The Development of the Papacy (Part 1)

We have two bishops in our congregation. When I say bishop, certain things come to mind—cool robes, special vows, and fancy titles. Our bishops have nothing of that sort; in fact, superficially you would not even be able to tell them apart from anyone else. They dress like everyone else, they are family men, and though they are called bishops, we never refer to them as our fathers.

One might ask why our bishops look drastically different than, say, the ones in the Catholic Church (or any other "high" church). Our bishops are modeled after the New Testament pattern, which is, unfortunately, something that has been lost in most religious groups.

In the first century, at the very outset of the church, the first and only office for leadership was the apostles, who led the first church at Jerusalem. However, they quickly realized they were overwhelmed. They had the multitude select men to serve the physical needs of the church (Acts 6:1-6) while they devoted themselves to the spiritual needs.

As the church continued to grow and congregations began to spring up in Judea, Samaria, and throughout the rest of the Roman empire, just as Jesus commanded (Acts 1:8), we see that the apostles alone were insufficient for giving each of these individual congregations the spiritual attention they needed; so they created a new office—bishops to oversee each congregation. As Paul would travel and establish a church, after some time (after it had matured), he would return to it and establish an eldership with multiple men from that congregation (Acts 14:21-23). Eventually, Jerusalem would acquire elders as well (Acts 15:6).

These men were described in many ways, such as bishops (overseers), elders, and pastors (shepherds). We know that these all referred to the same office, because the inspired writers of the New Testament used those words interchangeably—often in the same context. Luke equated the three words in Acts 20:17 and 28; Peter did so in 1 Peter 5:1-4; and Paul did also in 1 Timothy 3:1-7 and Titus 1:5-9.

There are quite a few differences between these bishops and modern Catholic bishops. The bishops of the New Testament were required to be married men with children (1 Tim. 3:2,4-5). The purpose for being a family man served as a test to see if they would make good leaders for the church. Paul plainly asked, "but if a man does not know how to manage his own household, how will he take care of the church of God?" (1 Tim. 3:5). All quotations are from the New American Standard Bible.

Another sharp contrast between the bishops of the New Testament and the Roman Catholic Church is that they served together—at a single congregation, where they were members (Acts 14:21-23; Titus 1:5-9). Never did one elder or bishop rule by himself in one or more congregations. In the Scriptures, there is always more than one (Acts 15:6). And these bishops only had authority over their own particular congregation; dioceses did not exist.

There is little debate in the academic community concerning this arrangement of the original organization of church government. Church historians of the churches of Christ, such as Everett Ferguson, state: "In each church, that order involved a plurality of elders or bishops (the terms were used in interchangeably) assisted by deacons" (106).

Other church historians, such as Philip Schaff, a practitioner of Reformed theology, agrees with the Biblical text stating that this too was the original form of government organized by the apostles (Schaff 1:491-93). Not even Catholic scholars such as Klaus Schatz deny this original form of government; he plainly states: "It seems likely that the Roman church was governed by a group of presbyters…" (4).

This is the bishop system that we have at our congregation, straight from the words of the apostles. This is the way they did it in their day, and this is the way the churches of Christ do it today.

Changes

So, what happened? How did the church go from local, family-oriented bishops who led in groups to the celibate, diocesan bishop which has authority over many churches? With a few heretical ideas interjected into the role of the bishop and a few changes in the church government, the mutated nature of the Catholic bishop became inevitable.

There was an early writer by the name of Ignatius who taught that there should not be multiple leaders of a local congregation, but only one leader, and he alone would be called "the bishop." Although he would have assistants, the term elder that was originally used synonymously with the bishop was now only exclusively used for these men who would be his council. The churches that began this practice departed from the New Testament pattern by altering God's system of church government. Though this change was made, bishops were still local figures—not regional figures—and did not yet become administers of "priestly" functions (Ferguson 106).

Ignatius not only encouraged the change in government, he left behind ideas that unnaturally elevated the bishop. He taught that the members of the congregation were to be obedient to the bishop as to God Himself and to be as obedient to the elders as the apostles themselves. We do not find this veneration of only one man to the status of bishop anywhere in the New Testament.

