Eastern Orthodoxy? Schism defended with false history
Was the Roman Church preeminent just because of the city's civil status? Was St Peter ever its bishop? Orestes Brownson shows Orthodox apologist Guettée is grasping at straws.
Editors’ Notes
This is the third part of a serialisation of Orestes’ Brownson’s engagement with “Eastern Orthodoxy.”
The background of this engagement—including that of the ex-Catholic author Abbé Vladimir (René-François) Guettée and his book The Schismatic Papacy—can be found in the first part:
The second part addressed Guettée’s surprising attempts to claim St Cyprian of Carthage as evidence for a patristic rejection of papal primacy.
In this part, Brownson addresses Guettée’s misuse of Tertullian, the so-called Apostolic Tradition and the history of the Church.
Why bother republishing a nineteenth century review of a nineteenth century book? For a start, the arguments have not significantly changed. As Brownson says at the end of this piece:
“The work is rambling, and made up of details most wearisome to read, and difficult to bring into a shape in which its real value can be brought to the test, but it is a fair specimen in spirit and arrangement of the works written against the Roman and Catholic Church, and contains in some form all that schismatics allege first and last against her.
“We may as well make it our text-book for the discussion as any other.”
Further, as an Eastern Orthodox account on Twitter said to us, Guettée’s book continues to be popular today:
If Guettée’s book continues to bring the ill-informed into the Photian schism, then Browson’s review and refutation of enduring importance.
In the face of our contemporaries encouraging Roman Catholics to enter into schism and heresy, we publish Brownson’s piece in good will, and in the hope that they will instead return to the Church of Christ, outside of which there is absolutely no salvation whatsoever.
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Guettée’s ‘The Schismatic Papacy’
Part III—Ex-Catholic Guettée defends schism with false history
Orestes Brownson
Originally published as “Guetté’s Papacy Schismatic’1
From The Catholic World, 1867
Published in The Works of Orestes A. Brownson, Vol. VIII
Thorndike Nourse, Deroit, 1884. pp 491-500
Headings and some line breaks added by The WM Review
Was Rome’s preeminence based on its civil status?
The author, unable to deny the preponderating influence of the Roman pontiff and his see in the government of the church, and the importance everywhere attached to being in communion with the bishop of Rome, seeks to evade the force of the fact by attributing it not to the belief in the primacy of the church of Rome, but to the superior importance of the city of Rome as the capital of the empire, as if the Catholic Church were merely a Roman church, and not founded for the whole world.
We indeed hear something of this when Constantinople, the New Rome, became the rival of Old Rome, and its bishop, on account of the civil and political importance of the city, set up to be œcumenical bishop, and claimed the first place after the bishop of Rome; but we hear nothing of it during the first three centuries, and the author adduces nothing to justify his assumption. All the fathers, alike in the East and the West, attribute the primacy held by the church of Rome not to the importance of the city of Rome in the empire, but to the fact that she is…
“The church that presides”
“The principal [or governing] church”
“The see of Peter, [and] holds the chair of Peter, prince of the apostles”
“The root and matrix of the Catholic Church”
… and that Peter “lives” and ‘speaks” in its bishops.
Now, whatever our learned author may say, we think these great fathers, some of whom were only one remove from the apostles themselves, and nearly all of whom gained the crown of martyrdom, knew the facts in the case as well as he knows them, and that there is every probability that they meant what they said and wrote.
‘The whole church protested against [Rome’s] ambitious pretentions’
“We see,” says the author, p. 48, “that as early as the third century the bishops of Rome, because St. Peter had been one of the founders of that see, claimed to exercise a certain authority over the rest of the church, giving themselves sometimes the title of ‘bishop of bishops’; but we also see that the whole church protested against these ambitious pretensions, and held them of no account.”
That the bishop of Rome was accused by those whom the exercise of his authority offended of assuming the title of bishop of bishops, by way of a sneer, may be very true, but that he ever gave himself that title, there is, so far as we are aware, no trustworthy evidence.
“The church protested against these ambitious pretensions.” Where is that protest recorded? That bishops were then as now jealous of their real or supposed rights, and ever well disposed to resist any encroachment upon them, is by no means improbable; and this, if the bishops generally held that the Roman pontiff had no more authority by divine right over the church than any other bishop, must have made it exceedingly difficult for him to grasp the primacy of jurisdiction over them.
