A Pauline Papacy?

Fifty-one New Testament proofs that Paul, not Peter, was the first pope and had all the authority implied therein, a tongue-in-cheek list showing that if you wanted to, you could make a pope out of other apostles than Peter based upon the evidence God gave us in His word. It also shows that, though some of the listed items are unique to Paul as are some Roman Catholics claim for Peter, a great deal of the proofs for a Petrine Papacy are inconsistently applied across the spectrum of the apostles. That Peter interpreted prophecy, for example, is claimed and yet the largest sum of prophecy in the Bible is entrusted not to Peter but to John. Paul interprets prophecy as well.

This really stood out to me, though it wasn’t “new” to me: Paul is the only apostle to publicly rebuke another apostle (Peter, no less!), and that Paul is called even Peter’s shepherd.

The last item in the list was also enjoyable, as it used the brief description in Revelation of the church at Ephesus to establish papal infallibility for Paul, which is a conclusion which must be come to by the same wrestling of scriptures which Roman Catholics must do with the passage in Matthew 18 concerning Peter’s confession.

Update: I can’t believe I forgot to include the link, and I can’t believe it took me so long to notice. :P

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Use your Gravatar-enabled email address while commenting to automatically enhance your comment with some of Gravatar's open profile data.

Comments must be made in accordance with the comment policy. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam; learn how your comment data is processed.

You may use Markdown to format your comments; additionally, these HTML tags and attributes may be used: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

the Rick Beckman archive
Scroll to Top