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In this episode Trent responds to Gavin Ortlund’s recent claim that “the Papacy is not from God.”
Articles on Acts 15:
Center Stage at the Big Church Council
Joe Heschmeyer: Responding to Gavin Ortlund’s “The Papacy Is Not From God”
Michael Horton’s Response to Me on Sola Scriptura (REBUTTED)
Upon this Rock By Stephen K. Ray
The Papacy: Revisiting the Debate Between Catholics and Orthodox
Transcription:
Trent:
In today’s episode, we’re going to examine Gavin Orland’s case against the Papacy and see that his methodology actually provides evidence against Protestantism and for Catholicism. But before we do that, I’d like to thank Gavin for reviewing the script for today’s episode because these kinds of reviews help us to create better arguments because we then clearly understand the person who’s being critiqued. I’d also like to thank our supporters@trenthornpodcast.com who make the Council of Trent possible. If you appreciate our content, then please consider supporting us for as little as $5 a month or $50 a year, and of course, liking this episode and subscribing to the channel are always appreciated. Alright, so let’s look at some of Gavin’s arguments, but first a disclaimer. The papacy is an interesting topic to debate because it deals with the question of what offices Christ instituted in his church and there is a wide variance in the common ground that a Catholic might have with a critic of the papacy.
For example, Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox agree bishops and patriarchs have sat Sattal apostolic authority. Where we disagree is on aspects of the Pope’s jurisdictional power and his infallibility. The Orthodox are even willing to say that the Pope is a first among equals kind of like how Anglicans view the Archbishop of Canterbury except the Pope is not a Lady Anglicans and many Lutherans and some Methodists would agree that Christ gave us bishops along with pastors and deacons. They just disagree over the idea that one bishop has greater authority than the other bishops. Other Protestants would say the church is not governed by bishops at all, but by general Presbyteral councils or even that, each congregation governs itself independently. So to convince many Protestants of the papacy, you’d have to show that sola scriptura is false since the Pope and the bishops united with him can teach infallibly and that God gave us the office of Bishop.
And finally that bishops do not all have equal authority in the church. Given this difficulty, I’m going to propose two simple approaches in response to Gavin’s arguments and ask Protestants to compare their cases to their own positions on the offices in the church. In a previous episode, which I’ll link to below, I discussed the fallacy of You lose so I win. This happens when atheists, for example, think that they can prove atheism by simply saying the arguments for God aren’t convincing enough, but that doesn’t work because even if that were true, atheists still have to carry their own burden of proof. Something similar happens when Protestants and Catholics debate theology. Protestants will say that because Catholic arguments don’t convince them, Protestantism wins by default, but that doesn’t follow because Protestantism has its own doctrines. It must also prove, and by the way, I’m not saying Protestants are just like atheists or trying to impugn their character.
I’m just making an analogy with another theological debate in order to provide clarity. Now, when discussing this episode with Gavin, he was concerned that in comparing Protestantism and Catholicism I’d be making a fallacious apples to oranges comparison because the papacy is an office in the church whereas the canon of scripture is a concept. The problem with keeping the discussion strictly related to ecclesial offices is that Catholics agree that the evidence supports the existence of the other offices. Many Protestants accept like bishops, priests and pastors and deacons. If anything, Anglicans and other high church Protestants should be wary about how arguments like Gavin’s against a supreme bishop of Rome are often used against the office of bishop itself. So that should make them rethink some of these arguments when they end up being used against the papacy. However, the true apples to apples comparison would be especially for Protestants like Gavin, to show that the Bible and early church history show that the church only has pastors and deacons or that it only had a congregational form of leadership where the church’s own members of the highest authority. So we can make our own argument from silence against this claim because nowhere in church history do we find early Christians saying that the office of Bishop or the office of the Pope represents a heretical innovation. Here’s my colleague, Joe Hess Meyer making this point in his response to Gavin.
