Role of the Pope

[Sergius_Lucius]

My understanding is that the rock referred to is Peter's confession of faith and not Peter himself.

Fathers (e.g. Photius and Theophilactus) don't hesitate to call Peter personally the rock. But Peter's personal ministry and his succession are two different questions.

 

[Polycarp1]

I refuse to get into the argument over what Jesus meant. But here's the background:

Simon bar Jonah seems to have been nicknamed "Kepha," translating more or less to "Rocky," and if you hear the Stallone reference there, I'm of the impression you aren't far wrong -- "He may not be the brightest candle in the menorah, but he's got a good heart, and he's loyal to a fault" would probably be the characterization people would give of him if you asked.

He has just given Jesus the answer to "Whom do men say that I am?" that confesses his faith in Him. And that faith is key to what Jesus is trying to teach. Knowing what is ahead -- the Holy Spirit's coming and indwelling of the Apostles, inspiring Peter to preach the Gospel, Peter's steadfast stance for Christ amid persecution, even to martyrdom -- Jesus acknowledges that rock-solid faith and perseverance with a pun on his nickname.

"I'm not going to call you Simon any more -- you're Rocky, and on that rock -- your faithfulness and perseverance in belief, the fortitude like a rock -- I will build my church."

It's not naming him Pope, and it's not just a bit of wordplay to acknowledge faith -- it's recognizing and commending what Peter will be in the spread of the Gospel, because of the kind of person that he is.

 

[Jay2004]

We agree that Peter is the rock and the head of the apostles but we disagree that

a. It means his infallibility,

b. It was inherited by the Popes of Rome only.

The Fathers explain the succession of Peter in two ways: each believer is the successor of Peter, because he/she confesses Christ as Peter did, and, at the same time, each bishop is the successor of Peter, because bishops are appointed by Christ to shepherd His flock.

If you believe in the tradition of apostolic succession, yes then the bishop of Rome would have authority, for he is descended from Peter...

 

[Dominus Fidelis]

Lets not turn this into a debate please, my fellow Catholics.

I asked for historical documentation in my opening post, so I'd like to stick to that.

 

[kimber1]

hmm okay well can someone address the keys issue then? i'm not denying that all teh apostles were given some type of authority. not at all. but much like say a security person is given the keys to the building he's to secure or protect, Jesus didn't give the keys to all the apostles, just Peter. i'm still trying to wrap my head around this..

 

[ufonium2]

What about Antioch?

If Peter founded both Rome and Antioch, why is primacy given to Rome?

 

[tizziale]

In conclusion it should be pointed out that the order of precedence given to the Apostolic Sees was determined exclusively by the political importance of various cities. The Bishop of Rome was recognized as first because Rome was capital of the empire. Originally, the Bishop of Constantinople was designated as second by the Second Ecumenical Council. Subsequently, when Constantinople became the capital of the Byzantine Empire and was referred to as New Rome, the Fourth Ecumenical Council proclaimed the Bishop of Constantinople equal in rank with the Bishop of Rome.

This is from http://www.orthodoxresearchinstitute.org/articles/church_history/michael_theschism.htm

 

[JeffreyLloyd]

What about Antioch?

If Peter founded both Rome and Antioch, why is primacy given to Rome?

Because I guess that is where he was bishop?

 

[Iacobus]

Because I guess that is where he was bishop?

No. Because Rome was the capitol of the world. Political supremacy meant a lot in assigning importance or weight to the various sees.

 

[JeffreyLloyd]

Well, that is what we believe.

 

[Polycarp1]

What about Antioch?

If Peter founded both Rome and Antioch, why is primacy given to Rome?

It's that "Imperial City" bit, originally.

James bar Zebedee, and after his martyrdom James Justus, "brother of the Lord," became the first Bishops of Jerusalem.

Peter removed to Antioch, and became its first Bishop. When he went on to Rome to head up the church there, he consecrated a new Bishop of Antioch. Somewhere recently in TAW there was a thread on the succession of the Bishops of Antioch.

 

[Rilian]

hmm okay well can someone address the keys issue then? i'm not denying that all teh apostles were given some type of authority. not at all. but much like say a security person is given the keys to the building he's to secure or protect, Jesus didn't give the keys to all the apostles, just Peter. i'm still trying to wrap my head around this..

The same authority conveyed to Peter, namely to bind and loose, was later conferred upon all of the Apostles. I did mention earlier that I don't see any emphasis on the transmission of keys as a sign of authority in the early church before the time of Pope Stephen in the third century.

