On the Journey with Matt and Ken, Ep. 58: Christian Authority – The Historical Case

again as i'm reading irenaeus first of all i'm not understanding half of what he's saying uh this line in here when he says uh that tradition derived from the apostles of the great that very ancient and universally known church founded and organized at rome by the two most glorious apostles peter and paul irenaeus knows that the church is actually founded in jerusalem when jesus you know commissions the twelve right and the pentecost when you know they're you know and filled with the holy spirit and move on he's making a point about where headquarters is now i mean he's making a clear point that this is where the central offices are now located okay ring the bells okay yeah because when you think of it peter founded the church in jerusalem [Applause] [Music] so [Music] well hello and welcome to another faster higher and stronger episode of on the journey thank you for being with us uh during this season when uh we're all kind of all over the place for the summer ken and i have been taking some time off we just got back started up last week we are now really cranking into questions of peter and the papacy and church history but before we do that i want to tell you to visit us at chnetwork.org if you want to find out more about ken hensley or myself matt swaim and how we both became catholic or if you want to plug into our community of people who are exploring this question as we speak and one of the ways to do that is our october retreat uh coming home network retreat in houston so if you're at any point in your journey you want to meet with other people who are as well and get some good support ken i know that these are a highlight for you because you are usually there for them yeah and i'll be there really enjoy it all right very quickly before we get into the topic what do you think is your favorite part of the coming home network retreats well the thing i love about the retreats is that they're not oriented around people sitting in rows and listening to lectures eight hours a day they're they're oriented toward people for for people who are on the journey to any degree having plenty of time to discuss together so there's we just spent a lot of time talking together and hearing each other's stories they're they're they're great times i mean that's gonna be october or what are the dates 11th through the 14th and uh be prepared to stay up talking about amazing things with amazing people these are they're really fun times chnetwork.org retreats if you want to check those out but in the meantime ken back back to peter back to peter and we're actually going beyond peter into the we've been hanging out in the new testament um but let's talk a little bit about the early centuries of christianity those earliest days post new testament and kind of what's going on yeah we're making a shift here today we've dealt with the biblical material looking at the extraordinary prominence of peter in the gospels and in the early chapters of acts that statement of those statements of jesus in matthew 16 and other places we've looked at the biblical material and we're moving today to look at the the primacy of peter and the church of rome the primacy of rome in the early centuries of christian history okay and so let me begin first of all with a very very basic historical narrative that is from what we know from the new testament accounts themselves again historical narrative peter begins his ministry in jerusalem peter travels to samaria in acts chapter 8. in acts chapter 9 we find peter traveling to joppa and then in acts chapter 10 to caesarea to the house of cornelius in acts 15 we find peter back in jerusalem for the council of jerusalem after this it appears that peter traveled through asia minor that is modern day turkey because in his first epistle we find him writing to the churches in the provinces of quoting now pontus galatia cappadocia asia and bithynia that's first peter 1 verse 1. and in the closing of that letter peter writes she who is in babylon who is likewise chosen sends you his greetings now no one believes that peter traveled to babylon and so most understand this as being a covert way of referring to the city of rome and therefore identifying peter as being in rome at the time that he writes that first epistle now peter's presence in rome is strengthened when we look at the early writings outside the new testament for instance eusebius the bishop of caesarea again the same place where cornelius lived the bishop of caesarea and the first church historian tells us in his book the ecclesiastical history he tells us that after having established the church in antioch which fits in with the new testament material peter went to rome which also fits in where he remained bishop eusebius says for 25 years before his death under the emperor nero this is what eusebius writes one of the things he writes quote nero in addition to his other crimes proceeded to make a persecution against the christians in which peter and paul died gloriously at rome so i'll just use saint jerome to kind of summarize here's how saint jerome summarizes the essential that is narrative of peter's life and death as it was understood and accepted at the time simon peter son of john of the province of galilee of the village of bethsaida brother of andrew the apostle and himself chief of the apostles noticed that in there after his bishopric at antioch and his preaching to the dispersed of the circumcision who who believed in pontus galatia cappadocia asia and bethennia in the