Posted on 10/21/2006 4:52:03 AM PDT by NYer
From Called To Communion: Understanding the Church Today
Editor's note: This is the second half of a chapter titled "The Primacy of Peter and Unity of the Church." The first half examines the status of Peter in the New Testament and the commission logion contained in Matthew 16:17-19.
The principle of succession in general
That the primacy of Peter is recognizable in all the major strands of the New Testament is incontestable.
The real difficulty arises when we come to the second question: Can the idea of a Petrine succession be justified? Even more difficult is the third question that is bound up with it: Can the Petrine succession of Rome be credibly substantiated?
Concerning the first question, we must first of all note that there is no explicit statement regarding the Petrine succession in the New Testament. This is not surprising, since neither the Gospels nor the chief Pauline epistles address the problem of a postapostolic Church—which, by the way, must be mentioned as a sign of the Gospels' fidelity to tradition. Indirectly, however, this problem can be detected in the Gospels once we admit the principle of form critical method according to which only what was considered in the respective spheres of tradition as somehow meaningful for the present was preserved in writing as such. This would mean, for example, that toward the end of the first century, when Peter was long dead, John regarded the former's primacy, not as a thing of the past, but as a present reality for the Church.
For many even believe—though perhaps with a little too much imagination—that they have good grounds for interpreting the "competition" between Peter and the beloved disciple as an echo of the tensions between Rome's claim to primacy and the sense of dignity possessed by the Churches of Asia Minor. This would certainly be a very early and, in addition, inner-biblical proof that Rome was seen as continuing the Petrine line; but we should in no case rely on such uncertain hypotheses. The fundamental idea, however, does seem to me correct, namely, that the traditions of the New Testament never reflect an interest of purely historical curiosity but are bearers of present reality and in that sense constantly rescue things from the mere past, without blurring the special status of the origin.
Moreover, even scholars who deny the principle itself have propounded hypotheses of succession. 0. Cullmann, for example, objects in a very clear-cut fashion to the idea of succession, yet he believes that he can Show that Peter was replaced by James and that this latter assumed the primacy of the erstwhile first apostle. Bultmann believes that he is correct in concluding from the mention of the three pillars in Galatians 2:9 that the course of development led away from a personal to a collegial leadership and that a college entered upon the succession of Peter. [1]
We have no need to discuss these hypotheses and others like them; their foundation is weak enough. Nevertheless, they do show that it is impossible to avoid the idea of succession once the word transmitted in Scripture is considered to be a sphere open to the future. In those writings of the New Testament that stand on the cusp of the second generation or else already belong to it-especially in the Acts of the Apostles and in the Pastoral Letters—the principle of succession does in fact take on concrete shape.
The Protestant notion that the "succession" consists solely in the word as such, but not in any "structures", is proved to be anachronistic in light of what in actual fact is the form of tradition in the New Testament. The word is tied to the witness, who guarantees it an unambiguous sense, which it does not possess as a mere word floating in isolation. But the witness is not an individual who stands independently on his own. He is no more a wit ness by virtue of himself and of his own powers of memory than Peter can be the rock by his own strength. He is not a witness as "flesh and blood" but as one who is linked to the Pneuma, the Paraclete who authenticates the truth and opens up the memory and, in his turn, binds the witness to Christ. For the Paraclete does not speak of himself, but he takes from "what is his" (that is, from what is Christ's: Jn 16: 13).
This binding of the witness to the Pneuma and to his mode of being-"not of himself, but what he hears" -is called "sacrament" in the language of the Church. Sacrament designates a threefold knot-word, witness, Holy Spirit and Christ-which describes the essential structure of succession in the New Testament. We can infer with certainty from the testimony of the Pastoral Letters and of the Acts of the Apostles that the apostolic generation already gave to this interconnection of person and word in the believed presence of the Spirit and of Christ the form of the laying on of hands.
The Petrine succession in Rome
In opposition to the New Testament pattern of succession described above, which withdraws the word from human manipulation precisely by binding witnesses into its service, there arose very early on an intellectual and anti-institutional model known historically by the name of Gnosis, which made the free interpretation and speculative development of the word its principle. Before long the appeal to individual witnesses no longer sufficed to counter the intellectual claim advanced by this tendency. It became necessary to have fixed points by which to orient the testimony itself, and these were found in the so-called apostolic sees, that is, in those where the apostles had been active. The apostolic sees became the reference point of true communio. But among these sees there was in turn–quite clearly in Irenaeus of Lyons–a decisive criterion that recapitulated all others: the Church of Rome, where Peter and Paul suffered martyrdom. It was with this Church that every community had to agree; Rome was the standard of the authentic apostolic tradition as a whole.
