Truth Unites - Pope Vigilius: A Challenge to Vatican 1

Episode Date: April 14, 2023

In this video I discuss how the conflict between Pope Vigilius and Constantinople II in 553 A.D. represents a challenge to papal supremacy as taught at Vatican 1. ESV Church History Study Bible: https://www.amazon.com/ESV-Church-History-Study-Bible/dp/1433579685/truthunites-20 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/

In this video, I want to offer an explanation as to why many of us outside of the Roman Catholic tradition don't regard papal supremacy as characteristic of the first millennium of church history. And what we'll do is just hone in on this one specific episode, Pope Vigilius and Constantinople II, the fifth ecumenical council, as an illustration of this concern. Sometimes diving in to one particular episode and doing some deep work there can be a helpful window into the broader historical questions. This is a great way of getting into church history, just pick a spot and dive in, you know. Several years back, I went through a phase where I was reading a little bit more in early American history.

I was kind of interested in that. There's some great books in that field, you know, David McCullough biographies and so forth. There's a great book by Joseph Ellis called Founding Brothers, really well-written book. But he picks like seven or so different episodes as a way to tell the whole story. And he's explaining why, and he quotes another historian. He says, it is not by the direct method of scrupulous narration that the explorer of the past can hope to depict a singular epic. If he is wise, he will adopt a subtler strategy. He will row out over the great ocean of material and lower down into it here and there a little bucket with which will bring up to the light of day some characteristic specimen from those far depths to be examined with a careful curiosity.

I like that quote. careful curiosity. But that's kind of what we're doing here. We're going to dive in to 553 and a little before then, turn it over with careful curiosity and say, what does this reveal about the broader dynamics of the early church? So, and basically what I want to argue is that the bishops at Constantinople 2 pretty clearly understand themselves to have authority over and apart from the Pope. Okay? And that is very difficult to reconcile with the definition of papal supremacy at Vatican 1 and then the way it's fleshed out of Vatican 2 a little bit too. Basically, because you have, to put this kind of bluntly, you have an ecumenical council saying we have authority over and apart from the Roman bishop. Okay.

So we'll just plow right in. I'll keep this on track here. We'll have three sections. First, this will be fairly long. I want to clarify the nature of this argument. and of the historical concern. Second, I just want to walk through the story, this dramatic, fascinating, bizarre event

between Pope Vigilius and the bishops at Constantinople II. And then third, I want to sort of summatively state the apparent problem. Before I dive in, I wanted to recommend another resource. People find this helpful when I do this. And lots of people are asking me, where should I start? How do I learn more about church history?

Well, I shared about this a while back, but I want to share about it again. This is the ESV Church History Study Bible. It is such a cool resource. It's got over 20,000 study notes from historical figures. So you're reading along in the book or you're reading along in the Bible. And at the bottom here, it will have all these quotes from historical figures. Athanasius, John Chrysostom, great church fathers like this, later figures, John Bunyan, a lot of the Puritans, Charles Spurgeon, people like this.

And then it's got all so many other things. it's got a glossary of historical figures. I got to do that. That was a real privilege. So if you ever hear somebody in church, I mean, it's pretty detailed. A lot of the people I had to look up, I didn't know who they were. You know, you'll see a quote somewhere from Isaac of Nineveh. You're like, who the heck? Who's Isaac? You know, well, you got this Bible, you just open it up and it's got so many people. It'll give you like a two-sentence biography of who they are. One of my favorite features of it is it has these, this passage in history callouts. So it will show the significance of a particular biblical text in church history,

like Romans 1, 16 and 17 for Luther, for example, this kind of thing. So that's cool. So it's an awesome resource. Just wanted to recommend that. I'm often trying to recommend good resources for studying church history. I'll put a link in the video description. Okay, first section of the video, let's clarify the nature of the concern here from a historical standpoint. In other videos, I've talked about my concerns about the papacy from scripture and from the apostolic fathers, that earliest generation or so of church history. And basically my argument, which is consistent with the general position of scholarship, including Roman Catholic scholarship,

is that not only is the Bishop of Rome, not the Supreme Head of the Church in the year, say, 100 AD, but at that time there isn't one. There isn't a bishop of Rome at all. And I think that's the overwhelming impression from the Shepherd of Hermes, Clement, Ignatius, the New Testament, and so forth. That's a separate topic, though. This video is not about that. I'm just referencing that because I want to clarify what I'm talking about in this video.

