# 178. William Tighe Says:
September 29th, 2006 at 9:53 am
From Mark Bonocore — A Response to #s 160, 161 and 163:
In answer to Owen’s question, … To my knowledge, Cyprian makes no direct mention of the “Chair of Moses” to support his theology of the “Chair of Peter”; but given the way that Cyprian speaks of the “Chair of Peter” (in a collective sense, referring to the teaching authority of the Church itself), it is fairly obvious that he is drawing from the Jewish tradition of the “Chair of Moses.” In ordinary Christian usage, a “chair” or “throne” referred to a specific episcopal see, not to the larger mystery of ecclesial authority. For example, the Poem Against Marcion, which was written by a contemporary of Cyprian, declares:
“Peter bade Linus to take his place and sit on the Chair whereon he himself had sat.” (III, 80).
But, Cyprian uses the “Chair of Peter” in a much broader, very Jewish sense –the sense of the “Chair of Moses,” in which “chair” applies, not merely to one diocese or one clerical office, but to the authority of the community itself, manifested by many clerics acting together in solidarity. And, even today, the authority of the synagogue is, among Orthodox Jews, referred to metaphotically as the “Chair of Moses” –not as applying to any one particular rabbi, but to the mystery of rabbinical authority viz. the succession of the Jewish fathers. This is clearly that dynamic that Cyprian has in mind, and he is almost certainly not the author of it, but is drawing from the Traditional understanding of the Church on this point.
Yet, it must again be clarified that Cyprian’s theology was not one-sided or pseudo-Protestant. While he believes that all bishops share in the Chair of Peter, both his teachings and actions SCREAM the fact that Cyprian does not believe that all bishops share in the Chair of Peter equally. As metropolitan of Africa, Cyprian obviously felt that it was his duty to quell erroneous bishops and set them straight. He also believed that Rome possessed an authority that was universal in nature and so greater than his own. For example, during his conflict with Pope Stephen (ergo Cyprian’s terse tone, which is dramatically different from his affectionate remarks to Cornelius), Cyprian writes to Rome to inform the Apostolic See that Bishop Marcianus of Arles (in Gaul) had joined the party of antipope Novatian. Stephen would have already been informed of this by Bishop Faustinus of Lyon and by the other bishops of Gaul. Yet, Cyprian urges Pope Stephen to do as follows:
“You ought to send very full letters to our fellow-bishops in Gaul, not to allow the obstinate and proud Marcianus any more to insult our fellowship… Therefore send letters to the province and to the people of Arles, by which, Marcianus having been excommunicated, another SHALL BE SUBSTITUTED IN HIS PLACE …for the whole copious body of bishops is joined together by the glue of mutual concord and the bond of unity, in order that if any of our fellowship should attempt to make a heresy and to lacerate and devastate the flock of Christ, the rest may give their aid…For though we are many shepherds, yet we feed one flock.” (Cyprian, Ep. lxviii)
Here, while Cyprian clearly feels that Marcianus’ defection is the concern of all bishops, he attributes to Pope Stephen the authority of deposing Marcianus and ordering a fresh election. In other words, Cyprian does not take it upon himself (or his African synod) to do it, but urges Rome to act. And, to appreciate this, we should compare it to what the anti-Pope Novatian had previously succeeded in doing in claiming the authority of Rome to promote his heresy against forgiving apostates. As Cyprian himself tells us:
“[Novatian] ….sent out his ‘new apostles’ to very many cities; and where in all provinces and cities there were long established, orthodox bishops, tried in persecution, he dared to create new ones to supplant them, as though he could rage through the whole world” (Ep. lv, 24).
And, giving the confusion over whether Novatian or Cornelius was the true Bishop of Rome, Novatian almost succeeded in doing this! For, even the EASTERN bishops who Novatian deposed were recognized as deposed by the locals, until it became clear that Novatian lacked the authority to do this. Writing from the East, Patriarch St. Dionysius of Alexandria (in the first recorded act of Alexandrian primacy in the East) took the side of Pope Cornrlius, and, once Cornelius was recognized to be the true Pope, Dionysius wrote to Rome to report how:
“Antioch, Caesarea, and Jerusalem, Tyre and Laodicea, all Cilicia and Cappadocia, Syria and Arabia, Mesopotamia, Pontus, and Bithynia, have returned to union and their bishops are all in concord.” (Eusebius, Hist. Eccl., VII, v).
