Part 1 — Introduction
Part 2 — The Council of Nicaea (325)
Part 3 — The Council of Constantinople (381)
Part 4 — The Council of Ephesus (431)
Part 5 — The Council of Chalcedon (451)
Part 6 — Leo
Part 7 — Conclusion
This is part 2 of our series discussing Lawrence McCready’s article “Papal Primacy in the First Councils” from the Unam Sanctam Catholicam blog. Today, we will discuss Canon 6 of the Council of Nicaea, in 325AD.
Canon 6 of Nicaea
Everyone is aware of the Council of Nicaea, held in 325, and how it was renowned for not only being the First Ecumenical Council but also for its importance in stopping Arianism. A common belief is that this was a gathering of 318 bishops of equal standing (i.e. no concept of a Roman primacy) whose collective conciliar authority won the day. But this concept fails to understand the reality of the ecclesial structures then in place, in which there clearly was a hierarchy of bishops, with the Pope at the top. An important testimony to this comes from Canon 6 of this same council, which states:
Let the ancient customs in Egypt, Libya and Pentapolis prevail, that the Bishop of Alexandria have jurisdiction in all these, since the like is customary for the Bishop of Rome also. Likewise in Antioch and the other provinces, let the Churches retain their privileges. And this is to be universally understood, that if any one be made bishop without the consent of the Metropolitan, the great Synod has declared that such a man ought not to be a bishop.
There was indeed a clear hierarchy of bishops, but the Bishop of Rome was not at the top.
You’ll recall from part 1 that Laughlin did not seemingly have access to the Codex Theodosianus. Inside the Theodosian Code is the case of Constantine Augustus referring separately to the “Vicar of Italy [in Milan]” and the “Prefect of the City of Rome” as if they were separate and unequal jurisdictions with the former being the greater both in scope and in title.
This was the civil situation in the same exact era as the Council of Nicaea in 325AD, as had been the case for about three decades (since the Diocletian reorganization in 293AD). The church largely divided itself according to the civil organization of the Roman Empire. We see this language mirrored in the early church writings. Albeit with some delay, the ecumenical structure followed the civil structure.
Here Athanasius identifies certain Bishops of the metropolis, province, or city of their origin, in accordance with the existing civil organization:
But while they thought that they were carrying on their designs against many by his means, they knew not that they were making many to be confessors, of whom are those who have lately made so glorious a confession, religious men, and excellent Bishops, Paulinus Bishop of Treveri, the metropolis of the Gauls, Lucifer, Bishop of the metropolis of Sardinia, Eusebius of Vercelli in Italy, and Dionysius of Milan, which is the metropolis of Italy. These the Emperor summoned before him, and commanded them to subscribe against Athanasius, and to hold communion with the heretics;
Even very lately, while the Churches were at peace, and the people worshipping in their congregations, Liberius, Bishop of Rome, Paulinus , Metropolitan of Gaul, Dionysius, Metropolitan of Italy, Lucifer, Metropolitan of the Sardinian islands, and Eusebius of Italy, all of them good Bishops and preachers of the truth, were seized and banished , on no pretence whatever, except that they would not unite themselves to the Arian heresy, nor subscribe to the false accusations and calumnies which they had invented against me.
…one of them is Liberius, Bishop of Rome, (for although he did not endure to the end the sufferings of banishment, yet he remained in his exile for two years, being aware of conspiracy formed against us), and since there is also the great Hosius, together with the Bishops of Italy, and of Gaul, and others from Spain, and from Egypt, and Libya, and all those from Pentapolis…
Had these expositions of theirs proceeded from the orthodox, from such as the great Confessor Hosius, and Maximinus of Gaul, or his successor , or from such as Philogonius and Eustathius , Bishops of the East, or Julius and Liberius of Rome, or Cyriacus of Mœsia , or Pistus and Aristæus of Greece, or Silvester and Protogenes of Dacia, or Leontius and Eupsychius of Cappadocia, or Cæcilianus of Africa, or Eustorgius of Italy, or Capito of Sicily, or Macarius of Jerusalem, or Alexander of Constantinople, or Pæderos of Heraclea, or those great Bishops Meletius, Basil, and Longianus, and the rest from Armenia and Pontus, or Lupus and Amphion from Cilicia, or James and the rest from Mesopotamia, or our own blessed Alexander, with others of the same opinions as these — there would then have been nothing to suspect in their statements, for the character of apostolic men is sincere and incapable of fraud.
