In this episode of Catholic Answers Live, Joe Heschmeyer sits down with Cy Kellett to tackle every major objection to the papacy in light of the newly announced Pope Leo XIV.
Transcript:
Occasionally, you might hear on this show because we answer questions about the Catholic faith. Someone call up with an objection about the papacy. You know, the papacy is not in the Bible, or popes are very rich. Jesus could not have intended this, that kind of thing. And so what we decided to do is a one day in which we would take every single objection to the papacy made by every human being who has ever lived. So we called them all 100 billion people. Now, that’s not exactly how we did it. We used the Internet, there was extensive use of the Internet to compile what are the objections to the papacy. And so we’re going to run through every single objection to the papacy. And who better to do that with than Joe Heschmeyer, who wrote the book? Pope Peter Joe Heschmeyer, thanks for being here with us to do this.
It is a joy to be here.
This is exciting, isn’t it? Let me start with this. I think it’s the most basic objection. I’m not sure, but I think it’s the most. It’s just not in the Bible. It’s not biblical. The papacy is not. That’s. You can. You just don’t. I mean, and I suppose there’s different ways I could say it. I could say, look, if Jesus wanted to establish a papacy, he would have used the word pope. He would have said, I want there to be a papacy. Do it this way.
Yeah. I think this gets at least two major things wrong and a lot of minor things wrong. The first major thing it gets wrong is the idea that everything important is going to be spelled out in the Bible. You’re not going to find the word Trinity. You won’t find the word Bible in the Bible used to describe the set of books. And you’ll find the word used to describe individual books, inspired or not. But you’re not going to, because the word Bible just means book. But you don’t have a Term for, like, the canon of Scripture as such, you know, these are important things. If you can’t get the Trinity in a single word from the Bible. But the concept is there. I don’t know. That seems like it should be a red flag. In my debate earlier this spring with James White, he made this argument, oh, you know, transubstantiation, you won’t find that in the Bible. And it’s like, yeah, of the books of the New Testament, only one of them, the Epistle to the Hebrews, ever explicitly says that Jesus is a priest. Explicitly. Right. Like the priesthood of Jesus is this incredibly important theme in the Epistle to the Hebrews and is implicit in the other books of the New Testament. But even though they showed Jesus in this high priestly role, even though that’s a really important part of Christianity, it wasn’t in those other 22 books. And there were early Christians who didn’t have Hebrews in their Bible. So the idea that every major doctrine is going to be spelled out for you in the Bible is absolutely unbiblical. You won’t find that doctrine, of course, spelled out in the Bible because it’s just not true.
Well, so when the person says it’s not in the Bible, I have to say, Joe, I feel a little bit of. Are you sure you want to make that argument? Because the next person down says, well, Jesus never claimed to be God.
Right, Exactly. There’s so many things. This is a terrible way of reading the Bible. This is just not like, biblically. Remember, before the break, I quoted St. Jerome, who said that the essence of scripture isn’t the letter, but the meaning. Like, the point isn’t whether you can. I’ll give another example. The word diakonos means deacon, but it also means, like, servant or steward. And so if you say in the Bible, okay, who is called a deacon? Well, you get a very strange list. Paul calls himself a deacon. Jesus is called the deacon. Phoebe is called the deaconess. And you know who’s not called the deacon? The original seven deacons mentioned in Acts 6. The word diaconoi is not actually used of the deacons. And it’s used for a bunch of people who we wouldn’t call deacons. And so using, you know, using the. Well, where is that word is just the worst way of trying to read your Bible. If this is how you’re reading your Bible, Catholic, Protestant, whatever you are, atheist. That’s not how the Bible is meant to be read. And this is a very shallow way of doing it. Now, don’t get me wrong, sometimes you can do a little word search. You know, you go onto Bible Gateway or some online Bible site, and you type in a word and you find some verses about it. And that can be fruitful sometimes, but you’re missing more than you’re finding most of the time. And if you’re just doing that way, you’re absolutely skimming the surface of Scripture. So that’s the first thing I’d say. Like, the first major problem with that objection is it doesn’t know how to read the Bible. The second major problem with the objection is it doesn’t understand the papacy, and in two ways. First, even the term Pope is more of a nickname than an actual title. So we’ll say Pope so and so. But Pope is just from Papa. You know, we’re calling him Father. If you look at the list of titles of the Roman Pontiff, the Bishop of Rome, the servant of the servants of God, a notable omission is Pope. It’s more shorthand than anything else. So a better question would be like, well, do we find one apostle who has an authority in relation to the other apostles? And of course we do, and it’s Peter. And you have to really grasp at straws to not see Peter there. And do we find bishops? Well, yes, we do. So the idea that there’s going to be a successor to the apostles, do we find that? Well, in Acts 1, we explicitly see Judas is replaced. And. And we know that the apostles in the original mission aren’t going to live forever. And so one of the things they’re doing is they’re building up bishops to carry on. Do we find one person having ultimate accountability in the church? Well, we do. In both the Old and the New Testament, you read Scripture and read it deeply. Don’t just do a word search and you’ll see time and time and time again, whether it’s Abraham and the patriarchs, whether it’s the judges, whether it’s the kings of Israel, whether it’s the high priest, whether it’s the apostles. There is always, even within a group of people called to lead, there’s always one person who God holds ultimately accountable for how things are going and will reward or punish them accordingly. And so the papacy is utterly biblical, understood in that way. Now, we can then get into much more of the fine grain details of which biblical passages point to Peter’s role. So maybe we can do that kind of as we move forward over the next hour and a half here. So I want to actually look at Matthew 16 many times when Catholics and Protestants debate Matthew 16, it’s on this line, I tell you, you are Peter Petros, and on this rock Petra, I will build my church. And many Protestants have been taught, oh, like Petros is a little pebble and Petra is like a really big rock. And that’s actually not true. You know, Martin Luther, in his commentary on this, suggests, well, all believers are called to be stones. And so we can all be called Peter. And it’s like, well, significantly, Jesus doesn’t name all of us Peter. He names one guy Peter and gives him an authority of office. And so the idea that each of us gets to be the Pope, each of us gets to be Peter, is this fiction that isn’t biblical. It is the opposite of what Jesus is actually doing here.
Can I interrupt you at that point? Because in defense of Martin Luther, there is a complexity here because there is this double level of priesthood in the church. There is this double level of kingship in the church, of sovereignty. So that Catholics don’t deny that you are called to be a stable rock upon which Jesus can build. We don’t deny the priestly function of every single Christian. Do you see what I’m saying, Joe?
Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely. We could even say a threefold structure. Because, of course, in one sense, Christ alone is high priest. Christ alone possesses the priesthood in the fullest, simplest way.
And so likewise, if we say, like, well, who are the stones? Well, in one sense it’s just going to be Jesus. In one sense, Peter is being called in this unique way. In one sense, it’s all of us. And Peter even points to the other two answers we could reasonably give here. In First Peter 2, he says about Jesus, come to him, to that living stone, rejected by men, but in God’s sight, chosen and precious. And like living stones, be yourselves built into a spiritual house. So who is the stone? Well, in one sense it’s Peter. In one sense it’s Jesus. In one sense, it’s all of us. The Bible supports all of those answers, but in different ways. In the same way, like, you know, what is. Who is your father? Well, in one sense, God alone, you know, call no man Father. But in another sense, you have, you know, spiritual fathers. St. Paul speaks very explicitly. You have one father through the Gospel and talking about himself. And he talks in Romans 4 about how Abraham is our Father not in the flesh, but our Father in faith. And so having spiritual fathers in that sense is totally fine. And not just totally fine is the biblical teaching. And then every father should be the spiritual Father of his family. It’s not enough for you to be the biological father. So we can talk about a whole series of fathers. We can talk about a whole series of stones. And all of this we say, okay, well, if you mean this, then just Jesus. Or if you mean this, you know, like the body of Christ, you mean Jesus’s historic body that walks the earth? Do you mean the way his body is present in the Eucharist? Do you mean the way the Church is the body of Christ? Do you mean the way that each of us become bodies of Christ by our incorporation into Christ in baptism? There can be many different ways of answering the question. Using one of those answers to contradict the other ones is bad exegesis.
Yeah, okay. Very, very helpful.
All right, so do you want to talk maybe about Luke 22? Because I know one of the other objections is, well, when the apostles are arguing about who’s the greatest, why don’t they all just know it’s Peter? I mean, I don’t know if you’ve heard that objection or not, but you’ll hear that, right? And the funny thing is, he clearly shows it’s Peter, but you have to actually read the passage. So it’s for context. It’s the Last Supper. And the apostles are, of course, debating which of them is the greatest, which.
Is what you do at the Last Supper. I mean, you’re in Jerusalem. The Lord is very grand.
It’s not like Jesus isn’t giving you some really important teachings during this time.
So what you do is you go, which one of us do you think is the greatest? Like, who do you think is top dog among us? Yes, go, apostles.
If you ever start arguing in church with your family, then at least you have precedent. There’s a venerable Christian tradition of doing this. And so Jesus tells them that they’re not to be like the kings of the Gentiles. Now, this is going to be another important way that the objector has misunderstood the papacy, that they’re expecting that. You know, as Jesus says, the kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, meaning the people in their service. But he says, it’s not to be among you. You’re to be as a servant. And he gives himself as an example. He says, I am among you as one who serves. And of course, when you couple this with the image in John of Jesus washing their feet, you have a clear image that, yes, there is authority in the Church, yes, there is greatness, but it’s not going to look like pagan greatness. And so people Saying, oh, why doesn’t Peter look like one of the pagan overlords? Because that’s their understanding of the papacy. It’s like, well, because that’s not the Christian model of the papacy. But let’s see, what is the Christian model? Because you might say, aha. Therefore, nobody’s to be in any kind of leadership context at all. But not so the next words out of Jesus mouth, this is now Luke 22:28. Are you are those who have continued with me in my trials. As my father appointed a kingdom for me, so do I appoint for you that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones judging the 12 tribes of Israel. So there is hierarchy, there is authority. But just as you know, if I said, tell me about the family and the Christian conception, you would say, okay, well, children aren’t just to be, you know, the slaves of their parents. Rather, parents often feel like the situation is the other way around. They’re constantly serving their children. And you say, oh, okay, so there’s no authority. You say, oh, no, no, no, there is authority. But it’s an authority of love and of service where I’m to lead and guide my children while serving them and pouring myself out for them. That’s the model in the family, and that is the model in the family of God. The Church and the apostles are clearly in a position of authority. They’re sitting on thrones. They are judging the 12 tribes of Israel. This idea that, like the kingly imagery of the Pope is some medieval invention. Read your Bible. It’s right there. Jesus is the king of kings. And granted his crown is a crown of thorns, but it is a. It is a true authority that he has and a true authority that he shares with the apostles. And then now that’s all 12, right? That’s the apostles writ large. In the very next verse. We’re now at verse 31, he says to one of them, simon Peter, Simon Simon, behold, Satan has demanded to have you. Now here, it’s you, plural, it’s you all. It’s yin, you guys. Satan has demanded to have you guys that he might sift you guys like wheat. And then he switches from the plural. To the singular. He doesn’t say, but I’ve stopped him because I’m God, and I’m just putting a stop to that. He doesn’t even say, as the Son of God, I’ve prayed for the 12 of you. He says, but I have prayed for you. And it is you. Singular, it is you, Simon Peter, nobody else that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brethren. The terrifying thing that’s just happened here is having just told all 12 that leadership is servant leadership and that all of them are called to be servant leaders to the whole church. In the face of a demonic assault. Jesus remedy is to say, and Simon Peter, you’re to be the servant of the servants of God, you are to serve those serving the rest, and you’re to strengthen your brethren in the face of actual attacks from the enemy. And he knows as he’s saying this that Peter’s about to deny him three times. He knows as he’s saying this, that Peter is manifestly unqualified for this role. And yet Jesus calls him anyway.
Look, the Bible never says Peter was a bishop in Rome. There’s nothing that says Peter went to rome, right?
