Gospel, 21st Sunday in OT Year A

24 Sunday Aug 2014

Posted by John Charmley in Bible, Catholic Tradition, Commentaries, Early Church, Pope

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Apostles, Catholic Church, Christianity, Jesus, St Leo, St Peter

As this Gospel reading was the subject of a commentary from the Fathers as recently as 29 June this year, today I want to offer part of the text of a sermon preached by Pope St Leo the Great on 29 June 443. There are various posts on this blog here, here and here which explain something on the background for those who insist on reading something other than what Jesus said. If you are a Biblical Christian and do not believe the plain sense of the text, as yourself why that is? Are you right and the Church wrong?

In the Gospel story, the Lord asked all the Apostles what people thought about him. But when the Lord wanted to know what the disciples felt, the first in dignity among the apostles was first to confess the Lord. When he had said, “You are Christ, Son of the Living God”, Jesus replied to him: “Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father who is in Heaven.” That is to say, for this reason you are blessed, since my Father taught you; since earthly opinion did not deceive you, but heavenly inspiration instructed you; since neither flesh nor blood but he, whose only Son am I, made me know to you.

“And I,” he said, “tell you,” that is to say, just as my Father has manifested my divinity to you, so I make known to you your own prominence. “That you are Peter,” that is to say that although I am the indestructible rock, “I the cornerstone who make both things one”, I “the foundation on which no one can lay another”, you also are rock because you are made firm in my strength. What belongs properly to my own power you share with me by participation.

“And upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” “On this” strength, he means, I shall raise up an eternal temple, and the loftiness of my church, piercing into Heaven, will rise up on the firmness of this faith. This confession will not be restrained by the gates of hell. It will not be bound by the chains of death. For that declaration is indeed a declaration of life. While it lifts those who confess it up to heaven, no less does it sink down to hell those who deny it.

It was with this in view that the most Blessed Peter was told: “And I will give unto thee the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in Heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in Heaven.” Certainly the right to use this power was conveyed to the other Apostles as well. What was laid down by this decree was for all the leaders of the Church, yet not without purpose is it handed over to one, though made known to all. Ot is entrusted in a unique way to Peter because the figure of Peter is set before all the rulers of the Church. Therefore this privilege of Peter resides wherever judgment has been passed in accordance with his fairness. There cannot be too much severity or too much lenience where nothing is bound or loosed outside of that which Blessed Peter has loosed or bound.

Christmas Day Sermon

25 Wednesday Dec 2013

Posted by John Charmley in Bible, Christmas, Early Church, Faith, Pope

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Catholic Church, Christianity, history, St Leo

This sermon was delivered on Christmas Day 443 by Pope Leo the Great

The Divine goodness, dearly beloved, has indeed always taken thought for mankind in various manners, and to many degrees. God has imparted many gifts of His providence to ages past; but in these last times has exceeded all the abundance of His usual kindness, when in Christ the very Mercy has descended to sinners, the very Truth to those that are astray, the very Life to those that are dead. As a result, that Word, which is co-eternal and co-equal with the Father, takes our lowly nature into the unity of His Divinity. God, born God, becomes man, born of man.

This was indeed promised from the foundation of the world, and had always been prophesied by many signs of facts and words : but how small a portion of mankind would these types and fore-shadowed mysteries have saved, had not the coming of Christ fulfilled those long and secret promises: and had not that which then benefited but a few believers in the prospect, now benefited myriads of the faithful in its accomplishment.

Now no longer then are we led to believe by signs and types, but being confirmed by the gospel story, we worship that which we believe to have been done. Added to this, for our enlightenment, are the helps of the prophetic lore, so that we have no manner of doubt about that which we know to have been predicted by such sure oracles.

This is why the Lord says to Abraham: In your seed shall all nations be blessed [Genesis 22:18]: hence David, in the spirit of prophecy, sings, saying:The Lord swore truth to David, and He shall not frustrate it: of the fruit of your loins will I set upon your seat [Psalm 132]; hence the Lord again says through Isaiah: behold a virgin shall conceive in her womb, and shall bear a Son, and His Name shall be called Emmanuel, which is interpreted, God with us [Isaiah 7:14], and again, a rod shall come forth from the root of Jesse, and a flower shall arise from his root. [Isaiah 11:1] In which rod no doubt the blessed Virgin Mary is predicted, who sprung from the stock of Jesse and David and fecundated by the Holy Ghost, brought forth a new flower of human flesh, becoming a virgin-mother.

