Not First Among Equals: The Bishop of Rome as Head of the Church from the First CenturyThe modern slogan that the Bishop of Rome was merely primus inter pares—first among equals—has become a convenient formula in some Orthodox and Protestant accounts of the undivided Church. It is not the formula the earliest sources use. From the lifetime of the Apostle John onward, the Church of Rome is treated as a court of last resort, a doctrinal norm, a see whose agreement is not optional, and a chair whose occupant is understood to succeed Peter as head of the apostolic college. The later juridical language of the medieval West and of Vatican I is a development of that principle, not its invention. Development is not invention. An acorn is not a full oak, but it is already an oak and not a thistle.
What follows is not a claim that every second-century Christian spoke the language of Pastor Aeternus. It is the claim that the role—a unique Petrine headship exercised by the Bishop of Rome over the other bishops and, later, over patriarchs—was already present in the first century and was recognized by Eastern as well as Western witnesses. Honor without headship cannot explain the texts. A presidency of courtesy cannot explain the interventions. A mere first place in a list cannot explain why churches from Corinth to Alexandria to Constantinople treated Rome as the see that could confirm, receive appeals, bind in matters of faith, and stand as the criterion of communion.
Peter Before Rome: Head of the College, Not Its Equal
The New Testament does not wait for Constantine, and it does not wait for a theory of pentarchy. In every list of the Twelve, Peter is named first (Matt. 10:2; Mark 3:16; Luke 6:14; Acts 1:13). The naming is not accidental cataloguing. He speaks for the Twelve at Pentecost. He receives the keys of the kingdom and the promise that the gates of Hades will not prevail against the Church built on the rock of his person and confession (Matt. 16:18–19). The keys are given in the singular. The binding and loosing that will later be shared with the Twelve in Matthew 18 is first given to one man as the principle of unity. After the Resurrection he is singled out again: “Feed my lambs… Tend my sheep… Feed my sheep” (John 21:15–17). The pastoral charge is not “feed your portion.” It is the flock of Christ.
The Jerusalem Council does not proceed as a parliament of equals in which Peter’s voice is one ballot among twelve. Peter speaks; the assembly falls silent; James then proposes a pastoral application (Acts 15:7–21). Paul, who will withstand Peter to his face when Peter’s conduct at Antioch is inconsistent with the gospel (Gal. 2:11–14), nevertheless goes up to Jerusalem “to visit Cephas” and remains with him fifteen days (Gal. 1:18). The verb is not casual. Chrysostom notes that Paul goes up “as to the greater and elder,” honoring the man more than all the others.
Eastern Fathers read these texts as granting Peter a real headship, not a decorative seniority. St. John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople, is as explicit as any Latin writer:
> He was the chosen one of the Apostles, the mouth of the disciples, the head of the choir… He entrusts him with the rule [prostasia] over the brethren… If anyone should say, “Why then was it James who received the See of Jerusalem?”, I should reply that He made Peter the teacher not of that see but of the whole world. (Homilies on John 88.1)
Again: after Peter’s fall, Christ “brought him back to his former honor and entrusted to him the headship of the universal Church” (Homily 5 on Repentance). Peter is “master of the whole world,” the one “to whose hands He committed the keys of heaven, whom He commanded to do and to bear all” (Homily on St. Ignatius). In the Homilies on Acts Chrysostom describes Peter as acting first in the election of Matthias “as having all put into his hands.” These are not Western interpolations smuggled into a Greek father. They are the words of the greatest preacher of the Greek Church, speaking to Greek congregations.
St. Basil the Great writes that Peter was “one of such mountains; and the Lord gave the promise to build His Church upon this rock.” St. Cyril of Jerusalem calls Peter “the chief of the apostles and the keeper of the keys of the kingdom of heaven” (Catechetical Lectures 17.27). St. Ephrem the Syrian calls him “mouth of the disciples, voice of the preachers… firstborn among those who received the keys into power.” St. Gregory of Nyssa and St. Gregory Nazianzen likewise treat Peter as the coryphaeus, the leader of the choir. The East did not treat Peter as a mere spokesman who happened to talk first. It treated him as head.