So first Peter 5:13, speaking of the church in Rome, says, she who is at Babylon, who is likewise chosen, sends you greeting, and so does my son Mark. Now understand, this is all non literal language. Mark is not Peter’s biological son, it’s his spiritual son, the, you know, the evangelist Mark, who. One of the reasons we trust his recounting is he’s gotten his witness of the Gospel from Peter, this is his translator and so on. But more importantly for our purposes, when he speaks of the church at Babylon, he doesn’t mean the ancient city that doesn’t exist anymore in the first century. He very clearly is referring to the city of Rome. And this is actually quite funny because many of the fiercest critics of the Catholic Church will claim, oh, the Catholic Church is the whore of Babylon mentioned in Revelation, because don’t you know, the early Christians used Babylon as a shorthand for Rome. And sure enough, they did do that. And that’s more evidence that Peter was in Rome. Now obviously there’s a difference between the city of Rome, the Roman Empire, and the Roman Catholic Church, AKA the Catholic Church. And conflating all of those by calling them all Rome is pretty basic as just what’s called a category error. It would be like accusing the apostles of being the Sanhedrin because they’re both in Jerusalem. Like, well, obviously just don’t call them Jerusalem. You know, that’s, that’s not helpful. So notably, Peter doesn’t refer to the Church as Rome or even as Babylon, but she who is at Rome or she who’s at Babylon. Excuse me. So like the church of Rome, the church in Rome is the way that we’re accustomed to speaking of the Church, because we’re not just a city and we’re not just an empire in a worldly sense. This is a kingdom of God that is on earth. So even though people get that wrong, you have that very clear clue in 1 Peter 5. You also have a ton of early Christians who talk about, you know, for example, Irenaeus and several others who talk about the apostles having, you know, Peter and Paul having gone to Rome and being martyred there. And then if all of that isn’t enough, and the fact you don’t have anybody in the early church claiming, oh yeah, Peter spoke to us over here in the ancient ruined city of Babylon. No, this is clearly about Rome and Roman history points to this. If all of that wasn’t enough, you also have the bones of Peter that have been reliably dated to the first century and seem to actually be Peter’s bones that have been preserved and venerated by Christians for 2000 years. So all of that together, I think cumulatively I can’t imagine a plausible case that Peter doesn’t go to Rome. And the only people who deny this seem to be people desperate not to accept what history proves about the papacy. And so they’ll just not give you any ground at all, even if it means denying the most obvious things in the world.
What about this? Peter and Paul founded the church in Rome. The Bible says Peter and Paul are the founders of the church in Rome.
Yeah, I mean, Paul is clear. He’s not the personal founder of the church. He says this to the Romans. You know, he makes the point that normally he only goes to churches that he’s founded. Rome is an exception and he is explicit about that. But also, yeah, he is considered a kind of co founder of Rome, not in the sense of literally starting it, but he does help build it up in the early days. And so, you know, the Catholic Church celebrates the feast of Peter and Paul together and very often both in the early church. Again, look at Irenaeus as mentioned and look at later mentions as well. You speak of Peter and Paul together and this is very beautiful in the sense of Roman history as well, because the city of Rome, at least in legend, was built up by the twins Remus and Romulus. And you know, it’s named after one of them. That’s why it’s not called Ream. But it’s, you know.
Well, it didn’t work out for him in the legend. Remus. It didn’t really work out for him. Well, I mean, I guess in that sense it didn’t work out for Peter or Paul either, because they were martyred in the city of Rome. Okay, but what about this? That Paul rebukes Peter. So if, like this is not showing respect for Peter as if he’s some towering figure. Paul is bossy towards Peter.
Yeah, he’s not really bossy towards him. He rebukes him to his face and talks about how he rebukes him to his face and says it in a way that is actually quite revealing. He actually said, I withstood him to or I opposed him to his face. This is Galatians 2, verse 11. That when Peter. So okay, a little bit of backstory here for those who don’t know the biblical context. Remember, Peter is the one who opens the doors of salvation to the Gentiles, even though they’re not circumcised, even though they’re not following the Mosaic Law. He has them baptized beginning with Cornelius and those with him in Acts 10. In Acts 11, he defends this. People like Paul are eagerly preaching this Gospel. And in Acts 15, it’s challenged. And then you have the Council of Jerusalem in which Peter gets up, there’s a big hubbub, and then Peter gets up and the crowd falls silent. And then James offers his opinion, citing to Peter. And then, okay, the council is done and they side with the apostles, namely James and Peter here. But Peter had all done this in his individual capacity. But then you get to this later event that happens in Antioch where Peter is eating with a mix of Jewish and Gentile Christians. And he doesn’t eat with the Gentile ones. He eats at a segregated table of Jewish Christians only. And so he hasn’t said anything heretical there. But his conduct is scandalous because it’s treating the Gentiles like second class Christians or treating them like they’re not fully Christian, like they’re still impure because they’re not following the Mosaic Law. So even though he hasn’t taught heresy, he hasn’t said anything false, people are going to be scandalized and confused by his actions. And so Paul rightly rebukes him for that. Like we want to say, both Peter is able to give things that are inerrant and even inspired. And Protestants will typically agree with this, that first and Second Peter are divinely inspired. Peter, when he writes those things, can be trusted completely, but also when he’s preaching, for instance, on Pentecost, that the Holy Spirit is working through him and he’s at the very minimum protected from error. But even more than that, he’s actually given the words to say in Some sense we want to say that’s true. And he’s still capable of individually sinning. And likewise with modern popes, they are divinely protected from error in certain contexts and are still capable of sinning, still capable of scandalizing people by their behavior. And they may still need to have fraternal and filial correction in the sense of people saying, hey, that’s not a good way to lead and govern. Those two things are completely compatible.
You know, it strikes me that I don’t understand the model of papacy you have in your mind where the Pope is immune from any critique. That’s not the Catholic position. And if you read not just Catholics online right now talking about the Pope or recent popes, but Catholics throughout the ages, look at how many popes Dante has in hell. In Dante’s Inferno, Catholics love to criticize the Pope. It’s not a rebuke or a disproof of the papacy that another part of the Church had some harsh things to say about the Pope. I would actually point you to the language in Galatians 2:11, which I started to allude to earlier when Cephas came to Antioch. That’s Peter. I opposed him to his face because he stood condemned for before certain men came from James, he ate with the Gentiles, but when they came, he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party. So notice he doesn’t accuse him of actually being like a heretic, but just basically being a coward that he knows better. And then he says, and with him, the rest of the Jews acted insincerely, so that even Barnabas was carried away by their insincerity. Now you say, well, why doesn’t he rebuke Barnabas, his friend? Why doesn’t he rebuke this guy who’s like Paul’s own companion? Well, he rebukes Peter because he’s the leader. You don’t say, I opposed him to his face unless it’s someone that is actually impressive. You oppose them to their face. Like, I stood up to the great Psychelle. I told him on air, such and such. That tells people who don’t know who Psychellate is, he must be somebody important if it’s a big deal that you stood up to him.
That’s why nobody ever says that.
We’Re just afraid to stand up to you. That’s awesome.
Yeah, sure, sure.