Let the righteous then rejoice in the Lord, and let the hearts of believers turn to God’s praise, and the sons of men confess His wondrous acts; since in this work of God especially our humble estate realizes how highly its Maker values it: in that, after His great gift to mankind in making us after His image, He contributed far more largely to our restoration when the Lord Himself took on Him the form of a slave. [Phi. 2:7]. For though all that the Creator expends upon His creature is part of one and the same Fatherly love, yet it is less wonderful than man should advance to divine things than that God should descend to humanity.

But unless the Almighty God did deign to do this, no kind of righteousness, no form of wisdom could rescue any one from the devil’s bondage and from the depths of eternal death. For the condemnation that passes with sin from one upon all [Rom 5:12, 18] would remain, and our nature, corroded by its deadly wound, would discover no remedy, because it could not alter its state in its own strength.

For the first man received the substance of flesh from the earth, and was quickened with a rational spirit by the in-breathing of his Creator , so that living after the image and likeness [Gen 1:26] of his Maker, he might preserve the form of God’s goodness and righteousness as in a bright mirror. And, if he had perseveringly maintained this high dignity of his nature by observing the Law that was given him, his uncorrupt mind would have raised the character even of his earthly body to heavenly glory.

But because in unhappy rashness he trusted the envious deceiver, and agreeing to his presumptuous counsels, preferred to forestall rather than to win the increase of honour that was in store for him, not only did that one man, but in him all that came after him also hear the verdict: earth you are, and unto earth shall you go [Gen 3:19]; as in the earthy, therefore, such are they also that are earthy [1 Corinthians 15:48], and no one is immortal, because no one is heavenly.

And so to undo this chain of sin and death, the Almighty Son of God, that fills all things and contains all things, altogether equal to the Father and co-eternal in one essence from Him and with Him, took on Him man’s nature, and the Creator and Lord of all things deigned to be a mortal: choosing for His mother one whom He had made, one who, without loss of her maiden honour, supplied so much of bodily substance, that without the pollution of human seed the New Man might be possessed of purity and truth.

In Christ, therefore, born of the Virgin’s womb, though his birth was miraculous, his nature is not, on that account, different from ours. For He Who is true God, is also true man: and there is no lie in either nature. The Word became flesh [Jn 1:14] by an elevation of the flesh, not by failure of the Godhead. His divinity conducted his power and goodness in such a way that he raised what was ours by taking it up and did not lose what was his own. In this nativity of Christ, according to the prophecy of David, truth sprang out of the earth, and righteousness looked down from heaven.[Psalm 85]

…….

But you, dearly beloved, whom I address in no less earnest terms than those of the blessed Apostle Peter, a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession [1 Peter 2:9], built upon the impregnable rock, Christ, and joined to the Lord our Saviour by His true assumption of our flesh, remain firm in that Faith [Col. 1:23], which you have professed before many witnesses [1.Tim 6:12], and in which you were reborn through water [Jn 3:5] and the Holy Ghost, and received the anointing of salvation, and the seal of eternal life.

But if any one preach to you any thing beside that which you have learned, let him be anathema [Galatians 1:9]: refuse to put wicked fables before the clearest truth, and what you may happen to read or hear contrary to the rule of the catholic and Apostolic creed, judge it altogether deadly and diabolical.

Be not carried away by their deceitful keepings of sham and pretended fasts which tend not to the cleansing, but to the destroying of men’s souls. They put on indeed a cloak of piety and chastity, but under this deceit they conceal the filthiness of their acts, and from the recesses of their ungodly heart hurl shafts [Psalm 55] to wound the simple; that, as the prophet says, they may shoot in darkness at the upright in heart.

A mighty bulwark is a sound faith, a true faith, to which nothing has to be added or taken away: because unless it is one, it is no faith, as the Apostle says,one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in us all [Ephesians 4:5-6] . Cling to this unity, dearly beloved, with minds unshaken, and in it follow after all holiness [Hebrews 12:14], in it carry out the Lord’s commands, because without faith it is impossible to please God, and without it nothing is holy, nothing is pure, nothing alive.

For the just lives by faith [Heb.10:38] , and he who by the devil’s deception loses it, is dead though living [1Tim 5:6], because as righteousness is gained by faith, so too by a true faith is eternal life gained, as says our Lord and Saviour. And this is life eternal, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent [John 17:3]. May He make you to advance and persevere to the end, Who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit, for ever and ever. Amen.

