The Deformation of
the New Testament church and Historical Context of the Reformation.
|
• Critical and other contrasts between
the New Testament church and the church of Rome.
• Historical testimony to the
progressive deformation of the church
• The context of the Reformation
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Critical and other contrasts between the New Testament church and
the church of Rome.
It is obvious that the
church (as the body of Christ) of today stands in contrast to the
prima NT church in purity, power and passion, and which saw its unity
under manifest apostles of God. Yet the deformation of the NT church
was progressive, and which finally reached the point which required
the Reformation, which itself was and is not the “work of one day
or two.” (Ezra 10:13)
This reform was and is
far from perfect and complete, and still has things to unlearn from
Catholicism, yet it enabled the greatest modern increase in the
kingdom of God of souls through manifest regeneration.
But while much can be
said about the state of the evangelical church today (and of my need
for Christ-likeness), yet it is Catholicism and the church
of Rome in particular (as the church taking up the most space on the
broad way) that is most manifest as standing in critical and overall
contrast to the NT church as manifested in Scripture. Which church,
1. Was not based
upon the premise of perpetual assured infallibility of office as per
Rome, which has presumed to infallibly declare that she is and will
perpetually be infallible whenever she speaks in accordance with her
infallibly defined (scope and subject-based) formula, which renders
her declaration that she is infallible, to be infallible, as well as
all else she accordingly declares.
2. Never
promised or taught a perpetual assuredly infallible magisterium was
necessary for preservation of truth, including writings to be
established as Scripture, and for assurance of faith, and that
historical descent and being the stewards of Scripture assured that
such had assured infallibility.
3.
Never was a church that manifested the
Lord's supper as being the central means of grace, around which
all else revolved, it being “the source and summit of the Christian
faith” in which “the work of our redemption is accomplished,”
by which one received spiritual life in themselves by consuming human flesh, so that without
which eating one cannot have eternal life (as per RC literalism, of
Jn. 6:53,54).
In contrast to
believing the gospel by which one is regenerated, (Acts 10:43-47;
15:7-9; Eph. 1:13) and desiring the milk (1Pt. 2:2) and then the
“strong meat” (Heb. 5:12-14) of the word of God, being
“nourished” (1Tim. 4:6) by hearing the word of God and letting it
dwell in them, (Col. 3:16) by which word (Scriptures) man is to live
by, (Mt. 4:4) as Christ lived by the Father, (Jn. 6:57) doing His
will being His “meat.” (Jn. 4:34) And with the Lord's supper,
which is only manifestly described once in the life of the church,
focusing
on the church being the body of Christ in showing the Lord
sacrificial death by that communal meal.
5.
Never differentiated between bishops and elders, and with grand
titles ("Most Reverend Eminence," “Very Reverend,”
“Most Illustrious and Most Reverend Lord,” “His Eminence
Cardinal,” “The Most Reverend the Archbishop,” etc.) or made
themselves distinct by their
ostentatious pompous garb. (Matthew
23:5-7) Or were all to be formally called “father” as that
would require them to be spiritual fathers to all (Mt.
23:8-10 may be sen as a form of hyperbole, reproving the love of titles such as
Catholicism examples, and “thinking of men above that which is
written, and instead the Lord emphasizes the One Father of all who
are born of the Spirit, whom He Himself worked to glorify).
6.
Never required clerical celibacy as the norm, (1Tim.
3:17) which presumes all such have that gift, (1Cor. 7:7) or
otherwise manifested that celibacy was the norm among apostles and
pastors, or had vowed to be so. (1Cor. 9:4; Titus 1:5,6)
7.
Never taught that Peter
was the "rock" of Mt.
16:18 upon which the church is built, interpreting Mt. 16:18,
rather than upon the rock of the faith confessed by Peter, thus
Christ Himself. (For
in contrast to Peter, that the LORD Jesus is the Rock (“petra”)
or "stone" (“lithos,” and which denotes a large
rock in Mk. 16:4) upon which the church is built is one of the most
abundantly confirmed doctrines in the Bible (petra: Rm. 9:33; 1Cor.
10:4; 1Pet. 2:8; cf. Lk. 6:48; 1Cor. 3:11; lithos: Mat. 21:42;
Mk.12:10-11; Lk. 20:17-18; Act. 4:11; Rm. 9:33; Eph. 2:20; cf. Dt.
32:4, Is. 28:16) including by Peter himself. (1Pt. 2:4-8) Rome's
current catechism attempts to have Peter himself as the rock as well,
but also affirms: “On the rock of this faith confessed by St
Peter, Christ build his Church,” (pt. 1, sec. 2, cp. 2, para.
424) which understanding some
of the so-called “church
fathers” concur with.)
8. Never taught
or exampled that all the churches were to look to Peter as the bishop
of Rome, as the first of a line of supreme infallible heads reigning over all
the churches, and as having the final determinitive word in questions affecting the
whole Church.
9.
Never recorded or taught any apostolic successors (like for James:
Acts 12:1,2)
after Judas who was to maintain the original 12 apostes (Rv.
21:14) nor elected any apostolic successors by
voting, versus casting lots (no politics). (Acts
1:15ff)
10.
Never recorded or manifested (not by conjecture) sprinkling or
baptism without repentant personal faith, that being the stated
requirement for baptism. (Acts
2:38; 8:36-38)
11.
Never preached a gospel of salvation which begins with becoming good
enough inside (formally justified due to infused interior charity),
via sprinkling (RC "baptism") in recognition of proxy faith, and which
thus usually ends with becoming good enough again to enter Heaven via suffering
in
purgatory, commencing at death.
12.
Never supported or made laws that restricted
personal reading of Scripture by laity (contrary to Chrysostom),
if able and available, sometimes even outlawing it when it was.