And that's I want to talk about after that, once the monarchical episcopate has taken root in the West, where it's a little later in the West than in the East. So, you know, we're talking maybe 120, 130, 140, AD, something like that. From that time, for the next 1,000 years or so, don't have a hard cut off, that what is representative of that span, of church history is not papal supremacy as understood at Vatican 1. What makes this so tricky is that the Bishop of Rome does have a kind of primacy. We're going to use the P words for this. Primacy, preeminence, privilege, I'll have others. Try to clarify where the line of demarcation is here, what we're arguing. So we're saying there's a kind of primacy during that, and it's growing. It's not the same in the third century as in the ninth. It's changing. We're

time. But what's generally representative is a kind of primacy, I'll define that more, but not, as is claimed by Vatican I, supremacy and infallibility. Those qualities represent the end of a long process of kind of expanding centralization and institutionalization of power in the Western Church. And I like to use the word accretion a lot to show that this is a gradual change. It's not overnight. Because sometimes people struggle to understand that claim, Let me give an analogy. Sometimes people think, oh, you know, they think it's so implausible that the office of the papacy could expand that much or something like that. But I would like to propose that this is kind of the way things usually go with human institutions in a fallen world.

This tendency to expand and self-protect over time is extremely common. You can see it in all different kinds of ways. One interesting example is the Office of President of the United States. and the executive branch more generally. Despite being in a much shorter window of time, roughly 250 years, and despite being very clearly defined in the Constitution, I don't think any historian would deny that the powers of this office have pretty significantly increased over time. Okay.

Now, that's not because of a power grab or something that just happens overnight. It's just what happens with institutions a lot of times. They become more formal. They become more institutionalized. they become, and they tend to accrue power over time. Another interesting example would be Roman emperors. So I'm not really saying anything much so far. I'm just trying to clarify the nature of the argumentation here.

When we talk about the papacy as an accretion, what are we talking about? We're not saying there were no popes. I've had people say, well, just study church history. You can see the popes back there. It's like, well, we know there were popes. We know, although that word was used not just for the Roman bishop early on, but we know there were Roman bishops, and we know they were very powerful. What we're saying is it's a slow growth to get to Vatican One style supremacy and infallibility.

Okay, that's the idea here. Now, this raises a question we have to address, and that's, well, what's wrong with a developing papacy? What's wrong with it growing over time? Why is that bad? And how much growth can there be in? Of what kind and so forth? Now, this is a hugely complicated question. You get into development of doctrine, but I'll just address it for our purposes in this kind

of limited way to say, we want to be reasonable and open-minded. definitely there can be changes in the office over time. There can be circumstantial variation. You know, what kind of clothing does the Pope wear? Fine, no, that's fine if that changes. What if there's persecution and the Pope goes into hiding so you don't hear about it? Fine. You know, that's one of the proposals for some periods early on.

Okay, leave room for all of that and much more be as generous as possible. But there are problems with pushing development too far. There are limits to how much this can do for you. And there's several reasons for that, but for our purposes, I'll just mention one of them, and that's the claims of Vatican One. Pastor Eternus, the document at Vatican One defining papal authority and infallibility, claimed that scripture's teaching concerning the institution of the papacy has always been understood by the Catholic Church, and that Peter received the keys of the kingdom, and that he lives in his successors in the Roman Sea, was known in every age, and that Peter's supremacy extends to his teaching is demonstrated by

the constant custom of the church and so forth. There's a few other similar phrases like that. So leave room for reasonable development, but you can't come along and say, well, infallibility is in the second millennium, but not the first millennium. You can't do that, okay? The basic functions of the papacy as are portrayed Vatican One as a perennial dynamic representative generally of church history. You can't go too far with the development. So where exactly how far you can go we don't even need to get into for this video because we're just going to talk about supremacy.

Okay. So here's the question we'll ask is, well, is the claim at Vatican One that this is the constant custom of the church that the Pope's supremacy extends to. is teaching, okay, is that true? Do we have supreme popes throughout church history? Generally speaking, leave a little wiggle room, you know, especially based upon where we have less knowledge. But is that generally true? Now, it's not just the Protestants who give a resounding no to this answer. That is also the position that's generally representative of a lot of the non-Catholic Eastern traditions like Eastern Orthodox, Orients or Orthodox, Assyrian Church of the East,

and of some of the proto-Protestant groups and of the old Catholic churches, the churches that split off at Vatican One, which I'll talk more about. That is not to say that there's no differences in the interpretation that these traditions have. An Eastern Orthodox perspective might see a legitimate primacy of honor for the Bishop of Rome, whereas a Presbyterian, they'll just say it's not a supreme power of jurisdiction, but it's a primacy of honor. a Presbyterian historian might not even see the primacy of honor as having apostolic grounding, which is not to say that they'd see it as evil or bad necessarily, but they're just saying even that doesn't actually go back to the apostles.

So you might have differences. But there's this significant overlap in that all of these different traditions basically say what I'm trying to argue in this video, that papal supremacy has understood the Vatican I is not representative of the first millennium of church history. And what I want to do is just explain that a little bit because there are, as I've been in these conversations, I'm aware that we're frequently accused as Protestants of being skeptics. Like we're just sort of dragging our feet and not accepting something even though it's obvious. It's so weird to me because I sincerely believe in Protestantism with all my heart.

