Was Peter a Pope? (White vs Matatics)

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and Alpha and Omega Ministries, we'd like to welcome you to the second of two debates.
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I'd like to state the thesis for the debate from the outset, for the sake of clarity. The proposition for tonight's debate is,
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Peter was given a position of primacy in the Christian Church that is to be passed on to successors.
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Mr. Jerry Mattis is taking the affirmative position, and Mr. James R. White will be taking the negative position.
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I'd like to just give you a little bit of background information about our two participants.
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Mr. Jerry Mattis was formerly an ordained minister and theologian in the Presbyterian Church in America in Easter of 86.
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He, together with his wife and family, entered the Catholic Church. He was the first minister of that denomination to ever become
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Roman Catholic. He's graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy with highest honors in 75. He earned a
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Bachelor of Arts Magna Cum Laude in Classical New Testament and Patristic Greek from the University of New Hampshire in 1977.
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And at that time, he was inducted into National Phi Beta Kappa. He received his Master of Divinity with a concentration in Systematic Theology from Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary in 1981.
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He studied Sacred Scripture at St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Seminary of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and is a
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Ph .D. candidate in Biblical Interpretation at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, for which he is currently completing his doctorate dissertation on the
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Book of Revelation. A member of the Society of Biblical Literature, the Catholic Biblical Association of America, the
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Catholic Theological Alliance, and the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars. He has taught on the faculties of Westminster Theological Seminary and St.
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Joseph's University in Philadelphia, the Notre Dame Pontifical Catechetical Institute in Arlington, Virginia, and Christendom College in Front Royal, Virginia.
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Mr. Matitix is now a full -time apologist with Catholic Answers, a non -profit organization based in San Diego.
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And in that capacity, he writes for their monthly magazine, Miss Rock, and travels around the country speaking at churches and conferences, engaging in such debates.
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Mr. James R. White is an ordained Baptist minister and the author of The Fatal Flaw and Answers to Catholic Claims, and also two recent books,
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Letters to a Mormon Elder and a book on the Doctrine of Justification by Faith. He has received his
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Bachelor of Arts degree in Scripture from Grand Canyon College and a Master of Arts in Theology from Fuller Theological Seminary.
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He is the founder and director of Alpha and Omega Ministries in Phoenix, Arizona, which does apologetics work around the country.
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Now, the format of the debate tonight is as follows.
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We're going to have a series of opening statements. Mr. Matitix will go first for 25 minutes, followed by Mr.
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White for 25 minutes. The first rebuttal period belongs to Mr. Matitix, which will go for 10 minutes, followed by Mr.
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White, and then we will break for 15 minutes. After the break, we'll call you back about 13 minutes after we've started to get settled, and we'll begin the second half with the second rebuttal period, which will last only five minutes.
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Once again, Mr. Matitix will go first, followed by Mr. White. Then we'll have a 20 -minute period of cross -examination.
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Mr. White will go first, followed by Mr. Matitix. And then finally, closing remarks will be offered, 10 minutes apiece, beginning with Mr.
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Matitix and closing the evening with Mr. White. Just real briefly, some basic ground rules for behavior.
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At the end of each presentation, you're welcome to applaud, but we'd like to keep the applause, the hoots, the hollers, the threats, and the friendly or nasty remarks to a minimum.
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Actually, we'd like to rule them out altogether as not befitting the occasion at any other time.
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Also, there will probably not be any time left over for questions and answers, and so unless you hear otherwise, you may simply wish to jot down questions that you have for whoever and then discuss it afterwards more informally.
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The timer is, for all practical purposes, the final authority, so it's going to be soul -up timer tonight.
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And we'll try to stick strictly to that as best as possible.
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Time may be relative in many other parts of the universe, but not here tonight. For our opening prayer,
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I'd like to read a passage from Psalm 119. We pray, Teach me,
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O Lord, to follow your decrees, then I will keep them to the end. Give me understanding, and I will keep your law and obey it with all my heart.
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Direct me in the path of your commands, for there I find delight. Turn my heart toward your statutes and not toward selfish gain.
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Turn my eyes away from worthless things. Preserve my life according to your word and your mercy.
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We'd like to begin now with the opening statement made by Mr. Manatee.
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My brothers and sisters in Christ, I'd like to begin my time by stating that my single passion in life and my sole desire tonight is to submit my mind and my heart to my
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Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. I want to believe all that he teaches, and I want to obey all that he commands.
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And it is precisely in obedience to Jesus Christ, my Lord and King, that I found my
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Protestant prejudice against the papacy beginning to cave in under the avalanche that I began to find as I dug more deeply into God's inerrant word.
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I began to see in Scripture that Jesus' plan is to exercise his lordship over our lives through the church, that the church has a fundamental role to play.
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And as a matter of fact, Scripture uses two very intimate images to describe the intimate connection between Christ and the church.
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The image of body connected organically to a head, and the image of bride, wife, connected as one flesh to her husband.
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So that Christ works through the church, teaches through the church, saves through the church.
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And as a result, I saw that the Scriptures speak of the church as Paul puts it in 1
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Timothy 3 .15, the pillar and foundation of the truth. As Jesus says in Matthew 18,
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Christians must listen to the church, that Christ speaks through it, so that as he said to the 70 elders he sent out, and if it's true of them, it's true how much more, a fortiori of the 12 apostles, who had an even higher status, whoever hears you, hears me.
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But whoever rejects you, rejects me, and in rejecting me, rejects him who sent me.
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And I saw that the first officers of this church were Christ's handpicked 12 apostles, who inherited his teaching authority, and that among these apostles,
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Peter had a leadership capacity. He was the chief of the apostles. And I saw furthermore that these apostles, when it was time for them to leave this earth, took the provision to appoint successors.
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And that these successors inherit, though not the inspiration of the apostles, their teaching authority, which must be heeded by God's people.
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And that in particular, Peter's successors would have a particularly significant role in functioning as guardians of the gospel, the good news,
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God's saving truth. Now, as you heard the thesis presented tonight, you notice that in effect it has two basic parts to it.
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And that's what I have to defend this evening. Part one is that Jesus did indeed confer a primacy upon Peter.
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He intended him to have a headship, a patriarchal authority in the church.
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Is there biblical evidence for that? Yes or no? That's what I have to persuade you of. That's what my worthy counterpart,
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Mr. White, is going to try to dissuade you of. And then secondly, I have to approach the issue of successors.
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If Peter indeed was a head in some sense by Christ's own plan and appointment, did this headship transfer to any successors?
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And does the line of Roman bishops have any historical leg to stand on to say that we are the successors of Peter's headship and his authority?
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What I would like to do is to focus most of my time in this opening statement on the first point, although I hope to get to the second.
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And I want to turn right away to what I consider the most significant passage, and I'm sure my colleague agrees that it probably is the most significant passage for us to look at, and that is
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Matthew 16, verses 13 through 19. So if you have a Bible, please turn to it.
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And if you don't have a Bible tonight because you're a Catholic, then just listen carefully. You know this passage well.
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At the midpoint of Jesus' earthly ministry, He brings His disciples apart to put to them the most critical question of all,
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Who is Jesus Christ? Who am I? And they produce various human opinions.
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Well, some say you're John the Baptist or Jeremiah or Elijah. Some of the prophets come back from the dead. And then
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Jesus says, Well, what do you have to say? And at this point, it's significant that it's
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Peter who speaks up and says, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.
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Now, I want you to notice in Jesus' response to Peter's outburst, the response that spans verses 17, 18, and 19,
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I find two very interesting things about that response. Thing one and thing two,
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I feel like I'm reading a cat and hat book here or something to my kids. The first thing I find interesting about this response is the formal language that our
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Lord employs. Peter has just said, You are the
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Anointed One, which is what the Greek word Christ, as you know, means. You are the Anointed One, the
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Son of God. And Jesus returns the compliment of this kind of formal, stylistic, formulaic way of addressing
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Himself. You are the Blessed One, Son of Jonah. What's going on here?
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Why this elevated style of language? What we have, and I think the subsequent verses bear this out, is a very formal and therefore very literarily stylized bit of conversation here.
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This isn't just some casual conversation. What we have here in this courtesy and response, this recognition of the person, their status, their privilege, and their father, a reference to the person's genealogy, and then
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Jesus reciprocating, in the case of Peter, is the language of the court.
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You have formal courtesy here, in other words. So something very significant is going on. Peter has perceived
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Jesus' office. God had sent prophets, priests, and kings in the
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Old Testament to bring us truth, which is what prophets did, to bring us life, grace, which is what priests did, to bring us righteousness, goodness, justice, which is what kings did, or were supposed to do.
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They didn't have these in and of themselves. God is the source of our being, our knowing, and our doing.
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But He imparted these gifts, these graces, through these officers, and as a recognition that they did not have it in themselves, they were simply conduits through which this grace came, they had oil poured upon their heads at the beginning of their ministries.
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Prophets, priests, and kings did. They were anointed ones. Oil is a symbol, as you know, of the
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Holy Spirit. What I have to give, the prophet says, is the word of the Lord, the word from on high. It's not my own word, it's not my own truth.
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And the priest says, what I have to give is the forgiveness of God, not my own forgiveness for grace. I can't forgive anyone other than myself.
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And what the king says is, it's not my job to come up with my own standards of righteousness, but to let
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God be king over Israel through me as His dutiful servant and citizen.
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And so they're all anointed. They're anointed ones, they're messiahs, to use the Hebrew word, or Christs, with a little c, to use the
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Greek word. But there was this expectation that someone would come one day who would do this perfectly and definitively, who would in fact be prophet, priest, and king.
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All three officers rolled into one, and Peter had just got done saying, you are that one, to Jesus.
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And Jesus says, well, you are. And what he proceeds to say here, verses 17 through 19, is, you are someone, because of this perception, which you didn't get from your own smarts, it wasn't because you're sharper than the other guys here, but God has sovereignly selected you,
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Simon, to receive this revelation. That's what Jesus calls it.
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Not by flesh and blood was this revealed to you, but by my Father in Heaven.
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As a result, you enter into a special privileged position with reference to me, with reference to me as the
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Christ that you just identified me as. If Christ means prophet, priest, and king, it's very interesting to me, this is the second thing
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I find interesting in our Lord's language, it's very interesting to me that what Jesus says to Peter follows this threefold division.
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He says, Peter, you are going to, as it were, have me confer upon you a prophetic function, a priestly function, a kingly function, to be an officer in my church.
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First of all, in verse 17, he says that Simon has had the ability to perceive the
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Christhood of Jesus, again, not out of his own merit, not out of his own competence or capability, but by a prophetic insight given to him, revealed to him by the
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Father in Heaven. There is prophetic imagery here, in other words. At a time when there was confusion, when there was controversy, when there was chaos as to who
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Christ was, there was a Christological controversy here, it is Peter who utters the declarative sentence, which defines and says this is who
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Jesus Christ is. Peter's words here settle the issue. God has chosen to do that through Peter.
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And we have to recognize that, as Jesus did. If we're followers of Christ, we've got to recognize what
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God chose to do, sovereignly through Peter, as Jesus recognized it.
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When we move to verse 18, we find that we're moving from prophetic language to priestly language, where Jesus says,
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And I for my part say to you that you are rock, and on this rock I will build my church, so that the gates of Hades, or Sheol, will not overwhelm it.
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Now, why does Jesus call Simon rock at this point? Why does he give him this new name?
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I think that there are several reasons for it, and I'm going to suggest three.
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I think there's more I could say, but my time is limited. First of all, many scholars see, in the conferring of this new name of rock upon Simon, a reference to the rock of foundation that the
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Jews were familiar with in their own temple. If you read the passages in 2
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Samuel 24 and 1 Chronicles 21, where the plague that is decimating the population of Jerusalem is averted by David purchasing a very significant threshing floor, a huge stone slab from a man named
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Aaron of the Jebusites, and erecting an altar upon it, and averting the plague, and seeing a vision of the angel of death stopping and recognizing the efficacy of that sacrifice on that particular site.
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And you read the subsequent narrative where David says to Solomon, this is where the temple must be built.
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I can't build it. God has told me that. But you're going to build it, and you're going to build it on this rock. And the
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Ark of the Covenant stands upon that rock in the Holy of Holies, and the temple is built on top of it.
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The Jews call that rock the Eben Shethiet, the rock of foundation, the foundation stone.
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And I don't have the time tonight, but it's interesting that if you want to start there, where you see there's an actual literal rock, and you move backwards, you can find a whole series of episodes in Scripture where this rock shows up in earlier events, when
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David is bringing the Ark back from the Philistines, and it crosses this threshing floor, the
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Ark crumbles. The oxen stumble. Why? There's something significant about this site.
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When you go back further, you see that this threshing floor shows up again and again. It's a place where Joseph mysteriously stops and mourns for seven days when he's bringing his father
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Jacob to be buried back in Palestine in Genesis 50, and then he continues on his path. Why? It's a place where Jacob stops, and at this stone has a vision of God and a huge staircase going to heaven with the angels of God ascending and descending.
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Now, the Jews argued on the basis of poetic passages in Scripture, and we don't want to build too much upon this, since they are admittedly poetic passages and may not be intended to be taken too literally.
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The Jews pointed out that there is a reference to a stone upon which the world itself was built.
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It is the foundation not just for the temple in Solomon's day, but it is the holy place where God built the world and indeed the first temple, the temple where Adam and Eve, the sanctuary in the
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Garden of Eden where they worshipped God. And this rock has a very interesting foundational significance in Scripture.
