What Eastern Orthodox Apologists Miss About the Papacy

A Catholic perspective on popes, patriarchs, primacy, and Eucharistic ecclesiology.

Jacopo di Cione, Saint Peter Enthroned Between Saint Paul and the Faithful.

Recently, a Catholic convert to Eastern Orthodoxy named Kyle King released a video entitled, “What Catholic Apologists Miss About The Orthodox Approach to Bishops, Patriarchs, & Primacy.” As an Eastern Orthodox convert to Catholicism myself, and one who spent a lot of time wrestling with the issues discussed in this video, I thought it would be a fruitful endeavor to write a response to the claims being made here. In many ways, Kyle’s arguments are a good representation of what I used to believe about things like primacy and the papacy when I was Eastern Orthodox, and so I know firsthand how persuasive they can be to Catholics looking eastward. As such, my goal in this article is to explain why I no longer believe that the ecclesiological vision Kyle presents is actually a challenge to the Catholic faith. Additionally, I hope to make a positive case for why the Catholic understanding of the papacy is incredibly well supported from Scripture, Tradition, and reason.

I also just want to say from the outset that, although this article started off as a response to Kyle, it developed into something much larger than that. So Kyle, please do not feel obligated to respond to absolutely everything I write here, as it’s not all directed as a critique of your video, rather much of it is simply using your video as a spring board from which I could explore and develop my own theological ideas on ecclesiology in the East versus the West. To make this article more accessible, I’ve also added an index below. With that said, let’s get into it.

I. Introduction

II. The Successor of St. Peter

III. Peter’s Chair: the Origin of Church Unity

IV. Peter’s Chair: the Criteria of Canonical Communion

V. Eastern Orthodoxy’s Ecclesiology Problem

VI. The Eucharistic Meaning of St. Peter’s Primacy

VII. Conclusion

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I. Introduction

Kyle begins his video by laying out what he takes to be the Orthodox position on popes and patriatchs vis-à-vis the other bishops. To illustrate this, he uses the analogy of an abbot’s relationship to his brother monks. Just as the abbot is “above” his brothers not by divine right, but by canonical privilege, so too is the pope or the patriarch canonically “above” his brother bishops, not because his office is of divine origin, but rather because these men are granted a special privilege by way of episcopal or conciliar decree. Although he later nuances this, Kyle’s understanding of the office of primate seems analogous to the traditional Presbyterian understanding of the office of bishop: the office doesn’t belong to the essence of the Church (i.e. it’s not de jure divino), but it is nonetheless useful for ecclesiastical order.

In order to support this point, Kyle cites the ecclesiology of St. Ignatius of Antioch. He argues that, for Ignatius, the only de jure divino “offices” are the major sacramental orders of bishop, priest, and deacon,¹ not the offices of pope and patriarch. In Kyle’s words, that “laity report to deacons, deacons report to presbyters (priests), presbyters report to bishops, and bishops report to God” is the “hard apostolic DNA of the Church” according to St. Ignatius. And as you can see, there’s clearly no room in this picture for divinely established offices of primacy that are distinct from the sacramental offices we know to have come from the apostles. These offices of canonical primacy were later, post-apostolic ecclesial structures, of which the office of the papacy is but one instance. Kyle’s argument that Vatican I’s ecclesiology lacks continuity with the early Church’s can thus be summarized as follows:

1. Offices of canonical primacy (whether patriarchal or papal) are not of divine origin, and therefore do not belong to the essence and identity of the Church.

2. The office of the papacy in particular is not qualitatively distinct from the offices of primacy held by other patriarchs, rather it’s only distinct in its scope.

Both aspects of this argument wind up with the same conclusion: the papacy does not belong to the essence of the Church, and therefore can be done away with if necessary. This would directly contradict the teaching of Vatican I’s dogmatic constitution, Pastor Aeternus, that the papacy exists “by the institution of Christ the Lord himself, that is to say, by divine law,” and will have “perpetual successors in the primacy over the whole church” until the end of time.² If I’m misrepresenting Kyle’s argument I certainly welcome correction, but this is how I’ve understood it.

Indeed, Kyle seems to “double down” on this line of reasoning in his interpretation of Matthew 16 and St. Peter’s primacy over the apostles. Kyle believes that “what Jesus made into [sic] Peter, he made into all of the bishops as well… everything that Peter is, the bishops are [too].” In other words, our Lord didn’t establish the papacy in Matthew 16, but rather the episcopacy. Every local monarchical bishop is the successor of St. Peter in this theological scheme, since every bishop is the rock and key-bearer (“the Peter”) of his local diocese. As a patristic witness to this belief, Kyle cites St. Cyprian of Carthage, who is indeed famous for his application of Matthew 16:18-19 to all bishops: “describing the honour of a bishop and the order of His Church, [Jesus] speaks in the Gospel, and says to Peter: ‘I say unto you, That you are Peter’… the Church is founded upon the bishops… [and] this is founded on the divine law… [that] the Church is established in the bishop and the clergy.”³ He further cites the work of Catholic biblical scholar Michael Barber to show that Matthew 16 has both royal and priestly undertones,⁴ which supports the notion that this text is about the institution of Holy Orders, not canonical primacy.⁵

All of this is argued to aid Kyle’s overarching claim that the ecclesiology of Vatican I is not the ecclesiology of Scripture and the fathers. Rather than establishing St. Peter and his successors in Rome to lead the Church until the end of time, our Lord actually established the episcopate as St. Peter’s “successor” in the Church, charging all bishops to fulfill the role of Peter and “feed my lambs” with the Bread of Heaven (Jn 21:15). Sounds pretty compelling. So how could I, a former Eastern Orthodox Christian, have known all of this prior to my conversion and still have decided to become Catholic? Let’s begin by addressing Kyle’s interpretation of Matthew 16 (and other Petrine texts). As we shall see, this matter ties in closely with both aspects of his argument, and is the starting point from which we can address it.

II. The Successor of St. Peter

If, as Kyle supposes, our Lord truly was likening all bishops to St. Peter in Matthew 16, then it would be quite natural to set aside or downplay this text as speaking to ecclesiastical primacy in general, and the papacy in particular. However, a certain difficulty arises when trying to speak of all bishops, i.e. the entire Episcopal College, as successors of Peter. This is because, whatever you believe Matthew 16 ends up teaching with respect to ecclesiology, it’s nonetheless clear that, historically, Jesus was appointing St. Peter to a unique role of headship within the Apostolic College. Don’t take it from me, take it from St. Cyprian: “that He might set forth unity [among the apostles], He arranged by His authority the origin of that unity, as beginning from one [Peter].”⁶ Or take it from St. Stephen of Dor, who was St. Sophronius of Jerusalem’s legate at the Lateran Synod of 649: “the truly great Peter, head of the apostles, was deemed worthy not only to be entrusted, alone out of all, with ‘the keys of the kingdom of heaven’… [but] he had [also] been adorned by God who became incarnate for our sake with power and priestly authority over them all.”⁷ Or St. Jerome: “But you say, the Church was founded upon Peter: although elsewhere the same is attributed to all the Apostles, and they all receive the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and the strength of the Church depends upon them all alike, yet one among the twelve is chosen so that when a head has been appointed, there may be no occasion for schism.”⁸

Raphael, Christ’s Charge to Peter.

Without getting into the weeds of what these fathers were teaching just yet, let’s pause on this point: according to the Church’s tradition, in Matthew 16:17-19, St. Peter was appointed as the head of the apostles in some unique way. That’s simply an historical and theological fact. The man Simon Peter, son of Jonah, was chosen by our Lord to be the singular head of the Apostolic College. In the words of St. John Chrysostom, Peter was “the chosen one of the Apostles, the mouth of the disciples, the leader of the band… [and] the chief authority among the brethren.”⁹ You won’t find a father who says otherwise. This reality begs a very relevant question. Since St. Peter was, by divine right, the head of the Apostolic College, if Peter is to have a successor, over what would his successor be the head today? Well, the obvious answer is that the successor of Peter would be the head over whatever the successor of the Apostolic College is. Now, both Catholics and Eastern Orthodox are united in our conviction that the Episcopal College is the successor of the Apostolic College. This is the foundation of our shared belief in the infallibility of Ecumenical Councils, for example.¹⁰ However, if this is the case, then the following logic is inevitable:

1. St. Peter was the singular head of the Apostolic College.

2. The Episcopal College succeeds the Apostolic College.

3. Therefore, Peter’s successor must be the singular head of the Episcopal College.

If being a “successor to the apostles” means sharing in the very office that the apostles carried out, i.e. preaching the word, celebrating the sacraments (especially the Eucharist and Holy Orders), and administering ecclesiastical discipline, then being the “successor of Peter” must mean sharing in the very office that Peter held. As established above, the office that Peter held consisted in his headship over the entire Apostolic College, and so if he is to have a successor at all, then that successor must carry out the same headship over whatever has succeeded the Apostolic College today, which is the College of Bishops. Now, if every bishop was the successor of Peter, it would follow that every bishop is the head of the Episcopal College. However, that’s absurd. If every member of the episcopate was the head, then no one would be the head. Thus, Peter can only have one successor who, by divine right, is the head of all bishops. This successor we call the pope.

Once again, don’t take it from me, take it from an authority that both Catholics and Eastern Orthodox recognize. When the fathers of the Council of Ephesus (A.D. 431) asked the papal legate Philip to declare his faith, he said the following:

We offer our thanks to the holy and venerable Synod, that when the writings of our holy and blessed pope had been read to you, the holy members by our [or your] holy voices, you joined yourselves to the holy head also by your holy acclamations. For your blessedness is not ignorant that the head of the whole faith, the head of the Apostles, is blessed Peter the Apostle. […] 

There is no doubt, and in fact it has been known in all ages, that the holy and most blessed Peter, prince (ἔξαρχος) and head of the Apostles, pillar of the faith, and foundation (θεμέλιος) of the Catholic Church, received the keys of the kingdom from our Lord Jesus Christ, the Saviour and Redeemer of the human race, and that to him was given the power of loosing and binding sins: who down even to today and forever both lives and judges in his successors. The holy and most blessed pope Cœlestine, according to due order, is his successor and holds his place, and us he sent to supply his place in this holy synod, which the most humane and Christian Emperors have commanded to assemble, bearing in mind and continually watching over the Catholic faith.

Council of Ephesus (A.D. 431), “Extracts From the Acts,” in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, second series, vol. 14, eds. Phillip Shaff and Henry Wace trans. Henry Percival, for New Advent by Kevin Knight.

According to Philip, our Lord’s appointment of “blessed Peter the Apostle” as “the head of the Apostles” entails that the pope is “the holy head” of the Episcopal College today. This is because, as “it has been known in all ages,” the prince and head of the Apostles, blessed Peter, “down even to today and forever both lives and judges in his successors.” That only one man can be Peter’s successor at any given time is clear from Philip’s next statement: “The holy and most blessed pope Cœlestine, according to due order, is his successor and holds his place.” What place does the pope of Rome hold? That of being the “prince and head of the Apostles, pillar of the faith, and foundation of the Catholic Church.” Just as St. Peter’s role in the Church was to be “the head of the Apostles,” so too is the pope’s role to be “the holy head” of the bishops. Until when does Philip believe the popes of Rome will fulfill this role? “Down even to today and forever.” That is to say, there will never be a time in Church history when the pope isn’t the singular head of all other bishops, just as there was never a time in the early Church when Peter wasn’t the singular head of all other apostles.

How did the fathers of the Third Ecumenical Council receive such “papalist” teachings? When St. Cyril of Alexandria heard Philip’s profession of faith, he announced to all of the council fathers that it “stand[s] manifest to the holy Synod,”¹¹ and no one is recorded as raising any objections. As you can see, this ecumenically approved ecclesiology perfectly aligns with what’s been outlined above. Just as the Apostolic College only had one head, St. Peter, so too can the Apostolic College’s successor, the Episcopal College, only have one head, the successor of Peter, who is the pope of Rome. Put differently, St. Peter can only have one true successor who, by divine right, is the head of the episcopate until the end of time. Thus saith St. Cyril and the Third Ecumenical Council anyways.

Image in the church Notre-Dame de Fourvières, France, St. Cyril of Alexandria at the Council of Ephesus.

Furthermore, this same ecclesiology is professed by another text that Kyle brings up in his video, the letter of Pope Hadrian I to the Seventh Ecumenical Council. Anyone involved in “papal apologetics” will be quite familiar with this letter, as it’s an authoritative source that both Catholics and Orthodox recognize, and one that lays out the Catholic Church’s papal claims with extreme clarity. Unfortunately, Kyle doesn’t attempt to demonstrate how this letter is in harmony with Eastern Orthodoxy, rather he simply plays a video clip in which Fr. Richard Price seems to water down the way this letter was received by the Eastern bishops at Nicaea II (note: not its actual content as intended by the Latins). I’ll admit that I did find it a bit curious that Kyle didn’t even show what the letter says in his video, so to clear up any confusion that may have caused his viewers, allow me to quote the full text:

If you persevere in that orthodox Faith in which you have begun, and the sacred and venerable images be by your means erected again in those parts, as by the lord, the Emperor Constantine of pious memory, and the blessed Helen, who promulgated the orthodox Faith, and exalted the holy Catholic and Apostolic Roman Church your spiritual mother, and with the other orthodox Emperors venerated it as the head of all Churches, so will your Clemency, that is protected of God, receive the name of another Constantine, and another Helen, through whom at the beginning the holy Catholic and Apostolic Church derived strength, and like whom your own imperial fame is spread abroad by triumphs, so as to be brilliant and deeply fixed in the whole world. But the more, if following the traditions of the orthodox Faith, you embrace the judgment of the Church of blessed Peter, chief of the Apostles, and, as of old your predecessors the holy Emperors acted, so you, too, venerating it with honour, love with all your heart his Vicar, and if your sacred majesty follow by preference their orthodox Faith, according to our holy Roman Church. May the chief of the Apostles himself, to whom the power was given by our Lord God to bind and remit sins in heaven and earth, be often your protector, and trample all barbarous nations under your feet, and everywhere make you conquerors. For let sacred authority lay open the marks of his dignity, and how great veneration ought to be shown to his, the highest See, by all the faithful in the world. For the Lord set him who bears the keys of the kingdom of heaven as chief over all, and by Him is he honoured with this privilege, by which the keys of the kingdom of heaven are entrusted to him. He, therefore, that was preferred with so exalted an honour was thought worthy to confess that Faith on which the Church of Christ is founded. A blessed reward followed that blessed confession, by the preaching of which the holy universal Church was illumined, and from it the other Churches of God have derived the proofs of Faith. For the blessed Peter himself, the chief of the Apostles, who first sat in the Apostolic See, left the chiefship of his Apostolate, and pastoral care, to his successors, who are to sit in his most holy seat forever. And that power of authority, which he [Peter] received from the Lord God our Saviour, he too bestowed and delivered by divine command to the Pontiffs, his successors.

Second Council of Nicaea (A.D. 787), “Session 2,” in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, second series, vol. 14, eds. Phillip Shaff and Henry Wace trans. Henry Percival, for New Advent by Kevin Knight. 

According to Pope Hadrian, “the holy Catholic and Apostolic Roman Church” is “the head of all Churches,” not because of any conciliar decree or canon, but rather because “the Lord set him who bears the keys of the kingdom of heaven [Peter] as chief over all [the apostles]” in Matthew 16:18-19. For Hadrian, because “blessed Peter himself, the chief of the Apostles” was the first bishop of the Apostolic See, he “left the chiefship of his Apostolate” to his successors, the popes, who will “sit in his most holy seat forever.” The Pontiff could not have been more clear: “that power of authority, which he [Peter] received from the Lord God our Saviour, he too bestowed and delivered by divine command to the Pontiffs, his successors.” That Pope Hadrian and the 8th century Roman Church taught (at least) Vatican I’s understanding of papal supremacy is without question. If words have meaning, then Pope Hadrian is indeed teaching that because Jesus Christ established St. Peter as the chief of His apostles, his ministry of “chiefship” over the Church will be carried out “forever” by “his successors,” the Pontiffs of the Apostolic See.¹² As the Eastern Orthodox theologian Fr. Laurent Cleenewerck recognizes, the Second Council of Nicaea “constitutes the highest point of recognition of what we can call ‘Roman Catholic ecclesiology’ in the East, not so much in the definitions and canons as in its letters and sessions. There was no Vigilius or Honorius factor at Nicea—it was total recognition that the pope of Rome held Peter’s See, and that Rome was in a unique way heir of Christ’s promises to Peter.”¹³

If this is not the ecclesiology I’ve described above, wherein Peter only has one successor, the pope of Rome, who will head the College of Bishops until the end of time, then I’m not sure what would be. Everyone should at least be able to recognize that this isn’t the “Eucharistic ecclesiology” that Fr. Cleenewerck argues in favor of in his book, His Broken Body; to pretend otherwise would be dishonest. This is why the entire Eastern Orthodox “defense” against Hadrian’s letter being received by Nicaea II rests not on denying that Pope Hadrian and the Latins were papal supremacists, but rather on supposing that the Eastern bishops deceptively tampered with the content of Hadrian’s letter when translating it into Greek, in order to water down the papal claims. However, even this “more nuanced” position has serious problems.

First, if “papalism” is such an abhorrent heresy, how is it that the pre-schism Roman Church could have been steeped in it without any Eastern bishops or theologians explicitly raising objections?¹⁴ I mean, this is the same era of Church history when men like Origen of Alexandria and Honorius of Rome were dug out of their graves to be condemned as heretics. If popes like Hadrian at Nicaea II really were teaching such awful heresy that the Eastern bishops had to literally alter the meaning of their words when translating them, wouldn’t we expect at least someone to have explicitly said as much? I certainly would. On a related note, isn’t the Church of Rome that Popes Hadrian and Celestine ruled supposed to be, in the words of the Encyclical of Eastern Patriarchs of 1848, “the ancient, holy, and orthodox Church of Rome… the most honored part of the Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church”?¹⁵ Didn’t all of the Eastern bishops of the 6th century agree with St. Hormisdas’ Libellus that Rome is the See in which “the Catholic religion has always been preserved without stain,” and, “in which there is the whole and the true and the perfect solidity of the Christian religion”?¹⁶ Or in the words of St. Maximus the Confessor, isn’t it true of first millennium Rome that,

[E]ver since the Word of God condescended to us and became man, all the Churches of Christians everywhere have held, and hold the great Church there [in Rome] as their sole basis and foundation, because, according to the very promises of the Lord, the gates of hell have never prevailed over her, but rather she has the keys of the orthodox faith and confession.

St. Maximus, Opuscula theologica et polemica, PG 91.137-40, qtd. in Butler and Collorafi, Keys Over the Christian World, pp. 352-353.