Okay. I'm finite. I'm fallible. I'm not saying I know everything, but I know I'm not lying. You know, but people act like we're skeptics, like there's something over there and we're just not wanting to look at it or something like that. But on an issue like this, it's helpful to see we're not alone in saying this just isn't how church history is. That isn't, that's not what you see in the first millennium. So let me show that by pointing to how much internal resistance there was within the Roman Catholic Church in the years leading up to Vatican 1 and during the proceedings. This might create a little bit of sympathy. So it's not just like, it's not just the Protestants who are dragging their feet and being skeptical of this. Probably the

most famous example is Johann Dullinger. People say his name differently and include other parts of his name as well. But he's a 19th century Catholic theologian and historian who is sort of famous for opposing papal infallibility. He was eventually excommunicated for that position. This was very scandalous because he was like a very old. He was in his 80s, I think, by that point. And he was a very, he'd been kind of a leading Catholic historian, well respected his whole life. You know, it's kind of a fascinating thing at the end of his life then that this happens. And yet his basic grounds for rejecting papal infallibility is understood and defined at Vatican 1 is basically say this is just not church history. The idea that you're going to put infallibility and

located in one person rather than in the church entirely or in counsel, he's just saying that is not how it's ever been. We've never done things that way in the church. And he stated this so strongly. At one point, at the end of his life, a person is writing him a letter, saying, you know, save your soul. Are you really going to risk your everlasting damnation on this? You know, being excommunicated from the church, that's how that's understood at that time. And he's basically writing back to explain, here's why I can't sacrifice my intellect for the sake of my soul. Listen to how he puts it. If I did so in a question, which is for the historical eye, perfectly clear and unambiguous, there would then be no longer for me any such thing.

as historical truth and certainty. I should then have to suppose that my whole life long I had been in a world of dizzy illusion and that in historical matters I am altogether incapable of distinguishing truth from fable and falsehood. It's like he's saying, you know, think how confident he is. I mean, more power to him. That's, you know, I kind of admire him. But, you know, he's willing to hang his everlasting salvation potentially and possibly on this. And his language perfectly clear and unambiguous. He's saying, if papal infallibility is true of church history, then all my life I've been in a dizzy illusion. I can't even tell truth from falsehood. This is one of those things where it's like, stop saying the Protestants are skeptics. We are joining a long and diverse

tradition of dissent. And on grounds that this, well, I won't make the fine points yet. I'm just explaining the nature of the concern. One of the things Dahlinger said, by the way, is basically, he said, why wouldn't this have come up by now? Don't you think this would be pretty important to clarify early on when it is being contested? Because people say, oh, you just wait to define something when it's being contested. No, this was definitely the nature of the role of the Roman bishop, as we shall see in a moment, in relation to other bishops, in relation to councils, etc., that was massively contested. So why just now are we defining this? In another letter, he said, we are still waiting the explanation how it is that until 1800s.

130 years had passed, the church did not formulate into an article of faith, a doctrine which the Pope calls the very foundation principle of Catholic faith and doctrine. Now, Dahlinger is not the only Roman Catholic who regarded the claims of Vatican One as fundamentally ah historical. There's a whole group of minority bishops at Vatican One that had opposed Pastor Eternus. And then there's a majority that's in favor. Pius I.9th is the Pope during Vatican One. a pretty strong personality, to put it mildly.

He kind of dominated the council. But you can read through, there's a great book by John O'Malley, who describes the proceedings and the nature of the argumentation back and forth at Vatican One between the majority bishops and the dissenting minority. And the main argument, though not the only one for the dissenting bishops, is from history. Okay? They're saying this just isn't how it's ever been. We've never had a supreme, infallible guy at the top of the church.

That's not what we see. And here's how O'Malley summarizes the argument of these bishops. The most basic problem with Pastor Eternus was its historical naivety. It took the present situation as the norm for interpreting the past and projected present practice and understanding onto it. Remember that sentence. We're going to come back to that. That's important. Since it ignored differentiation between past and present, it lacked a sense of development from past to present,

even though Newman's essay on the development of Christian doctrine was by then 25 years. old. Now this is basic, this idea that basically Vatican 1, the claims of infallibility and supremacy, it's never been that way. That's just not what we see in the early church. That's the same position of the various Eastern traditions that I mentioned earlier that are outside the Catholic Church. If you want a good summary, this is an older book, but it's still good, the primacy of Peter edited by John Meindorf. This gives Orthodox perspectives on the papacy. Several of them are are pretty good essays. It would just give you a flavor of what they mean when they're talking about a primacy of honor. So there's the same idea that they're arguing, though. You can see the

reactions at the time to Vatican I from the Eastern, especially from the Eastern Orthodox. And they're saying the same thing. It's like, that's just not what we ever see. Now, let's clarify this a little bit further because I want to be respectful. I always try to be respectful even if I'm trying to state my genuine convictions with force, try to be respectful. There's a lot of smart Catholics out there. They're very brilliant people, many of them. They've found ways to try to understand this. And so we have to acknowledge it is a little tricky because the early church in Rome, and then the Roman bishop, does enjoy significance from very early times.

