How the fictional early papacy became real

Beggars All Martin Luther's Mariology ^ | June 7,2010 | John Bugay

[RnMomof7]

"Historically, Catholics have argued that the papacy was a divinely-given institution papacy (Matt 16:17-19) etc., and they have relied on the notion that there have been bishops of Rome extending all the way back to the time of Peter.

This notion of bishops extending all the way back was thought to be actual history. In fact, as Shotwell and Loomis pointed out, in the General Introduction to their 1927 work "The See of Peter":

With reference to the Petrine doctrine, however, the Catholic attitude is much more than a "pre-disposition to believe." That doctrine is the fundamental basis of the whole papal structure. It may be summed up in three main claims. They are: first, that Peter was appointed by Christ to be his chief representative and successor and the head of his Church; second, that Peter went to Rome and founded the bishopric there; third, that his successors succeeded to his prerogatives and to all the authority thereby implied. In dealing with these claims we are passing along the border line between history and dogmatic theology. The primacy of Peter and his appointment by Christ to succeed Him as head of the Church are accepted by the Catholic Church as the indubitable word of inspired Gospel, in its only possible meaning. That Peter went to Rome and founded there his See, is just as definitely what is termed in Catholic theology as a dogmatic fact. This has been defined by an eminent Catholic theologian as "historical fact so intimately connected with some great Catholic truths that it would e believed even if time and accident had destroyed all the original evidence therefore. (xxiii-xxiv, emphasis in original).

So, if the history of the early papacy is disrupted, it should, by all rights, disrupt the dogmatic definition of the papacy. And this is what we have come upon in our era: the most widely accepted historical accounts of the period -- which are now almost universally accepted among legitimate historians of the era -- is that Peter did not "found a bishopric." There was no "bishopric" in that city for 100 years after his death. The history completely contradicts what the "dogmatic fact" has held for more than 1000 years. Now, according to Eamon Duffy, among others, what was thought to be historical accounts were actually fictitious accounts that became passed along as history:

These stories were to be accepted as sober history by some of the greatest minds of the early Church -- Origen, Ambrose, Augustine. But they are pious romance, not history, and the fact is that we have no reliable accounts either of Peter's later life or the manner or place of his death. Neither Peter nor Paul founded the Church at Rome, for there were Christians in the city before either of the Apostles set foot there. Nor can we assume, as Irenaeus did, that the Apostles established there a succession of bishops to carry on their work in the city, for all the indications are that there was no single bishop at Rome for almost a century after the deaths of the Apostles. In fact, wherever we turn, the solid outlines of the Petrine succession at Rome seem to blur and dissolve. (Duffy, pg 2.)

Briefly, on Peter and "the tradition," Reymond talks about the further lack of information about Peter in Scripture:

The Peter died in Rome, as ancient tradition has it, is a distinct possibility (see 1 Peter 5:13, where "Babylon" has been rather uniformly understood by commentators as a metaphor for Rome), but that he ever actually pastored the church there is surely a fiction, seven some scholars in the Roman communion will acknowledge. Jerome's Latin translation of Eusebius (not Eusebius's Greek copy) records that Peter ministered in Rome for twenty-five years, but if Philip Schaff (as well as many other church historians) is to believed, this is "a colossal chronological mistake." Paul write his letter to the church in Rome in early A.D. 57, but he did not address the letter to Peter or refer to him as its pastor. And in the last chapter he extended greetings to twenty-eight friends in Rome but made no mention of Peter, which would have been a major oversight, indeed, an affront, if in fact Peter was "ruling" the Roman church at that time. Then later when Paul was himself in Rome, from which city he wrote both his four prison letters during his first imprisonment in A.D. 60-62 when he "was welcoming all who came to him" (Acts 28:30), and his last pastoral letter during his second imprisonment around A.D. 64, in which letters he extend greetings to his letters' recipients from ten specific people in Rome, again he made no mention of Peter being there. Here is a period of time spanning around seven years (a.d. 57-64) during which time Paul related himself to the Roman church both as correspondent and as resident, but he said not a word to suggest that Peter was in Rome. (Reymond, "Systematic Theology," pg 814)

Schaff, who is cited by Reymond, explicates a little bit further. "The time of Peter's arrival in Rome, and the length of his residence there, cannot possibly ascertained. The above mentioned silence of the Acts and of Paul's Epistles allows him only a short period of labor there, after 63. The Roman tradition of a twenty or twenty-five years' episcopate of Peter in Rome is unquestionably a colossal chronological mistake."

