SRR # 87 | The Diving Board, Ep 2

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Justification by Faith Alone and Polemical Christian Speech

The anathema of God was for those who denied justification by faith alone. When that is at stake, we need to be on the battlefield exposing the air and combating the air.

We are unabashedly, unashamedly Clarkian. And so the next few statements that I'm going to make, I'm probably going to step on all of the Vantillian toes at the same time. And this is what we do at Simple Riff around the radio, you know.

We are polemical and polarizing Jesus style.

I would first say that to characterize what we do as bashing is itself bashing. It's not hate. It's history. It's not bashing. It's the Bible.

Jesus said, Woe to you when men speak well of you. For their fathers used to treat the false prophets in the same way. As opposed to blessed are you when you have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness.

It is on. We're taking the gloves off. It's time to battle.

Ray Ryland’s Claims About Papal Authority in the Early Church

OK, we're back again with the diving board as we dive deep into history to show that Roman Catholic apologists and those who follow them have remained in the shallow end of the history pool while claiming to be deep in history.

And we are focusing on those Protestants who fall for those shallow arguments and convert to Roman Catholicism, thinking that they too are deep in history. We are continuing in this episode with a speech given by Father Ray Ryland, who converted from the Episcopalian Church to Roman Catholicism.

The video we are analyzing is entitled Papal Authority and the Early Church. And it comes to us from a 2004 conference by the Coming Home Network, a ministry founded by former Protestants who have crossed over to Rome, believing that it is the true church.

The conference is called Deep in History, based on a statement that Cardinal Newman once made about his own journey from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism. And it comes to us from his introduction to his most famous work on the development of Christian doctrine.

He wrote, whatever history teaches, whatever it omits, whatever it exaggerates or extenuates, whatever it says and unsays, at least the Christianity of history is not Protestantism. If ever there were a safe truth, it is this, to be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant.

That statement was the inspiration for the Deep in History conference sponsored by the Coming Home Network. And in our last episode, we began to examine the claims of Father Ray Ryland in his journey from the Episcopal Church to Roman Catholicism.

We have covered Ray Ryland's claims from the Letter of Clement to the Corinthians in the 1st century, Pope Victor's excommunication of the Eastern Bishops in the 2nd century, and the alleged submission of Bishop Dionysius of Alexandria to Bishop Dionysius of Rome on doctrinal matters in the 3rd century.

This week, we will cover Ryland's arguments regarding the excommunication of Paul of Samosata the same century, and the Council of Nicaea during the Episcopate of Bishop Sylvester of Rome during the early 4th century.

As we showed last time, Ryland's arguments require that his listeners stay in the shallow end of the history pool. But we are on the diving board, ready to jump into the deep end. So, let's dive in and go on to Ryland's next piece of evidence, which is the case of Paul of Samosata, a heretic who had been Bishop of Antioch.

Here is Ryland's summary.

Another case, Pope Sixtus II, also in the 3rd century, had trouble with a man in Antioch, Paul of Samosata, who was a known heretic. Three synods of bishops in the East had tried to get rid of him, and they couldn't get rid of him.

And finally, the emperor asked the pope to intervene. The pope intervened, and he was out of there. And that settled the matter.

Okay, so these events are contemporary to the events we discussed at the conclusion of our previous episode. It is the late 60s of the 3rd century, and Dionysius is bishop in Alexandria, Sixtus of Rome has died and has been succeeded by Dionysius of Rome, and Demetrianus of Antioch has died, and Paul of Samosata has succeeded him as bishop.

Very shortly after that, Paul of Samosata was found to be a heretic. To hear Ryland tell it, it sounds like neither the church at Antioch nor the many assembled bishops of the East at multiple councils could deal with the matter, and even the emperor of Rome could not solve the problem until the pope got involved.

The truth is, everyone except the bishop of Rome was involved in removing Paul of Samosata from the episcopate of Antioch. The bishop of Rome never actually got involved at all, which Ryland would know if he were as deep in history.

As he claimed to be. Ryland's approach here is to count on his listeners' ignorance of history and let them come to a conclusion without knowledge of the events that transpired. What we will do is fill in the missing details and cast some light on the situation from contemporary sources that reveal just how deceptive Ryland's misrepresentation is.

First, we will cover the history of the controversy related to Paul of Samosata to show that he was removed from the episcopate completely without the help of the bishop of Rome. And without even asking for the permission or advice of the bishop of Rome.