So I mentioned these P words, primacy, privilege, preeminence, prestige, prominence. You can tell them a preacher. I like the alliteration. Okay, so primacy, privilege, preeminence, prestige, prominence. The Bishop of Rome has all of that. The Bishop of Rome is a significant figure. And you can see that growing at times. In my other videos, I've talked about Leo in the fifth century, Gregory the Great. Some of these significant popes, it's like it really is expanding in its functions. There's lots of reasons for that. Okay. One of them is that Rome is the capital of the empire.

I have people push back on that. That really was part of the argumentation. Read Canon 28 of Chalcedon. That's just part of the explicit thinking is that that is significant. And then it's the place of the martyrdom of Peter and Paul. It's a flagship church, a bastion of orthodoxy for several centuries early on. It's a very significant church. And the bishop comes into this stature. Okay. So he receives appeals. His approval is sought for ecumenical councils, which is not the as saying it's necessary, okay? But there's all kinds of ways we can find. So it's not hard to go back into church history and find significance for the Roman bishop. Here is the point that must be grasped. General prominence doesn't entail supremacy and infallibility. And those are the specific

qualities that Vatican 1 asserted was characteristic of church history. Yet people stretch. So that's how, That's my fundamental concern about the way Roman Catholics will argue for the papacy from church history. They'll stretch from general significance to supremacy and infallibility, but you really can't do that. They're not the same thing. Okay. So, and this happens in all kinds of ways from Ignatius saying the church in Rome presides in love. It's a great example of a sort of proof text, so to speak, that is actually very weak

if you don't just assume something in advance. The language is ambiguous. look at the second occurrence of the word presides right after that. Comparable, comparably praiseworthy things are said by Ignatius of the other churches, like especially the Ephesian church. You know, he doesn't mention any bishop there. There's so many ways in which that's like just doesn't hit the target. But people will appeal to that. I've talked about Cyprian. People will appeal to language in Cyprian, but it's a stretch. It doesn't, you know, Cyprian doesn't even think that the chair of Peter is just for Rome. He sees that as the charter for every bishop.

I've talked about that. So people stretch the data. They find these generally prominent things about Rome and the Bishop of Rome, and they stretch that into supremacy and infallibility. But if you set the target as Vatican One does, the evidence just doesn't hold up. People infallibility, for example, not the target of this video, but I will mention, like the general position in the scholarship on this, people may not know this, is that it doesn't explicitly. emerged until the 13th century, and even that it's enormously controversial for several centuries. It's not adopted at the Council of Trent, partly for that reason. Let me quote a Roman Catholic scholar.

I'm only going to be quoting Roman Catholic scholars during this video. Probably one of the seminal texts on this issue, Brian Turney's book on the development of papal infallibility, the final couple sentences almost where he summarizes his argument, he says this. There is no convincing evidence. the papal infallibility formed any part of the theological or canonical tradition of the church before the 13th century. The doctrine was invented in the first place by a few dissident Franciscans because it suited their convenience to invent it. Eventually, but only after much initial reluctance, it was accepted by the papacy because it suited the convenience of the popes to accept it.

Again, he's a Roman Catholic scholar. So, you know, look, here's the deal. So if you want to throw that scholar under the bus, I often find the, at the popular level, people throw the scholars under the bus a lot. They say, all they're bad, you know, fine, but then say they're skeptics too. Don't just say the Protestants are skeptics. Say they're skeptical. See what I'm saying?

Because what I'm trying to show is the nature of the Protestant concern is not unique to us. Now what I want to show that with in this video is supremacy. And what must be understood is what that word means. What is papal supremacy? Well, the Vatican 1, it is stipulated that the Pope has an immediate and universal power of jurisdiction over the whole church, and it frames that in terms of obedience. Quote, both clergy and faithful of whatever right and dignity, both singly and collectively, are bound to submit to this power by the duty of hierarchical subordination and true obedience. Now, it applies that not just to faith and morals, but to the government and discipline of the entire church.

