Dialogue with Ken Temple
I had an exchange with Ken Temple on Dave armstrong’s blog. It started with a comment he made:
That is the whole point of Protestantism; it recognized that the church was good in many ways and yet that it had gotten some things wrong and needed a reformation. But that the Scriptures are perfect and inerrant, but man and human leaders, through their weaknesses and sins and inconsistencies can get things wrong in doctrine and application of passages and interpretations.
Then I replied this way:
The problem was you just replaced one set of human leaders with another. You don’t gain anything. But you lose apostolic succession. You lose the papacy. These are God’s way of making his church work despite human weakness. You reject God’s solution to the problem and replace it with nothing. Somehow there is an assumption that nobody will be fooled by false teachers.
Then one more round a little longer:
You don’t gain anything.
We gained much; the Biblical gospel; freedom from legalisms (Romans, Galatians) and gaining the power of God to free people from sin and assurance of salvation (I John 5:13); going directly to God through Christ, the one mediator (I Tim. 2:5, I John 2:1) without Mary and statues and all the other religious paraphernalia that gets in the way of true worship.
You had the scriptures before the reformation so you don’t gain anything that is clearly biblical. All you gain is the ability to teach things that are arguably biblical and contradict the tradition of the church fathers. Just adding more human opinions when you say human opinions are the problem. The reality is we now have such a mass of human opinion most people get lost and just arbitrarily pick stuff based on tradition. But you lose apostolic succession.
No, we have the right kind of “apostolic succession” if we follow the doctrine of the apostles, they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching, doctrine. Acts 2:42, Jude 3, 17, 2 Peter 1:12-21, 3:1-2, 3:16
This is just nonsense. Apostolic succession is about not simply allowing anybody to declare themselves to be God’s annointed and declare their tradition to be christian tradition. This offers no protection from false teachers. We know they will lead many astray. How can we know if we are following them? Because they say they are not false?
Irenaeus and Tertullian, who traced the bishops back in their lists, did so against Gnosticism, and showing that the rule of faith (a pre-Nicean/apostles creed/basic Trinitarian doctrinal formulation) was always there in all the churches at that time. The issue was Gnosticism, not any other kind of issue that would come up 1000 years later. They never claimed that that chain was infallible or goes on into future as protecting the church from error. Since we agree with the early catholic church against Gnosticism, we are in agreement with that method at that time; so it does nothing to prove anything against sola Scriptura or Protestantism per se.
You really should stop reading the ECF’s. You are incapable of seeing anything but your own opinion in them. Why should Irenaeus’ method of discerning truth from heresy be invalid for us just because the heresy is different? It is arbitrary and intellectually dishonest. Just admit you have a very, very different way of arriving at truth then the early church did. Not that different from the heretics but very different from the orthodox christians.
Yes, they appointed elders (pastors, overseers) in Acts 14:23 and Titus 1:5-7 in local churches, and those leaders are supposed to cling to the apostles doctrine. “able to teach”, “hold to the mystery of the faith”, “guard the deposit”, etc.
The key word here is “appointed”. They were not self-appointed but they were appointed by Titus who was appointed by Paul who was appointed by Jesus. Nobody could just declare himself to be a presbtyr.
The history of the RCC and EO shows that as the centuries went by, they allowed little things to start creeping in and corrupting Biblical doctrine.
This is your opinion. You cannot prove their doctrines are unbiblical. You cannot show the aspects you object to crept in rather than being there early on. You just assert that the gates of hell prevailed against the church.
You lose the papacy.
There never was a papacy in the Bible or the early church — it is just not there in Matthew 16 or John 20-21 as your church claims) the concept of a Roman bishop over all the other bishops was a later development. Even Cyprian and Firmillian in 250-256 ? fought against Stephen on that issue.