CLIP:
If you think that Jesus did create some kind of structure of governance, if he did give some instructions to the apostles, you can imagine how people would freak out if somebody else came along and usurped that structure. For instance, if there were elders governing all the local churches and suddenly one guy comes along and says, Nope, we don’t need you anymore, it’s just going to be me leading from now on. How likely is it that those other elders are going to take that kind of demotion without objecting and particularly if this new bishop is replacing the structure of the church that Jesus Christ founded? Wouldn’t everybody be upset about that? But as Leon Morris points out in the evangelical dictionary of theology, we don’t find any kind of freak out at all in his words. Nowhere is there evidence of a violent struggle as would be natural.
A divinely ordained congregationalism or presbyterianism were overthrown. The same threefold ministry is seen as universal throughout the early church as soon as there is sufficient evidence to show us the nature of the ministry. In fact, not only is there not a violent struggle, scholars have found no trace whatsoever of any churches going from a Presbyterian or a congregational structure to a church governed by a single bishop. In fact, we’ve seen several claims from church fathers where they make it very clear that they don’t believe they have the right to change the structure of government because it was given to them by Christ through the apostles.
Trent:
So that’s one way to subject Protestantism to the same critique. The Catholic ecclesial model is being subjected to. However, to make my point and address Gavin’s concern, I’m going to ask this episode a smaller question and a bigger question When comparing evidence for Catholicism and Protestantism. So back to my original analogy, sometimes atheists will say, so what if you have evidence that there is a designer or necessary cause of the universe, you still have improved. It is your omnipotent, omniscient, omni benevolent God to which a Christian might say, well, what makes better sense of the data? We do observe a supreme being or the non-existence of a supreme being in doing this. Both sides have to then carry the burden of proof and we can follow an inference to the best explanation, which is a common way to resolve philosophical and historical disputes when it comes to Protestant Catholic debates and even debates with Eastern Orthodox, we see something similar they’ll say, so what if you have evidence Peter and his successors had a unique role in church history?
You still haven’t proven Peter and his successors had a supreme infallible authority to which a Catholic might say, well, what makes better sense of the data that we do observe a supreme or chief pastor of the church or the non-existence of a chief pastor? In both cases, the Christian invites the other person to look at the data and see which mutually exclusive only available hypotheses better explain the data we do see. So that’s the smaller question I’m going to ask, which should be apples to apples or chief apple to no chief apple, if you will. However, the papacy is part of Catholicism’s ultimate authority structure. So I think it’s fair to compare this to the ultimate authority structure in Protestantism and make sure both are being subjected to historical analyses and one isn’t simply being assumed to be true. If Catholics should ask themselves, where does the New Testament in early church history say apostolic successors are the highest authority in the church, as Protestants want Catholics to ask themselves, then Protestants should ask themselves, where does the New Testament and early church history say Apostolic writings are the highest authority in the church?
What I want to do now is go through the evidence and divide it into three distinct periods of church history, Jesus’s ministry in the gospels, the apostolic period after Pentecost and the church after the apostles, but before the Council of Nsea. We can then ask the smaller and the bigger questions and compare the Catholic and Protestant models and see which one has more evidence in its favor. So let’s begin. Number one, gospel evidence. In Luke 22, the apostles asked Jesus who will be the greatest among them and Jesus does not say there will be no such person because you all have equal authority. Instead, Jesus says there will be a greatest among the disciples, but this person will be a servant, not a tyrant. Which is why since the early Middle ages, popes have called themselves servant of the servants of God and within the same context Jesus then prays specifically for Peter that his faith would not fail and so that he would be able to strengthen his brethren.