 

[tizziale]

If one would look at the verse as translated in the King James Bible, you could see that the power to "bind and loose" was given to all the Apostles, "Whosoever sins ye remit . . . ." This article is short and simple in explaining the Orthodox position on this verse: http://www.orthodoxinfo.com/inquirers/papal_supremacy.aspx

tizzi

 

[kimber1]

I did mention earlier that I don't see any emphasis on the transmission of keys as a sign of authority in the early church before the time of Pope Stephen in the third century

that's what i want to know!! why don't you??

 

[Jay2004]

What about Antioch?

If Peter founded both Rome and Antioch, why is primacy given to Rome?

Antioch was founded by Peter and Paul.
Peter left Antioch and found Rome..
Rome was the capitol..


Why does Constantinople have primacy in the Orthodox church.. Same reason as Rome.
After Rome in the early church, it was Alexandria that was 2nd after Rome.
Constantinople was given 2nd status in the 4th century during the reign of Constantine when he moved his capitol to Byzantium (Constantinople) the same time that the Patriarch was moved from Ephesus to Constantinople..

 

[Rilian]

that's what i want to know!! why don't you??[/font]

Because I don't think it was viewed as conveying any special sense of authority in the early life of the church. I personally believe it was a piece of exegetical mining on the part of the Popes to back their claims.

Why does Constantinople have primacy in the Orthodox church.. Same reason as Rome.

The important difference of course being the EP simply holds a place of honor among the other bishops. His decisions are not binding on them and he is responsible only for his own flock.

 

[kimber1]

okay thanks for the answer! i understand that's your personal view. now what is the official Orthodox view or is it the same is abscially what i'm asking. i'll quit bugging you soon i promise

 

[Jay2004]

The important difference of course being the EP simply holds a place of honor among the other bishops. His decisions are not binding on them and he is responsible only for his own flock.

Their opinion was a binding one in the early church. It was when the Russian church refused to adhere to the EP after the fall of Constantinople that the primacy of honour doctrine appeared....

The situation changed...

After the fall of Constantinople, the EP had to adhere to the Turkish Sultan to a degree. This was why the Russian did not succomb to the EP's authority..

If Constatinople had never fallen, it would be a different scenerio. The EP would have authority in the Orthodox churches today..

 

[Iacobus]

okay thanks for the answer! i understand that's your personal view. now what is the official Orthodox view or is it the same is abscially what i'm asking. i'll quit bugging you soon i promise

An excerpt from The Patriarchal Encyclical of 1895: A Reply to the Papal Encyclical of Pope Leo XIII, on Reunion:

VI. And indeed for the holy purpose of union, the Eastern orthodox and catholic Church of Christ is ready heartily to accept all that which both the Eastern and Western Churches unanimously professed before the ninth century, if she has perchance perverted or does not hold it. And if the Westerns prove from the teaching of the holy Fathers and the divinely assembled Ecumenical Councils that the then orthodox Roman Church, which was throughout the West, even before the ninth century read the Creed with the addition, or used unleavened bread, or accepted the doctrine of a purgatorial fire, or sprinkling instead of baptism, or the immaculate conception of the ever-Virgin, or the temporal power, or the infallibility and absolutism of the Bishop of Rome, we have no more to say. But if, on the contrary, it is plainly demonstrated, as those of the Latins themselves, who love the truth, also acknowledge, that the Eastern and orthodox catholic Church of Christ holds fast the anciently transmitted doctrines which were at that time professed in common both in the East and the West, and that the Western Church perverted them by divers innovations, then it is clear, even to children, that the more natural way to union is the return of the Western Church to the ancient doctrinal and administrative condition of things; for the faith does not change in any way with time or circumstances, but remains the same always and everywhere, for 'there is one body and one Spirit,' it is said, 'even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all." [7]

VII. So then the one holy, catholic and apostolic Church of the seven Ecumenical Councils believed and taught in accordance with the words of the Gospel that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father; but in the West, even from the ninth century, the holy Creed, which was composed and sanctioned by Ecumenical Councils, began to be falsified, and the idea that the Holy Ghost proceeds 'also from the Son' to be arbitrarily promulgated. And certainly Pope Leo XIII is not ignorant that his orthodox predecessor and namesake, the defender of orthodoxy, Leo III, in the year 809 denounced synodically this anti-evangelical and utterly lawless addition, 'and from the Son' (filioque); and engraved on two silver plates, in Greek and Latin, the holy Creed of the first and second Ecumenical Councils, entire and without any addition; having written moreover, 'These words I, Leo, have set down for love and as a safeguard of the orthodox faith' (Haec Leo posui amore et cautela fidei orthodoxa'). [8]

