Many Catholic apologists argue that Agatho’s condemnation of his predecessor, Honorius, at the sixth ecumenical council (680/681) is an example of an ex cathedra papal statement, as it meets the criteria laid out in Pastor aeternus (1870). To quote Robert Sungenis:
Here is the most
important statement by Pope Agatho to the 6th council concerning Honorius that
should solve the issue once and for all: Agatho writes: "The heretics have
followed some passing expressions imprudently set down by one Pope [Honorius],
who made no appeal to papal authority, nor to tradition from St. Peter. Against
this I put the repeated, the continuous protest of Pope after Pope,
authoritative, grave, deliberate. Their voice was intended to be, and was, the
voice of the infallible Roman Church." (Mansi, v. 11, p. 285).
Notice that Pope
Agatho says that Honorius made no appeal to his papal authority nor to
tradition when he wrote the letter to Sergius. Agatho thus confirms our thesis
that Honorius' letter was not an ex cathedra dogma of the Church. But not only
does Agatho demote the letter of Honorius, but he appeals to all prior Popes
who have given "authoritative, serious and deliberate" teachings as
signs of the "infallible Roman Church." The 6th Council made no
protest, asked for no clarification, postulated no distinctions regarding the
letter of Pope Agatho to them. They accepted both his estimation of Honorius
and the statement regarding the infallibility of the Roman Church uncontested.
The Council writes on
September 16, 681: "And this holy and ecumenical Synod, faithfully and
with uplifted hands greeting the letter of the most holy and blessed Pope of
Elder Rome, Agatho, to our most faithful Emperor Constantine, which casts out
by name those who have preached and taught, as we have said, one will or one
operation..."
The council's decree
was signed by the whole council, first by the papal legates, and last by the
Emperor himself. In the logos prosphonetikos addressed to the Emperor by the
whole Council, and signed by the papal legates and all the bishops of the
Council, it states in reference to the Arian heresy: "Constantine ever
Augustus and the famous Pope Silvester immediately assembled the great and
illustrious Council of Nicea....Therefore, in accordance with the inspiration of
the Holy Ghost, and in agreement with one another, and assenting to the letter
of our most blessed Father and most high Pope Agatho, addressed to your majesty
[the Emperor] and also to that of his holy synod of 125 bishops, we glorify our
Lord Jesus Christ as one of the holy Trinity..." (Mansi, v. 11, p. 657).
This shows that in
the seventh century the bishops of the Council knew that they depended on the
Pope and the Emperor for their legitimacy.
In this next quote,
the victory over the monothelite heresy is attributed to the Pope. Moreover,
Agatho's own claim to be the mouthpiece of Peter is adopted by the Council. The
6th Council writes: "But with us fought the Prince of the Apostles, for to
assist us we had his imitator and the successor to his chair, who exhibited to
us the mystery of theology in his letter...And the ink shone, and by Agatho
Peter spoke...our true God has revealed your Holiness as a wise physician,
mightily driving away the disease of heresy by the medicine of orthodoxy...We
therefore leave to you what is to be done, since you occupy the first see of
the universal Church, and stand on the firm rock of the faith...which also we
recognize as pronounced by the chiefest head of the Apostles..." (Mansi,
v. 11, p. 697).
And then the Emperor
drafts an edict, which is signed by all the Council bishops, which confirms the
infallibility of Pope Agatho on the issue of Monothelitism and Honorius. The
emperor writes: "These are the teachings of the voices of the Gospels and
Apostles, these the doctrines of the holy synods, and of the elect and
patristic tongues; these have been preserved untainted by Peter, the rock of
the faith, the head of the Apostles..." (Mansi, v. 11, p 697).
The Emperor himself
wrote a letter to Pope Agatho concerning the letter that Agatho wrote to the
6th council about the heresy of Honorius. Concerning Agatho's letter, the
Emperor states: "We compared it with the voices of the Gospels and of the
Apostles, and set beside it the decisions and definitions of the holy
ecumenical councils, and compared the quotations it contained with the precepts
of the Fathers...And with the eyes of our understanding we saw it as it were
the very ruler of the Apostolic choir, the proto-kathedras Peter himself,
declaring the mystery of the whole dispensation, and addressing Christ by this
word: ‘Thou art the Christ the Son of the living God...We all received it [the
letter of Agatho] willingly and sincerely, and embraced it, as though it were
Peter himself...Glory be to God, who does wondrous things, who has kept safe
the faith among you unharmed. For how should He not do so in that rock on which
He founded His Church, and prophesied that the gates of hell, all the ambushes
of heretics, should not prevail against it?" (Mansi, v. 11, p.713).
