Greetings:
Now as for Tertullian, I tend not to site him, at least when he begins to go off the rocker, which is somewhere around 205AD. His works before that are generally orthodox, his ones around 205 to 215, he is in a transition, by 215 he is with the heretical Montanists.
As for show me in the scriptures, the scriptures themselves as what constituted the canon was not yet defined.
As for Rome, if a Council was called, that was fine, but unless Rome approved it, it never got the status of ecumenical. Nothing you cite goes against primacy. Primacy was operational as early as Clement of Rome in the late 1st century [it was a mustard seed, to use the NT image, but it is there]. For if he had no primacy at all, the Church of Corinth would have told Clement to get lost.
By the time of St. Ireneaus’s Against Heresies, he clearly cites Clements Letter to the Church of Corinth as an example of Rome’s preeminent authority and he does provide a list of all the Bishops from Peter till his day. Saint Irenaeus “Against Heresies” was written around 180AD, which still is in the 2nd century quotation.
The extant Letter of Bishop Dionysius of Corinth [dated circa 166AD] to Bishop Soter of Rome praising him for the ancient custom of the Rome of urging with consoling words, as a Father does for his children. He also makes reference again to the Letter of Clement of Rome to the Church in Corinth[Fragment in Eusebius, History of the Church Book 2, Chapter 23 and 25]. So at least this Church in the East saw Rome as “a Father who cares for her children], this is also in the 2nd century.
The Muratorian Fragment [155AD to 200AD] clearly uses the period of the Saint Pius, Bishop of Rome 140AD to 155AD to date why the Shepherd of the Hermas should not be included the NT books to be read in the Church at Rome [earliest NT canonical List!]. Now why is Pius Bishop of Rome important?
The issue of the Gnostic heretic Marcion, who was a wealthy cleric from the East and Son of a Bishop of an Eastern Church in what is now modern Turkey. In 144AD, he was excommunicated “unilaterally” by the Pius and the Church of Rome. There was no council, no protest from the Eastern Churches. So my questions to you are
1)On what authority Did the Church of Rome and Pius act in excommunicating Marcion, who was the son of a Bishop in the Eastern Church, and may have been himself elevated to Bishop?
2)What evidence do we have from any Eastern Churches that Rome acted incorrectly or usurped a role that should have been handled by say the Church in Antioch [which would be the closest major Patriarchal See] or Alexandria?
3)Take the Arius situation. Arius was a Priest Trained in Antioch who moved to Alexandria and preached the doctrine that there was a time when the Father was not a Father, for he was once Alone. The Bishop of Alexandria acting with a Synod of Bishops from all of Egypt “excommunicated Arius”. Arius doctrine had support near Antioch, where he had studied Theology and now you had rival parties, the orthodox, Arians and semi-Arians, and thus the Arian crisis was born [and the crisis was over interpretation of scripture, namely Proverbs 8:22-31].
It would take the Council of Nicea to condemn Arianism and reaffirm Bishop Alexander and the Synod of Bishops in Egypt, and even then, he still had supporters well after Nicea.
So while Arius’s excommunication by Bishop Alexander of Alexandria and the Synod of Egyptian Bishops was affirmed by Nicea in 325, it was still challenged and questioned and the Council of Nicea ultimately had to resolve the crisis [Even after the Council of Nicea, Arius still had supporters]. Conversely, there was never a question that Pius, Bishop of Rome did not have the authority to excommunicate Marcion [who again, was the son of a Eastern Bishop, a wealthy one at that].
So given Pius Bishop of Rome and the Marcion excommunication [144AD], that is evidence of some form of Papal Primacy well before the middle of the 2nd century.
So if we date the Apostle John’s death at around 90AD and we date Pius, Bishop of Rome’s tenure from 140 to 155AD, what we are talking about is whether or not we can find in the writings of the Fathers whether anyone cared who was the Bishop of Rome between that 50 year period. It is quite clear, given the Marcion excommunication, that Pius, Bishop of Rome’s authority carried significant weight. So even you have to concede the “Papists” theory of Primacy of the Bishop of Rome is operational in Church practice and discipline by the time of Pope Pius [140AD to 155AD].
Now, the 50 year period between 90AD [Apostle John’s death and Pius tenure as Bishop of Rome, 140D to 154AD]. The only extant writings are the Letter of St. Clement to Rome [93AD] and the 7 extant Letters of St. Ignatius of Antioch. Clements Letter is consistent with Rome having some authority to correct the problems in at least 1 Church in the East, i.e. the Church in Corinth [again a Church in the East]. St. Ignatius Letter to the Romans does not mention the Bishop of Rome at that time [Saint Alexander I 105 to 115AD] but it does state that the Church at Rome “Presides in Love” and “You have envied no one; Others you have taught”
So there are clear examples of the basic principle of Primacy of the Church of Rome in the late 1st and 2nd century.
As Pelikan The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition: 100AD to 600AD ; Chapter 2 Outside the Mainstream] states, it is becoming increasingly that this primitive Catholicism with its movement from kerygma to dogma was far more explicitly at work in the first century than previously thought [p. 71]. He goes on to freely acknowledge in in the later part of Chapter 2 that the Church of Rome was chief among the churches in authority and prestige [p. 118].
