Spotlight on Loraine Boettner's "Roman Catholicism"

Peter and the Papacy

Chapter 17, CATHOLICISM and FUNDAMENTALISM - The Attack on "Romanism" by "Bible Christians" 1

by Karl Keating

Like other Protestants, fundamentalists say Peter was never appointed by Christ as the earthly head of the Church for the simple reason that the Church has no earthly head and was never meant to have one. Christ is the Church's only foundation, in every sense of that term.

The papacy, they say, is an institution that arose out of third-century politics, both secular and ecclesiastical; it has no connection, other than mythological, with the New Testament. It was not established by Christ, even though supposed "successors" to Peter and their apologists claim it was. At best the papacy is a ruse; at worst, a work of the devil. In any case, it is an institution designed to give the Catholic Church an authority it simply does not have.

Besides, the argument continues, Peter was never in Rome and so could not have been the first Pope, and that puts the lie to talk about his "successors"; the unbroken chain is broken in its first link. How can Catholics talk about the divine origin of the papacy when their claim about Peter's whereabouts is wrong? Let us begin with this last charge.

At first glance, it might seem the question, whether Peter went to Rome and died there, is inconsequential. In a way it is. After all, his being in Rome would not itself prove the existence of the papacy; it would be a false inference to say he must have been the first Pope since he was in Rome and later Popes ruled from Rome. With that logic, Paul would have an equal claim to the title of first Pope, since he was an apostle and went to Rome. On the other hand, even if Peter never made it to the capital, he still could have been the first Pope, since one of his successors could have been the first holder of that office to settle there.

Besides, if Peter did end his days at Rome, that might have something to say about who his legitimate successors would be (and it does, since the man elected Bishop of Rome is automatically the new Pope on the notion that Peter was the first Bishop of Rome and the Pope is merely Peter's successor), but it would say nothing about the status of the papal office. It would not establish that the papacy was instituted by Christ in the first place.

No, somehow the question, while interesting historically, does not seem to be crucial to the real issue, whether the papacy was founded by Christ and, if so, what authority the Pope wields. Still, most anti-Catholic organizations take up the matter and even go to considerable trouble to prove Peter could not have been in Rome. Why? Because they think they can get mileage out of it.

Here is a point on which we can put the lie to Catholic claims, they think. Catholics trace the papacy to Peter, and they say he was martyred in Rome after heading the Church there. If we could show he never went to Rome, that would undermine — psychologically if not logically — their assertion that Peter was the first Pope. If people conclude the Catholic Church is wrong on this historical point, they will conclude it is wrong on the larger one, the supposed existence of the papacy. Such is the reasoning, the real reasoning, of leading anti-Catholics.

The case is stated most succinctly, even if not so bluntly, by Loraine Boettner in Roman Catholicism:

The remarkable thing, however, about Peter's alleged bishopric in Rome is that the New Testament has not one word to say about it. The word Rome occurs only nine times in the Bible [actually, ten times in the Old Testament and ten times in the New], and never is Peter mentioned in connection with it. There is no allusion to Rome in either of his epistles. Paul's journey to the city is recorded in great detail (Acts 27 and 28). There is in fact no New Testament evidence, nor any historical proof of any kind, that Peter ever was in Rome. All rests on legend. 2

Well, what about it? Admittedly the scriptural evidence for Peter being in Rome is weak. Nowhere does the Bible unequivocally say he was there; neither does it say he was not. Just as the New Testament never says, "Peter then went to Rome", it never says, "Peter did not go to Rome". In fact, very little is said about where he, or any of the apostles other than Paul, did go in the years after the Ascension. For the most part, we have to rely on books other than the New Testament for information about what happened to the Twelve, Peter included, in later years.