Second, we will show why the bishop of Rome was indeed mentioned in the recorded history of the controversy, but not because anyone asked him to intervene, and certainly not because anyone thought he was in charge.

Third and finally, we will describe a similar controversy in Spain in which the bishop of Rome attempted to intervene, but the Spanish bishops sought a second opinion and then ignored the Roman bishops' intervention.

In other words, not only did the bishop of Rome not intervene in the case of Paul of Samosata in Antioch, but also when he actually did attempt to intervene in a similar situation in Spain, his intervention was rebuffed and in fact overturned by a bishop in Africa.

These are the kinds of communications Ryland does not want you to know about because they shed light on how the early church operated back then, and they do not cast a favorable light on the alternative history Ryland has tried to construct.

So let's walk through those three items. First, starting with the controversy in Antioch. The matter is introduced for us in Eusebius' History of the Church, Book 7, from which I will now read. It is the only detailed account of the entire dispute, and the listener is asked to pay attention to the geographic diversity of the bishops to whom Antioch appealed.

And please take note that nobody appealed to Rome. Okay, now citing from Eusebius, Church History, Book 7, Chapters 27 -28. After Sixtus had presided over the Church of Rome for eleven years, Dionysius, namesake of him of Alexandria, succeeded him.

About the same time, Demetrianus died in Antioch and Paul of Samosata received that episcopate. As he held, contrary to the teaching of the Church, low and degraded views of Christ, namely that in his nature he was a common man, Dionysius of Alexandria was entreated to come to the Synod.

But being unable to come on account of age and physical weakness, he gave his opinion on the subject under consideration by letter. But all of the other pastors of the churches from all directions made haste to assemble at Antioch, as against a despoiler of the flock of Christ.

Of these, the most eminent were Formilianus, bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, the brothers Gregory and Athenodorus, pastors of the churches in Pontus, Helenus of the parish of Tarsus, Nicomus of Iconium, and moreover, Hymenaeus of the church of Jerusalem, and Theoteknus of the neighboring church of Caesarea, and besides these, Maximus who presided in a distinguished manner over the brethren of Bostra.

If any should count them up, he would not fail to note a great many of others, besides presbyters and deacons, who were at that time assembled for the same cause in the above-mentioned city. But these were the most illustrious.

OK, that concludes the citation from Eusebius. So let's take inventory. Cappadocia, Pontus, Tarsus, Iconium, Jerusalem, Bostra, Alexandria, and in fact there were many other presbyters and deacons assembled from a great many other places, but those were the most illustrious.

So far, Rome is not mentioned and is not even involved. So let's keep reading Eusebius' account. Time has passed, and a lot has happened, and some important bishops have since died and have been replaced, and several emperors have passed as well, but the controversy has not died.

Now citing Eusebius' Church History, Book 7, Chapters 28 -29. OK, so that concludes that citation. But it says he was excommunicated from the Catholic Church. Who excommunicated him? Is it possible to excommunicate a bishop of Antioch without the consent of the bishop of Rome?

Well, let's find out. Here is the letter of the bishops who excommunicated Paul of Samosata at the Church in Antioch. Now citing Eusebius' Church History, Book 7, Chapter 30, Paragraphs 7 and 17. He has departed from the rule of faith, and has turned aside after base and spurious teaching.

Therefore, we have been compelled to excommunicate him, since he sets himself against God and refuses to obey, and to appoint in his place another bishop for the Catholic Church. By divine direction, as we believe, we have appointed Dominus, who is adored with all the qualities becoming in a bishop, and who is a son of the blessed Demetrianus, who formerly presided in a distinguished manner over the same parish.

Okay, so still no mention of the bishop of Rome, except to include him in the list of bishops to whom the letter is addressed. And here is Eusebius' summary of the matter from the same chapter. As Paul had fallen from the episcopate, as well as from the Orthodox faith, Dominus, as has been said, became bishop of the Church at Antioch.

So, there you go. Paul of Samasata has been excommunicated, and Dominus is now the bishop of Antioch. And so far, the bishop of Rome still has not been consulted in the matter. Just the illustrious bishops of Alexandria, and Cappadocia, and Jerusalem, and a cohort of others from the surrounding regions.

But listen how Ray Ryland reported on the matter, as if the bishop of Rome was absolutely the indispensable factor in getting rid of Paul of Samasata.

