In Matthew 16, the Apostle Peter made the bold proclamation that Jesus is “the Christ, the Son of the living God.” To this Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! 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 gates of Hell will 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.” This passage is generally known by Christians to be the passage in which Jesus establishes what will be known as the Christian Church. The church is said to be so powerful, that even death itself—“the gates of Hell”—will not be able to prevail against it. It’s also said that this church will “bind” and “loose” things on earth things that have been bound and loosed in Heaven. But upon what is this authority rested? This is one argument which has divided Roman Catholicism and Protestants since the Reformation. Who is Christ giving the authority to in this passage—Peter by himself, or the Apostles as a whole? Is Christ’s church built on the Apostle Peter or on Peter’s declaration of Jesus as the Christ? This is one of the base claims of the Roman Catholic church for the authority of the Pope over the entire Christian Church. How did this come to be? It is the purpose of this paper to discuss the historical rise of the Catholic church and the authority of the Pope.
The Christian Church began under the authority of the apostles, given by Jesus. The apostles taught the doctrine of the Church as they had learned it from Jesus. They formed the local churches based on the teachings of Jesus Christ (see the book of Acts). They taught those churches how to function as a Christian church (see the New Testament Epistles), and even taught them the process for appointing leaders in the local churches (see I Timothy 3, Titus 1). But by the end of the first century, most, if not all of the Apostles had died. How should the church continue on as its original leaders began to die out? Above all, they needed to remain unified; after all, they were supposed to be the “body of Christ” (see Ephesians 2-3). This commitment to unity throughout the body of churches is what led to the concept of a “Catholic Church.” Ignatius, one of the church’s first post-Apostolic Fathers, is the first writer to label the church the “Catholic Church.” It is apparent, however, that he did not mean this in the sense of the Roman Catholic Church, but that the Church of Jesus Christ is united throughout by the work of the Holy Spirit inside each of its members. The Catholicity then was based on internal work, not external membership. Tertullian, another one of the early Church Fathers, also used the term, apparently in the same manner that Ignatius had used it. The Catholic Church was a concept understood by the earliest Church Fathers to be an internal Catholicity based on the work of the Holy Spirit. However, Peder Stiansen notes the following, “[w]hen we come to Cyprian, the situation is changed. The Holy Catholic Church has become an external organization and not only an organism. Where the bishop is, there is the church. Salvation now depends upon membership in this Holy Catholic Church. ‘He cannot have God as his Father who has not got the Church as his Mother.’ Outside of the church, there is no salvation. Salvation is now identical with membership in the Catholic Church.”[1] This change in view of the Catholic Church marked a change in the understanding of the term “Catholic.” This also brought about a difference in understanding of what it meant to be “united in Christ.” If the visible Catholic Church was the only True Church, then the visible Church must need a head just as Christ is the Head of the spiritual Church. Christ needs a visible head to lead His visible Church. This led to what is now called the Papacy. Stiansen notes, “[t]his development was logical because of the fact that the church now was a state church and the government wanted the church administered according to the pattern of the empire with one authority above the other until the highest authority was found in the Capitol. The eastern part of the church had five patriarchates: Alexandria, Jerusalem, Antioch, Ephesus and Constantinople; and they had to divide the power. In the west, however, there was only one patriarch, that of Rome, and he divided his power with nobody, especially after the fall of the Western Empire in 476 A.D. The Papacy was the result.” These patriarchs led to the uniting of the Christian Church under certain Christian leaders. Eventually, this led to the uniting of the Christian church under the one western patriarch in Rome.
Following the course of sinful human nature, this shift into a united church leadership led to major doctrinal shifts at the same time. The focus of the church eventually became focused upon the teachings of the Pope and the affirmations of church councils and not upon the teachings of the Apostles and the affirmations of the Holy Spirit. Noting the Council of Chalcedon, Norman Geisler says, “The council reaffirmed the decisions of all three general councils before it (Session 4) as well as ‘the writings of that blessed man, Leo, Archbishop of all the churches who condemned the heresy of Nestorius and Eutyches, [to] shew what the true faith is.’ The presence of an ‘archbishop’ or bishop over bishops, represents a new state in the long development of the Roman episcopal hierarchy”.[2] This development was furthered as the Archbishops (the head of the major Churches) of the Church of Rome began to claim more and more authority. B. Sears notes that “Innocent I. in 416, was the first who laid absolute claim that all the churches of the Western empire should submit to his authority, in matters of faith, in consequence of his being the successor of Peter, the chief of the apostles”[3]. Later Archbishops continued to make this claim, and Leo the Great eventually convinced the Emperor that it would be in his best political interest to further the support of the Roman church over all of the other Patriarchal churches. This boosted the strength of the Church at Rome and its leader to a level of authority that it had not held before. This political move by the Church of Rome secured for itself the “headship” over all of the other churches within Christianity. The church was now set up to rule over the other churches in matters of doctrine and practice.
This rule by politics is what kept the Roman Church in power for many centuries throughout most of the Western nations. One of the greatest examples of such a politically minded rule by the Roman Catholic Pope would have to be the “Unam Sanctum” decree given by Pope Boniface VIII. The “Unam Sanctum” declared the following: “there is only one church, outside of which there is no salvation. The Pope is the Vicar of Christ, and if anyone denies that, he does not belong to the fold of Christ. He is a Manichaean, a heretic. There are two swords, the spiritual and the temporal, and both must be used for the church and by it. The bull closes with the statement that for every human being the condition of salvation is obedience to the Pope.”[4] Bold political moves like this one became characteristic of the Popes of the Catholic Church. They saw themselves as rulers of Church and State. This dominance by force continued until the Reformers began to dispute the Roman Catholic church in the sixteenth century.
As noted above, the Roman Catholic Church dominated much of the Western nations throughout the Middle Ages until the Reformation. This brought many benefits to these nations, however it also brought many devastating consequences along with it. One of the benefits was that much of the developing world in the West accepted Christianity as the national religion. This brought with it the fact that the most dominantly practiced belief system by the citizens of these nations was Christianity. However, the downside of this benefit is that much of these nations had accepted the perverted political form of Christianity found in the Roman Catholic Church. The Roman Catholic Church practiced and believed many things which were contrary to Scripture—some even heretical to the nature of the Gospel. These beliefs were the major teachings of the Church, and were the teachings being followed by most, if not all, of those who were “Christians” in the West. A belief system that teaches heresy, no matter whether they call themselves “Christians” or not, is leading its followers down the broad road which leads to destruction, according to Jesus in Matthew 7. They did not teach the truth about Jesus’ role in the Gospel, and man’s respond to Christ’s call to “come unto Me.” (Matthew 11) The Church also taught many false things about the authority of the Pope and the authority of the Church. These both compromise the authority of the Scripture, which is said to be able to make the man of God “perfect, equipped for every good work.” (2 Timothy 3) These problems, and the Church’s unwillingness to repent of them, are what eventually led the Reformers to leave the Catholic Church in order that Scripture might be taught accurately, and not according to “human interpretation.” (2 Peter 1)
Bibliography
Geisler, Norman L. "The Historical Development of Roman Catholicism." Christian Apologetics Journal, Spring 2005: 22-54.
Sears, B. "The Contest For Supremacy Between The Papacy And The Empire In The Middle Ages." Bibliotheca Sacra, Nov 1845: 758-794.
Stiansen, Peder. "Church Reform in the Late Middle Ages ." Bibliotheca Sacra, BSAC 105:418 (Apr 1948): 213-232.
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