Grafted Theology

  Apostolic Succession in the Pre-Nicene Church Introduction One of the recurring claims in modern discussions of church history is that apostolic succession developed gradually after the age of the apostles and was not part of the original structure of Christianity. According to this view, the early Church eventually created a system of episcopal succession in order to preserve order and combat heresy. The surviving evidence from the pre-Nicene Church tells a different story. When the earliest Christian sources outside the New Testament are examined, apostolic succession is not presented as a new development or later institutional solution. Rather, it is consistently described as something received from the apostles themselves and embedded in the life of the churches they founded. From Rome to Antioch, from Asia Minor to Gaul and North Africa, the same basic assumption appears: the Church possessed a visible continuity with the apostles through ordained leaders who succeeded those...

- Penal Substitution’s Tension with the Trinity and Christology - The Christological Boundaries We Cannot Cross Any account of the atonement must remain within the boundaries of orthodox Christology. However we describe Christ’s saving work, we are not free to adjust the doctrine of Christ in order to make our theory function. Our doctrine of the atonement cannot contradict our doctrine of Christ. What we say about what God accomplished in Him must remain consistent with who He is. If Penal Substitutionary Atonement claims that Christ was condemned in our place, then this is not merely a debate about soteriology. It is a question about the identity of Christ Himself. And when Christology is at stake, we must begin where the Church did: with the Definition of Chalcedon (AD 451), historically affirmed as the Chalcedonian Creed, which has guided orthodox reflection on Christ’s person and natures throughout the centuries. The Creed confesses: “We, then, following the holy fathers, all with...