Archaic Authority

A very common objection to the Catholic Church is the hierarchy. Many Protestants claim that the Pope is not only not scriptural, but just plain wrong. To this, I pose the following riddle.

A Southern Baptist, Oneness Pentecostal, and a Jehovah's Witness are in a police deposition room. On the table in the middle of the room, there is a King James Version of the Bible. The three people have each studied that Bible thoroughly, and have come to mutually exclusive understandings of who Jesus is. The Southern Baptist holds the traditional understanding that Jesus is both God and Man (the Trinity), the Oneness Pentecostal believes that there is only one Person in God, and that he manifests himself in different ways (an ancient heresy called modalism), while the Jehovah's Witness believes that Jesus was really only an angel (a form of Arianism). They begin debating who is right, throwing scripture quotes at each other until they're blue in the face. You are watching this, and with you, there is a person who has never before been exposed to Christianity. He turns to you and asks, "How can I know who's right?"

This question, as far as I have heard, has only two possible answers- some form of arrogance in which you say "I'm right." But that begs the question, why are you right? Another answer, although it really isn't an answer, is for people to say "Well, study the scriptures, and the Holy Spirit will show you the way." Well, that's exactly what the three people in the room did. They clearly didn't arrive at the same answer.

When no one is pope, everyone is pope.

So how do you know who's right?

Well, somebody has to have the right answer. That person must have the authority to make declarations about the Word of God. But to be able to make authoritative declarations about God, that power has to come from God. Is there anybody throughout history who was given that power? Incidentally, yes, there was. In Matthew 16:18, Jesus says to Peter, "you are kepha, and on this kepha, I will build my Church." (Kepha is an aramaic word that literally means "rock.") The next verse is the most interesting part. "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."

This passage has an interesting parallel. In Isaiah 22:22, an almost perfect match in wording is used. "I will place the key of the House of David on his shoulder; when he opens, no one shall shut, when he shuts, no one shall open." As a faithful Jew, Jesus would have known this piece of Scripture. He was clearly quoting it to Peter, so we now must ask, "What did this do?"

Well, in the context of Isaiah 22, the steward of the kingdom of David is being fired. Shebna, the old steward, has done a poor job, and God wants him out. He sends Isaiah to the king to tell him to hire Eliakim, to be the new steward of the kingdom. As steward, Elaikim's power would be second only to the king. Think of the steward of Gondor in the Lord of the Rings. His job was to take care of the kingdom until the King returned. He wielded great power, and the only person who could override it was the king.

So if Peter is being handed this power, it would make sense that he'd be the one to answer any objections (see Acts 15, where Peter stands up, and everybody else stops arguing). But does that office have a succession? Well, to figure this out, we take a look at any biblical precedent. Oh, hey, what do you know, there is one. In the first chapter of Acts, the first thing the apostles do after Jesus ascends into Heaven is choose a successor to Judas. Paul also references the laying on of hands as the main way of passing on authority in his letters to Timothy (1 Timothy 4:12, 2 Timothy 2:2).

Why did I choose today to post this one? Because yesterday marked one of the stranger feasts in the Catholic Church. We celebrated the feast of the Chair of St. Peter yesterday. Not the actual throne, but rather the authority behind the seat. The pope's authority is not only scriptural, it also makes logical sense. For 2000 years, it has served to keep the Catholic Church united as one, without splitting into thousands upon thousands of various denominations.