Their power to resist, in case they believed they could resist with a good conscience, must have been, being, as they were in the fourth century, eighteen hundred to one, somewhat greater than his to encroach. That the bishops or simple priests whom the Roman pontiff admonished or censured protested sometimes, not against his authority, but against what they regarded as its unjust, arbitrary, or tyrannical exercise, is no doubt true, and the same thing happens still, even with those who have no doubt of the papal authority; but that the whole church protested is not proven; and in all the instances in which protests were offered on the part of individual bishops that came before an ecclesiastical council, the universal church uniformly sustained the Roman pontiff.
When St. Victor excommunicated the Quartodecimans, some bishops remonstrated with him as being too severe, and others opposed his act, but the council of Nicæa sustained it. Even before that council, the author of the Philosophumena, whose work must have been composed in the early part of the third century, treats the Quartodecimans as heretics, although, except as to the time of keeping Easter, their faith was irreproachable.
So on the question of the baptism of heretics, the whole church, instead of protesting against the decision of St. Stephen, approved it, and follows it to this day. It will not do to say the whole church treated the acts of these popes “as of no account.”
Even those opposed testify to Rome’s claims to and exercise of jurisdiction
The writers of the letters attributed to Sts. Cyprian and Firmilianus are good evidence that the popes claimed and exercised jurisdiction over the whole church in the controversy on the baptism of heretics, and Tertullian affords no mean proof of the same fact at a yet earlier date.
In a work written after he had fallen into some of the heresies of the Montanists, he writes, as cited by our author, p. 78:
“I learn that a new edict has been given, a peremptory edict. The sovereign pontiff, that is, the bishop of bishops, has said: ‘I remit the sins of impurity and fornication.’ O edict! not less can be done than to ticket it—GOOD WORK! But where shall such an edict be posted? Surely, I think, upon the doors of the houses of prostitution.”
This passage undoubtedly proves that Tertullian himself, fallen into heresy, did not relish the papal decision that condemned him, and perhaps that he was disposed to deny the authority of the Roman pontiff; but if it had been generally held that the Roman pontiff was no more in the church than any other bishop, and therefore that his decision could have no authority out of his diocese or province, would his decision have so deeply moved him, and called forth such an outburst of wrath?
If the claim to the primacy of authority in the whole church, and therefore to jurisdiction over all bishops, was not generally recognized and held, what occasion was there for so much indignation? What point would there have been in the sneer, or force in the irony, of calling him the sovereign pontiff, or the bishop of bishops?
Tertullian’s language, which was evidently intended to exaggerate the authority claimed by the Roman pontiff, plainly enough implies that he was generally held to have authority to make decisions in doctrine and discipline for the whole church, and that a censure from him was something of far more importance than that from any other bishop or patriarch.
Testimony of the supposed work of St Hyppolytus
The author cites to the same effect as Tertullian the work published at Paris a few years ago under the name of Origen, entitled Philosophumena, “justly attributed,” he says, “to St. Hyppolytus, Bishop of Ostia, or to the learned priest Caius.”
The authorship of the work is unknown, and no documents have yet been discovered that enable the learned to determine with any degree of certainty by whom it was or could have been written. The work, however, bears internal evidence of having been written by some one belonging to the East, and who lived during the pontificates of St. Victor, St. Zephyrinus, St. Callistus, St. Urban, and perhaps St. Pontian, bishops of Rome, that is to say, from 180 to 235, certainly not later.
The work, when published by M. Miller at Paris, in 1851, attracted the attention of English and German Protestants by its gross charges against the two venerated Roman pontiffs and martyrs, St. Zephyrinus and St. Callistus—charges which for the most part refute themselves. But though Protestants have not been able to make much of it against the papacy, Catholics have found in it new and unexpected proofs of the authority extending over the church in all parts of the world, exercised by the popes of that early period.
“In his invectives,” says the Abbé Cruice, “the adversary of Callistus acknowledges his great power, and furnishes new and unexpected proofs of the supremacy of the holy see.”
The Abbé Cruice, who, we think, we have heard recently died Bishop of Marseilles, published at Paris, in 1851, an interesting History of the Church of Rome under the pontificates of St. Victor, St. Zephyrinus, and St. Callistus, in which he has incorporated these proofs with great judgment and effect.
As we are not now considering the affirmative proofs of the primacy of the Holy See, but the arguments intended to prove the papacy schismatic, we can only refer the reader to this learned work and to the Philosophumena itself.