Silliness again. Look at this quote:
The Lord says to Peter: ‘I say to you,’ He says, ‘that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church’…On him He builds the Church, and to him He gives the command to feed the sheep; and although He assigns a like power to all the Apostles, yet He founded a single chair, and He established by His own authority a source and an intrinsic reason for that unity. Indeed, the others were that also which Peter was; but a primacy is given to Peter, whereby it is made clear that there is but one Church and one chair. So too, all are shepherds, and the flock is shown to be one, fed by all the Apostles in single-minded accord. If someone does not hold fast to this unity of Peter, can he imagine that he still holds the faith? If he desert the chair of Peter upon whom the Church was built, can he still be confident that he is in the Church?
St. Cyprian of Carthage, The Unity of the Catholic Church, 1st edition, A.D. 251
So St Cyprian fought against Pope Stephen but recognized the pope’s authority. That is the point. If they always agreed then authority would not matter. Still he believed that to break with the pope was to break with the christian faith.
Randy,
I just discovered your entry here on our discussion from Dave Armstrong’s website.
Cyprian also wrote:
It remains, that upon this same matter each of us should bring forward what we think, judging no man, nor rejecting any one from the right of communion, if he should think differently from us (a direct allusion to Stephen). For neither does any one of us set himself up as a bishop of bishops, nor by tyrannical terror does any compel his colleague to the necessity of obedience; since every bishop, according to the allowance of his liberty and power, has his own proper right of judgment, and can no more be judged by another than he himself can judge another. But let all of us wait for the judgment of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the only one that has the power both of preferring us in the government of His Church, and of judging us in our conduct there (Ante-Nicene Fathers (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1995), The Seventh Council of Carthage Under Cyprian, p. 565).
As for Cyprian, the famous quote from “The Unity of the Church” has 2 forms. Cyprian himself realized that people would mis-understand what he wrote, so he clarified himself. Cyprian wrote both of them. (J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, p. 205-206)
“So St Cyprian fought against Pope Stephen but recognized the pope’s authority.”
This is what is silliness and nonsense, and a contradiction. There is nothing in Cyprian’s writing that speaks of Rome or the bishop of Rome as the exclusive “chair of Peter” or the only church or only bishop that has the unity of faith and that all the other areas and churches must submit to that church or bishop. He is quoting from Matthew 16 and John 21 and referring to Peter’s confession of faith, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God”, and that a like power was given to all the apostles.
Later, Cyprian writes, “The authority of the bishops forms a unity, of which each holds his part in its totality.” Cyprian, Unity of the Church, next sentence after your quote. And there is a longer version of this, which Cyprian also wrote, to clear up any mis-understanding, that he was claiming that he and all the other bishops also hold the chair of Peter and unity of faith in their territories, so Cyprian is not talking about Rome as a single jurisdictional authority, (does not even mention Rome or the bishop of Rome in that quote at all, and neither does Jesus or Peter in Matthew 16 or I Peter or 2 Peter); rather he is talking about all true churches and bishops and that they must all hold to the unity of the faith of Peter.
No, he did not recognize any kind of Pope or authority over him and his area as a bishop/elder. Same goes for Firmillian in the East. (Cappadocia, today in Central Turkey) No where in the quote does Cyprian give any special authority to the church of Rome or the bishop of Rome. He talks about a unity and a chair of Peter, but those are not in reference to the bishop of Rome as above all the other churches or bishops.
He is using “the chair of Peter” and the Matthew 16 passage to show that a unity of doctrine was part of the issue to show that all the apostles agreed with each other, there was no contradiction between them, and all of the apostolic churches agreed with each other — all the ones planted by Paul, and others, Colossea, Galatia, Ephesus, Philippi, Jerusalem, they are all supposed to agree with the one unity of doctrine (the unity of the faith, or the unity of the Spirit - Ephesians 4:1-16).
That is what Cyprian means, a “unity of the doctrine of what the faith” is. He does not say the bishop of Rome is over him or any other church, and he does not teach any kind of doctrine that was much later developed by the Roman Catholic Church by using the proof texts of Matthew 16 and later, in 451 by Leo I, combining Luke 22 and John 21 with it and no one claimed these are about the bishops of the church in Rome, until Stephen and even then, there was no claim of infallibility .