It was rumoured everywhere that Liberius, Bishop of Rome, the great Hosius of Spain, Paulinus of Gaul, Dionysius and Eusebius of Italy, Lucifer of Sardinia, and certain other Bishops and Presbyters and Deacons, had been banished because they refused to subscribe to my condemnation.
(Athanasius really enthusiastically liked Hosius!)
Notice, for example, that the Emperor sees no need to summon the Bishop of Rome to speak against Athanasius.
Notice too, for example, that the Bishop of Rome is identified by the city, but the Bishop of Italy is identified by the whole province of Italy, rather than merely by his home city of Milan.
Athanasius describes the chief city as the Metropolis of the associated province (e.g. Italy) and calls its bishop the Metropolitan of the respective province. He describes the lower bishops by the city of their rule, and the rest of the leadership as bishops, presbyters, and deacons. Athanasius always identifies the Bishop of Rome with the city designation.
Notice, especially, that the Bishops of Rome and Jerusalem are in the same category: identified by their city, rather than the province the city is contained within. Notice also that despite Rome and Jerusalem being civil metropolises of the Roman Empire, Athanasius never identifies them as such.
Elsewhere, Cyprian refers to the leaders of the church of Rome as “city clergy” in letter 39 and as “Roman clergy” in letter 44. In the latter (in paragraph 3), Cyprian contrasts the small city domain of the Roman clergy with the provincial domain of Cyprian’s home province. Indeed, Cyprian was concerned that the Roman clergy were acting as schismatics, infecting the rest of the church with its heresy.
In the Council of Serdica (343AD), the council affirmed that normally all petitions are sent to the largest metropolis in each province. But in the case of Italy, Rome was allowed to handle petitions that were filed locally. This echoes Nicaea, which allowed Alexandria and Jerusalem their own lesser domains within the whole of Oriens.
It is easy to see a hierarchy of leadership identified as follows:
Tier 0: Bishop of Rome
Tier 1: Provincial Metropolitan of a Diocese
Tier 2: Bishop of a civil metropolis
Tier 3: Bishop
Tier 4: Presbytr
Tier 5: Deacon
While the hierarchy of bishops was definitely one of jurisdiction, its not clear at all that it carried with it additional prestige or power within the church at large. The hierarchy did exist, but it appears to have been more administrative than theological. It’s not obvious at all that the Tier 1 and Tier 2 bishops had differing levels of influence. It’s also not clear whether or not different Tier 1 bishops were all equivalent in prestige and influence.
In any case, the Bishop of Rome was clearly identified as a Tier 2 Bishop, both by the early writers and by the Council of Nicaea (alongside the Bishops of Alexandria and Jerusalem and lesser to the Metropolitan Bishops of Milan and Antioch).
You can read more in Timothy F. Kauffman’s “False Teeth.”
Let the ancient customs in Egypt, Libya and Pentapolis prevail, that the Bishop of Alexandria have jurisdiction in all these, since the like is customary for the Bishop of Rome also. Likewise in Antioch and the other provinces, let the Churches retain their privileges. And this is to be universally understood, that if any one be made bishop without the consent of the Metropolitan, the great Synod has declared that such a man ought not to be a bishop.
This canon teaches that as per “ancient custom,” there have been three major Sees, each retaining certain jurisdictions. The main controversy surrounding Canon 6 is whether it is envisioning a “trio of Patriarchs” rather than a Primacy of the Bishop of Rome. Preferring the former interpretation are obviously the Protestants (2) and the Eastern Orthodox. While a quick reading seems to lend weight to the the former reading, a more careful second look reveals that is not the case. Informed Catholics throughout the ages have pointed to a few key details as to why any reading other than that of Papal Primacy doesn’t work.
This canon isn’t teaching anything.
The Council of Nicaea was convened three decades after Diocletian reorganized the Roman Empire into Dioceses. One of its jobs was to resolve the jurisdictional disputes among Bishops within a single diocesan jurisdiction. The reason why the “ancient custom” of Alexandria was described in terms of its pre-Diocletian provincial boundaries (the one’s listed in the Canon) and not the diocesan boundaries is because the new Diocese of Oriens contained no less than three civil metropolises: Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria.
