http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2010/09/modern-scholarship-rome-and-a-challenge/#comment-76686
Here’s the problem with John’s claim. All the historical evidence Lampe cites in his book, even when taken together in aggregate, is fully compatible with there being a monarchical bishop in Rome. Twelve times zero is still zero; it isn’t greater than one times zero. Because each of the pieces of evidence Lampe cites (not just the twelve Brandon picked out as the strongest pieces of evidence, but the other things Lampe discusses in his book) is fully compatible with there being a monarchical bishop in Rome, putting them all together does not provide any increase in the likelihood of the truth of Lampe’s conclusion, over the likelihood of its falsity.
In fact, there are several problems.
First of all, Bryan is misconstruing again. Lampe’s evidence doesn’t even address “bishops in Rome” up to a certain point. Lampe’s aim is to draw a picture. In fact, he crafts a vivid account of the churches in the city of Rome, using the positive historical evidence that we do have.
“How Christians entered the city through trade routes, and where they lived” does not address the question of whether there is a monarchical bishop in Rome.
The question “where the cemeteries are located” has nothing to do with the question of whether there is a monarchical bishop in Rome.
Where the archaeological finds for various churches are located has nothing to do with the question of whether there is a monarchical bishop in Rome.
The kinds of businesses that Christians worked in has nothing to do with the question of whether there is a monarchical bishop in Rome.
Lampe draws together information about the situation between Jewish and Gentile Christians; noting that Paul went “first to the Jews, then to the Gentiles”, his ability to locate Jewish synagogues (14 of them) and to note that “these communities were only loosely associated with each other” does shed some light on the locations and hence the organizational structure of the churches in Rome. (This is an appendix).
His ability to isolate the various educational components of the various educations of Clement of Rome, Justin, Marcion, Tatian, and others is incredible.
He does consider various elements from Acts and Romans (his section locating Romans 16 as part of the original letter of Paul to Romans – contra what some “critical scholars” had been saying), is cited heartily by Douglas Moo and Thomas Schreiner and other commentary writers on Romans.
He considers virtually every writer from that period, Christian writers especially, some non Christians. The Neronian persecutions are evaluated, the writings of Clement, Ignatius, Hermas, Justin, Hippolytus, and others are all discussed, keeping in mind the social settings of the writers and the individuals named in the works.
He considers “Christian burial places” (including excavations at the Vatican where it is claimed that Peter came to be buried) and notes “with very few exceptions, no Christian inscriptions, sculptures, mosaics, or sarcophagi are found in the first two centuries”. (The exception is found among the Valentinians, who generally were from wealthier quarters). “The reason for this is that many Christians apparently had many beans to afford them”. Christians at Rome first began to bury their dead in underground cemeteries around 200.
He notes “by the time of Hermas it was possible to divide [Roman] Christians into twelve (!) different categories” – a fact that supports the kind of “fractionation” that Lampe later posits. This points to large numbers. He compares this with “statistics from Cornelius (in Eusebius) in the middle of the third century (mid 200’s) lists 1,500 widows and people in need, supported by the church, as well as 46 presbyters, 7 deacons, 7 subdeacons, 42 acolytes, 52 exorcists, lectors, and doorkeepers.
He is able to look at archaeological and literary findings to look at various pieces of private property that may have been owned by various Christians in different places. He does discuss the possible origins of the various Titular churches.
He discusses the various cults that were extant in Rome in the second century, as well as “theological pluralism”. For example, as mentioned above, he locates 14 different synagogues in the city. Elsewhere he notes that “several synagogues are aligned according to geographical origin” – that is, their allegiances held more closely to their places of origin rather than to “the Jewish population of the city of Rome”.
The same held true for Christians. Lampe doesn’t mention this, but it’s very likely that Paul was addressing this very situation in his letter to the Romans. Certainly , in the Quartodeciman conflict, “the Quartodecimans were more attached to their native bishops in Asia minor than to Bishop Victor in Rome”.