Now, since you raised an issue about citing J. Pelikan. Rev. Henry Chadwick, The Anglican Patristic Scholar [Taught at Oxford and Cambridge] writes, with respect to the Church of Rome, that its role as a natural leader goes back to the early age of the Church. Its leadership can be seen in their brotherly intervention in the dispute at Corinth before the end of the first century. Chadwick continues and states that the first seeds of Rome’ s future development can be seen in St. Paul’s independent attitude towards the Church in Jerusalem and his focus on building up a Gentile Christendom focused upon the capital of the Gentile world. The standing of the Church of Rome was enhanced by its important part in the second century conflicts with heresy [I documented those earlier], and by it consciousness, expressed as early as 160AD in the monuments erected to the memory of St. Peter and St. Paul. By the end of the 2nd century, Pope Victor insisted, in a manner that others thought autocratic , that all churches should observe Easter on the same day as the Church of Rome.. Chadwick continues that before the 3rd century, there was no call for a sustained, theoretical justification of leadership. All were brethren, but the Church of Rome was accepted First among equals. He points out that the Petrine text of Matthew 16:18 cannot be seen to play a Role in Rome’s leadership till the mid-3rd century when there was a disagreement between Cyprian and Stephen, Bishop of Rome over baptism but by the 4th century, Pope Damasus, Rome would then be seen as using this text more and more for the theological and scriptural foundation of Rome’s leadership [Chadwick, The Early Church Revised Edition, 1989, page 237-238].
In volume 2 of Pelikan’s work [The Spirit of Eastern Christendom], he starts out by stating the schism of Western and Eastern Christianity was one of the greatest calamities in the history of the Church [I agree] and it seriously undermined the powers of resistance in the Christian East against the advances of Islam and on the other hand, it hastened the centralization of Western Christendom which resulted in many abuses and provoked widespread discontent so that the Reformation itself, which split Western Christendom into two hostile camps, was one of its consequences. [I tend to agree with his analysis here].
He then goes on to discuss the Orthodoxy of Old Rome starting out by saying dominating the discussion between East and West was the massive fact of Rome’s spotless [or nearly spotless] record for doctrinal orthodoxy. The Pope’s made use of this record quoting the Petrine text [Mt 16:18-19; John 21-15-17] and Pope Agatho [678-681AD] would rely on Peter’s protection, etc. Pelikan then states that the positive evidence of history was certainly cogent and Pelikan cites his earlier work in Volume 1 noting that the East had to admit that Pope Leo [Church of Rome] had been hailed as the “pillar of Orthodoxy” and had been remembered ever since [p. 148 of Volume 2].
Pelikan continues on and notes that Rome had been on the side that “emerged victorious from one controversy to another”, and “eventually it became clear that the side Rome chose would be the one that would emerge victorious.”
Pelikan continues on by referring to the two issues discussed earlier in this work [Volume 2] and states that in the two dogmatic issues that we have discussed thus far, the person of Christ and the use of images in the Church, the orthodoxy of Rome was a prominent element, in the first of these perhaps the decisive element, so that when the relation of East and West itself became a matter of debate, the Latin Case could draw from the record established in the early centuries and the immediate past [p. 150].
Pelikan goes into the Monothelite issue and notes that even though Pope Honorius was said to have fostered it by his negligence [he never defined it, he said nothing in reality], what “Rome had sad in local councils in 649 and 680: became the orthodox definition stated at Constantinople in 681 and states Peter was still speaking thru the Pope.
So Their is a Doctrine of Primacy and it is well attested to by the 2 Protestant [well 1 former Protestant patristic scholars that I cited above. Primacy is non-negotiable and there is clear evidence for the Primacy of the Bishop of Rome. Now, what does that Primacy entail and how it has been exercised in the past and how it could be exercised in the future is I think an interesting theological question and one I think the Catholic Church and Orthodox Church will one day have to sit down and honestly address if there is to be a Full Communion between our 2 Apostolic and historic Churches.
Former Pope Benedict [writing then as Cardinal Ratzinger] in Principles of Catholic Theology (1987, p.217) notes that when Patrirach Athenagoros met the Pope in 1963 in Phanar by stating “Against all expectations, the Bishop of Rome is among us, first among us in honor, he who presides in love [Saint Ignatius of Antioch, epistle to the Romans ). It is clear, Pope Benedict writes [then Cardinal Ratzinger] that the Patriarch did not abandon the claims of the Eastern Church or acknowledge the primacy of the West. Rather, he stated plainly what the East understood as the order, the rank, of the equal Bishops in the Church and it would be worth our while to consider whether this archaic confession, which has nothing to do with jurisdiction, but does confess a primacy of honor and love might be a formula that recognizes the place of the Church of Rome in the Universal Church.
As then Cardinal Ratzinger noted, Rome must not require more from the East with respect to the Doctrine of Primacy than had been formulated and was lived in the first millennium (p.199).