It was within this context that the Nicean precedent was established (as reflected in the custom of Rome): there can be only one Metropolitan in a single diocese. Later in the series, we’ll see this precedent referenced more than a century later:
It has come to our notice that, contrary to the ecclesiastical regulations [of Nicaea], some have made approaches to the civil authorities and have divided one province into two by official mandate, with the result that there are two metropolitans in the same province.
But let’s go back to the Council of Nicaea.
As one of the three so-called Petrine Sees, it is easy to see why the Bishop of Alexandria would claim primacy over the newly established Diocese of Oriens, rather than being limited to its previous provincial boundaries. And it’s easy to see why Antioch, another of the three so-called Petrine Sees, would object and claim its own superiority. Nicaea resolved this dispute by insisting that Alexandria maintain its ancient jurisdiction and giving (most of) what remained in the Diocese to Antioch by default.
In doing so, the the Bishop of Oriens (residing in Antioch) became the sole Metropolitan in the Diocese.
But what’s that about Rome, the last of the three so-called Petrine Sees? Rome lost its status as the Capital of the Roman Empire only five years after the Council of Nicaea. This decline had not been helped at all by the appointment of the Vicarius of Milan to rule over the new Diocese of Italy at the end of the 3rd century.
When Nicaea talks about what is “customary” for the Bishop of Rome, it uses a different word in Greek (συνηθες vs εθη) to refer to something that has more recently become the norm. With the Diocletian Reorganization and the falling influence of Rome, Rome had become a secondary metropolis (to Milan) within the Diocese of Italy.
Thus were the Provincial Metropolitans (like Antioch) to retain their privileges while the lesser city Bishops—like the Petrine See in Alexandria—were to retain their lesser provincial jurisdiction, just like what recently occurred provincially to the Petrine See in Rome as the church informally and habitually embraced, by way of custom, the civil reorganizations.
What is most astounding is how little respect was given to the Petrine Sees (the “trio of patriarchs”). While their historical significance was certainly acknowledged, in the end two of the three Petrine Sees were relegated to secondary, tier 2 status within their own Diocese. Of the three Petrine Sees, Antioch was given the highest place.
In part 3, this will become relevant as we discuss the council of Constantinople (in 381) and Rome’s response in the Council of Rome (in 382).
About That Footnote
(2) Note the irony that either option refutes Protestantism on historical grounds, since neither option is compatible with Protestant ecclesiology.
This is a curious thing for McCready to argue because this is an historical argument, not a theological one. The truth of history is not dependent on one’s theological commitments. Thus, if the Protestants are right about history—and they are!—than Roman Catholicism is falsified. McCready’s argument contains an implicit fallacious Argument from Consequences. What this goes to show is that the Roman Catholic is choosing whatever version of history confirms his interpretation, rather than the other way around. This is quite the concession!
(In part 4, we’ll see that McCready makes this concession openly and explicitly)
As a Protestant, I don’t get to choose my interpretation of history based on what I already believe. I have to follow where the evidence leads. And the evidence, rather plainly, put Alexandrian and Rome on equal footing in jurisdictional terms, and it placed Alexandria “under” Antioch.
Of course, if you’ve been paying close attention, nowhere does it state that Antioch ruled over Alexandria or that Alexandria was of lesser merit because it ruled over a limited land territory. In fact, each city ruled within its own jurisdiction, not across jurisdictions. Moreover, prior to the Diocletian split, Alexandria had been equal to Antioch. How could Antioch (or Rome) be greater than Alexandria as an apostolic stance if this had not always the case? Obviously, neither Antioch nor Rome were greater.
What happened was an administrative change within the church.
The Protestant—really, any Christian—doesn’t care about bureaucratic administrative changes. Administrative decision making isn’t theological or apostolic, it’s logistical. If the church wants to grant a bishop more or less responsibility, it doesn’t matter because bishops are not in it for personal power or ambition. They are there to humbly serve in any capacity required, not to seek out positions of power and influence.
But not so for the Roman Catholic! Complete authority over the administration of the church is what it means to be the Pope for a Roman Catholic, and the hierarchy of bishops (and their power and influence) is extremely important.
For the Protestant, it doesn’t matter that Milan had greater administrative charge compared to Rome. It doesn’t matter than Antioch had greater administrative charge compared to Alexandria and Jerusalem. Yes, Milan and Antioch had larger lands, but that didn’t make Milan superior to Antioch or Antioch superior to Rome. So it’s not clear at all that this harms the Protestant in any way. But it absolutely and fundamentally refutes Roman Catholicism to its core because Rome did not have primacy. The basis for Protestantism isn’t found in a hierarchy of church leadership.
