In this episode Trent responds to Gavin Ortlund’s recent claim that “the Papacy is not from God.”
The Fallacy in Almost Every Anti-Catholic Argument
The One Passage that Proves the Papacy (to Protestants)
Articles on Acts 15:
Center Stage at the Big Church Council
Joe Heschmeyer: Responding to Gavin Ortlund’s “The Papacy Is Not From God”
Michael Horton’s Response to Me on Sola Scriptura (REBUTTED)
Upon this Rock By Stephen K. Ray
The Papacy: Revisiting the Debate Between Catholics and Orthodox
Transcription:
Trent:
In today’s episode, we’re going to examine Gavin Orland’s case against the Papacy and see that his methodology actually provides evidence against Protestantism and for Catholicism. But before we do that, I’d like to thank Gavin for reviewing the script for today’s episode because these kinds of reviews help us to create better arguments because we then clearly understand the person who’s being critiqued. I’d also like to thank our supporters@trenthornpodcast.com who make the Council of Trent possible. If you appreciate our content, then please consider supporting us for as little as $5 a month or $50 a year, and of course, liking this episode and subscribing to the channel are always appreciated. Alright, so let’s look at some of Gavin’s arguments, but first a disclaimer. The papacy is an interesting topic to debate because it deals with the question of what offices Christ instituted in his church and there is a wide variance in the common ground that a Catholic might have with a critic of the papacy.
For example, Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox agree bishops and patriarchs have sat Sattal apostolic authority. Where we disagree is on aspects of the Pope’s jurisdictional power and his infallibility. The Orthodox are even willing to say that the Pope is a first among equals kind of like how Anglicans view the Archbishop of Canterbury except the Pope is not a Lady Anglicans and many Lutherans and some Methodists would agree that Christ gave us bishops along with pastors and deacons. They just disagree over the idea that one bishop has greater authority than the other bishops. Other Protestants would say the church is not governed by bishops at all, but by general Presbyteral councils or even that, each congregation governs itself independently. So to convince many Protestants of the papacy, you’d have to show that sola scriptura is false since the Pope and the bishops united with him can teach infallibly and that God gave us the office of Bishop.
And finally that bishops do not all have equal authority in the church. Given this difficulty, I’m going to propose two simple approaches in response to Gavin’s arguments and ask Protestants to compare their cases to their own positions on the offices in the church. In a previous episode, which I’ll link to below, I discussed the fallacy of You lose so I win. This happens when atheists, for example, think that they can prove atheism by simply saying the arguments for God aren’t convincing enough, but that doesn’t work because even if that were true, atheists still have to carry their own burden of proof. Something similar happens when Protestants and Catholics debate theology. Protestants will say that because Catholic arguments don’t convince them, Protestantism wins by default, but that doesn’t follow because Protestantism has its own doctrines. It must also prove, and by the way, I’m not saying Protestants are just like atheists or trying to impugn their character.
I’m just making an analogy with another theological debate in order to provide clarity. Now, when discussing this episode with Gavin, he was concerned that in comparing Protestantism and Catholicism I’d be making a fallacious apples to oranges comparison because the papacy is an office in the church whereas the canon of scripture is a concept. The problem with keeping the discussion strictly related to ecclesial offices is that Catholics agree that the evidence supports the existence of the other offices. Many Protestants accept like bishops, priests and pastors and deacons. If anything, Anglicans and other high church Protestants should be wary about how arguments like Gavin’s against a supreme bishop of Rome are often used against the office of bishop itself. So that should make them rethink some of these arguments when they end up being used against the papacy. However, the true apples to apples comparison would be especially for Protestants like Gavin, to show that the Bible and early church history show that the church only has pastors and deacons or that it only had a congregational form of leadership where the church’s own members of the highest authority. So we can make our own argument from silence against this claim because nowhere in church history do we find early Christians saying that the office of Bishop or the office of the Pope represents a heretical innovation. Here’s my colleague, Joe Hess Meyer making this point in his response to Gavin.
CLIP:
If you think that Jesus did create some kind of structure of governance, if he did give some instructions to the apostles, you can imagine how people would freak out if somebody else came along and usurped that structure. For instance, if there were elders governing all the local churches and suddenly one guy comes along and says, Nope, we don’t need you anymore, it’s just going to be me leading from now on. How likely is it that those other elders are going to take that kind of demotion without objecting and particularly if this new bishop is replacing the structure of the church that Jesus Christ founded? Wouldn’t everybody be upset about that? But as Leon Morris points out in the evangelical dictionary of theology, we don’t find any kind of freak out at all in his words. Nowhere is there evidence of a violent struggle as would be natural.
