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.

[Quix]

Thanks for your humbling kind words.

Your wisdom is certainly fitting. And I tend to agree on all counts . . . though I probably persist more often longer than I should to engage the spiritually . . . less than transfigured.

[1000 silverlings]

But, what exactly are "all revelations of God"? This is an old bugaboo isn't it?

Not at all, 1000 silverlings

Thank you for the reply yourself, Alamo Girl!

Ergo, Here is something interesting that occurred to me last night:

If you reject the authority of men re God's Word, revelations, etc. who and how would you personally define a "prophet" or perhaps a "prophetess?"

Iknow Quix will be interested in this subject as well. Thanks

[annalex]

I see all of you in that Peter and Rome thread already, but for the others, this is it:

St. Peter and Rome

Let me also mention that whether or not Peter ever was in Rome (he demonstrably was) has little to do with his primacy, apostolic succession, or the fact that the Holy See is presently in Rome.

[Running On Empty]

What do you mean by "the spiritually ....less than transfigured"?

[InterestedQuestioner]

"So, I did manage 15 bowls today in far less time. Have 5 more to match agreed upon commitment. Will try to do another 4 for a margin. Will see how many make it through all the steps! Thankfully, the ones today were quite thin compared to usual. And, I was able to loosen up and experiment more. So, I think your prayers were answered. Thanks much."

Thanks for the note Quix, sounds like you've been very productive. I wish you well in your good work.

-iq

[InterestedQuestioner]

"I guess a more accurate question would have been, do you think that the first pope could have claimed to be Peter, or was mistakenly assumed to be the biblical Peter, but wasn't really Peter? Whether or not the biblical Peter was ever in Rome I mean."

No, I don't think that.

[InterestedQuestioner]

Hello Uncle Chip,

250 posts ago a very polite person told you he was finished speaking with you. He said he would be willing to continue a discussion with you when you demonstrated evidence of honesty and sincerity. You’ve since sent nearly 30 unsolicited emails to that person with no response, several demanding that he reply to you. You’ve even sent a dozen posts to me, including several demands that this person reply to you. Now, some would say that’s highly inappropriate behavior, and that you deserve to be banned from Free Republic. Most people, on the other hand, would simply agree that it was weird, and the individual made a highly intelligent decision to ignore you. Not me though, Uncle Chip, I wouldn’t dream of saying those things.

However, just to be clear, Uncle Chip, you and I don’t have a thesis. You have a thirty post history that might be construed by reasonable people as harassment. You and I have never discussed your claims about the position of St. Peter’s body when he was murdered. More to the point, I’m not interested in discussing it with you, since it has no bearing on this thread whatsoever. Don’t worry though, Uncle Chip, I won’t ping the mods. If someone else does, I would of course have to recognize that as an appropriate response to your 30 unsolicited posts to a person who told you he was finished talking with you.

If you want to prove St. Peter was crucified right side up in Rome, go right ahead knock yourself out. Post your evidence. Perhaps someone will even be interested. Heck, I’ll even take a look if you’d like. We know from accounts of the Roman Historian Tacitus that Christians were publicly tortured in Rome. They were executed by crucifixion, and by being fed to dogs. We also know they were used as human torches. Perhaps you can post your evidence that St. Peter was merely stopping by Rome for a hamburger when he was martyred near your evidence that his crucifixion was right side up.

As far as this thread is concerned, your questions about the orientation of St. Peter’s body when was murdered at Rome, and the length of his stay there are irrelevant. 25 months or 25 years, crucified right side up or upside down, it has no bearing on the facts of the case. The bottom line is that the Apostles Peter and Paul both went to Rome, both served there as Apostles, and both were martyred there. You agree with that don’t you, Uncle Chip?

Here’s your case up to this point.

1. You’ve been unable to post any evidence that indicates Peter was never in Rome. Neither has anyone else on this thread. That’s because no such evidence exists. You agree, correct?

2. You’ve been unable to locate where Peter died in Scripture. That’s because Scripture doesn’t say where he died. Correct?

3. The historical evidence is unanimous in affirming that St. Peter went to Rome, served as an Apostle there, and was martyred by crucifixion. You agree with too, correct, Uncle Chip?

[Quix]

Thanks thanks. 'Tis a worthy cause for indigent elderly care.

Did tolerably this afternoon. PTL.