So, in closing, the Primacy of Peter as First among the Apostles and thus the Church of Rome has a basis in history and is supported by NT Text, Church Fathers, and the Councils of the Church, as Pelikan noted in his work. However, how that Primacy is exercised, it seems, is still something that can be adapted, while still holding to the Doctrine of Primacy. Even then Cardinal Ratzinger admitted that as I noted above. So a model where the Pope is the only Bishop that can call a council or if it is called by Other Bishops, the Pope approves their request, and when a council is convoked, the Pope presides over the Council appears, if I am reading Pope Benedict correctly, a model for the Doctrine of the Primacy that would be able to help heal the schism of the Orthodox and the Catholic Church.
So does the Pope micro manage ever area of the Church, if that is what is Universal jurisdiction, then the Popes today do not do that. Universal jurisdiction would only apply to ensuring orthodox doctrine is preserved. The Pope does not have the authority to tell the Eastern Church how to do their Liturgy. The Eastern Liturgies are as valid as the Roman Rite.
As for the Eucharist. Here we go again. The celebration of the Eucharist, is the representation, in an unbloody manner, of the once and for all sacrifice of Christ on the Cross. The Catholic Church reads the entire Scripture, with Christ as the reference point, thus everything in the Old Testament points to Christ and everything in the NT epistles are understood in reference to Christ.
http://www.usccb.org/catechism/text/pt1sect1chpt2.shtml
The CCC discusses Typology in section 128. Typology is the Catholic view of reading Sacred Scripture as a unified whole, with the person of Christ as the center. Thus, Catholic theology sees OT persons, events, signs, as prefigurements or “types” of persons and events that occur in the NT all understood in reference to Christ. So, King David prefigures Christ the King of the new Israel. So I would like to look at Eucharist using the Catholic Biblical principle of Typology
In Genesis 14:18, we read “Melchizedek, king of Salem, brought out bread and wine, and being a priest of God Most High, he blessed Abram.” Later in Genesis, we read where Abraham was told to sacrifice his son Isaac and he tells his son, that God will provide the Lamb. Of course, God command Abraham to not sacrifice Isaac, and Abraham later sacrifices a Ram (c.f. Gen 22:7-14). So, two themes are already developed here, Melchizedek a priest offering Bread and Wine and the image of the Lamb.
As we move to Exodus, we see the Passover ritual described in Exodus 12: 1-20. Some key themes emerge in this text, “the blood of the Lamb is spread on the doors” (c.f. Ex. 12: 7) and the Jewish People “should partake of the Lamb and eat unleavened bread” (c.f. Ex 12: 7-8). Later in the text, we read “This day shall be a memorial feast for you, which all your generation shall celebrate with pilgrimage to the Lord, as a perpetual institution” (c.f. Exodus 12”14) and again, “keep the custom of unleavened bread…celebrate as a perpetual institution” (c.f. Ex 12:17). So some themes emerge hear, that connect back to the passages in Genesis. The blood of the Lamb is put on the door, and the angel of death passes over God’s people. To celebrate and actually participate in this saving action of God, God prescribes a Liturgy/Rite whereby the Jewish People are to celebrate the feast of unleavened bread as a “Perpetual Institution”, i.e. a celebration that transcends time and space. For the record, the reading from Exodus 12 is read every Holy Thursday in Catholic Churches ,which is when Christ celebrates the Last supper with the Apostles.
As the Jews cross the read sea in Exodus 14 [a prefigurement of Baptism], we see them on the journey to the promise land and they are without food, so what do we read in scripture. We see in Exodus 16:13-15, God providing his people with “manna”, i.e., “bread from heaven” as Moses states “This is the bread which the Lord has given you to eat” (c.f. Ex 16: 15). So again, the sign of God giving his people bread to sustain them on the journey to the promise land is coming into play here again. As we get to Exodus 24: 6-8, we see the covenant ratified in blood as we see Moses taking blood and sprinkling it on the altar [a sign of the presence of God among the people] and then taking the same blood and sprinkling it on the people. So, from this text we have a covenant being made in blood and the mingling of the blood on the altar and people now indicates that God and the people are one, i.e. in communion. Again, for the record, this OT passage is read in Catholic Liturgy on the Feast of Corpus Christi, which was celebrated a few Sunday’s ago.
Two Psalms have strong Eucharistic imagery, as well as sacramental imagery. For example, in Psalm 104:14-15, we read “You raise grass for cattle and plants for our beasts of burden. You bring bread from the earth and wine to gladden our hearts, Oil to make our faces gleam, food to build our strength.” In Psalm 110:4 we see the connection to Melchizedek again as we read “The Lord has sworn and will not waver: like Melchizedek, you are a priest forever.” In addition, the Prophet Malachi (c.f. Mal 1:11) writes “For from the rising of the sun, even to its setting, my name is great among the nations; And everywhere they bring sacrifice to my name, a pure offering.”
So again, the signs of bread and wine are in the Psalms and the Psalmist makes a prophetic statement about Christ being like Melchizedek, you are a priest forever and later the prophet Malachi indicates that a sacrifice will be offered everywhere.
In closing with respect to the OT, the themes, signs, persons and events in these passages, which include bread and wine, priest, sacrifice, Lamb, Passover, unleavened bread, and Melchizedek, through typology, point to the person of Christ and find there fulfillment in his person.
