In this episode of A Reasonable Response, Robert Bosley examines the claim that Christians should look to the early church—and ultimately Rome—to discover what authentic Christianity ought to be.

Bosley challenges the assumption that the early church fathers provide an infallible model for Christian faith and practice, pointing out that some operated without the complete New Testament canon and that the Roman Catholic Church has accumulated doctrines and traditions that Protestants contend go beyond Scripture.

So, why be Catholic and not just Christian? Bosley argues that Christians should indeed be catholic—in the historic sense of belonging to Christ's universal church—but not Roman Catholic. Rather than looking to Rome or even the early fathers as the final authority, he makes the case for the Protestant principle of Scripture alone as the infallible standard for the church.

Unless I am convinced by scripture and by plain reason, not by popes and councils who have so often contradicted themselves. Welcome to Reasonable Response. I'm Robert Bosley, and the purpose of this podcast is to give a reasoned response to issues related to the Christian faith from a Reformed Baptist perspective. This is not meant to be a replacement for the instruction you should receive in your local church. Rather, we hope it is a help and an additional resource for you.

Today, we're going to be looking at a video from the YouTube channel of Brian Holdsworth, who on the topic of why be Catholic and not just Christian. Considering we're in October and Reformation Day is right around the corner, we thought it would be worthwhile diving in to this topic again that has divided Protestants and Roman Catholics for now going on 509 years from the time of Martin Luther. So with that, let's begin. I need to point out the category error, the fallacy in the question, because I know a lot of my audience members will be eager to have that clarified before I say anything else. Saying, why be Catholic instead of Christian, is like saying, why be a fruit instead of an apple?

It assumes the incompatibility of the two things it's comparing from the outset. And of course, as a Catholic Christian myself, I'm going to argue that Catholicism isn't just one form of Christianity, but that it is the whole of Christianity itself, in the same way that fruit has a species or a category is the whole of what all other specific fruits like apple and orange portray some portion of Catholicism is the whole of which all the others to whatever degree they are true, portray some aspect of. I realize that's a provocative statement that I'm going to have to start to back up here. So, starting out, he explains what he says is the fallacy of even asking the question of why someone would be Catholic and not just Christian. And I get what he means.

Yes, people could be more precise, but everyone knows what he means. I'm 99% sure this gentleman is an American, and in an American context, Christian is almost always gonna be identified with Protestantism. It was Protestant majority country, So when people say, why be a Catholic and not a Christian, they're really asking why a Catholic and not a Protestant. Yes, we can complain that people aren't precise enough, but that's clearly what is meant. As for his assertion that the Roman Catholic Church is the whole of the faith and all these others that claim to be Christian are just reflect a portion of that truth.

As he says, he needs to support that claim. He doesn't do a very good job of this, as we'll see throughout the rest of the video. Although I do have to say, I actually would prefer interacting with someone like this, rather than a squishy modernist who wants to say that all of us are really just the same with various emphases or whatever. At least he agrees and recognizes there are real differences that separate us. I would say When we talk about Catholic, we recite the Apostles' Creed, we use the word Catholic.

It's not verboten among Protestants to use that word. We simply recognize that Catholic, the term in and of itself, is a word that means universal or according to the whole, as he talks about later, though he misuses it, we're talking about the whole expanse of all those who have been redeemed by Christ. It's not a singular, visible institution, especially one centralized around a man and a church in Rome. The Catholic Church is all of God's people wherever they may be found. And so in that sense, I am a Catholic.

I believe in the gospel that is presented in the scriptures and affirmed by the early creeds and I am not just Catholic, I am reformed and I'm not just reformed, I'm a Baptist. I'm a reformed Baptist. That may be confusing for some people. We need to carefully clarify and define what those terms mean, but it's not completely out of bounds to use the term Catholic to describe ourselves as Protestants. We just need to clearly understand what is meant by that, and it's not what Rome tries to import into the word.

When we get to talking about the early church fathers here in a little bit, they did not use the term Catholic in the sense that Rome uses it or that Mr. Holdsworth uses it in this video. Let me offer a bit of an analogy that could be helpful. Imagine if there was such a thing as like an omniscient AI, like artificial intelligence, or maybe an infallible AI would be a better way to think of this. Someone builds an AI model that will answer any question with infallible certainty, doesn't make any mistakes whatsoever, and then they offer this to the public to start experimenting with.

