Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Augustus Caesar, pontifex maximus, becomes a god

The dragon stood on the shore of the sea. And I saw a beast coming out of the sea. It had ten horns and seven heads, with ten crowns on its horns, and on each head a blasphemous name. The beast I saw resembled a leopard, but had feet like those of a bear and a mouth like that of a lion. The dragon gave the beast his power and his throne and great authority. One of the heads of the beast seemed to have had a fatal wound, but the fatal wound had been healed. The whole world was filled with wonder and followed the beast. People worshiped the dragon because he had given authority to the beast, and they also worshiped the beast and asked, “Who is like the beast? Who can wage war against it?”

As a young man, having grown up devoutly Roman Catholic and now struggling to leave that “church”, I had an understanding that the papacy was a key to my struggles. An “office” that extended 2000 years back through history to Christ was certainly an impressive show of authority. I grew up with the understanding that Matthew 16:18 said “Thou art Peter, and on this rock I will build my Catholic Church.” But I read the New Testament and I came away from it with no sense at all of Roman Catholicism.

How could “Roman Catholicism” and “New Testament Christianity” have diverged so sharply?



What follows is from Everett Ferguson’s “Backgrounds of Early Christianity,” Third Edition (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, © 1987, 1993, 2003, pgs 26 30).
Augustus (31.B.C.¬A.D. 14)
Octavian (later called Augustus) had absolute power. He secured election as consul every year, but this was not the basis of his power. He was a despot by universal consent, yet he realized that this was not a satisfactory position. He understood the new situation and its needs: there had to be a strong hand (Rome had to have a central policy for the frontiers and could not continue just to meet emergencies); there could be no overt absolutism, which would alienate the conservative forces in Rome; there had to be a rebuilding of morale and the support of the governing class had to be gained (the support of the governed is a luxury, but an empire cannot be governed by a democracy or by one man alone); and there was a need for order and stability (people were tired of change and the years of war and uncertainty.

The new ruler’s official version of the constitutional settlement reached in 27 B.C., his res gestae (the acts of things of note), is a combination of political testament and propaganda. It tells the truth, with some exaggeration, but not the whole truth. The res gestae says that Octavian’s position rested on his exceeding everyone in auctorictas — a word that means a combination of innate power and prestige and refers to one whom the people naturally followed. Concerning the new arrangements, it continues:
When I had extinguished the flames of civil war, after receiving by universal consent the absolute control of affairs, I transferred the republic from my own control to the will of the senate and the Roman people. For this service on my part I was given the title of Augustus by decree of the senate.
“Augustus” was an ancient word suggesting the numinous and something more than human, but no precise category. By this epithet Octavian has continued to be known. A Roman name had three parts: praenomen (personal name of which there were very few and so usually abbreviated), nomen (the gens or family name), and the cognomen (nickname) — as M(arcus) Tullius Cicero. In a full designation the name of the father would be inserted between the nomen and cognomen. Thus the ruler’s name had been C(aius) Julius C f [filius, son, of C(aesar)] Octavianus. After 27 his official name was Imp(erator) Caesar divi f(ilius) [“son of a god,” in this case the now deified Julius Caesar] Augustus. In every respect this was not a normal Roman name and was indicative of the unique position he held.

What were the reasons for ostensibly restoring an outmoded and ineffective Republic? There was the problem of how one with superior power legalizes his position. Augustus had to provide for a transmission of power. With a legal arrangement he could channel patronage and answer his critics. Moreover, he had to consider the sentiments of the people. But there was no doubt who was in control. In 27 B.C. Augustus was voted a very large military command, comprising about three-fourths of the legions, to be held for ten years. And he continued to be elected consul until 23 B.C. It was not very republican to hold office this long; and by doing so he was squeezing out other men from gaining administrating experience and was extending the power of the office beyond its content.

The final legal definition of the new constitutional arrangement was made in 23 B.C. Augustus was allowed to have proconsular power over the provinces without living there and without the title of proconsul. This was known as the imperium maius of the provincial army. Further, he received the right of interference in any province. Augustus gave up the office of consul and was invested with the tribunicia potestas, the power of the tribunate. To protect the power of the people, the Republic had elected ten tribunes — a troublesome office to the aristocracy, for a tribune held veto power and could initiate legislation, and an offense against a tribune was considered an offense against the gods. The office had been kept under control until the time of the Gracchi. Augustus was now given the power of the board of tribunes. Since the power (in distinction from the privileges) of the office had never been clearly defined, it was elastic enough to be extended as far as Augustus desired, while keeping the republican forms. Augustus’s legal position now rested on the tribunate and the imperium of the provincial army.

