www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Petrine Views

Not so. The apostolic charism is sui generis, and not all the Apostles acted as bishops. St. Paul, for one, though founder of many Churches, was peripatetic and left bishops to carry on after his founding. There isn't even much evidence that Paul presided at the Eucharistic table.

Also, the earliest versions of the Liber Pontificalis don't start with Peter but with Linus, indicating that Peter was considered something other than Bishop of Rome.

Unfortuately, the Patriarch Ignatius Abdul Masih II was considered deposed, reelected and deposed again, somewhere along the time by his own Patriarchate due to Ottoman interferences. The Syriac Patriarchate claims this ordination of the Catholicate of the East in India was illegitimite, whereas the Malankara Orthodox accept it. Adding Catholic drama to the mix, it is said that Patriarch Abdul Masih II before he died, was received as a Catholic. It is disputed if he stayed that way before he left this earth.

So this amounts to your basic Eastern Churches food fight, only more exotic because it involves the Syrians and Indians, instead of the usual squabbling Slavs.

Dear brother Stuart,

I can only partially agree with you, because I don’t find it reasonable to insist that potestas is necessarily opposed or even inconsistent with the notion of auctoritas. Many probably equate potestas with legalism and absolutism, but apostolic and patristic practice does not support such an assumption. Potestas is indeed connected with the law of things (ecclesiastical or divine). However, legalism is not defined by a mere adherence to law, but rather by an adherence to law that damages the subject that that law is supposed to protect and/or preserve. And while potestas is also indeed connected with juridical authority, absolutism is not defined by the possession of juridical authority, but by the exclusion of any outside influence upon that authority. Clearly, potestas in the ecclesiological sphere can exist, does exist, and has existed - can be exercised, is exercised, and has been exercised - since the days of the Apostles that is neither legalistic nor absolutist, but rather ministerial.

In the Church, auctoritas cannot exist without potestas, and vice-versa; they are two sides of the same coin. They can be considered separately in the secular sphere, both theoretically and practically, but it is impossible to do so ecclesiologically speaking. Why? Because authority in the Church is first and foremost an exercise of the authority of God.

Accordingly, I believe your statement that primacy “can only be derived from moral suasion and the proper desire of all to defer to all according to status and gifts” is somewhat erroneous. I only say “somewhat” because your condition is actually a feature common to all forms of authority - whether absolute, collegial, democratic, etc., whether secular or divine. Your condition does not distinguish your position from the Absolutist Petrine view – so it does not help your position much. In other words, any form of authority requires from its subjects what you propose - otherwise, the result is anarchy. But what distinguishes ecclesiastical authority from secular authority is that the potestas of the former is divine – not just supported by God, but rather is of God. It is the knowledge of this divine origin of ecclesiastical potestas which inspires, informs, and undergirds the auctoritas of the Church.

Divorcing potestas from auctoritas, does not solve the problem in the least, but causes more problems, because it can lead theoretically and practically to Protestantism. The only legitimate concern is really the frequency, manner, and purpose for its use. We can take care of this through the canons, and that is what an ecumenical council can do when reunion occurs or for reunion to occur.

BTW, earlier you stated that I am arguing to maintain the “status quo.” Can you please explain what you mean? What “status quo” do you think I am trying to maintain?

Blessings,
Marduk

I would agree. The thing that distinguishes bishops from Apostles is that Apostles were itinerant.

Blessings

We actually agree here.

Dear brother Aramis,

I agree. But "suffragan" as an ecclesiastical term came into vogue only upon the inception of jurisdictionalism in the fourth century (latter third at the earliest). ISTM that before this time, there was only one head bishop (the bishop of Rome) of the bishops of every nation (Apostolic Canon 34/35), not one head bishop of the bishops in each nation (a later development). Before this time, the college of bishops was a fraternity with a coryphaeus who acted as an elder brother. Everyone recognized who this head bishop was, and there was no need to identify or insist upon who was suffragan to whom. But when jurisdictionalism came into vogue in the fourth century, that was no longer the case, and in order to preserve the jurisdiction of the various head bishops, it then became necessary to identify who was suffragan to whom.

Thanks for bringing this up. The Jewish roots of the Church would seem to dictate that the hierarchal OT model should have influenced the Church's conception of its own ecclesiastical consitution (high priest, chief priests, priests, levites).

Blessings

I do not agree with your interpretation of Canon 34, and even the Roman Catholic members of the Joint Commission on dialogue with the Orthodox Church accept the fact that the canon refers to regional primacies (see the Ravenna Document, section 2, nos. 22 - 31):

“The bishops of each province (ethnos) must recognize the one who is first (protos) amongst them, and consider him to be their head (kephale), and not do anything important without his consent (gnome); each bishop may only do what concerns his own diocese (paroikia) and its dependent territories. But the first (protos) cannot do anything without the consent of all. For in this way concord (homonoia) will prevail, and God will be praised through the Lord in the Holy Spirit” [Apostolic Canon 34].

