“I exhort you as your fellow elder,” St. Peter writes, and it’s hard to know who first tried to use this verse as a proof-text against papal primacy. Why, Peter himself says he’s just one among many! So why does the pope lord it over the whole Church? One thing it’s not hard to know is that the Church Fathers are full of assertions that Peter does have primacy, and not one of them ever cites 1 Peter 5:1 to refute the idea. If the text does deny papal primacy, apparently none of the Church Fathers were aware of it. Dear reader, you’re welcome to search an index of Scripture references in the Church Fathers if you think you can find any of them citing 1 Peter 5:1 to deny the primacy of Peter. Surely they were aware of the text — Cyprian refers to it, as do Tertullian and Jerome — but none of them think it means that Peter is no more than the equal of all other bishops.
1 Peter 5:1 is not a proof text against papal primacy.
BY: Henry Matthew Alt • March 23, 2022 • Apologetics; Church Fathers; Exegesis; papacy
The crack apologist and fivepoint Calvinist who calls himself “TurretinFan,” and who is known to us as Mr. X, first got upset about this manuscript in 2008. Then, he got upset again in 2009. Now in 2021, after a blogging sabbatical of six weeks, he has decided to let us know that he is upset again. Maybe that explains his absence; he couldn’t bring himself to log onto his blog and has spent the days in severe prayer. I don’t know. It’s not hard to imagine why Mr. X is so upset; the mansucript in question is the “Homily of the Papyrus of Turin” [HPT]. The (lost) original dates to around the 4th century — the one extant manuscript is from the 6th — and Catholic apologists like to cite it as an early example of Marian veneration.
Its addiction to fake quotations is an indictment on pop apologetics. Did you know that St. Augustine never said “Roma locuta est; causa finita est?” It’s a handy epistrophe; it’s a fair enough paraphrase; but it was not what Augustine wrote. Here are Augustine’s exact words, from Sermon CXXXI. (The context is Rome’s condemnation of Pelagianism.) “For already have two councils [Mileve 
Protestants know that if the Church Fathers did not talk about sola scriptura, then it really would be an invention of the Reformation that was unknown before. Surely, if it were a true doctrine, someone knew about it before the sixteenth century! So they go plowing through volume after volume of the Church Fathers trying to find it by force of divination, which they call sound exegesis. In the earlier parts of his opening statement, Dr.* White has claimed to find it in St. Cyril, in Theodoret, and in St. Augustine. Now he tries to pile on St. Athanasius. St. Athanasius is a real hero of Dr.* White’s.
TurretinFan is back! We’ve missed him. Longtime readers will remember this crack, Reformed theologian who, because of his anonymity, is known here as Mr. X. I thought his blog was dying a protracted death. There would be long silences; then, he would flicker up again for a post or two; then, slump into another doze. Perhaps he thinks I have forgotten him and he can now resume his raison d’être: plowing wild and unhinged and desperate through the Bible and Church Fathers for evidence of Protestant doctrine.