Why I Don't Accept The Papacy

in this video i'm going to give two arguments against the papacy as understood by the roman catholic church i want to say just a few things to set it up here at the beginning uh first of all if you watch other videos of mine you probably notice the background is different so this i'm filming this from my house i started filming this earlier today i was so excited i did the whole thing and then i realized i had had camera issues at the end so here's hoping i won't have that problem again it's actually new year's eve tonight so good riddance 2020 and welcome 2021 and i uh just wanted to get this done before and i also just got the kids to bed i have four young kids right behind me so they're pretty decent chance you'll hear them at some point during this but i've been so excited to make this video i wanted to go ahead and get it done let me just say at the beginning here because i'm going to be criticizing roman catholic theology i want to start off by saying several things that i admire about my roman catholic friends and about the catholic tradition so i'm going to list five things now if you've seen any of my other videos on this topic protestant orthodox catholic engagement you know that i'm trying to take an ironic approach to these conversations some people have said what does irenic mean ironic just means aiming for peace and that is really important to me now aiming for peace iranicism doesn't mean that we don't contend for truth so i don't see that as at odds with contending for truth i think arguing for truth is really healthy but it's really important to me to have these conversations in as peaceable a way as possible part of that is just the state of dialogue in our culture right now i think those of us who are followers of christ need to model something better part of that is just i think that's what the gospel calls us to do if you believe that your sins have been eternally blotted out and you're going to heaven forever by an act of sheer grace if that does anything for you i mean however sure you are of your protestant views or catholic views or orthodox views or whatever if there's anything you're sure of it should be i need to be gracious and i need to be kind because of what god has done for me so um and that i i know i talk about that a lot but it's not just sort of a stylistic thing for me or icing on the cake that's to me actually you know first corinthians 13 says without love we're a resounding symbol or clanging gong love is essential for these conversations i really believe that so five things uh in that spirit kind of five things that i admire about my catholic friends in fact things i would say as i've been on my own study of engaging catholic theology things that i think catholics generally speaking obviously these are generalizations do better than protestants so number one philosophy and logic especially in the thomist tradition and a lot of evangelicals are kind of iffy on philosophy which is unfortunate number two literature in the arts almost all my favorite writers are catholic malcolm mugradge gk chesterton dorothy sayers j.r.r tolkien many others architecture and liturgy and just sort of the the aesthetics of worship not all protestants are bad at that but many are number four history and latin latin is my favorite language and i've noticed this many times and number five social and political philosophy and even certain areas of moral philosophy where you know whatever you think about the roman catholic view on contraception they've thought about that way more than many evangelicals have and they're i admire their consistency and i admire that they don't just move with the times so this video is not coming from a place of malice you know i really do i don't know if it's weird to mention those things but i'm just trying to be as productive as possible in the way we talk about these things but i really do admire those things but it's also not contrary to iranism or contrary to love to argue for truth and to use reasons to argue for the truth as best we see it in fact i think arguing is healthy there are few things that i respect more than forceful but calm disagreement and just the ability to just talk about those disagreements and the truth of these issues matter i mean this is kind of where my head has been the last couple of months engage researching thinking about catholic protestant orthodox differences and the issue of the papacy is about as important as a theological issue can be if you become a christian this is a fork in the road very early on that will affect the flavor of christianity for you the whole rest of the pathway if you think that there is a teaching office in the church that has the ability under certain conditions to offer infallible verdicts that bind the conscience of every christian on earth then that will have a massive impact upon just what your life is like following jesus so this is really important it's really important that we work at it so i'm going to give two arguments a biblical argument and then a historical argument and if you would like this video that would mean a lot to me because i feel like i'm going to get outnumbered on this one i feel like i'm headed into the storm here so here goes biblical argument my my claim would be that the biblical evidence for the papacy is slender and ambiguous say slender and ambiguous those adjectives because there's not many texts that are at play and those that are are unclear they're not explicit in what they're teaching us so let me spend most of my time just now on matthew 16. i'm going to say a little bit about luke 22 and john 21 as well but the main text i think that is at play