The language that Paul uses in describing Peter still is language of deference. And this is coming a chapter after Paul recounts his own conversion and says, after three years. They went up to Jerusalem to visit Kephas and remained with him 15 days. But I saw none of the other apostles except James, the Lord’s brother. That he makes a special point to go to Jerusalem to just seek out Peter and to be with him for 15 days and doesn’t feel the need to be with any of the other apostles. That Peter has that much authority. He is that special. And sure he sees James, the bishop of Jerusalem, but it’s a bigger deal that he’s seeing Peter. And I think that’s something that people reading this passage are just mining it for. Trying to pit the apostles against each other are just missing the actual kind of biblical context.
Is there anything else you want to say about that before I go on to the next objection?
There’s so much more to say about it, but we can just kind of work at different passages as we go. I mean, you can see Peter’s authority in so many different ways. I guess I’ll give one, one quickish example. Every time you see a papal list that has Judas name on it, he’s in last place. There’s four times that the apostles are all named and Judas is on three of them. I won’t say what happened to him by the fourth one. And he’s listed last.
And Peter’s always listed first. And then the 10 in the middle, they’re positions aren’t in any particular order. That tells you something, that the two fixed positions are the place of dishonor for Judas and the place of honor for Peter. Now we can talk about what does this authority look like. But one thing the authority looks like for sure is that Peter is able to unilaterally open the door to the Gentiles. That uncircumcised Gentiles are brought into the kingdom of God through baptism in Acts 10 without him having to wait for the Council of Jerusalem. What the Council of Jerusalem does at the level of a council, Peter does in his individual authority as an apostles and not just an apostle, but the apostles sent. You know, Paul can call him the apostle to the Jews, but he’s also the apostle to the uncircumcised. He’s the apostle to the Gentiles as well in the sense of opening the doors of the church to the Gentiles. I don’t think you can look at all that and say, yeah, he’s just one among the 12. And I guess if I can add one more quick little detail.
Acts 2 refers to the 12 apostles as Peter and the 11. Like doesn’t even just number him among the 12, considers him something more than an apostle. And so you have that kind of authority. And it’s right there in Scripture, go tell the apostles. And Peter, you know, that sort of thing is over and over again.
And I do think that among the weakest arguments against the papacy is Peter was no big deal. That seems to me that’s just not going to work. You can’t read the New Testament and think, yeah, Peter’s exactly like all the other apostles.
Right. He gets mentioned more than the other 11. Well, the other 12 put together.
Right. So it just doesn’t work. That won’t work. So if you’re of the mind of, oh, Peter’s not that important, just read the New Testament and we won’t have an argument. Peter’s very, very important in the ministry of Jesus. So I think that the more. Maybe I don’t want to say intelligent, but the more persuasive argument is, yes, but this is not. We don’t see Jesus establishing an office. We see Peter playing this role in the apostolic age. But what is your evidence that this goes on for 2,000 years?
Yeah, I think one part of this, I really do think it’s worth just having a little bit of a reality check to say, was there ever a time the papacy was less necessary than while Jesus is on earth? Was there ever a time the papacy was less necessary than While you have 11 other apostles who’ve accompanied him? So just at a level of how plausible is this version of history, if you’re, I don’t know, a Presbyterian or a Congregationalist or whatever, and you think, yeah, Jesus wanted us all to be Presbyterian in our system of government. He wanted us all to be Congregationalist, whatever. Why in the world does Jesus not just found that? That’s super easy to found. I mean, tons of people in your hometown have probably already done that. Jesus couldn’t have done that. And instead he found this thing that looks monarchical, this thing that looks like kingship that he describes with thrones, that he has one guy in a position of authority while he, the King of the Jews, the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, is roaming the earth. What a weird way to get. Like, if you’re trying to get to Presbyterianism, you’ve taken the longest detour in the wrong direction to get there. Because Presbyterianism or Congregationalism is basically what you get if you leave it up to anarchy. Like, yeah, eventually either the mob will decide or a handful of people who are more naturally prone to leadership will rise to the top. And that’s what you get if you don’t have Jesus building a church. That’s what you get if you just, you know, leave it up to the people to decide for themselves. And that’s very decisively not what we get with the church. So I think just at the outset, to just point out, well, it’s hard to explain Jesus’s entire approach and the deliberation he takes with setting this up if it was meant to be for such a short span of time. Why even tell us about it if he’s going to be here today and gone tomorrow? And why does he not tell us one word about what he wants to have come next, if not this? Like, if this isn’t the shape of government that he wants for the church, why does he take so much time to build it and take literally no time to build the government that he actually wants to see? So have that kind of in place as we think about future popes or successors of Peter is one way that.
I should interpret what you’re saying then is that you see the three years, let’s call it three years of. Roughly three years of ministry, of public ministry from Jesus, that he himself established something around him that looks quite hierarchical. He doesn’t.
Everybody around him is not an equal. That’s clear that there are. He’s got crowds that come to him. He’s got people that he ministers, that, you know, this wider thing. He’s got a group of 70 or 72. You have to help me with my recollection there, Joe, that seem to be particularly the 70.
But Luke 10.
And then you’ve got this obviously group set apart for something different, which is the 12. I mean, even when I watch the Chosen, I can see those people. These guys are different than everybody else. And then Even among the 12, you.
Have Peter, James and John. You know, Peter, James, sometimes Peter, James and John and sometimes Andrew.
Peter, James and John are the only ones invited to the Transfiguration, for instance. And there’s actually several moments.
Or in the Garden of Gethsemane.
Yes. Where I was exactly going to go. So all 12 are present at the Garden of Gethsemane. Judas has a particular role that he plays. We’re going to leave him aside, as our Lord does, and say, okay, so the 11 go with Jesus to the garden. Then Peter, James and John are invited to go in further into the garden. Like there’s a visible hierarchy in terms of proximity to Jesus. He’s going in deeper. He’s not taking all of them. He’s just taking these three. And then how many of them fall asleep? Eleven. How many get scolded for it? Peter, like, Peter by name is scolded for it. And so, you know, I always say, like, if you’ve got. Let’s say you’ve got 11 kids, God help you, and you come home and the house is a mess, and you scold one kid. Now, if I know nothing else about your family, I’m like, okay, well, there’s two possibilities. Either this kid is, like, wildly more destructive than all the other ones, but if you find out they all did the same thing, then say, okay, clearly this is the child you’ve left in charge. This is the one that you put in a position of authority. And so the buck stops with them when things go badly. And so Peter getting rebuked more than the others, which is regularly brought up against the papacy, is obviously evidence for the papacy, because if he’s not a.
