Conclusion

The last decades of the 3rd century were peaceful and largely uneventful. The church enjoyed the peace granted by Galerian's edict of tolerance (AD 260). Diocletian was reorganizing the empire but was soon to launch the fiercest persecution, which was eventually followed by a general peace in 313. From AD 67 thirty-one bishops had sat on the see of Peter, some of them outstanding, others less, some well known, others almost unknown. During the intervening 280 years the church had expanded to include over 1.000 communities, unevenly spread throughout the empire and beyond its borders to the East. What originally was just a message had grown into a movement that had won freedom and imperial recognition, and soon was to turn into Rome's single most powerful moral driving force. The church had withstood challenges from without and conquered serious crises from within. Local communities had organized evangelization and catechesis, charity and liturgy: baptismal rites, some outline for eucharistic prayers, which were largely spontaneous: the first elements of a liturgical year were taking shape. Ties and communications with other churches had been set up. There was a canon of inspired scriptures, some symbols of faith and a primitive theology. By the end of the 2nd century Christians were able to look around and really feet their religion was a universal one.

The process had been a gradual one. The progress had not been even. The churches had not had a chance yet to come together and give themselves some form of unitary organization. This was to be done by the great councils of the 4th and 5th century, notably Nicaea (325). Constantinople (381) and Chalcedon (451). The one symbol of unity and its driving force at this time was Rome. The vitality of other churches had spilled over the surrounding areas: Antioch for Syria, Carthage for N. Africa, Alexandria for Egypt. Rome stood out among them. The most prominent among the apostles, Simon-Peter, had worked and died there. Between the years 80-100 the NT communities had recognized in him the rock on which Christ was building his church, the leader to whom he had given specific authority to bind and loose, the shepherd to whom his flock had been entrusted. Him He had strengthened, so that he might in turn stengthen his brethren, and, in time, give his life for them, in a mission that the church was to carry out to the ends of time (Mt 28:18). If this appears like a grand role, perhaps we may remember that it was the later NT writings that began to cast Peter in an idealized role (30).

Before claiming any authority, the bishops of Rome had picked up the heritage and had gone about expanding it, well aware, from as early as the end of the 1 st century, that they were acting with an authority that had come from Christ through the apostles. At least twelve out of thirty-one bishops of Rome gave up their lives or were exiled in the course of their mission. They stood for and promoted unity and communion within the church, defended orthodoxy at home and abroad, intervened in the life of other communities, correcting, encouraging, or excommunicating, if necessary. In AD 180 Irenaeus clearly saw the bishops of Rome as 'successors' of Peter, and sort of crystalized his view in a 'rule of faith' he put forward as a point of reference for orthodoxy. As a matter of fact, they exercised a power which in some respects was what later came to be called primatial and juridical. The word of Christ to Peter was unfolding its prophetical role and was gradually being realized in an incarnated church, herself growing, expanding and getting organized (31).

This is what the documents point to. Yet the picture needs some pinpointing. Was there or was there not a Roman primacy in the first three centuries? As stated once and again, the question concerning the primacy of the bishop of Rome is a complicated one. Any answer to such a question is not possible without differentiating exactly between his position as bishop, as patriarch and as successor of Peter. To separate primacy from patriarchate is not easy, particularly in this period when no agreement on supra-diocesan organization had been mooted as yet. Nor does it do to attempt to apply categories known to have existed at a later stage, such as referring juridical notions to a church on which the concept of law had not yet impressed its mark. In this period she rather represented herself thorough categories such as 'communio', 'pax', 'agape', of which Rome was said to be the president, a type of inter-church relationship that naturally did not exclude juridical or disciplinary elements (32). Yet to attempt to reduce such concepts to juridical categories would mean failure to capture the sense of early Christian life.

Having said this. one may assert, on the basis of historical evidence, that the bishops of Rome did exercise an authority that was truly primatial, at least in the broader sense of the word. i.e. an extra-diocesan intervention that surpassed the powers later attributed to metropolitans and patriarchs. Such was the case at least in the actions of Clement, Victor, Stephen and Dionysius. While Clement's 1 Corinthians does contain a primitive theology of episcopal succession, there seems to be no manifest evidence that his action was actually 'informed' by a clear Petrine consciousness. However this somehow fits with the dynamics of a gradually developing living reality. In the cases of Victor, Stephen and Dionysius. however, the claim to authority is such that one can think of no ground to justify their papal stand-point other than that of primacy. To all effects, these interventions were 'papal'. While in the first half of the second century we have evidence of a Petrine interpretation of episcopal power, and pope Stephen possibly appealed to it in his controversy with the African bishops, the 'Petrine text' of Mt 16:18 began to become important as providing a theological and scriptural foundation to a consciousness that had grown and kept growing, only in the middle of the 4th century (33). Hence, when the council of Sardica in 343 established the appellate jurisdiction of the Roman see, and when pope Damasus (366-384) began to refer to Rome as the 'apostolic see', or when pope Leo I openly claimed to speak for Peter, no real novelties were being introduced. It was rather a matter of defining the issue in more explicit, juridical terms, fully in keeping with other parallel developments in the life of the church. The ecumenical council of Chalcedon (451) received Leo's intervention (the famed Tome to Flavian) as a true Petrine utterance: "Peter has spoken through Leo!"

(30)BROWN, Peter, pp. 55. 127.

(31)LORTZ. It. Ed.. 1. p.91.

(32)海脫令，51-52頁(HERTLING, Chinese Ed.).

(33)CHADWICK, Early Church, pp. 237-238.

(34)SCHMAUS, Pope, p.44.

(35)海脫令，49-50頁(HERTLING, Chinese Ed.).

(36)V.SOLOVIEV, La Russie et L' Eglise universelle, Paris 1889, quoted from the It. Ed., pp. 44-45, in VODOPIVEC, Papato, pp. 712-713.

(37)LORTZ, It. Ed., I, p.92.