Rome's Forced Anachronism

Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. Here we are and man, we still got a bunch of chords and stuff. We're going to cover that up.

It looks so. I wasn't there before. We definitely zoomed out.

We definitely zoomed out. You really did. And just it's OK, a little more.

Yeah, OK. All right. Better than anything. Better than nothing, I guess. Anyways, I just normally don't look up there and see that.

I just don't remember seeing quite as many chords before. But hey, you got to make all this stuff work. So right before I went on the air, the

Babylon Bee posted something. It says, 10 amazing perks of becoming a

Catholic. And since we have been listening to a debate between a Catholic and a Mormon. And I asked the comments to make about the solo sculpture debate that took place in Dallas a couple weeks ago.

The premiere of that debate took place, what, two, three days ago now with John Horn?

Anyway, I thought it was a pretty good list. 10 amazing perks of becoming a Catholic. Here they are. Number one, you can tell the difference between your church and a shopping mall.

No one has ever confused a Catholic church with a nail salon. Yeah, that's generally true.

I have seen some Catholic churches recently that I've even heard Catholics complaining about because they do look a little bit more like a nail salon.

So, yeah, maybe. They still have the head of John the Baptist. And if you kiss it, you get time off purgatory or something.

We're pretty sure that's how it works. Yeah, that is how it works. That is how it works. They've got all sorts of people's skulls, craniums, tibias, fingers, knuckles, kneecaps.

And yes, it was very plainly time off purgatory at one point, but now purgatory could be instantaneous.

So what does time off mean? You know, it's just it's just another of those instances where the unchanging church has changed so much over the centuries.

Just so obvious and especially modern Catholic apologists just don't have any problem at all.

Running with total revisions of the views of the past and it's like, hey, it works now.

Three, now this one. Okay, come on guys. Access to the Holy Hand Grenade. You never know when you might need it.

Now, unfortunately, some people don't know what that means. And the problem is if you studied the historical documents, then you know that the

Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch has already been used to kill the rabbit. The fierce and awesome rabbit.

So I'm not sure that that one's really valid. Better ceiling art.

This is what they wrote. In fact, you can look at all kinds of nude religious art without it being weird at all.

That's true. That's true. We've been to the Vatican recently. Yep. Mm -hmm. Yep. Number five, you never have to read your

Bible ever again. Makes things so much easier. Well, you know, I know my Catholic friends would have a conniption fit at that one.

But if you listen to their arguments against Sola Scriptura, it's sort of hard to avoid that that is sort of the conclusion you can come to.

Really can. Let's see, tall hats let you easily see who is in charge.

No confusion about church hierarchy here. Well, that's yeah, pretty true.

Number seven, you're far less likely to drown during baptism. That total immersion stuff can get a little scary sometimes, but let's be honest, that's a minority of Protestants that immerse along with the apostolic tradition of having done so.

Obviously. Number eight, they have the extended edition Bible with all the deleted scenes.

Have you ever read Bell and the Dragon? It's dope. Yeah, honestly, there isn't a whole lot overly exciting there.

But anyway, stained glass windows mean you don't have to look at the hideous outdoors, especially nice if you live in Toledo, Ohio.

Why do people pick? Okay, I've been to Toledo, so I'm not going to ask that question. I know why people pick on Toledo.

Okay, but John Denver had this hilarious song about Toledo, Ohio.

And now this, I mean that the folks in Toledo, Ohio are going to develop a complex.

But they did give us the scale. They did design. If you when you get up when you stepped on a scale this morning, if you were unhappy, blame

Toledo. And number 10, bowls of holy water are everywhere to fend off mid -service attacks from Dracula or Hillary Clinton.

I'm just reading them folks. I'm just reporting what it says. Ten perks. So remember, if you want something serious on that subject, a number of years ago,

I remember sitting down and writing it. I wrote the top 10 reasons, the top 10 things

I would ask you to think about before you join the Roman Catholic Church or something like that. And I've reposted it over the years on the blog a number of times.

And so yeah, that would be probably more edifying than the

Babylon B article, but there you go. All right, so listen to the debate from Dallas on solo scripture.

And I'm not going to be playing stuff. It would be worthwhile, honestly, to play

Trent Horn's opening statement, walk through it. Of course, it wasn't that much different than his opening statement in our debate last year, which was right around this time, wasn't it?

Yeah, it's been right at about a year in Houston. And look,

Trent's a great guy. He's a very nice guy. We sat and yammered for quite some time when

I was there. I wasn't there for the debate because I headed down to Baton Rouge to speak there on Sunday.

And we prayed for his wife. If you're not aware of this, his wife was diagnosed with brain cancer and is undergoing treatment and stuff like that.

And so, you know, he's a really neat guy to talk to. He's very sharp.

But, you know, he's stuck in a situation where, you know, he's been handed the program.