True charge dude, you’re in charge. Like, that’s why I’m talking to you. You’re like the foreman. Like, what’s going on on this work site? Nobody’s working. That’s the foreman. That’s the guy.
Exactly. So I would just say, like, you see those kind of things. So Peter is very clearly in this role, but in this role not just because of his own natural leadership abilities, but because he’s being invited into our Lord. And the idea that that is going to go away strikes me as obviously wrong. But now let’s talk about how do we know this is an office instead of just, you know, natural leadership? So I want to actually look at Matthew 16, and I want to look at Matthew 16 in the parts that we often don’t talk about.
Like I said before, many times, when Catholics and Protestants debate Matthew 16, it’s on this line. I tell you, you are Peter Petros, and on this rock, Petra, I will build my church. And many Protestants have been taught, oh, like Petros is a little pebble and Petra is like a really big rock. And that’s actually not true, but I’m going to leave that aside. If we want to get into it later, we can, but I want to look at the second half of what’s going on. Because Jesus says, I will build my church. And then he says, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Well, this is sometimes translated as the powers of death shall not prevail against it. I don’t really like that translation, but fine. If the Church founded by Jesus lasts until the death of Peter and then it dissolves. Then the case of hell have prevailed against the church. He seems to be saying he’s creating a visible church, that there’s some kind of connection with Peter. And, you know, whether it’s as a rock or something else, for some reason Peter is getting mentioned, and he’s going to get mentioned a lot more. And this is going to last in such a way that death will not be the end of it. Which means definitionally, it’s not going to last for one generation, because if it lasts for one generation and ends in death, that’s the opposite of what Jesus promised. And what do we say about this church? He says, I will give you Peter, and this is you singular, not you, the, you know, collective Christians, but you, Peter, the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatever you, singular, bind on earth shall be bound in heaven. And whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Now that is a tremendous amount of authority. And that looks very, very much like an office, particularly if you read it in light of the Old Testament. So for instance, if you read in Isaiah 22 with the words about Eliakim that God says in Isaiah 22:20, in that day, actually, I’ll go to verse 19, he’s talking to Shebna, the predecessor, and says, I will thrust you from your office and you will be cast down from your station. In that day, I will call my servant Eliakim, the son of Hilkiah, and I will clothe him with your robe and will bind your girdle upon him, and will commit your authority to his hand. Now we’ve just heard from verse 19, that is the authority of office. And he shall be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and to the house of Judah. And I will place on his shoulder the key of the house of David. He shall open and none shall shut. And he shall shut and none shall open. So my point there is that is clearly a bestowal of office. And we can even say the kind of office that it was that he was placed over the house of David, meaning he represented the king. And so when they come to one of the foreign like, invading powers demands to speak to the king, and instead of the king himself coming out, his vicar comes out Eliakhen. And it’s like, okay, well, Jesus is using that language and that imagery describing Peter’s relationship to him, that he’s going to serve in this office as representative of our Lord on earth. That looks like he’s creating an office of someone who’s going to be the vicar of Christ. And that’s not from me looking through medieval history. That’s from me comparing Isaiah 22 and Matthew 16, that the keys are an image of official authority, not just personal ambition or natural aptitude. Like, you know, you’ll find people who are just like, oh, you know, Peter’s just leading because he was just naturally the leader. False. Peter is leading because he’s given the keys by Jesus by name, individually, and his name is changed. And read through the Old Testament and look at the significance of Jacob becoming Israel. Look at the significance of Abraham becoming Abraham and so on, and it becomes so implausible that Simon to Peter is just, you know, this not particularly important thing.
Okay. It is hard to phrase it as a question because I have to. Well, let me say it the way a Protestant might say it, then. I’ll try to imitate what the Protestant minister might say. We have a faith in Jesus as the sole mediator between God and man. He’s our high priest. The temple veil is torn to show us that we no longer need all these Old Testament accoutrements. What we need is simply an appeal in faith to the person of Jesus. And our authority to know about that is Scripture. So where does the Pope fit in? That.
Yeah, that’s very well said. That’s a good way of framing it. And I think that there is often this idea. I think the temple veil is a great example of a tragically misused bit of scripture because it’s a beautiful scene and it’s misunderstood by the people who cite to it. I regularly hear people say, oh, before the temple veil was torn, people didn’t believe they could pray directly to God and they had to go to the priest. And then the temple veil is torn, and that tells us we can pray directly to God. It’s like, no, none of that is true. That’s not the meaning of the tailoring of the temple veil. And people before the time of the death of Christ did pray directly to God. I mean, you have.
That’s what the psalms are.
150 instances of praying directly to God.
Yeah. And, you know, you’ve got Luke 18, the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, and both of them feel comfortable going into the temple and offering prayer on their own. They’re not going to the priest. In Luke 11, with the giving of the Lord’s prayer, the disciples approach him and say, lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples. So John the Baptist is teaching methods of prayer to the disciples. And the disciples aren’t like, we’re not allowed to pray, are we? No, it’s ridiculous. I mean, people were praying all over the Old Testament directly to God. That’s not some new thing. Well, on the flip side, even after the temple veil is torn, even though we have direct access to God as we did before, we have it in a new and rich way now, in the body of Jesus Christ, nevertheless there remain intercessors. How do we know that? Well, you mentioned 1 Timothy 2, which says we have one mediator, but four verses prior to that. In 1 Timothy 2, St. Paul urges that supplications, prayers, intercessions and thanksgivings be made for all men. Well, who makes intercessions an intercessor? That’s by definition. So intercession remains in place in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, something has changed, and it involves the body of Christ and the tearing of the temple veil. The thing that strikes me about the Protestant misreading of the tearing of the temple veil is Hebrews 10 tells you what it means. And so often the people who quote to this event don’t actually cite the place where it’s explained. In Hebrews 10, verse 19, we’re told, therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way which he opened for us through the curtain that is, through his flesh. The curtain is the temple veil. But the tearing of the temple veil represents the tearing of the flesh of Christ, the piercing of his side. Blood and water flow out that this shows us that Christ, the new temple has been torn open so we can enter, as it were, into the heart of Christ through the blood and water, through baptism in the Eucharist, we can enter into the heart of God in this radical way. This is not a repudiation of Christian priesthood at all, but it is the idea that now we can go directly before God, not just in prayer. We could do that before. We can now commune directly with God bodily, that we have access to divinity through the body of Jesus in a new way. And so it’s strange to me that the people who talk about this in this way are missing the actual meaning of this passage, which is talking about this new bodily dimension of access to God, which Hebrews 10 tells you that. Okay, so what about the fact that Christ is our high priest? So therefore we don’t need priests. That doesn’t make any sense. The whole point of saying one is the high priest is to distinguish him from the other priests. When you look at the Old Testament, there is a high priest, and he’s accompanied by priests. So Christ being the high priest doesn’t mean that there are no other priests. But then likewise, you have, you know, in First Peter, the reference to us being a nation of kings and priests. Well, this is quoting Exodus 24. And if that passage means there’s no priests, then it would seem to mean there are no priests in Exodus, which is not true. So all of the kind of arguments against priesthood for that reason, that Peter couldn’t possibly have a role because there’s no role for priesthood and intercession, none of that is true. None of that is true based on just the Bible alone.
