The successor of who?
While we're on the subject of the papacy, it's started: the ad nauseum repetition of the dubious notion that John Paul's successor will be, in any strictly historical sense, the 266th pope- and that the papacy, again in any strictly historical sense, dates back to the time of Peter.
To be sure, claims to being Peter's successor- whatever that means- come from Rome from very early on. But they rest entirely on tradition and political expediency, not on history.
They are sometimes even acknowledged by others. The same can be said of Rome's claims to unique authority. Given the geopolitical significance of Rome, neither a predisposition to grant Rome special status or an inclination, having done that, to seek theological justification for that political decision is surprising! These facts neither necessarily establish the validity of Rome's church-political claims, nor would necessarily invest a theoretical Petrine origin for the Roman see with any particular degree of significance. The exegesis of Matthew 16 is debatable, and many in the early Church perfectly willing both to accept Rome's Petrine claims and accord Rome's bishop a high degree of deference as "first among equals" nevertheless balked at giving it the kind of authority it claimed.
The strongest support for the claim of a Petrine origin for the papacy comes from various (contradictory) lists of popes originating in the mid-Second Century. Many come from partisans of the Roman see with an obvious axe to grind. Interestingly, they begin to appear soon after the arrival on the scene of a mature monarchial episcopate- a development which for the first time made something like the papacy even thinkable. Before that time, each bishop in his own congregation (only gradually did his jurisdiction extend to a diocese) occupied a position more or less analogous among the presbyters, or "elders," to what the many other bishops often said by Roman Catholic apologists to have submitted to the authority of the Roman bishop actually were often willing to grant him: the status of "first among equals." It is very close to the heart of the entire matter that the office of bishop in Peter's time (even if one accepts the historically dubious premise that he was ever bishop of Rome in the first place) was simply that of a parish pastor- and not necessarily even the "senior pastor." The New Testament uses the titles "bishop" and "elder" interchangeably!
The most convincing of the early lists of "popes" was compiled by Iranaeus, a seemingly disinterested Eastern Christian writing about 187. The early dates of these lists, by the way, in themselves no more establishes their historical validity than that silly- and historically inaccurate- list of alleged "coincidences" between the lives and deaths of Abraham Lincoln and John Kennedy that keeps popping up on the Internet is rendered credible by its origin only months after JFK's assassination.
In fact, even Iranaeus was not, in one sense, nearly as disinterested as he might seem. Eastern or Western, he was committed to the historically dubious concept of a succession of monarchial bishops dating back to the time of the apostles- a bit of ideology which demanded some sort of apostolic origin not only for the office of bishop- in its modern sense- but for a significance for that office which the early Church clearly did not give it. Again, in the New Testament, the terms "bishop" (episkopos) and "presbyter" (presbuteros)- the term later used to denote an ordinary priest- are used interchangeably. But Iranaeus- writing in his Against Heresies- needed the alleged dating of the monarchial episcopate to the time of the apostles in order to invoke it as a defense against false teachers. His goal was noble, but the argument did not hold historical water. The office of "bishop" was a very different animal in the time of the apostles, and was only lately becoming the kind of office Iranaeus needed for his argument around the time he was composing it.
When the episcopacy and the presbyteriate first were distinguished from one another, the bishop was simply the pastor of a local congregation, and the presbyters his assistants- a slight change from the New Testament usage of the terms, which seems to make no distinction between them at all. About the beginning of the Second Century, however, St. Ignatius of Antioch describes a "monarchial" episcopate- he actually uses that term- but one which shares authority with a council of presbyters. The absolutist episcopacy compatible with something like a papacy seems to have originated about the middle of the Second Century, around the time when Pius I became the bishop of Rome.
There are, from an historical point of view, bishops....and then there are bishops. What has become known as "the historic episcopate" is, in fact, not nearly as historic as its partisans claim; in earliest Christian history, the office was a very different animal than it later became.
Pius became Rome's bishop about 140- about a decade before the various lists of popes, beginning with St. Peter, began to appear. It is true that Roman bishops had claimed much earlier that Peter founded their see, and with universal authority. But such unsupported claims are hardly evidence, and neither is the fact that credence was given them as a theoretical basis for a deference to the Roman see on the part of other bishops, particularly in the West, which would have been natural in any case, given Rome's geopolitical and economic importance.