14. Never taught
that the deity Muslims worship (who is not as an "unknown god") is the
same as theirs.
15. Never had a
separate class of believers called “saints.”
16.
Never prayed
to anyone in Heaven but the Lord, or were instructed to (i.e.
"our Mother who art in Heaven") who were able to hear and respond
to virtually unlimited prayers addressed to them (a uniquely Divine attribute in Scripture).
17.
Never recorded a women who never sinned, and was a perpetual virgin
despite being married (contrary to the normal description of
marriage, as in leaving and
sexually cleaving) and who would be bodily assumed to Heaven and
exalted
(officially or with implicit sanction) as
• an almost almighty
demigoddess to whom "Jesus owes His Precious Blood" to,
• whose [Mary] merits
we are saved by,
• who "had to
suffer, as He did, all the consequences of sin,"
• and was bodily
assumed into Heaven, which is a fact (unsubstantiated in Scripture or
even early Tradition) because the Roman church says it is, and "was
elevated to a certain affinity with the Heavenly Father,"
• and whose power now
"is all but unlimited,"
• for indeed she
"seems to have the same power as God,"
• "surpassing in
power all the angels and saints in Heaven,"
• so that "the
Holy Spirit acts only by the Most Blessed Virgin, his Spouse."
• and that “sometimes
salvation is quicker if we remember Mary's name then if we invoked
the name of the Lord Jesus,"
• for indeed saints
have "but one advocate," and that is Mary, who "alone
art truly loving and solicitous for our salvation,"
• Moreover, "there
is no grace which Mary cannot dispose of as her own, which is not
given to her for this purpose,"
• and who has
"authority over the angels and the blessed in heaven,"
• including
"assigning to saints the thrones made vacant by the apostate
angels,"
• whom the good
angels "unceasingly call out to," greeting her "countless
times each day with 'Hail, Mary,' while prostrating themselves before
her, begging her as a favour to honour them with one of her
requests,"
• and who (obviously)
cannot "be honored to excess,"
•
and
who is (obviously) the glory of Catholic people, whose "honor
and dignity surpass the whole of creation." Sources
and
more
.
►
Historical testimony to the progressive deformation of the
church
In the past Rome has
made claims such as, “The Roman Church...by
the will of Christ obtains primacy of jurisdiction over all other
Churches. These declarations were preceded by the consent of
antiquity which ever acknowledged, without the slightest doubt or
hesitation, the Bishops of Rome, and revered them, as the legitimate
successors of St. Peter.” (Satis
Cognitum, encyclical of Pope Leo XII, June 29, 1896)
And,
“Only
faith can recognize that the Church possesses these properties from
her divine source. But their historical manifestations are signs that
also speak clearly to human reason. As the First Vatican Council
noted, the "Church herself, with her marvelous propagation,
eminent holiness, and inexhaustible fruitfulness in everything good,
her catholic unity and invincible stability, is a great and perpetual
motive of credibility and an irrefutable witness of her divine
mission.” (CCC 812;
http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p123a9p3.htm)
However,
both Catholic scholarship and research from without provides
evidence contrary to such propaganda, and instead supplies
testimony to the progressive deformation of the church, and contrary
to the premise of a perpetuated
assuredly infallible (if conditional) Petrine papacy, from which her
authority flows.
• Paul Johnson,
educated at the Jesuit independent school Stonyhurst College, and at
Magdalen College, Oxford, author of over 40 books and a conservative
popular historian, finds,
The
Church was now a great and numerous force in the empire, attracting
men of wealth and high education, inevitably, then, there occurred a
change of emphasis from purely practical development in response to
need, to the deliberate thinking out of policy. This expressed itself
in two ways: the attempt to turn Christianity into a philosophical
and political system, and the development of controlling devices to
prevent this intellectualization of the faith from destroying it. The
twin process began to operate in the early and middle decades of the
third century, with Origen epitomizing the first element and Cyprian
the second.
The
effect of Origen’s work was to create a new science, biblical
theology, whereby every sentence in the scriptures was systematically
explored for hidden [much prone to metaphorical] meanings, different
layers of meanings, allegory and so forth.....
Cyprian
[c. 200 – September 14, 258] came from a wealthy family with a
tradition of public service to the empire; within two years of his
conversion he was made a bishop. He had to face the practical
problems of persecution, survival and defence against attack. His
solution was to gather together the developing threads of
ecclesiastical order and authority and weave them into a tight system
of absolute control...the confession of faith, even the Bible itself
lost their meaning if used outside the Church.
With
Cyprian, then, the freedom preached by Paul and based on the power of
Christian truth was removed from the ordinary members of the Church,
it was retained only by the bishops, through whom the Holy Spirit
still worked, who were collectively delegated to represent the
totality of Church members...With Bishop Cyprian, the analogy with
secular government came to seem very close. But of course it lacked
one element: the ‘emperor figure’ or supreme priest...
[Peter according to
Cyprian was] the beneficiary of the famous
‘rock and keys’ text in Matthew. There is no evidence that Rome
exploited this text to assert its primacy before about 250 - and
then...Paul was eliminated from any connection with the Rome
episcopate and the office was firmly attached to Peter alone...
...There
was in consequence a loss of spirituality or, as Paul would have put
it, of freedom... -(A History of Christianity, by Paul Johnson, pp.
51
-61,63. transcribed using OCR software)
Roman church’s past
was also being reinvented for polemical purposes.
•
Johnson also writes,
Eusebius
presents the lists as evidence that orthodoxy had a continuous
tradition from the earliest times in all the great Episcopal sees and
that all the heretical movements were subsequent aberrations from the
mainline of Christianity.
Looking
behind the lists, however, a different picture emerges. In Edessa, on
the edge of the Syrian desert, the proofs of the early establishment
of Christianity were forgeries, almost certainly manufactured under
Bishop Kune, the first orthodox Bishop, and actually a contemporary
of Eusebius...