Three synods of bishops in the east had tried to get rid of him, and they couldn't get rid of him. And finally, the emperor asked the pope to intervene. The pope intervened, and he was out of there.

The fact is, the Church at Antioch summoned multiple synods, dealt with the heresy, and Paul of Samasata alternately repented of and returned to his error, and finally the Church excommunicated him and replaced him.

The Church at Antioch dealt with the matter quite judiciously and got rid of him. So what on earth is Ray Ryland talking about? Well, it turns out that what Ray Ryland represented as papal intervention in an ecclesiastical dispute about the episcopal seat of Antioch was actually a dispute regarding a piece of real estate, that is, the church meeting place.

And even then, the bishop of Rome did not get involved, as we will show. We will let Eusebius explain, now citing from Eusebius' Church History Book 7, chapter 30, paragraph 19. But as Paul refused to surrender the church building, the emperor Aurelian was petitioned, and he decided the matter most equitably, ordering the building to be given to those whom the bishops of Italy and the city of Rome should adjudge it.

Thus, this man was driven out of the church with extreme disgrace by the worldly power. Okay, we'll get back to the matter of the bishops of Italy and the city of Rome in a moment. First, I want to emphasize the word building, or oikon, in Eusebius' original Greek.

If you'd like to examine that Greek word for yourself, check out Jacques Meunier's series on the Greek Fathers, volume 20, column 720. What Paul of Samosata refused to do was vacate the church building.

Our point here is that Ryland has played a little word game by attempting to make us think that the church building was the apostolic seat, and the church at Antioch could not get Paul of Samosata to vacate the office of bishop.

In reality, the church of Antioch just could not get Paul of Samosata to vacate the building. To address that point, let me introduce now an article from the Journal of Roman Studies, volume 61, from 1971.

The article is called Paul of Samosata, Zenobia, and Aurelian, the Church, Local Culture, and Political Allegiance in the Third Century, Syria, by Fergus Miller. Now citing his article. There is no doubt that by the end of the third century, Christian communities generally possessed a regular meeting place.

There does not appear, however, to be good evidence from this period that it was ever combined with an actual Episcopal residence. So the church building was not the Episcopal seat, and this all came down not to an ecclesiastical matter of who should occupy the office of bishop, but to a civil matter of who owned the church building and should occupy it.

Should the church at Antioch possess the property and meet there, or should Paul of Samosata and his heretical following occupy the building and meet there? That was a civil matter to be decided by the emperor, and that brings us back to the matter of the letters that the churches all wrote to each other back then.

As we have noted repeatedly, the early churches wrote letters to each other all the time, and it was important that they be unified in their doctrines and teachings, which is why they were exchanging letters in the first place.

They invested a lot of time making sure that letters were sent only to those who were of the true faith, and that those of the true faith were the only ones writing letters. In a few minutes we will provide a relevant example of a rather significant controversy that erupted around this time because letters were not being addressed to the correct person.

It was the exchange of letters that facilitated the unity of the faith, which is why the church at Antioch, after the excommunication of Paul and the election of Dominus, made sure everyone knew to whom they should be addressing their letters from this point.

Now citing from Eusebius, Church History Book 7, Chapter 30, Paragraph 17. By divine direction, as we believe, we have appointed Dominus, who is adorned with all the qualities becoming in a bishop. We have informed you of this, that you may write to him, and may receive letters of communication from him.

But let this man, that is, Paul of Samosata, write to Artemis, who, by the way, was another heretic of the time, and let those who think as Artemis does communicate with him, that is, Paul of Samosata.

So they mentioned Artemis, who was considered the mouthpiece of the heresy and was a contemporary of the same stripe as Paul of Samosata. The significance is that Paul continued communicating with his fellow heretics and continued meeting with his following in a property that belonged to the church at Antioch.

And in order to get the property back, the church appealed to the emperor, since the civil power of eviction rests with the state, not with the church. But wait, our listeners might ask, didn't Emperor Aurelian at least remand the case to a synod of bishops in Italy and Rome and ask them to intervene and decide what to do with the building?

In fact, if you get your history from Wikipedia, that is exactly what it sounds like. Under the entry of Paul of Samosata, Wikipedia says of Emperor Aurelian, wishing only to restore order, he relied on the judgment of the bishops of Italy and Rome.

