On Matthew Barrett's Conversion to Anglicanism

Well, greetings and welcomes. I'm trying to get the cameras to work and they're not working. Someone must be stealing my truck or something. I don't know. But it's a Windows program and that's what Windows programs are all about, in my experience.

Anyways, lots of stuff going on today. Back here in Phoenix, trying to get things to work first time back. I only had 11 battery left on this computer when I got back. And that's okay. That's life. Anyway, I just don't know that anything's working out there anymore.

Yeah. What is this? Permission declined. I'm not allowed to look at... It worked until 10 minutes ago. Well, if my truck's gone, all the tech guys are fired just immediately. That's all there is to it.

That's just how it's going to go. I hate having that sitting there and it's not working. Anyway, boy, do we have a lot of things to get to today. Well, actually, we only have one thing to get to today primarily, but I have been buried today with this stuff.

People keep sending me the same links over and over again and saying, have you seen this? Have you seen this? Have you seen this? And I'm like, yes, of course I've seen this. How could I have not seen this?

The Rise of Great Traditionism and Aquinas Fascination

Look, I don't remember the first time we took the time to start interacting with the rise of a fascination with Thomas Aquinas and quote unquote classical theology, at least that's the terminology they like to use, an emphasis on natural theology and the supremacy of, well, rediscovering the great tradition.

And some of you will recall we did lengthy programs in the big studio and put stuff up on the board and went back and forth and did all this stuff for quite some time. And one of the primary people we were dealing with was Dr. Matthew Barrett at Midwest Baptist Theological Seminary, and we kept putting pictures up, for example, of the suggested books in the library or the bookstore or probably connected to each other.

And six out of the ten would be by Roman Catholics. And we pointed out this was happening rather broadly, not just there, but in Reformed Baptist circles as well. And our concern was it doesn't seem to us like these folks, A, have a whole lot of interaction with Roman Catholics.

They don't seem to be very much involved in evangelizing Roman Catholics. And in fact, you start wondering if they might come to the conclusion that Roman Catholics don't need to be evangelized. And look, there are many people in quote unquote Protestantism.

Remember, Protestantism is just a catch-all phrase. It doesn't have any actual existence. I mean, what is Protestantism? It's just something that isn't Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox. But even that has no meaning to it because that would include Mormonism, which is polytheistic, and Jehovah's Witnesses, who are Unitarian, and all sorts of other stuff along the way.

So there isn't any quote unquote Protestant church, but unfortunately that's what you have to deal with. And so within the ranks of these folks, there are Protestants who don't believe we need to evangelize Roman Catholics or anything like that, they don't believe the gospel is actually definitional and central to defining the faith, or it's part of the adiophora, or you can have such a wide definition of the gospel that anything really fits in there and so we don't have to worry about any of that kind of stuff.

And so we sort of raised some alarms and said, look, this is the home of the Spurgeon, the big, big, big name there at that school, and lots of conferences about Spurgeon and things like that. And all of a sudden, instead, I remember specifically mentioning, and it wasn't that long ago, it was within the past two years, that students were hand-drawing pictures of Thomas Aquinas and giving them to Matthew Barrett, who is displaying them on the earlier, those would have been pictures of Charles Haddon Spurgeon, or maybe some other early Baptist leader, but it wouldn't be a Dominican monk, but that's what was going on now.

And there was more than once I said, are the people in charge at Midwestern really, is this what they want? Is this the direction they want the school to go? And everybody's like, oh, you are just so overreacting.

You just need to learn to reclaim the great tradition and all this kind of stuff. And you need to stop being a Biblicist. I'm sure that Spurgeon would have just died if someone called him a Biblicist.

Anyway, so we, more than once, we sort of said, you know, there's some questions out here. I'm only going to play this because I didn't have a means of, I guess I could have downloaded it. I'll just do the audio.

It's just me anyways, so who cares? A friend of mine sent me two clips. I wouldn't have had time to find these, so it's nice to have friends that do things like this. But a friend sent me two clips from the Dividing Line.

One's from me sitting right here, and one is from the Mobile Command Center Version 2. So the JACO that we had for a while that I would still love to be pulling, but if it had been made right. Anyway, two clips, and as he put it, these video clips are aging well.