If pre-schism Rome’s papalism (which absolutely did not start with Hadrian)¹⁷ really is “the heresy above all heresies,” as someone like Justin Popovich believed,¹⁸ then that seems extremely problematic for not only Eastern Orthodoxy, but all the Saints, theologians, and hierarchs who praised Rome’s orthodoxy during this time.¹⁹

Moreover, as Erick Ybarra shows in his article, “Comparing the Greek and Latin Texts of Pope Hadrian’s Letters Read Aloud at Nicaea 2: Did the Greek Text reject Papal Supremacy and Infallibility?,” it’s simply not true that the Greek translation of Hadrian’s letter waters down the papal claims. Ybarra points out how the only significant difference between the Latin and Greek versions of the letter is that the former refers to the pope as the successor of St. Peter while the latter refers to him as the successor of Ss. Peter and Paul. However, what they are in agreement on is that the Roman Pontiff is the singular successor to the chief seat of authority within the Church, and that this succession is based on divine law and will continue until the end of time. As Ybarra renders the Greek translation:

And especially if you follow the tradition of the orthodox Faith of the Church of the holy Peter and Paul, the chief Apostles [Rome], and embrace their Vicar [the Roman Pontiff], as the Emperors who reigned before you of old both honoured their Vicar [the Roman Pontiff], and loved him with all their heart: and if your sacred majesty honour the most holy Roman Church of the chief Apostles, to whom was given power by God the Word himself to loose and to bind sins in heaven and earth. For they will extend their shield over your power, and all barbarous nations shall be put under your feet: and wherever you go they will make you conquerors. For the holy and chief Apostles themselves [Peter and Paul], who set up the Catholic and Orthodox Faith, have laid it down as a written law that all who after them are to be successors of their thrones [Roman Pontiffs] hold their Faith and remain in it until the culmination of all things.

To pretend that the Greek translation of this letter is saying something akin to “the pope is just like the other patriarchs but with more responsibility,” or “all bishops are the successors of Ss. Peter and Paul,” is to ignore the context, and therefore is not serious exegesis. This is especially so considering there’s a second letter from Pope Hadrian that was translated into Greek at Nicaea II that teaches that, in Matthew 16:18-19, Jesus was establishing Rome as “[Peter’s] See,” and “the head of all the churches of God,” and that the pope exercises Peter’s authority in the Church “at the command of the Lord.”²⁰ Even Fr. Richard Price recognized that the “Greek text of this letter does not water down Hadrian’s claim to supreme authority as the successor of St. Peter.”²¹ This is significant because, as Ybarra observes, “if it were true that the Greeks sought to scrape away any idea of a Petrine exclusivity from Hadrian’s 1st letter, why did they not scrape the same from the 2nd letter by adding the Pauline element?”²² Regardless, though, Fr. Price affirms that, even if the first translated letter of Pope Hadrian did water down the papal claims (a position I disagree with), this would have been done after Nicaea II, outside the authority of an ecumenical council,²³ and thus is not relevant in a dogmatic context.

Saints Peter and Paul, from a Catacomb Etching.

The last thing I’ll mention about the papal ecclesiology of Pope Hadrian’s letter is that, if later Greek bishops did intend to water it down to “the pope is just another patriarch with some added privileges,” or Kyle’s “Eucharistic Petrine ecclesiology of the episcopacy,” their failure was legendary. Consider three of the greatest defenders of the Seventh Ecumenical Council in the Eastern Church, St. Theodore the Studite, St. Nicephorus of Constantinople, and Theodore Abu Qurrah. In addition to defending Iconodulia, all three of them also taught papal supremacy and even infallibility in no uncertain terms. According to the Studite, for example, because “Christ placed the keys of faith” in “the chief throne,” i.e. the Roman See, this is why “the gates of hell, namely the mouths of heretics, have not prevailed up to now, nor shall they ever prevail, according to the promise of him who does not lie.”²⁴ In other words, because of Jesus’ divine promise to St. Peter, which is forever “fulfilled” by the popes of Rome, the mouths of heretics will never prevail against the Church. Indeed, elsewhere Theodore affirms that the reason why “it is necessary to report to Peter or his successor [the pope] everything new that has been introduced in the Catholic Church” is because “Christ our God has granted to the great Peter, in addition to the keys of the kingdom of heaven, the dignity of being first among pastors.”²⁵

Any honest reader can observe that St. Theodore’s ecclesiological vision is far more in line with Vatican I’s than it is with Kyle’s view that all bishops equally share in the Petrine office. The Studite clearly teaches that the Roman Pontiff is the singular and unique successor of Peter, that his office was established by Jesus Christ in Matthew 16:18-19, that the papacy is the means by which the Catholic Church will endure against heresy until the end of time, and that it is a divine law to report all dogmatic questions to the pope. As Fr. Cleenewerck acknowledges, the Studite’s teachings are “as Roman Catholic as can be… [since] Theodore seemed to believe that Rome had received and maintained the charisma of eternal infallibility.”²⁶ This is how Eastern theologians interpreted Pope Hadrian’s letter to the Seventh Ecumenical Council.

Likewise, St. Nicephorus of Constantinople taught that when “a doctrine is questioned in the Church,” the “divine custom established from of old” is that “it may not pass scrutiny or be regarded as settled” until the Church “of ancient Rome” weighs in. This is because “in truth they [the Roman Church] have inherited the position of leadership in the priesthood, and have been entrusted with the dignity of the Leaders [Peter and Paul] among the apostles.”²⁷ This Iconodule Saint clearly isn’t someone who interpreted Pope Hadrian’s letter as giving the Roman See a mere place of canonical honor among the Churches. Instead, Nicephorus is firm in believing that Rome’s approval of dogmatic decisions isn’t needed because of some mutable, post-apostolic canons, but rather because she has lawfully “inherited” the office of the chief apostles, Ss. Peter and Paul, that our Lord Jesus established.

Finally, consider Theodore Abu Qurrah, the great Melkite who defended Nicaea II at the dawn of the Islamic period in 9th century Syria. It’s in his writings that we get what is probably the most explicit and systematic teaching on papal supremacy in the entire history of the first millennium Church.²⁸ According to Abu Qurrah, when we read Jesus’ words to St. Peter in Luke 22:32, “‘I prayed for you, that you not lose your faith; but you, have compassion on your brethren, at that time, and strengthen them,’ we do not think that he meant St. Peter himself. Rather, he meant nothing other than the holders of the seat of St. Peter, that is, Rome.” In other words, for Theodore, the holders of the seat of St. Peter, the bishops of the Roman Church, possess the very infallibility of faith that Peter himself had. Theodore even goes on to say that when Jesus established St. Peter as the rock of His Church in Matthew 16:18-19, “He meant by these words nothing other than [that] the holders of the seat of St. Peter, who have continually strengthened their brethren[,] will not cease to do so as long as this present age lasts.” For Abu Qurrah, “the holders of the seat of St. Peter” are his successors in Rome, the popes. It is they who were commissioned by our Lord to “strengthen their brethren,” and they will carry out this duty “so long as this present age lasts,” that is, until the close of the age.

Jean Fouquet, Grandes Chroniques de France (Great Chronicles of France), Pope Adrian I meets Charlemagne.

Because Jesus gave St. Peter the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and because Peter left his ministry in the Roman Church, the popes of Rome will fulfill His ministry of strengthening the brethren until the end of time. There’s simply no denying that this is the interpretation of Matthew 16 that Pope Hadrian originally intended in (both) his letters to Nicaea II, and that Theodore Abu Qurrah, an Eastern defender of Nicaea II, also espoused. Further, it must be highlighted that Theodore not only cites the very same Petrine texts as Pope Hadrian, but also Pope St. Agatho. Agatho’s letter to the Sixth Ecumenical Council is unique among “papal proof-texts” in that it relies not on Matthew 16:18-19, but rather Luke 22:31-32. For Agatho, when our Lord spoke to St. Peter saying, “Peter, Peter, behold, Satan has desired to have you, that he might sift you as wheat; but I have prayed for you, that (your) faith fail not,” what He was doing was ensuring that all “the Apostolic pontiffs, the predecessors of my littleness,” i.e. the popes of Rome, would not fall into heresy. This is why, St. Agatho reasons, “the Apostolic Church of Christ,” which we know is Rome since its “founders” are “the princes of the Apostles of Christ,” Peter and Paul, “remains undefiled unto the end, according to the divine promise of the Lord and Saviour himself.”²⁹ As Fr. Cleenewerck admits, “Pope Agatho had reaffirmed Rome’s traditional claim to Petrine infallibility in his letter to the Council.”³⁰ For both Agatho and Theodore, then, the personal infallibility of St. Peter’s faith, which is inherited by the popes of Rome, is the very means by which the Catholic Church is forever protected from error.

Once again, it simply cannot be emphasized enough that Theodore Abu Qurrah, a pre-schism Eastern theologian, interpreted both Matthew 16 and Luke 22 in the same way that Popes Agatho and Hadrian did. Namely, as referring to the divine institution of Peter and his successors in Rome as the head of the episcopate until the end of time. Much the same can be said about Ss. Theodore the Studite and Nicephorus of Constantinople. So if later Eastern bishops truly did attempt to alter the meaning of Agatho and Hadrian’s papal teachings when translating them into Greek, these Eastern Saints are evidence that their project of subversion was a failure.

Having gone over all of that, it’s hopefully very clear that all of these patristic and conciliar sources, which both Catholics and Eastern Orthodox accept as authoritative, support the threefold logic explicated above:

1. St. Peter was the singular head of the Apostolic College.

2. The Episcopal College succeeds the Apostolic College.

3. Therefore, Peter’s successor must be the singular head of the Episcopal College.

As such, if Orthodox apologists like Kyle wish to argue that the pre-schism Eastern Church completely rejected this “papal ecclesiology,” in favor of what they believe is St. Cyprian’s “Eucharistic ecclesiology,” they have a lot more work to do than make decontextualized appeals to Fr. Richard Price and Fr. Laurent Cleenewerck.

III. Peter’s Chair: the Origin of Church Unity

With that said, let’s circle back to the ecclesiological paradigm of St. Cyprian, as it simply cannot be avoided in this discussion. After everything that’s been argued above, it might leave the reader wondering if the Catholic Church has abandoned Cyprian’s teaching that every bishop sits on “the Chair of Peter.” Indeed, reading the words of Philip, Agatho, Hadrian, Theodore, Nicephorus, and Abu Qurrah about Rome’s unique and absolute Petrine inheritance could easily leave that impression. It may also accentuate the worry that Catholic ecclesiology grounds Church unity in a kind of juridical legalism, rather than divine sacraments like the Eucharist and Holy Orders; or the worry that Catholics have to downplay the priestly elements of Matthew 16:18-19 in order to read it within a primarily papal framework. However, I’d like to propose that these two understandings of the Church’s hierarchy are not in competition, but rather are complimentary. We don’t have to choose between legalistic “papal ecclesiology” and sacramental “Eucharistic ecclesiology,” because we can actually have both once they’re properly understood.

When St. Cyprian taught that there’s a sense in which all bishops are the successors of Peter, it’s important to keep in mind the context. In his work, On the Unity of the Church, Cyprian seeks to “prove the episcopate itself to be one and undivided,” and he cites Matthew 16:18-19 to do so. He explains that, while it’s true our Lord gave “equal power” to all of the apostles, “yet, that He might set forth unity, He arranged by His authority the origin of that unity, as beginning from one. Assuredly the rest of the apostles were also the same as was Peter, endowed with a like partnership both of honour and power; but the beginning proceeds from unity.”³¹ For Cyprian, St. Peter is the origin of the Church’s unity, and he uses several analogies to illustrate this. There are “many branches of a tree, but one strength based in its tenacious root,” “many rays of the sun, but one light,” “from one spring flow many streams… yet the unity is still preserved in the source.”³² In the words of Erick Ybarra, “this is how [Cyprian] conceives of the episcopal government. The many bishops proceed from one source, St. Peter’s Chair, and so long as they remain in that unity, they have a legitimate Church.”³³

For Cyprian, what our Lord did in Matthew 16:18-19 was establish the one Chair of Peter in which all bishops participate and find their unity. Just as the many branches, rays, and streams are unified by their one source, their principle of unity, so too are the many bishops unified by the one cathedra Petri, which, in some way, is their source. This, of course, begs the question of what exactly the Chair of Peter is, and how exactly it serves as the “source” of the episcopate. Indeed, this is where some readers of Cyprian have noticed a tension in his thought. On the one hand, Cyprian maintains that every local bishop fully sits on the Chair of Peter, and is thus the source and principle of unity for his diocese. However, on the other hand, Cyprian affirms that the “throne of Peter,” “the chief Church whence priestly unity takes its source,” is the Church of “the Romans… to whom faithlessness could have no access.”³⁴ If, in Cyprian’s ecclesiology, the one Chair of Peter is what grounds the unity of its many occupants (the bishops), and the “source” of that “priestly unity” is the Church of Rome, then it would seem to follow that the one Chair of Peter is not merely an abstract principle, but rather a concrete reality fixed in the Roman bishopric.

Paolo Caliari, Saint Anthony Abbot Between Saints Cornelius and Cyprian.

Indeed, it’s worth noting that when St. Cyprian refers to Rome as “the chief church,” the Latin phrase he’s using is ecclesiam principalem, which can also be translated as the “first church” or the “original church.” This is a bit odd, given everyone knows that the Church of Jerusalem is the “original church” we read about in the book of Acts, so how could Cyprian possibly conceive of Rome as fulfilling this role? Perhaps another early father who wrote extensively about ecclesiology can shed some light. St. Optatus of Milevus, a man whom St. Fulgentius of Ruspe hailed alongside Ss. Ambrose and Augustine,³⁵ wrote the following against the schismatic Donatists of his day:

You cannot then deny that you do know that upon Peter first in the City of Rome was bestowed the Episcopal Cathedra [Chair], on which sat Peter, the Head of all the Apostles (for which reason he was called Cephas), that, in this one Cathedra, unity should be preserved by all, lest the other Apostles might claim—each for himself—separate Cathedras, so that he who should set up a second Cathedra against the unique Cathedra would already be a schismatic and a sinner… Well then, on the one Cathedra, which is the first of the Endowments, Peter was the first to sit.

St. Optatus, Against the Donatists, Book 2, II.

When I was Eastern Orthodox, one of the things that really “clicked” for me on my journey to the Catholic Church was realizing that the “one Cathedra” of Peter is not a theological abstraction. Rather, there is truly only one Chair of Peter because there was only one man to whom that Chair was really given in the historical account that Matthew 16:18-19 records, Simon son of Jonah. As St. Optatus points out, it was this one historical man, St. Peter, who was established as “the Head of all the Apostles,” and thus given the “first” and “unique” Cathedra, for the very purpose that, “in this one Cathedra, unity should be preserved by all.” St. Optatus isn’t giving us a theologically abstract conception of how every bishop instantiates the Petrine ministry here, rather he’s primarily giving us history. When Jesus Christ stood before His apostles at Caesarea Philippi and appointed St. Peter as their head, what He was doing was ensuring that in the “Cathedra” of that one man, Peter, the many apostles would be able to stay unified. In this way, our Lord established Peter as the first bishop, and thus the literal source and origin of the episcopate, and therefore also its principle of unity.

This makes sense of St. Cyprian’s identification of the Chair of Peter not as the episcopate itself, but rather as its source. Just as the many branches start with one root, the many rays start with one light, and the many streams start with one source, so too did the many bishops start with one bishop, St. Peter. For both Cyprian and Optatus, this historical reality is why Peter serves as the principle of unity for the entire episcopate, namely, because “the unity is still preserved in the source.”³⁶ This is analogous to an earthly father being both the source of his family and its principle of unity. Since the family was started by him, it’s his personal responsibility as “the head” to ensure that it stays together (cf. Eph 5:23-31).³⁷ Likewise, because our Lord Jesus chose Simon Peter to be the first bishop, the beginning of the episcopate, and thus “the Head of all the Apostles,” He also tasked this one man with the responsibility of ensuring episcopal unity. As Cyprian put it, our Lord “arranged by His authority the origin of that [episcopal] unity, as beginning from one.”³⁸

With this understood, something that ought to be pointed out is that, during Peter’s earthly ministry, no one else could have claimed this Petrine role, not even the other apostles. Just think about it. According to these fathers, the apostles were the very group of men in need of a principle of unity (“the one Cathedra”) in the first place, so it would make no sense if they all equally were that principle. And if the other apostles couldn’t claim this one Cathedra during Peter’s lifetime, how much less could the other bishops? Rather, as both Cyprian and Optatus affirm, because Peter’s historical role was to be the head of and origin of unity for all the apostles, no one else could claim to possess the one Cathedra in the way that Simon Peter did, “lest the other Apostles might claim—each for himself—separate Cathedras.” There must be a real sense, then, in which the Chair of Peter is unique and singular, even within the ecclesiology of Ss. Cyprian and Optatus, otherwise their logic becomes nonsensical.

St. Optatus, the Bishop of Milevus in Numidia.

However, this causes us to wonder what would happen upon Peter’s death. If the entire episcopate began with St. Peter, and so depended upon him for the preservation of its unity, then who could take up that role after his departure from this life? It’s natural to think that someone would do so, as it would be very strange for our Lord to wish His episcopate to have a single principle of unity while the apostles were alive, but not after their deaths. It’s tricky, though, because who could that unifying source possibly be once the “original bishop” is gone? Luckily, St. Optatus has a clear answer: “Well then, on the one Cathedra, which is the first of the Endowments, Peter was the first to sit. To Peter succeeded Linus, to Linus succeeded Clement… to Damasus Siricius, who today is our colleague, with whom ‘the whole world,’ through the intercourse of letters of peace, agrees with us in one bond of communion.”³⁹ Since it was “in the City of Rome” that Peter left “the one Cathedra” upon his death, it is the successors to this Cathedra in Rome, the popes, who now serve as the principle of unity for the worldwide episcopate. Recall that this is exactly what Pope Hadrian and the Seventh Ecumenical Council taught as well, “blessed Peter himself, the chief of the Apostles, who first sat in the Apostolic See [of Rome], left the chiefship of his Apostolate, and pastoral care, to his successors, who are to sit in his most holy seat forever.”⁴⁰

This explains how St. Cyprian could refer to the Church “of the Romans” as the “first” or “original” church. It’s not because the historic Church of Rome was the first one actually established, but rather because the man with whom the episcopate was first established, St. Peter, left his ministry of being the source and principle of unity in the Roman Church. Hence Cyprian says that Rome is “the original church whence priestly unity takes its source.”⁴¹ Just as the man Simon Peter was the original bishop in whom the unity of all the apostles originated and was preserved, so now is Rome the “original church” in which the unity of all the bishops originates and is preserved. Notice how this both maintains Kyle’s point about Matthew 16 being about the creation of the episcopate, while simultaneously upholding the Catholic Church’s emphasis on Peter’s unique role of headship within the episcopate. It’s because the new covenant’s royal priesthood began with Peter in Matthew 16 that he and his successors in Rome continue to act as the “source” of “priestly unity” for the whole Church to this day.⁴² “The unity is still preserved in the source.” Fr. Aidan Nichols, O.P., summarizes Cyprian’s ecclesiology well:

[For Cyprian], Peter has the same power as the other apostles, yet they received theirs after him. His chronological priority over the college is the foundation of its unity... Just as the apostles received the single episcopate by entering into solidarity with Peter who had received it first, so the bishops of the churches retain their due episcopate by entering into, or remaining in, communion with that church whose foundation is the most primordial. The Roman church inherits the one role which is Peter’s alone (in contradistinction to the other apostles), namely, to manifest the unicity of the Church... Although the unity of the bishops (and through them the unity of the churches) is not achieved through communion with Rome (but through fraternal intercommunion and the direct succession of each from the common source), nevertheless, it is only by communion with the Roman church that the bishops know and can demonstrate that they are united amongst themselves, and that this unity is the same as that which Peter himself signified at the beginning. Rome is thus for Cyprian the necessary centre of unity because it is the necessary sign of this primordial unity.

