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Bible in Context is an Instagram page that regularly replies to Catholic creators, and has replied to several clips of Joe. Today Joe responds back!
Transcript:
Joe:
Welcome back to Shameless Popery. I’m Joe Heschmeyer. Many of you may be familiar with the Instagram account Bible in context. It’s run by a guy by the name of Patrick O’Brien, and he’s built a large following attacking Catholic teaching. He’s called the Rosary Demonic, said praying to saints is communicating with demons, and even called the Eucharist blasphemy. So needless to say, no fan of Catholicism. He also recently shared a tweet praising a video made by Mike Gendron, a prominent ex- Catholic. Now, I’ve in the past pointed out where I think Gendron is being dishonest, both in his personal testimony and in false claims he’s made about Catholic teaching. And I’ll link to the two videos I’ve made in the description below, as well as the end of this video. But today I want to focus on something else. Patrick has actually responded to some of my videos and I wanted to respond to three of his replies.
As I do that, let me just say that one of the most encouraging things in what I do is the incredible response from you guys over at shamelessjo.com. This channel doesn’t take sponsors and I want to keep it like that. Your direct support for as little as $5 a month helps us here at Catholic Answers, not to be beholden to advertisers or to the algorithm. And it also gets you early access to videos, to exclusive live streams where you can ask me anything, and to a community of Christians who take their faith seriously. So thank you to all of our patrons, and I hope to see you over at shamusto.com. So with that said, let’s look at the first of the three topics, baptism. I’ve pointed out before that when Jesus says in John three that we must be born of water in the spirit, the earliest Christians rightly recognize this as a reference to baptism.
But Patrick claims this is just proof of my indoctrination.
CLIP:
The reason Roman Catholics think that way is because they have been indoctrinated by different commentary books like this one, where it says things like this. A council of Trent declared in 1547 that John three: five refers to baptism. There it is, it settled.
Joe:
But Everett Ferguson, a non-Catholic scholar, has pointed out in his book Baptism in the early church that John three: five became the most cited baptismal text in the second century and continued to be important afterward. So the interpretation that John three: five is about baptism, that’s not some new interpretation invented at the Council of Trent in the 16th century. That’s how the earliest Christians understood it. This is, in Ferguson’s words, the overwhelming historical consensus and the majority contemporary consensus today. So this is how most scholars today and virtually everyone in the early church understood the meaning of Jesus’ words, but Patrick claims he knows the real meaning of the text. He knows the real meaning of Jesus’ words by looking to what he claims the Pharisees taught.
CLIP:
But when we properly exegete this text, we have to understand that it is a Jew talking to another Jew in a Jewish context. In phariseical teachings, when somebody was born of water, it meant natural birth.
Joe:
As evangelical scholar D.A. Carson points out, this simply is not true. In his words, there are no ancient sources that picture natural birth as from water. Saying that water means amniotic fluid is already a huge stretch, but saying that this was some kind of known pharisaical teaching is simply fictional. Worse, this turns Jesus’s teaching on being born of water in the Spirit from one event into two separate events. Now, Patrick actually acknowledges this explicitly.
CLIP:
No, John three: five does not say that unless you are baptized of water and born of the spirit, you’ll not enter the kingdom. He says, unless one is born of water and the spirit, you will not enter the kingdom of God. He’s talking about two separate things that have to happen. One is you have to have a natural birth, and then you have to also be born of the spirit, the second birth.
Joe:
Why is that a problem that turned into two events? Because as Ferguson points out, that interpretation simply cannot be right. Grammatically, this Greek speaks of one birth, not two. A birth of water and the spirit. Just as a sandwich of peanut butter and jelly is one sandwich and not two. So twisting Jesus’ words to try to turn this into two separate events, purely on the basis of fictional Pharisaical teaching or your own theology is a bad move. We should instead side with the earliest Christians who actually understood what Jesus taught about baptism. The second issue I want to talk about is on the 10 Commandments. A while back, I called out Mike Gendron for falsely claiming that the Catholic Church had changed the 10 commandments, but both Patrick and Steve Christie claim I’m lying about this. We didn’t rip out the second commandment. The 10 commandments are not numbered in the Bible.
The Bible doesn’t actually call them the 10 commandments. They’re called the 10 words.
CLIP:
Listen to this.
Actually, Joe Heschmire, not Mike Gendron, is the one lying about the 10 commandments, which I can prove from both scripture and the catechism of the Catholic church.
Joe:
Now, as we look at this, I want you to remember the three claims that I made, the claims that they’re allegedly replying to. Number one, the Catholic church did not rip the second commandment out of the Bible. It’s still there in Catholic and Protestant Bibles. Number two, the 10 commandments are not numbered in the Bible. You can open a Bible, Catholic or Protestant and see that for yourself. And number three, the 10 commandments are not actually called the 10 commandments in the Bible. In Hebrew, they’re called the 10 words. Now, all three of those facts are easily confirmed with even a modicum of research. So which of those claims are Steve and Patrick going to try to claim is a lie?