Gospel: 18th Sunday in OT

04 Sunday Aug 2013

Posted by John Charmley in Bible, Commentaries, Early Church, Faith

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Catholic Church, Christianity, St Leo, St. Cyril

Luke 12:13-21

St Ambrose reminds us that we should be seeking an inheritance of immortality, not one of money; nor should one tempt the Lord by asking Him to arbitrate in such matters. Augustine reminds us that Christ has come to gather, and not to divide; greed and avarice divide, charity and love unite. St Cyril tells us that here Jesus shows that covetousness is pitfall of the devil’s; it is a form of idolatry, no better than the worship of sticks and stones; it is a snare which drags our souls down to hell.

St Cyril points out that, surrounded by great riches with which he might do much good, he looks neither to the future nor to God, but to himself and his own greed; he does not think about the poor and the needy, nor does he sympathise with them and their suffering and attempt, as he could, to help them. He hoards these good things to himself, in the same way the proud Pharisees hoarded the teaching of God. St Augustine makes a similar point, that, instead of helping the poor, he helped himself; so where will he be when the Lords says “I was hungry and you did not give me to eat”? [Matthew 25:42].

St Leo the Great [Sermon 90] says:

But because the snares of the devil are not at rest even in such a state of things, most rightly at certain seasons of the year the renewal of our vigour is provided for: and now in particular, when one who is greedy of present good might boast himself over the clemency of the weather and the fertility of the land, and having stored his crops in great barns, might say to his soul, you have much goods, eat and drink, let him take heed to the rebuke of the Divine voice, and hear it saying, You fool, this night they require your soul of you, and the things which you have prepared, whose shall they beLuke 12:19-20? This should be the wise man’s most anxious consideration, in order that, as the days of this life are short and its span uncertain, death may never come upon him unawares, and that knowing himself mortal he may meet his end fully prepared.

Ambrose reminds us that only virtue and charity follow us after our death. St Cyril adds that the man who is rich toward God, and thus blessed, is not one who values money, but one who loves virtue; such a man’s hand is open and generous to the poor, and by his charity, such a man gathers up treasure in Heaven. It is God who gives all good things, and we should imitate him if we are fortunate enough to be endowed with riches. But riches wrongly used are a snare.

The Church Fathers are unanimous in seeing this passage in two ways: a warning to the rich; and a call to charity and generosity on their part. They did not live in a world where anyone could expect the State to pick up the bill, or where one could out-source charity; every man who had more than he needed for his daily bread was adjured to share of his substance with those less fortunate. The links to the Matthean passages where Jesus casts himself in the place of the poor, are strong with the Fathers. Building up wealth for oneself is literally pointless; indeed, in as far as it hardens one’s heart to the poor, it is harmful to one’s soul.

C451

In the mouth or hand? Myths examined

30 Tuesday Apr 2013

Posted by John Charmley in Early Church, Faith

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Catholic Church, Christianity, St Leo

Had I not had a good understanding of Vatican II wars, I confess I should have been puzzled by the way Catholics go on about reception in the hand. As an Anglican I had always thus received and known why. It was not simply that we followed the example of St. Cyril of Jerusalem, it was that we followed it to the letter. We did indeed make our hands into a throne to receive Our Lord. The ancient canons of the Chaldean Church forbade the priest from putting the host directly into his mouth with his fingers, but to consume it straight from his palm. This I did as an Anglican, and as an Orthodox. It was also (and remains) my practice to bow before receiving the host and to make the sign of the Cross after reception.

Let me say here that whilst I am aware that there are those who question whether the lectures are by St Cyril, that is irrelevant for this argument; they are stated as the practice of the Church, and I have yet to meet someone who can show me that this was not the case. In other words, the validity of the argument has nothing to do with the authorship of the lectures, and the attempt to divert it into one shows simply the paucity of evidence in favour of the later practice of receiving on the tongue.

I am also aware that Pope Paul commended the practice of receiving on the tonge as an ancient tradition, which it is – in the Latin Rite. But tradition is not confined to the Latin Rite, and the Latin Rite os not the whole Catholic Church. I have no doubt that some reception in the hand is irreverent, but then equally little doubt that sticking your tongue out at the priest and him getting your saliva on his fingers is hardly reverent either. All of these arguments are ones of preference, not from tradition, which actually supports both methods of receiving.

What I would argue here is that those who dislike aspects of modernisation in the Church are picking on this issue to express their disdain, dislike and even hatred of what happens at the Novus Ordo Mass most Sundays in most places. Well, they are wleocme to their opinion, I hold a similar one of the practice of pulling tongues at my priest, but my feelings, like their feelings, are irrlevant – both practices were present in the Church from about the fifth century, but the practice of receiving on the tongue and in on species only is the newer of the two.

