[boatbums]

And this is mine. Eusebius says that St. Peter was the first pope of the Catholic church, and gives a list of the popes all the way from St. Peter to his day. This was in the early part of the 4th century. It is the earliest historical source that we do have with this particular list, and the list is actually older than the oldest complete manuscript copies of the bible we possess. If you are to take Barnes’ and his notes, why would you reject historical evidence from Eusebius demonstrating that the Catholic position, is in fact correct?

Again, I am not taking Barnes' opinion as "authoritative" but as an interpretation of the Matthew 16 passage WRT Peter's primacy. By the same token, Eusebius (c. AD 263 – 339) is also a fallible man and his words do not carry authority either, but simply express his own ideas on a subject that was NOT settled then nor is it today. From http://triablogue.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20nonexistent%20early%20papacy we read about Origen (184/185 – 253/254) and his views about Peter's primacy:

When Origen is commenting directly on Matthew 16:18f. he carefully puts aside any interpretation of the passage that would make of Peter anything other than what every Christian is to be.
… And if we too have said like Peter, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God”, not as if flesh and blood had revealed it to us, but because light from the Father in heaven had shone in our hearts, we become a Peter, and to us also he who was the Word might say, “Thou Art Peter and upon this rock I will build my Church”. For every imitator of Christ is a rock, of Christ, that is, who is the spiritual rock that followed them that drank of him. And upon every such rock is built every word of the Church, and the whole order of life based thereon; for whosoever is perfect, having the sum of words and deeds and thoughts which fill up the state of blessedness, in him is the Church that God is building.

But if you suppose that God builds the entire Church upon Peter and on him alone, what would you say about John, the son of thunder, or any particular apostle? In other words, are we so bold as to say that it is against Peter in particular that the gates of Hades shall not prevail, but that they shall prevail against the other apostles and the perfect? Does not the above saying “The gates of Hades shall not prevail against it” hold in regard to all, and in the case of each of them? And likewise with regard to the words “Upon this rock I will build my Church”? Are the keys of the kingdom of heaven given by the Lord to Peter only, and will no other of the blessed receive them? For in the passage before us, the words “Whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven” and what follows do appear to be addressed to Peter individually; but in the Gospel of John, the Saviour, having given the Holy Spirit to the disciples by breathing on them, says “Receive ye the Holy Ghost” and what follows. For all the imitators of Christ are surnamed “rocks” from him, the spiritual rock which follows those who are being saved; … but from the very fact that they are members of Christ, they are called Christians by a name derived from him. And those called after the rock are called Peter. (In Matt. 12:10-11; ANF translation, extensively revised by E. Giles, Documents Illustrating Papal Authority 1952, pp. 45-46).

This is the earliest extant detailed commentary on Matthew 16:18f. and interestingly sees the event describe as a lesson about the life to be lived by every Christian, and not information about office or hierarchy or authority in the church.

The Brown, Donfried, and Reumann work concludes by saying, “it has become clear to us that an investigation of the historical career does not necessarily settle the question of Peter’s importance for the subsequent church” (168).

Origen is the first commentator from the Eastern church (Alexandria) on the importance of Peter. According to this passage, Peter’s importance as an apostle is not denied, but it is very much put on par with that of the smallest of believers.

There is no acknowledgement here of any “primacy”. This speaks also to the issue that Christ founded a visible church and specifically, what this “visible church” is – very much reminiscent of Calvin and the WCF, “The catholic or universal Church, which is invisible, consists of the whole number of the elect, that have been, are, or shall be gathered into one, under Christ the head thereof; and is the spouse, the body, the fullness of Him that filleth all in all.”

Here Origen’s understanding deals with the ontological aspects of what is visible, and that is, “every imitator of Christ is a rock”, a reflection of Peter’s own statement, “you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house”.

Both of these together support the notion that there was nothing special about the “ontologicalness” of being Peter. In terms of being “first”, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, Peter had the privilege of being the first one to preach the Gospel, “first to the Jews, then to the Gentiles” (Acts 10), but in the context of historical “tradition”, Origen contradicts the notion that the early third-century church in the East thought that there was anything particularly special about him, or where he happened to be located.

As to the commonly cited claim that there is an undisputed list of Popes going back to Peter, such a claim is not provable and there is much to contradict that it even can be true. From http://reformation500.wordpress.com/2010/01/14/historical-literature-on-the-earliest-papacy/:

Interestingly, regarding Peter and succession, the Catholic writer Raymond Brown says, “The claims of various sees to descend from particular members of the Twelve are highly dubious. It is interesting that the most serious of these is the claim of the bishops of Rome to descend from Peter, the one member of the Twelve who was almost a missionary apostle in the Pauline sense – a confirmation of our contention that whatever succession there was from apostleship to episcopate, it was primarily in reference to the Puauline tyupe of apostleship, not that of the Twelve.” (“Priest and Bishop, Biblical Reflections,” Nihil Obstat, Imprimatur, 1970, pg 72.)