Moreover, Eusebius of Caesarea organized the first version of his ecclesiastical history in accord with the same principle. It was to be a written record of the continuity of apostolic succession, which was concentrated in the three Petrine sees Rome, Antioch and Alexandria-among which Rome, as the site of Peter's martyrdom, was in turn preeminent and truly normative. [2]
This leads us to a very fundamental observation. [3] The Roman primacy, or, rather, the acknowledgement of Rome as the criterion of the right apostolic faith, is older than the canon of the New Testament, than "Scripture".
We must be on our guard here against an almost inevitable illusion. "Scripture" is more recent than "the scriptures" of which it is composed. It was still a long time before the existence of the individual writings resulted in the "New Testament" as Scripture, as the Bible. The assembling of the writings into a single Scripture is more properly speaking the work of tradition, a work that began in the second century but came to a kind of conclusion only in the fourth or fifth century. Harnack, a witness who cannot be suspected of pro-Roman bias, has remarked in this regard that it was only at the end of the second century, in Rome, that a canon of the "books of the New Testament" won recognition by the criterion of apostolicity-catholicity, a criterion to which the other Churches also gradually subscribed "for the sake of its intrinsic value and on the strength of the authority of the Roman Church".
We can therefore say that Scripture became Scripture through the tradition, which precisely in this process included the potentior principalitas–the preeminent original authority–of the Roman see as a constitutive element.
Two points emerge clearly from what has just been First, the principle of tradition in its sacramental form-apostolic succession—played a constitutive role in the existence and continuance of the Church. Without this principle, it is impossible to conceive of a New Testament at all, so that we are caught in a contradiction when we affirm the one while wanting to deny the other. Furthermore, we have seen that in Rome the traditional series of bishops was from the very beginning recorded as a line of successors.
We can add that Rome and Antioch were conscious of succeeding to the mission of Peter and that early on Alexandria was admitted into the circle of Petrine sees as the city where Peter's disciple Mark had been active. Having said all that, the site of Peter's martyrdom nonetheless appears clearly as the chief bearer of his supreme authority and plays a preeminent role in the formation of tradition which is constitutive of the Church-and thus in the genesis of the New Testament as Bible; Rome is one of the indispensable internal and external- conditions of its possibility. It would be exciting to trace the influence on this process of the idea that the mission of Jerusalem had passed over to Rome, which explains why at first Jerusalem was not only not a "patriarchal see" but not even a metropolis: Jerusalem was now located in Rome, and since Peter's departure from that city, its primacy had been transferred to the capital of the pagan world. [4]
But to consider this in detail would lead us too far afield for the moment. The essential point, in my opinion, has already become plain: the martyrdom of Peter in Rome fixes the place where his function continues. The awareness of this fact can be detected as early as the first century in the Letter of Clement, even though it developed but slowly in all its particulars.
Concluding reflections
We shall break off at this point, for the chief goal of our considerations has been attained. We have seen that the New Testament as a whole strikingly demonstrates the primacy of Peter; we have seen that the formative development of tradition and of the Church supposed the continuation of Peter's authority in Rome as an intrinsic condition. The Roman primacy is not an invention of the popes, but an essential element of ecclesial unity that goes back to the Lord and was developed faithfully in the nascent Church.
But the New Testament shows us more than the formal aspect of a structure; it also reveals to us the inward nature of this structure. It does not merely furnish proof texts, it is a permanent criterion and task. It depicts the tension between skandalon and rock; in the very disproportion between man's capacity and God's sovereign disposition, it reveals God to be the one who truly acts and is present.
If in the course of history the attribution of such authority to men could repeatedly engender the not entirely unfounded suspicion of human arrogation of power, not only the promise of the New Testament but also the trajectory of that history itself prove the opposite. The men in question are so glaringly, so blatantly unequal to this function that the very empowerment of man to be the rock makes evident how little it is they who sustain the Church but God alone who does so, who does so more in spite of men than through them.
The mystery of the Cross is perhaps nowhere so palpably present as in the primacy as a reality of Church history. That its center is forgiveness is both its intrinsic condition and the sign of the distinctive character of God's power. Every single biblical logion about the primacy thus remains from generation to generation a signpost and a norm, to which we must ceaselessly resubmit ourselves. When the Church adheres to these words in faith, she is not being triumphalistic but humbly recognizing in wonder and thanksgiving the victory of God over and through human weakness. Whoever deprives these words of their force for fear of triumphalism or of human usurpation of authority does not proclaim that God is greater but diminishes him, since God demonstrates the power of his love, and thus remains faithful to the law of the history of salvation, precisely in the paradox of human impotence.