It is often said that Leo the Great provides evidence that by the fifth century reception on the tongue was practised. But if one looks at the sermon cited it says no such thing, it simply refers to ‘what is taken in the mouth’, which is not evidence about how the host got into the mouth. This is one of the arguments used by Bishop Athanasius Schneider to show that reception in the hand was a ‘Calvinist novelty’. Well. the Bishop needs to read more history, as I say, the citation from St Leo is reading into it what the Bishops wishes to find, the same is true of the argument about St Gregory and about St Basil. The last is especially puzzling as it clearly means what it says, which is that people received in the hand and, in the absence of a priest, could administer it to themselves; only those committed to the idea that communion on the tongue was the norm could read it in any other way.

I ask one thing only, an account from tradition that the Tridentine practice was, in fact Apostolic, and I am sorry, but statements by a Council in the Middle Ages without backing are evidence only of the sorry practice of men supposing that what they did had always been done, and then claiming the sanctity of tradition in support. No one doubts that by then reception on the tongue was the norm in the Latin West – but the argument that it had been since the days of Leo the Great falls flat.

Let me emphasise in closing that none of this is an agument against one practice or the other, just against self-styled traditionalists misunderstanding their own traditions – or worse, misrepresenting them.

Of course I want reverence for the Blessed Sacrament – but there has never been just the one way of doing that in the Catholic tradition, so let us not pretend otherwise and let us not beat one another up over it

Chalcedon

14 Sunday Apr 2013

Posted by John Charmley in Early Church, Faith, Pope

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Christianity, controversy, history, orthodoxy, St Leo, St. Cyril

Thanks to Liverpool University Press we can read the full proceedings of the Council of Chalcedon. The Council opened on 8 October, and its first job was to review what had happened at Ephesus in 449. It did so and it condemned Dioscorus and exiled him. At a stroke, Alexandria’s empire-building had collapsed.

The central part of the Council was the consideration of the Tome of Pope Leo. It is sometimes presented as though it were a synthesis of the Alexadrian and Antiochene views, and the Oriental Orthodox, the descendants of those who rejected Chalcedon, tend to make noises anout Leo’s Latin not being as flxible as the Greek. Both views give Leo little credit for a formula which has endured to this day.

Leo was the first Pope to be a considerable theologian, and we see a line of thinking in his Tome which reveals that. He emphasises that the Son is co-eternal with the Father (a decisive rejection of Nestorius) and that although the Son emptied Himself by condescending to take take on our humanity, He never ceased to be God. Like Cyril, he wrote about two natures but one person in the Incarnation; the two natures retained their distinctiveness (there was no sort of hybrid monster) but acted together ‘in communion’ in the one person of Jesus Christ. The Divine nature did those things appropriate to it (such as the miracles) whilst the human nature did likewise (like dying).

The fact that there was one perosn meant that each nature could be spoken about in terms of the other in a sharing of qualities or an interchange of properties – a communicatio idiomatum (communion of idioms). Thus one could say that the Son of Man came down from heaven and took flesh from the Virgin Mary.

It is worth giving the wording:

We, then, following the holy Fathers, all with one consent, teach men to confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in Godhead and also perfect in manhood; truly God and truly man, of a reasonable soul and body; consubstantial with us according to the manhood; in all things like unto us, without sin; begotten before all ages of the Father according to the Godhead, and in these latter days, for us and for our salvation, born of the virgin Mary, the mother of God, according to the manhood; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, to be acknowledged in two natures, inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably; the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one Person and one Subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son, and only begotten, God the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ, as the prophets from the beginning have declared concerning him, and the Lord Jesus Christ himself taught us, and the Creed of the holy Fathers has handed down to us.

The Creed is in line with the Nicene Creed, and affirms the pre-esistence of Christ and His equality with Father; it also proclaims His perfect humanity and divinity. It is important to note that the assembled bishops pored over Leo’s Tome, but once it was clear to them that Leo agreed with Cyril, they were happy to declare ‘Peter speaks through Leo.‘

I have offered my own explanation of what Leo claimed, as has Jessica, but what matters here is that for the majority, agreement had finally been reached on the vexed question of the nature of Christ. However, several questions remain to be answered, and it is to those we must turn now.

Who whom?