Cyprian rebukes that kind of thinking, as Firmillian does also from Caesarea in Cappodocia, and the Council of Carthage around 256 AD; which was lead by Cyprian and that had many bishops from all over N. Africa and the East (86 bishops from both N. Africa and the East) to agree that “no one has the right to call himself bishop of bishops”.
Of course you want to stop reading the Early church fathers! In order to understand Cyprian, one has to go back and read about 10-15 of his other letters, and the treatise on the lapsed, and the Unity of the church, with both versions, and the council of Carthage, and the historians who can help us put all of that material together.
All the major historians on this issue, Roman Catholic (Robert Eno, William Jurgens, Michael Winter), (documented below by William Webster) Orthodox (John Meyendorff, all others, for this is their main beef with the RCC and what keeps them separated from the EO, was and is over the jurisdictional claims of the see of Rome) and Protestant (J. N. D. Kelly, pp. 205-207, Early Christian Doctrines, Reinhold Seeberg, quoted in William Webster’s articles), agree that the chair of Peter and unity that Cyprian is talking about is equal in all the churches and areas, and that it means that a true church must hold to the confession and faith of Peter, not that there is a special jurisdictional authority in the city of Rome. Rome is honored because it is an apostolic see, as both Peter and Paul were there, Paul wrote his great doctrinal letter of the Romans to that church, and they were martyred there; and it was the capital of the Roman Empire, and from there, other churches were planted in Europe and in N. Africa. The primacy was a primacy of honor, “first among equals”, that is what all the earliest references to Rome in the Early Church refers to, a primacy of honor as first among equals; not a jurisdictional authority of “bishop of bishops.”
William Jurgens, a Roman Catholic Patristic scholar and historical comes to the conclusion that in the historical context of all the letters of Cyprian and Firmillian along with the Council of Carthage and the phrase, “no one sets himself up as a bishop of bishop”, he is talking about Stephen, bishop of Rome, and countering his assertions.
‘In the context of the present question of opposition between Rome and Carthage, it is impossible to believe that in committing himself to the words of the present address, Cyprian did not have Stephen in mind’ (William Jurgens, The Faith of the Early Fathers (Collegeville: Liturgical, 1970), Volume I, p. 241).
From William Webster’s articles on Cyprian and the Papacy issue:
August 8th, 2007 at 10:29 amCyprian says:
It remains, that upon this same matter each of us should bring forward what we think, judging no man, nor rejecting any one from the right of communion, if he should think differently from us (a direct allusion to Stephen). For neither does any one of us set himself up as a bishop of bishops, nor by tyrannical terror does any compel his colleague to the necessity of obedience; since every bishop, according to the allowance of his liberty and power, has his own proper right of judgment, and can no more be judged by another than he himself can judge another. But let all of us wait for the judgment of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the only one that has the power both of preferring us in the government of His Church, and of judging us in our conduct there (Ante-Nicene Fathers (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1995), The Seventh Council of Carthage Under Cyprian, p. 565).
Cyprian refers here to the fact that no bishop has a right to demand obedience from his fellow bishops or to withdraw communion because of a difference of opinion. He speaks of this as a universal law in the Church as a whole. This, of course, goes back to Cyprian’s view of ecclesiology as expressed in his treatise On the Unity of the Church. In that treatise he makes it clear that all bishops are of equal status. Thus, from the standpoint of his ecclesiology, no bishop can lawfully be called the Bishop of Bishops as Stephen was claiming for himself. The only authority that can dictate to another bishop is a Church Council and that is precisely why they have come together in Council in Carthage. Three Roman Catholic historians, Robert Eno, Michael Winter and William Jurgens, affirm this conclusion:
Robert Eno: ‘Apart from his good relations and harmony with Bishop Cornelius over the matter of the lapsed, what was Cyprian’s basic view of the role, not of Peter as symbol of unity, but of Rome in the contemporary Church? Given what we have said above, it is clear that he did not see the bishop of Rome as his superior, except by way of honor, even though the lawful bishop of Rome also held the chair of Peter in an historical sense (Ep. 52.2)…It is clear that in Cyprian’s mind…one theological conclusion he does not draw is that the bishop of Rome has authority which is superior to that of the African bishops’ (Robert Eno, The Rise of the Papacy (Wilmington: Michael Glazier, 1990), pp. 57-60).
