THE THRONE OF PETER DURING THE FIRST CENTURIES: FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE SEPARATION OF THE PAPACY FROM BYZANTIUM

This Article discusses the question pertaining to the primacy of the Pope of Rome from the fi rst to the eighth centuries. The author criticizes the Roman Catholic teaching of the primacy of the pope as well as papal infallibility both of which were promulgated at the First Vatican Council in 1870. The author’s sources include an analysis of the proof texts employed by the Council: texts from scripture, from the works of early Christian fathers (Saint Ireneus and Saint Ambrose), from the works of the roman Pontiff s (Leo the Great, Hormisdus, and Gregory the great), on which the Council based its assumptions regarding the primacy of Peter and of the roman pontiff s. A panoramic view and detailed study of these documents lead the author to conclude that the doctrine of primacy has no real foundation in fact. The scriptures underscore the significance but not the particular office of Peter whose importance is founded in the fact that the apostle was at the head of the Christian community in Jerusalem. The Council incorrectly understood the proof texts on which it based the primacy doctrine separating them from their historical and social Sitz im Leben. The author pays particular attention to the historical circumstances surrounding the particular position of Rome as the capital city, the unique, for the western half of the Empire, apostolic origin of the see, its distance from Constantinople, and the relative independence of the popes in the face of the Byzantine emperors, an understanding which was not at all shared by the Eastern Churches. The author concludes that the pretensions of the popes to primacy were never accepted by the whole of the Church.