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And according to the Psalms, which say that the holy light of God's Shekinah, His glory, comes streaming forth from this rock on top of Zion, the
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Jews argued in their traditions, and this is only a tradition, it's nothing explicitly taught by Scripture, so again, we don't want to build any argument on it, but I'm pointing out as a possible background, possible background in the mind of Jesus, that when
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God said, Let there be light, that the light burst forth first from this foundation stone. And therefore, some scholars, including many
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Protestants, as a matter of fact, all the scholars I've read who argue this are Protestant or Jewish. I've not yet encountered a
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Catholic who's willing to see this or is aware of these kinds of connections.
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They argue that one reason why Jesus might say, You are the rock, is because, again, as this darkness came bursting forth from the lips of the apostles,
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You're John the Baptist, you're Elijah. Well, none of those things are true. When this beam of light, the light of God's revealed truth, comes leaping from the lips of Peter, Peter, as it were, is identifying himself, or God the
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Father in heaven is identifying him, as the rock from which the light streams forth. And therefore, Jesus gets excited about this and says,
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As my father built the temple, as David built the temple over this rock, so I, the son of David, will now build my temple, my church, over this new rock.
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And just as that stone is seen in the Psalms as holding the powers of darkness, the waters of Sheol at bay, so you,
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Peter, will exercise that function as well. That's one possible connection, but I wouldn't want to base an argument on it.
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There's something else that I think is clearer, and that is that it's very interesting that God himself uses this foundation stone imagery in the
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Old Testament and applies it to Abraham. He says in Isaiah 51, verses 1 and 2,
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Look to the rock upon which you were built. Look to Abraham, your father, he says to Israel.
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Now Abraham, interestingly enough, is the first man and the most significant man in the Old Testament to have his name changed from Abram to Abraham, because God says,
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You're going to be a father, a father of a multitude, is what Abraham means. And that name change is very significant.
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And Abraham becomes the patriarch, the father upon which God builds, out of Abraham's loins, out of living flesh, builds the temple of Israel, the living temple of God's covenant people.
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It's also interesting that Simon is the first person and the most significant person whose name is changed again by God Almighty Himself here in the incarnate second person of the
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Trinity from Simon to Rock in this passage. The first person, and so there's a kind of parallelism here.
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In other words, Jesus may be saying, Peter, you will fulfill the same function in the new covenant
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Israel in the church, the Israel of God, as Paul says in Galatians 6, that Abraham did in the
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Old. You will be the father, a father figure, a patriarchal figure for the new covenant people of God.
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There's a third reason, and that is that this whole interchange is occurring in a very significant site.
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Matthew draws our attention to it by saying that it's Caesarea Philippi. It used to be called Panaeus up until just prior to this episode.
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It was called that because it was the site of a shrine dedicated to the Greek god Pan and many other ancient gods as well.
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And it became the shrine, the site of a new cult to a new god. Emperor worship was on the rise.
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And to curry favor with the Roman ruler, Herod Philip built atop a huge cliff of rock, 200 feet high, 500 feet wide, overlooking this very site where the conversation is taking place.
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He built a temple to Caesar as to God. And he renamed the town
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Caesarea Philippi, the town devoted, dedicated to Caesar by me, Philip. And Jesus is as much as saying, look, who is the real incarnation of God in the world?
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Is it Caesar? Or is it I? And therefore, which is the real temple?
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Is it that building? Or is it the church that I will build? And therefore, which is the real foundation stone?
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Is it this cliff? Or is it you, Simon? Because God has given you this insight and will work through you in this way.
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That's another reason why I think Jesus gives him the rock, because he's punning upon their setting and saying, look, this isn't where it's at.
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This isn't reality. This is reality, the gospel, the Christian faith. I am the real emperor, the real king.
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This is the real temple. And you are the real rock. Now we move on in verse 18 from this priestly language, this language of rock and foundation and sanctuary, to kingly language in verse 19.
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I will give you, Jesus said, the keys of the kingdom of heaven so that whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.
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And this language obviously comes from Isaiah chapter 22. Isaiah 22 is a very interesting passage and it starts in verse 20, the verses
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I want to look at, Isaiah 22, starting in verse 20, because it gives us the singular privilege of eavesdropping on the inauguration ceremony of a very important officer in ancient
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Israel, the prime minister, or the grand vizier, or the major domo, or the king's chamberlain, whatever term you want to use.
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The Hebrews used the term chief steward. Of all the stewards or ministers that the king had, he had a prime minister, a chief steward.
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And this was a person of incredible power, as say the prime minister in England is as well. The monarch has entrusted so much power to it that many people have asked, who's the ruler of England?
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Well, I guess it was Margaret Thatcher. She's just the prime minister of all the ministers. But there's a primacy of ministry that she has.
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The divinic kings had the same. And what we hear in Isaiah 22, starting in verse 20, is that God gives through His inspired prophet
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Isaiah an oracle that one of these guys was on the way out, and God was going to induct into office a more faithful man.
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And the language of the inauguration ceremony is cited here by God Himself. In that day
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I will summon my servant Eliakim, son of Hilkiah. I will clothe him with your robe and fasten your sash around him and hand your authority over to him.
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Notice the slang divestments, and investiture, and authority, power being handed over.
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He will be a father to those who live in Jerusalem and to the house of Judah. Notice he's spoken of in patriarchal, in paternal, in fatherly terms.
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I will place on his shoulder the key to the house of David so that what he shuts no one can open and what he opens no one can shut.
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He has the master key that supersedes all lesser keys. The same language Jesus used, of course, in Matthew 16, 19.
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And then he goes on to say that he will have a seat of honor for the house of his father and all the glory of his family will hang on him, its offspring and offshoots.
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Here we have one of the most important points, and that is that just as the Davidic king exercised his kingship through dynastic succession, so the office of prime minister was likewise here going to be transmitted from father to son, one of dynastic succession.
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This is a very important principle in the biblical concept of government.
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And Jesus draws upon this and applies this whole thing to Peter. He says, look, Peter, I am the
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Davidic king. My church is the house of David, the kingdom of God, and I need a prime minister just as the
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Davidic kings before me did, and you are going to be that prime minister, so I turn the keys over to you as the
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Davidic king did to his prime minister. The keys which represent authority to act as my representative and to govern the church in my name.
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Now, there's more I'd love to say about this passage, but I'm simply going to move on here.
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How much time do I have left, sir? Three minutes, thank you. Let me move on because some people say, gee, everything stands or falls with that passage.
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It does not. The Catholic faith is not pinned. It's teaching on the primacy of Peter on that passage alone.
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There are many other ones. Let me just mention a few other ones. One would be Luke 22, starting in verse 31.
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Actually, if you look up at verse 28 and 29, Jesus says to his apostles, you are those who have stood by me in my trials, and so I confer on you a kingdom.
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This theme of suffering leading to reigning is pervasive throughout Scripture. And he says to his apostles,
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I confer on you a kingdom as my Father conferred one on me, so that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones governing the twelve tribes of Israel.
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So we're talking about government here. We're talking about authority. We're talking about thrones of authority. And then he says,
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Simon, Simon, in verse 31, Satan has asked to sit you, plural, as wheat.
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You, apostles. Satan wants to get his mitts on you. But I have prayed for you. And here in the
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Greek, the you is singular. I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail.
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And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers. Of course, Jesus prayed for all his people, including all his apostles.
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But what he's highlighting here is that there is a strategic role that Simon would play with reference to the apostles as a whole.
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He is, as it were, a kind of a spine. He is a source of strength, Jesus says in verse 32, to his brothers.
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Jesus preserves and protects them all from Satan by upholding Peter. Peter has a foundational role to play.
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We see the same thing in John 21, where as the good shepherd, which Jesus identifies himself as in the
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Gospel of John in chapter 10, is about to go back to heaven. He entrusts the care of his flock to Simon Peter when he asks him three times,
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Do you love me more than these? And Simon says, You know I do. Then feed my lambs, tend my sheep, take care of my flock.
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All throughout scripture, when a prophet is called or someone is invested with authority, they're inaugurated into office, there's often this three -fold pattern in what we call a call narrative.
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And so there is here, certainly to balance out and to cancel out Peter's three -fold denial, but also to impress upon us the solemnity of this occasion.
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He entrusts the flock to Peter to act as his earthly representative, to be a shepherd, because the good shepherd is going back to heaven.
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Now, if this is true, if Jesus is indeed conferring a primacy on Peter, you would expect to see evidence of this elsewhere in the
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New Testament. And that is exactly what you find. Every time the apostles are listed in all four Gospels, in Matthew 10,
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Mark 3, Luke 6, Acts 1, Peter is always placed first, even though he wasn't chronologically the first Gospel, the first person selected.
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And he is given a special title. It says, First Peter, Matthew says. And he uses a
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Greek word that can have a double entendre there. There's a firstness, there's a primacy to Peter. As a matter of fact, his name of Peter, or Rock, is always given.
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Peter is named 195 times in the New Testament, and the second closest runner up is John at a whopping 29.
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Over and over again, in every episode, we see Peter frequently acting as a representative of the apostles and speaking on behalf of them all and Jesus addressing the twelve by addressing
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Peter. It offers us Peter and those that were with him, Peter and the rest of the twelve. Jesus singles Peter out for special privileges over and over again, whether it's the one coin to pay the temple tax for the two of them, or the walking on the water, or selecting
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Peter's boat, which I think has symbolic significance, to preach from, and then the miraculous catch of fish.
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The same thing happens in John 21. All throughout the book of Acts, Peter is the one that says in Acts 1,
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Look, Judas is gone. We have to appoint a successor. There's no argument. There's no big case made for it.
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It's assumed there will be apostolic succession. I guess I've got to stop, so I'll simply stop there and continue my debate in my rebuttal period.
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I thought I was going to get up. And now we will hear the opening statement of Mr.
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James. It is good to be with you again this evening as we now address the issue of the
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Roman Catholic teaching in regards to the person of Peter and the concept of the papacy.
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I would like to expand a little bit on what Mr. Matics has said and help you to understand more fully exactly what the
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Roman Catholic Church teaches in regard to Peter and the papacy. For example, from Vatican I, the
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First Vatican Council, we read, We therefore, for the preservation, safekeeping, and increase of the
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Catholic flock with the approval of this sacred council, do judge it to be necessary to propose to the belief and acceptance of all the faithful in accordance with the ancient and constant faith of the universal church, the doctrine touching the institution, perpetuity, and nature of the sacred apostolic primacy.
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And what did they teach? I hope you will allow me a few moments to read you that which was taught. We therefore teach and declare that, according to the testimony of the gospel, the primacy of jurisdiction over the universal church of God was immediately and directly promised and given to blessed
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Peter, the apostle, by Christ the Lord. For it was to Simon alone, to whom he had already said,
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Thou shalt be called Cephas, that the Lord, after the confession made by him, saying, and then we have the quotation, the passage that Jerry just read to us from Matthew chapter 16.
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And it was upon Simon alone that Jesus, after his resurrection, bestowed the jurisdiction of chief pastor and ruler over all his fold in the words,
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Feed my lambs, feed my sheep. At open variance with this clear doctrine of Holy Scripture, it has been ever understood by the
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Catholic Church are the perverse opinions of those who, while they distort the form of government established by Christ the
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Lord in his church, deny that Peter, in his single person, preferably to all other apostles, whether taken separately or together, was endowed by Christ with a true and proper primacy of jurisdiction, or of those who assert that the same primacy was not bestowed immediately and directly upon Blessed Peter himself, but upon the church and through the church on Peter, her minister.
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If anyone, therefore, shall say that Blessed Peter, the apostle, was not appointed the prince of all the apostles and the visible head of the whole church militant, or that the same directly and immediately received from the same our
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Lord Jesus Christ a primacy of honor only and not of true and proper jurisdiction, let him be anathema.
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And so as we examine the Roman Catholic position, let us recognize that it remains the same today.
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Vatican II in the section of the church, chapter 3, section 18, very clearly reiterated this very same teaching.
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So we are being told that the Catholic church has always understood Peter to have had a primacy amongst the apostles.
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But this primacy is seen most clearly in the main passage that Jerry spent his time on, Matthew chapter 16, specifically verses 17 through 19, where we are told the rock upon which the church is based is the person of Peter.
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Christ in this passage not only confers a primacy upon Peter, but upon the successors of Peter as well.
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Therefore, in this passage, we are being told that Christ institutes an office, which we know today as the papacy.
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Therefore, I'd like to make this statement. It is incumbent upon the defender of Roman Catholicism to demonstrate beyond question or infallibly, for the church claims to be infallible and claims absolute and complete trust in its statements regarding this issue, that one,
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Jesus is without question speaking to Peter in speaking about the rock in Matthew chapter 16.
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Secondly, that the words of Lord Jesus speak without question in establishing Peter as the prince of the apostles, the very first pope, the head of the
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Christian church. And third, that these words of Jesus necessarily indicate the creation of an office of pope replete with successors and the ascendant powers.
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Now, let us examine the Roman Catholic position. Primary, in my thinking, of course, will be an examination of Matthew chapter 16 because my opponent has spent most of his time dealing with that.
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And of course, even given the dogmatic statements of the church in Vatican I, it is directly said that this is the interpretation of this passage.
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And the Roman Catholic is bound to that. But before we look at Matthew 16 or John chapter 21,
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I need to ask the question, does the New Testament as a whole lead us to believe that Peter was considered to be the head of the church?
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Was Peter viewed as the vicar of Christ on earth? Was he ever called the Holy Father? Well, some might say, oh, those are titles that evolved at a later time.