And there is only a certain number of ways you can do what you're told to do as a

Catholic apologist. And so, as we listen to the statements, you know, there's just, the thing

I want to say as I'm listening to him, because one of the things he does especially is to go, well, you know,

Protestants disagree on this and Protestants disagree on that and that just proves solo scriptura. And I'd sit here and go, Trent, you know the state of the modern

Roman Catholic Church. I cannot imagine that Trent Horne is a huge fan of Tucho Fernandez, who is basically the head of the doctrinal expressions of the

Roman Catholic Church. At least was. I don't know what he's doing these days. I think he's still in that same position, if I recall correctly.

I thought I would have heard an announcement that he had been removed, but if he's still there, that just proves that Leo was just a rubber stamp choice from Francis anyways.

But you guys are not unified.

Not in any honest sense. I mean, come on. Any honest

Roman Catholic who studies history, if you said this, we don't even have to go back this far, but let's use it because we have the

Catechism of the Council of Trent as a sort of a landmark, right around the year 1600.

It's a little before that, but nice even number. What would happen if the delegates, if the, let's put it this way, if the

Magisterium, which by the way was not a term that was used very often until the 1800s, but if the Magisterium of 1600 met the

Magisterium of 2026, how different would they be? How different would they be?

You might say, well, not at all. They'd all go to Mass. Yeah, but what would they believe is actually taking place?

Who would they believe should be partaking? What would their worldview be?

What would their view of Scripture be? Of marriage? Homosexuality?

What would they do if you told them that the Pope in our day shakes hands with, encourages a

Jesuit, and believe you me, the Jesuits of 1600 would burn every single

Jesuit of 2026 within a week's time.

Okay, every single one. No one can argue that.

You cannot possibly. Mitch Paco might make it, okay? He's the most conservative

Jesuit on the planet, but the rest, toast. So if you told them, the

Magisterium from 1600, that the Pope would shake hands with and encourage

Father James Martin, who runs around promoting the LGBTQ plus movement within Roman Catholicism, they wouldn't even have a category to put that in.

They would have, they would be like, what? What? Why hasn't this

Father James Martin been defrocked and burned? That's what the church in 1600 would say.

And then you could go say, well, but Pope Francis has said that the use of capital punishment has always been sinful, and they'd be go, what?

What? So it's just, for me, an honest

Roman Catholic who thinks that one of their best arguments against the other side is, well, you all, you all don't have unity.

As if you do. I mean, no

Roman Catholic from 1600 could attend a class at Boston College today and have any idea what in the world they were listening to.

They have no way, they would have no way of even recognizing. So you need to recognize the change, the contradiction, the development.

And if you want to sit here and say, and that's the development of the deposit of faith, well, then the deposit of faith has no objective reality.

It can fundamentally change. It's whatever, well, it's sort of the modern view of the

Constitution as a living document. The deposit of faith is a living document, and so it can change from generation to generation.

It's just a subjective thing. Is that really what you've got? What would that have gotten you in 1600 if you had taught that in Rome?

Burned at the stake. And you would have been excommunicated at least until the 1860s for saying something like that, minimally.

So it always strikes me as somewhat self -serving and I think honestly a little dishonest to make that kind of argument as if what soul scripture is saying is the scripture is sufficient in a fallen world to create unanimity of opinion.

We never make that claim. It is sufficient for God's purposes. It is sufficient for the church.

It is sufficient for life and godliness. It's sufficient for all those things, but that doesn't mean that God's going to grant the grace to everybody to know it or to be obedient to it or to be able to recognize when their traditions get in the way of what the content of the scripture is.

So there's that issue and some of this is going to come up.

I think actually it came up already in this. Actually, I just realized Heschmeyer did address that in this deposit of faith stuff.

But anyway, the one thing I wanted to specifically mention in passing, having listened to the debate, had to do with, once again, the concept of using the canon as your primary argument.

In fact, I think Trent Horne said it was his primary argument. Soul scripture can't be true unless you have an inspired table of contents.

The canon has to be an object of revelation. I've told the story and we have new listeners all the time.

We're not out there trying to get clicks. I can't tell you how many times

I've had people around the world when I traveled globally, around the

United States, as I still do. I can't tell you how many times

I have had people come up to me and said, Man, I came out of Roman Catholicism.

Then they started coming after me and they started challenging all the stuff that I had read. A lot of the sources

I was looking at just weren't deep enough to respond to these challenges. Then I stumbled across your stuff.

You gave me that foundation. You gave me that ability to reply to this kind of rhetoric.

It's been going on for decades. Those are the people that we want clicking into this program.

That's why we do this stuff. I'm watching some of these folks. Someone sent me a link to a program that was posted today where an ostensibly

Reformed guy was interviewing a Roman Catholic who really hates

Calvinists, but he also goes after the Jews. That makes us co -belligerents.

We'll see how long those folks remain, even use the term Reformed. Those folks are not us folks.

They do their thing. We have completely different motivations, completely different reasons for doing what we do.

When I listened to Trent Horn throwing the canon stuff out,

I remember back when I first started listening to Jerry Matitox and Scott Hahn in 1989 -88.

I've told the story about how I was struggling with the canon issue. I was at the end of seminary in 1988, graduated in 1989.

