Was Peter a Pope? (White vs Matatics)

Debate Format and Opening Prayer

Welcome you to the second of two debates. I'd like to state the thesis for the debate from the outset, for the sake of clarity. The proposition for tonight's debate is, Peter was given a position of primacy in the Christian Church that is to be passed on to successors.

Mr. Jerry Mattis is taking the affirmative position, and Mr. James R. White will be taking the negative position. I'd like to just give you a little bit of background information about our two participants.

Mr. Jerry Mattis was formerly an ordained minister and theologian in the Presbyterian Church in America in the Easter of 86. He, together with his wife and family, entered the Catholic Church. He was the first minister of that denomination to ever become Roman Catholic.

He's graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy with highest honors in 75. He earned a Bachelor of Arts Magna Cum Laude in Classical New Testament and Patristic Greek from the University of New Hampshire in 1977.

And at that time, he was inducted into National Phi Beta Kappa. He received his Master of Divinity with a concentration in systematic theology from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in 1981. He studied sacred scripture at St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Seminary of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and is a Ph .D. candidate in biblical interpretation at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, for which he is currently completing his doctorate dissertation on the Book of Revelation.

A member of the Society of Biblical Literature, the Catholic Biblical Association of America, the Catholic Theological Alliance, and the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars. He has taught on the faculties of Westminster Theological Seminary and St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia, the Notre Dame Pontifical Catechetical Institute in Arlington, Virginia, and Christendom College in Front Royal, Virginia.

Mr. Matitix is now a full-time apologist with Catholic Answers, a non-profit organization based in San Diego. And in that capacity, he writes for their monthly magazine, This Rock, and travels around the country speaking at churches and conferences engaging in such debates.

Mr. James R. White is an ordained Baptist minister and the author of The Fatal Flaw and Answers to Catholic Claims and also two recent books, Letters to a Mormon Elder and a book on the Doctrine of Justification by Faith.

He's received his Bachelor of Arts degree in Scripture from Grand Canyon College and a Master of Arts in Theology from Fuller Theological Seminary. He's the founder and director of Alpha and Omega Ministries in Phoenix, Arizona, which does apologetics work around the country.

Now, the format of the debate tonight is as follows. We're going to have a series of opening statements. Mr. Matitix will go first for 25 minutes, followed by Mr. White for 25 minutes. The first rebuttal period belongs to Mr. Matitix, which will go for 10 minutes, followed by Mr. White, and then we will break for 15 minutes.

After the break, we'll call you back about 13 minutes after we've started to get settled, and we'll begin the second half with the second rebuttal period, which will last only five minutes. Once again, Mr. Matitix will go first, followed by Mr. White.

Then we'll have a 20-minute period of cross-examination. Mr. White will go first, followed by Mr. Matitix, and then finally, closing remarks will be offered, 10 minutes apiece, beginning with Mr. Matitix and closing the evening with Mr. White.

Just real briefly, some basic ground rules for behavior. At the end of each presentation, you're welcome to applaud, but we'd like to keep the applause, the hoots, the hollers, the threats, and the friendly or nasty remarks to a minimum.

Actually, we'd like to rule them out altogether as not befitting the occasion at any other time. Also, there will probably not be any time left over for questions and answers, and so unless you hear otherwise, you may simply wish to jot down questions that you have for whoever, and then discuss it afterwards more informally.

The timer is, for all practical purposes, the final authority, so it's going to be soul-up timer tonight. We'll try to stick strictly to that as best as possible. Time may be relative in many other parts of the universe, but not here tonight.

For our opening prayer, I'd like to read a passage from Psalm 119. We pray, teach me, O Lord, to follow your decrees, then I will keep them to the end. Give me understanding, and I will keep your law and obey it with all my heart.

Direct me in the path of your commands, for there I find delight. Turn my heart toward your statutes and not toward selfish gain. Turn my eyes away from worthless things. Preserve my life according to your word and your mercy.