A divinely ordained congregationalism or presbyterianism were overthrown. The same threefold ministry is seen as universal throughout the early church as soon as there is sufficient evidence to show us the nature of the ministry. In fact, not only is there not a violent struggle, scholars have found no trace whatsoever of any churches going from a Presbyterian or a congregational structure to a church governed by a single bishop. In fact, we’ve seen several claims from church fathers where they make it very clear that they don’t believe they have the right to change the structure of government because it was given to them by Christ through the apostles.
Trent:
So that’s one way to subject Protestantism to the same critique. The Catholic ecclesial model is being subjected to. However, to make my point and address Gavin’s concern, I’m going to ask this episode a smaller question and a bigger question When comparing evidence for Catholicism and Protestantism. So back to my original analogy, sometimes atheists will say, so what if you have evidence that there is a designer or necessary cause of the universe, you still have improved. It is your omnipotent, omniscient, omni benevolent God to which a Christian might say, well, what makes better sense of the data? We do observe a supreme being or the non-existence of a supreme being in doing this. Both sides have to then carry the burden of proof and we can follow an inference to the best explanation, which is a common way to resolve philosophical and historical disputes when it comes to Protestant Catholic debates and even debates with Eastern Orthodox, we see something similar they’ll say, so what if you have evidence Peter and his successors had a unique role in church history?
You still haven’t proven Peter and his successors had a supreme infallible authority to which a Catholic might say, well, what makes better sense of the data that we do observe a supreme or chief pastor of the church or the non-existence of a chief pastor? In both cases, the Christian invites the other person to look at the data and see which mutually exclusive only available hypotheses better explain the data we do see. So that’s the smaller question I’m going to ask, which should be apples to apples or chief apple to no chief apple, if you will. However, the papacy is part of Catholicism’s ultimate authority structure. So I think it’s fair to compare this to the ultimate authority structure in Protestantism and make sure both are being subjected to historical analyses and one isn’t simply being assumed to be true. If Catholics should ask themselves, where does the New Testament in early church history say apostolic successors are the highest authority in the church, as Protestants want Catholics to ask themselves, then Protestants should ask themselves, where does the New Testament and early church history say Apostolic writings are the highest authority in the church?
What I want to do now is go through the evidence and divide it into three distinct periods of church history, Jesus’s ministry in the gospels, the apostolic period after Pentecost and the church after the apostles, but before the Council of Nsea. We can then ask the smaller and the bigger questions and compare the Catholic and Protestant models and see which one has more evidence in its favor. So let’s begin. Number one, gospel evidence. In Luke 22, the apostles asked Jesus who will be the greatest among them and Jesus does not say there will be no such person because you all have equal authority. Instead, Jesus says there will be a greatest among the disciples, but this person will be a servant, not a tyrant. Which is why since the early Middle ages, popes have called themselves servant of the servants of God and within the same context Jesus then prays specifically for Peter that his faith would not fail and so that he would be able to strengthen his brethren.
Jesus also gives the keys of the kingdom to Peter and I’ve linked below Joe Hesh Meyer’s episode which talks about how Jesus sees Peter here as the chief steward of the kingdom of the new Covenant. Through the act of giving these keys in natural human societies like countries or corporations, the natural order produces a single person to head the leadership hierarchy and this becomes the most prudent and efficient means of achieving the good. God used this same order in creating the hierarchy of ancient Israel and the Davidic kingdom and the keys given to Peter parallel that same structure as seen in Isaiah 2222, which directly parallels Matthew 16, 18 and 19. The Protestant scholar DA Carson even admits that when we combine the sayings of Jesus about Peter in John 21 and Matthew 16, we find that the argument for petrin primacy gains a certain plausibility. Obviously, Carson does not think that they work and Gavin offers arguments and resources in his episode against the claims of what these passages mean. For example, Gavin says this,
CLIP:
Peter is just being restored as an apostle to normal apostolic functions after his denials of Christ to read in Vatican one supremacy to feed my sheep or strengthen your brothers as a post hoc maneuver where you’re taking this later idea that’s not logically required by the words and you’re bringing it back in,
Trent:
But there’s a wide number of views between Vatican one supremacy and normal apostolic functions. Many Protestant scholars see this passage as evidence of Jesus giving Peter a special unique leadership role in the church that goes beyond the duties shared by the other apostles, the Lutheran scholar Achi Jeremiah says, only in John 2115 through 17 which describes Peter’s appointment as a shepherd by the risen Lord, does the whole church appear to have been in view as the sphere of activity? David a De Silva says, Peter is the one commissioned to tend the sheep and feed them the beloved disciple whom the text presents as the author of John’s gospel is not given any specific commission or responsibility for the church in that scene or any other. In Ernst tensions commentary on the gospel of John, he says, John 21 does not make Peter the bishop of Rome, but he does say this, it is entirely comparable with Matthew 1617.