So the “fractionation” was not simply a geographic functionality – different church groups in different places. There was a “fractionation” among wealthy and poor Christians. There were educational differences. There was theological “fractionation” (“uneducated folk tended [as did “Pope” Callistus of the third century] toward modalistic notions”).
So the case is built that all of the differences – geographical, places of origin, education, wealth, status, theological differences – did feed into “loyalties”, and they did tend to work against the notion that “the church at Rome was one big happy Christian family, all part of “the Church that Christ founded”.
In fact, sources outside of Lampe correlate that there was fighting among these groups “as to who was greatest”.
Does fractionation into house communities that were scattered throughout the metropolis favor the development of theological pluralism? In Rome of the second century we find evidence of breathtaking theological diversity. Besides the representatives of orthodox Christianity, we saw in their own circles Marcionites with their independently developed school sections, Valentinians, Carpocratians, dynamistic monarchians, modalistic monarchians [and one of these—Callistus—became a “pope”], Montanists, Quartodecimans [definitely these were orthodox], Jewish Christians with Torah observance … I observe the simultaneous appearance of topographical fractionation and theological multiplicity. It makes some sense therefore to presume that the one promoted the other, even if not in a causal genetic sense. Most of the theological tendencies represented in Rome did not originate there, but were imported into the capital city [see the part about the trade routes above].
All of this prior to the year 200.
In short, Lampe provides an incredible amount of information that really gives us a vivid account of the churches in the city of Rome.
Only then does he look at the accounts of “Sts. Hegesippus and Irenaeus” and says, “how do these fit in with the scenario that I’ve just created?”
Because each of the pieces of evidence Lampe cites (not just the twelve Brandon picked out as the strongest pieces of evidence, but the other things Lampe discusses in his book) is fully compatible with there being a monarchical bishop in Rome, putting them all together does not provide any increase in the likelihood of the truth of Lampe’s conclusion, over the likelihood of its falsity. However, because we do have positive historical evidence for there being a monarchical bishop in Rome from, for example, the testimonies of Sts. Hegesippus and Irenaeus, therefore, given all the available evidence, Lampe’s conclusion does not fit with the aggregate of the evidence.
* * *
In another comment, Bryan threw in a little “extra” that I’d like to address, again in which he demonstrates (a) a very clear lack of understanding of how to read ancient sources and (b) a very clear lack of understanding of what exegesis and discernment are all about.
He said at the bottom of his comment:
One other point worth noting. You draw from St. Optatus to show that there were 40 churches in Rome. But if one draws from St. Optatus as an historical source, then one cannot dismiss what he says about schism and the role of the bishop of Rome as the essential principle of unity for the Church. You also draw from Eusebius to cite the number of presbyters in Rome. Not only is it ad hoc to pick and chose from within the writings of a particular source (e.g. St. Optatus), it is also ad hoc to accept [one thing in] St. Optatus and Eusebius, while dismissing the testimony of Sts. Hegesippus and Irenaus as a fictive construction. To construe the latter two persons as making up “fictive constructions,” while assuming the former two persons to be reliable, is ad hoc special pleading, i.e. making use of the Fathers when they support your position, and accusing them of error when what they say (i.e. that there was an unbroken succession of bishops extending down from St. Peter) doesn’t fit your paradigm.
Let me take his statements one at a time:
But if one draws from St. Optatus as an historical source, then one cannot dismiss what he says about schism and the role of the bishop of Rome as the essential principle of unity for the Church.
In the first place, while Brandon uses the name “Optatus”, it comes from Lampe’s footnote #5 on pg 360, referring to the number of titular, or “titled” churches. These were larger, “relatively independent parishes within the city, with their own place of assembly, their own clergy, cult, baptistery, and burial place. We know the number and the names of the tituli from the signature lists of the Roman synods”. These date from the late fourth and fifth centuries.
So we can see that Lampe actually relies on signed documents from local councils to come up with the number of titular churches, and he notes in the footnote that he excludes Optatus as a source.