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But what was the perspective of the early church in regards to Peter? Obviously, we have to ask this question because if Peter was actually given a primacy in Matthew chapter 16, then clearly we would see evidence of this throughout the
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New Testament. Do we find such evidence? I submit to you that we do not find a scintilla of evidence that Jesus gave this type of primacy to Peter or that anyone in the
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New Testament church believed that he had. Turn with me, for example, to 1 Peter 5, verses 1 -2.
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1 Peter 5, verses 1 -2. In this passage, written by the
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Apostle Peter, you notice who he is addressing. He says,
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Therefore I exhort the elders among you as your fellow elder and witness of the sufferings of Christ and a partaker also of the glory that is to be revealed, shepherd the flock of God among you, exercising oversight not under compulsion, but voluntarily according to the will of God and not for sordid gain, but with eagerness.
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Here Peter describes himself as a fellow elder. The Greek term is presbyteros, a term that was used on equal basis in the early church with the concept of the bishop, the bishop and the presbyter in the early church with the same offices along with all other elders.
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And he calls them his fellow elders. In talking to his fellow elders, that is, his equals, he calls them to shepherd the flock of God.
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There is no indication whatsoever in this passage that Peter views himself as the shepherd of the flock, telling less shepherds or other shepherds to shepherd with his authority.
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There is no indication of this whatsoever. He gives no hint of any supposed supremacy. Also in Acts chapter 15 in the great
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Jerusalem council, if you turn with me and your Bibles there, please. And I would encourage you to jot down the passages that are mentioned both by Jerry and myself this evening so that you have an opportunity of examining them at a later time because there is so little time in our discussion tonight to look at all of them.
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But in Acts chapter 15, you have the great Jerusalem council where the issue of the Gentiles is brought before the church.
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What must the Gentiles do, if anything at all, in regards to being in the church? And there is the problem of the
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Jews and the moral problem of the Gentiles and all these things are brought before the council. James is there.
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Peter is there. Paul is there. But there is no indication whatsoever in the text that Peter rules over this council or that Peter acts as a pope in this council.
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Instead, in verse 13, you will notice it is James who answers after the material has been presented, after people have spoken.
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And verse 19, it is James who gives his judgment. Notice, therefore, it is my judgment that we do not trouble those who are turning to God from among the
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Gentiles and that we write the letter that was sent to the churches. There is no indication whatsoever that Paul or James view
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Peter as the vicar of Christ, the Holy Father, the head of the Christian church in this passage.
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In Acts chapter 8, verses 4 through 13, Peter is sent along with John by the apostles to investigate the situation in Samaria.
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Again, the equality of the apostles is clearly seen in this passage as well.
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In short, there is nothing at all from the pen of Peter or the mouth of Peter that suggests that he viewed himself either as the rock upon which the church was founded or as the head of Christ's church on earth.
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There are other New Testament references to Peter. Peter is certainly, as Mr. Matics pointed out, heard from a tremendous amount of times in the
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Gospels. He speaks more often than the other apostles in the Gospels. But to jump from this to a concept of primacy and from that to a concept of an office centered upon Peter for all time is beyond, in my opinion, credibility.
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Peter was a spokesman. He was an impetuous spokesman. He was normally the one who spoke up first.
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But that hardly makes him a pope. If you look, for example, at Luke chapter 9, verse 33, an incident that takes place immediately after Matthew chapter 16's recording of the encounter in Caesarea Philippi, there at the transfiguration of our
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Lord Jesus Christ, when the Father appears and the Son is transfigured and all these things are going on in the mountain,
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Peter speaks up first again. He's the first one to make a statement. What does Luke tell us in Luke 9 .33?
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For Peter didn't know what he was saying. He just had to say something, so he said something. It made no sense.
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Obviously, it must have been embarrassing to him in later years, but he was an impetuous person and he spoke up freely.
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Does that make him a pope? No, it certainly does not. Peter took the lead in the Jerusalem church in the early days as well.
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No one in any way, shape, or form denies this is the case. It was through his instrumentality that the
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Gospel was first preached to Jews and Gentiles alike. But aside from these truths, which no one disputes, there is no
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New Testament evidence whatsoever that anyone in the church felt that Peter was superior to any other apostle or elder, let alone any evidence that Peter was understood to be the head of the church, the vicar of Christ, or the
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Holy Father. Paul testifies, for example, in 2 Corinthians 12, verse 11.
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He says, In nothing was I less than the very chiefest apostles. And I have to ask you, if Paul had believed that Peter had a primacy, or that he was the head of the church, would he have withstood
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Peter to the face in Antioch, in Galatians 2, verse 11 and following, when
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Peter himself, by his actions, compromised the very core of the
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Gospel itself. Peter's actions compromised the
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Gospel. And Paul withstood him. There is nothing in that passage that would lead anyone to believe that Paul viewed
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Peter as the head of the church, as the vicar of Christ on earth. Would Paul have spoken this way to the vicar of Christ on earth?
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No, Christ admits to you that Paul and Peter both knew who the true vicar of Christ on earth is, and that, my friends, is the
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Holy Spirit of God. Now, it is alleged by the Roman Catholic position that Peter was the
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Bishop of Rome and that he was in Rome at his death. Now, the Bible gives very little evidence that Peter was in Rome.
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Early tradition strongly supports his presence there, but how long he was there cannot be determined from tradition alone.
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If Peter were in Rome, we can tell it certainly was not for a long period of time. In fact, it is highly unlikely that Peter ever functioned as the
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Bishop of Rome there for any lengthy period of time at all. When Paul wrote to the Romans somewhere between 55 and 57
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AD, it is evident that Peter was not in Rome from the greetings that he sends. Paul's prison epistles from Rome never mention the presence of Peter.
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In fact, in one place, 2 Timothy 4, verse 16, I believe they make it very clear that either he was not there or he had abandoned
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Paul. If you look at 2 Timothy 4, 16, Paul says that at his first defense, no one stood with me.
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A devastating charge against Peter, if in fact he had been in Rome at this time, for Paul asks right afterwards the
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Lord not hold it against them. Paul further testified that Peter was called to be the
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Apostle to the circumcision in contrast with his own call to the uncircumcision in Galatians chapter 2.
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Now, was this just a temporary feeling on the part of Peter and Paul? Did it change over time?
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Or did Peter continue his ministry to the circumcision, for example, by going to Babylon itself, as he records in 1
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Peter 5, 13? So when we come and examine Matthew chapter 16, we have to recognize the fact that the interpretation that has been,
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I believe, forced upon this text by the Roman Catholic Church in modern times is without support in the rest of the
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New Testament. The New Testament apostles, the rest of the writings, simply do not view
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Peter as the head of the Christian church. Now, in looking at Matthew chapter 16,
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I ask you to turn there with me now. Let us make a few quick comments on this passage as well. Matthew chapter 16.
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Looking primarily at verses 17 -19, we note in the immediate context, as Mr. Matics brought out, that this statement of faith on the part of Peter, where he says,
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Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God, is due to a revelation that is given to Peter.
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Peter himself is the passive recipient of this revelation of God. And it is a revelation of grace.
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It is a revelation of grace. But I point out to you that anyone who recognizes in a true, heartfelt fashion that Jesus Christ is the
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Messiah, the Son of God, only knows that by a revelation. Only.
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Today, back then, makes no difference. And I point out to you that Peter was not the first one to recognize that Jesus Christ is the
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Son of God. John 1 .49 says, Nathanael recognized that Jesus was the
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Son of God long before Peter made this confession. Now, Jesus does address
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Peter personally as Mr. Matics pointed out. The pronoun, as in you are Peter, is singular. But I point out in passing, and we will look at this more in depth in just a moment, that in the
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Greek language, and of course we'll address also in a moment the discussion of whether this was written in Aramaic or Greek or things like this.
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In the Greek language, the terms Peter and rock are in different forms. Petros, Petrar.
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Jesus, I believe, is speaking to Peter about the rock. This rock, in the passage, is not direct address as saying, you are
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Peter. It is not a direct address in addressing the rock himself, as can be seen by the demonstrative pronoun, taute, if any of you happen to be carrying your
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Greek text with you this evening as well. Christ is the one in this passage who builds the church.
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His headship is never compromised, as he goes on to say. I will build my church.
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It will be a permanent establishment. The gates of Hades shall not stop the church of Christ.
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Now, there have been many interpretations of the rock in Matthew 16.
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Many interpretations. One of the interpretations is that the rock is the faith that Peter had confessed in Christ.
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This view has been taken by a large number of interpreters, including such notable early church fathers as Augustine and John Chrysostom.
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Augustine said, for his regard to his proper personality, he was by nature one man, by grace one
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Christian, by still more abounding grace, one and yet also the first apostle. But when it was said to him, and then the quotation of Matthew 16, 19, he represented the universal church, which in this world is shaken by diverse temptations that come upon it like torrents of rain, floods and tempests and falleth not, because it is founded upon a rock from which
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Peter received his name. For Petra, rock, is not derived from Peter, but Peter from Petra, just as Christ is not called so from the
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Christian, but the Christian from Christ. For on this very account, the Lord said, on this rock I will build my church, because Peter had said,
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Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. On this rock, therefore, he said, which thou hast confessed,
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I will build my church. For the rock, Petra, is Christ, and on this foundation was Peter himself built.
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For other foundation can no man lay than what is laid, which is Christ Jesus. And John Chrysostom also added,
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Therefore he added this, and I say unto thee, thou art Peter, and upon this rock will I build my church, that is on the faith of his confession.
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And elsewhere he said, for Christ added nothing more to Peter, but as though his faith were perfect, said that upon this confession of his he would build the church.
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And so there have been many of those who have taken the perspective that the rock is the faith that Peter had confessed in Christ.
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In fact, the Jesuit scholar Maldonathus wrote that there are among ancient authors some who interpret this rock, that is, on this faith, or on this confession of faith, in which thou hast called me the
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Son of the living God, Hillary, Gregory of Nyssa, Chrysostom, and Cyril of Alexandria. Another perspective is that Christ is the rock himself.
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Drawing this view especially from biblical New Testament usage of the term, even Peter himself frequently refers to Christ as the rock, though he never refers to himself as the rock.
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Augustine, in his retractations, mentions, quote, having sometimes adopted the language which Saint Ambrose had used in a hymn, and which designates
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Peter as the rock of the church, but most frequently, he goes on to say, he had interpreted the passage of Christ himself, led by the text that rock was
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Christ, and other foundation can no man lay. In that passage, Augustine leaves his readers at liberty to choose, but his mature judgment evidently inclines to the latter interpretation.
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Dr. Froehlich has said, the most astonishing fact is that in the entire Middle Ages, in contrast to the polemical literature of the period, specifically exegetical literature universally made the equation rock equals
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Christ, not rock equals Peter. The Venerable Bede also wrote, that upon this rock meant upon the
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Lord as well. And a third interpretation is the rock was Peter himself. The French Roman Catholic Lenoy listed 17 patristic testimonies that Peter was the rock.
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44 that list Peter's faith as the rock. That the rock was Christ himself is supported by 16, and all the apostles together being the rock supported by 8.
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Cyprian, the great early church father from North Africa, identified Peter as the rock, but as we shall see,
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Cyprian did not in any way believe that this indicated that the bishop of Rome had primacy in the church.
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And this is very important for us to grasp. For as Mr. Matitix very rightly pointed out, there are two aspects of the
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Roman Catholic claim. One, that Peter is the rock upon which Christ builds the church, and that it necessarily follows from this, that Peter has successors and that these successors have primacy in the church.
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Here you have Cyprian who believes that Peter is the rock, but he does not in any way, shape or form believe that there is one bishop above all other bishops, that there is one who has the supremacy in the church, as Vatican I would tell us if we don't believe that, if we reject that, that we are anathema.
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William Cathcart wrote, the same view of the scripture was taken by other leading fathers of the church, that is in regards to faith being the rock, and outside of Rome for the first five centuries of our era, no
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Christian father of any note dreamt that this saying gave Peter the sovereignty of the church.
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Now, it may be mentioned, and in previous debates on this issue, Mr. Matics has brought up the issue, that there are
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Protestants who interpret Matthew chapter 16 to mean Peter as the rock.
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For example, Dr. William Hendrickson takes this perspective, but we must point out that they are very quick to reject any papal pretensions that are placed upon this passage.
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Dr. Hendrickson, in his commentary on Matthew, beginning at page 645, presented three views that he said must be rejected, and one view that is to be appreciated, and one that he takes himself.
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The second view that he presented that must be rejected is that, quote, this passage proves that Peter was the first Pope.
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He then quoted Cardinal Gibbons of the faith of our fathers, which states, the Catholic Church teaches that our Lord conferred on St.
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Peter the first place of honor and jurisdiction in the government of his whole church, and that same spiritual authority has always resided in the
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Popes or Bishops of Rome as being the successors of St. Peter. Consequently, to be true followers of Christ, all
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Christians, both among the clergy and laity, must be in communion with the Sea of Rome, where Peter rules in the person of his successor.
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Dr. Hendrickson's response to this claim is, quote, the passage does not support any such bestowal of well -nigh absolute authority on a mere man or on his successors, end quote.
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These Protestant interpreters who accept that Peter is here called rock are clear in denying the
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Roman interpretation of the passage by insisting that this passage must be taken historically. Dr.
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Coleman in the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament follows other Protestants in saying that Peter is this, of course, only and not otherwise than as the
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Simon whom Christ has taken in hand, that is, the elected Peter. They emphasize, as Dr.