Amen. We'd like to begin now with the opening statement made by Mr. Matitick. My brothers and sisters in Christ, I'd like to begin my time this evening the way I began the debate we had last evening, by stating that my single passion in life and my sole desire tonight in this debate is to submit my mind and my heart to my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

I want to believe all that he teaches, and I want to obey all that he commands. And it is precisely in obedience to Jesus Christ, my Lord and King, that I found my Protestant prejudice against the papacy beginning to cave in under the avalanche of evidence, overwhelming evidence for the papacy that I began to find in sacred scripture itself as I dug more deeply into God's inerrant word.

I began to see in scripture that Jesus' plan is to exercise his Lordship over our lives through the church, that the church has a fundamental role to play. And as a matter of fact, scripture uses two very intimate images to describe the intimate connection between Christ and the church.

The image of body connected organically to a head and the image of bride, wife, connected as one flesh to her husband, so that Christ works through the church, teaches through the church, saves through the church.

And as a result, I saw that the scriptures speak of the church as Paul puts it in 1 Timothy 3 .15, the pillar and foundation of the truth. As Jesus says in Matthew 18, Christians must listen to the church, that Christ speaks through it, so that as he said to the 70 elders he sent out, and if it's true of them, it's true how much more a fortiori of the 12 apostles who had an even higher status, whoever hears you hears me.

But whoever rejects you rejects me, and in rejecting me rejects him who sent me. And I saw that the first officers of this church were Christ's handpicked 12 apostles who inherited his teaching authority, and that among these apostles, Peter had a leadership capacity.

He was the chief of the apostles. And I saw furthermore that these apostles, when it was time for them to leave this earth, took the provision to appoint successors, and that these successors inherit, though not the inspiration of the apostles, their teaching authority, which must be heeded by God's people.

And that in particular, Peter's successors would have a particularly significant role in functioning as guardians of the gospel, the good news, God's saving truth. Now as you heard the thesis presented tonight, you notice that in effect it has two basic parts to it, and that's what I have to defend this evening.

Part one is that Jesus did indeed confer a primacy upon Peter. He intended him to have a headship, a patriarchal authority in the church. Is there biblical evidence for that? Yes or no? That's what I have to persuade you of.

That's what my worthy counterpart, Mr. White, is going to try to dissuade you of. And then secondly, I have to approach the issue of successors. If Peter indeed was a head, in some sense, by Christ's own planning, and an appointment, did this headship transfer to any successors?

And does the line of Roman bishops have any historical leg to stand on to say that we are the successors of Peter's headship and his authority? What I would like to do is to focus most of my time in this opening statement on the first point, although I hope to get to the second.

And I want to turn right away to what I consider the most significant passage, and I'm sure my colleague agrees that it probably is the most significant passage for us to look at, and that is Matthew 16, verses 13 through 19.

So if you have a Bible, please turn to it. And if you don't have a Bible tonight because you're a Catholic, then just listen carefully. You know this passage well. At the midpoint of Jesus's earthly ministry, he brings his disciples apart to put to them the most critical question of all, who is Jesus Christ?

Who am I? They produce various human opinions. Well, some say you're John the Baptist or Jeremiah or Elijah. Some of the prophets come back from the dead. And then Jesus says, well, what do you have to say?

And at this point, it's significant that it's Peter who speaks up and says, you are the Christ, the son of the living God. Now, I want you to notice in Jesus's response to Peter's outburst, the response that spans verses 17, 18 and 19, I find two very interesting things about that response.

Thing one, thing one and thing two, I feel like I'm reading a cat and hat book or something to my kids. The first thing I find interesting about this response is the formal language that our Lord employs.

Peter has just said, you are the anointed one, which is what the Greek word Christ, as you know, means you are the anointed one, the son of God. And Jesus returns the compliment of this kind of formal stylistic formulaic way of addressing himself.

