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.
We run into this phenomenon of assuming a greater knowledge domain from a smaller observer vantage point all the time on science threads where the correspondent insists that randomness exists and yet one cannot say that randomness exists in a system unless he knows what the system “is.”
Great points, Alamo-Girl. Especially thank you for your "little epistemological list." It bears close study!
He was in Babylon according to 1 Peter 5:13 where he wrote this first epistle circa 65 AD. It was not even part of the Roman Empire then, but part of the Parthian Empire with a substantial Jewish population centering around the Babylonian Talmud.
As evidenced by the fact that they crucified him upside down.
----- 25 years later?????? They wouldn't know that he was there for 25 years? After Claudius issued his decree for all Jews to leave Rome, Peter would never have been allowed into Rome at all, and if found escorted out. They weren't crucifying Jews, just expelling them from Rome, and many went to Asia Minor, Pontus, etc,. That is why he referred to them in Asia Minor as "sojourners" and had probably visited them before going to Babylon.
I have to ask, Why do you not want it to be true that Peter was in Rome? It seems to me that you desparately don't want to acknowledge that Peter was in Rome. That you just made up the notion that Luke claimed Peter was imprisoned by Herod in 44 AD, apparently in order to attempt to refute Jerome, is telling. Why do you kick against the goads?
-A8
This is an example of being an uncharitable interpreter. Luke does not use the term "44 AD". Nor does Luke say anything that requires us to think that Peter appeared before Herod in 44 AD. Peter's imprisonment under Herod (and release by the angel) is thought to have occurred in 42 AD.
Thought by whom? --- Jerome. Historians put the reign of Herod Agrippa at 39 to 44 AD. The narrative in Acts 12 would put Peter's imprisonment and release closer to Herod's death in 44 AD.
But let's go forward to the Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15 where Peter was a major player. When was that? 49 AD? 50 AD? some put it 51 or 52. How could Peter be at the Council of Jerusalem and serving as Bishop of Rome at the same time? Bishops did not travel. They resided in one place with their flock. So what was Peter at that point: an Apostle or a Bishop? He couldn't be both. One or the other.
And was Peter in two places at one time? or did he have a clone?
Or was Peter simply in Jerusalem as Luke records traveling between Jerusalem and Asia Minor and Parthian Babylon, and not in Rome as Eusebius and Jerome erroneously pontificate.
You trust Jerome all you like. I trust Luke and his fellow writers.
Isn't Scripture amazing ---- and never failing
Yeah....I'm sure!
You wouldn't be siding with the theologians of your "separated brethren" on this, would you? Oh how I have heard the protests from Rome about being called "Babylon"!!!! And now you are insisting that we call Rome "Babylon?
All kidding aside, though, even the churches of the Reformation and later have their "patriarchs" and "traditional interpretations", but when confronted with the facts of Scripture, those things should give way. Unfortunately, they often do not.
The basic rule of hermeneutical interpretation is that the plain meaning of Scripture is to rule over the imaginative meaning. If it is possible and probable that "Babylon" means "Babylon" then without further consternation, it means "Babylon". Why would this be the only place in the New Testament when a writer had to hide the fact of where he is? Peter was not deceptive. He was just straight-forward. Rome was Rome. Babylon was Babylon, and every Jew knew what Babylon was and where it was.
If Rome was known as Babylon, then why didn't all the "Fathers" refer to the Church of Babylon instead of the Church of Rome? What Peter meant by "Babylon" and what John meant by the term, might be different, as the latter was writing figuratively.
That's unjustified speculation on your part. You are using another argument from silence to claim that events that occurred in 42 AD must have occurred in 44 AD, since the two narratives don't say that two years elapsed between them.
How could Peter be at the Council of Jerusalem and serving as Bishop of Rome at the same time? Bishops did not travel.
Where did you get the notion that "bishops did not travel"? How would they ever get to ecumenical councils if they did not travel??
You trust Jerome all you like. I trust Luke and his fellow writers.
The very notion that one has to choose between Jerome and Luke is a construct of your own making.
Here'e a timeline of Peter's life, from Stephen Ray's Upon This Rock:
c. 30 Death, Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus; Pentecost
30-37 Peter head of the Church in Jerusalem
38-39 Peter's missionary journeys in Samaria and on the coast of Palestine
40-41 Peter in Antioch
42 Imprisonment in Jerusalem, escape, and departure to "another place".
42-49 First sojourn in Rome
49 Expulsion from Rome by the edict of Claudius against its Jews
49-50 In Jerusalem for the Apostolic Council
50-54 In Antioch, Bithynia, Pontus, Asia, and Cappadocia (or some of them)
54-57 Second sojourn in Rome; Gospel of Mark written under Peter's direction
57-62 In Bithynia, Pontus, and Cappadocia (or some of them); Mark in Alexandria, Egypt
62-67 Third sojourn in Rome; canonical Epistles of Peter; Mark with Peter in Rome
67 Martyrdom in Rome and burial near the Necropolis at the Vatican.
-A8
Again, another argument from silence. You seem to have a thought pattern that makes frequent use of and gives great weight to arguments from silence. A review of the basic informal fallacies might be helpful to you.
