Posted on 07/07/2009 10:31:26 AM PDT by Alex Murphy
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Amen Brother!
ICor. 1:12 Now this I say, that every one of you saith, I am of Paul; and I of APOLLOS; and I of Cephas; and I of Christ.
I want to be with the last.
All Apostolic Succession does is divide believers and allow those who claim it to claim all types of other justifications for their control of believers and persecution of those who don't adher to it.
Men selected Mathias and he disappeared. Jesus selected Paul and through him God gave us a great deal of the New Testament.
Stuff and nonsense. Let's look at the implications of your claim on the ecclesiology of the 1st-2nd centuries.
The Church Fathers always talk about the heretics claiming to be (in your language) "standing on God's Word"--i.e. deriving their ideas from Scripture. Obviously there were different interpretations out there as there are today. So the ecclesiology you are advocating would have given in the first and second centuries exactly what we have in the Reformed churches since the very beginning--endless fissiparousness and division.
Reformation theology tries to sugarcoat that fact by claiming, well, we differ among ourselves in non-essentials--but really we are all of the same Body. With the Apostolic Succession gone, the Church body becomes some invisible collection of like-minded pilgrims instead of a real, live, organic and visible body of the faithful.
But this is not the Church of the subApostolic Age, TQC. The Church of the sub Apostolic Age was unified in doctrine--and divided itself very cleanly--you are with the universal body, or you are a damnable heretic. Clement, writing to the Corinthians, telling them not to throw aside their appointed presbyters and put up new ones in their place. Ignatius of Antioch, warning the churches of Asia Minor to do nothing without the bishop. If these were operating under your assumptions, Clement would be telling the Corinthians "whatever...just split the congregation if you don't like your local pastor, it doesn't matter anyway." Ignatius would be telling the Magnesians and others, "hey look, if you want to operate outside the authority of your bishop, that's cool, just make sure you hold fast to God's Word."
No such thing. There were indeed "local churches" as you say back then--there still are--*but they were not organizationally independent from each other.* They were set up and appointed by Apostles, and the bishops the Apostles appointed, in continuation down the ages.
The Church Fathers always talk about the heretics claiming to be (in your language) "standing on God's Word"--i.e. deriving their ideas from Scripture. Obviously there were different interpretations out there as there are today. So the ecclesiology you are advocating would have given in the first and second centuries exactly what we have in the Reformed churches since the very beginning--endless fissiparousness and division.
If you think this is the result of local church ecclesiology, then I think you really need to bone up on the history involved. After all, many of these heretic groups, instead of engaging in "endless fissiparousness and division," really did nothing more than set up their own ecclesial structures that mimicked that of the proto-Catholics. The Marcionites, for instance, were definitely not local-church in their ecclesiology, but had a church hierarchy structure that Irenaeus would have been proud of. But they weren't orthodox - THAT was the problem. Hierarchy is no guarantee of orthodoxy - and indeed, hierarchy and universal churchism can actual abet the spread of error throughout the entire structure - such as what happened with the Arians for the roughly half a century that they controlled the Eastern area of Christianity.
Further, we need to understand that when the heresiologists condemned heterodox groups which attempted to support their beliefs with scripture, we're talking about some way out stuff. We're talking about gnostics trying to twist the Creation account in Genesis to have the serpent being a good guy who led Adam and Eve in obtaining gnosis despite the Demiurge's best efforts. We're talking about twisting passages from Paul to support the existence of the Ogdoad.
It's one thing to have honest difference of opinion on Scripture as the text is approached honestly, fairly, contextually, and plainly based upon what the text simply says. It's quite another to take verses as justification, but use them in a way which is so far out of context or accord with the plain meaning that it should be "obvious" to any honest person that this isn't what the text *really* says. I believe in the perspicuity of Scripture. I do not believe God gave us His Word, but only so that we'd have to search for mystical, hidden esoteric meanings in it. While there may be room for honest (though relatively minor) differences of opinion about what a passage means, I also think it's relatively "obvious" when something "isn't right", and this obviousness is based upon the plain meaning of the text IN CONTEXT with the rest of Scripture (i.e. Scripture interpets Scripture), not upon either mysticism (as with the gnostics) or hierarchical authority (as with the Catholics).