For with the same realism with which we declare today the sins of the popes and their disproportion to the magnitude of their commission, we must also acknowledge that Peter has repeatedly stood as the rock against ideologies, against the dissolution of the word into the plausibilities of a given time, against subjection to the powers of this world.
When we see this in the facts of history, we are not celebrating men but praising the Lord, who does not abandon the Church and who desired to manifest that he is the rock through Peter, the little stumbling stone: "flesh and blood" do not save, but the Lord saves through those who are of flesh and blood. To deny this truth is not a plus of faith, not a plus of humility, but is to shrink from the humility that recognizes God as he is. Therefore the Petrine promise and its historical embodiment in Rome remain at the deepest level an ever-renewed motive for joy: the powers of hell will not prevail against it . . .
Endnotes:
[1] Die Geschichte der synoptischen Tradition, 2d ed. (198 1), 147- 51; cf. Gnilka, 56.
[2] For an exhaustive account of this point, see V. Twomey, Apostolikos Thronos (Münster, 1982).
[3] It is my hope that in the not-too-distant future I will have the opportunity to develop and substantiate in greater detail the view of the succession that I attempt to indicate in an extremely condensed form in what follows. I owe important suggestions to several works by 0. Karrer, especially: Um die Einheit der Christen. Die Petrusfrage (Frankfurt am Mainz, 1953); "Apostolische Nachfolge und Primat", in: Feiner, Trütsch and Böckle, Fragen in der Theologie heute (Freiburg im.Breisgau, 1957), 175-206; "Das Petrusamt in der Frühkirche", in Festgabe J. Lortz (Baden-Baden, 1958), 507-25; "Die biblische und altkirchliche Grundlage des Papsttums", in: Lebendiges Zeugnis (1958), 3-24. Also of importance are some of the papers in the festschrift for 0. Karrer: Begegnung der Christen, ed. by Roesle-Cullmann (Frankfurt am Mainz, 1959); in particular, K. Hofstetter, "Das Petrusamt in der Kirche des I. und 2. Jahrhunderts", 361-72.
[4] Cf. Hofstetter.
So, how do we determine who has the Holy Spirit, and who doesn't? The Mormon says he has the Spirit. You say *you* have the Spirit. So how do we determine who is right? Your answer to this question, if I understand you correctly, is to conduct a subjective test: We should pray and seek God, and determine for ourselves who has the Spirit and who doesn't. Like I said earlier, that's a recipe for the fragmentation of the Church, for if you have 20,000 people, you will get 20,000 different notions of what the Spirit is saying.
This subjective and gnostic notion is completely alien to the first 1500 years of Christian orthodoxy. For the early and medieval Church, if you wanted to know who has the Spirit, you would see who had valid orders in succession from the Apostles.
-A8
The problem with this proposal is that it assumes that we already know what counts as "remaining obedient to the Father". The question on the table is: Which is more obedient to the Father: following the Protestants' interpretation(s) of Scripture or following the Catholic intepretation of Scripture?
It seems to me that the best way to attempt to resolve our disagreement is first to understand each other's positions. We can't compare the two positions if we don't have a good understanding of both of them. Second, we have to determine what point or points are fundamental to all the points of disagreement. In other words, we need to determine if all the points of disagreement depend on some one or more fundamental points of disagreement. And third, we need to evaluate the evidence for and against the fundamental points of disagreement. That's my proposal.
-A8
I don't think restoring unity to Christ's Church will be accomplished merely by commanding or inviting all Christians to become Reformed Protestants. I think it will take a patient but determined commitment to dialogue (in a manner similar to what I just laid out above) between Christians of the various traditions.
-A8
Even if that were true, it would be an argument from silence, and that would beg the question by assuming the truth of 'sola scriptura'.
The Church you attend may be able to trace its roots to the Apostles, namely Paul, but Rome being the center of Christianity with a supreme Pontiff simply did not occur until the council of Nicea.
The church at Rome always had primacy, as the Church fathers even in the first two centuries attested.