CLIP:
First does refer to the decalogue, the law given by God to Moses on Mount Sinai as the 10 commandments three separate times in the Torah. You keep using the word. I don’t think it means what you think it means.
Joe:
So rather than just tell you Steve Christie doesn’t know what he’s talking about, I thought it might be helpful to see for ourselves. Let’s look at the three places that he cites. The first is Exodus 34:28, and it’s true in English Bibles, it says the Lord wrote upon the tables, the words of the covenant, the 10 commandments. But if you read the footnote, you’ll notice that the Hebrew doesn’t say that. It says words, not commandments. That’s the very point I was making. The point Christie thought was a lie. Then look at Deuteronomy 4:13. Same thing. In Deuteronomy 10: four, exactly the same thing again. So what’s actually going on here? Let’s take a closer look at Exodus 34. In English, versions of the word command or commandment appear six times in the chapter. The Lord commands Moses up Mount Sinai. He says, “Observe what I command you this day.” Says to keep the feast of unleavened bread as I commanded you.
And Moses tells the people all that he’s commanded to tell them. In each of those five cases, the Hebrew is a form of the verb, Sava, command. But in verse 28, it’s not. When it talks about what in English are called the 10 commandments, the Hebrew word there isn’t the word for commandment. It’s instead debar. And what does debar mean? Word or words. That’s why when Jews before the time of Christ translated the Torah into Greek, they translated the Hebrew there as Decalogue, 10 words. And it’s why Jewish writers like Josephus refer to them as the logoi, the plural of logos word. It’s fine to call them the 10 commandments if you want, but it’s not a lie to point out that this isn’t what they’re actually called in the Bible. But whether you call them the 10 commandments or the decalogue, the real problem is this.
The Bible does not number them one to 10, and different groups of people, even within Protestantism, number them somewhat differently. Now to make things more confusing, even the list within the Bible vary slightly between Exodus and Deuteronomy. Steve Christie finds this suspicious.
CLIP:
But the Deuteronomy list, it commands not coveting your neighbor’s wife first and then not coveting anything of your neighbors. If these were two separate commandments, why would not coveting your neighbor’s goods and not coverting your neighbor’s wife be switched considering God etched these commandments in stone? Yeah,
Joe:
Steve Christie’s right. It is kind of odd that the sequence and wording of the 10 commandments in Exodus 20 is not word for word the same as it is in Deuteronomy five, given that the tablets are etched in stone. But I have no idea why he’s blaming the Catholic church for this. Dr. Evelyn Vonstaldoin Soulman is a professor of reception history of the Hebrew Bible in antiquity as well as a Protestant minister. And she’s pointed out that in the Hebrew version of Exodus, there is what appears to be a single prohibition against coveting your neighbor’s house or wife or possessions. Now that matches the evangelical list where it looks like a single commandment. But in Deuteronomy in contrast, we’re told not to covet your neighbor’s wife, but then told also not to desire your neighbor’s property. Two different Hebrew verbs are used, one for coveting a woman, another for desiring someone else’s stuff.
And as Van Staldoyne Soulman points out, that looks like two different commandments, one about women, the other about property, and that makes sense given the rest of the decalogue. Just as adultery isn’t the same sin as theft, lusting over your neighbor’s wife isn’t the same sin as desiring his property. Since Paul says, “You shall not covet in Romans 13,” Steve claims that this shows there must have been one commandment that covered both coveting women and property, but in fact, Paul actually distinguishes coveting from wicked desires in Colossians three, following the pattern of Deuteronomy, and Paul’s not alone. Van Staldu and Solomon points out that all of the Jewish targems and also the Greek version of Exodus, meaning the version of Exodus used by Jesus and the apostles most often actually follows the ordering of Deuteronomy rather than the ordering of the Hebrew version of Exodus.
And she rightly points out that this is the origin, the true biblical foundation for the typical Catholic practice of regarding this as two separate commands. But I want to be clear, this is an area where Christians can reasonably interpret the evidence differently. Western Catholics and Lutherans tend to follow the list as it’s presented in Deuteronomy. Eastern Catholics, Eastern Orthodox and evangelicals tend to follow the list as it’s presented in the Hebrew version of Exodus. And the standard Jewish numbering is actually slightly different from both. But however you number the list, the inspired biblical text remains the same. It’s only the uninspired numbering that’s different. Nobody’s lying, nobody’s removing commandments, and claiming otherwise shows an egregious lack of knowledge about the Bible or history. But there’s a third area that Patrick says, “I’m lying as well.” And that’s when I pointed out that Saint Irneus, writing around the year 100, says that all churches had to agree with the Church of Rome on account of its preeminent authority.
But despite Patrick labeling this as a lie, it is very obviously true, and you can actually read the text for yourself. I would encourage you to do so. So why does Patrick claim this is a lie? Because Patrick thinks we should interpret the text contrary to what the text actually says.
