Tuesday, August 23, 2022

The Condemnation of Pope Honorius and its Implications in Dyer, "Essays on Theology and Philosophy"

  

Most argue over whether Honorius was or was not a heretic, etc:  I want to take a different, more obvious approach: setting aside the issue of his orthodoxy for a moment, the mere fact that an entire ecumenical council was perfectly fine with condemning Honorius itself shows the mindset of the 7th century church was not that of Vatican I.  If they had had a Vatican I mindset, or even anything approximating it, such a notion would have been completely impossible. The whole assembly would have risen up and demanded the head of anyone challenging the office of Peter embodied in the Roman Pope (alone), which was supposedly the cornerstone of the Church! Did this occur?  No, the council unanimously condemned Honorius and later debates ensued.  This alone simply proves they did not have a Vatican I mindset and that alone is enough to demonstrate the dogma of the papacy is a centuries-long morphing and evolving and expanding abberation.  Romanists simply assume the papal claims of the ultramontanes and retroactively read them into anything and everything in the past.  

 

The notes in the Schaff Set argue forcefully as follows concerning whether he was a monothelite, and note the ever-evasive trump card of papal apologetics – when in doubt or heresy, just say “he was speaking as as private theologian and not as pope!”  An argument so absurd and childish it hardly requires a reply, given the entire supposed purpose of the office of the papacy!: 

 

“Most Roman controversialists of recent years have admitted both the fact of Pope Honorius’s condemnation (which Baronius denies), and the monothelite (and therefore heretical) character of his epistles, but they are of opinion that these letters were not his ex cathedrĂ¢ utterances as Doctor Universalis, but mere expressions of the private opinion of the Pontiff as a theologian.  With this matter we have no concern in this connexion.

I shall therefore say nothing further on this point but shall simply supply the leading proofs that Honorius was as a matter of fact condemned by the Sixth Ecumenical Council.

 

1.  His condemnation is found in the Acts in the xiiith Session, near the beginning.

2.  His two letters were ordered to be burned at the same session.

3.  In the xvith Session the bishops exclaimed “Anathema to the heretic Sergius, to the heretic Cyrus, to the heretic Honorius, etc.”

4.  In the decree of faith published at the xviijth Session it is stated that “the originator of all evil…found a fit tool for his will in…Honorius, Pope of Old Rome, etc.”

5.  The report of the Council to the Emperor says that “Honorius, formerly bishop of Rome” they had “punished with exclusion and anathema” because he followed the monothelites.

6.  In its letter to Pope Agatho the Council says it “has slain with anathema Honorius.”

7.  The imperial decree speaks of the “unholy priests who infected the Church and falsely governed” and mentions among them “Honorius, the Pope of Old Rome, the confirmer of heresy who contradicted himself.”  The Emperor goes on to anathematize “Honorius who was Pope of Old Rome, who in everything agreed with them, went with them, and strengthened the heresy.”

8.  Pope Leo II. confirmed the decrees of the Council and expressly says that he too anathematized Honorius.337

9.  That Honorius was anathematized by the Sixth Council is mentioned in the Trullan Canons (No. j.).

10.  So too the Seventh Council declares its adhesion to the anathema in its decree of faith, and in several places in the acts the same is said.

11.  Honorius’s name was found in the Roman copy of the Acts.  This is evident from Anastasius’s life of Leo II.  (Vita Leonis II.)

12.  The Papal Oath as found in the Liber Diurnus taken by each new Pope from the fifth to the eleventh century, in the form probably prescribed by Gregory II., “smites with eternal anathema the originators of the new heresy, Sergius, etc., together with Honorius, because he assisted the base assertion of the heretics.”

13.  In the lesson for the feast of St. Leo II. in the Roman Breviary the name of Pope Honorius occurs among those excommunicated by the Sixth Synod.  Upon this we may well hear Bossuet:  “They suppress as far as they can, the Liber Diurnus: they have erased this from the Roman Breviary.  Have they therefore hidden it?  Truth breaks out from all sides, and these things become so much the more evident, as they are the more studiously put out of sight.”

 

With such an array of proof no conservative historian, it would seem, can question the fact that Honorius, the Pope of Rome, was condemned and anathematized as a heretic by the Sixth Ecumenical Council.”

 

If it was the mind of the 7th century Church that Pope Honorius was only speaking as a “private theologian” and not as the infallible head, where was any of this nonsense at the time?  It was nowhere, but was in the mind of the universal church at the time was the certitude of condemning the bishop of Rome. 

 

Roman Catholic Reply:  Honorius was actually legit, but wasn’t teaching infallibly!  

 

My reply: See the circular nonsense of point number 1 above.  This brings up another error in the Roman Catholic system, which is founded on a classical foundationalist epistemology.  Thomism, for example, still the “official” philosophy of the Roman Church, is just such a system, where axiomatic and self-evident principles cannot be proven, only known to be clearly self-evident.  Thus, the Roman anthropology and epistemology formally rejects all circular arguments as fallacies.  

 

Yet when it comes to the basis of the religion, grounded as it is on “supernatural” truths over against “natural” truths, the truth of Catholicism is known by the dogma and definitions of the papacy. The doctrine of the infallibility and universality of the papacy is known and grounded in the promises made to St. Peter by Jesus, i.e., Scripture, or revelation.  But the basis for faith in revelation in Scripture in terms of what the canon is, is said to be the determination of the papal decrees on the canon of Scripture.   Thus, a vicious circle has been found within a philosophico-reigious scheme that adamantly rejects all circular argumentation as always fallacious.  Setting aside the problems in Thomism, I have never seen this clear issue addressed.  Romanists are quick to chide Protestants and Orthodox for being circular and arbitrary about having an individual understanding of Scripture, but when pressed about the bases for their own faith, wherein all forms of circular arguments are fallacious, the entire system is found to be circular.  

 

“I know what’s true based on the papacy, which is based on the Petrine texts, which the papacy determined is canonical long ago.”  

 

The folly of the Roman Catholic attempting to solve an epistemic question by introducing the juridical office of the papacy into the mix is evident.  It only moves the problem back a step.  What is needed is a different anthropology and epistemology where paradigmatic questions are allowed to be circular, without violating normative logical laws.  That is possible in Orthodoxy and its Christology and anthropology and Triadology – but not in the dogmatic classical foundationalism of Rome.   (Jay Dyer, “5 Simple Arguments Against the Papacy,” in Essays on Theology and Philosophy [Samizdat Press, 2019], 247-50)