Divine Authority and the Limits of Human Tradition

Within the Christian tradition, truth has never been regarded as secondary to unity, nor faith as independent of historical fidelity. Christianity is grounded in the conviction that God has acted decisively in history through Jesus Christ, and that the content of this revelation matters. To confess Christ rightly therefore requires more than inherited loyalty to later formulations; it requires continual discernment of whether doctrine remains faithful to what was preached, lived, and handed down in the apostolic witness. From the earliest centuries, the Church understood this task as one of remembrance and preservation rather than innovation.

The ecumenical councils themselves testify to this priority. They did not claim to create new revelation or impose novel dogmas by sheer authority, but sought instead to guard the apostolic faith as witnessed in Scripture and received in the life of the Church. Scripture functioned as the normative reference point against which doctrinal claims were tested, even as it was interpreted within the Church’s communal life. Appeals to authority were meaningful only insofar as that authority was demonstrably faithful to the apostolic deposit.

For this reason, historical inquiry is not an enemy of faith but one of its safeguards. When doctrines arise that lack grounding in Scripture, are unknown to the early Church, or depend upon retrospective reinterpretations of apostolic authority, they must be examined critically rather than accepted unreflectively. Such examination is especially necessary given the undeniable influence of imperial power, legal structures, and political necessity on the later development of ecclesiastical institutions. To return to the sources is not to undermine the Church, but to seek assurance that the faith confessed today has not been reshaped by historical contingencies into something other than what Christ and the apostles proclaimed.

The question of papal supremacy ultimately rests on a prior and more fundamental issue: the nature of apostolic authority and its relationship to the episcopal office. Much of the later Western doctrine of papal jurisdiction depends: often implicitly, on the assumption that the apostles themselves functioned as bishops in the later juridical sense, and that Peter in particular was the first bishop of Rome, exercising a form of authority that could be transmitted intact to his successors. When this assumption is examined historically, however, it proves untenable. Once the distinction between apostleship and episcopacy is restored, the theological superstructure built upon their conflation begins to collapse.

In the earliest strata of Christian tradition, apostles were not local officeholders. They were witnesses of the resurrection, directly commissioned by Christ, and sent without territorial limitation. Their authority was foundational, charismatic, and non-repeatable. Apostles founded churches, preached the Gospel, and bore witness to Christ across regions, but they did not govern fixed dioceses as later bishops did. By contrast, bishops emerged as local overseers (not Vicars) of already-established Christian communities. Their authority was territorially defined, exercised collegially, and embedded within synodal structures. These two roles; apostolic mission and episcopal governance; were distinct in origin, function, and scope.

Early Christian practice reflects this distinction clearly. When ancient churches compiled episcopal lists, apostles were consistently excluded as bishops. Irenaeus of Lyons, writing in the second century, attributes the founding of the Roman Church to Peter and Paul, yet he names Linus; not Peter, as the first bishop of Rome. Eusebius follows the same pattern not only for Rome, but also for Alexandria and Antioch. Mark is acknowledged as the apostolic founder of Alexandria, yet Annianus is listed as its first bishop. Peter is acknowledged as connected to Antioch, yet Evodius appears as its first bishop. This pattern is uniform and deliberate. The apostle is the founder; the bishop is the successor appointed after the apostolic mission has moved on.

This early historiographical consensus is devastating to later claims that Peter functioned as a bishop in the same sense as later Roman pontiffs. If Peter were understood as the first bishop of Rome, there would have been no reason for the Church to exclude him from episcopal succession lists. The fact that he is excluded everywhere he appears indicates that early Christians did not conceive of apostles as bishops at all. The later identification of Peter as “bishop of Rome” reflects a retrospective theological development, not an apostolic self-understanding.

The figure of James the Just reinforces this conclusion decisively. James, the brother of the Lord, was not one of the Twelve apostles, yet he emerges in the New Testament as the recognized leader of the Jerusalem Church. At the Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15, Peter speaks, but James presides and delivers the final judgment. His authority is local, stable, and juridical in a way that apostolic authority is not. James embodies the early episcopal office in its clearest form, and he does so precisely as a non-apostle. This single fact demonstrates that episcopal authority did not derive automatically from apostolic rank and that governance in the early Church was local and communal rather than universal and hierarchical.