Reformation theology tries to sugarcoat that fact by claiming, well, we differ among ourselves in non-essentials--but really we are all of the same Body. With the Apostolic Succession gone, the Church body becomes some invisible collection of like-minded pilgrims instead of a real, live, organic and visible body of the faithful.
Well, I tend to think that Catholics greatly exaggerate the "division" among non-Catholics, while simultaneously downplaying the very real divisions *within* Catholicism.
This is because, so I've observed, when Catholics speak of "unity," they (like yourself) primarily and implicitly mean "political unity." I.e. unity that comes through the giving of homage to the pope. All Catholics the world over are "united" by their common fealty to the pope and to Mother Church, even if their unity is not in doctrine. I can talk with twenty different Catholics about any number of theological or practical application questions, and get twenty different responses about what the Church teaches, how to apply it, what's right, etc. Some Catholics are against birth control (as the pope is), some use it themselves. Some Catholics are Vatican II, some still think all Prods will burn in hell and so will the liberals who don't go to Latin mass. Some Catholics think the church teaches Liberation theology, some think the church teaches capitalism, and some think it teaches distributionalism - and you can find all three in the clergy who advocate for each. Some Catholics call themselves evangelical and try to mimic evangelical theology, most don't. Some Catholics some speak in tongues and reject cessationism, most don't. But they're all "good Catholics" in the eyes of the Church, since they're all loyal to the pope and the magisterium (even if a lot of Catholic FReepers don't agree).
Meanwhile, despite the doctrinal differences, I'd say there's a lot more similarity, even in order of worship and even in most doctrines beside the particular group "distinctives", between, say, Reformed churches and Methodists, or between both of these and Baptists. Despite the local church ecclesiology, I would be hard pressed to think of any significant differences between my church and any of the dozens of other Independent Baptist churches all across the country and the world that I know of personally, other than on one issue, the use of the KJV verses the use of new versions. And even then, that's a matter of practice, not deep theology.
Both Catholics and Protestants err in their use of universal ecclesiology. The former errs in assuming a purely political unity, the latter in assuming a purely spiritual unity. The church, as the New Testament itself indicates, is to have both. There should be spiritual unity of doctrine and fellowship, but there is also to be unity around the leadership of the pastor. This is only practically feasible within a local body of believers. Further, if we assume an universal church ecclesiology, than Christians are condemned to unfaithfulness with respect to, for instance, the interpersonal injunctions given in Ephesians 4. There is no way I can demonstrate true, agape love for my fellow church members in China or India or Africa or Brazil except in the most superficial and meaningless of manners - manners which are totally at odds with the plain, intended meaning of the passage, yet we are to do these things "in the church."
But this is not the Church of the subApostolic Age, TQC. The Church of the sub Apostolic Age was unified in doctrine--and divided itself very cleanly--you are with the universal body, or you are a damnable heretic. Clement, writing to the Corinthians, telling them not to throw aside their appointed presbyters and put up new ones in their place. Ignatius of Antioch, warning the churches of Asia Minor to do nothing without the bishop. If these were operating under your assumptions, Clement would be telling the Corinthians "whatever...just split the congregation if you don't like your local pastor, it doesn't matter anyway." Ignatius would be telling the Magnesians and others, "hey look, if you want to operate outside the authority of your bishop, that's cool, just make sure you hold fast to God's Word."
You seem to be confusing "local church" ecclesiology with "NO church" ecclesiology. Under local church ecclesiology, there would be no "throwing aside" of appointed presbyters (a phrase which Catholics tend to take out of context from Clement anywise), there is no "doing anything without your bishop", etc. The bishop (i.e., the pastor, as the names all refer to the same office) is there over the local church, and members of the body of a local church are still commanded to obey them that have the rule over them (Hebrews 13:17). Clement, Ignatius, they're talking about local churches and local church pastors.
Indeed, I've always been surprised how un-Catholic the earliest patristics really are. Clement of Rome, in particular, seems to be local church especially. the problem with the Catholic approach to the patristics is that Catholics tend to "read in" their theology into the Church Fathers and anachronise a lot of stuff that rightly dates from the 5-7th centuries back onto the 1st-2nd century men, even when a plain reading doesn't support it.
No such thing. There were indeed "local churches" as you say back then--there still are--*but they were not organizationally independent from each other.* They were set up and appointed by Apostles, and the bishops the Apostles appointed, in continuation down the ages.
There's no actual independent evidence to suggest any of this, however. Even the church at Rome was founded by somebody who's name we don't even know - it wasn't founded and headed by Peter or any other apostle, since Paul would surely have said something about that. Peter wasn't the pastor of the church at Rome, since Peter himself clearly says he was pastoring in Babylon, and that he was the apostle to the Jews (of whom a large colony existed in Babylon at that time). The Roman church that Paul addresses in his epistle was probably started by one of the converts to Christ from Pentecost in Acts 2. The traditions about Peter's apostolic see, etc., are later accretions designed to give Rome the "edge" in its competition with Constantinople, Antioch, and Alexandria for the position of "head church" in the 4th century. It's funny, if Alexandria had thought of the idea of claiming Peter first (and they'd have had a credible case, being that they had a tradition of being founded by John Mark, who was Peter's amanuensis, and whose gospel likely received early prominence due to Peter's star power), we might be talking about the "Alexandrian Catholic Church" today, and I'd bet the history of the Middle East would be a lot different.
Nevertheless, a plain reading of the New Testament shows that churches were local, that they didn't need an apostle to start them, and that an apostolic origin or support was no guarantee of orthodoxy.
Paul routinely talks of churches as if they were local. throughout Paul's epistles, as well as the rest of the "post-Jesus" New Testament, the assumption is that churches are local and confined to a specific city. When speaking of regions like Macedonia, Achaia, and Galatia, there are said to be multiple churchES. This is consistent with the actual meaning of the word itself - an ekklesia is a called-out assembly, and is always used to denote a smaller group taken out apart from a larger body, both in religious and secular usage. The only places in the New Testament where "church" and "all of Christendom" are synonymous are very early in Acts (when believers were still grouped together in Jerusalem) and in Hebrews 12:23 (which speaks of the general assembly of believers in heaven, once all is said and done).
The churches in Ethiopia were founded by the eunuch who was converted through the preaching of Philip. We should note that the Philip in question was NOT the apostle, but the deacon from Acts 7. He was not ordained a bishop, which would make him not part of the "apostolic succession", yet he was preaching the Gospel, baptising people, and his convert started a church which eventually played a rather prominent role in African history. This same Philip also preached throughout Samaria, and say many converts, presumably organised into the local churches of Samaria we see mentioned in Acts 9:31.
Paul himself warned the assembly of bishops from Ephesus in Acts 20:30 that even from "among themselves" - i.e. from among this body of bishops who were in the "apostolic succession" - there would be those who would fall into error and lead many astray. Even in churches started by Paul personally, error crept in. At one point, Paul marvels that the Galatian church was moving so quickly away from his teachings (Gal. 1:6) and has to ask his converts if they had so many things in vain (3:4). The Corinthian church, also started by Paul, is well-known for the many errors, both moral and doctrinal, which it had fallen into, even though its pastors were presumably appointed by Paul the apostle.
The local church ecclesiology has the advantage of serving also limit the spread of error - both moral and doctrinal - throughout the family of God. With a hierarchy, when the head goes bad, the whole body will be infected. With a local church approach, when one local church or pastor goes bad, it can be "cut off", so to speak, since no other church is yoked with it.
Likewise, local church ecclesiology is advantageous from a fellowship perspective. In Catholicism, for instance, every Catholic is technically in fellowship with every other Catholic who hasn't be excommunicated, the world over. Sounds good and spiritual, right? Well, this means that all the good Catholic FReepers on here are in fellowship with, among others, liberal Catholic abortion doctors in the Northeast (since they haven't been excommunicated yet), with paedophile priests who get shuffled from one diocese to another instead of being punished, with murdering mafia members, etc.
Now, with independent baptistic churches (and note, not all Baptists are baptistic in regard to ecclesiology, and not all baptistic groups are Baptist by name), if you have a pastor who diddles with a little girl, he can't just be shuffled off to some other parish half a continent away. Instead, he gets removed from his position by the local church body, and turned over to the police. If you have a member of a local church who was a murderer or a thief or whatnot, they'd (hopefully) be disciplined out via church discipline and the NT commands to disassociate ourselves from those "walking disorderly." The church body can readily deal with such things, and fellowship can be withheld, and even if one local church body tolerated a paedophile pastor or murdering member, no other independent baptistic church body would be yoked with it in fellowship.
