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.
IQ,
You beat me to it. I was just about to ask the same question.
I have noted many times hereon and at least once in this thread . . .
any group of people worshipping together as a church . . . that exists for about a year and a half or longer . . . begins to get fossilized, calcified, traditional, rigid, CUSTOM BOUND and resistent to hearing and obeying God's Voice, HIS SPIRIT
unless the leadership is wise enough to insure otherwise AND DETERMINED in practical effective ways to make it so. That usually takes enormous humility and enormous diligence with lots of input from all levels of the group and from occasional outside observers AS WELL AS PRAYER AND FASTING on occasion about those very tendencies and issues.
Human critters like CONTROL.
ESPECIALLY IN RELIGION. Was evident throughout all Scripture.
Groups are wonderful tools for control freaks.
Individuals AND GROUPS LOVE PREDICTABILITY, consistency, sameness. Helps individuals feel SAFE.
God died that we might have RESTORED DAILY INTIMATE DIALOGUE WITH HIM--A RESTORED WALK IN THE GARDEN IN THE COOL OF THE EVE sort of thing. Christ's Blood was an awful price for such RESTORED DIALOGUE, RELATIONSHIP.
But humans are persistently insistent--you talk to God, Moses/Bossman. We are afraid. We don't want to get that close to God.
So, we'll set up this organization here to do the RELIGIOUS thing for us and pretend that's relating rightly to God. But since we were made to worship something and worshipping CLOSE TO GOD is tooooo scary, we'll end up worshipping the organization as God--maybe not overtly but in practice, in our actions . . . and in our defenses of it. Much easier than doing what God says to us Day by Day.
Shoot HE EXPECTS ME TO GROW IN GRACE, IN LOVE, IN WALKING IN HIS SPIRIT! THAT'S SCARY! Thanks, anyway, Moses, You do it, bossman. I'll just continue to go through all these organizational hoop jumping exercises on occasion and then I'll imagine that THAT makes me righteous and I'll feel safe and comfortable. And God won't bother me that much about changing because I won't be close enough to hear Him. But I'll pretend the organization covers all that for me with The Big Man.
PING.
Basically, humans typically & chronically refuse to walk daily in intimate relationship with God because that's too scary. He expects "too much." He expects us to grow daily. TO COOPERATE WITH HIM CHANGING US FROM THE INSIDE OUT.
It's much safer humans delude themselves into thinking--to hide in an INSTITUTION/ORGANIZATION and pretend that the organization covers all the necessary God stuff.
Doing that long enough, and the insitution becomes the object of adoration, worship, smugness, pride, ego, emotion . . . worshipped.
Quix: The history of the human Roman organization is full of blazing brazen examples to the opposite.
A8: Name one example in the history of the Catholic Church of orthodoxy being determined by the laity instead of the bishops.
Quix: I don't recall my fingers stuttering. I don't recall mentioning the laity. That was not my point. The point I was responding to was that the Bishops--AND PARTICULARLY THE !!!LEADING, TOP, [POLITICALLY SUCCESSFUL] ROMAN!!! BISHOP et al decided orthodoxy flawlessly . . . particularly compared to the 20,000 Protestant idiot groups. WHEN that clearly has not been the case at many times in the Roman group's history. I think the points below reiterated will affirm that.
A8: If your point was that the bishops and the pope "decided orthodoxy flawlessly", then you and agree. (I suspect that you intended to include a "not".) My original point was that orthodoxy is determined by the bishops, not the laity. So your objection seemed to suggest that you think that the laity should get to determine for the Church what is or is not orthodoxy.
Quix: Methinks that the folks on the racks during the Inquisition would beg to differ.
A8: A person "begging to differ" does not refute the point in question. Yes, the Pope has the highest authority (under Christ) in the Catholic Church. But, that does not mean that the Pope has absolute or unqualified authority. Abuses of authority are not indications of the extent or range of authority.
Quix: AND, HE TOOK THEM OUT OR REMOVED THE ANOINTING from every remotely long line of them sooner or later
A8: And how do you know this? This is the sort of deism we see in Mormonism.
Quix: I'm not talking about SECULAR POLITICAL authorities.