second year of the emperor claudius went to rome and occupied there the sacredotal seat for 25 years until the last year of nero by the way um just for those of you who are following at home uh satsardotil is like a fancy word for priestly so there you have it all right for 25 years by nero then quoting again from eusebius i mean from jerome from st jerome by nero he was fashioned he was fastened to a cross and crowned with martyrdom his head down toward the earth and his feet raised on high for he maintained that he was unworthy to be crucified in the same manner as his lord he was buried in rome in the vatican that is on the vatican hill near the via triumphalis and is celebrated by the veneration of the whole world so to kind of draw this together the evidence from the writings of the early church both in the new testament and then beyond all of the evidence points to peter being the first bishop of the church of rome and being martyred there around 67 a.d in fact historically when you look at protestant um opposition to this basic narrative most often it's it seems to be rooted in solo scriptura the idea being that unless we catholics can prove from the pages of the new testament itself that peter went to rome that peter became the bishop of the church in rome and that peter was martyred in rome that somehow this entire scenario needs to be treated as mere catholic tradition it's totally up in the air who knows that kind of that kind of an attitude and yet ken uh we have all kinds of things that ended up in my history books going to public school that we have far less evidence for yes than we do for the actual narrative of peter you mentioned um him being an antioch and him going over to rome i mean not only do we have people who have written stuff like this down we have archaeological stuff that points to this as well there's there's a lot let's just say yeah yeah in fact when you look at scholarship from within the protestant world historical scholarship um they don't treat it like like you find in lorraine bettner's book uh catholicism where you know really anti-catholic literature but again as i said the opposition is just based on solar scripture it's like we have to prove from the new testament itself these things the these points of history whereas uh for instance uh new testament scholar protestant new testament scholar oscar coolman in his book peter disciple apostle and martyr he speaks of peter's death in rome and this is what he says we do not have even the slightest trace of historical evidence that points to any other place which could be considered the scene of his death it is a further important point that in the second and third centuries when certain churches were in rivalry with the one in rome it never occurred to a single one of them to contest the claim of rome that it was the scene of the martyrdom of peter and for comparison there are disputes between various churches about martyrdom sites of other apostles yes that said well this guy was smarter than armenia i know he was martyred in north africa there are some questions about that with the other apostles no questions about peter in the early church yeah when it comes to peter you know this basic historical narrative is is just really solid peter's ministry in jerusalem his ministry in antioch and then he's going to rome his being the bishop of rome him being martyred in rome under nero in fact i want to you mentioned archaeological evidence i just want to throw this out i would encourage those who are listening or who are watching take some time to get john walsh's book the bones of peter and read it i mean it it reads like an exciting detective story but the bottom line is this the evidence is strong that the original church of saint peter basilic of saint peter that was built under constantine in the fourth century and then was rebuilt in the 16th century as the saint peter's basilica that we that we now see in rome that the earlier church from the 4th century was itself built over a monument that had been placed in the first century over the grave of peter on vatican hill and that to this very day peter's bones are interred directly beneath the high altar of saint peter's basilica and you know you can go on tours now it's called the skavi tour where they take you down underneath saint peter's uh to where the bones of peter have been found in the 20th century so i mean there's a lot of amazing stuff here but the bottom line is the historical narrative is solid yeah and again bear in mind that if you're solo scriptura when it comes to evidence pertaining to what's going on in the bible then you can't get excited when archaeology goes and proves hey there really was a fishing village that you know existed where the bible was well we don't care what we care about is that the bible says that the apostles came from this place no when you find the archaeological evidence that's like real actual historical data that you can back things up with so even protestants who i mean if you read like the biblical archaeology review all the time they're finding things that refer to some king that was maybe mentioned only by name in the old testament and like oh now we know all these things about him but they're not in the bible so can we trust them you know right right right okay the historical evidence for the pro the historical evidence for peter having gone to rome and being martyred in rome is solid and is strong but at the same time matt the the historical evidence for the primacy of the church in rome the primacy of the bishop of rome the primacy of peter and