The unanimous verdict was for Paul to relinquish his position as bishop. Well, in reality, there was no synod, no reliance on the judgment of the bishops of Italy and Rome, and no unanimous decision for Paul to relinquish his position as bishop, because Aurelian had not been petitioned to resolve the matter of Paul's office of bishop, but to resolve a matter of real estate about the church building.

So what actually happened? Well, a typical English translation, and we'll use Philip Schaaf's series on the Antonicene Fathers here, has Eusebius saying that Emperor Aurelian ordered the building to be given to those to whom the bishops of Italy and of the city of Rome should adjudge it.

What gets translated as having the bishops of Italy and Rome rule on the matter, or adjudge it, is actually in Greek, tu dogmatos epistaloian, or literally, those with whom the bishops of Italy and Rome are in dogmatic agreement by their letters.

Remember all we've been saying in this series about the church's writing letters, and in particular, in this case, how important it was to the church at Antioch that letters be addressed properly? It is also important to know that one of the complaints of the bishops assembled at Antioch was that Paul of Samasata went about reading his letters and reciting them as he walks in public.

The word for letters there is epistolas. Well, those bishops who excommunicated him at Antioch concluded their synodical letter by saying, let this man write, that is, epistoleto, to Artemis. And then two sentences later, Eusebius says that Emperor Aurelian decided the church should belong to whomever is of the same religion as reflected in the communications, that is, epistoloian, of the bishops of Italy and Rome.

It all came down to who was writing letters to whom, and the fact that the church at Antioch had concluded that people should no longer be exchanging letters with Paul of Samasata. And that gets us back to the decision made by Aurelian.

The church at Antioch simply appealed to the emperor in a real estate dispute, and the emperor decided that the church building should belong to the bishops of Antioch who were exchanging letters with the bishops in Italy and Rome.

That's it. There was no request for the bishop of Rome to intervene, and there was no council of bishops in Italy and Rome to decide what to do with the church building. But wait, our listeners might ask, doesn't that at least show that the bishops of Italy and the city of Rome were the standard of orthodoxy at the time, and everyone had to agree with them?

Well, not exactly. The attentive historian should ask why any of this mattered to Aurelian at all. He was not a believer, and honestly did not care about Christian doctrines. These events took place in the context of the crisis of the 3rd century, when over a course of 50 years, more than 25 different people claimed to be emperors of Rome.

The entire empire was constantly in disarray, and there were insurrections and invasions and attacks on every side, from within and without. At the time of Paul of Samasata's episcopate in Antioch, Aurelian was the emperor in Rome, and the separatist queen Zenobia of Palmyra ruled in Syria and Egypt and was at war with him.

And Paul of Samasata had been on friendly terms with her. She in turn wished to protect his standing, as recorded by Athanasius in his History of the Arians, book 8, chapter 71. The church of Antioch may have excommunicated him, and he may have, quote, fallen from the episcopate as well as from the orthodox faith, unquote, as Eusebius reported.

But Zenobia was still disposed toward Paul, and therefore he refused to surrender the church building. But then something changed. Aurelian had invaded and conquered Syria and eliminated Zenobia's influence by exiling her to Rome.

With Zenobia gone and Aurelian in charge, the church at Antioch appealed to him to get Paul of Samasata out of the building. But the critical piece of data is that Emperor Aurelian had only one objective, and that was to remove the influence of Zenobia in Syria and Egypt, where she had only recently declared herself empress.

So he exiled her to Rome and decided that the church building should belong to whichever bishops in Antioch were of the same religion as the bishops of Italy and Rome. It was not a religious decision, but a political decision.

The bishops in Italy and Rome were never actually consulted on this, and the bishop of Rome was never actually asked to intervene. Most relevant to our point, the history books do not record Paul of Samasata being evicted by the ecclesiastical power, but by the worldly power.

Hardly a case of early papal authority, the emperor of Rome deciding what to do with a piece of real estate based on what gives him the least amount of headaches while he's trying to address the more pressing matters of stabilizing an empire.

But we should say one more thing about Ryland's argument before we move on. Ryland has attempted to pass off Eusebius' reference to the bishops of Italy and the city of Rome as if Eusebius was referring to, quote, Again, here is Ryland.

And finally, the emperor asked the pope to intervene. The pope intervened, and he was out of there.

