Why there is no perpetuated Petrine Papacy / Roman Hierarchy in the Bible
• 1. It is not historical descent that is the basis for authenticity under the New Covenant, (Mt. 3:9; Rm. 2:2829) but manifest faith based upon Scriptural substantiation in word and in power. Upon which the Lord and His apostles established their Truth claims, (Mt. 22:23-45; Lk. 24:27,44; Jn. 5:36,39; Acts 2:14-35; 4:33; 5:12; 15:6-21;17:2,11; 18:28; 28:23; Rm. 15:19; 2Cor. 12:12, etc.) not on the premise of a perpetually infallible (if conditional) magisterium. Which Rome has autocratically presumed to infallibly declare she is and will be perpetually infallible whenever she speaks in accordance with her infallibly defined (scope and subject-based) formula, which renders her declaration that she is infallible, to be infallible, as well as all else she accordingly declares.
Thus the classic quote by Manning once again,
It was the charge of the Reformers that the Catholic doctrines were not primitive, and their pretension was to revert to antiquity. But the appeal to antiquity is both a treason and a heresy. It is a treason because it rejects the Divine voice of the Church at this hour, and a heresy because it denies that voice to be Divine...
may say in strict truth that the Church has no antiquity. It rests upon its own supernatural and perpetual consciousness. Its past is present with it, for both are one to a mind which is immutable. Primitive and modern are predicates, not of truth, but of ourselves. — Most Rev. Dr. Henry Edward Cardinal Manning, Lord Archbishop of Westminster, The Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost: Or Reason and Revelation (New York: J.P. Kenedy & Sons, originally written 1865, pp. 227,28
The reality is that under the RC model in which the historical stewards of Scripture are the infallible authorities on it, with dissent from them constituting rebellion to God, then the church itself is invalidated. For the church began in dissent from those who had historical descent and sat in the seat of Moses (Mt. 23:2) over Israel, who were the stewards of Scripture, and to whom belonged the promises, and of whom Christ came, God blessed for ever. (Rm. 3:2; 9:4,5)
And as God is able of stones to raise up children unto Abraham, (Mt. 3:9) so he can raise up men from without the established magisterium “living stones” (1Pt. 2:5) who like Peter effectually confess Christ as the Divine Son of the living God, to continue to build His church, correcting the established magisterium and setting captives free to discern truth based upon Scriptural substantiation.
Thus the church began and is preserved as the body of Christ, which receives its members by regeneration. (1Cor. 12:13) And in its visible form ordains leadership, for as Westminster affirms, “It belongeth to synods and councils, ministerially, to determine controversies of faith, and cases of conscience; to set down rules and directions for the better ordering of the public worship of God, and government of his Church; to receive complaints in cases of maladministration, and authoritatively to determine the same...” (http://www.spurgeon.org/~phil/creeds/wcf.htm )
And thus fundamental/evangelical type churches ordains leadership. But not as claiming assured infallibility as Rome has decreed she has, as instead the veracity of such teachings are dependent upon the degree of Scriptural substantiation. Which again, is not the case with Rome, as she can decree something as infallible Truth even if it is not taught in Scripture - as long as it does not contradict Scripture. But which Rome is the judge of, while RCs are not to objectively examine Scripture in order to determine the truthfulness of Roman Catholic doctrines.
This is one of the many critical and substantial contrasts between Rome and the NT church.
• 2. Nowhere in Scripture do we see an apostolic successor except for Judas, which was to maintain the number of the 12, (Rv. 21:14; Acts 1:15ff) And rather than supporting apostolic succession, the Holy Spirit conspicuously never mentions any successor for the apostle James who was martyred, (Acts 12:1,2) despite the careful chronicling of important events and details of the early church.
• 3. Rome has never even elected (TMK) any of her supposed successors by the non-political OT Scriptural method of casting lots (Prov. 16:33) used by Peter and the 11, but instead her elections have often involved political machinations, resulting in, among other things, wicked men being elected, and conveying that God is a respecter of persons in favoring Italians. Moreover, a qualification for an apostle seem to require a literal personal discipleship by the Lord Himself. (Acts 1:21-22; 1Cor. 9:1; Gal. 1:11,12,17)
• 4. Nowhere is the church exhorted to look to Peter as its supreme infallible head, much less in Rome (and is not even mentioned in Paul's list of acquaintances in Rm. 16).