his successors this was something that presented me with a great deal to think about in my uh at the time that i was beginning to study catholicism um i read at the time a number of books on this subject i listened to a number of debates between protestant catholic apologists in fact every debate that i could find and i really struggled for a while with the fact that that while i could see the basis for the catholic view of peter and the papacy in the pages of the new testament i could see that and in fact it seemed strong to me and i remember being kind of bewildered because i thought wow i never saw this stuff before but you know everything we saw in matthew 16 about peter and then going back to the idea of the of the the you know the the grand steward of the grand vizier of the house of david and all that right okay while i could see the basis for the primacy of peter in the new testament what i struggled with was the fact that it seems to me that the acceptance of the basic catholic view was something that developed over time that there was real development in the early centuries of the church both in the reception of the doctrine and even in the understanding of the doctrine itself and that's what i want to look at here today and i think it's important that you bring this up because you know there may be some triumphalist catholics out there who are like well obviously from day one peter was the pope and the guy after him was the pope and the guy after him was the pope come on and fact the matter is is that this is a struggle for protestants who have not grown up with that kind of long view of ecclesiology you know if you grew up like you and i did you know we have to see the hard and fast evidence that it was that way and the fact matter is that it wasn't that way and it doesn't have to be that way i know that now as a catholic um but as i was going through all this i i had a very similar struggle to what you're about to recount yeah i mean although when we were looking at the book of acts we definitely see peter assuming a strong leadership position but i'm just saying that when you begin to read the early church father is post-apostolic you don't have this complete unity right from the beginning on anything well on some things yes but you don't have this complete unity and that that was that was a real struggle for me first the positive side though because i can still remember how really struck i was like a brick to the forehead really when i did begin to read the early church fathers and i caught something of their mindset with respect to the church of rome and the place of primacy of rome and peter and whatnot just the fact that there was anything describing that stuff seemed like crazy to me because i had never given it any thought and we're going to walk through some of it but for instance there was saint clements famous letter to the church in corinth okay clement is there's no dispute of this he's one of the earliest bishops of the church of rome probably bishop number three his letter to the church of corinth may be the earliest post-apostolic document that we have it's usually dated around 95 a.d but i've seen it dated 80 and even 70 a.d so this is a very early document okay apparently a dissension had taken place in the corinthian church there was fighting among the leadership there and the leadership had reached out to rome for uh what it seems at minimum some council so clement writes this letter the bishop of rome writes this letter to the church in corinth and he begins his letter by apologizing for having taken so long to attend to the situation there this is what he says owing dear brethren to the sudden and successive calamitous events that have happened to us we feel that we have been somewhat tardy in turning our attention to the points about which you consulted us okay from the beginning matt you read it and there's this authoritative fatherly tone to the letter that clement writes and the questions is like right from the beginning just come off the page why has the church of corinth reached out to rome for council i mean corinth is in greece last time i looked i mean it's six or seven or eight hundred miles as the crow flies from rome which is in italy why do they reach out to the roman church with the problem they're having yeah why would they reach out to antioch where the believers were first called christians or and constantinople and why is clement apologizing for having been tardy in dealing with the situation so these questions right away why but that's not all clement offers guidance to the church in great detail and then he warns his readers of the consequences of not following his instructions and here's a portion of what he says accept our counsel and you shall have nothing to regret and he elaborates on that but should any disobey what has been said by him through us and in the context matt the by him is talking about jesus he has just referred to jesus christ so accept our counsel you you shall have nothing to regret but should any disobey what has been said by jesus christ through us let them understand that they will entangle themselves in transgression and no small danger i remember reading this you know again maybe the earliest post-apostolic document in existence and and thinking well i don't know you know thinking wow yeah i remember reading it and thinking you know because i had read some later people stuff with where they use the papal we right like we say this and we say that and uh you know you don't talk like that unless you're speaking from a role of authority uh you know we