Download PDF | (Oxford Studies in Historical Theology) A. Edward Siecienski - The Papacy and the Orthodox_ Sources and History of a Debate-Oxford University Press (2017).
527 Pages
Preface
Pope Paul VI, addressing the subject of Christian unity shortly after the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council, shocked many people both in and outside the Catholic Church simply by speaking aloud what had long been known to most—that the papacy had “undoubtedly [become] the greatest obstacle on the path of ecumenism.”1 Of course, this was not the first time Pope Paul had pointed out the tragic irony that a ministry established to guarantee the unity of the Church had become the greatest impediment to it.
Three years earlier in the encyclical Eccesliam Suam he had written “that it distresses us to see how we, who have the work of mutual reconciliation so much at heart, are regarded by many of the separated brethren as being its stumbling block … Do not some of them say that the removal of papal primacy would facilitate the work of uniting the Catholic Church with those who are now separated?”2 It was for this reason that Pope Paul’s successor, John Paul II, in the encyclical Ut Unum Sint, invited his separated brethren “to find a way of exercising the primacy which, while in no way renouncing what is essential to its mission, is nonetheless open to a new situation.”3 He asked, “Could not the real but imperfect communion existing between us persuade Church leaders and their theologians to engage with me in a patient and fraternal dialogue on this subject, a dialogue in which, leaving useless controversies behind, we could listen to one another, keeping before us only the will of Christ for his Church and allowing ourselves to be deeply moved by his plea ‘that they may all be one … so that the world may believe that you have sent me’ (Jn. 17:21)
Christians of all denominations responded to the pope’s request, and studies of the papacy, both historical and theological, proliferated exponentially. Symposia were held throughout the world, often sponsored by various agencies of the Roman Catholic hierarchy, asking what role the pope might play in a future, undivided Church. National and international theological dialogues with a number of churches were refocused to address the issues of authority and primacy, with particular emphasis on the petrine ministry (i.e., the unique ministry allegedly granted to Peter and presently exercised by his successor, the Bishop of Rome). Their achievements, although still far from having solved the so-called problem of the papacy, have been substantial. Yet however significant these theological advances have been, perhaps far more groundbreaking are the developments that have occurred on the level of praxis. Since the time of the recently canonized John XXIII (1958–63), the world has increasingly come to recognize the Pope of Rome as a figure whose importance transcends the institutional boundaries of the Roman Catholic Church.
In the age of the 24-hour news cycle the pope has become an everpresent figure, often pictured meeting with world leaders or speaking out on moral/social/economic issues. At the funeral of Pope John Paul II in 2005, the unprecedented number of political and religious leaders who came to Rome to offer their respects testified to the unique role the late pontiff had played in both the spiritual and secular spheres.5 For non-Catholic Christians, whose descriptions of the pope were once dominated by such terms as “anti-Christ,” “brothel-keeper,” and “child of perdition,”6 relations have generally improved and most (but certainly not all) have forgone the polemics of the past to view the papacy in a new light. For example, relations between the Sees of Rome and Canterbury, despite recent problems over women’s ordination and same-sex unions, are particularly warm, and among evangelicals it is not uncommon to find preachers praising the Roman Catholic Church, and the pope in particular, for his willingness to speak out in defense of certain Christian moral teachings.7 Nowhere was this change of dynamic more evident than among the Orthodox, whose problems with the papacy pre-date the Protestant Reformation by several centuries. The historic meeting between Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athengoras on the Mount of Olives in 1964, the first such meeting in over five hundred years, signaled a new beginning in relations between the two “sister churches.”
The “dialogue of love” that began in the 1960s soon matured into a theological dialogue that has thus far demonstrated a level of consensus undreamed of only a few decades ago. Although technically still in a state of schism, one could go so far as to argue that relations between Rome and Constantinople are now better than they were a millennium ago, when then two churches were still in full Eucharistic communion. 8 Still fresh in one’s memory are the images of Pope Benedict XVI and Patriarch Bartholomew lifting their clasped hands on the balcony of the Phanar, and Pope Francis’s bowed head as he received a kiss from “his brother Andrew” during the 2014 papal visit to Constantinople. The fact that the papacy remained the issue still separating the Catholic and Orthodox Churches was well-known to me, for as my previous research on the filioque had shown, behind that debate there existed two very different understandings of the papal office and its authority.
As I wrote in my earlier work, “Everyone knew that to challenge the truth of the filioque was to challenge the orthodoxy of Old Rome, and by extension any claims to power or legitimacy made by the pope. And if the pope seemed determined that the East should accept the doctrine, it was, in part, because he knew that such an act was the tacit recognition of his own role as pastor and shepherd of all Christians.”9 The Latins claimed the pope as head of the Church had the right to define the faith while the Greeks maintained that no one bishop could alter or change a creed composed by an ecumenical council. The filioque controversy was about theology, but there was, and still is, a debate behind this debate—the question of authority in the Church and, in particular, about the unique ministry of the Bishop of Rome. Despite what has often been claimed, defining the limits of the pope’s primacy and authority is not always an easy task for the Orthodox. For many Orthodox Christians rejection of the papacy has become a central tenet of the faith—to be Orthodox is to be “pope-less.” Forgotten, it seems, is the historical truth that Orthodoxy had a pope for over a thousand years, and that for centuries following the schism the primacy of Rome was not considered the main point of division with Latin Christianity—the filioque and azymes were far more central.
