TxGodfollower #13
There are several scenarios that would have Christ’s promise to Peter being fulfilled, the Catholic Church being the initial authority, and then losing it. Consider, just one scenario that comes to mind; the Orthodox Church. At first the Catholics and Orthodox were one Church, united. A disagreement about doctrine came up, Catholics went one way, the Orthodox went another. Assuming that the united Catholic/Orthodox Church was the one Christ promised, one side in the argument had to be right. The other side, when they left, no longer was the “hell proof” Church that was promised. A similar logical argument could be made about the Protestant Reformation.
The grave error in this is the impossibility of TxGodfollower replacing the Christ who is God, and claiming for himself and his perfection that Christ’s own Church “lost” Christ’s authority against the Christ who proclaimed:
“You are Peter and on this rock I will build My Church.” (Mt 16:18)
“The gates of hell will not prevail against it.”(Mt 16:18)
I will give you the keys of the Kingdom of heaven." ( Mt 16:19)
“Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven.” (Mt 16:19) [Later to the Twelve].
That the Church was united under St Peter is a fact – that there was a break away by the Orthodox is also a fact of history, just as there were breakaways before them.
#28
I know the Catholic Church has that claim; but it is a claim shared by the Orthodox Church as well. My beliefs are founded solely on the text that God promised to preserve hundreds of years before Christ promise to Peter.
Note that the early Church always accepted the Bishop of Rome as head of the Church. In about 80 A.D., the Church at Corinth deposed its lawful leaders. The fourth bishop of Rome, Pope Clement I, was called to settle the matter even though St. John the Apostle was still alive and much closer to Corinth than was Rome. Tradition shows Pope St Clement exercising his primacy in about 96, on a matter of schism in the Church of Corinth. Of the same generation as Saints Peter and Paul and when St John the Apostle was probably still living in Ephesus, Pope Clement wrote as one commanding to the Church of Corinth in Greece: “If any disobey what He (Christ) says through us, let them know that they will be involved in no small offence and danger, but we shall be innocent of this sin.” (I Clem. ad Cor. 59,1)
This Is The Faith, Francis J Ripley, Fowler Wright Books, 1971, p 151; 139-141].
In his epistle to the Romans (around 110), St Ignatius of Antioch refers to the Church which, “presides in the land of the Romans” remarking that he could not command them the way Peter and Paul did – clearly referring to the leadership of Peter in Rome. (Reference in
Catholicism And Fundamentalism, Karl Keating, Ignatius 1988, p 202-3)
It’s interesting also that Arnold Lunn in
Now I See, Sheed & Ward, 1955) could quote from the Anglican Vicar of Oddington, Rev S Herbert Scott, that St Peter and his successors were recognised as the supreme judges in matters of faith by a long succession of great Eastern saints, Ignatius, Irenaeus, Denys, Athanasius, Chrysostom, and others.
Scott quotes from the Graeco-Slav Liturgy at the Council of Nicea addressing the Pope, St Sylvester, who was not himself present: “…thou didst appear as a pillar of fire, snatching the faithful from Egyptian error (sc. Arius) and continually leading them with unerring teachings to divine light.” [Op. cit. Lunn, p 218-9]. Sir Arnold remarks that “This unwilling tribute from the Greek Church of today to the “unerring teaching” of the Roman Pope is most impressive.”
About Pope Victor I’s declaration by edict, about the year 200, that any local Church that failed to conform with Rome was excluded from the union with the one Church by heresy, none other than Adolph von Harnack admitted that Victor I was “recognised, in his capacity of bishop of Rome, as the special guardian of the ‘common unity’… " (See
And On This Rock, p 118, 1987, Trinity Communications, Fr Stanley L Jaki).
Harnack asked: “How would Victor have ventured on such an edict – though indeed he had not the power of enforcing it in every case – unless the special prerogative of Rome to determine the conditions of the ‘common unity’ in the vital questions of faith had been an acknowledged and well-established fact?”
The apostles were a collegial community, under Peter. “By the end of the apostolic age, the bishops of the Catholic Church began meeting together on a regional basis, and with the first ecumenical council at Nicaea in 325, this co-operative activity reached worldwide proportions.” (Fr John A Hardon, S.J.,
The Catholic Catechism, Doubleday, 1975, p 320-321).