Jesus also gives the keys of the kingdom to Peter and I’ve linked below Joe Hesh Meyer’s episode which talks about how Jesus sees Peter here as the chief steward of the kingdom of the new Covenant. Through the act of giving these keys in natural human societies like countries or corporations, the natural order produces a single person to head the leadership hierarchy and this becomes the most prudent and efficient means of achieving the good. God used this same order in creating the hierarchy of ancient Israel and the Davidic kingdom and the keys given to Peter parallel that same structure as seen in Isaiah 2222, which directly parallels Matthew 16, 18 and 19. The Protestant scholar DA Carson even admits that when we combine the sayings of Jesus about Peter in John 21 and Matthew 16, we find that the argument for petrin primacy gains a certain plausibility. Obviously, Carson does not think that they work and Gavin offers arguments and resources in his episode against the claims of what these passages mean. For example, Gavin says this,
CLIP:
Peter is just being restored as an apostle to normal apostolic functions after his denials of Christ to read in Vatican one supremacy to feed my sheep or strengthen your brothers as a post hoc maneuver where you’re taking this later idea that’s not logically required by the words and you’re bringing it back in,
Trent:
But there’s a wide number of views between Vatican one supremacy and normal apostolic functions. Many Protestant scholars see this passage as evidence of Jesus giving Peter a special unique leadership role in the church that goes beyond the duties shared by the other apostles, the Lutheran scholar Achi Jeremiah says, only in John 2115 through 17 which describes Peter’s appointment as a shepherd by the risen Lord, does the whole church appear to have been in view as the sphere of activity? David a De Silva says, Peter is the one commissioned to tend the sheep and feed them the beloved disciple whom the text presents as the author of John’s gospel is not given any specific commission or responsibility for the church in that scene or any other. In Ernst tensions commentary on the gospel of John, he says, John 21 does not make Peter the bishop of Rome, but he does say this, it is entirely comparable with Matthew 1617.
It is a commission and authorization in which Peter is entrusted with the highest task in Christendom. Remember, I’m not claiming the entire doctrine of the papacy can be proved from scripture and history alone to everyone’s satisfaction. I’m just saying Peter being the chief apostle and Jesus planning for him to be the chief pastor of his church after his ascension in heaven makes better sense of the data and there is no comparable example of Jesus insisting that no such office would ever exist in the church. Now when it comes to the bigger question of whose authority structure the data better supports, we at least have verses in the gospels that people can debate about when it comes to Peter being the chief apostle or chief head in the church, but we have no similar verses in the gospels whatsoever saying that the writings of the disciples would become the highest authority in the church.
Instead, we see that the apostles themselves are simply considered to be that authority, not their writings, and Peter has a special authority among them During his earthly ministry, Jesus never even told anyone to write anything down. Instead, Jesus gave authority to the apostles to bind and loose, to forgive sins and to teach in his name and Jesus gave a special authority to Peter making him the rock upon which the church is built. I mean, why did Jesus change Peter’s name if there was no meaning behind the change? Also, in every list of all the apostles, Peter is always presented first and in Matthew 10, two it says Peter is first or in Greek protos, the late Protestant apologist John MacArthur said this protos doesn’t refer to the first in a list. It speaks of the chief, the leader of the group. So I would simply say that a chief pastor makes better sense of the gospel evidence over the Protestant claim of no chief pastor and the gospel evidence supports an apostle being the highest authority in the church, but it says absolutely nothing about an apostolic writing being a highest authority in the church, which is a strange omission if these writings would eventually become foundational for 99.9% of all Christians who ever lived.
Number two apostolic evidence. In Gavin’s video he says that we should doubt the papacy comes from God because the New Testament never says there will be an enduring petrin office in the church. Now he’s careful to say this isn’t merely an argument from silence. He’s just instead asking, where does the Bible teach this doctrine so that I can come to believe it. However, it is a kind of argument from silence because Gavin says if this office did exist, then we’d expect it to be described and its absence would then indicate it’s not a legitimate office.
