Did Jesus have brothers? Most people think the answer is obviously yes. The New Testament repeatedly calls others his brothers. Paul said he met with ‘James, the Lord’s brother,’1 and Matthew identifies Jude (or Judas) as one of Jesus’s brothers.2 It’s easy to find other examples.3

That Scripture so clearly affirms that Jesus has brothers is often taken to be a decisive objection to the Catholic Church’s teaching that Mary remained a virgin throughout her life. If that doctrine were true, Jesus could not have any brothers. But Scripture tells us he did indeed have brothers! Therefore, the doctrine is false.

An Alternative Possibility

Here I want to explore a possibility of which that simple (simplistic?) argument doesn’t take adequate account. It’s true that, ordinarily, if someone is another’s brother, then he and the other share a mother and a father. So, if you learn that Bob is Sam’s brother and you know nothing else about either of them, you may reasonably infer that they share the same biological parents. And, ordinarily, an inference of that kind will be a safe one.

But not always. Two people can be brothers if they share only a father. That phenomenon—half brotherhood—is not especially outlandish. We’re all familiar with the concept, and many of us are or have met half brothers.

Likewise, two people can be brothers even if they share neither a father nor a mother. That phenomenon—step brotherhood or adoption—is also not especially outlandish. We’re all familiar with the concept, and many of us are or have met step- or adopted brothers.

Indeed, something like that concept is in Scripture. Joseph is repeatedly called Jesus’s ‘father,’4 and Jesus his ‘son.’5 Of course, Christians do not believe that Joseph is Jesus’s biological father or that Jesus is his biological son. Scripture tells us that Jesus was conceived of the virgin Mary by the Holy Ghost. We can make sense of Joseph nevertheless being Jesus’s father by recognizing that one can be another’s relative without being the other’s blood relative. Joseph, we can say, is Jesus’s stepfather, or, according to the dictionary, ‘the man who is married to [his] biological (= related by birth) parent, but who is not their biological father.’ It is, of course, entirely sensible to call a stepfather another’s ‘father’ and a stepson another’s ‘son.’ Thus, already in Scripture there is a recognition that familial terms can be applied to people who have no biological relationship.

Here, then, is the possibility I want to explore:

James and Jude (and the other siblings) are Jesus’s stepbrothers.

A stepbrother, according to the dictionary, is ‘the son of a person that one of your parents has married.’ On this view, Mary married Joseph, who had children from a previous marriage. Those children—including James and Jude—became Jesus’s stepbrothers.

This view completely dispatches a strong version of the objection to the Catholic doctrine that Mary was perpetually a virgin. I often hear that this doctrine is incompatible with Scripture or contradicts Scripture. That claim obviously does not work against the view that Jesus’s siblings were his step-siblings. All Scripture says is that Jesus had brothers and sisters; it nowhere expressly says that Jesus’s siblings are his biological siblings or were born of Mary. On the view under consideration, ‘we should not expect [James and Jude] to be called anything except “brothers”,’ as Protestant Bible scholar Richard Baukham confirms.6 So, on this view as on the standard Protestant one, Jesus did indeed have brothers and sisters, making it entirely compatible with the Scriptural data. There is therefore no formal contradiction.

A better objection is this: We already conceded that, when we learn that someone is another’s brother, it is ordinarily reasonable and safe to infer that they are biological brothers. Most people are brothers in that way; fewer are stepbrothers. So, unless we’ve got evidence to doubt the usual inference, we should conclude that James and Jude are Jesus’s brothers, born of Mary. (Actually, we cannot make the usual inference here, because James and Jude are not Jesus’s full brothers, which is how people are most usually related as brothers. But let’s set this wrinkle to the side.)

The point is right as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go very far. Because step- or adoptive brothers are an ordinary phenomenon (even if not the most ordinary), it usually doesn’t take much evidence for us to doubt the inference that two brothers are biologically related.

Suppose that you learn that Bob and Sam are brothers and know nothing else about them. You reasonably conclude that they are biologically related. But now suppose that you learn something new: Sam’s mother has only been married to his father for three years, and Bob is seven years old. Maybe that’s not enough to reject the original inference, but the new evidence should shift the probabilities dramatically. Now, at least, you’re no longer able to confidently believe that Bob and Sam are biologically related, in part because the evidence makes plausible another, quite ordinary hypothesis: Bob is his father’s son from a previous marriage. Of course, there are alternative explanations compatible with the original inference. Maybe the father and mother had extramarital relations four years before getting married that resulted in Bob’s birth. Maybe. It seems, in this scenario, the safest thing to do is to suspend judgment until you learn more about Bob and Sam.

So, what is the evidence to doubt the usual inference? As of right now, we’ve just been entertaining the possibility that Jesus had stepbrothers, but in the absence of evidence, as we’ve seen, we have no reason to block the usual inference that James and Jude are biologically related to Jesus.

The Evidence

Keeping in mind that we don’t need much evidence to make the usual inference unsafe, let’s consider a few lines, both within and without Scripture. We will consider each line of evidence individually, but you should not consider the evidence individually. You should instead wait until the end to see the collective force of the evidence. As we’ll see, there are several lines of evidence that fit more with the hypothesis that James and Jude are Jesus’s stepbrothers than that they are his biological brothers.

1. Joseph falls out of the story early.

Joseph appears most prominently in the gospels of Matthew and Luke. These gospels, unlike the others, include accounts of Jesus’s birth and infancy, at which Joseph was present. Luke also tells some stories about Jesus’s adolescence in which Joseph appears as a character.7 In both gospels, Joseph falls out of the narrative early. After the second chapter, Joseph plays no role in Matthew. And after the stories about Jesus’s adolescence, Joseph plays no role in Luke. Joseph plays no role at all in Mark and John, which are principally about Jesus’s adult ministry. All gospels, then, fail to depict Joseph as present when Jesus is an adult; he is last seen when Jesus is a child.

Let’s consider two other facts that will help us to see the upshot of Joseph’s falling out of the story. Joseph is not depicted as being at the crucifixion of his son, Jesus, and Jesus gives Mary, his wife, to the care of John.

First, the gospels name people present at Jesus’s crucifixion, but Joseph isn’t amongst them. John says that, ‘standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.’8 Luke says that ‘all his acquaintances and the women who had followed him from Galilee’ were there.9 Matthew says that there were ‘many women there,’ including ‘Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Joseph and the mother of the sons of Zebedee.’10 And Mark says that ‘Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome’ were there.11 Each of the gospels thus goes out of their way to report that relatively minor figures like acquaintances and Mary Magdalene and the mother of the sons of Zebedee were present. But not Joseph.

Second, Jesus gives Mary to the care of John just before he dies,12 a point to which we shall presently return. John, in turn, tells us that ‘from that hour the disciple took her to his own home.’13 Mary’s living with another man would be highly irregular if Mary’s husband, Joseph, were still alive.

Here’s the upshot: These data strongly support the inference that Joseph died sometime before Jesus’s adult ministry. He is not mentioned as having played any role during that period. If he were alive when Jesus was on the cross, it is inconceivable that he would not be there to comfort his wife and his son. And, conclusively, Jesus thinks it necessary to give Mary to the care of another man. I conclude that Joseph died sometime before Jesus’s adult ministry.

That conclusion makes it plausible that Joseph was significantly older than Mary when they married. Given that Mary was very likely quite young at that time, it is plausible that Joseph was in his 40s or 50s at that point. Of course, it’s also possible that Joseph and Mary were about the same age, but that Joseph died prematurely a relatively young man. That sometimes happens.

For now, we need only see that these data are expected on the hypothesis that Joseph had a previous and fruitful marriage. (Indeed, that hypothesis, if true, would guarantee that Joseph was much older than Mary.) Old men generally die sooner than their relatively young wives. The data are a bit less expected on the hypothesis that Mary was Joseph’s first wife—in the old days, people married early, which would make Joseph, a young man, the victim of an untimely death (less common than a later death).

2. Jesus’s brothers doubted him.

Our next piece of evidence is that Jesus’s brothers doubted that Jesus was who he claimed to be. John tells us that ‘not even his brothers believed in him,’14 and Mark suggests they thought he was ‘out of his mind.’15

Compatible with this is what our other evidence suggests: Jesus’s brothers were not at his crucifixion. Given that Mary, their alleged mother, did go, and given that Jesus was their older brother, we’d expect them to be there, too. But we don’t see them there.

All of this is much less surprising if Jesus’s brothers are older brothers from Joseph’s prior marriage than that they’re his younger brothers. If Jesus were their older brother and Mary their mother, they’d have grown up being taught about who Jesus was and seeing him work wonders, vindicating what they’d been taught. But if they were older than Jesus and born of another woman, we’d expect them to go their own way sooner, perhaps not long after Jesus’s birth. (Though not far away in space, as they are at different events with Jesus and Mary as depicted in our sources.) In that case, they’d have far more cause to be suspicious of Jesus’s claims than as younger brothers who grew up with him.

Confirming this a little more, if Jesus’s brothers grew up with him and were taught to look up to him, we’d expect them to be at his crucifixion with their mother, if for no other reason than to comfort her. Less so if they had a more distant relationship with Jesus, no relationship with Mary, and were unbelievers.

3. Jesus gives Mary to the care of John before he dies.

We may now turn to what I think is the most important piece of evidence, one that fits hand-in-glove with the other pieces we’ve considered: Jesus gives Mary to the care of John. We’ve already considered how this bears on the question of Joseph’s age, but now we’ll see how it bears on the ultimate question. Here is the relevant passage in full:

When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved [John] standing nearby, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son!” Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother!” And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home.16

We already saw that this passage decisively confirms that Joseph was not alive to care for Mary, or else she certainly would not have gone into the home of another man from that hour on.

This passage also suggests that Mary had no other children who could care for her, either.

Consider our ordinary inference: Jesus’s brothers are his brothers because Mary gave birth to them. In that case, Mary has younger male children who could care for her. And the moral expectation at that time, as today, was that a widowed mother’s children would care for her in her old age. Paul makes this point clear:

Honor widows who are truly widows. But if a widow has children or grandchildren, let them first learn to show godliness to their own household and to make some return to their parents, for this is pleasing in the sight of God…But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.17

If Mary was not the mother of James and Jude, Jesus’s giving Mary to someone else makes good sense. If James and Jude were Mary’s children, by contrast, Jesus’s giving Mary to someone else makes far less sense: Her biological children were there to care for her, consistent with moral expectations, and as their mother, she presumably would’ve preferred her own children to a very young man who was not her child. (John died in very old age around AD 100.)