Well that would obviously be quite thrilling, but I can tell you exactly what would happen in that scenario. People who approach it with their previously conceived ideologies perfectly intact will expect to have those beliefs affirmed by their interactions with this infallible artificial intelligence. Which wouldn't be all that hard to do because there are probably true beliefs within their particular ideology, in which case they will start to claim that the Infallible AI supports their particular beliefs. All heresies are an attempt to reduce the truth into some easy-to-digest portion, something easily packaged in something like a slogan, like, faith alone. But truth itself is far too big to have definite borders placed around it as if we can reduce the eternal truth into a portion size fit for our finite systems of thought.

In this section there are really three main points to respond to. First he says that if there was this inerrant or infallible AI, people would basically pick and choose what they wanted to believe from it. And people could do that to a degree because there's some measure of truth in all different systems of thought and worldviews. And I think he's probably right to a point. What is ironic though is he doesn't see he's doing the same thing, as we'll be seeing when we get into talking about the Fathers and, of course, Scripture.

The Roman Catholic position is built on a very specific misreading of the early fathers and of scripture itself. That isn't to say I'm claiming infallibility for myself, but rather it's a simple recognition that this is a common problem to all people and we can look at history, we can look at the scriptures, and we can see that what Rome demands you believe today is not what they taught. That is without question simply true. Second, defining heresy as this reducing the faith to just mere slogans or reducing it to a small part. Sometimes that's true, but more often than not, historically and scripturally, we see that actually heresies, when you add to the word of God, when you add to what God has said, for instance when Jesus criticized the Pharisees, he didn't say that they had utterly abandoned the word of God, rather he said they sit in Moses's seat.

So when they tell you what Moses said, do what they say. But they tie heavy burdens that are hard to bear and lay them on men's shoulders. They're adding to the word of God. And we see that Jesus criticized them that by their adding to the Word of God, they were nullifying it. In the same way, when Paul is dealing with the Judaizers and Galatians, Galatians 6, he talks about those who desire to make a showing of their flesh, these would compel you to be circumcised.

There's an adding on. They're not saying don't worry about Christ. They're saying Christ plus your works. That is what Rome is guilty of. We can go to the scriptures and see there are so many doctrines that Rome lays on its people like the Pharisees of old.

When they teach what is true from scripture, that's good, but then they go beyond that. They add their own traditions and thereby nullify the sufficiency of the Word of God. Third was his kind of a jab there at faith alone, sola fide, as a just a mere slogan, a heretical slogan, according to him. Whereas sola fide is not a slogan per se, although I guess I could see how you can say that, but really it's simply a summary of what we believe the New Testament teaches. Paul says that we are justified not by works, but by faith.

It is by faith that we receive the forgiveness of sins. It's by faith that we're united to Christ. That is not to deny the importance of good works. Protestants have consistently held that good works are necessary in the sense that a heart truly changed by God's grace, united to Christ by faith, will live a life of good works. They inevitably follow genuine faith.

That is different from the Roman Catholic position, but again this idea of just taking a jab at sola fide, faith alone, as if it's just this empty slogan that people just smear on as if it's all of our doctrine. That's just not true. It's simply a summary statement of what we believe about how a sinner is justified before God. The word Catholic in the history of Christianity is a very very old term. In fact it was coined by a disciple of one of the twelve Apostles.

That's how central it is to the story of the faith. Saint Ignatius of Antioch was a direct disciple of Saint John the beloved apostle who was the only one who witnessed the crucifixion. So already we have on pretty good authority that this particular church father had some pretty good exposure to what it means to be a Christian as he was trained by someone who wrote scripture and knew Jesus intimately in his earthly life. Now we're getting into some of the fun stuff. He's talking about the early fathers and particularly Ignatius here, and there's a couple issues already.

First of all, no, Ignatius did not coin the term Catholic. That word, catholicae, was already in use outside of Christian circles, even before the advent of Christ. J.B. Lightfoot in his commentary on the Apostolic Fathers, he notes that Catholicos was found in a treatise by Aristotle. It is used by Zeno the Stoic in his work titled Universals or Katholica.

This is a term that would have been used already to signify something that is general or broad or universally applicable. So it's not something that Ignatius invented. What is unique is Ignatius is the first one to use it as an adjective to describe the Church. So he is the first one to say, hey, Catholic Ecclesia, but that is a description of the Church as being universal, as general. It's the equivalent to how we would describe the true body of Christ as the invisible church today that is found across denominational lines, including all those who have true faith in Christ.