CLIP:
So Ernest appeals to Rome not because of its divine supremacy over the whole church, but because it has well-known public, continuous, apostolic teaching that’s traced back to Peter and Paul. When he writes in Latin preeminent authority, he likely means that Rome has more influence because of its apostolic origin. Most scholars interpret this statement to be more about Rome’s reliability and not its universal magisterial power.
Joe:
But lots of local churches in Irenes’ day were founded by apostles, and it was so early on that each of those churches could also trace their lineage of bishops back to the one bishop who’d been ordained by the apostles. Turtrian mentions this just as a fact around the year 200, but Irreneus acknowledges this as well and explicitly. He’s quite clear that he could provide a list for any of the apostolic churches. He just says that doing so for each of them would be tedious. So why Rome amongst all the other apostolic churches? Well, he tells us explicitly. He says it’s because it is a matter of necessity that every church should agree with this church on account of its preeminent authority. When Patrick says that preeminent authority just means something like absolute origin, that interpretation simply makes no sense. All of the churches in question here have provable apostolic origin, so it wouldn’t explain why you would choose Rome over somewhere else like Smyrna.
And as the Anglican scholar RCP Hansen admits, the Latin word used here, Principolitas, appears seven other times in Iranaus’ writings, and you know what? It always means power or authority. It never means origin. As Hansen puts it, trying to interpret it in this one case as origin is almost impossible. Henry Hart Millman and Anglican historian and clergymen similarly admits this as the earliest distinct assertion of any primacy in Peter and derived from him to the sea of Rome. There’s a reason that even Protestant and secular translators tend to translate the text just as we’ve heard that all Christians must agree with the Church of Rome because of its preeminent authority. That is pretty clearly what he’s saying in context. Now, I understand for many Protestants, it’s shocking to be exposed to the truth about history. The idea that even while the early Christians are still in the catacombs, they’re talking about the special authority of the Church of Rome.
So perhaps it’s unsurprising that we see so many of what the Methodist scholar John Lawson refers to as unfounded Protestant attempts to minimize the sense of the text of Irnes. But as Christians, we shouldn’t be afraid of the truth, whether it’s the truth of the gospel or the truth of history. Lying about history is no service for a Christian. The simple truth is the early church was the Catholic church, and even anti-Catholics like Mike Gendron have to admit that reading the writings of the earliest Christians for themselves is one of the main things that leaves evangelical Protestants to realize this and become Catholic. Gender insolution then is just to close his eyes and not read the church fathers.
CLIP:
What’s the attraction for evangelicals joining the Catholic Church? And there are really three. They start listening to Roman Catholic apologists that say that the Catholic church is the one true church, therefore you need to come back to it. Another one is the early church fathers and Roman Catholic apologists have always tried to get me to read them. And my response is, how do I know they’re not the people that Paul warned us about at the end of his ministry when he’s in front of the Ephesian elders, even from your own number. Men will arise to distort the truth to lead people away. No, we want to build our theology on the inspired word of God, not on the uninspired words of men, whether it be church fathers or anyone else.
Joe:
By Gendron’s reasoning, you should never read a theology book then. You should never listen to a preacher. You should never watch a Christian channel because who knows? What if they say something wrong? By Gender’s own reasoning, you should certainly not listen to him and his uninspired and frequently false teachings. Now, if you want to know whether a particular teacher is reliable or not, whether they’re introducing some heretical new teaching or whether they’re instead defending the teaching handed on by the apostles, it turns out there actually are ways of doing that. You have to get deeper into history, not just blithely disregard history when it’s inconvenient. In this case, the evidence is pretty clear. Saint Irines was taught by St. Pauly Carp, who in turn learned Christianity from the Apostle John himself. Irineus boldly opposed the introduction of any new teachings, any heretical doctrines. This is why the title of his book is Against Hereses.
And by the way, all Christians are indebted to and rely upon Iranius because guess what? He’s also the earliest source we have to know which four gospels belong in our Bibles. So to say that you don’t need to listen to people like Iraneus because you have the biblical writings is self-refuting because the way you know which books are passed on by the apostles is precisely through Iraneus and others like him. Now look, this is all just the tip of the iceberg. As a Catholic, I frequently disagree with Protestants, but my default assumption is always that they’re acting in good faith. Even if they get some point of Catholic theology wrong, it’s more likely than not that this is an innocent error, just as I might misunderstand some point of their theology. But Mike Gendron has made a career of going to Protestant churches and telling them outright falsehoods about what the Catholic church believes, while presenting himself as some kind of expert because he used to be Catholic and had an uncle who was a priest.
Now, I’ve corrected some of his falsehoods publicly twice before, and he actually commented on the first of those videos, but then continued to parrot the same debunked falsehoods. So if you want to see why you, whether you’re Protestant or Catholic should simply avoid Mike Gendron’s fictions, I usually check out this video. For Shemus Popri, I’m Joe Heschmeyer. God bless you.