Protestants usually object as follows: James and Jude were unbelievers, and Jesus wouldn’t have wanted to leave his mother in the care of unbelievers. The objection doesn’t work.

James would not only become a believer in short order, but one of the most prominent believers in the history of the church. The apostles appointed him the first leader of the mother church at Jerusalem. James renders his judgment at the Council of Jerusalem.18 Paul calls him a ‘pillar.’19 And, most importantly, Jesus personally appears to James after his death.20 Jesus knew all of this before his death. If James were an unbeliever at that point, he’d remain so for only a few days. Yet from that hour to the end of her earthly life, Mary is given to the care of John, even though her alleged son, James, would become the most prominent Christian in her church.

There is no doubt whatever that this evidence is much more expected on the hypothesis that James and Jude were not sons of Mary than on the hypothesis that they were. If they were not, Jesus’s giving Mary to John forevermore is utterly unsurprising. If they were, it is at least somewhat surprising. All should admit, then, that this bit of data is some evidence against the proposition that James and Jude were born of Mary.

4. Jude refers to himself as the brother of James.

For our final bit of scriptural data, we’ll consider the preface to Jude’s epistle. Here is how he identifies himself:

Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James, To those who are called, beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ: May mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you.21

Jude, recall, is supposed to be Jesus’s younger biological brother. If, as Christians believe, Mary was a virgin at Jesus’s birth, then Jesus was her firstborn son, and all others would be his younger brothers. In that case, we’d expect Jude to identify himself as the brother of Jesus, his eldest and most prominent brother. But he doesn’t. He instead identifies himself as the lesser known (though still prominent) James. For his part, James does not identify himself as the brother of Jesus in his own epistle, only as his ‘servant.’22

Though far from dispositive, this bit of evidence fits well with what we’ve seen so far. If James and Jude were brothers from Joseph’s other marriage, and James was the oldest, it would make good sense for him to identify himself as James’s brother. Less so if Jesus was his older brother.

5. Evidence outside Scripture affirms that James and Jude were Jesus’s stepbrothers.

We may now look outside Scripture to see if there were any early traditions floating about that confirm what the above scriptural data suggest. Lo and behold, there were indeed such traditions. Baukham reports that ‘the idea that the brothers and sisters of Jesus were children of Joseph by a previous marriage is found in three second-century Christian works (the Protoevangelium of James, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Peter).’23 He acknowledges that it ‘looks like this was an early second-century Syrian Christian tradition’ and that ‘[r]eliable tradition about prominent early Christian leaders like the Lord’s brothers could still have been available at this time and place.’

Let’s consider just the Protoevangelium of James to see whether it matches what we have seen Scripture independently suggests. Before he marries Mary, the author depicts Joseph as ‘hav[ing] children’ and as being an ‘old man.’ He depicts Mary as being ‘young.’ The author thus betrays the existence of an early tradition that Joseph was a relatively elderly widower who had children before he met Mary—exactly what we saw Scripture independently suggests.

At this point, many Protestants dismiss the Protoevangelium of James as a non-canonical work. The objection misses the mark. It is used in this context, not because it is a reliable or even orthodox witness, but for the limited purpose of establishing that there was an early tradition floating about that Joseph was a relatively elderly man who had children from a previous marriage. And with respect to that purpose, the Protoevangelium of James is golden evidence.

Conclusion

Our data thus converge nicely on one hypothesis: Jesus’s brothers were his stepbrothers. Joseph’s absence from Jesus’s adult ministry and the crucifixion suggest that he had died as a relatively elderly man. Jesus’s brothers didn’t initially believe in him, which suggests that they didn’t spend their whole childhood with him. Jesus thinks it necessary to leave Mary to the care of John rather than Joseph or James, which suggests that Joseph was dead and that James wasn’t her son. And Jude identifies himself as the brother of James, which suggests that James was his oldest brother. The evidence of Scripture thus makes Joseph’s prior marriage a live option, and that live option is explicitly endorsed outside Scripture—a remarkable coincidence.

None of this is meant to establish that Mary was a perpetual virgin. A Protestant could maintain, for example, that Mary had no other children but that she tried (and failed) to have other children.

Rather, what I have argued blocks one Protestant argument against the perpetual virginity: Mary couldn’t have remained a virgin because she gave birth to other children. In the light of the evidence, Protestants cannot confidently draw that conclusion.

As we saw, it only takes a little evidence to make unsafe an inference from general statements that someone is another’s brother. And we have more than a little evidence converging on the hypothesis that, on the contrary, Jesus’s brothers were not his biological brothers. Accordingly, Protestants should suspend judgment on the question, and recognize that there is at least one other plausible hypothesis that is compatible with Scripture’s report that Jesus had brothers.

Polycarp, sometime bishop of Smyrna, was an influential Christian leader in the early church. Born around AD 70, he would have been just about 30 years old at the death of the last apostle. He is an important witness to apostolic teaching because, in his words, the apostles “preached the gospel to us.”1 He went to his reward around AD 156, after suffering martyrdom for his Lord.

Polycarp is unique amongst the apostolic fathers in the way modern Christians have perceived him. Unlike Ignatius, sometime bishop of Antioch, whose letters were perceived by some Protestant reformers as too Catholic, Polycarp is revered even by the most low-church Reformed Protestants to this day. It is an interesting phenomenon.

I’ll argue that our evidence suggests that he was no less Catholic than Ignatius. What we know about Polycarp comes from a handful of sources. Fortunately, they’re early. We have one example of Polycarp’s own work, and we shall see that it tells us more than what is apparent from the text alone. We have Ignatius’s letters to Polycarp and to the church he led. We have a near-contemporaneous account of his martyrdom by his followers. And we have the testimony of Irenaeus, a man who knew Polycarp in his youth and who profited from his teachings. As we shall see, these sources paint quite a Catholic picture of this early bishop.

1. Polycarp and Ignatius, Brother Bishops

Let’s start with Polycarp’s letter to the Philippians, which he wrote around AD 108. I want to focus on a point that is sometimes overlooked: Polycarp was Ignatius’s dear friend and brother bishop. That observation, we will see, has dramatic implications for how we should look at Polycarp’s theology. The reason is that Polycarp tells the Philippians to stay away from false teachers and heretics. Yet Polycarp was not only in communion with Ignatius, but was friends with him in addition.

What’s our evidence for those propositions? First, Polycarp instructs the Philippians to stay away from false teachers. He tells them that “everyone who does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is antichrist.”2 He tells them “whoever does not acknowledge the testimony of the cross is of the devil.”3 And he tells them “whoever twists the sayings of the Lord to suit his own sinful desires and claims that there is neither resurrection nor judgment—well, that person is the firstborn of Satan.”4 As Irenaeus reports, Polycarp had a reputation for refusing to “even converse with mutilators of the truth.”5 When the heretic Marcion asked Polycarp, “Don’t you recognize me?” Polycarp replied, “I do indeed: I recognize the firstborn of Satan!”6 We therefore know that Polycarp was careful not to commune with false teachers.

Second, we know that Polycarp did not regard Ignatius as a false teacher because he names Ignatius as an example of Jesus’s patient endurance in the face of suffering. He reminds the Philippians that Jesus took on “our sins in his own body upon the tree” and “for our sakes he endured all things, in order that we might live in him.”7 “Let us, therefore, become imitators of his patient endurance, and if we should suffer for the sake of his name, let us glorify him.”8

Here’s the key: He urges the Philippians to “exercise unlimited endurance, like that which you saw with your own eyes not only in the blessed Ignatius … but also in others from your congregation and in Paul himself and the rest of the apostles.”9 Ignatius “did not run in vain but with faith and righteousness.”10 He was now “with the Lord, with whom [he] suffered,” for Ignatius “did not love the present world but the one who died on our behalf and was raised by God for our sakes.”11 For Polycarp, then, Ignatius’s suffering and martyrdom were, with the apostles themselves, an example of the patient endurance Polycarp thought Christians should imitate.

From this evidence, we may conclude that Polycarp did not regard Ignatius as a false teacher or heretic. And here’s the point: Polycarp was in a position to know, and did know, what Ignatius taught. The reason is that Polycarp not only had Ignatius’s letters, but ratified them and commended them to Christians:

We are sending to you the letters of Ignatius that were sent to us by him together with any others that we have in our possession, just as you requested. They are appended to this letter; you will be able to receive great benefit from them, for they deal with faith and patient endurance and every kind of spiritual growth that has to do with our Lord.12

We may infer a couple of interesting conclusions from this. First, there is no doubt whatever that Polycarp was in communion with Ignatius, who wrote his letters expressly with “love for Polycarp.”13 Second, the authenticity of Polycarp’s letter stands or falls with the authenticity of Ignatius’s letters, because Polycarp refers to them expressly. If they were later forgeries, then Polycarp’s letter would have been interpolated. Finally, assuming, as most scholars argue, that both Polycarp’s and Ignatius’s letters are authentic, then it is clear that Polycarp agreed with the teachings in Ignatius’s letters. We can therefore use the letters Polycarp commended to the Philippians as evidence of what Polycarp himself likely believed. This, in turn, is striking corroboration that Ignatius’s teachings were apostolic, or else this apostolic man, Polycarp, would not have commended them.

Should the teachings in Ignatius’s letters give any Protestants pause? Much will depend on which Protestantism we’re talking about, but what follows are some examples of what Ignatius taught in the letters Polycarp preserved and sent to the Philippians. I will leave it up to the reader to decide for himself.

• Threefold order and Monarchical Bishops:

  • “It is obvious, therefore, that we must regard the bishop as the Lord himself.”14

  • “[T]he holy presbyters likewise have not taken advantage of [your bishop’s] youthful appearance but defer to him as one who is wise in God.”15

  • “It is right, therefore, that we not just be called Christians, but that we actually be Christians, unlike some who call a man bishop but do everything without regard for him.”16

  • “Be eager to do everything in godly harmony, the bishop presiding in the place of God and the presbyters in the place of the council of the apostles and the deacons, who are especially dear to me, since they have been entrusted with the ministry of Jesus Christ, who before the ages was with the Father and appeared at the end of time. … [B]e united with the bishop and with those who lead, as an example and lesson of incorruptibility. Therefore, as the Lord did nothing without the Father, either by himself or through the apostles (for he was united with him), so you must not do anything without the bishop and the presbyters.”17

  • “Similarly, let everyone respect the deacons as Jesus Christ, just as they should respect the bishop, who is a model of the Father, and the presbyters as God’s council and as the band of the apostles. Without these no group can be called a church.”18

  • “That is, whoever does anything without the bishop and council of presbyters and deacons does not have a clean conscience.”19

  • “You must all follow the bishop as Jesus Christ followed the Father, and follow the council of presbyters as you would the apostles; respect the deacons as the commandment of God. Let no one do anything that has to do with the church without the bishop.”20

  • “[T]he one who does anything without the bishop’s knowledge serves the devil.”21

  • “Polycarp, bishop of the church of the Smyrneans, or rather who has God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ as his bishop: … Let nothing be done without your consent, nor do anything yourself without God’s consent, as indeed you do not.”22

• Eucharist:

  • “[G]ather together in grace … in order that you may obey the bishop and the council of presbyters with an undisturbed mind, breaking one bread, which is the medicine of immortality, the antidote we take in order not to die but to live forever in Jesus Christ.”23

  • “I take no pleasure in corruptible food or the pleasures of this life. I want the bread of God, which is the flesh of Christ who is of the seed of David; and for drink I want his blood, which is incorruptible love.”24

  • “Take care, therefore, to participate in one Eucharist (for there is one flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ, and one cup that leads to unity through his blood; there is one altar, just as there is one bishop, together with the council of presbyters and the deacons, my fellow servants), in order that whatever you do, you do in accordance with God.”25

  • “Now note well those who hold heretical opinions about the grace of Jesus Christ that came to us; note how contrary they are to the mind of God. … They abstain from the Eucharist and prayer because they refuse to acknowledge that the Eucharist is the flesh of our savior Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins and which the Father by his goodness raised up.”26

• Sacraments, Eucharist, baptism, and marriage:

  • “Let no one do anything that has to do with the church without the bishop. Only that Eucharist which is under the authority of the bishop (or whomever he himself designates) is to be considered valid. Wherever the bishop appears, there let the congregation be; just as wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the catholic church. It is not permissible either to baptize or to hold a love feast without the bishop. But whatever he approves is also pleasing to God, in order that everything you do may be trustworthy and valid.”27

  • “And it is proper for men and women who marry to be united with the consent of the bishop, so that the marriage may be in accordance with the Lord and not due to lustful passions.”28

• Presidency of the Church of Rome:

  • “[T]he church beloved and enlightened through the will of the one who willed all things that exist, in accordance with faith in and love for Jesus Christ our God, which also presides in the place of the district of the Romans, worthy of God, worthy of honor, worthy of blessing, worthy of praise, worthy of success, worthy of sanctification, and presiding over love.”29

  • “You have never envied anyone; you taught others. And my wish is that those instructions that you issue when teaching disciples will remain in force.”30

  • “I do not give you orders like Peter and Paul: they were apostles, I am a convict; they were free, but I am even now still a slave.”31

  • “Remember in your prayers the church in Syria, which has God for its shepherd in my place. Jesus Christ alone will be its bishop—as will your [= the church of Rome] love.”32

• Indefectibility of the Church of Rome

  • “[T]o those who are united in flesh and spirit to every commandment of his, who have been filled with the grace of God without wavering and filtered clear of every alien color.”33

• Contra Sola Scriptura

  • “For I heard some people say, ‘If I do not find it in the archives [= Scriptures], I do not believe it in the gospel.’ And when I said to them, ‘It is written,’ they answered me, ‘That is precisely the question.’ But for me, the ‘archives’ are Jesus Christ, the unalterable archives are his cross and death and his resurrection and the faith that comes through him; by these things I want, through your prayers, to be justified.”34

  • “For I know and believe that he was in the flesh even after the resurrection; and when he came to Peter and those with him, he said to them: ‘Take hold of me; handle me and see that I am not a disembodied demon.’ And immediately they touched him and believed, being closely united with his flesh and blood.”35

• Celibacy

  • “If anyone is able to remain chaste to the honor of the flesh of the Lord, let him so remain without boasting. If he boasts, he is lost; and if it becomes known to anyone other than the bishop, he is ruined.”36

In my view, Polycarp could not have ratified and commended Ignatius’s letters if he were a proto-Protestant. He instead looks far more Catholic.

2. Polycarp, Apostolic Bishop, Defender of Apostolic Tradition

Irenaeus is our next witness. He wrote within a few decades of Polycarp’s martyrdom. And he tells us that he knew and heard Polycarp in his youth.37

Much of the information we have about Polycarp comes from Irenaeus. He tells us relatively mundane details, such as that Polycarp “lived a long time and passed away in extreme old age.”38 But he also tells us significant details about Polycarp’s status as an apostolic father. As we saw, Polycarp himself confirmed that he heard the apostles preach the gospel. And his friend, Ignatius, tells us that Polycarp was the bishop of Smyrna. Irenaeus adds that “not only was [he] instructed by apostles and conversed with many who had seen the Lord, but also was appointed by the apostles in Asia as Bishop of Smyrna.”39

He was not alone. A little before Irenaeus wrote, the Muratorian Fragment reported that John’s “bishops … had been urging him” to write a Gospel.40 And a little after Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria confirms more directly that, upon his return to Ephesus, John “used to go, when asked, to the neighboring Gentile districts to appoint bishops, reconcile churches, or ordain someone designated by the spirit.”41

Let’s pause to consider what all this means: The apostles were going around appointing monarchical bishops before they died, which explains why, within a decade of the death of John, Ignatius could name many Asian bishops in his letters.

Perhaps more importantly, Polycarp was no believer in sola scriptura. We know that because he went around teaching Christians apostolic tradition—what we had heard from the apostles in addition to what they left for us in writing. We can infer this from Polycarp’s reputation for teaching what he heard the apostles preach to him and from the fact that the apostles did not reduce most of what they taught to writing. (“John, it is said, had used only the spoken word until he finally took to writing.”42)

Irenaeus makes the point explicit. Polycarp “continually taught the things he had learned from the apostles, the traditions of the church that alone are true.”43 Elsewhere, Irenaeus says, again, that Polycarp “reported his discussions with John and others who had seen the Lord.”44 Polycarp, says Irenaeus, “recalled their very words, what they reported about the Lord and his miracles and his teaching—things that Polycarp had heard directly from eyewitnesses.”45 Irenaeus identifies himself as an eyewitness to Polycarp’s practice: “I listened eagerly to these things at that time.”46 And he identifies corroborating sources: “These facts are confirmed by all the churches of Asia and the successors of Polycarp to this day.”47

We are lucky to have an example that illustrates Polycarp’s reputation as a defender of apostolic tradition:

In the time of Anicetus [bishop of Rome], he visited Rome and converted many among these heretics to the church of God, proclaiming that the one and only truth he had received from the apostles was that transmitted to the church. And there are those who heard him tell how John, the Lord’s disciple, went to take a bath at Ephesus, but, seeing Cerinthus inside, he rushed out of the bathhouse without bathing, crying, “Let’s get out of here lest the place fall in: Cerinthus, the enemy of the truth, is inside!”48

That express condemnation of Cerinthianism is not in Scripture; it strains credulity, though, that Polycarp would not have thought it authoritative as coming from the mouth of John himself. Yet it is preserved for us only in tradition. In short, there is no doubt that Polycarp considered the “discussions” he had “with John and others who had seen the Lord” as authoritative, even if not in written Scripture, because he “continually” taught Christians based on those discussions.49

3. Polycarp, Catholic Martyr

We arrive now at our last source: The Martyrdom of Polycarp. The letter is the “oldest written account of a Christian martyrdom outside the New Testament.”50 Between AD 155 and 160,51 Polycarp’s followers in the church of Smyrna gave an account of the martyrdom of their bishop for the benefit of “all the communities of the holy and catholic church sojourning in every place.”52 If you have not read the account of his death, you should.

For present purposes, the Martyrdom confirms much of what we have already seen in evidence. The Smyrneans describe their leader as “the most remarkable Polycarp, who proved to be an apostolic and prophetic teacher in our own time, bishop of the catholic church in Smyrna.”53 Polycarp, then, was known, by himself, his friends, his followers, and Christians in distant lands, as a bishop who knew the apostles.

Interestingly, Polycarp’s followers revered his relics. “And so later on,” they reported, “we took up his bones, which are more valuable than precious stones and finer than refined gold, and deposited them in a suitable place.”54 They gathered there frequently:

There, when we gather together as we are able, with joy and gladness, the Lord will permit us to celebrate the birthday of his martyrdom in commemoration of those who have already fought in the contest and also for the training and preparation of those who will do so in the future.55

Conclusion

The primary evidence paints a picture of Polycarp that is very unlike what we’d expect if some brands of Protestantism were true. Polycarp, we learned, heard the apostles’ preaching. He was appointed by them to be the monarchical bishop of Smyrna. In that role, he went around the Roman world preaching what he heard the apostles teach. For Polycarp, these apostolic traditions were authoritative even if not preserved in written Scripture.

We also learned many of Polycarp’s beliefs from the letters of Ignatius. As we saw, Polycarp expressly ratified his friend’s letters by sending them to foreign churches, commending them for instruction. We further saw that Ignatius’s teachings were very Catholic. It is perhaps for that reason that some of the Protestant reformers suspected that Ignatius’s letters were forgeries.56

The fact that it was Protestant scholars who decisively demonstrated the authenticity of Ignatius’s letters is one of the great ironies of the history of early-church scholarship. Here is how Charles Gore, the great Protestant author of Roman Catholic Claims, put it:

[W]e cannot but congratulate ourselves that now for the third time in the history of literary controversy their genuineness has been vindicated by an English scholar. It is perhaps hardly too much to say that Dr. Lightfoot has now at last brought the controversy to an end.57

Given their genuineness, the inference is overwhelming that Polycarp believed in the apostolic origin of the threefold order of bishops, presbyters, and deacons; that he believed in the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist; that he believed that monarchical bishops had the authority over the sacraments; that he had a high view of the church of Rome; and that he rejected proto-sola scriptura. Polycarp, then, was no proto-Protestant.

In the first three parts of this series, we saw considerable evidence that there were bishops of Rome throughout the second century, and we will return to even more second-century evidence in due course. In this part, we will jump into the first century before we return to the second.

I will argue that Peter was the first chief presbyter or bishop of Rome. The argument is simple. It is, moreover, what I will call Protestant-friendly. By this I mean that it will rest on premises that Protestants can—indeed, should—accept. If I am right, then Protestants who believe that there were no bishops of Rome in the early second century have to believe that there was a gap: Nobody succeeded the first bishop of Rome until, decades later, the church of Rome appointed another chief presbyter.

Before we get to the argument, we should be clear about our terms. I shall understand by “bishop” a church’s chief presbyter, or the presbyter of a citywide church who is set above the rest as the church’s presiding leader or overseer. Or, as Irenaeus put it, the presbyter who “headed the church.”3 My claim is that Peter was the chief presbyter of Rome in that sense until he suffered martyrdom there around AD 65.

Above I promised a simple argument. It proceeds in just a few steps. First, Peter lived, preached, and died in Rome as a presbyter of the church there. Second, Peter would’ve been the overseeing authority in any church at which he was uniquely present apart from other apostles. Finally, before Peter died, he was the first apostle to give the church of Rome its apostolic character and, at times, was the only apostle present. From these propositions, I shall argue that Peter was the chief presbyter of the church of Rome. In a word, its bishop.

1. Peter the Presbyter Lived, Preached, and Died in Rome

At the end of this series, I intend to give a more thorough treatment of Peter’s life and death in Rome as a presbyter, from an historical perspective.4 For now, I will argue that the proposition that Peter lived, preached, and died in Rome as a presbyter is, from a Protestant perspective,5 not subject to reasonable doubt. If so, the first two steps of my Protestant-friendly argument are secure.

Peter’s First Epistle settles the question. The letter begins by unambiguously identifying its author, Peter, and its audience—Christians in Asia Minor.6 Peter then unambiguously refers to himself as a presbyter:

So I exhort the presbyters among you, as a fellow presbyter and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed: shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you; not for shameful gain, but eagerly; not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock.7

Peter calls himself a presbyter, and so he is. He also tells us that presbyters shepherd their flocks and exercise oversight over them. We may thus infer that, wherever Peter wrote this letter from, he shepherded and oversaw the flock that was the church there (though, for now, we may reserve the question whether he did so above the other presbyters of Rome).

Peter all but tells us he wrote from Rome. At the end of the letter, he writes:

By Silvanus, a faithful brother as I regard him, I have written briefly to you, exhorting and declaring that this is the true grace of God. Stand firm in it. ¹³ She who is at Babylon, who is likewise chosen, sends you greetings, and so does Mark, my son. Greet one another with the kiss of love.8

“She” “refers to the church.”9 And “Babylon” was “an early Christian code-name for Rome.”10 In the first century, “the symbolism of Babylon for Rome became frequent in Jewish and Christian circles.”11 In the early second century (c. AD 110), Papias, bishop of Hierapolis, confirmed that Peter referred to Rome “figuratively as Babylon in the words, ‘Your sister church in Babylon, chosen together with you, sends you greetings; and so does my son Mark.’”12 Putting this together, Peter was a presbyter of the church of Rome, where he “exercis[ed] oversight.”13

Peter suffered martyrdom. Let us begin with the fourth gospel. Before the crucifixion, Jesus tells Peter, “Where I am going you cannot follow me now, but you will follow afterward.”14 Peter responds, “Lord, why can I not follow you now? I will lay down my life for you.”15 After the resurrection, Jesus has a conversation with Peter in which Jesus commands him to “tend my sheep.”16 At the end of the conversation, Jesus tells Peter, “when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go.”17 John tells us that “he said [this] to show by what kind of death he was to glorify God”18—a probable reference to Roman crucifixion.19 Peter followed his Lord to glory.

We know, then, on the authority of the New Testament, that Peter wrote from Rome as a presbyter and that he was martyred.

Other sources confirm that conclusion. Clement of Rome, writing from Rome just a few years after Peter is supposed to have died,20 reports the martyrdoms of both Peter and Paul. Here is what he says about Peter:

But to pass from the examples of ancient times, let us come to those champions who lived nearest to our time. Let us consider the noble examples that belong to our own generation. Because of jealousy and envy the greatest and most righteous pillars were persecuted and fought to the death. Let us set before our eyes the good apostles. There was Peter, who because of unrighteous jealousy endured not one or two but many trials, and thus having given his testimony went to his appointed place of glory.21

In the next century, Dionysius, sometime bishop of Corinth, tells us that Peter taught “in Italy” and was “martyred” there.22 Irenaeus tells us that “Peter and Paul were preaching at Rome.”23

Gaius, a Roman presbyter, said he could “point out the trophies [monuments] of the apostles. If you will go to the Vatican or the Ostian Way, you will find the trophies of those who founded this church.”24 These “shrines at their graves or cenotaphs over the sites of their martyrdoms” were “dramatically confirmed by archaeology” in the 20th century.25 Here is how Eusebius summarized the evidence as it had come to him:

So it happened that this man [Nero], the first to be announced publicly as a fighter against God, was led on to slaughter the apostles. It is related that in his reign Paul was beheaded in Rome itself and that Peter was also crucified, and the cemeteries there still called by the names of Peter and Paul confirm the record.26

In the light of the evidence, says Duffy, “most scholars accept the early Christian tradition that Peter and Paul … lived, preached and died in Rome.”27

2. Peter, Chief Presbyter

We arrive at the second step of the argument: Peter would’ve been the overseeing authority in any church at which he was uniquely present apart from other apostles. By this I mean that, if no other apostles were present, Peter would have been set above the presbyters of a local church as the overseeing authority. This step in the argument does not assume Petrine primacy (though primacy is, in my view, obvious in Scripture).

I will consider two lines of evidence that point in the same direction. First, we have a model that looks like what would be the situation at Rome if Peter were the sole apostle there. Second, we have more direct evidence about Peter in particular that guarantees that he would have been the chief presbyter at Rome if no other apostle were present.

First, consider the mother church, Jerusalem. James the brother of Jesus was a presbyter of the church. And he was certainly the chief presbyter of that church. Here is how one scholar put it:

Already before Herod Agrippa struck his blow the Twelve had begun to set out each one to his allotted sphere of evangelisation, the care of the Mother Church being confided to James, the Lord’s Brother, assisted by a body of presbyters, of whom he was one, but over whom he presided with something of monarchical authority. It would be an anachronism to give him the Gentile title of Bishop, but in this earliest constitution of the Jerusalem Church we have the model which other Churches were to follow and out of which episcopacy grew.28

It is plausible to suppose that Peter would have brought the Jerusalem constitution with him to Rome.

Second, Jesus gave Peter authority that would have set him above other presbyters of Rome. Several passages demonstrate this, but the most obvious is Matthew 16, in which Jesus makes two promises to Peter in response to his confession of faith:

Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”

Here Jesus tells Peter that he will have (1) the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and (2) the authority to bind and loose, in heaven and earth. For our purposes, we may allow the (implausible) Protestant view that Peter does not uniquely possess the keys or this authority. (I have argued against that view here.) Even if the other apostles also had the keys and the power to bind and loose, Peter surely had them as well. And that means that, if Peter was a presbyter of the church of Rome and no other key holder was present, he would have been the only individual presbyter with the power to bind and loose. And he apparently exercised it: In his letter to the Romans, Ignatius, writing around AD 107 as the second bishop of Antioch, tells us that Peter commanded the church of Rome.29 It follows that, in the church of Rome, Peter had authority over the other presbyters there.

3. Peter, the Unique Apostolic Presbyter

Irenaeus associates the church of Rome with both Peter and Paul.30 We saw above that both were martyred and buried at Rome. But Paul did not give the church of Rome its apostolic character. And before Peter died, he was likely the only apostle at Rome.

Let us begin with Paul’s letter to the Romans. In it, Paul makes clear that he did not found the church. He tells the Roman Christians that “I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on someone else’s foundation.”31 For that “reason,” Paul had “often been hindered from coming to see” the church of Rome.32 Paul is saying that he did not previously go to Rome, because doing so would build on another person’s foundation.

“Who was he? All tradition answers with one voice the name of St. Peter.”33 There is evidence for this answer beyond what we have already covered, but what we have already covered should suffice for now. We know from the pen of Peter himself that he was a presbyter of the church of Rome. As he suffered martyrdom around AD 64, he wrote his letter sometime before then. Meanwhile, Paul wrote to the Romans around AD 57. Our direct evidence, from Peter and Paul, at once suggests that another man had already laid his foundation at Rome and that Peter had planted himself there. It is difficult to resist the inference that the “someone else” to which Paul refers is Peter.

Other sources confirm what the evidence from Peter and Paul suggests. Eusebius records an account of the origin of Mark’s Gospel:

Peter’s hearers, not satisfied with a single hearing or with the unwritten teaching of the divine message, pleaded with Mark, whose Gospel we have, to leave them a written summary of the teaching given them verbally, since he was a follower of Peter. Nor did they cease until they persuaded him and so caused the writing of what is called the Gospel according to Mark.34

Papias “confirms” that Peter “was delighted at their enthusiasm and approved the reading of [Mark’s Gospel] in the churches.”35 As we saw, Peter names Mark in his letter.36 Our evidence therefore converges: Peter and Paul’s letters jointly suggest that Peter led the church of Rome, and other sources confirm that he exercised his authority there for acts as significant as ratifying a gospel and approving its use in the churches.

Why, then, did Paul wish to visit Rome? It was not to share in the governance the church. Nor was it principally to “preach the gospel” there.37 As we saw, to do so would be trespass on “someone else’s foundation.”38 Instead, Paul planned to visit Rome as a stop on his way to Spain:

But now, since I no longer have any room for work in these regions, and since I have longed for many years to come to you, I hope to see you in passing as I go to Spain, and to be helped on my journey there by you, once I have enjoyed your company for a while. At present, however, I am going to Jerusalem bringing aid to the saints. For Macedonia and Achaia have been pleased to make some contribution for the poor among the saints at Jerusalem. For they were pleased to do it, and indeed they owe it to them. For if the Gentiles have come to share in their spiritual blessings, they ought also to be of service to them in material blessings. When therefore I have completed this and have delivered to them what has been collected, I will leave for Spain by way of you.39

Clement of Rome tells us that Paul made it to Spain after his sojourn in Rome:

Because of jealously and strife Paul showed the way to the prize for patient endurance. After he had been seven times in chains, had been driven into exile, had been stoned, and had preached in the east and in the west, he won the genuine glory for his faith, having taught righteousness to the whole world and having reached the farthest limits of the west.40 Finally, when he had given his testimony before the rulers, he thus departed from the world and went to the holy place, having become an outstanding example of patient endurance.41

From this evidence we may conclude the following. Peter would have been the only apostle at Rome before and after Paul left to Spain; in this period, Peter was surely the chief presbyter of Rome. And because Paul acknowledges that the church of Rome was Peter’s foundation, and because he says his intention is simply to pass through Rome on his way to do his work elsewhere, we may infer that he had no interest in trespassing upon Peter’s leadership role in this church. Indeed, we have other evidence of this in the form of the Jerusalem church: James was the established leader there, and Paul did not trespass on that role when in Jerusalem even if they were both prominent figures in the universal church. Thus, even when both Peter and Paul were at Rome, it is plausible that Peter remained the church’s chief presbyter on account of his having planted himself there as its leader first.

Conclusion: Peter, the First Bishop of Rome

Recall that a “bishop” is a presbyter who is set above the other presbyters as the leader of the local church. The clearest early example is James, the chief presbyter of the mother church at Jerusalem. Our evidence confirms that Peter occupied this role at Rome. We saw that he taught distant churches from Rome as a presbyter there. We saw that Jesus gave Peter authority over the other presbyters of Rome. And we saw that, at the relevant times, nobody else had or exercised a like authority at Rome. We may safely conclude that Peter was the first chief presbyter of Rome or, in a word, its bishop. A Protestant can and should accept every step in this argument.

The problem, though, is that the conclusion is in tension with what some Protestants say about the absence of early bishops of Rome. If the Protestant maintains that view and accepts, as he should, that Peter was the first bishop of Rome, then he must believe that there was a gap between Peter’s episcopate and the episcopate of the first bishop of Rome after Peter—decades or as much as a century later.42

That gap is in tension with our evidence. Accepting that Peter was the first bishop of Rome all but amounts to a concession that the church of Rome had a constitution like the mother church of Jerusalem, with Peter and James as the chief presbyters above the others at their respective churches. Yet tradition has it that, after James’s martyrdom in Jerusalem,43 Simeon succeeded him as the bishop.44

The Westminster Confession of the Faith declares that the “whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for His own glory, man's salvation, faith and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture.” If, as I have argued, Matthew 16 plausibly reports that Jesus established the office of steward over the Church, then succession in that office follows “by good and necessary consequence.” For this steward oversees the Church in anticipation of the return of the King. And, as we saw, Scripture tells us that Peter was to die before that point. Because the King has not yet returned, there must be at least one steward who followed Peter in his ministry.

Against this evidence, why would we think that, after Peter’s martyrdom, nobody succeeded him as the bishop? We will return to this question in due course.

One question that comes up in this debate is whether the early church believed in sola scriptura. Protestants often have difficulty pointing to clear, explicit formulations of sola scriptura in the earliest centuries. I think an honest observer will say that the Catholics score a point in their favor from the relative absence of explicit affirmations of sola scriptura, together with the (apparently many) appeals to tradition.

But what if an early church father expressly rejected sola scriptura? What if, moreover, this father was a student of the apostles? And, still more, what if this apostolic pupil was entrusted with an episcopal office and was friends with the likes of Polycarp? All that would, I should think, be bad news for the Protestant view.

And yet, there is apparently one example of a father of that description that I have not seen others bring up.2

Some time ago, I took up the hobby of reading as much of early Christian literature that I could get my hands on. So I picked up a translation of the apostolic fathers—the earliest Christian writers outside the New Testament. If you do the same (and you should), you will, I think, be surprised by how much we have from the period immediately following the apostles. If you finish the corpus, you will wish we had more.

I was reading Ignatius’s letters for my own edification as part of my hobby, not to find anything in particular about sola scriptura. For those who don’t know, Ignatius was the second bishop of Antioch after Peter. He knew the apostle John. He was friends with the great Christian martyr, Polycarp, sometime bishop of Smyrna. And he himself, around the year of our Lord 107, went on to his reward after the Romans fed him to wild beasts in the Colosseum. Before he suffered there, Ignatius wrote seven letters—six to churches and one to Polycarp. We are very lucky indeed to have them.

Across his letters, Ignatius is very anxious about different heresies that emerged around the turn of the second century. He was worried, for example, about docetism—the view that our Lord was not really a physical human being. (By the way, he denounced that heresy in language that sounds very Catholic.3)

He was also, apparently, anxious about what I will call proto-sola scriptura. As I was reading his letter to the Philadelphians, I came across the following passage, which struck me as rejecting something like the modern Protestant position:

Moreover, I urge you to do nothing in a spirit of contentiousness, but in accordance with the teaching of Christ. For I heard some people say, “If I do not find it in the archives,4 I do not believe it in the gospel.” And when I said to them, “It is written,” they answered me, “That is precisely the question.” But for me, the “archives” are Jesus Christ, the unalterable archives are his cross and death and his resurrection and the faith that comes through him; by these things I want, through your prayers, to be justified.5

As I read them, the proto-Protestantism in these few lines leapt from the page. Here’s what I think Ignatius was getting at. As the bishop of Antioch, Ignatius would exercise his office by teaching. In response, some people—the proto-Protestants—objected: “If it’s not in the Bible [as it were], then it’s not in the gospel.” (Sound familiar?) Ignatius responded by saying that it is written. But he went on: The Scriptures, in their fullest sense, are not just the written word, but the living faith that comes down to us from our Lord.

This passage suggests that Ignatius did not share a view in which written texts alone function as the decisive criterion of belief. At minimum, his understanding of authority is less textually bounded than what later came to be articulated as sola scriptura.

This is the third part of a series that critically interrogates the claim of some scholars ‘that there was no single bishop at Rome for almost a century after the deaths of the Apostles.’1 In the last part, we saw that there was certainly a single bishop of Rome by the end of the second century, when Pope Victor (c. AD 189-199) excommunicated entire churches for failing to take his view in the famous Easter controversy. We also saw that the evidence that episode supplies strongly suggests that Victor was not the first bishop of Rome. It is unlikely that the first bishop of Rome would also be the first bishop to do pope-like things, like exercising jurisdiction far away from his church!

In this part, we will see that what Victor’s papacy suggests other evidence directly confirms. Eusebius has preserved for us a letter to one of Victor’s supposed predecessors. A bishop of a foreign church sent this letter to the church of Rome about 20 years before Victor. It expressly confirms that there was a bishop of Rome at that time. And, as we shall see, it tells us something about this bishop’s authority over the church of Rome.

1. The Primary Source: Dionysius to Soter

As I explained in the last part, Eusebius was a promiscuous quoter: Instead of writing history only in his own words, he often included block quotes of earlier sources. When he did so, the evidence he supplied is often the equivalent of gold for the historian. Sometimes, for example, he quotes letters that we no longer have. These fragments give us excellent evidence of what Christians believed long before Eusebius’s career as an historian in the early fourth century. And even when Eusebius does not quote, we have some reason to think that mundane details he wrote were in the earlier sources to which we know he had access.

Fortunately for us, Eusebius preserved a letter fragment by Dionysius, sometime Bishop of Corinth, that we will soon see is highly probative of whether there were bishops of Rome before Victor. He also tells us, in his own words, about Dionysius and his prolific career as a writer. Let’s begin with the details we have about our witness.

Eusebius tells us that Dionysius had a reputation for giving ‘inspired service’ to ‘distant’ churches, ‘especially through general epistles he wrote for the churches.’2 He wrote a ‘letter to the Spartans,’ instructing them ‘in peace and unity.’3 He wrote ‘to the Athenians,’ calling them ‘to faith and to life in accord with the Gospel’ after ‘Publius, their bishop, was martyred in the persecution of the time.’4 He ‘relate[d] that after this martyrdom Quadratus was appointed their bishop and that through his fervor they were reunited and their faith revived.’5 He reported ‘that Dionysius the Areopagite, who was converted by the apostle Paul, … was the first to be appointed Bishop of Athens.’6 He wrote ‘to the Nicomedians,’ contesting ‘Marcion’s heresy, in defense of the truth.’7 He ‘wrote to the church at Gortyna and elsewhere on Crete, congratulating Philip, their bishop, on the courage of the church there but warning him to guard against the heretics.’8 He wrote ‘to the church at Amastris and those in Pontus,’ expounding ‘the divine Scripture,’ naming ‘their bishop, Palmas,’ teaching about ‘marriage and celibacy at length,’ and directing ‘that those who return after moral or heretical lapse should be welcomed back.’9 He wrote ‘to the Cnossians, in which he urges Pinytus, the bishop, not to make celibacy compulsory for the brethren but to remember the weakness of many.’10 And, finally, he wrote ‘to Chrysophora, a most faithful believer, in which he supplies her with appropriate spiritual food.’11

It is unfortunate that we have none of these letters. But Eusebius’s account strongly confirms that Dionysius had a prolific career as a bishop who interacted with and exhorted foreign churches. He would not likely have had a career of that description if Christians at this time did not regard him as an especially prominent figure. So high was this bishop’s reputation in the catholic Church that others fabricated works in his name. Eusebius preserves a fragment of Dionysius’s own reflection on this fact:

When the brethren asked me to write letters, I wrote them, but the apostles of the Devil have filled them with weeds, omitting some things and adding others. But grief awaits them. No wonder, then, that some have distorted even the word of the Lord when they have schemed against writings so inferior.12

Of all of Dionysius’s letters, Eusebius thought it good to preserve the text of just one: ‘A letter of Dionysius to Bishop Soter and the Romans’ responding to a previous letter by Soter.13 Eusebius preserves different parts of the letter in different parts of his history to make different points. For convenience, I include all the fragments here, with Eusebius’s gloss in brackets:

[A letter of Dionysius to Bishop Soter and the Romans is also extant, in which he acclaims the custom of the Romans, observed down to the persecution of our own times:]

It has been your custom from the beginning to show kindness to all Christians and to send contributions to the churches in every city, relieving the distress of those in need at some places or in the mines. This, your ancestral Roman custom, Bishop Soter not only has maintained, but also increased by generously sharing bounty among the saints and encouraging brethren coming to Rome with inspired, paternal words.

[In the same letter he refers to Clement’s Letter to the Corinthians, showing that it had been customary to read it in the church from the beginning:]

We read your letter today, the Lord’s Day, and shall continue to read it frequently for our admonition, as we do with the earlier letter Clement wrote on your behalf.14

[And that [Peter and Paul] were both martyred at the same time Bishop Dionysius of Corinth affirms in a letter written to the Romans:]

By your great counsel you have bound together what has grown from the seed that Peter and Paul sowed among Romans and Corinthians. For both of them sowed in our Corinth and instructed us together; in Italy too they taught jointly in the same place and were martyred at the same time.15

This letter is golden evidence. Dionysius and Soter were contemporaries. Dionysius was a bishop over a foreign church. He interacted with the church of Rome. He was therefore in a position to know something about its constitution and the nature of the episcopal office. How does this evidence bear on whether the church had bishops of Rome before Victor?

2. The Explanation: Soter, Bishop of Rome

Start with what we learned about Dionysius. He wrote many letters to many churches, from Athens to Nicomedia. He repeatedly mentions the bishops of the citywide churches to which he wrote.

From this evidence, we may infer the following. First, by AD 170, there were bishops appointed throughout the Roman world, including to the episcopal chairs of relatively less prominent churches. Second, the bishops were monepiscopal bishops, or single bishops that had overseeing authority over citywide (or regional) churches. Dionysius, himself the bishop of Corinth, repeatedly named the single bishops of the cities to which he wrote, which would be inexplicable if there were only a college of presbyters who occupied the same offices. (Why name a random presbyter amongst many if he were not the presiding bishop and leader of the church?) Accordingly, not long after the middle of the second century, monepiscopacy was a fact of Christian governance throughout the Roman world.

That conclusion makes implausible the view that Rome was late to develop the monepiscopal constitution. To sustain it, we would have to imagine that the most prominent church at the time—the church associated with the two most prominent apostles—lagged behind the lesser known churches of Sparta, Nicomedia, and Gortyna (for some examples). We would not expect more prominent churches to follow the example of less prominent ones (versus the other way around). Even if we did not have direct evidence, then, we would have an expectation that Rome had a bishop, too.

Lo and behold! Our direct evidence confirms that expectation. Dionysius directly confirms that the church of Rome had a bishop—‘Bishop Soter.’

Ordinarily, this kind of evidence should settle a debate about a mundane factual question such as the one under consideration. But scholars who defend the hypothesis that Rome lacked a bishop until the late second century or even the third are forced to resist the obvious reading of the text.16 For example, Joshua Sijuwade, following liberal scholarship, acknowledges that Dionysius ‘refers to Soter as blessed bishop,’ but he asserts that ‘approaching the text impartially leaves open whether this indicates a monarchical bishop or simply one among others’!

That view is implausible in the light of what we know about Dionysius. As we have already seen, Dionysius, himself a monepiscopal bishop, made clear what he meant by ‘bishop.’ By singling out the one bishop in many of the other churches to which he wrote, he certainly did not mean ‘one among [many] others’ in the same church. Rather, it is clear that Dionysius takes for granted monepiscopacy. That he elsewhere invariably used ‘bishop’ in the sense of the leader of the citywide church is a strong reason to suppose that ‘Bishop Soter’ bears the same sense.

Fortunately, we do not need to rest on the fact that Dionysius calls his Roman counterpart by the same title he had. He also gives us information about the nature of Soter’s office. The church of Rome, Dionysius reports, had a famous and longstanding custom of being generous to foreign churches. This ‘ancestral Roman Custom,’ he says, ‘Bishop Soter not only has maintained, but also increased.’ Here, then, we have a contemporary who testifies that his Roman counterpart—Bishop Soter—could and did exercise his own authority over the church of Rome to increase its contributions to foreign churches. This authority makes complete sense if Soter was the presiding monepiscopal bishop of the church of Rome; it makes far less sense if Soter was one amongst many presbyters in a church with a collegial constitution.

Dionysius also tells us that Soter’s office involved authoritatively teaching Christians, both at Rome and abroad. At Rome, Soter would receive Christians arriving from abroad and ‘encourag[e]’ them ‘with inspired, paternal words.’ Abroad, Dionysius tells us that Soter’s letter to the Corinthians was read on ‘the Lord’s Day’ at the church of Corinth, and says that it ‘shall continue to’ be read there ‘frequently for our admonition.’ This practice of reading the words of the bishop of Rome in church—alongside Scripture—was apparently not new, for Dionysius tells us that the church of Corinth frequently read ‘the earlier letter Clement wrote on … behalf’ of the church of Rome.

At least two other witnesses confirm what is already obvious from the information Dionysius supplied. Irenaeus, writing to Victor, tells him that he should follow the example of ‘the presbyters before Soter who headed the church over which you now preside’17—at once confirming that Soter preceded Victor and presided over the church of Rome. Hegesippus ‘compiled the succession down to Anicetus, whose deacon was Eleutherus. Anicetus was succeeded by Soter and he by Eleutherus.’18 We therefore have at least three witnesses—Dionysius, Irenaeus, and Hegesippus—writing around the same time and confirming with one voice that Soter was indeed the bishop who presided over the church of Rome.

Conclusion

Putting this together, according to multiple witnesses, Soter was known as the Bishop of Rome. In that capacity, he can and did exercise his authority to increase the church of Rome’s aid to foreign churches. He also taught Christians at Rome and abroad. And at least one other prominent church read his work on the Lord’s Day. All of this strongly suggests that Pope Soter was the bishop of Rome.

Let’s begin with the text:

Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” Mt. 16:16-19.

The debate about this passage usually focuses on two aspects. First, is Peter himself the rock on which Jesus promised to build his church, or is something else the rock? Second, are the keys of the kingdom of heaven a symbol of a prime-minister-style office, as in Isaiah 22:22?

These are important questions, but I want to focus briefly on what comes next: Jesus promises Peter that he will have a special kind of authority. “Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven,” Jesus declared, “and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” How, if at all, does this language bear on whether there is there an infallible pope-like figure in the Bible?

I shall argue that it strongly suggests that (1) Jesus appointed Peter to a special teaching office; (2) Jesus promised him the gift of infallibility in that teaching office; and (3) Peter is unique amongst the apostles with respect to this infallible teaching office. Let us take each of these contentions in turn.

1. Peter, Key Holder

Jesus appointed Peter to a special office. The “binding and loosing” idiom is used elsewhere in Josephus in the context of the Pharisees exercising royal authority during the reign of Alexandra, sometime Queen of Judea (c. 70s BC):

And now the Pharisees joined themselves to [Alexandra], to assist her in the government. These are a certain sect of the Jews that appear more religious than others, and seem to interpret the laws more accurately. Now, Alexandra hearkened to them to an extraordinary degree, as being herself a woman of great piety towards God. But these Pharisees artfully insinuated themselves into her favor by little and little, and became themselves the real administrators of the public affairs; they banished and reduced whom they pleased; they bound and loosed [men] at their pleasure; and, to say all at once, they had the enjoyment of the royal authority, whilst the expenses and the difficulties of it belonged to Alexandra.1

Here we have the Pharisees acting as “administrators of the public affairs” and, in that capacity, exercising “the royal authority.” They had the authority to bind and loose men. This authority consisted in the power to authoritatively forbid or require (binding), and the power to permit (loosing). Here, then, is the earliest use of the idiom by a non-Christian source, and it is in the context of exercising official power in the capacity of a kingdom’s administrators.

I do not believe that it is a coincidence that the “binding and loosing” idiom was used in a royal context. Jesus uses another idiom in the very same sentence that plausibly connotes royal authority. He gives Peter “the keys of the kingdom of heaven,” a plausible reference to Isaiah 22. There, Isaiah reports that Eliakim replaced Shebna in the office of prime minister or royal steward in the Kingdom of Judah:

In that day I will call my servant Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, and I will clothe him with your robe, and will bind your sash on him, and will commit your authority to his hand. And he shall be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and to the house of Judah. And I will place on his shoulder the key of the house of David. He shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none shall open. Is. 22:20-24 (emphasis added).

It is interesting that both the Pharisees and Eliakim act as overseers over the kingdom and exercised the authority to, as it were, bind and loose—open and shut. I think this evidence points pretty clearly to Jesus promising to establish a similar office of royal steward in his “kingdom” (or Church) whose occupant possesses the “keys.” But even setting that aside, it should at least be clear that, whether the office was that of steward or not, Jesus did promise to appoint Peter to a special office that involved the authority to bind and loose. And that office was not merely that of apostle, for Peter is appointed an apostle before his confession (Mt. 10) and is later (Mt. 16) promised that in the future he will occupy the office of Church key holder with the power to bind and loose.

2. Peter, Infallible Key Holder

The authority promised to Peter involves infallibility. As we have seen, in Matthew 16, Jesus uses a well-established idiom, but with a twist. Josephus uses the simpler form, “bind and loose.” The Pharisees had that power because they “sat on the chair [kathedra] of Moses.” (Mt. 23:2). For that reason, men were obliged to “do and observe whatever they tell you” when “they preach” (Mt. 23:3). The Pharisees used this teaching authority to “tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people’s shoulders” (binding without loosing) even as “they themselves [were] not willing to move them with their finger” (Mt. 23:4).

Jesus takes this extraordinary authority a step further: He does not just give Peter the authority to bind and loose earth; he gives him the power to bind and loose heaven in addition:2 “whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”

It is impossible to bind heaven—God!—to error. Why? Because God is infallible; He cannot err. We can infer that, when Peter exercises his power to bind and loose, he cannot err. For if he were to erroneously exercise his authority, then heaven would be bound to error: “whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven.” So, whenever heaven is, as it were, bound by Peter’s teachings, it is bound free of error. And because Peter, being merely a man, cannot, by himself, infallibly bind heaven, Jesus’s promise amounts to a promise to protect Peter from error when he exercises his official authority. We need not rest on that very plausible inference, for Jesus all but makes it explicit: “the gates of hell shall not prevail against” the Church (Mt. 16:18). It follows that Jesus promises Peter a kind of official infallibility.

3. Peter, Unique Infallible Key Holder

Did Jesus give the same authority to the other apostles? Many people will answer yes based on Matthew 18. A plain reading of that text, though, does not say that the other apostles were also given the keys of the kingdom. And the text does not say that the apostles individually have the power to bind and loose apart from Peter. Let’s look at Jesus’s own words:

“If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them” (Mt. 18:15-20 (emphasis added)).

Nothing in this text says that Jesus gives the other apostles the keys of the kingdom of heaven. That proposition is not in the text; it is brought to the text as an assumption.

Nor can the proposition be inferred from the proposition that the apostles are given the same power to bind and loose. True, Peter has the keys and the power to bind and loose heaven. And, true, the apostles have that power, too. But it does not follow from the fact that they have the power to bind and loose that they each individually have the keys of the kingdom. The Speaker of the House of Representatives has the chair and the power to vote; the fact that other members of the House have that power does not mean that they also have the chair. What we need is textual support that someone other than Peter has the keys. We do not have that support.

