Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, subject to the Pope? I think not:
“Let the ancient customs in Egypt, Libya, and Pentapolis prevail, that the Bishop of Alexandria have jurisdiction in all these, since the like is customary for the Bishop of Rome also. Likewise in Antioch and the other provinces, let the Churches retain their privileges.”
6th Canon of the Nicene Council.
Papal authority as you see it today was a long evolution. According to the Nicene Council, Rome was just another jurisdiction, an equal peer of Rome. Go back 80 years before that to the Council of Carthage and it is even clearer:
“For neither does any of us set himself up as a bishop of bishops, nor by tyrannical terror does any compel his colleague to the necessity of obedience; since every bishop, according to the allowance of his liberty and power, has his own proper right of judgment, and can no more be judged by another than he himself can judge another.”
Another clear statement of jurisdictional separation, with no one head but Christ.
As for being subject even to the Bishop of Rome, that was not how Athanasius handled the Arian controversy. Do you not remember how Liberius, Bishop of Rome at the time, signed the Sirmium Creed, which was heretical for its Arianism? What a failure, what a dark day for Rome! But even more interesting, it didn’t settle the controversy. Rome couldn’t settle that controversy because it didn’t have controversy settling power outside of its own, limited jurisdiction.
And did Anthanasius succumb to the Arian heresy by following the lead of the Bishop of Rome? Absolutely not. He would have none of it, and fought his battle almost alone among the bishoprics, “contra mundum,” against the world, with his primary weapon, the Holy Scriptures, which no Pope could unilaterally sanction because there was no “bishop of bishops.” But God used those Scriptures mightily in the hands of the Bishop of Alexandria, and the tide toward heresy was pushed back, praise God!
stpio, I think you are a very fine person, but you need to research these things carefully. There are very important things you appear to be missing. God is the God of all truth, including the public record of the history of Christianity, and it would be a sin for me to lie either to you or to my own mind just to please a man in Italy whom I don’t even know and who appears, by the record, to have no basis of claim over either of us.
Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, subject to the Pope? I think not:
“Let the ancient customs in Egypt, Libya, and Pentapolis prevail, that the Bishop of Alexandria have jurisdiction in all these, since the like is customary for the Bishop of Rome also. Likewise in Antioch and the other provinces, let the Churches retain their privileges.”
~ ~ ~
Do you never question, where is Protestant teaching in the
early Church? The Church is Roman Catholic, quit fighting
it SR.
Forever protesting the authority of the Pope. Your Bible
has the books in it Damasus named (less Luther’s error),
kinda fits...66 books remaining. God’s trying to get
your attention.
Athanesius was a Bishop, understand, there is a hierarchy.
A Bishop is under the authority of the Pope. Yes, there will always be those who reject the Pope’s authority.
Athanesius disagreed about the Book of Revelation, he did not have the God given gift never to error on faith and morals. Not sure. The Eastern Orthodox, some of them still question Revelation.
Funny why the fellas, the KJV translators changed the word
Bishop, the original to “overseers.” Seeee...you’ll use, accept the word “Bishop” now when you’re trying to make another point but like them changing the word Bishop, it’s for the same reason, to reject the true faith.
“6th Canon of the Nicene Council.
Papal authority as you see it today was a long evolution. According to the Nicene Council, Rome was just another jurisdiction, an equal peer of Rome. Go back 80 years before that to the Council of Carthage and it is even clearer:
“For neither does any of us set himself up as a bishop of bishops, nor by tyrannical terror does any compel his colleague to the necessity of obedience; since every bishop, according to the allowance of his liberty and power, has his own proper right of judgment, and can no more be judged by another than he himself can judge another.”
Another clear statement of jurisdictional separation, with no one head but Christ.”
~ ~ ~
Quit using Church history, Catholic Councils, Catholic
writings to say the Church is wrong. The above personal comments are BX. Jesus named his authority on earth in Matthew 16:18. My turn, here’s a Catholic quote from long ago that you ignored SR. Give it up, come to the faith.
+++ Pope Damasus I
“Likewise it is decreed: . . . [W]e have considered that it ought to be announced that . . . the holy Roman Church has been placed at the forefront not by the conciliar decisions of other churches, but has received the primacy by the evangelic voice of our Lord and Savior, who says: ‘You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it; and I will give to you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you shall have bound on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you shall have loosed on earth shall be loosed in heaven’ [Matt. 16:18-19]. The first see [today], therefore, is that of Peter the apostle, that of the Roman Church, which has neither stain nor blemish nor anything like it” (Decree of Damasus 3 [A.D. 382]).
+++ Jerome
“I follow no leader but Christ and join in communion with none but your blessedness [Pope Damasus I], that is, with the chair of Peter. I know that this is the rock on which the Church has been built. Whoever eats the Lamb outside this house is profane. Anyone who is not in the ark on Noah will perish when the flood prevails” (ibid., 15:2).