Jason Engwer: Closing Statement
My opponent decided not to defend the Roman Catholic doctrine of the papacy, but instead to defend his own conception of a court of appeal that transferred from one city to another, eventually residing in Rome. He argued that passages such as Matthew 16:19 and Luke 22:32 prove that Peter had unique authority, although that unique authority isn’t what the Catholic Church has defined. He also argued that the Roman church became a court of appeal after the church of Jerusalem and the church of Antioch, but he didn’t explain why other churches Peter went to didn’t also become courts of appeal. If this court of appeal wasn’t always determined by Peter’s presence, then how is it relevant to the concept of a papacy? If Jerusalem remained influential after Peter’s departure from that city, and other cities that Peter went to didn’t become courts of appeal, how is a Petrine papacy proven by arguing for this court of appeal concept? How do we know that these churches were courts of appeal? And how do we know that the court of appeal was to no longer transfer after it arrived in Rome, but instead was to remain there permanently? My opponent admitted in his opening remarks and in his response to my first question:
Furthermore, it must be recognized that none of these early fathers are writing with the intention of promoting the supreme authority of the Roman church. Rather, this was a time when the Faith itself was still being communicated and defined. Therefore, any references to Rome’s authority are incidental at best….
Firstly, the NT documents never refer to lots of things. For example, where does the New Testament specifically teach that the Gospel of Matthew is Divinely-inspired and approved by the Apostles? Yet, you accept that it is because that’s the sacred oral Tradition of the Christian Church. Right? Thus, I know that the Roman church held “preeminent authority” because that is part of the same body of oral Tradition, as we see reflected in the patristic evidence.
My opponent has chosen to defend his own concept of the papacy, which is different from the Catholic Church’s definition. He acknowledges that his concept of the papacy can’t be found in the New Testament, but instead must be found by combining the apostolic documents with post-apostolic documents, and those post-apostolic sources have references to the papacy that “are incidental at best”.
False Comparisons
Is the absence of early evidence for a papacy comparable to the absence of any New Testament reference to Matthew writing the gospel attributed to him, as my opponent has suggested? Is the papacy comparable to the Trinity in that people’s understanding of the doctrine developed over time? No, those are false comparisons.
As I documented in my opening remarks, the Catholic Church teaches that the papacy is a “clear doctrine of Holy Scripture” that has always been understood by the universal Christian church. The Catholic Church doesn’t allow for the comparisons my opponent is making to the authorship of the gospel of Matthew and the Trinity. Not only is my opponent’s definition of the papacy absent from the New Testament and the early post-apostolic documents, but it’s also absent from Roman Catholic teaching.
My opponent is contradicting what the Catholic Church has taught, and his comparisons are false even if we ignore what’s been taught by the Catholic Church. Is there any context in the New Testament in which we would expect the authorship of Matthew’s gospel to be addressed, aside from the possibility that the gospel always bore Matthew’s name on it, as some scholars believe? (Obviously, forgery would be a possibility, so bearing Matthew’s name wouldn’t, by itself, prove that the gospel was written by Matthew.) Should we expect Paul, in his epistle to the Ephesians, for example, to declare that Matthew wrote a gospel? Obviously, there’s no context in the New Testament in which we would expect the issue of the authorship of Matthew’s gospel to be addressed. Absence of any mention of the subject is understandable. Can the same be said of the papacy, though?
No, to the contrary, the papacy is absent in passages of scripture in which we would expect it to be mentioned if it had existed at the time. In the dozens of passages about church government in the New Testament, including epistles written primarily to address issues related to the governing of churches (1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, etc.), are we actually to believe that a papacy would never be mentioned? When Paul writes a letter to the Roman church, and he greets dozens of people associated with the Roman church by name (Romans 16), is that a context in which we wouldn’t expect there to be any mention of a papacy or even of Peter’s association with the Roman church? When Peter is nearing death, and he’s explaining how his readers can remember his teachings after his death (2 Peter 1:13-15, 3:1-2), are we actually to believe that this isn’t a context in which mentioning a successor in Rome would be relevant? Instead, Peter mentions that he’s leaving behind written documents whereby people can remember what he taught. The Roman Catholic Church claims that the papacy is the foundation upon which the Christian church is built, and there are dozens of passages of scripture in which we would expect a papacy to be mentioned if it existed at the time. And my opponent thinks that its absence from the New Testament is comparable to whether the authorship of Matthew’s gospel is mentioned?
Another reason why my opponent’s comparison is false is that the historical evidence for the authenticity of Matthew’s gospel is far more conclusive than the evidence cited for an early papacy. I can’t address all of the evidence for the New Testament canon in these closing remarks, but, for those who are interested, I would recommend consulting some of the hundreds of articles and books that have been written on the subject, as well as an article on the canon at my web site ( site since defunct ).
