Except that it says, “since the like is customary for the Bishop of Rome also.” IOW, the Bishop of Alexandria’s is like that of the Bishop of Rome. Now, unless they both have universal jurisdiction, what it means is the Bishop of Rome has his jurisdiction, and the Bishop of Alexandria his, etc., and their privilege is the same.
There is a difference between primacy, which the early Church recognized, and universal jurisdiction, which even today Orthodoxy does not.
Jon
“Let the ancient customs in Egypt, Libya and Pentapolis prevail, that the Bishop of Alexandria have jurisdiction in all these, since the like is customary for the Bishop of Rome also. Likewise in Antioch and the other provinces, let the Churches retain their privileges.”
I still don’t understand what you’re getting at. This appears to say that the Bishop of Alexandria has jurisdiction in a couple areas. Check. “…since the like is customary for the Bishop of Rome also.” Well, the Bishop of Rome is in fact the bishop of the diocese of Rome. This could be read as the Bishop of Alexandria is to his stuff as the Bishop of Rome is to Rome, I suppose, but there is no reason to assume that this says anything at all about universal jurisdiction. The bishop of Alexandria has the same duties to his diocese as the bishop of Rome does to his, because both are bishops of their diocese, and both are responsible for them. The Bishop of Rome also has further responsibilities, not referenced here. That they are not referenced right there does not mean they don’t exist.
Or the the line could be read as "Let the bishop of Alexandria actually have authority in these regions,
since it is the custom of the bishop of Rome that he has such. That is, since it is customary for the bishop of Rome that the Bishop of Alexandria have authority in certain places, let it be so. Since it is followed by, essentially, “Likewise in these other dioceses,” that may make more sense - “The bishop of Alexandria has authority in X places, because the Pope says so - likewise these other Bishops have authority in their respective places.”
In fact, there would be no reason whatsoever to interpret this canon as a limitation on Papal authority, unless it were directly intended to be such - but that wouldn’t make historical sense. To intend it as such would require that the idea of Papal primacy was a known (which it was, though many protestants like to pretend it wasn’t). But if it was a known idea which they were putting down, they would have just put it down. “Peter isn’t that special, deal with it” sort of language. They weren’t afraid of that. “If anyone says [something stupid] let him be anathema” was pretty common language.
But clearly this is not the case. The only other way that this could mean what you say it means is if it is an extremely round about way of saying all bishops are the same without having any particular reason for doing so. First you’d have to ask why they’d bother to say that if it was a known. There’d be no reason.
But let’s lay that aside for the moment. Why then say that “the bishop of Antioch is the same as the bishop of Rome in his area. Similarly, the other bishops are also the same as the bishop of Rome.” That is a very silly way to say that all bishops are the same. It’d be much better to say that “The bishop of Antioch is the same in these areas under his authority as all other bishops are in their respective areas.” That is, why reference the bishop of Rome in a special way at all? Unless they were talking specifically about his claim to universal jurisdiction. Which they weren’t. Because if they were then, by above, they would have simply said that such didn’t exist.
So what’s actually happening here is that some people didn’t like the idea of Papal authority, and so went digging to see what there was that could refute it, then completely and totally ignored all the surrounding writings and beliefs of everyone at any time (including those who wrote the document) so that they could twist a single canon of a council, in isolation, so that it sounded like it said what they wanted it to say.
This is a pretty common tactic actually. It’s how the world got faith alone and scripture alone too.