Significantly, unlike Peter, Matthew 18 does not say that the apostles have the same power to bind and loose individually, apart from Peter. Jesus is speaking to “the disciples” collectively (Mt. 18:1). The context is the authority of the church to resolve disputes. And he clarifies when infallibility is secured immediately after he says that “you”—the disciples—have the authority to bind and loose: “if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them” (Mt. 18:19). The disciples, as a group, have the power to bind and loose heaven. But in Matthew 16, Peter alone is promised the power to bind and loose heaven. He can exercise this power as the unique key holder; the other apostles can exercise it as a council.

Conclusion

On a straightforward reading of the above texts, Peter is the key holder. Whatever that office is, it entitles its occupant to exercise the power to bind and loose heaven. The power to bind and loose heaven includes divine protection from error. And Peter alone occupies the office of key holder, entitling him alone to exercise an infallible teaching office.

This is the second part of a series that critically interrogates the claim of some scholars ‘that there was no single bishop at Rome for almost a century after the deaths of the Apostles.’1 According to this view, monepiscopacy—the form of church government that involves one bishop leading the citywide or regional church—developed late at Rome, later even than the less significant churches of the East, such as Smyrna or Magnesia. As we shall see in this series, the evidence does not support this view.

In this article, we shall consider a significant second-century controversy in the catholic Church. In that century, Christians disagreed about when Easter ought to be celebrated. The Roman view was the view with which everyone is now familiar: Easter is celebrated on a Sunday, the day of the week on which Christians believe that God raised Christ from the dead. Before that view became universal, Christians in Asia Minor celebrated ‘on the fourteenth day of the moon, on which the Jews had been commanded to sacrifice the lamb,’ no matter whether that day fell on a Sunday.2 How was this controversy settled?

Several eyewitnesses describe the showdown between Victor, the bishop of Rome, and the Asian churches that defied him. Victor had called on bishops the world over to gather into synods to settle the question in favor of the Roman view. The Asian churches gathered their bishops but rebuffed Victor, appealing to their own traditions and apostolic pedigree. Victor responded by excommunicating the lot of them.

I shall argue that this episode points to a prolonged existence of monepiscopacy at Rome. If monepiscopacy were of recent origin, we would not expect Victor to have the confidence to command foreign churches with a more ancient succession of bishops, let alone to excommunicate them. That Victor did this with the support of many non-Roman bishops around the world suggests that they believed that the Roman church, like their own churches, enjoyed a succession of bishops back to the apostles. If so, this episode decisively refutes the suggestion of Peter Lampe that Victor was the first bishop of Rome.3

1. The Primary Sources: Victor and the Easter Controversy

Eusebius wrote an account of the controversy. As is his wont, he quotes liberally from earlier sources. In this case, the sources he quotes were written at the time of the controversy by significant participants in the controversy—bishops, both East and West. Of course, when Eusebius is not quoting, he is giving his own account. But he tells us that he has access to other material from which he does not quote, and we can therefore have some confidence that the information he delivers outside quotations is based on the earlier material available to him. The evidence we have is therefore unusually reliable, and I shall include here what I take to be its most significant aspects for our purposes.

The churches of Asia Minor, as we have seen, thought that Easter should sometimes be celebrated on a day other than Sunday. ‘[C]hurches throughout the rest of the world,’ says Eusebius, ‘maintained the view’ that ‘prevail[ed]’ in Eusebius’s own day ‘according to apostolic tradition’: ‘the fast ends only on the day of our Saviour’s resurrection,’ Sunday.4 To resolve the dispute, synods were held in churches around the world. ‘[A]ll were of one opinion in formulating a decree for the church’ favoring the view that Easter should be celebrated only on Sunday.5 For this, Eusebius names his sources:

Still extant is a letter from those who attended a conference in Palestine, with Bishop Theophilus of Caesarea and Bishop Narcissus of Jerusalem presiding, as well as from those who attended a similar conclave at Rome on the issue, under Victor as bishop. There are others from the bishops of Pontus, over whom Palmas presided as the senior; from Gaul, over which Irenaeus presided; from Osrhoene and the cities there; from Bacchyllus, Bishop of Corinth, and many more who expressed the same, unified opinion and gave the same vote.6

The bishops of Asia took a different view as apparently the only exceptions in Christendom. They were led by Polycrates, sometime bishop of Ephesus. Eusebius preserves a large chunk of his ‘letter to Victor and the Roman church.’7 In it, Polycrates himself confirms that Victor had asked the Asian churches to ‘summo[n]’ their bishops to resolve the question and that Victor ‘threat[ened]’ them, apparently (according to Eusebius) with excommunication if they did not yield to the dominant view.8 Polycrates rejected this pressure on the ground that ‘Great luminaries sleep in Asia.’9 There was ‘Philip, one of the twelve apostles, who sleeps in Hierapolis.’10 And there 'is John, ‘who became a priest wearing the miter, a martyr, and a teacher’ and ‘sleeps in Ephesus.’11 There were also bishops like ‘Polycarp at Smyrna.’12 ‘All these’ and more took the Asian view of the controversy.13

Victor responded forcefully. He ‘immediately tried to cut off from the common unity as heterodox all the Asian dioceses.’14 To that end, he ‘pilloried them in letters announcing the absolute excommunication of all the brethren there.’15 But, says Eusebius, ‘not all the bishops were pleased by this,’ and they urged Victor to ‘pursue the cause of peace, unity, and love.’16 The remonstrance included ‘Irenaeus, who wrote in the name of the Christians he supervised in Gaul.’17 Though his letter affirmed that Easter must ‘be celebrated only on the Lord’s day, he nevertheless urges Victor not to excommunicate entire churches of God for following ancient tradition.’18 Eusebius preserves large chunks of Irenaeus’s letter to Victor.

In it, Irenaeus appeals to the precedent of Victor’s predecessors. ‘Among these,’ he says, ‘were the presbyters before Soter who headed the church over which you now preside—I mean Anicetus, Pius, Telesphorus, and Xystus.’19 ‘They themselves did not observe’ the Asian practice, reports Irenaeus, ‘yet they lived in peace with those who arrived from dioceses that did.’20 ‘And when the blessed Polycarp visited Rome in Anicetus’s time,’ neither could persuade the other to change their views.21 They nevertheless remained in communion, and ‘Anicetus yielded the consecration of the Eucharist to Polycarp.’22

2. The Explanation: Early Bishops of Rome

Here we have two eyewitnesses to the controversy: Polycrates, a hostile witness, and Irenaeus, a friendlier one. Both individually, one without the other, strongly suggest that monepiscopacy had a prolonged existence at Rome before the episode. Collectively, they rule out the view that monepiscopacy developed in the second half of the second century.

Irenaeus provides direct evidence that monepiscopacy had a prolonged existence at Rome by the end of the second century. He tells us explicitly that there were presbyters ‘who headed the church’ of Rome as far back as the first third of the second century. The simplest explanation of this evidence is that there were bishops of Rome long before Victor.

If that were not true, and monepiscopacy at Rome were of more recent vintage, Irenaeus was in a position to know. He had visited Rome under Victor’s predecessor, ‘Father Eleutherus,’ when he personally delivered a letter to him on behalf of his church at Lyons.23 He therefore had first-hand, eyewitness knowledge of the constitution of the church of Rome. If he was sincere, there is no doubt that Victor had predecessors who led the church of Rome.

He was not lying. Consider the reason he brings up Victor’s predecessors. He does not do so to bolster the apostolic pedigree of the church of Rome, or to establish that there were bishops of Rome. Instead, Irenaeus takes for granted that there were individuals who led the church of Rome in succession before Victor. He mentions their names in a letter (not an apologetic treatise) to urge Victor to follow their example of tolerance. Irenaeus thus assumes that Victor would likewise take for granted that he had predecessors who ‘headed the church’ and who tolerated the Asian practice. If Irenaeus were lying, and others knew that he was making up bishops, his primary argument for Roman tolerance would be totally ineffective—Victor would know that his predecessors’ conduct as heads of the church did not contradict his own because they did not exist as such! Because Irenaeus obviously thought it important to secure a more tolerant stance toward the Asian churches and believed that appealing to precedent would be effective, his sincerity is beyond question.

If we had nothing else, the testimony of a bishop who assumes that the bishop of Rome himself agreed with the basic facts would be a firm basis to reject the proposition that monepiscopacy at Rome was a creature of the end of the second century.

But we have more. Polycrates indirectly confirms Irenaeus’s direct evidence that monepiscopacy had a prolonged existence at Rome.

Two things in the letter stand out. First, in response to Victor, Polycrates says that the bishops ‘whom I summoned at your request … approve this letter.’24 Second, he says that he is ‘not afraid of threats.’25

These two details confirm that Victor took himself to have authority to intervene in the affairs of foreign churches. He first asked the Asian churches to gather in a synod to decide the question. And, given that Victor announced ‘the absolute excommunication’ of the Asian bishops in response to Polycrates’s letter, we may reasonably infer that he had threatened to excommunicate them before they published their decision if they did not take his view of the matter. It is significant that Victor apparently thought that he had the power to ‘excommunicate entire churches.’26

The main arguments against an early monepiscopacy at Rome are arguments from silence.27 Let us turn the tables and consider what is not said in our sources. Though Polycrates appeals to the apostolic pedigree of the Asian churches and their past bishops, he does not take the opportunity to tell Victor that the church of Rome was in an inferior position. ‘Who are you, a bishop who cannot trace your office back to the apostles, to command us?’ would have been an obvious response if the facts allowed it. Though Irenaeus rebukes Victor for his decision to excommunicate the Asian churches, there is no hint in his letter or in Eusebius’s account that anyone thought that Victor lacked the authority to excommunicate the Asian churches. ‘You have usurped power to cut off your brother bishops’ would have been an obvious response if that view were widely held.

The evidence is to the contrary. Eusebius says that ‘not all the bishops were pleased by’ Victor’s excommunications,28 ‘which implies that there were some, probably many, who thought St. Victor in the right.’29 Thus, despite Irenaeus’s rebuke, this episode at once confirms that Victor and many other bishops in addition believed he had extraordinary authority to command foreign churches on pain of excommunication.

What is the upshot of that fact? It is very unlikely indeed that, immediately after monepiscopacy arose at Rome (later than other churches), its bishops would acquire the requisite confidence to begin commanding other churches to conform to their views. Yet we have in Victor someone who betrays no cognizance of the relative infancy of his office.

