I'm not prejudiced against R.C.s BUT...

Can you provide citations for those quotes? I don't doubt that they're genuine, but since we're reading translations into English it might be helpful to know the exact reference so that comparisons to different translations can be made for the sake of clarity.

None of the quotations prove that papal infallibility was taught or believed in the early centuries. At best, what those writers said is consistent with Vatican I, but most of it is also consistent with the Eastern Orthodox and Protestant positions as well. Everyone recognizes that Rome was a bastion of Orthodoxy when the rest of the world was engulfed successively in the Arian, Nestorian, and Monophysite controversies. Beyond that, the case is overstated: Hormisdas and Maximus, in the translations you quoted, said that Rome had not erred, not that Rome could not err.

What initially brought Pope Gregory into conflict with Patriarch John was the Pope's (quasi-)appellate jurisdiction, which would be meaningless if he also had ordinary universal jurisdiction.

 

Even if I disagree with this, it’s still a huge problem for orthodoxy (I won’t mention Protestants because I don’t think they’re very historical, no offense).

The Eastern Orthodox must admit that Rome made claims early on that were *consistent* with Vatican I. This means the orthodox were in communion with a church that publicly made outright heretical claims, as they consider papal dogmas heresy, for a Millenium. What does this say about the indefectability of the church? Did we ever keep communion with aryans or even miaphysites? How come the church of Christ kept communion with papal heretics for a thousand years +?

The thing is that Rome being a bastion of orthodoxy for so many years meant the Greeks naturally started ceding to Roman claims. Why do you think St maximus said what he said? He said the Roman church wouldn’t err until the end of time.
You’re giving a lot up to Roman claims. Because even if you want to read the quotes (which I don’t think you’re interpreting right but you can have your own opinion) of st Maximus as Rome not having taught heresy yet , what does it matter? His claims are way more in line with the current catholic position than the orthodox. The modern orthodox don’t even have a consensus on how the papal office is supposed to work. But a fair amount, like Stalwart just did, claim it is a primacy of honor.
Do these quotes show mere “honor?”
No. They’re way more close to Roman claims. They go against orthodox claims, no orthodox currently holds to St Maximus’ belief that Rome has the keys, that it is unfailing according to the promise of the savior, and he specifically calls it an unfailing light. You’d have to prove that Maximus believed Rome could bind the whole church on error. Doesn’t seem like it to me but I welcome a correction.
St Maximus makes roman primacy based on Christ’s words to Peter. This is NOT a mere primacy of honor, and is not something any of the fathers would ever say could fail the church. How can the words of Christ himself fail?
You’d have to have a completely different interpretation of the papacy and say it’s a primacy of honor because of the empire instead of the divine promise which st Maximus bases it on. And again, not a single orthodox or even Protestant believes this. If you believed the papal office was because of Peter, you wouldn’t be leaving it, you’d stay with it because you think it’s actually more than mere honorific pleasantries. It’s non genuine to say St Maximus believed in modern orthodox or Protestant papal understandings.

Which of my quotes would you like a quotation for?
St Maximus’ is Maximus, Letter to Peter, in Mansi X 692. You can find it in the book “his body broken,” an Eastern Orthodox perspective on the schism.

 

Mostly the ones from Bede, since you've provided the one from Maximus. I don't doubt the genuineness of the quotation, I just like to be able to read these things in their fuller literary context. It's been over a decade since I've read Bede.

I think all the major parties to the debate are wrong. Rome clearly had a form of appellate jurisdiction prior to the Great Schism. It was not merely a primacy of honor. There were also Popes who fell into heresy. The Tridentine dogma of Scripture and Tradition as equal sources of authority is not to be found, for example, in Aquinas:
http://willgwitt.org/scripture/thomas-aquinas-on-the-formal-sufficiency-of-scripture/
Vatican I was clearly an innovation.

 

But he doesn’t have this power, that’s precisely the point. He is neither automatically “more Christian” than anyone else, he’s not “more right”, he’s “not more godly”.

There isn’t a single Church Father who would’ve been okay with the Bishop of Rome having a supreme ordinary jurisdiction over the whole worldwide Church. Therefore he’s driven all his followers (you I guess) into a state of schism from the Catholic Church.

So you’re literally acknowledging the fact that the Romanists changed doctrine, and the popes took on the function of the emperors?

This is only true today when the secularists are atheistic pedophiles. During the history of Christendom, the secular kings were typically more godly than the popes.