We will only remark that the unknown author is far more bitter against the popes than his contemporary Tertullian, and leaves more unequivocal evidence to the extent of the papal power. No one can read the Philosophumena without perceiving in the complaints and incidental remarks of the author that the hierarchy at the end of the second century was as regularly organized as now, and precisely in the same manner, with the Roman pontiff at its summit.
Arguments from apostolic tradition misunderstood
The author, p. 82, says Tertullian, who in several passages refers to the church of Rome as a witness to the apostolic tradition, “does not esteem her witness testimony superior to that of others.”
Perhaps so, for in the cases referred to Tertullian had no occasion to discriminate between one apostolic church and another. He is using against heretics the argument from prescription. Their doctrines are adverse to the apostolic tradition, and therefore false. If any one would know what is the apostolic tradition, he may learn it from any of the churches founded by apostles…
“… where their sees still remain, where their epistles are still read, where their voice still resounds, and their face, as it were, is still seen. Is it Achaia that is near thee? thou hast Corinth; if thou art not far from Macedonia, thou hast the Philippians; if thou canst go to Asia, thou hast Ephesus; if thou dwellest near Italy, thou hast Rome, whose authority is near us…”
… that is, near us in Africa.
It is true Tertullian pronounces a eulogium on the church of Rome that he does not on the others, but no great stress need be laid on that. Any one of the apostolic churches was sufficient for determining the apostolic tradition, and there was no reason why he should mention the primacy of the see of Peter if he held it, and it would have weakened his argument if he had appealed to that primacy, doubtless then as now rejected by heretics.
Supposed counter-evidence of Petrine patriarchal sees
But this leads us to a remark which it may be well to bear in mind. All the churches founded by the apostles were during the whole of the first three centuries in existence, and preserved the apostolic doctrine or tradition, and it could be learned from Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, Ephesus, &c., without the necessity, at least on ordinary occasions, of recurring to the supreme authority of Rome.
The author quotes several of the fathers who call the see of Antioch Peter’s see; he might have gone further, and shown that each of the four great patriarchal sees, Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, were so-called, and because they were held to have been founded by Peter. This is the reason why they received the dignity and authority of patriarchal churches.
Peter was held to survive and govern in each one of them, but more especially in Rome, where he gave his life for his faith, and where stands his tomb. It is Peter who governs one and indivisible in them all, and consequently, to get Peter’s authority, it was not, except in the last resort, necessary to apply to his successor in the see of Rome.
It is this fact, misapprehended by the author, that has made him assert that the see of Peter, or the chair of Peter, means the universal episcopate which all the bishops, as St. Cyprian says, hold in solido.
Every bishop in communion with Peter’s see, no doubt, was regarded as solidaire with the whole episcopal and apostolic body, as we have already explained; but we have not found the “see of Peter,” or “chair of Peter” applied to any particular churches, except those tradition asserted were founded by Peter, and only those sees had originally patriarchal jurisdiction, and this fact is in itself no slight proof that the primacy was held to be vested in Peter as we have already explained, and the author has given us the opportunity of proving from St. Cyprian.
The defection of the other patriarchal sees testifies to Rome’s uniqueness
This fact that Peter was held to govern in the four great patriarchal sees, though supremely only in the church of Rome, explains why it is that in the early ages we find not more frequent instances of the exercise of jurisdiction beyond his own patriarchate of the West by the Roman pontiff.
The bishops of these Petrine churches were not originally called patriarchs, but they exercised the patriarchal power long before receiving the name, and probably from times immediately succeeding the apostles. So long as these patriarchs remained in communion with the bishop of Rome, their head and chief, most of the questions of discipline, and many of those of faith, could be, and were, settled by the patriarch, or local authority, without resort to the Roman pontiff.
But when these sees fell off from unity into heresy or schism, Peter remained only in the Roman see, and all causes that had previously been disposed of by the patriarchs of the East had to be carried at once to Rome, before the supreme court.
The facts do not fit into the ‘civil status’ theory
Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch were the three chief cities of the empire, and the capitals, the first of the empire itself, and the others of its two largest and most important prefectures.
This fact may seem to favor the author’s theory that the ecclesiastical superiority is derived from the civil superiority; but had this been so, Jerusalem would hardly have been selected as the seat of the third patriarchate of the East.
