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.

Uprooting "the Jewish roots of the papacy"

I'm going to comment on Brant Pitre's presentation on the "Jewish roots of the papacy":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xl3pD4l0K5U

This is the final time I plan to write about Pitre, although I reserve the right to change my mind. As with my other posts on Pitre, I'm going to make some methodological observations about his hermeneutical grid. In this presentation he labors to document the "Jewish roots" of Mt 16:18-19 by ransacking Josephus, the Mishna, Babylonian Talmud, and Targums. Based on his putative background material, he draws "connections". For instance: 

There was a central stone, pillar, or rock around which the temple was built. What the rabbis tell us is that not only was this true of the pagan temple that we have at Philippi, it was also true of the Jerusalem temple as well. In the holy of holiness, upon which rested the ark of the covenant. Rabbis had interesting traditions about this rock upon which the temple was built. It was the same stone on which Abraham offered Isaac. The rabbis had tradition that the whole world stemmed from this one stone. Jerusalem center of the earth, first thing God made.

They kept the keys of the temple in a rock–a slab of marble with a ring and chain which the keys hung from. Notice the connection? Keeper of the keys, the prefect of the priests. Sound familiar? The prefect? Captain of the temple. When the temple of Jerusalem was destroyed, the priests took the keys of the kingdom and threw them up into heaven.

It was the priests who had the temple keys. There were actual keys to the temple and they were kept by Jewish priests, so when Jesus gives Peter the keys, Peter is going to be offering the sacrificial offering of the eucharist. If Peter is the foundation stone in the holy of holies, do you already begin to see the priestly context of who was able to go into the holy of holies and put the blood on the foundation stone. The high priest and the high priest alone. So there's a connection between the foundation stone of the temple and not just any priest but the high priest. Peter is a warrior who plunders Hades. Jesus is building a new temple on Peter–the new temple of new covenant. 

So what are we to make of this?

Umpires who bet on their own team

Around the 26-31 min. mark, Bishop Baron defends the papacy:

1. He's discussing the difference between authentic an inauthentic theological development. Developments may deviate from the essential meaning of the original idea. So that requires the authority of the pope to play umpire.

   But there's an obvious flaw in Barron's argument: an umpire isn't supposed to bet on his own team. By contrast, the pope is not a disinterested arbiter. The papacy is, in itself, a product of theological development, so popes have a vested interest in developments that aggrandize the papacy. They have a direct hand in writing their own job description. An umpire who has a personal stake in the outcome should be disqualified, because that rigs the game. So Barron's comparison backfires.

   Cult-leaders and false prophets make self-serving claims. Now, it's possible to make a self-serving claim even if the claim is true, but in that event we should have some corroborative evidence independent of the claimant. Because the papacy has a direct stake in theological developments, appealing to the papacy to make the call regarding what constitutes authentic or inauthentic development of doctrine is viciously circular.

2. Barron trots out the ersatz "30,000" Protestant denomination figure as contrary to Christ's prayer for unity in Jn 17. But what kind of unity does Barron think Jn 17 refers to? Surely not doctrinal unity. Doctrinal unity is not a requirement for membership in the church of Rome. Passing a theology exam is not a prerequisite for confirmation in the church of Rome.

3. He compares sola Scriptura to handing a kid a copy of Hamlet. The bare text of Hamlet. Point being: Hamlet requires an interpret lens. The reception history. It's borderline irresponsible to pick up the Bible and off you go.

   i) It's true that the average reader will have a much better grasp of Hamlet if he reads an annotated edition by A. L. Rowse. But Barron knows perfectly well that most Protestant pastors have a seminary education. He knows perfectly well that Protestants produce commentaries on the Bible by OT and NT scholars. So the comparison backfires. Just as the interpretation of Shakespeare benefits from having background knowledge about his time, place, and sources of influence, Protestant exegetical scholarship does the same thing in reference to Scripture.

   ii) Moreover, the proper interpretive lens isn't the reception history of the text but the original setting. Not what came later, but a Bible writer's background and the background of his target audience. The occasion, purpose, situation.

   iii) Modern Catholicism subverts the historicity and supernaturalism of Scripture. Take the footnotes of the NABRE at the USCCB website.

4. In addition, it's possible to overemphasize as well as underemphasize the necessity of Bible scholarship. To take a comparison, a Trekkie will get more out of some Star Trek movies than a novice. Star Trek movies have in-jokes and allusions to the Star Trek mythos. It's useful to know the backstories of Vulcans, Romulans, and Klingons. It's useful to know the backstory of Spock. His hybrid psychological makeup.