I’m not gung ho about the Emperors carrying such authority over the Church either. That’s why the conciliar rule, the church ruled by the church, is the best and most Christian form of absolute government. But during 800s AD, would I pick the Popes or Charlemagne to have oversight over my bishop? Definitely Charlemagne, for when the papacy repeatedly tried to introduce heresies into the Latin church, the king forbade it.

Don’t you get it? If a king installs or removes a bishop, that person still was a bishop, just that secular force was used against him. But if the Pope installs or removes a bishop, it means that person wasn’t really bishop in the first place.

Well of course, the bishop of Rome was once just the Patriarch, and the Metropolitan of the Latin churches. We should and did recognize his authority. You’re confusing the papacy with authority, when in reality it’s conquest, subjection, slavery. My local Bishop in, say, 800s AD would’ve been a really bishop, with a divine right of having local ordinary jurisdiction. He wasn’t a puppet stand-in for the Pope. There is not a single instance under, say, King Alfred, where the popes removed a bishop, or appointed their own bishop against the King’s wishes.

As I write above, they would’ve been pretty surprised to learn about the magical words that make something infallible. I guess they just didn’t “develop” church doctrine sufficiently at that time still.

 

Those would be Ecclesiastical History, Book II, Ch. 1, and the one about Mary is
cited as In Lucam; PL 92, 330B in the book
“The Blessed Virgin Mary in the Thought of Medieval Latin Theologians.”


As to scripture an tradition, can you clarify what you mean that it was never believed before?
The eastern churches don’t even consider tradition to be different from scripture, so to them it’s all the same authority.
Thomas aquinas did not believe anything contrary to the catholic doctrine from what I see on that website. If by formal sufficiency you mean everything has to be literally spelled out in the Bible, he didn’t believe that. I should point out that no one believed this, as the 7th ecumenical council anathematized those who refuse to venerate images. This is nowhere in scripture yet it was accepted as required to be in communion with the church and thus De Fide dogma.

Popes can fall into heresy, this has never been denied by Catholics.

I would like some proof for your claims that Vatican I is an innovation, aside from just saying it.
The popes consistently taught papal supremacy and the indefectability of the Roman see. I don’t see how this is novel.
I’ve read siecienski, the papacy and the orthodox. He’s orthodox and a fair historian, and readily admits that papal claims existed and were not novel. I don’t see history lining up with your claims.

 

These statements seem to contradict one another, unless you say that the pope is a separate entity from the Roman see, in which case it must be said that the latter cannot defect, and therefore papal infallibility is, indeed, an innovation. It seems like you keep confusing the categories of who (the Roman See and Substructure, or its Earthly authority, the Roman Bishop) is what (indefectible, infallible, supreme in jurisdiction, established by God through Peter...)

 

I’m getting a lot of “feelings” from your response.
No one has ever claimed the popes are more christian or godly than anyone else.

Did you see what st Maximus said about Rome?
What about Bede?
I suggest you read a non polemical history book on the English church, and see how it readily accepted Roman claims of primacy.
How can you look at what the popes themselves who are church fathers have claimed, and the other Saints as well, and say none of them believed the pope had universal jurisdiction?

I am not saying Rome changed doctrine. I’m saying the popes had to keep pushing their claims of power against emperors. It was a power struggle from Constantine on. Anyone who’s read church history knows as much.

if you would genuinely have your church ruled by a monarch, who holds no ecclesial office, than by a pope, we don’t really have anything else to talk about.
All you did was make some claims without backing them up. Show me something from history, something the church fathers said or preferably a non polemical book, and we can keep talking.
Simply stating “Vatican I is an innovation” and “pope is bad” isn’t going to convince me.

I sincerely hope you ponder more on the dangers of secular emperors take over affairs of the church as a continuation of the pagan office of the caesar, pontifex Maximus. It doesn’t matter how godly they may be, they have no right to universal jurisdiction.
Have some perspective and ask yourself this.
If the emperors had universal jurisdiction over eastern churches, why is it that everyone freaks out when the pope claims to have it?
Why is it that we should let a recently converted pagan have more authority over our church than a bishop who is the successor of Peter?
Why is it that the papacy was the only thing which helped the western church escape the terribly corrupt power of monarchs during the reform papacy?

Until you can provide support for the emperors ruling the church, I’m going to ignore any indignation you have to papal claims of jurisdiction, because you’re perfectly OK with emperors having it but not the pope. That is insincere.