We'd been dealing with Mormonism for many years by that point in time. It's not that I hadn't been challenged on that stuff before, on the issue of the canon, but the

Mormon attack on the canon is different than the Roman Catholic attack on the canon.

The Roman Catholic attack on the canon has at least some kind of historical reality to it. The Mormon doesn't.

An American religion founded in 1830 just doesn't have any historical pedigree.

In fact, LDS attempts to create a connection to the early church are pathetic.

Just pathetic. They truly are. It's not that there aren't a plethora of them anymore, but it is just so fundamentally obvious that the early church would have looked at Mormonism as freakish in its doctrine of God.

Just completely freakish. And all the rest of its doctrine. Temples, priesthoods, all this temple underwear, and all the rest of that kind of stuff.

Anyway, so I went out on a bike ride, as I've been doing for many, many years.

I only recently stopped doing that outside due to changes in the Phoenix area primarily, making it unsafe to do that any longer.

When Democrats take over your major city, kiss it goodbye. Because they're only here to do one thing.

Bring this nation to its knees. And that's what that party is all about.

The destruction of the United States of America. And they are succeeding. Anyway, I went out for a bike ride, listening to Jerry Madetik's droning on about Sol Sartore.

And all of a sudden, it hit me. On the bike ride, I was northbound on 51st Avenue. Out toward Bell Road, Union Hill, something like that.

All of a sudden, it struck me. What the answer was. What I'd been missing all along.

And I was so worried I'd forget it, that I banged a U -ey, rode straight back home, wrote down an outline of what

I'd said, and got back on the bike and went back out for a shorter ride. If you want to hear the conclusions

I came to, you can go to G3 and listen to the interview between myself there at, what year was that?

2018? I think it was 2018. The President of Reformed Theological Seminary and I, in Charlotte, did a discussion of the canon of scripture.

And presented all that stuff, I'm not sure if I told the bike ride story, but I presented all that stuff in that particular presentation.

It's still on YouTube. I'm not going to go into it right now. But, the idea was a recognition that the canon is not a object of revelation, which is what

Trenthorne assumes it has to be. But it is, instead, an artifact of revelation.

It comes into existence because God inspires at least one book and not all books. And hence,

God always has infallible knowledge of exactly what the canon is. And therefore, our knowledge of the canon is derivational from the nature of scripture as being inspired.

And it is not an object of revelation. In fact, when you think about it from the Roman Catholic perspective, if you say it's an object of revelation, then you have revelation taking place long after the apostles.

Because, from the Roman Catholic perspective, the dogmatic definition of the canon of scripture is from April of 1546.

The church had functioned for a long, long, long, long time without that. For a very long time without that.

So, you can't make the argument that the church can't function without a canon. And that's part of Trenthorne's argumentation.

And he has to recognize that there were fundamental differences. There were minor differences.

I mean, I honestly consider the apocryphal books to be a side issue. They just don't have the central doctrinal authority to be overly relevant.

There's almost nothing in them that's relevant. Even the Maccabees passage about purgatory.

It just doesn't matter. It has nothing to do with purgatory. It's not central. Of course, there's no passage of scripture that is central.

But, doctrinally, they're not really relevant at all. But, despite all that, that decision was only made in response to the

Reformation. And long after every key doctrinal issue in regards to the doctrine of God had been decided long, long, long, long, long ago without a quote -unquote dogmatic infallible canon of the scripture.

So, it just doesn't work from the Roman Catholic perspective. It's a self -defeating argument.

And yet, Trenthorne uses it absolutely all the time. It is just absolutely constant.

And it came up, again, in the debate. The cross -examination was not quite as useful as I would like it to have been.

I'm afraid our side, more than once, decided to make more arguments, make more statements, bring in new evidence during cross -ex, which

I think should be stopped by the moderator. That detracts from the debate.

It's not fair to do that, honestly. And so,

I wish that hadn't happened. But, anyway, it's out there for you to watch.

I've done five debates in Sola Scriptura with Catholic Answers, or people who work for Catholic Answers, and we've pretty much covered everything there is to cover over the years, and most of it doesn't change at all.

So, anyways, wanted to comment briefly on that. And so, let's get back into the

Heshmeyer -Hanson debate. We were listening to cross -examination.

I didn't change anything, so we should be right where we left off. And Jacob is cross -examining

Joe. So, let's dive back into it. The particular delegate who was representing the

Catholic side there has a kind of idiosyncratic vision of history that was critiqued even by other Catholic scholars, as being not a very precise way.

This is part of the issue of why, if you're going to get in the weeds on jurisdiction, that's just not going to be the way you prove a great apostasy.

It's not going to be... But what if the apostasy is defined as the loss of the fullness of institutional authority in the

Church? Wouldn't it meet that criteria? You would not be showing how an Orthodox... An Orthodox person hearing that would say, yeah, the papacy is bad, and also, there is no great apostasy.

So, it wouldn't actually meet your burden. Yeah, but if we define apostasy ourselves as Latter -day

Saints as a loss of the fullness of the institutional Church, and then we can demonstrate that there was a loss of the fullness of the institutional

Church, even by your own standards, doesn't that mean that there was an apostasy using our definition?

