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.
But oh how I wish you had gone the route of Paul (see below) before settling into a doctrinal path. And perhaps someday in the future you will set aside as much time as you can, alone somewhere pleasing in nature with virtually no trace of man whether people, computers, television, phones or books (except the Holy Scriptures of course) - and just spent a well extended time alone with Him. On personal experience, I’m very sure the effort would be renewing.
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?
Jesus: Our ultimate, undeniable, indescribable, incorruptable, sovereign Lord and Authority.
To Him alone I bow.
**I am deeply moved in my soul at every mass.**
I am too. Actually shocked to see blind leaders of the blind crucify Him afresh.
Everybody has emotions. Not everybody has been filled with Holy Ghost. It is joy unspeakable and full of glory. It is a supernatural experience.
On Pentecost, people were thought to be drunk, so powerful was the effect. And it wasn't because there was so many different languages being spoken at the same time. I've walked through an airport and heard several languages spoken in a congested area.
Simon the sorcerer offered the apostles money for the power to give souls the Holy Ghost. What did he see and hear, people saying "I accept the Lord as my personal savior"? I think it was much, much more than that.
There are three accounts in the book of Acts where people spoke in tongues when receiving the Holy Ghost. The most unruly member, the tongue, yielding to God's Spirit.
I fought it for years, meanwhile clinging to traditions that were passed down by blind leaders of the blind.
Nyer posts stories of people 'crossing the Tiber', as if that makes a case for Roman Catholicism. It just proves to me that their walk with God became reliant on seeing and partaking in a religious ceremony.
Jesus commanded his apostles to preach repentance and remission of sins beginning at Jerusalem. Peter followed that command, ordering convicted hearts to "repent and be baptized EVERYONE of you in the NAME of Jesus Christ, for the REMISSION of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost."
Jesus said: He that believeth on me as the scriptures hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. (But this spake he of the Spirit which they that believe on him should receive: for the Holy Ghost was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet glorified.)
AFTER partaking in the last supper Jesus told his disciples that he would not leave them comfortless, saying, "I will come to you", and "At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you".
What day? The day they are filled with the Holy Ghost, aka 'Christ in you, the hope of glory'.
For many years I settled for conviction, and emotion, coupled with ceremonies that had been approved by religious leaders. The baptism of the Holy Ghost is not emotions. It is God making his presence known.
My counter-point was that matter in the universe (critical density) is of three types: ordinary matter at 5% which has never been observed nor made (Higgs field/boson), dark matter at 25% e.g. the high gravity center of galaxies, and dark energy at 70% which has a negative gravity. Moreover, because neither CERN nor Fermilab have been able to observe or make ordinary matter, state-of-the-art physics theories suggest that matter in our four dimensions (3 of space, 1 of time) is a shadow of momentum components in a fifth dimension – or perhaps multiply imaged from as little as a single particle in a fifth time-like dimension.
In other words, physics even with its limited technological ability tells us that “matter” is not what most people think it is and thus what appears to be mystical to us (e.g. the items of the temple which were so Holy that one could not even touch them, the indwelling Spirit, etc.) – may be something else from God’s point-of-view. And I suspect that is the case because of my epistemology
My epistemology summed up at post 1190 puts God first as the only reliable source of objective Truth. But you all are certainly welcome to reject my personal epistemology. We each have our own “worldviews” – and that doesn’t bother me at all.
The reason God is first, the only source of objective Truth in mine is simply this: we are parts and participants of His Creation – both physical and spiritual. We are “in” it, anchored to space/time. God alone is beyond all geometry – dimensionality cannot apply to the uncaused cause, i.e. creator of causation itself.
So being observers “in” Creation we cannot move outside of it and see “all that there is” at once. Only God can speak in those terms, stating the end from the beginning.
Our vision and minds are limited specifically to three spatial dimensions and one temporal dimension – even though we know through mathematics (geometric physics) that there may indeed be additional spatial and temporal dimensions. Thus everything we observe with our senses, think with our minds, is distorted by comparison to His vantage point.
And therefore, all revelations of God are more sure, more valuable, more trustworthy to me than any other source of knowledge – whether sensory perception, logic, mentors, opinions of experts, etc.
Christ is the centerpiece of “all that there is” – first in everything - and all that was made was made by Him and for Him. And Calvary was the necessary part to reconcile to Himself everything both in heaven and in earth. (Col 1)
We shall see that reconciliation (His kingdom come, His will be done) in the new heaven and the new earth after everything that is to be culled from this heaven and earth has been destroyed and “all that there is” is remade.
My two cents...
Concerning your closing quotation from adiaireton8, and your response - these especially - the Word concerning the Spirit given came to mind:
1 Corinthians 22 For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. 3 I was with you in weakness, in fear, and in much trembling. 4 And my speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, 5 that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.
6 However, we speak wisdom among those who are mature, yet not the wisdom of this age, nor of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. 7 But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the ages for our glory, 8 which none of the rulers of this age knew; for had they known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
9 But as it is written:
“Eye has not seen, nor ear heard,10 But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God. 11 For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. 12 Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God.
Nor have entered into the heart of man
The things which God has prepared for those who love Him.”
13 These things we also speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. 14 But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. 15 But he who is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is rightly judged by no one. 16 For “who has known the mind of the LORD that he may instruct Him?” But we have the mind of Christ.
[T]he mystery which has been hidden from ages and from generations...has been revealed to His saints. To them God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles: which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Him we preach, warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus. To this end I also labor, striving according to His working which works in me mightily.