 

The Roman see is what the pope rules over. It does not lose its indefectability because a pope privately holds to heresy. The only way it would lose it is if a pope held to heresy and tried to bind the whole church on it. This would show it’s not protected by the Holy Spirit from error. No contradictions here…

 

As I have posted previously in another thread:

Mat 16:18 And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

"Peter" is a masculine noun in Greek (and in Aramaic/Syriac, too). "Rock" is a feminine noun in Greek (and in Aramaic... some people believe that the people back then mostly spoke Aramaic). Either the "rock" Jesus referred to was not Peter, or else He just referred to Peter as a woman! Which do you suppose it was?

The RCC counts on people not knowing the nuances of the languages during Jesus' day. Such nuances can become lost rather quickly (just look at how rapidly English word meanings change and slang expressions are adopted or dropped).

I believe the "rock" was the fact which Simon Peter had just uttered: the revelatory truth that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God. This was the expression of Peter's faith in Jesus, and it is the building block by which the true church is erected, bit by bit, upon the one-and-only cornerstone of the foundation: Jesus the Christ. Peter's faith was just the first stone laid on top of that cornerston, the first of billions.

Eph 2:19 Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God; And are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone; In whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord: In whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.

Thus the RCC has built their church, not upon the true cornerstone, but upon the first little stone laid upon it (the papal concept).

Peter was, at best, first among equals (the apostles). Peter did not claim that he could speak infallibly, not ever. Nor did he claim to hold any sort of primacy.

 

Is the word “fact” which Simon Peter uttered as you said, a feminine word?

Also, none of this disproves anything. It’s your private interpretation as well as all the fact that it doesn’t matter if it’s peters faith or it’s Peter.
That Rome was the successor of Peter ( or his faith, whichever ) was accepted at the ecumenical councils along with the popes interpretations of Matthew 16:18

 

1) And the Popes continued to feel so pressed to combat the emperor that they literally crowned a created a new 'holy' roman emperor with whom they would squabble well into the Early Modern Era.

2) I don't think that the Queen wields power in the Church of England analagous to that of the pope.

3) Do we have the Byzantine emperor anymore? The Byzantine churches are busy freaking out about the overreach of HAH Bartholomew III right now.

4) The papacy most certainly did no such thing.

 

So the Pope isn't protected from error. The Holy See is protected from error. Which is not what Christ was saying in the much cited text from Matthew. He does not say 'and upon this rock shall I build an infallible office'.

But this is lawyerly nonsense to protect Vatican I. St. Maximos saying that the Roman church is a bastion of orthodoxy does not entail that every 'ex cathedra' statement is protected from error, which statement can be negotiated ad infinitum by lawyers in the Vatican.

 

The papal office is protected from error.
The pope is a person. When he is a private theologian he can have error. When he exercises the papal office and binds the whole church he can’t be in error. This is papal infallibility 101.
Let me suggest that this incredulity at infallibility is not very thought through.
The ecumenical councils are infallible. The writings of the apostles are infallible. I’m sure you’d also say the apostles were infallible when teaching doctrine to Christians, wouldn’t you?
The prophets of the Old Testament were also infallible.
It’s no different with the papacy. I feel like it’s some sort of atheism that drives people to put the too religious-y” and hard to believe stuff in the past so God is just an intellectual belief you have in past history.
I could likewise ridicule orthodox Christian ideals of the Bible being infallible . What, you mean to say the writings of some guy are infallible?
Oh you think Jewish prophets were infallible?
But this is ridiculous of course. We only believe what they said is infallible because they’re proclaiming truth from God.
The papal office is even less grandiose than this. Popes don’t reveal new prophesy or teach new doctrine. They just pass on what has already been revealed.

I’m tired of the double standard for other Christian doctrines but not catholic claim. This also goes for the atheism of some Protestants who have a fear of “ritualism” and anything that seems to religious

 

You aren’t here to be convinced. No one on this Forum is.

It is not possible to go from an “is” to an “ought”, or vice versa. As a matter of history (i.e., the “is”), the papal office developed over time, Peter was not the leader of the post-resurrection church - that role belonged to James - if Peter possessed infallibility Paul seems to have been quite unaware of it, multiple Sees claim descent from Peter, we know from the 4th cent. canons of Serdica that the Papacy at that time had come to possess appellate jurisdiction (which makes no sense if it also possessed ordinary and universal jurisdiction), etc. So if Rome disagreed with Rome, the proper procedure was to appeal from Rome, to Rome?