So, for example, take how do popes relate to ecumenical councils, according to, contemporary Roman Catholic teaching. Well, at Lumengentium, a dogmatic constitution promulgated at Vatican II, this is how the relationship is defined. It is the prerogative of the Roman pontiff to convoke these councils, that's ecumenical councils, to preside over them and to confirm them. It further stipulates that although the Pope and the other bishops are joined in a union with one another, his supremacy is such that they do not have that power apart from his consent. So in speaking of how the bishops share in his jurisdiction over the church, it says this power can only be exercised or can be exercised only with the consent of the Roman pontiff. Okay. So that's giving

a sense of what supremacy is. And the nature of the argument I would like to make is that that isn't true to church history. For example, none of the seven ecumenical councils were convoked by the Roman bishop. None of them were presided over by a Roman bishop. It was always the emperor. In some cases, he wasn't even invited and he didn't send legates like at Constantinople 1. And people can say, well, that was just a unique situation or he had that power, but he didn't exercise that power and so forth. At some point with historical judgments, we have to yield to plausibility. Really? You're going to say the pope has... prerogative to convoke and preside over ecumenical councils, but he just never does it,

even in the times of dire need. Okay? But here's this more specific and even more emphatic and decisive problem. On several occasions throughout the first millennium, it is clear, I would say, I'm going to use that adjective. It is clear that the bishops gathered in counsel considered themselves to have authority over and apart from the Roman bishop. And that stands in contrast to the strand of teaching at Vatican 2 that says bishops have no power apart from his consent. Okay. And so it's to the end of that that I now want to go into the second stage of this video and talk about this conflict between Pope Vigilius and the bishops gathered at Constantinople

2, the 5th Ecumenical Council. I think this episode illustrates this concern dramatically. Okay. Vigilius. Let's talk about Pope Vigilius. Pope from 537 to 555. This is a fascinating time. This is in the aftermath of Chalcedon where there's kind of all this echoing out from that council about Christology. There's all these things still being worked out.

And there's still a hope for reunion between the Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian Christians, this massive painful split that happens after the fourth Ecumenical Council. And so the Byzantine Emperor Justinian, who's going to feature prominently throughout the rest of this video, drags up these three older figures who were long since dead. I'll put their names up on the screen and starts pressuring the major patriarchates to anathematize them and certain of their writings. And this is called the three chapters controversy. The basic goal, we're not going to get into all the Christology and all the issues here. The basic goal is he's trying, it's political. He wants to reunite the non-Chalcedonians with the Chalcedonians. So that's the over, he's trying to kind of

give an olive branch to the non-Chalcedonians. That's kind of the, basic idea here. Now we won't get into all the Christology. It is really fascinating. There's this fascinating debate between the Miophysite or non-Chalcedonian Christians about whether Christ's body was perfect from birth or from his resurrection. That's something I've done some work in. In theological retrieval for evangelicals, I talk about the transfiguration. And I'm kind of arguing for what's a little bit more of an Eastern view that basically there's more organic continuity between Christ's body from his birth to his resurrection. And basically the transfiguration is revelatory rather than this unusual moment.

Like that's when you see the real Christ, you know. So I'm fascinated in all that stuff. I remember reading Athanasius. There's actually a couple passages where it sounds like he thinks Jesus didn't get sick. That's the kind of question that is coming up here. you know, what was the, so what people, what's helpful to understand is it's not like, well, do you affirm that there are two natures in one person, or do you not sign on the dotted line and that's all we're debating? There's a whole spectrum of options. There's more radical meaphysites and then more moderate ones. There's all these other Christological issues that get affected by those debates. So it's really fascinating. But our interest here is how this plays out for Vigilius and the rest of the church and what we can learn from that. A word about Pope Fijilius. We don't want to demonize him. We don't want to whitewash history and downplay things. We also don't want to demonize someone. Because Vigilius ends up flip-flopping several times, as we shall see, it's easy to

accuse him of cowardice. But I actually don't think Faglius is just a coward. Because there's other times where he doesn't, where he doesn't yield the pressure. Nor is he just a purely evil person. You know, it's easy to look at that and see that way. But it's complicated. You see his humanity at times. He seems to have been maybe a more sensitive person. There's one of his letters. He writes a, he's frequently betrayed by his subordinates.

And one time he writes a letter to one of his deacons that betrayed him, and you can tell how hurt he is. You know, it's kind of fascinating. It's like, these are real people. Like, they got their feelings hurt, you know? and so you want to try to see his humanity and not just but but the thing is just to be historically accurate we want to also appreciate this is a really dark time in history this is really grisly and brutal as we shall see and Vigilius is not he he is a very well let's say let's say

it like this he's a very opportunistic and ambitious person okay the way you see that in the way he gets to be Pope basically to just not sugarcoat it at all. He thinks he's going to be Pope, then he isn't. So he has, he drudges up this false charge against the guy who does get to be Pope, Silvarius, and has him deported into exile in this tiny remote town in the middle of nowhere. So now he's Pope. Now the bishop of that tiny town takes up the cause of Silvarius appeals to Emperor Justinian. Emperor Justinian is alarmed by this, sends him back for a fair trial. So now does Vigilius give him a fairer? trial? No. As soon as his ship lands, he sends him off to another exile, this time on an island,

and then Silvarius dies there in a couple of months because of malnutrition. And so you think about that. I mean, that's about as dark as it gets in terms of how you get to be Pope. Here's how Eamund Duffy, who's a Catholic scholar who wrote a history of the popes published by Yale University Press. I told you I'm only going to quote Catholic scholars in this. It says, to all intents and purposes one pope and he the son of a pope had been deposed and murdered by another because Silvarius was the son of a prior pope. So anyway, none of this disproves the papacy. This is not an argument that has anything to do with supremacy. Supremacy is not saintliness. I get that. But for historical accuracy, it's going to be really important to understand the kind of person