have decided like i don't come to you ken and say you know uh we are sorry that we took so long to get back to you on the notes for this episode we understand ken that you are in need of our solicitude no i mean i say yeah hey ken i'm sorry um and and the fact that even clement was referring to himself in the royal we you know kind of showed that there was like a position here that i wasn't expecting to find you add up the fatherly tone you add up the authoritative tone apologizing for not getting back warning them that if they don't obey what has been spoken by him or through by christ through him oh i mean the the whole thing okay so he doesn't say bishop i mean he doesn't talk about the papacy but he does say those things okay and then then there was the the seven letters of saint ignatius the bishop of antioch now these are written around 1 10 a.d maybe 117 a.d again one of the earliest witnesses that we have ignatius was a disciple of the apostle john himself now in his letters ignatius says a great deal about the need for each church to be unified around the authority of its bishop and while he doesn't say anything specifically about the bishop of rome he describes the church of rome in ways that just make it patently clear that he viewed this church as holding a special place of authority among the churches listen to what he said this is his inter this is the introduction his greeting in his letter to the church in rome ignatius who is also called theophorus to the church that has obtained mercy through the majesty of the most high father and jesus christ his only begotten son the church that is beloved and enlightened by the will of him who wills all things according to the love of jesus christ our god that presides in the place of the region of the romans worthy of god worthy of honor worthy of the highest happiness worthy of praise worthy of obtaining her every desire worthy of being deemed holy and which presides in love now people have gone back and forth debating what exactly is meant by this phrase presides in love this can be debated but here's how one eastern eastern orthodox mat one eastern orthodox theologian comments on this passage in his book the primacy of peter as you know the eastern orthodox do not accept the papacy but listen to how he comments on this passage from ignatius he that is ignatius pictures the local churches grouped as it were in a eucharistic assembly with each church in its special place and the church of rome in the chair sitting in the first place we are not told by ignatius why the church of rome should preside and not some other church to ignatius it must have seemed self-evident and proofs a waste of time in this period that is in this historical period no other church laid claim to this role which belonged to the church of rome okay so a couple of things here actually you know one sort of main thing so ignatius writes this on a way to his martyrdom and he he's martyred what age he's in his 80s right there's around one yeah 110 a.d you subtract 80 from 110 ignatius is a baby at the time that jesus rises from the dead essentially this is not i mean you you just read 110 off a page and you assume well this is removed from the world of the apostles yeah no jesus has risen from the dead in ignatius his lifetime and he's writing this i mean that's how close we are to this kind of thinking how close this kind of thinking is to the age of the apostles and he was a disciple of john yeah so so so you have clement i i read these letters of ignatius and i ran into this again he doesn't he doesn't say papacy but he speaks of the church is possessing this this important a central role and he's all and he's at the same time speaking continually about how the bishops have this extreme authority and that everyone needs to be united around the bishop which implies that the bishop of rome had the authority that he's referring to okay okay then i then i walk on to saint irenaeus the bishop of lyon in southern gaul now one of the most important again of the early church fathers and in his book against heresies written in the 180s a.d irenaeus is talking about the unity this is powerful he's talking about the unity of the church and the unity of the church's teaching that at the time was embraced he describes it throughout the world okay the unity of the church and its teaching he says as i said before the church having received this preaching and this faith from the apostles although she is disseminated throughout the whole world yet she guarded it as if she occupied but one house she likewise believes these things just as if she had but one soul and one in the same heart and harmoniously she proclaims them and teaches them and hands them down as if she possessed but one mouth for the churches which have been planted in germany do not believe or hand down anything different nor do those in spain nor those in gaul nor those in the east nor those in egypt and he continues on okay we have this is the 180s this is near the end of the second century and he's describing this tremendous unity of faith that existed within the church at that time and then he goes on to explain the basis for this unity matt and what does he focus on apostolic succession and in particular the unique role of the church in rome and i have to read it for it for the the impact to be felt it is within the power of all therefore in every church who may wish to see the truth to contemplate clearly the tradition of the apostles manifested throughout the whole world and we are in a position to reckon up those who were by the apostles