From this, we can see the wide-range of Novatian’s claimed authority; and so what the authority of Rome actually was. Here, in the mid-3rd Century (before the legalization of Christianity and while the Church was still an underground society), the Bishop of Rome had the authority to depose bishops in far-off provinces. This is not the ecclesiology of the modern Eastern Orthodox Church, which makes no room for Magisterial intervention when extraordinary (or emergency) conditions apply. But, Rome and the churches in communion with Rome have always held fast to this Tradition.
As Pope St. Gregory the Great, 350 years later, succinctly put it his exchange with Bishop John of Syracuse (in Byzantine-ruled Sicily), when discussing the new episcopal candidate for the church of Constantinople, …
“As to what he says, that he is subject to the Apostolic See (Rome), I know of no bishop who is not subject to it, IF there be any fault found in bishops.” (Pope Gregory I Ep. Ad. Joan.)
This is the real issue, which Fr. Bouyer does not account for in his article, and which modern Eastern Orthodoxy fails to consider or address. YES, all orthodox bishops act as one and participate together perfectly in the one Chair of Peter. This is the normal and natural condition of the Church, as Christ desires it to be. Eastern Orthodoxy and Vatican II have that part correct. BUT … “If there be any fault found in bishops,” this is not the natural or normal condition of the Church, for the erroneous bishop has separated himself from the Chair of Peter. And, the one who must ultimately judge whether or not this bishop has departed from the Chair of Peter is the primary custodian of Peter’s own episcopal Chair—the Pope of Rome. THIS is the part of the mystery that Vatican I focused on and was concerned about. And anyone (e.g. an Eastern Orthodox) who finds Vatican I to be alienating or uncomfortable has failed to appreciate THE CONTEXT in which Vatican I is speaking. For, as Cyprian urged Pope Stephen to do, and as antipope Novatian claimed the right to do (and would have succeeded in doing if his illegitmacy were not exposed), and as Gregory the Great claimed the right to do, and as NUMEROUS Popes have done throughout antiquity, the See of Peter DOES possess the right and duty to intervene in the affairs of other churches WHEN there is a pressing need to do so, and when this pressing need threatens the universal communion of the Church. It is not, as one person on these boards has said, that ‘an Orthodox cannot accept Vatican I and still remain Orthodox.” That is simply a silly thing to say. No dogmatic canon of Eastern Orthodoxy denies the teachings of Vatican I, and the historical heritage of the Eastern Church testifies to the truth of Vatican I’s teachings! The issue here is not, and never has been, how the Church should operate under normal and natural conditions—the conditions intended by Christ and the Apostles. The issue is, and always had beem, how the Church (and the Roman Papacy in particular) should operate according to unnatural conditions, stemming from the unnatural compromise between the Church and the secular world. This unnatural compromise began with Constantine, and continues to be an issue for us today—that is, bishops are not always faithful to the Apostolic deposit because concerns for this world (e.g. their own power and success) frequently lead them astray, and this can, and often does, result in formal heresy and similar abuses. However, Christ Himself established a remedy for this, which is the infallible charism of the Petrine ministry; and this is why other bishops are subject to the Pope of Rome. … NOT when they are faithful and shepherding the Church as they should (for, in doing that, they are indeed “Peter” as well, and so just as infallible as the Bishop of Rome). But, when they slip into error, they do need a “bishop of bishops” who can shepherd them on the universal level, and lead them back (if possible) to the sure pastures of orthodoxy. Can their other brother bishops do this as a collective group? Of course! But, among these brother bishops (and especially when the bishops disagree among themselves), there must be one father who holds the final authority for the Family, and who can speak officially for all, settling disputes. This is the voice of Peter, the voice of the Pope of Rome. And this Apostolic Tradition has been neglected among the Eastern Orthodox, primarily because their ecclesiology and their overall view of the Church is not that of the old, illegal, underground society of the martyrs, but of the imperial Church established by Constantine, which has accepted as “normal” the unnatural condition in which the Church is partners with the secular world. This is why the anicent East was so prone to heresy after heresy, and why the imperial Church of Constantinople had to abandon its original fidelity to the (non-imperial) See of Peter at Rome. The theology surrounding our Schism, when viewed realistically, is merely a smokescreen for a secular cultural / quasi-nationalistic agenda—the “one Church, one Empire” agenda of ancient Byzantium, which is unnatural to the Church of Jesus Christ.