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Frederick Dale Bruner writes, the uniqueness, the historical once -for -allness of Peter's commission as rock.
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The text does not say on this rock and on his successors I will build my church. Solus Petrus.
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To take this text literally is to honor Peter only. Peter was given first place by Jesus as the one who first confessed
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Jesus Christ the divine son, and so Peter is made the first rock of the church, for the church is built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets,
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Jesus Christ himself being the cornerstone in Ephesians 2 .20. These Protestants' identification of Peter as the rock is of little assistance to the
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Roman position for the fulfillment of Peter's commission as they see it is directly contradictory to the Roman Catholic concept because they see
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Peter using the keys of verse 19 in a solely declaratory manner. That is, he is the one who preached the gospel, opened the kingdom of God to Jews and Gentiles alike.
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Now, in the brief few minutes I have left, I had 22 pages of notes this evening and I'm not going to get to very many of them in the opening statement, but in the few moments
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I have left, I want to address your attention to the position taken by Mr. Matitix and other modern defenders of the
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Roman Catholic concept of the papacy in regards to Isaiah chapter 22. Isaiah chapter 22.
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It was read in your hearing. A good deal of the background was presented in the passage, but amazingly enough to me, and I have yet to hear a
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Roman Catholic apologist use this passage and give you the full story about it.
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Why is that? Well, we look at Eliakim, the son of Hilkiah, and we see verse 22 that El set the key of the house of David on his shoulder.
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When he opens, no one will shut. When he shuts, no one will open. And Mr. Matitix tells us this is the language from which the
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Lord Jesus is drawing in Matthew chapter 16. In fact, Mr. Matitix specifically said
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Jesus draws on this and applies it to Peter. I don't believe so.
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If you have a cross -reference Bible, you may look at verse 22, and if you look over in your column, one of the first references you'll see is
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Revelation chapter 3 verse 7. Could we turn to Revelation chapter 3 verse 7 and read
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Revelation 3 verse 7? Let me read it in your hearing. These are the words of the
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Lord Jesus Christ, who I believe all of us in this room tonight most probably would accept as the infallible interpreter of Scripture.
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And to the angel of church in Philadelphia write, He who is holy, who is true, who has the key of David, who opens and no one will shut, and who shuts and no one will open, says this.
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That is a direct quotation of Isaiah chapter 22. Word for word.
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And who is the one who has the key, singular of David? Is it the Pope? It's the
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Lord Jesus Christ. Who is the one who opens and no one will shut? Is it the Pope? No, it's the
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Lord Jesus Christ. Who is the one who shuts and no one's open? Is it the Pope? No, it is the Lord Jesus Christ.
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And I would point out to you that in Jesus describing Himself, He takes Isaiah 22 and He interprets that prophecy of Himself.
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And He says here, and it would be interesting to note since Mr. Matitix is doing his doctoral dissertation on the book of Revelation when he dates this, but most scholars date this well after Peter's death.
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And the Lord Jesus says He is the one who has the key of David. The fulfillment of Isaiah 22 cannot in any way be taken to be in a
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Pope or in the papacy. Isaiah 22 is about the person of the
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Lord Jesus Christ in its prophetic fulfillment. Thank you very much. I'm glad that Mr.
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White says we need to look carefully at Matthew 16 because I think that is a significant passage, although I want to reiterate it is not the only passage.
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I want to take exception with some of the statements he made. I think he presented a very fluent, very masterful presentation, but there were some problems, some flaws in it, and I think some actually ultimately fatal flaws in it.
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First of all, it is not the case that Nathaniel made in John 1 the same confession that Peter makes in Matthew 16.
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We need to interpret Scripture very carefully, with precision. I think every word counts. What Nathaniel says is,
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Rabbi, you are the Son of God. You are the King of Israel. So there is a reference there to his kingship, and there is a reference there to the
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King as the Son of God. But I think Peter's confession is a richer one, a more three -dimensional one, because he says, you are the
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Christ, and Christ involves the idea of prophet, priest, and king, and we see this three -fold response on the part of Jesus.
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Regardless of what you think about that, if Nathaniel did even come up for the sake of argument with the exact same confession, this exactly proves my point.
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Jesus does not say to Nathaniel, I'm going to give you a special office. It's not a question of Peter having some extra spirituality or some extra qualification for the office.
01:00:09
We have an exercise of sovereign grace here on the part of our Lord. The point is this. Jesus never says to Nathaniel, I will give you the keys.
01:00:16
He never says what you bind will be bound, what you loose will be loosed. Another point
01:00:24
I want to make about this Matthew 16 passage is about this whole Petros -Petra controversy.
01:00:32
Mr. White alluded to the fact that there is disagreement among biblical scholars as to whether the distinction between Petros and Petra is at all germane to the issue, to the reading of the passage.
01:00:43
First of all, it is virtually certain that Jesus and the apostles as Palestinian Jews did not walk around speaking
01:00:52
Greek in their day to day conversations. The conversation occurred in Aramaic and every biblical scholar who specializes in the
01:01:03
Aramaisms, the idioms that were originally, that obviously show an
01:01:10
Aramaic thumbprint upon them, Matthew Black and others point out the enormous presence of Aramaisms in Matthew 16.
01:01:18
In other words, there are phrases here like flesh and blood and binding and loosing which are not native to the
01:01:24
Greek language. The world -renowned scholars like Joachim Jeremias and Oskar Kuhlmann who have made this passage, and these are
01:01:34
Protestants that I'm referring to, their special province of study have said no one can deny that what we have underlying the
01:01:42
Greek text that we study an Aramaic original. No one is able to muster an argument against that.
01:01:49
The evidence is overwhelming for that. In Aramaic, there is one word for rock, not two, masculine and feminine, it is kepha, which you have translated throughout the
01:01:59
Gospels and throughout the book of Acts and throughout Paul's epistles as cephas. It's interesting by the way that Paul refers to Simon as kepha, as rock.
01:02:08
He doesn't call him Simon. Why? You have to ask yourself does Paul refer to Simon as rock over and over and over?
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Why is that his characteristic way of referring to him if Simon is not a rock? Jesus said you are kepha, rock, and on this kepha
01:02:26
I will build my church. Every single testimony that Mr.
01:02:33
White is dependent upon for the apostolic authorship of the Gospel of Matthew, in other words, the
01:02:39
Gospel itself doesn't say this is written by Matthew an apostle. In the document itself, it's anonymous. You are dependent for your belief in the apostolic authorship of this
01:02:50
Gospel upon the testimony of the early church. They tell us who wrote these books.
01:02:56
And every single person who says that Matthew wrote the Gospel, if they go at all into detail about the circumstances of the writing, tell us that Matthew wrote it originally in Aramaic.
01:03:10
Some of them used the word Hebrew, which probably as it did generally in the first century, refers to Aramaic, this cousin language, it's almost dialect of classical pre -exilic
01:03:22
Hebrew. And so the evidence is overwhelming that the passage was originally written in Aramaic and certainly the conversation behind it was, and there's no attempt to make a distinction of two rocks there.
01:03:36
Even in the Greek, you don't have an adequate argument that Jesus is saying there are two rocks.
01:03:41
You're Petras. You see, this is what the reformers used to like to attempt back in the 1500s when our knowledge of Greek was really not as developed and sophisticated as it is today.
01:03:51
They would say Petras from our lexical study probably means a smaller, movable stone, while Petra always means a huge, immovable rocky cliff.
01:03:59
And so Jesus is saying, you're a movable stone, Simon, but on this rock, something else, either the confession or me, myself,
01:04:06
I will build my church. The problem is Greek can no longer support that distinction.
01:04:12
It's an utterly fallacious argument. And I find it incredulous that a Protestant today would want to use this when every major Protestant commentator,
01:04:23
Bible scholar, lexicographer, person who writes Greek dictionaries admits that Petras and Petra can no longer be used to distinguish larger from smaller rocks.
01:04:34
They're interchangeable. You can pull down off the shelf the volume of the largest Greek dictionary that exists,
01:04:40
Kittel's Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. And you can read the articles on Petras and Petra and Kuhlman will say they're interchangeable.
01:04:50
The fact that Petra cannot be some huge, immovable rock, if Mr. White wants to claim that there's a distinction, is refuted by the
01:04:57
Bible itself. When Paul speaks of the rock that followed the Jews in the wilderness, a movable rock, and says, and the rock was
01:05:06
Christ, and uses the word Petra for it. So this whole old argument that Calvin and Luther used, that Jesus is contrasting an immovable
01:05:14
Petra with a movable Petras, just doesn't wash. It's no longer honest argumentation.
01:05:21
Why is there a difference when the gospel was finally translated into Greek? Because Petra, the word used to describe this rock on this site, and the general word for large rock, is a feminine noun.
01:05:35
And it would have been socially inappropriate for Jesus to take a feminine noun and give it to a man as a new name.
01:05:42
He had to change it and give it a masculine, singular ending. And there is no evidence that it was a proper name for anybody prior to this time.
01:05:50
Jesus invents as it were, the word Petras as a name, and says, Simon, I will give you the name of rock.
01:05:59
But keep in mind that Jesus is not speaking Greek. And Matthew, out of courtesy to Peter, excuse me, as a man, it's in the masculine, singular form.
01:06:09
Now, it is true that some early church fathers, and they are not the majority, if you've been given that impression, did think that Peter was not the rock that Jesus said he would build his church on.
01:06:23
Augustine does say that in two places. But in many other places, he says that Peter is the rock.
01:06:31
Christensen does say that, and a few other fathers say it as well. But what's very interesting, however, is that although they felt that the proper exegesis of Matthew 16 said that Jesus was the rock, they did not use this interpretation to deny that Peter was the rock in other passages.
01:06:49
Thank you. They did not say that Peter is therefore not someone with special privileges conferred upon him.
01:06:55
It is insane to cite Augustine or Chrysostom or any of these other fathers that were mentioned as someone that might have agreed that Peter wasn't the rock, seem to say, well, we reject the
01:07:06
Roman Catholic understanding of the primacy of the Roman bishop. These people were Catholics who accepted the special rock -like status of the bishop of Rome as the inheritor of the teaching authority and the jurisdictional authority of Peter.
01:07:19
And there's no way to try to make them sound like proto -Protestants at that point.
01:07:25
I read, as a Protestant, years ago, a book which absolutely changed my way of looking at this whole issue.
01:07:34
It's a book compiled by a Protestant. Documents Illustrating Papal Authority, A .D.
01:07:41
96 -454 by Edward Giles, published by SBCK in London. What he has done is gone through all the primary source documents of the first five centuries.
01:07:52
Every memorandum, every letter, every sermon, every conciliar statement, every statement of a pope, that bears at all on this issue of whether Peter is the rock and whether the bishops of Rome are his successors.
01:08:09
And by the time I got to the end of this book, and I sat down and read the whole book, I remember the day vividly in a
01:08:15
Protestant library, from early in the morning until the time they had to kick me out of the library at midnight, I was overwhelmed with the avalanche of evidence, as I said before, that what you see, although fathers disagree slightly here and there on some points, that the consensus builds to an enormous swell and that the vast majority of people recognize what the cabinet church teaches today.
01:08:40
So the statement that in the first five centuries you don't have people seeing a sovereignty for the bishop of Rome is just not historically valid.
01:08:48
Look into it yourself. Get a hold of this book in a library and read yourself the documents and you will see that by the end of the fifth century the evidence is overwhelming, the consensus is there.
01:08:59
Thank you. Mr. White's rebuttal for ten minutes.
01:09:19
I'd like to point out a number of things in regards to Mr. Mattock's comments just now. I will not, however, use the,
01:09:27
I think, improper thing of saying, well, there's so many things I pointed out that Jerry didn't say anything about. That's just simply a time constraint and I don't feel it's right to say, well, hey,
01:09:35
I think Jerry's dodging this, that, and everything. I hope he gets an opportunity to mention a number of things that I said earlier.
01:09:41
However, I just have to respond to some of the things that were said because Mr. Mattock seems to like such adjectives as no one, certainly, there is no one who believes
01:09:52
X, Y, and Z in regards to these things. For example, it was said that every single person agrees and every single scholar agrees and no argument can be marshaled to say that the gospel of Matthew, the underlying conversation was in Aramaic or that the gospel was originally in Aramaic and these things.
01:10:12
Well, I guess this guy never existed, but his name was G .H. Schott and he wrote in the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia and he said this, one thing which seems certain is that whatever this
01:10:23
Hebrew or Aramaic document may have been referring to, referring to the statement by Pappius, it was not an original from which the present
01:10:30
Greek of Matthew was translated either by the apostle himself or by someone else. He is pointing out to these individuals that Jerry spoke of when he talked about some individuals, every single one who addressed the gospel of Matthew in the early fathers and talked about how it was written and said it was written in Hebrew or Aramaic.
01:10:52
I would suggest that you look a little more deeply into that because that isn't the case. Indeed, he goes on to say, the
01:10:58
Greek Matthew throughout bears the impress of being not a translation at all, but as having been originally written in Greek as being less
01:11:05
Hebraistic in the form of thought than some other New Testament writings. It is genuinely not difficult to discover when a
01:11:11
Greek book of this period is a translation of the Hebrew Aramaic. The article cites the fact that Matthew uses the
01:11:17
Septuagint translation of the Old Testament rather than the Hebrew indicating its originality in Greek and those references are in the book
01:11:25
Answers to Catholic Claims if you want to look at them. Now, Jerry then said that it is insane.
