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.
Hi, just wanted to note that I was quoting that particular line from Alamo-Girl! I know you had your hands full, Quix, and you have done a mighty job keeping this thread for Christ Jesus, King and Truth!
My solution has been to be as selfefacing as I can get away with and still carry fitting respect--and to discourage pedestal notions.
I think the verse AT LEAST speaks to the very human tendency to put leaders on pedestals. I think that tendency grows out of our inborn, created need to worship God. But when that inborn God-given tendency is misplaced, then all manner of evil results.
Here's a ping to my thoughts on teaching and teachers! Not surprisingly, they are much like your own posted here!
"I also think Pope Benedict XVI has a brilliant mind,an awesome holiness and true humility. Truly a follower and imitator of Christ."
I agree he is in the same mold as John Paul II.
Under most circumstances. However, the burden of proof can and often does shift to the negative. For instance, the Catholics can point to fairly ancient traditions which allege that Peter died and was executed as Bishop in Rome. (The whole crucified upside-down story.) When you have ancient, reliable traditions, then the burden does indeed shift to the relative newbie (which all of us are) to demonstrate that those ancient, reliable traditions are indeed not ancient or are not reliable.
You are most welcome!
Thank you, A-G!
Have you seen Adiaireton8 anywhere???? I am concerned for him. They might have consigned him to purgatory for his sin of not doing his part.
"Though the Calvinist/Armenian threads can get pretty fierce against the Armenians, too."
_____________________________
I know, both sides can get after it pretty good sometimes. I never see abuse complaints though. In my personal opinion it seems to be one sided and only serves to censor debate and discussion.
In response to this I've found that the best way for me to respond as soon as someone starts with the "I'm outraged" or "I'm offended" is to stop posting to that person, or thread. I'm sure that is part of what they want to accomplish (stifling debate), but I don't want to miss out on opportunities like this thread where a very interesting argument is being presented and the chance to learn something new is present.
Thanks for your kind and humbling words.
Heading off to pottery, I think. Plenty to do around here but all those bowls for the hospice sale need trimemed and I need to make 5-10 more.
There are plenty of things to respond to on the 2 threads but . . . enough for now. And, I think others can do better than I, anyway.
Have a blessed day Dear Sister and all.
LUB,
Ya know....I'm really goin' to enjoy readin' your posts!
Welcome to Free Republic.
I want to thank both of you for opening up a whole new area of study. It seems that just as I'm finishing up reading about one thing (currently the common meal tradition) I need to get a whole new set of books.
Well hang in there, buddy, because I am going to help you. I am going to do your part for you with the help of those left here in the land of the living threads and we will spring you from your purgatory as soon as possible. So keep the faith --- help is on the way. I am working on it right now.
[I hope they let you read this]
You are giving me way too much credit for this. It's all in scripture, and you would have come up with the same argument.....given time.
Very few of you (nonCatholics) have dealt with what Pope Benedict XVI said,instead you focus on what you all think about the whether or not Peter was in Rome,which in most Catholic and nonCatholic circles is not nor has ever been much in question. Read annalex's responses on that on the other thread.
Are there any other changes that I should make on our treatise thus far, and if so, please provide the citations so as to include them. If I have left out anything that can be remotely construed by the most rhetorical amongst as evidence, I will post it and I hope you will as well.
I will be down at the monastery later today in their inquisitional library where they torture all those writings of the Ante-Nicene Fathers to get them to cough up everything they said and even lot of things that they didn't say. We will use every inquisitional device to find all that we need to complete Part II of the treatise.
As you can see, we tortured the writings of Clement of Rome and Justin Martur, but we could not break them. They would not tell us what we wanted to hear. Pray that we are more successful with the latter.
We are doing this for poor Adiaireton8 to spring him from his purgatorial dungeon. Please don't be mean to him, he tried. But where he failed, Uncle Chip will prevail on his behalf. Please help me.
Hang in there, Adiaireton8. Help is on the way. Keep the faith. And I hope they let you read this.
THE EVIDENCE for THE TWENTY-FIVE YEAR BISHOPRIC of SAINT PETER in ROME and His UPSIDEDOWN CRUCIFIXION under NERO
Part I] Evidence From the Holy Scriptures: There is no evidence at all.
Part II] Evidence From the Writings of the Ante-Nicene Fathers:(a work in progress by Uncle Chip on Adiaireton8's behalf)
A. Clement of Rome --- No Evidence
B. Justin Martur --- No Evidence
C. Ignatius of Antioch ---(pending)
D. Irenaeus of Lyons ---(questionable)
E. Dionysius at Corinth --- (pending)
F. Tertullian --- (pending)
G. Hippolytus --- (pending)
H.
I.
J.
K.
You cannot say that loud enough or often enough as far as I am concerned. I am so grateful for our relatively new Bishop of Phoenix,Bishop Thomas Olmsted. He continually emphasizes the First Commandment and that all good things flow from putting the love of God first.
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