Down yonder, a reader writes:
Speaking of Matthias, I caught a sermon by a fundamentalist preacher
on the radio somewhat in the middle of it, but it seemed to me that he
was arguing that the election of Matthias was invalid, presumably
because it was done by casting lots, and that God over-ruled the early
Christians by making Paul an apostle. The moral, he said, was that we
shouldn’t force God to choose between two man-made choices, but rather,
we should give him the maximum freedom in revealing his will. (He used
Matthias as an example of this, although the principle seems valid).My question is: how common is this line of thought? And, if Paul was
an apostle and so was Matthias, then weren’t there 13 apostles?
The line of thought is somewhat common in Protestant circles. When I was Protestant, for a time I was a member of a church where the pastor held this idea, though he didn’t phrase it so strongly (e.g., he didn’t diss the drawing of lots, perhaps because he knew high priests often did this in the Old Testament to discern God’s will).
Still, the idea is not all-pervasive in Protestant circles, and my impression is that most reject it. There is good reason for doing so as Acts portrays the selection of Matthias as a divine act and never challenges his status as an apostle. The fact Paul (who wouldn’t be converted for some time yet) went on to be a more effective apostle proves nothing. Paul also was more effective, so far as we can tell, than–say–Jude Thaddeus or Simon the Zealot, but they were clearly apostles.
There’s also another reason why the argument doesn’t work: The basic motive for booting Matthias in favor of Paul (other than an anti-hierarchial bias) is to get the total number of apostles to come out to twelve. But this won’t work as soon as one realizes that Barnabas, along with Paul, is directly called an apostle in Acts 14:14, which would boot the number back up to thirteen.
One could, of course, count the martyrdom of James son of Zebedee (Acts 12) as bringing the number down to twelve even allowing Barnabas and Paul, but at this is so long after the Crucifixion that it would be hard to explain except on the Mormon-like idea that the Twelve constituted a group that needed to be continually replenished, which the early Church did not share. It also would not explain the other (though more debatable) passages that appear to refer to additional apostles (e.g., the Andronicus and Junias mentioned in Romans 16:7).
It is simpler, I suggest to look at the matter this way:
1) In the wake of Judas Iscariot’s suicide, Peter declares (Acts 1:20-22) that his slot in the Twelve needs to be filled and he lays out a specific condition for the kind of person that needs to fill it: someone who was with them the whole time of Jesus’ ministry, from the Baptism by John to the Ascension. This suggests that the function of the Twelve is to serve as witnesses of Christ’s earthly ministry.
2) Matthias was validly elected as a member of the Twelve, as Acts 1 suggests. The other apostles or early Church Fathers never challenged this.
3) The Twelve, as witnesses of Christ’s ministry, were a group that could not continue indefinitely since only a certain number of people witnessed it. It thus was not a continuing body, as Mormons maintain.
4) Despite the function of the Twelve as witnesses of Christ’s ministry, God did call other apostles, including Paul, Barnabas, and possibly others. Some of these, such as Paul, could not be members of the Twelve because they had not been around during the period of Jesus’ ministry, but they could be afterward commissioned as apostles, either in a vision of Jesus (1 Cor. 9:1) or perhaps by revelation from the Holy Spirit (Acts 13:2).
Speaking of the Apostles, you can get a good discussion of them in Vol. 3 of John Meier’s book A Marginal Jew (although he doesn’t take the issue into post-resurection times). But make sure to supplement his book with a more conservative work, such as IVP’s Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels.
Jimmy: I do think that the question of who “the twelve” were – when there were twelve – but after Judas – is still an interesting one, especially in light of the way the Roman Canon mentions twelve, including Paul, but not including Matthias. (I agree that the Protestant attempt to make a theological point about Paul vs. Matthias doesn’t work, though.)
The reason being that there is, I suspect, a difference between the “apostles” in a narrower sense – those who were the original witnesses to Jesus – and “apostles” in the sense of those who succeeded them, or even of all Christians (remember that “apostle” means “sent” and we are all “sent” on a mission in Christ).
Who will be the “twelve” who will judge the world along with the twelve tribes of Israel? If Apostleship is limited to the original 12 chosen by Jesus, then there will be only 11, since Judas is in hell. If apostleship extends to those chosen afterward, then Paul and Matthias would make the number 13. Any thoughts?
Speaking of Matthias, have you read “Gospel” by Wilton Barnhardt? And if so, what did you think of it?
The Greek word ‘apostle’ might mean sent one, but the Hebrew word ‘sheliach’ is a special legal office. A sheliach has to be directly appointed by the person he represents, and can then speak for that person, as though that person were speaking, -and it cannot be passed on by the sheliach to someone else-.