when we're talking about the papacy is matthew 16. and the thing that's been so helpful for me in interpreting this passage is looking at what the church fathers had to say now the basic point i'm going to make is i do think it's clear that peter is given some kind of leadership role in the bible but the papacy the idea that there's this office that's universal head of the church such that what is given to peter can be handed down successively to the other bishops of rome after him um it's really a tough case to make so here's where the church fathers have brought me when it comes to matthew 16. we got a couple of questions we can just pose in matthew 16 jesus says to peter you are peter change is his name peter means rock and on this rock i will build my church so one of the big questions is what is this rock is it peter as a person or in his office is it the confession peter just made or is it jesus and then if it's peter is it peter in such a way that could support the doctrine of the papacy or something that would get you to the doctrine of the papacy so you know there's a lot to that beyond just is peter the rock on which the church is built because you need this office that can be handed down and you need you know infallible teaching coming from this office now among the church fathers you have all three of those major views represented that the rock is jesus that the rock is peter that the rock is peter's confession and then what's so interesting is you have a lot of hybrid views where it's some combination thereof and when we get into that we need to be asking what's the logical relationship between these so if it's both peter and jesus how is that the case how is it both of them and why is it both of them so let me just canvas some of the options here early on eusebius and origen advocated for a view of jesus as the rock and that they had a huge influence on others lots of church fathers go this route this is what augustine lands on he changes his view in his retractions he gives this view and he kind of leaves it open which is interesting here's what he says peter called after this rock represented the person of the church which is built upon this rock and has received the keys of the kingdom of heaven for thou art peter and not thou art the rock was said to him but the rock was christ in confessing whom as also the whole church confesses simon was called peter now the key here that is so interesting is peter there is is spoken of as a symbol or representation for the whole church and that's a key motif that comes up again and again with the church fathers when peter is identified as the rock or even when he isn't he's often interpreted as either a symbol of the unity of the church or as a representative example of the faith in christ that every christian is called to so that's how jerome as well interprets this one foundation which the apostolic architect laid as our lord jesus christ upon this stable and firm foundation which has itself been laid on solid ground the church of christ is built for the church was founded upon a rock upon this rock the lord established his church and the apostle peter received his name from this rock the rock is christ but here it is who gave to his apostles that they should also be called rocks thou art peter and upon this rock i will build my church so here he actually goes on to say the rock is not just peter for those who he references that and he says no it's all the apostles and then you've got other church fathers like origen who say all christians are the rock insofar as they confess christ like peter so that's one common view that jesus is the rock another common view is that the rock is peter's confession you can see this in john chrysostom he says quotes the verse thou art peter and upon this rock i build my church then he says that is on the faith of his confession here's how basel of seleucia put it now christ called this confession a rock and he named the one who confessed it peter perceiving the appellation which was suitable to the author of this confession for this is the solemn rock of religion and this the basis of salvation this the wall of faith and the foundation of truth for no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid which is christ jesus so there you've got the confession of peter as as the rock because jesus is the rock see again it's interesting the logical correlation between these different alternatives and he's quoting first corinthians 3 there that's one of the things the fathers are always doing that leads them to the idea that jesus is the rock first corinthians 3 first corinthians 10 ephesians 2 there's many other passages that identify jesus as the rock on which the church is built probably drawing from psalm 118 where jesus quotes this and says you know the the stone that the builders rejected has become the capstone so that's the second major option you've got that the rock is peter's confession you see that all over you see it in hillary and ambrosiaster and epiphanius and theodorate and cyril of alexandria and many many others now you also have some fathers who say peter is the rock but here's the key point when people go that route they almost always identify peter as the rock because of his confession or because jesus is the rock so peter is not the rock in his person or in his ecclesial role or office rather peter is the rock insofar as he is representative of faith or he's a symbol of the unity of the church so for example ambrose is often quoted out of context where people quote him as saying where peter is there the church is but if you keep reading in ambrose here's the fuller quote he says when peter heard who do you say