I admit I had viewed it as historical fact that Peter was in Rome, and founded the Catholic Church. I have visited the tomb of Peter!
You've visited a monument that the Catholic Church claims is the tomb of Peter. I have been to the tomb of Vladimir Lenin and I can assure you Lenin is not in it (the wax sculpture purporting to be his corpse isn't even really that convincing). I have been to three different tombs of Sun Zhongshan (or Sun Yat-Sen if you prefer his Western spelling), and Dr. Sun is only buried in one of them. I have visited the tomb of Genghis Khan, when historians do not know where he was actually buried. A monument can be erected claiming to be anyone's tomb.
There is also the fact that there is doubt as to whether the man who went to Rome claiming to be the Apostle Peter was actually Peter (which I'll get around to explaining eventually). When one reads the Pauline Gospels, one finds frequent references to an impostor religion, a false Gospel being spread by those who claim to serve Christ but do not actually. Jude as well later warned about the Great Apostasy, where many would believe they were serving Christ while they were following a false faith that was contrary to God's Will. There is evidence (admittedly not hard proof, but evidence) that this false Gospel Paul warned against was the early bastardization of Pagan worship overlaid with Christian symbolism that would later be institutionalized as the Roman Catholic Church.
I spent about 1 hour reading about this topic.
Madam, pardon my sarcasm but you may rest assured I've spent
well more than 1 hour reading about this. Confronting the Heresy of Rome has been the entire foundation of what I hope I am not being too brazen by calling "my life's ministry."
In the end it seems to boil down to:
1 Peter
If 1 Peter was written by Peter, then it seems historians would concede that he was in Rome, since apparently it is considered acceptable that Babylon was a code word for Rome.
It's more than this. First of all, you are correct that the Catholic Church cannot prove the Apostle Simon Peter wrote 1 Peter, but even if he did (and yes it's rather widely acknowledged that "Babylon" was a code word for Rome; it's used later in Revelation as well), that does not prove Peter was in Rome when it was written. I find nothing in the Petrine Gospels specifically claiming, even in code, that the writer was within the city limits of Rome when it was written, and I find it unlikely that Peter would have any reason to go there. Not only was he commissioned as Apostle to the Jews rather than to the Gentiles, but it makes little practical sense. The Early Church had precious few leaders, and Paul was already in Rome. It seems inefficient for the sparsely manned early Church to send both of its heaviest hitters to the same city and leave the rest of the world with only Junior Varsity evangelists to spread the Gospel.
To believe that a sinner such as Peter was the rock on which Jesus is building His church contradicts the clear teaching of Scripture.
There is only one Rock and He is God Almighty. There are many passages in the Bible that attest to that truth, however the prophet Isaiah records one of the clearest statements by God. Isaiah 44:8 "Is there a God besides Me? Indeed there is no other Rock; I know not one.’”
Peter is not the rock on which Jesus Christ is building His church; never was, never will be. Peter was a sinner saved by the grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ, the same as any other sinner (including the mother of Jesus).
Eh, both doctrine and linguistics both compel me to dispute this as well. If your claim is "Peter was sinful so God couldn't do anything with him," then we're all up an offensively named creek without a paddle. Paul was a sinner (and he referred to himself as chief among sinners). If God couldn't do anything useful with sinners, there'd be no Church. Peter's original name was Simon. Christ gave him the name Peter, and he chose that name because it literally translates into "rock. If you read the verse with the name's meaning substituted for the name, it becomes "thous art rock, and upon this rock I shall build my Church." It seems fairly cut and dry that Christ was stating He'd build His Church using Peter as its backbone.
The part I'm refuting is the belief that this refers to the
Roman Catholic Church. The Church of the Apostles was founded on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2), and the Plan of Salvation by Baptism was revealed there by Peter (Verse 38). Until Paul's later commission to spread the Gospel beyond the Jews and into the Gentile nations, Peter was regarded as the rather undisputed leader of the original Apostles and therefore of the early Church, and Peter performed more than three quarters of the Baptisms recorded in Scripture.
When Christ said He'd build His Church upon Peter, He was referring to that; to Pentecost and the 1st century Church of the Book of Acts, not to the Roman Catholic Church.