Likewise he is by no means ignorant that during the tenth century, or at the beginning of the eleventh, this anti-evangelical and lawless addition was with difficulty inserted officially into the holy Creed at Rome also, and that consequently the Roman Church, in insisting on her innovations, and not coming back to the dogma of the Ecumenical Councils, renders herself fully responsible before the one holy, catholic and apostolic Church of Christ, which holds fast that which has been received from the Fathers, and keeps the deposit of the faith which was delivered to it unadulterated in all things, in obedience to the Apostolic injunction: 'That good thing which was committed unto thee keep by the Holy Ghost which dwelleth in us'; 'avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called: which some professing have erred concerning the faith." [9]

But more particularly this:

"XIV. Passing over, then, these serious and substantial differences between the two churches respecting the faith, which differences, as has been said before, were created in the West, the Pope in his encyclical represents the question of the primacy of the Roman Pontiff as the principal and, so to speak, only cause of the dissension, and sends us to the sources, that we may make diligent search as to what our forefathers believed and what the first age of Christianity delivered to us. But having recourse to the fathers and the Ecumenical Councils of the Church of the first nine centuries, we are fully persuaded that the Bishop of Rome was never considered as the supreme authority and infallible head of the Church, and that every bishop is head and president of his own particular Church, subject only to the synodical ordinances and decisions of the Church universal as being alone infallible, the Bishop of Rome being in no wise excepted from this rule, as Church history shows. Our Lord Jesus Christ alone is the eternal Prince and immortal Head of the Church, for 'He is the Head of the body, the Church," [14] who said also to His divine disciples and apostles at His ascension into heaven, 'Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.' [15] In the Holy Scripture the Apostle Peter, whom the Papists, relying on apocryphal books of the second century, the pseudo-Clementines, imagine with a purpose to be the founder of the Roman Church and their first bishop, discusses matters as an equal among equals in the apostolic synod of Jerusalem, and at another time is sharply rebuked by the Apostle Paul, as is evident from the Epistle to the Galatians. [16] Moreover, the Papists themselves know well that the very passage of the Gospel to which the Pontiff refers, 'Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church,' [17] is in the first centuries of the Church interpreted quite differently, in a spirit of orthodoxy, both by tradition and by all the divine and sacred Fathers without exception; the fundamental and unshaken rock upon which the Lord has built His own Church, against which the gates of hell shall not prevail, being understood metaphorically of Peter's true confession concerning the Lord, that 'He is Christ, the Son of the living God.' [18] Upon this confession and faith the saving preaching of the Gospel by all the apostles and their successors rests unshaken. Whence also the Apostle Paul, who had been caught up into heaven, evidently interpreting this divine passage, declares the divine inspiration, saying: 'According to the grace of God which is given unto me, as a wise master-builder, I have laid the foundation, and another buildeth thereon. For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.' [19] But it is in another sense that Paul calls all the apostles and prophets together the foundation of the building up in Christ of the faithful; that is to say, the members of the body of Christ, which is the Church; [20] when he writes to the Ephesians: 'Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints and of the house hold of God; and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner stone.' [21] Such, then, being the divinely inspired teaching of the apostles respecting the foundation and Prince of the Church of God, of course the sacred Fathers, who held firmly to the apostolic traditions, could not have or conceive any idea of an absolute primacy of the Apostle Peter and the bishops of Rome; nor could they give any other interpretation, totally unknown to the Church, to that passage of the Gospel, but that which was true and right; nor could they arbitrarily and by themselves invent a novel doctrine respecting excessive privileges of the Bishop of Rome as successor, if so be, of Peter; especially whilst the Church of Rome was chiefly founded, not by Peter, whose apostolic action at Rome is totally unknown to history, but by the heaven-caught apostle of the Gentiles, Paul, through his disciples, whose apostolic ministry in Rome is well known to all. [22]