that i am immediately not mindful of his station he exercised his primacy that is what kind of primacy the primacy of confession not of honor the primacy of belief not of rank this then is peter who has replied for the rest of the apostles rather before the rest of men and so he is called the foundation because he knows how to preserve not only his own but the common foundation faith then is the foundation of the church for it was said of peter's flesh not of peter's flesh but of his faith that the gates of hell shall not prevail against it now how do we know that that's really what ambrose means well because in other passages he explicitly identifies christ as the rock on which the church is built and basically says be a rock like peter you see how the logic works christ is the rock so confess this rock and you are also and that's in line with paul's imagery in ephesians chapter 2 where you've got the apostles i mean i don't think anyone would doubt that peter is foundational for the church along with the other apostles or that peter has a leadership role among the apostles but in terms of identifying peter as the rock in some way that would lead to the doctrine of the papacy i would go so far as to say this if our interpretation of matthew 16 follows the cues of the church fathers then we will not arrive at an interpretation that is favorable to the papacy to the roman catholic interpretation of matthew 16. we just won't for the church fathers the rock on which the church was built fundamentally was jesus christ the son of god and the apostles come in in in their witness to him what emerges from all this i would say is just that the exegetical basis for this doctrine is very slender because what you have to get to get to the papacy is not just the notion that peter has this foundational role in the church and however specifically he has that but he has it in such a way that it could be handed off subsequently to um the subsequent roman bishops now even if you think no i'm the way i read matthew 16 is it's it's peter in such a way that it's his office it's not his confession of faith or something like that it's his office that could be handed off you still have a very slender basis you're just dealing with this one passage the other passages that are generally brought into discussion so john 21 and luke 22 for example these passages just aren't clear or explicit and i've looked at the fathers on these as well and none of them are correlating these texts with peter's rank or status within the church or something like that pretty consistently they're looking at these passages as having to do with peter's restoration after his denials of christ so you know it would be a it would be a proof of peter's uh of the papacy perhaps if jesus said to peter in john 21 feed my sheep as my vicar or if he said in luke 22 when you have turned back strengthen your brothers as their head or something like that but all it's saying is all all these all that's explicit in these passages is that jesus is restoring peter to his ministry as an apostle and eastern orthodox christians protestant christians believe in a foundational role for peter but you need more than that to get to the papacy so here's the way i would make the appeal the doctrine of the papacy is a massively significant issue i mean it i would say it's the main issue that separates protestants and and catholics probably catholics and orthodox as well it has to do with authority you know everything else sort of falls out from this doctrine if you buy into it it it affects the entire way you will proceed theologically and just as a christian for such a massive doctrine you'd want a strong biblical foundation you'd want a number of passages or at least some a couple of clear passages it's something you know you'd want to have something that basically says if not in these words in some way there's gonna be a pope you know like and that's not unreasonable to expect we have passages like ephesians 4 that talk about the unity of the church and talk about the offices of the church serving the unity of the church one lord one faith one baptism you'd expect there to be something that indicates there's hey there's going to be a head of the church on earth you know and uh we just don't have that we have a couple of passages mainly one passage in terms of where you really get into the issues of infallibility with the binding and loosing imagery and that kind of stuff and this passage is very ambiguous it's it's certainly if we're following the church fathers we will not clearly be arriving on an interpretation that favors the papacy we just don't have a strong exegetical base for this massive doctrine okay my second argument against the papacy is a historical argument and i'll start off by saying there's no question that the roman church was a significant church from the beginning peter and paul both died there just like there's no question that peter was a leader among the apostles during jesus's earthly ministry absolutely the roman church was a very significant church you have strong statements from irenaeus and others about its stature its authority um it's the capital of the empire you know rome is the whole roman empire and it's a large church it's a prominent church so i don't think there's any question about that but what you'd need to see to support the idea of the papacy is not just general stature or occasional sporadic uh leadership in some way you'd need to see some kind of evidence for universal jurisdiction or i mean i'm open on the details of what this would look like you need to see some kind of universal leadership coming in early on where the bishop of rome is functioning