[Uncle Chip]

Hello back to you, Interested Questioner

I will stop pinging Adiaireton8 if you will allow him to return to the land of the living threads to continue his rhetorical ministry.

Will you take his place in this research project? Will you help me to find all the evidence that will complete my treatise? What do you say?

[Cvengr]

I suspect your meaning is well intentioned, but perhaps confusing salvation with sanctification. Technically, Christ paid the price, the Father makes the call and the Holy Spirit regenerates the spirit. The act of regeneration is synonmous with salvation. It is a one time event. It is a birth of life. Sanctification continues over time until the first death by our ability to remain in fellowship with Him. Durung the Church Age, we are indwelled by the Holy Spirit upon regeneration. We are filled with the Spirit while we remain in fellowship with Him and do not sin after returning to Him. If we sin, we may return to Him by telling Him our sin through faith in Christ and returning to Him in our thinking. Then He is free to continue in His fellowhip with us.

The Church or body of believers do have some involvement, in that we witness the Gospel to an unbeliever and then when the Father is ready He makes the call. The Holy Spirit searches our hearts and makes our prayers known to Him and makes our faith effective for salvation in His work of regenerating our spirit.

The Church doesn't have the ability to regenerate the spirit of any fallen man. That is only within the capacity of God.

[Quix]

DON'T RECALL if I've noted that your exhortations are wise and fitting.

Thanks.

[Marysecretary]

I wholeheartedly believe that denominations will fall as our world begins to crumble. Man will see how fruitless it is to fight and argue amongst ourselves when our very lives are threatened. The time is coming, sooner than we think, and people will HAVE to turn to God and God alone. Unity comes when all else fails.

[adiaireton8]

So you think sanctification is not part of salvation? What does it mean to "work out your salvation"?

-A8

[Quix]

she possessed the fullness of the means of salvation
= = =

Just noticed that sentence/phrase on rereading your post.

I first find it an odd construct, notion. I suppose in a sense, it's technically accurate in some minimal sense of the words used--perhaps.

But on the whole, I find it a distrubing thought. I can't imagine an ORGANIZATION--especially a man constructed organization--but really--any organization made up of humans . . . possessing the fullness of anything.

We are too finite. Our organizations are too finite.

CERTAINLY WHEN IT COMES TO GOD AND SALVATION, A RESTORED RELATIONSHIP WITH HIM--ANYTHING HUMAN is far, far, far too finite, imho.

We do well to display the fullnes even 55% of the fullness of any tiny slice of God's plan and majesty about anything.

Now, certainly, INDIVIDUALS can possess Salvation because Salvation is an individual agreement, affirmation, commitment, covenant BETWEEN THE INDIVIDUAL AND GOD . . . and in some sense, the individual can possess all that's essential, necessary for that individual's relationship to be restored with God. But even there, the fullness will not be realized this side of Heaven, imho.

I can't actually think of a single Scriptural example of God blessing any ORGANIZATION as we construe organizations and construct organizations in our era.

Certainly he fought for and with the children of Israel . . . but that was a collection of tribal groups--still is . . . and God's being on their side was a fulfillment of God's promise to His buddy Abraham.

Certainly there is New Testament evidence of God blessing a meeting or even a series of meetings of folks who are very much in tune with and focused in earnest heart-felt worship of Him. And there's evidence of God blessing such meetings or even a series of meetings throughout history.

But I don't recall any examples of such blessings and anointings going longer than say 18 months, if that long.

As near as I can discern from Scripture and from history, God doesn't think much of human organizations. He sure didn't the group of saducees and pharisees--which probably came as close in Scripture as any group to our current notions of religious organizations.

If my sense of the above is not Scripturally accurate, I'd prefer to know it and see the Scriptures proving it wrong.

[Marysecretary]

Oh, I'm sure they do, wagglebee. I'm sure they do.

[Cvengr]

Sanctification begins in salvation. One might cease in their fellowship with God by becoming a carnal Christian, but never can a believer lose their salvation. Just as God gives human life, he gives spirit life. He describes salvation as a rebirth. We are saved from eternal condemnation by that rebirth. We are not repetitively or continuously born anew, we are only reborn once. We might repent and return to Him repetitively, but salvation is a one time event. Regeneration is not within the power of the church to bestow to any unbeliever.