01:11:32
Maybe I just didn't hear him say that, but I thought I heard him say that it is insane to maintain that the early fathers who viewed
01:11:43
Peter as the rock or didn't view Peter as the rock, those who didn't view him as the rock, that these individuals did not accept the primacy of Peter and the
01:11:54
Bishop of Rome. Well, I'm going to have to be insane because my research indicates just the opposite.
01:12:01
In fact, since we're discussing books that you might want to look at, if you'd like to go to the library, I'd suggest you look up Dr.
01:12:07
Salomon's work The Infallibility of the Church. The Infallibility of the Church used to be published by Baker.
01:12:13
I'd suggest you read through it as well. It does an excellent job in addressing these issues. But Cyprian of Carthage, Cyprian must have been one of the insane early church fathers who made this distinction.
01:12:24
He was one of the most important early church fathers and aside from disagreeing with modern Roman Catholic teachings on such issues as the operation of the sacraments,
01:12:31
Cyprian's view of the church differed markedly from modern Roman doctrine on this issue. For our purposes, his view of the equality of bishops is most important.
01:12:41
In the preface to the Seventh Council of Carthage, Cyprian wrote, and Cyprian died in 258, so he's not exactly way down the road someplace.
01:12:49
For neither does any of us set himself up as a bishop of bishops, nor by tyrannical terror does any compel his colleagues 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.
01:13:08
Cyprian also openly rebuked the bishop of Rome, Stephen, who meddled in the affairs of the
01:13:14
African church in restoring the apostate Basilides to his post. Referring to this, Cyprian wrote, neither can it rescind an ordination rightly perfected that Basilides, after the detection of his crimes and the burying of his conscience, even by his own confession, went to Rome and deceived
01:13:31
Stephen, our colleague, not our superior, our colleague, placed at a distance and ignorant of what had been done and of the truth, to canvas that he might be replaced unjustly in the episcopate from which he had been righteously deposed.
01:13:46
The significance of this must be recognized. Here Cyprian, one of the minority, and I believe it is clearly minority, of early fathers who saw
01:13:56
Peter as the rock of Matthew 16, clearly did not believe that this gave any superiority or supremacy to the bishop of Rome.
01:14:05
He, like Dr. Hendrickson or Dr. Kuhlman, did not find any reason to believe that Matthew 16 records the establishment of an office of supremacy in the
01:14:15
Pope. I would also point out that the term Pope was used of men outside of Rome more than once.
01:14:21
In fact, I personally am unaware, and I would be glad if Mr. Matics would provide me references to this, of any use of the term
01:14:28
Pope with reference to the bishop of Rome in the first four centuries of the Christian era. Cyprian himself was addressed as Pope Cyprian in letters sent to him, interestingly enough, two times by the presbyters and deacons abiding at Rome.
01:14:43
You would think that the Roman presbyters and deacons would know who the one Pope was. Surely, if anyone knew that the term
01:14:49
Pope should not be used of anyone else, it would be these men. Dr. Cox does know that the term, quote, was originally given to all presbyters as implied in their name of elders and was a title of humility when it became peculiar to the bishops.
01:15:03
He further commented with reference to Jesus' words in Matthew 23, Call no man your father upon earth. Thus interpreted, these words seem to be a warning against the sense in which this name,
01:15:13
Papa or Pope, became long afterwards restricted in Western Europe. This was done by the decree of the ambitious Hildebrand, Gregory VII, who died in A .D.
01:15:22
1085 when in a synod held at Rome, he defined that, quote, the title Pope should be peculiar to one only in the
01:15:29
Christian world. Further, Dr. Cox noted the fact that the most ancient tradition relevant to the term
01:15:34
Papa continues in the East this very day. The patriarchs in the Eastern Church continue to be called
01:15:40
Popes despite Gregory VII's novel demand that only he have the name.
01:15:46
Other early Church documents again show that to claim what
01:15:52
I am claiming is not insane. The apostolic canons, which are dated from either the early 3rd to the late 5th century state, quote, the bishops of every country ought to know who is chief among them and to esteem him as their head and not do anything without his consent but everyone to manage only the affairs that belong to his own parish and the place that is subject to it.
01:16:11
But let him not do anything without the consent of all for it is by this means there will be unanimity and God will be glorified by Christ in the
01:16:19
Holy Spirit. The council of Nicaea, one of the most important councils in the Christian Church, an important council wherein the deity of Christ was defined and defended, where the bishop of Rome was not present, was represented by but two presbyters who had almost nominal dealings with the entire thing.
01:16:37
Are we really to believe that this incredibly important council was not guided by the vicar of Christ on earth?
01:16:43
Well, I hardly think so, but Canon 6 of the Council of Nicaea reads as follows. Let the ancient customs in Egypt, Libya, and Pentapolis prevail that the bishop of Alexandria have jurisdiction in all these, since the like is custom for the bishop of Rome also.
01:16:58
Likewise, in Antioch and the other provinces, let the churches retain their privileges, and this is to be universally understood that if anyone be made bishop without the consent of the metropolitan, the great synod had declared that such a man ought not to be a bishop.
01:17:10
So here you have Alexandria, Rome, Antioch, the patriarch of those churches was considered to have the authority in his area, but not in the authority over the other areas.
01:17:22
The bishop of Rome is not seen here at this great council as being the vicar of Christ on earth, the head of the church.
01:17:29
The Council of Chalcedon, 451, the 28th Canon, gives us an insight into why the
01:17:35
Roman bishop was seen as having any special authority by anyone. Let me quote a little bit of the section to you.
01:17:42
It's fairly lengthy, but I'll try to keep it fairly short. Following in all things the decisions of the Holy Father is acknowledging the canon, which has just been read, of the 150 bishops beloved of God, who assembled in the imperial city of Constantinople, which is
01:17:55
New Rome, in the time of the emperor Theodosius of happy memory. We also do enact and decree the same things concerning the privileges of the most holy church of Constantinople, which is
01:18:04
New Rome. Listen closely for the father's rightly granted privileges and throne of old
01:18:09
Rome, because it was the royal city, because it was the royal city. Now, I point out to you that, for example,
01:18:17
Jerome, as late as the beginning of the fifth century, wrote the following, wherever a bishop may be, whether at Rome or Eugebium, at Constantinople or at Regium, at Alexandria or at Tunis, he is of the same worth and of the same priesthood.
01:18:35
The force of wealth and lowness of poverty do not render a bishop higher or lower, for all of them are the successors of the apostles.
01:18:41
Listen to what he says. It would be like in our situation if we had a church, and I hope none of you are from the little city of Ajo.
01:18:48
If you were the bishop of Ajo, you would not probably be as readily recognized in your position as the bishop of Washington, D .C.
01:18:59
But here Jerome says that does not change the fact that these bishops are equal with one another.
01:19:07
It is insane to assert that the early church fathers, even those who rejected
01:19:13
Peter as being the rock, also did not believe and had no concept of a supremacy of the
01:19:21
Roman bishop. Then all of these facts must be called just that. They must be called insane, but they are facts nonetheless.
01:19:29
Thank you very much. We want to take a break, and I would like to call the meeting back to the second half in 13 minutes.
01:19:44
So around 20 until, start finding your way back to your seats. In the second half, a representative of the
01:19:54
City of the Lord community would like to make a brief announcement. When you leave tonight, we have two exits.
01:20:05
We have an exit here, and then, of course, this exit over here to your left that the majority of people came in.
01:20:12
So keep that in mind. You can go up this way, and I'll take you directly out to the street. Then I want to mention that this is not a church.
01:20:20
It's a Christian community, but it's a privately owned Christian community of the people of Longford such as myself.
01:20:29
However, they are not sponsoring this debate. The Catholic answer is, and the community here asked for their own protection that we get some liability insurance to cover in case any accidents could happen.
01:20:46
And this just makes sense because unfortunately we're in a society that we have too much of that.
01:20:53
And so we have a bucket over there and one over here, and we're not asking much, but believe it or not, we had to pay $250,
01:21:02
Catholic answers, not the owners of the building, $250 for insurance for this one -night stand.
01:21:09
So if you feel led to it, it's not big deal. It's a big deal.
01:21:16
It's not deal. It's not a big deal.
01:21:24
It's not a big deal.
01:21:41
It's not a big deal. It's not big deal.
01:22:43
It's not deal.
01:22:48
big deal. It's a a big deal. It's not a big deal. It's not a big deal. It's not big deal.
01:23:18
It's not it's deal. deal. It's not a big deal. it is a big deal. taxes to put them back up. But nonetheless, let me try to put some of these blocks back up that I think have been unjustly knocked down, and I want to hit some of these issues just rather rapidly.
01:23:33
First of all, the issue of the Aramaic original. I don't think it's a major issue tonight, but it's an issue that Mr.
01:23:40
White has contested, and so I want to make reference to it. The name of the German scholar that Mr.
01:23:47
White quoted is actually not shod, but shoddy, and I am suggesting that to select him alone and to read him might be considered by some a little bit shoddy in terms of scholarship because the one article that was cited is a turn of the century article in the
01:24:07
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia. It's been reprinted since then, but the whole understanding of Aramaic originals underlying the
01:24:17
Gospels has really come about and mushroomed in this century. The evidence wasn't even there.
01:24:22
The manuscript didn't even exist, and with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls and other biblical manuscripts, we have a vaster insight into some of these things.
01:24:31
I'm saying look at the 20th century scholars who have established expertise in this area.
01:24:37
Look at the works or look at any selection. Go into an evangelical Protestant bookstore and pull down the
01:24:45
Commentary on Matthew by R. T. France or the Anchor Bible Volume by William F. Albright or books by Herman Ritterbosch, one of the greatest
01:24:54
Dutch scholars, or Donald A. Carson, a turn of evangelical divinity school, or Gerhard Meyer, a fundamentalist
01:25:00
Lutheran minister, or Jean Carmignac, the author of The Birth of the Synoptic Gospels, which
01:25:05
Catholic Answers does carry. Look at the work of William Farmer and William Hendrickson, Henry Alford, even most of the works of the last century, like Henry Alford's Greek New Testament and William Hastings' Dictionary of the
01:25:19
Bible. Hastings says in his
01:25:25
Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels, the common view that the rock is
01:25:30
Jesus himself has scarcely any supporters among the interpreters of today. Most Protestant scholars agree with the
01:25:37
Roman Catholic Church in understanding the rock to be Peter himself. Now that doesn't prove Catholicism, and my point was not that all of these
01:25:44
Protestant scholars are ready to sign up to join the
01:25:52
Catholic Church, but we've got to take this folks one step at a time. It's too easy to get confused. My first point, very simply, is that the best, most responsible way of interpreting
01:26:03
Matthew 16 is to see that Peter is the rock being spoken of and that he has a foundational role.
01:26:09
And most Protestant scholars today, I said most, I didn't say everyone, of course there are people who will vehemently deny this, but most
01:26:17
Protestant scholars today will admit this. The citations from the fathers were highly selective, and I don't know really how we can help you on this.
01:26:27
You're going to have to really sit down and read them for yourself. Cyprian, for example, did dispute with Pope Stephen, the
01:26:36
Bishop of Rome, and in that dispute he took his classic treatise on the unity of the
01:26:42
Catholic Church and wrote a revised version of it in which he downplayed and cut out all the compliments he had lavished upon the
01:26:50
Bishop of Rome in his first edition. That's a matter of historical record. Nonetheless, Giles, a
01:26:56
Protestant scholar, says this about Cyprian's work. To Cyprian, the rock is Peter, and our
01:27:02
Lord builds his church on Peter. He says this so often that no one doubts that this is
01:27:07
Cyprian's view. And I could read you, if I had the time, which I don't, dozens of quotations from Cyprian in numerous epistles.
01:27:16
You can go into any library and read them for yourself. In numerous treatises were over and over again. He says Peter is the rock.
01:27:21
God built his church upon Peter. So, so much for that.
01:27:26
The same goes for the other fathers which have been mentioned. Certainly you can find a quote here and a quote there, but I would recommend seeing something like Giles and reading the cumulative effect.
01:27:38
Jerome, by the way, is not a good example either of someone to cite as someone that's undermining this claim.
01:27:45
Jerome said in a letter to Pope Damasus himself in 376, as I follow, excuse me, it is to the successor of the fishermen that I address myself, to the disciple of the cross, as I follow no leader save Christ.
01:28:00
Notice the logic here. So I communicate with or in communion with none save your beatitude that is with the chair of Peter.
01:28:07
He doesn't say it's either or since I acknowledge the Lordship of Christ, I therefore reject your authority, but the one is the basis of the other.
01:28:16
Why? For this I know is the rock upon which Christ built the church. This is
01:28:21
Noah's Ark and he who is not found in it shall perish when the flood overwhelms all. And there are many other statements of Jerome as well, indicating the primacy of the
01:28:31
Roman bishop. So much for, therefore, Jerome. The councils likewise.
01:28:37
No, the Pope wasn't at the Council of Nicaea. He sent legates. All of these early councils are all happening in the east.
01:28:44
And he simply sent ambassadors or emissaries there. And it's interesting that even these eastern fathers,
01:28:51
Chrysostom and others that would have no political reason to want to give any inch to Rome, nonetheless, acknowledge in these early church fathers writings that Rome has this priority and they don't base it on Rome's political being, being the political capital, the empire.
01:29:06
On the contrary, when you read letter, Clement's first letter to the Corinthians, when you read
01:29:12
Ignatius's letter to the Romans, when you read what Irenaeus has to say, and I hope I get a chance to hear a momentarily and what
01:29:20
Chrysostom and Jerome and others say, they say the reason Rome is special is because the two chief apostles,
01:29:27
Peter and Paul, went there. They labored there. They established the church there.