A8: Your mentioning of Hitler is what suggested to me that you *were* also talking about secular political authorities.
Quix: The Pope and Cardinals have been plenty abusive 100's of times
A8: Catholics agree. Perhaps this can be a point of common ground. We agree that Catholic leaders have abused their authority. But Catholics believe that when a Catholic leader abuses his authority, this does not eliminate or nullify his God-given authority through ordination. That is what become clear through the Donatist controvesy. And we can thank St. Augustine for helping to clear this up. We don't have to worry whether our baptism was invalid due to some secret and serious sin in the life of the one who administered our baptism. And the same is true of all the sacraments. The gifts and calling are irrevocable. If we fall away from the faith, we do not have to be re-baptized when we return. Why? Because baptism (like confirmation and ordination) leaves an indelible character in the soul.
A8: Please name one 'flipflop' in Catholic *dogma*. Just one.
Quix: I think eggregious indulgences would be one. Papal philandering outside of marriage could be construed as another. ... There were variouis pollitical land grabs at various points in history that were not at all Christ-like--or even remotely moral.
None of those are Catholic dogma.
-A8
This claim commits the fallacy of begging the question.
-A8
Jesus summarizes the 10 Commandments into two. The Law of God is 100% moral.
How is praying for the excommunicated person and trying to persuade him to seek reconciliation with the Church a case of failing to follow 1 Tim 5:19?
What part of 1 Tim 5:19 says anything about reconciliation with a Church? Reading further, my argument is even more reinforced by the Apostle:
1Ti 5:24 The sins of some men are quite evident, going before them to judgment; for others, their sins follow after. 1Ti 5:25 Likewise also, deeds that are good are quite evident, and those which are otherwise cannot be concealed.
Why can't you simply get together with your Catholic brethren and accuse a Priest, Bishop, Cardinal, or Pope of committing evident sins?
The Church was founded by Christ on Peter the rock (Matt 16:18). So, I think you are misinterpreting the passages to which you are referring. The Twelve Apostles are the foundation stones of the Church (see Revelation 21:14).
The Church was founded on the Holy Spirit, not the man Peter. Did you miss this verse?
1Pe 5:1 Therefore, I exhort the elders among you, as your fellow elder and witness of the sufferings of Christ, and a partaker also of the glory that is to be revealed,
What of the account of Mat 21:23-17? How did the people recognize John the Baptist as a prophet? How does one recognize Godliness? It certainly is not the church in this instance? Paul writes that the laity can accuse the clergy, to be careful when laying on of hands, etc. There had to be a clear standard for God to deal with us. Men are all sinful.
Rom 3:9 What then? Are we better than they? Not at all; for we have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are all under sin; Rom 3:10 as it is written, "THERE IS NONE RIGHTEOUS, NOT EVEN ONE;
Lev 24:22 'There shall be one standard for you; it shall be for the stranger as well as the native, for I am the LORD your God.'"
LOLOL. Amen! Saints chuckling all the way to heaven. 8~)
Are F A Sullivan's writings Nihil Obstated and/or Imprimatured or not? Yes or No?
You are welcome to *substantiate* your claim.
I'll substantiate mine. Here is one example from St. Cyprian, bishop of Carthage:
"For which reason you must diligently observe and keep the practice delivered from divine tradition and apostolic observance, which is also maintained among us, and almost throughout all the provinces; that for the proper celebration of ordinations all the neighbouring bishops of the same province should assemble with that people for which a prelate is ordained. And the bishop should be chosen in the presence of the people, who have most fully known the life of each one, and have looked into the doings of each one as respects his habitual conduct. And this also, we see, was done by you in the ordination of our colleague Sabinus; so that, by the suffrage of the whole brotherhood, and by the sentence of the bishops who had assembled in their presence, and who had written letters to you concerning him, the episcopate was conferred upon him, and hands were imposed on him in the place of Basilides."
-A8
Now I'm confused, are you a foggie or a fogie
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such there is no law. (Gal 3) and again:"Pray for the excommunicated person and attempt to persuade them to seek reconciliation with the Church." (Adiaireton8); "
13 For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love be servants of one another. 14 For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." 15 But if you bite and devour one another take heed that you are not consumed by one another. (Gal 3)
"If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over. But if he will not listen, take one or two others along, so that 'every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.' If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector. ("Matthew 18:15-20)Here we see the Church as the proper authority to which individuals may appeal where differences arise.