A habit developed of calling Augustus the princeps, the chief citizen, and the government the principate. This is descriptive terminology; it occurs on no monument as an official title of the emperor. It had harmless and benevolent connotations, but as princeps senates (from 28 B.C.) he had the right of speaking first in debate. A new system was developing. Several efforts have been made to define it, but it changed with the passing of time and with the viewpoint (in the provinces it was monarchy and they liked it, and at Rome it was a continuation of what was flexible in the old constitution). In a sense the new government was a delegated absolutism. There is much to be said for the view that Augustus introduced a revolutionary tyranny. On the other side, his achievements were great and he well answered the needs of the time.

Without any delegated authority, Augustus would still have been master of the world: he exceeded all in auctoritas, extraconstitutional power; all the clientele of the opposing families were swept into his allegiance after Actium; he had the army and the money; and he had the resources of Egypt. So clear was the new reality as a permanent fact that all took an oath of allegiance to Tiberius in A.D. 14 as they had to Augustus, without another word about a successor.

Augustus was careful to act in the right ways as a citizen, but he accepted the halos of artists and writers (who did an important service in promoting the new reign), and in the east he stepped in to the place of earlier monarchs. There was a great emphasis on peace: his rule ushered in the pax romana. After the wars of the preceding period a genuine sense of gratitude was expressed toward Augustus for the restoration of peace. He promoted this virtue of his reign, given monumental expression in the ara pacis (altar of peace) in Rome, whose reliefs are a noble expression of the ideals of the principate. Security and safety made possible travel, trade, and renewed economic development and prosperity. Augustus took the office of pontifex maximus in 12 B.C. as part of his program of restoring the religion of the Republic. Some historians have considered this as merely keeping up appearances, but there was a very real accomplishment by Augustus in this regard. The Roman gods were not yet dead, and Roman religious emotions were still strong. Further, Augustus initiated significant building activity, boasting that he found Rome a city of brick and left it a city of marble.

Philo of Alexandria was special pleading in contrasting Augustus with Caligula, but his words represent the contemporary provincial estimate of Augustus:
This is he who exterminated wars both of the open kind and the covert which are brought about by the raids of the brigands. This is he who cleared the sea of pirate ships and filled it with merchant vessels. This is he who reclaimed every state to liberty, who led disorder into order and brought gentle manners and harmony to all unsociable and brutish nations, who enlarged Hellas by many a new Hellas and Hellenized the outside world in its most important regions, the guardian of the peace, who dispensed their dues to each and all, who did not hard his favors but gave them to be common property, who kept nothing good and excellent hidden throughout his life. . . . He was also the first and the greatest and the common benefactor in that he displaced the rule of many and committed the ship of the commonwealth to be steered by a single pilot, that is himself, a marvelous master of the science of government. . . . The whole habitable world voted him no less than celestial honors. These are so well attested by temples, gateways vestibules, porticoes. . . . They knew his carefulness and that he showed it in maintaining firmly the native customs of each particular nation no less than of the Romans, and that he received his honours not for destroying the institutions of some nations in vain self-exaltation but in accordance with the magnitude of so mighty a sovereignty whose prestige was bound to be enhanced by such tributes. That he was never elated or puffed up by the vast honours given to him is clearly shown by the fact that he never wished anyone to address him as a god (Philo, Embassy to Gaius, 145-54, trans. F.H. Colson in Loeb Classical Library, Philo 10.75ff.).
As the rule of Alexander marks one turning point for our period, so the rule of Augustus marks another. He did not look at himself as the first of a series of emperors. He was a man undertaking a constitutional experiment that depended on a delicate balance. Although he refused the discredited office of dictator, he could still act arbitrarily. . . .
Roman Catholicism depends on the notion that the papacy was instituted by Christ. The 2006 “Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church”, sponsored by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and approved by Pope Benedict XVI himself, says:
182. What is the mission of the Pope?

The Pope, Bishop of Rome and the Successor of Saint Peter, is the perpetual, visible source and foundation of the unity of the Church. He is the vicar of Christ, the head of the College of Bishops and pastor of the universal Church over which he has by divine institution full, supreme, immediate, and universal power.
The title of pontifex maximus is missing from that description. Rome is dependent upon its own assertion that it is “divine institution” that maintains the papacy. The whole structure of the Roman Catholic Church rests upon that one assertion. Shatter that assertion, show it to be empty and meaningless, and the whole Roman Catholic structure crashes upon itself like a house of cards.