The remaining question is whether that headship was a personal charism that died with Peter, or an office that passed to the Church in which he preached, suffered, and was buried. The first-century sources already answer by what they do.
Rome Intervenes While an Apostle Still Lives: Clement of Rome
Around A.D. 96 the Church of Rome writes to the Church of Corinth. Presbyters appointed in the apostolic line have been deposed by a faction. Rome does not wait to be invited as a neutral arbitrator among equals. It writes as a body that has a duty to intervene, apologizing only for delay caused by “sudden and repeated calamities”:
> If, however, any shall disobey the words spoken by Him through us, let them know that they will entangle themselves in no slight transgression and danger. (1 Clement 59.1)
> You will afford us joy and gladness if, being obedient to the things which we have written through the Holy Spirit, you will root out the wicked passion of jealousy. (1 Clement 63.2)
The letter claims that God speaks “through us.” It demands obedience to what has been written “through the Holy Spirit.” It sends envoys and asks that they be sent back—language that later commentators have compared to imperial administrative style, not to a friendly circular. The letter is issued in the name of the Roman church, as later papal letters often are. That fact does not weaken the claim; it shows that the see already acts as a subject of authority. The personal name of Clement is supplied by the subsequent tradition of Irenaeus, Eusebius, and Dionysius of Corinth, who had no motive to invent a monarchic author if none existed.
Corinth—an apostolic church founded by Paul—receives the letter. About A.D. 170 Bishop Dionysius of Corinth writes to Pope Soter and mentions that Corinth still reads Clement’s letter publicly in the liturgy, as it reads Scripture. Eusebius records the same fact (Church History 3.16; 4.23). A fraternal suggestion from one equal to another is not kept as nearly canonical for seventy years in the very church that was rebuked.
Two further points matter for the “first among equals” thesis. First, according to the same second-century tradition, the Apostle John was still alive in Ephesus, geographically far closer to Corinth than Rome. If the only principle in force was local apostolic prestige or regional seniority, Ephesus was the obvious court. The Corinthians look to Rome, or Rome looks to Corinth as a matter of right. Either way, the axis is Roman. Second, the Shepherd of Hermas, a Roman document of the early second century, assigns to Clement the duty of sending writings “to the cities abroad, because that is his duty” (Vision 2.4.3). Whether or not that Clement is the author of 1 Clement, the text assumes that a named Roman leader already has a recognized extra-local function.
Pope Benedict XVI called 1 Clement “a first exercise of the Roman primacy after St. Peter’s death.” The judgment is not unique to modern Catholics. Irenaeus already treats the episode as proof that the Roman church possesses and transmits apostolic tradition (Against Heresies 3.3.3). John Meyendorff, writing as an Orthodox historian, preferred the word “priority” to “primacy” for this period. The concession is important. A church that already knows itself to have priority over Corinth in the 90s is not waiting for the Gregorian Reform to discover that it is not simply one sister among sisters.
“Which Presides in Love”: Ignatius of Antioch
Ignatius of Antioch, writing on his way to martyrdom about A.D. 107, addresses six churches with instructions, warnings, and exhortations to obey their bishops. To Rome he writes no such instructions. He writes as a man approaching a church that teaches others and does not need to be taught:
> You have envied no one, but others have you taught. I desire only that what you have enjoined in your instructions may remain in force. (To the Romans 3.1)
The salutation is unique in the Ignatian corpus. Rome is “the church which presides in the place of the region of the Romans” and “which presides in love” (prokathētai tēs agapēs). No other addressee receives this language. Ignatius, a bishop of the great Eastern see of Antioch—itself a Petrine church—does not describe Antioch, Ephesus, or Smyrna as presiding over the love of the churches.
