Zdôrazňovanie apoštolskej tradície v sporoch s heretikmi – Rím ako privilegované miesto tejto tradície

TEREZA REHORČÍKOVÁ
Bratislava

Focusing on apostolic tradition in the conflicts with the heretics – Rome as privileged place of this tradition

Abstract: The apostolic churches, as guarantors of orthodox doctrine, had generally higher authority than all other churches, because it was believed that the apostolic faith was certainly preserved in them. In the fight against gnosis in the second half of the 2nd century, Christian authors argued with the apostolicity of the church and they used to use the Roman Church as the perfect and the most appropriate example precisely because of its exceptional apostolic origin. The first author and witness of this state is Hegesippus, whose argument – the preservation of true apostolic faith due to succession of bishops in every church where he used Rome as the best example – was deepened by Ireneus of Lyon. Rome has in his Adversus Haereses the “fullness” of apostolicity, is the most apostolic church of all churches thanks to its connection to both Peter and Paul and their martyrdoms. Therefore, every other church in which the apostolic faith and tradition is preserved must ipso facto agree with Rome. Moving forward Rome is the best example for demonstrating apostolicity of the whole church. The question for the last analysed author from this period – Tertullian – was how to discern from the heretic and apostolic reading of the Scripture since Gnostics used the same texts with completely different explanation. The answer was (to put the simplest) the apostolic faith itself. It is again passed through generations thanks to succession of bishops and the best places where to verify it are apostolic churches. Rome is not as obviously named as the best example; the fortresses of the true faith the apostolic churches were equal, still the Rome in his enumeration covers more place. It is the testimony of the very high reverence for Roman church, which was quite common during the whole Christian antiquity.

Keywords: apostolic tradition, church of Rome, Ireneus of Lyon, succession of bishops, papal primacy.