Even as late as the Council of Florence (1438–39) the Greeks’ sole demand for the restoration of communion was the removal of the filioque, and the brief discussion that took place on the papacy was almost an afterthought following prolonged debates on purgatory and the procession. Communion with the Bishop of Rome was simply a part of being Orthodox during the first millennium, with temporary ruptures (e.g., during the Acacian and “Photian” Schisms), viewed as aberrations, not the norm. This is why theologians on both sides of the East-West divide have often looked to the first millennium as a starting point for ecumenical dialogue, asking if it is possible to return to the status quo ante and the age of the “undivided Church.” Yet those ecumenists who look to this era for their inspiration are soon frustrated by the fact that the role of the Bishop of Rome during the first millennium was not as clear as we would like.
This was especially true in the Christian East, where (despite the claims of both Catholic and Orthodox polemicists) no unanimously held view of papal authority ever existed. Instead there existed a variety of views that often depended upon time, place, and the pope’s relative usefulness. When the popes agreed with them, the fathers had little trouble heaping praise upon the “Vicar of Peter” and could shout with one heart and mind at the Council of Chalcedon (451) that “Peter has spoken through Leo!” And while many, especially in the Catholic Tradition, have read these statements as indicative of the fathers’ view of the Roman See and its bishop, this is only half the story. Leo the Great’s rejection of Chalcedon’s canon 28, discussed at length in chapter 4, shows that already during the conciliar period there were important differences in how East and West understood Rome’s “primacy of honor,” the reasons behind it, and the jurisdictional/authoritative limits (if any) of the Patriarchate of Rome. What also makes the question of the papal office particularly difficult for the Orthodox is the fact that Western thinking on the subject developed, for the most part, independently of the East.
Often statements on the pope’s power and authority were drafted to deal with particular movements or figures within the Latin-speaking West, with little thought given to how they might apply to the Christian East. When the Orthodox were later confronted with these claims, or, more problematically, were forced to accept the practical realities that accompanied them (e.g., following the Fourth Crusade), they found them hard to reconcile with their own understanding of the Church and the nature of the primacy entrusted to Rome by the councils. I thus set out to trace the history of the Orthodox understanding of the papacy and the place it has played in East-West relations since the beginning of the “estrangement” that eventually split them apart. This was no easy task, especially as there were temptations on every side. The first was simply to write another history of the papacy, which admittedly had the benefit of introducing all sorts of interesting characters, stories, and legends that have made the history of the popes one of the most oft-told tales in history.
Even the most fervent Catholic apologist must admit that at times the actions of the medieval popes sound like a morality play with various pontiffs cast as the seven deadly sins enfleshed. Juicy stuff indeed, but if the history of the papacy contains much that is unseemly, fairness demands that one also recognize the achievements and virtues of the popes as well. No human institution is without its occasional scoundrel, even if the medieval and renaissance papacy offers more than its fair share. And while chronicling the papacy’s checkered history, especially in its dealings with the Christian East, might be an interesting project, I hoped to do more, believing as I do that while issues of power and authority are always at play in these debates between East and West, they were never the sole issues.
Theology counts, and in this particular debate about the primacy of Rome both Catholic and Orthodox Christians believed themselves to be defending a vision of the Church willed by Christ himself, hardly an issue one can simply ignore. The second temptation was to avoid the secular history altogether and concentrate solely on the exegetical and theological arguments used by Catholic and Orthodox Christians to justify their respective ecclesiologies. This would mean simply tracing the development of the papacy as a doctrine, divorced from how the petrine ministry has actually been exercised and experienced. While an attractive option, especially as I had always intended to keep my focus theological, it soon became clear that one could not separate the development of this particular doctrine from either the history of the papacy or the larger question of East-West relations. When speaking about doctrinal development as it concerns the papacy, context is key.10
For example, many of the Greek fathers who wrote so glowingly about Peter or the primacy of Rome (e.g., Maximus the Confessor) were engaged in doctrinal struggles in which the pope was their key ally. Some of the grandest statements on the pontiff’s “universal” authority were made by popes who could not even rule Rome itself, many having been ejected from the city by mobs, the Roman aristocracy, emperors, soldiers, or so-called anti-popes.11 Even the rather exalted definition of papal power foisted upon the Greeks at Ferrara-Florence can only be understood in light of Pope Eugene’s recent battle with, and victory over, the Council of Basel and the conciliarist movement. There is no way around it—to understand properly the doctrine of the papacy and its reception in the East one is required to study both the theology and the history. The third and final temptation was one I had faced in my earlier work on the filioque, which was simply to collect another florilegium supporting or refuting the current Roman Catholic teaching on the primacy of Rome. As with the filioque, there are already far too many of these works to make the production of another worthwhile, especially since the results of these studies were always predictable—Catholics inevitably found ample proof that Rome’s universal jurisdiction had been present and recognized in the first millennium, while the Orthodox brought forward dozens of instances where the fathers refused to grant the pope anything more than an “honorary primacy” devoid of any authority or power. For too long the schism between East and West has been prolonged by such efforts. A new collection of prooftexts would help very little.