Orthodoxy
was not established [In Egypt] until the time of Bishop Demetrius,
189-231, who set up a number of other sees and manufactured a
genealogical tree for his own bishopric of Alexandria, which traces
the foundation through ten mythical predecessors back to Mark, and so
to Peter and Jesus...
Even
in Antioch, where both Peter and Paul had been active, there seems to
have been confusion until the end of the second century. Antioch
completely lost their list...When Eusebius’s chief source for his
Episcopal lists, Julius Africanus, tried to compile one for Antioch,
he found only six names to cover the same period of time as twelve in
Rome and ten in Alexandria.
(“A History of Christianity,” pgs
53ff;
http://reformation500.com/2014/01/17/historical-literature-on-the-earliest-papacy)
• English medievalist
and critical Catholic researcher Roger J. H. Collins, writing of the
Symmachan forgeries”, describes these “pro-Roman”
“enhancements” to history:
So
too would the spurious historical texts written anonymously or
ascribed to earlier authors that are known collectively as the
Symmachan forgeries. This was the first occasion on which the Roman
church had revisited its own history, in particular the third and
fourth centuries, in search of precedents That these were largely
invented does not negate the significance of the process...Some of
the periods in question, such as the pontificates of Sylvester and
Liberius (352-366), were already being seen more through the prism of
legend than that of history, and in the Middle Ages texts were often
forged because their authors were convinced of the truth of what they
contained. Their faked documents provided tangible evidence of what
was already believed true...
It
is no coincidence that the first systematic works of papal history
appear at the very time the Roman church’s past was being
reinvented for polemical purposes. (Collins,
“Keepers of the Keys of Heaven, A History of the Papacy” pp
80-82).
•
Klaus Schatz [Jesuit Father theologian, professor of church
history at the St. George’s Philosophical and Theological School in
Frankfurt] in his work, “Papal Primacy ,” pp. 1-4, finds:
“New
Testament scholars agree..., The further question whether there was
any notion of an enduring office beyond Peter’s lifetime, if posed
in purely historical terms, should probably be answered in the
negative.
That
is, if we ask whether the historical Jesus, in commissioning
Peter, expected him to have successors, or whether the authority of
the Gospel of Matthew, writing after Peter’s death, was aware that
Peter and his commission survived in the leaders of the Roman
community who succeeded him, the answer in both cases is probably
'no.”
“....that
does not mean that the figure and the commission of the Peter of the
New Testament did not encompass the possibility, if it is projected
into a Church enduring for centuries and concerned in some way to to
secure its ties to its apostolic origins and to Jesus himself.
If
we ask in addition whether the primitive church was aware, after
Peter’s death, that his authority had passed to the next bishop of
Rome, or in other words that the head of the community at Rome was
now the successor of Peter, the Church’s rock and hence the subject
of the promise in Matthew 16:18-19, the question, put in those terms,
must certainly be given a negative answer.” (page 1-2)
[Schatz goes on to
express that he does not doubt Peter was martyred in Rome, and that
Christians in the 2nd century were convinced that Vatican Hill had
something to do with Peter's grave.]
"Nevertheless,
concrete claims of a primacy over the whole church cannot be
inferred from this conviction. If one had asked a Christian in the
year 100, 200, or even 300 whether the bishop of Rome was the head of
all Christians, or whether there was a supreme bishop over all the
other bishops and having the last word in questions affecting the
whole Church, he or she would certainly have said no." (page 3,
top)
[Lacking
such support for the modern concept of the primacy of the church of
Rome with its papal jurisdiction, Schatz concludes that, “Therefore
we must set aside from the outset any question such as 'was there a
primacy in our sense of the word at that time?” Schatz. therefore
goes on to seek support for that as a development.]
“We
probably cannot say for certain that there was a bishop of Rome [in
95 AD]. It is likely that the Roman church was governed by a group of
presbyters from whom there very quickly emerged a presider or ‘first
among equals’ whose name was remembered and who was subsequently
described as ‘bishop’ after the mid-second century.” (Schatz
4).
Schatz additionally
states,
Cyprian
regarded every bishop as the successor of Peter, holder of the keys
to the kingdom of heaven and possessor of the power to bind and
loose. For him, Peter embodied the original unity of the Church and
the episcopal office, but in principle these were also present in
every bishop. For Cyprian, responsibility for the whole Church and
the solidarity of all bishops could also, if necessary, be turned
against Rome." — Papal Primacy [Collegeville, Minnesota: The
Liturgical Press, 1996], p. 20)
•
Roman Catholic scholar William La Due (taught canon law at St.
Francis Seminary and the Catholic University of America) on Cyprian:
....those
who see in The Unity of the Catholic Church, in the light of his
entire episcopal life, an articulation of the Roman primacy - as we
have come to know it, or even as it has evolved especially from the
latter fourth century on - are reading a meaning into Cyprian which
is not there." (The Chair of Saint Peter: A
History of the Papacy [Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1999], p. 39
•
Catholic theologian and a Jesuit priest Francis Sullivan, in his work
From Apostles to Bishops (New York: The Newman Press), examines
possible mentions of “succession” from the first three centuries,
and concludes from that study that,
“the
episcopate [development of bishops] is a the fruit of a post New
Testament development,” and cannot concur with those (interacting
with Jones) who see little reason to doubt the notion that there was
a single bishop in Rome through the middle of the second century:
Hence
I stand with the majority of scholars who agree that one does not
find evidence in the New Testament to support the theory that the
apostles or their coworkers left [just] one person as “bishop” in
charge of each local church...
As
the reader will recall, I have expressed agreement with the consensus
of scholars that available evidence indicates that the church of Rome
was led by a college of presbyters, rather than a single bishop, for
at least several decades of the second century...