So, staring with the New Testament, John the Baptist identifies Christ as the “Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world” (c.f. John 1:29). In St. John’s chapter 6, we see Christ giving the bread of life discourse, where he cites manna that God gave in the OT and now indicates that he is the true bread from heaven. In the Gospels we read that Christ Passion took place in the context of Passover (c.f. Mt 26:17; Mk 14:12; Luke 22: 7; John 19:14) and all them make the point to indicate that it was the “feast of unleavened bread and St. Mark and St. Luke make the point that this was when the Passover lamb was sacrificed. We also read in the three synoptic Gospels that Christ celebrated the Last supper with his Apostles (c.f. Mk 14: 22-26; Mt 26: 26-30; Luke 22: 14-20), using bread and wine, and stated “This is my Body; This is my Blood and do this in memory of him” and Christ stated that the bread and cup were the new covenant of his blood (c.f. Luke 22:20). St. Paul, in 1 Corinthians 11: 23-29, which interestingly, is written before any of the Gospel accounts gives a strong narrative on the Tradition of the Eucharist as he writes that Christians are to celebrate the Eucharist and indicates that it is a covenant in Christ blood and each time you celebrate the Eucharist, you proclaim the death of the Lord. St. Paul also clearly states that partaking of the Eucharist must be done worthily and a person should examine himself/herself before receiving the Eucharist (c.f. 1 Cor 11:27-28).
In St. Luke’s Gospel, we see the post resurrection account of the road to Emmaus (c.f. Luke 24: 13-35) Christ appearing to two of his Apostles (who are not named) and they do not recognize him until Christ celebrates the “Eucharist” as we read “And it happened that while he was with them at table, he took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them. With that their eyes were opened and they recognized him…….and the two recounted how he was made known to them in the breaking of the bread (c.f. Luke 24:30-35). St. Luke, in Acts of the Apostles, gives us an account of Church life as he writes “They devoted themselves to the teaching of the apostles and to the communal life, to the breaking of the bread and to the prayers.” (c.f. Acts 2:42). We see the importance of gathering to break bread again in Acts 20:7 where we read “On the first day of the week, when we gathered to break bread” and Paul again breaks bread before he leaves (c.f. Acts 20:11).
So, taken collectively, the Catholic Church sees the Eucharist as the ritual, sacramental action of thanksgiving to God which constitutes the principal Christian liturgical celebration of communion in the paschal mystery of Christ and the celebration of the Eucharist is at the heart of the Church’s life (Catechism paragraph 2177). The Eucharist then fulfills all of the Old Testament signs and events in the person and actions of Christ, and thus it is the celebration commanded by Christ to make present the sacrifice of Christ throughout the ages until Christ comes again. Christ entrusted this memorial of his body and blood to his spouse, the Church and thus it is an action of both Christ and His Church and it again, re-presents [makes present] the sacrifice of the cross and an because it is a memorial, it applies its fruits. The sacrifice of Christ and the Eucharist are one in the same and as Christ once offered himself in a bloody manner on the Cross, the Eucharist as a sacrifice and an offering of bread and wine is the same offering in an unbloody manner.
So the notion that Christ’s Sacrifice is only “Past” is actually a limitation on God. Christ by his Incarnation entered into time and space and thus the Crucifixion happened 2,000 years ago yet God who is not bound by space and time can make the same “once for all Sacrifice” present in perpetuity because Christ is God. The Eucharist makes present through Sacred Mystery the Sacrifice of Christ 2,000 years ago.
As for the notion of Transubstantiation, this dogma has to be understood in the context when it was defined during the middle ages as it is a Philosophical Definition in response to Philosophical question about the Eucharist that arose during this period of history and thus should be understood as such. It is not the only way to explain or define the Eucharist because what we are talking about is a “Sacred Mystery” and thus the Eucharist can never be totally defined with theological language, which is why the Eastern Orthodox Church refers to Sacraments as “Holy Mysteries” consistent with the expression of St. Paul who referred to priests (i.e. St. Paul described his ministry as priestly, see Romans 15:16) those should be thought of as stewards as we read “Thus should one regard us: as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God” (cf. 1 Corinthians 4: 1). In the Catholic Church, this expression is also used as you will often hear the Priest in the opening prayer before Mass/Liturgy saying we come to ‘celebrate these Sacred Mysteries”, etc.
While it is true to say that transubstantiation was not clearly defined in the Church Fathers, it is however, an “organic development” that is entirely consistent with the clear doctrine of the “real presence” of Christ in the Holy Eucharist which no Church Father ever denied.
In addition, many of the best non-Catholic scholars of Early Church History, who have far more credentials than you and I both, indicate the evidence of the Early Church Fathers supports the Catholic and Eastern Orthdoox Doctrine on the Eucharist. Again, I will cite the same two to make my point, Henry Chadwick, a Professor of Church History at both Oxford and Cambridge [not sure if he is still with us], and the late Professor Jaroslav Pelikan, who taught at Yale University.