instituted bishops in the churches and to demonstrate the succession of these men to our own times those who neither taught nor knew anything like what these heretics rave about since however it would be very tedious in such a volume as this to reckon up the successions of all the churches we do put to confusion all those who in whatever manner whether by an evil self-pleasing by vain glory by blindness and perverse opinion a symbol in unauthorized meetings by indicating that tradition derived from the apostles of the very great the very ancient the universally known church founded and organized at rome by the two most glorious apostles peter and paul this is peter first and then paul that's the correct order as also by pointing out the faith preached to men which comes down to our time by means of the successions of the bishops for it is a matter of necessity that every church should agree with this church on account of its preeminent authority and again matt irenaeus doesn't focus on the bishop of rome he doesn't talk about the bishop of rome or the you know the authority of the bishop of rome he doesn't give us meaning that he doesn't give us the full catholic doctrine of the papacy at the same time is so easy for me to see that there was something of the mindset of clement of ignatius of irenaeus that was simply light years from anything that i believed as a baptist yeah and there's sense yeah go ahead i was gonna say and there's a line he's he says in here and again as i'm reading irenaeus first of all i'm not understanding half of what he's saying because he's arguing with a whole bunch of different heretics along the way but uh this line in here when he says that tradition derived from the apostles of the great that very ancient and universally known church founded and organized at rome by the two most glorious apostles peter and paul irenaeus knows that the church is actually founded in jerusalem when jesus you know commissions the twelve right and the pentecost when you know they're you know and filled with the holy spirit and move on he's making a point about where headquarters is now i mean he's making a clear point that this is where the central offices are now located okay ring the bells okay yeah yeah because when you think of it peter founded the church in jerusalem he's the one who stood up and preached on that first day at pentecost and then he goes and he file found the church in antioch and yet what is uh what does irene's point to okay if you want to know the truth we've got to go back to that most ancient that most glorious most venerated church headquarters yeah the headquarters man the headquarters okay so again while while irenaeus doesn't describe for us the doctrine of the papacy in all of these writings there's this sense that the bishops held a place of authority within each church and that means something to me because i didn't even have bishops in the baptist church you don't even have bishops okay and there's this sense that the church of rome holds this special place of authority among all the churches and and if the bishops of each church hold a special place of authority and the church of rome holds this special preeminent place of authority and presiding in love then the bishop of rome holds this by implication this place of authority and saint clement who's the bishop of rome he seems to be conscious of possessing this special authority over the church even in corinth but then we move on just a couple of things quickly then we have victor the bishop of rome during the time of irenaeus excommunicating all of the bishops of the east okay now we don't need to get into the details and the truth is irenaeus talks him out of it at the time but the very fact that the bishop of rome victor operates as though he has this authority just to wave his hand and excommunicate all the bishops of the east over anything it just speaks volumes as to the concept that he had of himself we have origin of alexandria identifying peter as and i'm quoting now the great foundation of the church that most solid of rocks upon which christ built his church we even have saint cyprian bishop of the church in carthage in the mid third century who argued strongly at times for the equality that is the equal authority of each bishop within his own realm and yet he wrote the following in this in his tract the unity of the catholic church written in 251 a.d quoting him the lord says to peter i say to you he says that you are peter and upon this rock i will build my church and to you i will give the keys to the kingdom of heaven here's cyprian writing on him peter that is he builds the church and commands him to feed his sheep john 21 17 and although he assigns a like power to all the apostles yet he founded a single chair catholic cathedral and he established by his own authority a source and an intrinsic reason for that unity indeed the others were also what peter was that is bishops but a privacy was given to peter by which it is made clear that there is one church and one chair if one does not hold fast to the unity of peter can he think that he holds the faith if he deserts the chair of peter upon which upon whom the church was built can he be confident that he is in the church and then in his letter to cornelius the bishop of roman 252 a.d this is what cyprian said with a false bishop appointed for themselves by heretics they dare even to set sail and carry letters from schismatics and blasphemers they dare to set sail and carry letters even to the chair of peter and to the principal church in which sacherdotal unity has its