Yeah, here's the problem. There is equivocation here.

There's a lot of equivocation. He's trying to argue that the papacy is not primitive, and it's not.

He's completely right about that. But the real issue in the

LDS doctrine of the apostasy has nothing to do with the papacy. It has everything to do with priesthood authority.

And maybe he just doesn't want to have to try to defend that. Maybe he realizes it is indefensible, historically, and from any perspective like that at all.

Maybe he recognizes that. I don't know. But it's not the same thing.

And so, this was the big thing that was going on in all the conversations after this is, we're talking two different debates here.

They're talking right past each other. And whatever you decide about Hansen's approach, it was unique.

Since he was in the positive, it did sort of keep the other side on a back foot. So you can give it that,

I suppose. But it did diminish its usefulness as far as actual interaction goes.

I'm trying to understand what it is you're arguing, but you would have to show, I think, that the keys and priesthood authority were taken away.

The pope's jurisdiction in the West in the 4th century... Okay, that was the one time he talked about priesthood authority.

But he never defined it. The Mormons in the audience might have understood it, but I don't think any of the

Catholics would have had any idea what he was talking about when he mentioned priesthood authority, because that would be a different concept than Roman Catholicism.

One that they would admit developed over time. Well, okay. The people who agree with Newman being made a doctor of the church would admit that it developed over time.

The people who don't will continue to believe that it was established by the apostles.

I mean, I don't know how they can avoid it. Mitch Pacwa's entire argument when we did the mass debate was that Jesus ordained the apostles as priests at the

Last Supper. So that would make the priesthood an apostolic invention.

Which, just historically speaking, just isn't true. But, anyway. ...is

not, as far as I can tell, at all pertinent to that debate. Now, I'm happy to have that debate, if you want to do a debate about the papacy, but that was not the debate

I came prepared to talk about. I can see that, and I'm just wondering why you would think, if our...

wouldn't it make sense that you have to defend the papacy as the fullness of the institutional church? Well, let me...

But, wait a minute. Okay. Heshmeyer's got this point.

You're in Salt Lake City. You're debating a Mormon. And therefore, isn't it appropriate to sort of assume that if they're going to defend the great apostasy, it's going to be the

Mormon definition? And that doesn't include defending the papacy on Joe's part?

I mean, I think he could make an argument. Again, they're doing this number. But he could make a fairly good argument that we're talking about the

LDS teaching. But Hanson's response is, yeah, but the church that you're saying did not disappear is the

Roman church and no other. And you admit that without the papacy, you don't have the fullness of that church.

So, you know, you can see both sides at that point. Let me ask another one.

I want to talk about St. Cyprian of Carthage. He said, talking about the bishops...

Now, again, it's fun for me to hear this. Because I'm thinking back to 1993.

Denver, Colorado. The papal visit during World Youth Day. And the debate with Jerry Matitix.

Seven and a half hours over two nights. On the subject of the papacy.

The second night's yearly church. And we heard all about Cyprian and Framilion.

And all these great quotes. Some of which you're about to hear. And so we've been doing this for years.

And of course, the reformers were doing that long before we did.

So there's nothing new here. Each generation, though, has to rediscover these things.

And has to epagonizamai for the faith once delivered to the saints. Because you've claimed that Irenaeus said that there was a bishop of bishops of sorts.

This is what Cyprian says in 256. He says, for no one of us bishops sets himself up as a bishop of bishop or forces his colleagues to obedience.

Each bishop has his own right of judgment and can no more be judged by another man than he himself can judge another.

So if Cyprian is saying this, does that not imply, from a Catholic perspective, that the fullness of the institutional church, including the papacy, was missing at that time?

No. If you read Cyprian... Well, missing at that time or hadn't developed at that time.

You see, for the apostasy argument, to win, it had to have been there and it's been lost.

The reality is it just hadn't developed yet. And wouldn't develop fully for a thousand years.

You need to have the donation of Constantine. Even that was way down the road at this point.

Hundreds of years down the road. You need the pseudo -Isidorean decretals. You needed all these forgeries to create the illusion of papal power and papal authority.

And none of that exists in the middle of the 3rd century with Cyprian. And so, again, the two sides talking past each other.

For the one side, the papacy had to be there and disappear. For the other side, the reality is it just hadn't yet developed.

And so that's why we sit here in the middle and go, well, you're both right and wrong all at the same time.

You've got the wrong context going on here. There's other statements where he talks about the Bishop of Rome. At the time that he writes that in 256, he's actually in a conflict with the

Bishop of Rome and is stressing his local authority, basically saying, back off. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Yes, that's because Stephen was making claims no one before him had made.

And this was a council, this isn't just Cyprian sitting down there in Carthage doing his thing.

This was the North African bishops, just like, what, 150 -ish years down the road?

Augustine and the North African bishops are going to tell Pope Zosimus to take a hike when he rehabilitates

Pelagius. And they're going to say the same thing. And they are not going to submit to the

Pope's decision. So you could just sit here and say, well, yeah, those North Africans, they've always rebelled against apostolic tradition.