But Boettner is wrong when he claims "there is no allusion to Rome in either of [Peter's] epistles". There is, in the greeting at the end of the first epistle: "The Church here in Babylon, united with you by God's election, sends you her greeting, and so does my son, Mark" (1 Pet 5:13). Babylon is a code word for Rome. It is used that way six times in the last book of the Bible and in extra-biblical works such as Sibylline Oracles (5, 159f·), the Apocalypse of Baruch (ii, 1), and 4 Esdras (3:1). Eusebius Pamphilius, writing about 303, noted that "it is said that Peter's first epistle, in which he makes mention of Mark, was composed at Rome itself; and that he himself indicates this, referring to the city figuratively as Babylon." 3

Consider the other New Testament citations: "A second angel followed, who cried out, Babylon, great Babylon is fallen; she who made all the nations drunk with the maddening wine of her fornication" (Rev 14:8); "The great city broke in three pieces, while the cities of the heathens came down in ruins. And God did not forget to minister a draught of his wine, his avenging anger, to Babylon, the great city" (Rev 16:19); "There was a title written over his forehead, The mystic Babylon, great mother-city of all harlots, and all that is abominable on earth" (Rev 17:5); "And he cried aloud, Babylon, great Babylon is fallen" (Rev 18:2); "Standing at a distance, for fear of sharing her punishment, they will cry out. Alas, Babylon the great, alas, Babylon the strong, in one brief hour judgment has come upon you" (Rev 18:10); "So, with one crash of ruin, will Babylon fall, the great city" (Rev 18:21).

These references cannot be to the onetime capital of the Babylonian Empire. That Babylon had been reduced to an inconsequential status by the march of years, military defeat, and political subjugation; it was no longer a "great city". It played no important part in the recent history of the ancient world. The only truly "great city" in New Testament times was Rome.

"But there is no good reason for saying that 'Babylon' means 'Rome'", 4 insists Boettner. But there is, and the good reason is persecution. Peter was known to the authorities as a leader of the Church, and the Church, under Roman law, was organized atheism. (The worship of any gods other than the Roman was considered atheism.) Peter would do himself, not to mention those with him, no service by advertising his presence in the capital — after all, mail service from Rome was then even worse than it is today, and letters could be intercepted easily by Roman officials. Peter was a wanted man, as were all Christian leaders. Why encourage a manhunt? In any event, let us be generous and admit that it is easy for an opponent of Catholicism to think, in good faith, that Peter was never in Rome, at least if he bases his conclusion on the Bible alone. But restricting his inquiry to the Bible is something he should not do; external evidence has to be considered, too.

William A. Jurgens, in his three-volume set The Faith of the Early Fathers, 5 an easily accessible and masterly compendium that cites at length a great number of works from the Didache to John Damascene, includes thirty references to this question, divided, in the index, about evenly between the statements that "Peter came to Rome and died there" and that "Peter established his See at Rome and made the Bishop of Rome his successor in the primacy." A few examples must suffice, but they and other early references demonstrate there can be no question that the universal — and very early — position (one hesitates to use the word "tradition", since some people read it as "legend") was that Peter resided and was martyred in the capital of the Empire.

Dionysius of Corinth, writing to Soter, the twelfth Pope, about 170, said, "You have also, by your very admonition, brought together the planting that was made by Peter and Paul at Rome." 6 It was commonly accepted, from the very first, that both Peter and Paul were martyred at Rome, probably in the Neronian persecution.

A generation later Tertullian noted, "How happy is that Church ... where Peter endured a passion like that of the Lord, where Paul was crowned in a death like John's" 7 (referring to John the Baptist, as both he and Paul were beheaded). Fundamentalists admit Paul died in Rome, so the implication from Tertullian is that Peter also must have been there. In the same work Tertullian said, "This is the way in which the apostolic Churches transmit their lists: like the Church of the Smyrnaeans, which records that Polycarp was placed there by John; like the Church of the Romans, where Clement was ordained by Peter". 8 This Clement, known as Clement of Rome, later would be the fourth Pope. (Note that Tertullian did not say Peter consecrated Clement as Pope, which would have been impossible since a Pope does not name his own successor; he merely ordained Clement as priest.) Clement wrote his Letter to the Corinthians perhaps before 70, 9 just a few years after Peter and Paul were killed; in it he made reference to Peter ending his life where Paul ended his.

In writing to them around 110, Ignatius of Antioch remarked he could not command the Roman Christians the way Peter and Paul once did,10 such a comment making sense only if Peter had been a leader, if not the leader, of the Church in Rome.

