Peter & Succession (Understanding the Church Today)

Ignatius Insight ^ | 2005 | Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger

[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.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you for sharing your views!

Yet, I believe A8 is correct in his assessment that your epistemology and theology is essentially subjective naval gazing that lacks radical exteriority needed to lift yourself beyond your own horizon.

LOLOL! I have no idea how you got that idea. My epistemology puts my own musings way down the list. Even logic ranks #3 there.

Before I get into the meat of the arguments of the subject matters at hand I found your appeal for insularity from judgement as symptomatic of basic defects in your warrants and perhaps a whiff of an appeal to authority.

Hardly. When I said “I’d rather you not judge me at all” it was in reference to Matthew 7 – because whoever is judging another will be held to the exact same standard he is using. IOW, it was not for my sake but for anyone making judgments of another:

Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. – Matthew 7:1-2

There is also that snaky problem Paul mentioned, that our judgments are self-condemning per se:

Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest: for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same things. – Romans 2:1

Or in modern parlance, ’it takes one to know one.’ or to put it another way, the one who can imagine a thing is the one who speaks of it. The naïve person’s mind is clean and thus he has no basis to judge. Conversely, as the Sermon on the Mount shows, the thinking of the thing and the doing of it are equally condemning.

Finding no cause for your appeal to insularity from judgement we move on then to your self-annointed framework for personal judgement. [where I am using the fruit/tree test of Matthew 7 and the fruits specified in Galatians 5]

Your protest fails on “self-anointed” since the standard for judging whether or not to listen to a “prophet” is not mine but Christ’s. And as to the connection between the fruits described in Matthew 7 and itemized in Galatians 5:21-22, it requires spiritual discernment.

Clearly you are consistent in your degrading of Creation and a skepticism of reality that imply things may be appearances only. If this is not full blown gnosticism it closely approaches it.

To the contrary, it is geometric physics (Vafa, Wesson, et al)

From what I witnessed Scripture only serves your immanent epistemology, fit to explain your existential situation not something that brings you out your internal world. I think your oft-repeated mantra is telling in this matter.

As I have testified on many occasions, God the Father has revealed Himself in four ways:

1. Through Jesus Christ who is the brightness of His glory, the express image of His person – by whom everything that was made, was made, and for whom it exists and by whom it subsists. (Hebrews 1:3, Col 1)

2. Through the indwelling Spirit who reveals Truth to us and leads us. (John 14-17, Romans 8, I Cor 2)

3. Through the Scriptures, which I do often quote as most of the correspondents accept them as inerrant.

4. Through Creation itself. (Psalms 19, Romans 1:20)

I am not in an “internal world” – to the contrary, those who value sensory perception and reasoning above the person of God are the ones who are living in an “internal world”.

Because of the observer problem, there is no objective truth from the perspective of the ego-centric. None of us mortals can step outside of “all that there is” – both physical and spiritual - for a panaromic view of reality. That is the domain of God alone. He alone is objective Truth. There is no other way to obtain Truth than through Him, i.e. the Spirit He has given us for that very purpose. (John 14-17)

This is not something I can reason with another person. Either they are led by the Spirit or they are not. But if they are led by the Spirit, they know some of the mind, the wisdom and the power of God. (I Cor 2)

IOW, hermeneutics are wasted on me though I'm sure many find comfort in them. But that's fine, we are not "cookie cutter" Christians.

[Running On Empty]

I would like to thank you for the posts you have made on this and other threads. They are direct and easy to follow, not tiresomely long, and also are cordial and respectful.

I also have noticed how very seldom you use the words "I" or "me".

It causes me to remember the words of St. John the Baptist: "He must increase, I must decrease".

I'm glad that you are here.

ROE

[Quix]

Now, now. Wouldn't want you getting ILL, Harley.

[Quix]

Overturning any Catholic dogmas.
= = =

Ahhhhh, but they have! LOL.

[Quix]

Such a harsh slave driver, you are!

LOL.

Cue Mission Impossible theme! LOL.

[adiaireton8]

Ahhhhh, but they have!

Please name one Catholic dogma that the Catholic Church has overturned. Anyone can toss out accustations without substantiating them.

-A8

[wmfights]

"AWESOME POLITICAL POWER has a LOT of attractions and bennies. They are hard to turn loose of or weaken."
__________________________

I agree and am not naive about the motivations of men, but I am also a skeptic by nature. I've found it comforting because the more you question the more TRUTH is revealed.

[Quix]

Reader's Digest . . .

CERTAINLY Holy Spirit is free to ENLIVEN, highlight, anoint . . . anything.

He actually anointed a donkey to speak sentences once upon a time. He MAY even have anointed a phrase or 3 from a Bishop or two sometime in history . . .

Certainly He can enliven something from The Reader's Digest, The Daily Times . . . something a snotty nosed kid blurted out on the playground as one passed by on the sidewalk.

Doesn't really matter the source. What matters is that Holy Spirit says at a given time and place to the individual concerned--

"You know that issue you've been so burdened about . . . remember that phrase the kid just blurted out on the playground? Apply that there. That's your answer."

And it is. And the burden lifts.

Was the kid enScripturating something new to be included in the Canon? Of course not. That's silly.

Was the highlight, anointed sentence Holy Spirit called the individual's attention to God's word to the individual at that moment? Absolutely.

With according fruitfulness in the individual's life.

[Quix]

Masterfully put.

Thanks for the encouragement.

[Dr. Eckleburg]

History as dogma, dogma a history; sweet work, if you can get it. Who can't win with this formula?