   However, that doesn't mean you have to be a Trekkie to make sense of a Star Trek movie. If well-written, it has a plot that's comprehensible to a novice. Most of the dialogue is comprehensible to a novice. If you enjoy the cheesy space western genre, you can get the gist of the movie even if you come to the movie as a novice. Star Trek movies operate at more than one level. At one level is the basic plot and dialogue. That's accessible to general viewers. But it also has a subtext for the fan base.

   By the same token, the Bible is not a closed book unless you have a commentary by your side. Much of Scripture is accessible to a novice. Returning to Barron's illustration, T. S. Eliot wrote a famous essay on "Hamlet and His Problems". Although Eliot didn't know as much about Shakespeare's world as Rowse, yet as a poet and literary critic, he was able to analyze the play on strictly dramatic or literary terms.

   By the same token, because there's so much narrative in Scripture, literary critics like Robert Alter, Leland Ryken, and Meir Sternberg explore the internal dynamics of biblical accounts without reference to the world outside the story. And that contributes to our understanding of the text. That draws attention to a dimension of meaning that's lost sight of if a commentator is preoccupied with comparing a biblical narrative to the world outside the text.

   Like Shakespeare or Star Trek, the Bible operates at more than one level. There are different ports of entry.

The Crisis of Rome and Its Claims of Ultimate Authority

https://calvinistinternational.com/2018/09/19/the-leadership-of-the-catholic-church-now-vs-then-pt-6/

Now v. then

A mini-series on the historical claims of Rome:

https://calvinistinternational.com/2018/09/06/the-leadership-of-the-catholic-church-now-vs-then-pt-2/

https://calvinistinternational.com/2018/09/06/the-leadership-of-the-catholic-church-now-vs-then-pt-3/

The Roman Catholic Church was Never “Catholic”

Anticipating the publication of the book “Roman but Not Catholic”, which is due out in time for the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, I want to re-publish and clean up some of the articles that I’ve written over the last few years that support the authors’ conclusion. In this article, I summarize what the Roman Catholic Archbishop Roland Minnerath (who studied the matter for an official Roman Catholic historical study of “the primacy of the bishop of Rome in the first millennium”) said: “The East never shared the Petrine theology as elaborated in the West.”

What this means, essentially, is that at a most fundamental level, the Roman Catholic Church was never truly “catholic”, in the sense that the word was first used by Ignatius (in the second century, when it first referred to “the whole body of believers”). This article is updated and slightly edited since its first publication on June 6, 2011.

The Absence Of A Papacy In Early Responses To Christianity

One way to study early Christianity is to look at it through the eyes of its opponents. I've often noted that the early opponents of Christianity describe the religion in a manner that contradicts Roman Catholic claims about church history. It's instructive to observe what men like Trypho, Celsus, and Caecilius tell us about early Christianity and what arguments they bring against the religion. It's also important to notice how individuals like Justin Martyr, Origen, and Minucius Felix respond on behalf of Christianity. Those early interactions between Christians and their critics provide us with a lot of evidence against the claims of Catholicism (and Eastern Orthodoxy, etc.) on the veneration of images, prayer to the dead, and other issues.

One of the most substantial problems for Catholicism in the early responses to Christianity is the absence of any reference to a papacy. Remember, Catholics often tell us how important the papacy allegedly is. We're supposed to think that it's the foundation of the church, central to Christian unity, an infallible source of Christian teaching, and so on. We're told how valuable the papacy is in the abstract and how practical it is, how it's such a good idea on so many levels to have such an office. We're often pointed to John 17:21, as if Jesus was referring there to denominational unity under Roman Catholicism and the papacy. Well, if we need to submit to the papacy "so that the world may believe" (John 17:21), shouldn't we expect the world to know that the papacy exists and to refer to it when discussing Christianity? Isn't that especially true during the earliest centuries of church history, when, according to many Catholics, there was such widespread and consistent unity under the Pope? What if, instead of acknowledging such unity and responding to it along the lines of John 17:21 or focusing on the papacy as one of the most foundational issues to be addressed (as we'd expect if Christianity was Roman Catholic at the time), the early responses to Christianity show no knowledge that a papacy even exists and sometimes make comments suggesting its nonexistence?

Something worth considering in this context is what Celsus, a second-century pagan critic of Christianity, said about Christian disunity and how Origen, a Christian, responded. See here.