Vigilius is to try to trace out why he's acting like he is. But he isn't just a coward and he's not just, you know. So basically here's what happens. Not to go into, to get to the main point. Justinian is pressuring for the anathemas on the three chapters. Pope Vigilius initially resists because in the Latin West, there's massive, people do not like this idea. So he's arrested and taken to Constantinople. Some people think he faked his own arrest to protect himself. But anyway, whether he's there in Constantinople. After a while, he sees the benefits of going along with his plan, so he flops and writes a solemn,

condemnation of the three chapters, but at least to this massive outcry in the West. And so Justinian allows Vigilius to retract his condemnation, but they secretly agree to renew it at the opportune time. Vigilius and Justinian, the Pope and the Emperor, are constantly making these secret deals. It's just a brutal relationship. They don't trust each other, but they're trying to use each other. On August 15, 550, Vigilius takes a secret oath over the Gospels and and over a nail from the passion of Christ to do everything in his power to secure the condemnation of the three chapters. And you can read about the text of that oath in Richard Price's translation of the Acts of Constantinople II and other documents related to the three chapters controversy.

This is what I've been reading through lately. Price summarizes the deal. He's another Roman Catholic scholar. He summarizes the deal as a deal between gangsters. I mean, this is why I love some of these scholars, they don't sugarcoat it or downplay it. They're just honest. You know, it is pretty dark. So, this is all what leads to the Fifth Ecumenical Council. It's just scandalous the way politics drives so much at this time. If you want to know the brutality that results from the politicization of the church at this time, one example is the bargaining of anathemas. There's one point where Justinian is trying to sort of get, he's trying to sort of court the non-Chalcedonians. And so he's basically bargaining, like, who do I need to anathematize to get you to the table?

You know? And then Justinian just drives the counsel. He just hands them the script and they obey. He just completely determines what happens. I regard Constantinople 2 pretty negatively, not because I disagree with the Christology reflected in the canons, but because of the many things. The politicization of anathemas is one of them. And on originism and all kinds of things, It's pretty ugly. So I also think it's tragic in that it cemented the division. There were still hope. Honestly, I really believe the division from Chalcedon could have been gotten over.

If people had been patient and listened and, you know, but the politics and polemics of the time just drove it. And so and Constantinople, too, cemented that. There's no chance for reunion after you'll see why. It's so brutal. So, yeah. Constantinople II is a very complicated legacy. That's the big question in the scholarship is, does ecumenical council number five clarify ecumenical council number four, or does it confuse ecumenical council number four? And that's a big debate.

But yeah, so this is a pretty ugly stuff in terms of just the persecution of dissidents and other things like this. Essentially, what happens is Justinian thinks that opportune, time that they agreed upon for taking action comes sooner than Pope Vigilius does. And so conflict breaks out between the two again, and Vigilius is basically functionally put in house arrest. And then that's when Constantinople II is convoked by Justinian. And Pope Vigilius refuses to attend and opposes the outcome of the council. And he writes another treatise of his own on the three chapters called the First Constitutum. And this is his final solemn rejection of condemning the three chapters.

He critiques some of the theology of some of those figures, but he rejects the condemnation put forward at Constantinople II. So essentially what happens is Justinian releases a kind of dossier of the secret correspondences and dealings he's had with Vigilius, and just totally discredits him. And the council condemns the three chapters. They condemn Vigilius as well, removing his name from the diphtics of the council, which would be read aloud during the liturgy.

It's kind of a functional act of excommunication. They make it clear we're not cutting ourselves off from your office, but you as a person. We are excommunicating functionally. Let me just read aloud from the climactic section of the acts of the seventh session where they do this. They're referencing his refusal to come to the council, since therefore Vigilius has acted in this way, we have pronounced that his name is alien to Christians and is not to be read aloud out in the sacred diphtics. About six months after that, because of his utterly being discredited, he flip-flops again.

And this time he does condemn the three chapters in what we call the second constitutum. And so in the aftermath of that, it's just chaos. It's just chaos. It's like shambles, you know, because then he dies soon after that. So in the west, like in some various parts of the west, like northern, Italy, parts like near Croatia, there's schism that lasts for like 150 years. It's just really bad. So that's the story. Third section of the video, why is this a problem?