[Quix]

She also was destined to be "universal" in time as well as in space, and it was to her that applied the promise of Christ to Peter and the other apostles that "the powers of death shall not prevail" against her (Mt 16:18).
= = = =

Uhhhhhhhhhh, no. That would not be correct at all.

It's clear from Scripture that Christ's Body is and certainly will be called out of every sort of people group on the planet--eventually, even tribal people groups--obviously many having never heard of anything remotely related to Rome.

But that's already happened as the life of Samuel Morris demonstrated around 1900. His story is in the little classic: THE MARCH OF FAITH.

Sammy was a chief's son of a tribe in Africa that had been warring with a neighboring tribe for centuries. And, the custom of that region was that the tribe that lost the war, would surrender their chirf's sons for torture until the ransome was paid.

Sammy had been tied to a post in the center of a clearing for days and tortured.

Now, in the middle of the night on, I think the 3rd evening, he hears a voice say:

GET UP AND RUN.

He's convinced he's hallucinating as he can hardly breath, hardly exist he's so exhausted, tortured, brutalized, suffering, in pain.

A 2nd time, he hears the voice with his ears:

GET UP AND RUN.

He's hanging desperately by his bonds to the post. He's limp. I's a struggle to breathe. He has no energy at all to run and is bound firmly to the post.

A third time, he hears more insistently and loudly:

IS SAID TO GET UP AND RUN.

He discovers instantly that not only have has bonds been loosed by some miraculous power, but he also miraculously had energy to get up and run. He quickly runs out of the tribal clearing of his enemies' camp.

In the jungle, he discovers there is a curious, mysterioius light which moves with the voice he first heard. The light leads him to water and food for I think 2-3 weeks. Eventually, the light and voice lead him to a walled compound. The voice then says:

IN THERE, YOU WILL LEARN OF ME.

The walled compound is a Protestant mission compound. I forget the flavor. I think it was interdenominational.

I think Sammy was around 16 years old at the time. He lived to be in his early 20's.

God was mightily with him. He would always pray looking up and talk to God just as though he was talking to a person standing or sitting beside him . . . as though he was talking to a beloved father.

Sammmy would speak at huge meetings throughout Engliand and I think the USA. It was common at those meetings . . . that whenever Sammy crossed the threshhold of the auditorium door--even unbenknownst to the attendees--even an obscure door in the back or side--the moment he crossed the threshhold, folks would run screaming to the front of the auditorium repenting, confessing and seeking Jesus as their savior--all without any pronouncements from the platform or even without folks knowing that Sammy had arrived.

According to the Roman believers' orthodox construction on relaity--such a phenomenon would not be possible. Salvation can only, in the Roman construction on reality, flow through the Roman hierarchy, traditions, ceremonies, rituals, etc. That is, that God has given them an exclusive monopoly on what Christ died to give all men freely.

Clearly, as the above and thousands of other examples prove, God disagrees about that supposed monopoly.

[1000 silverlings]

on what Christ died to give all men freely.

Bravo, Quix, well said!

[adiaireton8]

Actually shocked to see blind leaders of the blind crucify Him afresh.

Here's your dilemma: If it is just a piece of bread and a chalice of wine, then how exactly are they crucifying Christ? But if it is really Christ's body and blood, then the Catholics are right about the Eucharist.

-A8

[Quix]

Essentially, the most fitting word that comes to mind regarding that post is:

NONSENSE.

That one Scripture about:

FREELY YOU HAVE RECEIVED, FREELY GIVE

scuttles the whole notion of any human organization or any finite human group having a monopoly on what Christ shed His Precious Blood to scatter abroad so utterly freely:

WHOSOEVER WILL MAY COME.

It was not written:

Whosoever will who goes to the right human organization; marches in step with all the traditions, rituals, edicts, encyclicals, pontifications, rules, policies, dogma . . . of a certain finite human organization . . . who kowtow to the hierarchy in fitting contrition and submission; who jump through all the RELIGIOUS hoops . . . .

those and only those whosoevers may come to the gilded edifice and receive our pontifical, lofty, exclusive, monopolistic sanctions, our human authorized Salvation.

WE AND WE ALONE ARE THE EXCLUSIVE GATE KEEPERS BACK TO GOD. Deposit your coins appropriately.

No way Hosea! Not by a long shot.