Thank you, Joe. I appreciate that. And I appreciate that you made me kind of focus the question, because it’s a hard question to get at. More of a systematic question, that the papacy doesn’t fit into a certain system of beliefs.
Yeah, that’s right. But a lot of. I mean, I want to just say this, and I don’t mean this as an accusation. A lot of American Protestants are not aware of how much their religion is shaped by being American more than it’s shaped by being Christian. I think that’s true in a lot of ways of American Catholics as well, that we have certain ideas about democracy and individuality and everything else. That when you go looking for them in the Bible, you’re not going to find them, because those ideas aren’t coming from the Bible. They’re coming from the American founders, they’re coming from the Enlightenment, they’re coming from people who often hated Christianity, but we’ve incorporated them. We drink them so deeply, they’re in the air we breathe. That a lot of the objections to Catholicism are really just. It doesn’t feel American enough. And it’s good that it doesn’t feel American enough, because the kingdom of God isn’t reducible to any earthly kingdom, including the US Of A.
All right, then, I’ll tell you what. You. Having said that, I want to move to an Orthodox objection to the papacy, then, because you say that the papacy is the Catholic Church’s most distinctive doctrine. Part of that is a reference to Orthodoxy that when I think of someone who’s. I don’t know, let’s say, in the Russian Orthodox Church.
It’s virtually indistinguishable from what I believe the practice, the understanding of the Beatitudes, of the sacraments, of the. I’m not saying that there’s no distinction, but it seems almost the equivalent of the distinction between Me and Maronite Catholics. The only difference is the papacy in general terms, and I have to be very, very general here. Hundreds of millions of people are Orthodox Christians. But in general terms, there is an acceptance of Peter, of the primacy of Peter, and even of the important status of Rome as central to the structure of the Church. But that the Pope is not primate, so to speak, of the Church, he’s a first among equals among the bishops. What do you make of this objection to the Catholic understanding of the papacy?
Yeah, I would say a few things. Number one, this is almost always going to be a harder objection to answer. I think that the danger with the objection is you end up very much lost in the weeds saying what was in the mind of this 5th century author when he wrote these words? Oh, yeah, I think the advantage of it, and I think the strength of it is it takes the Church Fathers a lot more seriously than many of the Protestant objections we looked at in the last hour, where it says, yeah, we want to be in the same Church that the early Christians are in, and not just our, like, imaginary version of the early Christians, but the actual Christians who’ve left us their writings. So I want to applaud the argument in that way, but I still think it’s got a largely fictional version of what that looks like. And I think you see that with this idea of the Pope being, you know, first among equals. So the Pope’s authority was always understood as much more than that. There is an article, if people want to get a little more of a scholarly deep dive on this. I’ll sketch out the basic meaning. But Daley, Brian Daly had a 1993 journal article that I regularly find myself referencing on this particular question called Position and Patronage in the Early Church. And the subtitle is the Original Meaning of Primacy of Honor. Because the two ways you’ll hear this described are, oh, the Pope was just first among equals. This is clearly not true. You have popes doing things, for instance, in the three hundreds, you have the first papal decretal, and any bishop that disagrees is deposed. No one is doing that to the Pope. The Pope is able to do that to other people. That tells us something about the way his authority is understood. You know, like he. He can depose the Bishop of Spain, the Bishop of Spain can’t depose him. Calling those two equals doesn’t seem to be honest or true. But then the other way is, well, this was just a primacy of honor, and this is just a misunderstanding of the sources that when it talks about sources, when it talks about honor. Excuse me, that this term is in reference to office, that I don’t know how deep into this you want to get, but let me. One of the things Daly says is that the terms onos indignitas, which suggested the long term status of a person who is continually given honor, came to be used by the Romans to mean political office itself. So the example I would give is the way we refer to judges as your honor. Now, when we say your honor, we are making a reference to their office, not their personal dignity. They may be a very honorable person, they may be a very dishonorable person, they may be a total stranger. The term your honor is a reference to the fact that they possess the honor of being a judge. That makes sense.
Yes, makes sense. Yes.
So and talking about the primacy of honor, this would be like saying, well, he’s the chief justice or he’s the supreme Court. So now we realize this is not honor in the sense of like, he gets to wear the coolest hat or he gets to go first in the procession, or even, you know, Peter is the first one mentioned in the list of popes, that the honor is something much deeper there. This is an actual authority of office, not just an honorific.
Ah, yeah. So that honor is related to something that’s real. It’s related to an office.
Because otherwise you end up in this weird place where they’re kind of arguing for the very model of leadership that Jesus tells the apostles not to have, where everybody’s just going to argue about which of them gets to be the greatest. And it’s not about service. It’s just about, well, who gets to wear the coolest hat, who gets to go first in the procession. That is not the heart of the papacy. That’s not the heart of what this whole thing is about. And so the Catholic position is ironically, much more biblically sound there than the idea of just a first among equals. And then additionally, Peter isn’t just first among equals in the way he’s presented in the Bible. Like if you look at Peter and say, does Peter have the exact same authority as everybody else? No. Several times Peter is tasked with something nobody else is. I’ll give some examples. In Matthew 16, he alone is given the keys of the kingdom of heaven, while the church collectively is given the ability to bind and loosen. In Matthew 18, only Peter is individually given the binding and loosening authority. Also in Matthew 16, in Luke 22, Peter is entrusted with the care of the entire flock, including the other apostles. He’s told, strengthen your brethren. Nobody else is given that authority or that mandate. In John 21, Jesus gives the entire flock to the care of Peter. He says, feed my sheep, tend my lambs, tend my sheep. Those terms are not used of anybody else. I would suggest in John 10, Jesus says there will be one flock with one shepherd. Now who’s the shepherd? Ultimately, it’s Jesus. But the care of the one flock is entrusted to Peter.