Now, can we honestly say that the bishops of Italy and the city of Rome is equivalent to the pope? Of course not. Italy and Rome had for a long time been considered separate administrative regions. This became even more clear when Diocletian finally divided the empire into dioceses about 20 years later.

But even at this time, the bishop of Rome was not considered the bishop of Italy. And there were, in fact, many Italian bishops. Aurelian did not single out the bishop of Rome and determined that his opinion should decide the matter.

To that end, I would like to bring up a little controversy that erupted around 252 A .D., basically about 20 years prior to the controversy of Paulus Amasada. There was a schism in Rome, and there was, for a time, much confusion about who actually had been elected as the new bishop of Rome.

The people of Africa had received different reports about who had been elected, and therefore it was difficult to understand to whom letters should be addressed. Because of the uncertainty, some letters were addressed to Cornelius of Rome, while others were addressed to the presbyters and deacons there.

And that irritated Cornelius, who, as it turned out, was the rightfully elected bishop. This event is recorded for us in Cyprian's letter to Cornelius, in which Cyprian records not only Cornelius' indignation, but also the cause of the confusion.

Now sighting from epistle 43 of Cyprian's letter to Cornelius, on the cause of the confusion about to whom letters should be addressed. Cyprian to Cornelius, his brother. Greeting. I have read your letters, dearest brother, which you sent by Primitivus, our co-presbyter, in which I perceived that you were annoyed that, whereas letters from the Adrumentine colony, in the name of Polycarp, were directed to you, yet after Liberalis and I came to that place, letters began to be directed thence to the presbyters and to the deacons.

As Cyprian goes on to explain, they weren't quite sure who was bishop in Rome, so they were not quite sure to whom they should be addressing their letters. But then Cyprian says something extraordinary.

He explains why it has taken so long for the confusion in his province to be resolved. And he refers to a schism made in the city, that is, a schism in Rome, and says it could not be cleared up in his province in Africa very quickly because, quote, our province is widespread and has Numidia and Mauretania attached to it.

That's from paragraph 3 of the same epistle. The schism made in the city is a reference to the controversy over who was bishop in Rome. And in comparison to Cornelius' minor jurisdiction, that is, the city, which was geographically small, Cyprian's is comparatively large and, quote, widespread.

The significance here is that Cyprian knew that Cornelius' domain was limited to the city, but Cyprian's jurisdiction was quite large and stretched from Carthage on the Mediterranean Sea all the way to the Atlantic Ocean.

In fact, Cyprian repeatedly referred to the Roman clergy as the city clergy in his epistles. In epistle 23, regarding the letters he had sent to the Roman clergy, he says, I have sent a letter to the clergy who abide in the city.

In epistle 39, regarding plans for a synod to which the Roman clergy had been invited, he refers to them as, quote, the city clergy. Cyprian had thus contrasted his vast North African province with the comparatively small urban geographic domain of the bishop of Rome.

The significance of that particular observation is that the Roman clergy were responsible for the church in the city of Rome, not for the church throughout Italy. Italy had other bishops in other cities, and the bishop of Rome was only in charge of the city, not the whole Italian peninsula, which stood in dramatic contrast with the bishop of Carthage, who was responsible for a broad swath of land stretching across the northern coast of Africa.

In another epistle, Cyprian said that the bishop of Rome speaks for the whole Roman church. That's Cyprian of Carthage, epistle 56, paragraph 1. He did not say he speaks for the whole Catholic church, or even for the whole Italian church, but for the whole Roman church.

The significance to our discussion is that when Eusebius recorded the controversy relating to Paulus Amosata, and referred to the communications between the church at Antioch and the bishops of Italy and the city of Rome, it is not a reference to the bishop of Rome and his vast domain of Italy.

It is a reference to the bishop of the city of Rome, as well as to the bishops who serve in the rest of the Italian peninsula, which was not under the jurisdiction of the bishop of Rome. Ryland made it sound like Italy and Rome were all under the guidance of the bishop of Rome, so he said Emperor Aurelian asked, quote, the Pope to intervene, which is a horrible misrepresentation on many levels, and does not sit well with those who swim in the deep end of the history pool.

So, we're going to make one last point about the controversy in Antioch related to Paulus Amosata. Just remember that the church at Antioch excommunicated Paulus Amosata without consulting the bishop of Rome, and Emperor Aurelian evicted Paulus Amosata from the church building without consulting the bishop of Rome.