~Colossians 1:26-29John 14:26
But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.1 John 2:27
But the anointing which you have received from Him abides in you, and you do not need that anyone teach you; but as the same anointing teaches you concerning all things, and is true, and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you will abide in Him.
Christ is the centerpiece of “all that there is” – first in everything - and all that was made was made by Him and for Him. And Calvary was the necessary part to reconcile to Himself everything both in heaven and in earth. (Col 1)We shall see that reconciliation (His kingdom come, His will be done) in the new heaven and the new earth after everything that is to be culled from this heaven and earth has been destroyed and “all that there is” is remade.
I have point #1 for you: If Peter wasn't ever in Rome, a whole lot of people are really screwed.
That is really true. That is why the future "Dr A8" and I have undertaken this great and exhaustive search for the truth regarding Peter in Rome. Because if he did not have that legendary bishopric there, then all the claims of the magisterium from Nicea to the present have been an absolute fraud and millions of people who have fallen for this fraud are now paying for it for an eternity.
That is the purpose of our thesis: to present the facts FOR that legendary bishopric of Peter in Rome that the magisterium have claimed give them the authority to pontificate their doctrines and perform their magic, and then let the people decide.
The magisterium claim that the magic that is on demonstration at every mass, the ability to change things from one substance into another, was passed down to their priesthood by a divine person who was in Rome from 42 AD until 67 AD. Was that Simon Peter or was that Simon Magus [aka Simon the Magician who went from Antioch to Rome at that time]?
So far we have found no facts, no documentary evidence of Simon Peter's legandary bishopric. But our search continues and we will turn over every stone and shake every tree in search of the real truth to remove the veil. As goes the Legend of Peter, so goes the Vatican and its myriad of useless pontifications.
I have searched through the Latin Vulgate, the Douay Rheims, the Challoner, the NIV, NASB, and other bibles but no evidence has surfaced. Should I look in the King James Bible? Oh is it still on "the List".? Could you post for me that updated "List of Forbidden Books". Mine is dated 1950 and it still has the King James Bible on it? And could you check to see if that Nihil Obstated and Imprimatured work of F.A. Sullivan From Apostles to Bishops ever made "the List"? You know, the one who claimed that the first church in Rome was shepherded by presbyterians not a bishop? Yeh!! the First Presbyterian Church of Rome. I'm sure he was popular at mass after that?
How is your search through the AnteNicene Fathers going? . Don't forget to search Clement of Rome thoroughly. Yeh, it would be ironic if Peter passed his authority down to a "presbyterian". The Keys of St Peter handed over to the First Presbyterian Church of Rome. Wouldn't that cause a scandal? Well, we haven't found anything yet about Peter in Rome, so tell them not flutter their cassocks.
Well its on to the Epistles. And yes, I am searching the Septuagint as well, and shhhhhh, even the King James Bible, just in case they missed anything. And after that I will be going down to the University to check all of the old manuscripts, the vellums, the uncials, miniscules, the Peshita, the Ethiopic, the Sahidic, the Old Latin, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and yes even all that papyrus from the sands of Egypt. We will find evidence of Peter's bishopric somewhere, don't you think?
Godspeed on your end. And check with your superiors to see if we can have access to the Vatican Library. They might have some good stuff in there that's just gathering dust.
Could it be that THAT is the "rock" upon which He built His church: The fact that He is Jesus, Our Christ, Son of the Living God??
You nailed it!
= = =
You mean . . . as in the Biblically predicted CHIEF CORNERSTONE?
Christ or Faith in Christ either one, fit for me.
Peter is inadequate to fit.
Thanks for your thoughtful,Biblical, wise and meaty post.
INDEED.
Diego did a wonderful job in that most Biblical post.
The other position would have us ASSUME, EXTRAPOLATE, INFER from a very fuzzy metaphorical phrase in one verse
the foundation for a very pharisaical, tradition bound, proudly pontifical . . . edifice . . . historicaly often and greatly at odds with the example and statements of JESUS THE CHRIST . . . and that somehow, by some mangled, convoluted rationality, logic . . . all such is ?reasonable?
Whereas the plain Scriptures Diego posted indicate a very different probability, certainty.
IT'S CHRIST'S CHURCH. He COULD have installed a donkey for head, if He'd wanted. Not my call. His call.
And given His acute understanding of the flawed heart of man . . . that He and His Spirit seem to take a lifetime overhauling in each of us . . . It seems rather illogical that He would set up a flawed fisherman as chief church leader--when He then shortly remarks about speaking more out of satan's prompting than The Spirit's.
The only, plausible to me, meanings possible from that vabue metaphorical verse are that Jesus is speaking of Peter's faith in Himself, in Christ; or of Christ, Himself.
I suppose it's conceivable that He could be speaking of His own Power to transform flawed folks like the little pebble Peter into the living stones of His Church Universal. But that's about as much of a stretch as the Roman one, imho.
At first, I thought that assertion was a bit overdone. But . . .
You could be right for those who put their faith and trust in man and organizations accordingly.
Our FAITH belongs IN CHRIST ALONE.
Thanks tons for your Spirit-filled wisdom and kind encouragements.
Masterfully, lovingly and wisely done, as ever.
Wonderful post. Thanks.
Yet again, I agree wholesale. The Lord clearly guides your cogitations, imho.
Thanks tons. Am humbled by your kind words and blessed by The very fitting Scriptures.
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