Sullivan is by no means unusual in articulating this view. Even those who defend episcopal church government typically argue that it is a gradual development guided by the Holy Spirit, not a structure extending back to the apostles. For example, the Roman Catholic scholar Raymond Brown acknowledges that “the presbyter-bishops described in the NT were not in any traceable way the successors of the Twelve apostles.” Thus, he argues that “the affirmation that the episcopate was divinely established or established by Christ himself can be defended in the nuanced sense that the episcopate gradually
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