07 Thursday Mar 2013

Posted by John Charmley in Early Church, Pope

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Christianity, controversy, St Leo

Lenin thought that the central question in politics was ‘who ruled whom’. Our recent discussions over the Papacy show the same question applies to Christianity.

The notion, across which one comes frequently, that the Papacy in its modern form evolved from a power-grab, is more often asserted than proved. Eschewing the apologetic device of a floilegium of excerpts designed to show that the Papal claims have always been accepted in their current form, it makes more sense to investigate such texts against historical development.

In our recent discussion there was agreement about the Papacy having a primacy of honour; I would suggest that the situation we inherit has grown out of different answers to that question. Susan Wessel’s tremendous book on Leo the Great and the spiritual rebuilding of a Universal Rome (2009) offers a scholarly corrective to the notion that Papal primacy is the result of a persistent land-grab by Rome.

Pope Leo I (440-461) certainly emphasised the primacy of the papacy, and was the first Pope to systematise the claims making use of the Petrine verses from Matthew in a consistent series of exegeses. He did so not in order to expand his power, but because of “a deeper sense of justice that facilitated order and stability within the hierarchy” (127). Leo’s concerns about Roman authority had nothing to do with a struggle for ecclesiastical power. Rather, he was a quintessential Roman deeply concerned about the importance of the tranquilitas ordinis without which disorder and dissent would destroy the Body of Christ.

In the chaos which was engulfing the ordered world of Romanitas, the question of what a ‘primacy of honour’ might mean was not an academic one; it was an urgent and practical one. As violent hand sought to take the kingdom by force and tell the Church who should and should not be a bishop, and what should and should not be believed, where, in such shifting sands and perilous times was firm rock to be found? In the Petrine verses. Leo was not the first Pope to use them, but he was the first to systematically explore their meaning and to apply them practically.

One great test of this was Chalcedon in 451. The role Leo played there is centred on his famous Tome, “the significance of which for the formation of catholic Christology cannot be overstated” (41). But the second role Leo played—or, rather, refused to play – his refusal to accept canon 28, the one underscoring Constantinople’s “privileges” next after Rome itself, had nothing to do with pride, and everything with order. In addition to the important procedural question (the canon was passed in the absence of Leo’s legates, whose reasons for leaving remain unclear), Leo refused this canon for several reasons, none of them, Wessel insists, nefarious: “the privileges that Rome claimed were not an attempt to subject the patriarchal sees to Roman domination” (285). Rather, he resisted what he saw as the nakedly “political” nature of Constantinople’s claim in contradistinction to the “Apostolic” claims of Rome.

Leo’s answer to the calamities of his times was to assert that the Church stood on the rock of Peter’s faith, and at Chalcedon the Fathers said Peter spoke through Leo. Only when the East wished to assert its claims anew did anyone apply quizzical reading to the plain meaning of those words.
It would help if Catholics were better informed about their own history here, and were wiling to forego what they imagine is the slam-dunk of the florilegia for the harder route of historical study. It would also help if those who argue the ‘power grab’ case would address the issue of Leo and his motives.

Leo and the Rock

18 Wednesday Jul 2012

Posted by John Charmley in Early Church

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Catholic Church, St Leo

Before Leo had rejected the canon, both the Emperor Marcion, and the Patriarch of Constantinople, Anatolius, had written to him in conciliatory tones. Marcion hoped (Leo, Epistles CII) that now Rome’s doctrinal position had triumphed , that Chalcedon could be ratified. Anatolius went along the same line in another December letter (Price III pp. 138-142) in which he tried to convince Leo that his delegates had reported things incorrectly and stated clearly they had not simply sent him the canon as a conciliatory measure but for his approval:

This decree has been transmitted to your sacredness by the holy council and by us in order to receive from you approval and confirmation.
He went on the ‘beg’ him to do so so that ‘everything that was transacted in writing at this holy and ecumenical council’ could then be enacted. This was not the language even of primus inter pares – it was language used to a primus. But as we have seen, Leo was not mollified and would not give his approval. He told the Empress Pucheria that delighted though he was that the Council had proclaimed orthodoxy, he was saddened that an attempt had been made to add to the canons of Nicaea for no aim higher than political advantage.