Hence
I cannot agree with Jones's judgment that there seems little reason
to doubt the presence of a bishop in Rome already in the first
century.
“...the
evidence both from the New Testament and from such writings as I
Clement, the Letter of Polycarp to the Philippians and The Shepherd
of Hennas favors the view that initially the presbyters in each
church, as a college, possessed all the powers needed for effective
ministry. This would mean that the apostles handed on what was
transmissible of their mandate as an undifferentiated whole, in which
the powers that would eventually be seen as episcopal were not yet
distinguished from the rest. Hence, the development of the episcopate
would have meant the differentiation of ministerial powers that had
previously existed in an undifferentiated state and the consequent
reservation to the bishop of certain of the powers previously held
collegially by the presbyters. — Francis Sullivan, in his work From
Apostles to Bishops , pp. 221,222,224
The research of
esteemed historian Peter Lampe* (Lutheran) also weighs against Rome:
The
picture that finally emerges from Lampe’s analysis of surviving
evidence is one he names ‘the fractionation of Roman Christianity’
(pp. 357–408). Not until the second half of the second century,
under Anicetus, do we find compelling evidence for a monarchical
episcopacy, and when it emerges, it is to manage relief shipments to
dispersed Christians as well as social aid for the Roman poor (pp.
403–4). Before this period Roman Christians were ‘fractionated’
amongst dispersed house/tenement churches, each presided over by its
own presbyter–bishop. This accounts for the evidence of social and
theological diversity in second-century Roman Christianity, evidence
of a degree of tolerance of theologically disparate groups without a
single authority to regulate belief and practice, and the relatively
late appearance of unambiguous representation of a single bishop over
Rome. (Review
of “Christians at Rome in the First Two Centuries,” by Peter
Lampe in Oxford’s Journal of Theological Studies, 2005)
(*Peter
Lampe is a German Lutheran minister and theologian and Professor of
New Testament Studies at the University of Heidelberg, whose work,
“From Paul to Valentinus: Christians at Rome in the First Two
Centuries,” was written in 1987 and translated to English in 2003.
The Catholic historian Eamon Duffy (Irish Professor of
the History of Christianity at the University of Cambridge, and
former President of Magdalene College), said “all modern discussion
of the issues must now start from the exhaustive and persuasive
analysis by Peter Lampe” — Saints and Sinners,” “A History of
the Popes,” Yale, 1997, 2001, pg. 421).
•
Roman
Catholic [if liberal and critical] Garry Wills, Professor of History
Emeritus, Northwestern U., author of “Why i am a Catholic,”
states,
"The
idea that Peter was given some special power that could be handed on
to a successor runs into the problem that he had no successor. The
idea that there is an "apostolic succession" to Peter's
fictional episcopacy did not arise for several centuries, at which
time Peter and others were retrospectively called bishops of Rome, to
create an imagined succession. Even so, there has not been an
unbroken chain of popes. Two and three claimants existed at times,
and when there were three of them each excommunicating the other two,
they all had to be dethroned and the Council of Carthage started the
whole thing over again in 1417." — WHAT JESUS
MEANT, p. 81
• American
Roman Catholic priest and Biblical scholar Raymond Brown (twice
appointed to Pontifical Biblical Commission), finds,
“The
claims of various sees to descend from particular members of the
Twelve are highly dubious. It is interesting that the most serious of
these is the claim of the bishops of Rome to descend from Peter, the
one member of the Twelve who was almost a missionary apostle in the
Pauline sense – a confirmation of our contention that whatever
succession there was from apostleship to episcopate, it was primarily
in reference to the Puauline tyupe of apostleship, not that of the
Twelve.” (“Priest and Bishop, Biblical
Reflections,” Nihil Obstat, Imprimatur, 1970, pg 72.)
Thus while more will
follow, both the idea of the church looking for a supreme exalted
infallible pope in Rome, as well as successors of this Peter is
contrary to historical evidence. Yet Catholic theology makes denial
of her papacy into a denial of the authority of the church. But the
reality is that church of Rome is an invisible church in Scripture.
Catholics thus try to
argue that the reason for the cloaking of this papacy is due to it
not being contested, likening it to the doctrine of the Trinity, as
Newman does, yet in so doing he admits what before would be
considered heretical :
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. . . . St. Peter’s prerogative would
remain a mere letter, till the complication of ecclesiastical matters
became the cause of ascertaining it. . . . 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….there was no formal acknowledgment
of the doctrine of the Trinity till the Fourth [century]. (Essay on
the Development of Doctrine, Notre Dame edition, pp. 165-67).
But which argument is
specious. For it is clear that God is infallible, almighty and
eternal by nature, and that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit
are explicitly and implicitly referred to as God in word and in deed,
with
Christ
especially
having uniquely Divine attributes, glory and titles ascribed to Him,
even though the Trinity was only later precisely and formally
formulated as a doctrine in the NT.
In contrast, the manner
of corporate leadership of the people of God in Scripture has always
been made manifest, and while Peter is manifest as being the
street-level leader among brethren, and the first to use the “keys”
to the kingdom of God, that being the gospel, and who exercised a
general pastoral role, but who could fail, yet nowhere is he
presented as being the supreme exalted infallible head whom the
church looked as such, much less in Rome. Nor is there any manifest
successor for any apostle after Judas, or preparations for one, much
allowance for legitimate successors being men who would not even meet
the qualifications for being a church member, let alone a supreme
head. See here on
The
Peter of Scripture versus that of Rome.
Further deformation of
the church is seen under Damasus 1 (366-384) who began his reign by
employing a gang of thugs in seeking to secure his chair, which
carried out a three-day massacre of his rivals supporters. Yet true
to form, Rome made him a "saint."
