In this post, I want to examine the tradition of the papacy in the earliest church (AD 33 - 180). Why this time period? Well, the number of sources are limited enough to examine in one post and, as the earliest time period of the church, we ought to expect the papacy (if it is Holy Tradition) to at least appear in seedling form during this time. In other words, based on the definition of catholicity given in part I, this is a critical time period to examine for the case for the papacy.
The following sources speak to the situation of ecclesial leadership in Rome in the first 100 years of the Church:
- St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans
- St. Ignatius of Antioch's Epistle to the Romans
- St. Clement of Rome's Epistle to the Corinthians
- The Shepherd of Hermas
- St. Justin Martyr's works (I and II Apology, Dialogue with Trypho)
- St. Irenaeus of Lyons' works (Apostolic Preaching, Against the Heresies I - V)
- Eusebius' Ecclesial History
The first comes from St. Clement of Rome. It isn't so much that St. Clement has a lot to say directly about Roman authority, so much as that St. Clement is taken to demonstrate Roman authority in the early church. At the end of the 1st century, probably around 97 AD, St. Clement was an official within the Roman church. He is often regarded as a bishop (more on this later) - at the least, he was significant enough in the Roman Christian community to write a letter on its behalf to the church in Corinth. This is the same Corinthian community to which St. Paul wrote his two epistles, which we now regard as Scripture. Indeed, for a time, some Christians included St. Clement's letter in their canon of Scripture (that's how highly regarded it was). I have to agree with its veracity, though I obviously don't count it as Scripture - the letter itself is a masterful testament to Christian patience and the importance of humility in the cause for Christian unity. It is well worth reading just for devotional purposes.
In this letter, Clement intended to settle a breach of unity within the Corinthian church (not unlike the breach in unity St. Paul had written about earlier in the century). Evidently, some of the members of the community in Corinth had decided they didn't like their clergy and had rejected them, appointing new clergy (possibly themselves) in their place. St. Clement wrote to say that this was against the principles of church order (appealing to "our great and holy tradition" and to the idea of apostolic succession to warrant his claim), and that this went against the principles of Christian humility. He argues extensively from the old testament in making his point.
For Roman Catholics, this text serves two purposes: A) it establishes apostolic succession as an early doctrine; B) it shows a Roman bishop writing an epistle mediating a dispute over church order in the early church. Point B, in particular, matters for the issue of the validity of the papacy. IF this letter shows that, in the 1st century, Roman bishops wielded a mediating authority within the college of bishops THEN we have here, in seed form, a sort of proto-papacy (or at least one aspect of the modern papacy). Put rhetorically, a Roman Catholic might ask: "IF there wasn't a papacy in the early church then WHY was it St. Clement of Rome who was called upon to settle the dispute in Corinth (and not some other person in the Church)?"
This carries two assumptions, however, that don't pan out:
1) That this action (of writing a letter to another community commanding them to do something) is unique to the Roman see in this time period.
2) That this letter was written by THE bishop of Rome.
The first - that this action is unique - is evidently and obviously false. The early church wrote many letters; given the restrictions on travel / persecuted nature of the community, this was their primary way of communicating. IF St. Clement's epistle can be taken as a sign that the Roman bishop (today) ought to have authoritative primacy over all other bishops and limited infallibility, THEN so do the letters of St. Ignatius (of Antioch) likewise demonstrate that the bishop of Antioch ought to have authoritative primacy over all bishops and limited infallibility. Roman Catholics clearly do not wish to teach this, and so they are guilty of special pleading if, in the case of St. Clement, they claim evidence for the papacy but, in the virutally identical cases of other early letter writers, they make no such inference.
The second is a bit more complicated, and drives us back to the original question of this post: what WAS the nature of ecclesial authority in Rome in the first 100 or so years of Christian history?
Contemporary scholars - most, anyway - doubt that there even WAS a singular bishop in Rome during the first 100 years or so of Christian history. The term for this is "mono-episcopate" and it refers to the model we see today: a bishop in charge of the church in a given geographic region, served and assisted by presbyters and deacons. I will argue, in a later post, that this three-fold ministry DID exist from the earliest days of the Church in communities like Jerusalem and Antioch, but that it took longer to develop fully in Western sees like Rome. This will become highly relevant when, in this series of posts on the papacy, we inevitably turn to the Roman Catholic idea of the "development" of tradition (as development can be used to defend the papacy against precisely the argument I'm building in this post).