The geographical position and civil and political importance of these cities may have influenced the apostle in selecting them to be the chief seats of the ecclesiastical government he under Christ was founding, but could not have been the ground of their superior ecclesiastical jurisdiction, because the church was not organized as a national religion, or with a view to the Roman Empire alone, and the apostles themselves carried the gospel beyond the furthest limits of that empire, into regions never penetrated by the Roman eagles.
The church was catholic, and was to subsist in all ages and teach all nations, as well as all truth. Our Lord said, “My kingdom is not of this world”; it does not hold from the kingdoms of this world, and is independent of them, both in its constitution and in its powers. These remain always and everywhere the same, whatever the revolutions or the rise and fall of states and empires.
The authority of the church is immediately from God; her grandeur and glory are spiritual, and not derived from the greatness, grandeur, wealth, or power of earthly cities. St. Augustine makes the city of Rome the type of the city of the world, which he contrasts with the church or city of God.
The idea that the rank or the authority of the bishop derived from the civil rank and importance of the city in which he held his see was a Constantinopolitan idea not heard of till the fifth century, and, as we shall see in its place, one of the chief causes of the schism between the East and the West.
False claims that St Peter never was Bishop of Rome
The author denies that St. Peter was ever, in the proper sense of the word, bishop of Rome, or of any particular see. If he is right, how could the unity of the church have a visible starting-point or centre? or how could it be said to begin from Peter or the chair of Peter, as his own witness, St. Cyprian, asserts?
If Peter had no particular see, established his see, or set up his chair, his cathedra, nowhere in particular, the whole argument of St. Cyprian as to the origin and manifestation of unity is baseless, and goes for nothing.
Besides, it is contradicted by universal tradition. The testimony that Peter had his chair at Rome is ample, and leaves nothing to be desired.
But this is not the point. It is for the author to prove that he was not bishop of Rome; for he has undertaken to prove the papacy is schismatic, and at every step he takes, the burden of proof is on him. Where are his proofs?
The author says St. Linus was the bishop of Rome when Peter first arrived in that city. A church which has a bishop is already a church founded and constituted. Yet the author allows and cites authorities that prove that Peter was the founder, or at least one of the founders, of the Roman church!
That St. Linus was the first bishop of Rome after St. Peter there is no doubt; that he was the first bishop, or bishop of Rome, before the arrival of St. Peter in the city, there is no evidence, but any amount of testimony to the contrary. We say there is no evidence.
The lists given by the fathers sometimes enumerate him as first and sometimes as second, as they do or do not include the apostle; but all make him the successor of St. Peter. The fathers, in giving the lists of other apostolic sees, are not uniform, and sometimes they include and sometimes they exclude the apostle, and reckon only from his death. Eusebius says, as cited by the author, p. 144,
“After the martyrdom of Paul and Peter, Linus was the first that received the episcopate at Rome.”
Tertullian, as also cited by the author, p. 145, says that “Peter sat on the chair of Rome;” but he contends that Tertullian “does not mean that he was bishop, but that he taught there,” that is, St. Peter was a professor of theology at Rome!
This might do if Tertullian had been treating of the Sorbonne, or of the French university, but will not answer here. In ecclesiastical language, chair, cathedra, means simply the seat of the bishop, and figuratively the episcopal authority. To say Peter sat in the chair, or cathedra of Rome is saying simply he was bishop of Rome.
The presumption is, that Tertullian meant what he said, understood according to the usages of the language he used. Besides, if chair may sometimes be used figuratively for teaching, it is the author’s business to prove that it must mean so in this particular case. This he does not and cannot do.
False claims that St Peter never was Bishop of Antioch either
The author pretends that the tradition which makes Peter seven years bishop of Antioch and twenty-five years bishop of Rome is obviously false; for any one can see by counting that there was not time enough for it between the day of Pentecost and the martyrdom of Peter.
We do not pretend to be very good at counting, but as we count, seven years bishop of Antioch and twenty-five years bishop of Rome make in all thirty-two years. The day of Pentecost, according to the usual reckoning, was in A. D. 33, and St. Peter suffered martyrdom at Rome under Nero, A. D. 66, or at the earliest 65. Tillemont says 66, which leaves thirty-three, at least thirty-two years; and we see no reason to suppose that the organization of the church at Jerusalem and committing it to the care of James, its first bishop, and the setting up of his chair at Antioch, might not all have been done before the close of the year of the crucifixion.