Not everything you do ends up aging well. But here is, here's first one. And I can't tell you exactly what the date is on it, but you know, I could have tracked it. I've had more time, but busy day. I actually ended up getting all the last of my, well, I just realized I forgot a few things, but all the stuff out of the RV, pull her tomorrow morning, get her stored in our covered storage spot only for like 32 days before the next, this next one, this was a pretty short trip.

Next one's a marathon, well over a month, and marathon distance-wise too. So yeah. Anyway, here's the first clip, and this is yours truly. Much like to the doctrine of God, he critiques men like Matthew and Barrett, implies they are going to Rome.

Again, you hear the simplicity. When I point out Barrett's wildly imbalanced fascination with Thomas Aquinas, I don't know if he'll ever become Roman Catholic. Maybe he will, maybe he won't. I don't know, but it's wildly imbalanced.

If you are at a Southern Baptist seminary and your students are drawing pictures of Thomas Aquinas for you, you might want to go, hmm, huh, something strange. There's an imbalance, a massive imbalance.

Just look at his timeline. I mean, if I as a Calvinist talked about Calvin half as much as Matthew Barrett talks about Thomas Aquinas, and all you gotta do is go back to 2016 when he wrote a book on solo scriptura, that's not the same guy.

That's not the same guy. Something has changed, big time. Yeah, and that's true. Something has changed, big time. And it's also true that the book he wrote on solo scriptura in 2016, which almost never made reference to Thomas Aquinas at all, certainly not as part of its argumentation, I just don't even know how he could continue to have it in print, given recent events.

And for those of you who don't know, I'm sorry, I just sort of assumed everybody is inundated with things, as I am today, but Matthew Barrett has left, well, Midwestern, I found out last week, I was informed last week that Midwestern was not extending his contract.

And today, this morning, and so there was all sorts, the news started getting out yesterday, day before yesterday, that he was joining an Anglican seminary. But the question still was, well, but is he an Anglican?

Isn't that necessary first, to become an Anglican before you teach it? No, not necessarily these days. And then his article appeared this morning, at least hitting my feed this morning. And it's his whole discussion of his conversion to Anglicanism.

And so everybody's, when it first started coming out, everybody's like, well, I know somebody that called that one, and that's why I'm playing these things here right now. So here's the second clip.

Matthew Barrett. I mean, I don't necessarily blame them for feeling a bit nauseated. And then they just give up at that point. And so what I always say to them is, don't pay attention to the caricatures.

Those are sloppy misrepresentations of Protestantism. They are radicalizations of otherwise good principles. Instead, go back to actually history itself and look at what, say, the Reformed scholastics, for example, look at how they went about their theology.

Not only was it incredibly robust, but it was inherently making the claim that they were, say, Augustinian. Or in some cases, they were even refining and transforming Thomism for the sake of arguing against the Arminians and Sassinians.

I mean, there's countless examples of this.

Paul Ankerberg. So there you go. There's the reasoning. Oh, they were using Thomas, and had to get Thomas in there. Nothing about grounding people in the apostolic revelation of Scripture. It's not there.

It's not there. The man who wrote the book in 2016 doesn't exist anymore. It's like Bruce Jenner, Caitlyn Jenner. Boom. Gone. Astonishing. Astonishing. Troubling. Deeply, deeply troubling. So again, I don't have the exact dates on those, but those were both yours truly.

And look, I did not say, Matthew Barrett's going to do this, or this amount of time. I don't make predictions like that. What I have indicated is that if you hold the positions that he was enunciating in a flurry of books that came out, some of which evidently a lot of folks felt were rather hurried, and therefore of a lower quality than they might have otherwise.

But the stuff that he was enunciating, I'm like, this isn't Baptist. It's not Southern Baptist. It's not Before Baptist. It's just not Baptist Baptist, because it is elevating tradition to a position of ultimate interpretational authority.

And I don't care who you are. Baptists don't believe that, and our theology isn't derived from it. And you can say, well, that's why we need to stop being Baptist. Well, he just did. At least he's being consistent at that point.

