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.
Not surprised.
Most fogies are foggie. That's what makes them a fogie.
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More familiar with that than I want to be.
LOL.
Certainly a lot of folks think I've been lost in a fuge for a long time.
And certainly the Calvinists and probably now the Romans are convinced I'm terminally fog-y.
Thankfully, God knows my heart and all the rest besides! YEA GOD! LOL.
Plausible distinctions, to me.
Thx.
For the first 300 years the early church just ran around evangelizing until so many goofy views started springing up that someone decided that perhaps it would be good to write down what Christians believe. The "grand hierarchal" that the early fathers refer to is simply because there was no other choices up until this time. Interesting, the Orthodox never recognized a Pope as the top dog.
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Great points, imho.
Stunning isn't that all the inspired "God Breathed" writings that comprise the New Testament were written during the Apostolic Era. This was accomplished before we had a dominant religion of the State.
= = = =
INDEED, INDEED!
When it comes to caps, color, sizing, boldfacing and other emphasis - one must do what he must. The effect of it might indeed limit the audience because many of us may tend to either read only the emphasis or anything but the emphasis or just skip it altogether.
Nevertheless the correspondent must express himself. If it goes beyond what is acceptable, I'm sure the Religion Moderator will take care of it. LOL!
Personally, I try to keep my replies short and limit myself to three main points simply because most Freepers don't have a lot of time to wade through a bunch of narrative and I'm hoping they'll read my contributions. But then there are times when I must go into more detail and/or provide sources and "back up" whatever I'm trying to say.
Those posts can be quite large and all that I can do to make it easier on the reader is to use indentations and emphasis (boldface, italics, underlines and such) to break it into digestible segments.
Oh well, we all struggle to communicate in a world moving at a fast clip. But of a Truth, we need only to trust the Holy Spirit to bring the hearer and encouragement together according to God's will. That is the point, after all.
Well and graciously said with wisdom and accuracy, as usual.
Thanks tons.
You are shaping my behavior by your example maybe more than is obvious.
LUB,
If this is the case, perhaps you could suggest how we might do better in the future.
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While my reply was Scripturally sound and accurate . . . I feel I should try again . . .
Let us as iron sharpening iron ENCOURAGE ONE ANOTHER Scripturally as beloved bretheren . . . and call one another to that standard when we fail to measure up.
Let us avoid the tired and tiresome stereotypes that are unnecessarily--UNNECESSARILY hostile, exclusive etc.
I'm not asking for any lowest common denominator nonsense nor any syncratistic nonsense.
But I am asking for a very minimum of the super repetiticious diatribe types of code words and phrases which are not fruitful in any eternal way. We can all fling them about with great abandon. I think the result is only smelly and muddy.
Hope that helps.
LUB, BRO.
And there is only one shepherd and one flock:
For ye are yet carnal: for whereas [there is] among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men? For while one saith, I am of Paul; and another, I [am] of Apollos; are ye not carnal?
Who then is Paul, and who [is] Apollos, but ministers by whom ye believed, even as the Lord gave to every man? - I Cor 3:1-5
Those of us who are on Spiritual meat must be loving and patient and help the younger Christians understand the meaning of the Lord's prayer, what it is all "about": His name, His will and His kingdom. The rest is details.
My two cents...
Indeed, I meant to use the word "worldview". A worldview is ego-centric, it's the perspective from which one interprets the world he perceives.
If a person's worldview is that "the absence of evidence is evidence of absence" he'll interpret the world quite differently than one whose worldview allows for gaps to be filled in by "just so" stories.
I never said I couldn't tell you. We can (and should, though with humility and caution, and by the appropriate means) bring to light serious sins committed by the clergy. In fact, we have a duty to do so, out of love for them and for the holiness and purity of Christ's Church.
Following your logic, Peter is Satan as well as the foundation of the church.
No, the premise of your argument is mistaken. That *doesn't* follow my logic. When Jesus refers to Peter as a rock, Jesus isn't confusing Peter with a dense inanimate homeomerous chunk of earth. Jesus is using the term analogously, showing the *functional* role that Peter and his successors would have in the Church. But when Jesus says "Get behind me Satan", Jesus isn't saying that Peter is Satan. Jesus is not confusing Peter with the angelic prince of darkness. Jesus is speaking to Satan (and Peter) at the same time, rebuking both of them. There is no reason whatsoever to think that Jesus thinks Peter *is* Satan. But Jesus definitely says that Peter is the rock (i.e. the foundation stone) upon which Jesus will build His Church, and to whom Jesus gives (vs. 19) the "keys of the kingdom of heaven".
Where is the term Magisterium found in scripture?
Right next to the word 'Sabbatarian'. :-)
There are many terms in theology that are not found in Scripture.
What scripture, what command of God tells us this?
All the Scriptures and commands of God come to us through the Magisterium. That is why the question itself is strange. Jesus did not write any books. He ordained Apostles with the authority to rule the Church and forgive and retain sins (Matthew 16:18-19; Luke 10:16; John 20:22-23); these Apostles ordained bishops (cf. Pillipians 1:1; 1 Tim 3; Titus 1:7) to govern the churches in the various cities. Bishops were instructed to ordain successors (2 Tim 2:2) through the laying on of hands (1 Tim 4:14; 2 Tim 1:6) with the prayer of consecration. The books of the New Testament were written by Apostles (or others under their supervision), and were over time collected, identified, preserved, copied, and canonized by the bishops.
