New Testament Concepts of the Christian Ekklesia – Should They Still Apply Today? The Roman Catholic Answer

The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.378 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2021. It is among the world’s oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a prominent role in the history and development of Western civilization. The church consists of 24 sui iuris churches, including the Latin Church and 23 Eastern Catholic Churches, which comprise almost 3,500 dioceses and eparchies located around the world. The pope, who is the bishop of Rome, is the chief pastor of the church. (Wikipedia)

In our study of ekklesia we have discovered that the Scripture conceives of the church as one thing, whether universal, worldwide, regional or local. Presumably, then, every local church is a part of the one regional church, which regions are part of the worldwide church, which is part of the universal church. To say there is one church is to say it is the true church. Of the one, true, visible church, many claim that they are it: “the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Oriental Orthodox communion, the Assyrian Church of the East, the Ancient Church of the East, the Christian Churches/Churches of Christ, the Churches of Christ, and the Lutheran Churches, as well as certain Baptists” (Wikipedia).

How does the Roman Catholic Church make the claim that it is the true church? The Catholic church claims that it is the first, and for many years, the only church on earth, and its prime bishop, the bishop of Rome or the Pope, has a lineal succession from the apostle Peter. Thus, it also has a singular leadership for all the sub-churches within it, making them all one.

We could critique this as follows:

1. The Jerusalem church was the first and only church in the world for several years.

Why then, on the basis of this reasoning, would not the Jerusalem church be the true church? And it had all the apostles, not just Peter, as leaders in it. Did those leaders extend their authority over other churches? Yes. When Philip planted a church in Samaria, the apostles John and Peter came up to Samaria and granted the gift of the Holy Spirit to the converts, thus preventing the Samaritan church from seeing itself as separated and autonomous from the leadership of the first church. When the issue came up of how Gentiles must enter the church (was it by faith alone or should they also be circumcised), the leadership of the Jerusalem church called a council to determine the answer and then wrote letters to all the churches expressing their decision. If this is the basis for being the one true church, we should be speaking of the Jerusalem Catholic Church, not the Roman Catholic Church.

2. There is no unbroken succession of leadership from Peter.

Obviously, the Roman Catholic Church sees Peter as the head apostle whose authority should be over the whole true church. This is based on Jesus’ statement in Matthew 16,

Mattthew 16:18, “And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.”

We will examine this passage later, but if you assume that this gives Peter primacy over all other leaders in the church, making him the vicar of Christ, the true representative of Jesus on earth, and you also assume that he could not be the last leader of the church but must have successors, then yes, there must be an unbroken line of succession. Those are huge assumptions which we will challenge. But the fact is, there is no unbroken succession from Peter to today.

The Roman Church publishes a list of the successive popes.

This chronological list of popes of the Catholic Church corresponds to that given in the Annuario Pontificio under the heading “I Sommi Pontefici Romani” (The Roman Supreme Pontiffs), excluding those that are explicitly indicated as antipopes. Published every year by the Roman Curia, the Annuario Pontificio no longer identifies popes by regnal number, stating that it is impossible to decide which pope represented the legitimate succession at various times. The 2001 edition of the Annuario Pontificio introduced “almost 200 corrections to its existing biographies of the popes, from St Peter to John Paul II“. The corrections concerned dates, especially in the first two centuries, birthplaces and the family name of one pope. [Wikipedia].

I have highlighted critical portions. Antipopes were people who claimed “to be Bishop of Rome and leader of the Catholic Church in opposition to the legitimately elected pope. Between the 3rd and mid-15th centuries, antipopes were supported by factions within the Church itself and secular rulers.” At times there were more than one pope followed by the Church.

Of course, Scripture never represents Peter as having authority over the whole church, at least not any more than the other apostles. And Scripture never suggests the need for a succession of apostolic authority. Certainly the New Testament would have been very clear about such a necessity for the one true church. And there has always been a large portion of the church that did not give obedience to the Roman bishop, the Pope. Roman Catholics have chosen to view them as schismatics or heretics. There does not seem to be merit to the claim of Roman Catholicism being the true church.