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.
I agree. But if the differences between Christians are *not* important, then by remaining divided we are dividing Christ's body over petty matters. And Christ prays three times (in John 17) that His disciples would be one, "perfected in unity".
On the other hand, if the differences between Christian *are* important, then we should definitely talk about them.
-A8
Thanks, Dear Heart.
Am humbled by your kind words.
And 10 X's the blessings of The Lord right back at you and family. LUB
-A8
Here's the danger. If God might just at any time "lift the anointing and give it to someone else", then we would have no way of knowing who has the anointing.
NOT AT ALL in my experience and in my reading of Scripture. Particularly, to the discerning, prayed up, confessed up, repented up, obeyed up, filled-up with Holy Spirit--the departure of the anointing is very obvious. And, sometimes, it's almost or literally as though a cold wind comes in behind the departure. Certainly there's a dryness, a hollowness, an empty-ness which seems to descend. Detecting the departure of the anointing is easy for anyone seriously spiritually sensitive . . .as all Christians ought to seek to be, imho.
Throughout all of redemptive history, "the gifts and calling are irrevocable" (Rom 11:29).
GIFTS AND CALLINGS of God are DIFFERENT from the ANOINTING of God.
David in your example above would probably have been blessed of God to have removed Saul then and there. After all, God delivered him into David's hand. DAVID CHOSE to respect God above that expected in terms of refusing to touch God's anointed in a functional, title sense. The spiritual anointing had left Saul long ago as Scripture is clear about.
Sampson was anointed again while chained between the two pillars in the banquet hall. He brought the house down literally. He had forsaken his anointing and it was lifted from him when he disobeyed God and told the woman the secret of his power, anointing.
That notion that God might just (or maybe just did) "lift the anointing and give it to someone else", disconnects form and matter, word and witness, spirit and sacrament. It is a form of gnosticism that completely undermines the possibility of Church authority, for everyone gets to determine on his own who has the anointing, and that is an entirely subjective endeavor.
NOT AT ALL. I Corinthians 14 takes care of that. Each local congregation is to test the spirits . . . discern what is of God in this or that prophetic sharing etc. Paul clearly laid it out for The Church Universal to follow. Few do.
But Jesus *breathed* on the Apostles. And the Apostles *laid hands* on the bishops. There was a physical endowment of the ordination authority they received through this sacramental act. The Church has always taught that no one who has been validly ordained can be unordained, just as one who has been baptized cannot be unbaptized (even if he renounces his baptism).
That's not THE ACTIVE, ALIVE, CURRENT VIBRANT, POWERFUL, POTENT, ANOINTING OF GOD'S SPIRIT UPON THAT INDIVIDUAL IN THAT MOMENT UNLESS GOD CONFIRMS IT AS SUCH WITH SUCH.
Folks can go down into baptism a dry sinner and come up a wet sinner depending on the attitude of their heart. They can have all the hands in the congregation laid on them in some sort of formal 'anointing' and installation in this or that office--it can mean nothing in terms of God's perspective. God looks on the heart and applies His Spirit's anointing, or not, ACCORDING TO HIS STANDARDS AND PRIORITIES, NOT OURS.
If he repents and returns to Christ, he is not to be re-baptized, because his baptism remains with him eternally. And so does his ordination gift. That is (in part) why Paul tells Timothy not to be hasty in the laying on of hands. Sacraments cannot be undone.
SACRAMENTS AND ANOINTING ARE VERY DIFFERENT THINGS IN TERMS OF THE ANOINTING I'M SPEAKING OF. There is an anointed with oil for an office. One hopes that Holy Spirit literally anoints with Himself in a powerful way at the same time. I've observed that He rarely does so . . . in this era--regardless of the Christian organization involved.
That is a non sequitur, and thus a false dilemma.
