In this clip, Cy Kellett welcomes Karlo Broussard to discuss the role of the priesthood in light of Jesus’ fulfillment of the Old Testament laws. Dr. Karlo dives into the significance of the torn veil and how it impacts our understanding of the New Covenant. Don’t miss this enlightening conversation that challenges common beliefs!
Transcript:
Caller: I was raised a Catholic and I went to Catholic school, and I ended up converting to non-denominational Protestant beliefs because I am convinced from my study of Scripture that the Old Testament requirement to have a priest as an intermediate back then you would take your sacrifice to the priest.
And it could be for your whole family, that transgressions of your entire family. And God the Father came down once a year.
And he interacted with the priests behind the veil. We know that Jesus fulfilled all of the laws and the prophets, and there were 600 and something rules, including the 10 Commandments that were all mandatory behavior and rules. When he hung on the cross and he said, “It is finished,” that is the point where the Old Testament ended when the veil was rent and the New Testament began.
Karlo: Yeah.
Caller: Question number one, can you give me any New Testament scripture justifying why we still need an earthly priest?
Karlo: Oh great. Okay. Okay. So if the question has to do with ministerial priesthood, the question ultimately is did Jesus give us such ministerial priests? Okay, because I understand your line of reasoning that there were priests, there was a ministerial priesthood in the Old Testament with the Old Covenant. And according to your line of reasoning, it seems as if you’re arguing that because Christ has come, there is no longer any ministerial priesthood whatsoever. But notice that the conclusion there doesn’t necessarily follow from the premise.
I would agree with you that the Old Testament priesthood no longer exists. Because as the author of Hebrews says in Hebrews 7, when there is a change in the priesthood, there’s a change in the law. So Christ is our one high priest according to the book of Hebrews. Right? Christ is our one high priest.
But consider this, Keith. St. Peter in First Peter, chapter 2, verses 5 and 9 refers to the Christians as a priestly nation, a kingdom of priests. So St. Peter affirms that we’re all priests in and through the unique priesthood of Jesus. But notice St. Peter is drawing a parallel or alluding to explicitly Exodus chapter 19, verse 6, where the Israelites are referred to as a kingdom of priests.
And so notice how you have a match or a parallel between the bottom rank of priestly ministry, namely the universal priesthood of the Israelites and baptized believers in the Christian Church. You also have a parallel with the top rank of priestly ministry, because for the Israel of God in the Old Covenant, Keith, just because you had a universal priesthood of Israelites, it didn’t follow that you did not have a higher priestly rank of Aaron and his sons.
And so likewise in the New Covenant, we not only have a parallel with the bottom rank of priests in Christ, the universal priesthood, we also have the parallel with the highest rank, the top rank of Jesus. But just as they had a middle rank in the Israel of God in the Old Covenant, namely the sons of Aaron who ministered with Aaron, so too, at least we can see it’s plausible, biblically speaking, in light of St. Peter’s allusion to the Israel of God in the Old Covenant, drawing a parallel that there would also be a middle rank of priestly ministry to minister with Christ, not apart from Christ, but in and through the one priesthood of Christ.
So in light of that parallel, I think we at least have some biblical plausibility. But for the evidence that Christ constituted the apostles as priests, consider this, Keith. Consider that in John 20:23, which I’m pretty sure you’re familiar with, I would assume you’re familiar with if you’re a student of the Word, when Jesus tells the apostles in the upper room, “Whosoever sins you forgive, they are forgiven. Whosoever sins you retain, they are retained.”
Now, as you already mentioned, Keith, you’re well aware that in the Old Testament, those who God associated with the forgiveness of sins and making atonement for sin were his ministerial priests. So to be associated with administering the forgiveness of sins for the Old Covenant was to be a priest. That was a priestly function to minister on behalf of people to God for the forgiveness of sins.
And here in John 20:23, Jesus clearly is giving the apostles authority to not only offer sacrifice and atonement for sin, to request God to forgive, but to actually make a judgment to forgive or to retain, and that they have this ministry of administering the forgiveness of sins in, of course, the name of Jesus, because Jesus says he breathes on them and gives them the Spirit to do so.
“As the Father hath sent me, I now send you.” So too, these apostles are ministerial priests because Jesus is associating them with the reconciliation of people back to God. And so in essence, that’s a priest, a mediator. But more specifically, they’re associated with reconciling people back to God by forgiving sins. And that’s revelatory of their priestly nature.
You could look at the Last Supper. Jesus says, “Do this in remembrance of me.” The Greek there for “do this” is *poeo*, which has sacrificial overtones, suggesting that Jesus is commanding the apostles to offer the Last Supper as a sacrifice. And inasmuch as it’s a sacrifice, that suggests that he views them as ministerial priests. For the role of a priest is to offer sacrifice.
And then finally in Romans 15, Keith, Paul refers to his ministry as a priestly service. And the Greek word that he uses there, the root is *jerus*, which is the Greek word that’s used for the Jewish priests of the Old Testament. So Paul himself views his ministry as a priestly ministry. So those are just a few examples. What do you think of that, Keith?
Caller: I agree with just about everything you said because we do take on priestly roles as…
A born-again…
Christian, as a saved… I think we agree on the saved term. The plausibility that it could very well be like that does not outweigh the fact that when you look at what that veil represented and he did away with the veil at his death, I go to God now with my sins. There’s no veil that I can’t go behind anymore. There’s no veil that requires me to go to the priest.