Near the end of the second century, Irenaeus mentioned that Matthew wrote his Gospel "while Peter and Paul were evangelizing in Rome and laying the foundation of the Church". He said the two departed Rome, perhaps to attend the Council of Jerusalem, and he noted that Linus was named as Peter's successor — that is, the second Pope — and that next in line were Anacletus (also known as Cletus) and then Clement of Rome.11

Clement of Alexandria wrote at the turn of the third century. A fragment of one of his works is preserved in Eusebius of Caesarea's Ecclesiastical History, the first history of the Church. Clement wrote, "When Peter preached the Word publicly at Rome, and declared the Gospel by the Spirit, many who were present requested that Mark, who had been for a long time his follower and who remembered his sayings, should write down what had been proclaimed."12

Peter of Alexandria was bishop of that city and died around 311. A few years before his death he wrote a treatise on penance. In it he said, "Peter, the first chosen of the apostles, having been apprehended often and thrown into prison and treated with ignominy, at last was crucified in Rome."13 Seven years later, Lactantius noted that "when Nero was already reigning Peter came to Rome, where, in virtue of the performance of certain miracles which he worked by that power of God which had been given to him, he converted many to righteousness and established a firm and steadfast temple to God."14 Nero reigned from 54 to 68.

Eusebius Pamphilius gave more precise dates than did Lactantius. He said that in 42 (he actually said the "second year of the two hundredth and fifth Olympiad") "the apostle Peter, after he has established the Church in Antioch, is sent to Rome, where he remains as bishop of that city, preaching the Gospel for twenty-five years." He went on to say that "Nero is the first, in addition to all his other crimes, to make a persecution against the Christians, in which Peter and Paul died gloriously at Rome."15

These citations could be multiplied. It should be enough to note that no ancient writer claimed Peter ended his life elsewhere than in Rome. True, many refer to the fact that he was at one point in Antioch, but most go on to say he went on from there to the capital. Remember, these are the works that form the basis of Christian historical writing in the immediate post — New Testament centuries. On the question of Peter's whereabouts they are in agreement, and their cumulative testimony should carry considerable weight.

To sum up, Boettner does not know what he is talking about when he claims there is no "historical proof of any kind" and that "all rests on legend". The truth is that all the historical evidence is on the side of the Catholic position.

Continuing, Boettner, like other fundamentalist apologists, claims that "exhaustive research by archaeologists has been made down through the centuries to find some inscription in the Catacombs and other ruins of ancient places in Rome that would indicate Peter at least visited Rome. But the only things found which gave any promise at all were some bones of uncertain origin."16 Boettner saw Roman Catholicism through the presses in 1962. His original book and the revisions to it since have failed to mention the results of the excavations under the high altar of St. Peter's Basilica, excavations that had been under way for decades but that were undertaken in earnest after World War II.

Pope Paul VI was able to announce officially something that had been discussed in archaeological literature and religious publications for years, that the actual tomb of the first Pope had been identified conclusively, that his remains were apparently present, and that in the vicinity of his tomb were inscriptions identifying the place as Peter's burial site, meaning early Christians knew that the Prince of the Apostles was there. The story of how all this was determined, with scientific accuracy, is too long to recount here. It is discussed in detail in John Evangelist Walsh's The Bones of St. Peter.17

It is enough to say that the combination of historical and scientific evidence is such that no one willing to look: at the facts with an open mind can doubt that Peter was in Rome. To deny that fact is to let prejudice override reason. Grant, then, that Peter really was in Rome and really died and was buried there. What can be said about him, particularly from Scripture? Fundamentalists say he was just the equal of the other apostles, not their leader. He enjoyed no primacy, and he was granted by Christ no powers not given to the others.

In fact, there is ample evidence in the New Testament that Peter was first in authority among the apostles. When they were named, Peter almost always headed the list (Mt 10:1-4; Mk 3:16-19; Lk 6:14.—16; Acts 1:13); sometimes it was only "Peter and his companions" (Lk 9:32). Peter was the one who generally spoke for the apostles (Mt 18:21; Mk 8:29; Lk 12:41; Jn 6:69), and he figured in many of the most dramatic scenes (Mt 14:28-32; 17:24; Mk 10:28). On Pentecost it was he who first preached to the crowds (Acts 2:14-40), and he worked the first healing (Acts 3:6-7). And to Peter came the revelation that Gentiles were to be baptized (Acts 10:46-48).