Fr. Aidan Nichols, “The Appeal to the Fathers in the Ecclesiology of Nikolai Afanas’ev: II. From Cyprian to Denys,” qtd. in Erick Ybarra, The Papacy, p. 147.

Indeed, even Fr. Laurent Cleenewerck recognizes that, for Cyprian, being the “center of gravity and possible organ of unity [sic] of the common union of Churches” was “a special attribute of the Roman Church.”⁴³ However, relying on Fr. Johannes Quasten’s “irrefutable” assessment of Cyprian’s ecclesiology, Cleenewerck completely dismisses the notion that Rome being the Church’s source of unity means anything other than her possessing a mutable primacy of honor (which is odd since even this goes against Cyprian’s teaching that the apostles were not only “the same as was Peter” with respect to “power,” but “honor” as well).⁴⁴ Certainly it cannot mean that Rome held authority over the other churches, as Cyprian himself explicitly rejected the idea that any bishop holds any jurisdiction whatsoever outside of his territory,⁴⁵ a radical belief that not even the Eastern Orthodox uphold today.⁴⁶ But just because Cyprian held these two positions together, doesn’t mean they’re actually consistent.

Thus, in order to understand the implications of Rome possessing the unique Chair of Peter, and thereby being “the source of priestly unity” for the entire episcopate, we have to look further into why the fathers believed the episcopate needs a principle of unity in the first place. To this end, let’s return to another father we briefly referenced at the beginning of this article. In his refutation of the heretic Jovinian, St. Jerome wrote the following about why our Lord chose Peter alone to be the head of the apostles, “But you say, the Church was founded upon Peter: although elsewhere the same is attributed to all the Apostles, and they all receive the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and the strength of the Church depends upon them all alike, yet one among the twelve is chosen so that when a head has been appointed, there may be no occasion for schism.”⁴⁷ Cyprian himself echoes this sentiment when he writes, “For neither have heresies arisen, nor have schisms originated, from any other source than from this, that God’s priest is not obeyed; nor do they consider that there is one person for the time priest in the Church, and for the time judge in the stead of Christ.”⁴⁸

Giovanni d’Alemagna, St. Jerome.

For both Ss. Cyprian and Jerome,⁴⁹ the purpose for which our Lord ordained one man to act as the head of His apostles, as their principle of unity, was to eliminate all “occasion for schism.” We saw this same teaching in St. Optatus, who wrote that our Lord established Peter’s “one Cathedra” so that “he who should set up a second Cathedra against the unique Cathedra would already be a schismatic and a sinner.”⁵⁰ Pope St. Gelasius likewise rhetorically asks, “Was it that the rest of the holy and blessed Apostles were not clothed with [Peter’s] virtue? Who dare assert this? No, but that, by a Head being constituted, the occasion of schism might be removed.”⁵¹ What I want to emphasize is that, regardless of the context in which this ecclesiological principle is invoked, whether it’s in discussions about the local church or the universal church, the principle itself carries an implication for all levels of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. That implication being, where there is an episcopal head, that head must have coercive authority to prevent schisms from happening. As we shall see, understanding this will also be key to understanding how Catholic ecclesiology can maintain both the relative sense in which all bishops are the successors of Peter, and the absolute sense in which the pope alone is the successor of Peter.

Consider this principle in the context of a local church. Why is there only one bishop for one church, rather than many bishops? It’s because, as Jerome reminds us, “when a head has been appointed, there may be no occasion for schism.” If there were several bishops with equal authority in a local church, then all it would take to cause a schism would be for one of those bishops to authoritatively disagree with another one. Since they would both have an equal claim to authority, the laity wouldn’t be able to tell who the true schismatic is, which would cause horrible division and confusion. However, if only one bishop is the head of a church, then he has the final and most authoritative say, and anyone who departs from him is automatically outed as “a schismatic and a sinner.” This is why Cyprian could say that there’s only one thing that ever causes schisms: “that God’s priest is not obeyed.” The way in which episcopal headship eliminates not just the likelihood of schism, but the very occasion of schism is by giving ultimate authority to a single bishop to whom all others are subject. Hence St. Gelasius further clarifies, in order that “the occasion of schism might be removed… it [was] Christ’s will that One amongst them should be the Ruler.”⁵²

Now, if this principle is true at the local level, then it must also be true at the universal level. This is because the original institution of headship that our Lord established in His Church, i.e. Peter over the apostles, was not limited to a single local church, but rather encompassed the universal church, which simply consisted of Peter and the apostles at that time. As Fr. John Chapman said of St. Jerome’s view of primacy, “Since he declares that a primate was necessary even among the Apostles, and that without a monarchy over the priests of one city there ‘will be as many schisms as there are priests,’ it follows that he must a fortiori believe in the necessity of a primacy over the universal Church.”⁵³ Thus, if Peter and his successors in Rome, by virtue of their episcopal primacy, remain the principle of unity for the universal Church to this day, as has been argued above, then that primacy carries with it true coercive authority over the whole Church by which the pope can prevent schisms at the universal level of the episcopate. In order to do this, the pope must be in such a position that, when there are disagreements between multiple bishops of whatever rank, his judgment is final, such that rebelling against it would intrinsically be an act of schism.

Remember, the purpose of episcopal headship isn’t just to make schisms less likely, but rather impossible. That’s what it means to remove every occasion of schism; it’s not even something that could happen in principle. The only way this can be a reality is if the episcopal head’s authority is, a priori, ultimate and final. To be sure, there is a relevant difference between the way this principle functions at the local level versus the universal level. For example, everyone agrees that local bishops aren’t infallible, and so it might sometimes be necessary to disobey and separate from your bishop for the sake of retaining orthodoxy.⁵⁴ However, if this is the case, then how are we to maintain the teaching of Ss. Jerome, Optatus, and Gelasius that episcopal headship removes all occasions for schism? Or St. Cyprian’s teaching that disobedience to lawful hierarchy alone is what causes schism? We can uphold these teachings only if, beyond the local level, there’s a cascading hierarchy of “Petrine headship” to which one can appeal if a local bishop fails. If your local Peter is a heretic, you can appeal to the Peter over him, and then to the Peter over him, and so on. Ultimately, this “hierarchy of Peters” culminates in the one Chair of Peter to whom all are subject, which is what truly guarantees the impossibility of schism and thus the unity of the Church. This reality was beautifully summarized by none other than Pope St. Leo the Great:

The connection of the whole body makes all alike healthy, all alike beautiful: and this connection requires the unanimity indeed of the whole body, but it especially demands harmony among the priests. And though they have a common dignity, yet they have not uniform rank; inasmuch as even among the blessed Apostles, notwithstanding the similarity of their honourable estate, there was a certain distinction of power, and while the election of them all was equal, yet it was given to one to take the lead of the rest. From which model has arisen a distinction between bishops also, and by an important ordinance it has been provided that every one should not claim everything for himself: but that there should be in each province one whose opinion should have the priority among the brethren: and again that certain whose appointment is in the greater cities should undertake a fuller responsibility, through whom the care of the universal Church should converge towards Peter’s one seat, and nothing anywhere should be separated from its Head.

Pope St. Leo the Great, Letter 14, XII.

For St. Leo, when Jesus appointed Simon Peter to be the “one to take the lead of the rest” of the apostles, He was establishing “Peter’s one seat” to which “the universal Church” is subject, and that seat is currently occupied by the pope of Rome.⁵⁵ However, Leo also believes that the divine institution of the papacy serves as a “model” for all the “distinction[s] between bishops.” This is why Catholic theology holds that the pope of Rome alone is the successor of Peter in an absolute sense, while the other monarchical bishops are the successors of Peter in a relative sense. All other instances of episcopal headship are modeled after the one episcopal head that our Lord directly instituted in blessed Peter’s appointment over the apostles. Thus, a local monarchical bishop is “Peter” in a relative sense because he has the same relation to his diocese that the historical man Peter had to the Apostolic College. Namely, possessing immediate, direct, and ordinary jurisdiction over it in order to prevent the occasion of schism. With this authority, a local bishop (a successor of Peter) prevents schisms in the local church, and the Roman Pontiff (the successor of Peter) prevents schisms in the universal church. This is why Leo says that “nothing anywhere should be separated from its Head.” No one should ever be separated from his lawful bishop, because as long as that bishop remains in the Petrine hierarchy, which “converge[s] towards Peter’s one seat” in Rome, he will never be a schismatic.

Indeed, this is the only way in which episcopal headship can truly prevent schism, and it’s where we begin to see the doctrine of papal infallibility rear its head. No one in the early Church explained this better than Pope St. Gelasius:

This is just what the Apostolic See takes great care against—that because its pure roots are in the Apostle’s glorious confession, that it be marred by no crack of wickedness, no contagion. For if, God forbid, something we trust could not happen, such a thing were to result, how could we dare resist any error? Whence would we seek correction for those in error? … What are we to do about the entire world, if, God forbid, it were misled by us? … If we [Rome] lose them [faithfulness to the truth and communion], God forbid, how could anything ever be restored again, especially if in its summit, the Apostolic See, it became attainted, something God would never allow to happen… If I, God forbid, were to become an accomplice in the evil, then I would be in need of remedy myself, rather than being able to offer one; and the See of Blessed Peter, would be seeking a remedy from elsewhere rather than itself offering a remedy to others [something that God would never allow to happen.]

Pope St. Gelasius, Thiel, ed. Epistolae Romanorum, t.1., 353, 302, 306, qtd. in Erick Ybarra, The Papacy, p. 389.

Pope St. Leo the Great (d. 461) and Pope St. Gelasius (d. 496).

According to St. Gelasius, since the Church of Rome has “its pure roots in the Apostle [Peter’s] glorious confession,” that is, because of Rome’s divinely instituted “principate” over the Church by which she is “the first See,”⁵⁶ this is why she can “be marred by no crack of wickedness, no contagion.” Why does Gelasius believe that Rome falling into heresy is something that “could not happen”? Because if it ever did, then “how could we dare resist any error? Whence would we seek correction for those in error?” For both Ss. Leo and Gelasius, episcopal authority is a “pyramid of Peters” with Peter’s one successor, the pope, at the top. If your local monarchical bishop is engaging in heretical or schismatic behavior, then in order to remain in union with the Church, you must go above him until you reach the Roman Pontiff himself. The buck always stops with Rome. This is why Gelasius believes that “if in its summit, the Apostolic See,” the Church became “attainted” by falsehood, then nothing could “ever be restored again,” i.e. the ordinary mission of the Church would have failed. Indeed, since Leo and Gelasius believe that there’s no one to appeal to beyond the pope, there’s no higher authority from which “those in error” could “seek correction,” then if the pope required the universal Church to embrace heresy, Christians would be forced to choose between heresy and schism. However, because God can never demand the morally impossible (cf. 1 Cor 10:13), this is why Gelasius believes that binding papal heresy is “something God would never allow to happen.” Otherwise, if Rome fell, the whole Church would go down with her. Whence the logic of papal infallibility.⁵⁷

Hopefully it’s clear that what’s been outlined above isn’t some “ultramontane” mental gymnastics, rather it’s simply taking certain theological premises to their conclusions. If episcopal headship eliminates the very occasion of schism, as the holy fathers teach, then there must be some sort of divine guarantee that this headship will not fail when it reaches its summit. If Ss. Jerome, Cyprian, and Leo really were right that without a “chief-priest” there will be “as many schisms in the Churches as there are priests,”⁵⁸ that “schisms [have not] originated from any other source than from this, that God’s priest is not obeyed,”⁵⁹ and that “nothing anywhere should be separated from its Head,”⁶⁰ then a Christian could certainly never be put in a scenario where obedience to his lawful episcopal head would be the cause of schism. And yet, we know from Church history that local episcopal heads can, in fact, impose heresy and sacrilege on their subjects. Thus, without a hierarchy of episcopal headship that culminates in a single episcopal head whose authority is unquestionable (and therefore infallible), there would be no sense at all in which the Chair of Peter is the “source of priestly unity” for the entire Church, no matter how that concept is understood.

Indeed, the understanding of episcopal headship articulated above is required to uphold one of the only teachings our Lord explicitly gave on ecclesiology, “If [a sinner] refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a heathen and a tax collector” (Matt 18:17). Jesus Christ Himself commands us to listen to the Church’s hierarchy under pain of excommunication. He, in fact, gave us no other means by which Christians can settle disputes with one another. It’s the ecclesiastical hierarchy or bust. As such, somewhere along this hierarchical chain has to be the definitive end point of any given dispute, and the holy fathers consistently identify the pope of Rome as possessing that very authority by virtue of his succession from St. Peter.⁶¹

IV. Peter’s Chair: the Criteria of Canonical Communion

In order to better grasp why episcopal headship is essential for the Church’s unity, consider St. Francis de Sales’ critique of the Protestant Reformers who broke communion with their local episcopal ordinaries. In The Catholic Controversy, he explains that separating from your ordinary is never permitted because, in order to truly have a “mission” from God in the Church, a man must be sent,

[E]ither mediately or immediately. We say mission is given mediately when we are sent by one who has from God the power of sending, according to the order which He has appointed in His Church, and such was the mission of S. Denis into France by Clement and of Timothy by S. Paul. Immediate mission is when God Himself commands and gives a charge, without the interposition of the ordinary authority which He has placed in the prelates and pastors of the Church: as S. Peter and the Apostles were sent, receiving from Our Lord’s own mouth this commandment: Go ye into the whole world, and preach the Gospel to every creature, and as Moses received his mission to Pharaoh and to the people of Israel.

St. Francis de Sales, The Catholic Controversy, Part I, Chapter II.

It’s not enough for a man to be sacramentally ordained to the priesthood to be a lawful minister of the Gospel. Instead, he must also possess a mission from God. As St. Paul teaches, “how shall they preach, unless they are sent?” (Rom 10:15). There’s two ways in which one can receive such an ecclesiastical mission, either ordinarily or extraordinarily. Peter and the apostles received an extraordinary mission from God since they were the beginning of something new. However, after the apostolic mission was created in an extraordinary manner, it’s only ever been given to others in an ordinary manner, via apostolic succession through the episcopate. But as mentioned, this mission is something more than just the sacrament of Holy Orders itself, given both Catholics and Orthodox agree that it’s possible for sacramentally ordained priests and bishops to become schismatics, i.e. break from the ordinary mission of the Church. Thus, in addition to objectively possessing Holy Orders through the laying on of hands, a lawful ecclesiastical mission is being authorized by the competent authority to carry out your ministry. It’s what modern Catholic and Orthodox theologians refer to as a minister being “canonical.”

Understanding this concept of “canonicity” sheds light on why it’s never permitted to break communion with one’s episcopal head: because the canonical, ordinary mission of the Church, which is the only mission from God in the post-apostolic era, is received from being sent by one’s episcopal head. Unless a man claims to be a divinely inspired prophet who’s received a “new mission” from someone like the Archangel Gabriel, the only way he can be “an ambassador for Christ” (2 Cor 5:20) is if someone above him who’s already an ambassador actively commissions him to do so. As such, if a man were to break away from his ordinary (as the Reformers did), or if the ordinary were to break away from his superiors (as the Eastern Orthodox have done), he would be breaking away from that which connects him to the divine commission our Lord gave to Peter and the apostles; he would no longer have a mission from God. This is precisely de Sales’ argument against the Reformation. Since the Reformers didn’t have an extraordinary mission (they never claimed to be prophets), nor an ordinary mission (they rebelled against their ordinaries), we can, before even considering anything else they have to say, dismiss them as lacking a divine mission to preach, and therefore being schismatics.

St. Francis de Sales, in the Church of St. Philip Neri, Catania, Italy, 1937.

Indeed, this is the basis of our Lord’s aforementioned teaching in Matthew 18:17, “If [a sinner] refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a heathen and a tax collector.” Jesus Himself commands us to listen to whatever the Church, in her ordinary mission, has ruled, because this is the only mission He has authorized during the present age (cf. Matt 28:20). Thus, as St. Francis comments on this passage, since “we are obliged to obey our ordinary pastors under pain of being heathens and publicans,” we absolutely cannot “place ourselves under other discipline than theirs.”⁶² Specifically, we are bound to the discipline of our ordinary episcopal heads, as “the body speaks not by its legs, nor by its hands, but only by its head,” and thus “the Church [cannot] better pronounce sentence than by its heads.”⁶³

For both Catholics and Orthodox, then, the existence of the Church depends on the existence of her ordinary, visible, and canonical mission, which is received and maintained through her lawful episcopal heads. From this it follows that, if the Church herself cannot fail, then the institution of episcopal headship cannot possibly fail either, whence our mutual belief in episcopal infallibility; ordinary episcopal headship must forever be that which sustains the Church’s unity, and, as a result, her profession of the true faith. However, recall that episcopal headship in the Church exists as a cascading hierarchy of Peters that “converge[s] towards Peter’s one seat” in Rome, with all local bishops receiving their canonical status via the maintenance of communion with their heads, as this is what prevents the occasion of schism. This must mean that the one head towards whom all headship converges is the ultimate “fount,” “origin,” and “source” from which every canonical mission in the Church is derived. And if the Church’s ordinary canonical mission is indefectible, then the See from which it originates, Rome, must be indefectible as well.

In case you didn’t notice, this is simply the unfolding of St. Cyprian’s teaching that the Apostle Peter forever remains the principle of unity for the Episcopal College. “The unity” of the priesthood, Cyprian writes, is always “preserved in [its] source,”⁶⁴ and because Peter was the original source of the priesthood, this is why he and his unique successors in Rome always remain the “source” of “priestly unity” for the universal Church to this day.⁶⁵ You’ll recall that St. Optatus likewise taught that because Peter was “the Head of all the Apostles,” possessing the “first” or original episcopal “Cathedra,” he is the one through whom “unity [is] preserved by all” the apostles and bishops; the Church’s “one bond of communion” is forever shared with “the whole world” through the mediation of Peter and his Roman successors.⁶⁶ For these early fathers, Rome and her bishop being the source of the Church’s canonical communion wasn’t an arbitrary theological idea that was invented by some church council because of the city of Rome’s imperial prestige. Rather, it had a very clear theological and historical basis: Peter was the singular principle of the apostolate’s unity (its canonical communion), and since he left his ministry, which was intended to last until the end of time, in Rome, his successors in Rome will never fail to be the source of canonical communion for the worldwide episcopate. Simple as that.

Nor were Ss. Cyprian and Optatus alone in teaching this, rather it was a common doctrine among the fathers, especially those of the ancient Roman Church. For example, St. Innocent I, whose feast the Orthodox Church celebrates on March 25th, writes that “the holy Apostle Peter” is the one “through whom both the apostolate and episcopate in Christ took their beginning”;⁶⁷ St. Gregory II, whose feast the Orthodox celebrate on February 11th, likewise held that “the blessed apostle Peter stands as the fountainhead of the [entire] Apostolate and the Episcopate.”⁶⁸ As St. Innocent further explains, it’s precisely because Peter is “the very apostle from whom the very episcopate and whole authority of this name has emerged,”⁶⁹ that when there are disputes, “all our brothers and fellow bishops ought to refer to none but Peter [the Roman See], that is to the author of their name and office.”⁷⁰ Indeed, as St. Boniface I (d. 422 A.D.) teaches,

The structure (institutio) of the universal church took its origin from the honor given to Peter. All rule [Episcopal government] in the Church consists in this, that from Peter, as from a fountainhead, the discipline of the whole Church has been derived as this church grows and expands…. It is certain that this church [the Apostolic See of Rome] is related to the churches spread over the whole world as the head to its members. Whoever cuts himself off from this church places himself outside the Christian religion, since he no longer remains part of its structure (institutio). I hear that certain bishops want to set aside the apostolic constitution of the church and are attempting to introduce innovations against Christ’s own commands. They seek to separate themselves from communion with the Apostolic See, or, more precisely, from its authority [potestate separare].