Once this distinction is acknowledged, the logic of papal supremacy loses its foundation. If Peter was not a bishop in the later juridical sense, then he could not transmit universal jurisdiction as a bishop. Apostolic authority, precisely because it was universal and foundational, was not inheritable. Succession preserves office, not scope. Bishops succeed apostles only in the sense that they continue the ordinary pastoral ministry of teaching, sanctifying, and governing local churches. They do not inherit the apostles’ universal mission or foundational authority any more than presbyters inherit episcopal jurisdiction simply by ordination.

The pope is not an apostle. He does not meet the New Testament criteria for apostleship: he was not a direct eyewitness of the risen Christ, was not personally commissioned by Christ during his earthly ministry, and does not possess the foundational, once-for-all authority that belongs to the apostolic office. The Church itself implicitly acknowledges this when it speaks of the apostles as unique and unrepeatable.

If even Peter’s apostolic authority did not function as supreme jurisdiction in Acts 15, then a later bishop who is not an apostle at all cannot logically claim a greater form of authority than Peter exercised. Succession can preserve an office, but it cannot enlarge the scope of authority beyond what the original holder actually used. A successor cannot inherit powers that were never exercised in the first place.

Acts 15 therefore becomes more decisive, not less. Peter, an apostle, speaks with authority but submits to the conciliar process and does not issue a binding judgment. James, a non-apostle, presides locally and articulates the council’s decision. Authority is exercised through the Church gathered in council, not through apostolic rank and not through a single individual.

If papal supremacy were part of the Church’s original structure, it would be most visible at this moment. Yet it is absent. The pope, as a later bishop and not an apostle, cannot claim an authority that even the chief apostle did not exercise. To do so would require not succession, but transformation; a change in the very nature of authority.

Even if one grants that Peter exercised a form of primacy among the apostles; a point that need not be denied, that primacy was personal, symbolic, and historical. It belonged to Peter as an apostle, not to an episcopal office. Roman bishops may succeed Peter locally, as bishops of the church associated with his martyrdom, but they cannot succeed him universally, because the universal dimension of his authority was apostolic, not episcopal. To claim otherwise is to confuse two distinct modes of authority and to project later ecclesiological categories backward onto a period in which they did not exist.

The structure of the early Church confirms this reading. Authority was exercised synodally, not monocratically. Ecumenical councils were not convened by papal fiat, nor were their decisions dependent upon unilateral papal ratification. Bishops, including bishops of Rome; were judged by councils when necessary, as the cases of Liberius, Vigilius, and Honorius demonstrate. Rome enjoyed great prestige, and its voice carried significant moral and theological weight, but this influence functioned within the communion of churches, not above it.

The primacy Rome possessed in the first millennium is best described as a primacy of honor, memory, and historical precedence. Rome was revered as the church of Peter and Paul, respected as the ancient capital of the empire, and often appealed to as a stabilizing witness to orthodoxy in times of crisis. Yet none of this amounts to inherent, immediate, and universal jurisdiction by divine right. That conception emerges gradually in the West, shaped by political transformations, the decline of imperial authority, and the development of a distinct Western ecclesiology after Rome’s separation from the synodal life of the East.

When the apostles are no longer treated as bishops, the logic becomes unavoidable. Peter was not a bishop in the later juridical sense. Because he was not a bishop in that sense, he could not transmit universal jurisdiction as a bishop. Because he could not transmit universal jurisdiction, Roman bishops cannot claim apostolic universality by succession. What remains, historically and patristically, is not supremacy, but primacy; real, meaningful, and venerable, yet fundamentally different in kind from the claims later made on its behalf.

This conclusion does not diminish the dignity of the Roman Church, nor does it deny Peter’s unique place in Christian memory. It simply restores the early Church’s own categories and allows its witness to speak without distortion. In doing so, it reveals that the Church of the first millennium knew nothing of papal supremacy as later defined, and that its unity rested not on juridical domination, but on communion, synodality, and shared fidelity to the apostolic faith.