-A8
Surely you are not going to tell us that Peter had a 13 year long distance Bishopric with his flock in Rome? And if he had been away that long, surely he would have written letters to them during those 13 years. Where are those? Where are any? Nowhere because it never happened.
Apostles travelled and established churches. Bishops resided with their churches and shepherded their flock, and they did not take 13 year sabbaticals away from their flocks without resigning their bishoprics.
The Church at Rome was not established by Peter in 42 or any time by Peter. It was established by Paul after he wrote his Epistle to the Romans which was circa 56 AD.
In Ch 1:11 of Romans Paul writes: "For I long to see you that I may impart unto you some spiritual gift to the end that ye may be ESTABLISHED". As late as 56 AD there were believers there in Rome but without a spiritual gift and therefore not established in the apostolic way. And Paul did that when he was taken to Rome.
One problem with gnosticism is that it lacks any objective way of determining who has "The Indwelling Spirit", and thus who has authority. If two people each claim to have "The Indwelling Spirit", and they disagree with each other, there is no way of determining who is right. Each thinks that he is right and that the other is wrong. And so they must each go their separate ways, adding to the 20,000+ number of already existing sects. In short, the position is a concession to skepticism about the possibility of objective theological knowledge.
-A8
(PS: Please stop using all caps.)
You still have shown us no other "Father" of the early Church to attest to Peter's 25 year bishopric? They are all so silent. You said that there were so many. Where are they? They too must be arguing from silence. Right???
No, Ray does not say that Peter was away from Rome for 13 years. I have no idea where you are getting that.
Is Ray right or Jerome?
Once again, the very notion that one has to choose between Jerome and Ray is a construct of your own making. Do you notice a pattern here? You are revealing your rush to find contradictions where there are none, and thus revealing your cynical/skeptical approach to the Fathers and to Catholicism, not a genuine truth-seeking approach.
Given that you have just started to read the fathers, it is amazing to me that you have the audacity to make such hand-waving dismissals of long-established traditions and claims of the Fathers.
The commandment to honor and mother and father does not merely apply to our biological parents, but also to our mothers and fathers in the faith. And that includes the Church Fathers.
-A8
That is a non sequitur.
-A8
No I didn't, but it is becoming quite clear that you are not interested in truth, especially when you attribute to me things I never said.
-A8
Since you are such an adherent to sola scriptura, please cite your source of this.
This is simply untrue! Josephus speaks of Israelites, beyond numbers, not subject to the Romans living in "Babylon" during the first century. You will find this in "Antiquities" Book XI, Chapter V, paragraph 2.
And when these Jews had understood what piety the king had towards God, and what kindness he had for Esdras, they were all greatly pleased; nay, many of them took their effects with them, and came to Babylon, as very desirous of going down to Jerusalem; but then the entire body of the people of Israel remained in that country; wherefore there are but two tribes in Asia and Europe subject to the Romans, while the ten tribes are beyond Euphrates till now, and are an immense multitude, and not to be estimated by numbers.
Matthew 10:5-6 directs Peter and the other Eleven to evangelize these "Lost Sheep" and not to go among the Gentiles. In 1 Peter 1:1-2 you will find Peter doing just that....evangelizing "Those with the foreknowledge of God". In fact Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles....and Rome, was told to stay away from there [Acts 16:7].
You will find that Babylon was a little more than a caravan stop during the first century. You may not like the idea of Peter being there but both history and scripture verify it. They do not do the same for him being in Rome.....at any time.
Good question and it should be pursued. There is very little in the writings of the early church fathers regarding Peter being in Rome. Uncle Chip
In Acts 8 we read of another "Simon"....Simon Magus who was a counterfeit.....perverted the gospel....was a descendant of Babylonians [II Kings 17:24].....spent most of his latter years in Rome known as Father Simon or Simon Pater.
I think there is probably some historical confusion about Simon Magus and Simon Peter.
Again, another argument from silence. You seem to have a thought pattern that makes frequent use of and gives great weight to arguments from silence. A review of the basic informal fallacies might be helpful to you.
Was that your answer to the question?
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