The fact is, Optatus did weigh in on this matter of the number of churches, and it confirms Lampe’s thesis. However Lampe excludes Optatus’s number from his analysis because it includes non-tituli churches – a more certain number of which he can get from other sources, as is described in the work.
I’ve written about Optatus in the past. He may have been able to count the churches in his neighborhood, but he was a bad historian.
Shotwell and Loomis, “The See of Peter,” pgs 111-112, say of him, “not only, [did he say], was Peter ‘head of the apostles’ and the first bishop of Rome, but [that] his bishopric at Rome was the first to be established anywhere in the Church. It was the original episcopate. The claim, however, was excessive even for that credulous age. It violated such widely accepted ideas as those of the bishopric of James the apostle at Jerusalem, and of Peter’s foundation of the bishopric at Antioch” (111).
This brings me to the topic of “picking and choosing”.
Not only can one scrutinize an author’s writings and be critical about it, but one must do this in instances where the writer is clearly erring. The writings of the church fathers are flawed by a number of historical errors – Irenaeus claims that Jesus lived into old age (50 – which he didn’t), and that Peter and Paul “founded and set up” the church at Rome – when it is clear that Paul DIDN’T found the church at Rome, and it’s quite possible that Peter may never have been there, except at the very end of his life.
For what reason should we not examine the historical accuracy of his “list”?
As well, more than a century later, Eusebius relates as fact the totally fictitious “Letter from Jesus to Abgar”. It is ridiculous to think that Jesus wrote a letter, to anyone, much less a king of Persia, but Eusebius found it in some sources and dutifully reported it.
One reason why I bring up Eusebius is because he is the only source that we have for Hegesippus.
Not only is it ad hoc to pick and chose [sic] from within the writings of a particular source (e.g. St. Optatus), it is also ad hoc to accept [one thing in] St. Optatus and Eusebius, while dismissing the testimony of Sts. Hegesippus and Irenaus as a fictive construction.
We must certainly appreciate many of the ancient writers. We must also appreciate the testimony they left to us about their eras of the church. However, we must also appreciate flaws of the individual writers, and the specific characteristics of the time periods in which they lived and wrote.
Where we are in a quandary – where the need for critical (i.e., “picking and choosing”) investigation is important is because, as Everett Ferguson notes, “five words in a primary source are worth a thousand words of a secondary source”.
In Lampe’s Chapter 41, he does not merely consider Hegesipus and Irenaeus in a vacuum. He considers them within the context of other first- and second-century writers, not least of whom is Paul, plus Clement, Ignatius, Hermas, Justin, as well as the writings of Marcion, Rhodon, Tertullian, and others.
Given the “direct evidence” provided by and among ALL of these authors, Lampe then proceeds to assemble what he calls “the most plausible reconstruction”.
Then, afterward, he ties this “reconstruction” from among these first and second century writers back into his other reconstruction – that of the city – social-historical factors, house congregations in and around trade routes, wealthy and poor Christians, real-estate, care for the poor, etc.
All through this exercise, Bryan has been examining individual trees and saying, “nope, no forest there”. He’s missing the big picture, and his myopic vision is leading people astray "in the peace of Christ". There is something about those who say "peace and safety" when there is no peace and no safety.
Finding five true words amid the false words is a matter not of “picking and choosing”, but of comparing each ancient source with other ancient sources (yes, using a grammatical-historical hermeneutic), and making value judgments on which is more or less probable.
It is telling that even Robert Eno, SS (the “SS” is not the German Nazi designation, but stands for “Order of the Sulpicians”, an order devoted to teaching diocesan priests in seminaries) does not try to deny Lampe’s work, but instead, cites it as if it is the best explanation of this time and place, and Klaus Schatz, who studied and wrote about “primacy” from a Roman perspective, does not disagree with Lampe’s conclusions either.
Bryan is not espousing truth; he's advocating his own home-grown brand of "Romanism".
His fans and followers need to consider what he's doing to them. How he's leading them astray.
No comments:
Post a Comment