Is it Ridiculous to Cite J.N.D. Kelly?

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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Since I've started looking around YouTube, actually I'm not really looking around, people are sending me links because now that they know that I'm doing this kind of video blogging, they go, hey did you see what this guy said over here and this guy said over there.

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It really is fascinating to start digging through what people say about you and what's really interesting is to hear what they hear in comparison to what

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I actually said. And I'll give you a good example of that right here. A Roman Catholic fellow has been posting responses to me,

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I guess for a while now, and he's responding to the closing statements from the papacy debate from about 1998 as I recall.

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And so what I'm going to do is I'm going to play you my closing statement, I'm going to give you the closing statement from the debate, and then

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I'm going to give you, just start looking at some of his comments and the disconnect between my mannerisms, what

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I was saying, and then what this person hears. It's very educational, certainly educational to me, maybe it will be educational to you as well.

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Let's take a look at it. Now, some examples, Father Pacwa talked about Clement, I suggest you read the epistle of Clement to the

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Corinthians. You'll find all through there, in fact, I failed badly, and I will admit this in front of you all,

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I failed badly when I debated Father Pacwa on a question he asked me once about justification by faith. There's a great passage on justification by faith alone in Clement, I just wanted to make up for that error.

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In fact, someone here this evening pointed that out to me years ago electronically and now I'm correcting that.

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Read it, it talks about all sorts of wonderful things, but you know what you find out when you read Clement? There's a multiplicity of elders in Rome at this time.

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Clement doesn't say I is the Bishop of Rome, there's a multiplicity of elders. This is extremely important.

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Patristic scholar J .N .D. Kelly has written a fascinating work entitled The Oxford Dictionary of Popes. One of the striking features that many seem to miss in working through this reference source is to be found as an example in his entry on Anacletus, who

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Kelly notes is second in the earliest succession list, which did not include Peter as Bishop of Rome, reflecting

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Irenaeus' statement that Peter and Paul made Linus the first bishop, and third on the later list that introduced the novelty of Peter as the first bishop.

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The word seems so innocuous that one might well miss their impact. Listen, quote, his actual functions and responsibilities can only be surmised for the monarchial or one -man episcopate had not yet emerged in Rome, end quote.

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Did you catch that? Kelly notes in the days of Anacletus, in fact, all the way into the middle of the second century there was no one monarchial episcopate in Rome.

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This truth is reflected in Clement's epistle to the Corinthians, where a plurality of elders is seen. Ignatius as well makes no mention of a bishop when he writes to Rome, and this fact has been generally acknowledged to be the case.

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But think about what this means. We are told that Peter's supposed authority is invested in his successors as bishop singular of the

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Church of Rome, yet the historical fact is that the Church of Rome didn't think she needed a single bishop until a century after Peter had died.

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Indeed, the confusion of later succession lists may well be due to the fact that later men, assuming that there had always been just one bishop at Rome, attempted to trace such a succession through the early period when in fact there had been multiple bishops or elders at Rome.

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Are we to believe that Peter did not give proper instructions to the Church so as to have one bishop elected to whom could be given the keys of heaven itself?

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Can we imagine what the conciliarists of the 15th century would have done with this information? Obviously, we see that the

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Church of Rome felt no need to have a single bishop, a single supposed successor to Peter or Paul or anyone else, and that is highly, highly significant.

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Father Pacwa also mentioned Tertullian, making a statement about what Tertullian stated, but I would again suggest you read what

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Tertullian actually said. He absolutely, rapaciously regales the

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Bishop of Rome, insulting the Bishop of Rome, calling him Pontifex Maximus, which in those days was the chief priest of the pagan cults, and calling him

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Bishop of Bishops, and every word that he used was meant to be the worst insult it could be, and the amazing thing about Church history is a thousand years later, those are titles that the

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Bishop of Rome actually wears. Yet when they were first used by Tertullian, he was insulting the

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Bishop of Rome and saying that he was teaching falsehood. Cyprian, very shortly before his martyrdom,

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Cyprian presided over the Seventh Council of Carthage, which gives us the following information, for neither does any of us set himself up as a

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Bishop of Bishops, nor by tyrannical terror does any compel his colleague to the necessity of obedience, since every bishop, according to the allowance of his liberty and power, has his own proper right of judgment, and can no more be judged by another than he himself can judge another."

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Sound like they believed in the Roman primacy? It is easy to recognize a reference to Stephen, the

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Bishop of Rome with whom Cyprian had clashed in previous years, in the rebuke of the title Bishop of Bishops.