You are the blessed one, son of Jonah. What's going on here? Why this elevated style of language? What we have, and I think the subsequent verses bear this out, is a very formal and therefore very literarily stylized bit of conversation here.

This isn't just some casual conversation. What we have here in this courtesy and response, this recognition of the person, their status, their privilege and their father, a reference to the person's genealogy, and then Jesus reciprocating in the case of Peter, is the language of the court.

You have formal courtesy here, in other words. So something very significant is going on. Peter has perceived Jesus's office. God had sent prophets, priests and kings in the Old Testament to bring us truth, which is what prophets did, to bring us life, grace, which is what priests did, to bring us righteousness, goodness, justice, which is what kings did or were supposed to do.

They didn't have these in and of themselves. God is the source of our being, our knowing and our doing. But he imparted these gifts, these graces, through these officers and as a recognition that they did not have it in themselves.

They were simply conduits through which this grace came. They had oil poured upon their heads at the beginning of their ministries. Prophets, priests and kings did. They were anointed ones. Oil is a symbol, as you know, of the Holy Spirit.

What I have to give, the prophet says, is the word of the Lord, the word from on high. It's not my own word. It's not my own truth. And the priest says what I have to give is the forgiveness of God, not my own forgiveness or grace.

I can't forgive anyone other than myself. And what the king says is it's not my job to come up with my own standards of righteousness, but to let God be king over Israel through me as his dutiful servant and citizen.

And so they're all anointed. They're messiahs to use the Hebrew word or Christ's with a little C to use the Greek word. But there was this expectation that someone would come one day who would do this perfectly and definitively, who would in fact be prophet, priest and king.

All three offices rolled into one. And Peter has just got done saying you are that one to Jesus. And Jesus says, well, you are. And what he proceeds to say here in verses 70 through 19 is you are someone because of this perception, which you didn't get from your own smarts.

It wasn't because you're sharper than the other guys here. But God has sovereignly selected you, Simon, to receive this revelation. That's what Jesus calls it. Not by flesh and blood was this revealed to you, but by my father in heaven.

As a result, you enter into a special privileged position with reference to me, with reference to me as the Christ that you just identified me as. If Christ means prophet, priest and king, it's very interesting to me.

This is the second thing I find interesting in our Lord's language. It's very interesting to me that what Jesus says to Peter follows this threefold division. He says, Peter, you are going to, as it were, have me confer upon you a prophetic function, a priestly function, a kingly function to be an officer in my church.

First of all, in verse 17, he says that Simon has had the ability to perceive the Christ hood of Jesus again, not out of his own merit, not out of his own competence or capability, but by a prophetic insight given to him, revealed to him by the father in heaven.

There is prophetic imagery here. In other words, at a time when there was confusion, when there was controversy, when there was chaos as to who Christ was, there was a Christological controversy here.

It is Peter who utters the declarative sentence which defines and says, this is who Jesus Christ is. Peter's words here settle the issue. God has chosen to do that through Peter, and we have to recognize that as Jesus did.

If we're followers of Christ, we've got to recognize what God did, chose to do sovereignly through Peter as Jesus recognized it. When we move to verse 18, we find that we are moving from prophetic language to priestly language, where Jesus says, and I, for my part, say to you that you are rock, and on this rock I will build my church so that the gates of Hades or Sheol will not overwhelm it.

Now, why does Jesus call Simon rock at this point? Why does he give him this new name? I think that there are several reasons for it, and I'm going to suggest three. I think there's more I could say, but my time is limited.

First of all, many scholars see in the conferring of this new name of rock upon Simon a reference to the rock of foundation that the Jews were familiar with in their own temple. If you read the passages in 2 Samuel 24 and 1 Chronicles 21, where the plague that is decimating the population of Jerusalem is averted by David purchasing a very significant threshing floor, a huge stone slab from a man named Aaron of the Jebusite, and erecting an altar upon it, and averting the plague, and seeing a vision of the angel of death stopping and recognizing the efficacy of that sacrifice on that particular site.