Peter fades from view after Acts 15, and Paul himself called all the Ephesian pastors to conference, as well as doing many other things that make him as a pope. Nowhere in any of the epistle are the churches even exhorted to pray specially for Peter (though they certainly did as for other leaders, and as needed) as the supreme head. And in Gal. 2:1ff Peter is mentioned as the second among 3 pillars of the church, “who seemed to be somewhat,” and who provided public affirmation of of Paul, but who publicly reproved Peter for his duplicity, consistent with Paul's statement that “God accepteth no man's person.”
Moreover, while Peter was the brethren type leader among the 12, and exercised a general pastoral role, the power of binding and loosing was also given to all the disciples, (Mt. 18:15-19) and exercised contrary to Rome's presumption.(1Cor. 5; James 5) And who was the first to use the keys to the kingdom of God, the gospel, by faith in which souls are translated into it. (Col. 1:13)
• 5. Not once in the Lord's own letters to the 7 representative churches in Rv. 2 and 3 is the pope mentioned, not as a solution to their needs nor as fidelity to as a commendation, which at least is evidence that Rome did change the Bible to support here, but which lack of testimony is why Rome employed the use forgeries to support her pretensions.
6. Peter is not confirmed to be the rock upon which Christ built His church, but the Christ of Peter's confession is. For in contrast to Peter, that the LORD Jesus is the Rock (“petra”) or "stone" (“lithos,” and which denotes a large rock in Mk. 16:4) upon which the church is built is one of the most abundantly confirmed doctrines in the Bible (petra: Rm. 9:33; 1Cor. 10:4; 1Pet. 2:8; cf. Lk. 6:48; 1Cor. 3:11; lithos: Mat. 21:42; Mk.12:10-11; Lk. 20:17-18; Act. 4:11; Rm. 9:33; Eph. 2:20; cf. Dt. 32:4, Is. 28:16) including by Peter himself. (1Pt. 2:4-8)
And many so-called “church fathers” also did not interpret Mt. 16:18 as referring to Peter.
• 6. Nowhere did Peter refer to himself as anything more than “a servant,” “an apostle,” “an elder,” (1Pt. 1:1; 5:1; 2Pt. 1) and was married, (Mt. 8:14; 1Cor. 9:4) and evidently poor, (Acts 3:6) living as a guest a tanner's house (Acts 10:6: a smelly profession, thus it was by the sea) who would not let even an unsaved men bow down to him. (Acts 10:25,26) And while not diminishing his non-assertive, informal leadership among brethren, and initial primary use in Acts, yet it was James who provided the definitive and detailed decree at the 1st ecumenical council. (Acts 15:13-21)
• 7. Modern research, including by Catholics, testifies against the Roman version of history, in which Peter is set forth as the first of a line of supreme infallible heads to whom all the church looked to from the beginning.
Klaus Schatz [Jesuit Father theologian, professor of church history at the St. George’s Philosophical and Theological School in Frankfurt] in his work, “Papal Primacy ,” pp. 1-4 :
New Testament scholars agree..., The further question whether there was any notion of an enduring office beyond Peter’s lifetime, if posed in purely historical terms, should probably be answered in the negative.
That is, if we ask whether the historical Jesus, in commissioning Peter, expected him to have successors, or whether the authority of the Gospel of Matthew, writing after Peter’s death, was aware that Peter and his commission survived in the leaders of the Roman community who succeeded him, the answer in both cases is probably 'no.”
“....that does not mean that the figure and the commission of the Peter of the New Testament did not encompass the possibility, if it is projected into a Church enduring for centuries and concerned in some way to to secure its ties to its apostolic origins and to Jesus himself.
If we ask in addition whether the primitive church was aware, after Peter’s death, that his authority had passed to the next bishop of Rome, or in other words that the head of the community at Rome was now the successor of Peter, the Church’s rock and hence the subject of the promise in Matthew 16:18-19, the question, put in those terms, must certainly be given a negative answer.” (page 1-2)
[Schatz goes on to express that he does not doubt Peter was martyred in Rome, and that Christians in the 2nd century were convinced that Vatican Hill had something to do with Peter's grave.]
"Nevertheless, concrete claims of a primacy over the whole church cannot be inferred from this conviction. If one had asked a Christian in the year 100, 200, or even 300 whether the bishop of Rome was the head of all Christians, or whether there was a supreme bishop over all the other bishops and having the last word in questions affecting the whole Church, he or she would certainly have said no." (page 3, top)
More.
Moreover, Rome used carnal force to foster her preeminence (see #10).
• 8. And in contrast to Acts 1, her "unbroken succession" has included vacancies of up to 3 years, as well as rival popes and confusion as to where the one true visible church could be found. (But as "unbroken" is defined by Rome, it could allow for far more years of disarray.)
