According to the Catholic Church, the pope, the bishop of Rome, is the supreme head of the entire Church, having authority over every bishop and every Christian. Further, in 1870, the First Vatican Council of the Roman Catholic Church officially declared the dogma of papal infallibility: when the pope speaks ex cathedra (officially as the pope) concerning a matter of faith or morals to be held by the whole Church, he speaks infallibly. These ideas of papal supremacy and papal infallibility are among the most important theological issues separating the Roman Catholic Church from both Protestant churches and Eastern orthodox churches. The Catholic Church claims to find support for the doctrines of papal supremacy and papal infallibility in what the New Testament has to say about the apostle Peter, especially in Jesus granting Peter the “office of the keys” (Matt 16:18-19). According to the Catholic understanding, Jesus gave Peter a unique spiritual authority, and this unique spiritual authority has been uniquely passed on via apostolic succession to the bishop of Rome.
Peter in the New Testament
It is undeniable that Peter does have a position of leadership among the apostles in the New Testament. Peter is the most frequently mentioned apostle in the Gospels. He always appears first in lists of the apostles in the Gospels (Matt 10:2, Mark 3:16, Luke 6:14) and, along with James and John, was part of the small inner circle of disciples who witnessed Jesus’s Transfiguration (Matt 17:1, Mark 9:2, Luke 9:28), and accompanied Jesus while He prayed in Gethsemane (Matt 26:37, Mark 14:33). Jesus also made a post-resurrection appearance to Peter alone before appearing to all the disciples (Luke 24:34, I Cor 15:5). And Peter is the most significant figure in the early part of the book of Acts, before the focus shifts to the apostle Paul.
So, it is clear that the New Testament portrays Peter as having a special, prominent place among the apostles. However, nowhere does the New Testament teach that Peter had supreme Authority over all the other apostles. Paul refers to “James, Peter, and John” (note the order of the names) as “esteemed as pillars” of the Jerusalem church (Gal 2:9). Nowhere does Paul suggest that Peter had supreme Authority over James, John, or himself. In Acts, when the council of apostles met at Jerusalem to decide the issue of whether Gentile Christians must be circumcised (Acts 15:1-21), there is no suggestion that Peter was the supreme head of the council. He is one voice among many, and it is James, not Peter, who gives the final, authoritative word (vv. 13-21).
Catholic apologists point to Luke 22:32, where Jesus tells Peter, “I have prayed for you, Peter, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers,” as providing support for Petrine supremacy. They also point to John 21:15-17, where Jesus tells Peter, “Feed my lambs. . . Take care of my sheep. . . Feed my sheep,” as proving that Peter had authority over the whole church.
However, neither of these passages supports the idea of Petrine supremacy. The only reason Jesus prayed a special prayer for Peter was that Jesus knew Peter was going to deny Him. In John 21, Jesus asks Peter three times if he loves Him and gives a threefold command to take care of His flock because Peter had denied Him three times, and needed to be restored. Neither of these passages provide support for the idea that Peter had unique authority over the other apostles.
The strongest argument for Petrine supremacy can be made from Matthew 16:18-19, where Jesus tells Peter, “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” Many Protestant interpreters have tried to argue that Jesus was not actually talking specifically to Peter when He made these statements. The “you” here, though, is singular, and it does seem clear that Jesus was talking specifically to Peter in this passage.
However, in John 20:22-23, Jesus makes an equivalent statement to all the apostles: “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” Clearly, the “office of the keys” is not restricted solely to Peter, but is given to all the apostles. In Matthew 18:18, we see Jesus make the same statement: “I assure you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” When one looks at the context of this verse (Matt 18:15-20), one can see that Jesus is talking about the process of Church discipline for Christians in general. In this process, there is no reference to leaders or offices in the Church at all. What Jesus says is that when a Christian refuses to repent of a sin, even when the matter is brought before the ecclesia, the assembly of God’s people, they are to be declared to no longer be a legitimate member of God’s people, and that decision stands in heaven. According to Jesus’ words, any community of Jesus’ disciples, when acting under obedience to God’s word and being guided by the Holy Spirit, has the authority to declare whether someone is forgiven or not forgiven by God. According to the New Testament as a whole, the “office of the keys” is not something uniquely given to Peter, but is something given to the church as a whole.
The Authority of the Bishop of Rome
Even if it could be shown that Peter had supreme authority over the rest of the apostles in the New Testament, that still would not prove that the bishop of Rome has supreme authority over all other bishops. In order to prove that, one would have to prove that Peter’s apostolic Authority has been uniquely handed down to the bishop of Rome, and only the bishop of Rome, via apostolic succession.
As I argued in my last post, it is questionable whether there was an office of “bishop” in the first century that can be traced all the way back to the apostles, and, even if such an office could be traced, there is no good reason to think that Apostolic Authority has been passed on via apostolic succession to whoever holds an office of bishop today. But even if one accepts the idea of apostolic succession, there is no good reason to think that Peter’s Apostolic Authority has been uniquely passed along to the bishop of Rome. Why should it not have been passed along to the bishop of Jerusalem, where Peter was a prominent church leader long before the church of Rome even existed?
