DOES THE LETTER OF CLEMENT I PROVE ROMAN SUPREMACY?
The epistle
known as Clement to the Corinthians, which is attributed to Clement bishop of
Rome, who according to Irenaeus and Tertullian, was in office from the year 88
to 99, it is considered to be a strong proof of the universal primacy of the
bishop of Rome by Catholic ecclesiastical historians.
WHO WAS
CLEMENT?
No exact information
can be collected directly from history.
All we know from
Clement is from rumors and traditions, but no concrete proof of his existence
can be found.
He is mention
for the first time by Tertullian (160CE), who through ‘tradition’ said that he
was the immediate successor of Peter in the leadership of Rome (1). However,
Irenaeus of Lyons (130-185CE) mentions him quickly as being the third successor
‘from the apostles’ as bishop of Rome (2).
Eusebius of
Caesarea who lived between 265 to 339, and through whose we have most of the
information we have today, mentions a certain Jew convert called Hegesippus,
who reputedly made the first list of bishops of Rome, around the middle of the second
century where he mentions Clement as being third bishop of Rome (3), and by the
time of Jerome, already in the 4th century, this idea had become solid
in the ecclesiastical tradition of the Church, even though he places Clement as
the 4th bishop of Rome, and not the third or second (4).
By the time of
the 15th century, this was clearly shown as a fact by the Liber
Pontificalis; a list of Roman Popes from Peter to Pius II (1458-1464CE),
written in Latin by the Church of Rome, that places Clement as the 4th
bishop of Rome from St Peter.
Despite the
discrepancies of the place of Clement in the bishopric of Rome (Tertullian says
he was the second bishop of Rome; Ireneaus and Hegesippus, third; Jerome,
fourth.), there seems to be enough evidence of Clement as being the third or
fourth bishop of Rome from the apostolic times.
The letter
called ‘Clement to the Corinthians’ or simply Clement I, it is an anonymous letter,
from a series of different works attributed to him, from which only a First and
Second letter (Clement I and Clement II), are the most relevant, and from this
two, only Clement I is most likely to be genuine, and the second a forgery.
The epistle does
not have a sender name, simply greets the “Church of God in Rome, to the Church
of God in Corinth” (Clement 1, prologue). It contains 65 small chapters, in
which the author advices the believers in Corinth to remember the teachings of
the apostles, specially of St Paul, and encourages to stop their divisions, and
submit to their leaders, as God wants unity and order.
THE POINT
OF ROMAN SUPREMACY
Regardless of
the author, the point is made by Roman Catholicism, that the fact that the
Church of Rome wrote to the Church of Corinth in mainland Greece, during the time
of Apostle John, is proof of the universal authority of the church of Rome in
virtue of Peter.
The argument has
two main points:
1 – INTERNAL
CLAIM
Chapters 58:2
and 59:1 read the following:
“Receive
our counsel, and ye shall have no occasion of regret… but if certain persons
should be disobedient unto the words spoken by Him through us, let them
understand that they will entangle themselves in no slight transgression and
danger” (1Clement
58:2-59:1)
This is taken as
claim of the authority of Clement over the church of Corinth, and by extension,
over the whole universal church.
2 –
EXTERNAL CLAIM
As the time is
contemporary to Apostle John, who is assumed to have lived in Ephesus, a city
closer to Corinth than Rome, it is said that Clement, as successor of Peter,
enjoyed a higher authority than John, and that is why the church at Corinth
came to Clement for guidance instead of John the apostle.
ANALYZING THE
CLAIMS
1 – The letter is addressed to the whole church of Corinth
in general, and the topic is the dispute against some Presbyters, who also are
called Bishops interchangeably, the same way it is done in the NT (1Clement
42:4-5; 57:1, compare with Titus 1:5-7).
There is no
claim from the letter itself, that the author was anymore than a Presbyter-Bishop,
one of many of the Church in Rome. The only claim that he was a monarchical ‘Bishop’
like the ones that appear much later, it is made by later sources, like Eusebius
and Jerome, based on ‘tradition’, since not even Tertullian or Irenaeus claim
Clement to be more than a ‘bishop-presbyter’, third or second from the Apostles;
and especially considering as it is accepted that Peter left Linus and Cletus
as ‘bishops’ of Rome, due to the large population.
Further, there
is no mention of a single ‘bishop’ in Corinth, since all references are made to
the ‘presbyters’ or ‘bishops’ as being all from the same rank, above only to
the deacons (1Clement 42:4-5; 44:2,4). This would justify the intervention of
Clement or any other great leader of the Church since it is exactly the lack of
a central authority which caused the disputes in Corinth, thing that would have
never happened if there would have been a single Bishop over the city.
The whole
argument of Clement is to quote bible passages from the Old and New Testaments,
to compel the Christians at Corinth to do the right thing, by “listening to the
Lord’s advice and repent” (1Clement 56:16; 57:1).
His call to
listen to God through him, and to obey his call, is not claimed to come from
his own authority, since at no moment he claims personal authority or status;
but to listen his advice done according to the will of God from the Scriptures
he quotes.
Clement bases
his whole authority on Scripture as the legacy of apostolic authority and never
on his ‘own’
(1Clement
45:2-3).
2 – The epistle, apart from the fact that it describes the
Jewish temple sacrifices as if they were still in existence (1Clement 32:2;
41:2) which has caused some to assumed that it must have been written before 70
CE; the majority of scholars consider the letter to have been writen around the
year 96CE (5), specially considering that Clement is assumed to have been
bishop in Rome from the years 88 to 99 CE.
At this time, apostle
John was imprisoned and isolated in Patmos from 95 to 98-100CE.
CONCLUSION
Clement’s letter
to the Corinthians is an anonymous epistle coming from the Church of Rome, from
a bishop assumed to be Clement of Rome by later tradition, who exercised the
position of Bishop in Rome, in a time of no monarchical episcopacy, and who
claims no personal authority over the Church in Corinth, save to have spoken
according to what they both churches considered to be Scripture.
There is no
claim of personal or ‘papal authority’ in the letter, and it is addressed to a
presbyterial system church, without a supreme authority, as fraternal support
of the highly considered Church of Rome for being in the Empire’s capital, to the
known church of Corinth.
No claim was
made to Apostle John for being imprisoned at Patmos or dead at the time.
It is ridiculous
to think that any Christian would have the arrogance to claim more authority
than one of the Apostles of the Lamb.
Finally, the Epistle
was rejected from the Christian canon, due to the senseless fantasies it
contains, like the five verse story about the Phoenix, the mythological bird
who “lives for 500 years and resurrects from the fire” as Clements teaches as
truth in his letter (1Clement 25:1-5), and many other words of Jesus not found
in the Gospels.
Omar Flores.
(1) The Ante-Nicene Fathers: Translations of the Writings
of the Fathers Down to A.D. 325. Volume III, Part II, Section I, Ch 32.
(2) Irenaeus, Against Heresies, Book 3, Ch 3, 3.
(3) Eusebius, Church History, Book III, Chapter 4,
paragraph 10.
(4) Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II. Volume III.
(5) The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, St. Clement
of Rome, 2005.
Stephen
Harris, Understanding the Bible, 1985.
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