01:29:33
The church was the beneficiary of their preaching. They spilled their blood there and thus with by that sacrifice for Christ's sake, consecrated that church and made it special and continue, as it were, to have a connection with that.
01:29:50
I don't have time to get into the whole biblical theology of martyrdom, but they continue to exercise a kind of governing, a kind of supervision of the church there.
01:29:57
And father after father says, for this reason, this church can not be touched by error.
01:30:03
This church is guaranteed because it was the beneficiary of so much grace filled, inspired, spirit filled and infallible preaching on the part of these two apostles.
01:30:12
And over and over again, Rome is seen as that which puts its stamp of approval. All other churches,
01:30:18
Irenaeus said in the second century, must agree with this church from 140 to 220 A .D.
01:30:23
that you had a flood of heretics going to Rome trying to get their particular false teaching ratified, knowing that if Rome somehow could be tricked into endorsing their teaching, then everyone would accept it as authoritative and apostolic.
01:30:38
And of course, they were unsuccessful. And a book like Giles will show you that. Now, another issue that's moving on from the whole idea of the rock is the issue of the keys.
01:30:47
And that has not been, I think, adequately addressed by Mr. White. He has addressed it, but I'm saying not adequately, because as I looked at Isaiah 22, 22 in Revelation 3, 7,
01:31:01
I and Matthew 16, I ended up somewhat disagreeing with him that Revelation 3, 7 is a direct quote word for word.
01:31:10
It is not. There are words that are true that are not in Revelation 3, 7 and vice versa. It is no more a direct quote than Matthew 16 is.
01:31:18
But I don't want to split hairs. I think if you look at both passages, you see that both of them hearken back to Isaiah 22.
01:31:26
Absolutely. That is the very point that I am trying to make, that Jesus Christ has the key of David.
01:31:33
Why? Because he's the son of David. But what is the son of David do with those keys? He does what every
01:31:39
Davidic king has done. He hands them to a prime minister. No one is denying that Jesus is the ultimate authority, the ultimate head of the church.
01:31:46
The Catholic Church affirms that. So certainly he received the key of David and holds it permanently because he is the
01:31:53
Davidic king and the gospels identify him as such. But he takes these keys and notice here, by the way, it's plural.
01:32:01
And you cannot get away from the fact that whatever you think about the rock, Jesus said in Matthew 16,
01:32:07
I give you, Peter, the keys of the kingdom of heaven. What is Mr. White going to do with that verse?
01:32:13
He can't say Jesus has it. Peter doesn't. Jesus said, I give him to you and all those keys imply.
01:32:20
So I think when you go through the other passages that we looked at, I have other things that I want to ask him about, but I don't have much time left.
01:32:29
I think you'll see that the authority of Peter is affirmed throughout the
01:32:36
New Testament. In the book of Acts, for example, he is the one, as I pointed out before, who called this meeting and said,
01:32:43
Look, we have to appoint a successor to fill Judas's place. Notice Peter's view of apostolic succession.
01:32:50
He doesn't argue about it. He doesn't build a case. We have to do this. And if Judas, a wicked apostle, is his successor, how much more would
01:33:01
Peter need to receive one as well? Thank you very much,
01:33:11
Mr. Moderator. I have written down a number of things that in ten minutes
01:33:16
I have eleven things. That shows you how fast I have to go. First of all, I must remind everyone that this debate is about the teaching.
01:33:26
The Roman Catholic claim that Peter is the first pope. He has successors and there is a primacy in that office.
01:33:34
The Catholic claims are absolute in that regard and therefore cannot be a matter of, well, we've got a 50 -50 chance that our interpretation is right and you have to believe it because of that.
01:33:44
If not, an infallible church cannot give you a, well, this seems to be the best interpretation. I know there are others and yes, a couple early church fathers has agreed with us, but hey, we've got the best possibility and you are supposed to believe us on the basis of that.
01:33:57
If you're going to claim absolute authority, you have to have absolute certainty. I'd like to point out a few other things in passing.
01:34:03
First of all, when I mentioned Nathanael and his confession of Jesus as the Son of God and that confession coming, we believe, as it's shown in Matthew 16 from God the
01:34:13
Father Himself. I would also like to point out that previous to Peter, Simeon, way back when
01:34:19
Jesus was but a lad, taken to the temple, confessed that Jesus was the
01:34:25
Christ. In Galatians chapter two, verse nine, I'd like to point out something else that Mr. Mattock said.
01:34:30
He said over and over again, Peter is always the one who is listed first amongst the apostles. But in Galatians chapter two, verse nine, when the bishops or elders or pastors of the church in Jerusalem are mentioned,
01:34:42
Peter is not mentioned first. He is not the first in the list. He is not given a quote unquote position of primacy.
01:34:49
Lest there be some calumny in my not addressing John chapter 21, verses 15 through 17.
01:34:54
Let me very quickly do so. In John chapter 21, where Jesus instructs Peter to feed his sheep,
01:35:00
Jesus is again the direct object of the Lord's attention, not because Peter has some immediate primacy or assigned primacy that is supposed to be an office in the church, but because Peter is in need of restoral following his failure and denial of the
01:35:15
Lord. Christ deals directly with any disciple, you or I, any disciple or follower, just as he does with Peter.
01:35:23
Does this mean that each disciple who personally encounters Christ has primacy over other disciples?
01:35:30
Certainly not. And Peter himself, when addressing the very issue of shepherding the flock in first Peter chapter five, verses one through two, shows no indication whatsoever that his fellow elders do the shepherding of their flocks under his guidance, which is what
01:35:47
Vatican one and the Roman Catholic Church teaches in regards to the papacy. Now, in reference to the subject of Aramaic and the whole issue of the modern
01:35:59
Aramaic view and everything else, mathematics has said, well, at the time that this article, this shoddy article was written, manuscripts didn't exist.
01:36:11
Well, I'd like to ask Mr. Matics, has he yet found the original manuscript of Matthew? If he has, he has no something that the vast majority of biblical scholars today have no knowledge of.
01:36:22
The fact of the matter is that the reconstruction of a supposedly original Aramaic is a matter of conjecture.
01:36:28
There is no original Aramaic. And I must ask you something else in regard to the inspiration of scripture. When was
01:36:35
Matthew inspired? Was it inspired only in the Aramaic original? And whoever did the translation of Matthew just,
01:36:43
I don't know what controversy and boy, we wish we knew what was originally inspired. Don't we know anymore?
01:36:49
No, my friends, we do. We do now in regards to Protestant scholars interpreting
01:36:55
Peter as the rock. I want to again point out to you that the Protestant scholars that Jerry is talking about while they view
01:37:04
Peter as the rock, view this as a literal passage with a literal fulfillment in Peter and in Peter only.
01:37:12
And I point out to you that if that is the proper interpretation of the passage, if that is the only proper interpretation of the passage, you cannot read into this passage.
01:37:22
The concept of successors. There is nothing in Matthew 16 that gives any indication that this promise to Peter has anything to do with succession.
01:37:32
Moving on to the next point, Jerry talked about Pope Stephen and Cyprian.
01:37:38
I'd like to ask Jerry, did Cyprian call the bishop of Rome Pope in those correspondences that we have with him?
01:37:44
I'm not aware that he did. I'd like to ask Jerry to show me where he did. I'd like to be corrected about that. I don't think Cyprian called him Pope.
01:37:50
And I'd like to point out to you as well in Cyprian's doctrine that Cyprian speaks of priests being elected by the people.
01:37:56
And in fact, the Roman bishop, the bishop of Rome was elected by the people until 1058, at which time the
01:38:02
College of Cardinals had having evolved through the preceding couple of hundred years now elected a person and then proceeded to present him to the people for their acclamation.
01:38:11
But up until that time, as Cyprian taught, it is the people who determine who the priests are to be.
01:38:17
That was his perspective. Cyprian did not believe that the bishop in Rome had a primacy that allowed him to tell
01:38:26
Cyprian and the other bishops in North Africa what to do. He did not believe that in regards to the
01:38:33
Jerome quote. There are passages presented to your hearing regarding Jerome and his view of the bishop of Rome.
01:38:38
But I want to remind you again, why did I quote Jerome? Did I quote Jerome to try to tell you that Jerome didn't have some special view of the bishop of Rome?
01:38:48
No. If you recall why I quoted Jerome, I quoted Jerome in regards to the quality of the bishops, the equality of the bishops, and that a bishop in a great city like Rome or a bishop in a little city like Eugebium could not be considered to be in a hierarchical situation where one bishop's superiority to the other caused him to have a higher standing over him.
01:39:13
Now, I want to present to you one of the some of the words of one of the bishops of Rome, one of the bishops of Rome, Gregory I, one of the greatest bishops of Rome.
01:39:25
He sat in Rome from 590 to 604. He strongly opposed the concept of a universal bishop.
01:39:34
While Gregory himself took a number of actions that anyone will admit in the wake of the fall of the
01:39:42
Western Emperor that led the development of the medieval papacy and its attendant claims seen in such men as Innocent III.
01:39:49
He himself did not believe in the theology that underlies much of modern Roman doctrine of the papacy, especially as seen in what
01:39:57
I read to you originally from Vatican I. Too many things to bring up here.
01:40:04
Let me give you some of the quotes from this bishop of Rome, Gregory the Great. Now, I confidently say that whosoever calls himself or desires to be called universal priest is in his elation the precursor of Antichrist because he proudly puts himself above all others.
01:40:24
And he said more. If then he shuns subjecting the members of Christ partially to certain heads as if beside Christ being
01:40:31
Paul, though this were to the apostles themselves, what will thou say to Christ, who is the head of the universal church in the scrutiny of the last judgment, having attempted to put all his members under thyself by the appellation of universal?
01:40:44
Who, I ask, is proposed for imitation in this wrongful title, but he who, despising the legions of angels, constitutes socially with himself, attempted to start up to an eminence of singularity that he might seem to be under none and to be alone above all.
01:40:59
Gregory likens anyone who would claim to be universal bishop to Lucifer himself, who attempted to raise his throne above the throne of God himself in Isaiah chapter 14.
01:41:13
Now, I point out to you that Gregory's successor took the title.
01:41:19
Now, who is right? Is it Gregory or his successor? Which one? Clearly, we see that Gregory does not believe in a universal bishop.
01:41:28
He does not believe in a universal bishop. Mr. Matic's quoted from Irenaeus. So little time in one minute and 30 seconds.
01:41:35
I will simply give you the reference. You can find these in almost any library around the Antonicing Fathers published by,
01:41:42
I believe it's Erdmann's volume one, page 415 and Irenaeus against heresies, right hand column down the bottom of the page.
01:41:47
You have the quotation that Mr. Matic's gave you. I would like to ask you to examine it in context for yourself.
01:41:54
Finally, in regards to Revelation three, seven and Isaiah chapter 22 and the presentation made by Mr.
01:42:00
Matic's where he didn't mention Revelation three, seven originally, he said that Jesus took this language.
01:42:06
He took this passage and applied it to Peter. I pointed out. No, he didn't. There's nothing in Matthew 16 that tells us he's quoting from Isaiah 22.
01:42:13
When Jesus quotes Isaiah 22, he quotes it of himself. He's not simply hearkening back to Isaiah chapter 22.
01:42:20
He's obviously quoting it. He's applying it to himself. And when he says he has the keys is a present participle.
01:42:27
Jerry Haechon, the one having the key singular. It's singular in the
01:42:32
Hebrew. It's singular in the Greek Revelation three, seven. It's impossible for me to think about how a person could not see that.
01:42:37
I'd like to also point out that no early church father that I've been able to find the first 700 years of the church used
01:42:43
Mr. Matic's argument from Isaiah chapter 22. The keys spoken of by Jesus is plural, not singular.
01:42:51
And those keys are given to all of the apostles in Matthew chapter 18, not to Peter alone.
01:42:56
Thank you very much. Examination section under the cross examination section, each person will have 30 seconds in which to frame a question.
01:43:13
The other will have two minutes to respond and then the questioner will have one minute to rebut.
01:43:22
Mr. White will go first and then we'll go back and forth. And Mr.
01:43:29
Matic will have the last opportunity to ask that question.
01:43:35
So why don't we have Mr. White begin? Mr. Matics, in regards to the concept of the papacy,
01:43:44
I would like to ask you, as I presented originally, if you feel that the treatment by the apostle
01:43:55
Paul of the apostle Peter in Galatians chapter two is confident with modern
01:44:01
Roman Catholic teaching in regards to the position of the pope in the church. Yes, absolutely.
01:44:10
You asked the question, would Paul have spoken this way to the vicar of Christ?
01:44:16
Would he have rebuked him to his face? There is nothing in the Catholic under was willing to rebuke
01:44:34
Jesus. And later on in Matthew 16, he knows that Jesus as heads of your household, if you chose something, rebuked
01:45:18
Jesus or when you're many, many possibilities of citing examples or there's nothing wrong with that.
01:45:42
It is faultless in his performance or in what he teaches. And Paul stresses when he talks to Peter that Peter is not guilty of heresy.
01:45:53
He says, Peter, you and I agree that we do not need to eat kosher and be circumcised and so forth.
01:45:59
He calls Peter a hypocrite. A hypocrite is someone who doesn't practice what he preaches. But with what Peter preached with his creed,
01:46:05
Paul had no objection. If Mr. White is going to say, look, his morals, his behavior is involved in teaching and he's going to end up.
01:46:25
Of course, I wasn't raised. Paul's rebuke of Peter was hardly simply a criticism.