Neither Celsus and his Jewish sources nor the other earliest non-Christian sources who comment on the religion refer to a papacy. And we have much more than documents like Justin Martyr's Dialogue With Trypho and Origen's Against Celsus to go by. Larry Hurtado notes:

"Whatever their actual success, clearly some Christians made impressive efforts to disseminate their works, not only among fellow believers, but more widely as well. Here again, it is difficult to find an equivalent effort by other religious groups of the day….Philo of Alexandria's Embassy to Gaius might serve as a kind of precedent. But the sheer number of Christian apologia [apologetic] texts is unprecedented." (Destroyer Of The Gods [Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press, 2016], 132-3, n. 90 on 249)

Men like Aristides and Tertullian wrote apologies in which they responded to objections to Christianity and anticipated potential objections. They address the deity of Jesus, his virgin birth, his resurrection, the second coming, the inspiration of scripture, how to interpret various passages of scripture, Christian moral standards, the apostles, Christian teachers, the nature of the church, and many other topics. But they say nothing of a papacy, to explain it, defend it, anticipate objections to it, or anything else.

“The Nonexistent Early Papacy”

Here is a brief overview that I've written in the past on historical literature on the earliest papacy:

“There was … no individual, committee or council of leaders within the Christian movement that could pronounce on which beliefs and practices were acceptable and which were not. This was particularly true of Rome with its numerous small groups of believers. Different Christian teachers and organizers of house-churches offered a variety of interpretations of the faith and attracted particular followings, rather in the way that modern denominations provide choice for worshipers looking for practices that particularly appeal to them on emotional, intellectual, aesthetic or other grounds (15-16).

This is not an esoteric or a “liberal” interpretation of history. This is a mainstream historical position.

That is why, for the first time, the Vatican changed its story from “permanent” and “immediately given” to “we are conscious of development of the papacy” in 1996. They are trying to salvage the sinking “barque of Peter.” The papacy is built on a foundation of quicksand — of less than that — its foundation is nonexistent. It will go down; and thanks to the speed of the Internet, it may go down faster than anyone expects.

Brandon Addison’s Complete Response to “Called to Communion” regarding “the Nonexistent Early Papacy”

Anyone who reads this site knows that Called to Communion is one the most difficult Roman apologetics sites to deal with because of the lengths they are willing to go to, in order to maintain their dogmatic sophistry.

In the following, stunningly amazing piece of work, Brandon Addison has done a tremendous service for the entire church, squarely addressing the “Called to Communion” argument in favor of an early papacy in Rome, having tracked down and assembled virtually every scholarly writing on the topic of “Bishops in the earliest church” and the “development” of the office of “bishop”, especially in the city of ancient Rome.

In the process, he thoroughly and patiently analyzes the arguments that Called to Communion makes, he finds their weaknesses, he proposes and argues counter-arguments. The result is that the Called to Communion response to his original piece is seen to be as almost totally devoid of merit.

Here is how the whole piece breaks down:

One Way that Forgery Plays a Role in Aquinas and the Historical Development of Roman Catholic Doctrine

Forgeries, too, went into
his “synthesis” 

Thomas Aquinas seems to be making a comeback, among Roman Catholics, but also, we are seeing this take place especially among a trendy group of Reformed believers. My question is, how much should we take into account (or ignore) the role that Thomas played, as it is said, when:

The monstrous forgeries of the Pseudi-Isidore Decretals of the ninth century (115 wholly forged documents of the bishops of Rome from the first centuries, from Clement of Rome onward; 125 documents with interpolations) were now employed to buttress the claim of the teaching authority of the pope.

This occurs in the greatest of all of Aquinas’s works, the Summa Theologica, II-II, q1 a10. The question is “Whether it belongs to the Roman Pontiff to Draw Up a Symbol of Faith?” Here is one analysis of this “Question” from the Summa: The author continues:

Early Pope Fiction

Awareness of the Christian past of Rome and the spiritual resources that lay almost untapped within it and especially underneath it had been growing since the time of Paul I (757-767). He and his successors over the next hundred years moved bodies of Christians buried in the catacombs outside the walls into the city for re-interment in its growing number of churches.

The belief that those buried in the catacombs were all victims of the persecutions of the second and third centuries grew as the veneration of the relics of martyrs became increasingly popular. As we have seen, the number of early popes believed to have been martyred expanded significantly between the fourth and sixth centuries. In many cases, no record existed of the life and heroic death of the presumed saint, and legends had to be invented to provide these bones with an appropriate past.

Roger Collins, “Keepers of the Keys of Heaven: A History of the Papacy” (p. 156). Basic Books. Kindle Edition.