Michael Winter: ‘Cyprian used the Petrine text of Matthew to defend episcopal authority, but many later theologians, influenced by the papal connections of the text, have interpreted Cyprian in a pro-papal sense which was alien to his thought…Cyprian would have used Matthew 16 to defend the authority of any bishop, but since he happened to employ it for the sake of the Bishop of Rome, it created the impression that he understood it as referring to papal authority…Catholics as well as Protestants are now generally agreed that Cyprian did not attribute a superior authority to Peter’ (Michael Winter, St. Peter and the Popes (Baltimore: Helikon, 1960), pp. 47-48).
William Jurgens: ‘Although Cyprian was on excellent terms with Pope St. Cornelius…he fell out sharply with Cornelius’ successor, Pope St. Stephen…on the question of the re-baptizing of converted heretics. It was the immemorial custom of the African Church to regard Baptism conferred by heretics as invalid, and in spite of Stephen’s severe warnings, Cyprian never yielded. His attitude was simply that every bishop is responsible for his own actions; answerable to God alone’ (William Jurgens, The Faith of the Early Fathers (Collegeville: Liturgical, 1970), Volume I, p. 216-217).
So in his use of the term ‘bishop of bishops’ Cyprian is making a direct reference to Stephen, the bishop of Rome. The Roman Catholic patristic scholar, William Jurgens, agrees with this assessment that Cyprian is indeed referring to Stephen in his use of the term and that it is a repudiation of the primacy claims enunciated by him. He says: ‘In the context of the present question of opposition between Rome and Carthage, it is impossible to believe that in committing himself to the words of the present address, Cyprian did not have Stephen in mind’ (William Jurgens, The Faith of the Early Fathers (Collegeville: Liturgical, 1970), Volume I, p. 241).
From William Webster and his answers to Steve Ray. Reading all of the articles on this sometimes complicated issue, Webster clearly refutes Steve Ray.
http://www.christiantruth.com/ray2.html
That is a fairly long cut and paste job. I have to do some reading to reply fully. I did find a pretty good Catholic reply here:
http://www.bringyou.to/apologetics/num44.htm
Suffice it to say that William Webster’s arguments were first raised by Anglican apologists about 100 years ago. Steve ray has described them as the best arguments from the protestant side. So maybe I should read up on them. Thank you so much Ken.
August 8th, 2007 at 3:59 pmI found a typo in my post. I left out the word, “me”.
Of course you want (me) to stop reading the Early church fathers!
This was in response to your statement here:
You really should stop reading the ECF’s.
Thanks for the interaction.
August 8th, 2007 at 8:41 pmI was saying you should stop reading them if you are just looking for stuff to back up your set-in-stone opinion. What you did with Irenaeus seemed like an extreme example of that. As far as what you say about this Cyprian quote you are going the same way. Your attempts to explain it are quite a stretch. To say the “chair of Peter” refers to Peter’s faith is pretty strange. People try that when Peter is called the rock upon which the church is built. It doesn’t makes sense in that case. It makes less sense now. When you refer to someone’s faith you don’t talk about their chair. The term refers to an office or position. Cyprian even talks about “the faith” at the end. So you have him connecting the “chair of Peter” to “the faith” yet they are supposed to be the same thing?
No, your explanation of my quote fails big time. The other quotes you threw in are interesting. That is what I need to read some on.
August 9th, 2007 at 6:55 amNo, your explanation fails big time.
No, there is nothing about a “chair” or office in the Matthew 16 passage; that is a later development, first mentioned, as far as I can tell, by Cyprian. He may mean the office of the bishop, but he tells us that he is using “chair” in order to speak about “a single chair”; “one” and “unity”, “that a commencement may be made from unity”. The point is that the churches should be unified, yes.