01:46:32
He struck at the very core of the gospel. Yes, Peter did question Jesus and set him aside. And Jesus's response was he called
01:46:38
Peter Satan by saying it behind me. But in regards to the issue of people down to the ages having questioned and rebuked the
01:46:45
Roman Catholic pontiff, that is very true. But without getting into the attempting to say that this in and of itself disproves the concept of the papacy,
01:46:54
I must remind us who are historically minded, I hope, that some people such as Savonarola in Florence who questioned the papacy and rebuked the pope were burned for their efforts.
01:47:06
That obviously, I think, shows that a simply a rebuke of the
01:47:11
Roman Catholic pope has been understood in the church through the history and certainly in light of Vatican One as being something that shows us that Paul's view of Peter is not the same view as is held by the
01:47:24
Roman Catholic Church in modern times. Mr. Mattis has 30 seconds to ask a question.
01:47:31
Would you listen to the following quote, please, Mr. White? Simon, my follower, I have made you the foundation of the
01:47:36
Holy Church. I used to formally call you Peter because you, or I at times, excuse me, called you
01:47:42
Peter because you are the inspector. Yours is that life -giving in scripture.
01:48:13
Well, obviously, how come to believe, as Vatican One said, that the concept of the papacy is found in the unanimous consent of the early fathers or in consent with what they believe.
01:48:28
The point that we must keep in mind tonight is that I have demonstrated that early fathers disagreed with Roman position.
01:48:35
I have demonstrated that to be the case. Men that otherwise the Roman Church considers to be orthodox and therefore, since it is incumbent that the papal position is the only position that can be taken, that it is a position of absolute authority, that Peter was given this primacy, then it is up to you to demonstrate that these individuals did not dissent and did not disagree.
01:48:58
But I also, in response to that, you asked me sort of a rhetorical question. How could Ephraim have said these things?
01:49:05
I respond to you. How could so many popes down through history have allowed the donations of Constantine, which we know today were complete and total forgery, but were used to prop up papal claims throughout the
01:49:14
Middle Ages and into the 1400s when Lorenzo Valla discovered they were? How could popes have used these things who were, in fact, fraud?
01:49:23
It's just as much a rhetorical question as a question that you ask me. Well, the donations of Constantine were discovered by later methods of literary criticism to be inauthentic, but the
01:49:35
Catholics does not claim that popes are infallible in their understanding of literature. Newman said this, and godly men and sincere men disagreed on many of these things.
01:50:05
It takes time as accumulative to be authentic and orthodox teaching, which
01:50:27
Jesus and the apostles intended us to adhere to. So I think we have to be consistent here. I obviously disagree very strongly that the concept of papacy, the doctrine of the trinity, is clear in scripture.
01:50:45
The number of passages that clearly teach the deity of Christ, the person of the Holy Spirit, is beyond question.
01:50:51
So far beyond the thin layer of passages that have been presented to us and the thin interpretation that's been presented to us.
01:50:58
Father's not seeing your view? Most definitely, but we would consider any father who denied the deity of Christ to be unorthodox.
01:51:05
And I would also point out to you in regards to the two wills issue that Pope Honorius, one of the popes of the
01:51:10
Catholic Church, as you would claim, then one of the bishops of Rome, held a false view of that issue. The issue again is, does the scripture teach this?
01:51:19
Does the scripture teach it? I do not believe the scripture does at all with anywhere near the amount of evidence that the scriptures teach in the doctrine of the trinity.
01:51:27
There's no way of paralleling the two whatsoever. Now we go on and have
01:51:33
Mr. White cross -examine. Mr. Medetichs, you allege that in Matthew chapter 16,
01:51:43
Peter is given, well I can't tell if it's key or keys because of the
01:51:49
Isaiah 22 issue, but he's given keys. Do you not agree that in Matthew chapter 18, these keys are also given to all of the apostles?
01:52:00
I do not agree because I'm in keys in Matthew 16.
01:52:16
You and I, and everyone here has to deal with them. What did Jesus mean when he gave keys to Peter? It's a sign, it's a symbol of authority.
01:52:23
What authority did Jesus, by virtue of the understanding of the keys, transfer that we read about in Isaiah 22?
01:52:33
The answer is yes. In Matthew 18, there is no reference to keys, ladies and gentlemen. Look in the
01:52:38
Bible for yourself. Jesus repeats to the apostles as a whole that whatever they bind will be bound, whatever they loose will be loosed, but there's no reference to the keys.
01:52:45
The keys are exercised by the prime ministers. They're all ministers, but it's an incredibly weak argument to say that because Peter says in 1
01:53:05
Peter 5, I as a fellow elder beseech you, therefore he's not aware of any primacy.
01:53:11
That just doesn't follow. I mean, when Richard Nixon said, my fellow Americans, he wasn't saying, gee, I guess, you know,
01:53:17
I'm no more authoritative than you are. I'm just a fellow American with you. You can appeal at a lower level than what
01:54:05
Jesus said to him. No. Obviously, Peter didn't forget what Jesus said to him. That's what continues to confuse key and keys.
01:54:16
If you want to use Isaiah chapter 22, it's a key. The key in Isaiah chapter 22, according to Jesus Christ, and I take his interpretation.
01:54:29
Therefore, there's obviously no ability to use Isaiah chapter 22 in Matthew chapter 16. When he talks about the people as a fellow elder, he said he does not have to swagger about.
01:54:39
That is very true. He does not. But there is nothing in scripture. Talk about arguments of silence. There is nothing in scripture that you can present to me that Peter viewed himself as anything but a fellow elder.
01:54:50
You have to read into the idea that he considered himself a pope or the head of the church. And they're simply from anywhere in scripture.
01:54:58
It would be anyone who's simply reading scripture to believe that Peter was the head of the church, the holy father, the vicar of Christ on earth.
01:55:05
Those terms are never used of him. And they are not in any way accurately representing what the teaching is about.
01:55:12
Mr. Matterport's turn to cross examine. Mr. White, if you look at those passes that you cited from the
01:55:22
Council of Carthage and other apostolic canons, don't you need to admit to this audience that the context there is that when
01:55:34
Cyprian says no one of us sets us up as a bishop of bishops, he's talking about no one bishop of a local area sets himself over another, but he's not speaking to the issue.
01:55:50
No, I saw this interfere in the affairs of the
01:55:57
North African church in regard to the heretic vassal ladies. I do not believe, again, that we can avoid the fact of making this significant allegation that the
01:56:06
Roman Catholic Church and attempting to build its concept of the papacy is guilty of taking modern concepts and reading them back into ancient documents.
01:56:14
I would challenge anyone to read the ancient documents for themselves, not simply selected portions of them that are put together under titles, but the whole documents themselves.
01:56:26
And they will see that these beliefs were not the universal faith of the church. And I must remind you that if the
01:56:32
Roman Catholic position of an infallible church and infallible pope can is to be maintained this evening in debate, it must be demonstrated that this is the only interpretation of these passages
01:56:45
I have demonstrated to you. And Mr. Mantic has admitted that early fathers did not hold this position.
01:56:51
They denied this position. They functioned in the church with a denial of this position. And therefore, since it is obvious that men have disagreed about this, men who are inside the church, then obviously the
01:57:02
Roman Catholic perspective that has to have absolute authority cannot win the day. Folks, several things that I could take exception to.
01:57:16
First of all, it is not a question of modern statements being modern, being read back into ancient statements, read for yourself, take
01:57:24
Mr. White's advice, sit down and read through Giles' documents on certain people, authority collected by a Protestant, all the all the relevant material.
01:57:32
And you will see the reason he stopped this book in 454 is by that point, there is consensus in the church that when
01:57:39
Leo, for example, speaks at the Council of Council, which he did not mention, the people say
01:57:44
Peter has spoken. The matter is settled. Leo's poem decides the doctrine of the two natures in the one person.
01:57:51
It is a misrepresentation of the Catholic position that there must be unanimity among all the fathers or the
01:57:57
Catholics has no right to say this is the right view. There were differing views from the fifth century on with consensus and unanimity is on the basis of the infallibility of the
01:58:12
Pope, which infallibility is not the issue of debate tonight. We now proceed to the next.
01:58:25
Mr. Matics, you have undertaken this evening to defend the proposition that Peter was made the
01:58:42
Pope and that there is an office of successors in the papacy. I simply must ask very basically, what passage do you feel gives you the right to believe that Peter himself believed himself from Peter?
01:58:59
If you would, please, if you believe such a passage exists to be the vicar of Christ on earth, you need to break this down to the various components.
01:59:10
First of all, the question is, did Peter have a primacy? We can't talk about success. And as I have read to you over and over again, plus the scholars are willing to admit this.
01:59:22
These scholars, I agree, do not see that's clear, but they're willing to say what
01:59:27
Max Torian said is the universally held opinion of all reputable scripture scholars that the primacy of Peter is evident without exception in all the
01:59:36
Gospels. That's in his book, One in Christ, published in 1986. So the primacy of Peter is acknowledged by Kuhlman in his classic work.
01:59:44
He's the Protestant expert on Peter in his book, Peter, Disciple, Apostle and Martyr. They don't think it has succession, but one thing at a time, are you willing to see that Peter has a primacy, a headship?
01:59:53
If so, then let's move to the second question. Would Jesus want this at the end of Peter's life?
02:00:01
No, there is succession. Jesus said dynastic succession built into the office of prime minister.
02:00:07
We see that in Isaiah 22. Secondly, we see in Acts one of the apostles were understood automatically without argument that it needs successors.
02:00:15
And thirdly, when we read the evidence of the early church fathers and all the believers in the early church, nobody doesn't believe in apostolic succession.
02:00:24
Everybody that talks about the teachers in the church that day say that the official, there are no
02:00:32
Protestants in the early church who say apostles don't have successors. There is no one that says
02:00:37
Peter doesn't have any successors. Everyone acknowledges that the bishop of Rome is a success.
02:00:44
They might want to disagree or in a moment of wanting to be disobedient, dispute the rights of that bishop to lord it over them.
02:00:59
But everyone understands that the bishop of Rome and the evidence in a book like John is overwhelming on that point.
02:01:10
I'm sorry, Mr. began to address my, do you find a single passage in scripture where Peter expresses or gives any indication that he feels himself to be the vicar of Christ on earth?
02:01:24
My personal position is there obviously is no such passage anywhere in scripture. But in regards to what you did say, you again brought up Isaiah chapter 22.
02:01:33
I again point out one more time. Isaiah chapter 22 has nothing to do with Peter. Jesus himself interpreted in light of himself.
02:01:39
I reject Mr. interpretation. I present you with Jesus interpretation and let you go from there. Secondly, in regards to apostolic succession in the, uh, in the early church fathers,
02:01:48
I point out to you, apostolic succession does not equal papacy. Apostolic succession does not equal papacy.
02:01:57
Thank you. We are now to the end.
02:02:03
And if you like this, I think you like rope burn too. This is lively, but, uh, certainly jarring to us so much in one evening.
02:02:14
I thank you on behalf of both, uh, debaters for your patience and for your attention.
02:02:21
The closing remarks will last 10 minutes a piece. Mr. Mattafix will begin and Mr.
02:02:26
White will close. Well, you've heard a lot tonight.
02:02:36
You have to sit down and wrestle through these scriptures and this evidence.
02:02:42
I would like to close with kind of a smorgasbord of, uh, separate points here.
02:02:48
I don't know how much organic unity I can guarantee to them. I, I have argued this evening and most
02:02:57
Protestant scholars are willing to admit this, but there is evidence in the gospels from the lips of our
02:03:03
Lord himself that Jesus gave Peter a primacy. Let's take things one at a time.
02:03:11
The evidence is overwhelming that Jesus said something special to Peter, that he doesn't say the other apostles in Matthew 16.
02:03:18
He gives him a new name and a name that means rock. And you've got to deal with that.
02:03:24
He gives him the keys of the kingdom of heaven and nowhere else in the gospels is Jesus say he gives keys to the kingdom of heaven to anybody else.
02:03:32
Mr. White cannot produce such a verse. Jesus says, Peter, I will protect the apostles by praying for you singular, and you will be a source of strength to your brethren.
02:03:43
And I believe that church history bears that out at times of great doctrinal confusion in the church at times on issues that Mr.
02:03:51
White and I would agree on, like the deity of Christ and the two natures in one person. And the fact that Christ had two wills and the rejection of Pelagianism, the
02:03:59
Bishop of Rome played a fundamental and decisive role. And as people joined and allied themselves with him, as Irenaeus said, they had an obligation to and I'll read that in closing.
02:04:09
The church was led into paths of truth and righteousness for his name's sake.
02:04:15
We see that Jesus says to Peter in John 21, something he doesn't say to the others, feed my sheep, feed my lambs, tend my flock.
02:04:24
And we see that because of this, every time the apostles are listed, Peter is listed first.
02:04:30
Every time the twelve are listed, Mr. White was, I don't think, actually speaking what
02:04:36
I was talking about when he said, hey, in Galatians two nine, that isn't true. Galatians two nine does not give you a list of the twelve apostles.
02:04:42
So it's not at all a contradiction to what I was saying. But in the gospels, Jesus, though he didn't select
02:04:50
Peter first, has inspired the various gospel writers to put Peter first, to give him a priority.
02:04:57
And throughout the gospels and throughout the book of Acts, we see Peter exercising a leadership role in Acts one, as I already mentioned in Acts two.
02:05:04
He's the one who preaches on the day of Pentecost and opens the doors on Acts three, he performs the first miracle in Acts four.