In fact, Peter clearly could not have been bishop of Rome in the accepted sense of the term, and hard evidence that he was its bishop in any sense is just about non-existent. Church historians unbound by dogmatic constraints see no evidence at all that either Peter or St. Paul, by the way, had anything to do with the founding of the Roman church. Peter's martyrdom at Rome, and even the idea that he ever visited the city, are very far from being incontrovertible historical facts. The association of Peter with the see of Rome seems to rest originally on the claims of the occupants of the see of Rome, of their partisans- and by others who needed to make a case for the apostolic origin of the monarchial episcopate. Even those who accepted the claim of Petrine origin did not necessarily afford it the significance Rome attributed to it.
Whether or one accepts Luther's exegesis of Matthew 16, it does not automatically follow that even an association of the papacy with Peter leads where the papacy claims that it leads. That exegesis, however, is worth noting. The passage contains two different forms of the Greek word for "rock." That upon which Christ would build his church is called a petra- a large, immovable rock like the Rock of Gibraltar. But the name Christ gave Peter was Petros- a smaller rock, perhaps chipped off the petra, but one not necessarily large enough to build upon.
Luther argued that Christ said that He would build his Church, not upon the person of Peter, but upon Peter's confession: "You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God!' In fairness, it's true that Peter's gender demanded that his name be a masculine one- Petros rather than Petra. It would not do for one of the Lord's disciples to have been the First Century equivalent of the "boy named Sue!" But it's equally true that nowhere either in this passage or elsewhere does Scripture even hint at a Petrine office- that if Jesus were, in fact, to have been referring to Peter, He would in doing so have been establishing an ongoing position in which Peter would have a successor, much less 265 of them!
It also remains significant that the accounts of Peter's subsequent career in the New Testament simply are not compatible with the position Roman Catholic tradition and dogma afford him. Peter was one of the leaders of the Jerusalem church, a position he seems to have more or less shared with James. Authority in that church seems to have been exercised collectively by the bishop/presbyters there, which was pretty much the standard way in which churches operated at the time. Peter was in the wrong "diocese-" and exercising a role that is anything but papal even there! In Galatians, Paul expresses no compunctions about having confronted Peter publicly for his hypocrisy in refusing to dine with gentiles, and telling him to his face that he was wrong. Contrary to arguments made by Roman Catholic apologists, by the way, behind the practical question of whether to eat with Gentiles was a clearly dogmatic question- and Peter was on the wrong side of it.
Even Peter- who had been given a special revelation to the effect that Gentiles were eligible for membership in the Church and had concluded from that vision that they should not be discriminated against- felt the need to refrain from eating with them in order to avoid giving offense to more traditionally Jewish Christians. Doubtless he justified this practice as an exercise in deferring to the weaker consciences of others, as Paul himself recommends in the Corinthian correspondence. But it was, of course, more than that. It was what the Formula of Concord fifteen hundred years later would call a matter of "confession and offense." What about the danger of offending Gentile Christians by treating them as unclean? And what about the dogmatic question of the equality of all believers before God, which was under attack here and which required a clear and unambiguous defense?
St. Clement- bishop of Rome in some sense in closing decade of the First Century- made a famous claim of primacy for the Roman see in a letter to the Corinthian church, and justifies it on the grounds of the allegedly Petrine origin of the Roman see. But again, the importance of Rome virtually guaranteed a certain willingness to regard its bishop as at least being "first among equals," and to accept whatever theological arguments might seem to justify doing so. I Clement, despite its early date, isn't a very convincing argument for the primacy of the Roman see on the basis of an actual succession from St. Peter.
There has never been a time in all of history in which anything close to a consensus of the Christian Church has accorded the papacy anything like the authority it claims- even among those wiling to grant some sort of a connection to Peter. Such a willingness was clearly apparent at Chalcedon, a council actually called by Pope Leo I at a moment of maximum influence for the see of Rome, as well as minimum influence by a weak and subservient Patriarch of Constantinople. Yet among Chalcedon's definitions is the equality of the sees of Rome and Constantinople!
