In this engaging clip, Cy Kellett welcomes Catholic apologist Joe Heschmeyer to discuss a listener’s perspective on Paul being an exclusive preacher to the gentiles.
Transcript:
Caller: I know what Catholics believe. They believe that Peter was the first pope. Right. Based on the passage. I tell you what, I’m in a very generous mood today. I’m feeling really generous today, you guys. I will give you Peter as the first pope. Okay?
Cy: All right. All right. Thank you!
Caller: You’re still wrong. You’re still wrong. Why? Because the New Testament is crystal clear that we are to be followers of Paul.
Joe: Interesting…
Caller: Peter is the apostle to the circumcision. He’s the apostle to the Jews. We, in this dispensation, we are to be followers of Paul. In First Corinthians 11:1, he said, “Be followers of me even as I follow Christ.” He says it all over.
Joe: He actually says, “Imitators of me as I am of Christ.”
Caller: Well, followers. Yeah, I know. And see, now we’re going to get into the difference in the Bibles that we read, but I think in… I think it’s in Timothy. Sorry, I’m driving right now. I don’t have my Bible in front of me, but that’s okay. Paul said that he is the preacher, the teacher, and the apostle to you Gentiles. Yeah, that’s pretty clear.
And people always call him, you know, the Apostle Paul. The Apostle Paul. That’s actually kind of a subtle misdirection, because what it really is, is our Apostle Paul. We are to be followers of Paul and not Peter.
Joe: Okay. So should we not be part of the Church? Peter is at the head of…
Caller: We are members of the body of Christ.
Okay. I mean, Jesus Christ is the head of the Church.
Joe: Actually, if I may, can I just ask you a few questions about this? I will give you this. This is a unique take on the argument against the papacy, that Peter could be the first pope and we still wouldn’t follow him because we’re Gentiles. In Acts chapter 10, when the door of salvation is opened to the Gentiles and Cornelius is baptized, who is it that God sends to baptize the first Gentile? The first Gentiles, because his family is also baptized.
Caller: Was it Peter?
Joe: It was Peter. And then in Acts 11, who is it who preaches the salvation of the Gentiles to the brethren in Judea? It’s also Peter. And in Acts 15, when St. Paul is saying, you don’t have to follow the Mosaic law to be saved, and there’s a controversy about this, where is this all settled? At the Council of Jerusalem. And Peter and James are the two major forces there. And the Council of Jerusalem sends instructions with Paul and Barnabas. And Paul doesn’t have the ability to just disregard what the Church is saying. He is actually sent out by the Church with a message from the Church saying it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us, and then with instructions about what they do and don’t have to follow in terms of the Levitical law.
And then on the flip side, we could say, when Paul and Barnabas would go into a new town, what was the first place that the Acts of the Apostles tells us they would go to preach?
Caller: They went to… Was it… Let’s see, they’re called Christians first at Antioch.
Joe: Oh, no, but where… Sorry, in the particular towns when they would go into a new town, what was it? The habit?
Caller: Sorry, was it the synagogues?
Joe: It was the synagogue. So what I’m saying is when Paul talks about himself as a disciple to the uncircumcised as Peter is to the circumcised, that doesn’t mean that he literally only preached to Gentiles or only preached to Jews. That actually goes completely against the whole message of St. Paul in places like Romans, where he is writing an epistle to a mixed congregation of Jews and Gentiles who’ve become Christians and then talks about their equality before God. And, you know, he doesn’t say, I’m only the apostle to some of you.
So racializing the gospel like that is completely contrary to what God has done with this. There would be a mistake to pit Peter and Paul against each other. And it raises all sorts of really complicated and convoluted questions. So, for instance, a lot of people today have mixed Jewish and Gentile heritage. Who’s their apostle?
Caller: There is no Jew or Gentile. Now, Paul withstood him to the face. Paul said he withstood Peter to the face.