And you read the subsequent narrative where David says to Solomon, this is where the temple must be built. I can't build it. God has told me that, but you're going to build it, and you're going to build it on this rock.

And the Ark of the Covenant stands upon that rock in the Holy of Holies, and the temple is built on top of it. The Jews call that rock the Eben Shethiet, the rock of foundation, the foundation stone. And I don't have the time tonight, but it's interesting that if you want to start there, where you see there's an actual literal rock, and you move backwards, you can find a whole series of episodes in Scripture where this rock shows up in earlier events.

When David is bringing the Ark back from the Philistines and it crosses this threshing floor, the Ark trembles. The oxen stumble. Why? There's something significant about this site. When you go back further, you see that this threshing floor shows up again and again.

It's a place where Joseph mysteriously stops and mourns for seven days when he's bringing his father Jacob to be buried back in Palestine in Genesis 50, and then he continues on his path. Why? It's a place where Jacob stops, and at this stone has a vision of God and a huge staircase going to heaven with the angels of God ascending and descending.

Now, the Jews argued on the basis of poetic passages in Scripture, and we don't want to build too much upon this, since they are admittedly poetic passages and may not be intended to be taken too literally.

The Jews pointed out that there is a reference to a stone upon which the world itself was built. It is the foundation not just for the temple in Solomon's day, but it is the holy place where God built the world and indeed the first temple, the temple where Adam and Eve, the sanctuary in the Garden of Eden where they worshiped God.

And this rock has a very interesting foundational significance in Scripture. And according to the Psalms, which say that the holy light of God's Shekinah, his glory, comes streaming forth from this rock on top of Zion, the Jews argued in their traditions and this is only a tradition, it's nothing explicitly taught by Scripture, so again we don't want to build any argument on it, but I'm pointing out as a possible background, possible background in the mind of Jesus, that when God said, Let there be light, that the light burst forth first from this foundation stone.

And therefore some scholars, including many Protestants, as a matter of fact all the scholars I've read who argue this are Protestant or Jewish, I've not yet encountered a Catholic who's willing to see this or is aware of these kinds of connections, they argue that one reason why Jesus might say, You are the rock, is because, again, as this darkness came bursting forth from the lips of the apostles, You're John the Baptist, you're Elijah, well none of those things are true.

When this beam of light, the light of God's revealed truth comes leaping from the lips of Peter, Peter as it were is identifying himself, or God the Father in heaven is identifying him as the rock from which the light streams forth, and therefore Jesus gets excited about this and says, As my father built the temple, as David built the temple over this rock, so I the son of David will now build my temple, my church over this new rock.

And that stone is seen in the Psalms as holding the powers of darkness, the waters of Sheol at bay, so you Peter will exercise that function as well. That's one possible connection, but I wouldn't want to base an argument on it.

There's something else I think is clearer, and that is that it's very interesting that God himself uses this foundation stone imagery in the Old Testament and applies it to Abraham. He says in Isaiah 51 verses 1 and 2, Look to the rock upon which you were built.

Look to Abraham, your father, he says to Israel. Now Abraham, interestingly enough, is the first man and the most significant man in the Old Testament to have his name changed from Abram to Abraham, because God says you're going to be a father, a father of a multitude, which is what Abraham means.

And that name change is very significant, and Abraham becomes the patriarch, the father upon which God builds out of Abraham's loins, out of living flesh, builds the temple of Israel, the living temple of God's covenant people.

It's also interesting that Simon is the first person and the most significant person whose name is changed again by God Almighty himself here in the incarnate second person of the Trinity from Simon to rock in this passage.

The first person, so there's a kind of parallelism here. In other words, Jesus may be saying, Peter, you will fulfill the same function in the new covenant Israel in the church, the Israel of God, as Paul says in Galatians 6, that Abraham did in the old.

You will be the father, a father figure, a patriarchal figure for the new covenant people of God. There's a third reason, and that is that this whole interchange is occurring in a very significant site.