From Apostolic Communion to Roman Supremacy

If the apostles were not bishops, and if no bishop; including the bishop of Rome, was understood in the early Church as a vicar of Christ or bearer of universal jurisdiction, a further question necessarily arises: how did a single episcopal office come to exercise supreme authority over the whole Church? The answer cannot be adequately explained by appeal to apostolic institution, nor can it be reduced to mere ambition or coercive power. Rather, papal supremacy emerges through a gradual reconfiguration of ecclesial authority driven by historical necessity, theological reinterpretation, and institutional substitution.

The decisive shift occurs when functions originally exercised communally and synodally are progressively concentrated in a single see, not because this concentration was required by the nature of the Church, but because it appeared to provide stability amid fragmentation.

Once universal jurisdiction is vested in a single episcopal office, a further and more serious theological problem emerges: the effective relocation of doctrinal authority from the apostolic deposit to a living individual. The danger here is not merely abuse of power in a personal sense, but the structural possibility that new dogmas may be introduced without grounding in Scripture or demonstrable continuity with the faith of the early Church.

The ecumenical councils themselves testify to a markedly different understanding of doctrinal authority. They did not conceive of doctrine as indefinitely expandable by ecclesiastical decree, but as something received, to be guarded and articulated only insofar as it could be shown to accord with the apostolic witness. Repeatedly, conciliar language emphasizes preservation rather than innovation. The faith is “once delivered,” and councils understand their task as defending that inheritance against distortion, not supplementing it with novel articles of belief.

Within this framework, Scripture functioned as the normative reference point; not in isolation from the Church, but as the publicly accessible and universally binding witness to apostolic teaching. Tradition, as understood in the early centuries, was not an independent source of new revelation, but the Church’s faithful transmission and interpretation of what had already been given. To claim parity between Scripture and later traditions that were unknown to the apostolic and conciliar Church represents a significant shift in epistemology, one that would have been unintelligible to the bishops of Nicaea, Ephesus, or Chalcedon.

This shift becomes particularly pronounced once papal supremacy is asserted. If a single bishop (not apostle) possesses immediate and universal authority, and if that authority includes the capacity to define doctrine irreformably, then the Church’s historic mechanisms of doctrinal restraint; synodality, conciliar consensus, and appeal to Scripture; are effectively bypassed. The question is no longer whether a teaching is apostolic, but whether it has been authoritatively declared. In such a system, continuity risks being replaced by authorization.

The historical consequences of this shift are visible in concrete doctrinal and devotional developments. Practices such as the veneration of images and relics, while later defended by appeal to post-apostolic custom and reported miracles, lack any clear apostolic mandate. The New Testament contains no command to venerate relics, no instruction to bow before images, and no indication that such practices formed part of the Church’s foundational worship. On the contrary, early Christian identity was sharply defined over against pagan cultic practices, and concerns about idolatry were acute and explicit.

Appeals to later historical testimony cannot substitute for apostolic origin. That a practice arose early, or that it was associated with popular devotion, does not render it apostolic in substance. The early Church distinguished carefully between pious custom and binding doctrine, and it is precisely this distinction that becomes blurred when later practices are retroactively declared to belong to the apostolic tradition.

Divine Authority, Human Authority, and the Irreversibility of God’s Commandments

At the heart of the Christian confession lies a fundamental axiom: authority belongs to God, not to man. The Church exists to bear witness to what God has revealed, not to revise it. All ecclesial authority; apostolic, episcopal, or conciliar, is therefore derivative and ministerial. It serves revelation; it does not stand above it. When this order is reversed, even unintentionally, the Church risks substituting human authorization for divine command.

This principle is not abstract. Scripture presents it concretely and repeatedly. God speaks; humanity listens and obeys. Revelation is not negotiated, nor does it evolve according to historical convenience. When the Book of Revelation describes the faithful as those who “keep the commandments of God and the testimony of Jesus” (Rev. 12:17), it establishes an unambiguous hierarchy: God commands; the Church remains faithful.