•
Upon Pope Liberius's death September 24 A.D. 366, violent disorders
broke out over the choice of a successor. A group who had remained
consistently loyal to Liberius immediately elected his deacon Ursinus
in the Julian basilica and had him consecrated Bishop, but the rival
faction of Felix's adherence elected Damasus, who did not hesitate to
consolidate his claim by hiring a gang of thugs, storming the Julian
Basilica in carrying out a three-day massacre of the Ursinians.
On
Sunday, October 1 his partisans seized the Lateran Basilica, and he
was there consecrated. He then sought the help of the city prefect
(the first occasion of a Pope in enlisting the civil power against
his adversaries), and he promptly expelled Ursinus and his followers
from Rome. Mob violence continued until October 26, when Damasus's
men attacked the Liberian Basilica, where the Ursinians had sought
refuge; the pagan historian Ammianus Marcellinus reports that they
left 137 dead on the field. Damasus was now secure on his throne; but
the bishops of Italy were shocked by the reports they received, and
his moral authority was weakened for several years....
Damasus
was indefatigable in promoting the Roman primacy, frequently
referring to Rome as 'the apostolic see' and ruling that the test of
a creed's orthodoxy was its endorsement by the Pope.... This [false
claim to] succession gave him a unique [presumptuous claim to]
judicial power to bind and loose, and the assurance of this infused
all his rulings on church discipline. — Kelly, J. N. D. (1989). The
Oxford Dictionary of Popes. USA: Oxford University Press. pp. 32
,34;
•
Eamon Duffy (Pontifical Historical Commission, Professor of
the History of Christianity at the University of Cambridge, and
former President of Magdalene College) states: “Self-consciously,
the popes
began to model their actions and their style as Christian leaders on
the procedures of the Roman state”. — Eamon
Duffy notes (“Saints and Sinners”, ©2001 edition)
•
Eastern Orthodox scholarship also adds voice to this,
It
is illuminating to understand that even some very illustrious Roman
Catholic theologians today recognize that the Papacy as it now exists
is of late origin. W. DeVries admits, “...throughout the first ten
centuries Rome never claimed to have been granted its preferred
position of jurisdiction as an explicit privilege” (Orthodoxy,
Roman Catholicism and Anglicanism by Methodios Fouyas, p. 70). Avery
Dulles considers the development of the Papacy to be an historical
accident. “The strong centralization in modern Catholicism is due
to historical accident. It has been shaped in part by the homogeneous
culture of medieval Europe and by the dominance of Rome, with its
rich heritage of classical culture and legal organization” (Models
of the Church by Avery Dulles, p. 200)
http://www.orthodoxresearchinstitute.org/articles/ecumenical/maxwell_peter.htm
Pope
Gregory was concerned that the Patriarch of Constantinople, St. John
the Faster, had accepted the title of Ecumenical (or Universal)
Patriarch. He condemned any such title for the following reasons:
First, anyone who would use such a title would have fallen into pride,
equal to the anti-Christ. He wrote: “I say it without the least
hesitation, whoever calls himself the universal bishop, or desires this
title, is by his pride, the precursor of anti-Christ, because he thus
attempts to raise himself above the others. The error into which he
falls springs from pride equal to that of anti-Christ; for as that
wicked one wished to be regarded as exalted above other men, like a god,
so likewise whoever would call himself sole bishop exalteth himself
above others” (Ibid., 226).
Second,
St. Gregory believed that such a title would be perilous to the Church.
“It cannot be denied that if any one bishop be called universal, all
the Church crumbles if that universal one fall” (Ibid., p. 223).
It
is illuminating to understand that even some very illustrious Roman
Catholic theologians today recognize that the Papacy as it now exists is
of late origin. W. DeVries admits,
“...throughout the first ten
centuries Rome never claimed to have been granted its preferred position
of jurisdiction as an explicit privilege” (Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism
and Anglicanism by Methodios Fouyas, p. 70).
Avery Dulles considers the development of the Papacy to be an
historical accident. “The strong centralization in modern Catholicism is
due to historical accident. It has been shaped in part by the
homogeneous culture of medieval Europe and by the dominance of Rome,
with its rich heritage of classical culture and legal organization”
(Models of the Church by Avery Dulles, p. 200)
http://www.orthodoxresearchinstitute.org/articles/ecumenical/maxwell_peter.htm
Also,
Archbishop Roland Minnerath, who was a
contributor to the Vatican’s 1989 Historical and Theological
Symposium, which was directed by the Vatican’s Pontifical
Committee for Historical Sciences, at the request of the then
Cardinal Ratzinger’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, on
the theme: “The Primacy of the Bishop of Rome in the First
Millennium: Research and Evidence,” states,
At
the heart of the estrangement that progressively arose between East
and West, there may be a historical misunderstanding. The East never
shared the Petrine theology as elaborated in the West. It never
accepted that the protos in the universal church could claim to be
the unique successor or vicar of Peter. So the East assumed that the
synodal constitution of the church would be jeopardized by the very
existence of a Petrine office with potentially universal competencies
in the government of the church. (in How Can
the Petrine Ministry Be a Service to the Unity of the Universal
Church? James F. Puglisi, Editor, Grand Rapids, MI and Cambridge,
U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, ©2010, pgs. 34-48).
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2011/06/archbishop-says-eastern-orthodox-never.html
Moreover,
• The
sixth century found Rome sunk too low by war and pestilence for many
churches to be built; but at this time took place the transformation
of ancient buildings into Christian shrines. Instead of despising the
relics of paganism, the Roman priesthood prudently gathered to
themselves all that could be adopted from the old world. Gregorovius
remarks that the Christian religion had grown up side by side with
the empire, which this new power was ready to replace when the
Emperor withdrew to the East.