Peter's preeminent position among the apostles was symbolized at the very beginning of his relationship with Christ, although the implications were only slowly unfolded. At their first meeting, Christ told Simon that his name would thereafter be Peter, which translates as Rock (Jn 1:42). The startling thing was that in the Old Testament only God was called a rock. The word was never used as a proper name for a man. If one were to turn to a companion and say, "From now on your name is Asparagus", people would wonder. Why Asparagus? What is the meaning of it? What does it signify? Indeed, why Peter for Simon the fisherman? Why give him as a name a word only used for God before this moment?

Christ was not given to meaningless gestures, and neither were the Jews as a whole when it came to names. Giving a new name meant that the status of the person was changed, as when Abram was changed to Abraham (Gen 17:5); Jacob to Israel (Gen 32:28); Eliacim to Joakim (2 Kings 23:34); and Daniel, Ananias, Misael, and Azarias to Baltassar, Sidrach, Misach, and Abdenago (Dan 1:6-8). But no Jew had ever been called Rock because that was reserved for God. The Jews would give other names taken from nature, such as Barach (which means lightning; Jos 19:45), Deborah (bee; Gen 35:8), and Rachel (ewe; Gen 29:16), but not Rock. In the New Testament James and John were surnamed Boanerges, Sons of Thunder, by Christ (Mk 3:17). but that was never regularly used in place of their original names. Simon's new name supplanted the old.

Not only was there significance in Simon being given a name that had been used only to describe God, but the place where the renaming occurred was also important. "Then Jesus came into the neighborhood of Caesarea Philippi" (Mt 16:13), a city that Philip the Tetrarch built and named in honor of Caesar Augustus, who had died in A.D. 14. The city lay near cascades in the Jordan River and not far from a gigantic wall of rock two hundred feet high and five hundred feet long, part of the southern foothills of Mount Hermon.18

Caesarea Philippi is no more. Near its ruins is the small Arab town of Banias, and at the base of the rock wall may be found what is left of one of the springs that fed the Jordan. It was here that Jesus pointed to Simon and said, "Thou art Peter" (Mt 16:18). The significance of the event must have been clear to the other apostles. As devout Jews they knew at once that the location was meant to emphasize the importance of what was being done. None complained of Simon being singled out for this honor, and in the rest of the New Testament he is called by his new name, while James and John remain just James and John, not Boanerges.

When he first saw Simon, "Jesus looked at him closely and said, 'Thou art Simon the son of Jonah; thou shalt be called Cephas' (which means the same as Peter)" (Jn 1:42). The word Cephas is merely the transliteration of the Aramaic Kepha into Greek.

Kepha means rock. Later, after Peter and the other disciples had been with Christ for some time, they went to Caesarea Philippi, where Peter made his profession of faith: "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God" (Mt 16:17). Jesus told Peter that this truth was revealed to him specially, and then he reiterated: "Thou art Peter" (Mt 16:18). To this was added the promise that the Church that would be founded would, in some way, be founded on Peter (Mt 16:18).

Then two important things were told the apostle. "Whatever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; whatever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven" (Mt 16:19). Here Peter was singled out for the authority that provides for the forgiveness of sins and the making of disciplinary rules. Later the apostles as a whole would be given similar power, but here Peter received it in a special sense; the later grant to them did not diminish the uniqueness of what was granted Peter. Indeed, Peter alone was promised something else. "I will give to thee [singular] the keys to the kingdom of heaven" (Mt 16:19). In ancient times keys were the hallmark of authority. A walled city might have one great gate and that gate one great lock worked by one great key. To be given the key to the city (an honor that exists even today, although its import is largely lost) meant to be given free access to and authority over the city. The city to which Peter was given the keys was the heavenly city itself. This symbolism for authority is used elsewhere in the Bible (Is 22:22; Rev 1:18).

Finally, after the Resurrection, Jesus appeared to his disciples and asked Peter three times, "Dost thou love me?" (Jn 21:15-17). In expiation of his threefold denial, Peter gave a threefold affirmation of love. Then Christ, who is the Good Shepherd (Jn 10:11, 14.), gave Peter all the authority he earlier promised: "Feed my sheep" (Jn 21:17). Thus was completed the prediction made just before Jesus and his followers went for the last time to Olivet.

