Claims XIV and IL to LIV, on Papacy

List of claims

The list:

• XIV It is claimed that papacy is thus un-Biblical.
• IL It is claimed that it is foreign to the Bible with a Vicar of Christ. Including that of bishop of Rome which lays claim to it.
• L It is claimed that the supremacy was created with the support of Roman Emperors.
• LI It is claimed that this supremacy was resisted by most other bishops.
• LII It is claimed that this resistance of most other bishops was overcome by Emperors.
• LIII It is claimed that fall of Western Empire allowed Popes to "step in their shoes".
• LIV It is at least suggested that a real Christian bishop could not be called Pontifex Maximus.

Each singly:

• XIV It is claimed that papacy is thus un-Biblical.

Namely in the sense of taking sth not directly mentioned in the Bible in verbally identic terms and also limiting searches about the New Testament Church to New Testament Books as being something foreign to the God and to the message of the Bible.

• IL It is claimed that it is foreign to the Bible with a Vicar of Christ. Including that of bishop of Rome which lays claim to it.

As previous.

• L It is claimed that the supremacy was created with the support of Roman Emperors.

It is true that one Pagan Emperor during a time when he was not actively persecuting the Church in a quarrel in Antioch or somewhere about ownership to a Church adjudged it to those over there in Communion with Rome.

However, he was considering Christians as a minority meant to stay so.

Emperors who were Christians or at least heretics have by contrast sought to rival the papacy over influence over the now majority religion of the Roman Empire.

This was specifically so with Arian Emperors, of whom one banished Pope Liberius, and saw to it to make claims about his complicity with Arianism to the Romans to discredit either him or Athanasian and Nicene Orthodoxy.

It was true of Iconoclast Emperors who were isolating the Church in Constantinople from Roman influences, as Rome was iconodule.

While we mention this, Exodus 20:4 does not begin another commandment, it continues already begun first one.

• LI It is claimed that this supremacy was resisted by most other bishops.

Not true. This is a historic allegation, which needs to be argued on historic merits, a discussion which is totally lacking.

• LII It is claimed that this resistance of most other bishops was overcome by Emperors.

On the contrary, as shown.

• LIII It is claimed that fall of Western Empire allowed Popes to "step in their shoes".

True about political power in a wordly sense. Popes, and some other bishops and abbots, like temporarily the bishop St Remigius and permanently the bishops of Salzburg, like temporarily the abbot or hermit St Severinus or Noricum, and permanently the abbots of Iona, were stepping in for lacking lay administrators.

As to strictly religious role, this is obviously rot, since no one has been asked to burn incense to the genius of the Pope.

• LIV It is at least suggested that a real Christian bishop could not be called Pontifex Maximus.

The title as such is an adiaphoron. There were more priestly titles in Rome than just one, and the title pontifex was not tied to a specific pagan divinity, unlike "flamen dialis" or "flamen martialis" or "flamen quirinalis" or each of the "flamines minores". Therefore, the word could be used also of a Christian priest with some similarity of position, which we know the Popes had, since deciding on calendar issues, like Julius Caesar when he invented the Julian Calendar, the one we still use, except later a Pope made a modification concerning leap years and centurial years. In Julian Calendar, a centurial year is a leap year, since divisible by four, in Gregorian, only every fourth centurial year.