But even an error in the chronology would not prove that Peter was not bishop of Rome.
False claims that Apostles could not be bishops of particular sees
The pretence that it was incompatible with the dignity of an apostle to be the bishop of a particular see has nothing to sustain it.
It is not necessary to suppose Peter, by establishing his see at Rome, was obliged to confine his whole attention and labor to that particular church, or that he remained constantly at Rome.
Indeed, it is very possible, and thought by many to be very probable, that he committed the care of that church during his absences to St. Linus as his vicar, and there are several authorities to that effect. Some of them join St. Anacletus, St. Cletus, or, as the Greeks say, Anencletus, and St. Clement, successively bishops of Rome, with St. Linus in the government of the Roman Church under Peter during his lifetime; but, however this may have been, tradition is constant that St. Linus was the immediate successor of Peter, which at least implies that Peter was regarded as having held the see as well as having assisted in founding it; for otherwise St. Linus could not have been regarded as his successor, and no reason could be assigned why he was called the successor of Peter rather than of Paul, who also assisted in founding it, and is honored even to-day by the Roman Church as one of its founders.
The bluster and gratuity of Guettée’s claims
We have taken up the author’s theory point by point, and we find him utterly failing to establish it in whole or in part.
His allegations are set forth with great confidence, but the authorities he cites do not sustain them, and are either not to his purpose or, like St. Cyprian, point blank against him.
He may have demolished the man of straw which he himself had set up, but he leaves standing the papacy as held by the Catholic Church and defined by the Council of Florence.
He has asserted in very strong terms the ignorance, the chicanery, the sophistry, and the dishonesty of the Roman theologians, and leaves no doubt in the minds of intelligent readers that he greatly excels them in the qualities and practices he ascribes to them; but he adduces nothing beyond his own assertions and misrepresentations against their fairness and candor, and their intelligence and learning.
His sneers at them are pointed only by his own ignorance or malice, and present him in a most unfavorable light. His cant, so abundant against them, is very stale and simply disgusting.
From first to last he proves that he lacks, we will not say the humility of the Christian, but the modesty and reserve of real learning and science, and that he is moved not by love of truth, but by a spirit of hatred and revenge.
Conclusion to the first part
Here we might well close, for the author has been refuted from St. Cyprian himself, by proving by his own witness the primacy of jurisdiction by divine right was possessed even in the third century, while he has left all the arguments and authorities adduced by the Roman theologians from Scripture and tradition to prove affirmatively the papal authority by divine right, or by the positive appointment of Jesus Christ in their full force.
But the reasons which induced us in the first place to begin the examination of the author’s lucubrations2 induce us to go through with them. The work has been translated and published here under Protestant auspices, set up as an important work against the papal authority and the Church of Rome, “the root and matrix of the Catholic Church,” as says St. Cyprian, and, were it left unnoticed or unreplied to, many people might take it to be really what it is represented to be, and conclude that we cannot answer it because we have not done it.
Besides, the controversy between large classes of Protestants and Catholics is narrowed down to two questions, the honor we render to Mary the mother of God, and the authority we attribute to the Holy See and the Roman pontiff. M. Guettée, having been reared in our communion and gone out from us because he was not of us, and having in this work done his best to prove the papacy schismatic, and that its assertion has been the cause of the schism between the East and the West, affords us as good an occasion as we can expect to discuss the latter question, and to consider the arguments, facts, and authorities alleged in their defence by those who refuse their obedience to St. Peter in his successor.
The work is rambling, and made up of details most wearisome to read, and difficult to bring into a shape in which its real value can be brought to the test, but it is a fair specimen in spirit and arrangement of the works written against the Roman and Catholic Church, and contains in some form all that schismatics allege first and last against her. We may as well make it our text-book for the discussion as any other.
The next part will begin Brownson’s second article against Guettée.
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The Papacy: Its Historic Origin and Primitive Relations with the Eastern Churches. By the Abbé Guettée, D.D.
Translated from the French, and prefaced by an original biographical notice of the author, with an Introduction by A. Cleveland Coxe, Bishop of Western New York. New York: 1867.
The original article is available in OCR form here.
A learned—or pseudo-learned or pedantic—piece of writing.
Very good article; and a big help in refuting some of the Orthodox apologists that invade our Catholic forums, "seeking whom they may devour".