Not only did Ignatius elevate the bishop, he made him the center of the church—and the only one who could offer communion. He further argued that all worship and religious "rites" (a word not used in the New Testament) must revolve around the bishop. He also plainly wrote and taught that where there is no bishop, there is no church (Schaff 2:147-48). This is odd, considering the New Testament describes establishing churches first and then, after they had matured, selecting spiritually-minded, local leaders (Acts 14:21-23).

In fact, the Didache (a late, first-century, uninspired document, also called "The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles") implies a similar practice, stating that churches would determine their own leaders: "You must choose for yourselves bishops and deacons who are worthy of the Lord" (15). Clearly what Ignatius was advocating was not of Divine origin. Even Jerome (the translator of the Vulgate about A.D. 400), who is considered a "saint" by the Catholic church, said that this departure from New Testament pattern did not have a Divine origin (Schaff 2:140).

But this is not the only thing that helped solidify the power of the modern-day Catholic bishop, it was the idea of apostolic succession. Although the idea of apostolic succession is not a Christian idea, it is, to the surprise of many, a Gnostic idea. Now, Gnostics were some of the earliest heretics, who believed blasphemous things, such as the idea that Jesus never came in the flesh, that He was a creation of God, and many other things that contradict the teaching of the New Testament. Some Gnostics in the second century made an interesting argument; they claimed they inherited secret teachings, passed down from their teachers, who had received them from the apostles themselves (Ferguson 107).

Irenaeus, an apologist of the second century, took this argument and applied it to the church at Rome, indicating that they were the ones who had preserved the teachings of Christ by their leaders (a.k.a. the bishops and elders). Tertullian and many others took this argument further and further until the bishops were not only preservers of traditions; they themselves were eventually seen as the direct successors of the apostles (Ferguson 107-108). Though these ideas are not even remotely found in Scripture, they caught fire.

Bishops became even more powerful; in the third century, as churches grew and became large institutions, bishops who ruled the church in the city would establish neighboring congregations in the rural areas, sending their elders to lead the newly-established churches. The Greeks called these districts ruled by the bishop a diocese (Shackelford 30). Eventually these elders, under the ruling bishop of the diocese would be referred to as priests (Sisman 42). It is clear from this point that the formation of the Catholic church began to take the shape as it appears in its modern context; to this day this form of government remains, even though it is truly distinct from the New Testament pattern.

Hundreds of years after the church had been established by Christ, a new unauthorized form of leadership began to come into existence—one that still exists to this day—the Roman Pontiff.

The Invention of the Pope

Now all respectable church historians, even some who are Catholic, will agree that the modern office of the Roman Pontiff did not exist in the first few centuries of the church's existence. Even the Catholic church historian, Klaus Schatz, states that the apostles had no understanding of Peter having a perpetual office that would last for generations (1-2). He also acknowledges that no Christian in the first 400 years of the church would have recognized a Roman bishop as head over the church. Schatz freely admitted that

…certainly anything like papal primacy of jurisdiction was completely foreign to Ignatius, or Irenaeus, or even Augustine; they knew nothing of any bishop being placed over another, and so on (3).

Church historians realize that the mutation of the Roman bishop becoming the Pope as we see it today, took a great deal of time. One of the arguments made by the early Roman Church (an argument that is still made today by Roman Catholics) is that since Peter and Paul died in Rome, it was a special church. This argument was made on one of the first occasions in which Rome tried to assert its "supposed" dominance in the late second century.

There arose a dispute between the church at Rome and many other churches over the celebration of Easter. Rome said that it should be celebrated on a Sunday, while other churches (many of which were in Asia minor) celebrated it as it correlated to the Jewish Passover, which did not always fall on a Sunday. Rome argued that it preserved the truth according to its traditions, which it supposedly received from Peter and Paul. They therefore insisted that it should be celebrated on Sunday; on the other hand, the churches of Asia Minor argued that the traditions they had from the apostles John and Philip (who had died in their territory) were the opposite. Upon hearing this claim, Victor, the bishop of Rome, excommunicated all who were in Asia Minor (Schatz 11-12).

Apparently, the corpses of Peter and Paul were somehow worth more than the corpses of Philip and John, the apostle whom Jesus loved. For hundreds of years afterward, the bishop of Rome continued to try to assert dominance over all other bishops throughout the Roman Empire. (A few bishops of Rome actually were content not to make a grab for power.)