Pope St. Boniface I, Epistle 14, PL 20.777; trans. Ludwig Hertling, Communio: Church and Papacy in Early Christianity, pp. 56-57.

For St. Boniface and the holy popes before and after him, because our Lord established St. Peter as the source of the episcopate, Peter’s one seat in Rome remains the source of the episcopate’s canonical mission to this day. And since this Petrine ministry in Rome belongs to the very “structure” of the Church, since it’s the “fountainhead” from which “all [Episcopal] rule” flows, this means that those who depart from the judgment of the Apostolic See “no longer remain part” of the Church’s canonical “structure.” This is the context for understanding what St. Boniface and other first millennium popes meant when they described the relationship between the Roman Church and all other churches as being, “as the head to its members.” The member of a body is only alive insofar as it’s in communion with the head. If a member gets cut off, it dies while the head remains, since the head is the source of life for the body. If the head were to get cut off, then the whole body would die, but since Rome is at the head of the Body of Christ, which, “being raised from the dead, will never die again” (Rom 6:9), it follows that she will never be cut off from the Church, and thus “whoever cuts himself off from this church [Rome] places himself outside the Christian religion.” To appropriate the language of St. Ambrose of Milan, since it’s from “the Roman Church, the Head of the whole Roman world” that “all the rights of venerable Communion [flow] to all persons,”⁷¹ if anyone separates himself from Roman communion, he separates himself from the canonical fellowship of the Church.

Peter Paul Rubens, Saint Peter holding the Keys of Heaven.

The reason I bring this up isn’t just to support a theological argument, but also to highlight a fundamental flaw I discovered in Eastern Orthodox ecclesiology while I was attempting to defend it myself. That flaw being: they have no objective criteria for what it means to be “canonical.” Indeed, when I was Eastern Orthodox, the question of what it meant to be canonical often plagued me. How did I know that the parish I was chrismated into was canonical? They received me by chrismation rather than rebaptism, after all, even though the Eastern Orthodox Council of Constantinople 1755, which was accepted by Constantinople, Alexandria, Jerusalem, and later Antioch (Moscow’s Patriarchate had been abolished by Tsar Peter I), decreed western baptismal forms (e.g. pouring, sprinkling) to be invalid,⁷² meaning my Lutheran baptism wasn’t even eligible for “ekonomia.” My Orthodox priest himself was a former Baptist minister who had only been baptized with a single immersion (and was never rebaptized), which even the martyr Fr. Daniel Sysoev, who otherwise accepted non-Orthodox baptisms, considered invalid.⁷³ I thus belonged to a parish that was living in direct violation of legitimate canonical rulings from the Eastern Orthodox Church.

Nor was the canonical standing of my own bishop free from suspicion. I belonged to the Antiochian Orthodox Church, which officially sanctions inter-communion and common worship with Monophysite heretics.⁷⁴ I was also in communion with the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, which likewise sanctions inter-communion and common worship with Roman Catholics,⁷⁵ whom I considered heretics. This meant that I belonged to a church that officially endorses practices that violate Apostolic Canon 45.⁷⁶ Not only this, but I came to learn that the Patriarchates of Constantinople,⁷⁷ Moscow,⁷⁸ and the jurisdiction of the Orthodox Church in America,⁷⁹ have all officially allowed for the use of artificial contraception, which I believed (and still believe) is blatantly heretical. Of course I knew the mantra: “these hierarchs aren’t infallible!,” but that’s beside the point. I didn’t care that these hierarchs weren’t infallible, my concern was that I had no answer to the question of what made these “World Orthodox” institutions “canonical.” Clearly, it wasn’t a strict adherence to the Eastern Orthodox faith as it’s laid out in Scripture, Tradition, and the ecumenical councils and canons. The traditionalist “True Orthodox” or “Genuine Orthodox” sects had a better claim to “canonicity” along those lines.⁸⁰ So to what criteria of canonicity was I actually appealing?

Truthfully, I only found an answer when I was confronted with the choir of the holy fathers outlined above, who all spoke as with one voice in declaring the Church of Rome, the Chair of St. Peter, to be the criteria by which canonicity is determined. This is one of the many reasons I ended up deciding to become Catholic. Now, I’m obviously not ignorant of historical cases of individual Saints defying the authority of Rome, and even Ecumenical Councils, on account of their dubious theological convictions (e.g. St. Cyprian, St. Columbanus). I’m even familiar with the infamous case of Pope Vigilius and the Fifth Ecumenical Council.⁸¹ However, despite these cases, it remains true that there’s only one “canonical theory” (i.e. explanation of what makes a particular church canonical) that could ever be defended as being both present in and endorsed by the undivided Church of the first millennium, and that theory is Rome’s. Namely, that because our Lord instituted St. Peter as the head of the apostles, and the source of the episcopate itself, he and his successors in Rome remain at the head of the Church, as the source of canonical communion, until the end of time; and so long as a Christian remains under this hierarchy that “converges towards Peter’s one seat,” he can be confident that he’s a canonical Catholic.

Indeed, this is the ecclesiology that the Third Ecumenical Council embraced when it accepted St. Celestine’s teaching that our Lord’s appointment of “blessed Peter the Apostle” as “the head of the Apostles” entails that the pope is “the holy head” of the Catholic Church “down even to today and forever.”⁸² It’s what the Sixth Ecumenical Council endorsed when it ratified St. Agatho’s teaching that because “the duty of feeding the spiritual sheep of the Church” was entrusted to Peter, the faith of his successors, “the Apostolic pontiffs” of Rome, “remains undefiled unto the end, according to the divine promise of the Lord and Saviour himself.”⁸³ It’s what the Seventh Ecumenical Council unambiguously taught by receiving Pope Hadrian’s teaching that, “blessed Peter himself, the chief of the Apostles, who first sat in the Apostolic See [of Rome], left the chiefship of his Apostolate, and pastoral care, to his successors [the popes], who are to sit in his most holy seat forever.”⁸⁴

To any Eastern Orthodox readers of mine I would say, unless you believe that Popes St. Celestine, St. Agatho, and Hadrian all had a radically different ecclesiology from Popes Ss. Innocent, Leo, Gelasius, Gregory II, and Boniface, it’s time to face reality. The ecclesiological framework that was originally articulated by Ss. Cyprian and Optatus, and especially “Romanized” through the saintly popes of the first millennium, is the only “official” theory of canonicity that the Ecumenical Church of both East and West actually endorsed. Whether you like it or not, whether you think the ecclesiology itself is true or not, that’s just the reality. The Eastern Orthodox don’t even have a single unified canonical theory that can compete with the Catholic Church’s, much less one that can find the level of acceptance in the first millennium (and rooted-ness in Scripture and Tradition) that Rome’s has. As such, modern Catholic ecclesiology is your best bet for claiming continuity with the first millennium Church’s understanding of canonicity and the episcopal hierarchy.

V. Eastern Orthodoxy’s Ecclesiology Problem

With all of that said, let’s now take some time to contrast the patristic ecclesiology explained above with the popular ecclesiology professed by many Eastern Orthodox hierarchs, theologians, and scholars today. While it’s true that the Orthodox Church doesn’t have an “official” ecclesiology, and we can rather speak of various, mutually exclusive Orthodox “ecclesiologies,” what’s outlined below is the standard presentation you’ll hear in catechism class at the parish level. I will discuss other Eastern Orthodox theories of canonicity and the Church as well. Ultimately, I hope to demonstrate that the Orthodox are not even in the running for having a coherent ecclesiological vision that’s in continuity with the first millennium tradition.

Consider the following article by the Orthodox historian Nektarios Dapergolas, “The Error of Blind Obedience to Bishops – According to the Saints of the Orthodox Church.” He writes that, according to Eastern Orthodoxy, even though “the Church, which is the Body of Christ, cannot err,” it’s nonetheless true that “patriarchs, bishops or [even] the vast majority of the clergy” can wind up “outside the church” through heresy. Naturally, he celebrates the fact that, from the Orthodox perspective, after the Council of Florence, “the Church once again consisted of one cleric, Mark Evgenikos, who alone resisted the decision of the false council, together with the laity.” He further approvingly cites a “prophecy” from the popular Orthodox monastic Elder Ephraim of Arizona, who believed that a time is coming when “only a few simple priests will keep and preserve Orthodoxy, while the ‘great ones’, the church officials, will follow the devil.” Likewise, in his recent book, On the Reception of the Heterodox, Fr. Peter Heers⁸⁵ writes that it’s possible for any number of episcopal heads in the Church to make heretical decrees. “A true and authoritative council” is not one that’s “comprised of a certain number of bishops or patriarchs,” but rather one that’s “in agreement with the teaching of the Fathers and the Ecumenical Councils.”⁸⁶ In other words, contra Ss. Cyprian, Optatus, Jerome, Leo, Gelasius, Innocent, Gregory II, and Boniface, the one Chair of Peter is not what guarantees the unity of the Church and thus her preservation of the truth, rather it’s just “the truth itself” that does this, somehow.

Icon of the First Ecumenical Council.

Nor is Heers alone among Orthodox theologians who hold this view. He also cites the Orthodox Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos, who teaches that it’s not just any episcopal heads in the Church who possess coercive authority, rather it’s only the “glorified who participate in the glory of God” who “are the foundation and basis of ecclesiastical life.”⁸⁷ Fr. John Romanides likewise rhetorically asks, “will the Holy Spirit come without fail and enlighten [the bishops gathered in council]? Simply because they are canonical bishops and assemble at a Council and pray?” His answer is no, “the Holy Spirit does not act in that way.” Rather, we can only trust episcopal headship in the Church if the bishop “who prays” has “noetic prayer already activated within him when he comes to the Council.”⁸⁸

Fr. George Florovsky, a well known and respected theologian, hailed by the Orthodox Saint, Sophrony of Essex,⁸⁹ agrees with Romanides that councils of the worldwide episcopate “were never regarded as a canonical institution, but rather as occasional charismatic events… Indeed, those Councils which were actually recognized as ‘Ecumenical,’ in the sense of their binding and infallible authority, were recognized, immediately or after a delay, not because of their formal canonical competence, but because of their charismatic character: under the guidance of the Holy Spirit they have witnessed to the Truth.”⁹⁰ In other words, even when all of the episcopal heads in the entire Church gather together, Florovsky believes there’s still no guarantee that the Holy Spirit will preserve the Church’s unity in faith through them. Fr. Laurent Cleenewerck also rejects the notion that episcopal headship is the guarantor of the Church’s unity in faith: “the Orthodox admit that these Councils are called ecumenical and infallible only in retrospect, because what they teach is received as true by ‘the entire body of the Faithful,’ not based on any intrinsic organizational criteria.”⁹¹ Dr. Edward Siencienski even dared to write that many of the “heroes and saints” of Eastern Orthodoxy were “the ones who, to protect the orthodox faith, disobeyed the biblical injunction to ‘submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every authority instituted among men’ (1 Peter 2:13). They were the ones who ignored Ignatius of Antioch’s plea to be obedient to the bishop, respecting him ‘as you respect the authority of God the Father.’”⁹²

Once again, against the teachings of Ss. Cyprian, Optatus, Jerome, Leo, Gelasius, Innocent, Gregory II, and Boniface, these modern Orthodox theologians do not believe that the Chair of Peter is the source of the Church’s unity, in any way that might be understood. Instead, whether or not submission to episcopal headship can faithfully preserve unity depends on the spiritual and theological competence of those episcopal heads. And while this sounds nice in theory, the problem is that, as even Florovsky acknowledges,⁹³ this logic is circular. There really cannot be any meaningful way in which episcopal headship guarantees the unity of the Church if a Christian’s obedience is dependent on his own assessment of whether or not his superiors are worthy of being obeyed. All this ends up doing is fulfilling St. Jerome’s warning that without a “chief-priest” there will be “as many schisms in the Churches as there are priests,”⁹⁴ the truthfulness of which is proven by the existence of so many mutually excommunicated “True Orthodox” sects. At most, Heers, Nafpaktos, Romanides, Florovsky, Cleenewerck, and Siencienski could say that our Lord’s establishment of a “source of priestly unity” in His Church makes schisms less likely, but they couldn’t agree with the holy fathers that it serves to eliminate the very occasion of schism itself.

Ultimately, if it’s possible for the bishops to fail at every level of the Petrine hierarchy, from your local Peter all the way to the universal Peter, then it just isn’t true that our Lord “arranged by His authority the origin of that [ecclesial] unity, as beginning from one [Peter].”⁹⁵ It wouldn’t be true that in order that “the occasion of schism might be removed… it [was] Christ’s will that One amongst [the apostles] should be the Ruler.”⁹⁶ It wouldn’t be true that the purpose for which our Lord established Peter as “the Head of all the Apostles” was so that “in this one Cathedra, unity should be preserved by all.”⁹⁷ It wouldn’t be true that, in ecclesiastical matters, “nothing anywhere should be separated from its Head.”⁹⁸ It wouldn’t even be true that those who “refus[e] to listen even to the church” are to be treated as “heathen[s] and tax collector[s]” (Matt 18:17). These would sometimes be true, perhaps, but other times the exact opposite would be true, which would make the whole institution of “Peter’s Chair” superfluous. As such, Eastern Orthodox Christians who genuinely hold to the ecclesiology of men like Heers, Florovsky, and Cleenewerck ought to put their money where their mouth is and adopt the mindset of the “True Orthodox.” If adherence to the true faith is the sole criteria of canonicity, then Orthodox Christians should be scrupulously analyzing the official teachings of their own hierarchs to make sure that they haven’t departed from the faith, and if their hierarchs have, then they ought to separate from them.⁹⁹ Yet almost none of them will ever go this route, and for good reason.

Deep down, even the Eastern Orthodox understand that following their own ecclesiology to its logical conclusion leads to a schismatic mindset. If there’s no visible, objective, a priori criteria that determines where the canonical Church of Jesus Christ is, then everyone is stuck trying to figure out who the most “doctrinally pure” hierarchs are, being “tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine” (Eph 4:14). Especially in our modern age when liberalism and ecumenism have swept across the entire Christian world, including both the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches, it’s very tempting to look to fringe “traditionalist” sects that claim to be the “holy remnant” that’s preserved the true faith, in defiance of the “established hierarchy.” However, everyone who goes down that rabbit hole, whether Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant, can’t help but feel like a schismatic. This is because, as St. Francis de Sales appropriated St. Augustine’s rhetoric against the Donatists, the Catholic Church is “the city set on a mountain, that cannot be hid. This is the light which cannot be concealed, nor put under a bushel, which is known to all, famous to all… Who can get lost or miss this mountain? […] Who fails to see the city set on a mountain? Yet no, be not astonished that it is unknown to those who hate the brethren, who hate the Church. For by this they walk in darkness, and know not where they go. They are separated from the rest of the universe, they are blind with anger.”¹⁰⁰ Indeed, whether it’s a Protestant, Sedevacantist, or True Orthodox, I can’t help but believe that as they enter their tiny, obscure little chapel for Sunday worship, the words of St. Francis ring in their ears: “How would our Lord, who said that ‘men do not light a candle and put it under a bushel’ (Matt 5:15) have placed so many lights in the Church to go and hide them in certain unknown corners?”¹⁰¹

Of course, the vast majority of Orthodox Christians don’t belong to one of these traditionalist sects, thanks be to God. However, my question to them is: why not? Have you actually investigated their claims? It’s not as if these groups only consist of a handful of “terminally online” laymen, rather there are entire synods of validly ordained Orthodox hierarchs who loudly object to and condemn “World Orthodoxy” for violating their own canonical rulings against ecumenism.¹⁰² Some of these sects have even existed for the same amount of time as the OCA. As recently as last January, a priest of the Antiochian Church condemned his Patriarchate’s practice of inter-communion with the Monophysites as heretical, for which he was canonically deposed.¹⁰³ So if, as Siencienski wrote, the “heroes and saints” of Eastern Orthodoxy are often those who “ignor[e] Ignatius of Antioch’s plea to be obedient to the bishop,” then why not run off with a few like minded laymen, priests, and bishops to preserve the version of Orthodoxy that you believe is the most pure? What, in principle, could stop a faithful Orthodox Christian from doing this? There’s nothing. If it’s possible for every level of the Church’s hierarchy to fail, then what else is an Orthodox Christian supposed to do when that actually happens?

Debate between Catholics and Eastern Christians in the 13th century, Acre 1290.

After all, if the only thing “Peter’s Chair” amounts to is a validly ordained bishop who possesses the true faith, as it seems to in the ecclesiological scheme Cleenewerck and Kyle present, Orthodox Christians would be completely justified in breaking away from their “canonical” bishop to follow a different one who they believe more perfectly aligns with the fullness of the Orthodox faith. Indeed, since there’s no obviously visible “Chair of Peter” to fall back on, everyone must decide for himself which Chair of Peter to follow. Whether it’s Peter’s Chair in World Orthodoxy, in one of the True Orthodox sects, or even in a new sect that he decides to make with his own local bishop, he must choose. This is simply the logical conclusion of denying the teaching of the holy fathers that our Lord Jesus chose “one among the twelve” apostles to be the ruler, “so that when a head has been appointed, there may be no occasion for schism.”¹⁰⁴ Just as, without a divinely instituted head in the local church, i.e. the monarchical bishop, the occasion of schism would very much be present, so too, without a divinely instituted head over the universal church, the occasion of schism is absolutely present and ripe for happening. Thankfully, this is why Jesus chose only one among the apostles and their successors to be the head, so that, as St. Optatus taught, “in [Peter’s] one Cathedra, unity should be preserved by all, lest the other Apostles might claim—each for himself—separate Cathedras.”¹⁰⁵

In recognition of these issues, there are indeed some Orthodox writers who want to maintain the existence of a universal primate in the Eastern Orthodox Church. This is, in fact, one of the most significant theological disagreements between the modern Patriarchates of Moscow and Constantinople. Moscow, following the traditional Eastern Orthodox position laid out in the Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs of 1848, completely rejects the notion that any kind of universal primacy existed among Peter and the apostles at all,¹⁰⁶ and it especially rejects the idea that such primacy exists among their successors today.¹⁰⁷ Constantinople, on the other hand, has recently exalted itself as the See that is “first without equals,” claiming that since “the presiding hierarch of the universal Church [in the first millennium] was the bishop of Rome,” with whom “Eucharistic communion” is now “broken,” “canonically the [new] presiding hierarch of the Orthodox Church is the archbishop of Constantinople.”¹⁰⁸ However, something that both of these Orthodox ecclesiologies have in common is rejecting the notion that the Church has a universal primate who is the divinely instituted successor of Peter. Even the modern Church of Constantinople follows the Patriarchal Encyclical in grounding both Rome’s historic primacy and its own in the “canonical” tradition of the Church, and not the divine institution of the Lord.

