Posted on 09/11/2014 12:08:50 PM PDT by Alex Murphy
There are one billion Roman Catholics worldwide, one billion people who are subject to the Pope’s authority. How, one might ask, did all of this happen? The answer, I believe, is far more complex and untidy than Catholics have argued. First, I will give a brief explanation of what the Catholic position is, and then, second, I will suggest what I think actually took place.
The Catholic Explanation
The traditional Catholic understanding is that Jesus said that it was upon Peter the church was to be built (Matt. 16:18−19; see also John 21:15−17; Luke 22:32). Following this, Peter spent a quarter of a century in Rome as its founder and bishop, and his authority was recognized among the earliest churches; this authority was handed down to his successors. Indeed, the Second Vatican Council (1962–65) re-affirmed this understanding. Apostolic authority has been handed on to the apostles’ successors even as Peter’s supreme apostolic power has been handed on to each of his successors in Rome.
The problem with this explanation, however, is that there is no evidence to sustain it. The best explanation of Matthew 16:18–19 is that the church will be built, not on an ecclesiastical position, but on Peter’s confession regarding Christ’s divinity. Correlative to this understanding is the fact that there is no biblical evidence to support the view that Peter spent a long time in the church in Rome as its leader. The Book of Acts is silent about this; it is not to be found in Peter’s own letters; and Paul makes no mention of it, which is strange if, indeed, Peter was in Rome early on since at the end of Paul’s letter to the Romans, he greets many people by name. And the argument that Peter’s authority was universally recognized among the early churches is contradicted by the facts. It is true that Irenaeus, in the second century, did say that the church was founded by “the blessed apostles,” Peter and Paul, as did Eusebius in the fourth century, and by the fifth century, Jerome did claim that it was founded by Peter whom he calls “the prince of the apostles.” However, on the other side of the equation are some contradictory facts. Ignatius, for example, en route to his martyrdom, wrote letters to the bishops of the dominant churches of the day, but he spoke of Rome’s prominence only in moral, not ecclesiastical, terms. At about the same time early in the second century, the Shepherd of Hermas, a small work written in Rome, spoke only of its “rulers” and “the elders” who presided over it. There was, apparently, no dominant bishop at that time. Not only so, but in the second and third centuries, there were numerous instances of church leaders resisting claims from leaders in Rome to ecclesiastical authority in settling disputes.
It is, in fact, more plausible to think that the emergence of the Roman pontiff to power and prominence happened by natural circumstance rather than divine appointment. This took place in two stages. First, it was the church in Rome that emerged to prominence and only then, as part of its eminence, did its leader begin to stand out. The Catholic church has inverted these facts by suggesting that apostolic power and authority, indeed, Peter’s preeminent power and authority, established the Roman bishop whereas, in fact, the Roman bishopric’s growing ecclesiastical prestige derived, not from Peter, but from the church in Rome.
The Actual Explanation
In the beginning, the church in Rome was just one church among many in the Roman empire but natural events conspired to change this. Jerusalem had been the original “home base” of the faith, but in a.d. 70, the army of Titus destroyed it and that left Christianity without its center. It was not unnatural for people in the empire to begin to look to the church in Rome since this city was its political capital. All roads in that ancient world did, indeed, lead to Rome, and many of them, of course, were traveled by Christian missionaries. It is also the case that the Roman church, in the early centuries, developed a reputation for moral and doctrinal probity and, for these reasons, warranted respect. Its growing eminence, therefore, seems to have come about in part because it was warranted and also, in part, because it was able to bask in some of the reflected splendor of the imperial city.
Heresies had abounded from the start, but in the third-century, churches began to take up a new defensive posture against them. Would it not be the case, Tertullian argued, that churches founded by the apostles would have a secure footing for their claims to authenticity, in contrast to potentially heretical churches? This argument buttressed the growing claims to preeminence of the Roman church. However, it is interesting to note that in the middle of this century, Cyprian in North Africa argued that the words, “You are Peter …” were not a charter for the papacy but, in fact, applied to all bishops. Furthermore, at the third Council of Carthage in 256, he asserted that the Roman bishop should not attempt to be a “bishop of bishops” and exercise “tyrannical” powers.
Already in the New Testament period, persecution was a reality, but in the centuries that followed, the church suffered intensely because of the animosities and apprehensions of successive emperors. In the fourth century, however, the unimaginable happened. Emperor Constantine, prior to a pivotal battle, saw a vision and turned to Christianity. The church, which had lived a lonely existence on the “outside” up to this time, now enjoyed an unexpected imperial embrace. As a result, from this point on, the distinction between appropriate ecclesiastical demeanor and worldly pretensions to pomp and power were increasingly lost. In the Middle Ages, the distinction disappeared entirely. In the sixth century, Pope Gregory brazenly exploited this by asserting that the “care of the whole church” had been placed in the hands of Peter and his successors in Rome. Yet even at this late date, such a claim did not pass unchallenged. Those in the east, whose center was in Constantinople, resented universal claims like this, and, in fact, this difference of opinion was never settled. In 1054, after a series of disputes, the Great Schism between the eastern and western churches began. Eastern Orthodoxy began to go its own way, separated from Roman jurisdiction, and this remains a breach that has been mostly unhealed.