Orthodox theologians such as Nicholas Afanasiev and Alexander Schmemann have themselves treated the phrase as an acknowledgment of a real primacy of the Roman church in the eucharistic communion of churches—not a courtesy title and not a reference merely to Roman almsgiving. Afanasiev held that already in the pre-Nicene period the authority of Rome’s witness was such that acceptance or rejection by Rome largely determined the fate of a doctrine among the other churches. If that is true, “first among equals” has already failed as a description. An equal does not determine the reception of doctrine for the rest.
Ignatius does not mention a single bishop by name in the letter to Rome, which some take as proof that Rome still had only a college of presbyters. Even if local Roman structure was still maturing from a presbyteral college toward a clearly monarchical bishop—a development most historians place in the early second century—Ignatius’ language about the church of Rome is not the language of equality. The presidency belongs to that church. The injunctions of that church are to remain in force. Structure can develop; the unique place is already named.
Irenaeus: Every Church Must Agree with Rome
Irenaeus of Lyons, disciple of Polycarp, disciple of John, writing about A.D. 180 against the Gnostics, gives the earliest surviving list of Roman bishops from the apostles to Eleutherius. He does not list Rome as one example among many possible apostolic successions. He lists Rome instead of the others, because Rome is sufficient to refute those who assemble in unauthorized meetings:
> Since, however, it would be very tedious, in such a volume as this, to reckon up the successions of all the Churches, we do put to confusion all those who… assemble in unauthorized meetings by indicating that tradition derived from the apostles, of the very great, the very ancient, and universally known Church founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul… For it is a matter of necessity that every Church should agree with this Church, on account of its preeminent authority [propter potiorem principalitatem], that is, the faithful everywhere, inasmuch as the apostolical tradition has been preserved continuously by those who exist everywhere. (Against Heresies 3.3.2)
The Latin potior principalitas has been endlessly parsed, in part because the original Greek of this sentence is lost. Whatever Greek phrase it renders, Irenaeus’ argument is structurally clear. He does not say every church may compare notes with Rome as with any other ancient see. He says every church must agree with this church because of a superior origin and authority. He then names Linus, Anacletus, Clement, Evaristus, and the rest down to Eleutherius, treating the episcopal office at Rome as a single succession from Peter and Paul. In the time of Clement, he recalls, “the Church in Rome dispatched a most powerful letter to the Corinthians.” The succession list and the intervention belong together.
This is not “first among equals.” Equals do not impose a necessity of agreement. A first among equals is a useful chairman. Irenaeus describes a norm. The First Vatican Council later cited the passage for a reason. Catholic historical theologians such as those writing in Theological Studies have argued that attempts to reduce the sentence to “Rome is a convenient meeting place of travelers” collapse under Irenaeus’ own ecclesiology: the active custodians of tradition are the bishops in succession, and the bishop of Rome is the one whose church he actually lists.
From Victor to Stephen: The Second and Third Centuries Act Like a Headship
By the late second century the Roman bishop is already acting across provincial lines in a way no other bishop does. Pope Victor I (c. 189–199) seeks to impose the Roman dating of Easter on the churches of Asia. Polycrates of Ephesus resists, invoking the tomb of John and the custom of the Quartodecimans. Irenaeus, who believes Victor is wrong in method, nevertheless writes to him as to the one whose excommunication of Asian churches would be a real and terrible act. He does not write as if Victor were a peer throwing a tantrum. He pleads with the head not to cut off whole churches over a custom. The plea presupposes the power.
In the third century St. Cyprian of Carthage is often quoted against later papalism because he resisted Pope Stephen on the rebaptism of heretics. The same Cyprian, however, writes some of the strongest language in the Latin tradition about the one chair:
> The Lord says to Peter: “I say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church”… On him he builds the Church, and to him he gives the command to feed the sheep, and although he assigns a like power to all the apostles, yet he founded a single chair, and he established by his own authority a source and an intrinsic reason for that unity. Indeed, the others were that also which Peter was, but a primacy is given to Peter, whereby it is made clear that there is but one Church and one chair… If someone does not hold fast to this unity of Peter, can he imagine that he still holds the faith? If he deserts the chair of Peter upon whom the Church was built, can he still be confident that he is in the Church? (On the Unity of the Catholic Church)
He calls Rome, in a letter to Pope Cornelius, “the chair of Peter and the principal church, from which sacerdotal unity takes its source” (Letter 59.14). Schismatics from Africa sail to Rome with letters, because they know that recognition by that chair is the point at which a rival bishop becomes a threat to unity.
