I mentioned in my last post that I view the papacy as the product of a historical development, not the mark of the true church. It may be helpful to make some more comments on this matter.

The history of the church in Rome in the first and early second century is shrouded in obscurity. While it is clear that there was by the late first century an emerging sense of a coherent and cohesive body of Christians in Rome (the letter of I Clement testifies to that), it is not at all clear that there was a “bishop” of Rome, let alone that the bishop exercised authority outside of the city of Rome.

In the second and third centuries, other churches were equally powerful–Carthage in the West, and certainly the bishoprics of Alexandria and Antioch. Rome became most important in the west, because it alone of all the western churches, could claim apostolic foundation. As early as c. 200, Tertullian, writing in Carthage, recognized that Carthage’s claim to apostolicity rested, not in having been founded by an Apostle (as Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch, could claim) but in its teaching being consistent with that of the Apostles.

But a half-century after Tertullian, Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, could challenge papal teaching and authority. For Cyprian, bishops working together in a synod were more important than a bishop who could claim direct apostolic succession. It is pretty clear that Rome’s supremacy in the church is a product of two things: 1) its unique status in the west as an apostolic foundation, and 2) the importance of Rome as the Imperial capital (the latter explains why Constantinople eventually overtook Antioch, Alexandria, and all other apostolic foundations to become the most important patriarchate in the East).

In the Protestant Reformation, the true church was defined as that community where “the word of God was truly proclaimed and the sacraments rightly administered.” Again, it was largely for historical reasons that the Church of England insisted on the apostolic succession of the episcopacy as one of the marks of the true church. It was a powerful weapon in the conflict with Calvinist polity, but it conceded a great deal in the conflict with the papacy.

It seems to me that one of the key issues for Anglicanism is to articulate a clear ecclesiology that doesn’t merely distinguish it from the Roman Catholic church, but provides a positive rationale for its existence. I’m wondering whether the heart of our current problem isn’t a definciency in ecclesiological reflection.