02:05:10
He's the one that replies to the Sanhedrin, the name of all twelve in Acts five. He's the judge in the case of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts eight.
02:05:16
He's the one sent by the church of Jerusalem, along with John. And the idea of a group sending a couple members of that group is no indication that they have inferior authority or simply equal authority.
02:05:27
It happens all the time in Washington, D. C. The congressman will send, for example, a couple of them up to the
02:05:33
White House and something. And there's no indication that those senators somehow lesser or to be dictated to by the body as a whole.
02:05:42
In Acts chapter eleven, he opens the doors to the Gentiles and in Acts fifteen. Contrary to Mr. White's exegesis, he does have a decisive role to play in the council of Jerusalem.
02:05:52
It is a fact of history that James, at this point, was the head of the church in Jerusalem and so was the presiding head of this local council.
02:06:02
We read in Acts twelve that Peter had to leave town. The disciples wanted him to stay alive. And you wonder why that is.
02:06:08
Why did they consider him so significant and dispensable? They wanted him to get out of town so that he wouldn't be put to death.
02:06:13
He had already been liberated by the angel. But in Acts fifteen, when there's tremendous dispute and controversy over this whole issue, after much debate,
02:06:22
Peter got up and spoke to them and delivers a rather definitive statement.
02:06:29
And as it says, when the moment he's done speaking in verse twelve, the whole assembly then fell silent and then allowed
02:06:35
Barnabas and Saul to tell their story of what had happened. And James, as the head of the local church there in Jerusalem, then sums the matter up.
02:06:44
I don't think there's anything in Galatians to to deny. Mr. White actually confused me a little bit there.
02:06:51
He said his last question was, show me any place. This is I wrote it down as he asked it. Show me a place in scripture which indicates a primacy or leadership in Peter.
02:07:00
Have it from Peter, if you will. And then, though I didn't decide to use Peter as an example, he said, you didn't speak to my question at all.
02:07:08
You didn't quote Peter at all. He said I could pick Peter if I wanted. I didn't pick Peter because I think Peter exercises that modesty, that humility that I spoke of and doesn't point to himself and he doesn't use all kinds of titles that he could have perhaps justly used.
02:07:21
But even the use of titles develops. No one's going to say that because he didn't use the word Pope, therefore, the concept of the papacy is not true any more than just because you don't find the word
02:07:29
Trinity in the Bible. The doctrine isn't true. And Mr. White has himself reminded us it is. But in Galatians chapter one,
02:07:37
Paul goes to great lengths to say he went up to Jerusalem in fear that he had perhaps misconstrued the gospel.
02:07:46
And he consulted with Peter, James and John. James, Peter and John, excuse me, is the order there.
02:07:53
And that's Mr. White's point. But that's not the point that I was making. And he says that these were pillars.
02:07:58
They had a position of preeminence. Peter, James and John had that higher circle of intimacy with Christ. And they fully agreed with me.
02:08:06
They ratified my gospel. They said there was nothing wrong with what I was teaching. So when Peter came to Antioch, I knew
02:08:12
I was on good grounds in opposing him to his face because his behavior didn't jive with his creed.
02:08:18
And he appeals to Peter as someone who shares the same theology. I saw they weren't acting in line with the gospel.
02:08:24
I said to Peter, we know that that circumcision and kosher foods and all these other works of the
02:08:31
Mosaic law are no longer pertinent to our justification in Christ. So he doesn't accuse
02:08:37
Peter of teaching heresy. Far from it. And if you're going to say his behavior constitutes false teaching, then, as I say,
02:08:45
Mr. White has got a problem because then he's got to admit that the apostles, not just Peter, whom we're claiming is the first bishop of Rome and therefore, the predecessor of the subsequent popes.
02:08:53
But all the apostles are no longer infallible teachers. And yet he would believe that he would believe that they are trustworthy teachers of the gospel in their official teaching, not in their behavior, infallibility, not impeccability.
02:09:04
There is nothing in First Peter five that would amount to a renunciation of a primacy.
02:09:11
And so I don't see any evidence in Scripture that is against this primacy that I have indicated exists there.
02:09:18
There is nothing in Scripture. There is no episode. There is no statement made that says
02:09:23
Peter is not the head of the church. And there are all these passages, some of which Mr. White has not addressed, like the 22 passage and the other ideas of the other examples, for example,
02:09:34
Peter being listed first. Why is Peter made so much of? Why is he given this shown and spotlighted to have this leadership role if indeed he was simply equal in every sense of the word, in every single way with all the other apostles?
02:09:47
My second point is this. If you are willing to grant at least the probability at this point, and I'm not the pope,
02:09:53
I cannot speak with infallibility here tonight. I am not asking you to accept my words as infallible.
02:10:00
And so Mr. White's words to that effect again, I think are counterproductive, or at least not to the point I'm asking you to weigh the evidence and to assign the probability of it.
02:10:09
But if you are willing to follow the majority of responsible Protestant scholars in this century and say, yes,
02:10:15
Peter certainly has a leadership, a headship, a primacy that is undeniable in the gospels.
02:10:21
Now the question is what happens to that headship? No serious historian in the 20th century denies that Peter went to Rome and died there and functioned as bishop of Rome.
02:10:31
The fact that he didn't happen to be there when this letter or that letter was addressed is not a very good argument. He traveled perhaps as much as our current pope does.
02:10:40
And just because he's out of town when Peter writes a letter to Rome, doesn't prove that he's not there. The evidence is overwhelming.
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Ladies and gentlemen, there is not a single document that Mr. White can cite that says Peter went somewhere else, that he exalted or established as bishopric in some other city.
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Everyone that talks about where Peter was martyred says that it was in Rome. The evidence is there that Peter went to Rome, functioned as bishop there, and Mr.
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White has to accept this testimony if he wants to be consistent and say,
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I want to know that the books that I have are indeed inspired scripture written by apostles or apostolic men.
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Because these same church fathers who tell us about Peter's sojourn in Rome and his dying in Rome and his bishopric in Rome are the ones who provide us the information because they're doing so in the context of saying he wrote two letters and Paul wrote letters as well.
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And Peter and Paul, they ended up after writing his letters and so forth, going to Rome and dying there.
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The last point is this. Does any other city claim to be the inheritor of Peter's primacy?
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No, there is no evidence in the early church that any other city says, No, we ought to have the preeminence because we are the recipients of authority of a greater apostle.
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Rome is the only candidate, folks. And so Irenaeus is right when he says that we can go to that church, which is the greatest, most ancient, well -known church established by the two most glorious apostles,
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Peter and Paul. And this church, on account of a more powerful principality, it is necessary that every church should agree with that is the faithful from everywhere and in which the tradition from the apostles is preserved perfectly by those who are from all parts.
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Thank you very much. I appreciate very much your patience and your attendance this evening.
02:13:01
You have been an excellent audience. I thank you for being here tonight. A few comments in regards to Jerry's closing statements.
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Peter, as a rock, as certain Protestant scholars will admit, I don't necessarily believe it's a majority.
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It's certainly not a majority of all Protestant scholars since Reformation, obviously. But even if it was a majority of modern scholars, seeing
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Peter as a rock does not equal the idea that he has a primacy.
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Make sure you understand that. Jerry, I think, walks the line a little bit on that point and saying, a Protestant scholars, responsible
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Protestant scholars recognize this. And then he goes on to say, well, if Protestants say this
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Protestant majority say that Peter is the rock, what happened to the headship? And you see, that's what those
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Protestant scholars are saying. They're not alleging that Peter had a headship of the church and they're not alleging.
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And in fact, they ultimately deny very clearly that that type of headship was anything that could be given.
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The supremacy that was his was his because he was chosen to be the first one to proclaim the gospel, to use the keys, their declarative power in preaching the gospel to people.
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And they would tell you, wait a minute, Jerry, you're misunderstanding us. What do you mean? Where did it go? Historically, we don't believe it could have gone anywhere historically because it's only in Peter and Peter alone.
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Look at them for yourselves on that. If Matthew chapter 18 and Mr.
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Mattox said, well, there's no mention of keys here. Well, that's true. If you look at Matthew chapter 18, verse 18, but you read it for yourself.
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If Matthew chapter 18 is not where Peter receives the keys, tell me where does he where does he?
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I don't know where he does it all. John chapter 21, Mr. Mattox mentioned that the words feed my sheep were only spoken to Peter.
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So it was only to Peter that Jesus said, get behind me, Satan. Is that relevant?
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Is that significant? I don't believe that it is. He pointed out the fact that I did not address the issue of Luke chapter 12, where Jesus prays specifically for Peter.
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I simply point out to you. I didn't feel it was really something that had to be high on my priority list because Jesus prays for all of us, does he not?
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Does he not intercede for all of us? Does he not intercede specifically for our weaknesses? Jesus knows the weakness of Peter.
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Jesus knows that Peter is the one who can fail. And Jesus prays for him. That hardly makes Peter into a position of being the first pope.
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In Acts chapter 15, we have a conference, a council of the entire church.
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And let me ask you something. I must ask Jerry, would innocent the third have sat as the second in a council, the entire church to some other bishop?
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I doubt very much that he would have. So obviously, Peter did not view himself as a pope.
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I asked Jerry, and if I misspoke, I apologize. But the question I asked Jerry in cross examination was, does
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Peter ever anywhere in the scripture give indication from himself that he views himself as a vicar of Christ?
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And Jerry answers, Peter doesn't do so. He doesn't point to himself because of humility. I only ask rhetorically, why have so many of those who claim to be his successors down to the ages failed to follow his example?
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History is replete with many who were anything but humble in their claims to being the vicar of Christ and the
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Holy Father. Now, Mr. Mattis said that there is nothing in scripture against papal supremacy.
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I would like to say there is nothing in scripture for it. And a great deal that shows that Peter didn't believe it,
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Paul didn't believe it, and no one acted in any way that says that they did. But I want to remind you of the gravity and the importance of this topic.
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Let me remind you what I said earlier. This is Roman Catholic dogmatic teaching.
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If anyone, therefore, shall say that blessed Peter, the apostle, was not appointed the prince of all the apostles and the visible head of the whole church militant, or that the same directly and immediately received from the same our
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Lord Jesus Christ a promise of honor only and not of true and proper jurisdiction, listen closely, my friends.
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Let him be anathema. Now, if the
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Roman Catholic Church is going to anathematize someone for not accepting a position, then
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I feel that it is right for us to demand of the Roman Catholic Church absolute and unequivocal evidence that it is true.
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And my friends, I have to ask you, has my opponent this evening from the page of the scripture given you absolute and unequivocal evidence that Peter was the first pope and his successors continue in his stead?
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I submit to you that he has not, because no one can. The scriptures do not teach it. The scriptures do not teach it.
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The New Testament does not present any concept or office of a pope or a papacy. The New Testament instead presents the church of Christ with him as the sole head, and that church is indwelt by the vicar of Christ, which is not any man.
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And I submit to you that the apostle Peter, who knew the Holy Spirit, would never have accepted the name vicar of Christ because he knew his own
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Lord Jesus is teaching that the vicar of Christ on earth is the Holy Spirit of God. It is a church's obedience to the word of God, the
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Bible, the New Testament teaches that the bishop, overseer, presbyter is a servant of the church, not her
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Lord or ruler. The New Testament teaches that each and every believer, each and every believer is a priest, one who is responsible before God for the revelation he has given in his word, who cannot possibly place that responsibility upon anyone else.
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And you cannot do that this evening. As you sit here this evening, you must make a decision.
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I am not going to stand before you and say, well, my opponent has not provided a single passage that to my concept, my thinking proves his point.
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Therefore, I proclaim myself a victor. I will not treat you in that way. You are the one who must make up your mind.
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You are the one who must make up a decision. I respect you too much to put yourself in a position saying, well, I win. No, the debate tonight, the challenge tonight was to prove that Peter was a pope.
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I have seen nothing in scripture that presents that and that Peter has successors throughout the history of the church.
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I see nothing in scripture presents that either, but you as an individual, no matter where you're coming from, you must make the decision tonight, because let me tell you something.
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The Roman Catholic church claims to be the infallible church. A, a charisma of infallibility has been given to the
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Roman Catholic church. And therefore, their interpretation of Matthew chapter 16, whether you feel it is completely stretched and without any basis whatsoever, you have to accept that if you're a
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Roman Catholic and some have said, well, it's certainly foolish to leave something that is certain for something that is uncertain.
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We have the infallible church. We have absolute security and certainty. And I would, I would submit to you, you have no more absolute certainty than the certainty and infallibility of yourself, because ultimately you have to make the decision whether to accept the
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Roman Catholic claims infallibility, including that of the papacy or not. If you can make a mistake in accepting that ultimate authority, my friends, there are many who claim it.
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Rome isn't the only one claiming ultimate authority. Rome isn't the only one claiming this, this succession, this apostolic power.
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There are many others. When you ask yourself the question, do I accept this claim or not?
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You can't make that decision on the basis of, well, they've got a 65 % chance. They've got a 35 % chance. I'll go with a 65.
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You can't do that to substantiate an infallible claim like this.
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You must have infallible evidence. It must be presented without question. My friends, there is no evidence in your testament that answers to that claim that answers that call.
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None at all. Therefore, I submit to you that the scriptures do not teach that Peter was a pope, do not teach that he had successors.
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They teach something totally different, that the church of Jesus Christ is indwelt by the vicar of Christ, which is the
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Holy Spirit. The Holy Father for Christians is only just as it was on the lips of Jesus Christ in John 17, reserved for God the