Was Ignatius of Antioch Roman Catholic?

He's been discussed a lot lately by various Catholics. See this recent video by Cameron Bertuzzi, for example. And Ignatius has often been cited in support of Catholicism and against Protestantism for many years. It's not just a recent development. It's been popular for a long time in Catholic circles to cite Ignatius as a major problem for Protestants, because of comments he makes about issues like the monarchical episcopate and how the eucharist is the flesh and blood of Christ.

But some Protestants believe in the monarchical episcopate and a bodily presence of Christ in the eucharist. And the sort of language Ignatius uses about the eucharist is also used by him in other contexts that aren't interpreted by anybody the way advocates of a bodily presence of Christ in the eucharist are interpreting his eucharistic comments. See my discussion here. And here are some other examples not discussed in that thread I just linked:

Evidence Against Alternatives To Sola Scriptura

A neglected line of evidence in controversies over sola scriptura is the absence of alternatives in contexts in which we'd expect them to be discussed if the sources involved believed in those alternatives. The New Testament says nothing of the bishop of Rome, much less does it tell Christians to look to him as the infallible standard of orthodoxy in the future. When Paul, Peter, and John are approaching death or are operating in some other relevant context, they turn their audience's attention to remembering what Jesus taught in the past, remembering what the apostles taught in the past, and scripture, but say nothing of anything like an infallible Pope, magisterium, or ecumenical councils. The earliest opponents of Christianity say a lot about things like Jesus' teachings and scripture, but show no knowledge of a papacy, an allegedly infallible church, etc. I've discussed issues like these many times in the past. See here and here, for example.

There's also the fact that Papias, Irenaeus, Tertullian, and other early sources defined the church and tradition much differently than modern opponents of sola scriptura do. So, citing them against sola scriptura doesn't lead us to the alternatives most modern critics of sola scriptura are advocating. In fact, the beliefs of the early extrabiblical sources are largely inconsistent with the beliefs of groups like Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. See the many examples discussed here. Or see here regarding Irenaeus and here regarding Tertullian, for instance.

You can click on the sola scriptura label at the bottom of this post for an archive of many of our posts on the subject. For example, shortly before his death, Steve Hays wrote a post on sola scriptura that makes some good points that are often neglected.

The Widespread Absence Of An Early Papacy

Gavin Ortlund just put out a video that provides a good overview of a lot of the evidence against the papacy. He makes some points I didn't make in my last post, and my post covers some things not included in his video. When you think of the evidence as a whole, notice that there's such a large number and variety of contexts in which the papacy is absent among the early sources. In addition to being absent, the concept of a papacy is sometimes contradicted. I mentioned some examples in my last post. And keep in mind how important Catholics tell us the papacy is, how it's allegedly the foundation of the church, the source of Christian unity, and so on. The First Vatican Council claimed that the papacy is a clear doctrine of scripture that's always been understood by the church. In reality, the papacy isn't in scripture or the earliest extrabiblical sources, and it's sometimes contradicted by those sources.

Some Ways To Argue Against A Papacy

It's useful to think of ways to concisely address a subject. That helps when we don't have much time in a particular context or we're looking for brief way to start a conversation on the topic, for example. In a post a few years ago, I summarized nine lines of evidence to consider when evaluating the papacy:

Regarding the evidence against the papacy outside of Matthew 16, think of the many contexts in which a papacy could have been mentioned early on, but wasn't: there's no reference to a title for a papal office (in contrast to "apostle", "deacon", etc.); the qualifications for holding other offices, like apostle and elder, are mentioned in places like Acts 1 and 1 Timothy 3, whereas there's no such discussion of the qualifications for being a Pope; passages discussing the structure of the church, like 1 Corinthians 12 and Ephesians 4, say nothing of a papacy; the imagery used for the church in Ephesians 2 and elsewhere doesn't make any effort to portray a papal office; the imagery used for the apostles in Matthew 19 and elsewhere (e.g., twelve thrones, twelve foundation stones) doesn't make any effort to portray a papal office; in passages in which the apostles are anticipating their departure in some sense (Paul departing from the Ephesian elders in Acts 20, Paul and Peter anticipating their deaths in 2 Timothy and 2 Peter), there's no reference to a papal office, looking to the bishop of Rome as the foundation of the church, looking to the bishop of Rome as the center of Christian unity, or anything like that; the earliest sources to comment on the Roman church and its importance (Paul in Romans, Luke at the end of Acts, Ignatius, Dionysius of Corinth, Irenaeus, etc.) give a variety of non-papal reasons for the Roman church's significance; the early opponents of Christianity, including ones who addressed the religion at as much length as Trypho and Celsus did, showed no awareness of a papacy. Furthermore, passages like 1 Corinthians 12:28 (mentioning "apostles" as the first order in the church) and Galatians 2:9 (grouping Peter with other apostles and naming him second) make more sense if there was no early belief in a papacy than if there was a belief in it.