Why is it important that there be a monoepiscopate in Rome from the beginning of the Church? Because it is (literally) impossible for it to be apostolic tradition to defer to the jurisdictional authority of the Pope (the Roman bishop) if, in the 2 or 3 generations following the Apostles there literally wasn't a Roman bishop to whom one could defer. Setting aside the problematic claims of papal infallibility, how can one call papal authority a Holy Tradition if there wasn't even a Roman Bishop for 100+ years? Did the people living in those 100+ years just not have the fullness of the faith? Return to post I in this series for the arguments surrounding the importance of antiquity as a criterion for catholicity.
So how do we know there wasn't a monoepiscopate? In particular, Roman Catholic apologists turn to St. Irenaeus of Lyons (who lists the succession of Roman bishops, starting with the one who succeeded St. Peter, in his attacks on the gnostics since the gnostics lacked any such succession of leaders). Doesn't St. Irenaeus' list of bishops prove that, at least in 180 AD, there was a memory of a monoepiscopacy extending back to the early (apostolic) church?
Unforunately, no. It appears that St. Irenaeus lived shortly AFTER the establishment of monoepiscopacy (more on that later) and had recieved a tradition designed BY that monoepiscopacy to defend its new-found power. One way, in the early church, to justify the kind of power grab that a mono-episcopate required would be to demonstrate that mono-episcopacy was the NORM (so that it appeared that the de-centralized system was taking power FROM the mono-episcopate, not the other way around). St. Irenaeus, in essence, may be repeating mono-episcopate propaganda as the source behind his list of bishops.
Yet why would we think that? Why not just trust the saint's list? Shouldn't we default to that in the absence of contravening evidence? YES. But the thing is, we HAVE evidence against the existence of a mono-episcopacy in Rome before the time of St. Irenaeus.
The case against this was best summarized, in my opinion, by Dr. Stewart-Sykes (Anglican priest and ancient church historian) in his introduction to the 3rd-century text "The Aposotlic Tradition" (by Hyppolitus, published by SVS press). Stewart-Sykes states: "That the origin of Christianity at Rome lay in a series of entirely independent communities is clear from the various greetings to different households to be found in Paul's letter to the Roman churches. A similar picture of diversity is to be found in the frequent references which both Hermas and Clement make to the leaders of the church, and the constant appeals which Hermas makes that there should be unity among these leaders. The use of the plural, and the diversity of terms employed by both writers to refer to the leadership of the churches, indicate not only a variety of churches but a variety of understandings of the nature of office. Continued diversity is shown in the references made by Justin to the variety of different Christian communities to be found throughout the city, and in the manner in which Marcion is arraigned before the presbyters and teachers, but no bishop. Roman Christianity thus consisted of a number of self-governing churches with leaders described with various titles. Because the churches were self-governing individual communities, there was no bishop with responsibility for a number of churches, but each church might have its own leader, perhaps known as a bishop, perhaps known as a presbyter" ("On the Apostolic Tradition: Introduction" p.13)
Let us unpack that warrant - as that was a big chunk of text:
- We see greetings to different households in St. Paul's letter to the Romans, and this is taken to indicate that there were a series of independent Christian communities (rather than one community under one bishop) in Rome in the aposotlic times.
- Both Hermas and Clement imply that this situation continued into their own day (late 1st, early 2nd c.)
- They use the plural in refering to leaders in the Roman church (rather than the singular: leader - which is what we would expect if there were a mono-episcopate)
- They use diverse terminology to refer to leaders: some (in Rome) are called bishop, some (in Rome) presbyters. So it appears that the words were interchangeable and did not refer to separate offices. If bishop were a word reserved for the ultimate leader of the city's Christians, then it would not also be used to refer to the leaders of individual communities.
- Hermas makes the appeal that the leaders should be united (implying that they aren't). If they were under one bishop, these appeals would be laughable, and Hermas' text wouldn't have survived as a popular text.
- St. Justin Martyr refers to a variety of Chrisitan communities in Rome (no citation is given in Stewart-Sykes; I believe this is in the Dialogue with Trypho)
- It is reported that Marcion was tried before a council of presbyter-teachers, but no bishop was present (and this early-mid 2nd c. heretic, in Rome, would have been pulled before the monoepiscopate if there had been one).
So it may not be entirely problematic (as St. Peter was still alive), but the existence of monoepiscopacy in Jerusalem several decades before St. Paul's epistle to the Romans (which shows no monoepiscopacy) should give a Roman Catholic pause.