The second commandment belongs squarely within this framework. It is not a ceremonial regulation tied to a specific culture, but a theological boundary grounded in God’s own self-disclosure. God explicitly forbids not only the making of religious images, but the acts of bowing and venerating them. The concern is not artistic representation as such, but the redirection of reverence, the human tendency to render devotion through created forms rather than direct obedience to the Creator.

The New Testament never grants permission to override this command. Christ does not suspend it; the apostles do not reinterpret it. Instead, the apostolic witness intensifies the call to undivided loyalty to God. The incarnation reveals God personally in Christ; it does not delegate divine authority to material objects, nor does it license new modes of worship absent divine command.

This raises an unavoidable question: if God himself forbade the veneration of images, by what authority can human beings authorize it? If God did not seek such acts of reverence when he revealed himself on Mount Sinai, why would he require them later through ecclesiastical decree? The burden of proof cannot rest on appeal to custom, theological reasoning, or institutional authority, but only on explicit divine mandate. Where such mandate is absent, restraint; not innovation, has historically been the mark of faithfulness.

The question becomes even sharper when viewed through the historical identity of Christ himself. Jesus of Nazareth was not a Roman philosopher or a product of imperial Christianity; he was a Jew formed by the law and prophets of Israel. He worshiped the God who gave the commandments at Sinai. He affirmed the enduring authority of that law, declaring that he came not to abolish it, but to fulfill it. There is no evidence that Christ regarded the commandments as provisional guidelines subject to later ecclesiastical revision.

Nor is there any indication that divine authority was later transferred to a particular city or office. God revealed his law on Mount Sinai, not in Rome. The commandments were given before emperors, councils, or pontiffs, and they stand above them. No human office; however venerable; can claim authority to overturn what God has spoken without explicit warrant from God himself.

This is why the question of images is inseparable from the question of authority. When human institutions claim the power to authorize practices that God has forbidden, even in the name of devotion, authority subtly shifts from divine command to ecclesial decree. What begins as pastoral accommodation can become theological inversion: obedience is redefined not as fidelity to God’s word, but as submission to institutional judgment.

Such a shift does not require malice. It requires only the assumption that the Church possesses authority not merely to interpret revelation, but to modify the boundaries it establishes. Yet the earliest Christian instinct was precisely the opposite. Faced with pressure to conform to prevailing religious customs, early Christians refused to bow before pagan statues and thousands were martyred for that refusal, not because they rejected material creation, but because they believed obedience to God’s command outweighed cultural or devotional appeal.

The Christian faith, at its core, is not a story of humanity refining God’s will, but of God revealing it and humanity being judged by its response. To bow before images when God has commanded otherwise is not a harmless variation in devotion; it is a theological claim about who has the final word. Scripture’s answer is unambiguous: God does.

What is at stake, therefore, is not the sincerity of later Christians, but the integrity of the Church’s doctrinal method. When tradition is no longer constrained by Scripture and early conciliar consensus, it becomes possible for the content of the faith to expand in ways that the apostolic Church neither taught nor envisaged. Over time, such expansions risk reshaping Christian belief and practice into something recognizably continuous in name, yet substantively altered in form.

From this perspective, papal supremacy, Marian dogmas, Treasury of merit, purgatory, indulgences, transubstantiation etc represent not merely a historical anomaly, but a theological vulnerability. By concentrating interpretive and doctrinal authority in a single office, it creates the conditions under which innovations can be presented as continuity, and accretions as inheritance. The result is a Church increasingly defined by what it has added rather than by what it has received.

The early Church knew a different path. It preserved unity without a universal monarch, safeguarded doctrine without a single infallible voice (only God is infallible), and resisted innovation by anchoring itself in Scripture, shared confession, and conciliar discernment. To recover that path is not to reject tradition, but to submit tradition once again to the apostolic rule of faith by which it was originally measured.

Doctrinal Restraint, Apostolic Tradition, and the Limits of Authority

A consistent feature of the ecumenical councils is their insistence that they possess no authority to create new doctrine, but only to preserve, clarify, and defend what has already been received. This self-understanding is not incidental; it is constitutive of conciliar authority itself.