Conclusion

The evidence about the Easter controversy converges on one hypothesis: Monepiscopacy at Rome was not a new institution. Irenaeus provides direct evidence that Victor had predecessors stretching back decades. And the fact that Victor purports to exercise extraordinary authority with the support of bishops around the world corroborates that testimony. To believe the contrary, one would have to, first, disbelieve the testimony of a man who met with bishops and the elders of the church of Rome. One would then have to imagine that, not long after monepiscopacy emerged in that church, the newly consecrated bishops acquired the confidence to command churches with a far more ancient monepiscopacy. One would also have to assume that the entire Christian world apparently forgot that Roman bishops were a recent development. And, finally, one would have to think that many bishops yielded to a usurpation of authority by a bishop whose office had only recently developed. All this seems a tad more problematic than accepting Irenaeus’s testimony at face value.

In the next article, we shall consider other evidence that confirms that position.

Were there early bishops of Rome? For most of Christian history up to the Reformation, an affirmative answer was taken for granted. Our earliest sources who speak expressly to the question affirm with one voice that the church of Rome had an unbroken line of bishops stretching back to Peter and Paul.

Our clearest and most prominent ancient witness is Irenaeus, sometime bishop of Lyons, writing around AD 180. In an oft-quoted passage, Irenaeus tells us that the Christians of his day were “in a position to reckon up those who were by the apostles instituted bishops in the Churches, and [to demonstrate] the succession of these men to our own times.”1 The church of Rome was exceptional, according to Irenaeus, not because it had no bishops (unlike the other churches), but because it “is a matter of necessity that every Church should agree with this Church, on account of its pre-eminent authority.”2 For that reason, and because it “would be very tedious … to reckon up the successions of all the Churches,” Irenaues picked the church of Rome as the only example he used to illustrate his point.3 He then produced our earliest, complete list of the bishops of Rome from the first century to the end of the second: Linus, Anacletus, Clement, Evaristus, Alexander, Sixtus, Telesphorus, Hyginus, Pius, Anicetus, Soter, and Eleutherius—the bishop of Rome in his own day.4

Many modern scholars do not believe him. Against his bishops list, they hold that there were no monepiscopal bishops5 of Rome until well into the second century and even into the third.6 Their case rests largely on silence in a handful of early Christian sources that do not mention monepiscopal bishops of Rome—Clement’s letter to the Corinthians, Ignatius’s letter to the Romans, and The Shepherd of Hermas.7 From this silence, these scholars infer that Irenaeus’s bishops list (and others) are retrojection, not memory.

The stakes are high. Protestant apologists like Jerry Walls and Gavin Ortlund have deployed their work to argue against distinctively Catholic claims. Walls in particular makes liberal use of quotations from the scholarship. Eamon Duffy, for example, says “all the indications are that there was no single bishop at Rome for almost a century after the deaths of the Apostles.”8 “Everything we know about the church in Rome during the first hundred years confirms this general picture.”9

This is the first of a series of articles that tests those claims. My approach will be historical, not theological. I will (1) lay out what the early primary sources say and then (2) consider whether what they say favors one hypothesis over the other. As we shall see, we have multiple, early lines of evidence that converge on the hypothesis that there were bishops of Rome before scholars usually suppose. And the arguments in the scholarship against the early bishops of Rome (and the ones apologists repeat) are almost invariably weak arguments from silence. The upshot, at the end of our journey, will be that there were probably early bishops of Rome.

This article begins with one line of evidence that the scholars have largely overlooked. In the second century, there was a custom amongst Christians of dating events by reference to the tenures of Roman bishops, including ones whose tenures would have been before the rise of the first bishop of Rome according to the scholars and apologists. That custom, I conclude, is evidence that there were early bishops of Rome.

1. The Primary Sources: Dating Events to Bishops

There was a well-established second-century custom amongst Christians of dating events by reference to bishops of Rome. This custom is like the custom of dating events by reference to the reigns of kings or the tenures of governors. Ancient authors not infrequently dated events by reference to political leaders to give their audience an idea of when the events are supposed to have occurred.10

This custom still exists. If you ask me when the Cuban Missile Crisis took place, I might answer, “When John F. Kennedy was President.” My answer—which may betray a failure to remember the precise year—suggests that I take for granted (1) that you know that there was such a President as John F. Kennedy, and (2) that you know around when he was the President. Some combination of (1) and (2) is what makes my answer informative. If you know your history, you can infer that the event took place between 1961 and 1963. But even someone who does not know much about American history might still be able to infer that the crisis took place “long before I was born” or “many decades ago” if he has the fuzzier belief that Kennedy was not recently the President or was not the President “during my lifetime.”

My claim is that second-century Christians communicated similarly when they wanted to inform their Christian audiences about when an event took place. The evidence for that claim consists of the many passing references to Roman bishops that exist in at least three sources: The Muratorian Fragment, Irenaeus, and Tertullian. Authors included these references, not to make the substantive point that there were bishops of Rome, but in passing to tell the reader around when a separate event took place.

Consider, first, the Muratorian Fragment, which was probably written around AD 160-170. This document—perhaps our earliest list of New Testament works—dates itself and another early Christian text to the second century by reference to a bishop of Rome: “Hermas wrote the Shepherd very recently, in our times, in the city of Rome, while bishop Pius, his brother, was occupying the [episcopal] chair of the church of the city of Rome.”11 The Fragmentist’s primary purpose is not to tell the reader that there was a bishop of Rome, Pius; he assumes that the reader knows that fact. Instead, the Fragmentist mentions that bishop to give the reader an idea about when (he thinks) Hermas wrote The Shepherd.

There are many other examples that evidence this custom from authors like Irenaeus and Tertullian (amongst others). I include the ones that I have been able to find below.

• “They [the heretics] claim that all their predecessors and the apostles themselves taught what they do and that the true teaching was preserved until the time of Victor, the thirteenth Bishop of Rome after Peter, but that the truth has been perverted from the time of his successor, Zephyrinus.”12

• “Christian writers before Victor also defended the truth against both the pagans and the heretics of their own day—I mean the works of Justin, Miltiades, Tatian, Clement, and many more.”13

• ‘It is agreed that they lived not so long ago, in the reign of Antonine, and that they first believed in the doctrine of the Catholic Church, in the Roman church under the episcopate of the blessed Eleutherus.’14

• “Among these also were presbyters before Soter who headed the church over which you [Victor] now preside—I mean Anicetus, Pius, Telesphorus, and Xystus.”15

• “And when the blessed Polycarp visited Rome in Anicetus’s time, though they had minor disagreements also on other matters, they made peace immediately, having no wish to quarrel on this point.”16

• “In the time of Anicetus, [Polycarp] visited Rome and converted many among these heretics to the church of God, proclaiming that the one and only truth he had received from the apostles was that transmitted by the church of God.”17

• “A certain Cerdo, influenced by the followers of Simon, had settled in Rome in the time of Hyginus, who held the ninth place in the succession from the apostles.”18

• “Valentius came to Rome in the time of Hyginus, flourished under Pius, and remained until Anicetus.”19

• “Marcellina, who came to Rome in the time of Anicetus.”20

• “In the time of this Clement, no small dissension having occurred among the brethren at Corinth, the Church in Rome despatched a most powerful letter to the Corinthians, exhorting them to peace, renewing their faith, and declaring the tradition which it had lately received from the apostles, proclaiming the one God, omnipotent, the Maker of heaven and earth, the Creator of man, who brought on the deluge, and called Abraham, who led the people from the land of Egypt, spake with Moses, set forth the law, sent the prophets, and who has prepared fire for the devil and his angels.”21

2. The Explanation: Early Bishops of Rome

In his recent polemic against Catholicism, Jerry Walls asserted that there “is no good evidence of a monarchical bishop in Rome until the late second century.”22 In the light of the evidence, that assertion is clearly mistaken. The custom of dating events by reference to bishops of Rome had already developed by the late second century. The institution giving rise to the custom had to precede the custom.

Consider the quality of our evidence. Our sources take the existence of past bishops for granted—they are mentioned in passing, not to establish their existence as such, but to date events. Our sources are also geographically diverse—from Rome (Muratorian Fragment) to Lyons (Irenaeus) to North Africa (Tertullian). And they were written there between AD ~160-200—confirming that the custom existed in and outside of Rome by the second half of the second century. Because the custom assumes that the reader and author share beliefs about when bishops lived, we can infer that the elders of this period, in different parts of the Roman world, believed that there were bishops of Rome that existed as such before their day.

And we can infer that they were right. The custom could not have taken root if monepiscopacy were of more recent vintage, otherwise the very elders who probably believed that there were bishops of Rome before their day were people who should have been able to remember that there was no bishop of Rome in their day. Irenaeus assumed that an 80-year-old reader of his work (c. AD 180) could remember Hyginus’s time (c. AD 136), and the Muratorian Fragmentist assumed that he could remember Pius’s time (c. AD 140). If that assumption were not well grounded, and the elders knew that bishops were a more recent thing, we would expect a later development of the custom, by when memories of the earlier situation would have been foggier or non-existent.

One possible move is to say that the men referred to existed as mere presbyters, not bishops. This response cannot explain a custom that was like the custom of dating by reference to the tenures of political governors. The Muratorian Fragmentist, for example, dates an event—the writing of the Shepherd of Hermas—to the ‘governor’ of the church of Rome in language that is not especially ambiguous: “while bishop Pius … was occupying the chair of the church of the city of Rome.” As J. B. Lightfoot explained, “the use of the ‘chair’ as a recognized phrase points to a more or less prolonged existence of episcopacy in Rome when the writer lived.”23 It is otherwise unclear why people should date events within living memory using the names of random presbyters who would have been remembered as such by living elders.

3. Conclusion

I have not seen recent scholars or apologists interact with this evidence and the argument from it.24 Yet it all but excludes a very late development of monepiscopacy at Rome. The argument is not new. The great church historian Louis Duchesne deployed it more than a century ago:

In Rome, the episcopal succession was so well known, and its chronology so clear, that it served to fix the date of other events. It was said of different heresies, that they appeared under Anicetus or Pius or Hyginus. In the discussion as to the observance of Easter, Irenaeus fixed a date in the same way, going back farther still, to Telesphorus and to Xystus I., that is to the time of Trajan and of St Ignatius.25

It is equally clear, in the light of this evidence, that Duffy overstated his case. It is not true that “all the indications are that there was no single bishop at Rome for almost a century after the deaths of the Apostles.” The custom of dating events by reference to bishops is an indication that goes the other way. As we shall see, there are many others in addition.