Matthew draws our attention to it by saying that it's Caesarea Philippi. It used to be called Panaeus up until just prior to this episode. It was called that because it was the site of a shrine dedicated to the Greek God Pan and many other ancient gods as well.

And it became the shrine, the site of a new cult to a new God. Emperor worship was on the rise and to curry favor with the Roman ruler. Herod Philip built on a top, a huge cliff of rock, 200 feet high, 500 feet wide, overlooking this very site where the conversation is taking place.

He built a temple to Caesar as to God, and he renamed the town Caesarea Philippi, the town devoted, dedicated to Caesar by me, Philip. And Jesus is as much as saying, Look, who is the real incarnation of God in the world?

Is it Caesar or is it I? And therefore, which is the real temple? Is it that building or is it the church that I will build? And therefore, which is the real foundation stone? Is it this cliff or is it you, Simon?

Because God has given you this insight and will work through you in this way. That's another reason why I think Jesus gives him the rock because he's punning upon their setting and saying, Look, this isn't where it's at.

This isn't reality. This is reality. The gospel, the Christian faith. I am the real emperor, the real king. This is the real temple, and you are the real rock. Now we move on in chapter 18 and in verse 18, excuse me, from this priestly language, this language of rock and foundation and sanctuary to kingly language in verse 19.

I will give you, Jesus said, the keys of the kingdom of heaven so that whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven. Whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. And this language obviously comes from Isaiah chapter 22.

Isaiah 22 is a very interesting passage and it starts in verse 20, the verses I want to look at. Isaiah 22, starting in verse 20, because it gives us the singular privilege of eavesdropping on the inauguration ceremony of a very important officer in ancient Israel, the prime minister or the grand vizier or the major domo or the king's chamberlain, whatever term you want to use.

The Hebrews used the term chief steward of all the stewards or ministers of the king had. He had a prime minister, a chief steward, and this was a person of incredible power, as say the prime minister in England is as well.

The monarch has entrusted so much power to it that many people have asked who's the ruler of England will say, well, I guess it was Margaret Thatcher. She's just a prime minister of all the ministers, but there's a primacy of ministry that she has.

The Davidic kings had the same. And what we hear in Isaiah 22, starting in verse 20, is that God gives through his inspired prophet Isaiah and Oracle that one of these guys was on the way out and God was going to induct into office a more faithful man.

And the language of the inauguration ceremony is cited here by God himself. In that day, I will summon my servant Eliakim, son of Hilkiah. I will clothe him with your robe and fasten your sash around him and hand your authority over to him.

Notice this language of vestments and investiture and authority power being handed over. He will be a father to those who live in Jerusalem and to the house of Judah. Notice he's spoken of in patriarchal and paternal and fatherly terms.

I will place on his shoulder the key to the house of David so that when he shuts, no one can open and when he opens, no one can shut. He has the master key that supersedes all lesser keys. The same language he's used, of course, in Matthew 16, 19.

And then he goes on to say that he will have a seat of honor for the house of his father and all the glory of his family will hang on him. It's offspring and offshoots. Here we have one of the most important points, and that is that just as the Davidic king exercises kingship through dynastic succession.

So the office of prime minister, was likewise here going to be transmitted from father to son, one of dynastic succession. This is a very important principle in biblical, in the biblical concept of government.

And Jesus draws upon this and applies this whole thing to Peter. He says, look, Peter, I am the Davidic king. My church is the house of David, the kingdom of God. And I need a prime minister just as the Davidic kings before me did.

And you are going to be that prime minister. So I turn the keys over to you as the Davidic king did to his prime minister, the keys which represent authority to act as my representative and to govern the church in my name.

Now, there's more I'd love to say about this passage, but I'm simply going to move on here. How much time do I have left? Three minutes. Thank you. Let me move on because some people say, gee, everything stands or falls with that passage.

It does not. The Catholic faith is not pinned. It's teaching on the primacy of Peter on that passage alone. There are many other ones. Let me just mention a few other ones. One would be Luke 22, starting in verse 31.