Leo’s claims were based on Tradition and Apostolicity, he could not, and did not yield them. On 21 March 453, with parts of Palestine claiming Chalcedon was not legitimate because Leo had not ratified it Leo confirmed (Ep. 114.2) that he agrees to everything at Chaldecon which did not contravene Nicaea. Letter 116 to the empress makes the same point, adding:

Let vicious ambition covet nothing belonging to another, nor let anyone seek his own increase through injuring another, for however much vainglorious pride builds on extorted assent and thinks that its depredations can be strengthened through talking of councils, whatever differs from the canons of the aforesaid fathers [Nicaea] will be null and void.

Leo’s ratification of the Council was thought necessary by all concerned, and given the nature of the crisis in Egypt and Palestine, no one mentioned Canon 28, although clearly Leo was not ratifying it; Rome did not do so until the thirteenth century.

Leo’s claims were well-known and public; they were not contested by Constantinople. All men knew what it meant for Peter to speak through Leo. He spoke through no other Bishop. No other Bishop stood at the head of the others. No other Bishop’s ratification was sought in the way Leo’s was. Once can debate until well after the cows have come home what later men later claimed these things meant; contemporaries seem to have been clear enough. Lack of clarity came only when men desired it – as is so often the case.

Loose talk about Caesaro-Papism conceals a harsh reality. In Constantinople the Patriarch owed the claims he made in 451 to the fact he was the Imperial Patriarch; Church and State were one. The Roman Empire was effectively a theocracy – at Constantinople. Rome, deserted by the imperial bureacracy, threatened by Huns, and already much reduced in population, owed its claims solely to Apostolicity. In upholding them, Leo was doing what generations of his predecessors would do – resisting the claims of the State to dictate to the successors of Peter.

The practicalities of doing this were never less than problematic. It might have been Stalin who famously asked ‘how many divisions has the Pope?’, but he was hardly the firsts. From Justinian through to Hitler, powerful men would threaten the Pope, even hold him hostage. The Popes would create their own State for safety and invent Western diplomacy to protect it. Whatever the modalities, the reasoning was consistent – Peter spoke through the Pope and against that Rock not even the Gates of Hell would prevail Nor have they, nor can they. On that we have His promise.

This ends this short series – my thanks to those who have followed it, and to Jess who asked for it.

Leo & Canon 28

17 Tuesday Jul 2012

Posted by John Charmley in Faith, Pope

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St Leo

I have no theoretical objection to theory. I have no philosophical objection to philosophising. But for preference, I like them grounded in history. Of the writing of treatises, polemic and tracts about Papal primacy there is no end. Catholics tend to come down on the Catholic side of the argument, non-Catholics ones on the other side. Both are convinced that history is on their side; they know, they wrote the history.

What is going on here is an attempt to establish what men in the fifth century believed they were saying when the Chalcedonian Fathers declared that ‘Peter speaks through Leo’; we know what the non-Chalcedonian Fathers made of it, so we can leave them where they wanted to be – out of it.

Canon 28 of the Council was, as we have seen, opposed by Leo’s representatives, but passed by the majority, and then Leo’s consent sought. It was not granted. Leo’s letter to the Emperor Marcian, written on 22 May 452 may be seen in full here. The parts most relevant to our argument are as follows:

Let the city of Constantinople have, as we desire, its high rank, and under the protection of God’s right hand, long enjoy your clemency’s rule. Yet things secular stand on a different basis from things divine: and there can be no sure building save on that rock which the Lord has laid for a foundation. …….

For the privileges of the churches determined by the canons of the holy Fathers, and fixed by the decrees of the Nicene Synod, cannot be overthrown by any unscrupulous act, nor disturbed by any innovation. And in the faithful execution of this task by the aid of Christ I am bound to display an unflinching devotion; for it is a charge entrusted to me, and it tends to my condemnation if the rules sanctioned by the Fathers and drawn up under the guidance of God’s Spirit at the Synod of Nicæa for the government of the whole Church are violated with my connivance (which God forbid), and if the wishes of a single brother have more weight with me than the common good of the Lord’s whole house.

St. Peter had founded Rome and Antioch, St. Mark, Alexandria; Constantinople owed its foundation to the Emperor, no Apostle had founded it and any priority it claimed could not be justified on the grounds the other Sees used. Leo’s own representatives, who had not been present when the canon was passed, had protested:

The apostolic see ought not to be humiliated in our presence, and therefore we ask your sublimity to order that whatever was transacted yesterday in our absence in prejudice of the canons or rules be nullified. But if otherwise, let our formal objection be recorded in the minutes, so that we may know what we ought to report to the apostolic man the pope of the universal church, so that he may pass sentence on either the insult to his see or the overturning of the canon. (Price and Gaddis, Acts of Chalcedon, III, p. 91]

Neither tradition, nor apostolic authority sanctioned the novelty that was Canon 28. Its sole basis in ‘tradition’ was canon 8 of Constantinople 381. But this canon was controversial at Rome, and in the form it was recorded at Chalcedon in canon 28 it was also inaccurate, as the Pope’s delegate, Paschasinus pointed out in the sixteenth session. There is a difference between the Greek and Latin versions of the Acta, and since the original is no longer extant, we cannot tell which version is more accurate.