The Council of Nicaea (325) frames its dogmatic work as a defense of the faith “handed down” (paradotheisa pisteis), not as the promulgation of new teaching. The Creed is presented not as innovation, but as a normative articulation of the Church’s existing confession in response to Arian distortion. Subsequent councils consistently echo this logic. Ephesus (431) famously declares:

“It is unlawful for anyone to produce, write, or compose another faith besides the one defined by the holy fathers gathered in the city of Nicaea.”

Chalcedon (451) intensifies this restraint, stating explicitly that it “adds nothing” to the faith of Nicaea and Constantinople, but merely clarifies it in response to new controversy. The council’s authority rests precisely on its refusal to innovate.

This conciliar pattern establishes a clear theological principle: doctrine is bounded. Authority exists to guard the apostolic deposit, not to expand it. Any ecclesial structure that permits the unilateral definition of new dogmas; especially dogmas lacking clear scriptural grounding or early catholic consensus; stands in tension with the Church’s own conciliar self-definition.

Scripture and Apostolic Paradosis

Within the early Church, Scripture functioned as the normative and publicly accessible witness to the apostolic proclamation. Tradition (paradosis) was not a second source of revelation alongside Scripture, but the Church’s faithful transmission of the same apostolic content in preaching, worship, and moral life.

When Paul exhorts Christians to “hold fast to the traditions” he has delivered (2 Thess. 2:15), he refers to teachings he himself has already proclaimed; teachings that either are or become embedded in the apostolic writings. Apostolic paradosis is thus content-identical with apostolic teaching, not an open-ended reservoir of future doctrines.

In the early centuries, appeals to tradition function as interpretive safeguards, not as mechanisms for doctrinal expansion. Tradition ensures that Scripture is read faithfully; it does not authorize teachings absent from Scripture. The later claim that Tradition stands alongside Scripture as an independent source of dogma; capable of yielding doctrines unknown to the early Church; marks a decisive methodological shift.

That shift becomes structurally possible only when doctrinal authority is centralized and detached from conciliar restraint.

Once a single bishop is understood to possess immediate and universal jurisdiction; and especially once that bishop is said to be capable of defining doctrine irreformably; the Church’s historic mechanisms of doctrinal restraint are effectively bypassed.

The question ceases to be whether a teaching is apostolic, scriptural, or conciliar in origin. Instead, it becomes whether it has been authoritatively declared. Authority moves from witnessing the faith to constituting it.

This structural shift creates the real danger; not merely hypothetical, of doctrinal inflation: the gradual accumulation of beliefs and practices presented as apostolic despite lacking any clear foundation in Scripture or the early Church. What councils explicitly refused to do collectively becomes possible for one office to do unilaterally.

Appeals to later historians, devotional practices, or popular piety cannot substitute for apostolic foundation. That Christians in later centuries engaged in certain practices does not mean those practices belong to the faith once delivered. The Church Fathers themselves frequently warn against confusing custom with doctrine.

What emerges over time is not the preservation of apostolic tradition, but its retrospective enlargement. Practices arise locally, acquire devotional significance, receive theological rationalization, and are eventually codified as normative; often under the authority of Rome. What begins as tolerated custom ends as obligatory belief.

This process does not require bad faith. It requires only a structure in which authority is no longer bound by apostolic and conciliar limits.

The concentration of doctrinal authority in a single office thus poses a profound ecclesiological risk. It renders the content of faith contingent upon institutional declaration rather than apostolic witness. Over time, the Church becomes defined less by what it has received and more by what it has added.

By contrast, the early Church preserved unity without a universal monarch, safeguarded doctrine without a fallible individual voice (all men are fallible), and resisted innovation by anchoring itself in Scripture, shared confession, and conciliar discernment. Its restraint was not weakness, but fidelity.

To recover that restraint is not to reject tradition, but to restore tradition to its proper role, under the authority of the apostolic deposit: the faithful transmission of what Christ and the apostles actually taught, not the accumulation of what later centuries deemed fitting.