in a capacity that indicates to us okay he's the head bishop something like that and i've looked into this uh pretty thoroughly and i'm passionately convinced that evidence just isn't there so let me give a couple of examples of this one would be ecumenical councils and other ways that the early church resolves doctrinal disputes and this is really significant because this is one of the whole appeals for the papacy it's like hey you know you guys have a zillion denominations for this reason you need some kind of infallible teaching office to tell you what's right and what's wrong theologically well the early church had you know okay of the seven ecumenical councils that were called and actually of some of the what we call general councils after that as well how many of those were convoked by the roman bishop zero they were all without exception convoked by the emperor what was the role of the roman bishop in those ecumenical councils to some of them he wasn't even invited like he wasn't consulted so we have no evidence he was consulted for nicaea in 325 the first one constantinople late 4th century he wasn't even invited and and or informed of it and the roman church didn't even send any legates to constantinople now i know roman catholics what people often say is well all it takes is the pope to approve of an ecumenical council okay i actually i actually would dispute that based upon the way the pope is now framed in terms of his role for economical councils but still what we're after right now is historical evidence of some kind that the roman bishop had a kind of preeminent role or prominent role or universal role in some way and you go through all and it's not just those those in the fourth century even after the rise of papal power in the fifth century you know you get to constantinople too now here's a case where the roman bishop vigilius was not only did he not convoke the council he attempted to suppress it he forbade he wrote an edict forbidding them from meeting they met anyway put him in jail uh sent all of his advisers into exile the emperor did and uh took his name out of the official documents from the council which was a very significant disciplinary action now um again it's the kind of thing it's kind of like when you look at later popes who are anathematized like in the seventh century pope honorius who was anathematized because he did teach heresy he taught monolith elitism and he didn't just do it privately he did it in a public dispute and people say yeah yeah but the pope's only infallible when speaking ex-cathedra and i get that but still what we're trying to get is historical evidence that the roman bishop and so if even in those later times you have this person who's in the same time said to be the rock of the church and yet they're anathematized by the church we're looking at these ecumenical councils the point is this it doesn't look like the early church resolved doctrinal disputes because of a teaching office in the roman church it's the same as in the book of acts acts chapter 15 when there's a doctrinal dispute the whole church comes together and there peter does not have the preeminent role if anyone does it's james who sums up and speaks in the final way but it's it's really everybody coming together so uh the ecumenical councils and the way the early church navigated theologically it doesn't look like there was a preeminent role for the roman bishop and then there's some other ways we can kind of look at what was the role of the roman bishop and how did sort of power work in the early church so another way is who had the right to confirm the appointment of bishops and here the evidence is very clear that this was a local regional matter so uh in the sixth canon of the council of nicaea you can see that the um you've got three major metropolitan areas rome antioch and alexandria and in each of those the bishop of that region has the authority to confirm appointment of bishops and then this is repeated so there's several local synods throughout the fourth century and then again in in constantinople one at the end of the fourth century and all of these i've it's interesting to read them what they're all basically saying is and eventually constantinople and jerusalem also get this right as well and what they're all basically saying is hey bishops stay in your own lane um you deal with your own jurisdiction and don't step on the toes of the other bishop and the other one and um it's like there's no evidence that the roman bishop was the head over these other bishops it looks like you have a plurality of bishops where the more prominent cities have more prominent role but none of them is the head over all the others and then if you just step back and look at kind of the big picture there's just not much that would lead you to think in those first several centuries that the roman bishop had some kind of universal or or preeminent role what we call the primacy of the roman sea there's just that much historical evidence for it you don't i mean you have prominent things written from rome like early on like the shepherd of hamas or to rome like ignatius's letter to rome that don't even really talk about there being a pope there in fact or or just who the bishop is even um of course the word pope itself was also not exclusive to rome from the third century onward the bishop of every major western every bishop in the west and then several in the east as well was called pope which simply means father all the other titles that eventually came to the roman bishop were used of others you know the athanasius was called the the prince or the the priest prince of priests that was it the the term father of