Nothing about Ryland's characterization of the events was true, except the names of the people involved. But in the same century, only 18 years before the events surrounding Paulus Amosata, a very curious incident occurred, and it demonstrates just how shallow Ryland's grasp of history really was.

Two bishops in Spain, Basilides and Martialis, had been removed from office when it was discovered that they had participated in idolatrous sacrifices during the recent persecutions. Both bishops confessed their sins and repented of them, and voluntarily stepped down from the episcopate.

The congregation thus elected others in their place. But Basilides then went to Rome and convinced Stephen, bishop of Rome, that he should not have been removed from the office and should be reinstated as bishop.

This confused the congregations in Spain, so they wrote a letter to Cyprian of Carthage asking what was to be done, now citing from Cyprian of Carthage, epistle 67, paragraph 1, in which Cyprian responds to the inquiry of the Spanish congregations.

We read your letters, which, according to the integrity of your faith and your fear of God, you wrote to us by Felix and Sabinus, our fellow bishops, signifying that Basilides and Martialis, being stained with the certificates of idolatry and bound with a consciousness of wicked crimes, ought not to hold the episcopate and administer the priesthood of God.

And you desired an answer to be written to you, again concerning these things, and to be relieved either by the comfort or by the help of our judgment. Well, Cyprian was very happy to oblige, and he was as direct as he was decisive in his response, and he was unsparing in his criticism of Stephen.

Basilides of Spain, quote, went to Rome and deceived Stephen, our colleague, that's paragraph 5, and Stephen of Rome was, quote, ignorant of what had been done and, lacking discernment, had been surprised by fraud.

Cyprian assured them that the scriptures disqualified Basilides and Martialis, and that Stephen of Rome had no power to rescind the election of the new bishops appointed by the congregations of Spain, and concluded his letter to them by criticizing Stephen for rashly holding communion with Basilides and Martialis and partaking of their sins in doing so.

That can be found in paragraph 9 of the same epistle. Now, let's just think through this controversy of the third century, occurring about 18 years before the deposition of Paul of Samosata. The bishops Basilides and Martialis of Spain were removed from office, and Bishop Stephen of Rome attempted to intervene to reinstate them, and the congregations of Spain instead wrote to Cyprian of Carthage to get a better opinion, and after consulting with him, ignored the recommendations of Stephen, and so Basilides and Martialis were not reinstated.

Just imagine what the Roman apologists would have done with this information had the roles been reversed, and Cyprian had directed Spain to reinstate the bishops, and the bishop of Rome had intervened and overturned Cyprian's recommendation, and in the process corrected Cyprian for being so easily deceived.

We would never hear the end of it, and our ears would be constantly assailed with the claims of Roman episcopal primacy, as evidenced in the letters. But as matters stand, Roman apologists don't mention these events, and instead focus on the controversy of Paul of Samosata, and even then they must massage the evidence to make it fit a narrative that is utterly inconsistent with the reality of history.

The bishop of Rome was not even consulted in the matter of Paul of Samosata in Antioch, and when the bishop of Rome actually was consulted in the matter of Basilides and Martialis of Spain, the Spanish bishops elected to get a second opinion from Cyprian of Carthage, who correctly informed them that Stephen was out of his depth and had no jurisdiction in the matter anyway.

So much for papal authority in the 3rd century. Okay, so let's move on to another comment from Ryland. We are going a little out of order here because Ryland's argument immediately after Paul of Samosata relates to Julius of Rome in the middle of the 4th century, and we will cover that in our next episode, but right after that he makes an argument for papal authority at the Council of Nicaea.

So we decided to go next to Bishop Sylvester at Nicaea, since he is the next chronological argument Ryland makes. This time, Ryland is claiming that all ecumenical councils are subject to approval and confirmation by the pope, starting with the first ecumenical council of Nicaea in 325 AD, and further that the ecumenical councils only convened to affirm something that had already been decided by previous popes anyway, and that popes were the ones who affirm and defend the decisions of councils.

We will grant him the ecumenical councils from Constantinople and beyond because those councils accepted Roman primacy in one way or another, but Ryland's claim that Nicaea only gathered to affirm the ruling of the Bishop of Rome, or that the Bishop of Rome presided even over Nicaea, is one council too ancient for those who swim in the deep end of the history pool.

Again, here is Ryland's argument.