CLIP:
The New Testament gives us a lot of information. It’s reasonable to expect that if there was this supreme office over the church, it’d probably come up somewhere if not in the New Testament, at least in the surrounding literature outside of the New Testament in the first century and then going into the second century,
Trent:
I get really worried about deploying these kinds of arguments because they can have many unintended consequences. For example, some Pentecostals say if the Trinitarian baptismal formula were valid, then we’d expect to see it being used after Pentecost in acts of the apostles or commanded in the epistles. But its absence in those sources does not invalidate the baptismal formula because later Christian tradition as recorded in things like the Diday show, this was the normative formula and practice in the church for baptism. It just didn’t happen to be recorded in these earlier sources. I’m also amused by some Protestants who say they can’t believe in the Pope because the New Testament is allegedly silent about that office, but they do believe a Christian can become a pastor on his own authority even though the New Testament never describes anyone doing that, and it always shows pastoral offices being handed on by preexisting church leaders through things like the laying on of hands acts of the apostles and the epistles are not giving definitive about the perpetual leadership structure of the church.
So we should be very careful about trying to divine particular ecclesial offices from these writings alone. Ephesians four 11 says, Christ’s gifts were that some should be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers. Some people in the early church like Barnabas were called apostles even if there was no record of them seeing the risen Lord. But most Protestants agree with Catholics that the office of Apostle ceased in the church and it no longer exists even though this is not explicitly taught in the New Testament and the assumption that this is an enduring office and the problem of reconciling that with solo scriptura even came up my dialogue with Protestant apologist Kelly Powers, I would say that that obligatory belief is not found in scripture that the office of Apostle has ceased. I would actually agree with you. There’s no script that actually states that you’re correct, so I’d urge caution in over extrapolating what we find from these early apostolic writings because they operate under the framework of the apostles still being alive and people already knowing about their roles in the church.
This wasn’t intended to be the perpetual state of affairs for the church. That’s why Protestants like Anglicans and Lutherans would say that Baptists shouldn’t assume that the interchangeability of the offices of Bishop and Presbyter in the New Testament, which Gavin correctly points out that this interchangeability means that it was not God’s plan, that these roles would eventually become two separate and distinct offices after the death of the Apostles. But what about my smaller and bigger questions? Do these early apostolic writings make more sense if the church had a chief pastor or if it did not have a chief pastor? I argue the former because Peter is treated in these texts as having unique authority in the church and there are no passages which deny the existence of such a role in the early church for the full treatment of this issue. I recommend my colleague Joe Hess Meyer’s book Pope Peter, but for now I will point out just some of the details that are better explained by Peter being the chief pastor of the church than him not being the chief pastor in this circumstance.
For example, Paul lists the other apostles and the brethren of the Lord and PHAs or Peter in an ascending order, which makes Peter distinct from the other apostles. Paul also boasts about how he didn’t care about impressing people and that he was willing to even correct Peter to his face, which would only make sense if Peter was an incredibly important person in the church that others were afraid to correct the Protestant authors of the dictionary of Jesus and the gospels refer to the incident in Luke 22 I discussed earlier where Jesus prays for Peter’s faith to not fail and for him to strengthen his brethren. They say this, Peter, despite his failure is implicitly singled out for special leadership. Again, the emphasis is not so much on transfer of authority as on mission. Peter is to care for the disciples much as Jesus has this anticipates Peter’s role in acts where he will be the leader of the early church, the Protestant scholar j and d Kelly likewise says Peter was the undisputed leader of the youthful church.
So I would say Peter being chief pastor makes better sense of the data in this period than him not having this role. Now Gavin may counter that Peter not being chief pastor makes better sense of the council of Jerusalem in Acts 15, I’ll refer you to several articles linked below that we have on Acts 15, but I will note that Peter ended a debate at the council by announcing what God had done or revealed. Thus, he gave a dogmatic teaching at the council about the inclusion of the Gentiles, especially since he received a vision from God in Acts chapter 10, whereas James gives the disciplinary teachings and he leads it because the council is taking place in Jerusalem where he’s the residing bishop. Notice also that the council has binding authority on the faithful the moment it was issued and not merely when its teachings became part of scripture years or decades later.