source against sacramento meaning priestly unity has its source again i've got one more quote okay because it builds from there it just keeps on building but over the course of the early centuries but just one more because this one is kind of special this is taken from the arabic canons of the council of nicaea in 325 okay and the reason it's a key statement is because it allows us to catch a glimpse of the thinking of the mindset of the eastern churches at the time of the council of nicaea and listen to it canon 39 of the arabic councils or canons of the care of the power which the patriarch has over the bishops and the archbishops of his patriarchate and of the primacy of the bishop of rome overall let the patriarch consider that things are done by the archbishops and bishops in their provinces and if he shall find anything done by them otherwise than it should be let him change it and order it as seemeth fit for him fit to him for he is the father of all and they are his sons and although the archbishop be among the bishops as an elder brother who hath the care of his brethren and to whom they owe obedience because he is over them yet the patriarch is to all those who are under his power just as he who holds the seed of rome is the head and prince of all patriarchs inasmuch as he is first as was peter to whom power is given over all christian princes and over all their peoples as he who is the vicar of christ our lord over all peoples and over the whole christian church and whoever shall contradict this is excommunicated by this synod these are the eastern churches matt in 3 25 which as you know is decades before even the canon of the new testament is is uh well is is is kind of formally the formal table of contents is not i mean even if you want to look for a comprehensive list of books that are in the new testament st irenaeus who just also said all that stuff about the primacy of the sea of rome is one of our earliest sources of a comprehensive list of the books that belong in the new testament i mean right it's it's it's wild you mean you think these things are growing up well there's these people who are focused on the bible and then there's these people over here who are focused on the papacy and the institutional church then you look at ireneas he's talking about both he's our best source in that era for authority on both of those questions yeah you know there's as i'm as i was discovering this um first of all there was this sort of terror that seized me um that i felt like i had i had been part of like venture capitalist christianity you know just trying to invent a new brand right i felt like i felt like there's just this immense historical weight of the church and i was just like trying to say no man this is what the bible means and i just felt like a fool you know it was this sort of yeah weird thing you know and all these and all these little phrases that are buried in these quotations that we didn't even stop and comment on though like when irene talks about those who are gathering in an unauthorized gatherings and i'm thinking that's me that's that's me dude i mean because he's obviously talking about this unity of the faith that is based on apostolic succession and the church of rome and the whole world at the time agrees in germany and spain and all that and he says and they they don't teach the church doesn't teach anything like these madmen who are raving and meeting together in unauthorized groups and if it was just irenaeus or if it was just sabrina of carthage or if it was just ignatius of antioch or if it was just clement or if it was just this group of arabic speaking christians at the council of nicaea i'd be like well that's just that's whatever the problem was is that when i ran into the same debates that you were talking about um and i don't even know if we watched some of the same ones it all sort of runs together after a while because uh there's just so much of so much noise what i found is that the catholic church said we don't have evidence of the word pope back then either we just know this is how leadership was understood and today we call that the papacy whereas the protestant sources that i was relying on to help get me out of this right these are the people i needed to be right the best they could say is well that's not enough proof yeah you couldn't say well this is this alternatively this is what happened all they could say because they couldn't provide an alternative the sources the debaters the apologists on the protestant side that i was looking too desperately for help all i could say is well that's not enough proof yeah because we can find some people speaking that seem to disagree with it you know along the way you know there's a there's there's not a total unity of um of a faith in this doctrine from the beginning and consistent among women there's enough well i mean i'm reading this thing from the arabic councils and and i i i noticed not only are there bishops at the time 325 a.d i didn't have bishops at all in my church maybe you did in the methodist church there's bishops right yeah there's bishops but in the israeli church we had district superintendents right you know yeah well okay there are bishops there but then there are archbishops that are over the bishops and then there are patriarchs that are over all of them and they still see those by the way in the eastern churches and the orthodox the eastern capitals and the orthodox churches today this same model holds yeah and so they're describing the patriarchs being over the archbishops who are over the bishops and then they