The controversy with Stephen shows that the exercise of Roman authority could be resisted by a great saint. It also shows that the claim was already there, and that Cyprian’s own theology of one chair supplied the principle he found difficult when Stephen applied it to baptismal discipline. Pope Stephen appeals to Matthew 16 and to the custom of the Roman church as binding on Africa and Asia Minor. Firmilian of Caesarea is furious precisely because Stephen claims to be successor of Peter in a way that binds other bishops. Anger is evidence. One does not write furious letters against a primacy that no one has asserted.
Tertullian, while still Catholic, writes that the Lord gave the keys “to Peter… not to the Church,” and built the Church “upon you” (On Modesty 21). After he became a Montanist he sneered at a Roman bishop as “pontifex maximus” and “bishop of bishops.” The sneer is precious historically. It tells us that the Roman bishop was already being addressed, or was already acting, in terms that a gifted rhetorician could parody as monarchical.
Optatus, Damasus, Augustine: One Chair in Rome
In the fourth century the African tradition remains Petrine and Roman. St. Optatus of Milevis, writing against the Donatists about A.D. 367, states:
> You cannot deny that you are aware that in the city of Rome the episcopal chair was given first to Peter; the chair in which Peter sat, the same who was head—that is why he is also called Cephas—of all the apostles; the one chair in which unity is maintained by all. Neither do the apostles proceed individually on their own, and anyone who would set up another chair in opposition to that single chair would, by that very fact, be a schismatic and a sinner. (Against the Donatists 2.2)
Pope Damasus I, in the Decree of 382 often associated with the Roman synod of that year, refuses to derive Roman primacy from conciliar concession:
> The holy Roman Church has been placed at the forefront not by the conciliar decisions of other churches, but has received the primacy by the evangelic voice of our Lord and Savior, who says: “You are Peter…” The first see, therefore, is that of Peter the apostle, that of the Roman Church.
St. Augustine, who will sometimes speak of Peter as representing the Church, nevertheless traces the episcopal line of Rome from Peter as the surest answer to Donatist claims of succession (Letter 53). For Augustine, communion with the Roman chair is not a political convenience. It is how one shows that one is in the Church that Peter’s rock still bears.
None of this is yet the full canonical apparatus of universal ordinary jurisdiction described in 1870. All of it is already more than honorary precedence. A chair “in which unity is maintained by all,” a primacy received from Christ rather than from councils, a first see that is Peter’s—these are the building stones of monarchy in the ancient Christian sense: one arche in the episcopate, not a rotating chairmanship.
Appeals from the East: Athanasius, Sardica, Chrysostom
When St. Athanasius is driven from Alexandria by Arian emperors and synods, he does not treat the major sees as a round table of equal last resorts. He and other Eastern bishops appeal to Rome. Pope Julius I receives them, examines the case, and writes to the Easterners that they should have written to Rome first, “so that a just sentence might be given from this place.” Julius grounds the practice in custom and in the dignity of the apostolic see. The Eastern accusation against Julius is not that he is a nobody interfering, but that he has received men they had condemned. They know what his reception means.