This Week in the News: all “Pope Francis”, all the time

And George “I Had Dinner With The Pope” Weigel is going to be on-point for the news coverage. Anyone who thinks I have a one-track mind in “bashing” the papacy ought to consider this kind of news coverage that a pope generates on a regular basis:

13 Things You Didn’t Know About “the Papacy”

[Please note: Elsewhere I have written about the trip that “Pope Francis” will be making to Philadelphia, September 26-27, and also the street evangelism efforts that that a number of Reformed believers are going to be participating in. I’m offering this article here (or some edited version of it) as the text for the hand-out piece to be given to Roman Catholics who are coming to Philadelphia and adoring this “pope”. If you decide to read this through, please take a minute to comment -- let me know if I missed anything, or if there is a point that I should not be making -- thank you. - John Bugay.]

13 Things You Didn’t Know About “the Papacy”

Popes over the centuries have enjoyed great power and privilege as “the Vicars of Christ”. And in our days, we still see large audiences giving adulation to the particular man who holds the title of “Pope”.

But “the papacy” is not biblical, and nor was it affirmed by early church writers or councils.

In fact, this document will make the claim that “the papacy” as an institution is a later add-on to Christianity – kind of like a leech – a fraudulent institution that evolved by making claims for its own authority based on illegitimate criteria – these were criteria that earlier writers understood to be fraudulent, but which later history (aided by the wealth of the Roman emperors and the later fall of Rome) could not easily argue against or resist.

Have you noticed that we rarely hear of “the papacy” nowadays? In fact, the words “papal” and “papacy” are not used at all in the “Catechism of the Catholic Church”, despite its history of claiming both worldly and spiritual power. Now we hear of “the successor of Peter” or “the Petrine ministry”.

In fact, concepts like “Roman primacy”, “the Papacy”, and “the Petrine ministry” were concepts “developed” long after the Apostles lived, and they were superimposed back upon history as a way of consolidating papal power in the middle ages:

“It is clear that Roman Primacy was not given from the outset; it underwent a long process of development whose initial phases extended well into the fifth century” (Klaus Schatz, “Papal Primacy”, 1996, pg 36).

“Dismantle the Papacy”? “Pope Francis” may be an ally in this effort

I would see this as a positive, though incomplete, “development”.

With the current pope, the “school of Bologna” is convinced that it has a clear road ahead:

The leaders of the “school of Bologna” have a very ambitious new project in the works: a history of the movement for Christian unity aimed at a thorough reform of the Catholic Church, starting with the dismantling of the papacy in its current form. They believe they have an ally in Pope Francis….

ROME, November 3, 2014 – At the end of October, Pope Francis received a delegation of Old Catholic bishops of the Union of Utrecht.

Numerically this is a very small group, but it is the bearer of a model of Church that pleases not a few progressive Catholics. It recognizes a primacy of honor for the pope, but it does not accept that he is infallible or has jurisdiction over the bishops. It has its bishops elected by a synod composed of clergy and laity. At Mass it gives Eucharistic communion to all, as long as they are baptized in one of the various Christian confessions. It administers collective absolution of sins. It allows second marriages for the divorced.

It also advocates a return to the early faith and recognizes as fully ecumenical only the first seven councils, those of the first millennium, when the Churches of West and East were still undivided….

They couldn’t dismantle it enough for my liking.

First, note that these are “Old Catholics” – those who refused to accept “papal infallibility” at Vatican I. I don’t think there should be a “primacy of honor” – not one that was acquired so dishonestly.

Second, my hopes for this type of dismantling, and the hopes of “not a few progressive Catholics”, would be quite different. They would see it as “license”, whereas I would hope to see it as an admission on the part of Rome that it had overstated its own importance and had thus harmed Christianity for centuries.

Third, I would want to see an actual repentance from the papacy of itself.

And of course, as I’ve written, it is a myth that “the Church” was “undivided” in the first 1000 years.

One of the most significant, Protestant-like “divisions” in the early church may be found in the simple designations of "The School of Antioch" or "The School of Alexandria," both of which held differing views of Scripture, and later, of the person of Christ. This manifested itself in “The Great Schism,” a schism of church governments of “The Church of the East,” the separation of the Church of Alexandria, etc.