Immediately before his denials were predicted, Peter was told, "Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has claimed power over you all, so that he can sift you like wheat; but I have prayed for thee [singular], that thy faith may not fail; when, after a while, thou hast come back to me [after the denials], it is for thee to be the support of thy brethren" (Lk 22:31-32). Christ prayed that Peter would have faith that would never fail, that he would be a guide for the others, and Christ's prayer, being perfectly efficacious, was sure to be fulfilled. Here we see the roots of papal infallibility and the primacy that is the Bishop of Rome's.

Now take a closer look at the key verse: "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church" (Mt 16:18). Disputes about this line have always concerned the meaning of the term rock. To whom, or to what, does it refer? Since Simon's fresh name of Peter itself means rock, the sentence could be rewritten as: "Thou art Rock and upon this rock I will build my Church." The play on words seems obvious, but commentators wishing to avoid what follows from this — the establishment of the papacy— have suggested that the word rock could not refer to Peter but must refer to his profession of faith or to Christ.

According to the rules of grammar, the phrase "this rock" must relate to the closest noun. Peter's profession of faith ("Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God") is two verses earlier, while his name, a proper noun, is in the immediately preceding clause. As an analogy, consider this artificial sentence: "I have a car and a truck, and it is blue." Which is blue? The truck, because that is the noun closest to the pronoun "it". This identification would be even clearer if the reference to the car were two sentences earlier, as the reference to Peter's profession is two sentences earlier than the term rock.

The same kind of objection applies to the argument that the rock is Christ himself, since he is mentioned within the profession of faith. The fact that he is elsewhere, by a different metaphor, called the cornerstone (Eph 2:20; 1 Pet 2:4-8) does not disprove that here Peter is the foundation. Christ is naturally the principal and, since he will be returning to heaven, the invisible foundation of the Church that will be established, but Peter is named by him as the secondary and, because he and his successors will remain on earth, the visible foundation. Peter can be a foundation only because first Christ is one.

There is another analogy. At times we ask our friends to pray for us, and we pray for them. Our prayers ask God for special help for one another. When we pray in this way, what are we doing? We are acting as mediators, as go-betweens. We are approaching God on someone else's behalf. Does this contradict Paul's statement that Christ is the one mediator (1 Tim 2:5)? No, because our mediatorship is entirely secondary to and dependent on his. He could have established his mediatorship in any way he chose, and he chose to have us participate when he commanded us to pray for one another (Mt 5:44; 1 Tim 2:1-4; Rom 15:30; Acts 12:5), even for the dead (2 Tim 1:16-18). So, just as there can be secondary mediators and a primary one, there can be a secondary foundation and a primary one.

Opponents of the Catholic interpretation of Matthew 16:18 also note that in the Greek text the name of the apostle is Petros, a masculine noun, while rock is rendered as petra, which is feminine. The first means a small stone, the second a massive rock. If Peter was meant to be the massive rock, the steady foundation of the Church here below, why is his name not Petra? As Loraine Boettner puts it in Roman Catholicism, "The Greek petros is commonly used of a small, movable stone, a mere pebble, as it were. But petra means an immovable foundation, in this instance, the basic truth that Peter had just confessed, the deity of Christ.''19 The Bible is clear on this point: Peter was no sure foundation.

Boettner continues by saying, "Had Christ intended to say that the Church would be founded on Peter, it would have been ridiculous for Him to have shifted to the feminine form of the word in the middle of the statement, saying, if we may translate literally and somewhat whimsically, 'And I say unto thee, that thou art Mr. Rock, and upon this, the Miss Rock, I will build my church. '. . . He made two complete, distinct statements. He said, 'Thou art Peter,' and, 'Upon this rock (change of gender, indicating change of subject) I will build my church.'"20 Boettner's "whimsy" obscures the straightforward solution to this problem.

The first thing to note is that Christ did not speak to the disciples in Greek. (And not Hebrew, either, which was reserved as a sacred language and was not in common use, somewhat analogously to the way Latin, in the recent past, was the sacred language for Catholics, but was not used by them in everyday speech.) Christ spoke Aramaic, the common language of Palestine at the time. In that language the word for rock is kepha. What was said was thus: "Thou art Kepha, and upon this kepha I will build my Church." When Matthew's Gospel was translated from the original Aramaic to Greek,21 there arose a problem that did not confront the evangelist when he first composed his account of Christ's life in his native tongue.