say but then over all of them is this one who they call the vicar of christ our lord whoever shall contradict this exists communicated and all this is again decades before the councils of rome hippo and carthage at which the the the 27 books of the of the new testament are firmly and formally kind of announced to the church and again back to an irenaeus irenaeus the same source we use when we're looking at how did the early church one of the same sources we use when we say how did the early church you know which books did the early church believe or the bible i mean it's the same sources in a lot of ways okay so here's what i'm coming to in my story in term in terms of my story is that is that as i was reading all of this and i was listening to the debates and all i could see that the catholic conception of the papacy is definitely forming in these early centuries of the church being more and more elaborated and more and more formalized and agreed upon on the other hand protestant apologists and this bothered me of course that i had to struggle with this protestant apologists they had no problem presenting evidence that seemed to go in the other direction early christian writers who did not see peter as the rock of matthew 16 who said that the rock was jesus whether the rock was peter's faith or who who maybe said yeah peter's the rock but he's no different than the other apostles and didn't seem to have any early christian writers who didn't seem to have a sense that this meant something for the church of rome or the bishop of rome and and the successors to peter possessing some kind of authority over the entire church and so i found myself thinking being kind of bifurcated that is that while i could see the basis for the papacy in the page of the new testament the universal acceptance of all that was involved or that catholics see is being involved in jesus's words to peter you are peter and on this rock i will build my church and i give you the keys this is something that evolved over several centuries it wasn't something everyone just knew from the get-go clearly and it wasn't something that everyone accepted or agreed on from the get-go or even or even right away it's something that that that developed over time and and here matt is what was becoming clear to me in all this that in order to embrace the essential catholic understanding of the role of peter and the successors the bishops of rome i was going to have to believe that the holy spirit was leading the church in this development to embrace this understanding and i kind of slowly realized that this was a key question a really key question that i was going to have to wrestle with did christ the head of his body his life coursing through his church did he lead the church in these early centuries to the development of their doctrine of the doctrinal positions that they came to because as a baptist i viewed all of this evidence in the early centuries of the church as evidence of a departure from a simple from the simple quote-unquote teaching of the new testament and the catholic church is making a contrary claim and saying no no this is the holy spirit leading the church to develop its belief its beliefs and you and i both believed that the holy spirit led the church at the council of jerusalem to come to its decision we both i'm sure we both believe that the holy spirit led the church reflecting on scripture and tradition to the correct view of the canon of the new testament or that the holy spirit was leading the church of the council of nicaea to define the hypostatic union the human and divine natures or that the holy spirit was leading the church at constantinople to you know to make a stand on the full personality and deity of the holy spirit we probably believed these things right the holy spirit was leading even if we didn't believe that's how they came about right we still believe these things we believe them so the question was in the air did i believe the holy spirit was leading the church to its understanding of baptism or the eucharist as a sacrifice made by priests on an altar or apostolic succession or the papacy to believe this was to become catholic and so that was the question where were you at at a certain point on this do you remember i i remember i'm gonna try and see if i can articulate this the right way um i think for me the the gut punch the i gotta jump out of this airplane i hope this parachute holds moment was when i realized unless you have this you don't get the bible like unless you unless you have a structure with authority and a centralized authority at that you don't have the bible ken if if we were to gather the churches in your town let's just say little old los angeles actually let's just say your little suburb of los angeles and you and three other churches in your area were to get together and say guys we got to decide which books are in the bible which books aren't yeah forget everything we've known we need to go back and look at the historical evidences we three churches are going to just look at and we're going to decide do you think you all three would come to the same list do you think that if you did come to the same list we would say well that's just what fillmore baptist says that's not what we believe like without this you don't get the bible i mean you don't get the cannon of the new testament without this in place it's i mean that's that to me was just a gut-wrenching conclusion that again it was new to me but of course the churches christians just sort of understood this up until about 1500 and then chaos ensued but