The
Bishop of Rome assumed the position of Ponlifex Maximus, priest and
temporal ruler in one, and the workings of this so-called spiritual
kingdom, with bishops as senators, and priests as leaders of the
army, followed on much the same lines as the empire. The analogy was
more complete when monasteries were founded and provinces were won
and governed by the Church. -
Welbore St. Clair Baddeley, Lina Duff Gordon, “Rome and its story”
p. 176
"We are
told in various ways by Eusebius [Note 16], that Constantine, in
order to recommend the new religion to the heathen, transferred into
it the outward ornaments to which they had been accustomed in their
own. It is not necessary to go into a subject which the diligence of
Protestant writers has made familiar to most of us. The use of
temples, and these dedicated to particular saints, and ornamented on
occasions with branches of trees; incense, lamps, and candles; votive
offerings on recovery from illness; holy water; asylums; holydays and
seasons, use of calendars, processions, blessings on the fields;
sacerdotal vestments, the tonsure, the ring in marriage, turning to
the East, images at a later date, perhaps the ecclesiastical chant,
and the Kyrie Eleison [Note 17], are all of pagan origin, and
sanctified by their adoption into the Church. {374}
Greeks dedicate
images to devils, and call them gods; but we to True God Incarnate,
and to God's servants and friends, who drive away the troops of
devils." [Note 18] Again, "As the holy Fathers overthrew
the temples and shrines of the devils, and raised in their places
shrines in the {377} names of Saints and we worship them, so also
they overthrew the images of the devils, and in their stead raised
images of Christ, and God's Mother, and the Saints. And under the Old
Covenant, Israel neither raised temples in the name of men, nor was
memory of man made a festival; for, as yet, man's nature was under a
curse, and death was condemnation, and therefore was lamented, and a
corpse was reckoned unclean and he who touched it; but now that the
Godhead has been combined with our nature, as some life-giving and
saving medicine, our nature has been glorified and is trans-elemented
into incorruption. Wherefore the death of Saints is made a feast, and
temples are raised to them, and Images are painted ... - (Chapter 8.
Application of the Third Note of a True Development—Assimilative
Power, John Henry Newman, a cardinal by Pope Leo III in 1879;
http://www.newmanreader.org/works/development/chapter8.html)
Then you had those
times it seems so many RCs seem to long for.
•
...in the
1180s, the Church began to panic at the spread of heresy, and
thereafter it took the lead from the State, though it maintained the
legal fiction that convicted and unrepentant heretics were merely
'deprived of the protection of the Church', which was (as they termed
it) 'relaxed', the civil power then being free to burn them without
committing mortal sin. Relaxation was accompanied by a formal plea
for mercy; in fact this was meaningless, and the individual civil
officer (sheriffs and so forth) had no choice but to burn, since
otherwise he was denounced as a 'defender of heretics', and plunged
into the perils of the system himself. (Paul
Johnson, History of Christianity, © 1976 Athenium, p. 253)
• Canons of the
Ecumenical Fourth Lateran Council, 1215:
Secular authorities, whatever office they may hold, shall be
admonished and induced and if necessary compelled by ecclesiastical
censure, that as they wish to be esteemed and numbered among the
faithful, so for the defense of the faith they ought publicly to take
an oath that they will strive in good faith and to the best of their
ability to exterminate in the territories subject to their
jurisdiction all heretics pointed out by the Church; so that whenever
anyone shall have assumed authority, whether spiritual or temporal,
let him be bound to confirm this decree by oath.
But
if a temporal ruler, after having been requested and admonished by
the Church, should neglect to cleanse his territory of this heretical
foulness, let him be excommunicated by the metropolitan and the other
bishops of the province. If he refuses to make satisfaction within a
year, let the matter be made known to the supreme pontiff, that he
may declare the ruler’s vassals absolved from their allegiance and
may offer the territory to be ruled lay Catholics, who on the
extermination of the heretics may possess it without hindrance and
preserve it in the purity of faith; the right, however, of the chief
ruler is to be respected as long as he offers no obstacle in this
matter and permits freedom of
action.(http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/lateran4.asp)
More
. ►
The context of
the Reformation:
In
this lecture I want to talk about the causes of the Reformation. This
is a rather standard approach to the Reformation because it is
admitted by all that the Reformation did not just happen or come like
a bolt from the blue...Part of the
tragedy of the Reformation is that the Church before 1517 was unable
to reform itself or to set in motion events or changes that would
have led to a reform in the Church that would have satisfied its
members and really affected change....
It
is possible to go back deep into the Middle Ages when enumerating or
toting up the causes of the Reformation. I would like to start simply
with the fourteenth century....
The
first thing to note is that in the fourteenth century there was a
period of approximately seventy years, from 1309 to 1377, when the
pope was not living or residing in Rome...In the midst of the pope
living outside of the Italian peninsula, outside of Rome, there
occurred one of those events in European history that mark an age
forever, and that was the infamous Black Death...Not too long after
the Black Death there occurred something that was far worse than the
popes living in Avignon... they proceeded to elect a counter-pope in
1378 to the pope who was then living in Rome. This counter-pope was
French. He went back to Avignon. The man already resident now in Rome
stayed in Rome, and Christendom now had the spectacle of not one pope
living where he shouldn't have been, but of two popes each claiming
to be the rightful pope, one living in Avignon, the other in Rome.
To...Boniface
IX, goes the unenviable distinction of probably having begun the
papal sale of offices...
1447
is usually taken as the year that began or marked the appearance of
what we call the Renaissance Papacy, or the Renaissance Popes. The
Italian Renaissance was in full swing at this time, and when we speak
of the Renaissance Popes what we mean more than anything else is that
these popes were more men of culture or rulers than popes...Sixtus IV
was completely a worldling. He is best known perhaps for the chapel
that he built which was later decorated by Michelangelo, the Sistine
Chapel. His successor Innocent VIII had an illegitimate family.
