Wrong. Augustine is explicit in stating, as do the overwhelming consensus of the church fathers that the "keys to the kingdom" were given to all genuine believers, and none of Rome's twisting or reading the later assertion of Rome to the contrary back into the fathers where Rome's assertion does not exist, can change the fact I just stated and have demonstrated.
You won't address Clement/Corinthians.
No need to, Clement never made any claim to any exclusive holding of the "keys" or any papal supremacy through Peter. Rome makes inferences where they do not exist as it usually does.
You won't address Ignatius' dust-up with Pope Victor.
No need to. Firstly, the quotes you cite have been in dispute as not authentic for a long time, and are considered by most historians to be additions, and embelishments. Imagine that, Rome adding things fraudulently. Not that it would be the first time. The Greeks didn't trust any document coming from Rome because of Rome's propensity to produce forgeries and fraudulent documents, as it continued to do through the medieval period. Actually, the entire series of letters pruported to be by Ignatius have been in dispute for a long time.
You won't address any other smoking-gun quotes
That's because there are no "smoking gun quotes". Now, what you do have are quotes taken out of context and Rome's later assertion of papal primacy read back into them where they do not exist.
Here, try this on for size:
Cyprian of Carthage 252 A.D.
"The Lord says to Peter: ‘I say to you,’ he says, ‘that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church.’ . . . On him [Peter] he builds the Church, and to him he gives the command to feed the sheep [John 21:17], and although he assigns a like power to all the apostles, yet he founded a single chair [cathedra], and he established by his own authority a source and an intrinsic reason for that unity. Indeed, the others were that also which Peter was [i.e., apostles], but a primacy is given to Peter, whereby it is made clear that there is but one Church and one chair. So too, all [the apostles] are shepherds, and the flock is shown to be one, fed by all the apostles in single-minded accord. If someone does not hold fast to this unity of Peter, can he imagine that he still holds the faith?If he [should] desert the chair of Peter upon whom the Church was built, can he still be confident that he is in the Church?"
You see RCs infer that because the fathers often speak in lofty language when referring to the apostle Peter implies a personal primacy, when in reality it does not.
Another false inference RCs make from Cyprian above, which is but one of two versions of the treatise the quote is taken from, is that Cyprian when using the word, "primacy", means that the bishops of Rome hold a supreme rulership over the entire church, when in reality Cyprian does not mean that at all.
As I said, there are two versions of that treatise, "The Unity of the Church". In the first, which you cited, Cyprian speaks of the chair of Peter in which he equates the true Church with that chair. He states that there is only one Church and one chair and a primacy given to Peter.
In the second, the references to a Petrine primacy are softened to give greater emphasis to the theme of unity and co–equality of bishops. Most Roman Catholic and Protestant scholars now agree that Cyprian is the author of both versions. He wrote the second in order to offset a pro–Roman interpretation which was being attached to his words which he never intended. The episcopate is to him the principle of unity within the Church and representative of it.
The ‘chair of Peter’ is a figurative expression which applies to every bishop in his own see, not just the bishops of Rome. The bishop of Rome holds a primacy of honor but he does not have universal jurisdiction over the entire Church for Cyprian expressly states that all the apostles received the same authority and status as Peter and the Church is built upon all the bishops and not just Peter alone, as is explicitely stated by Cyprian thusly:
Certainly the other Apostles also were what Peter was, endued with an equal fellowship both of honour and power; but a commencement is made from unity, that the Church may be set before as one; which one Church, in the Song of Songs, doth the Holy Spirit design and name in the Person of our Lord: My dove, My spotless one, is but one; she is the only one of her mother, elect of her that bare her---(Cant. 9:6) (A Library of the Fathers of the Holy Catholic Church (Oxford: Parker, 1844), Cyprian, On The Unity of the Church 3, p. 133).
That Cyprian’s comments refer exclusively to the bishops of Rome and that they therefore possess special authority as the successors of Peter is an inference that does not exist, one which Rome reads back into Cyprian.
Roman Catholic historian, Robert Eno, repudiates that inference as a misrepresentation of Cyprian’s view. As he points out Cyprian did not believe that the bishop of Rome possessed a higher authority than he or the other African bishops. They were all equals:
Cyprian makes considerable use of the image of Peter’s cathedra or chair. Note however that it is important in his theology of the local church: ‘God is one and Christ is one: there is one Church and one chair founded, by the Lord’s authority, upon Peter. It is not possible that another altar can be set up, or that a new priesthood can be appointed, over and above this one altar and this one priesthood’ (Ep. 43.5).