XV. The divine Fathers, honoring the Bishop of Rome only as the bishop of the capital city of the Empire, gave him the honorary prerogative of presidency, considering him simply as the bishop first in order, that is, first among equals; which prerogative they also assigned afterwards to the Bishop of Constantinople, when that city became the capital of the Roman Empire, as the twenty-eighth canon of the fourth Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon bears witness, saying, among other things, as follows: 'We do also determine and decree the same things respecting the prerogatives of the most holy Church of the said Constantinople, which is New Rome. For the Fathers have rightly given the prerogative to the throne of the elder Rome, because that was the imperial city. And the hundred and fifty most religious bishops, moved by the same consideration, assigned an equal prerogative to the most holy throne of New Rome.' From this canon it is very evident that the Bishop of Rome is equal in honor to the Bishop of the Church of Constantinople and to those other Churches, and there is no hint given in any canon or by any of the Fathers that the Bishop of Rome alone has ever been prince of the universal Church and the infallible judge of the bishops of the other independent and self-governing Churches, or the successor of the Apostle Peter and vicar of Jesus Christ on earth.

XVI. Each particular self-governing Church, both in the East and West, was totally independent and self-administered in the time of the Seven Ecumenical Councils. And just as the bishops of the self-governing Churches of the East, so also those of Africa, Spain, Gaul, Germany and Britain managed the affairs of their own Churches, each by their local synods, the Bishop of Rome having no right to interfere, and he himself also was equally subject and obedient to the decrees of synods. But on important questions which needed the sanction of the universal Church an appeal was made to an Ecumenical Council, which alone was and is the supreme tribunal in the universal Church. Such was the ancient constitution of the Church; but the bishops were independent of each other and each entirely free within his own bounds, obeying only the syndical decrees, and they sat as equal one to another in synods. Moreover, none of them ever laid claim to monarchical rights over the universal Church; and ii sometimes certain ambitious bishops of Rome raised excessive claims to an absolutism unknown to the Church, such were duly reproved and rebuked The assertion therefore of Leo XIII, when he says in his Encyclical that before the period of the great Photius the name of the Roman throne was holy among all the peoples of the Christian world, and that the East, like the West, with one accord and without opposition, was subject to the Roman pontiff as lawful successor, so to say, of the Apostle Peter, and consequently vicar of Jesus Christ on earth is proved to be inaccurate and a manifest error.

XVII. During the nine centuries of the Ecumenical Councils the Eastern Orthodox Church never recognized the excessive claims of primacy on the part of the bishops of Rome, nor consequently did she ever submit herself to them, as Church history plainly bears witness. The independent relation of the East to the West is clearly and manifestly shown also by those few and most significant words of Basil the Great, which he writes in a letter to the holy Eusebius, Bishop of Samosata: 'For when haughty characters are courted, it is their nature to become still more disdainful. For if the Lord be merciful to us, what other assistance do we need? But if the wrath of God abide on us, what help is there for us from Western superciliousness? Men who neither know the truth nor can bear to learn it, but being prejudiced by false suspicions, they act now as they did before in the case of Marcellus.' [23] The celebrated Photius, therefore, the sacred Prelate and luminary of Constantinople, defending this independence of the Church of Constantinople after the middle of the ninth century, and foreseeing the impending perversion of the ecclesiastical constitution in the West, and its defection from the orthodox East, at first endeavored in a peaceful manner to avert the danger; but the Bishop of Rome, Nicholas 1, by his uncanonical interference with the East, beyond the bounds of his diocese, and by the attempt which he made to subdue the Church of Constantinople to himself, pushed maners to the verge of the grievous separation of the Churches. The first seeds of these claims of a papal absolutism were scattered abroad in the pseudo-Clementines, and were cultivated, exactly at the epoch of this Nicholas, in the so-called pseudo-lsidorian decrees, which are a farrago of spurious and forged royal decrees and letters of ancient bishops of Rome, by which, contrary to the truth of history and the established constitution of the Church, it was purposely promulgated that, as they said, Christian antiquity assigned to the bishops of Rome an unbounded authority over the universal Church."


James

 

[Oblio]

Their opinion was a binding one in the early church. It was when the Russian church refused to adhere to the EP after the fall of Constantinople that the primacy of honour doctrine appeared....

The situation changed...

After the fall of Constantinople, the EP had to adhere to the Turkish Sultan to a degree. This was why the Russian did not succomb to the EP's authority..

If Constatinople had never fallen, it would be a different scenerio. The EP would have authority in the Orthodox churches today..

[mod hat]

Jay,

You have been gently reminded by your Catholic brother not to debate. Now I am going to do the same. Pressing the issue further will result in warnings. Thank you for your cooperation.

[/hat]