2. Pope as the Head of the Visible Church
Many/most expressions of the visible church on earth have some central administrative office, an office that serves the various particular churches administratively. Rome goes beyond this, however, and its pope is not merely an administrative official; he has authority to settle matters of faith and practice:
As the Bishop of Rome, he holds the highest teaching authority, safeguarding Catholics in faith and morals under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, i.e., when teaching in a definitive manner. . . . Catholics believe the pope continues the mission of Saint Peter, whom Jesus Christ made the foundation of his Church. (Catholic Answers [CA])
Some Protestants (called “Independents”) have no central office, even in an administrative sense. Most Protestants have a central administrative office, but “faith and morals” are addressed not by a single individual, but by a consortium of ordained men (called a “district,” a “presbytery,” a “conference,” an “assembly,” a “classis,” a “synod,” etc.). Only such groups have authority to address “in a definitive manner” matters that come before the church as the Jerusalem Assembly did in Acts 15.
For Protestants, the supreme authority in the church is the Holy Scriptures. For example, the Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF) 1.10: “The supreme judge by which all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men, and private spirits, are to be examined, and in whose sentence we are to rest, can be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture” (emphases mine). Protestants expressly deny that the pope of Rome is in any sense the head of the church: “There is no other head of the church but the Lord Jesus Christ. Nor can the pope of Rome, in any sense, be head thereof” (WCF 25.6).
3. Transubstantiation
The church has not enjoyed universal consensus about the words of institution of the Lord’s Supper: “This is my body.” Some (Zwinglians) understand the language as representative only: This loaf represents my bodily death. Others (Reformed) believe the language is representative, but that it also suggests a special presence of Christ that attends the celebration of the Supper. Still others (Lutherans) believe that Christ is present in and with the material elements themselves, but that the material elements themselves do not transform into another substance. Catholicism believes that the prayer of consecration materially transforms (transubstantiates) the bread and wine into the material body and blood of Christ: “Evidently Paul believed that the words Christ had said at the Last Supper, ‘This is my Body,’ meant that really and physically the bread is his body. In fact Christ was not merely saying that the bread was his body; he was decreeing that it should be so and that it is so.” (Francis J. Ripley, 1993; CA)
Protestants deny that the heavenly incarnate Christ leaves his current heavenly session to return to earth materially in the bread and wine of the Supper.
4. Mass as a Sacrifice
Protestants believe that the Lord’s Supper is a memorial/reminder of the bodily death of Christ, and some believe that it is also a meeting with Christ; but they deny that the Supper is in any sense a re-sacrificing of Christ, whose one-time death was a sacrifice that saves for all time those who come to God through him. Catholic teaching, however, regards the Supper as another offering of Christ. “Do this in remembrance of me” in Catholic teaching means “Do this sacrifice in remembrance of me.” As CA claims: “This use of poiein is translated as offer this or sacrifice this over seventy times in the Old Testament.”
It is true that, in some of the Mosaic instructions regarding the Levitical sacrifices, the Levites are instructed “to do” one thing or another, using the verb poiein. The term poiein, however, is one of the most common in the Greek Old Testament, occurring 3,208 times, which, by simple arithmetic, means that 3,207 times it denotes nothing related to sacrifices. So the term is not a terminus technicus, but a general term. What “do this” means in any context is determined by what the “this” is, and not by the verb “do” (poiein). Poiein occurs as an imperative in the same sentence with the pronoun “this” (touto) only eleven times in the Greek Old Testament, and of those, only one (not seventy) is at all cultic. In Leviticus 9, there is this narrative of “the people” (not the priests) bringing animals to Moses, who would in turn give them to the priests:
And say to the people of Israel, “Take a male goat for a sin offering, and a calf and a lamb, both a year old without blemish, for a burnt offering, and an ox and a ram for peace offerings, to sacrifice before the LORD, and a grain offering mixed with oil, for today the LORD will appear to you.” And they brought what Moses commanded in front of the tent of meeting, and all the congregation drew near and stood before the LORD. And Moses said, “This (Touto) is the thing that the LORD commanded you to do (poiēsate), that the glory of the LORD may appear to you.’” (Lev 9:3–6; emphasis added).
One possibly cultic usage of the expression (out of 3,208) is not enough to establish a technical use of the expression. The precise expression from the New Testament “do this” is never found in the Old Testament, and in the seven occurrences of the expression in the New Testament, only three (Luke 22:19, 1 Cor 11:24, 1 Cor 11:25) record the institution of the Supper; the other four are entirely non-sacramental and non-technical:
Matthew 8:9: For I too am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. And I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes, and to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.” (emphasis added)
Luke 7:8: For I too am a man set under authority, with soldiers under me: and I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes; and to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.” (emphasis added)
Luke 10:28: And he said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.” (emphasis added)
Acts 21:23: Do therefore what we tell you. We have four men who are under a vow . . . (emphasis added)
Protestants are informed (by Rom 6:10 and Heb 7:27) that Christ died sacrificially only once:
Romans 6:10: For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. (emphasis added)
Hebrews 7:27: He has no need, like those high priests, to offer sacrifices daily, first for his own sins and then for those of the people, since he did this once for all when he offered up himself. (emphasis added)
5. Seven Sacraments or Two Sacraments
Catholicism teaches that Christ instituted seven sacraments: Baptism, the Mass, confirmation, confession (also sometimes called “penance” or “reconciliation”), anointing the sick, marriage, and holy orders. Protestants acknowledge only baptism and the Lord’s Supper as sacraments (and some Protestants acknowledge no “sacraments” at all, but only “ordinances”).
©T. David Gordon. All Rights Reserved.
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T. David Gordon
Dr. T. David Gordon is a teaching elder in The Presbytery of the Ascension. Before retirement, he taught at Gordon-Conwell Seminary (1984–98) and Grove City College (1999–2021).
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