-A8
Salvation came to you through the Church, whether you realize it or not. That is why Augustine says, "He cannot have God for his father who does not have the Church for his mother." That does not mean that salvation did not come to you through Christ. But Christ is not greedy; He lets others participate in His saving work. Just as doing it unto the least of these is doing it unto Him, so he who listens to the Apostles (and bishops) listens to Christ, but who who rejects the Apostles (and bishops) rejects Christ and Him who sent Christ (Luke 10:16). Christ uses the Church (His body) to bring salvation to sinners. The visible Church is the body of the incarnate Christ now on Earth; we are His hands and feet. We continue His work with our hands and feet. To be saved one must be incorporated into Christ's body, to be made a part of His bride, the Church. That is why the Church is essential to our salvation.
-A8
Subjective testing of spirits = "telling yourself that the Holy Spirit just led you to believe or do what you just decided was the right thing to believe or do."
As proud_2_B_texasgal said in #1011, "Any human person is ... going to interpret differently from the next."
And the same is true of testing spirits. If you tell 20,000 people that they have the Spirit and the authority to determine subjectively what the Spirit is saying, then you will get 20,000 opinions.
-A8
With all due respect to Augustine, there is simply NO scriptural basis for that statement. I respect his love for & loyalty to his church, but nowhere in scripture is it said we need a "mother" of any sort or that God alone is not sufficient. This is fundamentally conflicting, to say the least, with scripture. The comment implies one is not exclusive of the other and that is simply not true.
Salvation does not come through a church, whether with a big "C" or a little "c". Salvation comes from the atoning blood of Jesus Christ. Jesus is ALL that is necessary for one's salvation. In His FINISHED work on the cross there IS sufficient for all of mankind's salvation. We have no need for a "mother" be it a church or other person. Our Father, in all of His righteousness and Glory, is more than enough for us. He shares His Glory with NO ONE. I am the LORD: that is my name: and my glory will I not give to another... - ISAIAH 42:8
To be saved one must be incorporated into Christ's body, to be made a part of His bride, the Church.
That is just not true:
The jailer] "brought them out, and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved? And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house" (Acts 16:30-31)
Truth completes us. Oh, how I wish their spirits were calm enough to hear, if they only knew... How blessed we are to be Catholic!!!
Other than Eusebius and Jerome, and they were late, in the 4th century, I have found no other early church patriarchs that give credence to Peter's Bishopric.
I checked Clement of Rome, Ignatius, Justin Martur, all of whom were early enough and connected enough to Rome to know the facts. If anyone would attest to his Bishopric, they would, but there is nothing in their writings. Surely Peter's Bishopric in Rome would show up in their writings if he had been there, right?
The earliest attestation that Peter was even in Rome was Irenaeus whose only attestation is of the "Church founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious Apostles, Peter and Paul". That's all. There is no mention of a 25 year bishopric, Nero, dates, crucifixion, or death of Peter in Rome.
Where did Irenaeus get his information that Peter had been in Rome with Paul establishing the Church there if it is not in Scripture or in any of the patriarchal writings before him? Did he just make it up or did he read about in the Gnostic Clementine literature that was going around which was hardly credible?
What credible patriarchs of the early Church am I missing?
The "church" has no role in salvation.
Salvation is a gift from God, we can do nothing to gain it.
"Nowhere in scripture is it said that we need a 'mother' of any sort".
It's quite apparent that Jesus Christ Himself chose to come to us in his body through a mother.
If "we are the body of Christ, member for member" (St. Paul), then we are incorporated in Him through a mother.
It is the way He has chosen to "become flesh and dwell among us."
Jesus did nothing out of the ordinary in coming to us through a mother. He is a God of order and He chose to follow the order He set "in the beginning". It is perfectly natural and amazingly awseome at the same time that he was born of a woman. In fact, He clearly CHOSE to be identified with us (scriptural) in that we all come into this world through a mother. Being birthed from a woman's womb is the natural means for a person to come into this world. Could He have identified Himself with us has He come in some grandiose fashion other than being born of a woman?
That He chose to be birthed of a woman, according the laws of nature that He preordained, says nothing to indicate we must have the church as a "mother".
We are the body made up of many members with Him as the head, yes. That we are such is in no way indicative of our need for a "mother church". It is Paul's analogy of the church as a body and Christ as the head that gives us insight as to our oneness with Christ and each other.
Nowhere is it in scripture that the church is to be our "mother". God is mentioned numerous times as being our Father, but nowhere does He indicate we have need of more than Himself.
Please clarify, with scripture, if you will, what you believe to be the church's role in salvation. Just to better understand what you are saying.