Now, the reasons why he did, we're going to look at that from his article. But the point is, all this scholasticism that has been coming into Reformed Baptist circles, was coming into Midwestern, this is inconsistent with what defines Baptist theology, practice, and polity as well.

And that is a straightforward, not crass, not the constant straw man, as long as the words aren't found in the Bible, you can't say that. I've met like three people in my entire life that ever said anything like that at all.

They are not a threat to the church. They're just weird. But a strong biblicism that says that the only sure word from God, the only thing is Theanostasis Scripture, that this was Jesus' view of scripture.

We should hold Jesus' view of scripture, if we're going to follow him. And therefore, the amazing thing that I've been attacked for over and over, I had a guy half an hour ago saying, yeah, well, at least Matthew Barrett's still Orthodox on the Trinity, unlike you.

And so, we examine any kind of later doctrinal development in the light of scripture, and give it authority based upon its consistency with scripture. Not like there's some oral tradition that exists outside of scripture passed down from the apostles.

We've all heard that one before. And look, and I'll tell you, I have spoken to lots of Roman Catholics that are just licking their chops. Oh, your folks are getting into Aquinas. Well, we'll get a few more rooms available at the local seminary for the upcoming priests, things like that.

You know, he's ours, we know he's ours, there isn't any question about that. And so, if your students are drawing pictures of Aquinas, pretty soon they'll be drawing pictures of Pope Leo XIV. It's inevitable, that's the progress.

So, what I did learn about is that once you collapse on certain foundational issues regarding scriptural sufficiency over against any kind of whatever terminology of tradition you want to use, those are the people who, if they continue to seek consistency, will end up not only leaving our churches, but moving toward a different expression of Christian faith.

And that might be certain highly liturgical churches that are still not necessarily in obedience to Rome, maybe Eastern Orthodoxy, that's become real popular over the past couple years, or obviously to Rome.

Because the fact of the matter is, having been doing this for over 40 years, I know I can think back on numerous people who lost confidence. Well, let's put it this way, I didn't grab it, but there's a series of books called Surprised by Truth, and they are the stories of converts to Roman Catholicism.

I think there's four volumes, maybe four volumes of it, and at least three. And read them. How many of those people, once they lost confidence in scriptural sufficiency, didn't move directly to Roman Catholicism or directly to Eastern Orthodoxy, but they took some of what we call them stutter steps maybe?

Moving to a liturgical church that, hey, you go from a Calvary Chapel style, free-flowing, contemporary Christian music filled Jesus is My Boyfriend songs, 17-minute entertaining multimedia presentation type thing, you move from that to a high liturgical Anglican service, with all the vestments and the pomp and circumstance and candles and maybe even some incense here or there.

And man, to you, that's like the biggest shift in the world. Now, interestingly enough, the sermon's still going to be about the same length, but big, big, big change. And what happens is, oh man, now I'm worshiping like they did in the early church.

Well, it depends on how you define early church and which early church and at what time period. And it was an evolutionary thing. And up until 313, no, that wasn't happening because it couldn't happen because you had to do it in houses and stuff like that.

But anyway, getting into the details of church history isn't normally what they're doing. They're just getting into the groove, the feeling of it all. And so for a while, that'll be enough. The newness of that remains new for a while.

But read those stories. Even when they go to an Episcopalian church, an Anglican church, maybe a super high liturgy Lutheran church or something like that, eventually, they get hit with the authority question.

Eventually, they get hit with okay, you're doing all this stuff, but you got all that stuff from us in the first place. So if you're taking the great tradition seriously, and in this case, you're constantly promoting Roman Catholic writers and things like that, then why not go all the way?

And they end up going all the way. I don't know what the percentage is. But if you look at the Surprise by Truth volumes, if you look at the Coming Home Network and listen to almost any percentage of the interviews they've done, there'll be a very large number of people who needed to take a small step first, and maybe a couple steps before they finally cross the Tiber River into full communion with the Roman Catholic church.

Or these days, cross the Bosporus or something like that, went to Constantinople, however you want to talk about conversion to Eastern Orthodoxy. And Anglicanism, Episcopalianism has very, very, very often been that intermediate step.