This further confirms that the authority structure in the early church was rooted in the written and unwritten word of God and the authority of a dynamic teaching office. And nowhere in these early apostolic writings does it say that this paradigm would ever change. So this leads to my bigger question. Do acts and the apostles and the other epistles say that apostolic men would be the highest authority in the church or apostolic writings? Gavin says We’d expect an enduring office like the papacy to be described and named in the New Testament, but by that logic, if the only infallible authority after the apostles was going to be their own writings, then it’s fair to say we’d expect the apostles to say this, but they never do. We’d expect them to say something like the writings of the apostles or the pillar and foundation of truth, not as St.
Paul says in one Timothy three 15 the Church of the Living God is the pillar and foundation of truth. The verse is commonly used to prove soul scriptura like Acts 17, 11 and two Timothy three 16 through 17 refer to the Old Testament scriptures, not the apostolic writings. Now some apostolic writings are called scripture by Peter and Paul, but not all of them are called scripture and the New Testament doesn’t say these writings are the only infallible rule of faith or that they contain all essential doctrine. We shouldn’t read scripture with a bias, but everybody reads scripture with a tradition including the tradition of which writings count as scripture. The apostolic writings tell us that the church’s authority comes in the written word and the spoken word of the apostles. That’s why Paul tells the Thessalonians, when you receive the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is the word of God.
And he told them, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us either by word of mouth or by letter. This is why as I noted earlier, sacred tradition fills in the picture on things like how the post Pentecostal church baptizes people, the formula that’s used or how the offices in the church will function after the death, the apostles. This is why we must now turn to our third and final piece of church history in order to put all of the pieces together. Number three, after the apostles and before Nyia, let’s start with the first century author Clement of Rome who EU lists as the third bishop of Rome. Gavin says that Clement was writing as merely one elder among a plurality leading the church of Rome and not as a pope because Rome did not have a single bishop at this time, allegedly.
Moreover, Clement’s correction of the Corinthian church that they wrote to. Gavin says This does not imply supremacy because Ignatius of Antioch also corrects other churches in his own letters. So let’s start with the smaller question. Does a chief pastor in the church make better sense of Clement at Ignatius’s writings or no chief pastor at this time? To best answer the question, I’d first say at the very least, the Church of Rome had special authority. It was a chief church and this better explains Clement and Ignatius’s writings than the alternative view that this church did not have special authority or that all the churches had equal authority amongst each other. The respected Protestant scholar Philip Schaf calls Clement’s letter, the first example of the exercise of a sort of papal authority, and he notes how Corinth sought out Rome’s help even though the apostle John was probably still alive and nearby.
Ephesus Clement says, disobeying the Roman church would put one in serious danger while they at Rome would be innocent of sin, which sounds more intimidating than mere brotherly correction. In fact, Clement tells his readers to become obedient to the words written by us and through the Holy Spirit indicating he thinks that he has divine approval for his decrees. However, Gavin compares Clement’s letter to Ignatius of Antioch letters to other churches saying, if we don’t believe in antiochian supremacy based on Ignatius giving instructions to other churches, then we should not believe in Roman supremacy based on Clement’s instructions to Corinth.
CLIP:
And so people say, look, Clement wrote this epistle to the Corinthian church, thus papal supremacy, but you could just as easily argue for Antiochian supremacy when Ignatius is writing letters to other churches.
Trent:
But we can believe Ignatius had authority over the cluster of churches he wrote to because they were all nearby him in Asia Minor where he was the esteemed bishop of Syria. Gavin also says Ignatius praises the serian and gives similar praise in his letter to Rome, but that doesn’t mean he thought the Roman church held supremacy. He praised lots of churches, but along with praise, Ignatius of Antioch also gave instructions like the following to the smy, see that you all follow the bishop even as Jesus Christ does. The father and the press bittery as you would the apostles and reverence the deacons as being the institution of God, let no man do anything connected with the church without the bishop. In contrast to these instructions, when Ignatius writes to Rome, he offers praise but he does not give like he does to other churches nearby him.
