Philippians - a Problem for “the Church has Always been Catholic” Roman Catholicism

There are two problems, one major and one minor, for a certain stream of Roman Catholicism, in the first verse of Philippians.  There are different streams of Roman Catholicism.  One popular stream of Roman Catholicism tries to assert that "the Church has always been Roman Catholic."  Typically, they would just use "Catholic" but their meaning is that they think their church represents an unchanged version of Christianity.  That's not the only stream of Roman Catholic thought.  There are other Roman Catholic views that would recognize the papacy as a development, as something that didn't exist in the earliest days, but eventually developed.

The two problems are for the first stream.  First, here is the verses.

Philippians 1:1 Paul and Timotheus, the servants of Jesus Christ, to all the saints in Christ Jesus which are at Philippi, with the bishops and deacons:

Notice that Paul is writing to the Christians at Philippi, an important Roman colony city.  This city has not just a single bishop in a monoepiscopate.  Instead, the city has plurality of bishops.  The monoepiscopacy was a very natural development (and we see it happening even in some Protestant churches), but it is a merely human tradition, not an apostolic tradition.

Likewise, notice that Timothy is the natural successor of Paul.  Timothy is not one of the apostles, but he appears in Philippians as Paul's co-author (Philippians 1:1) and messenger (Philippians 1:1), and Timothy also appears as Paul's co-worker in Romans (Romans 16:21) as Paul's messenger to Corinth (1 Corinthians 4:17 and 16:10), as a fellow preacher with Paul and Silvanus in Corinth (2 Corinthians 1:19), as Paul's messenger to Thessalonica (1 Thessalonians 3:2) and from Thessalonica (1 Thessalonians 3:6), as the recipient of two personal epistles of Paul (1 & 2 Timothy), and as the companion of the author of Hebrews (Hebrews 13:23), which is often ascribed to Paul.  Moreover, Timothy is co-author of 2 Corinthians (2 Corinthians 1:1), Colossians (Colossians 1:1), 1 Thessalonians (1 Thessalonians 1:1), 2 Thessalonians (2 Thessalonians 1:1), and Philemon (Philemon 1).  Who among the second generation of the church is more noted than Timothy? Certainly not the alleged successor of Peter at Rome, Linus or his alleged successor Anacletus/Cletus.

This is a less direct problem for Roman Catholicism, but it should give pause to folks who think that the Bible reflects an early "Roman Catholic" church. 

Molina's View of Middle Knowledge

Sometimes Calvinists are accused of "straw manning" Molinist positions regarding God's knowledge of conditional future contingents.  I recognize that there are many different Molinists, and that they may have many different views.  The following, however, are Molina's views, as summarized in the introduction to Part IV of Concordia, "On Divine Foreknowledge," by Prof. Alfred J. Freddoso, a go-to expert on this topic (and not someone likely to be accused of being a Calvinist) (pp. 23-24):

 On Molina's view, then, the source of God's foreknowledge of absolute future contingents is threefold: (i) His prevolitional natural knowledge of metaphysically necessary states of affairs, (ii) His prevolitional middle knowledge of conditional future contingents, and (iii) His free knowledge of the total causal contribution He himself wills to make to the created world. By (i) He knows which spatio-temporal arrangements of secondary causes are possible and which contingent effects might emanate from any such arrangement. By (ii) He knows which contingent effects would in fact emanate from any possible spatio-temporal arrangement of secondary causes. By (iii) He knows which secondary causes He wills to create and conserve and how He wills to cooperate with them via His intrinsically neutral general concurrence. So given His natural knowledge, His middle knowledge, and His free knowledge of His own causal contribution to the created world, He has free knowledge of all absolute future contingents. That is, He has within Himself the means required for knowing with certainty which contingent effects will in fact emanate from the actual arrangement of secondary causes.

In a paper on Molina (available here), Freddoso similarly summarizes Molina's views on God's knowledge this way:

According to Molina, then, the basis for God's providence and for his foreknowledge of absolute future contingents is threefold: (i) his pre-volitional natural knowledge of metaphysically necessary truths, (ii) his pre-volitional middle knowledge of futuribilia, and (iii) his post-volitional knowledge of the total causal contribution he himself wills to make to the created world. By (i) he knows which spatio-temporal arrangements of secondary causes are possible and which contingent effects might possibly emanate from any such arrangement. By (ii) he knows which contingent effects would in fact emanate from any such arrangement. By (iii) he knows which secondary causes he wills to create and precisely how he wills to cooperate with them via his intrinsically neutral cooperating grace and general concurrence. So given God's pre-volitional natural knowledge and middle knowledge, he is able to choose a comprehensive providential plan; and given further his post-volitional knowledge of what his own causal contribution to the created world will be, he has free knowledge of all absolute future contingents.

The "Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy" provides these insights (link) that claim to relate more broadly to Molinism and not specifically to Molina:

In the contemporary discussion of possible worlds, two concepts have proven particularly instructive: actualization and similarity. In popular piety, it is not unusual to refer to God creating the world. However, in possible worlds semantics, this is seen as semantically improper. Instead, God’s creative activity should be referred to as creating the heavens and the Earth, but actualizing a particular possible world (since possible states of affairs do not have a beginning, which the language of creation implies). According to the doctrine of Molinism, God can actualize a world where His will is brought about by the free decisions of creatures, but in order to make this claim, contemporary Molinists have had to distinguish between strong and weak actualization. Strong actualization refers to the efforts of a being when it causally determines the occurrence of an event (e.g., God causes something to happen), while weak actualization refers to the contribution of a being to the occurrence of an event by placement of a free creature in circumstances in which he will freely cause the event. Weak actualization has proven to be a powerful tool for understanding the relationship between God’s providence and human freedom. However, it must be noted that it implies that there may be some states of affairs that God cannot weakly actualize, which leads to the further conclusion that there may be some possible worlds that God cannot actualize.