Читать книгу Stunned by Scripture - Dr. John S. Bergsma Ph.D. - Страница 8

Chapter One

“John, I Am Your Father!”

The Bible and the Papacy

Men of my generation almost all have at least one cinematic experience burned into their memory: sitting in the theater watching a one-handed Luke Skywalker, clinging desperately to the sky bridge, stare in horror while Darth Vader announces: “Luke, I am your father!”

“No, no! It’s impossible!” Luke moans, “Noooooooooo!”

This scene captures the emotions many converts to the Catholic Church have experienced. They discover that the Pope, the man they once viewed as the Antichrist, is actually their spiritual father. To their non-Catholic friends, they seem like they have gone over to the “dark side.” Accepting the papacy is so synonymous with becoming Catholic, that many Protestants refer to conversion to Catholicism as “poping” (“Pope-ing”), as in, “Did you hear about John? He poped!”

After all, if there is one thing Protestants don’t like about the Catholic Church, it is the papacy. In fact, Lutheran theologian Stephen Long argues that it is the only thing all Protestants hold against the Catholic Church.¹ After all, Protestantism is very diverse. Some Protestant group can probably be found that agrees with the Catholic Church on almost every doctrine — whether the Real Presence, or justification, or Apostolic Succession — but none agree about the papacy. Necessarily so: to come to agree with the Catholic Church about the papacy would require one to reconcile with the Pope and thus join the Catholic Church!

The papacy in one sense was not a big problem to me as a convert, and in another sense, it was. I mean this: I got over my bigotry that the Pope was the antichrist in my teen years (John Paul II helped many Protestants get past this bias). By the time I was in Protestant ministry, I had a generally positive view of the Pope. By the time I started to seriously consider Catholicism, I could even see the practical need for the Pope as a universal pastor of all Christians. The practical side of the papacy was not a problem. It was papal infallibility that took me a long time to accept.

It was only a few weeks into my conversations with Michael in the fall of 1999 that the topic of the papacy came up, and Michael (as I recall) made the point that, if we were serious about the unity of the worldwide Church, we needed one worldwide pastor. I immediately saw the validity of his point, based on my experiences in urban ministry.

During my four years of urban ministry in Michigan, I served a racially diverse neighborhood in the heart of the city together with my co-pastor, a remarkable man, a former heroin addict who had experienced a radical conversion, supernatural deliverance from addiction, and had been gifted with extraordinary graces in his walk with Christ. He was an African-American who had moved from Selma, Alabama, to Michigan as an adult. For four years, he was my closest friend and partner, and he eventually baptized three of my children.

My partner was popularly known in the neighborhood and in the church as “Brother William.”² Both he and I were in courses of study for ordination within our denomination, although on different tracks. As God’s providence would have it, Brother William finished his ordination track before I finished mine, and that created a problem for us. Up to this time, I had been the head pastor of our little urban mission because I was credentialed as a “licentiate,” somewhat equivalent to a transitional deacon. But upon receiving ordination, Brother William would now “outrank” me in the ecclesiastical system, and so that forced the question on us: who would now take the lead?

We briefly discussed a “dual pastoral” model in which neither of us was the ultimate authority. We briefly discussed it, but then quickly rejected it. Why? We knew it wouldn’t work. Although it had been tried in various congregations we knew, neither of us knew of a single example where such a model was ultimately successful. What was the problem? Lack of unified vision and responsibility. Different interested parties within the congregation would play the two pastors off against each other, and — lacking one clear leader or authority — either the congregation would split or one of the pastors would leave.

Brother William summarized it in his characteristic Southern diction: “Can’t be but one pastor in the Church!” — driving home the point that, for the sake of unity, there had to be a central leader with whom “the buck stopped.”

I agreed (and still do). So, when Brother William was ordained, he “leapfrogged” me into the position of senior pastor. I took on the supporting role. It was necessary for the unity of our little church of seventy members or so. How much more so for a Church with over a billion members! There has to be a universal pastor if we are serious about the unity of the church.

During my years of pastoral ministry, I was involved in many ecumenical initiatives that sought to build church unity, including the Promise Keepers men’s movement that attempted to bridge denominational boundaries among Christian men in America. I have been to many meetings and conventions where we talked, sang, and prayed for Christian unity. However, I never felt like anyone was serious about it. It was well and good to have ecumenical prayer meetings, but I knew when push came to shove, you would have to pry everyone’s denominational distinctions out of their cold, dead fingers. If we had been really serious about unity, we would have had to submit our doctrinal differences to a common person or group of persons (a synod or council), and then abide by whatever decision resulted. I knew no one was ever going to do that: not the Calvinists, not the Baptists, not the Lutherans, not the Pentecostals, and so on. We were all convinced of the truth of our own positions. We were all paying lip service to unity, but for real unity to come about, there would have to be (among other things) a universal pastor with whom “the buck stopped.”

So, years later, it didn’t take long for my Catholic friend Michael to convince me of the practical need for a Pope. Since I was already favorably disposed, I was also pretty receptive to the biblical data when he laid it out.

The key biblical passage for the papacy is found in Matthew 16, the famous dialogue between Jesus and Peter:

Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do men say that the Son of man is?” And they said, “Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-jona! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” Then he strictly charged the disciples to tell no one that he was the Christ. (Matt 16:13–20)

In verse 18, Jesus gives Simon a new name, “Rock,” which in the original language of the Gospel (Greek) is petros, from which we get the English name Peter. Reading in the original language, the point of verse 18 is clearer:

“And I tell you, you are ‘Rock,’ and on this rock I will build my church.”

Jesus was making Simon into a kind of human foundation stone for the community (the “Church,” Greek ekklesia, Hebrew qahal) that he was establishing on earth.

Now, I knew from my seminary studies that John Calvin and many other Protestant theologians had bent over backwards to avoid the clear statement of the verse that Simon Peter was the human “foundation stone” on which Jesus would build his Church. It was popular to argue that the “rock” on which Jesus would build the Church was Peter’s confession of faith in the previous verse, not Simon Peter himself. Sometimes, the difference in gender endings on the name “Peter” and the word “rock” were pointed out in order to prove that Simon Peter could not be the “rock” on which Jesus built his Church. The Greek reads:

“And I tell you, you are petros, and on this petra I will build my Church.”

There is a difference in ending between the two words. But this means nothing. It only marks the grammatical gender of the word. If you know a European language besides English, you know that nouns in most languages have an assigned gender that is marked by various endings or by the article used with the word. Often the assigned gender of a word makes no sense. For example, in German the word for “young woman” (das Mädchen) is in the neuter gender!

In Greek, the word for rock, petra, is grammatically feminine and takes the ending a, which is feminine. However, you can’t make a feminine noun into a man’s name. So, when petra is given as Simon’s name, the ending is changed to the masculine-os, thus his name is petros. This is a little like adding the ending “-y” on the word “rock” to make the man’s name “Rocky.”

This is all simply a meaningless exercise of Greek grammar, and none of it would be relevant in Jesus’ spoken language. The Gospels are written in Greek, which was the international language of the day, everyone’s second language (like English in modern culture), in order to reach a large audience.

But Jesus usually spoke a different language, called Aramaic, with his disciples. We see a hint of untranslated Aramaic peeking through in Matthew 16, because the phrase “Bar-Jonah” in verse 17 is Aramaic for “son of John.” So, Jesus was originally speaking in Aramaic when he made Peter the Rock of the Church, and in Aramaic the word for rock is kepha, and kepha cannot take any endings in Aramaic. The original spoken words of Jesus would have been:

“And I tell you, you are kepha and on this kepha I will build my Church.”

The word kepha was given a Greek masculine ending (-s) and appears nine times in our Bibles as “Cephas”: John 1:42; 1 Corinthians 1:12, 3:22, 9:5, 15:5; Galations 1:18, 2:9, 11, 14.

The difference in gender of petros and petra is a grammatical issue that arose only when Jesus’ original words were translated into Greek. Nonetheless, I had read convoluted apologetics that tried to make a big deal over it in order to separate Peter as a person from the “rock” on which Jesus would build the Church.

Yet even when I was a Protestant pastor and seminarian, I never bought Calvin’s interpretation that the “rock” of the Church was Peter’s confession of faith rather than Peter himself. That seemed so strained to me. It was so obvious that Jesus was changing Simon’s name in order to signify the fact that he had become the rock of the Church. In my own mind, Calvin had just gone overboard trying to reject the position of the Catholic Church. Now that relations with the Catholic Church under John Paul II weren’t so strained, I thought, we could all agree that Peter was the rock of the Church.

But to me, this meant no more than that Peter was the first Christian, and maybe had an important role in founding the Christian movement. It never occurred to me that this role of “rock” was a kind of office or position that would continue after Peter’s death, with someone else taking on the role.

Here’s where we need to turn to the next verse, verse 19:

“I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”

I was told in the Protestant seminary that the “keys of the kingdom” were the preaching of the Gospel. When Peter preached the Gospel, those who accepted it would be “loosed in heaven” (saved) and those who rejected it would be “bound in heaven” (damned).

I accepted that view because I didn’t know any better. I didn’t know the Old Testament background for this verse. What I am about to show you was never shown to me in the seminary, and it rocked my world when I first saw it. Matthew 16:18–19 is actually drawing on a famous passage from the prophet Isaiah.

Thus says the Lord GOD of hosts, “Come, go to this steward, to Shebna, who is over the household, and say to him: What have you to do here and whom have you here, that you have hewn here a tomb for yourself, you who hew a tomb on the height, and carve a habitation for yourself in the rock?… I will thrust you from your office, and you will be cast down from your station. In that day I will call my servant Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, and I will clothe him with your robe, and will bind your girdle on him, and will commit your authority to his hand; and he shall be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and to the house of Judah. And I will place on his shoulder the key of the house of David; he shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none shall open.” (Is 22:15–22)

Again, it amazes me that, even though we discussed Matthew 16:18–19 in several different classes in my seminary, no one ever pointed out the connection with the Isaiah passage, even though the connection is well-known among Bible scholars and mentioned in several commentaries. After all, there are only two places in the Old Testament where the word “key” is used (Judg 3:25; Isa 22:22), so when we look for the Old Testament background of Jesus’ teaching (which we should always do), it doesn’t take long to find the connection between Matthew 16:19 and Isaiah 22:22.

Be that as it may, let’s discuss this passage of Isaiah and explain its relevance to Matthew 16:18–19.

The passage rebukes a certain man named Shebna. This Shebna was the royal steward, in Hebrew “the one over the house.” In the ancient kingdom of David, the royal steward was second in power only to the king. He ran the king’s household, and he had the keys to the palace. He controlled access to the king: he could lock or unlock the palace, let you in to see the king or keep you out.

Now, this particular royal steward, Shebna, had let his power go to his head. He began to think of himself as equal to the king, and was having a tomb carved for himself in the royal cemetery. If you are familiar with Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, think of the character of Denethor, steward of Gondor. Tolkien was something of a Bible scholar himself (he assisted in a Catholic translation of the Bible) and was well aware of the role of the royal steward. He modeled Denethor after Shebna. Both fell prey to pride and a desire to take the place of the king.

God sent Isaiah to Shebna with a message of rebuke. God would put Shebna out of office and replace him with a better man, Eliakim son of Hilkiah. Look what he says about Eliakim:

“I will clothe him with your robe, and will bind your girdle on him, and will commit your authority to his hand; and he shall be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and to the house of Judah.”

Let’s note two things. First, the “robe” and “girdle” were priestly garments because the royal steward was connected with the priesthood. It is highly probable that Eliakim was of priestly descent because his father’s name, “Hilkiah,” was popular within the Levitical priesthood.³ Second, Eliakim will be a “father” to Jerusalem and the House of Judah. The “House of Judah” was a name for the entire kingdom of David. So, we see that the royal steward had a paternal or fatherly role for all the citizens of the kingdom. They looked to him as a father-figure: a provider and protector.

Do you see where this is going? The ancient kingdom of David had an important role for a second-in-command figure, a priestly character who was a “father” or “papa” to all the people in the kingdom. Sound familiar?

Before we bring home all the implications of that, let’s proceed to the next verse:

“And I will place on his shoulder the key of the house of David; he shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none shall open.”

Apparently, the key to the royal palace (“the key of the house of David”) was worn on the shoulder of the royal steward as a sign or badge of his office. Perhaps it was tied there on his garment.⁴ The statement “he shall open, and none shall shut” emphasizes the royal steward’s authority no one but the king himself could oppose the steward’s decisions.

Finally, let’s notice the royal steward held a well-defined office or position that would be filled by another after he died or retired. So, God says to Shebna: “I will thrust you from your office (Hebrew matsav) and cast you down from your station (Hebrew ma’amadh).” It wasn’t a charismatic role held by one person that disappeared with him, but the role continued perpetually.

With this background in mind, let’s return to Matthew 16:19:

“I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”

This statement is clearly modeled on the ancient prophecy of Isaiah, because we see the parallelism of the promise of the gift of the key followed by the promise of authority. The phrase “Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven” is strongly parallel to “He shall shut, and none shall open.”

However, the difference between “binding and loosing” versus “shutting and opening” is just as instructive as the parallel.

In Jesus’ day, the terms “binding and loosing” referred to the authoritative interpretation of divine law. In Jewish culture, this was (and is) called “halakhic” judgment. In Judaism, the halakhah refers to the way you put the Law of Moses into practice. It derives from halakh, the verb “to walk,” and one could translate the term literally as “how one walks,” or “how one behaves.” Others have defined it as “the law as practiced.”

We need to realize that the Law of Moses (and all law) requires interpretation. For example, the Law of Moses says to “rest” on the Sabbath day and refrain from “work.”

Now, let’s say one is truly serious about obeying that command. Then several questions have to be answered: exactly when does the Sabbath begin, and when does it end, so I can be sure I’m not violating it? What constitutes “work” or “rest”? Is it “work” if I walk too far on the Sabbath? Is it “work” to light a fire? All these questions and hundreds more need to be answered if one is seriously going to obey the command to “rest.”

All such questions are “halakhic” issues. As a matter of fact, the Jewish rabbis eventually decided that lighting a fire was work. Therefore, one could not cook or do any other activity requiring a fire to be lit on the Sabbath. Furthermore, any walk longer than about a kilometer from one’s property became “work.” So, Jewish communities tend to eat cold food on Saturday and build houses within a short distance from their synagogue.

The authority to make all these kinds of decisions about the interpretation of God’s law was collectively termed “binding and loosing.” To “bind” something was to forbid it; to “loose” something was to permit it. Lighting a fire was “bound” on the Sabbath, but walking a kilometer was “loosed.”

So, when Jesus says to Peter, “Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven,” he is conferring on Peter the authority to interpret divine law (i.e., Scripture), and promising him that heaven will back up his judgments.

Later in life, I was again shocked to discover how clearly Jewish scholars understand the profound authority that is being conferred on Peter in this passage. The Jewish Encyclopedia explains that the authority to “bind and loose” was not merely an academic or intellectual exercise, but a divinely given power. Prominent rabbis would “bind and loose” for ancient Jews, and it was not that the rabbis “merely decided what, according to the Law, was forbidden or allowed, but that they possessed and exercised the power of tying or untying a thing by the spell of their divine authority.” The Encyclopedia continues:

This power and authority … received its ratification and final sanction from the celestial [heavenly] court of justice (Sifra, Emor, ix.; Mak. 23b). In this sense Jesus, when appointing his disciples to be his successors, used the familiar formula (Matt. xvi. 19, xviii. 18). By these words he virtually invested them with the same authority as that which he found belonging to the scribes and Pharisees.⁵

So, let’s put this all together. Based on the background in Isaiah 22, we come to understand that bearing the “key of the kingdom” was the mark of office of the royal steward, the man over the palace and “number two” to the king himself. Therefore, Jesus’ words to Peter in Matthew 16:18–19 confer on him the role of royal steward in his (Jesus’) kingdom, and they also grant Peter the authority to make decisions about how to interpret divine law, particularly the Scriptures. In the Old Testament, the role of the royal steward was both priestly and paternal: it was filled by a man who wore priestly garments, and he was recognized as a “papa” by all the citizens of the kingdom. Moreover, this role was not a personal charism that died with the royal steward, but it was an “office” or “station” that was filled by another when the previous occupant died or was removed.

One has to be fairly blind not to see that this is model of the papacy!

During my journey into the Catholic Church, I began to realize this:

Jesus is both Son of God and Son of David; therefore, his kingdom is both kingdom of God and kingdom of David.

Once I realized that, all sorts of things about the Bible and the Catholic Church began to make sense!

Growing up, I never understood why the first two or three chapters of Matthew and Luke stressed so heavily Jesus’ connection to the royal line of David, and yet the Davidic kingdom idea seems to go nowhere for the rest of the Gospels and the New Testament.

Actually, I was terribly mistaken. References to David and his kingdom actually continue through the Gospels and into Acts and occur elsewhere in the New Testament, especially in Revelation. The connection of Jesus to the fulfillment of the promises to the royal House of David is actually a major theme in the New Testament generally, but to grasp it we have to see that the Church is the fulfillment of the kingdom of David. That’s why Jesus promises the Twelve that they will “sit on thrones judging the tribes of Israel” (Luke 22:30). When do they do that? When they rule authoritatively over the Church in Acts (see Acts 5:1–11, for example). The Church is the “Israel of God” (Gal 6:16).

The Catholic Church is the transformed kingdom of David. The Son of David, Christ the King, rules over it. On earth, the royal steward guides it, a priestly and paternal man, a man called “papa” or “pope” by the citizens of the kingdom. He can “bind and loose” by declaring what is in accord with divine law and what is prohibited by it. So, for example, when Paul VI judged in his encyclical Humanae Vitae that artificial contraceptives were prohibited by divine and natural law, it was an exercise of the power of “binding” given to Peter and his successors.

The doctrine of papal infallibility is already implied in Matthew 16:19 when we read it in light of Jewish religious culture and through Jewish eyes. We have already seen that the Jewish Encyclopedia understands “binding and loosing” as an exercise of divine authority, ratified and sanctioned by “the celestial court of justice.” This is precisely what Jesus means by saying “what you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven.” Heaven will confirm the decisions of Peter on earth; and surely this implies that heaven will first guide the decisions of Peter on earth, because heaven cannot confirm error. That implies infallibility.

However, I did not come to affirm papal infallibility merely for scriptural reasons, although I did see that Scripture implied it. Rather, I came to accept papal infallibility when I saw its relationship to Church unity.

Here is my line of logic. You can judge if I am faithful to Scripture in my thinking:

1. Jesus desires visible unity of his Church.

2. Visible unity requires, ultimately, one “senior pastor.”

3. The job of the “senior pastor” is to maintain unity.

4. He can only maintain unity by stopping fights.

5. He can only stop fights if his word is final.

6. His word is final only if he can make an infallible judgment.

Did you follow that? Let me go through the steps with you, one by one.

1. Jesus desires visible unity of his Church.

Whether Catholic or Protestant, we Christians are not being honest with ourselves, church history, or the Scriptures if we deny this point.

I became convicted of the need for the visible unity of the Church when I had to prepare a sermon on John 17, the famous “High Priestly Prayer.” In the part of this prayer where Jesus prays for the whole Church, he says:

“I do not pray for these [i.e., the apostles] only, but also for those who believe in me through their word, that they may all be one; even as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” (John 17:20–21, emphasis added)

I knew that the usual Protestant interpretation of this passage was that Jesus was merely praying for spiritual unity, but my gut reaction to that, even as a Protestant, was “cop out!”

I could not believe — and still cannot believe — that Jesus was praying for his followers to be divided into forty thousand different groups differing on every imaginable point of doctrine, as long as they were somehow “spiritually unified” in some airy-fairy way.

I am especially convinced of this because it dawned on me — all those years ago when I was working on this text in the context of urban ministry — that there was a connection between unity and mission. Notice how the prayer that “they may all be one” is followed by the purpose clause “so that the world may believe.” Therefore, the unity of the Church lends credibility to the Gospel and helps the world “to believe” that Jesus has really been sent from God. But the world sees only the external. The world cannot see some airy-fairy “spiritual” unity behind forty thousand or more bickering denominations. The world needs to see visible unity in order to be moved to belief. That’s why the Reformation has crippled the evangelization of Western civilization, and it has been downhill for Christianity in the West ever since.

2. Visible unity requires, ultimately, one “senior pastor.”

Almost all churches recognize this in practice. As I mentioned above, dual pastorships are occasionally tried, but they never work long term. This is especially true in the most successful churches, like mega-churches built around the personality of one senior pastor: Bill Hybels, Rick Warren, Joel Osteen. The buck has to stop with one man, otherwise the church will not stay moving in one direction. It will be split by different visions.

Why can we recognize this principle on the local level, but not apply it to the universal level?

I’ll tell you why. Because, as I’ve said, most Christians are not serious about Church unity. They may pay lip service to ecumenical efforts, but they are not going to budge one inch on the theological particulars of their tradition in order to come back to a unified Church.

There’s no problem with the logic: if the local church needs a pastor for unity, the universal church needs a pastor for unity. The problem is that folks don’t like the conclusion.

Is there any indication that Jesus appointed one “senior pastor” over his Church? Absolutely! We just need to read the Scriptures with an open mind!

There is only one apostle whom Jesus names “the rock,” says that he will build his “church” on, and gives the “keys of the kingdom,” demonstrating that he has the role of the “royal steward” or second in command in the spiritual kingdom Jesus is establishing.

There is only one apostle who is always listed first in all the lists of apostles in the Gospel.

There is only one apostle who receives a triple commission to “feed and tend the sheep” in John 21, just before Jesus’ ascension. Since the word “pastor” literally means “shepherd,” and “senior” means “chief or primary,” we can say quite literally that Jesus appointed Peter as the “senior pastor” on the shores of Galilee after his resurrection (John 21).

Folks may resist applying Peter’s role to his successors, but the royal steward in the Old Testament had an “office and station” (Isa 22:19), and the replacement of Judas by Matthias in Acts 1 also demonstrates that the apostles had an “office” and “station” (Acts 1:20). In fact, the word for Judas’s apostolic “office” is literally episkopen in Greek, from which we get the word “episcopal” and ultimately even “bishop.”⁶

Peter ended his life crucified in Rome. The Roman Christians recognized his disciple Linus as his replacement; Linus in turn was replaced by Anacletus; and so on down to Pope Francis today. Jesus did not provide a “royal steward” only for the first thirty years of the Church’s existence.

3. The job of the “senior pastor” is to maintain unity.

Not his sole job, of course, but one of his most important responsibilities: certainly within a local church, and all the more so in the church universal. We see indications of Peter’s responsibility for unity in the Scriptures: Jesus prays that Peter’s faith will not fail, so that afterward he can “strengthen your brothers” (Luke 22:32), i.e., the other apostles. Strengthening them would certainly include keeping them together. At the first Church council described in Acts 15, it is Peter whose speech ends debate (Acts 15:7–11). Notice there is much debate before Peter speaks (15:7) and none afterward (15:12–29). As a result, the early Church did not split into “First Church of the Circumcision” and “First Church of the Gentiles.” Peter’s ministry kept the Church together.

4. He can only maintain unity by stopping fights.

This is simply obvious. Infighting, especially over theological issues, is what destroys Church unity. Different leaders have different opinions on a “hot button” issue, and before you know it, you’ve got two different denominations.

The weakness of Protestantism is that it lacks any way to resolve different plausible interpretations of Scripture.

If Jesus really intended the Church to remain together — which he did, according to John 17 — then he must have left us with the means to do it. Obviously, good intentions and the Holy Spirit are not those means, because Protestants have both of those and do not maintain unity. Christians have testified since the earliest fathers that one of the most important means to unity is the bishop of Rome, the successor of Peter, who is the touchstone of unity.⁷ Those who reject this testimony of the early Fathers have the responsibility to propose some other workable means of unity that Jesus left us.

As we saw above, the Scriptures themselves portray Peter in this role of settling theological fights. In Acts 15, his speech to the council of Jerusalem (vv. 7–12) settles the issue. When James, the leader of the “losing party,” rises to concede the argument, he cites the judgment of Peter (15:14) even before he cites the witness of Scripture (15:15–16). I don’t wish to argue from that fact that Peter’s testimony outweighs Scripture. But Acts 15:7–12 does show the authority Peter exercised within the early Church: an authority to settle divisive issues.

5. He can’t stop fights unless his word is final.

If his word isn’t final, other leaders will just argue with him, and continue arguing with each other, thereby destroying the unity of the Church.

6. His word isn’t final unless he is infallible.

Here’s where we finally come to the rub. Even Protestants who respect the role of the successor of Peter and see the need for a universal pastor still balk at the idea that his formal decision is backed by the Holy Spirit and cannot be wrong. But let us clearly understand: unless the Pope is backed up by infallibility, even when he would attempt to put an end to a fight people would just say he himself was wrong. The fight would just continue and the Church break apart.

Infallibility is really what is implied when Jesus gives to Peter personally an authority that he bestows on the rest of the apostles only corporately (as a group), namely, “what you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, what you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven” (Matt 16:19; cf. Matt 18:18). This, as Jewish scholars attest, is the promise of the backing of the divine court for the decisions that Peter makes concerning the interpretation of divine law. It entails that Peter’s decision is infallible, which means “unable to err.”⁸

Let us clarify that the Catholic Church has never held that the successor of Peter (or Peter himself!) was personally sinless, or that he never makes a wrong decision. Only a formal decision on doctrine is protected from error — in Jewish terms, a halakhic judgment. What constitutes a formal decision? The Church has standards for how that needs to be expressed.⁹ The technical term is that the Pope speaks ex cathedra, “from the throne,” which is not so much that he must physically sit on the throne of the bishop of Rome in St. John Lateran,¹⁰ but that he self-consciously and clearly intends to pass judgment on a disputed question on behalf of the whole Church.

So, we’ve explained the argument to the end. Let’s just run through it one more time to make sure we have grasped it: The job of the “senior pastor” of the universal Church is to keep unity, which he cannot do unless he can stop fights, and he can’t stop fights unless his decision is final, which implies he is infallible or “unable to err.” That’s it. That’s what I saw during my conversion to Catholicism, and I still see it today.

The Catholic Church remains one body, in part because of the gift of the papacy, the successor of Peter. Protestants have left the Catholic Church. Orthodox are separated from Peter. Like all who become separated from the Catholic Church, they have both been unable to maintain unity within their own ranks. Nonetheless, the Catholic Church remains a single body. It is not characteristic of Catholics to enter into schism. Great moral and spiritual reformers within Catholicism, unlike those within Protestantism, do not start new churches and break bonds of communion. No one ever says of Catholics that they are “the split C’s” the way they say of Presbyterians, the “split P’s.” There really is a very different lived experience in being Catholic versus being something else.

Summing Up the Scriptural Stunners

I first opened up to the papacy because I saw the practical need for it. In time, however, I came to realize how strong the evidence for the papacy was within the Scriptures. To sum it up:

1. Matthew 16:18–19 establishes Peter as the “royal steward” of Jesus’ kingdom-Church, and promises him the infallible backing of heaven for his decisions about the interpretation of divine law. A succession in office is implied by the fact that the royal steward of the Davidic kingdom was an office-holder with successors.

2. John 21:15–19 gives Peter an unparalleled and incomparable triple commissioning as the unique shepherd or “pastor” of all Christ’s sheep.

3. Acts 1:15–26 establishes the principle that the apostles occupied an “office” (episkopen) that could be filled by another after their death, thus establishing the principle of “succession.”

4. Acts 5:1–11, the account of Ananias and Sapphira, demonstrates that lying to and “testing” Peter is tantamount to lying to and testing the Holy Spirit.

5. Acts 15:1–31 shows Peter exercising his role as chief shepherd or “senior pastor” by putting an end to debate that threatened to break apart the unity of the early Church by rendering an authoritative judgment about the issue under question.

Does the Bible lay out a whole theory of the papacy? No, because that wasn’t why it was written. Does the Bible reflect the fact that Peter was the divinely-authorized leader of the Church? Yes. Does early Church tradition reflect the fact that this role fell to his successor upon his death? Absolutely. Let’s close with the testimony of Saint Jerome, the first great Bible translator of Christianity, from a letter addressed to Pope Damasus I (c. A.D. 376):

I think it is my duty to consult the chair of Peter, and to turn to a church whose faith has been praised by Paul (Rom 1:8). I appeal for spiritual food to the church whence I have received the garb of Christ…. Away with all that is overweening; let the state of Roman majesty withdraw. My words are spoken to the successor of the fisherman, to the disciple of the cross. As I follow no leader save Christ, so I communicate with none but your blessedness, that is, with the chair of Peter. For this, I know, is the rock on which the church is built!¹¹

May we, like Jerome, combine dedication to the study of Scripture with loyalty to the Bishop of Rome, the successor of Peter.

1 D. Stephen Long, “In Need of a Pope? Protestants and the Papacy,” The Christian Century, May 17, 2005, https://www.christiancentury.org/article/2005-05/need-pope.

2 Not his real name.

3 All the other Hilkiahs known in Scripture were priests.

4 See William Cooke Taylor, ed., The Bible Cyclopaedia: Or, Illustrations of the Civil and Natural History of the Sacred Writings (London: J.W. Parker, 1843), vol. 2, p. 718, where it is noted that the practice of wearing the key on the shoulder was still current among the Moors in the nineteenth century.

5 See Kaufmann Kohler, “Binding and Loosing,” The Jewish Encyclopedia (New York: Ktav, 1906), http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/3307-binding-and-loosing.

6 “Bishop” is a corruption of the Greek episkopos, “overseer” or “supervisor,” through the German bischof.

7 For example, around A.D. 180, the early Church Father Irenaeus, pastor of the city of Lyons in France, wrote the following about the Church of Rome: “It is a matter of necessity that every Church should agree with this Church, on account of its preeminent authority.” Then immediately he proceeded to list the succession of bishops of Rome (i.e., Popes) from Peter down to Eleutherius, who was still Pope in Irenaeus’s day: “Eleutherius does now, in the twelfth place from the apostles, hold the inheritance of the episcopate. In this order, and by this succession, the ecclesiastical tradition from the apostles, and the preaching of the truth, have come down to us” (Irenaeus, Against Heresies, Book III, Chapter 3, Sections 2–3; http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103303.htm).

8 Not “unable to fail,” a common misconception among English-speakers.

9 See the discussion in the online Catholic Encyclopedia under “Infallibility”: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07790a.htm#IIIB.

10 It is actually the Basilica of St. John Lateran (not St. Peter’s Basilica) that is the cathedral of Rome, the “official” church of the Bishop of Rome, the Pope.

11 Letter 15.2. See NPNF 2, 6:18. See also Sancti Eusebii Hieronymi: Epistulae 1-LXX, ed. Isodorus Hilberg, Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinarum (CSEL), vol. 54 (Vienna: F. Tempsky, 1910), 63–64.