Like its predecessor, The Filioque: History of a Doctrinal Controversy, this book intends to trace the history of a controversy—that is, the primacy of the Bishop of Rome as it has been received (or rejected) by Orthodox Christianity. As such there were certain limitations that I was forced to impose upon myself when writing, limitations that the reader should be keenly aware of before beginning. First, in order to focus on the papacy as a Catholic-Orthodox issue I have consciously avoided dealing with the Reformation critiques of the primacy, except where they impact Rome’s dealings with the East. That said, I have utilized the insights of many Protestant scholars of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries whose writings on the papacy have enriched the modern-day dialogue about what the papacy is and can become. For example, Oscar Cullman’s groundbreaking Peter: Disciple-Apostle-Martyr, whether one agrees with its conclusions or not, ushered in a new era in petrine studies that has greatly advanced our understanding of Peter’s role in the Early Church.12 It would be the height of foolishness to ignore it, and so I did not. Most important of all is to understand that this is a history of what has been, not necessarily a theology of what should be. Simply put, those seeking an ecclesiological treatise on the proper role of the papacy in the Church are likely to be disappointed. So, too, will those Catholic or Orthodox polemicists who hope to find support for their own views on why one should embrace, or reject, the petrine office as currently understood and practiced by the Pope of Rome.
My intent is not to convince, but rather to lay out the history in as clear, objective, and interesting a manner as is possible.13 In so much as the history itself is terribly interesting, I suspect that last bit will be the easiest—clarity and objectivity will require far more work. To accomplish my task I was fortunate enough to have access to the (quite literally) hundreds of books and articles that have been written in recent years on the history and theology of the papacy. I should thank the library staff at Stockton University for their assistance in obtaining many of these materials and making them available to me through the Interlibrary Loan system. I have tried as much as possible to integrate recent Continental scholarship on the papacy, especially the work of Greek, German, French, and Italian theologians on both sides of the Catholic-Orthodox divide.
Where they are available, I have utilized English translations of all primary and secondary sources except in those cases where clarity demanded the use of the original language. All other translations are my own unless otherwise noted. Special thanks to Dr. Tia Kolbaba (who also read and commented upon several chapters of the manuscript) for allowing me to use her unpublished translations of Mesarites’s work, and to Prof. Pauline Allen and Dr. Bronwen Neil for sharing early drafts of Pope Gelasius’s Letters, which has since been published by Brepolis.
This book was completed while I was teaching at Stockton University, and I would like to thank my colleagues in the Philosophy/Religion Program— Drs. Rodger Jackson, Anne Pomeroy, Lucio Privitello, and Jongbok Yi—for their many kindnesses during that time, especially when I took my sabbatical in the Fall of 2015. Thanks also to Dr. George Demacopoulos for his willingness to read and comment upon portions of the manuscript. George’s input was particularly helpful in framing several of the issues involved, especially as it concerned Peter’s time in Rome. Dr. Richard Price at the University of London kindly provided key insights for dealing with the Lateran Synod and the Fifth Ecumenical Council. I would also like to thank my close friend and former colleague at Misericordia University, Dr. Allan Austin, who made invaluable suggestions in order to make the work more readable. Similarly, thanks go to Greg Sapnar of Orthodox Church of the Holy Cross in Medford, New Jersey, and former student Dominic Silla, each of whom read early drafts of the work and made helpful comments. My gratitude goes to Cynthia Read and the editors at Oxford University Press for taking an interest in the project and seeing it through to completion. The project could not have been completed without the assistance of the Interdisciplinary Center for Hellenic Studies and the Grants Office at Stockton University, both of whom provided necessary funding. I would be remiss if I did not thank my father and mother, Edward and Terri Siecienski, for their years spent supporting and encouraging all of my academic endeavors. Also to be thanked is my mother-in-law, Martha Matwijcow, who unhesitatingly gave her time to help out with child care, allowing me to finish the project in a timely manner. My children, Alex and Alana, deserve recognition and gratitude for their patience, especially during those many hours when their father locked himself away and asked, in no uncertain terms, that they avoid disturbing him. Last, I want to thank my wife, Kiev, who supported me every step of the way and whose love enabled me to see it through to completion. To her, and to all my family, this book is dedicated.
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