The Council of Sardica (343), summoned to deal with these cases, enacted canons that honor “the memory of the most holy Apostle Peter” by granting a condemned bishop the right to appeal to the Bishop of Rome, who may order a retrial and even send legates. The Eastern bishops who withdrew to Philippopolis rejected the council, which limits its formal status as “ecumenical.” Yet the canons were later received in the East through the Council in Trullo (692) and were cited in the Photian period as recognizing a Roman right of cassation in certain cases. A purely honorary primacy does not generate appellate canons “out of reverence for Peter.” Even Orthodox joint statements, such as the Chieti document on synodality and primacy in the first millennium, admit that appeals were made to Rome from the East and that Sardica attempted to regulate them. They interpret those appeals as expressions of communion rather than of jurisdiction. The texts themselves speak of judgment, retrial, and legates. That is jurisdiction in germ, whether or not later Orthodox theology wishes to use the word.
Chrysostom himself, when attacked and exiled from Constantinople, looked to Rome and to Pope Innocent I. Innocent declared Chrysostom’s deposition invalid and broke communion with the Eastern bishops who had supported Theophilus of Alexandria’s campaign. The Eastern saint who called Peter head of the universal Church acted as if Peter’s successor still had a voice that could render a deposition null. If Constantinople’s archbishop were simply the equal of Rome’s, Innocent’s act would have been an impertinence. It was treated as a claim that had to be either accepted or fought, not ignored as a foreign courtesy.
Ephesus and Chalcedon: Peter Speaks Through His Successor
At the Council of Ephesus (431) the papal legate Philip declared, in the hearing of the assembled bishops, most of them Eastern:
> There is no doubt, and in fact it has been known in all ages, that the holy and most blessed Peter, prince and head of the apostles, pillar of the faith, and foundation of the Catholic Church, received the keys of the kingdom from our Lord Jesus Christ… who down even to today and forever both lives and judges in his successors.
The council did not shout him down as a Latin innovator. It received Pope Celestine’s judgment against Nestorius as already decisive in substance. Cyril of Alexandria had himself sought Celestine’s sentence before the council completed its work. The great Alexandrian doctor did not behave as if Rome were a distant honorary president.
At Chalcedon (451) the Tome of Leo was read. After examination, the bishops exclaimed: “This is the faith of the fathers! This is the faith of the apostles! Peter has spoken thus through Leo!” The acclamation can be minimized as enthusiasm for a document that agreed with Cyril. The rest of the acts will not allow the minimization. In the sentence against Dioscorus the council states that Leo, “through us and through this present most holy synod, together with the thrice-blessed and all-glorious Apostle Peter, who is the rock and foundation of the Catholic Church and the foundation of the orthodox faith,” deposes the Alexandrian patriarch. The synodal letter to Leo addresses him as “set as the mouthpiece unto all of the blessed Peter,” “established as the interpreter of the voice of blessed Peter for all,” and as the one through whom the inheritance of the faith was shown to the Church’s children.
The same council asked Leo to confirm its controversial Canon 28 elevating Constantinople to second place after Rome on political grounds. Anatolius of Constantinople wrote to Leo that he personally had not pushed the canon, and that “the whole force of confirmation of the acts was reserved for the authority of Your Beatitude.” A first-among-equals does not have his confirmation reserved as the force of a canon voted by hundreds of Eastern bishops and favored by the emperor. Leo refused Canon 28, precisely because it grounded rank in the presence of the emperor rather than in apostolic origin. The canon’s later life in the East does not erase the fact that the council itself treated Roman confirmation as necessary and that Leo’s theology of primacy was Petrine, not imperial.
Pierre Batiffol observed that in 381 Constantinople legislated for the East without asking Rome, whereas in 451 the same Eastern episcopate seeks Roman confirmation and speaks of Leo’s authority as a sovereignty in matters of faith and order. Something more than courtesy is on the table.