As a result, neither of these “official” Orthodox ecclesiologies ends up resolving any of the issues expressed above. So what if the Ecumenical Patriarch is the canonical primate of the whole Orthodox Church? He doesn’t have that position by divine right, nor is he infallible, which means that he could still become a heretic or schismatic worthy of excommunication. He thus cannot serve as the objective, a priori source of canonical communion for the entire Church; he cannot claim to possess, as St. Leo did, “Peter’s one seat” towards which all bishops must “converge” by divine law. This reality was especially highlighted in 2018 when Moscow not only had no problem severing communion with Constantinople over a canonical disagreement, but virtually no Orthodox hierarchs or theologians responded to this by claiming that it’s intrinsically schismatic to separate from the Ecumenical Throne. Indeed, in this system where the universal primate’s authority is not of immovable, divine origin, the problem of there being “as many schisms in the Churches as there are priests” will always persist. Unlike the historic Roman Church, the fallible Church of Constantinople simply cannot demand the unconditional obedience of its subjects when they have a dispute (e.g. Moscow versus Ukraine). It will always, in principle, be possible for dissenters to fall back on some doctrinal or canonical reason that justifies their severance from what’s supposed to be the principle of unity for the universal Church, which only proves that this kind of “primacy” is not a principle of unity at all.

It also goes without saying that, as thoroughly demonstrated above, Rome always grounded her principate over the Church in the divine commission that our Lord gave to blessed Peter, and this justification for her primacy was accepted by no less than three Ecumenical Councils. As such, if the Ecumenical Patriarch doesn’t make the same claim, then he does not, in fact, have the same position in the Orthodox Church that Rome had in the first millennium Catholic Church. And if the Ecumenical Patriarch is not just “the Orthodox version of the pope,” then he provides the Eastern Orthodox no assistance in answering the question of how the Chair of Peter can be the source of unity for the universal Church, as the holy fathers teach. Moreover, Moscow’s ecclesiology, which simply rejects an authoritative universal primate altogether,¹⁰⁹ is not even worth taking seriously as a continuation of the patristic ecclesiology explicated above. Thus, as was the case many times in theological disputes in the first millennium, Rome’s position alone remains standing.

As a final word on this subject, I’ll note that Eastern Orthodox ecclesiological theories about the “pentarchy” suffer the same fate as the ones explored above. In my last days as an intellectually convinced Eastern Orthodox, my own final attempt to secure some kind of indefectible “source of priestly unity” in the Orthodox Church was to say that the pentarchy, that is, the five Patriarchal Sees of Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria, Jerusalem, and Moscow, cannot all simultaneously fall away from the true faith. This is indeed the logical conclusion of believing that “patriarchal ratification” is what makes councils ecumenical and infallible, a belief upheld by Orthodox Saints and canonists such as Nicodemus the Hagiorite.¹¹⁰ If all of the patriarchs could simultaneously become heretics, then they could do it together at a council, and such councils would therefore not be ecumenical and infallible. However, if patriarchal ratification is what makes councils infallible, then it follows that the patriarchs themselves cannot collectively become heretics, thereby enabling them to serve as the objective “source of canonicity” for the universal Church. But unfortunately for my Eastern Orthodox self, I discovered a serious problem with this theory. Not only did it lack explicit attestation in the early Church,¹¹¹ but it also just wasn’t coherent.

Consider the Fourth Ecumenical Council, for example. During this Council and its aftermath, it was Rome, Constantinople, and Jerusalem versus Alexandria and eventually Antioch. What did the former do when the latter wouldn’t submit to Chalcedon? They just created new Patriarchates of Alexandria and Antioch that would, which is why both the Greek Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox Churches of Alexandria and Antioch continue to exist to this day.¹¹² In this historical case, how did “patriarchal ratification” serve as the objective criteria for Chalcedon’s canonical and infallible status? It didn’t. Instead, the whole concept of the pentarchy in this context is just an exercise in circular logic. “Chalcedon was an Ecumenical Council because it was ratified by all of the ‘true patriarchs,’ but the only ‘true patriarchs’ were those who professed the true faith of Chalcedon.” After some critical thinking, I eventually concluded that any theory about the patriarchs collectively being the quasi-divinely instituted, indefectible guarantors of the Church’s unity in faith ultimately fails for this same reason. If there’s not just one patriarch who, a priori, is indefectible, then the true faith could reside with any one of them when there’s a division, and then it’s no longer the patriarchal establishment itself that unifies the Church in truth, but once again just “the truth itself.” At that point, we’re back to square one.

VI. The Eucharistic Meaning of St. Peter’s Primacy

To begin wrapping up this lengthy article, I’d like to circle back to the question around which almost all of the topics discussed herein revolve. Namely, what is the primary meaning of the primacy that St. Peter was afforded over the Apostolic College? Does Peter’s headship over the apostles primarily signify the office of bishop? The office of archbishop or patriarch? The office of the pope? What, then, does Matthew 18:17-19’s commission to the rest of the apostles signify? Depending on which apologist you ask, you’re likely to get a variety of answers.

Icon of St. Peter with the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven.

If we go Kyle’s route, which is that Matthew 16:18-19 is primarily about Peter being instituted as the archetype for all monarchical bishops (i.e. episcopal heads with direct, immediate, and ordinary jurisdiction over their local dioceses), it does create a bit of a problem. In this scheme, because the apostles were given the exact same “Petrine-episcopal” ministry in Matthew 18 that Peter was given in Matthew 16, the historical man Peter doesn’t seem to have any unique relation to the rest of the apostles at all, which directly contradicts the patristic witness, as shown above. Indeed, it begs the question of why Matthew 16 and 18 even exist as two separate texts in the first place. If the primary meaning of the New Testament’s Petrine texts is just, “Peter, the apostles, and the bishops all carry out the exact same episcopal ministry within the Church,” then the very existence of a Petrine commission, as distinct from an apostolic commission, becomes superfluous. As such, we know that the primary meaning of our Lord’s commission to St. Peter is something more than just a theologically abstract archetype for bishops or even episcopal primates in general (which the apostles also would have been, e.g. Mark as the “first patriarch” of Alexandria).

However, at the same time, this idea that Peter is the archetype for all bishops cannot be readily dismissed either. Kyle is absolutely correct to point out that, through its allusions to certain Old Testament texts, Matthew 16:18-19 indeed portrays Peter as the new covenant’s high priest, the one who can lawfully offer the Eucharistic sacrifice of the new covenant, as all bishops do. After all, Peter is given “the keys of the kingdom of heaven,” and told that whatever he “binds on earth shall be bound in heaven,” and whatever he “looses on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” As many have observed,¹¹³ this imagery is an allusion to Isaiah 22, wherein Eliakim is established as the Davidic kingdom’s royal steward by being given “the key of the house of David,” being told that “what he opens none shall shut, and what he shuts none shall open,” and being clothed with a “turban” and “sash,” distinctive garments of the high priest (cf. Ex 28:4). Indeed, the broader context of Isaiah 22 often gets left out of this picture, and as a result, many readers miss a very key (no pun intended) way in which all of the Gospels portray Peter as the new covenant’s high priest.

The context of Isaiah 22:22 really begins in Isaiah 22:15, where we learn that God is bringing judgment against the current royal steward of Israel, a man named Shebna. Due to his rebellion against God, the royal steward Shebna is told that he will be replaced by Eliakim, who, in contrast, is a good and faithful servant of the Lord. Consider how this dynamic plays out in the Gospels. If St. Peter is the new Eliakim, then who’s the Shebna that he’s countering? It’s clearly Caiaphas, the ruling high priest in Jesus’ day. The Gospel that makes this the most explicit is St. John’s. Already in John 1:42, we’re introduced to Peter as “Cephas,” Κηφᾶς, a name that sounds all too familiar by the time we get to John 11:49 and meet the high priest, “Caiaphas,” Καϊάφας. However, the connection between these two is brought out the most dramatically in John 18:1-27, when the Evangelist intersperses Jesus’ trial before Caiaphas with the story of Peter’s triple denial of the Lord.

As the Reformed theologian James Jordan documents,¹¹⁴ John 18 throws the contrast right in our faces: John tells us that while Annas, the other high priest, abused Jesus, Peter betrayed him in the courtyard of the high priest (Jn 18:13-24). Then John says that Jesus was led before Caiaphas, but says nothing about the inquiry. Instead, John shifts back to Peter for his second and third betrayals (Jn 18:24-28). The way this is written we can hardly fail to see the association: “Annas therefore sent Him bound to Caiaphas the high priest. Now Simon Peter was standing and warming himself” (Jn 18:24-25). Peter denies Christ twice (Jn 18:25-27). “So they led Jesus from Caiaphas” (Jn 18:28). Nothing is ever said about Caiaphas, only about Peter. Peter is Caiaphas. He is the new covenant’s high priest, and like the old covenant’s, he’s betraying his Messiah.

However, upon his repentance, Peter is confirmed as the Lord’s faithful high priest, thus solidifying Caiaphas as the new Shebna who was replaced by the new Eliakim. In John 21:15-17, Peter and Jesus have their famous dialogue wherein Peter repents three times for his high priestly betrayal of the Lord, and after each “I love you” statement, Jesus replies by telling Peter to, “feed the lambs,” “shepherd my sheep,” and “feed my sheep.” Surprisingly, St. John rarely ever uses the imagery of “shepherding.” His Gospel only mentions it one other time, and that’s in John 10:1-18 when Jesus identifies Himself as “the Good Shepherd,” in order to demonstrate His headship over the “one flock” of the Church. Similarly, throughout the book of Revelation, which was most certainly written by John,¹¹⁵ every single time the Evangelist uses this verb, “to shepherd,” ποιμαίνω, it refers to the royal and priestly authority that Jesus exercises as the one Shepherd of the Church (Rev 2:27; 7:17; 12:5; 19:15). Thus, if Peter is also going to be shepherding the Lord’s flock, then he is Jesus’ successor, standing in the place of Christ our King and High Priest as the head of the Church.

No where is this reality brought out more beautifully than in John 20:1-9. As the Reformed theologian Brian Phillips explains,¹¹⁶ the entire Gospel of John is “a walk through the tabernacle.” The Gospel begins with St. John the Baptist introducing us to the altar of burnt offerings (Ex 38:1-7), “Behold, the Lamb of God!” (Jn 1:29, 35-36). Then we’re taken to the bronze basin, where Aaron and his sons would wash with water in preparation for offering the sacrifices (Ex 38:8). This is signified at the wedding of Cana, when we’re shown jars of water used for the “Jewish rites of purification” (Jn 2:6), in John 3 when Jesus teaches about being “born of water and the Spirit” (Jn 3:5), in John 4 when Jesus meets the woman at the well and tells her that He is the “living water,” and in John 5 when Jesus heals a man by the pool of Bethesda.

Layout of the tabernacle, based on Exodus 25-30.

Naturally, John 6 takes us to the table of the bread of presence (Ex 25:23-29), with Jesus feeding the five thousand with bread (Jn 6:1-14), and then solemnly teaching, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh” (Jn 6:51). Throughout John 8-13, Jesus brings us to the lampstand menorah, repeatedly declaring Himself to be “the light of the world” (Jn 8:12; 9:5; 11:9; 12:35), shining radiantly with the Father’s glory (Jn 13:31-32). By showing Jesus to be the true High Priest (cf. Jn 17:1-26), John 14-18 reveals the altar of incense, before which the high priest would stand to minister, immediately before the Holy of Holies (Ex 30:1-10). Then, in John 18:38, 19:4, and 19:6, the verdict of our Lord’s trial is given: “I find no guilt in Him” – exactly what was required of the sacrificial victim in the Holy of Holies (Lev 22:20). Then, the unblemished Lamb of God is slain, the veiled entrance to the Holy of Holies is torn in two (Ex 26:33 cf. Lk 23:45), and the Lord of Glory is laid in a tomb (Jn 19:28-42).

But, on the third day, a miracle happens. “Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot” (Jn 20:11-12). The Lamb of God is risen. What once was His tomb is now revealed as the Holy of Holies itself, complete with two angels overlooking the Mercy Seat (cf. Ex 25:7-20). The central message of St. John’s Gospel is this: Jesus Christ is our true High Priest, the Son of God, the Lamb of God, who entered the Holy of Holies both to offer and be offered in atonement for the sins of His people.

However, the story doesn’t end there. The author of this Gospel, the one who’s taken us on this literary journey through the tabernacle, St. John the Beloved, himself becomes a character in his own story. On Easter morning, after hearing Mary Magdalene’s report that the Lord’s tomb was empty, John and Peter both ran to investigate for themselves. The narrator, John, then gives us a curious, even humorous detail about this occasion: “Both of them were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first… but he did not go in” (Jn 20:4-5). Whether he knew it on Easter Sunday or not, by adding this detail the Evangelist recognizes all of the threads that have run throughout his Gospel: Jesus’ tomb is the Holy of Holies, which only the high priest could enter, and Peter is the high priest. This is why, although John arrives at the tomb first, he doesn’t immediately enter. The heavenly High Priest had already passed through, but something was still missing. “Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb” (Jn 20:6). The beloved disciple of Jesus waits for St. Peter, the high priest, to enter the Holy of Holies first, before entering himself (Jn 20:8). Once again, Peter is shown to be the successor of Jesus, the one who shepherds the sheep and, as high priest, allows the faithful to partake of our Lord’s one sacrifice by feeding them with the Eucharistic bread of heaven.

Perhaps the reader is wondering, doesn’t all of this just prove Kyle’s point? If Peter was the new covenant’s high priest, and monarchical bishops are new covenant “high priests” themselves, then doesn’t this just mean that Peter’s primary role was to serve as a mere archetype for all bishops? Doesn’t this mean that Peter himself didn’t have a unique, divinely instituted role among the apostles, but was just an image of what they all were? Not at all. Instead, what this demonstrates is that St. Peter was the high priest, the monarchical bishop over all of the apostles. This is why, in John 20:1-9, it’s St. John who waits for St. Peter to enter the Holy of Holies. As the only apostle who remained faithful during our Lord’s Passion, John represented all of the apostles. Indeed, by daring to enter the Holy of Holies after Peter, John showed himself to be a fellow apostolic high priest, however, one who’s dependent on the first high priest. John’s dependence on Peter therefore signifies that each apostle, each bishop, even though he possesses the same “high priestly” sacramental power as Peter, nonetheless depends on Peter as his own high priest in order to lawfully exercise his ministry.

This means that, what the apostles and their successors are in relation to their own Eucharistic communities, i.e. dioceses, Peter and his successors are in relation to the entire Apostolic or Episcopal College. Just as all priestly ministers in a diocese depend on the monarchical bishop to lawfully offer the Eucharist, so too do all high priests in the Church depend on Peter, the first high priest, to licitly serve the Sacred Liturgy. As the first high priest to enter the Holy of Holies, the first bishop to offer the Eucharistic sacrifice, Peter and his successors, the popes, are thereby the origin of all sacramental authority and power in the Church; and since, as Cyprian reminds us, “the unity is still preserved in the source,” it follows that the Petrine ministry in Rome is the means by which the Church’s sacramental unity in faith is forever preserved. The one who sits on the Chair of St. Peter is the personal source and guarantor of Eucharistic communion for the entire apostolic Church. Hence St. Jerome wrote to Pope St. Damasus, “As I follow no leader save Christ, so I communicate with none but your blessedness, that is with the chair of Peter. For this, I know, is the rock on which the church is built! This is the house where alone the paschal lamb can be rightly eaten… He that gathers not with you scatters.”¹¹⁷ The canonical liceity of any bishop’s Eucharistic offering is dependent on his communion with Peter’s Chair, “the house where alone the paschal lamb can be rightly eaten.”

Indeed, as St. Francis de Sales observes,¹¹⁸ this is the very logic that underlies “the keys of the kingdom of heaven,” and, unlike Kyle and Cleenewerck’s theory, this one actually provides an explanation of why Matthew 16 and 18 are two distinct texts. When describing the relationship between “the keys of the kingdom” and the authority of “binding and loosing,” Francis readily admits that “one is an explanation of the other.” That is, the keys, which Peter possesses (Matt 16:19), are what entail the authority of binding and loosing, which all of the apostles possess (Matt 18:18). However, de Sales points out that there’s nonetheless a very real distinction “between the possession of an authority and the exercise of it.” He further explains this with an analogy: “It may well happen that while a king lives, his queen, or his son, may have just as much power as the king himself to chastise, absolve, make gifts, grant favors. Such [a] person, however, will not have the scepter but only the exercise of it. He will indeed have the same authority, but not in possession, only in use and exercise. What he does will be valid, but he will not be head or king.” In a similar way, while each apostle, each bishop, is granted the authority to exercise the keys in Matthew 18:18, it’s only Peter, the head, who’s given possession of the keys in Matthew 16:19. The apostles and their successors are thus dependent on Peter and his successors if they wish to lawfully “bind” and “loose” within the Church, i.e. carry out their canonical and sacramental ministry in a licit manner.

Pietro Perugino, Delivery of the Keys.

Ultimately, what makes this interpretation of St. Peter’s primacy so compelling is that, far from denigrating Kyle and Cleenewerck’s view that every bishop is “the Peter” of his diocese, this Petrine theory is, in fact, the only way in which Peter could ever serve as a “model” or “archetype” for monarchical bishops at all. Just think about it. If the man Peter himself wasn’t, in the words of St. Sophronius of Jerusalem’s legate, “entrusted, alone out of all [the apostles], with ‘the keys of the kingdom of heaven,’” if he didn’t have “power and priestly authority over them all,”¹¹⁹ over the whole Apostolic College, which was his Eucharistic community, his diocese, then it would follow that a local monarchical bishop, who’s modeled after this same Peter, doesn’t have any unique authority over his diocese either. Peter simply cannot be the model for all monarchical bishops if he himself didn’t originally stand as the monarchical bishop, the key bearer, over all of the apostles. Peter cannot be the symbol of high priestly authority in the Church if he, personally, didn’t act as the one high priestly shepherd of the Apostolic College.

However, if Peter does act as the one monarchical bishop in relation to the entire Apostolic College, if he is the Church’s one shepherd, then this would mean that he and his successors have immediate, direct, and ordinary jurisdiction over the entire Apostolic or Episcopal College, just as local bishops, whose model or archetype is St. Peter, have this same authority over their dioceses. Just as the local bishop, a successor of Peter, possesses the keys of his diocese and serves as its source of canonical Eucharistic communion, so does the pope of Rome, the successor of Peter, possess the keys of the entire episcopate, thereby serving as the universal source of canonical Eucharistic communion. This is, in fact, the only way in which the Chair of Peter can truly ground the canonical standing of the worldwide episcopate, something that, as explained above, Eastern Orthodoxy has no ability to do.