The cathedri Petri symbolism has been the source of much misunderstanding and dispute. Perhaps it can be understood more easily by looking at the special treatise he wrote to defend both his own position as sole lawful bishop of Carthage and that of Cornelius against Novatian, namely, the De unitate ecclesiae, or, as it was known in the Middle Ages, On the Simplicity of Prelates. The chapter of most interest is the fourth. Controversy has dogged this work because two versions of this chapter exist. Since the Reformation, acceptance of one version or the other has usually followed denominational lines.
Much of this has subsided in recent decades especially with the work of Fr. Maurice Bevenot, an English Jesuit, who devoted most of his scholarly life to this text. He championed the suggestion of the English Benedictine, John Chapman, that what we are dealing with here are two versions of a text, both of which were authored by Cyprian. This view has gained wide acceptance in recent decades. Not only did Cyprian write both but his theology of the Church is unchanged from the first to the second. He made textual changes because his earlier version was being misused. The theology of the controverted passage sees in Peter the symbol of unity, not from his being given greater authority by Christ for, as he says in both versions, ‘...a like power is given to all the Apostles’ and ‘...No doubt the others were all that Peter was.’ Yet Peter was given the power first: ‘Thus it is made clear that there is but one Church and one chair.’ The Chair of Peter then belongs to each lawful bishop in his own see. Cyprian holds the Chair of Peter in Carthage and Cornelius in Rome over against Novatian the would–be usurper. You must hold to this unity if you are to remain in the Church. Cyprian wants unity in the local church around the lawful bishop and unity among the bishops of the world who are ‘glued together’ (Ep. 66.8).
Apart from his good relations and harmony with Bishop Cornelius over the matter of the lapsed, what was Cyprian’s basic view of the role, not of Peter as symbol of unity, but of Rome in the contemporary Church? Given what we have said above, it is clear that he did not see the bishop of Rome as his superior, except by way of honor, even though the lawful bishop of Rome also held the chair of Peter in an historical sense (Ep. 52.2). Another term frequently used by the Africans in speaking of the Church was ‘the root’ (radix). Cyprian sometimes used the term in connection with Rome, leading some to assert that he regarded the Roman church as the ‘root.’ But in fact, in Cyprian’s teaching, the Catholic Church as a whole is the root. So when he bade farewell to some Catholics travelling to Rome, he instructed them to be very careful about which group of Christians they contacted after their arrival in Rome. They must avoid schismatic groups like that of Novation. They should contact and join the Church presided over by Cornelius because it alone is the Catholic Church in Rome. In other words, Cyprian exhorted ‘...them to discern the womb and root...of the Catholic Church and to cleave to it’ (Ep. 48.3).
It is clear that in Cyprian’s mind...one theological conclusion he does not draw is that the bishop of Rome has authority which is superior to that of the African bishops---Robert Eno, The Rise of the Papacy (Wilmington: Michael Glazier, 1990), pp. 57-60.
Eno is not solitary among even Roman Catholic historians on this point either, but is among the overwhelming majority, yet that does not deter RC apologists from misrepresenting Cyprian in a dishonest manner.
This point is further concurred by another RC historian, Michael Winter:
Cyprian used the Petrine text of Matthew to defend episcopal authority, but many later theologians, influenced by the papal connexions of the text, have interpreted Cyprian in a propapal sense which was alien to his thought...Cyprian would have used Matthew 16 to defend the authority of any bishop, but since he happened to employ it for the sake of the Bishop of Rome, it created the impression that he understood it as referring to papal authority...Catholics as well as Protestants are now generally agreed that Cyprian did not attribute a superior authority to Peter---Michael Winter, St. Peter and the Popes (Baltimore: Helikon, 1960), pp. 47-48
Winter, a RC historian insists that it is a misrepresentation of Cyprian’s true teaching to assert that he is a father who supports the Roman Catholic interpretation of Matthew 16:18-19, saying that both Protestant and Roman Catholic scholars are now agreed on this.
Lets hear from a few more RC historians who soundly repudiate the misrepresentations of Cyprian presented here.
Concerning Cyprian and his comments on the ‘Chair of Peter’, Karlfried Froehlich states:
Cyprian understood the biblical Peter as representative of the unified episcopate, not of the bishop of Rome...He understood him as symbolizing the unity of all bishops, the privileged officers of penance...For (Cyprian), the one Peter, the first to receive the penitential keys which all other bishops also exercise, was the biblical type of the one episcopate, which in turn guaranteed the unity of the church. The one Peter equaled the one body of bishops---Karlfried Froehlich, Saint Peter, Papal Primacy, and the Exegetical Tradition, 1150-1300, p. 36, 13, n. 28 p. 13. Taken from The Religious Roles of the Papacy: Ideals and Realities, 1150-1300, ed. Christopher Ryan, Papers in Medieval Studies 8 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1989).