For example, Henry Chadwick, in the “The Early Church Revised Edition”, published by Penguin Press, writes “The Earliest second century-texts (Didache, Ignatius of Antioch, Justin Martyr) agree that the regular Sunday worship of the Christians was first and foremost ‘thanksgiving’, eucharista, a term which gradually replaced the more primitive term of ‘breaking bread’ (p. 261).” The term breaking bread of course is used in Luke 24:35 (Road to Emmaus) and Acts 2:42.
Chadwick (pp. 261-262) elaborates further on St. Justin Martyr’s writing. Chadwick states “The Roman Eucharist of 150 is described by Justin Martyr in a passage to reassure pagan readers that Christian rites are not black magic. After readings from ‘the memoirs of the apostles’ and from the Old Testament prophets, the president (evidently the Bishop) preached a sermon…….Then bread and a cup of water and wine mixed together were brought to the President who ‘to the best of his ability’ offered a prayer of thanks to the Father, through the Son and Holy Spirit, concluding with the people signifying their ratification by saying Amen….The Communion followed at which each person partook of the break and wine distributed to them by deacons, and received it no as common food for satisfying hunger and thirst, but as the flesh and blood of Christ. Finally, pieces of the sacred bread were taken to the sick and those in prison. If is clear that, although attending the service meant risking one’s life and liberty, all Christians regarded it as an absolute obligation to be present each Sunday if it was in their power. Justin saw in the universal Christian custom of a weekly Eucharist a direct fulfillment of the prophecy of Malachi 1: 10-11 that in every place a pure sacrifice would be offered to the Lord from the rising of the sun to its setting.”
The late Jaroslav Pelikan, who was a Distinguished Professor at Yale who again wrote an excellent 5 volume history of the Church entitled “The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine while he was a Protestant (Lutheran), as he later entered into the Eastern Orthodox Church, which has a view of the Eucharist consistent with the Catholic Church [as I have already noted].
In Volume 1 of Pelikan’s series, entitled ‘The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600), he reviews all of the early Church Fathers and their writings on the Eucharist. Pelikan (p. 167) states “Yet it does seem “express and clear” that no orthodox father of the second or third century of whom we have record either declared the presence of the body of blood of Christ in the Eucharist to be no more than symbolic (although Clement and Origen came close to doing so) or specified a process of substantial change by which the presence was effected (although Ignatius and Justin came close to doing so)…Within the limits of those excluded extremes was the doctrine of the real presence.” Pelikan uses the Liturgy to further show the belief in the real presence as he writes “yet the adoration of Christ in the Eucharist through the words and actions of the liturgy seems to have presupposed that this was a special presence….The Theologians did not have adequate concepts with which to formulate a doctrine of real presence that was evidently already believed in the Church even though it was not yet explicitly taught by Creeds..(p. 168).
Pelikan concludes (p. 170) by stating “Liturgical evidence suggests and understanding of the Eucharist as a sacrifice, whose relation to the sacrifices of the Old Testament was one of archetype or type, and whose relation to the sacrifice of Calvary was one of ‘re-presentation’ just as the bread of the Eucharist “re-presented” the Body of Christ.”
In closing, the evidence of the New Testament, the writings of the Early Church clearly do show a belief in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. I stand by this belief and if you think I took a beating from you, that is in your own imagination.
As for the Tome of Damasus, Phillip Scaff in his Introductory notes clearly believes that the Tome that the Constantinople received from the West was from Pope Damasus. He is a Reformed Protestant and certainly would not make such a statement because he is sympathetic to the Papacy. I suggest you read his Introductory notes on the Council of Constantinopile.
As for the NT, Rome by 405 had defined the canon. It is interesting that regardless of what Church Father said here or there, and the ones who questioned the Deuterocanonicals were the Minority, the Canon defined by Rome or confirmed by Rome became the standard for ‘every Church in the West” So you have to ask yourself this question, leaving Pope Damasus aside and the Council of Rome in 382, given the regional councils at Hippo and Carthage [which asked for confirmation from Rome] and given Pope Innocent I Letter to Bishop Exsurpius in what is modern France, and given the Council of Carthage in 419 which directed that its canon be sent to Pope Boniface for confirmation, why is it that all those local Churches which had to some degree, different canons, all accept the same canon. In fact some of those in the East would actually accept longer canons of the OT than the Catholics [some Orthodox accept 9 of the Deuterocanonicals, I think 3 and 4 Maccabees]
What you actually mean is: The status of the apocrypha were not yet sorted. The Papists, when put to a corner, want us to think there was no scripture at all, just confusion and madness. Papias, Ignatius, Polycarp, Irenaeus, and other early writers, have hundreds upon hundreds of quotations from the New Testament. Even before the end of the first century, all the Gospels were well known and gladly used. Even when Rome rejected Hebrews, and the Greeks began to look down at John's Revelation in Jerome's time, the church at large had a long history with these books long before the imbeciles set to work molesting these writings:
"This must be said to our people, that the epistle which is entitled "To the Hebrews" is accepted as the apostle Paul's not only by the churches of the east but by all church writers in the Greek language of earlier times, although many judge it to be by Barnabas or by Clement. It is of no great moment who the author is, since it is the work of a churchman and receives recognition day by day in the public reading of the churches. If the custom of the Latins does not receive it among the canonical scriptures, neither, by the same liberty, do the churches of the Greeks accept John's Apocalypse. Yet we accept them both, not following the custom of the present time but the precedent of early writers, who generally make free use of testimonies from both works. And this they do, not as they are wont on occasion to quote from apocryphal writings, as indeed they use examples from pagan literature, but treating them as canonical and churchly works." (Jerome, Letter to Dardanus, prefect of Gaul (Ad Dardanum, no. 129 § 3). A.D. 414.)
