Did Christ Found a Leaderless Church?

Catholics can accept the view that Christ founded the Church on the faith of Peter. However, we reject the notion that that is all Christ intended.

By Deacon Frederick Bartels
12 February 2024

That Christ instituted his one Church on the earthly headship of Peter is and always has been Catholic doctrine. Catholics recognize that doing so was indeed the wise plan of God.

Just as any successful earthly institution must have a leader at its helm, so too must the Church of Jesus Christ have an earthly leader installed at its helm as a sign and means of unity. A leaderless Church on earth cannot long stand. It will soon disintegrate into chaos and fail, just as any leaderless earthly institution will find the same end.

Catholics also maintain that Jesus intended for men to succeed Peter in his office of the papacy—to sit in the Chair of Peter. This papal succession is necessary, for if it did not exist, the Church would have been habitually leaderless from the moment Peter was crucified upside down in Rome under Nero’s reign. And a leaderless church does not fit the pattern of our Lord’s intention and design.

The Protestant View

Protestants often insist, however, that when Christ changed Simon’s name to Peter and said, “And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church” (Matt 16:18), he meant only to say that he was founding his Church on the faith of Peter. In this view, the “Christian church” is without an earthly leader, built only on the faith of a man who lived and died about twenty centuries ago. The Church is thus viewed in the abstract, as a loose collection of believers in Jesus Christ. It is not a definite visible and specific Church, but rather a collection of Christian communities.

This view conveniently allows for thousands of Christian communities spread throughout the world, tracing their origin to the 16th century Protestant revolution, each claiming to have authority to interpret scripture, while, at the same time, extensive disagreement is found among them over core doctrines of the Christian faith, such as the nature of baptism, the Eucharist, sin, salvation, grace, the sacraments, biblical interpretation, etc.

The Catholic View

Catholics can accept the view that Christ founded the Church on the faith of Peter. However, we reject the notion that that is all Christ intended. Christ primarily had Peter in mind as the earthly leader of the Church when he said to him, “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” (Matt 16:19).

To understand what it meant to give the “keys” to Peter, we recall Isaiah 22:15-24. Here Eliakim is given the key to the house of David. The giving of the key signified a man’s installment into a position of authority under the king, as the prime minister of the Davidic kingdom who governed in the king’s absence with the king’s authority.

When Christ promised to give the keys to Peter, he installed him as the prime minister of the Church, so to speak, having the power to govern and rule the Church in Christ’s absence.

None of this of course takes anything away from the fact that Christ is indeed the Head of the Church. Nevertheless, the office of the papacy is our Lord and Savior’s plan for insuring the perpetuity and indefectibility of his one Church.

Church Fathers

Furthermore, the Church Fathers (early members of the Church whose writings faithfully hand on the apostolic tradition) are unanimous in upholding the Chair of Peter—the office of the papacy—and papal succession.

In AD 251 St. Cyprian of Carthage wrote:

“On [Peter the Lord] builds the Church, and commands him to feed the sheep (Jn 21:17), and although he assigns a like power to all the apostles, yet he founded a single chair [cathedra], and he established by his own authority a source and an intrinsic reason for that unity. Indeed, the others were also what Peter was [apostles], but a primacy is given to Peter, by which it is made clear that there is one Church and one chair…. If someone does not hold fast to this unity of Peter, can he think that he holds the faith? If he deserts the chair of Peter upon whom the Church was built, can he be confident that he is in the Church?” (Unity of the Catholic Church 4; first ed. [Treatise I:4]).

And it is not only Catholics who recognize the primacy of the pope as leader of the Church. The Presbyterian professor C. A. Briggs writes in his book on Church Unity (p. 205):

“I cannot undertake to give even a sketch of the history of the Papacy. We shall have to admit that the Christian Church from the earliest times recognized the primacy of the Roman Bishop, and that all other great Sees at times recognized the supreme jurisdiction of Rome in matters of doctrine, government, and discipline…. When the whole case has been carefully examined and all the evidence sifted, the statement of Irenaeus [written in the second century] stands firm: We put to confusion all unauthorized assemblies by indicating the tradition derived from the Apostles of the great, ancient, and universally known Church founded at Rome by the two most glorious Apostles Peter and Paul … for it is a matter of necessity that every Church should agree with this Church on account of its pre-eminent authority” (Quoted from Radio Replies, vol. II, Fathers Rumble and Carty, Tan Books, p. 111; 430).

Correct Historical and Biblical Consciousness

A correct historical and biblical consciousness must admit that Christ instituted his one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church on the earthly headship of Peter with a hierarchical structure.

The office of the papacy continues throughout time in the successors of Peter. Comprised of the bishops in union with the pope, the Magisterium insures that the Church will indeed remain the “pillar and bulwark of the truth” (1 Tim 3:15), for our Lord promised that “the powers of death shall not prevail against it” (Matt 16:18).

Let us pray for the unity of all Christians within the womb of the Church, gathered under the headship of the pope, that Christendom may once again truly be one.