That is pretty much unquestionably how Ignatius uses it. Brian here does not seem to understand that, or he doesn't bring that up. He just assumes that Catholic in Ignatius means the Roman Catholic Church as he understands it today. That's simply not the case. Also he talks about Ignatius being a disciple of John, therefore he's, you know, learned from an apostle, learned from someone who wrote scripture, therefore we need to trust his word on whatever he says.

Functionally, that's his argument. The problem is the tradition that Ignatius as a disciple of John develops a little bit later, largely because he's friends with Polycarp, who is pretty widely recognized to be actually a disciple of John. It may or may not be true, we don't know, but that's not really a valid argument. Just because you learn from someone who was an inspired author of Scripture, That doesn't mean that everything you teach is therefore going to be inerrant and binding on the Church for all of history. If that were the case, we would not have a New Testament.

The entire New Testament is a testimony to the fact that you can learn directly from the apostles and still have really bad doctrine. That's why the New Testament exists. The apostle Paul is writing especially to churches that he helped plant and is correcting them on false teaching. So this argument right out of the gate just kind of falls flat, as well as he misreads Ignatius and the other fathers, as we'll see. Well, St.

Ignatius described in a letter where to find the true church and what the defining feature of the church is. He said, wherever the bishop is, there is the Catholic church. When I first came across that quote in a text by St. Ignatius, I was trying to make sense of denominationalism and trying to find which church I should join as a newly minted Christian. And this blew my mind as such an early and authoritative exclamation that bishops are indispensable as an ingredient of the true church founded by Jesus himself.

Okay. So he quotes Ignatius. He doesn't say where the quotes from, but he says Ignatius states that where the bishop is, there is the Catholic Church. The problem is Ignatius doesn't actually say that. I've got here my wonderful copy of the Apostolic Fathers, Michael Holmes, the diglots, we've got the Greek and English translation, and I will not overdo the Greek today.

But I believe what he's referring to is from Ignatius' letter to the Smyrnians, where he says in chapter eight, second sentence, Ignatius says, wherever the bishop appears, or is present, there let the congregation be. Just as wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church. And so He doesn't say where the bishop is, there is the Catholic Church. He says, where Christ is, there is the Catholic Church. And this is an analogy to the bishop and the congregation.

But even there, the analogy is not a one-to-one. He says, wherever the bishop is, let the congregation be. In other words, this is hortatory. He's exhorting the people to gather around the bishop because where Christ is, there is the Catholic Church, again, the universal church, the communion of saints writ large. Christ is the center of the church, not the bishop.

So already if a church you're evaluating or maybe your particular church doesn't have bishops who can trace some kind of meaningful pedigree to the apostles, you might be outside the bounds of the fullness of the faith. And then furthermore, he used this word Catholic to describe the church, which means universal or more accurately, according to the whole, the church that preserves all doctrines, mysteries and all, and doesn't leave anything out in order to make it easier to digest. As for his claim that you may not have a true church if your church does not have a bishop that is in the line of succession of other bishops going back to the other church. Again, this is a common claim among Catholics, Orthodox, even actually some Protestants. Anglicans can often fall into this as well.

It's just not a Biblical standard. We again see throughout the New Testament, people who are taught by the apostles get their doctrine wrong. We believe in apostolic succession, but not in an apostolic succession of office. We believe in a succession of doctrine. This is why in Acts two, for instance, we find it so significant that the people devote themselves to the apostles doctrine, to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, which is probably the Eucharist, and to the prayers.

These are the things that make the church apostolic doctrine, fellowship, the sacraments, and prayer. Not a bishop, not someone who says that he is descended and received his office from someone who received his office from someone who received his office going back to Peter or Paul or whoever. Or even Paul's exhortation to Timothy in 2 Timothy 2. The things that you've heard from me among many witnesses, commit these to faithful men who will be able to teach others. The emphasis isn't on the men themselves, it's not on their office, it's on the doctrine, the content of their teaching.

That is what is true apostolic succession throughout the ages. So it's not a matter of has someone had your office beforehand who could theoretically, if we squint at church history, maybe have an association with the apostles. Rather, are you teaching what the Apostles taught and the only place that we can go and we know we have what the Apostles taught is in Scripture That is the dividing line between Protestants and Roman Catholics as well as Eastern Orthodox as he affirms later on. The authority ultimately for them is the Magisterium of the Church, the tradition of the Church, not Scripture. We say you must go to Scripture because that is the only authoritative and certain rule that we have from the Apostles.