fathers was used for several other bishops like john of constantinople eventually all these titles kind of collected for the roman bishop but for several centuries you don't really have any sort of even whether in terminology or in role any special emphasis upon the roman bishop now there's various ways people will dispute this and one of the ways they'll do so is by looking at various things the roman bishop does do so one would be the letter of clement to the church in corinth and i've never found this a very strong appeal because there's lots of bishops who write letters to other churches and it doesn't prove universal jurisdiction in any way ignatius's letters to various churches which is just after clement's letter are arguably more commanding and authoritative clement's letter is just written in response to the appeal from the corinthian church it doesn't prove universal jurisdiction or people will point to victor in the late he was a bishop of rome in the late second century victor is there's a dispute about what's the proper date of easter and victor seeks to excommunicate a number of people who are on the other side and a bunch of bishops including irenaeus rise up and eusebius says they sharply rebuked him and so people from the and so he backs down so people from this say oh look uh victor would not have attempted to do that if he didn't have the right to do that and i i just think you can't prove a positive from a negative like that you can't prove that someone had the right to do something because they attempted to do it perhaps the very reason why irenaeus and these other bishops are rebuking victor is because he was overstepping his bounds and there's other popes who are kind of rebuked like that like stephen in the next century by cyprian now eventually in the 5th century i would argue that's when you really start to see strong you know it starts to come into focus more this this role of the roman bishop as more preeminent and uh with the pontificate of leo the great for example um and then definitely in the sixth century you have a massive consolidation and expansion of papal power with gregory the great who's an incredible leader and i love gregory the great his book of pastoral rule is awesome and then after that and by the way this is you know yaroslav pelican his history of christian doctrine he calls this idea that there was a turning point for the papacy with gregory the great in the sixth century quote unquote the conventional view so i'm not way out of bounds here with how this is often looked at after gregory the great you get a massive expansion including into the temporal realm so the bottom line is this the idea that the bishop of rome had a kind of universal jurisdiction from the beginning is just not well supported by the historical evidence it gives every indication of something that develops over time and takes several hundreds of years to do so and protestants are not the first ones to to make this claim protestants inherit a church that is already divided over this issue eastern orthodox christians but also other traditions in the east who don't recognize the primacy of the roman sea so here's my kind of concluding appeal you know i i i want to be as historically rooted as i possibly can be i want to be a part of the one church i believe the church is one holy catholic apostolic i want to be a member of that church as best i can possibly be one of when i'm what i'm told by my roman catholic friends that to be a part of the one true church i need to affirm all of the dogmas affirmed by the roman catholic magisterium so for example the bodily assumption of mary the way my conversations and my thought process has gone on things like that is well what are the reasons that i have to affirm a doctrine like that and biblically it's not taught there historically it doesn't it's just not present for hundreds of years now you start to get it like 5th century 6th century and sometimes that's disputed but that's the traditional dating for when you start to see evidence for people believing in the bodily assumption of mary so then i'm told well the reason for believing that is because of this teaching apparatus in the roman catholic church that has this authority that the holy spirit is leading and guiding and speaking through in those ways and the problem i have is it looks to me like that as well is developing and evolving so my final appeal would be for my protestant viewers this would be why i would urge you not to i know i have a lot of protestant viewers who are have considered or are considering going roman catholic this is be why i would urge you not to do that my catholic viewers i realized i probably stepped on toes with this and gave offense i hope i didn't do so unduly or unnecessarily feel free to give pushback i welcome honest kind of good faith argumentation and back and forth correct me if i made mistakes i may have made mistakes i just regurgitated a lot of stuff from memory but that's a little bit of hopefully it helps you explain or helps explain a little bit of why i'm thinking how i'm thinking about why it's possible to be a protestant but still be deeply rooted in history and why being a protestant may be the best way to be deeply rooted in history in any event thanks for watching this and if you enjoyed this i hope you'd consider subscribing and we can stay in touch as future videos come out you

Channel: Truth Unites

Views: 66,155

Keywords: Roman Catholicism, Does the Bible Support the Papacy?, The Pope, Arguments for Protestantism, Does church history support the Papacy?

Id: TG6pnAjHX1k

Length: 28min 51sec (1731 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 01 2021