Samuel Hugh Moffett, in his work, "A History of Christianity in Asia," describes this "Great Schism" this way:

What finally divided the early church, East from West, Asia from Europe, was neither war nor persecution, but the blight of a violent theological controversy, that raged through the Mediterranean world in the second quarter of the fifth century. It came to be called the Nestorian controversy, and how much of it was theological and how much political is still being debated, but it irreversibly split the church not only east and west but also north and south and cracked it into so many pieces that it was never the same again. (pg. 169)

This is an ugly memory for the “Greco-Roman” church -- it is a far larger and messier divide than the 1054 schism between the Roman and Orthodox churches. It makes a lie of the “unified church” claims of today's Roman Catholic apologists. It is the clearest example that there never was a governmentally-unified church -- especially not “under the papacy” -- ever in the history of the church.

See also A History of the Interpretation of Matt 16:18.

Calvin: “The entire church is polluted by the papacy.”

In the comments below, explorer wrote:

When the Popes launched all the “horrific events” in the middle ages etc, was that counted as “solemn/infallible judgement” or just a “discipline” or was it “only committed by the secular state”?

In that same comment thread, Matthew Schultz asked, “How would the situation been different if Roman Catholicism had not ‘disfigured’ the Gospel? Do you think a proper Gospel would have somehow contained Islam? (Perhaps launched more effective Crusades?)”

I’m grateful for these questions. I seriously get disgusted first that Roman Catholicism attempts to sweep all of its past under the rug, and second, that its attempts are successful, insofar as people just forget about all of it. And every “papal conclave”, we see on TV the thoughtless crowds cheering on “il papa”, and the ignorant news casters suggesting that the pope is somehow the leader of all Christians.

I do stand by what I said about Rome and the papacy – it doesn't take much reading in church history to understand that the direction it took was a wrong one. If the church at Rome had been more faithful to Christ, instead of pushing its own agenda of domination, I'm sure that history would have turned out much differently.

This isn’t my own opinion. I have picked up on this theme which was earlier articulated by John Calvin.

Calvin begins Book IV of the Institutes – the section on the Church – with a comment succinctly describing the papacy’s relationship to the Gospel, to the church and the world:

In the last Book, it has been shown, that by the faith of the gospel Christ becomes ours, and we are made partakers of the salvation and eternal blessedness procured by him. But as our ignorance and sloth (I may add, the vanity of our mind) stand in need of external helps, by which faith may be begotten in us, and may increase and make progress until its consummation, God, in accommodation to our infirmity, has added such helps, and secured the effectual preaching of the gospel, by depositing this treasure with the Church.

He has appointed pastors and teachers, by whose lips he might edify his people (Eph. 4:11); he has invested them with authority, and, in short, omitted nothing that might conduce to holy consent in the faith, and to right order. In particular, he has instituted sacraments, which we feel by experience to be most useful helps in fostering and confirming our faith. For seeing we are shut up in the prison of the body, and have not yet attained to the rank of angels, God, in accommodation to our capacity, has in his admirable providence provided a method by which, though widely separated, we might still draw near to him (Institutes 4.1.1)

So, given all that God has done for man (Institutes 1-3 – through Creation, fall, and redemption), we still, through “ignorance”, “sloth”, and “the vanity of our minds”, need help in “accommodation to our infirmity”. To this end, God has given us “the Church”, within which “He has appointed pastors and teachers, by whose lips he might edify his people (Eph. 4:11)”.

Note how Calvin now describes the relationship of “the papacy” to “the Church”:

Wherefore, due order requires that we first treat of the Church, of its Government, Orders, and Power; next, of the Sacraments; and, lastly, of Civil Government;—at the same time guarding pious readers against the corruptions of the Papacy, by which Satan has adulterated all that God had appointed for our salvation (Institutes 4.1.1).

That was from the online Beveridge translation. The Battles translation refers to:

those corruptions by which Satan, in the Papacy, has polluted everything God has appointed for salvation (Vol 2, pg 1012).

The entire church is polluted by the papacy. This is not in any way a stretch or an exaggeration.

All the good things that God has given to us in the church, visible and invisible, is polluted by the papacy. Pastors, teachers, Scriptures, interpretations, sacraments/ordinances. Everything. That is why I work so hard to bring this to light. If we can remove, or at least understand this curse, God’s blessings to us in the church will be so much more available to the world.

In the spirit of Luke 9:46 (and similar verses), “An argument started among the disciples as to which of them would be the greatest”, the papacy – the “successor to Peter” – the “Petrine ministry” – whatever they are calling it these days, has consistently brought bitterness and strife into the church.

I’ve written extensively on the topic of “The Nonexistent Early Papacy”, and I’ve encouraged the work of others on this topic (most notably Brandon Addison, a WSCal grad who has gone farther and deeper, in a more pastoral and scholarly way than I ever could have done).

