The problem is, if you accept the plain meaning of scripture, then you can’t accept papal primacy. Mt. 23:9 warnes, “Call no [one] man father upon the earth for one is your Father, which is in heaven.” The church is to be lead from within, by the HS and not by one man who alone is father and alone is holy. We can have many fathers, but electing one father will lead to abuses. As Lord Acton warned, “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
The “call no man father” issue has been addressed many times. Jesus is using hyperbole; he obviously doesn’t mean you cannot call
no man “father,” else you couldn’t refer to your mother’s husband as “father” – but no one thinks Jesus meant that.
In the very next verse, Jesus says to call no one “teacher.” Yet plenty of Protestants are fine addressing their pastors as “Dr. such and such” – the word doctor comes from the Latin word meaning teacher. But we know there is nothing wrong with calling someone “teacher,” for teachers have a role in the church:
“God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third
teachers” (1 Cor. 12:28)
Likewise, there are true fathers in the Church.
The fatherhood of the pope, like all bishops and priests, is s spiritual fatherhood. Paul says to the Corinthians: For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers.
For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel" (1 Cor. 4:14–15).
Spiritual fatherhood on the part of the Apostles is clear throughout the New Testament:
Paul tells Timothy:“To Timothy,
my true child in the faith: grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord” (1 Tim 1:2).
So unless you have a specific objection to the kind of fatherhood that the Pope has, then using this Scriptural citation to negate spiritual fatherhood does not work.
And to your other point, yes purely human power can corrupt. There have been many scandals on the part of popes who have embraced temporal concerns over the eternal concerns of Christ. But popes are mere men who retain their free will – they too can choose evil. Thankfully, the vast majority of popes have been saintly men who have worked to accomplish the will of God.
Nevertheless, the Church was not built by men. It is not purely or merely human. Christ says “
I will build my church.” And he continues by saying the gates of hell shall not prevail against it! This is the word of the Holy Spirit. And one tool Christ meant for his church to ensure its foundation of unity and belief is the role of Peter, whom Christ charged to “feed” his “sheep.” He prayed for Peter’s faith so that he could confirm his own brothers in the faith.
Peter’s very name was changed; and in the Bible, name changes signify something about the role of the person. Like Abram to Abraham. Peter is the “rock” on which Christ builds
his church.
When he says to Peter I will give you the “Keys of the Kingdom,” Christ echoes the words of Isaiah 22, which pointed to the role of the chief steward in the House of David, who served under the king and yet served as a leading figure with the “keys”:As can be seen in Isaiah 22:22, kings in the Old Testament appointed a chief steward to serve under them in a position of great authority to rule over the inhabitants of the kingdom. Jesus quotes almost verbatum from this passage in Isaiah, and so it is clear what he has in mind. He is raising Peter up as a father figure to the household of faith (Is. 22:21), to lead them and guide the flock (John 21:15-17). This authority of the prime minister under the king was passed on from one man to another down through the ages by the giving of the keys, which were worn on the shoulder as a sign of authority. Likewise, the authority of Peter has been passed down for 2000 years by means of the papacy.
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**But anyway, with that out of the way, I’d like to stick on track with the various non-Catholic views of the role of the Pope. **
Are there any others besides Anglicans and Lutherans who view some kind of primacy of the Pope? I do not just mean a recognition of a historical primacy; rather, a recognition of some sort of valid primacy for today’s Christian church?