The Latin version asserts Roman primacy, the Greek version omits this. In contemporary terms this did not matter since what was actually at issue was not the relative standing of the two sees but Constantinople’s jurisdiction in the east. It was only later that this difference was elevated to one of importance

But, as we have seen, it did not matter which version was advanced, the one in the canon itself or the conciliatory one put to Leo, he was having none of it because it infringed his unique apostolic privilege. There is no hyperbole, no poetic language – and no chance of misunderstanding. If we note in passing that Leo’s claims were far less limited than those of the modern Papacy, it ought to give all sectarian viewpoints pause for thought.

Leo and authority

16 Monday Jul 2012

Posted by John Charmley in Faith

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Catholic Church, St Leo

If Leo’s first contribution to the delineation of what ‘primacy’ meant was to establish what it meant to say that ‘Peter speaks through Leo’, his second was to establish what this meant in relation to the jurisprudence of the Church. If Christ spoke through Peter who spoke through the Pope, it followed that the latter dispensed Divine Justice. Leo explained in a sermon delivered on 29 June 443:

there cannot be too much severity or too much lenience where nothing is bound, nothing loosed except for what the blessed Peter has loosed or bound.

The power of Christ that was manifest in Peter who shared his power by participation was thus conferred upon the bishop of Rome – through whom Peter spoke.

Thus did Leo answer the questions of who had the authority say what was and was not Scripture, and how it should be interpreted. It was Peter’s continued presence in the acts of the Apostolic See, such as the formulation of doctrine and the exercise of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, which ensured the unity and orthodoxy of Christ’s Church. Thus was ensured something which to others might seem a paradox – the security of tradition and of legitimate developments of understanding which, to some, would seem to be change.

Tradition was the unbroken connection to the Apostolic past; but since that was alive in Peter speaking through the Pope, so developing understandings of the Faith once given could be distinguished from the mere opinion of men.

As Susan Wessels puts it in her, Leo the Great and the Spiritual Rebuilding of a Universal Rome (p. 293):
The relationship between Christ and Peter, and between Peter and the bishop of Rome. enabled Leo to conceive of the apostolic see as the sole repository of a living and fluid tradition whose actions were imbued continuously with the divine power of its origin.

Thus, when the Fathers at Chalcedon said ‘Peter speaks through Leo’, they were doing no more than echoing something understood by Leo and those who read his sermons and letters. But how did this work in practice? Was it no more than a theoretical claim by Leo? The controversy over Canon 28 of the Council of Chalcedon offers us a case study.

At the end of the Council, the Fathers had ratified a new canon, Canon 28, which, on the basis of what had been decided at the Council of Constantinople in 381, conceded to the See of Constantinople the second place in the Christian Church. As the Fathers explained:

And we further inform you that we have decided on other things also for the good management and stability of church matters, being persuaded that your holiness will accept and ratify them, when you are told. The long prevailing custom, which the holy Church of God at Constantinople had of ordaining metropolitans for the provinces of Asia, Pontus and Thrace, we have now ratified by the votes of the Synod, not so much by way of conferring a privilege on the See of Constantinople as to provide for the good government of those cities, because of the frequent disorders that arise on the death of their bishops, both clergy and laity being then without a leader and disturbing church order. …

We have ratified also the canon of the 150 holy Fathers who met at Constantinople in the time of the great Theodosius of holy memory, which ordains that after your most holy and Apostolic See, the See of Constantinople shall take precedence, being placed second: for we are persuaded that with your usual care for others you have often extended that Apostolic prestige which belongs to you, to the church in Constantinople also, by virtue of your great disinterestedness in sharing all your own good things with your spiritual kinsfolk. Accordingly vouchsafe most holy and blessed father to accept as your own wish, and as conducing to good government the things which we have resolved on for the removal of all confusion and the confirmation of church order

If this sounds as though the assembled Fathers were nervous about Leo’s reaction, it was because they were. His delegates at Chalcedon had opposed the canon, saying that only the Pope could confer such precedence. The Fathers were, they told Leo, confident that they were acting as he would have wanted. They could not have been more mistaken.