Far, far more damaging, however, are the writings of Sts. Clement and Ignatius, and the implicit witness of Hermas cited above by Dr. Stewart-Sykes. Stewart-Sykes doesn't delve into St. Ignatius' epistle to the Romans, but he ought to (as it completely supports his thesis concerning monoepiscopacy in Rome).
St. Ignatius wrote several letters in the first decade of the 2nd c. AD (around 107 AD) - just a decade after St. Clement's epistle to Corinth and several decades after St. Paul's epistle to the Romans. In EVERY letter that St. Ignatius wrote he exhorted the church to which he was writing to obey their bishop. EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. He always specified that there was ONE bishop, several presbyters, and several deacons. St. Ignatius doesn't go about arguing in favor of the monoepiscopacy - he assumes its reality (meaning it was already normative for Antioch by the end of the 1st c. AD, as it was for Jerusalem in the years immediately after the founding of the Church). The communities to which he wrote also treasured his letters and preserved them. This implies that they didn't find them odd or offensive, but found them to be lucid and venerable exhortations to Godliness. That being the case, we may assume that monoepiscopacy was normative in those communities as well.
St. Ignatius writes to SEVERAL communities in the ancient world while on his way to Rome to face martyrdom. He writes to the Ephesians, and exhorts them to obey their bishop (Ephesians 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 20 all contain independent exhortations to obey their one bishop, a man named Onesimus). He writes to Magnesians, and exhorts them to obey their bishop, a man named Damas (Magnesians 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, and 13 all contain independent exhortations to obey the bishop). He similarly writes to the Trallians, Philadelphians, and Smyrnaeans - and each letter is thick with references to each city's ONE bishop who must be obeyed as a successor to the Apostles.
In this context, the different tone of the Epistle to the Romans is absolutely shocking. It contains no command to obey the bishop. It doesn't even mention the WORD bishop. It names no bishop. None. It is utterly silent on the topic. Given St. Ignatius' boderline-obsession with obedience to the bishop, the absence of one being mentioned in this epistle implies, quite powerfully, that there was no monoepiscopacy in Rome at the time. If there were, we would rightly expect St. Ignatius to mention him by name and command obedience to him. The epistle itself is a marvelous treatise on martyrdom, and St. Ignatius' most popular epistle. It is, therefore, the most preserved and the one about which we are most assured of its authenticity and antiquity in form.
Yet what of St. Clement? Wasn't he supposedly the bishop of Rome when he wrote his epistle to the Corinthian church? That cannot be the case for several reasons. First, St. Ignatius' letter is written after St. Clement's - there was no monoepiscopacy in Rome when St. Clement was alive. Second, though, and more indicative of the state of the Roman churuch than the above argument-from-silence, is the very language that St. Clement utilized in his epistle. In several places, St. Clement writes about the leadership of the Church (it is, in fact, the cause of his writing). He uses the terms bishop (episcopos) almost exclusively for the leadership, although he also uses the term for elder / clergy (presbyteros) in a couple of spots in the epistle. What is most relevant, however, is his use of the plural in chapters 42 and 44. St. Clement seems to assume that there are multiple episcopos (overseers - he uses the plural) in the Corinthian church, and he references them while using 1st person plural pronouns. In other words, he is saying (in effect) that as there are bishops (plural) in your city, as in ours, these should remain in office as they are the appointed successors of the Apostles. The use of the plural implies a non-monoepiscopacy. The use of 1st person plural implies that what he assumes about the Corinthian church, he assumes because of the situation he sees in Rome (a non-monoepiscopacy).
Stewart-Sykes expresses the most common means that scholars deal with St. Clement's epistle, given the above analysis: "It is nonetheless clear that alongside the self-government of individual churches there were, from a very early period, gatherings of the leaders, to some among whom particular functions might be delegated, such as Clement who is to communicate with churches outside the city of Rome" (13). There appears to have been several bishops who, like the pagan schools of philosophy they imitated, each ran their own community. These would meet, in council (as in the condemnation of Marcion) and would appoint individuals for specific offices, in orde to act as a unified body.
It isn't until we reach the mid-2nd century that we start to see any evidence what-so-ever of a monoepiscopacy in Rome, but even then the form it takes and the warrants used to justify it do not coincide with what Roman Catholics will later (and still do to this day) claim as Holy Tradition. More on that in the next post.
In Christ,
Macarius
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