A Retired Title, Reissued Without a Single Authority to Grant It

For most of Christian history the title apostle was treated as closed, a description of a specific first generation rather than an office that could be filled again, and its reappearance as a functioning modern title is a comparatively recent and contested development. Nineteenth century movements such as the Catholic Apostolic Church revived it first, appointing twelve apostles of their own on the model of the original Twelve, a body that was never replaced once its last member died.

The larger modern revival runs through Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity, particularly the loose set of networks scholars group under the label New Apostolic Reformation, where self-identified apostles claim authority to oversee, correct and commission other churches and ministers, sometimes across whole regions or nations, without belonging to any denomination that ordains or supervises them. Because there is no central body granting or withdrawing the title in this setting, recognition of a given apostle rests entirely on the following and networks that accept the claim, which critics both inside and outside Pentecostalism argue removes any check on how the authority is used, while proponents hold it restores a governmental gift the institutional churches abandoned. Mainline, Catholic and Orthodox churches do not recognise the title in this modern sense at all.