LOL! Great post, AlbionGirl. You know of what you speak.

[Quix]

That's what the Mormons say. So who should we believe, you or the Mormons?
= = =

Lots of counterfeits say lots of things. They say things similar to the real. That's what counterfeits do. It's of no profit to counterfeit a $3.00 bill.

As A-G has said quite repeatedly . . . GOD ALONE is absolutely trustworthy. I don't understand where the difficult vocabulary is, in that.

Trust GOD ALONE!

WHEN God says trust us, then it's foolish before God to avoid trusting us. When God says--don't trust Quix when he says thus and so--then it would be foolish to trust Quix in that thus and so.

Has this suddenly turned into rocket science? Am I missing something?

[Dr. Eckleburg]

It's of no profit to counterfeit a $3.00 bill.

Great line.

[adiaireton8]

Trust GOD ALONE!

Where does one find God?

-A8

[proud_2_B_texasgal]

This question of authority has been on my mind to. The sticky wicket for some is that it is either/or. Bear with me for a minute, my thoughts don't always flow freely.

My authority is Christ, alone. Ultimately, when I stand before God, I won't be able to say "This person made me..." .. or "I beleived that person..." or "I was a part of this church" . I am, WE are, ultimately responsible for our Christian walk and the decisions we make.

Yes, there are those called to be leaders, and while a part of their congregation I would be under their "authority", but never to the point that I would blindly trust ANY MAN. Scripture is the standard. If that man's teachings began to blatantly contradict scripture, I could no longer follow that man, or men in the case of an institution.

I think to the point that they are called, elected, graduated, appointed .. leaders are probably held to a higher accounting for the souls of the people they lead. But ultimately, each person is responsible for their walk with the Lord.

The AUTHORITY given to all of us as believers is the authority to reach others with the gospel, pray for the sick, cast out demons. It is SUPERNATURAL authority over a SUPERNATURAL enemy, to walk daily with the weapons of our warfare, which is not carnal, and to take authority over the enemy.

We have in us the SAME POWER that raised Jesus from the dead. We have the weapons. We have the authority. We are given the scripture to speak. We are given the Holy Spirit for discernment and POWER. We just flat FAIL to use it.

Jesus said that HIS people parish for a lack of knowledge. HIS people. That is not unbelievers parishing because they don't have the knowledge of the gospel. That is HIS people .. Christians, parishing because they have a lack of knowledge about HOW to live AS HE LIVED.

We are sick, dying, and manipulated by the enemy on a daily basis. Jesus showed us and told us how to overcome these things. Why don't we? He showed us how to overcome the works of satan, to be healed and delivered and set free? Why aren't we? Is that the wide gate to destruction Jesus talked about? The narrow gate being the way to supernaturally overcoming the enemy in every circumtance, the way that leads to LIFE?

God's ways are foolishness to the world. He uses the foolish things to confound the wise.

I don't understand it all. I can't 'prove' any of it. I can only share what Jesus has worked in my life, and in my family's life. How I have witnessed, and moved in, the supernatural power of the Holy Spirit. How it is possible for different churches with different gifts and even some differences in doctrine, can work together as the BODY OF CHRIST to reach a community with the Gospel.

Jesus: Our ultimate, undeniable, indescribable, incorruptable, sovereign Lord and Authority.

To Him alone I bow.

[Quix]

Here's the dilemma: either those children will have more spiritual authority than you, or their spiritual authority will be equal to or less than your spiritual authority.

NO dilemma at all--except, maybe . . . for those trying to find them or trump them up. . . .

If those children will have more spiritual authority than do you, will you submit to them? But if the spiritual authority of those children will be equal to or less than your spiritual authority, will you too be sending "generals and their armies to their deaths and hell"?

Not quite sure what all I'll be doing. The Lord has made abundantly clear it will be interesting, plenty dramatic for sufficient interest and excitement . . . hazardous duty in a number of respects . . . and require the utmost in focus on and devotion to HIM ALONE.

Some folks have insisted I'll be talking firmly to the bosses of the generals. That would be interesting. What do I know emphatically? . . . prophetic things I tend to put on a shelf and wait to see what God confirms. And, some things have a longer timeline than others.

I just want to serve my Lord in whatever capacity He ordains and as faithfully as I can manage, by His Grace to cooperate with Him on. I want to never ever deny Him in any respect for any cost. But, He is the author and finisher of my faith and of me. So I'm growing in trusting Him on that score.

[Quix]

No. He's emphatically not. That much is easy.

Were He doing so, He'd be confirming it abroad in the Body of Christ I'm in touch with. He's not doing so.

That is a false word.

[adiaireton8]

That is a false word.

How do you know that it is a false word?

-A8

[Quix]

if your words have the same authority as that of the Apostles,

NO. I DIDN'T SAY THAT! I appreciate it more when folks avoid putting words in my fingers.

To judge something . . . one needs to know the goal, the standard of measure/criteria for determining whether the goal is reached and the context.

The Goal of Holy Spirit speaking to and through me is not to write more Scripture. What we have is quite sufficient.

The Scope of Holy Spirit's msg to me and/or through me is entirely different. Yes, the source is the same and the import IN MY LIFE can be similar or even the same. Because THE HOLY SPIRIT IS THE HOLY SPIRIT. But it has nothing to do with being equal to Scripture. Nothing. I'm surprised that such a mentality appears at all except that I know satan uses that spurious logic to cause trouble.

[Quix]

Probably not any time soon. Others may, if they wish.

The truth is there for those who care to dig it out. It's better appreciated then.

[Quix]

True enough.