In a footnote, Schaff says, Some Catholics, following the historian Alzog and others, "try to reconcile the tradition with the silence of the Scripture by assuming two visits of Peter to Rome with a great interval." (fn1, pg 252). The operative verse here, Acts 12:17, says only, 'He departed, and went into another place." This gives no details at all, and to posit that Peter took a trip to Rome at this time is irrational, given that just two chapters later (Acts 15) Peter is present back in Jerusalem again for a council.

Schaff continues his work in Vol 1 with two sections: The Peter of History, and the Peter of Fiction.

I won't get into the "history" at this point, other than to say, all that we know about Peter, we know about him from the pages in Scripture, as outlined by Reymond. The summary statement from Duffy, of any further details about Peter's life being "pious romance" is true.

D.W. O'Connor, in his 1968 work "Peter in Rome," looks at the absence of a Petrine presence in the second half of Acts and largely Paul's letters, and gives a reason for why all of this "pious romance" developed:

It has been suggested that Acts is a "selective" history, a fragmentary history, which simply did not include the facts pertaining to the last days and martyrdom of Peter and Paul. This is not acceptable, for such information would have been of great moment in the early church, which a century and a half before the rise of the cult of martyrs, only thirty-two years after the death of the apostles, remembered their martyrdom vividly (1 Clement 5). [But] the Early Church was so eager for details that within another century it created the full accounts which are found in the apocryphal Acts. (O'Connor, 11).

In my next post, I'll provide a catalog of some of these.

[Elsie]

I live in nasty Michigan and never had a problem with frost bite, that would turn the living hoof black.

Oh no!

The hoof is normally black on all but Caspers.

His is as white as our fingernails.

Nasty indeed!

It was -4° here this morning!

[lastchance]

I am Catholic.

[goat granny]

I just went to Bing (my search) typed in Goat foot treatment and there are quite a few articles. There are foot problems I never heard of or had problems with...maybe that can help you....also Goat management...

[Elsie]

With it being -8° here this morning, it sounds like a good way not to go outdoors!

[goat granny]

thats for sure....

[Faith Presses On]

Due to the weather I wasn’t able to reply before now.

On the personal attacks that have been going on here, it is troubling, as I said, for people to be attacked, especially their motives, for merely posting a legitimate article. If the articles are acceptable to Free Republic, and people are supposed to discuss and debate what’s in them rather than attacking people personally, then there’s no legitimate reason to question why someone posted an article, much less to the frequent extent that this has been going on, and all the outright accusations of the original posters having some evil motive or agenda. As someone accused of this myself on numerous occasions here, and who understands the motives of others who post articles critical of Catholicism, I know that’s simply untrue.

And on this article, if there are things that you don’t believe are accurate about it, then bringing them to the original poster’s attention is in order. Others might not agree with all your conclusions on it, either, and also feel that they have to endure and address a lot of specious arguing by Catholic apologists.

[Faith Presses On]

I would have been happy to discuss different things like if I’ve been to a mass and more about prayer, but your question was a tangent to the discussion going on, so that what you’ve written on prayer would be fine to discuss, except none of it addressed those subjects at all, which primarily had to do with prayer to Mary and those identified as “the Catholic saints.”

[lastchance]

I do hope the weather where you are improves soon. I think sometimes when a subject is so personal it is easy to become hypersensitive and respond less than charitably. We must be firm in the defense of truth but always take care to remember that salting the earth is not a Christian virtue.

I fully believe in the teachings of the Catholic Church and I also believe that other churches do share in some of those truths. I have no use for those who lie about what others believe. There is enough for us to honestly disagree about without resorting to making things up out of whole cloth.

May Christ always be first in your heart.