# Matthew 16 and the Papacy



## Bondman (Feb 12, 2007)

Where can I find the very best treatments of Rome's view of Matthew 16?


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## DTK (Feb 12, 2007)

Bondman said:


> Where can I find the very best treatments of Rome's view of Matthew 16?


A Roman treatment or a critique of Rome's view of Matthew 16?

DTK


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## Bondman (Feb 14, 2007)

DTK said:


> A Roman treatment or a critique of Rome's view of Matthew 16?
> 
> DTK



I was very tired when I started this thread. My apologies. 

I am looking for as many critiques of Rome's mangling of Matthew 16 as I can find. I just finished a three hour phone conversation with my Roman Catholic father on this issue. 

I would also ask for any brothers who read this thread to pray for my father's repentance unto faith to the glory of God.


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## DTK (Feb 14, 2007)

Bondman said:


> I am looking for as many critiques of Rome's mangling of Matthew 16 as I can find. I just finished a three hour phone conversation with my Roman Catholic father on this issue.
> 
> I would also ask for any brothers who read this thread to pray for my father's repentance unto faith to the glory of God.


I know that a number of us will be happy to pray for your father's conversion to Christ.

I encourage you to read Bill Webster's documentation of the patristic exegesis of Matthew 16 here, http://www.christiantruth.com/fathersmt16.html or you might want to purchase his book, William Webster, _Peter and the Rock_ (Battle Ground: Christian Resources Inc., 1996).

You might want to read or get a copy of Johann Joseph Ignaz von Döllinger's book that he wrote under the pen name of "Janus." It's titled _The Pope and the Council_. Von Döllinger was probably the best church historian in the Roman communion when this book was written in 1869, just before Vatican I defined the dogma of papal infallibility. He subsequently left the Roman communion over this issue, because he knew that the claim was ahistorical.

Honest Roman historians know that Rome's exegesis of Matthew 16 cannot bear the weight of the testimony of the ancient church. For example, Yves M.J. Congar, who has written the most extensive book I've seen on the Roman concept of tradition, has made the following observation; speaking of the difficulty of the so-called Unanimous patristic consent as a reliable _locus theologicus_ in Catholic theology, wrote...


> *Yves M.J. Congar:* Application of the principle is difficult, at least at a certain level. In regard to individual texts of Scripture total patristic consensus is unnecessary: quite often, that which is appealed to as sufficient for dogmatic points does not go beyond what is encountered in the interpretation of many texts. But it does sometimes happen that some Fathers understood a passage in a way which does not agree with later Church teaching. One example: the interpretation of Peter’s confession in Matthew 16.16-19. *Except at Rome, this passage was not applied by the Fathers to the papal primacy*; they worked out exegesis at the level of their own ecclesiasiological thought, more anthropological and spiritual than juridical. . . . Historical documentation is at the factual level; it must leave room for a judgment made not in the light of the documentary evidence alone, but of the Church's faith. Yves M.-J. Congar, _Tradition and Traditions: An Historical and a Theological Essay_ (London: Burns & Oats, 1966), pp. 398-399.



DTK


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## Mathetes (Feb 14, 2007)

James White also has a good article here:

http://aomin.org/Epitetaute.html

edit: also, volume II of Webster's Holy Scripture book has a big appendix of church fathers who commented on Matthew 16:18 without seeing anything resembling a papacy. They (mostly) saw Peter's confession as being the rock.

edit again: I see that the appendix that I'm referring to seems to have a lot of the same content as what DTK linked to...so you could get good answers either way, it seems


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## Bondman (Feb 14, 2007)

Many thanks brothers. I am currently reading the esteemed Doctor White's "The Roman Catholic Controversy" which has been a great help as well.

I just received another book "The Problem of Catholicism" by Vittorio Subilia from my pastor today. Maybe I'll make a kind of novice's assessment of it on the PB after reading it. 

Thanks again.


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## DTK (Feb 14, 2007)

Bondman said:


> I just received another book "The Problem of Catholicism" by Vittorio Subilia from my pastor today. Maybe I'll make a kind of novice's assessment of it on the PB after reading it.



I've read it; it's a very helpful book. My copy is pretty well marked up. Subilia was a professor of systematic theology at the Waldensian Theological Seminary in Rome (of all places). You will learn a great deal from this little book. Here are a few quotes I gleaned from it...