The canon concerns regional synods of bishops and recognition by the members of each synod of one among them, i.e., in their region, who is protos. Frankly you have reversed the ordering of how primacy evolved in the Church, which was from local to regional, and finally universal, and not the other way around as you assert.

It is important to remember that the primacy of the bishop of Rome is not a divinely revealed truth, but is something that slowly developed over the course of centuries.

In the context of the Roman Empire in which the Church grew, the two concepts are distinct but not mutually exclusive. Auctoritas, which has no direct English equivalent, implies a kind of moral authority that conveys great influence. Potestas, on the other hand, is a purely juridical sort of power, which is conveyed by law, and explicitly involves subordination and the right to compel. The paterfamilias of a Roman family, for instance, held the patria potestas which, in theory, anyway, gave him absolute power, including the power of life and death, over all members of his household, including his own grown sons.

Potestas may convey auctoritas upon the bearer, but not necessarily; potestas abused becomes tyranny. A magistrate who abused his potestas (particularly the kind called imperium), or a father who abused his patria potestas, would actually lose much if not all of his auctoritas.

Auctoritas, on the other hand, is not at all dependent upon potestas. A privatus (private citizen) without any magistracy at all could wield enormous auctoritas by virtue of his personality or his acheivements. Auctoritas could, and generally did, trump potestas if the two came into conflict. As I pointed out, the Princeps Senatus in the Roman Republic was simply the first among the senators, yet his auctoritas exceeded any of the other consulars or proconsuls, and it would be difficult for the consuls themselves to pass a law without his acceptance.

The role of the Pope of Rome in the early Church was analogous to that of the Princeps Senatus: he was the first among the bishops. He was not greater than any other bishop, and his potestas extended only to his own diocese (and later, his metropolitan province). But his auctoritas (derived from his standing as head of the Church of Rome, and not from his own personality) was unmatched, and it would be extremely difficult for any new doctrine, teaching or ecclesiastical act to find legitimacy unless it received his endorsement, indicating reception by the Church of Rome.

Ironically, the prestige of the Church of Rome, based on its reputation for doctrinal soundness, was a direct result of its innate conservatism and lack of intellectual ferment. By the fourth century, Rome was already a backwater: the seat of government had moved north to Milan, and it is in that city (as well as in Carthage, Hippo and Lyons) that most of the lasting patristic contributions of the Western Church originate. As I said elsewhere, at that time, the most important theologians of the West were not Popes Liberius and Damasus, but men like Ambrose, Augustine, Vincent of Lerins and John Cassian. There were distinct schools of theology in Alexandria, Antioch, Africa, Milan and Gaul, but none in Rome, and that lack of intellectual curiosity meant Rome adopted new ideas slowly. As I have frequently noted, Rome remained strictly "paleo-Nicene" and did not accept the Creed of Constantinople until the Council of Ephesus--an interval of fifty years. So, when Rome did accept something, everybody knew it had to be correct.

And that, in the end, is how Rome became the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval for doctrine. Rome's one positive intervention in the theological controversies of the day was Pope Leo's Tomos, which (in modified form) became the core of the Chalcedonian Definition. But Rome did not make any similar contribution at the subsequent three Ecumenical Councils, and only partially received or understood the import of them--most notably, according to Pope Benedict himself, the Seventh Ecumenical Council's teachings on sacred images.

Even as late as the Photian Controversy, the Western Church retained this conservative stamp. At the end of the day, Rome rejected the Filioque as an innovation (whatever happened to those silver shields on the doors of Old St. Peters?), leaving no theological basis for schism, and the rift was healed. But the opening century of the second millennium saw a much more assertive Papacy emerging from the Cluniac movement that was not only full of beans but also full of nifty ideas that it thought it could impose on everybody else. The new Papacy represented a radical discontinuity with the past, both in the scope and the intensity of its claims. In short, Rome's own self-image changed dramatically between the 9th century and the 11th century, and with it, the manner in which Rome tried to exercise its primacy. Good Cluniacs that they were, they tended to see the Church as a gigantic monastery, and the Pope as a super-abbot; as the abbot ran his monastery through his plena potestas over the monks, so the Pope would rule the Church through his plena potestas over all the other bishops and Churches.

When combined with their ignorance of the Eastern Churches (Gregory the Great was a notable exception), and their belief that the Latin Church represented normative Christian belief and praxis, opposition was bound to emerge, helped along by the destruction or subsumption of the great Churches in the West, and the reduction of the Great Churches of the East to suffragans of Constantinople. A bi-polar world is inherently unstable, and conflict inevitable.

There is no evidence whatsoever that Canon of the Holy Apostles 34 applied to the Church of Rome, for the simple reason that it was unknown in Rome until long after the time of its composition. It is an Eastern canon that was meant to apply to regional primacy, but its general principle is applicable at all levels of primacy, from parish to universal.