McCready’s gotcha is basically this:
I’m not impressed. In particular, I’m not fooled by accepting the framing of the so-called three Petrine Sees.
Canon 6 of Nicaea, Continued
First, considered grammatically, the Canon says nothing about a jurisdiction in reference to the Bishop of Rome. Thus, the idea that Alexandria governs Egypt and Libya, while the Bishop of Rome governs some “Roman” land like Italy is read into the Canon, effectively putting words into the Council’s mouth. This does not prove the Roman primacy, but it does help to remind us that this Canon does not deny a Roman primacy either, since no “Roman territory” is explicitly mentioned.
McCready is correct that the Canon does not state that the Bishop of Rome governs “some Roman land like Italy.” The Bishop of Rome did not, in fact, rule the church in Italy, so that is why the Canon did not state that that he did.
We also should not put words into the Council’s mouth by presuming, as McCready does, that it was talking about the whole Roman Empire as the domain of Bishop of Rome. It said nothing of the sort.
Although McCready for some reason did not recognize it, the Canon did, in fact, specify the domain of the Bishop of Rome’s rule: Rome. That’s why he’s called the Bishop of Rome (and not, say, the Bishop of Italy). The signifier indicated explicitly what his jurisdiction was: Rome the city. The boundaries of the city of Rome were urban rather than provincial or diocesan.
In this, Nicaea used the same convention that Athanasius and Cyprian used to identify the Bishop of Rome’s domain as being the city of Rome.
This is an important illustration. The Roman Catholic reads “the Bishop of Jerusalem” and understands the Bishop to rule over Jerusalem. But when he reads “the Bishop of Rome” he understands the Bishop to rule over the whole church. Notice how he weirdly concludes that, considered grammatically, the passage says nothing about the jurisdiction of the Roman Bishop, even as the grammar explicitly identifies the jurisdiction with the city of the Bishop!
Yes, apparently it is nearly impossible to tell what the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome was. If only there was a geographical context clue somewhere in the Canon.
This is a bad case of special pleading.
In English we do something similar. We don’t call the man the Bishop of the Vatican, as if he were some local administrator. Rather, we call him the Pope or Father of the Roman Catholic Church. But the early church did not do this. This did not happen until 382, when the Bishop of Rome, Damasus I, self-declared his own primacy:
“the holy Roman church is given first place by the rest of the churches”
Damasus was the first pope to refer to Rome as the apostolic see, to distinguish it as that established by the apostle St. Peter, founder of the church. In 380 the emperors Gratian in the West and Theodosius in the East declared Christianity as preached by Peter to be the religion of the Roman Empire and defined orthodoxy as the doctrines proclaimed by the bishops of Rome and Alexandria. Rome’s primacy was officially pronounced by a synod called in Rome in 382 by Damasus, who was perhaps wary of the growing strength of Constantinople, which was already claiming to be the New Rome. St. Jerome (c. 342–420) attended the synod and stayed on to become Damasus’s secretary, close adviser, and friend. Damasus commissioned him to revise the Latin translations of the Bible for what subsequently became known as the Vulgate.
And so we find the historical origin of Papal Roman Primacy.
Second, considering the logic of the canon, an interpretation that renders the canon something to the effect, …
…is a non-sequitur fallacy. In other words, it is irrelevant if the Bishop of Rome governs Italy, since that says nothing about who should rule elsewhere and especially what land they should govern. The same can be said if it is taken to mean…
…which brings out the logical fallacy all the more. For a Council that just got done addressing one of the most pernicious heresies of all time, including using precise and deliberate language for the Creed, we should expect a far more reasonable argument in Canon 6 than what Protestants and Eastern Orthodox have to offer.
Again, we are forced to agree: the Canon did not declare that the Bishop of Rome governs Italy.
This disagreement between Roman Catholics and their opponents is like two children arguing over the color of a purple crayon. The Protestant and Orthodox, suffering from protanopia (absent red cones) argue that it is a blue crayon. The Roman Catholic, suffering from trianopia (absent blue cones) argues that it is a green crayon, threatening to murder the Protestant unless he recants his heresy. But they are all wrong: the crayon is actually purple.
