Are you suggesting that Luther was not aware of those who taught this? You have just gone to great lengths to suggest that people are influenced by their environment and Luther would have been aware of these people and influenced. Yes or no.
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now why would Jesus do such a thing?:shrug:seriously what was Jesus’s purpose calling Simon, Peter?In John 21:15-19, after Jesus forgives Peter for denying Him three times, Jesus reinstates him into the position of Chief Shepherd of the Church.
Good.
I believe he has successors. I just don’t believe they are specific to the office of the Bishop of Rome.Good.
Do you believe that the Church stopped having someone overseeing it at the time of his death (and if so, why would Jesus have appointed an overseer for only one generation?), or do you believe that he had a successor? And if you believe he had a successor, then why don’t you believe that he continues to have successors, as appointed by God (Jesus) until such time as He will return again?
We know that Peter died in Rome; why would his successor not be the Bishop of Rome?
They were all Bishops, ordained with the laying on of hands. None of them were ever self-appointed or self-anointed - all of them took their God-given calling to the Church and were ordained in the proper manner before setting forth to establish their local church communites - they were always in full communion with the other successors of the Apostles, especially Peter’s successor.
Why would he have to be?
I guess there probably are people who have appointed themselves pastor over given congregations, but I am not talking about them.
Because the present Bishop of Rome is who succeeds to the previous Bishop of Rome; that’s why. Peter was the highest authority in Rome at the time of his death, so the successor to his chair (Cathedral of Rome) would receive both his Papacy and his Bishopric.
You’re aware, I trust, that all of the original Protestant leaders were self-appointed. Nobody from the Catholic Church ever ordained them to be Protestant leaders - they were all self-appointed. Their modern day successors trace only back TO them; not THROUGH them, because the Protestant lineage stops/starts with them. (They also had no authority from the Church to ordain themselves, nor anyone else, but that’s a whole other can of worms.)
Everything I said can only apply to Catholic Bishops with Apostolic Succession - it can’t apply to those who trace back to the original Protestants.
This presupposes a direct succession related to a geographic location and an attitude about the office of pastor that I do not see in Scripture.
You’re assuming a ceremonial succession as well as the idea that pastoral authority is bestowed by the institutional church rather than by God through the voice of the calling assembly. In every case the Reformers were ministers called by God in the voices of their various congregations. In many cases they were ordained ministers of the old church as well though that matters very little.
Presupposition: That “Apostolic Succession” must be ordinal, ceremonial and “sacramental”.
This is Biblical. It is prefigured in the Old Testament with the successors of Moses and the successors of David. There is clear, organizational lineal succession. God doesn’t call them out of the blue: they are born into or formally and ceremonially accepted into the roles that God places them into. Even with the Prophets, they are appointed by the Kings; there is none of this idea of wandering in the wilderness and suddenly hearing a voice from Heaven; they were already appointed and known to the whole world before God began to speak to and through them. That’s how the people knew to listen to them, and not to others - because they were lawfully appointed through God’s ordinary chain of command.
The Bishop of Rome has a much more credible claim, based on historical documents that show his lineage.
it’s not “rather than.” God’s mode of calling is through the institutions that He has set up for us.
Based on Biblical precedent. There is nothing in the New Testament to suggest that men can appoint themselves leaders of Churches - they must be appointed by the Apostles. There is no indication anywhere in the New Testament of any change in that system, or that there was to be such a radical change in the structure of the authority of the Church after the death of the Apostles.
In the case of David we are speaking of monarchical succession. David was not a priest nor was he the representative of God to Israel.
Again, only if you assume that this matters.
No doubt and how did Israel get to Egypt? They came there when Joseph called his brothers.
Again, these men did not appoint themselves. In Scripture they heard the voice of God and they obeyed it. In the voice of the community of the church they heard sheep without a shepherd and in that they heard the call to lead them.
David and his successors appointed the Prophets - Jeremiah, Isaiah, Daniel, etc…
The successor of Moses was the High Priest of the Temple. In the years when there was no Temple, the succession was held by the Cohenim, just as it is today among the Jews.
Yes, that’s how it was done back then. Christ’s priesthood is passed down by the laying on of hands in the Sacrament of Ordination.
To appear before the King and receive the anointing of a Prophet. After which they then served as Prophet of Israel.
And God always told them to go to the King to receive their appointments.
There were no Bishops among the early Protestant leaders - the majority were lay men and women, with one or two simple priests.
I assume that, because it’s God’s known method of operation, as we see throughout Scripture.
There is nothing even remotely like this in the New Testament. It is a new Church, but it has a human government - the Apostles and their successors - and it is open to all the world - for membership in it. Read I Corinthians 12, the whole chapter.
You’re mistaken.
No, the high priest was a descendent of Aaron as were all the priests. Moses was a Levite, not a Qohen and although every Qohen is a Levite, not every Levite is a Qohen and Moses never performed any priestly functions at least not ceremonially or ecclesially, and that, after all is what we’re talking about.
Christ’s priesthood is unique and final and is neither shared in by another nor does it succeed to anyone else. And yet, in another sense, every Christian is a priest as we share in His priesthood and present Him to the world and as we are peculiar and unique out of all the family of man.
Ironically enough, the prophets who received this royal anointing were the false ones.
The wicked kings of Israel did appoint “prophets” but these men were those false prophets Elijah, Balaam and others came against.
An example please? I looked and couldn’t find any.
The bible knows no difference between a Bishop and a Presbyter (see Titus 1:5-9 where Paul makes no distinction, using the terms to describe the same office).
And by now you should know that I see a completely different dynamic.
As I’ve already pointed out, put baldly, as you have it here I won’t even bother to disagree, the church is a treasure held in earthen vessels with human successors to the apostles, all of us who repent, believe and are baptized but in an institutional sense those men God calls to guide and lead us.
This makes no sense in terms of the Biblical evidence. When Catholics engage in this kind of extreme revisionism and special pleading, it seriously weakens your case.
The above is an interesting point.And if I actually read the Bible, and actually read the things that it leads to, including the writings of the Early Church, then I still end up with the guy who’s wearing the first century Roman robes.
There is nothing in the Bible itself that points to any Protestant denomination - and if he is reading the Gospel of Matthew with a pure mind and no preconceptions, then he already knows to look for Peter’s successor for his leadership - since he would have read where Moses had successors, and David had successors, and Elijah had successors, so why on earth wouldn’t Peter?
Quite correct.
This has been argued already but the departure of Luther had every bit as much and probably more to do with the entrenched attitudes of the Catholic hierarchy and politics than it did with any desire on his part to leave.