*Vittorio Subilia* argued that Johann Möhler and John Henry Newman “introduced Catholic thought to the notion of the seed-idea” and “gave credence to the concept of the evolution of dogma and gave rise to the remark that it was not Newman who had been converted [from Anglicanism] to Catholicism, but Catholicism that had been converted to Newman.” Vittorio Subilia, _The Problem of Catholicism_, trans. Reginald Kissack (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1964), pp. 33-34.

*Vittorio Subilia:* This biological principle is then used to explain the whole history of dogma, even to the extent of explaining the appearance of new doctrinal formulae. Even where, instead of a normal process of development, there is an abnormal transformation, even deformation; even where new and spurious elements are added to the original authentic ones—still, all is justified on the ground that no one can deny that in the beginning, it all existed in germinal form. We can see the dubious nature of this theory very strikingly in the Marian doctrine, which, even in its most improbable developements, can always refer back to its germ of origin, the fact that the mother of Jesus is certainly mentioned in the New Testament. In this way, any heresy whatsoever, granted that it has taken root slowly, almost imperceptibly, can be put forward as the recognition and the rendering explicit of some truth originally implicit, even if in its later stages of growth it has reached positions diametrically opposed to original ones. Vittorio Subilia, _The Problem of Catholicism_, trans. Reginald Kissack (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1964), pp. 35-36.

*Vittorio Subilia:* Why have all attempts, past, and present, to adopt the vernacular in the Roman Church failed? Should we not seek the answer in this contamination by elements that do not belong to the gospel, but have been so naturalized and incorporated into Catholicism that it no longer knows how to rid itself of them? These accretions have come to affect not only forms, but the very conception of God himself. Vittorio Subilia, _The Problem of Catholicism_, trans. Reginald Kissack (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1964), p. 84.

*Vittorio Subilia:* Catholicism is a grandiose synthesis of syncretism and authority. It has become a _complexio oppositorum_, in which gospel elements exist alongside non-gospel elements in a confusion that at times prevents their recognition, and the whole is ruled by a rigid hierarchical discipline. What is the explanation of the phenomenon? It is this. Catholicism has made the norm of the Church the Church itself, without there being over the Church any authoritative point of reference to determine in the ultimate instance what is truth. Vittorio Subilia, _The Problem of Catholicism_, trans. Reginald Kissack (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1964), pp. 103-104.

Fruitful reading,
DTK


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## SolaGratia (Feb 15, 2007)

*More Fruit/Ammunition*

David T. King,

Do you know of any more books on Roman Catholicism. I try to find, _The Pope and the Council by Von Döllinger_ online but could not find it, do you know where I can maybe look?


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## DTK (Feb 15, 2007)

SolaGratia said:


> Do you know of any more books on Roman Catholicism. I try to find, _The Pope and the Council by Von Döllinger_ online but could not find it, do you know where I can maybe look?


There are many books available today on Roman Catholicism. Bill Webster's book, _The Church of Rome at the Bar of History_ is very good. I suppose I would need to know what specific issues, regarding Roman Catholicism, are of interest to you.

I just looked and found a few used copies of _The Pope and the Council_ for sale at http://www.bookfinder.com/ . Mine is a bound photocopy. 

DTK


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## VirginiaHuguenot (Feb 15, 2007)

Available online here:

Johann Joseph Ignaz von Döllinger (aka Janus), _The Pope and the Council_


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## Beoga (Mar 3, 2007)

I want to second (or possibly third) Bill Webster's work. His The Matthew 16 Controversy is an excellent read, fill with tons of quotes from early Church Fathers. It is a good tool when discussing the topic with RC because so many times the RC will go, "The early church fathers said this..." or "the early church fathers said that..." and Bill goes in and actually looks at the early church fathers.
Another book that has been highly recommended to me, which I have, but have not read yet, is Peter: Disciple, Apostle, Martyr by Oscar Cullman.


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## Mathetes (Mar 14, 2007)

I would also recommend a few of Eric Svendsen's books, particularily "Evangelical Answers", and for a shorter (but quite powerful) work, "Upon This Slippery Rock". His book on Mary is good as well.


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