The Council of Nicea- the first of the ecumenical Councils- was neither called nor presided over by the Pope. His representatives did play major roles in its leadership- as one would expect of the representatives of the most powerful and influential church in Western Christendom. But in no sense was the approval of the papacy for its definitions seen by the Council itself as being required, however eager the Pope was to assert his own authority by granting it. The telling point is hard to miss: the authority of the papacy even in the Western Church developed, and even the office of bishop itself evolved. From an historical point of view, the papacy is not nearly as ancient as Catholic dogma and common custom assume, certainly in any recognizable form- and its connection with Peter is, historically, actually rather tenuous.
Another question arises from the entire history of the papacy and its interaction with ecumenical councils- one which is as obvious as it is awkward for partisans of the papacy: if the authority of the Pope was acknowledged as widely as they claim, and extended as far as they claim, why was it necessary to call Ecumenical Councils at all? The Ecumenical Councils themselves certainly do not seem to see their own role as mere advisors to the "Apostolic See!" Of course, even a claim as fundamental to papal authority as infallibility is actually only about a century old. The papacy did not spring full-grown from Matthew 16. It evolved and developed- and it is very far from being self-evident that the "popes" of the first century and a half were popes at all in any sense we would recognize today- that is, unless we have an ecclesiastical axe to grind!
But the traditional list of popes will continue to be cited by the media as if it were historically valid throughout the period of the mourning for John Paul II and the election and coronation of his successor, and the myth (which the Eastern Orthodox communion would surely dispute- and with good reason!) that identifies the ecclesiology of the early Church in an unqualified sense with that of what we know today as the Roman Catholic church will continue to be accepted at face value in the popular culture. The Roman Catholic church is large enough and powerful enough that the insertion of the journalistically proper qualifications "according to tradition," or "according to Catholic belief" to the numbering of the popes or the identification of the papacy with Peter would likely bring about a bothersome storm of protest from the very church which is, after all, the subject matter of the reporting.
So Catholic tradition and dogma will continue to be reported as if it were unquestioned historical fact. The pattern which always obtains between the death of one pope and the coronation of his successor will continue to hold. Most people will simply accept that sectarian tradition is historical fact, in the same way that they uncritically accept most things the media univocally proclaim as true.
But that doesn't make it so.
To be sure, claims to being Peter's successor- whatever that means- come from Rome from very early on. But they rest entirely on tradition and political expediency, not on history.
They are sometimes even acknowledged by others. The same can be said of Rome's claims to unique authority. Given the geopolitical significance of Rome, neither a predisposition to grant Rome special status or an inclination, having done that, to seek theological justification for that political decision is surprising! These facts neither necessarily establish the validity of Rome's church-political claims, nor would necessarily invest a theoretical Petrine origin for the Roman see with any particular degree of significance. The exegesis of Matthew 16 is debatable, and many in the early Church perfectly willing both to accept Rome's Petrine claims and accord Rome's bishop a high degree of deference as "first among equals" nevertheless balked at giving it the kind of authority it claimed.
The strongest support for the claim of a Petrine origin for the papacy comes from various (contradictory) lists of popes originating in the mid-Second Century. Many come from partisans of the Roman see with an obvious axe to grind. Interestingly, they begin to appear soon after the arrival on the scene of a mature monarchial episcopate- a development which for the first time made something like the papacy even thinkable. Before that time, each bishop in his own congregation (only gradually did his jurisdiction extend to a diocese) occupied a position more or less analogous among the presbyters, or "elders," to what the many other bishops often said by Roman Catholic apologists to have submitted to the authority of the Roman bishop actually were often willing to grant him: the status of "first among equals." It is very close to the heart of the entire matter that the office of bishop in Peter's time (even if one accepts the historically dubious premise that he was ever bishop of Rome in the first place) was simply that of a parish pastor- and not necessarily even the "senior pastor." The New Testament uses the titles "bishop" and "elder" interchangeably!
The most convincing of the early lists of "popes" was compiled by Iranaeus, a seemingly disinterested Eastern Christian writing about 187. The early dates of these lists, by the way, in themselves no more establishes their historical validity than that silly- and historically inaccurate- list of alleged "coincidences" between the lives and deaths of Abraham Lincoln and John Kennedy that keeps popping up on the Internet is rendered credible by its origin only months after JFK's assassination.