You continually make the case for the viability of papal infallibility and universal, ordinary jurisdiction--in other words, the two foundations of the present conception of papal primacy. I think the Pope can exercise the Petrine ministry without either of these two innovations.

The Church derived a lot from the Jews, including most of its liturgical forms. However, it did not look to the Temple hierarchy for its own ecclesiastical constitution, but rather to the Synagogue (note that the words synagogue and ekklesia both mean "assembly").

The early Church, following St. Paul, deliberately rejected the Aaronic priesthood in favor of Christ's universal priesthood. That is why the word for priest (hieros) is applied in the New Temple only to the Aaronic priests of the Temple on the one hand, and to Jesus Christ, "our one true High Priest", on the other. Church ministers instead look to Synagogue offices for their titles. The Episkopos or Steward, has his Synagoge equivalent in the Archesynagogos, the "Head of the Synagogue (he was sometimes even called the episkopos). He was assisted by a council of elders (presbyteroi).

The one unique Christian office is the diaconate, which has no Synagogue equivalent: the need for men to "wait upon tables" was a pastoral response to a uniquely Christian situation. The Levites did not fulfill the role of deacons, did not participate in the Synagogue as Levites, and had a very different function within the Temple (much closer to that of Muslim jurisprudents than anything else).

Thus, it is quite wrong, in spite of later developments and popular belief, to think of the Pope as "High Priest", the bishops as "chief priests", the presbyters as "priests" and the deacons as Levites. Christ is the one true high priest; all the faithful share in His priesthood, and our ordained ministers remain part of the Lao tou Theos even after they are called out from the community to serve the Church as leaders, teachers and presiders at the Holy Table.

Dear brother Todd,

That is an attractive theory, but it has one insurmountable problem - it has no historical support. On the other hand, that the Canon reflects a universal paradigm that was slowly acquired by local Churches has much evidence:
1) The Lord states He will set one servant over His household when He leaves (Mt 24).
2) The Lord actually does this (Jn 21).
BTW, that Mt 24 refers to St. Peter and fulfilled in Jn 21 is supported by St. John Chrysostom and St. Ambrose of Milan.
3) St. Clement rules on a matter in another country (Corinth in Greece) while St. John the Apostle is still alive, and much closer on the island of Patmos, and while a bishop existed in the metropolis of Athens in Greece. If your theory were true, the Corinthians would have appealed to Athens, not Rome.
4) St. Ignatius states that the Church in Rome is the Church who presides in love, is the Church that teaches others, and gives instruction to others, and affirms that God and the love of the Church in Rome will take care of the Church in Antioch when he leaves.
5) St. Polycarp travels all the way to St. Anicetus in Rome to discuss the Easter issue. If your theory were true, St. Polycarp should have gone to the bishop of Antioch, who would then be responsible for discussing the matter with the bishop of Rome.
6) Under the direction of Pope St. Victor, all the Churches in the Orient, East and West held local synods to discuss the Paschal controversy. This was probably the closest thing to an ecumenical gathering that the Church experienced before Nicea.
7) St. Irenaeus teaches that in doctrine the whole Church must agree with the Church in Rome.
8) Tertullian, before becoming Montanist, pointed to Rome as the model of orthodoxy, where "the apostles poured forth all their doctrine as well as their blood," and "from which there comes into our own hands the very authority of the apostles themselves.," and whose doctrine "against which she admits no gainsayer."
9) St. Cyprian appeals to Rome to discipline errant bishops in Gaul and Spain.
10) St. Cyprian informs us: "[Decius] declared that he would rather have welcomed the news that a rival had appeared on the scene to claim the empire than that of the election of a new Bishop of Rome." Even the secular powers recognized the plenary authority of Rome.
11) St. Cyprian himself, before his disagreement with Rome, calls Rome the Chief Church, greater than Carthage.
NOTE: At this time, there was no jurisdictional distinction between East and West, so when Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Cyprian refers to Rome's relation to other Churches, it must mean the entire Church, not just the Churches in the West.
12) Pope St. Dionysius of Alexandria regularly inquired of disciplinary and theological matters to Rome, and himself accepted correction from Pope St. Dionysius of Rome on a doctrinal matter.

What evidence do you have for your position before the 4th century?

I agree. It is Petrine primacy that is considered divinely revealed dogma. Roman primacy is regarded as apostolic/ecclesiastical dogma.

Blessings

It's a dogma that can bark but has no bite.

I have never claimed that Rome knew of it at an early date. In fact, Rome regarded the Apostolic Canons as spurious (not because it was false, but because the author was unknown). But that does not diminish the idea that the Canon was based on the universal model of the Apostles with St. Peter as their head. Nor does it diminish the facts I gave to brother Todd above, which indicates that before jurisdictionalism cam into vogue in the 4th century, Rome was univerally held to be the Chief Church of all the Churches - and hence its bishop the head bishop of the bishops of every nation.

Blessings