No, it hadn't developed yet. Now, would the Bishop of Rome make claims for himself that were quite grandiose even as early as Stephen?

Yes. Were his claims then accepted by the Universal Church?

No. So how do you argue this is some apostolic tradition?

It's not. This is exactly what you'd expect as history develops, as the

Roman Sea seeks to advantage itself at the cost of others, and they push back.

And it's going to take a long time before you get to the modern situation, before you get to an innocent, or the unum sanctum, or stuff like that.

It's going to be centuries down the road before any of that pops up, in an honest view of history.

But wouldn't he recognize, didn't everyone know? Wouldn't everyone have, like, if today, if a bishop goes against the

Pope, everyone knows, like, you're wrong, we have to stay with the Pope. Really? Haven't been watching the bishops in Germany recently, have you?

I mean, I mean, there's... And the scary thing is right now, the bishops who do stand up to the

Pope, they're the ones in danger of getting defrocked, removed, strickling, from Tyler, Texas.

The liberals? The leftist bishops in Germany?

Why aren't they getting kicked out? It's only the conservatives who get kicked out.

It's only the ones still holding to, honestly, the clear, obvious views of the papacy from the 1850s, in the modern time, that are being, were attacked by Francis, and that are in danger of losing their position.

If you're a leftist, like Father Martin, or like the guys in Germany, you're fine, you'll be good.

Right? On a matter of doctrine, on a matter of local adjudication of his diocese,

Vatican II is explicit, bishops are not the vicars of the Pope. And so, the idea that the

Pope is a bishop of bishops is actually not a good understanding of the Catholic idea of the papacy at all. But, it is, first of all, he recognizes that the bishops in council, in North Africa, were specifically rebuking the

Bishop of Rome, Stephen, for claiming to be a bishop of bishops.

Read Vermillion. I don't have the quotation in front of me. And it would take me too long to pull it up.

I mean, I have it on this computer, somewhere. Somewhere in the 8 terabytes of the hard drive.

I have Vermillion's quotation. But it was, it was wild.

And it was aimed directly at Rome. And of course, all the

Roman Catholic can do is go, he was wrong. Not, he represents a valid perspective at that time.

Not that he, not that we see development taking place here. We're seeing this example, right now.

That development. Did the

Church in Antioch, the Bishop of Antioch, have universal jurisdiction? No. Well, he did, briefly, while Peter was there.

That's it, that's it. I'm just going to, just that one question. So, it's just yes or no. So, the Bishop of Jerusalem, did the

Bishop of Jerusalem have universal jurisdiction? When Peter was there, in Jerusalem, in Antioch, did he possess that fullness of authority?

I'm asking about the specific Bishop of Antioch that existed in, let's say, the 2nd century. In the 2nd century, did the

Bishop of Antioch have universal jurisdiction? No, in fact, he doesn't claim to. Did the Bishop of Jerusalem?

No. Did the Bishop of Smyrna? No. Okay. So, can you show me, what documentation do we have?

Can you provide me with any documentation showing that the Bishop of Rome was actually given universal jurisdiction, and not just local jurisdiction?

Yeah, I already gave you one example of 1st Clement, of him adjudicating authority. Okay, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Okay, immediately, immediately, any honest historian will go, okay, the first thing we have to look at is the 6th

Canon of the Council of Nicaea. The 6th Canon of the Council of Nicaea delineates the areas of jurisdiction of the patriarchal seas, and specifically gives

Alexandria control over that region over against Rome.

Rome does not have control over those churches. That's the 6th Canon of the

Council of Nicaea. That is so damning to this position that when

I debated Robert St.

Genes and Scott Butler at Boston College in 1994,

I think it was, they literally had to try to appeal to an

Arabic version of the 6th Canon of the Council of Nicaea to try to find a way around the obvious meaning of what the official canon actually reads.

That's how desperate they were. So, that's the first thing you'd have to say.

Here's the first ecumenical council. Nobody called it that then. Nobody knew that's what it was then.

It had to fight for acceptance afterwards. But, the first ecumenical council sees that limitation.

So, that's the first thing you'd have to say. Secondly, you have to assume that your audience has not read there's that little booger back again.

Hey, I got him. Sorry, just killed one of God's creatures. Those that try to fly up your nose are worthy of death.

Anyway, he's got to be assuming that nobody in this audience has ever read the epistle of the

Church of Rome to the Church of Corinth. Which could be first century. Because, this is not a bishop of bishops.

This is not a person with universal jurisdiction. This is not an individual. This is a church writing to another church on foundation of equality, not supremacy, not universal jurisdiction.

You can't find anything in that letter to substantiate this grossly anachronistic reading of that text.

It's just not there. But, how many people listening to a debate have ever read it?

How many people who listen to this debate will ever even look it up? Let alone take the time to read it.

It's not a short letter. I remember, wow, what year was that?

Man, sometime around 2003 -ish. Anyways, I taught a class for, back then it was called

Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary, now it's Gateway. Development of Patristic Theology.

That was fun. And we read that letter. And it took a while.