None of this tells us a blessed thing about what the Papacy was intended to be (i.e., the “ought”). We may read statements attributed to Jesus in the Gospels in a certain way but that doesn’t mean the subsequent history must have conformed to those interpretations (and that’s setting aside just how anachronistic some of those interpretations actually are). And since Roman Catholicism denies the sufficiency of Scripture in matters of faith, one accepts Roman authority by having faith in Roman Catholic tradition, and submits to Roman tradition by trusting in Papal authority. It’s either totally circular or the Reformers had a point after all.

Personally I have very little interest in Catholic vs. Protestant or Catholic vs. Orthodox debates, and hope you do not take my remarks personally. The mainstream versions of each of these positions all presuppose acceptance of a number of premodern, pre-critical assumptions that I find completely untenable and indefensible today, and it’s been some years since I took any of those assumptions seriously. If being Roman Catholic works for you, more power to you. Same goes for being evangelical, or charismatic. None of those approaches “work” for me, however.

 

I think this is basically the issue. (Not to offend anyone) It's kind of what calvinists soteriologically do every time they see the word 'predestinate' in the KJV. They read that and then assume that it means Westminster. Here, the Romans (of today) read anything to the effect of 'the Pope has jurisdiction in the East', and try to qualify it with 'because he is divinely prevented from error when speaking from the throne of Peter.'

 

None of the patristic bishops of Rome claimed to have universal jurisdiction. Literally none. It would be incredible if they did so, as the bishops would tell them where to stuff it. There were a few times when bishops of Rome violated some other bishops and overstepped the bounds of their jurisdiction, and in those times the bishops like Saint Cyprian crushed their initiative and put them in their place, without a murmur from Rome. But then again the Patriarch of Constantinople and the other Patriarchs also violated their bounds from time to time, and they were put in their places as well. The more powerful Archbishops always had the sinful temptation to wield power, but the apostolic constitution of the Church stood in their way. But none of the patriarchs openly and explicitly ever professed to have universal jurisdiction over the entire planet.

As you were shown above, Pope St. Gregory the Great explicitly said that claiming universal jurisdiction is a mark of the antichrist. He literally said that. I understand your point that he believed in a strong Bishop of Rome, fine, but on that specific point, the universal jurisdiction, he manifestly stated that it's the mark of the antichrist.

There is simply no way for you to dance around this. The bishops of Rome didn't claim universal jurisdiction even in the middle ages. Bellarmine writes that the Roman church is like a "perfectly-ordered republic" with various jurisdictions and checks and balances on everyone which to him resembled the mixed-government of the ancient republic. That tells you everything you need to know about the chasm which separates the Roman church of the 1600s, from the catastrophe of the Roman church after Vatican I.

 

Forgive me if you’ve already cited the source or provided the original quotation, but if you haven’t, could you do so here? I had not heard of the comparison to the ancient republics before.
Thanks!

 

Did you read my post above? The one where I asked about how papal infallibility is mechanically different from the prophets of the old testament? May I suggest that this credulity at infallibility is not very well thought through either. I don't even think the Byzantines agree on what conciliar infallibility is. Definitions might be infallible. Canons might be infallible, whatever. But it's not literally inspired scripture. The interpretations are supposed to be infallible tradition, but are not the same thing as revelation and cannot be, because they are supposed to clarify the faith, not add onto it. Ergo, the infallibility applied to the councils is not the same kind of infallibility as the revelation being unveiled through the prophets.

It's like you're not even defining what infallibility is. There's no definition of infallibility that can be conclusively proven from the sources you've cited.

This isn't an argument. Of course God could use the pope in the same way that He used the prophets. I shouldn't believe it just because some bloke online quotes an obscure paragraph from St. Maximos' letter. Do you believe that the Mormon prophet or Mahomet received some kind of dispensation of infallibility? St. Paul does tell us to test all things.

And Papal infallibility was so revealed that they had to articulate this crucial dogma 1900 years after the fact, and it was so well received that still more Germans defected from the Roman hierarchy.

This 'atheism' polemic is an informal fallacy of generalization or reductionism. These are not the same issue at all. Like, AFAIK literally everyone with whom you are talking, save Rexlion, is in a high-church camp. Zwingli or whoever denying the sacraments is not the same thing as denying that the pope, when speaking in his capacity as Vicar of Christ on Earth, cannot promulgate an incorrect doctrine.