Karlo: All right, all right, let me just jump in right here real quick. Keith, your position would make perfect sense in saying, well, if the veil is rent and therefore there’s no priest, but you have to face the fact that Jesus actually reveals to us that he gives the apostles a ministry of reconciling people back to God by forgiving and in some cases not forgiving, in which case people wouldn’t be reconciled back to God.
So rather than focusing simply on the limited information that we have with that one instance of the veil being rent, you can’t read that. I would encourage you not to read that in isolation and exclude it from what Jesus says elsewhere.
And a Catholic can read the renting of the veil in that the union between God and the human race is now restored through the death of our Lord Jesus Christ. And rather than approaching God for the forgiveness of sins through the ministers of the Old Covenant, Keith, what the renting of the veil reveals is that we can only approach the Father and receive his mercy in and through the one high priest, Jesus Christ.
And he is the one mediator between God and man. Any other forms of mediation, like our mediation, Keith, when we pray for each other or from the Catholic view, the mediation of the priests in forgiving sins and who are successors to the apostles, and when the apostles are forgiving sins, that mediation is in and through the unique mediation of Jesus. And that’s what the renting of the veil represents. Christ is now our access to the presence of God.
Caller: I see that the apostles were given the ability to forgive and as he put or not. Okay, but that still sort of segues right into my second question. And let me just put it this way. I heard mention a couple of callers ago, several times he mentioned the infallible teachings. And sometimes I have issue with that. If you don’t have a scripture to back it up, then how is it infallible? And I agree that his rationale and his line of thinking is very reasonable. Very reasonable.
Cy: Let’s let Karlo respond to that, because I think the point he’s making about if you don’t have a scripture to back it up is exactly the challenge that we’re… it’s at the root of much of the conversation.
Karlo: Okay, so concerning the evidence for the infallibility of the church, if Keith is asserting that we must provide a biblical text, a text from the inspired word of God, that the church of Jesus is infallible, well then that brings up the question. Well, you need an infallible voice in order to rely on an infallible testimony in order to know that these documents are inspired to begin with, in order to begin deriving knowledge about divine revelation, right?
So if the claim is, well, the Bible’s inspired, so we need some evidence from the inspired word of God for infallibility. Well, your claim that the Bible is the inspired word of God presupposes or assumes there’s already an infallible testimony that you can rely on. And you got a problem there if you only look into the New Testament historical evidence.
Because neither Jesus nor the apostles ever tell us which documents are inspired by God and thus consequently infallible. But what we can do is we can look at these documents as historical documents, right? And we can say, well, historically speaking, Jesus had a group of 12, among which was one that he appointed to be the leader, Peter. And we can defend that with Matthew 16:18. It makes him the rock or the visible foundation of his church. He gives him the keys of the kingdom of heaven.
Right? And in that conversation with Peter, when he’s making him the visible foundation of his church on earth, he says the gates of hell will not prevail against it. Right? So that indicates that the church which Peter’s the foundation of, which Peter represents in his ministry, is not going to ever fall prey to Satan overcoming it, which would be if the church ever officially taught something heretical and erroneous contrary to God’s revelation, then Satan would have overcome the church.
But Jesus promised Satan will never overcome the church. Therefore, whenever the church teaches something as coming from divine revelation in a definitive way, it follows from that that it’s going to be protected from error. It’s going to be protected from Satan.
Right? Furthermore, we could look to Luke 22:29-32. That’s where Jesus tells Peter, he’s telling the apostles, “Satan desires to sift all of you.” You all in plural there in the Greek. But then he prays directly for Peter. “But I pray for you that once you have turned, strengthen the brethren.” I pray that your faith may not fail. Jesus makes an exclusive promise to protect Peter from the sifting of Satan when Satan’s desiring to sift all of them.
So from that we can infer a special protection of Peter and by way of extension his successors, that they would be protected from the sifting of Satan concerning teaching us things about what God has revealed to us, that through his Son Jesus, and by the Spirit leading the apostles in the apostolic age.
Right? And then of course, in 1 Timothy 3:15, St. Paul says, “The church, which, remember Peter’s the foundation of, is the pillar and bulwark, or ground of truth.” Well, if the Church, the ground of truth, that implies that the Church is immovable in the truth. It can’t be tossed to and fro with every wind of doctrine, right?
But if Peter is the visible foundation of that Church, well, then it follows that Peter too is immovable in the truth, the ground of truth, because he’s the representative of the Church. So when we look at that historical evidence and we follow the historical trail subsequent to the apostolic age and other historical writings, seeing that there were successors to St. Peter and the bishopric of Rome, then we have historical evidence that those same promises Jesus made to Peter and to the Church as a whole whom Peter represents would apply to his successors as well.
And so thus we have historical evidence that there is an infallible testimony that we can rely upon to know that those historical documents are indeed inspired by God and to give us definitive, infallible teaching concerning what pertains to God’s revelation, whether faith or morals. And so that would be the Catholic approach for establishing the infallibility of the papacy and, of course, the Church united to the papacy.
Cy: Keith, I’m really grateful that you took the time to call and to visit. I really could listen to a conversation between two men who know their scripture so well and go back and forth all day. But however, I have a bunch more callers on the line, so I have to continue on. So I’ll just say thanks, Keith, I hope you will call again.