Balderdash. Flat out wrong. These traditions were already firmly in place--and more importantly not questioned--by the second century, more than 100 years before Constantinople was even founded.
Ignatius wrote to the Roman Church in 110: "Not as Peter and Paul did, do I command you". Dionysius of Corinth in 170 says flat out that Peter and Paul founded the Church of Rome. Irenaeus relates it again in the 160s-170s. Gaius mentions the Tropaion of the Apostles at the Vatican in around 200--can that refer to anyone else but Peter? This tropaion, as part of a "red wall complex" under the Vatican, was excavated a few decades ago and the bricks in it dating to the Caesarship of Marcus Aurelius between 147-161.
As for the "Babylon" connection, let's look at what the Assyrian Church of the East has to say--because unlike Germanic johnny-come-latelies to this issue, these are the folks who are lineal descendants from the original Christians in Babylon. There is actually a belief among them that the Petrine epistle was in fact written from their homeland in Babylon proper. And yet, whaddya know...the Syriac liturgy in multiple places nevertheless asserts that Peter and Paul founded the Church in Rome. If anyone had a reason to refute the Peter-Rome connection, they did. And yet they did no such thing--even after 1500 years of schism with the Church of Rome.
I'll return to your other larger points if and when I have a chance.
Utter nonsense. Irenaeus' imagination notwithstanding, the fact remains that the matter of Roman supremacy was not firmly settled until the papcy of Leo the Great (440-461 AD).
Ignatius wrote to the Roman Church in 110: "Not as Peter and Paul did, do I command you". Dionysius of Corinth in 170 says flat out that Peter and Paul founded the Church of Rome. Irenaeus relates it again in the 160s-170s.
It's entirely unclear that Ignatius was suggesting that Peter had been in Rome preaching. Indeed, the passage you reference begins with "I write to all the Churches, and declare to all men, that I willingly die for the sake of God, if so be that ye hinder me not....", followed by Ignatius' request that the Romans pray for him to have constancy in martyrdom, and then the statement that you cite. However, Ignatius is not saying that Peter and Paul had both been in Rome, commanding them. Rather, he simply and only references the fact of their apostolic authority, contrasting it with his own position as one condemned. Contextually, there's nothing here that suggests what you're saying. At best, it could imply that - as was the case with Ignatius himself - Peter was brought to Rome for martyrdom (though that is also by no means settled on evidentiary grounds). The reference is about authority, not geography. Indeed, from what Ignatius writes, it would seem that Peter and Paul were also commanding the "other churches" that Ignatius alludes to - which again suggests their apostolic authority is in view, likely due to both their positions as "primary apostles" and that they were the two major vessels used by the Holy Spirit to write the New Testament.
As for Dionysius, the problem with the fragments we have left is that they're not a trustworthy source. The last fragment includes a complaint that his own letters were being tampered with by "apostles of the devil" who would add to and take away. This puts us into sort of a logical quandary, since how do we know that anything in them (including, ironically, the complaint itself) is genuine? Nevertheless, shaky evidence which may very well have been adulterated to include fabricated support for the growing move to attribute a primacy to Rome.
As for Irenaeus, well, what can we say about him? True, he does on several occasions mention that Peter and Paul "laid the foundations" of the Roman church, etc. But that's just the problem - it's scripturally impossible. Paul's epistle to the Romans is dated at around 57-58 AD. We know from the chronology of Acts that Paul had not been to Rome prior to this date. When Paul writes to the Romans, he indicates that he had not seen them, but was writing to them out of reputation (similar to what we see with the Colossians church) - Romans 1:10,15. Paul writes to this as-yet unmet group of Christians who were already assembled as a church. Without him. Not started by him, nor even built up yet by him. Further, Catholic tradition says that Peter was pope in Rome between 41-66 AD. Are we to presume that Paul would write an epistle to the church where the First Pope of all Christianity was pastor, and not greet this fellow apostle, or even mention his presence? Ridiculous. Clearly, Irenaeus is wrong on this count. This being so, it seems that Irenaeus is writing what he did more for the purpose of bolstering some claim on Rome's part to special apostolic position - and this could very well apply to Peter as well. Irenaeus is not a trustworthy witness in this regard, and in fact, has his problems throughout. He is, after all, the same guy who thought Jesus died when he was 50, despite the obvious Scriptural impossibility of this assertion.