Yeah, feed my sheep. So to speak.
Right. Nobody else is told that for the.
Entire world he’s actually made a shepherd. That’s the words that Jesus uses.
And if you read John 10 very carefully, there’s this cool two part aspect of it. So John 10, Jesus describes himself as a good shepherd, beginning in verse 11, I believe. But before that he gives a different. Yeah, in verse 11, but in John 10, 1, 10, he gives a different analogy or a different parable to describe the way authority in the church looks. And because it doesn’t have a different label in a lot of Bibles, we gloss over it thinking it’s the same thing. It’s not. In verse 1 to 10, he gives the parable of himself as the sheep gate. And he says, excuse me, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door, but climbs in by another way. That man is a thief and a robber. But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep to him. The gatekeeper opens, the sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes before them and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. Okay, so you think, all right, well, clearly Jesus is the good shepherd and the sheep know his voice. He must be talking about himself. But in verse 7, he says something really fascinating. He says, truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers. But the sheep did not heed them. I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. So it’s a fascinating thing where he’s talking here about the difference between a true shepherd of the flock and false shepherds who make their own denominations, their own churches, who he describes as thieves and robbers who are dividing the one flock of Christ. Those are strong words that I think many of our Protestant brothers and sisters should listen to carefully. But notice that the shepherd that he’s entrusting the entire flock to isn’t himself. He is the sheep gate that the true shepherd will approach the flock through. And so where do we find Jesus? The sheep gate calling someone to be the shepherd of the entire flock. Well, quite clearly in John 21, when he tells Peter to feed his lambs. And so that language should be understood in this invitation in John 10. And so no, that’s not just first among equals. There’s something much more being given there that was true of Peter, that was true of every pope subsequent to him. And then you find things. If you want to add on one more layer to this, you have, for instance, Irenaeus. I’ve mentioned him a few times, but in book three of against heresies. Now Irenaeus is writing in 180, this is probably about a year older than the first mention of the word Trinity. This is the first time Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are mentioned in one place as the four gospels that we still have. And so this is very ancient. And in it he traces the list of every pope. This is book three, chapter three of Against Heresies. And he says he could do this for any of the churches, but he does it for Rome, which he describes as the very great, the very ancient and universally known church, founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul. And you might say, well, why does this bishop in France who grew up in Smyrna, not instead trace the Church of Smyrna or the Church of Lyon? And he tells you, he says, for it is a matter of necessity. Of necessity. Sigh. It is a matter of necessity that every church should agree with this church on account of its preeminent authority. Does that sound like the authority of first among equals? Of course not. This sounds like an actual governing authority that the Church of Rome has, that everybody else is expected to agree with it. In matters of doctrine, there’s all these.
Different levels to the papacy, but most of them are not necessary in the sense of being trans historical, that is that for all time that has to be. There are aspects of the papacy that are trans historical. But a lot of what we identify with the papacy is really just surrounding stuff.
Yeah, it’s true. I mean, we want to have a clear distinction between, in saying, you know, Peter is called to lead and you know, the bishops of Rome following him are called to share in this leadership role. There’s a lot of stuff that isn’t defined to say, yeah, what should he dress like, what should he look like, what should, you know, should he have a popemobile and these things. There’s a two edged sword with a lot of this stuff where you want to present yourself to the world in such a way that you’re taken seriously and people listen because that can be good not for your own ego, but for their salvation, because you’re preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. And on the flip side, it can become dangerous. So there’s this great temptation, and I would say this clericalism is good for the laity and bad for clerics. You know, male headship is, is good for wives and children and bad for husbands and fathers in the sense that it can become a temptation to pride. It can become a, you know, quite apart from the question of how ought it looked, recognize that any of this deference, anytime there’s authority, anytime there’s office, there’s this double edged sword where the more I’m invited to submit myself to someone placed in authority over me, in many ways better for my soul, but the more that person is running the spiritual risk. And so how do we navigate those things? Many of the people who are convinced they have the best solutions have solutions that I would regard as terrible. And it sounds a lot better on paper than it would if you actually did it in real life. And if the solutions, I would say this about just most things in general. If the solution were as easy as you were imagining it would have been done, yet someone in 2000 years would have tried it. And we would be able to say, look at how well that worked. And it doesn’t work like that. I’ll give you an example that I think is related to this. Every generation or so, some Protestant says, whoa, what if instead of all these denominations, we just like formed a body and we called ourselves Christians and then we didn’t have denominations anymore? And then they try to form a group of believers in Christ that are united without a creed or doctrine and they just create one more denomination. And you can find this going back to Stone and campbell in the 19th century, modern denominational churches, over and over again, it’s like, oh, if we just strip away all the excess stuff, it’ll be this simple thing and it sounds great on paper and it doesn’t work in real life because some amount of structure is needed, some amount of a creed or doctrine or what do we actually believe in is actually necessary. And so likewise with the governance of the church, it sounds really simple to be like, yeah, just get rid of all the middlemen. People have the same kind of idea about how government works that you can just take a chainsaw and we’ll all be fine. And the reality of all of these things is it’s usually more complicated than that. And that there’s a reason all the people who want to introduce massive reforms find out that it’s trickier to do that in real life. And it’s not just corruption, it’s not just all this kind of cynical reasons. It’s often because the bigger an organization is, the more governing it is going to be a complicated affair. When Steve Jobs is running Apple Computers out of his garage, the org chart is pretty simple. By the time he dies, the org chart is a lot more complicated. That’s not because of corruption, that’s because of success. And here’s the thing. Jesus describes the church as growing from a mustard seed into a mustard tree. Now the mustard seed is the smallest, the mustard tree is the largest of the herbs of the garden. And the image there is obvious that he’s taking this very small group of believers and forming a church in the smallest church on earth. And it’s going to grow into the largest church on earth. And so having been told that we should recognize all these so called restoration movements, non denominational Christianity, Stone Campbell, Disciples of Christ, Churches of Christ, all this stuff is an attempt to go invent a new mustard seed. And that is actually the opposite of what Jesus told us. Wow.
You know, like, yeah, if you pull out a 20 year old carton of milk from the back of the fridge, don’t drink that. That’s well beyond its expiration date.
But I probably do have one back there. I’m guessing I probably have back there.
