Vol.9 No.6
False Hopes?
History is not kind to the claim that the Pope’s leadership could unite Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant Christians.
By Laci Kovacs
Christians on the brink of the third millennium cannot be faulted for wanting to put away unhappy church divisions left from past centuries. Increasingly, the Roman Catholic Church appeals to Christians for a return to apostolic unity under the Bishop of Rome’s leadership. Are her claims valid?
CATHOLIC ROME WASN’T BUILT IN A DAY
The early church at Rome was only one among many churches. Yet by the Middle Ages her bishops asserted authority over Christians every-where, even over Christians that did not recognize her headship. A glimpse at Christian history tells the amazing story of this development.
During its infant years, the church of Rome did not possess the prestige and sacred association of Jerusalem, or even of Antioch—the mother church of Gentiles and the first center of Paul’s missionary work. Roman Christians were largely immigrants, and until the third century remained a Greek speaking society, separated from pagan, cosmopolitan Roman society.
This separateness made it unpop-ular and suspect. Nero (A.D. 54-68) made good use of the Christians’ unpopularity, blaming them for the great fire of Rome (A.D. 64), a fire which most historians of that period believed he deliberately set. To punish them, Nero torched Christians in the coliseums and his gardens, setting a cruel precedent for future persecutions. Imperial persecution drove Christians into secret worship in underground burial chambers, known as catacombs. Despite these hardships, the influence of the Roman Church grew.
After the destruction of Jerusalem (A.D. 70), the Hebrew influence on Christianity began to wane—usher-ing in the Gentile era. Because Rome was the political center of the known world, creeds, heresies and controversies from other churches eventually reached the bishop of Rome, whereas other bishops may have never heard of them. When the emperor Constantine favored and legalized the Christian religion (A.D. 313), not only did imperial persecution cease, but the bishop of Rome became the emperor’s “spiritual arbitrator” in matters of doctrine.
THE EQUALITY CRISIS
A critical point in Christian history was Constantine’s decision (A.D. 330) to set up his new capital at Byzantium—later re-named Constantinople. Constantinople’s bishop rapidly became as influential as the bishops of Alexandria, Antioch, and Rome; and in the Council of Constantinople (381) he was recognized as second only to the bishop of Rome.
The move actually benefited the bishop of Rome who became the sole figurehead of an ancient city, once the capital of the world.
In A.D. 451 the Council of Chalcedon recognized the pre-eminence of the bishops of Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem—distinguishing them as “patriarchs” of the universal church. Rome protested unsuccessfully against Constantinople’s distinction, beginning an ongoing rivalry between the Eastern and Western Christian Churches for the leadership of Christendom. Once the two churches were alienated in spirit and engaged in an unchristian race for supremacy, all the little doctrinal and ritualistic differences which had developed were given an undue weight, and were branded as heresies and crimes.
In order to justify their claims for supremacy the bishops (popes) of Rome invented the doctrine of “Peter’s successors,” divinely appointed to govern Christendom, including civil and ecclesiastical affairs. This produced the court of no appeal—papal infallibility—unacceptable to the Eastern patriarch and his churches.
A GREAT SCHIsM
Scattered Christian groups had long protested Rome’s ecclesiastical authority. But the Roman spirit could not tolerate dissent and the “heretics” had been persecuted as enemies of the empire. Now Rome faced a more formidable dissenter, the whole of Eastern Christianity.
Throughout the first millennium, Eastern and Western Christendom had skirmished and separated off and on. But the great and last schism resulted from a chain of events.
When Photius, a prominent layman whose “virtue, wisdom and competence were universally acknowledged,” was elected (A.D. 875) as Patriarch of Constan-tinople, Nicholas, Bishop of Rome, rejected the election, asserting that Photius—a mere layman—had wrongly been raised within a single week to the rank of Archbishop without his approval.
When the Eastern Church united in support of Photius in the presence of the Pope’s delegates. Pope Nicholas, furious over the decision, “excom-municated” Photius, Patriarch of Constantinople.
Yet while a two-hundred year chill of silence prevailed, no official schism was pronounced by either Church until A.D. 1054, when a single incident divided Christianity East and West.
The act of destiny officially dividing the two was innocently initiated by Cerularius, Patriarch of Constantinople. He wrote a letter to Bishop John of Trania, Italy, enumerating the ungodly innovations introduced by the Roman Church, and begging him to circulate his letter widely in order that the truth might prevail. Pope Leo IX sent the Eastern Patriarch a sharp rebuke in response.
The emperor of Constantinople, facing a threat to his political interest in Italy, sent a conciliatory request to the Pope for delegates to restore friendly relations. The Pope sent Cardinal Humbert with a different mission, which he fully executed. He laid on the altar of the Church of Saint Sophia in Constantinople a bull of excommunication against the Eastern Church, signed jointly by the other Patriarchs. A millennia later, this papal bull still divides Eastern and Western churches.
Consequently, Eastern and Western Churches have taken different paths. Their names reflect this: the Eastern church calling herself Orthodox—the preservers of Christian faith; the Western Church calling herself Catholic—underscoring her claim to universal headship of the whole Christian world under the authority of the Roman Bishop.
History Repeats Itself
Throughout the second millennium, the popes never ceased to assert that Christians the world over owed them supreme allegiance. Through a misapplication of Christ’s words to Peter, “On this rock I will build my church,” they claimed to be Peter’s successors, the sole representatives of Christ on Earth, Supreme Pontiffs. Many of them succeeded in subjugating the kings of Western Europe to their political schemes. Through the Spanish and Portuguese fleets, they sought to expand their authority into India, China, the Americas, and Africa. All Christians must submit to Rome, and all rulers should recognize that Christ had given the Bishop of Rome the keys to the nations, they claimed. Forced conversions of pagans and Christian heretics were common. Those who would not submit were burned alive, hacked to pieces, thrown from precipices, impaled, or met similar fates.
Halfway through the second millennia, the Protestant reformers stood at the peril of their lives and denounced the popes of Rome as the antichrist of Bible prophecy. Their courageous witness divided Western Europe into north and south—Protestant and Catholic.
The reformation curbed the Catholic Church’s colonial march to world expansion. Without Protest-antism, democracy and representative governments would never have been allowed to flower. The inspiration that moved the fathers of the American revolution to free themselves from tyranny would have been strangled in its cradle.
John Paul II’s call for the unity of Christian churches under the authority of Rome will never bring true and lasting peace. The lessons of history plainly show that wherever Rome asserts her authority, dissension and strife are the sure results and personal freedom and individual conscience is not tolerated.
A return to the unity and vitality of the early Christian church can only happen when we return to the passion of the early church—a passion for God’s Word, not the words of a man or the words of church fathers. Until then, any promise of unity between the various Christian confessions is merely illusory.
Sadly, the lessons of history usually go unheeded. Bible prophecy actually predicts that nearly the entire world will give allegiance to the Bishop of Rome. (See Revelation 13.) They will set up a counterfeit religion and persecute those who refuse to recognize Rome’s spiritual authority. If it happens in our day, may we gain courage from the lives of those who remained true to God in the past. And may we stand true to King Jesus and His Word, who alone must possess our allegiance.
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