In fact, even Iranaeus was not, in one sense, nearly as disinterested as he might seem. Eastern or Western, he was committed to the historically dubious concept of a succession of monarchial bishops dating back to the time of the apostles- a bit of ideology which demanded some sort of apostolic origin not only for the office of bishop- in its modern sense- but for a significance for that office which the early Church clearly did not give it. Again, in the New Testament, the terms "bishop" (episkopos) and "presbyter" (presbuteros)- the term later used to denote an ordinary priest- are used interchangeably. But Iranaeus- writing in his Against Heresies- needed the alleged dating of the monarchial episcopate to the time of the apostles in order to invoke it as a defense against false teachers. His goal was noble, but the argument did not hold historical water. The office of "bishop" was a very different animal in the time of the apostles, and was only lately becoming the kind of office Iranaeus needed for his argument around the time he was composing it.
When the episcopacy and the presbyteriate first were distinguished from one another, the bishop was simply the pastor of a local congregation, and the presbyters his assistants- a slight change from the New Testament usage of the terms, which seems to make no distinction between them at all. About the beginning of the Second Century, however, St. Ignatius of Antioch describes a "monarchial" episcopate- he actually uses that term- but one which shares authority with a council of presbyters. The absolutist episcopacy compatible with something like a papacy seems to have originated about the middle of the Second Century, around the time when Pius I became the bishop of Rome.
There are, from an historical point of view, bishops....and then there are bishops. What has become known as "the historic episcopate" is, in fact, not nearly as historic as its partisans claim; in earliest Christian history, the office was a very different animal than it later became.
Pius became Rome's bishop about 140- about a decade before the various lists of popes, beginning with St. Peter, began to appear. It is true that Roman bishops had claimed much earlier that Peter founded their see, and with universal authority. But such unsupported claims are hardly evidence, and neither is the fact that credence was given them as a theoretical basis for a deference to the Roman see on the part of other bishops, particularly in the West, which would have been natural in any case, given Rome's geopolitical and economic importance.
In fact, Peter clearly could not have been bishop of Rome in the accepted sense of the term, and hard evidence that he was its bishop in any sense is just about non-existent. Church historians unbound by dogmatic constraints see no evidence at all that either Peter or St. Paul, by the way, had anything to do with the founding of the Roman church. Peter's martyrdom at Rome, and even the idea that he ever visited the city, are very far from being incontrovertible historical facts. The association of Peter with the see of Rome seems to rest originally on the claims of the occupants of the see of Rome, of their partisans- and by others who needed to make a case for the apostolic origin of the monarchial episcopate. Even those who accepted the claim of Petrine origin did not necessarily afford it the significance Rome attributed to it.
Whether or one accepts Luther's exegesis of Matthew 16, it does not automatically follow that even an association of the papacy with Peter leads where the papacy claims that it leads. That exegesis, however, is worth noting. The passage contains two different forms of the Greek word for "rock." That upon which Christ would build his church is called a petra- a large, immovable rock like the Rock of Gibraltar. But the name Christ gave Peter was Petros- a smaller rock, perhaps chipped off the petra, but one not necessarily large enough to build upon.
Luther argued that Christ said that He would build his Church, not upon the person of Peter, but upon Peter's confession: "You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God!' In fairness, it's true that Peter's gender demanded that his name be a masculine one- Petros rather than Petra. It would not do for one of the Lord's disciples to have been the First Century equivalent of the "boy named Sue!" But it's equally true that nowhere either in this passage or elsewhere does Scripture even hint at a Petrine office- that if Jesus were, in fact, to have been referring to Peter, He would in doing so have been establishing an ongoing position in which Peter would have a successor, much less 265 of them!
It also remains significant that the accounts of Peter's subsequent career in the New Testament simply are not compatible with the position Roman Catholic tradition and dogma afford him. Peter was one of the leaders of the Jerusalem church, a position he seems to have more or less shared with James. Authority in that church seems to have been exercised collectively by the bishop/presbyters there, which was pretty much the standard way in which churches operated at the time. Peter was in the wrong "diocese-" and exercising a role that is anything but papal even there! In Galatians, Paul expresses no compunctions about having confronted Peter publicly for his hypocrisy in refusing to dine with gentiles, and telling him to his face that he was wrong. Contrary to arguments made by Roman Catholic apologists, by the way, behind the practical question of whether to eat with Gentiles was a clearly dogmatic question- and Peter was on the wrong side of it.
