Apostles

Apostles are, in the New Testament, people sent with delegated authority to speak and act on the sender's behalf. The English word translates Greek apostolos, "one sent," from the verb apostellō, "to send"; in ordinary Greek usage it could mean simply a messenger or envoy, and that broader sense survives in the New Testament where the same word is used of church delegates and of Epaphroditus as a congregation's "messenger" (Philippians 2:25). In the Gospels it most often designates the Twelve whom Jesus chose and sent: the text says he appointed twelve "that they might be with him, and that he might send them out to preach" (Mark 3:14), and their company is named "the twelve apostles" (Matthew 10:2).

Apostleship in the New Testament is tied to the resurrection and to a commission from Christ himself. The text says the replacement for Judas had to be one who had accompanied the disciples from John's baptism and was a witness of the resurrection (Acts 1:21–22), and the task given is witness, from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8). The risen Jesus sends them to make disciples of all nations and to teach what he commanded (Matthew 28:19–20), and to preach the good news to the whole creation (Mark 16:15). Paul grounds his own claim to the title in a commission received directly from the risen Christ rather than from men (Galatians 1:1), and describes himself as an apostle to the Gentiles (Romans 11:13). The same commissioning pattern appears in the charge to Peter, "Feed my lambs… Feed my sheep" (John 21:15, 21:17). The apostolic claim is characteristically a claim to eyewitness testimony: what was heard, seen with the eyes, looked at and touched, declared and testified to (1 John 1:1–2).

Because the title carried authority, the New Testament also treats it as contested. The text speaks of "false apostles, deceitful workers, masquerading as Christ's apostles" (2 Corinthians 11:13), which indicates both that the word was claimed by itinerant teachers and that the churches were expected to test the claim.

Christian traditions differ over what apostleship means after the first generation, and this is a confessional rather than a purely historical question. In Catholic and Orthodox teaching, the bishops stand in a continuous line of succession from the Twelve, and apostolicity is a mark of the church carried in that ordered ministry. In most Protestant teaching, the apostles are a unique foundational ministry, with the church built on "the foundation of the apostles and prophets" (Ephesians 2:20); apostolicity is located instead in faithfulness to the apostles' teaching, and the apostolic office is not held to have successors in the strict sense, though some restorationist and Pentecostal bodies have claimed contemporary apostles. All the historic creeds confess the church as "apostolic," differing chiefly on where that apostolicity is located.

AI-generated reference entry, grounded in the passages where this term appears — history and Scripture stated as such, interpretation labeled as interpretation. Not a substitute for the text itself.