Joe: Yeah, he withstood him. But notice he… Even that language suggests that Peter has an authority and he withstands him. Not on his teaching. He withstands him for Peter not practicing what he’s teaching because what Peter was preaching in Acts 10 and Acts 11 is true. But in Galatians 2, Peter doesn’t live like it’s true and is rightly called out that in a situation where someone is sinning against what they know to be true, you can call them out for that, even someone who is a superior. This is what’s called filial correction.
So there are times where, you know, if you’re hanging out with the Pope and he does something sinful, you can absolutely call him out and say, you should not have done that like that. We completely agree with that. That doesn’t mean that he didn’t have authority. Like if Paul was just calling out a random Christian, he wouldn’t say, I withstood him face to face. The language suggests that he stood up to him because he has authority, even in referring to him as the apostle to the Jews, which is what it means to be the apostle to the circumcised.
Think about the fact there were 12 apostles to the Jews originally, right? They start with Judea and then they expand out to Samaria into the Gentile lands. That’s the mission in Acts 1. And one of them is so much beyond the others in terms of authority that he can be referred to simply as the apostle to the Jews.
Caller: Yeah, absolutely. I mean he was. And, but the problem is I see nothing where Peter said anything like what Paul said.
Joe: So you just think they’re preaching different gospels?
Caller: he said, well, there’s one gospel today, and that’s First Corinthians 15, verses 1 through 4. See?
Joe: Okay, if I can pause you on that point. First Corinthians 15:1-4 is great. It is, you know, it’s called… something’s called the Corinthian Creed. And Paul talks about having received it when he became a Christian, right? So where did he receive it? He says, “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received.” So who did he get that from? He didn’t get it from the Gentiles. He got that from the Jewish converts to Christianity, like the apostles say again, he got…
Caller: It from Christ himself. That’s Galatians 1:12.
Joe: First Corinthians 15. The Corinthian Creed there isn’t coming from Christ himself. He doesn’t say that. He says he also received it. He doesn’t say he received it from Christ. There’s a wide body of Protestant, Catholic, secular literature on this so-called Corinthian Creed. And there’s a widespread agreement, even among atheists like Gerd Ludemann, that this is coming from the Christians probably in Jerusalem from the first two or three years after the death and resurrection of Christ. Like this is one of the first Christian creedal formulations announcing that Christ has died, Christ has risen, and Christ will come again. That exact language Paul never claims to have gotten from Jesus.
Caller: Well, yeah, I’m not sure about that. But I mean Galatians 1:12 I think is where the torch was passed, you might say. And that’s what our gospel is. And see, you know, get back to the notion of rightly dividing the word of truth.
Joe: Yeah, this is the dispensationalist idea.
Caller: Yeah. Because right now the fact is God’s not judging sin. He’s not judging sin for anyone, whether you’re saved or lost. And that’s Second Corinthians 5:19.
Joe: Well, let’s talk about that dividing because I think you’ve shown really adequately the problems with it because you’re having to pit Peter and Paul against each other and having to say, like huge portions of the New Testament don’t actually apply to the people of the New Covenant. So let’s actually maybe just talk about the New Covenant for a second because I think this is at the heart of where this goes wrong.
I think the easiest way to see that dispensationalism is a false gospel is just to say, are you, as a Christian, a member of the New Covenant?
Caller No, that’s… that’s for the Jews.
Joe: So what are you part of? What is your covenant relationship with God, or do you have one?
Caller: I’m a member of the body of Christ, the covenant. Look, this brought…
Joe: Are you a member of the Church?
Caller: Well, I suppose you could call it that. It’s a spiritual body. I’m a retired Baptist, so I don’t go there anymore either.
Joe: Okay.
Caller: It’s a spiritual body. I believe Christ is the head of the Church.
Joe: Well, where is he? I mean, can you see my head?
Caller: Yeah, it’s a physical…
But we can’t see the head of the Church. I can’t see him. Therefore we must be talking about a spiritual body, because the Bible does teach that he is the, you know, he’s the head of the Church. He’s the head of the body.