Maximus the Confessor: Rome as Sole Base and Foundation
No Eastern Father of the seventh century is more important for later Orthodox theology than St. Maximus the Confessor. Monk, not pope, Byzantine in culture, he chose communion with Rome over communion with a heretical Constantinopolitan court. In the Monothelite crisis he writes:
> All the ends of the inhabited world, and those who anywhere on earth confess the Lord with a pure and orthodox faith, look directly to the most holy Church of the Romans and her confession and faith as to a sun of unfailing light, receiving from her the radiant beam of the patristic and holy doctrines… For from the time of the descent to us of the incarnate Word of God, all the churches of the Christians everywhere have held and possess this most great Church as the sole base and foundation, since, according to the very promise of the Saviour, it will never be overpowered by the gates of hell, but rather has the keys of the orthodox faith and confession in him. (Opuscula theologica et polemica)
And again, concerning communion with the condemned patriarch Pyrrhus:
> If the Roman See recognizes Pyrrhus to be not only a reprobate but a heretic, it is certainly plain that everyone who accuses those who have rejected Pyrrhus accuses the See of Rome itself, that is, he accuses the Catholic Church.
Maximus tells his interrogators that it is useless to persuade him without first satisfying “the blessed Pope of the holy Church of Rome,” the Apostolic See which “has received from the incarnate Son of God Himself universal and supreme dominion, authority, and the power of binding and loosing over all the holy churches.” This, he says, is confirmed by the synods and the canons.
These texts are sometimes dismissed as rhetorical, or as referring only to Rome’s orthodoxy at that fortunate moment. The language will not bear that reduction. “Sole base and foundation,” “keys of the orthodox confession,” “universal and supreme dominion,” “from the descent of the Word” is not primus inter pares and is not a compliment paid to a temporarily orthodox colleague. Maximus died under imperial mutilation rather than abandon the Roman definition of the two wills of Christ. His ecclesiology and his martyrdom are of one piece.
What Orthodox Scholars Actually Concede
Honest Orthodox scholarship does not claim that Rome was a non-entity in the first millennium. John Meyendorff spoke of Rome’s “priority” among local churches already in 1 Clement. Afanasiev treated Ignatius’ “church which presides in love” as a real primacy of witness within a eucharistic ecclesiology. Alexander Schmemann wrote that primacy is of the esse of the Church’s life, even while rejecting the later Latin form of universal jurisdiction. Olivier Clément, responding to John Paul II’s Ut unum sint, argued for a threefold structure of local, regional, and universal primacy and did not deny that Rome occupied the universal place in the first millennium. A. Edward Siecienski, in The Papacy and the Orthodox, documents that Eastern praise of Rome as “Vicar of Peter” was genuine whenever Rome defended the faith—as at Chalcedon—and that no single Eastern theory of the papacy existed. Variety of theory is not absence of primacy. It is evidence that the fact of Rome’s first place was older than any one explanation of it.
The Ravenna Document (2007) of the Catholic–Orthodox international dialogue stated that Rome “occupied the first place in the taxis” and that the Bishop of Rome was protos among the patriarchs. The remaining disagreement is about the content of that protology: honor only, or a real headship of teaching and communion. The first-millennium sources surveyed above continually overflow mere honor. When Maximus says “sole foundation” and Chalcedon says “Peter has spoken through Leo,” they are not decorating a seating chart.
Catholic Theologians on Development Without Invention
Catholic theology does not need to pretend that the curial machinery of the thirteenth century, or the phrasing of 1870, existed in A.D. 96. John Henry Newman’s Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine remains the classic account: a principle present from the beginning unfolds under historical pressure, as the Church meets heresy, schism, and empire. The primacy is not an exception to that law of development; it is one of Newman’s own leading examples.
Joseph Ratzinger argued that primacy and synodality belong together, but that the Petrine office is not created by the synod; it is a gift for the synod, so that the many bishops may remain one Church. Yves Congar distinguished the apostolic petrinum—the principle of a visible center of unity—from later Latin centralization and from the swelling of curial bureaucracy, while refusing to reduce the former to a presidency of honor. Jean-Marie Tillard described Rome as the church that “presides in love” in the Ignatian sense and as the see without which the college of bishops lacks its visible center. Klaus Schatz, in Papal Primacy from Its Origins to the Present, is useful precisely because he will not over-read the earliest texts as if they were Vatican I. Even he grants that 1 Clement and Ignatius already show a Roman consciousness of responsibility for other churches, and that Irenaeus attributes to Rome a unique doctrinal principalitas. The trajectory from that principalitas to Leo the Great’s theology of Peter still living in his successors is a straight line, not a hijacking by later popes.
