How Important Is the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church?
In recent weeks, with the passing of Pope Francis, there has been renewed attention put upon the Roman Catholic church, and the phenomenon of the papacy. Does the Bible talk about the pope at all? Does the Roman Catholic church having something that other churches are missing? We should take a look at what the Scriptures say about this issue, particularly since God has said in 2 Timothy 3:16-17, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof and correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” If the Scripture is what brings God’s people into completeness, let’s carefully assess what Scripture says on the issue.
In particular, let’s look at a couple verses that are often referenced when considering this question, Matthew 16:16-19:“Simon Peter replied, ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.’ And Jesus answered him, ‘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 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.'”
Is Matthew 16 talking about the Pope?
These verses in Matthew 16 are classically used by the Roman Catholic church to argue that the church is built on Peter, who is counted by them as having been the first Pope. From these verses, they assert that he has distinct authority over the whole Church – that he has a unique role as being the foundation of the Church. The assumption is that Jesus is saying, “You are [renamed] Peter, and on this rock [it’s assumed that he’s talking about Peter], I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” This is then used to argue for the ongoing, supreme authority of the Roman Catholic pope.
The first question we need to answer, then, is whether or not Jesus was speaking about Peter when he spoke about “this rock” in verse 18. You’ll notice that Jesus goes on to speak about giving the keys of the kingdom to Peter (he says “you” [singular] in verse 19), and because of this, it’s often assumed that everything in these verses is being particularly directed at Peter. And Roman Catholics have been taught that all these things, then, uniquely belong to those who have been Pope after Peter. But there are a number of things we need to understand here to get at the original intent of Jesus’s words.
What Rock Is the Church Built Upon?
For one thing, it’s not grammatically necessary for the phrase “this rock” to refer to Peter, or to the Pope of Rome. There are good reasons to believe that this could, alternatively, be preferring to the rock-solidness of the confession that Peter just made in Matthew 16:16, or it could refer to the “Rock-ness” of the One that Peter just confessed (namely, Jesus).
If “this rock” is referring to Christ, this would fit much better with the rest of the testimony of the Bible. Because every other time when the Bible speaks about the “cornerstone” and the “rock of offense” and other rock descriptions in Scripture, the stone in view isn’t Peter – it’s consistently the person of Christ himself. (Romans 9:33, Isaiah 28:16, 1 Corinthians 10:4, 1 Peter 2:8, Matthew 7:24-27; Matthew 21:42; Luke 20:17; Acts 4:11). I think one of the most significant passages along these lines is Ephesians 2:20, which makes it clear that the household of God [the Church] is built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, Jesus himself being the cornerstone. Not only does this single out Jesus as being the “Rock of rocks” – the ultimate “cornerstone rock” on which the church is built. We also see here that there are no distinctions made within the apostles and/or the prophets. Peter isn’t elevated above the others into a position of primacy for the church. (No Pope is the Rock of the church). Instead, the primacy is given to the headship and authority of Jesus Christ himself, and to him alone.
So the question arises – did Jesus name Peter, “Rock/Peter” in order to single him out as being the foundation of the Church? Or did Jesus name Peter, “Rock/Peter” to name him by the Enduring Rock (the Christ) he had just confessed? If in this moment, Jesus had really given Peter a special position of authority over the rest of the disciples (if that’s what this new name was about), it seems that when the disciples were arguing in Matthew 18:1-4 over who was the greatest among them, there wouldn’t have been an argument. Peter would have been first place, unquestionably. But the existence of their argument suggests that Peter himself was not singled out here as being the rock of the church in front of the other disciples – but that he was being named after the true Rock of the Church (Jesus).
Who Has the Keys of the Kingdom?
There’s still the question of Matthew 16:19. If Jesus has told Peter, “I will give you (singular) 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,” there’s a question if these words give Peter a unique authority over the other disciples. But if you keep reading in Matthew 18, you’ll find that the answer is no. Because in Matthew 18:18, the “keys of the kingdom,” which seemed to be given individually to Peter in Matthew 16, are clearly given to the church generally, to a plurality of people. When Matthew 18:18 says, “Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven,” the “you” is undeniably plural in the original Greek. So the “keys of the kingdom” belong to a plurality of people in the church – not to the pope or to individuals who are alleged to stand in succession from him. (And as a sidenote, the Bible makes it clear from Matthew 18 that these “keys of the kingdom” are particularly associated with declarations of church discipline. This shouldn’t be taken to mean that the has Church authority to “determine canon” or to enshrine papal traditions as dogmas of the church.)