Some of the arguments don't have enough significance to use in isolation. They should be part of a cumulative case instead. But some of them could be used in isolation. You could choose one or more to start with, then move on to others if warranted.

A Neglected Line Of Evidence For Sola Scriptura And Against Alternatives

There's some material in the New Testament that I've referred to as departure passages. They provide some evidence for sola scriptura and against alternatives to it. See here for a post about the departure material in the apostle John's writings. That post also has a link to an earlier article about departure material from Paul and Peter.

Resources For Addressing The Papacy

The papacy has been getting a lot of attention lately, because of the Pope's death. Go here for a brief summary of some of the evidence against the papacy. The main section of the post is just two paragraphs long, summarizing some problems with Roman Catholic appeals to Isaiah 22 and Matthew 16 and several contexts in which there could have been evidence for an early papacy, but the office is absent or contradicted instead. And here's a collection of many of our posts on the papacy, including lengthier discussions of the issues summarized in the first post linked above.

The Departure Material In John

I've written about what I've called the departure passages in scripture and how they relate to issues like the papacy and sola scriptura. See here, for example. Acts 20, 2 Timothy, and 2 Peter have been discussed a lot, but I want to expand on John's material, which has been neglected.

How Corrupt The Roman Catholic Church Is

The Other Paul and James White recently discussed the latest edition of the Jerome Biblical Commentary, an edition with a foreword from Pope Francis. See here for some examples of similar problems with Catholicism in other contexts.

More Discussion Of The Problems With The Eliakim Argument For The Papacy

John Cranman and Jeremy Kidd recently produced a video that makes a lot of good points about the argument for a papacy based on Eliakim in Isaiah 22. (I came across the video by means of a link from The Other Paul on Twitter.)

Protestants Are More Consistent With Matthew 16

Peter isn't just singled out in verses 16-19, which Catholics highlight. He's also singled out in verses 22-23. No other apostle is called Satan. Does it follow that Peter was uniquely Satanic, more evil than anybody else or any other apostle or something akin to that? No. For one thing, Peter can be singled out in verses 22-23 without having any relevant sort of primacy. It could be, and it probably was the case, that Peter was singled out in verses 22-23 because he singled himself out by speaking up. It wouldn't make sense for Jesus to respond to Peter by talking to Thomas. It doesn't follow that Peter was singled out because of being more Satanic than anybody else or some such thing. Since we know in the abstract that something like being singled out in verses 22-23 in the manner in which Peter was singled out doesn't imply primacy in any relevant sense, and the evidence as a whole suggests Peter didn't have the primacy in question (e.g., the evidence we have that Judas was more Satanic than Peter), we conclude that a Satanic primacy most likely isn't being referred to. The passage could be referring to such a primacy, but that possibility isn't a probability. Just as Peter's personality, such as his outspokenness, can explain, and seems to best explain, his being singled out in verses 16-19 without the involvement of something like an additional church office, the same is likely true in verses 22-23.

Protestants apply the same sort of reasoning to verses 22-23 that they apply to verses 16-19. Catholics, on the other hand, are less consistent.

Does Peter's name suggest papal authority?

Catholics sometimes make claims like the ones I came across in a recent discussion about the papacy: "He spoke to Peter first, and changed his name and gave him the authority specifically. At no other point does God change someone's name and it does not denote new authority and responsibility."

Problems With The Eliakim Argument For The Papacy

Some comments I posted in a YouTube thread, in case anybody would find them helpful:

Were Ephesus and Constantinople prominent because of a perpetual office instituted by Jesus or the apostles?