I want to address people supremacy from this, not infallibility, but let me just comment on infallibility quickly. This is the one that usually comes up. So I will briefly address that. And it's for good reasons because basically it seems like the first constitutum, fits what would be commonly accepted criteria for what constitutes infallible teaching. It sure looks like he intends to teach by virtue of his authority on a question of faith and morals to the whole church. Here's how the first constitutum concludes. If you had been alive at the time, how would you have understood this coming from the Pope? Now that this had been determined by ourselves with all and

every care and caution, we enact and decree that no one with ecclesiastical dignitary, and rank is permitted to hold or write or produce or compose or teach anything about the oft-mentioned three chapters, contrary to what we have declared and enacted in this present decree or to raise any further inquiry subsequent to the present definition. Okay. Now, Richard Price comments on this and calls the First Constitum a decree on the three chapters that claimed to be final and definitive, excluding any further discussion on the subject. Later, he comments on the conclusion of the document by saying he could not have stated

more unambiguously that his decree was final and left no room for discussion. Okay, here's the problem. The exact same thing is true of the second constitutum. It's equally final and decisive, which he wrote six months later and takes the opposite view. I laughed out loud a bit at this sentence in price. It is unusual to have a debate in which two of the lengthiest contributions arguing for diametrically opposed positions are written by the same person. It is stranger still when both contributions claim to give the final and definitive ruling closing the debate for all time. So it seems like about as clear a problem for papal infallibility as you could sum it up. But here's why I don't want to go into that.

There are ways you can get around us. Some of them are better than others. Some people could say it's not infallible. That just gets to a point where you say, I mean, my gosh. It's like, how can you ever know when something's infallible or not? Others will say, well, it wasn't really fresh doctrine. It was just a reiteration of Chalcedon, the first constitutive. But I don't really buy that.

There are some particular theological claims made, and I just think that's limiting papal infallibility too much. Even if it's reiterative in nature, he's still teaching on matters of faith and doctrine. So I don't think that's a great response either. I think if you want to get around papal infallibility, I think the best way to do it is just to say, Vigilius is under duress when he writes the first constitutum, and maybe the second. So, you know, he, so in other words, it's inadmissible as a case study because of that unique

circumstance. And for that reason, I'm not going to press the point about infallibility. He was not being like tortured, like put on the racks or anything, but he's under psychological duress for sure. I mean, when he's first arrested, he goes to flee to a church in constitutional. Constantinople for protection and the imperial guards come in and by his hair and clothes drag him out of the church. Vigilius is grabbing onto the altar and it falls down and almost lands on him, according to the testimonies there, as he's getting dragged out. It's terrible. It's just scandalous, you know, to treat the

Pope like that. So it's terrible. And then when he's put under house arrest, it's, you know, there are reports of his servants being instructed to harass him and mistreat him. So if they don't maltreat him, they're removed. So there's things like this. And then you just don't know all that's going on. You know, who knows what happened in that house? So when you put somebody in a pressure cooker situation like that, I can't imagine the stress he's under. You know, you can say he's under duress. So that's a way you can make this. I will still say, even if you get around it like that, there's this practical question of whether papal infallibility really has the clarifying positive effect that it's purported to have. So often we're told, you know, we have to have an infallible interpreter.

If you just have the scripture, you know, then things are unclear. But just in real life, in real time, the way things actually fall out time and time and time again, it's just as confusing to try to interpret the interpreter and try to figure out like what's infallible and what isn't. And, you know, it just seems like it's like over and over the irreformable gets reformed. So then it feels like we move the goalposts after the fact and say, well, it wasn't really irreformable or we find some other, you know, it just it feels a little evasive at times. But I'm not going to press that. If you want to say papal infallibility is not necessarily at issue here, I won't press that point. Because it is such a unique circumstance.

Here's what I do think is more decisive. The issue of papal supremacy as it is reflected upon by the understanding, of the other bishops and by their theological argumentation at an ecumenical council. Now, even here, you know, people will try to find a way around this, but this is a real problem, in my opinion. Here's the simple fact. And this is why I take this as a characteristic specimen that you don't have supremacy as defined a Vatican 1 as the constant custom of the church, as is claimed at Vatican 1 is really not how the early church functioned. For all his significance, the Roman bishop didn't have the powers that Vatican 1 says. Because here we're

you have is a pope and an ecumenical council in a standoff. He's formally teaching the opposite of what they are deliberating on and they are teaching. There's the ecumenical council that says A, and then there's the pope that says not A in this solemn declaration. And what's the understanding at the time of who wins? The bishops gathered at Constantinople II not only assert their authority over his theological edict and even disciplining him, excommunicating him functionally, but they exhibit no awareness that such an act opposes prior precedent or is controversial or anything like that. The theological reasoning they employ during the council seems to amount to an assertion that conciliar authority trumps papal authority. Here's how another Roman Catholic historian,

Klaus Schatz, who brought a history of papal primacy, put it, Constance and Ople Tune not only condemned those three chapters, but even excommunicated the Pope. This was a unique case of an ecumenical council setting itself clearly against the Pope. The council got around the papal opposition by referring to Matthew 1820. No individual could therefore forestall the decision of the universal church. Now you see the reference to Matthew 18 there, that's where two or three are gathered in my name, The bishops are quoting that verse. They're quoting Ecclesiastes 4-9, which says two are better than one.