Actually, if you look up at verse 28 and 29, Jesus says to his apostles, you are those who have stood by me in my trials. And so I confer on you a kingdom. This theme of suffering leading to reigning is pervasive throughout Scripture.

And he says to his apostles, I confer on you a kingdom as my father conferred one on me so that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones governing the twelve tribes of Israel.

So we're talking about government here. We're talking about authority. We're talking about thrones of authority. And then he says, Simon, Simon, verse 31, Satan has asked you plural as wheat, you apostles.

Satan wants to get his mitts on you. But I have prayed for you. And here in the Greek, the U is singular. I prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.

Of course, Jesus prayed for all his people, including all his apostles. But what he's highlighting here is that there is a strategic role that Simon would play with reference to the apostles as a whole.

He is, as it were, a kind of a spine. He is a source of strength, Jesus says in verse 32 to his brothers. Jesus preserves and protects them all from Satan by upholding Peter. Peter has a foundational role to play.

We see the same thing in John 21, whereas the Good Shepherd, which he identifies himself as in the Gospel of John and Chapter 10 is about to go back to heaven. He entrusts the care of his flock to Simon Peter when he asks him three times, Do you love me more than these?

Then Simon says, You know, I do then feed my lambs, tend my sheep, take care of my flock all throughout Scripture. When a prophet is called or someone is invested with authority, they're inaugurated into office.

There's this often this threefold pattern and what we call a call narrative. And so there is here certainly to balance out and to cancel out Peter threefold denial, but also impress upon us the solemnity of this occasion.

He entrusts the flock to Peter to act as his earthly representative, to be a shepherd because the Good Shepherd is going back to heaven. Now, if this is true, he is indeed conferring a primacy on Peter.

You would expect to see evidence of this elsewhere in the New Testament, and that is exactly what you find every time the apostles are listed in all four Gospels in Matthew 10, Mark 3, Luke 6 and Acts Chapter 1.

Peter is always placed first, even though he wasn't chronologically the first gospel, the first person selected and he is given a special title. It's his first Peter, Matthew says, and he uses the Greek word that can have a double entendre there.

There's a firstness. There's a primacy to Peter. As a matter of fact, his name of Peter or rock is always given. Peter is named 195 times in the New Testament, and the second closest runner up is John at a whopping 29 over and over again.

In every episode we see Peter frequently acting as a representative of the apostles and speaking on behalf of them all, and Jesus addressing the twelve by addressing Peter at offices, Peter and those that were with him, Peter and the rest of the twelve.

Jesus singles Peter out for special privileges over and over again, whether it's the one coin to pay the temple tax for the two of them or the walking on the water or selecting Peter's boat, which I think has symbolic significance to preach from, and then the miraculous catch of fish.

The same thing happens in John 21 all throughout the book of Acts. Peter is the one that says in Acts Chapter 1, Look, Judas is gone. We have to appoint a successor. There's no argument. There's no big case made for it.

It's assumed there will be apostolic succession. I guess I've got to stop, so I'll simply stop there and continue in my debate in my rebuttal period. I thought I was going to get a two minute warning.

Roman Catholic Claims About Peter and the Papacy

And now we will hear the opening statement of Mr. James White. It is good to be with you again this evening as we now address the issue of the Roman Catholic teaching in regards to the person of Peter and the concept of the papacy.

I would like to expand a little bit on what Mr. Matics has said and help you to understand more fully exactly what the Roman Catholic Church teaches in regard to Peter and the papacy. For example, from Vatican 1, the first Vatican Council, we read,.

We therefore, for the preservation, safekeeping, and increase of the Catholic flock with the approval of this sacred council, do judge it to be necessary to propose to the belief and acceptance of all the faithful in accordance with the ancient and constant faith of the universal church, the doctrine touching the institution, perpetuity, and nature of the sacred apostolic primacy.