Instead, Ignatius only asked the church at Rome to not rescue him from his impending martyrdom. Ignatius even says, I do not. As Peter and Paul issue commandments unto you and says those that the Roman church have never envied anyone you have taught others. Ignatius also says the church in Rome presides in love or in Greek proman tes agape, which translators have rendered having the presidency of love or preeminent in love. Now the language of presiding is also found in Ignatius’s letter to the church in magnesia where he writes, your bishop presides in the place of God. Ignatius uses the word preside only in a clerical context and non-Christian literature generally uses the word in conjunction with concrete entities like cities not abstract ideas like love. In his study of the papacy that Gavin cites in his episode, Orthodox Scholar a Edward Zinsky says that at the very least Rome’s preeminence is simply accepted by both Ignatius and presumably his readers without debate or explanation.
So a chief church makes better sense of the data than no chief church, but Gavin and others might say no. Chief pastor makes better sense of the fact that Clement appears to be writing on behalf of a plurality of elders leading the Roman church at Ignatius of Antioch never mentions a single bishop overseeing the church at Rome when it comes to whether there was a single bishop of Rome. At this time, I’ll refer you to Joe Hess Meyer’s recent response to Gavin that covers this topic in depth. I will say that Clement could be using the royal we or collective court language that Popes used up to the 19th century or if the letter was written earlier in the sixties, that may have been a time when Clement was a corresponding secretary for the Roman church writing on their behalf, which officials in the Vaticans still do to this very day and it’s possible Clement acted in this role while the Roman church temporarily lacked a bishop who had been martyred or what we now call an interregnum period between popes.
This would explain the letter’s opening reference to the sudden and successive calamitous events which have happened to ourselves that delayed. The response to the Corinthians. Ignatius refers to a similar interregnum that will occur after he is martyred. When he says that after his death, he tells the Roman church, remember in your prayers the church in Syria which now has God for its shepherd instead of me. Jesus Christ alone will oversee it and your love will also regard it. However, Gavin says that Ignatius does not mention a bishop in Rome by name, which is true, but he does say that this church presides in the place of the region of the Romans language we saw earlier used in Episcopal context. Ignatius also doesn’t mention priests or deacons at Rome. He never even mentions a single Christian by name in the city, and this makes sense if you want to protect the Christians there from persecution, but Ignatius does make it clear in his letter to the trails that churches must have bishops, priests and deacons and quote, apart from these there is no church.
So how could Ignatius praise Rome if it did not have an office of Bishop that all true churches must possess? Finally, Gavin cites Catholic historian Amen Duffy saying that Clement was merely one elder in a group of elders writing a brotherly letter that did not have special supreme authority, but Duffy is a medieval historian, not an early church scholar, and he’s a fairly liberal one at that in his previous writings, for example, Duffy talks about how the trinity was forced upon the church rather than it being present from the very beginnings of church history. He says the doctrine of the Trinity was forced upon the church as it struggled to do justice to what God had done for the world. It was forced slowly and hesitatingly to recognize the divinity of the Holy Spirit. The emergence of the doctrine of the Trinity was gradual, a painful and prolonged attempt truthfully to spell out the stupendous implications of the revelation of God in Jesus Christ.
So even though Duffy is a Catholic, I take what he says with a grain of salt and right now stick to evaluating the ancient texts themselves. Now what about the bigger question? However, do these early pre Nicene Christian sources treat a successor of the apostles as having the highest authority or do they treat apostolic writings as having the highest authority in the church? When it comes to my own decision to not be Protestant, one of the strongest reasons is the lack of recourse to apostolic writings as inspired infallible authorities among the first two centuries of Christian history. We would not expect this if Solas script tour were true. I’m not even saying these authors should know the complete New Testament canon. I’m just saying that if Solas script tour were true, then these authors should treat the category of apostolic writings as the church’s highest authority, but they absolutely do not do that, but rather invest authority in the successors of the apostles.