In my estimation, the error that many Eastern Orthodox apologists make when espousing “Eucharistic ecclesiology” is supposing that episcopal primacy was first divinely instituted at the local level (i.e. one bishop with immediate, direct, and ordinary jurisdiction over his regional diocese), and then Vatican I’s universal primacy was later (mistakenly) modeled after this. This is exactly backwards. As has been shown above, episcopal primacy started at the universal level, and flowed downstream from there. This is why St. Boniface taught that St. Peter is “the fountainhead” from which “all rule in the Church” flows.¹²⁰ This is why St. Innocent taught that St. Peter is “the very apostle from whom the very episcopate and whole authority of this name has emerged.”¹²¹ Peter is indeed the archetype for all bishops, however, that’s only because he’s the original bishop who Eucharistically ministers to all of the other bishops. It’s only because Jesus told Peter to “shepherd my sheep” (Jn 21:16), who, in context, are the other apostles and their disciples (cf. Jn 21:1-15), that the apostles themselves would go on to image Peter in their own episcopal ministries. But even after the apostles went off to serve as shepherds and high priests for their various Eucharistic communities, even after they ordained other men as bishops to do the same, the historical man Peter still remained their one shepherd and high priest, as Christ commanded him to do until his prophesied death in Rome (Jn 21:18-19).

Indeed, this is the very point that all of John 21 makes. To see this, consider the fact that the Gospels record three different times the apostles miraculously caught fish, and, in each story, Simon Peter plays a special role. The first miraculous catch of fish is recounted in Luke 5:1-11. This story is well known. Jesus was teaching by the Sea of Galilee and, seeing two boats docked on the shore, He climbed “into one of the boats, which was Simon’s” (Lk 5:3). Although many other future apostles were present, Jesus then “said to Simon” alone, “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch” (Lk 5:4). Simon and the others obeyed, and they ended up catching so “large [a] number of fish” that “their nets were breaking” (Lk 5:6). Upon understanding the miraculous nature of what had just happened, Peter declared, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord” (Lk 5:8). But Jesus said to him, and only him, “Do not be afraid, henceforth you will be catching men” (Lk 5:10). As Joe Heschmeyer points out, “It would be no exaggeration to say this miracle is for Simon Peter… In some unique way, different from the general way he calls all believers, or the specific way that he calls the other apostles, Christ is calling Simon Peter to be the fisher of men.”¹²²

The full meaning of this story is then brought out through the third and final miraculous fish catch recorded in John 21:1-14. As before, the apostles, led by Simon Peter, were on the Sea of Galilee all night, fishing to no avail (Jn 21:3). However, this time, Jesus doesn’t wait until they’re back on shore to tell them to cast their net on the right side of the boat. “So they cast it, and now they were not able to haul it in, because of the quantity of fish” (Jn 21:6). Upon realizing that, “It is the Lord!,” Simon Peter “put on his outer garment” and “threw himself into the sea” to swim to the Master whom he loved (Jn 21:7). This left the other apostles to sail to shore while dragging the net full of fish behind them, since they still couldn’t haul it themselves (Jn 21:8). Once they reached shore, Peter and the apostles were met with “a charcoal fire… with fish laid out on it, and bread” (Jn 21:9), which reminds us of the last time we saw a charcoal fire, back in John 18:18-27 during Peter and Caiaphas’ high priestly betrayal of the Lord. Although Jesus already had fish present, and truly had no need for His disciples’ catch, He nonetheless chose to work through His commissioned apostles: “Jesus said to them, ‘Bring some of the fish that you have just caught’” (Jn 21:10). While this was said to all of the apostles present, it was Peter alone who acted on their behalf: “So Simon Peter went aboard and hauled the net ashore, full of large fish” (Jn 21:11).

What the other apostles couldn’t accomplish without Peter on board (cf. Jn 21:7-8), Peter could, at the command of Jesus, single-handedly bring to completion. Significantly, St. John made sure to note that, unlike the first time the apostles hauled a miraculous catch ashore, and “their nets were breaking” (Lk 5:6), when Peter alone did this same thing, “although there were so many [fish], the net was not torn” (Jn 21:11). Heschmeyer comments on all of this better than I could, “When Christ sends them to bring in the catch, Peter acts alone, but on behalf of the whole. He is capable, at Christ’s urging, of doing what the other apostles were incapable of doing: bringing the catch home to the eternal shores without tearing the net. If we are the fish, and the kingdom is the net, Peter is given a unique role in leading that net toward the shore, to ensure that it doesn’t tear. The Greek word used here for ‘torn’ is from schisma, where we get our word schism. Peter’s role is to bring the Church to the eternal shore without letting it rupture through schism.”¹²³ It comes as no surprise, then, that this miracle, which can really be seen as an “enacted parable,” is immediately followed by our Lord’s threefold commission to blessed Peter: “feed the lambs,” “shepherd my sheep,” “feed my sheep” (Jn 21:15-17). Indeed, just as the miraculous catch in Luke 5:1-11 symbolized Jesus’ teaching that Peter would be a “fisher of men,” so too does John’s miraculous catch symbolize what it means for Peter to be the chief shepherd.

Although it’s true that all of the apostles were called to be “fishers of men,” all of them were tasked with ensuring that their “nets” never tore through schism, that their Eucharistic communities remained unified, it was Peter alone who was given that task among the apostles. What it means for St. Peter to “shepherd” the Lord’s flock is that, when the Church’s net grows so large that it contains more fish than the apostles can handle on their own, Peter will act on their behalf to make sure that the net reaches its destination without being torn asunder by schism. The ecclesiology that St. John the Evangelist presents in the sacred language of biblical symbolism is thus identical to the ecclesiology that Ss. Jerome, Optatus, and Gelasius articulated in the vernacular language of theology: “One among the twelve is chosen so that, when a head has been appointed, there may be no occasion for schism.”¹²⁴ “In [Peter’s] one Cathedra, unity should be preserved by all, lest the other Apostles might claim—each for himself—separate Cathedras.”¹²⁵ “[In order that] the occasion of schism might be removed… it [was] Christ’s will that One amongst them should be the Ruler.”¹²⁶ According to both Scripture and Tradition, the purpose of the singular headship that Peter and his successors have over the Church is to prevent the occasion of schism, something that the apostles and their successors cannot do on their own.

Adelaine Nohara, Fishers of Men.

Indeed, we know that St. John has successors for Peter in mind given his account is also a prophecy of the Church’s future. As the Orthodox theologian Seraphim Hamilton writes, “each of the four gospels concludes with a commissioning of Jesus to disciple the nations,” and “the end of John’s Gospel is actually John’s form of the great-commission narrative… The sea (Jonah, Daniel 7, etc) signifies the Gentile world, and ‘fish’ symbolize Gentiles.”¹²⁷ As such, John 21:1-14 shows us that Peter’s ministry of keeping the Church unified will be most needed during her future conquest of the Gentile nations when the Church is a “net full of fish” (Jn 21:8). This means that, contrary to James Jordan’s opinion,¹²⁸ the “gentile mission” didn’t signify the end of Peter’s ministry, but only the beginning, since that mission continues to this day.

Just think about how much more we need Peter’s ministry today than the Church did in the first century. Today the Catholic Church alone boasts 1.39 billion members across more than 200 different nations; if that’s not the “net” being so “full of large fish” that “the quantity of fish” is more than the apostles can haul, then I’m not sure what would be. As such, if Peter’s mission is to be the one who ensures that the net doesn’t break apart when it’s filled to the brim with fish, then this means that Peter must play an active role in sustaining the Church’s unity down even to today, when that image has become a reality. Certainly, since Jesus promised to be with His apostles, helping them carry out their mission to the Gentile nations “until the close of the age” (Matt 28:20), this means that Peter’s ministry of keeping the net full of Gentiles together must last until the end of time as well. This makes it all the more significant that John 21 is the only text in the New Testament that speaks of St. Peter’s eventual death in the city of Rome (Jn 21:18-19). Our Lord wanted us to know that, although the Petrine ministry would last for as long as there remain fish to catch, the man Simon Peter himself would, in fact, die. However, it is precisely his death in Rome that sets the stage for the bishop of Rome, Peter’s successor, to continue carrying out the Petrine ministry “down even to today and forever.”¹²⁹ As Pope Hadrian wrote to the Seventh Ecumenical Council, “the blessed Peter himself, the chief of the Apostles, who first sat in the Apostolic See [of Rome], left the chiefship of his Apostolate, and pastoral care, to his successors [the popes], who are to sit in his most holy seat forever.”¹³⁰

As Hamilton further explains, John 21 isn’t merely about a juridical reality, but rather it has profound Eucharistic significance as well. After Peter brought in the apostles’ fish without tearing the net, “These fish are then cooked and given, with bread, to the apostles by Jesus on the shore with the words, ‘Take, and eat.’” These words “echo the Eucharist” and thereby signify Peter’s role in Eucharistically sustaining “the oneness of the body of Christ, Jew and Gentile, in the one untorn net/robe of Christ.”¹³¹ As St. Jerome taught, since Peter is the one who eliminates all occasions for schism, since “the rock on which the church is built” continues to be “the chair of Peter” in Rome, the pope’s “is the house where alone the paschal lamb can be rightly eaten,” and he that “gathers not with” Peter and his successors during the Eucharist “scatters.”¹³² Once again, while there certainly is a relative sense in which the other apostles and bishops are “successors of Peter,” this simply cannot be to the detriment of Simon Peter’s historical role among the apostles, which was to keep them all unified around one Eucharistic table while the Church grew among the nations.

In the end, this is why Eastern Orthodox, and really any non-Catholic ecclesiology just doesn’t work: the historical man Peter had a real headship over all of the apostles that was directly and immediately given to him by Christ the Lord. Peter’s ministry simply wasn’t identical to the rest of the apostles,’ it was singular and unique. Even though the other apostles and bishops could be “local Peters,” images of what Peter fully was, they couldn’t be Peter himself. And yet, it was Peter’s ministry that was singled out as the means by which the Church would withstand the gates of hell until the end of time. In Matthew 7:24, our Lord Jesus spoke of “a wise man who built his house on the rock.” When the rain fell, the floods came, and the wind blew on that house, “it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock” (Matt 7:25). This is the backdrop for Matthew 16:17-19, wherein Jesus shows Himself to be the wise man who builds His house on the rock of St. Peter.¹³³ It’s in this very context that Jesus promised, “the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matt 16:18). This clearly has the same intended meaning as Matthew 7:24-25. Just as the wise man’s house didn’t fall because it was founded on the rock, so too will our Lord’s house always stand because it’s built on St. Peter. In other words, because Jesus made St. Peter the rock of His Church, somehow, this explains why the gates of hell will never prevail.

Whatever the exact meaning of this promise to the Church is, it’s clearly a promise that’s supposed to last until the end of time, and not die with Peter in the first century. However, the man Simon Peter did die in the first century, in Rome, as Christ foretold (Jn 21:15-19). As such, if Peter’s ministry was supposed to last until the end, but the man himself didn’t live until the end, the only explanation is that Peter must have a successor who will allow his ministry to be carried out perpetually; and as demonstrated at length above, the Holy Tradition of both East and West identifies the pope of Rome as just that successor. Certainly, neither the Patriarch of Constantinople, nor the Patriarchs of Alexandria or Antioch, nor the Archbishop of Canterbury, nor any Lutheran, Reformed or Evangelical pastors have any serious claim to being the “prince and head of the Apostles, pillar of the faith, and foundation of the Catholic Church.”¹³⁴ The best contender for that claim is and always has been the Roman Pontiff, and so it shall be until our Lord returns in the glory of His Father.

VII. Conclusion

To finally conclude this article, I’ll try to keep things brief. What started off as a mere reply to Kyle King’s comparatively short YouTube video, ended up becoming a comprehensive overview of my own ecclesiological thought. As such, it will be good to recount and summarize what it is I’ve actually been arguing all throughout, and why I believe it’s so important for dialogue between Catholics and Eastern Orthodox.

Icon of the Embrace of the Apostles Peter and Paul.

Recall the major thesis of Kyle’s video, which is that the “Petrinology” of Scripture and Tradition has almost nothing to do with the Roman Catholic understanding of the papacy. Instead, texts like Matthew 16:18-19, Luke 22:31-34, and John 21:15-19 are primarily about the institution of the episcopacy as such, which is why the fullest expression of Petrine authority in the Church is reserved to the local monarchical bishop. Anything these texts have to do with canonical primacy is really just an afterthought, a secondary meaning that was developed later in Church history, not directly instituted by our Lord Jesus Christ Himself.

What I hope to have done in this article is, at the very least, complicate that ecclesiological theory which has become so popular among many Eastern Orthodox and even some Protestant writers today. I hope to have demonstrated that, when we look at the entire catholic tradition of the Church, including not just Ss. Ignatius and Cyprian, but also men such as Ss. Optatus, Jerome, Leo, Gelasius, Innocent, and Boniface, we’re told quite a different story from the one Kyle presents. Indeed, when we join to this the witness of authorities such as St. Celestine and the Third Ecumenical Council, St. Agatho and the Sixth Council, and Hadrian I and the Seventh Council, we may even begin to wonder if our Eastern Orthodox friends themselves haven’t fallen for a bit of the opposite of “Peter syndrome,” a term Fr. Cleenewerck uses to denote “the automatic (and unjustified) application of anything about Peter to the bishop of Rome exclusively.”¹³⁵ While there certainly are many Catholic apologists who engage in this kind of careless exegesis when reading patristic treatments of St. Peter’s primacy, the same appears to be true of certain Eastern Orthodox apologists who never want to concede any unique Petrine authority to the pope of Rome.

I mean, when you have someone in the first millennium saying that because “blessed Peter himself, the chief of the Apostles” was the first bishop of the Apostolic See, he “left the chiefship of his Apostolate” to his successors, the popes of Rome, who will “sit in his most holy seat forever,”¹³⁶ the claim that, “maybe this is about all the bishops!,” just isn’t compelling. Or when you have an early church authority say that our Lord’s appointment of “blessed Peter the Apostle” as “the head of the Apostles” entails that the pope of Rome is “the holy head” of the Episcopal College “down even to today and forever,”¹³⁷ an Orthodox apologist responding with, “but every bishop is Peter!,” loses a significant amount of its force. I certainly appreciate the honesty of scholars like Fr. Laurent Cleenewerck when it comes texts like this, as he readily admits that there just were times when “Roman Catholic ecclesiology” was consented to by both the East and the West in the first millennium.¹³⁸ However, this is likely due to the “looseness” of his belief in conciliar and patristic infallibility,¹³⁹ a position that your more traditional Orthodox apologists aren’t likely to share.

Of course, Fr. Cleenewerck and other Orthodox theologians are also fond of dismissing the papal claims on account of them just being “Rome’s theory,” not genuinely shared by the East. However, as explained above, even this would be problematic for the Eastern Orthodox. As it has been shown, already in the 5th century, with popes such as Ss. Innocent, Leo, Gelasius, and Boniface, Rome had a fully developed “papal ecclesiology” that had no other trajectory than Vatican I. And yet, in the 6th century, the entire Eastern episcopate signed off on Pope St. Hormisdas’ Libellus which taught that Rome is the See in which “the Catholic religion has always been preserved without stain,” and, “in which there is the whole and the true and the perfect solidity of the Christian religion.”¹⁴⁰ No matter how much hyperbole one wishes to throw into the Libellus, if it means anything at all, it must mean that the first millennium Eastern Church did not agree with the modern Orthodox Saint, Justin Popovich, that the papal claims constitute “the heresy above all heresies.”¹⁴¹ Ss. Maximus the Confessor and Sophronius of Jerusalem also must have disagreed with modern Eastern Orthodox authorities that decry “papalism” as a heresy. After all, in the 7th century, St. Maximus taught that Rome is the Church which, “according to the very promises of the Lord, the gates of hell have never prevailed over,” “but rather she has the keys of the orthodox faith and confession.”¹⁴² St. Sophronius likewise taught that one could “wander from the edge of the earth to its outer limits until you come to the Apostolic See [of Rome], where the foundations of orthodox dogmas stand.”¹⁴³

Given how many authorities in the first millennium pointed to the Roman Church as a shining beacon of orthodoxy, if Eastern Orthodoxy’s assessment of Catholicism is correct, then I would expect Rome’s ecclesiology to be the most Eastern Orthodox out of any church in the first thousand years of Christianity. However, after everything that’s been explored above, such an idea is obviously ridiculous. It should therefore be clear why I’m skeptical of scholars such as Fr. Cleenewerck who attempt to downplay the witness of the ancient Roman Church in order to defend their own ecclesiologies.

Further, something else I hope to have demonstrated in this article is that the strength of Catholic ecclesiology isn’t just in a bare appeal to authority. Rather, when one takes time to actually unpack the ecclesiological paradigm of Ss. Cyprian and Optatus, wherein the unity of the new covenant’s royal priesthood is forever preserved in its source, and the source of both the priesthood and its unity is Peter and his successors in the Roman bishopric, then the Catholic understanding of the papacy is the only route to go. Indeed, unlike Eastern Orthodoxy, I posit that the Catholic appropriation of St. Cyprian provides a coherent explanation of how our Lord’s appointment of St. Peter as the head of the apostles truly grounds the canonical standing of the worldwide episcopate, thereby eliminating the occasion of schism. It was especially highlighted how important this is in our own day, when both the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches have been hit by a wave of liberal ecumenism. While Catholics have an objective, principled reason for remaining in communion with their canonical hierarchs, it was shown that the same cannot be said of the Eastern Orthodox, who are burdened with trying to explain their adherence to “World Orthodoxy.”

Lastly, one of my major goals in this article was to explain why “Eucharistic ecclesiology” is not at all a challenge to Catholic ecclesiology. On the contrary, the Catholic faith alone provides a reasonable account of how exactly St. Peter serves as the model for all monarchical bishops. It’s only because he originally stood as the monarchical bishop, the high priest, the one shepherd in relation to all of the apostles, that the apostles and their successors, the bishops, could go on to image Peter as shepherds and high priests of their own Eucharistic communities. However, even after becoming relative “successors of Peter,” local shepherds and high priests, the apostles and bishops would have never forsaken the man Simon Peter himself as their own divinely instituted shepherd and high priest, a role that was given to him, and only him, directly by Christ the Lord and intended to last until the end of time.

The Union of Brest-Litovsk.

Thank you to everyone who took the time to read this article, it truly means a lot. As someone who was Eastern Orthodox myself, the schism between the East and the West is obviously something very personal to me, and it grieves my heart more than most could ever know. My decision to become Catholic wasn’t because of any bad experiences I had with anyone in Eastern Orthodoxy, rather it was solely because of my conviction of the truth of Catholicism. My prayer is that, after reading this article, my Orthodox friends at least have a bit better of an understanding of why I went the direction I did with respect to ecclesiology. I don’t expect this article to convert anyone on the spot, however, I do hope that my words remain in the minds of those discerning between Catholicism and Orthodoxy. I would even say that many things I’ve written here present a challenge to classical Protestantism, and so even my Protestant friends ought to prayerfully consider these matters. I pray you all have a merry Christmas, and I ask your continued prayers for me, a sinner. Pax Christi <3

1. See St. Ignatius of Antioch, Epistle to the Magnesians.

2. “Si quis ergo dixerit, non esse ex ipsius Christi Domini institutione seu iure divino, ut beatus Petrus in primatu super universam Ecclesiam habeat perpetuos successores; aut Romanum Pontificem non esse beati Petri in eodem primatu successorem; anathema sit.” (Vatican I, Pastor Aeternus, Caput II).

3. St. Cyprian, Epistle 26, 1.

4. Michael Barber, “Jesus as the Davidic Temple Builder and Peter’s Priestly Role in Matthew 16:16-19.” Journal of Biblical Literature, vol. 132, no. 4, 2013, pp. 935–53.