Here's the definition of 'Magisterium' in the Catholic Catechism: "The living, teaching office of the Church, whose task it is to give an authentic interpretation of the word of God, whether in its written form (Sacred Scripture), or in the form of Tradition. The Magisterium ensures the Church's fidelity to the teaching of the Apostles in matters of faith and morals."
Who is Irenaeus?
Bishop of Lyons, c. 180 AD. You can read more about him here.
Can you really tell me the sum of the scriptures is "trust the church, not the Word of God"?
The Magisterium does *not* say that the sum of Scripture is "trust the church, not the Word of God". It would most definitely reject such a statement. One does not have to choose between trusting the Magisterium and trusting the Word of God. Only by trusting the Magisterium can we trust that we have the Word of God. The two necessarily go together.
"For my part, I should not believe the Gospel except as moved by the authority of the Catholic Church." St. Augustine
-A8
But, we disagree, I think, concerning the identity of that authority. I believe that the bishops in succession from the Apostles and in communion with the bishop of Rome have the rightful authority in the Church, and that only in communion with Christ's appointed shepherds can we be in full communion with Christ and with each other. You believe, however, that our only authority is Christ, that there are no human authorities in the Church.
So let me ask you a question: If you lived back during the time of the Apostles, would you have been under their authority or not? If so, then as soon as the last Apostle died, would you suddenly be left without any human authorities? But if you would not have been under the Apostles' authority, then why did Jesus give His Apostles the authority to bind and loose and forgive and retain sins, and to speak in His name such that whoever listens to them listens to Him, and whoever rejects them rejects Him? (Luke 10:6; 1 John 4:6)
-A8
Howbeit we speak wisdom among them that are perfect: yet not the wisdom of this world, nor of the princes of this world, that come to nought: But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, [even] the hidden [wisdom], which God ordained before the world unto our glory: Which none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known [it], they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.
But God hath revealed [them] unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.
Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.
But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know [them], because they are spiritually discerned. But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man.
For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ. - I Cor 2:2-16
You're welcome. Cyberhymnal.org is a big blessing.
jm
If one were to do a search on "written" in scripture they would get approximately 253 hits with 125 of those being in the New Testament itself. It is rather laughable for our Catholic friends to say nothing was written down until the 3rd century when many of the church fathers prior to that time quote from the scriptures.
Pliny went on to explain he found no evidence of cannibalism. IOW, the earliest Christians passed the cup because they did not believe the wine had been transformed.
Yes, I find no direct evidence in the very early writings of fathers that they felt "changes" took place during communion.
There is a rather interest part in one of Augustine's writing where he states the early Christians at first believed you had to baptized to be saved. Once you were baptized you had to live a perfect life. To paraphrase Augustine, right after the first baptisms, Christians discovered they were falling short of living a perfect life. Next they decided to wait until their deathbed but some of them died before they could be baptized which they thought meant going to hell. Worst yet, others recovered. Finally they realized that baptism is only a sign.
I find this part of Augustine's writing to be rather interesting if not somewhat funny. The early Christians had to work a lot of these theologies out and not always did they get it right. Obviously, some of the theologies like baptism was a lot easier to figure out but they took this stuff very seriously.
Many of the early fathers were coming out of pagan cultures and, as godly as they tried to be given their situation, they were prone to errors just like everyone else. Some of them held very strange ideas and the Eucharist was one of them. But I really see the problems develop later (around 600AD and upwards) as humanism enveloped the church, the problems with the Crusades (1000-1400??) as people were leaving the Church, the Renaissance's man-centered influenece on theology, and finally the Reformation.
Consider it an "ecumenical" effort that will bring us all, separated brethren, and faithful saints, and even unbelievers, together as one. Post those holy words of sacred Tradition for us all to see. And hold back nothing. Our faith can withstand the truth no matter how painful. We need to be thorough but brief.
Meanwhile I will be in silent meditation most of the day with "the Fathers" as well. I have been up for days in "silent" study of all the evidence from St. Luke to St. Jerome. Thank you for recommending them. They have opened up my eyes and I'm sure they will open the eyes of others and ears, all of their arguments from silence notwithstanding.
If I don't hear back from you, and even if I do, I will begin preparing my own list of the words of "the Fathers" regarding Peter's 25 year Bishopric in Rome, with upside down crucifixion there under Nero, of course. And then we can compare our works on this forum so we don't leave any of "the Fathers" out of this great ecumenical pursuit of our day, so that we "all may be one" and on the same page.
One question before I return to my "silent" patristic meditations, are the Syriac Fathers considered part of the "Sacred Tradition of the Church"??? You see in my study of "the Fathers", I found that some Syriac Fathers say that Peter was the Bishop of Antioch until 67 AD . Now we have Peter in three places at once -- in Rome, in Babylon, and in Antioch. How did St Jerome miss this? Are these fathers part of the "Sacred Tradition of the Church"? Are they Nihil Obstated and Imprimatured? Should I be reading them or just discard them? or what? I'm sure you will be able to explain, if not satisfactorially, atleast rhetorically.
Once again, thank you for pointing me to "the Fathers", the warm greeting of the brethren when I joined this thread has inspired me to return the favor. This great work that we will post here will answer a lot of questions, but of course, raise a lot more as well. But that's life.
UC
I asked before for you not to post me and explained why, please respect my wishes.
-A8
Wonderfully said, as usual.
I concur across the board.
Thanks.
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