Since the gospel of Matthew is a written document, unlike the “oral Tradition” of a papacy that my opponent refers to, we can date it by its internal evidence (language, references to people and places that are verifiable through history and archeology, etc.). We also have external evidence for the authenticity of Matthew’s gospel that doesn’t exist for the papacy. For example, when Papias, a Christian of the late first and early second centuries, reports that Matthew wrote a gospel, and that gospel is also quoted repeatedly as an authoritative document by other early sources, and early non-Christian sources accept Matthew as an apostolic document, how is that comparable to the papacy? There is no mention of a papacy in the early sources. That’s why my opponent has to speculate that Ignatius’ reference to the Roman church teaching people might be a reference to a papacy. That’s why he has to speculate that Irenaeus must have believed that the Roman church is important because of a papacy, even though the reasons Irenaeus gives for viewing the Roman church as he does don’t have anything to do with a papacy. To compare the explicit evidence for Matthew’s gospel to the sort of speculation, question begging, and special pleading my opponent has engaged in to argue for an early papacy is absurd.
About 150 years after Peter’s death, when the authenticity of Matthew’s gospel had already been accepted across the Christian world for generations, church leaders as influential as Clement of Alexandria and Origen repeatedly write about Christian doctrine and church government without saying anything about a papacy. Origen, for example, was one of the most influential of the early church leaders, as well as one of the most prolific, having authored thousands of works. Yet, as Catholic historian Robert Eno explains, “a plain recognition of Roman primacy or of a connection between Peter and the contemporary bishop of Rome seems remote from Origen’s thoughts” (The Rise of the Papacy, p. 43). As Catholic historian J. Michael Miller explained in a citation I included in my opening remarks, the concept of the papacy was absent from all of the Eastern churches in the earliest centuries. Oscar Cullmann explains that the interpretation of Matthew 16 advocated by the Protestant reformers:
was not first invented for their struggle against the papacy; it rests upon an older patristic [church father] tradition (Peter: Disciple - Apostle - Martyr, p. 162)
Though my opponent cited Luke 22:32 as evidence that Peter was a Pope, the earliest post-apostolic interpretations of that passage are non-papal. The earliest interpreters apply the passage to Peter, to all of the apostles, and to all Christians, but not to any exclusive succession of Roman bishops. This is seen, for example, in Tertullian (De Fuga in Persecutione, 2), Cyprian (Epistle 7), and the Constitutions of the Holy Apostles (6:5).
Not only is the papacy absent early on, but it’s also contradicted. Paul writes concerning Peter and other church leaders of reputation (Galatians 2:6):
But from those who were of high reputation (what they were makes no difference to me; God shows no partiality) - well, those who were of reputation contributed nothing to me.
Paul goes on to compare his apostleship with Peter’s, and he refers to Peter as one of three people who were reputed as pillars of the church, naming Peter second, after James. Paul asserts his independence from these reputed pillars of the church in Galatians 2:6. As he explains in Galatians 1:1, his authority was neither from men nor through men. If Paul was in submission to Peter as Pope, and he therefore had to submit his teachings and his ministry to Peter’s approval, as the Catholic Church claims, would it be truthful for Paul to say that who Peter was “makes no difference to me”? Galatians 1-2 cannot be explained apart from the equality and independence of Paul, which contradict the doctrine of the papacy. Paul was not in submission to Peter, nor was he in submission to the Roman church.
My opponent claimed in his rebuttal that when Paul asserted his authority over all the churches (1 Corinthians 4:17, 7:17, 2 Corinthians 11:28), he was referring only to the churches he founded. The text doesn’t say that, of course, and we know from Paul’s epistle to the Romans that Paul instructed the Roman church, which my opponent claims was founded by Peter. The truth is that all of the apostles had authority over all of the churches. This is why Peter refers to the churches following the teachings of “the apostles” (2 Peter 3:2), not just the teachings of one apostle who founded that church. This is why the apostolic documents were circulated among all of the churches, not just the churches founded by the apostle who wrote the document. Each apostle had universal authority, yet only Peter should have had universal authority, with the rest of the apostles having to submit to the Roman church, if Catholic claims about church history were accurate.
As I explained in the rebuttal segment of this debate, the Roman church failed to convince the churches of Asia Minor, Africa, and other regions of the world to agree with it during disputes such as the Easter controversy of the second century and the heretical baptism controversy of the third century. I quoted Polycrates, bishop of Ephesus, writing to Victor, bishop of Rome, to explain that he and other church leaders would continue to follow their traditions, regardless of Victor’s opposition. In these closing remarks, I want to turn my focus to the heretical baptism dispute.