this to me it was a revelation it was a it was shocking new information um kind of especially when you begin to learn that in some churches the letter of clement to the church in corinth was read and was read for a long time i mean for decades that the letter the shepherd were read yeah barnabas so so it's not like it it's not like everybody knew well there's 27 books and so we need to and we're going to be lehman's got to be in there philemon has to be in there don't you understand yeah yeah that's a that's a good point yeah when you began to realize i remember wasn't the talk i remember hearing a talk that was called the church and scripture both or neither something like like that you know that that yeah that if you didn't if you didn't believe i'm describing it as trusting the holy spirit's leading if you didn't believe that the holy spirit was in the church leading the church to decisions that are firm and binding then then the cannon is up in the air for you and uh and all these things are up in the air you know for yeah a whole lot of things and and hopefully i know that there's a lot of people who listen here who come from protestant backgrounds in our catholic but i know there are probably a lot of people i know there are definitely a lot of people listening to this who come from protestant christian backgrounds who are not catholic and maybe only slightly considering or maybe not considering it all this is why i'm so sympathetic to you because i remember just the the panic um that i felt when i started to discover stuff that was not consistent with i won't say not consistent with the research i had previously done but not consistent with the assumption that i'd already had and i know that there are people who are watching who are a lot more studied in their protestant backgrounds than i was when i started to hit these um these i wanted to call them like landmines but but i hope that people listening who are not where we are now understand that we are extremely sympathetic because this was earth-shattering for me yeah it was earth-shattering for me in this sense as well that that if i had ever gone to a bible study and i had heard someone say well i know this is the right interpretation because the holy spirit led me to it you know i would have thought they were nuts so i was on the opposite side of ever talking like well i think the baptists are right because the holy spirit led us to this system of theology and the presbyterians are wrong because the holy spirit didn't lead them or the lutherans are wrong or the nazarenes or the methodists or the you know the wesleyans whatever um i didn't talk that way and i didn't think that way it was chapter and verse it was you need to establish from the details the exegetical details of the text what you believe and so for me to come down to this question of wow the watershed then is do i believe the holy spirit led the church because on this doctrine of the papacy like on the doctrine of baptism or the eucharist or many other things i could see the seeds of all of it in the new testament but if i had to prove it from the new testament alone then i would cut be like i can't prove this there are other ways of reading these passages that are at least plausible and so i had to believe that the holy spirit was leading the church to this conclusion and in fact this is so crucial to my own conversion that this is what i want to do next week is i want us to just look at this question of the leading of the holy spirit and the church and focus on this and elaborate on it in more detail as we begin to bring you know to summarize then this series on scripture tradition and magisterium and bring it to a close over the next couple of weeks again it's the question behind the question when you've got 10 people in a room and vincent of lorenz your buddy talks about this you know in depth you got 10 people in a room all looking at the same verse all saying it is written it is all saying it is written and all saying something slightly different the question is not which one has the answer that sounds the best the question is who has the authority to say what this really means and that's the question really that's been driving us for five thousand episodes now at this point in the series but uh hopefully you've gotten something out of it um in the meantime if you want to uh come on a coming home network retreat if you're having questions along the way um as you seek christ and catholicism as part of those questions we do have these coming home network retreats and they're really neat experiences and uh we encourage you to go to ch network slash i'm sorry chnetwork.org retreats uh houston october 11th through the 14th ken will be there check it out you can uh you could tell him how he's wrong to his face do it just like paul did to peter in the meantime thank you so much have a wonderful day we'll talk to you soon you too matt [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: The Coming Home Network International

Views: 1,973

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: God, Jesus, Holy Spirit, Prayer, Faith, Religion, Spirituality, Old Testament, New Testament, Scripture, Bible, Papacy, Pope, Church history, early Church, Church Fathers, St. Peter, St. Paul, Apostolic Succession, Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, EWTN, Marcus Grodi, Journey Home, Becoming Catholic, pastors becoming Catholic, Asbury College, Fuller Seminary, Baptist, Free Methodist, Nazarene

Id: xU5fdJJgrv4

Length: 46min 0sec (2760 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 04 2021