I believe we have a role in ministering the message of salvation to the lost, but salvation in itself is offered only through Christ. No one else was nailed to the cross. No one else shed their blood. No one else died and rose again defeating the works of the devil. No one else but Christ has that power. There had to be a sacrifice for sin and Christ became that sacrifice. In doing all of this, Christ, and Christ alone, provided all that was necessary for salvation. No one else had a role in this act. Salvation is a completed work. Jesus said Himself, "It is finished." All that was necessary for salvation was fulfilled upon the cross. That we are to witness of this gift to others is a given, but we are nothing more than witnesses to the act and we can do nothing more to perfect the gift He so freely provided.
Why must there be a "Scriptural basis" for it? There is no "Scriptural basis" for 'sola scriptura'. Nobody thought in terms of sola scriptura for 1500 years. 'Sola scriptura' is an historical novelty, a modern contrivance completely foreign to the Church which Christ founded. That is why Cardinal Newman said that to be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant. As soon as one comes to understand that for 1500 years the Church recognized the *authority* of bishops, one sees that any group that does not recognize the authority of bishops and which espouses 'sola scriptura' is not the Church that Christ founded and the Apostles spread. A good book about this is Sungenis's Not By Scripture Alone.
-A8
How can we be assured of our own salvation if St. Paul wasn't (1 Corinthians 9:27)?
"Faith is an entirely free gift that God makes to man. We can lose this priceless gift, as St. Paul indicated to St. Timothy: 'Wage the good warfare, holding faith and a good conscience. By rejecting conscience, certain persons have made shipwreck of their faith.' [1 Tim 1:18-19 .] To live, grow and persevere in the faith until the end we must nourish it with the word of God; we must beg the Lord to increase our faith; [Cf. Mk 9:24 ; Lk 17:5 ; Lk 22:32.] it must be 'working through charity,' abounding in hope, and rooted in the faith of the Church. [Gal 5:6 ; Rom 15:13 ; cf. Jam 2:14-26.]" CCC 162
Apologies for not pinging you to my response.
Salvation is not a "one time" event, but an ongoing process until "the end" (Matthew 10:22; 24:13; Mark 13:13). Through the Church, we receive the Sacraments which help us grow in grace.
You seem to forget that Irenaeus was a pupil of Polycarp, who was an auditor of the Apostle John. You live in a society and culture in which something must be written down for it to have credibility. You are seemingly imposing that notion on a time and culture in which many things were passed down orally.
Irenaeus is a very trustworthy source, both in his character and given the fact that he spent considerable time in Rome as an envoy (if I remember correctly). Dionysius, bishop of Corinth (c. 166-174 AD), also writes that both Peter and Paul planted both in Rome and in Corinth, and suffered martyrdom at the same time. And there is no competing traditional account of Peter's life. Peter himself gives evidence of his being in Rome in 1 Peter 5:13. And Papias (bishop of Hieropolis) and Clement of Alexandria both testify that Mark wrote his Gospel at Rome, which Gospel is understood to have been written under the direction and authority of Peter. (See, for example, 1 Pet 5:13) This Clement of Alexandria (c. 150 - 215 AD) also tells us that Peter preached at Rome. Tertullian also refers to "those whom Peter baptized in the Tiber", and tells us that Clement (of Rome) was ordained by Peter at Rome. Remember too that unlike in the case of Paul, there is no evidence of Peter being brought to Rome to stand trial. Nor would Peter, not being a Roman citizen have needed to be brought to Rome to face Nero or to be executed. But there is much evidence that Peter was martyred in Rome. The best explanation of those three facts is that Peter was already in Rome, on his own accord. And there is long-standing and undisputed tradition that Peter went there early, in part to deal with the false teaching of Simon Magus (who apparently had gone to Rome and through his sorcery become so revered that had a statue of himself as a god set up in Rome). St. Cyril (bishop of Jerusalem) testifies to that, and there are other sources for that as well.
-A8
You are quite right as usual.
Allowed physical fatigue to influence the other. Sorry.
I'm routinely called a lot worse, even hereon, as you know! LOL.
Some of the folks I have known might, say, be prone to calling a dead black cat a flying pink elephant with green stripes.
I tend to disagree with their label.
Sounds like the author mentioned has an axe to grind and so trumped up something in favor of his axe and tradition etc. Doesn't fly with me in the least.
I have a fair amount of patience for a lot of repetition.
But at some point redundant redundant again again btoken broken records records of the gnostic labeling sort are extremely unatractive and will be ignored.
Impartation of the awareness that Christ is Lord and all the other spiritual truths by Holy Spirit--whether involving the Bible, or not, IS NOT GNOSTIC regardless of what some yea-hoo author decides to label them.
The logical result would be that Holy Spirit is gnnostic, which is absurd.
Amen, of course! LUB
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