I have been reading about the early years of Christianity and one of the things that is so clearly a myth is this idea that Rome had authority and control. Prior to the emergence of Rome as the preeminent power Christianity was congregational in structure and religious services were very different.
- = - = -
YUP.
I think maybe it was Jr High or some such when even just a cursory reading of history made that abundantly clear.
***..... with elders determined from the community by their "walk".***
Um, that makes it, by definition Presbyterian....
An amazing statement!!!!!! And this shows how rhetoricians deal with facts and the absence of them. They can claim anything to be true, no matter how ridiculous, as long as there is no one around to contradict them.
There is no credible place outside of Scripture that shows that Peter's Roman Bishopric was 25 years either. That's the point. Where is your first century proof? Your 2nd century proof? 3rd century? Jerome's and Eusebius's pontifications of such in the 4th century provide no evidence for their claim? If church people are to trust them them, they need to know who they trusted for their outrageous claim. Scripture together with the absence of any credible evidence for Eusebius's and Jerome's claims are witnesses against them.
So we are the traditional church?
Do you follow the Old Testament dietary laws? (No pork, shrimp, clams, oysters, lobster, etc.) (Leviticus 11)
KUSA: What exactly can Catholic laity do to affect the excommunication of a member of the clergy?
A8: Pray for the excommunicated person and attempt to persuade them to seek reconciliation with the Church.
KUSA: Why can't you do what the Bible says? 1Ti 5:19 Do not receive an accusation against an elder except on the basis of two or three witnesses.
A8: How is praying for the excommunicated person and trying to persuade him to seek reconciliation with the Church a case of failing to follow 1 Tim 5:19?
KSUA: What part of 1 Tim 5:19 says anything about reconciliation with a Church?
A8: You are the one who brought in 1 Tim 5:19 in response to my answer to your original question at the beginning of this dialogue.
Why can't you simply get together with your Catholic brethren and accuse a Priest, Bishop, Cardinal, or Pope of committing evident sins?
You can. Why do you think you can't?
The Church was founded on the Holy Spirit, not the man Peter. Did you miss this verse? 1Pe 5:1 Therefore, I exhort the elders among you, as your fellow elder and witness of the sufferings of Christ, and a partaker also of the glory that is to be revealed.
Why do you think that 1 Peter 5:1 nullifies Matt 16:18? Peter is indeed a fellow elder (and a fellow Apostle), but he also has a unique authority as shown more specifically in Matt 16:18, both as the rock on which the Church is built, and as the possessor of the keys.
What of the account of Mat 21:23-17? How did the people recognize John the Baptist as a prophet?
It is a moot point because the Old Covenant context and the New Covenant context are distinct. Now we have a Magesterium gifted with the "charism of truth" (to quote from Irenaeus). If we assume that that we must on our own as individuals (apart from the Magesterium) figure out who is 'anointed' or 'divinely inspired', we are loading a false claim into our methodology, namely, the false claim that "there is no Magesterium graced with the charism of truth".
Paul writes that the laity can accuse the clergy, to be careful when laying on of hands, etc. There had to be a clear standard for God to deal with us. Men are all sinful.
Catholicism believes and teaches all of this. I'm not sure why you think otherwise.
-A8
That is an ad hominem.
They can claim anything to be true, no matter how ridiculous, as long as there is no one around to contradict them.
This too is an ad hominem.
If church people are to trust them them, they need to know who they trusted for their outrageous claim.
That wouldn't be trust. As St. Augustine says, "For my part, I should not believe the Gospel except as moved by the authority of the Catholic Church." We do not demand from the Apostles the time and date that Jesus told them the things they teach in His name. We believe and trust their testimony of Christ. And we believe and trust the testimony and authority of those in sacramental succession from them.
Scripture together with the absence of any credible evidence for Eusebius's and Jerome's claims are witnesses against them.
No place in Scripture is there anything that shows that Peter's Roman bishopric was not 25 years. And absence of additional evidence is not a witness against them; that's the fallacy of the argument from silence.
-A8
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