Joe: When Jesus takes on a body, does that make him visible or invisible?
Caller: He’s obviously visible.
Joe: Okay, great. So the body of Christ is obviously visible.
Caller: Not… I don’t see him right now.
Joe: But you see him in the least of these. You see him in the visible body of Christ on earth. Like the Church is the continuation of the incarnation of Christ. That’s what it means to be the body of Christ. Like, the whole point of a body is that it’s not just a spiritual idea.
Caller: But that’s what I… Look, here’s what I’m saying. It goes back to this whole thing about you got to understand the difference between the Old Testament, physical nation of Israel, and the New Testament, spiritual body of Christ. That’s what I’m in.
And you know Jesus…
Joe: Yeah. I want to talk about the New Covenant, though, because it sounds like you’re saying you’re not part of the New Covenant.
Caller: No, there isn’t. It’s not in effect yet. We’re in the dispensation of the grace of God.
Joe: Okay, I don’t think so. Just… I want to just point out the reason we call the 27 books of the New Testament the New Testament is they’re the story of Christ creating a New Covenant (Testamentum from the Greek word diatheke for covenant). And Jesus inaugurates the New Covenant explicitly in Matthew 26 in the institution of the Eucharist, declaring it the New Covenant in his blood. And the covenant comes into effect on the death of one of the parties, which happens, of course, when he dies on the cross.
So according to the Bible, God is creating a new covenant with the House of Israel, which Jesus does in the institution of the Eucharist and his death on the cross. But because you reject that, you have to reject being part of the New Covenant, which means the New Testament is not for you. Which means you’ve got nothing. Like, you’re not part of the Church, you’re not part of the body. You don’t have the Bible. None of this is for you if you reject being part of the New Covenant, because this is how we are related to God.
The reason you can have the bridegroom and the bride together in Ephesians 5, Christ and the Church, is because they are united in a covenant. And that covenant is the very heart of Christianity. So the reason the early Christians call these books the New Covenant or the New Testament is that’s literally the whole point.
So if you don’t understand the New Covenant, you’ve missed not just the papacy, not just the Eucharist. You’ve missed the whole story of Christianity, of why Christ comes into the world, and you’ve replaced it with this false story coming from the 19th century, coming from people like Scofield, Darby, these dispensationalists peddling this totally false gospel never before heard of, where they pit Peter against Paul, where they pit Christians against the New Testament in the New Covenant. This is a heretical false gospel that has no biblical support.
So I understand you can pull a verse out of context to make it sound like that, but I just want to have you stand back and say, wait, this is crazy. Luke 22 says that the 12 apostles are going to be judging the 12 tribes in heaven and presents the Church as built on the foundation of the apostles.
So clearly, the New Testament doesn’t pit Israel against the Church. It has the apostles as the head of one and the same. Clearly, when St. Paul talks about the Church as the Israel of God, and when Revelation 3 talks about the Church being the true Jews and all of this stuff, they’re not making this radical break the dispensationalists make.
And clearly, when St. Paul talks throughout Romans about what it means to truly be a Jew, how Abraham is the father of all those who have the faith of Abraham, all of that harmoniously comes together in the Christian story. And dispensationalists attack the very foundation of that story and present something so radically different that it doesn’t leave you with a new covenant. It doesn’t leave you with being the heirs of the promises to Israel. It doesn’t leave you with the 12 apostles. It doesn’t seem to leave you with a whole lot.
Cy: And Eric, I let that go on about five minutes longer than I was supposed to because I have to take the break. So I’m going to take the break. In the meantime, if you would like one of Joe’s books, we’d be happy…
Joe: I think we should send Pope Peter. I mean, obviously he started with the question of Peter being the pope. And Eric, I know those are strong words, but I really do appreciate your call quite a bit. I’m grateful you called in. And it’s a question a lot of…
Cy: People have, and a very gracious call as well, Eric, so thank you very much for that!