This eventually became what has been considered one of the marks of the church in the Nicene Creed, which are one holy Catholic and apostolic. We get this from the Council of Nicaea which also gave us the doctrine of the Trinity. So within those four marks it immediately disqualifies most denominations. One means oriented towards unity which according to John 17 was Christ's dying prayer. If your denomination is habitually splintering or the progeny of several steps of division, then it isn't oriented towards unity.

Holiness means to be set apart from the world. Does your church do everything it can to be relevant, which is just a catchy way of trying to distort itself so that it can better fit the mold of the secular world? Or is there something peculiarly sacred about it and its unwillingness to take on the flavor of the world. Catholic or universal? Is it founded every nation?

Does it preach the whole of the faith? And is it apostolic? Does it retain the authority that the apostles possessed themselves? Most churches don't even believe such an authority exists, so you can pretty much strike them off the list right away. Okay, so he talks about the marks of the church as defined by the Nicene Creed, and the line in question from the Creed is, I believe in one holy Catholic and apostolic church.

And as a reformed Baptist, as a convinced Protestant, I believe in one holy Catholic and apostolic church. Again, apostolic, he's assuming this means a line of bishops who can say, you know, once upon a time in this line of secession, Peter was the officeholder. That's clearly not what they meant when they wrote the Nicene Creed as the canons of Nicaea themselves actually demonstrate. They did not believe the bishop in Rome had any supreme authority over the entire church. That's clear.

I believe it's Canon 6. Catholic, again, universal. It is broad. It is general. He equivocates on the use of Catholic, meaning according to the whole.

That's kind of an etymological fallacy, kata halas, according to the whole combined meaning Catholic. It doesn't mean that it has the whole doctrine. That's not what katholike means. It means it's a statement of extension, that it's broad, it includes all of these different groups and these different peoples. It's everywhere.

It's not centralized. It's actually almost a contradiction in terms to even use Roman Catholic. The universal church centered in a particular city is almost inherently contradictory. Catholic is a statement of extension, not a statement of what is contained within that body. It's holy.

It's set apart, not by our own holiness or not by our own activity, but it's set apart by God. God is the one who makes something holy. He takes sinners and sanctifies them, sets them apart, a definitive sanctification in the moment their sins are forgiven, and a progressive sanctification as they're made more into the likeness of Christ. And if this is true for the sinner, how much more true is it for the church? And the most difficult one for Protestants, and this is true, is the idea that the church is one.

Obviously, we'll look at the church and there are divisions, although I once again have to point out the double standard here. Rome kind of has institutional unity, although they just excommunicated a whole bunch of bishops who wanted to return to Latin Mass, so not entirely one. The standards you'll often hear people claim that, well, there's 40, 000 Protestant denominations or 50 or 60 or 100 billion denominations at this point. The book that that statement comes from also says there's several hundred Roman Catholic denominations. So there's an equivocation going on here.

Our oneness is not institutional. Our oneness, as much as we wish it were, is not perfectly doctrinal. Our oneness is that we are the people who follow one Lord. We are fallible, we are frail, we often get things wrong, but we still follow one Lord who is spreading his one kingdom across this entire world. That is the unity of the church.

How do you know what doctrines and practices are admissible and which should be excluded? Did Jesus appoint you and I with the authority needed to make those kinds of decisions? Or did he set you under a particular authority to reveal that to you? Almost all Christians that I know of will say the latter. He put us under some kind of authority to tell us what it is that we are supposed to believe and adhere to.

What is the whole true faith or what is the Catholic Church? And If you're descended from the Protestant tradition, you will usually say scripture is that authority. The Bible is that authority. If you are from an apostolic church, like say the Greek Orthodox or the Oriental or Ethiopian Orthodox or Catholic like me, you will say something like the church is a binding authority over the faithful. As the Catholic, we say the magisterium and the apostolic tradition handed down through the ages and protected by the church as well as Holy scripture.

Yes, Protestants will say the authority that is over us is scripture. Now we actually don't say that the Church has no authority. Clearly we do. We believe that the Church has the right to excommunicate people, that it has the right to declare what is a true interpretation of Scripture, but it's not an infallible authority, which puts us at odds with Rome and the East. When he says that they claim both are infallible standards, both are infallible authorities, this is never held onto consistently.