Here is a good analysis of Augustine’s view on Peter and the Rock and Matthew 16:
Although he has a very high view of both Rome and Peter, the apostle basically serves as the character who is representative of the universal Church of Christ; he is not the “rock” that sustains the Church. That position belongs to Jesus alone. This is confirmed in many of Augustine’s sermons. In The Retractations, he states the following:
In a passage in this book, I said about the Apostle Peter: ‘On him as on a rock the Church was built.’… But I know that very frequently at a later time, I so explained what the Lord said: ‘Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church,’ that it be understood as built upon Him whom Peter confessed saying: ‘Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God,’ and so Peter, called after this rock, represented the person of the Church which is built upon this rock, and has received the ‘keys of the kingdom of heaven.’ For ‘Thou art Peter’ and ‘Thou art the rock’ was said to him. But ‘the rock was Christ,’ in confessing whom, as also the Church confesses, Simon was called Peter. But let the reader decide which of these two opinions is more probable. 253
Although Augustine leaves the final decision to the reader, his preference regarding the rock seems clear. According to Augustine, Peter represents the Church and Jesus is the “rock” of the Church. Peter is chief among the apostles because he serves as the figure of the church, but he is not the “rock” in question. That “rock” is Jesus. This is seen yet again in Augustine’s Tractate on the Gospel of John. There, he writes:
And this Church, symbolized in its generality, was personified in the Apostle Peter, on account of the primacy of his apostleship. … For petra (rock) is not derived from Peter, but Peter from petra; just as Christ is not called so from the Christian, but the Christian from Christ. For on this very account the Lord said, ‘On this rock will I build my Church,’ because Peter had said, ‘Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.’ On this rock, therefore, He said, which thou hast confessed, I will build my Church. For the Rock (Petra) was Christ; and on this foundation was Peter himself built. For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Christ Jesus.254
Again, Peter is representative of the universal Church and Jesus himself, as rock, supports that Church. The rock did not take its name from Peter, but Peter had his name taken from the “rock”; this interpretation expressed Augustine’s doctrine of grace, because Peter, and in him the whole church, is built upon Christ alone.255 The “foundation” reference clearly echoes the writings of Paul. It appears that Augustine is using 1 Cor 3:11 to substantiate his reading of Matt 16. Church historian Karlfried Frhlich adds:
In harmony with his ecclesiology, but against the meaning of the text, Augustine rigorously separated the name-giving from its explanation: Christ did not say to Peter: ‘you are the rock,’ but ‘you are Peter.’ The church is not built upon Peter but upon the only true rock, Christ. Augustine and the medieval exegetes after him found the warrant for this interpretation in 1 Cor. 10:4. The allegorical key of this verse had already been applied to numerous biblical rock passages in the earlier African testimonia tradition. Matt. 16:18 was no exception. If the metaphor of the rock did not refer to a negative category of ‘hard’ rocks, it had to be read christologically.256
Therefore, Peter served as a great prototype for the Church because in many ways, he was representative of the everyday Christian: sometimes he is strong (confessing that Jesus is the Christ); at other times he is weak (rebuking Jesus about his imminent death). Like everyone else, he is fallible, and needs to be grounded upon something stronger than himself, namely Jesus.
Summary
For Eusebius, Cyril of Jerusalem, and Augustine the rock of Matt 16:18 was neither Peter nor his confession, but Jesus himself. It appears that the Pauline epistles, particularly 1 Corinthians, greatly influenced the writings of these fathers. The rock metaphor of Matt 16:18 stressed the strength of the Church’s foundation, but the foundation image itself was seen in 1 Corinthians 3, and that foundation is Jesus.257 Thus Jesus builds the church upon the firm rock, himself.258
Augustine, Cyril, and Eusebius all held a very high view of Peter, but they interpret the rock of Matt 16 to be Jesus, not the apostle. For Augustine, in particular, Peter and the popes are representatives of the entire Church; Jesus, though, is the firm rock upon which that Church rests, and it is he who supports and sustains the Christian body.
