Primacy in the Church from Vatican I to Vatican II
An Orthodox Perspective
Publication Year: 2013
Published by: Northern Illinois University Press
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It is with great delight that we welcome the publication of Primacy in the
Church From Vatican I to Vatican II: An Orthodox Perspective by the
Grand Archdeacon of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, Very Reverend Doctor
Indeed, we greet the volume at hand not only as being the result of the devoted scholarly research by one of the promising younger theologians of our Church, but also as the focus of imperative debate on one of the most divisive theological issues in relations between the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches...
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The primacy of the bishop of Rome as it was finally shaped in the Middle Ages and later defined dogmatically by Vatican I and II has been one of the thorniest issues in the history of the Western and Eastern Churches and has always been a topic in ecumenical dialogue. It appears to be an insurmountable obstacle to the realization of full unity between the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox Churches...
1. Vatican I
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In this chapter my intention is to present the teaching of Vatican I on the jurisdictional primacy of the bishop of Rome. I will present the main points of this teaching, which led to the reaction of Greek Orthodox theologians of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which I will discuss in chapter 2. I will also review the historical context in which Vatican I took place and which, inevitably, had an impact on the council itself...
2. The Aftermath of Vatican I
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This chapter will consider the main points of the arguments contained in the official Greek Orthodox encyclical letter of the Ecumenical Patriarchate issued in 1895, as well as those of selected Greek Orthodox theologians from the same period. I will present the arguments invoked by Archimandrite Grigorius Zigavinos (1835–1910), who was professor at the Theological School of the Ecumenical Patriarchate on the island Halki; John Mesoloras (1851–1942) and Anastasios Kiriakos (1843–1923), who were both professors at the Faculty of Theology of the University of Athens; and Spiridon Papageorgiou (1850–1918), a theologian from the Greek island of Corfu, against the main points of the Roman Catholic teaching on papal primacy described in the previous chapter...
3. Vatican II
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In this chapter we will first look at the main theological movements, namely the ecclesiological and liturgical movements, that influenced Vatican II’s doctrine on the Church and on papal primacy and episcopal collegiality, and then we will present the doctrine itself. As we will see, the ecclesiological movement developed a eucharistic ecclesiology that consolidated the biblical and patristic linkages between the Eucharist and the Church. In this perspective the Church came to be understood not in juridical categories—as a pyramidal hierarchical structure in which officeholders had jurisdiction over the members and the Vicar of Christ (the pope) was considered as ruler of the whole—but rather as a communion, based on the idea of eucharistic communion, and indeed as a communion of local churches...
4. Orthodox Reactions to Vatican II
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This final chapter is divided into three sections, the first of which is divided into two parts. In the first of these sections, we will examine Karmiris’s general appreciation of Vatican II’s Constitution on the Church, while in the second part the main lines of Karmiris’s argumentation against Vatican II’s renewed understanding of primacy within the context of its teaching on episcopal collegiality will be analyzed...
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We have examined the reactions of Greek Orthodox theologians of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to papal primacy as defined at Vatican I and II. In considering the arguments invoked by official patriarchal letters and by certain Greek Orthodox theologians directly or indirectly against the teaching on the papal primacy expressed at the two councils, we have identified two distinct groups of theologians, and we saw that the critique offered by one group lacked coherence and authenticity, as was noted by the second group...
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Page Count: 220
Publication Year: 2013