It is a commission and authorization in which Peter is entrusted with the highest task in Christendom. Remember, I’m not claiming the entire doctrine of the papacy can be proved from scripture and history alone to everyone’s satisfaction. I’m just saying Peter being the chief apostle and Jesus planning for him to be the chief pastor of his church after his ascension in heaven makes better sense of the data and there is no comparable example of Jesus insisting that no such office would ever exist in the church. Now when it comes to the bigger question of whose authority structure the data better supports, we at least have verses in the gospels that people can debate about when it comes to Peter being the chief apostle or chief head in the church, but we have no similar verses in the gospels whatsoever saying that the writings of the disciples would become the highest authority in the church.
Instead, we see that the apostles themselves are simply considered to be that authority, not their writings, and Peter has a special authority among them During his earthly ministry, Jesus never even told anyone to write anything down. Instead, Jesus gave authority to the apostles to bind and loose, to forgive sins and to teach in his name and Jesus gave a special authority to Peter making him the rock upon which the church is built. I mean, why did Jesus change Peter’s name if there was no meaning behind the change? Also, in every list of all the apostles, Peter is always presented first and in Matthew 10, two it says Peter is first or in Greek protos, the late Protestant apologist John MacArthur said this protos doesn’t refer to the first in a list. It speaks of the chief, the leader of the group. So I would simply say that a chief pastor makes better sense of the gospel evidence over the Protestant claim of no chief pastor and the gospel evidence supports an apostle being the highest authority in the church, but it says absolutely nothing about an apostolic writing being a highest authority in the church, which is a strange omission if these writings would eventually become foundational for 99.9% of all Christians who ever lived.
Number two apostolic evidence. In Gavin’s video he says that we should doubt the papacy comes from God because the New Testament never says there will be an enduring petrin office in the church. Now he’s careful to say this isn’t merely an argument from silence. He’s just instead asking, where does the Bible teach this doctrine so that I can come to believe it. However, it is a kind of argument from silence because Gavin says if this office did exist, then we’d expect it to be described and its absence would then indicate it’s not a legitimate office.
CLIP:
The New Testament gives us a lot of information. It’s reasonable to expect that if there was this supreme office over the church, it’d probably come up somewhere if not in the New Testament, at least in the surrounding literature outside of the New Testament in the first century and then going into the second century,
Trent:
I get really worried about deploying these kinds of arguments because they can have many unintended consequences. For example, some Pentecostals say if the Trinitarian baptismal formula were valid, then we’d expect to see it being used after Pentecost in acts of the apostles or commanded in the epistles. But its absence in those sources does not invalidate the baptismal formula because later Christian tradition as recorded in things like the Diday show, this was the normative formula and practice in the church for baptism. It just didn’t happen to be recorded in these earlier sources. I’m also amused by some Protestants who say they can’t believe in the Pope because the New Testament is allegedly silent about that office, but they do believe a Christian can become a pastor on his own authority even though the New Testament never describes anyone doing that, and it always shows pastoral offices being handed on by preexisting church leaders through things like the laying on of hands acts of the apostles and the epistles are not giving definitive about the perpetual leadership structure of the church.
So we should be very careful about trying to divine particular ecclesial offices from these writings alone. Ephesians four 11 says, Christ’s gifts were that some should be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers. Some people in the early church like Barnabas were called apostles even if there was no record of them seeing the risen Lord. But most Protestants agree with Catholics that the office of Apostle ceased in the church and it no longer exists even though this is not explicitly taught in the New Testament and the assumption that this is an enduring office and the problem of reconciling that with solo scriptura even came up my dialogue with Protestant apologist Kelly Powers, I would say that that obligatory belief is not found in scripture that the office of Apostle has ceased. I would actually agree with you. There’s no script that actually states that you’re correct, so I’d urge caution in over extrapolating what we find from these early apostolic writings because they operate under the framework of the apostles still being alive and people already knowing about their roles in the church.
