Expert: Griff Ruby - 11/5/2011

Question
Mr.Ruby, here is the question that I have. Is there any any mention of the pope in the bible?

Answer
Plenty.  All the while that Jesus was training all the Apostles to go forth into the world to preach the Gospel, work miracles, and join souls to the Church, He was also training one of them, Peter, to continue as His direct representative to the rest (in a leadership position), and charging him with duties relevant to such a role.
It is difficult to become familiar with the New Testament (particularly the four gospels) without eventually noticing that Jesus and Peter talk to each other more than twice as much as Jesus talks to all other disciples, individually as well as in any and all groupings that don't include Peter, all taken together.  It is disingenuous to put this all down to being merely some result of Peter's supposed outspokennes in comparison to the others.  Many of these Peter-only conversations are initiated by our Lord Himself.
Looking back on Scripture, it is surprising just how much is unique to Peter alone.  For example, the only one to walk upon water besides the Lord Himself is Peter.  Peter alone has his name changed (from Simon) to Peter, which is simply "Rock," so Jesus really said, "Simon, you are now to be called Rock, for upon this Rock I shall build my Church."  And from that point on, Simon was always known and referred to as Peter, "Rock."  Of Peter alone it is pointed out in any detail what manner of defection he (as a weak and fallen man) would make in the face of His trial and death, namely that he would deny knowing his Lord three times before the rooster crows twice.  And to Peter alone was given the instruction "Yes, you will deny Me, but you will also repent, and after you have returned, it is your job to confirm your brothers."  To Peter alone He gave the instruction "Feed My lambs; tend my sheep; feed my sheep."  And in every list of the Apostles, or any grouping thereof, it is Peter who is mentioned first, as befits one who is being groomed to take over once Jesus ascends back up to the Father, and this is even despite the fact that Andrew joined our Lord as a disciple even before Peter did.
To Peter (quite naturally, as being the one in charge, therefore fit to speak for the rest) it was given to give the famous first preachment of Pentecost at which time 3,000 came to be baptized into the Church.  At the Jerusalem Council, the disciples themselves were all disputing among themselves until Peter spoke and issued a ruling regarding the question at hand, after which all fell silent while Barnabas and Paul corroborated the validity of Peter's ruling on the basis of their experiences in the missionary field.
When James then spoke, it is clear that he had been one of the principle defenders of the contrary opinion, but now, in submission to Peter, he was expressing his acquiescence to the ruling of Peter by integrating the new ruling into his reading of the Jewish Scriptures, though still affirming what few basic principles had been dictated by Noah to all mankind, as distinct from the further commands of Moses which applied to the Jews (and, presumably, Samaritans as well) only.  In a true collegial manner (the Apostles were, after all, convened in Council), the exception to Peter's ruling introduced by James was accepted by all (including Peter), and thus became part of the official teaching of the Jerusalem Council and thereby of the Church.
Sacred Scripture ceases to cover Peter and his unique role in the Apostolic Church, though it does include two letters he wrote and mention once in passing the name of the man to succeed Peter (Linus) as being among those close to Paul in his final days in confinement in Rome shortly before his martyrdom, and who, together with Paul and others, greet Timothy.  However, early Church history, particularly as documented in the early Fathers, makes it quite clear that Peter had recommended Clement (of Rome) to succeed him in his position of authority, but Clement did not feel equal to so awesome a burden and so demurred, leaving the role to fall first to Linus, then to Anacletus, before he finally accepted it himself.
Finally, logic dictates that someone would have to be in charge.  Experience has shown time and time again that any organization, even God's own Church, flounders when the voice of a practical day-to-day authority, coupled together with the doctrinal authority to rule on difficult or disputed questions, which Peter and his successors had, is not present or functioning.
There are those who claim that all Apostles (including Peter) were all equal in rank, but if that had been the case, the Church would not have made it out of the first couple centuries let alone clear to ours, if that had been the case.
Indeed, today in our current popeless period (no real popes, only pretenders, including the one squatting in the former papal quarters in the Vatican), we see now exactly how the First Century of Christianity would have gone without the leadership of Peter and his successors Linus, Anacletus, and Clement of Rome.  A question arises between present-day successors of the Apostles, and with no one Apostle elected to succeed in the role of Peter, there is no arbitration, no resolution.  The question merely ripens into a dispute, and ultimately a parting of the ways, or else a tacit acceptance of each other on terms of "agreeing to disagree."  With the first arises sects and schisms, such that it ultimately becomes impossible to tell which one from among them all speaks truly and authoritatively for the Church.  With the second comes stagnation as each "Apostle" tends their own flock, but clearly none of them is charged with the duty to convert the whole world, nor can have the interest.
Ever wonder why East Orthodoxy has absolutely no presence in South America, the Pacific Islands, the Far East (China, Mongolia, Japan, the Philippines), nor in Australia, and only the most minimal (and historically recent) presence in North America?  The various Patriarchs each had jurisdiction only over some particular territory (Greece, Russia, Turkey, Malabar, Egypt, Syria...), none of whose jurisdictions include any of all these other areas.  So none of them are responsible for bringing the Gospel to these other areas, and if any of them tried to claim any of these areas for their own jurisdiction or else try to set up (as a Peer and Equal to themselves) some new Patriarch(s) for them, then others would be bound to do the same in competition and their uneasy peace based on agreeing to disagree would be broken.
