Truth Unites - Does Pope Leo I Validate Vatican 1?

Episode Date: April 18, 2023

Does the pontificate of Leo the Great in the fifth century validate the Roman Catholic Church's claims about papal supremacy? In this video, interacting with my friend Erick Ybarra, I highlight what must be reviewed to answer this question. Check out Erick's interview on the excellent channel Gospel Simplicity: https://youtu.be/G39_Jf2PYnM Truth Unites is a mixture of apologetics and theology, with an irenic focus. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) serves as senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Ojai. SUPPORT: Become a patron: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites One time donation: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/truthunites FOLLOW: Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://gavinortlund.com/  

Hey everybody, about a week ago I put out a video on Pope Vigilius arguing against Vatican 1 and the claims of the papacy in the contemporary Roman Catholic Church. And that came out at about the same time as a great interview on the channel Gospel Simplicity, which is run by a friend of mine named Austin Suggs. Check out his channel. If you don't know of it, you probably do. If you follow mine, you probably know of him. And that was with Eric Yubara, who's another friend of mine and great guy. This is a total coincidence he came out at the same time. Now, so I'm sitting down to film this video, which is going to be a very quick contribution on Pope Leo,

who's also come into these conversations as we try to understand the papacy in the first millennium. And right as I'm sitting down to film this, I see on Facebook that he's responding to the Vigilius video. So we've got a lot of stuff going back and forth here. So I'll look forward to watching that video on Vigilius. In the meantime, this is going out on Leo. We'll keep the conversation going, whatever way is best. I'm sure we'll be dialoguing. By the way, Eric is a fantastic representative of the other side.

He's a great person and a fair-minded thinker, intelligent. He's not into triumphalism, so I really enjoy our dialogues. So check out his channel. This would be necessarily brief. My purpose with this is I don't want to try to settle things with Pope Leo. I just wanted to kind of flag something for further review, if that makes sense. Think of this as putting the gauling. golf ball on the tea, not actually hitting it. I was trying to think of different metaphors to

help people understand how limited the purpose of this video is. I just want to basically highlight something that I want people to be aware of and thinking about, because in a previous video, I've used the episode with Pope Leo, also similar to Pope Vigilius as a counter-testimony to the claims of Vatican One. By the way, I'm expecting a call any minute from the car repair shop. I always, I hate, don't you hate that feeling? I hate that feeling when it's like, how much am I going to owe? Oh, and I get a text right here. So I'm going to be right back. Okay, now I can put my phone on silent. That feels good. And the age of miracles is not over. I have a good experience with the mechanic, nothing major. It's amazing. Isn't it? It's the great feeling. See, I always,

I always feel insecure because I don't know a lot about cars. So you always get this like, you know, oh, it's actually $800 because you need all these new things. and you're like, I don't know if they're lying or not, you know, but this is a great place. And so it's always nice to get a call and it's like cheaper than you expect because that's usually not how it works. So anyway, so that's good news. But plowing ahead from that to Pope Leo here, real quick, real quick video. Basically, what I want to explain, I want to try to explain why this issue is complicated and

kind of what are the things that need to be worked through to see both sides of it with Pope Leo and how Pope and how his pontificate speaks to the question of papal supremacy. On the one hand, it's obviously not hard to anyone who gets into the literature on this to see why people look at Pope Leo and say this is very strong for revealing a first millennium papacy that looks like Vatican 1. He's a very significant pope and there's this, you know, he understands himself to be the successor of Peter and to have a responsibility and care for the church. on that basis. So that's very strong. But then you'll hear language about how he's the

authoritative interpreter of the Apostle Peter. The peace of the church issues forth from subjection to him, you know, like really strong. So you can see, you know, you can get swept off your feet from all of that. But here's what I want to point out that needs to be reviewed. There is a conflict that transpires between Pope Leo and the other bishops at Chalcedon after the council concerning one of its canons. And it's a fascinating little episode that kind of cracks open some of the complexities at play in this debate about the papacy. Two of them that I'll mention. One of them is the basis for Roman primacy. So this is a longstanding dispute. Is the basis for Roman primacy that it's the capital city or that it's the Sea of Peter or both or something else?

But usually those two things, you know, is it imperial or is it Petrine? You call this the principle of accommodation versus the principle of apostolicity. And that's an ongoing debate. This canon is going to speak to that. The second issue that it kind of cracks open is the nature and extent of Roman primacy. Because at the same time, and this is why the patristic data is complicated,

because you get this exalted language about Rome that a Roman Catholic advocate can appeal to. But then you have, it's actually very tricky, because then you'll have these times where bishops who disagree, with the Bishop of Rome just disregard him. And so sometimes it's hard to tell what does this language mean and what kind of primacy are we talking about here?

Well, Canon 28 of the Council of Chalcedon speaks to both of those issues. It's basically following up on Canon 3 of Constantinople 1, which had designated that Constantinople is the new Rome and thus has a position of honor after Rome. And here's what it says, and I'll leave this up on the screen for a while so you can take a look at it, I'll explain why I've underlined and italicized some things, we issue the same decree and resolution concerning the prerogatives of the Most Holy Church of the same Constantinople, New Rome. The fathers rightly accorded prerogatives to the sea of older Rome since that is an imperial city, and moved by the same purpose, the 150 most devout bishops, that's talking about

Constantinople I, apportioned equal prerogatives to the Most Holy See of New Rome, reasonably judging that the city which is honored by the imperial power and Senate and enjoying privileges equaling older imperial Rome should also be elevated to her level in ecclesiastical affairs and take second place after her. Now there's two issues here. I'll leave the quote up for you to see. One of them is what I italicized concerning the basis for Roman primacy.