August 15th, 2007 at 5:54 pmThe quote above was from a paper at the following web-site:
http://www.bible.org/page.php?page_id=2704
Yes, I did a cut and paste job in order to save time and I was able to find a well researched article that has both good exegesis and church history in it; and also several Augustine quotes together with prove that he viewed “the Rock” as Christ.
The author of the research paper researched Tertullian and Gregory of Nissa and Augustine, etc. and so I was very surprised that she wrote nothing on Cyprian and Stephen. (at least I could not find anything at this point . . . still looking.)
August 15th, 2007 at 5:58 pmYes, I found some good material on Cyprian, from the same article, on a later page. Go and see for yourself.
“. . . yet in order that the oneness might be unmistakable, he established by his own authority a source for that oneness having its origin in one man alone. No doubt the other apostles were all that Peter was, endowed with equal dignity and power, but the start comes from him alone, in order to show that the church of Christ is unique. Indeed, this oneness of the church is figured in the canticle of Canticles when the Holy Spirit, speaking in Our Lord’s name says: ‘One is my dove, my perfect one: to her mother she is the only one, the darkling of her womb (Cant. 6:8). If a man does not hold fast to this oneness of the church, does he imagine that he still holds the faith? If he resists and withstands the church, has he still confidence that he is in the church, when the blessed apostle Paul gives us this very teaching and points to the mystery of ones saying: ‘One body and one spirit, one hope in your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God’ (Eph. 4:4)?467
For Cyprian, then, the authority of the apostles was equal. Here, he is supporting the collegiate conception of the episcopate, only adding that Peter was the starting point and symbol of unity.468 In other words, Cyprian would have used Matt 16 to defend the authority of any bishop, not just the bishop of Rome.469 According to Catholic theologian Michael Winter, Cyprian’s ecclesiology of unity is secured by two means: the authority of bishops (general) and the role of Peter.470 With Matt 16, Cyprian defends the oneness of government even at a local level; since the local church is a microcosm of the universal church, the safeguarding of unity in one will guard the other.471 Therefore, based on this text, Cyprian’s platform cannot be used to indicate the primacy of the Roman see over another; all bishops are equal, as all apostles are equal.
However, there is a major problem with the aforementioned excerpt from “On the Unity of the Church” – another version of the letter exists, and it does seem to affirm the primacy of the bishop of Rome. For the sake of convenience, both letters will be reproduced side-by-side below.472
August 15th, 2007 at 6:10 pmKen(and anybody else reading Ken’s posts),
I recommend that you read JESUS,PETER & THE KEYS A Scriptural Handbook on the Papacy by Butler, Dahlgren, and Hess. Your posts have been thoroughly refuted in this book, Ken, before you even posted them here. If I were the typing type, and had plenty of time, I would give the readers the courtesy of a lengthy, thoughtful, refutation of your post Ken. The book is an absolute slam dunk for the Catholic position of the papacy.
September 25th, 2007 at 9:25 pmI have read that book that Peter recommends and it does nothing of the sort.
Most of it is fluff, just mentioning every time Peter is ever mentioned in any historical writing, thinking that that means, the Papacy or pope or infallibility, or jurisdictional authority. No; it does not even deal with the above arguments I have made.
January 16th, 2008 at 3:08 pmSincerely,
Ken Temple
I have the book as well. It does not make a lot of arguments. It quotes the ECF’s and lets the reader decide. The evidence is massive. They are simply Catholic in the way they approach this question. Come to think of it, they are Catholic in the way they approach pretty much every question.
They are not a choir that sings only one note. They do reflect on a lot of possibilities just as Catholics do today. Jesus is the rock. Peter is the rock. It all fits with the idea of the pope as the vicar of Christ. Much of it does not fit at all with protestant thinking. So, yet again, protestants are out of step with historical Christianity.
January 16th, 2008 at 5:18 pm