Authority in the Church.

Most of the controversy, which set Greek against Latin in the Middle Ages could have been solved easily if both churches had recognized a common authority able to solve the unavoidable differences created by divergent cultures and historical situations. Unfortunately, an ecclesiological dichotomy stood behind the various doctrinal, disciplinary, and liturgical disputes. Any historian today would recognize that the Medieval papacy was the result of a long doctrinal and institutional development in which the Eastern Church had either no opportunity or no desire to participate. Orthodox and Roman Catholics still argue whether this development was legitimate from the point of view of Christian revelation.

The reformed papacy of the eleventh century used a long-standing Western tradition of exegesis when it applied systematically and legalistically the passages on the role of Peter (especially Mt 16:18, Lk 22:32, and Jn 21:15-17) to the bishop of Rome. This tradition was not shared by the East, yet it was not totally ignored by the Byzantines some of whom used it occasionally, especially in documents addressed to Rome and intended to win the popes’ sympathy. But it was never given an ultimate theological significance.

Origen, the common source of patristic exegetical tradition, commenting on Matthew 16:18, interprets the famous logion as Jesus’ answer to Peter’s confession: Simon became the “rock” on which the Church is founded because he expressed the true belief in the divinity of Christ. Origen continues: “If we also say, ‘Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God,’ then we also become Peter..., for whoever assimilates to Christ becomes rock. Does Christ give the keys of the kingdom to Peter alone whereas other blessed people cannot receive them?”¹⁶ According to Origen, therefore, Peter is no more than the first “believer,” and the keys he received opened the gates of heaven to him alone: if others want to follow, they can “imitate” Peter and receive the same keys. Thus, the words of Christ have a soteriological, but not an institutional, significance. They only affirm that the Christian faith is the faith expressed by Peter on the road to Caesarea Philippi. In the whole body of patristic exegesis, this is the prevailing understanding of the “Petrine” logia, and it remains valid in Byzantine literature. In the twelfth-century Italo-Greek homilies attributed to Theophanes Kerameus, one can still read: “The Lord gives the keys to Peter and to all those who resemble him, so that the gates of the Kingdom of heaven remain closed for the heretics, yet are easily accessible to the faithful.”¹⁷ Thus, when he spoke to Peter, Jesus was underlining the meaning of the faith as the foundation of the Church rather than organizing the Church as guardian of the faith. The whole ecclesiological debate between East and West is thus reducible to the issue of whether the faith depends on Peter, or Peter on the faith. The issue becomes clear when one compares the two concepts of the succession of Peter.

If many Byzantine ecclesiastical writers follow Origen in recognizing this succession in each believer, others have a less individualistic view of Christianity; they understand that the faith can be fully realized only in the sacramental community, where the bishop fulfils, in a very particular way, Christ’s ministry of teaching and, thus, preserves the faith. In this sense, there is a definite relationship between Peter, called by Christ to “strengthen his brethren” (Lk 22:32), and the bishop, as guardian of the faith in his local church. The early Christian concept, best expressed in the third century by Cyprian of Carthage,¹⁸ according to which the “see of Peter” belongs, in each local church, to the bishop, remains the longstanding and obvious pattern for the Byzantines. Gregory of Nyssa, for example, can write that Jesus “through Peter gave to the bishops the keys of heavenly honours.”¹⁹ Pseudo-Dionysius, when he mentions the “hierarchs” — i.e., the bishops of the earthly Church — refers immediately to the image of Peter.²⁰ Examples taken from the later period and quite independent of anti-Latin polemics can easily be multiplied. Peter’s succession is seen wherever the right faith is preserved, and, as such, it cannot be localized geographically or monopolized by a single church or individual. It is only natural, therefore, that the Byzantine will fail to understand the developed Medieval concept of Roman primacy. Thus, in the thirteenth century, shortly after the capture of Constantinople by the Crusaders (1204), we can read Nicholas Mesarites addressing the Latins:

You try to present Peter as the teacher of Rome alone. While the Divine Fathers spoke of the promise made to him by the Saviour as having a catholic meaning and as referring to all those who believed and believe, you force yourself into a narrow and false interpretation ascribing it to Rome alone. If this was true, it would be impossible for every church of the faithful and not only that of Rome to possess the Saviour properly, and for each church to be founded on the rock, i.e., on the doctrine of Peter, in conformity with the promise.²¹

Obviously, this text of Mesarites’ implies a concept of the Church, which recognizes the fullness of catholicity in each local church in the sense in which the Apostolic Fathers could speak, for example, of the “catholic church sojourning in Corinth.” Catholicity and therefore also truth and apostolicity thus become God-given attributes belonging to each sacramental, Eucharist-centred community possessing a true episcopate, a true Eucharist, and, therefore, an authentic presence of Christ. The idea that one particular church would have, in a full theological sense, more capacity than another to preserve the faith of Peter was foreign to the Byzantines. Consensus of bishops and not the authority of one particular bishop was for them the highest possible sign of truth. Hence, there is their constant insistence on the authority of the councils and their unwillingness to accept the Roman concept of the papacy.

Date: 2016-01-14; view: 561