Chapter 4. Holy Fathers about the Apostle Peter (original) (raw)

1931, Protopresbyter Gavrilo Kostelnik. Apostle Peter and the Roman popes, or the dogmatic foundations of the papacy

Christ's words "you are a rock, and on this rock..." are explained by the general body of the Holy Fathers in the same way as we have explained them. We have followed the Holy Fathers, and have only developed their explanations psychologically and logically. The explanation of these words of Christ in the sense of Roman dogmatics, as we shall see shortly, comes from the Roman popes themselves, who put forward and propagated this concept for their own benefit. Therefore, the voice of the popes here cannot in any way be considered an objective testimony, because "nemo iudex in propria causa" (no one is a judge in his own case). And the Holy Fathers-those who were independent of the popes-when they heard this explanation of theirs, either mocked it or explicitly called it a deception. From the first 250 years we have no news of the primacy of the Roman bishops on the basis of Peter's succession. Ignatius and Irenaeus, although they speak of the prominent position of the Roman Church, do not derive this from the Petrine succession of the Roman bishops, but express their recognition of the Roman Church because "the Roman Church is the largest and oldest (of course, in the West) and is known to all" (Irenaeus)(1). 50 About the Epistle of Pope Clement I, we will say at the end of the book. If the belief in the primacy of the Roman bishop on the basis of Peter's succession was really of apostolic origin, then it could decisively manifest itself in various documents before 250 AD, just as, for example, the belief in the Divinity of Christ, in baptism, the Eucharist, etc. manifested itself. However, here there is a gap of almost 200 years, which no Roman inventions can bridge! Indeed, already Pope Victor I (192-202) in the "Easter dispute" behaved with the Asian bishops as one who appropriates the first word in the Church, and wanted to excommunicate the Asians from it, but he was pacified by Irenaeus of Lyon. Whether Victor referred to any higher authority of his own thanks to Peter's succession, we do not know. But it is certain that at that time even in Rome itself they did not think in such categories-at least not at all. This can be witnessed by the unknown author of the apocryphal books of the epistles of Pope Clement I to the Apostle James and the religious novel "Recognition", written in the first quarter of the 3rd century.