Even Peter- who had been given a special revelation to the effect that Gentiles were eligible for membership in the Church and had concluded from that vision that they should not be discriminated against- felt the need to refrain from eating with them in order to avoid giving offense to more traditionally Jewish Christians. Doubtless he justified this practice as an exercise in deferring to the weaker consciences of others, as Paul himself recommends in the Corinthian correspondence. But it was, of course, more than that. It was what the Formula of Concord fifteen hundred years later would call a matter of "confession and offense." What about the danger of offending Gentile Christians by treating them as unclean? And what about the dogmatic question of the equality of all believers before God, which was under attack here and which required a clear and unambiguous defense?
St. Clement- bishop of Rome in some sense in closing decade of the First Century- made a famous claim of primacy for the Roman see in a letter to the Corinthian church, and justifies it on the grounds of the allegedly Petrine origin of the Roman see. But again, the importance of Rome virtually guaranteed a certain willingness to regard its bishop as at least being "first among equals," and to accept whatever theological arguments might seem to justify doing so. I Clement, despite its early date, isn't a very convincing argument for the primacy of the Roman see on the basis of an actual succession from St. Peter.
There has never been a time in all of history in which anything close to a consensus of the Christian Church has accorded the papacy anything like the authority it claims- even among those wiling to grant some sort of a connection to Peter. Such a willingness was clearly apparent at Chalcedon, a council actually called by Pope Leo I at a moment of maximum influence for the see of Rome, as well as minimum influence by a weak and subservient Patriarch of Constantinople. Yet among Chalcedon's definitions is the equality of the sees of Rome and Constantinople!
The Council of Nicea- the first of the ecumenical Councils- was neither called nor presided over by the Pope. His representatives did play major roles in its leadership- as one would expect of the representatives of the most powerful and influential church in Western Christendom. But in no sense was the approval of the papacy for its definitions seen by the Council itself as being required, however eager the Pope was to assert his own authority by granting it. The telling point is hard to miss: the authority of the papacy even in the Western Church developed, and even the office of bishop itself evolved. From an historical point of view, the papacy is not nearly as ancient as Catholic dogma and common custom assume, certainly in any recognizable form- and its connection with Peter is, historically, actually rather tenuous.
Another question arises from the entire history of the papacy and its interaction with ecumenical councils- one which is as obvious as it is awkward for partisans of the papacy: if the authority of the Pope was acknowledged as widely as they claim, and extended as far as they claim, why was it necessary to call Ecumenical Councils at all? The Ecumenical Councils themselves certainly do not seem to see their own role as mere advisors to the "Apostolic See!" Of course, even a claim as fundamental to papal authority as infallibility is actually only about a century old. The papacy did not spring full-grown from Matthew 16. It evolved and developed- and it is very far from being self-evident that the "popes" of the first century and a half were popes at all in any sense we would recognize today- that is, unless we have an ecclesiastical axe to grind!
But the traditional list of popes will continue to be cited by the media as if it were historically valid throughout the period of the mourning for John Paul II and the election and coronation of his successor, and the myth (which the Eastern Orthodox communion would surely dispute- and with good reason!) that identifies the ecclesiology of the early Church in an unqualified sense with that of what we know today as the Roman Catholic church will continue to be accepted at face value in the popular culture. The Roman Catholic church is large enough and powerful enough that the insertion of the journalistically proper qualifications "according to tradition," or "according to Catholic belief" to the numbering of the popes or the identification of the papacy with Peter would likely bring about a bothersome storm of protest from the very church which is, after all, the subject matter of the reporting.
So Catholic tradition and dogma will continue to be reported as if it were unquestioned historical fact. The pattern which always obtains between the death of one pope and the coronation of his successor will continue to hold. Most people will simply accept that sectarian tradition is historical fact, in the same way that they uncritically accept most things the media univocally proclaim as true.
But that doesn't make it so.
Comments