One of the strongest arguments against the ideas of papal supremacy and infallibility is that the entire eastern half of the Church has never accepted these ideas, in spite of affirming the importance and necessity of apostolic succession in general. The idea that the bishop of Rome is the supreme head over the entire Church did not exist in the early Church. The First Ecumenical Council (Nicea, 325 A.D.) declared that the bishop of Alexandria should have jurisdiction over all the surrounding provinces, just as the bishop of Rome has jurisdiction over its surrounding provinces, placing the bishops of Alexandria and Rome on an equal level.[1]A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, Second Series, Volume XIV (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1899), Page 15. Only gradually did the claims of ecclesial authority made by the bishops of Rome become more and more extreme until they claimed supreme authority over the whole Church. This was one of the main issues that led to the schism between the Eastern and Western churches in this eleventh century. In the fifteenth century, there was a strong conciliar movement in the Western Church which tried to assert the authority of church councils over the authority of the pope. This shows that papal supremacy was by no means a settled issue even in the Western Church at the eve of the Reformation, when Protestants would deliver a vigorous, renewed challenge to it.
In support of the idea that papal supremacy and infallibility was taught by the apostles, Catholic apologists point to a passage in the second century saint Ireanaus’s writings, where he speaks of “that tradition derived from the apostles, of the very great, the very ancient, and universally known Church founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul; as also [by pointing out] the faith preached to men, which comes down to our time by means of the successions of the bishops. For it is a matter of necessity that every Church should agree with this Church, on account of its pre-eminent authority, that is, the faithful everywhere, inasmuch as the apostolical tradition has been preserved continuously by those [faithful men] who exist everywhere.”[2]Against Heresies.III.3.2.
When we read this quote in context, though, we will see that Irenaeus is not making an abstract claim that whoever occupies the office of the bishop of Rome miraculously speaks with Divine Authority. Rather, he is arguing that heretics are wrong because their teachings contradict the teachings that have been truly handed down from the apostles, and he points to the church of Rome as a prime example of a church whose teachings can be confidently traced back to the apostles. Whatever “authority” the church of Rome has is based on its faithfulness to the teachings of the apostles; there is no claim that the church of Rome has some kind of intrinsic Authority inhering in it allowing it to claim absolute Authority for its teachings regardless of whether they are consistent with Scripture. Irenaeus’ argument is based on the claim that the “faithful everywhere” have preserved the teachings of the apostles in the church at Rome, not that the bishop of Rome intrinsically has supreme Authority over the whole church to impose his teachings on it.
“We have learned from none others,” writes St. Irenaeus, “the plan of our salvation, than from those through whom the Gospel has come down to us, which they did at one time proclaim in public, and, at a later period, by the will of God, handed down to us in the Scriptures, to be the ground and pillar of our faith.”[3]Against Heresies.III.1.1. Irenaeus does make a brief, ad hoc appeal to the apostolic succession of the church of Rome in order to refute heretics’ claims that their teachings are handed down from the apostles, but the overwhelming majority of his writing is composed of exegetical arguments from the Scriptures. For Irenaeus, it is Scripture, not the institution of the Church or Church leaders per se, which has Divine Authority. It is clear that St. Irenaeus did not believe that bishops in apostolic succession, even the bishop of Rome, inherently speak with Divine Authority.
We can see this clearly in another quote from Irenaeus: “Those, whoever, who are believed to be presbyters by many, but serve their own lusts, and do not place the fear of God supreme in their hearts, but conduct themselves with contempt toward others, and are puffed up with the pride of holding the chief seat, and work evil deeds in secret, saying, “No man sees us,” shall be convicted by the Word, who does not judge after outward appearance, nor looks upon the countenance, but the heart. . . From all such persons, therefore, it behoves us to keep aloof, but to adhere to those who, as I have already observed, do hold the doctrine of the apostles, and who, together with the order of priesthood, display sound speech and blameless conduct for the confirmation and correction of others. . . Where, therefore, the gifts of the Lord have been placed, there it behoves us to learn the truth, namely from those who posses the succession of the Church which is from the apostles, and among whom exists that which is sound and blameless in conduct, as well as that which is unadulterated and incorrupt in speech.”[4]Against Heresies IV.26.3. It is clear that, for Irenaeus, what is truly important is faithfulness to the teachings of the Apostles in word and deed, not apostolic succession per se. Early Church Fathers such as St. Irenaeus would never have agreed with the idea that one must submit to the authority of a corrupt, heretical church leader and regard his teachings as Divinely Authoritative just because he was a bishop who could trace his office all the way back to the apostles via apostolic succession.
If Jesus really had established an infallible institution to guide the whole Church and have Authority over it, we would expect Him and His apostles to have made this extraordinarily important fact very clear to the early Christians, so that they could be sure to consult this infallible institution whenever they faced a theological issue or dispute. But we find no hint of such an idea among the early Christians. Instead, when faced with theological disagreements, they engaged in vigorous, lengthy, theological and exegetical debates over the meaning of Scripture. Why waste all this time, energy, paper, and ink if they could just have consulted an infallible institution instead? It is clear that they did not believe that any such infallible institution existed.
There is no support for the idea of papal supremacy and infallibility in Scripture or in the teachings of the early Church Fathers. They are ideas invented by part of the church centuries after the apostles. Unfortunately, these ideas, which divide the Catholic Church from both Protestant and Eastern Orthodox Christians, stand as one of the most significant barriers to the unity of the Church today.