Nothing you cite goes against primacy.
Notice what's missing: The "why". You're avoiding like crazy whether the Church Fathers agreed with Rome's doctrine of the Papacy. This is founded on Matt 16, with Peter being the "rock." If you do not have this, you have nothing. A "primacy" not of supremacy, but of honor, based on an alleged foundation of the church under both Peter and Paul, is a victory for me in every way.
Primacy was operational as early as Clement of Rome in the late 1st century [it was a mustard seed, to use the NT image, but it is there]. For if he had no primacy at all, the Church of Corinth would have told Clement to get lost.
There is nothing in Clement that supports your claims, and certainly even the writer of Clement would not have believed it. As the Roman Catholic theologian Klaus Schatz, promoting his "development of the papacy" theory, concedes:
"If one had asked a Christian in the year 100, 200, or even 300 whether the bishop of Rome was the head of all Christians, or whether there was a supreme bishop over all the other bishops and having the last word in questions affecting the whole Church, he or she would certainly have said no." (Klaus Schatz, Papal Primacy, page 3, top)
And he's not the only one (the above citation, and all that follows, is stolen from a previous post by Daniel1212. The following also touches on "lists" of Bishops and other matters brought up in your post):
Schatiz additionally states,
"Cyprian regarded every bishop as the successor of Peter, holder of the keys to the kingdom of heaven and possessor of the power to bind and loose. For him, Peter embodied the original unity of the Church and the episcopal office, but in principle these were also present in every bishop. For Cyprian, responsibility for the whole Church and the solidarity of all bishops could also, if necessary, be turned against Rome." — Papal Primacy [Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1996], p. 20)
• Roman Catholic scholar William La Due (taught canon law at St. Francis Seminary and the Catholic University of America) on Cyprian:
"....those who see in The Unity of the Catholic Church, in the light of his entire episcopal life, an articulation of the Roman primacy - as we have come to know it, or even as it has evolved especially from the latter fourth century on - are reading a meaning into Cyprian which is not there." — The Chair of Saint Peter: A History of the Papacy [Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1999], p. 39
• Catholic theologian and a Jesuit priest Francis Sullivan, in his work From Apostles to Bishops (New York: The Newman Press), examines possible mentions of “succession” from the first three centuries, and concludes from that study that “the episcopate [development of bishops] is a the fruit of a post New Testament development,” and cannot concur with those (interacting with Jones) who see little reason to doubt the notion that there was a single bishop in Rome through the middle of the second century:
"Hence I stand with the majority of scholars who agree that one does not find evidence in the New Testament to support the theory that the apostles or their coworkers left [just] one person as “bishop” in charge of each local church...
As the reader will recall, I have expressed agreement with the consensus of scholars that available evidence indicates that the church of Rome was led by a college of presbyters, rather than a single bishop, for at least several decades of the second century...
Hence I cannot agree with Jones's judgment that there seems little reason to doubt the presence of a bishop in Rome already in the first century."
“...the evidence both from the New Testament and from such writings as I Clement, the Letter of Polycarp to the Philippians and The Shepherd of Hennas favors the view that initially the presbyters in each church, as a college, possessed all the powers needed for effective ministry. This would mean that the apostles handed on what was transmissible of their mandate as an undifferentiated whole, in which the powers that would eventually be seen as episcopal were not yet distinguished from the rest. Hence, the development of the episcopate would have meant the differentiation of ministerial powers that had previously existed in an undifferentiated state and the consequent reservation to the bishop of certain of the powers previously held collegially by the presbyters. — Francis Sullivan, in his work From Apostles to Bishops , pp. 221,22,24
• The Catholic historian Paul writes in his 1976 work “History of Christianity:”
"Eusebius presents the lists as evidence that orthodoxy had a continuous tradition from the earliest times in all the great Episcopal sees and that all the heretical movements were subsequent aberrations from the mainline of Christianity.
Looking behind the lists, however, a different picture emerges. In Edessa, on the edge of the Syrian desert, the proofs of the early establishment of Christianity were forgeries, almost certainly manufactured under Bishop Kune, the first orthodox Bishop, and actually a contemporary of Eusebius...
Orthodoxy was not established [In Egypt] until the time of Bishop Demetrius, 189-231, who set up a number of other sees and manufactured a genealogical tree for his own bishopric of Alexandria, which traces the foundation through ten mythical predecessors back to Mark, and so to Peter and Jesus...
Even in Antioch, where both Peter and Paul had been active, there seems to have been confusion until the end of the second century. Antioch completely lost their list...When Eusebius’s chief source for his Episcopal lists, Julius Africanus, tried to compile one for Antioch, he found only six names to cover the same period of time as twelve in Rome and ten in Alexandria."
• Roger Collins, writing of the Symmachan forgeries”, describes these “pro-Roman” “enhancements” to history:
"So too would the spurious historical texts written anonymously or ascribed to earlier authors that are known collectively as the Symmachan forgeries. This was the first occasion on which the Roman church had revisited its own history, in particular the third and fourth centuries, in search of precedents That these were largely invented does not negate the significance of the process...Some of the periods in question, such as the pontificates of Sylvester and Liberius (352-366), were already being seen more through the prism of legend than that of history, and in the Middle Ages texts were often forged because their authors were convinced of the truth of what they contained. Their faked documents provided tangible evidence of what was already believed true...
"It is no coincidence that the first systematic works of papal history appear at the very time the Roman church’s past was being reinvented for polemical purposes. (Collins, “Keepers of the Keys of Heaven,” pgs 80-82).
Roman Catholic [if liberal and critical] Garry Wills, Professor of History Emeritus, Northwestern U., author of “Why i am a Catholic:”
"The idea that Peter was given some special power that could be handed on to a successor runs into the problem that he had no successor. The idea that there is an "apostolic succession" to Peter's fictional episcopacy did not arise for several centuries, at which time Peter and others were retrospectively called bishops of Rome, to create an imagined succession. Even so, there has not been an unbroken chain of popes. Two and three claimants existed at times, and when there were three of them each excommunicating the other two, they all had to be dethroned and the Council of Carthage started the whole thing over again in 1417." — WHAT JESUS MEANT, p. 81
• American Roman Catholic priest and Biblical scholar Raymond Brown (twice appointed to Pontifical Biblical Commission):
“The claims of various sees to descend from particular members of the Twelve are highly dubious. It is interesting that the most serious of these is the claim of the bishops of Rome to descend from Peter, the one member of the Twelve who was almost a missionary apostle in the Pauline sense – a confirmation of our contention that whatever succession there was from apostleship to episcopate, it was primarily in reference to the Puauline tyupe of apostleship, not that of the Twelve.” (“Priest and Bishop, Biblical Reflections,” Nihil Obstat, Imprimatur, 1970, pg 72.)
• Raymond Brown [being censored here], in “Priest and Bishop: Biblical Reflections,” could not prove on historical grounds, he said, that Christ instituted the priesthood or episcopacy as such; that those who presided at the Eucharist were really priests; that a separate priesthood began with Christ; that the early Christians looked upon the Eucharist as a sacrifice; that presbyter-bishops are traceable in any way to the Apostles; that Peter in his lifetime would be looked upon as the Bishop of Rome; that bishops were successors of the Apostles, even though Vatican II made the same claim.. (from, "A Wayward Turn in Biblical Theory" by Msr. George A. Kelly can be read on the internet at http://www.catholic.net/rcc/Periodicals/Dossier/Jan-Feb00/Article5.html)
1)On what authority Did the Church of Rome and Pius act in excommunicating Marcion, who was the son of a Bishop in the Eastern Church, and may have been himself elevated to Bishop?
1) The authority to excommunicate is a Biblical one, and is a power every local church has, to remove evildoers from communion with the faithful (though it does not damn them).
2) The heretic in question originated his heresy in Rome.
3) You are claiming that Rome had an absolute authority to do as they pleased, single-handedly, which is historically denied. Rome, for example, had condemned Cyprian for teaching that apostates/converts who had been baptized in heterdox churches, needed to be re-baptized, which Augustine defends on the basis of a council having not determined the matter:
“There are great proofs of this existing on the part of the blessed martyr Cyprian, in his letters,-to come at last to him of whose authority they carnally flatter themselves they are possessed, whilst by his love they are spiritually overthrown. For at that time, before the consent of the whole Church had declared authoritatively, by the decree of a plenary Council, what practice should be followed in this matter, it seemed to him, in common with about eighty of his fellow bishops of the African churches, that every man who had been baptized outside the communion of the Catholic Church should, on joining the Church, be baptized anew.” (Augustine, On Baptism, Against the Donatists Book I)
4) Many opponents of decisions made by Rome have appealed to other Bishops or to Synods, which, if what you say is true, was in contradiction to the sole and absolute authority the church in Rome practiced here. But is not on contradiction if we consider the ancient view, that each church was its own master, with the Bishop beholden only to God, as we see in Ignatius’ quote, and here:
“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.” (Nicea, 6th canon)
5) ALL Apostolic Sees, in those days, have an authority to excommunicate:
“You cannot deny that you see what we call heresies and schisms, that is, many cut off from the root of the Christian society, which by means of the Apostolic Sees, and the successions of bishops, is spread abroad in an indisputably world-wide diffusion, claiming the name of Christians” (Augustine, Letter 232)
So given Pius Bishop of Rome and the Marcion excommunication [144AD], that is evidence of some form of Papal Primacy well before the middle of the 2nd century.
This language of "some form" is damning, and I'm surprised you still aren't talking about this. If the "form" of the Papacy is not the Roman form that it boasts of today, or is some "developmental" form, then Roman Catholicism has been overthrown. Either Peter's so-called successors have always held the keys to the kingdom of God, or they don't. There is no middle ground.