And you pull that out and you say, I think I found out why it was smelling. And you see on the side of it you see a, have you seen me? Picture of a kid who’s gone missing and you’re like, I know what to do, I’m going to go out and find that kid. You go out and you go to the park and you see a kid who looks just like the kid on the milk carton. You know what, you can know for sure that’s not him. Because the kid you’re looking for doesn’t look like that anymore. He looks grown up 20 years older. Well, likewise, the mustard seed has grown into the mustard tree. So if you expect the hierarchy of the church to look like the first century, that’s like going to the park to find that kid. No, you’re looking for something 20 centuries grown up, that’s gotten bigger, more complicated. That’s life. And we’re told this by Jesus. So of course the church is more powerful, it’s more complicated, it’s bigger, it’s More messy because it’s now got a billion people instead of 100 people. That’s the nature of getting bigger. And that’s the peril, if you will, of the success that Jesus is accomplishing.
Let me give you a couple small. They’re not small, but I think you can dispatch with them rather quickly. But many people find them quite serious. Popes are celibate. Peter was married. So clearly something has gone wrong here.
So, two answers. Number one, celibacy is a discipline, not a dogma, meaning if the cardinals want to elect a married man, they can. And I’ll leave my number if no, I’m just kidding. So it is not impossible to. And they’re married priests. Our recent chaplain was a married priest. So that’s a misunderstanding of the way celibacy works in the church. Nevertheless, I’m actually not sure Peter was married at the time he followed Jesus. There’s a reference to a mother in law. There’s no reference to a living wife. And in Matthew 19, Peter says to Jesus, we’ve left everything to follow you. What then shall we have? And Jesus responds by praising those who’ve left houses and brothers and sisters and father and mother and children and lands. But who’s he talking to? Well, he’s talking directly to Peter, and it makes it sound like he’s given up the possibility of having family life, which of course makes sense because he’s following Jesus in this itinerant life, and the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head. And so you can’t very well raise a family while you’re on the road with Jesus preaching for three years, and then you’re off to, you know, first Jerusalem and then Antioch and then Rome to be beheaded. This is no way to raise a family. And so I’m actually not convinced any of the apostles had families while they were apostles. Peter seems to be a widower. That’s not for sure. People can disagree with that, but it’s not. There’s no biblical reference to any wives of the apostles. Now, you will find occasionally Protestants will take a misquotation of First Corinthians 9. In 1 Corinthians 9, St. Paul says something about having the ability to have a woman. And many Protestant translations will change that to wife. The problem is that’s not what he’s saying at all. In 1 Corinthians 9, beginning in verse 4, St. Paul is defending the fact that he could be given financial compensation for his service, and he isn’t. And he says, I’m going to quote A few verses here. Do we not have the right to our food and drink? Do we not have the right to be accompanied by a woman as the other apostles and the brethren of the Lord and Kephas? Or is it only Barnabas and I who have to refrain from working for a living? Who serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard without eating any of its fruit? Who tends a flock without getting some of its milk? Now, Si. What is he talking about throughout all of those questions?
Oh, okay, yeah, I’m sorry. I thought that you might be being rhetorical there.
Rhetorical? I am. Yeah. So he’s talking about being paid or taken care of financially.
Why is he talking about this in the context of these women? Because look at the model of Jesus’s ministry. There were women who would accompany the disciples and take care for them out of their own wealth. How do we know that? Luke 8 tells us that directly. That they provided for them out of their means. And so Peter is saying, yeah, the apostles, including Peter, have that. And Barnabas and I don’t. And that’s his point, that they could have that. And for the sake of not inconveniencing anybody else financially, Paul instead chooses to work as a tent maker. That has literally nothing to do with celibacy. He’s not saying, man, I wish I was married so I didn’t have to have a job. That’s not Paul’s vision of the relationship of husband and wife at all. So it’s a wild distortion of 1 Corinthians 9. Once you take that out of the picture, all you can say is, peter had a mother in law, so once upon a time he had to have had a wife. But there’s no mention of her existing during his time as a disciple. And then the last thing again, I’d just reiterate what I said at the start. You can believe that popes can be married. You can believe maybe they should be married. That’s fine. There’s no dogma that turns on that. There’s no dogma of the Church that says the Pope has to be celibate. That is a myth.
I’ll tell you what, I was gonna end with that. None of this looks like what Jesus like, just physically, it doesn’t look like what Jesus founded. But you dealt with that with the parable of the mustard seed. So I’ll just give you a general one to end with that, you hear, the Roman Church is the whore of Babylon and the Pope is the Antichrist.
Yeah. This is where I Always ask people, okay, who was the first Pope then? And show me this in history. Because we can see very early on Christians saying, we have to believe what the Church of Rome says. We have to believe what the Bishop of Rome says. We have to agree with the Pope on these matters of faith and doctrine. And so it is an absolute massacre of Scripture to take the whore of Babylon, which I think is plausibly the Roman Empire. And it’s described as being built on the seven hills. And say, oh, yeah, that refers to the Vatican, which is not built on the seven hills, which exists on one of the hills outside the ancient city. And just because they both are geographically basically in Rome, even though the Vatican historically wasn’t in Rome, the city of Rome is now expanded. It just seems like that kind of exegesis is so poor that it’s not worth taking seriously. If you want to know who the Antichrist is, John tells you it’s one who denies Christ has come in the flesh. He tells us this specifically. He says, second John, chapter one, verse seven. Many deceivers have gone out into the world, men who will not acknowledge the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. Such a one is the deceiver and the Antichrist. So Catholics are bigger than Protestants, and I think Catholics and Orthodox alike are bigger than Protestants. In affirming the Incarnation and affirming the goodness of the body and the bodily nature of the Incarnation, we believe this is really Jesus’s body and blood in the Eucharist, we believe actually having your body baptized does something, that the spiritual power of God works through the body as we see in Jesus’s miracles, as we see in the sacraments. Ironically, the people who reject us end up something closer to a Gnostic view, a rejection of the body that, according to the Bible, is the actual Antichrist position.
And the Pope does affirm that the Lord has come in the flesh in Jesus. He does indeed, that disqualification. He offers his flesh in every mess as the Antichrist. Joe, I had a lot of fun doing that. I hope that you had to work hard. I didn’t have to work hard, but I hope that it was fun work.
It was fun work. I enjoyed it. All right, very good.
Thank you very much. If you want to send us other objections or you have follow ups, you know we do this all the time. You’re always welcome to call or you can send us an email. Radioatholic.com is our email address. And check out Joe’s books over@shop.catholic.com that will do it for us. I’M Cy Kellett, your host. We’ll see you next time, God willing, right here on Catholic Answers Live.