As Chapman says,
these letters show us that the bishops at the 6th ecumenical council, and the
whole mentality of the 7th century, despite the misstatement of Honorius, had
much more than a rudimentary idea of papal infallibility. The Council accepted
the letter of Pope Agatho which defined the faith. It deposed those who refused
to accept it. It asked Agatho to confirm its decision. The Bishops and the
emperor declared that Agatho's letter contains the doctrine of the Fathers;
Agatho claimed to speak with the voice of Peter, and the Council and the
Emperor affirmed it as the voice of Peter. His dogma had gone forth to all the
Churches, both East and West. He had kept the faith unaltered.
So if anything, the
heresy of Honorius affords us the great opportunity to show the true nature of
papal infallibility, by allowing us to contrast the undefined, non-binding, and
unclaimed for infallibility or Petrine office, kind of statement that Honorius
issued, with the defined, binding, traditional, Petrine-based, and claim to
infallibility decree of Agatho. Neither the 6th ecumenical council nor any
other council ever considered that Honorius had compromised the purity of the
infallible papal office, for they knew that Honorius never claimed to represent
his statement on the wills of Christ as an infallible teaching.
Far from demoting
papal infallibility, we see that the case of Honorius teaches the Church the
true nature of papal infallibility, its nature and its limits; its usefulness
and its timliness by contrasting the non-binding heresy of Honorius against the
binding truth of Agatho. Just as today we judge the letters of Pope Honorius by
the Vatican definition, and thus deny them to be ex cathedra, since they do not
define any doctrine and impose it upon the whole Church, so the Christians of
the 7th century judged the letters of Honorius by the custom of their own day,
and concluded that they did not claim what papal letters were supposed to claim
in order to be considered infallible. In cases where no appeal is made to the
tradition of the Church, where there is no precise definition, and where no
penalties are threatened for non-compliance to the whole Church, there can be
no instance of infallibility.
The seal on the whole
affair is noted in the confirmation of Pope Leo II on the 6th ecumenical
council. In his long letter to the emperor on May 7, 682, Pope Leo writes:
"My predecessor, Pope Agatho, of apostolic memory, together with this
honorable council, preached this norm of the right apostolic tradition. This he
sent by letter...to your piety by his own legates...And now the holy and great
council...has accepted it and embraced it in all things with us, as recognizing
in it the pure teaching of blessed Peter the prince of the apostles...And
because, as we have said, it has perfectly preached the definition of the true
faith which the apostolic see of blessed Peter the apostle (whose office we
unworthily hold), also reverently receives, therefore we...wholly and with full
agreement do consent to the definitions made by it, and by the authority of
blessed Peter, do confirm them..." (Mansi, v. 11, p. 721f). (Debate on
Papal Infallibility Robert Sungenis versus James White October 2000 Excerpts
from Robert Sungenis' Opening Remarks, Catholic Apologetics International Website [no longer online, but a copy is in my
possession for those who wish to have access to such])
For more on the Honorius affair itself,
see John Chapman's The
Condemnation of Pope Honorius (Catholic Truth Society, 1907). Chapman
himself refers to Agatho’s letter as being “dogmatic” (p. 76) and that "Agatho speaks with the voice of Peter himself" (p. 108).
So, why is Agatho’s letter, generally
considered to be ex cathedra, a problem for Catholicism? In the same
letter, Aghatho affirmed the distinction between God’s essence and his
energies, contra modern Catholic dogmatic theology that holds to absolute
divine simplicity where there is no distinction between the “essence” and “energies”
of God. As we read in Agatho’s letter:
For we equally detest
the blasphemy of division and of commixture. For when we confess two natures
and two natural wills, and two natural operations [Greek: energies]
in our one Lord Jesus Christ, we do not assert that they are contrary or
opposed one to the other (as those who err from the path of truth and accuse
the apostolic tradition of doing. Far be this impiety from the hearts of the
faithful!), nor as though separated (per se separated) in two persons or
subsistences, but we say that as the same our Lord Jesus Christ has two
natures so also he has two natural wills and operations [Greek: energies],
to wit, the divine and the human: the divine will and operation he has in
common with the coessential Father from all eternity: the human, he has
received from us, taken with our nature in time. This is the apostolic and
evangelic tradition, which the spiritual mother of your most felicitous empire,
the Apostolic Church of Christ, holds. (NPNF2 14:330-31)
As
with Athanasius, Agatho affirmed the energies-essence distinction (as do
the Eastern Orthodox), something inconsistent with the absolute divine
simplicity dogma of Catholicism (it was dogmatised at Fourth Lateran in 1215).
So here we have the Roman Pontiff, speaking authoritatively (ex cathedra,
fitting all the criteria of Vatican I, according to Mansi, Chapman, Sungenis,
and others) teaching the energies-essence distinction, a teaching that is
heretical according to modern Catholic dogma.
So much for the claim that embracing the
Papacy resolves theological issues one faces outside of Catholicism. Such only
compounds such and also forces one to embrace theological errors and heresies,
too, such as icon
veneration and the
Marian dogmas.
For more, see Jay
Dyer, Roman Catholic Absolute Divine Simplicity Refuted