5. I’ve made similar arguments, see my articles on, “The New Testament Priesthood.”

6. St. Cyprian, On the Unity of the Church, 4.

7. St. Stephen of Dor, qtd. in Fr. Richard Price, The Acts of the Council of Lateran 649, pp. 143-44.

8. St. Jerome, Against Jovinianus, 1:26.

9. St. John Chrysostom, Homily 88 on the Gospel of John.

10. The Apostolic Council of Jerusalem recorded in Acts 15, after which all subsequent ecumenical councils are patterned, did not need to wait for its teachings to be “received” by the faithful before they were dogmatically binding. Rather, as soon as “the apostles and elders” decreed that their teachings “seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us” (Acts 15:28), St. Paul considered them to be “dogmas” (δόγματα) that must be accepted under pain of sin (Acts 16:4). This informs us that councils ratified by the Apostolic College were dogmatically binding in and of themselves, by virtue of their apostolic authority. It thus follows that, if there are to be post-apostolic councils that carry this same infallible authority, such councils can only be held by a body that has validly succeeded the Apostolic College. Since both Catholics and Eastern Orthodox agree that ecumenical councils are infallible by virtue of them representing the whole Episcopal College, it follows that we both hold the Episcopal College to be the valid successor of the Apostolic College.

11. Council of Ephesus (A.D. 431), “Extracts From the Acts,” in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, second series, vol. 14, eds. Phillip Shaff and Henry Wace trans. Henry Percival, for New Advent by Kevin Knight.

12. This is no different from Pope St. Celestine’s legate’s profession of faith at Ephesus I.

13. Fr. Laurent Cleenewerck, His Broken Body: Understanding and Healing the Schism Between the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches, pp. 199-200.

14. Hadrian’s letter was no anomaly of Roman papalism. As I demonstrate in my article, “Papal Infallibility in the First Millennium,” the Church of Rome had been loudly making these claims since at least the 4th century.

15. Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs, 1848 A Reply to the Epistle of Pope Pius IX, “to the Easterns,” 5, xii.

16. “[Our] first safety is to guard the rule of the right faith and to deviate in no wise from the ordinances of the Fathers; because we cannot pass over the statement of our Lord Jesus Christ who said: “Thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build my church, etc.” [Matt 16:18]. These [words] which were spoken, are proved by the effects of the deeds, because in the Apostolic See the Catholic religion has always been preserved without stain… We condemn, too, and anathematize Acacius, formerly bishop of Constantinople, who was condemned by the Apostolic See, their confederate and follower, or those who remained in the society of their communion, because Acacius justly merited a sentence in condemnation like theirs in whose communion he mingled. No less do we condemn Peter of Antioch with his followers, and the followers of all mentioned above… Moreover, we accept and approve all the letters of blessed Leo the Pope, which he wrote regarding the Christian religion, just as we said before, following the Apostolic See in all things, and extolling all its ordinances. And, therefore, I hope that I may merit to be in the one communion with you, which the Apostolic See proclaims, in which there is the whole and the true and the perfect solidity of the Christian religion, promising that in the future the names of those separated from the communion of the Catholic Church, that is, those not agreeing with the Apostolic See, shall not be read during the sacred mysteries. But if I shall attempt in any way to deviate from my profession, I confess that I am a confederate in my opinion with those whom I have condemned. However, I have with my own hand signed this profession of mine, and to you, Hormisdas, the holy and venerable Pope of the City of Rome, I have directed it.” (The Libellus of Pope St. Hormisdas, Denzinger and Rahner, eds., The Sources of Catholic Dogma, 73-74, qtd. in Ybarra, The Papacy, p. 397).

17. Below we will explore the papalism of more 5th century Pontiffs such as Ss. Leo, Gelasius, Innocent, Gregory II, and Boniface. Also, once again, see my article, “Papal Infallibility in the First Millennium.”

18. See The Orthodox Ethos, “Papal Infallibility: "The Heresy Above All Heresies" - St. Justin Popovich.”

19. In the second century, St. Irenaeus said that “it is a matter of necessity that every Church should agree with this Church [in Rome].” In the third century, St. Cyprian likewise affirmed that “the Church of the Romans” is the one “to whom faithlessness could have no access.” In the fourth century, St. Gregory the Theologian taught that, “regarding the faith which they uphold, the ancient Rome has kept a straight course from of old, and still does so, uniting the whole West by sound teaching, and is just, since she presides over all and guards the universal divine harmony.” In the fifth century, Theodoret of Cyrus wrote, “This most sacred throne [Rome]... has been preserved from every stain of heresy and no one who thought the contrary has sat there, but instead it has preserved the grace of the apostles in tact.” In the sixth century, the Emperor Justinian taught that “the priests of Old Rome have followed apostolic doctrine in all things, have never differed among themselves, and to this day have kept the right and true doctrine.” And in the seventh century, St. Sophronius of Jerusalem said that you could “wander from the edge of the earth to its outer limits until you come to the Apostolic See [of Rome], where the foundations of orthodox dogmas stand.” For citations, see my article, “St. Peter: The Rock of the Church.”

20. Fr. Richard Price, Acts of the Second Council of Nicaea (787), p. 180.

21. Fr. Richard Price, Acts of the Second Council of Nicaea (787), p. 148.

22. Erick Ybarra, “Comparing the Greek and Latin Texts of Pope Hadrian’s Letters Read Aloud at Nicaea 2: Did the Greek Text reject Papal Supremacy and Infallibility?.”

23. “Hadrian’s letter to the emperors Constantine VI and Irene, of which the original Latin version is given in Anastasius Bibliothecarius’ translation of the Acts of Nicaea II (ACO III, 1, p. 169, II. 1-17). The passage is lacking, however, in the Greek version. Lamberz (2001) 227-8 showed that the excision of this part of the letter (and of other parts unwelcome to Constantinople) did not take place when the original Greek version was produced for reading at the council (as both Anastasius and scholarship until now presumed), but did so during Photius’ first tenure of the patriarchate. This mistake of locating the council in Constantinople was also made in the canons of the Council of Frankfurt of 794… It is not to be accounted for by the holding of the supposed eighth session in Constantinople, since this ‘session’, as Lamberz has shown elsewhere (ACO III, 3, pp. IX-XI), was a fiction later in date than Pope Nicholas. See Brandes (2020) 289-9. On this excision see already Wallach (1966).” (Fr. Richard Price, The Acts of the Council of Constantinople, p. 197, fn. 323)

24. “[The iconoclasts] have separated themselves from the body of Christ, and from the chief throne in which Christ placed the keys of faith: against which the gates of hell, namely the mouths of heretics, have not prevailed up to now, nor shall they ever prevail, according to the promise of him who does not lie. Therefore let the most blessed and apostolic [Pope] Paschal, who is worthy of his name, rejoice, for he has fulfilled the work of Peter.” (St. Theodore, PG 99:1281, qtd. in Collorafi and Butler, Keys Over the Christian World, p. 389).

25. St. Theodore, Epistle 33, PG 99.1017, qtd. in Erick Ybarra, The Papacy: Revisiting the Debate Between Catholics and Orthodox, p. 573.

26. Fr. Laurent Cleenewerck, His Broken Body, pp. 200-201.

27. St. Nicephorus, Apologeticus major, PG 100.597A, qtd. in Ybarra, The Papacy, p. 567.

28. “You should understand that the head of the apostles was St. Peter, he to whom Christ said, “You are the rock; and on this rock I shall build my church, and the gates of hell will not overcome it.” After his resurrection, he also said to him three times, while on the shore of the sea of Tiberias, “Simon, do you love me? Feed my lambs, rams, and ewes.” In another passage, he said to him, “Simon, Satan will ask to sift you wheat, and I prayed that you not lase your faith; but you, at that time, have compassion on your brethren and strengthen them.” Do you not see that St. Peter is the foundation of the church, selected to shepherd it, that those who believe in his faith will never lose their faith, and that he was ordered to have compassion on his brethren and to strengthen them? As for Christ's words, “I prayed for you, that you not lose your faith; but you, have compassion on your brethren, at that time, and strengthen them,” we do not think that he meant St. Peter himself. Rather, he meant nothing other than the holders of the seat of St. Peter, that is, Rome. Just as when he said to the apostles, “I am with you always, until the end of the age,” he did not mean just the apostles themselves, but also those who would be in charge of their seats and their flocks; in the same way, when he spoke his last words to St. Peter, “Have compassion, at that time, and strengthen your brethren; and your faith will not be lost,” he meant by this nothing other than the holders of his seat [the Popes]. Yet another indication of this is the fact that among the apostles it was St. Peter alone who lost his faith and denied Christ, which Christ may have allowed to happen to Peter so as to teach us that it was not Peter that he meant by these words. Moreover, we know of no apostle who fell and needed St. Peter to strengthen him. If someone says that Christ meant by these words only St. Peter himself , this person causes the church to lack someone to strengthen it after the death of St. Peter. How could this happen, especially when we see all the sifting of the church that came from Satan after the apostles' death? All of this indicates that Christ did not mean [him] by these words. Indeed, everyone knows that the heretics attacked the church only after the death of the apostles—Paul of Samosata, Arius.. Origen, and others. If he meant by these words in the gospel only St. Peter, then after him the church would have been deprived of comfort and would have had no one to deliver her from those heretics, whose heresies are truly "the gates of Hell," which Christ said would not overcome the church. Accordingly, there is no doubt that he meant by these words nothing other than the holders of the seat of St. Peter, who have continually strengthened their brethren and will not cease to do so as long as this present age lasts.” (Theodore Abu Qurrah, C. Bacha. Un traite des Oeuvres Arabes de Theodore Abou-Kurra. Paris, 1905, 34 sq., qtd. in Butler and Collorafi, Keys Over the Christian World, pp. 575-576)

29. “The Apostolic Church of Christ, has both in prosperity and in adversity always held and defended with energy; which, it will be proved, by the grace of Almighty God, has never erred from the path of the apostolic tradition, nor has she been depraved by yielding to heretical innovations, but from the beginning she has received the Christian faith from her founders, the princes of the Apostles of Christ, and remains undefiled unto the end, according to the divine promise of the Lord and Saviour himself, which he uttered in the holy Gospels to the prince of his disciples: saying, “Peter, Peter, behold, Satan has desired to have you, that he might sift you as wheat; but I have prayed for you, that (your) faith fail not. And when you are converted, strengthen your brethren.” Let your tranquil Clemency therefore consider, since it is the Lord and Saviour of all, whose faith it is, that promised that Peter's faith should not fail and exhorted him to strengthen his brethren, how it is known to all that the Apostolic pontiffs, the predecessors of my littleness, have always confidently done this very thing: of whom also our littleness, since I have received this ministry by divine designation, wishes to be the follower, although unequal to them and the least of all.” (Pope St. Agatho, Third Council of Constantinople (A.D. 680-681), “The Letter of Pope Agatho,” in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, second series, vol. 14, eds. Phillip Shaff and Henry Wace trans. Henry Percival, for New Advent by Kevin Knight). For more on the Greek translation of this letter, see Erick Ybarra’s video, “Pope St. Agatho's Tome and the 6th Ecumenical Council: A Response to Craig Truglia.”

30. Fr. Laurent Cleenewerck, His Broken Body, p. 193.

31. St. Cyprian, On the Unity of the Church, 4.

32. St. Cyprian, On the Unity of the Church, 5.

33. Erick Ybarra, The Papacy, p. 138.

34. St. Cyprian, Epistle 54, 14.

35. Fulgentius: Selected Works, trans. Robert B. Eno, S.S., (Washington: The Catholic University of America Press, 1997), p. 258.

36. St. Cyprian, On the Unity of the Church, 5.

37. This is why it’s the “man” who “leaves his father and mother and cleaves to his wife” (Gen 2:24), because he’s the one who initiates and begins the new family unit.

38. St. Cyprian, On the Unity of the Church, 4.

39. St. Optatus, Against the Donatists, Book 2, II-III.

40. Second Council of Nicaea (A.D. 787), “Session 2,” in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, second series, vol. 14, eds. Phillip Shaff and Henry Wace trans. Henry Percival, for New Advent by Kevin Knight. 

41. St. Cyprian, Epistle 54, 14.

42. It’s worth noting that if Matthew 16:18-19 was just about the institution of the episcopate, and didn’t primarily refer to a position of headship within the episcopate, it would seem to make Matthew 18:17-20 superfluous. More on this below.

43. Fr. Laurent Cleenewerck, His Broken Body, pp. 284-85.

44. “Assuredly the rest of the apostles were also the same as was Peter, endowed with a like partnership both of honour and power…” (St. Cyprian, On the Unity of the Church, 4).

45. “For neither does any 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.” (Acts of the Seventh Council of Carthage under Cyprian, The Judgment of Eighty-Seven Bishops, qtd. in Fr. Laurent Cleenewerck, His Broken Body, p. 285).

46. The formal establishment of metropolitans and patriarchs after the Council of Nicaea (A.D. 325) marked the official end of Cyprian’s view that no bishops ever hold jurisdiction over others. As even Cleenewerck observes, “[Cyprian’s] theory that ‘every bishop, according to the allowance of his liberty and power, has his own proper right of judgment’ was seriously limited by the metropolitan organization endorsed by Nicea.” (Fr. Laurent Cleenewerck, His Broken Body, p. 285). To this day, Eastern Orthodox patriarchs and metropolitans have some jurisdictional authority over other bishops within their territory.

47. St. Jerome, Against Jovinianus, 1:26.

48. St. Cyprian, Epistle 54, 5.

49. It’s worth noting that Fr. Laurent Cleenewerck has a peculiar reading of the quoted passage from St. Jerome: “it seems that this was Jovinian’s argument, not Jerome’s. In his zeal exalt [sic] virginity over married life, Jerome actually elevated John over Peter.” He further writes that, even if Jerome was saying that Peter was the head of the apostles, “his application would have been to the episcopate as an ‘ecclesiastical’ (not divine) institution” (Fr. Laurent Cleenewerck, His Broken Body, p. 300). However, in my opinion, this interpretation of Jerome is completely without merit. Consider what Jerome says immediately after describing Peter as the head of the apostles: “But why was not John chosen, who was a virgin? Deference was paid to age, because Peter was the elder: one who was a youth, I may say almost a boy, could not be set over men of advanced age.” Jerome clearly believes that Peter was “set over” John, not the other way around, even though John was objectively holier on account of his virginity. Likewise, it’s strange to suppose that this is “an ‘ecclesiastical’ (not divine) institution,” given Jerome is quite literally describing the divine Lord Jesus setting Peter over the apostles in Matthew 16:18. It doesn’t get more “divinely instituted” than that. Moreover, the concept of headship eliminating the occasion of schism is consistent with other threads in Jerome’s ecclesiology, as we’ll explore below.

50. St. Optatus, Against the Donatists, Book 2, II.

51. Pope St. Gelasius, qtd. in Andrea Gallandi, Bibliotheca Veterum Patrum: Antiquorumque Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum, Tomus X, Epistola VIII, part. VIII, qtd. in Erick Yabrra, The Roots of the Papacy, p. 51.

52. Pope St. Gelasius, qtd. in Andrea Gallandi, Bibliotheca Veterum Patrum: Antiquorumque Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum, Tomus X, Epistola VIII, part. VIII, qtd. in Erick Yabrra, The Roots of the Papacy, p. 51.

53. Fr. John Chapman, Studies on the Early Papacy, p. 110.

54. In the year 861, a local council of eastern bishops gathered in Constantinople and issued the following canon, which is still regarded as authoritative by many Eastern Orthodox to this day: “But as for those persons, on the other hand, who, on account of some heresy condemned by holy Synods, or Fathers, withdrawing themselves from communion with their president [bishop], who, that is to say, is preaching the heresy publicly, and teaching it bareheaded in church, such persons not only are not subject to any canonical penalty on account of their having walled themselves off from any and all communion with the one called a Bishop before any synodal verdict has been rendered, but, on the contrary, they shall be deemed worthy to enjoy the honor which befits them among Orthodox Christ­ians. For they have defied, not Bishops, but pseudo-bishops and pseudo-teachers; and they have not sundered the union of the Church with any schism, but, on the contrary, have been sedulous to rescue the Church from schisms and divisions.” (Council of Constantinople 861, Canon 15, qtd. in John Sanidopoulos, “Does Canon 15 of the First-Second Synod of 861 Allow for ‘Walling-Off’ Against Ecumenists?”).

55. As Pope St. Leo writes elsewhere, “The dispensation of truth therefore abides, and the blessed Peter preserving in the strength of the rock, which he has received, has not abandoned the helm of the Church, which he undertook. For he was ordained before the rest in such a way that from his being called the Rock, from his being pronounced the Foundation, from his being constituted the Doorkeeper of the kingdom of heaven, from his being set as the Umpire to bind and to loose, whose judgments shall retain their validity in heaven, from all these mystical titles we might know the nature of his association with Christ… And so if anything is rightly done and rightly decreed by us, if anything is won from the mercy of God by our daily supplications, it is of his work and merits whose power lives and whose authority prevails in his See [Rome].” (Leo, Sermon 3, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, second series, vol. 12, eds. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, trans. Charles Lett Feltoe (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1895), rev. and ed. for New Advent by Kevin Knight, http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/360303.htm).

56. St. Gelasius clearly believes that Rome’s headship over the Church is of divine origin, not ecclesiastical: “Let no true Christian ignore the fact that the constitution of any synod which has been approved by the consent of the whole Church can be executed by no other See than the first, which confirms any synod by its authority and watches over it through continuous supervision, especially because of its principate, which the Blessed Peter the Apostle obtained through the word of the Lord and which it has always retained and continues to retain.” (Collectio Avellana, Epistle 95, 10-11, qtd. in Erick Ybarra, The Papacy, p. 388).

57. For a more detailed exploration of this subject, see my video with Erick Ybarra, “The Logic of Papal Infallibility - Ben Bollinger & Erick Ybarra.”

58. St. Jerome, The Dialogue Against the Luciferians, 9.

59. St. Cyprian, Epistle 54, 5.

60. Pope St. Leo the Great, Letter 14, XII.

61. In light of this, consider the following quote from St. Nicephorus of Constantinople (A.D. 758-828): “Without them [the Romans] no dogma can receive definitive approbation or abrogation, even those sanction in a preliminary fashion by the canons and ecclesiological usages… for they preside over the episcopal office and they have received this dignity from the chief Apostles.” (St. Nicephorus, PG 100.597, qtd. in Edward Siecienski, The Papacy and the Orthodox, p. 218).

62. St. Francis de Sales, The Catholic Controversy, Part I, Chapter II.

63. St. Francis de Sales, The Catholic Controversy, Part II, Article IV, Chapter II.

64. St. Cyprian, On the Unity of the Church, 5.

65. St. Cyprian, Epistle 54, 14.

66. St. Optatus, Against the Donatists, Book 2, II.

67. Pope St. Innocent I, Etsi Tibi Frater – Epistle 2, (PL 10. 468-81); trans. B.J. Kidd, The Roman Primacy to A.D. 461 (London: SPCK, 1936), 78., qtd. in Erick Ybarra, The Roots of the Papacy, p. 27.

68. Pope St. Gregory II, Letter 18 to St. Boniface, The Letters of Saint Boniface, trans. Ephraim Emerton, p. 53.

69. Pope St. Innocent I, B.J. Kidd translates it “Apostolic source.” See his The Roman Primacy to A.D. 461, 84-85., qtd. in Erick Ybarra, The Roots of the Papacy, p. 28-9.