The Avignon Papacy (1309-76) relocated the throne to France and was followed by the Western Schism (1378-1417), with three rival popes excommunicating each other and their sees. Referring to the schism of the 14th and 15th centuries, Cardinal Ratzinger observed, "For nearly half a century, the Church was split into two or three obediences that excommunicated one another, so that every Catholic lived under excommunication by one pope or another, and, in the last analysis, no one could say with certainty which of the contenders had right on his side.
The Church no longer offered certainty of salvation; she had become questionable in her whole objective form--the true Church, the true pledge of salvation, had to be sought outside the institution. It is against this background of a profoundly shaken ecclesial consciousness that we are to understand that Luther, in the conflict between his search for salvation and the tradition of the Church, ultimately came to experience the Church, not as the guarantor, but as the adversary of salvation.
Of which the Catholic Encyclopedia (Council of Constance) states,
....after nearly forty years of disastrous life; one pope (Gregory XII) had voluntarily abdicated; another (John XXIII) had been suspended and then deposed, but had submitted in canonical form; the third claimant (Benedict XIII) was cut off from the body of the Church, "a pope without a Church, a shepherd without a flock" (Hergenröther-Kirsch). It had come about that, whichever of the three claimants of the papacy was the legitimate successor of Peter, there reigned throughout the Church a universal uncertainty and an intolerable confusion, so that saints and scholars and upright souls were to be found in all three obediences. On the principle that a doubtful pope is no pope, the Apostolic See appeared really vacant, and under the circumstances could not possibly be otherwise filled than by the action of a general council.
Under the circumstances the usual form of papal election by the cardinals alone (see CONCLAVE) was impossible, if only for the strongly inimical feeling of the majority of the council, which held them responsible not only for the horrors of the schism, but also for many of the administrative abuses of the Roman Curia. — http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04288a.htm
• 9. Consistent with the authority of the Biblical apostles being established upon Scriptural substantiation, the apostles in all things evidenced themselves to be apostles as ministers of God, with a holiness and abundant supernatural attestation that disqualifies purported Roman successors (or me!) by way of contrast:
"Truly the signs of an apostle were wrought among you in all patience, in signs, and wonders, and mighty deeds." (2 Corinthians 12:12)
"Through mighty signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God; so that from Jerusalem, and round about unto Illyricum, I have fully preached the gospel of Christ." (Romans 15:19)
"In stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labours, in watchings, in fastings; By pureness, by knowledge, by longsuffering, by kindness, by the Holy Ghost, by love unfeigned, By the word of truth, by the power of God, by the armour of righteousness on the right hand and on the left," (2 Corinthians 6:5-7)) with
Instead popes not only lack the abundant overt supernatural attestation which are signs of an apostle, but many of her supposed successors were manifestly immoral men as popes, and before, and thus were not even qualified to be counted as members of the body of Christ, (Eph. 5:5) let alone a apostolic successor.
Moreover, popes have presided over widespread moral wickedness.As no less a Roman authority as cardinal Bellarmine stated:
Some years before the rise of the Lutheran and Calvinistic heresy, according to the testimony of those who were then alive, there was almost an entire abandonment of equity in the ecclesiastical judgments; in morals no discipline, in sacred literature no erudition, in divine things no reverence; religion was almost extinct.” [Concio XXVIII. Opp. VI. 296; Colon. 1617.] “
At the time of the Reformation, the Catholic historian Paul Johnson described the existing social situation among the clergy:
“Probably as many as half the men in orders had ‘wives’ and families. Behind all the New Learning and the theological debates, clerical celibacy was, in its own way, the biggest single issue at the Reformation. It was a great social problem and, other factors being equal, it tended to tip the balance in favour of reform. As a rule, the only hope for a child of a priest was to go into the Church himself, thus unwillingly or with no great enthusiasm, taking vows which he might subsequently regret: the evil tended to perpetuate itself.” (History of Christianity, pgs 269-270)
More.
• 10. Furthermore, in stark contrast to the Biblical apostles and NT church, Rome has much relied the arm of flesh to gain her position and exercise her ecclesial purposes. Even the 4th c. pope Damascus 1, later declared a “saint” (a term used in Scripture for all believers: Rm. 15:25; 2Cor. 1:1; 9:1; Eph. 4:12; Colossians 1:4), employed a gang of thugs in seeking to secure his papal office, leaving 137 supporters of his rival papal competition dead. -Kelly, J. N. D. (1989). The Oxford Dictionary of Popes. USA: Oxford University Press. pp. 32,34.
And consistent with papal reliance upon the sword of men to achieve its ends, he persuaded the government to recognize the holy see as a court of first resort, and which led to Roman Christianity becoming the state religion in that form from which the Romans had imagined they received from St. Peter. Thus while before no Christians were allowed in the army, and which killed Christians, soon only Christians were allowed in it, and which practice would end up killing Christians do opposed Rome. Thus she has the blood of martyrs on her hands.
For indeed, so-called apostolic successors have sanctioned torture and the murder of theological nonconformists, and compelled secular authorities to carry out her demands in order to keep their rule, even absolving Catholics from submission to those governments who fail to carry out her persecution and bloodshed. More.
Moreover,
But for Rome historical descent is her specious basis.
• 11. Leadership in the NT church was not that of men called “priests,” which NT pastors are never titled by the Holy Spirit, but which Rome erroneously confers upon them, defending it by wrangling “presbuteros” to mean by why of imposed functional equivalence, nor were they normatively celibate as per Roman ecclesiastical law, with 11 of the apostles themselves being married. (1Cor. 9:4) And which ecclesiastical law mandating continent celibacy presumes most all (only a few clerical converts may be married priests) have that gift, (1Cor. 7:7) which is presumptuous and contrary to what is written. For the stated requirements presume marriage as being normative, and a attestation of his ability to pastor: A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife,...One that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity; (For if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God?)" (1 Timothy 3:2,4-5)
• 12. Valid leadership in the NT church was that which exercised discipline of such members as continued impenitently in such known sins as fornication, covetousness, idolatry, drunkenness, extortions, etc. yet not only were some of Rome's supposed :apostolic successors” guilty of such, but she fosters idolatry by her Mariolatry and the fine distinction between hyperdulia and latria, and in Scripture claiming one was only engaging in hyperdulia when bowing before a statue of a women and imploring mercy and assistance simply was nowhere seen by believers, as it was a practice of idolaters. And St. Peter's cathedral itself, among other things, was partly funded by extortion by way of Idiulgencss, which even the EOs reject as contrary to Tradition and history.
In addition, NT discipline was by spiritual means, that of supernatural chastisement or disfellowship, not the sword of men. But lacking the former and having lost the latter, Rome now counts as members in life and in death even notorious public murderers and pro-sodomite RCs, while her ardent defender treat evangelicals (who are overall more conservative in morals) as her greatest theological enemy in the West. Which of course, they must be due to her arrogance presumption and errors, and liberalism.
Thus we see the idea of a perpetuated Petrine papacy reigning over the church, to whom it looked to as its infallible head exposed as the fantasy that it is, as
1. It's basis for authenticity is contrary to Scripture, as rather than autocratically declaring she is the one True infallible church, the NT church began in dissent from those who lickwise presumed of themselves more than what was written, and instead established truth claims upon Scriptural substantiation in word and in power, Scripture being the standard for obedience and establishing Truth, as it is abundantly evidenced to be.
2. Scripture does not provide evidence of any more successors after Judas, which was to maintain the 12, though James was martyred.
3. Rome never used the non-political OT Scriptural method of casting lots to elect her supposed apostolic successors, but often involved used political machinations. And a qualification for an apostle seem to require a literal personal discipleship by the Lord Himself.
4. Nowhere was the church exhorted to look to Peter as its supreme infallible head.
5. Not once in the Lord's own letters to the churches is the pope even mentioned, despite the critiques, commendations and censures.
6. Peter is not confirmed to be the rock upon which Christ built His church.
7. Nowhere did Peter distinctively refer to himself as like a Roman pope, as is seen as being so.
8. Modern research, including by Catholics, testifies against Peter being set forth as the first of a line of supreme infallible heads to whom all the church looked to from the beginning.
9. Rome's "unbroken succession" has included vacancies of up to 3 years, as well as rival popes and confusion as to where the one true visible church could be found.
10. The apostles in all things evidenced themselves to be apostles as ministers of God, with a holiness and abundant supernatural attestation that disqualifies purported Roman successors (or me) as being so by way of contrast.
11. Leadership in the NT church was not that of men called “priests,” or mandating celibacy.
12. Valid leadership in the NT church was that which exercised discipline by spiritual means of continued impenitent members, not the sword of men, while Rome now counts as members even notorious public murderers.
4. Nowhere (in the Bible) is the church exhorted to look to Peter as its supreme infallible head.
5. Not once in the Lord's own letters to the churches (Rev. 2 & 3) is the pope even mentioned, despite the critiques, commendations and censures.