John Meyendorff of Fordham University, a Jesuit university, explains the meaning of Cyprian’s use of the phrase ‘chair of Peter’ and sums up the Cyprian's ecclesiology which was normative for the East as a whole:
The early Christian concept, best expressed in the third century by Cyprian of Carthage, according to which the ‘see of Peter’ belongs, in each local church, to the bishop, remains the longstanding and obvious pattern for the Byzantines. Gregory of Nyssa, for example, can write that Jesus ‘through Peter gave to the bishops the keys of heavenly honors.’ Pseudo–Dionysius when he mentions the ‘hierarchs’—i.e., the bishops of the early Church—refers immediately to the image of Peter....Peter succession is seen wherever the right faith is preserved, and, as such, it cannot be localized geographically or monopolized by a single church or individual---John Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology (New York: Fordham University, 1974), p. 98
Cyprian’s view of Peter’s ‘chair’ (cathedri Petri) was that it belonged not only to the bishop of Rome but to every bishop within each community. Thus Cyprian used not the argument of Roman primacy but that of his own authority as ‘successor of Peter’ in Carthage...For Cyprian, the ‘chair of Peter’, was a sacramental concept, necessarily present in each local church: Peter was the example and model of each local bishop, who, within his community, presides over the Eucharist and possesses ‘the power of the keys’ to remit sins. And since the model is unique, unique also is the episcopate (episcopatus unus est) shared, in equal fullness (in solidum) by all bishops---John Meyendorff, Imperial Unity and Christian Divisions (Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s, 1989), pp. 61, 152
What emerges from honest RC historians concerning Cyprian's statements of the "keys", "chair of Peter" and "primacy" is the direct opposite presented by yourself.
Cyprian, most certainly did not invest any exclusive primacy in the bishops of Rome at all, and this is agreed on by well known RC historians.
More revisionist history. It's really a cancer of this age.
No need to, Clement never made any claim to any exclusive holding of the "keys" or any papal supremacy through Peter. Rome makes inferences where they do not exist as it usually does.
He didn't have to. It was an accepted reality. Since you won't answer the original question, it's apparent you simply have no answer.
No need to. Firstly, the quotes you cite have been in dispute as not authentic for a long time, and are considered by most historians to be additions, and embelishments. Imagine that, Rome adding things fraudulently. Not that it would be the first time. The Greeks didn't trust any document coming from Rome because of Rome's propensity to produce forgeries and fraudulent documents, as it continued to do through the medieval period. Actually, the entire series of letters pruported to be by Ignatius have been in dispute for a long time.
More obfuscation. You can't be taken seriously at this point. If you believe all this documentation has been altered, what's your position on the validity of much older documents known as... Scripture? Since Catholic documents are suspect merely because they're old, then you have to question the entire Bible, since it was the Catholic Church that codified it. Getting cold out there, yet?
You see RCs infer that because the fathers often speak in lofty language when referring to the apostle Peter implies a personal primacy, when in reality it does not.
Nothing needs to be inferred. It's stated plain as day. I see the formula you work from:
1. If it's clearly stated, Catholics are inferring too much.
2. If it's inferred, it can't be true.
This point is further concurred by another RC historian, Michael Winter:
Michael M. Winter? Why don't you quote Ted Kennedy and Fr. Richard McBrien while you're at it?
What emerges from honest RC historians concerning Cyprian's statements of the "keys", "chair of Peter" and "primacy" is the direct opposite presented by yourself.
Now you're cherry picking historians instead of listening to the Church Fathers. Keep trying, the Church is still open for business.
Why didn’t the Eastern churches revolt when Pope Victor excommunicated the Quartodecimens? How could he excommunicate them without power to do so, and why would Ignatius travel all the way to Rome to make an appeal?
Why won’t you answer these question?
It seems your posts are peppered with words like “dishonest” and “lies” and “illusion” and endless talk of Roman Catholic conspiracy and “alterations” of historic documents and “redefining” of this, that, and the other. This is the main thrust of your argument.
The reason you are lashing out is very clear - you know the Truth - you know where it is - but your pride will not let you discover it. Every post of yours that I’ve shot down is further proof of what you already, in your heart, know about the Catholic Church - which is that it is the one, holy, catholic, and Apostolic Church created by Christ, built on the rock of Peter, and protected by the Holy Spirit, Who acts through his successors in Rome. The only other possibility is that you’re an ex-Catholic with a major axe to grind. But I think it’s the former. You know the Truth. The Spirit didn’t bring you to this thread to convert me. Listen to what He is saying, and you will find your way home.
Since I’ve covered all the ground that’s necessary to cover, I will wish you the best and my deepest prayers. I pray that you will stop persecuting the Church He’s calling you to embrace.