So, What is the Papacy?

So, what is the Papacy? I have two answers for you and the second to be elaborated in the next piece. Let's get started.

Answer 1

Every revolution is fearful of one thing, counter-revolution. The French revolution for example, initially meant for much good. They made a declaration of human rights, abolished class distinctions and set women equal to men. And yet what do we remember the French revolution for? Mostly the bloodshed of the reign of terror. A reign of terror that only came to an end with the establishment of absolute rule under Napoleon's ambitions. Quite opposite from the Republican ideals they first set out with.

This too was the case with Christianity. Paganism had dominated the consciences of men since the days of Hermes, otherwise known as Cush son of Ham. The worship of the one true God had been constricted to a single national people. The whole world lay in darkness. After centuries of relentless assault, the Jewish religion had itself caved in to elements of paganism. Christianity was heaven’s fresh air against the Paganism that had darkened the minds of men for centuries.

“The enfeebled world was tottering on its foundations when Christianity appeared…A kind of deism, destitute alike of spirit and of life, floated for a time above the abyss in which the vigorous superstitions of antiquity had been engulfed. But like all negative creeds, it had no power to reconstruct.” (John Merle D’Aubigne, Hist. Of Reformation Book 1, pg 7)

It was at such a time as that when the One who created the world came to the world. Divinity was manifested in human form and in that human form lived a perfect life. Such a life no man had ever lived before. A life without sin. A life of purity. Then following, this perfect life was crucified and killed, and according to the Hebrew prophecies, resurrected on the third day. His disciples spread this message far and wide. This was a revolution from heaven. It was meant to restore all mankind to the sinless position Adam and Eve had before their fall in Eden, which it did. That sinless pure life was now manifested in the followers of the Galileean.

“A breath of life began to move over this wide field of death. A new people, a holy nation, was formed upon the earth; and the astonished world beheld in the disciples of the Galilean a purity and self-denial, a charity and heroism, of which it had retained no idea.” (D’Aubigne, ibid)

And yet as this work went forth and the teeming masses of idolatrous pagans were finally informed that God is not an exacting, rash or lustful person, as had been intimated by their conception of the divine through their pagan deities, the danger of counterrevolution was already brewing. Paul set out the warning:

“For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock.” (Acts 20:29)

John in turn even puts a label on these wolves

“Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time” (1 John 2:19)

Christ had set up the revolution, now antichrist was coming to counter that revolution.

There are many Biblical factors to be used to identify the antichrist, but this simple explanation of revolution and counterrevolution should suffice to best explain what truly transpired in just about 200 years. While original/primitive Christianity set up equality of all believers, the Papacy brought back the subservience of believers to a priesthood, which was a pivotal epithet of Paganism. This reactionary counter revolutionist state of affairs would last for a thousand years till God was ready to respond, the response being to raise a protest against the corruption of His Gospel and call for reform through what would become the Protestant Reformation.

“Primitive Christianity and the Reformation are one and the same revolution, brought about at different epochs and under different circumstances. Although not alike in their secondary features, they are identical in their primary and chief characteristics. One is a repetition of the other. The former put an end to the old world; the latter began the new: between them lie the Middle Ages.” (D’Aubigne, ibid)

A statue of (from L to R) William Farel, John Calvin, Theodore Beza and John Knox at the Reformation Monument

So what exactly is the Papacy? Answer 1....the Papacy is a counterrevolution against the Gospel.

Answer 2

This is perhaps the most intriguing answer. Let me introduce to you the term Institutional Memory. Think of it in this manner. Imagine you join an organization, say a Bank that has been in operation for hundreds of years, I mean, they know everything there is to know concerning banking won't they? They've had hundreds of years of experience. Well the Papacy is oldest institution present on earth today. No other human organization has the breath of institutional memory that the Papacy has. What is the significance of this? How about I leave that as a tease for the next article?

A Papal Swiss Guard in the Vatican