Around the middle of the third century, there was a dispute relating to baptism, and the bishop of Rome took a position on the issue that was opposed by other bishops in the West and East. Cyprian, a bishop of Carthage in the West, held a council with dozens of other bishops, and the council opposed the position on baptism taken by the bishop of Rome and others. Cyprian wrote on this occasion:
For neither does any of us set himself up as a bishop of bishops, nor by tyrannical terror does any compel his colleague to the necessity of obedience; since every bishop, according to the allowance of his liberty and power, has his own proper right of judgment, and can no more be judged by another than he himself can judge another. But let us all wait for the judgment of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the only one that has the power both of preferring us in the government of His Church, and of judging us in our conduct there. (proceedings of the council of Carthage)
My opponent has attempted to portray Cyprian as somebody who believed in a papacy, but he obviously didn’t. Cyprian did refer to a “chair of Peter” in Rome, and he referred to the Roman church as the source of unity, but he said that in the context of disputes involving Rome, when heretics were founding their own churches in Rome in opposition to the orthodox Roman church. Elsewhere Cyprian referred to all bishops being successors of Peter (Epistle 26), referred to the chair of Peter being in Carthage (Epistle 39), not just in Rome, and referred to the Roman church falling away from the unity that was being maintained by other churches (Epistle 73). For those who want to read more about Cyprian’s beliefs, I recommend William Webster’s article on the church fathers and their interpretation of Matthew 16 ( link defunct ). Webster cites Catholic and non-Catholic historians confirming that Cyprian did not believe in a papacy.
It’s worth noting, however, that the bishop of Rome Cyprian opposed during the baptismal dispute, Stephen, was the first Roman bishop in recorded history to cite Matthew 16 in support of something at least similar to papal authority. His interpretation of Matthew 16 was rejected not only by Cyprian, but also by dozens of other bishops in the West and East. About 200 years after Peter’s death, we see the first attempt to cite Matthew 16 in favor of something like papal authority. It’s done by a Roman bishop who had an interest in attaining more power for himself, and his interpretation of Matthew 16 was rejected by bishops in the West and East.
My opponent quoted some comments Tertullian made around the year 220 as evidence that the bishop of Rome at that time was citing Matthew 16 in favor of a papacy. What my opponent failed to mention is that we don’t know who Tertullian was referring to. Some historians think he was referring to the bishop of Carthage. We don’t know. Even if he was referring to the bishop of Rome, Tertullian rejects this bishop’s interpretation of Matthew 16 as innovative, and the bishop citing the passage apparently didn’t think that this authority was unique to him. As Tertullian explains, this bishop, whether a bishop of Rome, Carthage, or otherwise, thought that this authority was held by “every church near to Peter” (On Modesty, 21).
There was no papacy during the earliest generations of Christianity. Even in Rome, the concept, or at least something similar, doesn’t arise until around 200 years after Peter’s death. Its acceptance in the rest of the Western world took even longer. Comparing the doctrine of the papacy to the issue of the authorship of Matthew’s gospel doesn’t change this. Nor does comparing the papacy to the Trinity. The papacy and the Trinity are similar in that neither the word “papacy” nor the word “Trinity” is found in the New Testament. They’re different, however, in that the concepts of Trinitarian doctrine - monotheism, the deity of Christ, the co-existence of the three Persons, etc. - are all scriptural, whereas fundamental aspects of the papacy are either absent from or contradicted by scripture (Peter having authority over the other apostles, Peter being succeeded exclusively by Roman bishops, etc.). The comparisons to the authorship of Matthew’s gospel and to the Trinity are false comparisons.
The Bad Fruit
Once the West was convinced to give more and more power to the Roman church - a process that took centuries - the Roman church was able to teach almost anything it wanted to, and have that teaching accepted just because it came from the Roman church. This led to the acceptance of all sorts of false teaching promoted in papal decrees and councils: anti-Semitism, Crusades, inquisitions, indulgences, etc. What began as a rise in the Roman church's influence for practical reasons has become a denomination that's followed by hundreds of millions of people as though it was established as the infallible standard of truth by Christ Himself. It's an example of what Jesus condemned in Matthew 15:9 and what Paul warned against in Colossians 2:8.
In our times, Popes aren’t teaching anti-Semitism or the selling of indulgences, but they are teaching that people must go through Mary as a mediator in order to be saved, that salvation is through works, that people can suffer to atone for their own sins, etc. The Christian’s response to such teachings should not be to submit to false papal claims of authority, but rather to say with Firmilian, a bishop of the third century who disagreed with the Roman bishop Stephen:
I am justly indignant at such open and manifest folly in Stephen...But as to the refutation of the argument from custom [tradition], which they [the Roman church] seem to oppose to the truth, who so foolish as to prefer custom to truth, or not to leave darkness, when he sees light?...And this you of Africa may say in answer to Stephen, that on discovering the truth you abandoned the error of custom. But we join custom to truth, and to the custom of the Romans we oppose custom, but that of truth; from the beginning holding that which was delivered by Christ and by His Apostles. (Cyprian's Epistle 74)
Jason Engwer
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