Matthew’s Reviews > The Primacy of Peter in the Orthodox Church > Status Update

Koulomzine, like Afanassieff, tends to to willingly draw conclusions from limited evidence, but his overview of Peter in the post-Ascension period is helpful, if not eye-opening.

Finished Afanassieff, who creates a false dichotomy between Eucharistic and universal ecclesiology, and between the local church and the universal church. If his claim about the impossibility of a primacy of power were so, Orthodox metropolitans and patriarchs will have been heretics far longer than the schism.

Unconvincing in the least.

Afanassieff makes so many unwarranted leaps and ill-founded judgements it is quite frustrating to read him.

Afanassieff never quite makes his case that Eucharistic and Universal ecclesiologies are incompatible. Many problems with his overall argument but very interesting nonetheless.

Finished Schmemann: he has little room for the universal dimension of the church; and if this causes him to reject the power of Rome, he is still harsher on his own Orthodox for autocephalies, for synodal governance etc.

He does have a role for the universal church, but it is purely relational and testimonial.

Importantly, S. recognises that Rome does/did hold a universal primacy in the Church.

Excellent essay.

Half-way through Schmemann - he becomes more debateable when he comes to the contrast between the local church (under a bishop) and the universal church. Although S. rightly rejects the "parts and whole" ecclesiology, the role of the universal is quite limited - he concludes the local is not isolated, with no need of the other churches, but it's not clear exactly why. At the least, the local church is predominant.

Starting Schmemann: many good things here. Clarity on types of primacy; impoverished nature of Orthodox ecclesiology; erosion of ecclesiology inn favour of unmoored canon law; need to understand the Church as Body of Christ; visible form of Church mirrors its invisible form and more just in first five pages.

Finished Meyendorff's look at post-schism writers: he concludes that the Byzantine tradition is twofold: all bishops receive the Petrine ministry; and, by analogy, Rome has a similar role in the college of bishops as Peter in the apostolic college; but that this has been lost/suspended due to error.

M. sees more consensus than justified; not all support his view that Petrine primacy is of human, not divine origin.

Meyendorff appears to occasionally over-homogenize his sources - his quotation of Camateros seems to imply a divine and not human primacy, for instance. Still nevertheless interesting.

Starting with the Meyendorff essay.