And we discussed all these various issues. And if I recall correctly, we even had one of those classes.

That was the year we went on the Zondam, on a cruise. And the class came on the cruise.

That was fun. And I had this big old suite. And we had enough room between the balcony and the inside for the whole class to sit there.

And we're doing development of patristic theology while at sea. Probably never get to do that again, but it was fun the one time we got to do it.

Anyway, so, this presentation being made by Heshmeyer extremely liable to refutation.

Did other bishops ever write letters to other churches? Sure. Did Athanasius write to intervene in the affairs of other churches when they were dealing with issues?

In fact, when they wrote to the Bishop of Rome, he responded by rebuking them for not reaching out earlier to settle the matter.

Was the letter by Clement actually written like, does it say like Clement's name?

Or was it written on behalf of the Church of Rome? Was it written anonymously? Well not, it's internally anonymous in the same way.

So it was an anonymous letter, it doesn't say like I, Clement say X, Y, Z. It's we in Rome say the following?

The Church of Rome is answering the question. See, Jacob knows the answer to all these questions.

Which, one of the rules of cross -examination is never ask a question to which you do not know the answer.

So, he knows that that is an anonymous epistle. There is no name.

Clement is traditionally attached to it. There is nothing in that epistle where the

Bishop of Rome, as the Bishop of Rome, exercises authority in any way, shape, or form.

This is an anachronistic abuse. An anachronistic abuse of 1st

Clement. But, Joe doesn't have any choice. Because there ain't nothing else.

It's that the papacy didn't exist at this time. But his theology says that it has to.

Because that defines the Church. Except, unless you believe

John Henry Cardinal Newman. And it's just a part of the deposit of faith, and the acorn won't grow into the oak tree for centuries.

Again, George Salmon wrote a full rebuttal of John Henry Cardinal Newman, back in the 1800s when all that controversy was taking place.

And one of the things he said about Newman's theory is that it was fundamentally an abandonment of the historical field of battle.

And that's what it is. So, Rome today is schizophrenic. The official leadership,

Leo XIV, having elevated John Henry Cardinal Newman to the position of Doctor of the

Church, has fully embraced the theory of doctrinal development. And so, you don't have to find something in the 1st century.

You don't have to find something in the 2nd century. You don't have to find something in the 3rd century. It wasn't there.

It had not yet grown to that point. So we're good. Problem is, that's not

Rome's historical claim. Satus Cognitum. One of the papal documents.

This has ever been the faith of the Church. Not that it developed over time. It's ever been the faith of the

Church. Now, we know what it meant to them. We know when Satus Cognitum was written, what that meant. What the modern

Church does, is it says, well, you may think that's what they meant, but only we get to determine what they meant.

See? So, we can interpret that as meaning it was a part of the deposit of faith, even though it had not yet consciously come into the understanding of the

Church. Through the enlightening of the Holy Spirit and the work of the great theologians. See, I can talk like the

Vatican, too. Not like Vatican II, but like the Vatican II. So there's always a way around it.

There is always a way around it. No matter what you want to do, there's always a way to get around it.

But once you accept sola ecclesia, you've got to do what Joe's doing. Joe may not want to misrepresent history, but he is.

He may not want to engage in anachronism, but his dogmatic authority tells him to do it.

Because it's done it. So if he's going to be faithful to it, there's something else to do. Now we can, we have the luxury of being able to start and stop and go, um, let's think about this.

Let's look at the facts. Let's put this in a proper historical context. And we get to do that for both sides.

Which is, I think, one of the sort of cool ways of doing this. Uh, okay.

What are the presbyters? What are the presbyters, Joe? See, at this point, the letter from the church at Rome is written before the monarchical episcopate, one bishop, has developed in Rome.

What's clear from reading Clement in context is that this is a church led by elders, like the

New Testament, where bishops, overseers, presbyters, and episcopoi are the same thing.

Bishops and elders are the same thing. That office has not yet been divided at this early point.

So it was still functioning apostolically. In other words, in the light of what the apostles actually taught about these offices.

Which, by the way, is the same way my church is organized. The way the New Testament identifies elders, bishops, same office.

Rome has divided these things. And what do the presbyters become in Roman Catholic theology? Priests.

See what had happened? Man, the church at Corinth had a lot of problems. You can tell that from the

Corinthian correspondence in the New Testament. And even having received two apostolic letters of significant length and ferocity?

Strength? Rebuke? Didn't change much. See, you can receive a direct letter from an apostle.

And there may have been a third letter that we don't have. And don't need to have. The church still had problems.

And they had rebelled against their properly ordained elders. And so what

Rome said was you can't do this. This is not apostolic.

This is not what the apostles taught us to do. You need to restore them. You need to submit to them.

And do this in proper order as a united body. But there is no one person saying this because the church at Rome is telling the church at Corinth, bring in the body, not the bishop.

There is no mention of the bishop at Corinth as a singular office. They had kicked the elders out as a group.

And so the elders in Rome are defending the elders in Corinth to the rebels in Corinth.

There's no pope here. There's no monarchical episcopate here. There's no exercise of authority here.