This is their reasoning. They're saying, we are multiple, you are singular, therefore we trump you in power. We are in union as a group of bishops, and therefore our authority surpasses yours. That is the argument that they make in the acts. And they certainly don't exhibit any awareness that they require his consent for their deliberation. for their theological conclusion for any of their acts. Now, when Pope Pelagius later accepts Constantinople II, which is also political,

there's no sense in anybody that, like, now it's like, okay, now it's valid. Now this, you know, it's like, no, on the basis of their own authority, they pronounce the Pope's name alien to other Christians. Their term. In fact, they even take offense at his unwillingness to yield. to their authority. Immediately after the council, there's a Miafizziah theologian named John Falaphanus who says, no ecclesiastical canon has instituted and no imperial law has enacted that the bishop of Rome is autocrat over the whole world. The arrogance of the Romans has been manifested in our

days in the council that met at Constantinople for the examination of the three chapters. Then he goes on to talk about his unwillingness to come to the council was pride, is what John is saying. And he's saying there's no basis for him to think he has authority to do that. Now, even though Kashtenople 2 is directed very much by Justinian, simple fact is, this is an ecumenical council. So Roman Catholics believe it's infallible. Although, again, you get into that and the ambiguities come up of, well, this part is and this part isn't and all that. Nonetheless, what do you do with this? You know, they seem to be making a claim of their own authority apart from and over the Pope. That isn't the understanding reflected at Vatican

2, for example. So, or Vatican 1. By the way, that's the Ecumenical Council, but even local councils. You know, there's three years before Constantinople 2, there's a council in Carthage and the North African bishops declare the Pope excommunicate. So, and if you, so if you, here's the thing, if you listen to the reasoning, the theology behind their actions against Pope Faglius. You don't get an understanding that is reconcilable with Vatican 1 or Vatican 2, in my opinion. I don't know how to jam those things together. It's like a, they just don't fit, you know? The first millennium just doesn't look like you've got this primacy of power that Vatican 1 is talking about. That's why I think people like Dollinger and others are saying

it's never been this way. You can't invest that much power in one person. Okay. Now, summing up, finishing off, if you want to wriggle out of this, I'm sure there's a way to do it, you know. Historical knowledge is always complicated, but at a certain point, I think you have to say, look, what's the most plausible? What's compelling? You know, can you understand this is an explanation of why we don't accept these claims of Vatican 1? Can you understand that? It just doesn't look like that's what you have in church history. Someone might say, well, oh, but this is a unique situation. Constance and Noble 2 is kind of a one-of-a-kind situation. Okay, then tell me which of the first seven ecumenical councils was convoked by a Roman bishop, which of them was presided over

by a Roman bishop. Where do we see popes pronouncing infallible dogmas in the early church? Where do we see that kind of authority and power? And usually when those cases come up, they're kind of late in the, usually early medieval sometimes, and it's usually very inferential in the reasoning. It's like, well, there's something really significant said about the Bishop of Romans, so things like infallibility are then spun out of that. But it's not explicit until, as we said, 13th century for infallibility. So bottom line, to put it as blunt as I can, Vatican One tells a tale about church history that just isn't what we see. It's just not what you see back in the early church. And so I'm offering this in a spirit of explanation for why a lot of us

would look at church history and say, look, this is enormously complicated. The church is constantly changing. I mean, we don't have the Roman Empire anymore. So, you know, all the rules have changed in so many ways multiple times over throughout the church. As Protestants, we think the church changes a lot. And that, you know, but, and there's definitely huge significance for the Roman bishop. But the one thing you don't seem to have is one guy at the top to which the rest of the church submits by the duty of hierarchical subordination and true obedience. You just don't see that. It's just not true to history. So that's my explanation for why we don't accept papal supremacy from that time period in question that I've mentioned. Hope this is useful in the dialogues we have in explaining the other side.

Because a lot of people are really curious. Like, why don't you accept? And again, we get the charge of being skeptics. I'm like, no, we're not skeptics. We're just not convinced. We just don't think it's true, you know. So let me know what you think. In the comments, keep it cordial, but let's talk.

Let's argue. Let's work on it. And thanks for watching the video. This will be my last video on Protestant stuff for a while. I got some other ones I'm really excited about coming out on the next couple of weeks and then I'm traveling at the end of this month. So probably won't have anything come out the last week of April. You'll see this after Easter.

I was going to say he has risen, but you'll see this. I didn't want to put this out during the sacredness of Holy Week. It's better to save our arguments for other times and just during Holy Week focus on what we agree upon. All right. Thanks for watching everybody. God bless. See you next time.