In Aramaic the word kepha has the same ending whether it refers to a rock or is used as a man's name. In Greek, though, the word for rock, petra, is feminine in gender. The translator could use it for the second appearance of kepha in the sentence, but not for the first, because it would be inappropriate to give a man a feminine name. So he put a masculine ending on it, and there was Petros, which happened to be a pre-existing word meaning a small stone. Some of the effect of the play on words was lost, but that was the best that could be done in Greek. In English, as in Aramaic, there is no problem with endings, so an English rendering could read: "Thou art Rock, and upon this rock I will build my church." In modern French Bibles, the word pierre appears in both places. The real meaning is hard to miss.

Another point: If the rock really did refer to Christ, as fundamentalists claim (basing their argument on 1 Corinthians 10:4, "and the rock was Christ"), why did Matthew leave the passage as it was? In the original Aramaic, and in the English that is a closer parallel to it than is the Greek, the passage seems clear enough. Matthew must have realized that his readers would conclude the obvious from "Rock. . . rock". If he meant Christ to be understood as the rock, why did he not say so? Why did he construct his sentences so awkwardly that contortions would be required to elicit the fundamentalist interpretation? Why did he take a chance and leave it up to Paul to write a clarifying text (presuming, of course, that 1 Corinthians was written after Matthew, as most biblical scholars assert; if it came first, it could not have been written to clarify it)?

The reason, of course, is that Matthew knew full well that what the sentence seemed to say was just what it really was saying. It was Simon — weak, Christ-denying Simon — who was chosen to be the first link in the chain of the papacy. The scandal, to fundamentalists, is that Christ would choose as his Vicar the weakest of the apostles, not the strongest. But God seems to enjoy working through the lowly in order to confound the mighty, and his choice of Peter was quite in keeping with other selections he had made, such as deciding to be born in a stable rather than a palace. In a way, it was Peter's weakness that would manifest the strength of the papacy. After all, noted G. K. Chesterton when writing of the succession of popes, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link.22

Still, however apt Chesterton's comment might be, a fundamentalist will not see it as supporting the Catholic position since it presumes the divine establishment of the papacy. His mind will turn, instead, to snatches of ecclesiastical history he has imbibed from visiting preachers or from anti-Catholic literature. What will stick in his mind is the claim that the papacy has achieved its position of authority through purely human rnachinations. Providence, he has been told, had nothing to do with it.

This is the theme of Henry T. Hudson's Papal Power,23 published in an attractive paperback format in England, but printed and distributed in America. This may be the most exhaustive look at the papacy to come from the hands of a fundamentalist in recent years. In five chapters Hudson examines the "origins of papal power", the development of the papacy before the Reformation, Luther's attack on the papacy, the further development of the institution after the Reformation, and papal claims in light of Scripture. (The chapter on Luther really does not focus on the Reformer's analysis of the papacy; it is better described as plain hagiography.)

In the introduction Hudson comments on the 1979 visit of John Paul II to the United States and asks, "Whatever happened to the traditional anti-papal sentiments common in American history?"24 In a footnote he points out that Loraine Boettner has said that two-thirds of the American population in 1776 was Reformed Protestant. Hudson longs for the good old days.

His appreciations of ecclesiastical history and biblical criticism are not without weaknesses. He believes, for instance, that the papacy was supremely strong during the Middle Ages, when in fact the Popes were at the mercy of princes and were largely ignored by irreformable bishops and persnickety abbots. He thinks Rome was without influence in the earliest ecumenical councils, when in fact the popes sent legates and formally approved the councils' decisions. With respect to Peter's presence in Rome, Hudson thinks Paul's statement that "only Luke is with me" (2 Tim 4:11) settles the matter. "This is conclusive."25 If it is, it is too conclusive. If the line proves Peter was not in Rome, it also proves no Christians, other than Luke and Paul, were there. Yet Paul wrote an epistle to the Christians in Rome, who apparently were numerous. Were they all out of town when 2 Timothy was written? If so, why was Luke still around?