Let's talk about the pope's role in the first seven ecumenical councils. Not one of the ecumenical councils, if you study the history, not one was able to interpret its own decrees. Not one was able to enforce its own decrees.

In every single case, the final enforcer, the final interpreter of those decrees, turned out to be the Bishop of Rome. Let's run through these first seven councils very quickly and see the decisive role the pope played in each one of them.

In each instance, we're going to find that one of the popes, one or more, had previously condemned the heresy or heretics which the councils were summoned to combat. In every single case, the decision of the council had already been made by a successor, Peter.

We start with Nicaea, focused on the heresy of Arianism. Forerunners of this heresy had been condemned in the second century by Pope Victor and in the third century by Pope Dionysius. Indeed, as we saw a while ago, Pope Dionysius brought up that term, which is the key word in the Council of Nicaea's decision.

Despite these condemnations, Arianism was spreading like wildfire throughout the East. Because the popes had previously spoken on this issue, the bishops who came to Nicaea did not come to consider an open question, but they came to render a concurrent judgment on the pope's teaching.

Pope Sylvester presided at the council in the person of his legate, Bishop Hosius of Cordova, and they simply underlined and accepted what the pope had previously ruled. And the half century after the council, it was the pope who repeatedly defended and upheld the decision of the council, not the council itself.

Okay, let me first say that the Council of Nicaea ruled on the Arian controversy, a matter in which bishops of Rome had indeed weighed in on occasion. But he was not the first to weigh in on them, and Ryland is oversimplifying the matter to say that Nicaea used the same words that a previous bishop of Rome had before.

The fact is, various councils and synods alternately condemned and accepted the term homoousion. Hilary of Portier, writing in the latter part of the fourth century, weighed in on this, complaining to the emperor Constantius.

He said,. That's citing from Hilary of Portier's letter to Emperor Constantius. So, it was not so simple as saying that Nicaea used the same word that a bishop of Rome had used before. Heretics had used the term as well.

But Nicaea also ruled that nobody should kneel on Sundays or on any day between Easter and Pentecost. We have no record of any bishop of Rome weighing in on that, although we have a lot of evidence that Irenaeus of Lyons in the second century and Tertullian of Carthage in the third had opinions about not kneeling on Sundays or on any day between Easter and Pentecost.

And despite that, today's popes insist that kneeling is an essential apostolic part of the Sunday liturgy, dating all the way back to the apostles. Ryland's statement is ambitious, to be sure, but it is just as silly as it is ambitious, because there is nothing in the council that even suggests that they were simply affirming a ruling of the pope on anything.

And today, the popes defy the plain teachings of the council by insisting that kneeling on the Lord's Day is an important part of the liturgy, something that the council explicitly forbade. We will get into some of these details in a later episode, but it is worth pointing out now by way of illustration.

The council of Nicaea also addressed the jurisdiction of the bishop of Alexandria, because Antioch and Alexandria were both located in the same civil diocese, and there were some boundary disputes between the two.

So the council could not solve the problem simply by granting jurisdiction to either of them over the entire diocese. So the council put Alexandria in charge of some of the western provinces and put Antioch over the rest of the provinces of the diocese.

But Nicaea put neither bishop over the whole diocese. But in 404 AD, Bishop Innocent of Rome completely misread the canons by saying that the council had placed Antioch over the whole diocese. Now citing from Innocent, Bishop of Rome, epistle 24, paragraph 1, the council of Nicaea has not established the church of Antioch over a province, but over a diocese.

No, that is not what Nicaea had done. And Pope Innocent, who was ostensibly supposed to be interpreting the canons of the ecumenical councils and defending them, did not even understand what the council had actually done.

It certainly had not placed Antioch over the whole diocese. The fact is, Alexandria and Antioch were both located in the same diocese, which is why the council didn't even have the option of putting either one of them over the whole diocese.

They divided it and let Alexandria have some of the western part and let Antioch have the rest. Or what about the famous deposition of Epiarius in 418 AD, when Zosimus, Bishop of Rome, attempted to intervene by quoting the canons of Nicaea from 325 AD?

But he was accidentally quoting the canons of Sardica from 343 AD. And need we mention Pope Leo of Rome, who sent his legates to the council of Chalcedon with a copy of the Nicaean canons, including a completely rewritten canon 6, which now said, The Church of Rome has always had primacy?