The Rise of the Papacy

Rating:	★★★★
Category:	Books
Genre:	Religion & Spirituality
Author:	Robert B Eno

While this is a very complex topic which even the author claims that is incomplete, I found this a very interesting read. It doesn't come out and say that the papacy flat out didn't exist in the early church, but it strongly suggests it.

1) Rome did not have a single bishop.
This is from some interpolation and other sources that suggest that there wasn't a "bishopric" as we now know the term, but ruling elders. This cooresponds with some NT contexts.

"...(Ignatius) does not greet a bishop in Rome nor does he ever mention such a person in this letter. One might object that Ignatius had never been in Rome, he did not know the bishop's name. He could have spoken to or of a bishop even if he had not known his name....But we have only his silence, which leads many to conclude that Ignatius did not address such a person because the roman community of the time had no such leader."

He leads into this by suggesting that the first three "popes" of rome were actually a group of elders that lead the church and this would explain some of Clements other comments.

Page 28
"In general, neither Clement nor anyone else appears in a position anything like that of the bishop as described by Ignatius. "

Page 29
"This evidence (Clement, Hermas, Ignatius) points us in the direction of assuming that in the first century to the second, there was no bishop of Rome in the usual sense given that title. ... If there was no bishop of Rome, in what sense can one speak of a Petrine succession."

2) No knowledge of succession by other bishops at the time.
In a response to Stephen's attention to African practice, Firmilian mentioned.

Page 63.
"He remarked, for instance, that Stephen's unkindness had at least the result of bringing Cyprian and himself together. Stephen is "bold and insolent", "manifestly stupid", "a disgrace to Peter and Paul", with a "slippery, fickle and uncertain mind".

"He who so glories in the place of his episcopate and contends that he has the succession of Peter on whom the foundation of the Church was established, should introduce many other rocks and constitute new buildings of many churches while he maintains by his authority that baptism is there."

"This is the first known appeal of a roman bishop to Peter's authority, indeed to the classical Petrine Gospel texts. But we must note as well that Firmilian not only does not accept the claim, he seems never to have heard of it before. He notes for example that in many liturgical customes, Rome differs from Jerusalem. There are variations from one church to another, "and yet, on account of this, there has been no withdrawal at all from the peace and unity of the Catholic Church". "How can you live in communion with such a person?" Rome insists on uniformity but other bishops, such as Irenaeus and Firmilian, not that all have gotten well up until now with varying customs."

Page 65
"His own opening remarks sum up his views on this question of a world leadership for the Church:

"For neither does any of us set himself up as a bishop of bishops nor by tyrannical terror force his colleagues to a necessity of obeying; inasmuch as every bishop, in the free use of his liberty and power, has the right of forming his own judgement, and can no more be judged by another than he himself can judge another.
But we must all await the judgement of Our Lord Jesus Christ, who alone has the power both of setting us in the government of his Church, and of judging of our acts therein."

In conclusion, the author seems to state that the papacy is a development, not something that Peter even contemplated, as the source of this development was in the mid 300s.

I found the book interesting as it covered a lot of characters and strong willed individuals. His comment about Newman was interesting in that he thinks Newman did not set well with the papacy once he was under their control. I'll have to look that up.


BTW, while leaving my library, I noticed a new book. "Electing Our Bishops". In the minute I gave the book, it mentioned in detail how election of the bishops took place in the early church. Not unlike the LDS system, I suppose. Anyway, it might be something to check out.

http://www.amazon.com/Electing-Our-Bishops-Catholic-Leaders/dp/0742558207/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1204928818&sr=8-1