When the interpretation of Matthew 16:18 is the question, Hudson is satisfied to say, "A simple, straightforward consideration of the grammatical construction seems to rule out Peter as the petra."26 If he is to be satisfied with simple, straightforward grammatical constructions, why no mention of the Aramaic, which is even simpler than the Greek and which states: "Thou art Kepha, and upon this kepha I will build my Church"? This seems to say the rock is Peter, but Hudson makes no allusion to the Catholic arguments.

His book's key contention, what distinguishes it from other anti-Catholic works (not because other anti-Catholics would disagree, but because few of them bother to discuss the matter), is that the papacy obtained its exalted position through fraud. Hudson discusses at length forgeries on which the Popes supposedly built their power. It is quite true there were forgeries, and they were used, long after the events they purport to describe, to bolster Rome's position, but commentators of almost all stripes, save the fundamentalist, agree the forgeries had little or no practical effect. The papacy already was established firmly when the forgeries first appeared, and documents such as the Donation of Constantine and the False Decretals added little to the status of the institution. Granted, it was imprudent for any Church official to base an argument on them, and Lorenzo Valla's Discourse on the forgery of the Alleged Donation of Constantine, which appeared in 1940, made many scholars look incompetent, but the fact remains that the papacy would have been what it was with or without the forgeries. They had far less effect on the institution than Parson Weems' biography had on the American public's perception of George Washington.

The curious thing is that, although Hudson decries forgeries used by partisans of Rome, he says nothing against forgeries used by Hudson. The last seventeen pages of the book are nothing less than the complete transcript of the speech said to have been given by Bishop Josip Strossmayer at Vatican I in 1870. Hudson does not defend the speech against the charges that it is a forgery; he does not even imply that he knows of such charges. He accepts the speech's bona fides unquestioningly.

In doing so he demonstrates that while fundamentalists can produce tracts, newsletters, and even books in quantity, the rarely make any effort to test their claims against the Catholic version of the facts. They do not seem to know there is a Catholic version. How simple it would be to open the Catholic Encyclopedia and see, in the article on Strossmayer, that the speech attributed to him is a forgery. No one is obligated to accept the article writer's word for it, but sources are given, and with a little legwork the sources can be checked. But checking is not something professional anti-Catholics are inclined to do. Thev are not so much interested in accuracy as in effect.

Footnotes

  1. Ignatius Press San Francisco, © 1988.
  2. loraine Boettner, Roman Catholicism, 117,
  3. Eusebius Pamphilius, Historia ecclesiastica 2,15,4.
  4. Boettner, Roman Catholicism, 120.
  5. William A. Jurgens, The Faith of the Early Fathers (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1970), 421.
  6. Fragment in Eusebius Pamphilius, Historia ecclesiastica 2,25,8.
  7. Tertullian, De praescriptione haereticorum 36, 1.
  8. Tertullian, De praescriptione haereticorum 32, 2.
  9. John A. T. Robinson, Redating the New Testament (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1976), 327-47 passim.
  10. Ignatius of Antioch, Epistula ad Romanos 4, 3,
  11. Irenaeus, Adversus haereses 3, 3, 3.
  12. Fragment in Eusebius Pamphilius, Historia ecclesiastica 6, 14, 1.
  13. Peter of Alexandria, De paenitentia canon 9,
  14. Lactantius, De mortibus persecutorum 2, 5.
  15. Eusebius Pamphilius, Chronicon ad an. Dom. 42, ad an. Dom. 68.
  16. Boettner, Roman Catholicism, 118
  17. Walsh, Bones.
  18. For an account of the locale, see Stanley L. Jaki, And on This Rock (Notre Dame, Ind.: Ave Maria, 1978), 21-55 passim.
  19. Boettner. Roman Catholicism. 106.
  20. Boettner, Roman Catholicism, 106.
  21. Papias, De expositione oraculorum Dominicorum, fragment in Eusebius Pamphilius Historia ecclesiastica 3, 39, 15.
  22. G. K, Chesterton, Heretics (London: Bodley Head. 1910), 67.
  23. Henry T, Hudson, Papal Power (Welwyn, England: Evangelical, 1981).
  24. Hudson, Papal Power, 2.
  25. Hudson, Papal Power, 21, n. 2.
  26. Hudson, Papal Power, 21, n. 3.

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