Because you can't have two infallible authorities. One will always give way to the other. This is akin to what Jesus said, no man can serve two masters. Rome tries to, three really, if you include the unwritten tradition. Ultimately, one will be seen as supreme.

And even in this video at the end, he affirms that ultimately the final say is the church. The church tells you what to believe, the church tells you what scripture means, the church tells you what tradition is. You will have either sola scriptura or sola ecclesia. The scriptures will be supreme, your final infallible authority, or your church will be your final infallible authority. And as Protestants, we say it must be scripture, because as is recorded in scripture, it is only the Word of God that is given by inspiration or breathed out by God and it is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work." That is a description of the scriptures, not the church.

The scriptures build the church. It's not the other way around. And of course, immediately someone's gonna say, well, that's only referring to the Old Testament. That does, Paul was not meaning the New Testament. I actually disagree.

First of all, when God inspired Paul to write this, God knew what his canon would be. We'll talk about that more in a minute. But also, this is one of, if not the last books of the New Testament written. I personally believe Revelation was written earlier than is commonly believed. I think 2 Timothy is probably the last book of our New Testament, and this is a summary statement.

All of Scripture, everything God has ever inspired, has been breathed out by Him, and it is where you go for doctrine, for reproof, for correction and instruction in righteousness. It is the scriptures that make a man sufficient for every good work. It is the scriptures that make a man able to even lead the church, not the church has the authority to empower a man to be a leader. Very different worldview, very different idea of what our authority is. And ultimately, are we going to believe what the scripture says about itself or not?

Rome, at least in practice, has to deny what the scripture says about itself. If the Bible is your highest authority for settling questions you might have about the faith, where does the Bible tell you that the Epistle of James is scriptural and the Didache is not? The answer is, it doesn't. The Canada of Scripture is not itself part of Scripture. It's a doctrine of the Church without which you don't have a Bible and yet almost all Christians agree that the Didache is not Scripture.

The problem with Protestants is that they inconsistently hold to the canon with infallible certainty, while refusing to recognize that they have to accept an infallible church doctrine, not found in Scripture, to give them that certainty. Whether they know it or not, there's a middleman between them and their highest authority, and it's the Catholic Church. Simultaneously, the Bible never describes itself as the ultimate authority because it never describes itself at all, like I said, but it also does describe the Church as an ultimate authority that can bind and loose the consciences of the faithful. He begins this section saying that the Scriptures never give itself the ultimate authority because it never refers to itself. And Again, I have to call our attention to 2 Timothy 3, 16, all scriptures given by inspiration of God.

It is only the scriptures that are given by inspiration, that are breathed out by God. The imagery is that when you read the scriptures, it's you're so close to the mouth of God, you can feel the breath moving. That's kind of the idea of breathed out. Scripture is breathed out by God. Toward what end?

Verse 17, so that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work, is the scriptures that make you complete. If it's scripture that's given by inspiration, it's the scriptures that make you complete, where is there a need for some other, a higher authority or even an equally alongside an infallible authority? There's simply no room for it. There's no need for it. It's simply wrong to say that the Bible never elevates itself above all other authorities or traditions.

Clearly, the Word of God is our highest standard according to the Word of God. Jesus said to Peter, you are rock and upon this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. He then told him that he would give him the keys to the kingdom and and said that whatever you bind and loose on earth will be bound and loose in heaven, which depicts an indisputable apostolic authority. Then in John 20 23 he gives them the authority to forgive sins, something only God could do. This is a uniquely divine authority.

When Jesus forgave the sins of those he healed, like in Matthew 9.5, his heroes accused him of blasphemy because they knew only God can do that. And here we are in John's Gospel with Jesus giving the unique authority of God to the church. Furthermore, he gave them the authority to write new scripture, which is what they did. They started writing new revelation in the case of the New Testament. The New Testament is a collection of texts written by the church.

How can we claim that the church does not have an indisputable infallible authority but that they could exercise infallibility in writing scripture? The writing of scripture, which we all agree is infallible, proves that God can use human beings to be his mouthpiece and preserve them from error in doing so. It proves that the church, at least in that instance, had infallible authority to teach. A lot of ink obviously has been spilled on this verse and I wonder if he's read the Fathers. The Fathers absolutely were not in universal agreement that Peter is the rock the church is built on.

