Spread throughout the World: Hints on Augustine's Understanding of Petrine Ministry

Part I: "Spread throughout the World"

Augustine's position on Petrine ministry has generally been studied along confessional lines: Protestant scholars have tended to emphasize North African autonomy vis-à-vis Rome, while Catholic investigators have tended to emphasize a robust Roman involvement. J. E. Merdinger has masterfully examined this issue once again in Rome and the African Church in the Time of Augustine and has attempted to uncover the sectarian bias that plagued previous generations of scholarship on the issue.¹ She correctly focuses on the importance of two particular events in understanding relations between the North African bishops and the bishop of Rome: Pope Innocent's lack of respect for a collegial decision of the African bishops to condemn Pelagius at the Council of Milevis and Apiarius' appeal to Zosimus, Innocent's successor in Rome, to overturn a decision of the African bishops to sanction him (the priest Apiarius). Important though these events may be, I believe scholars risk missing Augustine's position on the unique authority of the bishop of Rome when they fail to take into consideration the overall tone of his ecclesiology. Rather than looking at individual treatises, which are narrowly focused, I believe it would be more fruitful to look at Augustine's scattered references to the universal church (in general) and Roman authority (in particular) throughout his sermons and letters.

Years of reading Augustine's sermons and letters have alerted me to the uniquely Augustinian qualification of "church" when coupled with the additional phrase "spread throughout the world." Throughout Augustine's vast literary corpus, one notices the bishop's proclivity to refer to the church as a single entity: ecclesia per totum orbem terrarum est, or simply ecclesia toto orbe diffusa. Unity and universality are the two hallmarks of Augustinian ecclesiology, no doubt a precious heritage from Africa's favorite saint, Cyprian of Carthage. Robert Eno reminds us that Cyprian frequently employed the expression cathedra Petri ("chair of Peter") in works such as his treatise On the Unity of the Catholic Church. Although the other apostles were endowed with equal power and honor, the unity of the church takes its origin from one person in order that the church of Christ might be shown forth as one and united.² In his ep.59, Cyprian himself identifies the "chair of Peter" with "the primordial church, the very source of episcopal unity."³ It seems logical that Augustine might recognize the unique prerogatives of the Roman See only in the context of an ecclesiology that emphasizes the church's universality. I propose to look at the semantic field and context that surround all the instances where Augustine's predilection for this phrase "church spread throughout the world" occurs. In the final section of the paper, I will look for any references, even oblique ones, to the unique authority of the Roman bishop in this context. Based on the excellent work of Michele Maccarrone,⁴ I shall look for the key words sedes apostolica, vicarius Petri, and cathedra Petri, all of which became increasingly commonplace in the fourth century.

The formal idea for such an authority is seen in the council of bishops at Sardica (Sofia, just inside the boundary of the western empire), who in 341/342 proposed how a dispute between bishops might be resolved by the bishop of Rome. The specific issue was christological and for once included more western bishops (ninety-six) than eastern bishops (seventy).⁵ The eastern synods were unable to agree over Arianism but were insistent that as bishops they had no need to follow the doctrine of Arius, a mere presbyter. The canons that were agreed on effectively ruled out any intervention by the emperor in church affairs, as well as the not uncommon practice in the East of appealing decisions of smaller synods to larger ones. Although the eastern bishops departed, the remaining bishops at Sardica formally recommended to Pope Julius that when future councils occur, they would do well to send a report to the pope, ad...