Aidan Nichols has remarked that, at root, the issue of primacy is the one substantial issue that still divides the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. That is a reason to read the first millennium with severity, not a reason to flatten it into a slogan that the sources do not support.
Why “First Among Equals” Fails the Evidence
“First among equals” can describe the metropolitan among his suffragans when the metropolitan has no power to hear appeals, define the faith for others, or refuse communion in a way that the others treat as decisive. It cannot describe:
- a church that commands obedience in Corinth while an apostle still lives in Asia;
- a church that “presides in love” and whose injunctions a great Eastern martyr wants kept in force;
- a church with which every church must agree on account of a preeminent authority;
- a chair from which sacerdotal unity “takes its source,” so that to desert it is to leave the Church;
- a see to which deposed Eastern bishops appeal “out of reverence for Peter,” and which issues canons of retrial and legation;
- a pope through whom an ecumenical council of Eastern bishops says Peter has spoken, and who is asked to give “the whole force of confirmation” to a canon;
- a church that Maximus the Confessor calls the sole foundation of all the churches from the time of the Incarnation, holder of the keys of orthodox confession, possessor of universal binding authority from the incarnate Word.
Equals do not hold the keys for the rest. A president of honor does not invalidate a patriarch’s deposition. A first among equals does not receive the request that the force of a conciliar canon be reserved to him. A seating arrangement does not become “the sun of unfailing light” to the ends of the earth.
The pentarchy itself presupposes an order. The ancient taxis is Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem—not a circle and not a tie among five. Order without a head is not the order the Fathers describe when they speak of Peter’s chair, Peter’s voice, Peter’s keys, and Peter still judging in his successors. Constantinople’s rise, explicitly argued from the presence of the emperor, is the exception that proves the older rule: Rome’s first place was argued from Peter and Paul, from the gospel, from the promise to the rock. Leo saw the difference and refused to let the exception swallow the rule.
Even the formula primus inter pares—“first among equals”—concedes the point it is meant to soften. “Equals” names the shared episcopal dignity of every bishop; “first” names something the others do not have. There is no first where there is no order, and there is no order among shepherds unless one of them leads. A choir may be made of equal voices, but the coryphaeus is still the head of the choir; a college may be made of equal bishops, but the one who is first is the one the rest follow when unity must be kept. The phrase does not say “one among equals,” or “speaker among equals,” or “honorary chairman among equals.” It says first. First is a rank. First is a head. To call the Bishop of Rome first among the patriarchs is already to admit that the Church is not a flat table of identical sees, but a body with a visible lead. The Fathers used stronger words—rock, chair, keys, source of sacerdotal unity, teacher of the whole world—but even the weakest traditional title left to modern controversy still points in the same direction: if he is first, he is not merely equal, and if he is first among the bishops, he is their leader.
Continuity, Not Anachronism
To say that the papacy as monarch and head of all bishops and patriarchs was “always present” is to say that the office was present in seed, in consciousness, and in exercise—not that every canonical detail of Pastor Aeternus was present in the house-churches of the Flavian age. The seed is Petrine and dominical. The first documented extra-local act is Clement’s, while the Beloved Disciple still lives. The first great Eastern salute to a Roman presidency is Ignatius’. The first explicit necessity of agreement with Rome is Irenaeus’. The first conciliar appellate structure named for Peter’s memory is Sardica’s. The first ecumenical acclamation that Peter speaks through the Roman bishop is Chalcedon’s. The most sweeping Eastern confession of Rome as foundation and holder of the keys is Maximus’.