In fact, that was probably a minority position. Most viewed it either as the confession or a play on words where, yes, Peter is part of the rock, but it meant all of the apostles. There's no basis to say that everyone was in agreement until Martin Luther that Peter is the rock that the church is founded on. That's simply just not true. And yes, he says, I will give to you singular Peter, the keys to the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven.

Whatever you loose on earth will be loose in heaven. The problem is Matthew 18 exists. Matthew 18, Jesus says, assuredly I say to you whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, whatever you loose on earth will be loose in heaven. So he repeats himself. Here though, he's giving the authority of binding and loosing in the plural.

If the keys are to be identified as this binding and loosening authority, which I think everyone would agree with. They're given to Peter, singular possibly, in Matthew 16, but unequivocally they're given to all the Apostles in Matthew 18. The U is a plural U-M Greek. Also our translation M kind of flattens out the Greek because the Greek is a little awkward. The New King James reads, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven and loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.

Most translations reflect that but the grammar in the Greek is not quite that straightforward. Really it's whatever you bind will have been bound and whatever you loose will have been loosed. And so the idea isn't the apostles have this infallible authority to bind and release, which probably has to do with the proclamation of the forgiveness of sins. I think that's what's going on there. That they have that authority in and of themselves as apostles, as bishops, whatever word you want to use.

It's rather that they, going through the role of church discipline rightly, are accurately reflecting what has already happened in heaven. In other words, their activity is meant to, as the leaders of the church, reflect what God has already said. That's why this is not giving an infallible authority to church leaders. This is a statement that they are obligated to proclaim the forgiveness of sins on the basis of what God has already done. This is not establishing some infallible hierarchy that's never going to go away.

This isn't establishing an infallible line of bishops. This is a statement that those who lead the church need to lead in accordance with the word of God and the gospel and proclaim the forgiveness of sins based on God's activity, not their own words." And he seems to make a connection between the office of the apostles and of course the bishops that succeed from them and his theology. And on the basis of that office, they are given authority to write scripture. Whereas we don't see that actually in the scriptures. We know that Paul, for instance, wrote other letters.

We can assume that the other apostles probably wrote other letters that aren't considered scripture, even by Rome. If we found, we know that Paul wrote at least one, if not two other letters to the Corinthian church that aren't included in our New Testament. If we dug them up in Corinth this week, That would not then make them scripture. Just because an apostle wrote said something or said something doesn't mean it was infallible. We see that clearly in Galatians where Peter is wrong to exclude himself from the Gentiles when the Jews come from Jerusalem and he's rebuked publicly by the Apostle Paul.

Just having apostolic office doesn't mean you have infallible authority. Rather, the standard of Scripture is that God moves by the Spirit to write new Scripture. 2nd Peter chapter 1 verse 20, knowing this first that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private and most translations read interpretation which is kind of an unfortunate translation. This is not talking about us reading the scriptures and trying to interpret it ourselves. This is the one who is writing interpreting what he has been given from God.

This is not about us reading scripture and interpreting it. This is about the origination of scripture. No prophecy of scripture is of any private interpretation for prophecy never came by the will of man but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. It's the Spirit that moves men to write scripture and when the Spirit does that work of inspiration what they then produce is the inspired Word of God. It's not simply Paul wrote it, therefore it's scripture.

It's not simply Peter wrote it, therefore it's scripture. It's that Paul, Peter, John, whoever wrote under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit And therefore that statement, that word, that letter is different because it was given by the Spirit. And therefore as Protestants we do not see any need for a continuing ongoing magisterium holding to the same office of the apostles with the same authority. Because Ephesians 2 says that the apostles and the prophets are the foundation of the church, Christ himself being the chief cornerstone. The apostles were foundational.

They're not the building. They were what laid the foundation, the church's build and built on that foundation. They had that authority for a time. God wrote the scriptures and we have that as our foundation. Once the foundation's laid, there's no need for it to continue.

And so no, there's no need for an ongoing magisterial authority equal to that of Peter and Paul. The Church Fathers all recognize the authority of bishops to bind and loose, as well as the supreme authority of the Pope as the successor of Peter. I already mentioned Ignatius of Antioch who said that the church in Rome holds the presidency over the rest and that whatever it teaches should remain in force. Irenaeus said that all the faithful have to recognize Rome for its superior ancient origin and that in her is maintained the apostolic tradition in a unique way. There are many others but I'll name one more which is Cyprian of Carthage who details the authority given to the Apostles in Matthew 16 and how it succeeds through time but then says that with Peter he established a single chair that is a principle of unity with a primacy over the entire church.