St. Ignatius Letter to the Romans does not mention the Bishop of Rome at that time [Saint Alexander I 105 to 115AD] but it does state that the Church at Rome “Presides in Love” and “You have envied no one; Others you have taught”
His letter is a good argument for there not being any single Bishop in Rome at all at the time, as the other Papist I quoted suggest. Ignatius greets and greatly praises the Bishop of every city he wrote to, but when writing to Rome, did not even bother to say "hi". He also greets these other churches with great praise, similar to what the Romans received, and, as mentioned before, contradicts the supremacy of your church:
"Ignatius, who is also called Theophorus, to Polycarp, Bishop of the Church of the Smyrnæans, or rather, who has, as his own bishop, God the Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ." (Ignatius, Epistle to Polycarp, Ch. 0)
By the end of the 2nd century, Pope Victor insisted, in a manner that others thought autocratic , that all churches should observe Easter on the same day as the Church of Rome..
Autocratic is putting it mildly. He excommunicated all those who celebrated Easter on the "wrong day", resulting in "sharp rebukes" by the churches.
"But this did not please all the bishops. And they besought him to consider the things of peace, and of neighborly unity and love. Words of theirs are extant, sharply rebuking Victor." (Eusebius Pamphilius: Church History, Life of Constantine, Oration in Praise of Constantine, Chapter XXIV.—The Disagreement in Asia.
The Roman Bishop has, in fact, been threatened with excommunication, resulting in interesting reversals:
"A controversy arose out of the writings known as Three Chapters – written by bishops Theodore, Theodoret, and Ibas. Pope Vigilius opposed the condemnation of the Three Chapters. At the Fifth Ecumenical Council (553) the assembled bishops condemned and anathematized Three Chapters. After the council threatened to excommunicate him and remove him from office, Vigilius changed his mind – blaming the devil for misleading him.[103] Bossuet wrote "These things prove, that in a matter of the utmost importance, disturbing the whole Church, and seeming to belong to the Faith, the decress of sacred council prevail over the decrees of Pontiffs, and the letter of Ibas, though defended by a judgment of the Roman Pontiff could nevertheless be proscribed as heretical."[104]
German theologian Karl Josef von Hefele notes that the council was called " …without the assent of the Pope"[105]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Orthodox_opposition_to_papal_supremacy
Now, what does that Primacy entail and how it has been exercised in the past and how it could be exercised in the future is I think an interesting theological question and one I think the Catholic Church and Orthodox Church will one day have to sit down and honestly address if there is to be a Full Communion between our 2 Apostolic and historic Churches.
Interesting, but such theological questions make me wonder why you are debating with me at all? I am terribly confused by your statements. Why is a Roman Catholic arguing for a generic "primacy" that has no jurisdiction over me? Unless there is double-talk going on, I am greatly pleased with these statements, as they free us from Romanism's claims entirely. Your arguments depicting Rome as having an unquestioned and unique authority to do as it pleases, such as in the matter of excommunication, are absolutely contradicted by these statements here. Either Rome can open and shut the kingdom of heaven, or it can't. You can't keep having it both ways.
So does the Pope micro manage ever area of the Church, if that is what is Universal jurisdiction, then the Popes today do not do that. Universal jurisdiction would only apply to ensuring orthodox doctrine is preserved. The Pope does not have the authority to tell the Eastern Church how to do their Liturgy. The Eastern Liturgies are as valid as the Roman Rite.
Is this the double-talk right here? Are you saying that Rome ought to have the authority to tell the Eastern Church how to do their THEOLOGY, but that you'll leave them their liturgy? "I'll tell you what to believe and to do with your life, but you can choose what clothes you want to wear?" The differences in Eastern theology with Rome are quite big. If you think that it's only the liturgy that's different, you're in for a surprise.
As for the Eucharist. Here we go again. The celebration of the Eucharist, is the representation, in an unbloody manner, of the once and for all sacrifice of Christ on the Cross.
Huh? Where did this come from? I never talked about the Eucharist in general. While it is true to say that transubstantiation was not clearly defined in the Church Fathers, it is however, an “organic development” that is entirely consistent with the clear doctrine of the “real presence” of Christ in the Holy Eucharist which no Church Father ever denied.
This is quite silly, considering you took the time to depict Tertullian as a heretic in order to get out of his sayings. The problem isn't that it was not "defined," the problem for the Papists is that it was defined, and defined contrary to Roman Catholicism. Your "organic development" at the point is merely another way of saying that the current doctrine of transubstantiation is an invention, and not something passed down by the Apostles. You almost disarm me, since I have so many quotes to offer showing exactly how the Fathers contradict the modern church, but it's like you give up before we even begin by saying this stuff.
In closing, the evidence of the New Testament, the writings of the Early Church clearly do show a belief in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. I stand by this belief and if you think I took a beating from you, that is in your own imagination.
Well that's easy to say, since the issue of the Real Presence is a strawman. Presbyterians and Lutherans believe in the Real Presence too. It's easy to claim you won't get a beating if you're avoiding the beating by fighting about something we agree on. On Transubstantiation and the reading of John 6, however, you will receive a beating.
As for the NT, Rome by 405 had defined the canon.
You're just repeating yourself. There's nothing here for me to worry about.