And it essentially looks like you're getting an appeal to the principle of accommodation here, not apostolicity. In other words, it's about being the capital of the end. empire, not being the C of the Apostle Peter, and that's the basis for it. The second issue is what I underlined, and that's this language about equal prerogatives and equal privileges. And so it looks like the thinking here is more like a Roman primacy of honor, so that Constance and Noble One is then second place after her. You see that language there in that way, but has the same level in ecclesiastical affairs, the same equality of prerogatives and privileges. And so that's why the

Eastern patriarchs in the 19th century, following up on Vatican 1, opposed that counsel on the basis of this episode with Leo, saying, look, this was a primacy of honor, not a supremacy of jurisdiction and power. Now, I'm not trying to close down this discussion. This is enormously complicated. And I think any honest scholar looking at the evidence can kind of feel like, boy, it's not immediately obvious how you take everything. It's almost like the evidence in different directions is sort of overlapping. You know, it's like you can take this piece of evidence and it's shoving over this way. But then you can take this piece of evidence and it's shoving over this way and they're not, it's not all perfectly crystal clear and what you do with all of this. So I'm not trying to close this all down.

My goal here is just to put all that out on the table and kind of say, for people following this discussion, working through this issue, these are the kinds of things we've got to work through. And I haven't had the chance yet, apologies for this, to read Eric's book on this. So he may well have terrific answers for this. Knowing him, he's probably got great treatment of all this. So I'm not trying to close the discussion down, but I'm trying to say, hey, we got to get into this. This episode with Leo is complicated and it actually cracks open the complexities. I think here's the deal.

Leo is a bit irritated, to put it like that, with this canon. He doesn't accept it. He rejects this, okay? and he sort of, I think he takes offense at the principle of accommodation as though that's the basis for his authority. And he sees this as a slight not only to the Sea of Rome, but also to Antioch and Alexandria as well, because these churches have apostolic pedigree. And he's saying, you can't diminish that. That goes back to Nicaa. So he's saying that's already been settled.

So that's his concern. However, ultimately, this canon was accepted in the east over and against Leo's protestations. And so, you know, what a lot of people say is, look, the bishops are happy to appeal to the authority of the bishop of Rome when they agree. But when they don't agree, they don't, you see? Here's how there's a great scholar named George Democopoulos. He's one that I, he's a great patristic scholar, he's one that I've engaged with a lot in my work on Gregory the Great. And Ed Sitchinsky has this great book, try to get it without scraping by the mic here, called the Papacy and the Orthodox. I've interviewed Dr. Saczynski on my channel.

This is a great book and he's a fantastic scholar. In this book, he quotes from an email, that's when you know you're officially at scholarly status, when you quote the other scholars by your emails with them. But here's how Democopoulos puts it in their email. With reference to the Council of Chalcedon, he says, while the fathers were willing to declare Peter has spoken through Leo as a rhetorical justification for their own Christology,

the very same fathers rejected the fundamental claims of Leo's ecclesiastical reach. Okay. Again, I'm not trying to say, okay, therefore, it's all over. I mean, I think I'll listen to Eric's video on Vigilius, and then with this, too, I'm sure he's got answers to this, I'm sure, and we can keep talking. But I'm trying to say for people following this along, you've got to get into this stuff with Leo. You can't just, I think my concern is people are going to hear the strong language about Leo and Peter's speaking through Leo and so forth and just kind of say, okay, neat and tidy,

wrap a bow around it, you know, it's all over. But actually, here's what I would say. I actually think this is true. The tensions that develop, that ultimately erupt into the split between what we call Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic, reverberate back in history. I'm so animated with my hands. And I got this bigger mic now. I've got to be careful. They reverberate back way early. It's astonishing how early, these kind of tension points settle in between East and West and the church. And so it's certainly, you see that with Leo. You see that with this episode with Pope Leo. So as a Protestant, I would just say you see all of this as the church developing and changing. And we don't necessarily have to see all these developments as definitive and final and so forth. And a lot of

this is like historically unique. You know, a lot of this is happening in the Roman Empire. And so you're not going to say this is like this once for all change that then rumbles on forever and so forth. But at the very least, at the very least with Pope Leo, we've got to get into Canon 28 in this whole episode. And I think there is this, I think a good case that can be made that this, the way the other bishops are responding to Leo is not as strong as like what I put forward with Vigilius, but it's a similar kind of thing where you see like, oh, okay, this is different from Vatican 1 because the other bishops are happy to simply at times disregard what the Roman bishop thinks and says and makes appeals for. So again, more complexity here, but I'm trying to put that

on on the table and we'll keep talking about all this stuff. I'll watch, I'll look forward to watching Eric's video tomorrow and we'll keep this conversation going. I promised I'd keep it brief, so I will. Thanks for watching. Let's keep talking about this and have an awesome day, everybody. We'll see you next time