SR: There was no Roman Catholic church for the first 150-200 years after Christ's earthly ministry. We were all just Christians back then.
TC: In the first 200 years of Christianity, the Catholic church (the only church) had gone through 15 Popes....and Catholics are Christian..the ONLY true and COMPLETE form of Christianity on Earth.
Jerome does not agree with you. Rather, he describes the centralized episcopate as a later development, a response to infighting between various factions, but not a structure that existed or was recognized from the very beginning. In the beginning, according to Jerome, a bishop and a presbyter were the same thing, and the churches were run locally by pluralities of these elders. In essence then, Jerome is in agreement with Peter Lampe, who derives exactly the same conclusion based on primary evidence.
See an analysis of Jerome's comments here.
I am hopeful you will consider Lampe's historical argument. The pope lists of Irenaeus and others were not put together from careful record-keeping of a papal office that existed from the beginning. Rather, if you read for example Irenaeus more carefully, you see he is pulling out names thought to represent a continuity individuals who
by their lives and teaching held to apostolic truth as it was handed down to them, not a mechanical succession of supreme, universal bishops. Irenaeus was not attempting to play the papal supremacy card. He was making a case that those promoting some new error were teaching a novelty not supported by apostolic doctrine, as indicated by this cherry-picked list of those who from the beginning were faithful to the truth. This "succession of truth"as opposed to a "succession of men" is exactly what Protestants believe. It is how we see the work of the Holy Spirit in preserving the truths of the Gospel to all generations. This is the work of God, not men.
But in any event, the lists are not inspired. They are the fallible work of fallible humans. The evidence for that is that the various lists are not in perfect agreement. So they could be wrong.
Furthermore, if they were true, one would reasonably expect some confirming evidence that a monarchical papal office existed all the way back into the first days of the Christian church. But such evidence is missing from the first couple of centuries, starting with the Biblical record.
For example, in Scripture, just as described by Jerome, the conflict between the Jewish and Gentile Christians over Moses was resolved, not by appeal to Peter's supreme office, nor even by appeal to the supreme bishop of either Rome or Jerusalem. Nor was it decided by a universal college of bishops gathered from all over the ancient world. Nor was it decided by congregational vote (take that, you naughty congregationalists /s). Rather, it was decided by a gathering of presbyters and apostles, who discussed, looked at evidence, drew conclusions, and wrote those conclusions out as a decision the churches at large were expected to respect. James was the spokesman. Peter was just one of the apostolic deliberators. Again, this agrees both with Lampe's assessment of the churches at Rome, and with Jerome's own view of the early days of church operating structure. There was no monarch-priest, no supreme, universal bishop, no pontifex maximus.
Now Irenaeus is right about one thing. Paul does mention a chap named Linus here:
2 Timothy 4:21 Do thy diligence to come before winter. Eubulus greeteth thee, and Pudens, and Linus, and Claudia, and all the brethren.
But ... that's pretty much it for evidence. Imagine you're in court, and you're trying to convince a jury that your defendant, some guy named Mike, was the rightful supreme leader of some new religion, let's call them Group X, because one of Group X's founders once said he knew a guy named Mike. Once. Would you consider that a good argument? I wouldn't. I'd be too embarrassed to even put that in front of the judge. Now maybe you could save your client's claim if you could show he was actually ordained by the founder as Supreme Leader, and really did Supreme Leader sorts of things for which there was a record. Do we have that for Linus? No we don't.
Again, this is why you cannot discount the silence of the record. Peter Lampe establishes from primary sources, original documents, inscriptions, and other records, what life was like for Roman Christianity for about the first 160 years, and it was just as Jerome described it. No central leadership for the city. Just a loose federation of synagoge-like fellowships, which coordinated from time to time on bringing financial aid to Christian communities outside of Rome. There was no universal bishop, not even for just Rome. It was all done on the model of a plurality of elders running a multiplicity of fellowships. So there is no place, in the real world, for Linus to show up as Supreme Leader. The role simply didn't exist. Not until centuries later.
BTW, there's actually better evidence that Claudia and Pudens, mentioned right alongside Linus, were a couple of early Brits who took the Gospel from Paul back to the British Isles. There's even a theory of Baptist successionism that says these two were the founders of British Christianity independent of Rome, leading some Baptist groups to claim they've never been part of Rome and therefore never were Protestants. Now, I'm not saying that's right, and I'm not saying it's wrong. But if I did take such a position, how would you attack it? Wouldn't you challenge me to show proof, hard evidence, drawn from primary sources of the period, that my claims were true? Of course you would.
Because anybody can make a list with 15 names on it. But no one can fake a complex reality. If something is real, there will be clues. You can't stop the signal.
Peace,
SR