It may be worth clarifying, then: the reason why Peter received seemingly individualized words in Matthew 16 wasn’t because he had unique authority that other people in the Church didn’t have. But it would make sense that he received individualized words because he was the only disciple at that point who was in the Church, on account of his profession of faith in Christ. Then, later, the intent of Jesus to give these “keys” to a plurality of people in the Church, and not just to one person (or one Pope), is decisively clarified later on in Matthew 18.
The Bible Doesn’t Establish a Pope over the Church of Christ
And if we understand that Jesus is speaking about general authority belonging to the Church in Matthew 16:19, it actually fits better with the original context. Because Jesus doesn’t say that the gates of Hell won’t prevail against Peter, but that the gates of Hell won’t prevail against the Church. Jesus’s emphasis, here, in the text isn’t on establishing the headship or the authority belonging to one man, the Pope. But Jesus is actually speaking here about authority belonging to the Church, that is shared by a plurality of figures. And to find more information on what Church authority and leadership are supposed to operate, there are other passages of Scripture that speak to those questions much more clearly than Matthew 16.
In fact, Peter himself even speaks to these things in way that undermines the idea of the singular authority of the Pope. Peter, personally, makes it clear that he doesn’t see himself as having unique headship or authority in the church, as he’s writing 1 Peter. In 1 Peter 5, verse 1, Peter says, “I exhort the elders among you as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed, shepherd the flock of God.” In this chapter, Peter is urging church leaders to shepherd their flocks. And notice what Peter’s idea of church leadership is. The church leaders that Peter puts his stamp of approval on here are fellow elders (Greek presbyteros, which is where Presbyterian churches gets their name) – and not a hierarchy of priests, bishops, archbishops, cardinals, and a pope!
And notice, when Peter is listing out a number of credentials, to explain why his audience should listen to his exhortation, he lists multiple things – he identifies himself as a fellow elder, and as an eyewitness of Christ’s sufferings, and as a partaker of the glory Christ has prepared for him – but he doesn’t mention anything about having headship over the church of Christ. Nor should we expect him to, unless we’re already approaching the Bible with a preconceived idea that says we need to defend the uniqueness or supremacy of Peter.
A Balanced, Biblical View of Peter
I’m not saying that Peter is unimportant, or that he should be disregarded. After all, he did have distinctive authority as an apostle of Christ, and was used by God to give us inspired Scripture. But even this apostolic authority wasn’t his alone, but it was shared with the other disciples and with Paul (Matthew 10:1-4; Romans 1:1, etc). And Peter wasn’t an unshakeable rock. He was the disciple who denied Christ and who continued to mess up even in his ministry as an apostle (Galatians 2:11-14). At the Jerusalem council in Acts 15, Simon Peter is present in the council alongside other elders to decide what sort of message should be sent to Gentile Christians regarding circumcision, and it isn’t his voice that presents a judgment on the matter, but the voice of James (Acts 15:19-21). If we take Matthew 16 to mean that Peter should receive disproportionate attention relative to the other apostles, we press upon the Scriptures a presumption that the Scriptures themselves do not confirm.
The Word of God Is What We Need to Follow – Not the Pope
Even if we were to grant that Jesus may, perhaps, have been saying, “on this rock” (on Peter) I will build my church, we would still be left with the question – what did Jesus mean by these words? Perhaps it could mean that the Church would build off of Peter (who was the first disciple in Matthew’s gospel to profess Jesus to be the Christ). The Church has certainly grown beyond Peter at this point. Perhaps it could mean that Peter would be used to preach at Pentecost, and that Christ would use him to bring in the first substantial wave of converts to Christianity. Certainly we see this attested to in Acts 2. But to use this statement, “on this rock I will build my church” to claim that Jesus wasn’t talking about Peter alone, but that he was setting up a succession of papal figures who would speak with dogmatic, infallible authority to determine the theological positions of the Church – this assertion goes well beyond what the the text is saying. And in many ways this assertion runs contrary to what the Scriptures teach about Peter and Church authority.
In an age where culture is rapidly changing, it can often seem as though the Roman Catholic church promises to give people something which is more historic and stable. But even the Roman Catholic church has drifted from its foundation over the centuries (and continues to drift!). We’ll continue to drift, too, if we aren’t grounded in the right way. What the world needs today isn’t to return to Rome. What we need is to return to the unchanging, inerrant authority of the Word of God, which is laid out for us in the Old and New Testament Scriptures.