And what did they teach? I hope you will allow me a few moments to read you that which was taught. We therefore teach and declare that, according to the testimony of the gospel, the primacy of jurisdiction over the universal church of God was immediately and directly promised and given to blessed Peter the apostle by Christ the Lord.

For it was to Simon alone, to whom he had already said, Thou shalt be called Cephas, that the Lord, after the confession made by him saying, and then we have the quotation, the passage Jerry just read to us from Matthew chapter 16.

And it was upon Simon alone that Jesus, after his resurrection, bestowed the jurisdiction of chief pastor and ruler over all his fold in the words, Feed my lambs, feed my sheep. At open variance with this clear doctrine of Holy Scripture, it has been ever understood by the Catholic Church are the perverse opinions of those who, while they distort the form of government established by Christ the Lord in his church, deny that Peter in his single person, preferably to all other apostles, whether taken separately or together, was endowed by Christ with a true and proper primacy of jurisdiction, or of those who assert that the same primacy was not bestowed immediately and directly upon blessed Peter himself, but upon the church and through the church on Peter, her minister.

If anyone, therefore, shall say that blessed Peter, the apostle, was not appointed the prince of all the apostles and the visible head of the whole church militant, or that the same directly and immediately received from the same our Lord Jesus Christ, a primacy of honor only and not of true and proper jurisdiction, let him be anathema.

And so as we examine the Roman Catholic position, let us recognize that it remains the same today that it can, too, in the section of the church, chapter three, section eighteen very clearly reiterated this very same teaching.

So we are being told that the Catholic Church has always understood Peter to have had a primacy amongst the apostles, but this primacy is seen most clearly in the main passage of Jerry spent his time on Matthew, chapter sixteen, specifically verses seventeen through nineteen, where we are told the rock upon which the church is based is the person of Peter.

Christ in this passage not only confers a primacy upon Peter, but upon the successors of Peter as well. Therefore, in this passage, we are being told that Christ institutes an office which we know today as the papacy.

Therefore, I'd like to make this statement. It is incumbent upon the defender of Roman Catholicism to demonstrate beyond question or infallibly for the church claims to be infallible and claims absolute and complete trust in its statements regarding this issue that one Jesus is without question speaking to Peter in speaking about the rock in Matthew, chapter sixteen.

Secondly, that the words of Lord Jesus speak without question in establishing Peter as the prince of the apostles, the very first pope, the head of the Christian church. And third, that these words of Jesus necessarily indicate the creation of an office of Pope replete with successors and the ascendant powers that let us examine the Roman Catholic position.

Primary in my thinking, of course, will be an examination of Matthew, chapter sixteen, because my opponent has spent most of his time dealing with that. And of course, even given the dogmatic statements, the church in Vatican one, it is directly said that this is the interpretation of this passage and the Roman Catholic is bound to that.

But before we look at Matthew sixteen or John, chapter twenty one, I need to ask the question, does the New Testament as a whole lead us to believe that Peter was considered to be the head of the church?

Was Peter viewed as the vicar of Christ on earth? Was he ever called the Holy Father? Well, some might say, oh, those are titles that evolved at a later time. But what was the perspective of the early church in regards to Peter?

Obviously, we have to ask this question, because if Peter was actually given a primacy in Matthew, chapter sixteen, then clearly we would see evidence of this throughout the New Testament. Do we find such evidence?

I submit to you that we do not find a scintilla of evidence that Jesus gave this type of primacy to Peter or that anyone in the New Testament church believe that he had turned with me, for example, to First Peter, chapter five, verses one through two.

First Peter, chapter five, verses one through two. In this passage written by the Apostle Peter, you notice who he is addressing. He says, Therefore, I exhort the elders among you, as your fellow elder and witness of the sufferings of Christ, and a partaker also of the glory that is to be revealed, shepherd the flock of God among you, exercising oversight not under compulsion, but voluntarily, according to the will of God, and not for sordid gain, but with eagerness.