 

From the orthodox and the papacy on Peter :

“In recent years exegetes and historians have achieved near unanimity in understanding Simon Peter as “spokesman of the Twelve,” both during and after the public ministry of Jesus.47 This role “is attested in all the primary strata of the Gospel tradition ... and can be seen at significant moments in Jesus’ ministry, including the Transfiguration (Matt. 17:4; Luke 9:33; Mark 9:5), and most famously at Caesarea Philippi.”48 At several points in the gospels it was Peter who asked key questions about purity (Matt. 15:15), temple taxes (Matt. 17:24), forgiveness (Matt. 18:21), and Jesus’ teachings (Luke 12:41), frequently speaking before fully understanding the significance of his words (Matt. 14:28; Mark 8:33; John 13:6–9). Following the resurrection it was Peter who first spoke to the assembly of believers concerning Judas’s replacement (Acts 1:15), and it was he who addressed the crowds gathered in Jerusalem for Pentecost (Acts 2:14–36).
If these instances reflect Peter’s historical role among the Twelve, then scholars believe it is also likely that, as their spokesman, at some point he “made a confession of Jesus in terms of a known Jewish expectation.”49 According to the Synoptics, this declaration of Jesus’ messiahship was a response to a question posed by Jesus during the middle of his public ministry (“But who do you say that I am?”—Matt. 16:15).50 While Matthew details Jesus’ reaction, the pericopes in Mark 8:27–30 and Luke 9:18–21 merely have him command the disciples to silence (“And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him.” Mark 8:30). In John 6:67–69, which is likely “the Johannine parallel to the Synoptic (p.26) scene at Caesarea Philippi,”51 the confession also takes place in the context of a question (“Do you also wish to go away?” John 6:67). Once again it is Simon Peter who answered, confessing Jesus as the “the Holy One of God,” (ὁ ἅγιος τοῦ Θεοῦ). Thus despite differences in language, geography, and timing, all four gospels speak of Peter making a confession of faith during Jesus’ lifetime, multiple attestation being a strong argument in favor of its historicity.”

“However, this does not mean that Matthew’s now famous commissioning scene is completely divorced from history. On the contrary, most scholars argue that Matthew 16:18–19 is rooted in history, albeit in a post-resurrectional setting, and may originally derive from the same tradition of a post-Easter commission to Peter contained in John 21:15–19.61 While (p.28) John kept in its “more
original” or “more primitive” location (“although we cannot, of course, be certain” of this),62 Matthew moved the scene back into the public ministry in
order to meet his own theological needs.63 For John Meier, voicing the majority view, “all three Petrine logia [Matt. 16:18–19; John 21:15–19; Luke 22:32] are post-Easter sayings of the risen Lord, reflecting what different streams of first- century Christianity expected from or saw in Peter.”




what scholar, New Testament or just early church, says that Peter was not the leader?
James was the bishop of the Jerusalem church. This doesn’t mean he wasn’t a spokesman or leader of the 12.
Even orthodox admit this, following cyprians ecclesiology of all bishops being Peter.


What development of the papal office do you think is wrong?
The early popes claimed to be the leaders of the universal church.
Of course you can’t expect the modern day church structure to be there from day one


As to the infallibility of the apostles. Do you not believe that they were infallible in their doctrinal teachings?
Peter considered Paul’s writings to be scripture. Do you think this meant Paul’s writings were fallible to Peter?

There is no other see which claims to be the See of Peter. The fathers at the council of Chalcedon readily proclaimed Peter spoke through Leo, and this was said of another pope as well, I can’t remember which one right now. But it was only ever claimed of popes to have Petrine authority.
This is again attested by scholars and historians. No other see ever claimed power of Peter like Rome did.
And Catholics recognize Antioch and Alexandria as Petrine as well. The argument that Peter also has successors in other churches somehow nullifying the papacy is a modern one.
Sardica was a step in giving the papacy jurisdiction.
It’s unrealistic to expect the church have the papal office defined right away. Consider the fact that the distinction of the monarchical episcopate wasn’t church wide until the middle of the 2nd century. If that took so much time, how can you expect the papal office to be perfectly defined and everyone agree on its role so early on?


Catholics also don’t deny the sufficiency of scripture. We are allowed to believe all doctrines of the faith can be found within scripture.
you just interpret it differently, but this doesn’t mean we deny the sufficiency of scripture.

the Bible isn’t a book which you pick up and interpret outside of the community it has been given to , the church. Personal interpretation is a Protestant individualistic innovation.

 

How much time do you have?