A monarch in the Christian sense is not a despot and not a substitute for Christ. He is the one who holds the arche—the principate—for the sake of unity, as Peter held it among the apostles. Cyprian saw that one chair was given so that unity might have a source. Chrysostom saw that one apostle was made teacher of the world so that the choir might have a head. Leo saw that Peter does not abandon the helm of the Church he received. Maximus saw that the helm was still in Rome when the imperial church had lost the faith of the two wills.
The first century already knew the helm. Later centuries named it more precisely, defended it against emperors, and, in the West, juridically defined it. They did not invent it. The invention is the later claim that the sources show only a chairman among equals. They show a head.
The argument stands or falls with the primary texts. Read them in full, in context, and in both East and West. The phrase “first among equals” is too small for what they say.
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References
Primary sources
- 1 Clement. In The Apostolic Fathers, ed. and trans. Michael W. Holmes. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007.
- Ignatius of Antioch. Letter to the Romans. In The Apostolic Fathers.
- Shepherd of Hermas, Vision 2.4.3.
- Irenaeus of Lyons. Against Heresies 3.3.2–3. Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 1.
- Tertullian. On Modesty 21; Prescription Against Heretics.
- Cyprian of Carthage. On the Unity of the Catholic Church; Letters 59, 66, 74–75 (with Firmilian).
- Optatus of Milevis. Against the Donatists 2.2.
- Damasus I. Decree of Damasus (382).
- Athanasius. Apology Against the Arians; Julius I, Letter to the Eusebians.
- Canons of Sardica 3–5. In Norman P. Tanner, ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils.
- John Chrysostom. Homilies on John 88; Homilies on Acts 3; Homily on St. Ignatius; Homilies on Repentance 5.
- Cyril of Jerusalem. Catechetical Lectures 17.27.
- Basil the Great. Commentary on Isaiah 2.
- Augustine. Letter 53; Against the Letter of Mani.
- Acts of the Council of Ephesus, sessions 2–3. In Tanner, Decrees.
- Acts of the Council of Chalcedon, sessions 2–3; Synodal Letter to Leo (Letter 98); Anatolius to Leo. In Tanner; Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, ser. 2, vol. 14.
- Leo the Great. Tome to Flavian; Letters 10, 28, 93.
- Maximus the Confessor. Opuscula theologica et polemica 11–12; Disputation with Pyrrhus. PG 91; English in Andrew Louth, Maximus the Confessor, and related translations.
- Eusebius of Caesarea. Church History 3.16; 4.23; 5.6; 5.24 (Victor and the Paschal controversy).
Catholic scholarship
- Newman, John Henry. An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. 1845/1878.
- Schatz, Klaus. Papal Primacy from Its Origins to the Present. Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1996.
- Ratzinger, Joseph. Called to Communion. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1996.
- Congar, Yves. After Nine Hundred Years. New York: Fordham University Press, 1959.
- Tillard, J. M. R. The Bishop of Rome. Wilmington: Michael Glazier, 1983.
- Batiffol, Pierre. Cathedra Petri: Études d’histoire ancienne de l’Église.
- Nichols, Aidan. Rome and the Eastern Churches. San Francisco: Ignatius Press.
- Pastor Aeternus (First Vatican Council, 1870); Catechism of the Catholic Church, 880–896.
- Jurgens, William A., ed. The Faith of the Early Fathers. 3 vols. Collegeville: Liturgical Press.
Orthodox and ecumenical scholarship
- Meyendorff, John, ed. The Primacy of Peter: Essays in Ecclesiology and the Early Church. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1992 (Meyendorff, Schmemann, Afanasiev, Kesich).
- Afanasiev, Nicholas. “The Church Which Presides in Love.” In Meyendorff, The Primacy of Peter.
- Siecienski, A. Edward. The Papacy and the Orthodox: Sources and History of a Debate. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.
- Clément, Olivier. You Are Peter: An Orthodox Theologian’s Reflection on the Papal Primacy. Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2003.
- Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue. Ecclesiological and Canonical Consequences of the Sacramental Nature of the Church (Ravenna, 2007); Synodality and Primacy during the First Millennium (Chieti, 2016).
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