Alexander VI, who was Spanish, was perhaps the worst of them all. He
had many illegitimate children, but he was a good political
candidate. But his reign as pope did more to weaken the moral
prestige of the papacy than almost anything imaginable...
And
if we go to the clergy, to what we can call the lower clergy or the
ordinary priests, we can say that one vice that many of them had was
immorality. Many of them had women that they kept in their rectories
by whom they had children, so they had families to support. —
Maurice W. Sheehan, O.F.M. Cap., Lecture 2:
Prelude-Causes, Attempts at Reform to 1537; International Catholic
University http://home.comcast.net/~icuweb/c01802.htm
• The
Avignon Papacy (1309-76) relocated the throne to France and was
followed by the Western Schism (1378-1417), with three rival popes
excommunicating each other and their sees. Referring to the schism of
the 14th and 15th centuries, Cardinal Ratzinger observed,
"For
nearly half a century, the Church was split into two or three
obediences that excommunicated one another, so that every Catholic
lived under excommunication by one pope or another, and, in the last
analysis, no one could say with certainty which of the contenders had
right on his side. The Church no longer offered certainty of
salvation; she had become questionable in her whole objective
form--the true Church, the true pledge of salvation, had to be sought
outside the institution. It is against this background of a
profoundly shaken ecclesial consciousness that we are to understand
that Luther, in the conflict between his search for salvation and the
tradition of the Church, ultimately came to experience the Church,
not as the guarantor, but as the adversary of salvation.
(Joseph
Cardinal Ratzinger, head of the Sacred Congregation of the Doctrine
of the Faith for the Church of Rome, “Principles of Catholic
Theology,” trans. by Sister Mary Frances McCarthy, S.N.D. (San
Francisco: Ignatius, 1989) p.196).
http://www.whitehorseinn.org/blog/2012/06/13/whos-in-charge-here-the-illusions-of-church-infallibility/)
•
Joseph Lortz, German Roman Catholic theologian:
“The
real significance of the Western Schism rests in the fact that for
decades there was an almost universal uncertainty about where the
true pope and the true Church were to be found. For several decades,
both popes had excommunicated each other and his followers; thus all
Christendom found itself under sentence of excommunication by at
least one of the contenders. Both popes referred to their rival
claimant as the Antichrist, and to the Masses celebrated by them as
idolatry. It seemed impossible to do anything about this scandalous
situation, despite sharp protests from all sides, and despite the
radical impossibility of having two valid popes at the same time.
Time and time again, the petty selfishness of the contenders blocked
any solution...”
“The
significance of the break-up of medieval unity in the thirteenth
century, but even more during the Avignon period, is evident in the
most distinctive historical consequence of the Avignon Papacy: the
Great Western Schism. The real meaning of this event may not be
immediately apparent. It can be somewhat superficially described as a
period when there were two popes, each with his own Curia, one
residing in Rome, the other in Avignon.”
“The
real significance of the Western Schism rests in the fact that for
decades there was an almost universal uncertainty about where the
true pope and the true Church were to be found. For several decades,
both popes had excommunicated each other and his followers; thus all
Christendom found itself under sentence of excommunication by at
least one of the contenders. Both popes referred to their rival
claimant as the Antichrist, and to the Masses celebrated by them as
idolatry. It seemed impossible to do anything about this scandalous
situation, despite sharp protests from all sides, and despite the
radical impossibility of having two valid popes at the same time.
Time and time again, the petty selfishness of the contenders blocked
any solution...”
“When
Luther asserted that the pope of Rome was not the true successor of
Saint Peter and that the Church could do without the Papacy, in his
mind and in their essence these were new doctrines, but the
distinctive element in them was not new and thus they struck a
sympathetic resonance in the minds of many. Long before the
Reformation itself, the unity of the Christian Church in the West had
been severely undermined.” ("The
Reformation: A Problem for Today” (Maryland: The Newman Press,
1964), “The Causes of the Reformation," pp. 35-37; .
http://beggarsallreformation.blogspot.com/2011/10/roman-catholic-scholar-look-at-causes.html
)
• Catholic
Encyclopedia>Council of Constance:
“The
Western Schism was thus at an end, after nearly forty years of
disastrous life; one pope (Gregory XII) had voluntarily abdicated;
another (John XXIII) had been suspended and then deposed, but had
submitted in canonical form; the third claimant (Benedict XIII) was
cut off from the body of the Church, "a pope without a Church, a
shepherd without a flock" (Hergenröther-Kirsch). It had come
about that, whichever of the three claimants of the papacy was the
legitimate successor of Peter, there reigned throughout the Church a
universal uncertainty and an intolerable confusion, so that saints
and scholars and upright souls were to be found in all three
obediences. On the principle that a doubtful pope is no pope, the
Apostolic See appeared really vacant, and under the circumstances
could not possibly be otherwise filled than by the action of a
general council.”
(http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04288a.htm)
• Cardinal
Bellarmine:
"Some
years before the rise of the Lutheran and Calvinistic heresy,
according to the testimony of those who were then alive, there was
almost an entire abandonment of equity in ecclesiastical judgments;
in morals, no discipline; in sacred literature, no erudition; in
divine things, no reverence; religion was almost extinct. (Concio
XXVIII. Opp. Vi. 296- Colon 1617, in “A
History of the Articles of Religion,” by Charles Hardwick, Cp.
1, p. 10,)
•
Erasmus,
in his new edition of the “Enchiridion:
“What
man of real piety does not perceive with sighs that this is far the
most corrupt of all ages? When did iniquity abound with more
licentiousness? When was charity so cold?” (“The
Evolution of the English Bible: A Historical Sketch of the
Successive,” p. 132 by Henry William Hamilton-Hoare)
• Catholic historian
Paul Johnson additionally described the existing social situation
among the clergy at the time of the Reformation:
“Probably
as many as half the men in orders had ‘wives’ and families.