Now whenever I hear the case against Catholicism from non-Catholics there's always things like oh the Bible says call no man father or it's wrong to pray to the dead or where is the immaculate conception in the Bible, or where are the seven sacraments in the Bible? And here's the thing, once you realize the church has infallible authority to teach and give doctrines, you don't need to compare those doctrines to your own faulty exegesis of scripture. The question becomes redundant. Where does the church teach that? Oh, right, it's right there.

Case closed. And a document like the Didache, again, which I referred to earlier, is indispensable to this question. It is one of the oldest non-canonical writings describing what Christians believed and practiced in the first and second centuries. It depicts a hierarchical church with bishops, priests, and deacons. It describes sacraments like baptism and says that the Eucharist is the central act of worship in the church.

Some of these things you may find in particular denominations, but the only place you will find a church that is one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic is in the Catholic Church. So his summary conclusion here, he's just simply wrong. No Cyprian did not establish a unique chair of Peter that is located only in Rome. He did talk about the cathedral, the seat of Peter, but he clearly in context applies it to all the bishops. Yes, Irenaeus talks about the unique privilege of Rome, but that's because it was the imperial city.

It was the seat of commerce. It was the seat of the empire. It was the seat of politics. It had nothing to do with having an infallible head there at Rome. The early church absolutely did not view the church at Rome or the Bishop of Rome as the infallible authority for all the church.

That doesn't really even begin to take shape until the 600s. And it's contested for the first thousand years of church history. That's ultimately one of the big reasons the East and the West split, because you had Rome in the West claiming infallible authority over all the church. The East had five patriarchs, as they came to be called, who said, no, we all share authority. And they viewed the Bishop of Rome as overstepping his bounds, which he clearly was.

He talks about the Didache establishing bishops and elders and deacons. That's simply not the case. The Didache in Chapter 15 says, therefore appoint for yourselves bishops and deacons worthy of the Lord, men who are humble, not avaricious and true and approved, for they carry out for you the ministry of the prophets and teachers. So local church bishops, overseers, pastors, and the deacons. The Didache only knows of two offices, which are the biblical offices, which makes sense because the Didache is probably our earliest non-New Testament book that the Christians wrote.

It reflects the ecclesiology of 1st Timothy and Titus. There's no mention of bishops. The threefold office of Ignatius is a development that seems to really begin with him, and it does spread, and by the end of the second century, it is pretty dominant. You look in 1st Clement, which I think he even mentioned. Clement is technically anonymous.

We assign to it the name Clement, but there's no signature of Clement. It's written from the elders of the Church of Rome to the members of Corinth because they've been rebellious and removed their elders without a proper cause. And the whole point of First Clement, what we call First Clement, is that they are being unruly and rebellious and they're called to obey the Scriptures, to have a rightly ordered church according to the scriptures. There's no statement in 1st Clement, again coming from Rome, that says, hey I'm the Bishop of Rome, you need to listen to me and order your church as I say you need to do it. That's simply just not there.

This is just a complete misuse of church history. Simply put, when we go to the early fathers, we go to the early church, do they look exactly like Protestants? Are they Reformed Baptists? As much as I would like to say yes, no, they weren't. But they weren't Roman Catholics either.

The early church is what the early church was. They were men of their time, writing wonderful reflections on the Word of God, but they weren't infallible. They weren't inspired. Many of them, Ignatius for instance, didn't even have a complete canon. There seems to be no evidence that Ignatius had any gospel other than Matthew.

He didn't refer to John's epistles or Peter's. He had a limited canon. So how different would your theology be if you only had a third of your New Testament? So that's why we need to be careful when we go to the New Testament or when we go to the early fathers and say, we need to look like them. Do we rather, shouldn't we say we need to look like what the Bible says we need to look like?

Not what the early fathers say and certainly not what Rome says today with all of its accretions and additions to the scripture based on its own self-proclaimed authority. So in conclusion, to answer his statement, why be Catholic and not just Christian? I say be a Christian and be a Catholic, just not a Roman Catholic. Be a Protestant because we are truly Catholic, holding to that universal, infallible standard of the Scriptures alone, which are the standard for God's Church. Well, that's all the time we have for today.

If you'd like to connect with me personally, you can do so on X at R. Bosley 1689. And if you'd like more information about church and family life, you can do so at churchandfamilylife.com. And remember, let your reasonableness be known to all men. Thanks.

See you next time.