essentially spiritual in
character and in the conditions of its exercise. Anything like autocracy
among his followers was alien to Jesus's own teaching (Matt, xxiii.
6-11). All Christians were "brethren," and the basis of pre-eminence
among them was relative ability for service. But the personal relation
of the original Palestinian apostles to Jesus himself as Master gave
them a unique fitness as authorized witnesses, from which flowed
naturally, by sheer spiritual influence, such special forms of authority
as they came gradually to exercise in the early Church. "There is no
trace in Scripture of a formal commission of authority for government
from Christ Himself" (Hort, _Chr. Eccl._ p. 84) given to apostles, save
as representing the brethren in their collective action. Even the
"resolutions" ([Greek: dogmata]) of the Jerusalem conference were not
set forth by the apostles present simply in their own name, nor as _ipso
facto_ binding on the conscience of the Antiochene Church. They
expressed "a claim to deference rather than a right to be obeyed" (Hort,
_op. cit._ 81-85). Such was the kind of authority attaching to apostles,
whether collectively or individually. It was not a fixed notion, but
varied in quantity and quality with the growing maturity of converts.
This is how Paul, from whom we gather most on the point, conceives the
matter. The exercise of his spiritual authority is not absolute, lest he
"lord it over their faith"; consent of conscience or of "faith" is ever
requisite (2 Cor. i. 24; cf. Rom. xiv. 23). But the principle was
elastic in application, and would take more patriarchal forms in
Palestine than in the Greek world. The case was essentially the same as
on the various mission-fields to-day, where the position of the
"missionary" is at first one of great spiritual initiative and
authority, limited only by his own sense of the fitness of things, in
the light of local usages. So the notion of formal or constitutional
authority attaching to the apostolate, in its various senses, is an
anachronism for the apostolic age. The tendency, however, was for their
authority to be conceived more and more on formal lines, and,
particularly after their deaths, as absolute.

The authority attaching to apostles as writers, which led gradually to
the formation of a New Testament Canon--"the Apostles" side by side with
"the Books" of the Old Testament (so 2 Clement xiv., c. A.D.
120-140)--is a subject by itself (see BIB