Mat. 16:18, 19—“And I also say unto thee, that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever thou shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”Peter exercised this power of the keys for both Jews and Gentiles, by being the first to preach Christ to them, and so admit them to the kingdom of heaven. The “rock” is a confessing heart. The confession of Christ makes Peter a rock upon which the church can be built. Plumptre on Epistles of Peter, Introd., 14—“He was a stone—one with that rock with which he was now joined by an indissoluble union.” But others come to be associated with him: Eph. 2:20—“built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the chief corner stone”; Rev. 21:14—“And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.” Acts 15:7-30—the Council of Jerusalem. Gal. 2:11—“But when Cephas came to Antioch, I resisted him to the face, because he stood condemned”; 1 Pet. 5:1—“The elders therefore among you I exhort, who am a fellow-elder.”
Here it should be remembered that three things were necessary to constitute an apostle: (1) he must have seen Christ after his resurrection, so as to be a witness to the fact that Christ had risen from the dead; (2) he must be a worker of miracles, to certify that he was Christ's messenger; (3) he must be an inspired teacher of Christ's truth, so that his final utterances are the very word of God. In Rom. 16:7—“Salute Andronicus and Junias, my kinsmen, and my fellow-prisoners, who are of note among the apostles” means simply: “who are highly esteemed among, or by, the apostles.” Barnabas is called an apostle, in the etymological sense of a messenger: Acts 13:2, 3—“Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them. Then, when they had fasted and prayed and laid their hands on them, they sent them away”; Heb. 3:1—“consider the Apostle and High Priest of our confession, even Jesus.” In this latter sense, the number of the apostles was not limited to twelve.
Protestants err in denying the reference in Mat. 16:18 to Peter; Christ recognizes Peter's personality in the founding of his kingdom. But Romanists equally err in ignoring Peter's confession as constituting him the “rock.” Creeds and confessions alone will never convert the world; they need to be embodied in living personalities in order to save; this is the grain of correct doctrine in Romanism. On the other hand, men without a faith, which they are willing to confess at every cost, will never convert the world; there must be a substance of doctrine with regard to sin, and with regard to Christ as the divine Savior from sin; this is the just contention of Protestantism. Baptist doctrine combines the merits of both systems. It has both personality and confession. It is not hierarchical, but experiential. It insists, not upon abstractions, but upon life. Truth without a body is as powerless as a body without truth. A flag without an army is even worse than an army without a flag. Phillips Brooks: “The truth of God working through the personality of man has been the salvation of the world.” Pascal: “Catholicism is a church without a religion; Protestantism is a religion without a church.” Yes, we reply, if church means hierarchy.
Secondly,—If Peter had such authority given him, there is no evidence that he had power to transmit it to others.
Fisher, Hist. Christian Church, 247—“William of Occam (1280-1347) composed a treatise on the power of the pope. He went beyond his predecessors in arguing that the church, since it has its unity in Christ, is not under the necessity of being subject to a single primate. He placed the Emperor and the General Council above the pope, as his judges. In matters of faith he would not allow infallibility even to the General Councils. ‘Only Holy Scripture and the beliefs of the universal church are of absolute validity.’ ” W. Rauschenbusch, in The Examiner, July 28, 1892—“The age of an ecclesiastical organization, instead of being an argument in its favor, is presumptive evidence against it, because all bodies organized for moral or religious ends manifest such a frightful inclination to become corrupt.... Marks of the true church [pg 910]are: present spiritual power, loyalty to Jesus, an unworldly morality, seeking and saving the lost, self-sacrifice and self-crucifixion.”
Romanism holds to a transmitted infallibility. The pope is infallible: 1. when he speaks as pope; 2. when he speaks for the whole church; 3. when he defines doctrine, or passes a final judgment; 4. when the doctrine thus defined is within the sphere of faith or morality; see Brandis, in N. A. Rev., Dec. 1892: 654. Schurman, Belief in God, 114—“Like the Christian pope, Zeus is conceived in the Homeric poems to be fallible as an individual, but infallible as head of the sacred convocation. The other gods are only his representatives and executives.” But, even if the primacy of the Roman pontiff were acknowledged, there would still be abundant proof that he is not infallible. The condemnation of the letters of Pope Honorius, acknowledging monothelism and ordering it to be preached, by Pope Martin I and the first Council of Lateran in 649, shows that both could not be right. Yet both were ex cathedra utterances, one denying what the other affirmed. Perrone concedes that only one error committed by a pope in an ex cathedra announcement would be fatal to the doctrine of papal infallibility.
Martineau, Seat of Authority, 139, 140, gives instances of papal inconsistencies and contradictions, and shows that Roman Catholicism does not answer to either one of its four notes or marks of a true church, viz.: 1. unity; 2. sanctity; 3. universality; 4. apostolicity. Dean Stanley had an interview with Pope Pius IX, and came away saying that the infallible man had made more blunders in a twenty minutes' conversation than any person he had ever met. Dr. Fairbairn facetiously defines infallibility, as “inability to detect errors even where they are most manifest.” He speaks of “the folly of the men who think they hold God in their custody, and distribute him to whomsoever they will.”The Pope of Rome can no more trace his official descent from Peter than Alexander the Great could trace his personal descent from Jupiter.
Thirdly,—There is no conclusive evidence that Peter ever was at Rome, much less that he was bishop of Rome.
Clement of Rome refers to Peter as a martyr, but he makes no claim for Rome as the place of his martyrdom. The tradition that Peter preached at Rome and founded a church there dates back only to Dionysius of Corinth and Irenæus of Lyons, who did not write earlier than the eighth decade of the second century, or more than a hundred years after Peter's death. Professor Lepsius of Jena submitted the Roman tradition to a searching examination, and came to the conclusion that Peter was never in Italy.
A. A. Hodge, in Princetoniana, 129—“Three unproved assumptions: 1. that Peter was primate; 2. that Peter was bishop of Rome; 3. that Peter was primate and bishop of Rome. The last is not unimportant; because Clement, for instance, might have succeeded to the bishopric of Rome without the primacy; as Queen Victoria came to the crown of England, but not to that of Hanover. Or, to come nearer home, Ulysses S. Grant was president of the United States and husband of Mrs. Grant. Mr. Hayes succeeded him, but not in both capacities!”