This wasn’t intended to be the perpetual state of affairs for the church. That’s why Protestants like Anglicans and Lutherans would say that Baptists shouldn’t assume that the interchangeability of the offices of Bishop and Presbyter in the New Testament, which Gavin correctly points out that this interchangeability means that it was not God’s plan, that these roles would eventually become two separate and distinct offices after the death of the Apostles. But what about my smaller and bigger questions? Do these early apostolic writings make more sense if the church had a chief pastor or if it did not have a chief pastor? I argue the former because Peter is treated in these texts as having unique authority in the church and there are no passages which deny the existence of such a role in the early church for the full treatment of this issue. I recommend my colleague Joe Hess Meyer’s book Pope Peter, but for now I will point out just some of the details that are better explained by Peter being the chief pastor of the church than him not being the chief pastor in this circumstance.
For example, Paul lists the other apostles and the brethren of the Lord and PHAs or Peter in an ascending order, which makes Peter distinct from the other apostles. Paul also boasts about how he didn’t care about impressing people and that he was willing to even correct Peter to his face, which would only make sense if Peter was an incredibly important person in the church that others were afraid to correct the Protestant authors of the dictionary of Jesus and the gospels refer to the incident in Luke 22 I discussed earlier where Jesus prays for Peter’s faith to not fail and for him to strengthen his brethren. They say this, Peter, despite his failure is implicitly singled out for special leadership. Again, the emphasis is not so much on transfer of authority as on mission. Peter is to care for the disciples much as Jesus has this anticipates Peter’s role in acts where he will be the leader of the early church, the Protestant scholar j and d Kelly likewise says Peter was the undisputed leader of the youthful church.
So I would say Peter being chief pastor makes better sense of the data in this period than him not having this role. Now Gavin may counter that Peter not being chief pastor makes better sense of the council of Jerusalem in Acts 15, I’ll refer you to several articles linked below that we have on Acts 15, but I will note that Peter ended a debate at the council by announcing what God had done or revealed. Thus, he gave a dogmatic teaching at the council about the inclusion of the Gentiles, especially since he received a vision from God in Acts chapter 10, whereas James gives the disciplinary teachings and he leads it because the council is taking place in Jerusalem where he’s the residing bishop. Notice also that the council has binding authority on the faithful the moment it was issued and not merely when its teachings became part of scripture years or decades later.
This further confirms that the authority structure in the early church was rooted in the written and unwritten word of God and the authority of a dynamic teaching office. And nowhere in these early apostolic writings does it say that this paradigm would ever change. So this leads to my bigger question. Do acts and the apostles and the other epistles say that apostolic men would be the highest authority in the church or apostolic writings? Gavin says We’d expect an enduring office like the papacy to be described and named in the New Testament, but by that logic, if the only infallible authority after the apostles was going to be their own writings, then it’s fair to say we’d expect the apostles to say this, but they never do. We’d expect them to say something like the writings of the apostles or the pillar and foundation of truth, not as St.
Paul says in one Timothy three 15 the Church of the Living God is the pillar and foundation of truth. The verse is commonly used to prove soul scriptura like Acts 17, 11 and two Timothy three 16 through 17 refer to the Old Testament scriptures, not the apostolic writings. Now some apostolic writings are called scripture by Peter and Paul, but not all of them are called scripture and the New Testament doesn’t say these writings are the only infallible rule of faith or that they contain all essential doctrine. We shouldn’t read scripture with a bias, but everybody reads scripture with a tradition including the tradition of which writings count as scripture. The apostolic writings tell us that the church’s authority comes in the written word and the spoken word of the apostles. That’s why Paul tells the Thessalonians, when you receive the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is the word of God.
And he told them, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us either by word of mouth or by letter. This is why as I noted earlier, sacred tradition fills in the picture on things like how the post Pentecostal church baptizes people, the formula that’s used or how the offices in the church will function after the death, the apostles. This is why we must now turn to our third and final piece of church history in order to put all of the pieces together. Number three, after the apostles and before Nyia, let’s start with the first century author Clement of Rome who EU lists as the third bishop of Rome. Gavin says that Clement was writing as merely one elder among a plurality leading the church of Rome and not as a pope because Rome did not have a single bishop at this time, allegedly.
Moreover, Clement’s correction of the Corinthian church that they wrote to. Gavin says This does not imply supremacy because Ignatius of Antioch also corrects other churches in his own letters. So let’s start with the smaller question. Does a chief pastor in the church make better sense of Clement at Ignatius’s writings or no chief pastor at this time? To best answer the question, I’d f... Read more on Catholic.com