5 comments:

  1. The 1910 Catholic Encyclopedia decided to to throw some proverbial "stones in a glass house" and point out the disreputable origins of the Eastern Orthodox establishment:


    The Eastern Schism

    "This being so, we must remember how entirely unwarrantable, novel, and uncanonical the advance of Constantinople was. The see was not Apostolic, had no glorious traditions, no reason whatever for its usurpation of the first place in the East, but an accident of secular politics. The first historical Bishop of Byzantium was Metrophanes (315-25); he was not even a metropolitan, he was the lowest in rank a diocesan bishop could be, a suffragan of Heraclea. That is all his successors ever would have been, they would have had no power to influence anyone, had not Constantine chosen their city for his capital. All through their progress they made no pretense of founding their claims on anything but the fact that they were now bishops of the political capital. It was as the emperor's bishops, as functionaries of the imperial Court, that they rose to the second place in Christendom. The legend of St. Andrew founding their see was a late afterthought; it is now abandoned by all scholars. (NOTICE THE IRONY HERE FOLKS... - Viisaus)
    ...

    Let it be always remembered that the rise of Constantinople, its jealousy of Rome, its unhappy influence over all the East is a pure piece of Erastianism, a shameless surrender of the things of God to Caesar. And nothing can be less stable than to establish ecclesiastical rights on the basis of secular politics. The Turks in 1453 cut away the foundation of Byzantine ambition. There is now no emperor and no Court to justify the oecumenical patriarch's position. If we were to apply logically the principle on which he rests, he would sink back to the lowest place and the patriarchs of Christendom would reign at Paris, London, New York."

    ReplyDelete
  2. "Let it be always remembered that the rise of Constantinople, its jealousy of Rome, its unhappy influence over all the East is a pure piece of Erastianism, a shameless surrender of the things of God to Caesar."

    Heh. It's not uncommon to have Catholics tell you that the Catholic Encyclopedia does not represent Rome. Particularly some of the earlier editions.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Adrian Fortescue, the Catholic Encyclopedia writer that specialized on the affairs of Eastern churches, certainly did not hold back his rhetoric:

    "In its origin we must distinguish between the schismatical tendency and the actual occasion of its outburst. But the reason of both has gone now. The tendency was mainly jealousy caused by the rise of the See of Constantinople. That progress is over long ago. The last three centuries Constantinople has lost nearly all the broad lands she once acquired. There is nothing the modern Orthodox Christian resents more than any assumption of authority by the oecumenical patriarch outside his diminished patriarchate. The Byzantine see has long been the plaything of the Turk, wares that he sold to the highest bidder. Certainly now this pitiful dignity is no longer a reason for the schism of nearly 100,000,000 Christians."

    ReplyDelete
  4. Heh. It's not uncommon to have Catholics tell you that the Catholic Encyclopedia does not represent Rome. Particularly some of the earlier editions.

    Hi Truth. In one very real sense, Vatican II "re-wrote" Roman Catholicism; they "reformulated" a whole bunch of things, and in doing so, they untethered the modern RCC from its own history.

    As Nick Needham said, "Now Newman’s philosophy of development has won the day in modern Rome. Very few defenders of the old view can now be found. A cursory reading of modern Roman Catholic histories of the church and of theology will reveal Newman’s assumptions at work. It has liberated Roman Catholics from the unenviable burden of trying to prove that everything they believe and practice today was believed and practiced by the apostles."

    I've got part 4 of that coming up, which might tentatively be called "the Rise of the Liberals".

    ReplyDelete
  5. Already back in 1846, George Faber could foresee how Newman's ideas could be employed to blow up the whole traditional Roman paradigm - and on this issue, many RC "Rad-Trads" today seem to agree with him, and consider Newman and his evolutionist system to have been a sinister precursor of the Vatican II modernism.

    (They even tell rumors about Black Masses held in the Vatican, echoing Faber's imagery below!)

    http://www.archive.org/stream/a581272400fabeuoft#page/n121/mode/2up

    "The Argument has already been discussed: I now speak of the Developing Process, which partakes of the Infidel flavour of the Argument, though doubtless more subdued, and therefore more latent.

    What I mean is this.

    The whole Process of Development, as exhibited by Mr. Newman, is so superlatively absurd, that I could readily understand its drift if it had been conducted by an Infidel, while I really cannot understand its drift as conducted by a professed Christian. A covert Infidel, though, while writing at his desk, he might scarcely be able to keep his countenance, would naturally enough enjoy a sly hit which should turn Popery into ridicule under the mask of defending it; for this would be nothing more than a "Crambe Recocta" of the Gergo (as the Italians call it) said to have been systematically practised by the initiated medieval unbelievers.

    But, how a grave Divine, of no ordinary repute among his followers, could, in sober earnest, unless indeed "it were necessary to his position," develop such a marvellous system of development, passes, I must freely confess, my own comprehension."

    ReplyDelete