The Catholic historian Paul Johnson goes a bit further than Brown, in his 1976 work “History of Christianity”:

By the third century, lists of bishops, each of whom had consecrated his successor, and which went back to the original founding of the see by one or the other of the apostles, had been collected or manufactured by most of the great cities of the empire and were reproduced by Eusebius…– “A History of Christianity,” pgs 53 ff.)

Eusebius presents the lists as evidence that orthodoxy had a continuous tradition from the earliest times in all the great Episcopal sees and that all the heretical movements were subsequent aberrations from the mainline of Christianity.

Looking behind the lists, however, a different picture emerges. In Edessa, on the edge of the Syrian desert, the proofs of the early establishment of Christianity were forgeries, almost certainly manufactured under Bishop Kune, the first orthodox Bishop.

In Egypt, Orthodoxy was not established until the time of Bishop Demetrius, 189-231, who set up a number of other sees and manufactured a genealogical tree for his own bishopric of Alexandria, which traces the foundation through ten mythical predecessors back to Mark, and so to Peter and Jesus.

Even in Antioch, where both Peter and Paul had been active, there seems to have been confusion until the end of the second century. Antioch completely lost their list; “When Eusebius’s chief source for his Episcopal lists, Julius Africanus, tried to compile one for Antioch, he found only six names to cover the same period of time as twelve in Rome and ten in Alexandria.

Going back again in time, it is interesting to note the development of certain “enhancements” to the stories of succession. Of course Irenaeus passes along the whopper suggesting that Peter and Paul founded the church at Rome. He says, “Since it would be too long, in a work like this, to list the successions in all the churches (helpfully provided above by Johnson), we shall take only one of them, the church that is greatest, most ancient, and known to all, founded and set up by the two most glorious apostles Peter and Paul at Rome …” (Against Heresies, 3.3.2).

Peter and Paul neither “founded” nor “set up” the church at Rome. Paul of course wrote to the Romans in 56 or 58 ad that he had never been there, although the church was existing, thriving, and was attested as early as the Edict of Claudius as early as 49 ad (see Acts 18:2-3), having traveled there from Jerusalem, maybe as early as Acts 2, via the Puteoli-Rome trade routes.

Peter is said to have died in 64 ad, under Nero. There were many legends that Peter arrived at Rome during the reign of Claudius (41-54), and was “bishop” of Rome for 25 years. But Acts 15 places him in Jerusalem and Paul’s letters place him in Corinth and Galatia (not as a leader, but as a missionary) well into the 50’s, long after the church had been “founded” in Rome. Cullman, after a thorough investigation of the historical sources, says that he “became the leader of the Jewish Christian mission; that in this capacity, at a time which cannot be more closely determined but probably occurred at the end of his life, he came to Rome and there, after a very short work, died as a martyr under Nero.” (Cullman, “Peter,” pg. 152) Cullman refuses to discuss the notion that Peter lived in Rome for 25 years, noting that it is so obviously fictitious that it did not merit any serious discussion.

I bring these links up only to demonstrate that there is not a unified consensus to back up your statement, but I understand why some people feel compelled to believe it is the truth. I once was a Roman Catholic and am now an Evangelical Christian. I did not just swallow what was told to me but I diligently sought out the truth of the Gospel and to know the true God. God has not disappointed me and He has rewarded my faith.

And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. (Hebrews 11:6)

I can't believe it is this late! I'm hitting the sack. If you are still up, I hope you have a good night.

[JCBreckenridge]

Let’s be clear here - Origen disputes Primacy. He does not dispute Apostolic Succession. These are two very different issues. There are plenty of attestations from other Church fathers that do assert the Primacy of the See of St. Peter. Origen advances that of Alexandria, which isn’t an option now, nor defended by anyone at present. Present day it’s Rome and what is left of Constantinople. I say what is left - because it isn’t Constantinople that is running the show, it’s more complicated then this.

I really don’t want to get into issues over Primacy, because Apostolic succession is the main point. Despite what you say that Eusebius’ account is ‘just one man’s opinion’, this is false. Again, Eusebius is the best history we have of this particular period in Church history. Toss him away and you’re tossing something we cannot replace. Sure, he could be wrong, but the evidence is quite strong in favour of the Roman position of an unbroken succession. The Orthodox do not dispute this either, merely asserting that the issue isn’t Rome, but that they too have an unbroken succession through the same bishops.