There's something else that needs to be, and I'm going to look at the article and talk about the stuff that he talks about, but there's something else that just absolutely, I was very, very clear about this, and I've said this about some other people in this same group of evangelical scholars, to use the term broadly, Reformed scholars.

There is a, how do I put this? I want to be careful and fair, but there's almost nothing. For some men, acceptance in the academy is life, praise of the academy, praise of one's scholarship, praise of one's insights.

It's everything. It has more value than money, family, love, anything. It's the greatest thing they want. And if you want to really stand at the head of the class, shall we say, and really be seen as a true scholar, especially in church history, in systematic theology, and all these things, especially if you are absolutely taken with and enamored by Thomas Aquinas, there's only one place to be.

There's only one church to be a part of, and you may get there slowly, you may get there quickly, but you're going to get there eventually. And so, if the true driving reason for someone to, I mean, it was my understanding that Barrett was the head of the doctoral program at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

So, he was in charge of what these men are going to be studying, and all that kind of stuff. And if you're going to leave that, and what you really want is a recognition of your scholarship, I'm not sure how long you're going to stay within Anglicanism.

You might, but it depends on what your field of study is. A number of other people have said the exact same thing I'm about to say as well online. I just saw someone saying this, and it certainly struck me because of how the news came out.

The news came out first that he was leaving Midwestern, then that he was going to an Anglican seminary, and part of the question was, does that mean he's an Anglican? You'd sort of think that was part of it.

So, since it came out somewhat herky-jerky, here's something, it's troubling to me. It should be troubling to everybody, I think. And I really think that the leadership of the Anglican seminary that has hired him should be the ones answering this, but how do you hire someone to teach a research professor in, what was the term, research professor in systematic theology, or something?

What was that title? Something along those lines. How do you hire somebody who five minutes ago was a Baptist? I mean, it strikes me as really odd that you would put someone who is a brand new convert to your tradition.

I mean, he's literally writing about how he changed his view on baptism. He was writing a book on systematic theology. How has the baptism section changed? Had he written that part yet? I'd be really interested in what the pre-conversion version of it was.

That would be fascinating. We'll never see it, but anyway. Um, what, I don't understand. If I were the head of a seminary, okay, I do teach for a seminary. I teach for Grace Bible Theological Seminary.

Now, if a, let's say a Roman Catholic was converted, who is a famous Roman Catholic theologian, published dozens of books, and comes to the conclusion that I was wrong all that time, and I've become a good Reformed Baptist.

So, you know, last semester he was teaching at a Roman Catholic school. If he applied to teach at GBTS, I really think that the honor, but wouldn't you like to, you know, take a little time to adjust to a rather radically different context here and understanding of ecclesiology?

And there's a lot of questions about soteriology and sufficiency of scripture. And I don't think that be wise to, you know, just immediately jump into a teaching role when you're just teaching something very different like five minutes ago.

So, that certainly crossed my mind. I suppose this may have been a conversation ongoing for quite some time. Maybe he saw that his time was short at Midwestern. Maybe, because the article doesn't necessarily give us a specific timeline as to when all this took place.

But it does seem very strange to me that you would go from teaching, be the head of the doctoral program at a Southern Baptist seminary, and the next semester you're teaching for an Anglican seminary as an Anglican, in Anglican theology.

Something strange here. And that's why I personally believe the fundamental reason is mentioned. But it's not really mentioned as a fundamental reason. I think it's there. We'll get to it. But I hope people catch that.

So, he was at Midwestern for eight years. And he said that, for two decades, my family has sacrificed a lot for the SBC. We can do so no longer. I cannot begin to express how happy we are with that decision.

Now, I'm not a Southern Baptist. What? Oh, okay. Anyway, Rich is pointing at things, and I'm going, what in the world? And I guess the light has burned out or something. Anyway, this article is a, someone described it as a bunker buster bomb on the SBC.

And look, there's a lot to be said about problems in the SBC. There's a lot to be said about what happened at the last convention, conference, what do you want to call it? Annual meeting. You know, some of us are just getting to the point where it really seems like there is a Southern Baptist deep state that's not going anywhere.