The whole church, virtually all through history, has the stench of pollution in it because of the papacy. Because of the impulse of early bishops of Rome to say “I’m the greatest. I’m the ontologically and epistemologically necessary component of ‘the Church’. I’m the connection between heaven and earth.”

Calvin, however, said it best: “Christ’s headship is not transferable” (Institutes 4.6.9).

History vs. Roman Catholicism

Brandon Addison

Brandon Addison has published a 25,000 word guest article at the Called to Communion site, entitled (by the CTC folks) “The Quest for the Historical Church: A Protestant Assessment”.

Brandon is a 2012 MDiv graduate of WSCal. He’s seen friends of his, including Joshua Lim, be sucked in by the seemingly slick presentation of Roman Catholicism proffered by Called to Communion.

In the article, Brandon addresses head-on the Called to Communion claim that the Roman Catholic Church is “The Church that Christ Founded”, from a historical perspective, largely by analyzing head-on the notion of “apostolic succession” – showing that it was a later development that was not part of the thinking of the first-century church.

He begins by pointing out that what he has to say is not idiosyncratic, but rather is commonly held, even among Roman Catholics, that “the general consensus among Roman Catholic scholars is that the notion of an episcopate originating with Peter is virtually non-existent in the academic world”.

Tracing “the nonexistent early papacy” using evidence that we have

Andrew Preslar said:

You raise a new claim here, [that with respect to the early papacy and indeed with respect to the founding of the church], Catholics are the ones arguing from silence. I have no idea what this means, especially since the non-silence, in fact the explicit claims, of Ignatius and Irenaeus regarding bishops in the early church, and bishops of Rome in particular, factor so largely in Catholic (as well as Orthodox and some Anglican) arguments about early Roman Christianity.

I responded:

Roman Catholic “presuppositions” on the early papacy are in retreat

Galileo: “If I can do it, Bergoglio can do it”

A “presupposition” is an elementary assumption in one’s reasoning or in the process by which opinions are formed… [In the case of Protestant/Catholic discussions], a “presupposition” is not just any assumption in an argument, but a personal commitment that is held at the most basic level of one’s network of beliefs. Presuppositions form a wide-ranging foundational perspective (or starting point) in terms of which everything else is interpreted and evaluated. As such, presuppositions have the greatest authority in one’s thinking, being treated as one’s least negotiable beliefs and being granted the highest immunity to revision. (

That’s a fairly simple and standard definition given by Greg Bahnsen, early on in his work on “Van Til’s Apologetic (Phillipsburg: New Jersey, P&R Publishing, ©1998, pg 2).

Whatever level of “immunity to revision” one’s presuppositions may have, there are simply times and events which force that simply force one to modify one’s presuppositions. Galileo’s study of the solar system was one such occasion, forcing the Roman Catholic Church to modify its own “presuppositions”. (“The matter was investigated by the Roman Inquisition in 1615, and they concluded that it could be supported as only a possibility, not an established fact”. Over time, Roman Catholicism later modified these views even further, and in the 20th century, described Galileo as being among the “most audacious heroes of research”).

I believe that historical research into ancient cultures and “Earliest Christianity” is having the effect similar to Galileo’s on Roman Catholic doctrine, especially with respect to the papacy. In 1995, Pope John Paul II issued a statement Ut Unum Sint, in which he was asked (by whom?) “to find a way of exercising the [papal] primacy which … is … open to a new situation”

He positions this search for “a new situation” as “a request made of me”.

I can’t say who made the request, but in the past I have pointed to a growing body of historical literature (and this blog post only touches the surface) – it certainly seems as if this type of work has, in the growing pressure it puts on the papacy over the last century, “made the request”. It is similar to the pressure that Galileo’s work put on Roman Catholicism to change its views on science.

But these changes with respect to “the earliest papacy” have much to do with the “doctrine” of the papacy, which in turn is at the heart of Roman Catholic doctrine and epistemology.

* * *

In turn, this evolution in papal doctrine has a direct bearing in showing precisely how some scientific and historical research is affirming one aspect of Christianity – and affirming some of the presuppositions that some Christians have held – in this case, the development of the canon of the New Testament – while seriously challenging the presuppositions that Roman Catholics hold about the foundations of their own belief something.

Both of these beliefs are held as presuppositions, or “precommitments”, by conservative Protestants and by Roman Catholics, respectively. This was illustrated in a discussion that I had recently: