Where Is the Bishop of Rome When You Need Him?

Published on by D. G. Hart

Stellman thinks the Westminster Divines differed from the early church fathers on the Eucharist. He relies on J.N.D. Kelly to make his point and lists quotations from various early church fathers.

But since Stellman is a high papalist, what difference does it make if Augustine or Ambrose or Ignatius held a certain view of the sacrament? The task of the pope is to interpret infallibly the Christian faith. All other interpreters are fallible, right?

So which is it?

Jason may think this is just more Hart-kvetching, but he really should get his argument straight about Protestantism’s defects. Are we suspect because we don’t line up with the church fathers? Or are we deficient because we are not in submission to the pope?

He also needs to think through the exact relationship between the early church fathers and the papacy. J.N.D. Kelly is not at all clear that the early church was as on board with high papalism as Jason and the Callers are.

The crucial question . . . is whether or not this undoubted primacy of honour was held to exist by divine right and so to involve an over-riding jurisdiction. So far as the East is concerned, the answer must be, by and large, in the negative. While showing it immense deference and setting great store by its pronouncements, the Eastern churches never treated Rome as the constitutional centre and head of the Church, must less as an infallible oracle of faith and morals, and on occasion had not the least compunctions about resisting its express will. (Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 407)

Stellman belongs to the party of reason and we to the one of skepticism. So reason up. If you follow the church fathers on the Eucharist, why not on the See of Rome?

9 thoughts on “Where Is the Bishop of Rome When You Need Him?”

  1. Dr. Hart,

    Because then one might have to admit that Rome isn’t what one thought it was.

    In the principled distinction of pretentious papalism.

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  2. We’re rationalists. That’s pretty rich coming from CtC apologists. Of course at the end of that tether is noumenalism and the transcendence and unknowability of the Latin-rite. Smells, bells and tassels.

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  3. Reading the comments over there, I kept thinking about the passage in Hebrews about offering up a sacrifice of praise and Paul telling the Romans to offer their bodies as a “living sacrifice”. It seems that the image of offering a sacrifice was a common idiom for describing worship in the early church. Is it any surprise that that same imagery would be use to reference the Lord’s Supper? Given the use of “sacrifice” in the NT, I would be very hesitant to assume that the ECFs assume a literal sacrifice in the sense that modern RCs do.

    I also think it is curious that he turns to the WCF to take his cues on the sacrament. It seems to me that the Belgic confession is much more helpful on this,

    At that table he makes us enjoy himself
    as much as the merits of his suffering and death,
    as he nourishes, strengthens, and comforts
    our poor, desolate souls
    by the eating of his flesh,
    and relieves and renews them
    by the drinking of his blood.

    Clearly the WCF is trying to distance protestant practice from the superstitious nonsense that had grown up around the sacrament in RC circles.

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  4. Sdb,

    From my interaction over there, what is basically happening is that all the RC interlocutors are reading the word “sacrifice” in the early church fathers and importing into it the corporeal transformation of the elements, propitiation, and so on. Then they read WCF as if it condemning what the earliest fathers thought. It’s a typical acontextual reading of history in the Roman approach to church history.

    Maybe the ECFs were doing all that, but no one has made that argument yet. It’s just assumed. But no one accused of hardcore traditionalist RCs of knowing church history, did they?

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  5. But on the Arminian front—-is the gospel about an offering that Christ made to God to reconcile elect sinners to God, or is the gospel about an offering (a proposal) that Christ makes to sinners for their acceptance?

    In the “evangelical” middle, I guess the gospel is both. If you consent to take up the offer, that consent will cause Christ’s offering to become effectual….

    Thus the “evangelical” big tent excludes the good news of Christ’s substitutionary sacrificial satisfaction of divine law, so that God is both just and justifier of the ungodly elect.

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  6. Y’all maybe have seen this work:

    http://beggarsallreformation.blogspot.com/2010/08/this-bridge-should-be-illuminated.html

    What follows is the conclusion of Peter Lampe’s extensive work, “From Paul to Valentinus,” chapter 41, pages 397 ff:

    Thesis: The fractionation in Rome favored a collegial presbyterial system of governance and prevented for a long time, until the second half of the second century, the development of a monarchical episcopacy in the city. Victor (c. 189-99) was the first who, after faint-hearted attempts by Eleutherus (c. 175-89), Soter (c. 166-75), and Anicetus (c. 155-66), energetically stepped forward as monarchical bishop and (at times, only because he was incited from the outside) attempted to place the different groups in the city under his supervision or, where that was not possible, to draw a line by means of excommunication. Before the second half of the second century there was in Rome no monarchical episcopacy for the circles mutually bound in fellowship.

    It would be presumptuous here to wish to write again a history of the ecclesiastical offices that are mentioned especially in 1 Clement and Hermas. My concern is to describe the correlation between fractionation and one factor of ecclesiastical order, the monarchical episcopate. This bridge should be illuminated. What happens across the bridge in the field of history of ecclesiastical offices can only be here briefly sketched – and perhaps motivate one to further investigation.

    1. Fractionation into house congregations does not exclude that the Christian islands scattered around the capital city were aware of being in spiritual fellowship with each other, of perceiving themselves as cells of one church, and of being united by common bonds.

    Paul writes to several house communities in Rome (Rom 16; see above, chap. 36) and presupposes that these send his letter, with the greetings, from one to another (cf. similarly Col 4:16). The continually repeated (Greek: aspasasthe “greetings”) receives meaning if there were messengers between the various, topgraphically separate groups. In other words, not only were Eucharistic gifts sent to and fro (see above, chap 40), but also letters and greetings from outside the city were exchanged.

    That means that people writing from outside of Rome could address the Roman Christians as a unity. Not only Paul but also Ignatius and Dionysius of Corinth did this. Conversely, the Roman Christians as an entirety could send letters to those outside: 1 Clement and a further letter to Corinth around 170 C.E. (Eusebius, Ecc. Hist. 4.3.11). The totality of Roman Christianity undertook shipments of aid to those outside (see above on Dionysius, in Eusebius, Ecc. Hist. 4.23.10). People from the outside consequently spoke of the Roman church (e.g., Ignatius, Rom. Praescr.).

    It was useful to assign to someone in Rome the work connected with external communication. Hermas knows such a person by the name of Clement. In Vis. 2.4.3, Hermas prepares two copies of his small book and sends (pempo, “send, dispatch” within the city) one of them to Clement, who forwards it “to the cities outside, for he is entrusted with that task”.

    It is important to note that Hermas’s “minister of external affairs” is not a monarchical bishop. In the next sentence, Hermas describes how he circulates his little book within the city. He makes it known “to this city together with the presbyters who preside over the church” (emphasis added). A plurality of presbyters leads Roman Christianity. This Christianity, conscious of a spiritual fellowship within the city, is summed up under the concept of “ecclesia,” but that changes nothing in regard to the plurality of those presiding over it. In Vis. 3. 9.7, Hermas also calls them (Greek proegoumenoi or protokathedipitai – leaders or chief seats).

    Hermas knows to report the human side of the presiders: they quarrel about status and honor (Vis. 3.9.7-10; Sim. 8.7.4-6). What are proteia? Are the presbyters wrangling” for first place within their own ranks, for the place of primus inter pares? Whatever the answer may be, Hermas – in the first half of the second century – never mentions the success of such efforts, the actual existence of a single leader. Instead he speaks of (Greek, leaders or chiefs), all in the plural (Vis. 2.4.2f.; 2.2.6; 3.1.8).

    Correspondingly, we find in Paul’s and Ignatius’s letters to the Romans nothing of a Roman monarchical leader, even though Ignatius knew of a monarchical bishop’s office from his experience in the east. (Note: whether the monarchical episcopacy was established everywhere in the east is, however, questionable. Ignatius, Phil. 7- (cf. Magn. 6-8) presupposes Christians who do not wish to be under a bishop. In Ancyra around 190 C.E. there was still no bishop presiding but only a group of presbyters; anonymous, in Eusebius, Ecc. Hist. 5.16.5). In the year 144 Marcion, at the Roman synod meeting that he initiated (see above, chap. 40), also saw himself facing “presbyters and teachers” and not a monarchical bishop.

    First Clement presupposes the same presbyterial governance: hagoumenoi (1:3), proeoumenoi (21.6) presbuteroi (44.5, 47.6, 54.2, 57.1) episkopoi, (42:4f=Isa 60:17; LXX). As in Hermas (Vis. 3.5.1; Sim. 9.27.1; cf. 9.31.5f.), the word “bishop” is in the plural. And First Clement 44:5 clarifies who exercises episkope: the presbuteroi! A number of them, who simultaneously had episkope in Corinth, were dismissed by the Corinthians. In 47:6, 57:1 the dismissed men are called presbuteroi. In short, by presbuteroi and episkopoi 1 Clem designates the same persons. The two terms are interchangeable, as in Hermas (Vis. 3.5.1).

    “Bishops” are presbyters with a special function. With what function are they entrusted? Hermas in Mand. 8.20., Vis. 3.9.2, Sim. 1.8 uses the verb episkeptesthai not in relation to an office but referring to all Christians in the sense of “to care for the needy, to visit them. (Hermas) Sim.9.27.2.f. portrays the official “bishops” correspondingly as those who care for (diakonia) the needy and the widows. In this work they are supported by the deacons (Sim. 9.26.2). Our comparison of episkeptesthai and episkopoi shows that Hermas with the functional term “episkopos” still clearly associates episkeptesthai and its social-diaconal content. The wordplay episkopoi–eskepasan in Sim.9.27.2 demonstrates the same.

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