So, when Rob Grano cites the well-intentioned book by Oliver Clement, who advocates a “mid position” for the Papacy, which was supposedly its role for “the first eight- or nine-hundred years of Church history,” this is yet another occassion in which Greek East and Roman West are talking past each other and missing each other’s intended context. Oliver Clement is focusing on the natural and normal conditions of the Church, in which individual bishops are faithful Christian men with no secular agendas, but who desire the good of the Church and the promotion of the Apostolic Faith that they all hold in common via their equally-orthodox “sensus fidelium.”. We can all agree that, under those circumstances, the Pope of Rome should not intervene in the affairs of other dioceses, but should merely act as a pastoral example and a final court of appeal. HOWEVER, … What Oliver Clement and modern Eastern Orthodox fail to consider is that the modern Church is not living under the natural or normal conditions of the early Church, but … since the days of Constantine … we have one foot in the secular world, and this PROFOUNDLY effects how bishops relate to one another, and forces the Church to count on the infallible charism promised to Peter’s ultimate and personal successor at Rome. That’s why Vatican I dogmatized Papal Infallibility.
Someone also said that the infallible charism of the Holy See was established by the bloody martyrdoms of Peter and Paul. This is not so. It was established because Peter ended his earthly ministry in Rome (as Bishop of Rome) and passed his Christ-given responsibilities on to his episcopal successor there. This infallible ministry was created by Christ Himself in Matt 16:18-19. And, even if Peter had died a natural death in Rome, this ministry would still have been passed on to his successor. The martys of Rome bear witness to the faith of that church, it is true. But this is something distinct from the infallible office of authority.
God bless
Mark Bonocore
and
September 29th, 2006 at 1:09 pm
Alas, I have seen no new ground covered in this thread. And I entertain no illusions that any minds are going to be changed in a setting such as this. Still, it might be worthwhile for me to try to refine the state of the question for the sake of greater focus and less wheel-spinning.
The position being taken by the Orthodox is best summed up in #154:
…there is one area where all the Orthodox authors agree (e.g., Fr. Asanassieff, Fr. Meyendorff, Fr. Schmemann, and even Metropolitan Zizioulas), because they all appear to accept a “eucharistic” or “communion” ecclesiology, and all of them reject as completely incompatible with that ancient Patristic ecclesiology the concepts of “universal jurisdiction” and “supreme power.”
As I implied way back in #73, that posited incompatibility is exactly what Ratzinger, von Balthasar, Bouyer, and of course little ol’ me would deny. We affirm their compatibility, and I offered a bit of explanation why. The fundamental issues are how doctrinal development is understood and how it is to be understood. Thus if Ratzinger et al are correct, then the mature Catholic doctrine of the papacy is a connatural and thus valid development of what was held in common before 1054, including what is today called “the ecclesiology of communion”; if most Orthodox are correct, then of course it is not, and hence cannot be accounted as even an implicit part of the faith-once-delivered.
When it receives an Orthodox response that actually engages it—as opposed to merely restating what’s been said countless times before—what I shall call “the Ratzinger position” (’RP’ for short) typically gets the sort of the response given by Owen in #115.
Addressing me, he writes:
Two points in that are noteworthy: (1) RC advocates of RP are only said to determine what counts as valid development by appeal to papal authority; (2) as a result of such a move, RC advocates of RP are said to imagine that they understand Orthodox doctrine “better understand Eastern Christianity” than EOs and ECs do. If either point were true, it would be quite telling. But neither is.
(1) overlooks the significance of the fact that the doctrine whose development is most at issue is precisely that of papal authority. RP advocates are not trying to settle this issue by appeal to authority; indeed, if RP were merely saying that Vatican I’s doctrine of the papacy is a valid development because popes have so taught, its argument would be entirely circular and thus entirely uninteresting even to Roman Catholics. But Ratzinger et al deserve more credit than that. The real point is subtler: granted that V1’s teaching can neither be found in so many words in pertinent first-millennium texts and practices, nor even logically deduced therefrom, that teaching can readily be seen as a connnatural development therefrom. Hence the immediate issue is not by what authority a given development can be ascertained as valid, but rather whether data which both sides agree are data can reasonably be read to support RP. Apodictic proof is neither available nor being sought; what is available and sought is a reasonable way of seeing the common data.
Perhaps an analogy would help. Since the dawn of Christianity, the Jews have argued that Matthew’s quotation of Isaiah 7:14 as evidence for the Virgin Birth is based on a misconstrual of the original Hebrew. While the Septuagint, which Matthew followed, uses parthenos or ‘virgin’, the Hebrew uses alma, which means ‘young woman’ whether virginal or not; and Jews did not go in for imagining virgins having children. Despite countless attempts by Christian apologists to show that Isaiah really meant ‘virgin’—which continue even to this day—it is indeed rather unlikely that the original author actually had that in mind. We can’t really know for sure what he had consciously in mind, but we do know that that is not how he had been understood; for if he had been, then the idea of the Messiah’s virgin birth would have enjoyed much more currency in Jewish thought than it appeared to enjoy in the few centuries before Christ, which was little to none. It would not have seemed a novelty, which is how it seemed to most Jews at the time, who dismissed it accordingly. Yet as Christians we cannot of course agree with the Jews. What we must say is that even if the original human author of Isaiah did not have some future virgin in mind in 7:14, the Holy Spirit most certainly did. That’s why the Septuagint’s creative translation was prophetic. What the original author might have regarded as fantasy, and most of those who took his work as prophecy did indeed regard as fantasy, is logically compatible with what he wrote and is, in point of dogmatic fact, contained “in germ” within it. One could readily multiply examples of all the ways in which NT writers—and later, the Fathers—saw Christ and the Church in the OT even though the OT writers themselves, and certainly most Jews later, would not have seen things that way at all. Similarly, through the eyes of faith one can see V1 as a valid development from what was “commonly accepted and lived” regarding Roman primacy in the first millennium, without thereby imagining that most Easterners or even most Westerners at the time would have recognized Vatican I as what they believed.
Given as much, (2) above misstates the issue. One can readily understand why Orthodox do not see V1 in the first-millennium data: V1’s doctrine is neither stated there in so many words nor logically deducible from the sum total of the pertinent data. RP advocates agree. But that is not the relevant question. The relevant question is whether V1’s doctrine can reasonably seen as implicit in those data even if many of those who acknowledged Roman primacy in the first millennium didn’t see it there and even if many Christians today, including the Orthodox, still don’t see it there. That is what RP says. Accordingly, RC advocates of RP do not think they understand Orthodox doctrine better than the Orthodox; we know quite well what the Orthodox doctrine on this question is, which is what they say it is. Rather, RC advocates of RP maintain that Orthodox doctrine fails to recognize the full implications of what both sides believed for nearly a thousand years. Hence the common RC complaint that Orthodox “theological” resistance to the papacy is at root historical, cultural, and psychological.
Of course that complaint ultimately begs the question. To bulverize Orthodox resistance as cultural and psychological is plausible only if one already assumes the truth of the Catholic teaching on the papacy. But question-begging cuts both ways. Thus the following account of history from Owen:
One problem with that is its picture of popes “unilaterally” making changes in doctrine without regard to the sensus fidelium. That picture stems from a confusion of the normative with the empirical. Catholics certainly do hold that a pope’s defining a doctrine for the whole Church suffices to make believing that doctrine normative for and binding on the whole Church; but it does not follow, nor was it ever in fact the case, that popes dreamed up doctrinal “innovations” and then proceeded to impose them on the rest of the Church. Popes have no authority to invent doctrine or even to abrogate previously defined doctrines. Whether the doctrine in question be the filioque, papal infallibility, or any others that have caused divisions between East and West, each of the doctrines in question had undergone a long period of theological development in the West prior to definition and did not face opposition from most of the Catholic Church when they finally were defined. They were far from arbitrary or even new—in the West, and by the time of these alleged “innovations” the West was hardly an underpopulated backwater. Of course they were seen as unacceptable, heretical, or even monstrous innovations by many in the East. But what does that prove? All it proves is that, for a long time, the Eastern part of Christendom has not agreed with the Western about certain questions, including the question how other such questions are ultimately to be settled. It does not prove that popes of Rome have “imposed” certain doctrines on anybody. They had already enjoyed broad support in the West anyhow and, since the time of Photius, the popes have enjoyed rather little de facto juridical or doctrinal authority in the East.
That’s why the appeal to “reception” by “the Church as a whole” is even more problematic. One question that gets begged here is “Who is the Church?” If one includes all baptized people in the Church, then one would be hard put to make the case that any once-disputed doctrine escapes significant and ongoing dissent even today. If one includes in the Church all bishops of apostolic succession and those “in communion” with them, questions immediately arise: Who has such succession? Can it be lost by a see that once had it? Does everybody who has it or claims it count as part of the relevant consensus? Are all those who have it equally authoritative? If so, why? If not, why not? One can readily see how such questions are pertinent, and one might answer them by appeal to what is called Tradition. But of course the questions then arises “Whose tradition?” and “Whose interpretation of said tradition?”, and the answers always seems to end up as an appeal to the tradition of those who agree with “us,” whoever “we” are. But since what “we” say in the East diverges in some respects from what “we” say in the West, one cannot without begging the question appeal to what “the Church as a whole” has always believed.
This is why the hoary appeal to “reception” fundamentally question-begging and indeed a bit of legerdemain. Beyond even “Who is the Church?”, the more incisive question is “Who in the Church?.” Which of course brings us back to square one—unless, like the monks of Mt. Athos and not a few other Orthodox, one simply writes Rome out of “the Church” the way the Oriental Orthodox were once written out of “the Church.” But the world’s one billion Catholics can be forgiven for finding in that also not a little question-begging.
It will not do to say that Orthodoxy, unlike Catholicism, settles questions of doctrinal development by the bishops acting collegially over time. We have synods and general councils in Catholicism too. They are necessary not as window-dressing for papal absolutism, but as expressions of the real authority of the bishops and the nature of the Church as communion, which said authority serves. And as Vatican II recognized, the spiritual experience of the faithful and the investigations of theologians are necessary sources for the Magisterium—not only that of bishops individually or synodally, but even that of the papacy itself. The difference is not that Catholicism has the papacy to settle such matters instead of those other sources of input, but rather in addition to them, in such a way as to adjudicate and give definitive form to their results. Whether one thinks that a good thing or a bad thing depends on how one answers the conceptual question: whether V1’s doctrine of papal authority is compatible with the ecclesiology of communion.
Well, Ratzinger has long thought they are compatible, as do I, von Balthasar, and all RC advocates of RP. The books of those two great theologians provide the arguments. Even among the disputants here, everybody agrees that the pope may not do all that Catholic doctrine says he can do; we all even seem to agree that the pope cannot always do in practice what he can do in principle. But Owen and STK don’t seem to think helps. As I read them, they hold that the very idea of such jurisdiction as Vatican I ascribes to the papacy is incompatible with Tradition as a whole and with the ecclesiology of communion in particular. This is where the difference clearly emerges. But once again, the question is begged all around. One can always define ‘communion’ in such a way that somebody’s being in authority over everybody is incompatible with communion; but one can also define it so that the same state of affairs enables communion. That is what Ratzinger and his Catholic allies on this question do, and I think we can all agree that the absolute headship of the risen Christ himself is not only compatible with but the precondition for communion. Indeed, given what all acknowledge are the moral and practical limitations on the exercise of papal jurisdiction, especially in the East, there is no reason to suppose that such jurisdiction is incompatible in practice with the ecclesiology of communion. The sole question is whether it’s compatible in principle; that depends on how one formulates the principles; and the question how one ought to formulate the principles is to be settled by Tradition. But that doesn’t serve because the question at issue here is precisely whose interpretation of Tradition is to be accounted normative.
Once one recognizes that we’re dealing with two plausible but competing paradigms of ecclesiastical authority, neither of which can do more than beg the question against the other, the question becomes how to choose between them. As I have often pointed out before, each is plausible and self-consistent in its own terms. (Such a situation is very familiar to any professional in the field of philosophy.) I have also written about the means an inquirer does well to adopt in making their choice. The most important intellectual task is to avoid caricature as much as possible and get as clear a picture as one can of what each side actually believes. Once the requisite prayer and ascesis are practiced, only then can one decide where truth finds the more capacious home.