Because none of the earliest Christian sources refer to a papacy, Catholics often resort to suggesting that any sort of reference to a prominence or primacy of the Roman church is adequate evidence for the office. But when sources like Paul, Ignatius, Dionysius of Corinth, Irenaeus, and Tertullian commend the Roman church for non-papal reasons, it doesn't make sense to equate that with affirming that the Roman bishop has papal authority. It's sometimes suggested that critics of Catholicism are asking for too much when they make that sort of distinction. But it does make sense to distinguish between two concepts that aren't the same, and we do that with other early churches and early bishops. Think of how prominent churches other than Rome were in early church history (Jerusalem in the book of Acts, Ignatius' comments about the significance of the church of Ephesus, what Irenaeus said about the importance of the churches of Ephesus and Smyrna, the prominence of Constantinople in later centuries, etc.). All that Protestants and other critics of Roman Catholicism are doing is applying the same reasoning to Rome that we and Roman Catholics apply to other churches.

Petrine Primacy Isn't A Papacy

A good passage of scripture to bring up in discussions of the papacy is Matthew 11:11. We're told that nobody born of women is greater than John the Baptist. We don't conclude that he therefore was a Pope or that nobody, including Peter, could have had any authority over John. He could be unsurpassed in one sense without being unsurpassed in another sense. Similarly, when Jesus goes on in the same verse to say that he who is the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than John, it doesn't follow that some sort of jurisdictional primacy is in view. Matthew 11:11 illustrates the fact that there are multiple ways in which somebody can be considered to have a primacy. Somebody like John can simultaneously be unsurpassed in one context without being unsurpassed in another. And the placement of the passage in Matthew 11 is significant, since Peter's primacy in 10:2 is often cited as evidence that he was a Pope, as are the comments about him in chapter 16. As I told a Catholic I had a discussion with earlier this year, do a search on terms like "greatest" and "first" in Matthew's gospel and see what conclusions you end up with if you interpret all of those passages as referring to papal authority. We use categories and language of primacy often in our everyday lives without thinking of a papacy or something equivalent to it. One person will be a leader among a group of friends (making certain decisions for the group, taking the initiative more often than anybody else, etc.) without having any equivalent of papal authority. We speak of who the greatest military leader was, the greatest American president, or whatever without having any equivalent of a Pope in mind.

You can believe in a Petrine primacy, as I and many other non-Catholics do, without believing in a papacy. I also believe in a primacy of John the Baptist, a Pauline primacy, and primacies of other Biblical figures. Peter is the greatest among the Twelve in some ways, and my sense is that he's probably the greatest among the Twelve overall. (You could argue that John the son of Zebedee is the greatest, because of his influence on later history through his gospel and because of other factors, but my sense is that Peter is the more significant of the two overall.) However, I'd place Paul ahead of Peter if you go beyond the Twelve. That Pauline primacy doesn't involve a papacy, just as Peter's primacy doesn't.

If a papacy had existed in early Christianity, we probably wouldn't have to go to passages like Matthew 10:2 and 16:18-19 to find unverifiable, possible allusions to it. Go here for a discussion of how the papacy is absent across many contexts where we'd expect to see it mentioned if the office existed early on. And go here for a collection of resources on the papacy more broadly.

We can think of a series of steps involved in sorting through these issues. For example, if a passage like Matthew 10:2 or John 21:15-17 is cited in support of a papacy, is a papacy implied by the text in question? None of the passages cited by Catholics (in scripture or in the earliest sources outside of scripture) logically lead to a papacy. We can go on to ask whether we'd expect a papacy to be mentioned in certain places if the office existed at the time (e.g., the many New Testament passages on church government issues, the early patristic comments on why the Roman church is significant). We can also ask if any of the relevant sources seem to deny the concept of the papacy. You can read my material linked above for examples of all three of these questions being addressed. But we don't need to go through all of these steps to be justified in not believing in a papacy. The insufficiency of the arguments for a papacy are enough to justify not accepting the concept, even if we thought that no early source contradicts the concept or have never even considered whether any early source does so. We take the same approach with any other matter involving some type of primacy (Matthew 11:11, the unique name given to James and John in Mark 3:17, the unique language applied to Paul in the context of Acts 9, the focus on Paul in Acts, Paul's having written more books of scripture than any other apostle, John's being referred to as "the elder", etc.).

"At open variance with this clear doctrine of Holy Scripture as it has been ever understood by the Catholic Church are the perverse opinions of those who, while they distort the form of government established by Christ the Lord in his Church, deny that Peter in his single person, preferably to all the other Apostles, whether taken separately or together, was endowed by Christ with a true and proper primacy of jurisdiction; or of those who assert that the same primacy was not bestowed immediately and directly upon blessed Peter himself, but upon the Church, and through the Church on Peter as her minister....For none can doubt, and it is known to all ages, that the holy and blessed Peter, the Prince and Chief of the Apostles, the pillar of the faith and foundation of the Catholic Church, received the keys of the kingdom from our Lord Jesus Christ, the Saviour and Redeemer of mankind, and lives presides and judges, to this day and always, in his successors the Bishops of the Holy See of Rome" (First Vatican Council, session 4, chapters 1-2)

We want a king!

We should keep in mind that one of the reasons people can have for being Roman Catholic or finding Catholicism appealing is the sort of interest in a king that the ancient Israelites had, an interest that can be sinful. People can have sinful reasons for desiring some other belief system, including Protestantism, but my focus here is on Catholicism and the connection between the papacy and a monarchy. We should keep in mind that a desire for a monarchical form of church government can be, and I think often is, part of why people are Catholic or are attracted to Catholicism. And the motives for wanting that sort of authority structure don't have to be entirely sinful in order to be partly sinful or to be inadequate to justify accepting the papacy.

"your wickedness is great which you have done in the sight of the Lord by asking for yourselves a king" (1 Samuel 12:17)

The Keys In Matthew 18:18

See this Twitter thread from The Other Paul for some good points about Cameron Bertuzzi's recent video on alleged evidence for a papacy in Isaiah 22. We've said a lot about Isaiah 22 and the papacy over the years, and anybody who's interested can search our archives. In the remainder of this post, I want to add some points to the ones made by The Other Paul.

More About The Arguments For Pauline And Petrine Papacies

The Other Paul and Geoff Robinson just produced a good response to the video by Trent Horn and Suan Sonna on a Pauline papacy.

Since Luke 22, John 21, and Jesus' singling out of Peter in the Garden of Gethsemane have been getting a lot of attention, I want to point out how unusually weak Peter is in the gospel accounts leading up to Jesus' death. While all of the disciples are referred to as being unfaithful to Jesus in that context, and Judas is obviously the worst of them, the degree to which Peter falters is often underestimated. As I said in my initial response to the video by Trent and Suan, Peter boasted louder and fell harder. Before we even get to his triple denial of Christ:

How could a papacy have been referred to?

I've explained, in my last post and elsewhere, why passages like Matthew 16, Luke 22, and John 21 don't imply a papacy. If a papacy were to be derived from such passages, it would have to be derived implicitly rather than explicitly. There is no explicit reference to a papacy in any of the earliest sources. That raises the question of what we should expect a reference to a papacy to look like.

Apostolic Primacies

Trent Horn and Suan Sonna recently produced a video responding to a parody of Catholic arguments for the papacy that I posted about a decade ago. The list within that post originated about a decade earlier. It's a little over twenty years old now. As I explain in the introduction to the 2012 post linked above, I don't think any of the items on my list or any combination of them suggests that Paul was a Pope. And, to address an issue Suan raises near the beginning of the video, yes, some of the items on the list weren't intended to be the best arguments that could be made for a Pauline papacy. The introduction to my 2012 article mentions the example of citing Acts 19:11-12 to parallel a Catholic appeal to Acts 5:15. I wouldn't include that Acts 19 passage if I were just trying to produce the best arguments for a Pauline papacy. Even the points I made that I considered more significant weren't presented in the best potential form they could take. I was paralleling a list at a Catholic web site, which was similarly brief. That list included 50 items, so I included 51 in mine, as a parody of the shallowness of the arguments that are often put forward for a papacy (51 being better than 50).

Was there a papacy in the early church?

There's been a lot of discussion of the papacy lately on some popular YouTube channels. For example, Cameron Bertuzzi recently had Joe Heschmeyer and Jimmy Akin of Catholic Answers on his channel, along with some Protestants arguing for the other side. Here's a good one-hour summary, from Gavin Ortlund, of the problems with arguments for the papacy. The Other Paul has been producing a lot of good material on the subject as well, often with Geoff Robinson. Steven Nemes has been making a lot of significant points, such as in this recent video on Matthew 16 and Isaiah 22. You can find collections of our posts on these issues here and by clicking on the relevant post labels, like Papacy.