-A8
So who are the discerning? You, I suppose? Out of the 20,000+ Protestant sects, you and your fellow [let me guess, Pentecostals] are the discerning ones? My point is that each sect thinks its own members are the discerning ones. Who determines who are the "discerning"? Second-order discerners? You see how this leads either to an infinite regress, a viscious circle, or an arbitrarily determined starting point (e.g. me and all those who think just like me; *we're* the discerning ones). That is why I said that the gnostic position you advance removes the possibility of determining objectively who has the anointing. Because it is entirely subjective, your position reduces to "everybody has the anointing", which means in practice, that nobody has the anointing.
-A8
Meant to ping you, too, to 807.
My challenges to my Roman Catholic friends: give me a convincing example of some doctrinal or ethical principle which make the following five criteria. Give me an example of some doctrinal or ethical principle that is (1) not already in Scripture; (2) not contrary to Scripture; (3) based upon what is properly identified as tradition (that’s what all these introductory questions were about); (4) is necessary in some sense to the Christian life or Church (necessary); and (5) could not have been revealed during the days of the Apostles.Any teaching on the moral dilemmae of out modern time would do, for example, the Catholic Church's teaching on abortion, cloning, artificial insemination, or euthanasia; or evolution and other scientific claims.If the Roman Catholic Church intends to be taken seriously when it tells us that tradition supplements Scripture, then it should be able to offer an example of something that is not in the Bible, that’s not contrary to the Bible, it’s part of what’s properly considered tradition, is necessary for the Church but could not be revealed in the days of the Apostles. We have to understand why it couldn’t have been revealed in the days of the Apostles! That’s the first problem that I would give to my Roman Catholic friends. Can you even give me a convincing illustration of something that matches all these criteria?
LOL Great point, brother
LOL What other scripture is there that you dispute?
Washington wasn't the First President. Benjamin Franklin was
Provided the believer remains in faith through Christ, he continues in that anointing and the work of the Holy Spirit within the believer provides sufficiency in the believer's thinking to discern properly.
If the believer is scarred by past thinking, such as placing faith in any other person before Christ, then he falls out of fellowship and the Holy Spirit is not free to further sanctify the believer in sin, but is grieved until the believer returns to God, confesses and turns away from sin, allowing that past sin to be removed as an obstacle to their fellowship.
Roman Catholics present these very same arguments to argue in favor of Roman tradition, papal tradition! And then you turn around and find out that Eastern Orthodox polemicists use exactly the same arguments in favor of what they call their ‘Holy Tradition’ which is contrary to papal tradition. And so here you have two august Christian bodies (professedly Christian bodies) claiming the authority of tradition, and yet their authorities conflict with each other; their traditions conflict with each other. And yet, they laugh at Protestants for their ‘paper’ pope.
Something that I never thought about and most Catholics either. Every Church has its traditions, some more sacred than others, but Protestants don't elevate their traditions to the level of Scripture, or atleast they shouldn't. Some traditions conflict with others. Some patriarchs disagree with others. The early writings of some patriarchs disagree with their later writings. And where many of these patriarchs are now, I'm sure that they might wish that they could take back some of the things that they wrote. It is definitely not so with the writers of the Scriptures.
What ??????
However, as you may or may not be aware, when Paul wrote his epistle, THERE WAS NO NEW TESTAMENT. It was much later that the Church fathers went through and determined which were Canon.
This is an excellent point. The Apostles had Jesus's Power of Attorney, so to speak, and a Power of Attorney cannot pe passed on by one who has been granted it. And neither can an Apostle.
If you were a theologian, I would say that is heretical; however, as you have no formal training and I doubt your "pastor's" training extends very far beyond Jack Chick comic books, I will presume that you merely spoke from ignorance.
Which of the 20,000+ Protestant sects has the anointing? (If you say that they all have it, then why do they disagree with each other?)
-A8
Our Lord and Savior, Christ Jesus is the head of the body, the body being his believers, who obey God through faith in Christ. He didn't ever say He was given a body of numerous sects or of heirarchal brotherhoods. Rather we are all members of the same body through faith in Him.
We disagree with one another when between two or more parties of the disagreement, one if not both happen to be out of fellowship with Him. At that point, our soul, still indwelt by the Holy Spirit, but no longer in fellowship with Him, falls back onto scarred thinking processes. While we rationalize independent of Him, we also sin.
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