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Why is this important? Because Cyprian is truly one of the greatest obstacles to any serious acceptance of Roman claims regarding papal primacy.

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While he is often cited by Roman apologists, it is only at the expense of the fullness of his teaching that this is done, and that's what you get in a book like this.

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You see, Cyprian was one of the minority of the early fathers who saw Peter as the rock of Matthew 16.

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Indeed, he saw Peter as the symbol of ecclesiastical unity, and because of this, some of his words, if relieved of their context, lend support to Roman contentions.

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However, a full examination of Cyprian's words and actions is the death knell for Roman pretensions in regards to Cyprian.

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First, we note Cyprian's rejection of Stephen's claims to authority over the North African seas in his own words, quote,

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Neither can it rescind an ordination rightly perfected that Basilides, after the detection of his crimes and the bearing of his conscience, even by his own confession, went to Rome and deceived

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Stephen, our colleague, placed at a distance and ignorant of what had been done, and of the truth, to canvass that he might be replaced unjustly in the episcopate for which he had been righteously deposed.

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Cyprian rejected Stephen's meddling in the affairs of the North African church. Now, how can this be if Cyprian saw

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Peter as the rock? The answer is devastating to the Roman Catholic position. Cyprian believed that every bishop, himself included, was fulfilling the role of Peter as the rock.

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In Epistle 26 of Cyprian, he makes this very claim, citing Matthew 16, 18 with reference to all bishops, nowhere mentioning the bishop of Rome alone.

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Such passages led John Meyendorff to note, quote, In fact, however, Cyprian's view of Peter's chair, which

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Father Pacwa mentioned, was that it belonged not only to the bishop of Rome, but to every bishop within each community.

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Thus Cyprian used not the argument of Roman primacy, but that of his own authority as successor of Peter in Carthage.

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This is a video response to James White's closing statements against Father Mitch Pacwa and Batey about nine years back.

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James White, first of all, has made several fatal flaws and has used his

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Greek very sloppily in the past against several of the main opponents. So anytime you listen to James White, you need to do some deep research, taking into consideration the fact that he's not a very good exegete and he's not a very good scholar.

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White begins to quote J .M .D. Kelly, who puts the papacy in a negative light. Well, this is akin to me quoting the

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Catholic book and saying, oh look, Benedict said this and said that and said that. Of course

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Kelly's going to show the papacy in a negative light, Mr. White. He's a Protestant. It would do no good to try to support the papacy because then it would mean he would have to become

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Catholic. It's irrelevant to you citing a Protestant who speaks negative of the papacy.

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It's ridiculous. Well, ridiculous indeed for me to cite a well -known patristic scholar like J .M

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.D. Kelly. The problem is this gentleman is a big fan of Robert St.

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Janus, and so if he is going to be consistent, this type of argumentation is meaningful. We won't find any

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Roman Catholics citing J .M .D. Kelly either, right? Well, actually, here's

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St. Janus's book, Not by Bread Alone. All you have to do is turn to page 240.

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There's a citation of J .M .D. Kelly. Now why would Robert St. Janus get to cite

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J .M .D. Kelly? But it's ridiculous and absurd for me to do that. And you know what?

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You can even find that cited Not by Scripture Alone too. And in Stephen Ray's books, he's cited, in fact, since he's such a well -known patristic scholar that obviously this gentleman has never read, he is cited by lots of folks.

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And the fact is, I cited a factual statement on his part, and he's not the only one that makes it.

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For example, Joseph F. Kelly, in his Concise Dictionary of Early Christianity, published by Liturgical Press, notes the same thing.

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He says, The word Pope was not used exclusively of the Bishop of Rome until the 9th century. It is likely that in the earliest

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Roman community, a college of presbyters rather than a single bishop provide the leadership, which was the exact statement that I quoted from J .M

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.D. Kelly. So notice, my citation was in context, it was of a well -known scholar, and it was of a fact that Father Paquette did not, in fact, refute.

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This gentleman, likewise, has not refuted, doesn't even seem to understand why I made the statement, and his dismissal of it as being ridiculous only shows that he wasn't even listening carefully enough to what

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I said to see what the significance of it was. But since he went on from there to say other things, especially about the next citation about Tertullian that will really help us to illustrate how tradition glasses keep

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Roman Catholics from even looking at the early Church Fathers in a fair way, I'll continue that in the next video blog in response to this gentleman.