And so Heshmeyer is stuck reading history anachronistically.

He's forced. He has no choice. We've mentioned this over and over again over the years.

I feel sorry for my Roman Catholic friends who are told by Rome, you must believe this is the ancient faith of the church when it's so plainly obvious it wasn't.

It wasn't. And they can't do history. They can't allow the early church writers to be the early church writers.

They have to turn them into faithful Roman Catholics. And that's what's so disappointing.

When you hear all these new converts I read the early church and I found out that they were

Catholic. In what way? I mean, they use that term. Universal, yeah.

Not Roman Catholic. You equivocate. And if you want to read them, okay.

Show me the papacy. It's not there. Well, somebody mentioned

Peter. Yeah. So? So did Paul. Big deal.

Anachronism's ugly. Do those commands as binding on Paul? He says he doesn't do it in the same way Peter and Paul do. Okay, cool, cool.

Just want to make sure of that. Does he claim that he has authority over that church? If you're saying, does he say...

I'm sorry, I said he. In this anonymous letter that is attributed to Clement, does he, does does the group who wrote the letter claim authority over that other church?

There is no group who wrote the letter. Then why is it addressed as we say this? Because he is speaking as the bishop on behalf of the whole church.

Okay, pure anachronism. Pure fiction. Pure fiction. Why does he say that?

What evidence does he have? Nothing. Big, fat, nothing. There is nothing in the letter that substantiates that.

Nothing. So why does he say it? He has to. Because Rome has told him, this is what you're to believe.

This is what you're to see. And if the facts say otherwise, be anachronistic.

Right there in public. That's the amazing thing. And see, I can just simply sit here and say to you, let's say you're thinking about joining

Roman Catholicism or you are a Roman Catholic and you realize, wow, there's problems here and you know, um, but I can say this and go, it's available online.

It may take you a few minutes to read it. But just read it and don't read anything into it.

Just listen to it. And ask yourself a question. Is this how?

Yeah, ask yourself this question. Is this how the Bishop of Rome would write today to a church?

Or is this how a church organized with plurality of elders would write to another church with plurality of elders that just kicked its elders out, encouraging them to do the right thing?

So, one Reformed Baptist church writing to another Reformed Baptist church. Which one does it sound like?

It's not how the Pope talks. And yes, the Pope can use the majestic plural.

We say this. But that's after lengthy self -description of the

Bishop of Rome, Pontifex Maximus, you know, infallible leader of the entire church and there's nothing like that in 1st

Clement. And by the way, make sure you're reading 1st Clement. Remember, Leighton Flowers got all that confused in our debate and was way off on that one.

In the same way that your president might speak on behalf of the whole Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints. But no one has ever ascribed it to a committee or a panel or a group.

It has universally been attested as Clementine in origin. Universally! That is wishful thinking.

Again, any fair reading of the book shows that it is the elders at Rome writing to the elders at Corinth.

Not a single bishop. Prove me wrong. It's online. Go read it.

Prove me wrong. Where does a singular individual speak? Never.

It's not there. Because the doctrine didn't exist in their mind. To insert it is the myth of Roman Catholic supremacy.

That's the only way you can do it. But it's to twist history. The Christians in Corinth were reading it as Scripture.

I would like to see exactly how you substantiate that, but what does that have to do with anything?

That doesn't change the fact this is not the bishop of Rome speaking. It isn't.

Prove it. I mean, these are just bald assertions that go right against the text itself.

This is a great illustration of how Rome does history. It's backwards.

And it's no wonder they go, see, to go deep in history is to cease to be

Protestant. Actually, to go deep in history is to recognize that Rome tells you what to find in history and what to ignore in history.

I mean, this would be eisegesis of Scripture. This is just eisegesis of Clement. Because it came from Clement of Rome.

When you say that the entire... One last question. Okay, last question. When you say that Latter -day

Saints believe in this universal apostasy where all Christians... Christianity was totally lost. How do you reconcile that with the fact that Joseph Smith literally said that the great

Christian martyrs of history were saved in the Kingdom of God? I only said the first half of it. I said there was universal apostasy, and I took that statement from the

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints website. So, I think that may be a question better directed in -house.

Well, that was a good response. Because you know, you may want to try to soften the teachings of the early

Mormon church about the apostasy. For me, the fact that we've gotten this far into this debate, and we didn't listen to the opening statements and stuff.

You can go listen to them yourself. But that we've gotten this far into the debate, and the real issue from the

Mormon side has not even been touched on. It honestly bugs me a little bit that Jacob Hansen could get this far into the debate, and he's never even uttered the phrase

Melchizedek priesthood. I mean, how can you talk about LDS theology of the great apostasy and not talk about the fundamental element?

I mean, because it's so obvious. Now, this was absent on April 6, 1830.

David Whitmer makes it very clear. The whole concept of the priesthood developed after the founding of the church, which is fatal to LDS claims.