Peter speaks through Leo

15 Sunday Jul 2012

Posted by John Charmley in Early Church

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Catholic Church, St Leo

It is easy (and so often done) to assume that from the beginning the Papacy based itself on the Petrine verses in St. Matthew’s Gospel. The Eastern Orthodox like to point out that those claims were cast in terms of ‘primacy’; they are correct. But what did that much-disputed word mean to those who used it in the early Church? If we are to understand this, we need to understand something about Roman ideas of inheritance and authority – ideas which were shared across the whole Empire – including Constantinople.

St. Leo the Great made two main contributions to the developing understanding of what ‘primacy’ mean. The first amounts to an assertion that the past existed in the present, not just because he was Peter’s successor, but in the form of a direct and present link between the Apostle and the Pope. As he put it in his sermon on 19 September 443 (Sermon 3.4)

Regard him [Peter] as present in the lowliness of my person. Honour him. In him continues to reside the responsibility for all shepherds, along with the protection of the sheep entrusted to them. His dignity does not fade even in an unworthy heir.’

This is what Leo understood by the saying of the Chalcedonian Fathers: ‘Peter has spoken through Leo. (See here also W. Ullmann, ‘Leo I and the Theme of Papal Primacy’, Journal of Theological Studies 1960, pp. 26-28).

Under Roman jurisprudence, a person was supposed to be present in his legal representative, even as the deceased was in his heir. The same jurisprudence was present in the eastern empire, so to argue that anyone in Constantinople would have been ignorant of this conception of what it meant for Leo to have said what he had said seems to strain credulity. Indeed, as K. Shatz puts it in Papal Primacy From Its Origins to the Present (1996), Leo made ‘the “church of tradition … into the church of the capital city that extends its laws to the whole world.’ (pp. 33-36 for the argument).

On this understanding the Pope was not simply Peter’s representative but his living successor – Peter spoke through him. Thus, Rome’s judgments and decrees were rendered universal because the Holy Apostle was understood to be present in Leo and in the system of justice he administered. As Leo put in in that same sermon on 19 September 443 (3.3):
Persevering in the fortitude he received, blessed Peter does not relinquish his government of the Church. He was ordained before the others so that, when he is called rock, declared foundation, installed as doorkeeper for the kingdom of heaven, appointed arbiter of binding and loosing (with his definitive judgments retaining forces even in heaven), we might know through the very mysteries of these appellations what sort of fellowship he had with Christ. He now manages the things entrusted to him more completely and effectively. He carries out every aspect of his duties and responsibilities in him and through him whom he has been glorified.

So, if we do anything correctly or judge anything correctly, if we obtain anything at all from the mercy of God through daily supplications, it comes about as the result of his works and merits. In this see his power lives on and his authority reigns supreme. This, dearly beloved, is what the confession has obtained [Matthew 16:18]. Since it was inspired by God the Father in the apostle’s heart, it has risen above all the uncertainties of human thinking and has received the strength of a rock that cannot be shaken by any pounding.

It is Peter’s presence that brings about the Christian universalism that Leo envisoned himself exercising. If we look at his letter to the bishops of Illyricium, 12 January 444, placing them under Anastasius, the bishop of Thessalonica, and telling them that serious disputes must be referred to Rome, we see him exercising that power of which his sermons spoke.

The primacy of Rome was not simply the result of Apostolic succession, or of inhertance from St. Peter, but of this very special relationship which ensured that Peter spoke through the Pope. As Leo says in a sermon given on 29 September: [Sermons 5.4]

our solemnity is not merely the apostolic dignity of the most blessed Peter. He does not cease to preside over his see but unfailingly maintains that fellowship which he has with the eternal Priest. That stability which he received from Christ the rock (by having himself been made ‘rock’) has poured over onto his heirs as well. Whenever there is any show of firmness, it is undoubtedly the shepherd’s fortitude that appears.

Leo’s views are set out in fuller form in a sermon preached on 29 June 443 (Sermon 83.1) in which he makes it clear that since Peter exercises the Lord’s power on His behalf, so too does the Pope exercise the powers of Christ Himself, as Peter speaks through him.

This is not a claim made by any other Bishop. It was made in public by Leo in his sermons and letters, and it was based firmly upon Scripture, patristic testimony and the common law of the Empire. Before examining how it was exercised in a situation where there was a dispute, we must turn to Leo’s second contribution to the delineation of the Petrine primacy.