It isn't anywhere near enough that all serve the same Lord or even that they all have precisely the same doctrine.  There needs to be an earthly (visible and objectively definable) final and ultimate court of appeal, and personal authority, beyond the judgment of any other persons, and dependent upon the promises of God to be what our Lord desires for His Church here on earth, if the Gospel is to be preached cohesively throughout the world.
There remains one other Scriptural question to bring out and that is the question of whether it was Peter or if it might have been someone else in charge of the New Testament Church while most or all of the original 12 (with Matthias having replaced Judas Iscariot) were still alive.  Really, there are only two other possible "contestants" for the role besides Peter, for the two of them, after Peter, again truly head the pack in terms of getting the most coverage in Scripture, namely James and John.  Furthermore, they two were the only ones, in addition to Peter, who were invited to the Transfiguration, and were also the only two who along with Peter went out of the camp of all the other disciples to follow Jesus for some distance, before Jesus went on alone for his famous agony in the garden.  There is clearly no reason to suppose the leadership of the Church as a whole ever fell to Bartholomew or Andrew or Thomas or Matthew or the lately chosen (by lot) Matthias, or the other James, or any of the women, etc., even for any moment, so let's look at James and John.
First with James.  I can see only three reasons (besides the ones above that include Peter, and again, always list Peter, not James, first) for which James might be so thought of:  (1)  James remained in Jerusalem, which had long been the geographical epicenter of God's congregation sicne before the days of King David, and which had been a reasonable central location for a main capital city of the land promised to Moses.  (2)  James was related to Jesus by birth and family, perhaps either as a son of Joseph by a previous marriage, or else as a son of some uncle or aunt of our Lord.  (3)  James seems to get the last word at the Jerusalem Council.  Let us look at each of these:
(1)  The significance of Jerusalem as a place in particular (and distinct from other equally possible places within the original promised land, such as Mount Gerezim as was similarly favored by the Samaritans) was comparatively recent in Jewish history at that time (unlike now), and furthermore, Jesus made it clear (to the Samaritan woman at the well) that in His Kingdom, Jerusalem would come to have no more (or less) significance than Gerezim.  Also, with the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, coming at or shortly after the martyrdom of James, there ceased to be any "Bishop of Jerusalem" at all for at least centuries.
(2)  Despite the role of fairly close relatives of Jesus in the New Testament, Jesus displayed no favoritism among family lines.  Even when a woman in the crowd praised His mother, he rebuked that woman, not for the bare fact of praising His mother, but for having praised her for the wrong reasons.  The woman in the crowd had praised Mary for her close family connection to Jesus, as if that were the least bit worthy of praise in and of itself, which was wrong.  But rather, in truth Mary was to be praised for her sinlessness as one who heard the Law and kept it, a criteria which has no connection whatsoever family ties of any kind.
(3)   Looking closely again at the description of the Jerusalem Council, it was Peter who quieted the disputes with his voice of authority and not with a silver tongue nor with any extraordinary lungpower.  It is also not clear that no further discussion occurred after James' speech, though the issue at hand had been clearly resolved with the speech of Peter, and only clarified on a finer point, by James.  For one thing, "The Apostles and Elders, together with all the Church" still needed to express their approval of James' amendment to Peter's declaration, and then to approve and then send forth other (lesser) leaders of the Christian community to spread the decision of the Council among the rest of the Church.
Now let's look at John.  There really is only one reason to look in John's direction, again apart from the same couple things he shared with Peter and James.  John was the closest of the disciples, the disciple whom Jesus (most?) loved, who rested his head on Jesus' bosom at the Last Supper, and the only male disciple to remain with Jesus with Mary and some other women at the foot of the Cross.  However, John was also the youngest of the original 12 and among the youngest of any of the disciples (perhaps about same age as Mark, who by the way is generally taken to have written his Gospel with Peter's guidance?), it seems again quite unlikely that so great a responsibility as of the Church as a whole would be placed upon such young shoulders, and there really is no evidence, either in Scripture nor in early Church history, that it ever was.  As further evidence of his youth, he did however outlive all others by at least a decade, probably more like two or possibly even longer.  Might the reins of authority have fallen on him later on, perhaps as a successor to James?  But when he wrote, in his Gospel and again in his letters and Revelation, he speaks not as one charged with running and administrating the Church, but rather as a sort of elder statesman who by then alone can remember what it was to be with Jesus and the rest of the original 12 before the crucifixion.  Perhaps (at most), whoever was in charge of running the whole Church, be it Anacletus or Clement or Clement's successor Evaristus by that time, might have solicited recommendations from the Apostle John based on John's remembrances of Christ, and perhaps been often guided by them in resolving newer questions.
All of which goes to show that the early Church had to have an earthly head (once our Lord ascended into Heaven) in at least some way in charge of it all as a last and ultimate recourse and definitive authority, and that it had to be Peter who started off as the first occupant of that most sacred office.