For example, when Clement quotes scripture, he almost always quotes the Old Testament and when he quotes the New Testament, it’s the parts that quote the Old Testament. Clement doesn’t say the apostolic writings are the ultimate or even a authority in the church. He says Scripture has nothing counterfeit in it, so he may mean scripture is infallible, but then he quotes something outside of the Bible that he calls scripture which says this, I will appoint their bishops and righteousness and their deacons in faith. For Clement Christian authority is found in the church’s leaders because the apostles had according to him, perfect foreknowledge through Christ and because of this they agreed other approved men should succeed them in their ministry. Likewise, Ignatius never says apostolic writings are the sole infallible rule of faith or even that they are infallible. In fact, even though Ignatius quotes apostolic writings a dozen times, he never calls them scripture.
This isn’t surprising because most scholars agree that the early church did not consider the New Testament to be inspired scripture until the time of EU at the end of the second century. The Baptist scholar Lee Martin McDonald writes, in the first one and a half centuries of church history, no prominence was given to a gospel writer or to a gospel as a written document. Rather it was what they quoted that had authority, not the written words themselves. Michael Krueger, who unlike Amon Duffy, is a very conservative Protestant scholar who Gavin has had on his own show admits that quote, for many modern scholars the key time is the end of the second century. Only then largely due to the influence of IUs were these books first regarded as scripture. This is absolutely disastrous to those who believe soul scripture comes from God. If the scriptures were the only infallible rule of faith for the church and they contained all that Christians must believe as divinely revealed, then we’d expect that a bare minimum the Christians of the first 150 years of church history would at least recognize these apostolic writings were scripture.
But in the vast majority of cases, they don’t say that. You can see this in my previous episode on a neglected argument for solo scriptura where I compare all the major sources of the first two centuries and show they did not see Christian authority lying in the writings of the apostles. Instead, they saw this authority being found in the successors of the apostles and by the second century it becomes clear that what unifies this authority is the successor of Peter, the bishop of Rome. This Roman preeminence can be seen when Saint Reinas protested Pope Victor, the first decision to excommunicate an entire region of churches. While EU felt that such a decision would not be prudent, he never doubted the Pope had the authority to impose such a punishment on churches outside of his local bishop. Rick EU even said that in the face of heresy it was important to seek out churches that were the custodians of apostolic tradition.
Specifically he writes the very great, the very ancient and universally known church founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles. Peter and Paul EU put this advice into practice when he visited Victor’s predecessor a Luther Theus in order to seek his appraisal of the modernist heresy. In fact, EU declared in his work against heresies that it is a matter of necessity that every church should agree with this church on account of its preeminent authority and then EU gives a list of bishops of Rome up to his own day. Now in response, Gavin cites the third century author Saint Cian and one could say that Gavin’s position is that Cyprian’s testimony makes more sense if the church operated at that time with no chief pastor.
CLIP:
Cyprian is another example that’s often misused because people will reference his language about the unity of the church being founded in the chair of Peter, but they will neglect to tell you that he thinks that every bishop shares in that charter and that no one bishop has authority over all the rest, and that’s very clear in his conflict with Steven the bishop of Rome on the question of baptism where he is very explicitly saying Peter did not assert that he had rights of seniority and that therefore upstarts and latecomers ought to be obedient to him. Ian’s position is very clear. I mentioned that earlier.