The problem is not the quality or reasonableness of the arguments. Given the assumptions that each participant has made, their arguments are (sort of) rock solid. Each side has (sort of) very good reasons to conclude that the crayon is blue or green. But they are all, nevertheless, completely and utterly wrong.
McCready—like virtually everyone who weighs in on this topic—is suffering from historical (rather than color) blindness. And here it is again:
[A]n interpretation that renders the canon something to the effect, …
This is a hopeless and utterly anachronistic historical claim. Nicaea could not possibly have told the Bishop of Alexandria to rule Egypt because the Diocese of Egypt did not exist and never had. It would not even exist for about five more decades. Diocese of Italy, on the other hand, did exist, and the Council of Nicaea made no mention of it!
Pay special attention to the above quote, because it’s more important than anything else here. Without McCready’s presumption of Roman Catholicism, he would not have ever said that. The Council did not assign the region or diocese of Egypt to Alexandria, it “assigned” to it the land contained by the earlier provincial division: Egypt, Libya and Pentapolis. Only much later after the Council of Nicaea was Alexandria given rule over the regional Diocese of Egypt.
But the people making these arguments do not know this because they are ignorant of history. They think the above map was the reality at the Council of Nicaea, when in reality it looked like this:
If you can’t figure out where Alexandria’s and Antioch’s jurisdictions are on that second map, then you understand why the council of Nicaea had to weigh in. And, in the process, you now know more than most scholars and theologians who have weighed in on the issue over the centuries.
Once you know this, you become the child who recognizes two other children yelling “Blue!” and “Green!” over a purple crayon. You know the correct answer, but no matter what you do, you’ll never be able to convince the others of their error.
Now, how should the Roman Catholic to try to get Canon 6 to work? He might conclude that it’s not about the territory at all, but just about a straight exercise of authority. It’s the belief that Alexandria was assigned its territory because by the custom of the past the Bishop of Rome had previously assigned jurisdiction in other cases. The problem? You cannot get to…
…from…
…without a non sequitur, a logical fallacy. McCready complains about his opponents’ non sequitur, but the Roman Catholic position is equally guilty, if not more so. Now consider:
If Canon 6 excludes some kind of “territory of Italy” over which Rome has primacy, what is the correct interpretation? The Catholic interpretation understands the canon to mean something like,
Understood this way, Canon 6 is no longer a non-sequitur; this canon now has some teeth. The appeal of the Nicene Council is to an ancient custom, which surely must have originated on some solid basis (i.e. not accepted simply “because it’s old”), and this basis is none other than the affirmation of the Bishop of Rome. Without question, only the Catholic interpretation of this canon satisfies the intellect and confirms the Faith, especially when we look at it in the context of the canons of the councils immediately following Nicaea which sought to expound upon Canon 6.
As above, you can’t get to…
…from…
…without a non-sequitur-powered leap across the logical cavern. But it is a trivial deduction to say this:
In fact, even without the gloss, the deductive conclusion is still painfully obviously comparing the jurisdiction of Rome with “the like” jurisdiction of Alexandria, since jurisdiction is quite obviously the context of discussion. The only sense in which this sentence makes simple, coherent, logical sense is if the jurisdiction of both Alexandria and Rome is likewise the same, that is, limited in scope. And, given what we know of history, that is precisely what we see.
But, let’s look at a different attempt to make this work.
If “the like” is the right of the Bishop of Rome over the whole church (its domain), then this must mean—as some have argued—that Alexandria was given the jurisdiction over the whole of Egypt (its domain). But of course this is an historical anachronism. It isn’t possible, because there was no entity known as the whole of Egypt to which Alexandria was assigned.
(There was a province of Egypt, but it did not include the whole of what the church came to know as Egypt, such as Pentapolis and Libya)
Let’s try one more time to make something else work.
If “the like” is the right of the Bishop of Rome over the whole church, then this is still nonsensical. Alexandria was not given jurisdiction over Egypt, Libya, and the Pentapolis in particular because “the like” of Rome having no land in particular. The Bishop of Rome must have had some land in particular for which reason Alexandria deserved some land in particular.
Of course, as we’ve seen, it is obvious. The Bishop of Rome was given Rome in particular and the Bishop of Alexandria was given Egypt, Libya, and the Pentapolis in particular. Both of them were given limited jurisdictions in particular within the wider general, not in particular domain of a Metropolitan Bishop (Milan and Antioch, respectively).
It really is that simple.
But, as we’ll see, what came later only muddied the issue.