70. Pope St. Innocent I Epistle 30, to the Council of Mileve (Inter Caeteras), PL 33.784; Aug. Ep. 182; trans. E. Giles, Documents Illustrating Papal Authority A.D. 96-454, Doc. 180., qtd. in Erick Ybarra, The Roots of the Papacy, p. 29.

71. St. Ambrose, Letter XI, 4.

72. The Orthodox Ethos, On the Reception of the Heterodox into the Orthodox Church, Chapter 15.

73. “Incidentally, here we might list those Christian heretics who must be received into the Church through holy baptism. These include all Protestants except the Lutherans, Reformed Protestants, Anglicans, and Old Catholics. This, firstly, is because Protestants reject the regenerative power of holy baptism. They are convinced that baptism is merely a rite of loyalty, and not a birth of water and the Spirit. This is why we cannot acknowledge their rite as a sacrament. Secondly, the Baptists, Pentecostals, and other sectarians (such as the Church of Christ – the so-called ‘Boston movement’) that baptize through single immersion, which is expressly forbidden by the 7th canon of the 2nd Ecumenical Council, while others (such as the Methodists) baptize through aspersion (sprinkling), so that frequently not a single drop of water falls on the person being ‘baptized.’” (Fr. Daniel Sysoev, Catechetical Talks, pp. 302-303).

74. According to an official document from the Patriarchate of Antioch, if Eastern Orthodox Christians find themselves in a place where there’s only an Oriental Orthodox priest, that priest “will celebrate services for the faithful of both Churches, including the Divine Liturgy, pastoral duties, and holy matrimony.” (Patriarchate of Antioch, “Statement of the Orthodox Church of Antioch on the Relations between the Eastern and Syrian Orthodox Churches,” 9).

75. According to an official document that was “published with the blessing and authorization of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople,” “When they are not near a Roman Catholic Church, Roman Catholics are permitted to receive the Holy Communion in Orthodox Churches. It is now [also] permissible for Orthodox and Roman Catholics to pray together, and for the Orthodox Liturgy to be offered in a Roman Catholic Church.” (Archbishop Athenagoras, The Thyateira Confession: the faith and prayer of Orthodox Christians, p. 69).

76. “Let a bishop, presbyter, or deacon, who has only prayed with heretics, be excommunicated: but if he has permitted them to perform any clerical office, let him be deposed.” (The Apostolic Canons, Canon 45).

77. “The Orthodox Church has no dogmatic objection to the use of safe and non-abortifacient contraceptives within the context of married life, not as an ideal or as a permanent arrangement, but as a provisional concession to necessity.” (GOARCH, “For the Life of the World: Toward a Social Ethos of the Orthodox Church,” 24).

78. “Some contraceptives have an abortive effect, interrupting artificially the life of the embryo on the very first stages of his life. Therefore, the same judgements are applicable to the use of them as to abortion. But other means, which do not involve interrupting an already conceived life, cannot be equated with abortion in the least. In defining their attitude to the non-abortive contraceptives, Christian spouses should remember that human reproduction is one of the principal purposes of the divinely established marital union (see, X. 4). The deliberate refusal of childbirth on egoistic grounds devalues marriage and is a definite sin.” (The Russian Orthodox Church, “The Basis of the Social Concept,” XII. Problems of bioethics, XII. 3).

79. “Married couples may express their love in sexual union without always intending the conception of a child, but only those means of controlling conception within marriage are acceptable which do not harm a fetus already conceived.” (OCA, “Synodal Affirmations on Marriage, Family, Sexuality, and the Sanctity of Life,” The Procreation of Children).

80. For a full defense of the “True Orthodox” position, see Bishop Maximus Marretta, “Why the True Orthodox Are Truly Orthodox.” See also the Holy Orthodox Church in North America’s publication, The Struggle Against Ecumenism: The History of the True Orthodox Church of Greece from 1924-1994. See also an opinion paper by the Fathers of the St. Gregory Palamas Monastery, Etna, California, “The True Meaning of Canonicity.”

81. For more on this, see my article, “Pope Vigilius and Papal Infallibility.”

82. Council of Ephesus (A.D. 431), “Extracts From the Acts,” in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, second series, vol. 14, eds. Phillip Shaff and Henry Wace trans. Henry Percival, for New Advent by Kevin Knight.

83. Third Council of Constantinople (A.D. 680-681), “The Letter of Pope Agatho,” in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, second series, vol. 14, eds. Phillip Shaff and Henry Wace trans. Henry Percival, for New Advent by Kevin Knight, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3813.htm.

84. Second Council of Nicaea (A.D. 787), “Session 2,” in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, second series, vol. 14, eds. Phillip Shaff and Henry Wace trans. Henry Percival, for New Advent by Kevin Knight, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3819.htm.

85. The book is “anonymous,” but was published by Fr. Heers’ Uncut Mountain Press, which is part of his organization, The Orthodox Ethos, and contains just about every idea he affirms in his public videos, so I’ll just be referring to him as the author.

86. The Orthodox Ethos, On the Reception of the Heterodox into the Orthodox Church, p. 364.

87. Vlachos, Empirical Dogmatics of the Orthodox Catholic Church, Vol. 2, pp. 326-328, qtd. in The Orthodox Ethos, On the Reception of the Heterodox into the Orthodox Church, p. 356.

88. Ibid., pp. 400-402, qtd. in The Orthodox Ethos, On the Reception of the Heterodox into the Orthodox Church, p. 358.

89. See Hieromonk Nicholas Sakhrov, The Cross of Loneliness: The Correspondence of Saint Sophrony and Archpriest Georges Florovsky.

90. Fr. George Florovsky, “The Authority of the Ancient Councils and the Tradition of the Fathers,” p. 3, Chapter VI of The Collected Works of Georges Florovsky, Vol. I, Bible, Church, Tradition: An Eastern Orthodox View (Vaduz, Europa: Buchervertriebsanstalt, 1987), pp. 93-103.

91. Fr. Laurent Cleenewerck, His Broken Body, p. 30.

92. A. Edward Siencienski, “Holy Disobedience: Resistance to Secular and Ecclesiastical Authority in Orthodox Christian History.”

93. Florovsky further writes, “The ultimate authority and the ability to discern the truth in faith is vested in the Church which is indeed a ‘Divine institution,’ in the proper and strict sense of the word, whereas no Council, and no ‘Conciliar institution,’ is de jure Divino, except in so far as it happens to be a true image or manifestation of the Church herself. We may seem to be involved here in a vicious circle. We may be actually involved in it, if we insist on formal guarantees in doctrinal matters. But, obviously, such “guarantees” do not exist and cannot be produced, especially in advance.” (Fr. George Florovsky, “The Authority of the Ancient Councils and the Tradition of the Fathers,” p. 4).

94. St. Jerome, The Dialogue Against the Luciferians, 9.

95. St. Cyprian, On the Unity of the Church, 4.

96. Pope St. Gelasius, qtd. in Andrea Gallandi, Bibliotheca Veterum Patrum: Antiquorumque Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum, Tomus X, Epistola VIII, part. VIII, qtd. in Erick Yabrra, The Roots of the Papacy, p. 51.

97. St. Optatus, Against the Donatists, Book 2, II.

98. Pope St. Leo the Great, Letter 14, XII.

99. After all, the Council of Constantinople 861, recognized as authoritative by the Eastern Orthodox, declared, “But as for those persons, on the other hand, who, on account of some heresy condemned by holy Synods, or Fathers, withdrawing themselves from communion with their president [bishop], who, that is to say, is preaching the heresy publicly, and teaching it bareheaded in church, such persons not only are not subject to any canonical penalty on account of their having walled themselves off from any and all communion with the one called a Bishop before any synodal verdict has been rendered, but, on the contrary, they shall be deemed worthy to enjoy the honor which befits them among Orthodox Christ­ians. For they have defied, not Bishops, but pseudo-bishops and pseudo-teachers; and they have not sundered the union of the Church with any schism, but, on the contrary, have been sedulous to rescue the Church from schisms and divisions.” (Council of Constantinople 861, Canon 15, qtd. in John Sanidopoulos, “Does Canon 15 of the First-Second Synod of 861 Allow for ‘Walling-Off’ Against Ecumenists?”). I’ll also note that, although Sanidopoulos’s article is trying to argue that breaking away from “World Orthodox” bishops wasn’t justified in a particular case, he fails to engage seriously with the arguments of the True Orthodox, who do have synods of bishops that have condemned World Orthodoxy for violating the Apostolic Canons against Communicatio in sacris with heretics.

100. St. Augustine, Ps. XLVII, EP. I, Joan. Tr. i., qtd. in St. Francis de Sales, The Catholic Controversy, Part I, Chapter XI.

101. St. Francis de Sales, The Catholic Controversy, Part I, Chapter XI.

102. See the website, “True Orthodox Christianity,” for a list of such sects. See also the Holy Orthodox Church in North America’s publication, The Struggle Against Ecumenism: The History of the True Orthodox Church of Greece from 1924-1994.

103. See Fr. Joseph Suaidan’s article, “Antiochian Face-Off in the UK over Ecumenism.”

104. St. Jerome, Against Jovinianus, 1:26.

105. St. Optatus, Against the Donatists, Book 2, II.

106. This document, which was ratified by the Patriarchates of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, taught that, “our divine Fathers, with one accord, teach that the sense of the thrice-repeated command, ‘Feed my sheep,’ implied no prerogative in St. Peter over the other Apostles, least of all in his successors. It was a simple restoration to his Apostleship, from which he had fallen by his thrice-repeated denial.” (Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs of 1848, 11).

107. This document further rejects the existence of any universal primacy in the Church at all: “Thus he who is cited by his Holiness as a witness of the primacy of the Roman Church, shows that its dignity is not that of a lordship, nor even appellate, to which St. Peter himself was never ordained, but is a brotherly privilege in the Catholic Church, and an honor assigned the Popes on account of the greatness and privilege of the City. The fourth Ecumenical Council, for the preservation of the gradation in rank of Churches canonically established by the third Ecumenical Council (Canon 8),—following the second (Canon 3), as that again followed the first (Canon 6), which called the appellate jurisdiction of the Pope over the West a Custom,—thus uttered its determination: ‘On account of that City being the Imperial City, the Fathers have with reason given it prerogatives’ (Canon 28). Here is nothing said of the Pope’s special monopoly of the Apostolicity of St. Peter, still less of a vicarship in Rome’s Bishops, and an universal Pastorate.” (Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs of 1848, 13).

108. Metropolitan Elpidophoros (Lambriniadis) of Bursa, “The Ecumenical Patriarch: First Without Equals,” 2, ii.

109. According to the, “Position of the Moscow Patriarchate on the problem of primacy in the Universal Church,” “The ecclesiological distortions ascribing to the primus on the universal level the functions of governance inherent in primates on other levels of church order are named in the polemical literature of the second millennium as ‘papism…’ The Orthodox Church rejected the doctrine of the Roman Church on papal primacy and the divine origin of the power of the first bishop in the Universal Church. Orthodox theologians have always insisted that the Church of Rome is one of the autocephalous Local Churches with no right to extend her jurisdiction to the territory of other Local Churches. They also believed that primacy in honour accorded to the bishops of Rome is instituted not by God but men.”

110. “An Ecumenical Council is a Council that was convened by order of the emperor, issued a dogmatic definition of faith, its decisions are pious, Orthodox and agree with the Holy Scriptures and previous Ecumenical Councils. It must be unanimously accepted by all the patriarchs and hierarchs of the Catholic Church, present at the Council either in person or through their representatives, or, if they were absent, by expressing their consent by letters with signatures […] the decisions of the Ecumenical Councils are equivalent to the decisions of the Holy Spirit of truth, for it is said: He will teach you everything and remind you of everything (John 14:26), which is especially true for the Ecumenical Councils.” (Nicodemus, The Rudder. Rules of the Orthodox Church with interpretations. Volume 2. Rules of the Ecumenical Councils, n. 1).

111. As Albert G. Bondach documents in his article, “The Pentarchy and the Moscow Patriarchate,” explicit references to the pentarchy in patristic sources don’t even begin until the 7th century. Now, some will try to appeal to the Seventh Ecumenical Council’s explanation of why the Council of Hieria wasn’t authoritative as evidence for “patriarchal ratification” in the Ecumenical Church: “And how can a council be ‘great and ecumenical’ when it received neither recognition nor assent from the primates of the other churches, but they consigned it to anathema? It did not enjoy the cooperation of the then pope of Rome or his priests, neither by means of his representatives or an encyclical letter, as is the rule for councils; nor did it win the assent of the patriarchs of the east, of Alexandria, Antioch, and the holy city, or of their priests and bishops” (Nicaea II, 6th Session, Official Refutation of the Horos of Hieria, qtd. in Price, Richard. The Acts of the Second Council of Nicaea 787, p. 442). However, notice that the only “rule for councils” is the Church of Rome’s cooperation. The lack of participation of the eastern patriarchs is just noted as evidence that Hieria wasn’t ecumenical, not a deviation from any divine law that concerns what makes councils authoritative.

112. In fact, during this time, there was so much opposition and hesitancy towards Chalcedon that the Eastern Church had no other canonical justification for its acceptance other than the Church of Rome’s “Petrine theory” of ecclesiology. See Erick Ybarra, The Papacy, Ch. 14, “The Papacy and the Acacian Schism (484-519).”

113. See Michael Barber, “Jesus as the Davidic Temple Builder and Peter’s Priestly Role in Matthew 16:16-19.” Journal of Biblical Literature, vol. 132, no. 4, 2013, pp. 935–53. Also see Suan Sonna, “New Eliakim Research.”

114. Much of the following is directly adapted from James Jordan’s article, “Peter as High Priest.”

115. See my article, “The Chiasm of John-Revelation and its Implications.”

116. Much of the following is directly adapted from Brian Phillips’ article, “A Walk Through the Tabernacle.”

117. St. Jerome, Letter 15, 2.

118. All of the following quotes from St. Francis de Sales are from, The Catholic Controversy, Part II, Article VI, Chapter III.

119. St. Stephen of Dor, qtd. in Fr. Richard Price, The Acts of the Council of Lateran 649, pp. 143-44.

120. Pope St. Boniface I, Epistle 14, PL 20.777; trans. Ludwig Hertling, Communio: Church and Papacy in Early Christianity, pp. 56-57.

121. Pope St. Innocent I, B.J. Kidd translates it “Apostolic source.” See his The Roman Primacy to A.D. 461, 84-85., qtd. in Erick Ybarra, The Roots of the Papacy, p. 28-9.

122. Joe Heschmeyer, Pope Peter: Defending the Church’s Most Distinctive Doctrine in a Time of Crisis, p. 108 [Kindle ed.], emphasis added.

123. Joe Heschmeyer, Pope Peter, p. 112 [Kindle ed.].

124. St. Jerome, Against Jovinianus, 1:26.

125. St. Optatus, Against the Donatists, Book 2, II.

126. Pope St. Gelasius, qtd. in Andrea Gallandi, Bibliotheca Veterum Patrum: Antiquorumque Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum, Tomus X, Epistola VIII, part. VIII, qtd. in Erick Yabrra, The Roots of the Papacy, p. 51.

127. Seraphim Hamilton, “The Canonical Edition of the New Testament and its Apostolic Origin.”

128. Without much argument, Jordan asserts that, while Peter is the new covenant’s high priest, this position was short-lived. “Once Peter’s work was done, and the Church was established, he could retire from this leadership position, leaving Jerusalem in the hands of James and the gentile mission in the hands of Paul.” (James Jordan, “Peter as High Priest”). However, this runs contrary to the teaching of John 21, wherein Peter’s appointment as the new covenant’s “shepherd” is in the context of his leading and maintaining the Church’s conquest of the Gentile “sea.”

129. Council of Ephesus (A.D. 431), “Extracts From the Acts,” in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, second series, vol. 14, eds. Phillip Shaff and Henry Wace trans. Henry Percival, for New Advent by Kevin Knight.

130. Second Council of Nicaea (A.D. 787), “Session 2,” in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, second series, vol. 14, eds. Phillip Shaff and Henry Wace trans. Henry Percival, for New Advent by Kevin Knight.

131. Seraphim Hamilton, “The Canonical Edition of the New Testament and its Apostolic Origin.”

132. St. Jerome, Letter 15, 2.

133. For a full defense of St. Peter as the rock of Matthew 16:18, see my article, “St. Peter: The Rock of the Church.”

134. Council of Ephesus (A.D. 431), “Extracts From the Acts,” in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, second series, vol. 14, eds. Phillip Shaff and Henry Wace trans. Henry Percival, for New Advent by Kevin Knight.

135. Fr. Laurent Cleenewerck, His Broken Body, p. 78n2.

136. Pope St. Agatho, Second Council of Nicaea (A.D. 787), “Session 2,” in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, second series, vol. 14, eds. Phillip Shaff and Henry Wace trans. Henry Percival, for New Advent by Kevin Knight.

137. Philip the legate of Pope St. Celestine, Council of Ephesus (A.D. 431), “Extracts From the Acts,” in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, second series, vol. 14, eds. Phillip Shaff and Henry Wace trans. Henry Percival, for New Advent by Kevin Knight.

138. For example, Fr. Cleenewerck recognizes that the Second Council of Nicaea “constitutes the highest point of recognition of what we can call ‘Roman Catholic ecclesiology’ in the East, not so much in the definitions and canons as in its letters and sessions. There was no Vigilius or Honorius factor at Nicea—it was total recognition that the pope of Rome held Peter’s See, and that Rome was in a unique way heir of Christ’s promises to Peter.” (Fr. Laurent Cleenewerck, His Broken Body, pp. 199-200).

139. Fr Cleenewerck forewarns his readers, “At the outset, I should state that I do not believe in the ‘infallibility’ or ‘inerrancy’ of the universal or local Church, at least not in the way that it is popularly understood. What I mean is that the teaching organs of the Church, (presbyters, bishops, councils and popes) can and indeed have erred – which does not necessarily mean that they have failed. I do not think that I need to prove this assertion in the case of individual presbyters, bishops and non-Ecumenical Councils. I will on the other hand have to discuss this issue in the case of the teachings, Ex-Cathedra or not, of the Bishop of Rome. The infallibility of the Ecumenical Councils is another matter, inasmuch as there is broad agreement that the dogmatic teachings of the first seven, properly understood, are accurate witnesses to the truth of who Jesus Christ is. But the Orthodox admit that these Councils are called ecumenical and infallible only in retrospect, because what they teach is received as true by ‘the entire body of the Faithful,’ not based on any intrinsic organizational criteria.” (Fr. Laurent Cleenewerck, His Broken Body, p. 30).

140. The Libellus of Pope St. Hormisdas, Denzinger and Rahner, eds., The Sources of Catholic Dogma, 73-74, qtd. in Ybarra, The Papacy, p. 397.

141. See The Orthodox Ethos, “Papal Infallibility: "The Heresy Above All Heresies" - St. Justin Popovich.”

142. St. Maximus, Opuscula theologica et polemica, PG 91.137-40, qtd. in Butler and Collorafi, Keys Over the Christian World, pp. 352-353.

143. St. Sophronius, “To Stephen of Dor,” Mansi 10.896, qtd. in Ybarra, The Papacy, p. 637.