The pope’s emergence to a position of great power and authority was, then, long in the making. Just how far the popes had traveled away from New Testament ideas about church life was brutally exposed by Erasmus at the time of the Reformation. Pope Julius II had just died when, in 1517, Erasmus penned his Julius Exclusus. He pictured this pope entering heaven where, to his amazement, he was not recognized by Peter! Erasmus’ point was simply that the popes had become rich, pretentious, worldly, and everything but apostolic. However, he should have made his point even more radically. It was not just papal behavior that Peter would not have recognized as his own, but papal pretensions to universal authority as well.
Citation please...
Early church as in first to third century...
Why, in the 66 books of the Bible that we all agree upon, of course. ; )
Wait... you're Catholic?
LOL! Sorry to disappoint. Reformed Baptist here. :)
Ah, yes. Those 66 books that the Apostles and several generations of early Christians had no concept of.
Show me this ossuary....got a link?
Peter was not writing from Mesopotamia, which wasn’t even part of the Roman Empire at the time. It belonged to Parthia. Turn to the early part of 1st Peter. Pontus, Galacia, Bithynia...notice those are all Roman provinces? Notice the two people he says he has with him have decidedly Roman names: Silvanus and Mark (Marcus)?
And speaking of his “son” Mark who was with him there, isn’t it odd that he would follow Peter to Mesopotamia and then write a Gospel that’s full of Latinisms and not Akkadian or Aramaic ones?
LOL! Suits me fine. They had the Tanakh, which is enough.
Well, they all had the OT, right? (Minus the OT deuterocanonicals, which didn't show up as part of the Septuagint until about the 4th-5th Century.) So they had the law and the prophets, as Jesus so often referred to them, right out of the gate.
And this part boggles my mind. How can anyone think they didn't have the Gospels and the epistles within the first generation or two? They were apostolic work product. They HAD to exist during the apostolic era. There's even a physical fragment of John that dates to about 125. So while they didn't necessarily have them all neat and organized like we do, they were contemporary to the first years of the church. The ecclesia of Christ, the one that would overcome even the gates of Hell, has never been without Scripture.
Peace,
SR
Not so much.
Acts 15:13 When they finished, James spoke up. “Brothers,” he said, “listen to me. 14 Simon[a] has described to us how God first intervened to choose a people for his name from the Gentiles. 15 The words of the prophets are in agreement with this, as it is written: 16 “‘After this I will return and rebuild David’s fallen tent. Its ruins I will rebuild, and I will restore it, 17 that the rest of mankind may seek the Lord, even all the Gentiles who bear my name, says the Lord, who does these things’[b]— 18 things known from long ago.[c] 19 “It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God.
Oh, and his name is not "Skippy". Leave those tactics to the kindergartners.
Please show where the assumption of Mary is found in scripture.
No way. The evidence would show he spent very little time there. Now one Simon Magus on the other hand...
But then a pagan by the name of Simon Magus on the other hand..
What, didjer finners fawl awf?
Peter was not writing from Mesopotamia, which wasn’t even part of the Roman Empire at the time. It belonged to Parthia.
So what? More important is the Silk Road, and the jurisdiction of the Jews in Babylon (as pertains to the synagogues)... Did you forget that Peter is an Apostle to the Jews?
Turn to the early part of 1st Peter. Pontus, Galacia, Bithynia...notice those are all Roman provinces?
Find the Northern trade route out of Babylon... Hmmm, I wonder where that goes?
Notice the two people he says he has with him have decidedly Roman names: Silvanus and Mark (Marcus)?
More important is the absolute silence of Paul... All that time up in Rome, and not a single mention of Peter... Gee, I guess he was too busy sitting on that great golden throne, getting his toes slobbered on... That's probably why Peter had no time for the little people'... ; )
You must account for what was normative and authoritative in the interim. It cannot be disputed that there was not a, what we call "New Testament." Polycarp and Ingatius had to fulfill their bishoprics without it. They defeated heresy without it.
You have to account for that. The heresies they refuted could not be refuted by Old Testament Scripture, because the Incarnation and the Resurrection had rocked the world. The heretics, like Marcion and the Gnostics were coming at the Church with ideas that rationalized or mystified the Incarnation.
So without a New Testament, they refuted the heresies and forged a link in the chain of orthodoxy (right belief). How do you account for that?
They found a statue dedicated to him on some bridge in Rome... I will have to go find that again.
I think there is more evidence that Simon Magus was the “Simon” in much of the Catholic Church history rather than Simon Peter.
I studied on this a bit. There are protocols that need to be followed for an itinerant rabbi to preach in a synagogue. Submittable in writing, and what not, for approval... This was to permit the 'home team' time to formulate correction for 'right teaching' and debate. Probably somewhere in the Talmud, I bet...
This is one of the reasons I regard an original Hebrew Gospel to be almost critically necessary, and something like Hebrews too, as 'work product', as you say. Maybe some archaeologist will dig up some transparencies or a powerpoint presentation... some CDs out in the entrance... Then we'll know.
youi mean this Polycarp, the one that quoted from most of the books of the New Testament?
http://www.ntcanon.org/Polycarp.shtml
Check out the quote tables. Either the chap had a blazing amazing photographic memory, or he had some of those NT texts laying around.
I’ll look at Ignatius later, but I think you see where this is going.
Peace,
SR
Ping to 59.
As for rabbinic protocols, I am not aware that Polycarp was Jewish, and I have seen (unsourced) statements he was gentile. I have no reason to believe at this point that said rabbinic protocols were being observed, and so I don’t see why this should infer a Hebrew NT text. If you have good sources backing your view I will be glad to take a look.
Peace,
SR
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