Gaius mentions the Tropaion of the Apostles at the Vatican in around 200--can that refer to anyone else but Peter? This tropaion, as part of a "red wall complex" under the Vatican, was excavated a few decades ago and the bricks in it dating to the Caesarship of Marcus Aurelius between 147-161.
Of course it can refer to somebody else besides Peter - there were a dozen other apostles besides him, after all. Further, Gaius says that the trophies of the Apostles are at both the Vatican and the Ostian Road. Later tradition associates these with Peter and Paul, but this is a century and a half after the fact. Gaius may be relating a developing tradition (or, likewise, he may have had not the least idea of Peter or Paul specifically in his mind when he wrote this - we'll never know since his works exist only as fragments, which limits our ability to delve context), but as with Irenaeus, the problem with the tradition is that it doesn't accord with Scriptural facts.
As for the "Babylon" connection, let's look at what the Assyrian Church of the East has to say--because unlike Germanic johnny-come-latelies to this issue, these are the folks who are lineal descendants from the original Christians in Babylon. There is actually a belief among them that the Petrine epistle was in fact written from their homeland in Babylon proper. And yet, whaddya know...the Syriac liturgy in multiple places nevertheless asserts that Peter and Paul founded the Church in Rome. If anyone had a reason to refute the Peter-Rome connection, they did. And yet they did no such thing--even after 1500 years of schism with the Church of Rome.
Once again, there are Scriptural deficiencies with this assertion of tradition. Tradition cannot overturn Scripture, so the Syriac traditions and liturgies are wrong. Further, archaeology would seem to agree with Scripture. There's a solid case to be made that Peter's ossuary was discovered in Jerusalem in 1953. Also, what are we to make of the fact that when Venerando Correnti, an Italian anthropologist, examined in 1956 the bones that had been certified by Pius XII as belonging to Peter, he found out that they were really an assortment of bones from a number of individuals, some of them female, and some not even homo sapiens. These were the bones of the "Red Wall", that had been certified as "Peter's Tomb." Clearly, these were not the bones of Peter, despite Pius XII's wishful thinking.
So we take the single most important piece of evidence of Roman primacy from the second century, and we dismiss it with a wave of the hand as Irenaeus's personal "imagination". You have no historical warrant to do that TQC. Particularly since his comments are supported by other events of the second century. The fact that the Corinthians are writing to Clement at all to solve their dispute (no Apostle he). Ignatius' epistles, which are written as a man of authority, until he writes to the Romans where all of a sudden he takes a deferential tone. Victor's response to the Quartodeciman controversy--which shows that he thought (at least) he had the right to excommunicate Churches in Asia for their Easter date.
that's just the problem - it's scripturally impossible..
No. It's not Scripturally impossible. You're making an assumption. There are any number of reasons why Paul doesn't address or mention Peter. Tradition gives Peter a stay in Rome of 25 years, but that's very uncertain, and there's no reason to assume he was in Rome the whole time, particularly as we know that Claudius expelled the Jews probably around 49. Peter may have been in Corinth at one point.
Of course it can refer to somebody else besides Peter.
Like who? Which Apostle was martyred on the Vatican Hill?
Tradition cannot overturn Scripture, so the Syriac traditions and liturgies are wrong.
You simply assume Paul's not mentioning Peter in Romans means the latter *cannot* have founded the Church there. You simply assume Babylon does not mean Rome as it does in all the rest of Christian literature. And then you dismiss every single historical reference as mistaken or invalid because they are "contradicting" Scripture. They are not. Scripture says nowhere *plainly*--Peter was at X place until he died. We have to make inferences, and supplement with historical data.
Clearly, these were not the bones of Peter, despite Pius XII's wishful thinking.
Margherita Guarducci has done some detective work on this. It was not the bones you mention but a set discovered in a loculus that may have been the bones of St. Peter. They are of a 60-ish year old man, and the loculus bears traces of gold and murex fragments as befitting a burial of importance.
In any case, I am not resting this case on the validity of the bones but of the historical record.
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