” The Apostles could not absolve sins.”
Yes, they could.
“That is something that belongs to God only.”
God gave them this power.
“Mar_2:7 Why doth this man thus speak blasphemies? who can forgive sins but God only?”
John 15:5
“I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”
“The reference is to their binding and loosing, officially, as the Priests of the Old Testament did in making lepers either clean or unclean, but not that they gave them leprosy or cleansed their leprosy.”
Sez who? You?
“Tell that to James, who usurped his role in Acts 15, and Paul.”
Oh, you mean James, Bishop of Jerusalem, presiding over the Conference in Jerusalem. I see.
“Therefore, the rock, which is in the feminine form, must either be Peter’s confession.”
petros? The Greek isn’t feminine.
“obedient to the Chief Cornerstone, which is Christ, not any particular man.”
Matthew 8:8-9
The centurion replied, “Lord, I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. But just say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and that one, ‘Come,’ and he comes. I say to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.”
Christ later on tells Peter - “Feed my sheep”
“Ignatius doesn’t, neither does Polycarp. In fact, Ignatius, when writing to Polycarp, calls the head of Polycarp God, and not the Pope or any Bishop of Rome. Not even in Ignatius’s letter to the church of Rome is the Bishop even mentioned. Clement mentions Peter, listing him among the other Apostles who died mightily for the faith. No primacy of the Bishop of Rome or of Peter are mentioned.”
This is an argument from silence.
Tertullian argues for Apostolic succession through the bishop of Rome from St. Peter to Clement. So for your argument to prevail, this pushes you back all the way to some time before Tertullian.