Trent:
Now Cyprian is an interesting case because he contradicts himself in the first edition of On the unity of the Church. He writes, A primacy is given to Peter whereby it is made clear that there is but one church and one chair. If he desert the chair of Peter upon whom the church was built, can he still be confident that his is in the church? Cyprian was a big fan of Pope Cornelius when he defended Cyprian against his critics in Carthage, but then Cian really didn’t like his successor Pope Steven saying that Pope Steven was wrong about those who were baptized by heretics about them not needing to be baptized again. So you see, I miss the old Pope and the new Pope is wrong and awful. This isn’t just a modern issue, although Cian was the one in error and Steven upheld the Orthodox view that Heretics who intend to baptize as the church does, can administer valid baptisms.
However, this disagreement resulted in Cian distancing himself from papal authority in his later writings, which leads to his writings having different views on the matter. As a result, Eastern Orthodox Scholar Nicholas aif says, CPR has left us a literary heritage broken by frequent self-contradiction, which has been a matter for controversy from then until the present day. However, when Stephen threatened CPR and with excommunication, Cian did not deny that the Pope had the authority to carry out such a punishment even though Cian lived in Carthage, not Rome. Aef provides this more balance Cyprian’s position. He writes, according to Cyprian, every bishop occupies Peter’s throne, the bishop of Rome among others, but the C of Peter is Peter’s throne par excellence. The Bishop of Rome is the direct heir of Peter, whereas the others are heirs only indirectly and sometimes only by the mediation of Rome. Hence Cyprian’s insistence that the Church of Rome is the root and matrix of the Catholic church.
I’m not going to engage Gavin citations of the post sene fathers and controversies because that would require an entire episode of its own to address. When it comes to my bigger question, I would recommend you view my response to Michael Horton where I show that the problem of claiming the post ene fathers practice sola scriptura becomes evident when we see that they believed many doctrines that Protestants reject. That means even if the post ene fathers practice sola scriptura, that would only prove that Catholicism is the only acceptable outcome from following the Bible alone. Now granted, there are some difficulties in understanding papal authority after Nyia, but the church in this period looks way, way more like modern Catholicism than modern Protestantism. When it comes to the papacy, the regional Council of Sciatica affirmed the right of bishops to appeal a dispute with their colleagues to the Bishop of Rome who has unique authority to judge such matters.
St. Basil, the great Athanasius sought the intervention of Rome in their disputes with Aryan bishops in the Eastern Empire and when St. Jerome sought Pope Dam’s counsel about a dispute over the rightful claimant to the sea of Antioch, Jerome said, as I follow no leader save Christ, so I communicate with none. But your blessedness that is with the chair of Peter for this I know is the rock on which the church is built just a few decades later and a century before the villus controversy that Gavin mentions, we find that after a public recitation of Pope Leo’s letter at the Council of Caldon, the bishops in attendance proclaimed Peter has spoken through Leo. Finally, the idea that papal infallibility only appears in the late Middle Ages as some authors allege is simply incorrect. In the seventh century, Pope St. Agatha spoke of this spiritual mother of your most tranquil empire, the Apostolic Church of Christ, a term he uses to refer to the Roman Sea.
He then says, this church by the grace of Almighty God has never aired from the path of the apostolic tradition, nor has she been depraved by yielding the heretical innovations and he cites the promise to Peter in Luke 22 to support that claim. In the year five 17, Pope Horus said that in the apostolic Sea, the Catholic religion has always been preserved unblemished, and in the third century, Cyprian spoke of heretics who bear letters from schematic and profane persons to the throne of Peter and to the chief church. Hence, priestly unity takes its source and not to consider that these were the Romans whose faith was praised in the preaching of the apostle to whom Faithlessness could have no access. If you like more on the evidence for papal authority in the first millennium, I recommend Steve Ray’s book upon this rock and Eric IRA’s book, the Papacy, revisiting the Debate between Catholics and Orthodox. Thank you guys so much for watching. Big thanks to Gavin for putting together a charitable and rigorous case and reviewing this episode, all of which help Catholics to sharpen their apologetic. I look forward to engaging him and other well-meaning apologists of different traditions so that we can all get closer to the truth together. Once again, thank you all for watching and I hope you have a very blessed day.