Absolutely fatal. All the stuff about Aaronic priesthood,

John the Baptist, 1829, Peter, James, and John, Melchizedek priesthood, all developed so much so that Joseph Smith literally changed and inserted over 400 words into one revelation from the 1833

Book of Commandments into the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants. These are factual realities. But to not have even raised the fundamental assertions of the

Mormon church that they and they only possess valid priesthood authority, their baptism only is valid before God, and that the church cannot exist without the priesthood authority.

That should have been central to what was said, but it wasn't.

It wasn't even mentioned. That's strange to me.

It's very, very strange to me. Again, two debates taking place, going past each other.

That's a good place to stop, because now Heshmeyer gets a chance to question

Hansen, and that'll be worth listening to as well. I hope you're enjoying this. I find it sort of interesting.

I'm not having to come up with the outline. I'm not having to come up with the topics. They just grow naturally out of two erroneous positions trying to prove the other one wrong.

And we get to sit in the middle and go, that's true, but not quite. Yeah, that's true too, but not quite.

Yeah, and of course, we have the luxury of getting to talk much longer than they do.

Reviewing debates like that, that's normally what ends up happening. Anyway, okay, so should be pretty much a normal schedule next week, though I had work done on my house.

I had something installed on my house. I'm getting tired of dealing with governmental agencies.

Okay? I know it's much worse in California, but Arizona is becoming

California. And so I had something installed, but now

I have three inspections that I have to go through before what was installed will be allowed to function.

And the first inspection is on Tuesday.

And you know how this works. Yes, we'll be out Tuesday. Do you have a time frame?

Yes, between sunrise and sunset. Maybe. So, hopefully they'll be there in the morning.

Hopefully. I can't. We're dealing with the government here. And you can't guarantee anything.

Did you know that I think in Canada, with its free medical care, 26 weeks is the standard wait time before you can get to the doctor.

Most people are dead within 26 weeks. It clears well, that and made medical assistance in dying.

The stories about that in Canada are astonishing. I mean, people coming in and they've got problems getting in the door because of a leg problem and they're offered suicide.

I mean, Sarah Palin was exactly right. It's your death counsels.

Their death panels are right there. They're right in front of you. Alright, anyway. With that, thank you for watching the program today.

We went a little bit over time. Nobody cares because we're not on a radio network. We don't have to worry about it. We don't have any sponsors.

If you want to help with the next trip. By the way,

I'm looking at the summer. I have to work with my wife on this because she's got a trip to take. I don't want to run into that.

Getting back up to Colorado, probably not going to be doing any of the big rides. I just can't do the big rides anymore.

Miss that. I would dearly love to be up in the mountains, even if I'm going up slowly at high altitude.

I'd like to get back together with some folks in Colorado Springs. There's a

Reformed Baptist Church there. I need to get in touch with them if you happen to be listening. That would be a great place to stop.

I've got friends in Denver. One of my friends in Denver says, all the churches in Denver are scared of me. It would be nice if a church in Denver would contact me and say, we're not scared of you.

And work that out. Well, there is one church in Denver that's not scared of me, but this guy is actually associated with.

Anyway, and then I wouldn't mind getting up north a little farther.

I'm in Boulder. Maybe my friends in Boulder will have me back. Maybe they're scared of me now too. I don't know.

But I would like to hit as many churches up there as possible. Colorado has become such a blue, deep blue state that normally

I avoid blue states. But Colorado is, in my opinion, the most beautiful state in the lower 48.

I mean, Yosemite up there, okay, all right. But I've just fallen in love with it.

And riding up there is just that recharges you for the next year. And so anyway, if you'd like to help us get to those places, we're going up to Utah.

We've got two debates up there. And I think I mentioned to you last time, but let me mention to you again. We did make the change on the

RV. You have seen that background and the rainbow lights for the last time.

Rich is trying to not shout hallelujah from the other room right now.

And since the glass hasn't been replaced yet, well, that's taking him a while, you would hear him shouting that.

But I will be doing one of those two debates. One of the two debates with Jacob Hansen will be in person in Ogden.

But I'll be debating Shabir Ali online from the new unit. And this new unit literally has an office in the back of the unit.

And I have some nice pictures on the wall, but other than that, the utility will be that this is sit down, put the cameras up, plug it in and go.

Which will be just awesome and wonderful and fantastic and super. And it's a beautiful unit.

All the research we've done has said that this thing has got the best company behind it.

That it'll handle the many miles that we put on a unit. Rich and I and volunteer spent pretty much all day

Wednesday moving everything from the old unit to the new unit.

And there were still some things that I've never found. That I have no idea how

I lost. That I thought I might find by moving everything out, but didn't find them. Anyway, so this next trip is going to be really really interesting.

We're going to be breaking new ground and it's been pricey.

So if you want to help with the travel and getting us up to Utah and doing the things we're going to be doing travelfund .aomen

.org general fund, whatever you want to do. Those things always help as well.

I'm excited about the trip coming up. We've only got about three weeks until I need to be pulling that unit.

Getting it ready to go. I'm excited and I think you're going to be excited once you see the program from up there.

And what we're going to be able to do with it. So with that, as I said, Tuesday just watch the app, watch

Twitter because we are at the mercy of governmental authorities.