Fascination with Pope

Some real quick thoughts this morning. On Saturday night, I found myself saying, "For a moment in time, America seems really enamored with the Pope. Why?"

[BTW, Keith Drury re-posted this document some of us at IWU created a few years back on the Catholic Catechism. It points out the places where, say, Wesleyans would differ from Catholics. You can also see that most of the document has no comments. We should also keep in mind that the RCC today also differs quite a bit after Vatican 2 in the 1960s than before. See, for example, this joint statement on justification by faith by both Catholics and Lutherans.]

So why is America enamored with the Pope? My first two points are trivial. But the second two may hold out some thoughts for us as the church in America.

1. Star power
We are enamored with any superstar. I'd probably go to the White House if any President invited me, even if I strongly disagreed with him or her.

2. Catholic pride
There are a lot of nominal Catholics out there who don't agree with the Pope, but they grew up Catholic. This would include a significant number of people in the media.

3. The Pope's humility and confidence
The Pope is clear in what he believes, but he isn't pushy. It's at this point that I began to wonder. There is a place for pushy prophets. But I wonder if the point where America is ripe for revival right now is churches with a confident yet non-pushy humility. It seems clear to me that much of America is enamored with this man who is so confident and yet so loving and so humble.

I wonder if this is a point for revival. The revival point in America right now might not be with the pushy prophets, who could actually be pushing people in the direction of hell right now. Is it possible that some souls will be lost who might otherwise have been saved because of what are perceived to be angry, pushy people?

4. The Pope's message is attractive.
Call it liberal, but the message of love toward all, forgiveness toward sinners, helping the poor, showing mercy to the immigrant, stewarding the environment seems to be an attractive message to a lot of non-Christian Americans. And of course while there are some Christians who decry these as Devilish, there are also a lot of Christians who would say these are actually the core of the Bible.

I wonder if it is thus from some "liberal" direction of this sort that the next great American revival will come. Revival never comes from where we expect it. We want it to come from where it came before.

Bottom line: Saturday night I found myself wondering if the Pope's popularity revealed that there was actually still a spiritual longing in America. I found myself wondering if America is actually ripe for a revival, but one that will come from the "wrong" place.

We'll see.

Rocks, Keys, and the Gates of Hades

Last week one of the leadership assignments touched on Matthew 16 where Jesus gives Peter the keys to the kingdom.  This is of course the classic text where Roman Catholics trace the idea of Peter being the first pope.  God gives the keys to Peter, who gives them to Linus, who gives them to Clement... who gave them to Pope Francis I this year. Protestants have of course often responded by saying that the "rock" on which Jesus built his kingdom was not Peter but the confession that Jesus is the Christ.

Some historical notes.  First, Peter, which means rock, was not Peter's birth name.  In fact, since Peter is Greek, Jesus may never have made the sounds, petros, ever.  "Cephas" is the Aramaic name that Jesus gave Simon, son of Jonah.  Simon was his birth name.  Jesus gave him the name Cephas, "rock."

So that makes it pretty likely that Peter is a central part of the referent of "on this rock I will build."  This of course is light years from popes and apostolic succession, but it does seem to imply that Jesus is centrally talking about Peter.  Additionally, the "you" in "I will give you" is singular, so it is not even something Jesus is saying to all his disciples there.  He is speaking to Peter specifically.

The "gates of hell" here are not the gates of Gehenna, the place of punishment, but the gates of Hades, the realm of the dead in general.  In short, death will not win over the kingdom.  "Kingdom of heaven" does not likely mean anything different from "kingdom of God" in Mark.  Heaven is the place from which God rules, not the place where we will be in the kingdom (cf. Matt. 8:11).

Some thoughts on the Matthew 16 passage...

The First Pope

Someone asked me recently, "Peter was in Rome?"  Yes, reasonable tradition suggests that Peter was crucified in Rome under the emperor Nero. However, even Roman Catholic Bible scholars will tell you that it is not at all likely that Peter founded the church at Rome.

Brown and Meier, two of the best RCC Bible scholars of all time, suggest that the kernel of truth behind the tradition may be that the Roman church was a little more "conservative," more sympathetic to Peter's positions, than to Paul.

But I don't think it's appropriate even to translate the word episkopos as "bishop" in the time of the New Testament.  I believe that, for the most part, house churches were run by a council of elders and that these elders were also called the "overseers" of the assembly (=church). So there was probably not even a single overseer (episkopos) of an individual house church, let alone one over a whole city.  That doesn't happen until around the beginning of second century. That is not to say that there wasn't often someone more or less running the show.

So who was the first bishop of Rome?  Linus may very well have been an overseer in Rome. He's traditionally second to Peter.  Was he an overseer of all the churches in the city?  We just don't know if it got that far that early.  I personally doubt it.

Perhaps by the time of Clement, in the late first century, the role of overseer had developed enough for him to be called the overseer of the city.  Even here, though, he doesn't talk of the leadership of Corinth in such "one man" terms. Ignatius in the early 100s is arguing for the authority of a single overseer, so even then the idea of a single leader of a city is still being solidified.

So Peter was not the first bishop of Rome, let alone the first "Pope," a concept that would not develop for several more centuries.  Even in 1054, half the church denied that the bishop of Rome was of higher authority than the other bishops of key cities. Thus the Great Schism between East and West.