Behind all the New Learning and the theological debates, clerical
celibacy was, in its own way, the biggest single issue at the
Reformation. It was a great social problem and, other factors being
equal, it tended to tip the balance in favour of reform. As a rule,
the only hope for a child of a priest was to go into the Church
himself, thus unwillingly or with no great enthusiasm, taking vows
which he might subsequently regret: the evil tended to perpetuate
itself.” (History of Christianity, pgs 269-270)
• In the summer of
1536, Pope Paul III appointed Cardinals Contarini and Cafara and a
commission to study church Reform. The report of this commission, the
Consilium de emendanda ecclesiae, was completed in March 1537.
The final paragraphs deal with the corruptions of Renaissance Rome
itself:
“the
swarm of sordid and ignorant priests in the city, the harlots who are
followed around by clerics and by the noble members of the cardinals’
households …”
“The
immediate effects of the Consilium fell far below the hopes of its
authors and its very frankness hampered its public use. … the more
noticeably pious prelates [note: this the “noticeably pious”
clergy] had no longer to tolerate the open cynicism of the Medicean
period, and when moral lapses by clerics came to light, pains were
now taken to hush them up as matters of grievous scandal.” (G.
Dickens, “The Counter Reformation,” pp. 100,102)
In the same candid
spirit is the following statement of de Mézeray, the historiographer
of France: [Abrege’ Chronol. VIII. 691, seqq. a Paris, 1681]
“As
the heads of the Church paid no regard to the maintenance of
discipline, the vices and excesses of the ecclesiastics grew up to
the highest pitch, and were so public and universally exposed as to
excite against them the hatred and contempt of the people. We cannot
repeat without a blush the usury, the avarice, the gluttony, the
universal dissoluteness of the priests of this period, the licence
and debauchery of the monks, the pride and extravagance of the
prelates, and the shameful indolence, ignorance and superstition
pervading the whole body .... These were not, I confess, new
scandals: I should rather say that the barbarism and ignorance of
preceding centuries, in some sort, concealed such vices; but,, on the
subsequent revival of the light of learning, the spots which I have
pointed out became more manifest, and as the unlearned who were
corrupt could not endure the light through the pain which it caused
to their eyes, so neither did the learned spare them, turning them to
ridicule and delighting to expose their turpitude and to decry their
superstitions.”
Bossuet* in the opening
statements of his “Histoire des Variations,” admits the frightful
corruptions of the Church for centuries before the Reformation; and
he has been followed in our own times by Frederic von Schlegel
[Philosophy of History, 400, 401, 410, Engl. Transl. 1847.] and
Möhler. [Symbolik, II. 31, 32, Engl. Transl.]
While
all of them are most anxious to prove that the Lutheran movement was
revolutionary and subversive of the ancient faith, they are
constrained to admit the universality of the abuses, which, in the
language of Schlegel, “lay deep, and were ulcerated in their very
roots.” — Charles Hardwick A
History of the Articles of Religion;
http://www.anglicanbooksrevitalized.us/Oldies/Thirty-Nine/hardwick39.htm
•
Jaroslav Pelikan (Lutheran, later Eastern Orhodox), The Riddle of
Roman Catholicism (New York: Abingdon Press, 1959),
also found:
"Recent research on the Reformation entitles us
to sharpen it and say that the Reformation began because the
reformers were too catholic in the midst of a church that had
forgotten its catholicity..."
“The
reformers were catholic because they were spokesmen for an
evangelical tradition in medieval catholicism, what Luther called
"the succession of the faithful." The fountainhead of that
tradition was Augustine (d. 430). His complex and far-reaching system
of thought incorporated the catholic ideal of identity plus
universality, and by its emphasis upon sin and grace it became the
ancestor of Reformation theology. … All the reformers relied
heavily upon Augustine. They pitted his evangelical theology against
the authority of later church fathers and scholastics, and they used
him to prove that they were not introducing novelties into the
church, but defending the true faith of the church.”
“...To
prepare books like the Magdeburg Centuries they combed the libraries
and came up with a remarkable catalogue of protesting catholics and
evangelical catholics, all to lend support to the insistence that the
Protestant position was, in the best sense, a catholic
position.
Additional support for this insistence comes from
the attitude of the reformers toward the creeds and dogmas of the
ancient catholic church. The reformers retained and cherished the
doctrine of the Trinity and the doctrine of the two natures in Christ
which had developed in the first five centuries of the church….”
“If we keep in mind how variegated medieval catholicism was,
the legitimacy of the reformers' claim to catholicity becomes clear.
(Pelikan, pp. 46-47).
"Substantiation for this
understanding of the gospel came principally from the Scriptures, but
whenever they could, the reformers also quoted the fathers of the
catholic church. There was more to quote than their Roman opponents
found comfortable." (Pelikan 48-49).
However, Scripture, tradition and history can only assuredly consist of and mean
what Rome may say they do, and which is the real basis for the veracity of Rome
for a RC. Thus no less than Cardinal Manning stated,
"It was the charge of the Reformers that the Catholic doctrines were
not primitive, and their pretension was to revert to antiquity. But the
appeal to antiquity is both a treason and a heresy. It is a treason
because it rejects the Divine voice of the Church at this hour, and a
heresy because it denies that voice to be Divine....The only Divine
evidence to us of what was primitive is the witness and voice of the
Church at this hour." — Most
Rev. Dr. Henry Edward Cardinal Manning, Lord Archbishop of Westminster,
The Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost: Or Reason and Revelation (New
York: J.P. Kenedy & Sons, originally written 1865, pp. 227,28
More reading:
