Bishop of Rome?

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BrianH:
Please, who is the first that does this…thanks
BH
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The first recorded instance of a successor of Peter using the Keys is Clement.
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This has ceased to be interesting. The old “I just don’t see it” approach gets old after a while.

What is your purpose here, Brian? What is your intention as a Christian? Are you looking for answers? Exploring your faith? Trying to understand the early church and the bible?

More likely you’re trying to protect that little piece of turf you’ve staked out for yourself at all costs. Why? It must mean a great deal to you if the long-undisputed Catholic position on this subject is proved correct. Are you worried that all the other dominos will fall if you accept the obvious truth?

Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Next thing you know, you have to face the fact of the One True Church. Then if you face that–you have to decide if you should join.
 
Brian,

I’m going to go with your plan and assume that there is no historical evidence of the Primacy. There is one glaring question that begs to be answered.

When the Bishops who succeeded Peter assumed Primacy (pulled it out of thin air), why wasn’t there a hue and cry (I love that phrase) among the rest of the Church? There would have been so much of an outcry from Bishops all over the know world, that a Bishop of Rome would exert his influence over them. Where is this?

Notworthy
 
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NotWorthy:
Brian,

I’m going to go with your plan and assume that there is no historical evidence of the Primacy. There is one glaring question that begs to be answered.

When the Bishops who succeeded Peter assumed Primacy (pulled it out of thin air), why wasn’t there a hue and cry (I love that phrase) among the rest of the Church? There would have been so much of an outcry from Bishops all over the know world, that a Bishop of Rome would exert his influence over them. Where is this?

Notworthy
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The Orthodox church…1054…the whole giant first schism…

fatheralexander.org/booklets/english/history_timothy_ware_1.htm
"
Photius had no desire to start a dispute with the Papacy. He treated the legates with great deference, inviting them to preside at a council in Constantinople, which was to settle the issue between Ignatius and himself. The legates agreed, and together with the rest of the council they decided that Photius was the legitimate Patriarch. But when his legates returned to Rome, Nicholas declared that they had exceeded their powers, and he disowned their decision. He then proceeded to retry the case himself at Rome: a council held under his presidency in 863 recognized Ignatius as Patriarch, and proclaimed Photius to be deposed from all priestly dignity. The Byzantines took no notice of this condemnation, and sent no answers to the Pope’s letters. Thus an open breach existed between the Churches of Rome and Constantinople.

The dispute clearly involved the Papal claims. Nicholas was a great reforming Pope, with an exalted idea of the prerogatives of his see, and he had already done much to establish an absolute power over all bishops in the west. But he believed this absolute power to extend to the east also: as he put it in a letter of 865, the Pope is endowed with authority “over all the earth, that is, over every Church.” This was precisely what the Byzantines were not prepared to grant. Confronted with the dispute between Photius and Ignatius, Nicholas thought that he saw a golden opportunity to enforce his claim to universal jurisdiction: he would make both parties submit to his arbitration. But he realized that Photius had submitted voluntarily to the inquiry by the Papal legates, and that his action could not be taken as a recognition of Papal supremacy. This (among other reasons) was why Nicholas had cancelled his legates’ decisions. The Byzantines for their part were willing to allow appeals to Rome, but only under the specific conditions laid down in Canon III of the Council of Sardica (343). This Canon states that a bishop, if under sentence of condemnation, can appeal to Rome, and the Pope, if he sees cause, can order a retrial; this retrial, however, is not to be conducted by the Pope himself at Rome, but by the bishops of the provinces adjacent to that of the condemned bishop. Nicholas, so the Byzantines felt, in reversing the decisions of his legates and demanding a retrial at Rome itself, was going far beyond the terms of this Canon. They regarded his behavior as an unwarrantable and uncanonical interference in the affairs of another Patriarchate."
 
This is funny, because it was the same Orthodox Church who recognized the Roman Primacy many times before.

They were there in Chalcedon, in 451, and stood with all the other bishops, mostly Eastern, and cried out with virtually one voice: “It is Peter who says this through Leo. This is what we all of us believe. This is the faith of the apostles…”.

What had Leo said? He’d affirmed the Nicene Creed against the Arian wishes of the Eastern Bishops. But they still declared his words “those of Peters”.

This from Kenneth Whitehead’s “One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic”.

Notworthy
 
My point to the previous post being, “It seems that the Roman Primacy hadn’t changed, but the Orthodox’s view of that Primacy had”.

Notworthy
 
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NPS:
This has ceased to be interesting. The old “I just don’t see it” approach gets old after a while.

What is your purpose here, Brian? What is your intention as a Christian? Are you looking for answers? Exploring your faith? Trying to understand the early church and the bible?

More likely you’re trying to protect that little piece of turf you’ve staked out for yourself at all costs. Why? It must mean a great deal to you if the long-undisputed Catholic position on this subject is proved correct. Are you worried that all the other dominos will fall if you accept the obvious truth?

Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Next thing you know, you have to face the fact of the One True Church. Then if you face that–you have to decide if you should join.
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Post 110 please,
BH
 
Brian, I thank you. Once again, there has been a challenge in my faith, asking for a reason why we “Crazy Catholics believe what we believe” (yes, I’m paraphrasing). When questioned, I have to go and research, in this case, early Church History. Once again, this has helped me understand my faith better, drawing me closer to her. Here’s something I ran across from Cardinal John Newman in 1845.
Let us see how, on the principles which I have been laying down and defending, the
evidence lies for the Pope’s supremacy. As to this doctrine the question is this, whether there was not from the first a certain element at work, or in existence, divinely sanctioned, which, for certain reasons, did not at once show itself upon the surface of ecclesiastical affairs, and of which events in the fourth century are the development; and whether the evidence of its existence and operation, which does occur in the earlier centuries, be it much or little, is not just such as ought to occur upon such an hypothesis.
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. . . While Apostles were on earth, there was the display neither of Bishop nor Pope; their power had no prominence, as being exercised by Apostles. In course of time, first the power of the Bishop displayed itself, and then the power of the Pope . . .
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. . . St. Peter’s prerogative would remain a mere letter, till the complication of ecclesiastical matters became the cause of ascertaining it. While Christians were “of one heart and soul,” it would be suspended; love dispenses with laws . . .
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When the Church, then, was thrown upon her own resources, first local disturbances gave exercise to Bishops,and next ecumenical disturbances gave exercise to Popes; and whether communion with the Pope was necessary for Catholicity would not and could not be debated till a suspension of that communion had actually occurred. it is not a greater difficulty that St. Ignatius does not write to the Asian Greeks about Popes, than that St. Paul does not write to the Corinthians about Bishops. And it is a less difficulty that the Papal supremacy was not formally acknowledged in the second century, than that there was no formal acknowledgment on the part of the Church of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity till the fourth. No doctrine is defined till it is violated . . .
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Moreover, an international bond and a common authority could not be consolidated, were it ever so certainly provided, while persecutions lasted. If the Imperial Power checked the development of Councils, it availed also for keeping back the power of the Papacy. The Creed, the Canon, in like manner, both remained undefined. The Creed, the Canon, the Papacy, Ecumenical Councils, all began to form, as soon as the Empire relaxed its tyrannous oppression of the Church. And as it was natural that her monarchical power should display itself when the Empire became Christian, so was it natural also that further developments of that power should take place when that Empire fell. Moreover, when the power of the Holy See began to exert itself, disturbance and collision would be the necessary consequence . . . as St. Paul had to plead, nay, to strive for his apostolic authority, and enjoined St. Timothy, as Bishop of Ephesus, to let no man despise him:so Popes too have not therefore been ambitious because they did not establish their authority without a struggle. It was natural that Polycrates should oppose St. Victor; and natural too that St. Cyprian should both extol the See of St. Peter, yet resist it when he thought it went beyond its
province . . .
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On the whole, supposing the power to be divinely bestowed, yet in the first instance more or less dormant, a history could not be traced out more probable, more suitable to that hypothesis, than the actual course of the controversy which took place age after age upon the Papal supremacy.
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To be continued…

Thanks again,

Notworthy
 
continued…
It will be said that all this is a theory. Certainly it is: it is a theory to account for facts as they lie in the history, to account for so much being told us about the Papal authority in early times, and not more; a theory to reconcile what is and what is not recorded about it; and, which is the principal point, a theory to connect the words and acts of the Ante-nicene Church with that antecedent probability of a monarchical principle in the Divine Scheme, and that actual exemplification of it in the fourth century, which forms their presumptive interpretation. All depends on the strength of that presumption. Supposing there be otherwise good reason for saying that the Papal Supremacy is part of Christianity, there is nothing in the early history of the Church to contradict it . . .

Moreover, all this must be viewed in the light of the general probability, so much insisted on above, that doctrine cannot but develop as time proceeds and need arises, and that its developments are parts of the Divine system, and that therefore it is lawful, or rather necessary, to interpret the words and deeds of the earlier Church by the determinate teaching of the later.
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Thanks again.
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Notworthy
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Not Worthy,
Thank you as well to everyone who has challenged my views
 
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BrianH:
vern humphrey:
elaborate please, I am very familiar with 1st Clement so please explain further
BH
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If you’re familiar with 1st Clement, no need for me to elaborate – just re-read his epistle. He is giving direction to a church that badly needs it – and one well outside what would be his sphere of influence if he were an ordinary bishop. In other words, he is exercising the powers and dutys Christ gave to Peter.
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vern humphrey:
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BrianH:
If you’re familiar with 1st Clement, no need for me to elaborate – just re-read his epistle. He is giving direction to a church that badly needs it – and one well outside what would be his sphere of influence if he were an ordinary bishop. In other words, he is exercising the powers and dutys Christ gave to Peter.
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Vern,
Polycarp wrote letters outside of his jurisdiction as well…it seems a fairly common practice. I am in no way saying that Clement was not an importance figure…HE WAS BISHOP OF ROME…that is obviously an important position …never said that it was not…I have argued that Ignatius, Bishop of Anticoh, letters are fake, which people have disagreed with. BUT BUT if you think they are legit…He also sent letters to everyone as well
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BrianH:
vern humphrey:
Vern,
Polycarp wrote letters outside of his jurisdiction as well…it seems a fairly common practice. I am in no way saying that Clement was not an importance figure…HE WAS BISHOP OF ROME…that is obviously an important position …never said that it was not…I have argued that Ignatius, Bishop of Anticoh, letters are fake, which people have disagreed with. BUT BUT if you think they are legit…He also sent letters to everyone as well
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What letters did Polycarp and Ignatius write that are comparable to Clement’s stepping in and solving the problems of another diocese?

When did Polycarp and Ignatius tell another church they were wrong to expel ordained men?
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BrianH:
Whoa…
leap of faith…where does it say he is going to keep passing that key?
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Mat 16:18 And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter [Cephas], and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. (KJV)

Not so much of a leap of faith. Pretty clearly set out in Sacred Scriptures (even the KJV).

Had the Keys left the Church when Peter died, then the gates of Hell would have prevailed. We believe Christ’s words.

P.S. You can quit using all kinds of periods to make your point. It’s hard to read your posts.
 
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