It doesn't matter how many people vote or don't vote or anything else. It's permanent and it ain't going anywhere. So, there's lots of things to criticize about the SBC, but it should be noted, you know, is Midwestern going to respond to this?

And who's going to do it? Because I don't know how they can't. How can you not respond to, you know, I cannot begin to express how happy we are with the SBC. I don't know how they can't. This was their, for a couple of years, he was their darling boy.

I mean, this is where you want to go to get your PhD and all the rest of that kind of stuff. And so, he gives some reasons. All right. The first pillar that was knocked down by this tornado of a storm, he describes, the first pillar started to crack a year ago when a group of Southern Baptists stood before the SBC asking for the inclusion of the Nicene Creed in the Baptist faith and message.

Now, I heard the motion was made, this wasn't a year ago, maybe it was made a year ago and it was made again just a few weeks ago, but I had heard of this and it's my understanding that most of the issue was in regards to how this was being done.

It seems to me that anything that the deep state, the SBC doesn't really want to do, they come up with some parliamentary reason to just not even allow it to be debated. That happens all the time. But I don't find this to be much of an argument.

I criticized the SBC, I criticized the Baptist faith and message. When was it? What, 20 years ago? When a oneness Pentecostal singing group, Phillips, Craig, and Dean were invited to perform at the SBC pastor's conference, which happens right before the annual meeting.

And I pointed out the Baptist faith and message is so vague on the doctrine of Trinity that oneness Pentecostals could actually sign it and get away with it. They can sign it honestly, honestly in the sense that, yeah, I can agree with these words, not honestly in the sense that if you looked historically at what the framers had intended, that they were intending to leave open a possible denial of doctrine of Trinity or something like that.

So look, the 1689 is a whole lot more specific than the Baptist faith and message. But they would argue it needs to have a broad movement. And look how much bigger the SBC is than anything the 1689 has produced.

But I don't think that that's... Because it can still happen. It's not like, well, we reject the content of the Nicene Creed or something like that. It's interesting below that, he says, let me see, he's talking about the policy of the SBC.

He says, I've come to realize that even if it is included, the polity of the denomination is not such that it can implement the creed with authority like other traditions can. Traditions that believe in councils and synods and have the polity to credibly support them.

Well, that would have to mean that there is a sufficiently biblical argument to be made for councils and synods and issues like that, right? Is that the argument that's being made? But more of the point, the culture of the SBC is not one that can ultimately sustain who?

Those who care about retrieval and the great tradition. Okay, now there's a little flash of light on the real reasons for Matthew Barrett leaving the Sundance Convention, is the culture of the SBC is not one that can ultimately sustain those who care about retrieval and the great tradition.

Now, we've seen lots of different definitions of what the great tradition is or might be. Retrieval, what exactly does that mean? Depends on who's trying to get you to hire them, publish their book, click on their stuff and get the money, whatever.

But it is the big thing that he's talking about and that certain other people together with him are talking about. And he's saying that the SBC isn't. Well, you know what? I think he knew that years ago.

I think he knew that from the beginning. Maybe he sort of thought that, well, I can change all that and it didn't end up working out. But that, I think, is part of the primary reason. Then he said the second pillar that started to crack was polity.

But more specifically, the culture in which is embedded. My experience after two decades, both at the local level and institutional level, is this. For Southern Baptists, image is everything. Yeah, no question about that one.

You look at the Southern Baptist deep state, you look at the leadership that became embedded during COVID and just seems to still have control even though they're not technically in charge anymore. Yeah, for Southern Baptists, image is everything.

And he says, Southern Baptist pastors often tell their congregations, just trust us and don't gossip, which results in a church incapable of acting when they suspect sin in the leadership. Moreover, they have little recourse to an external ecclesiastical authority to hold the leadership accountable.

Well, that's a nice easy shot there, unless you know anything about church history. It's real easy. We have an external ecclesiastical authority to hold the leadership accountable. Yes, you do, unless the leadership itself is corrupt.

And church history is filled with centuries of unceasing corruption because there was an external ecclesiastical authority that itself was corrupt and had rejected scriptural sufficiency and therefore there was no way of fixing it.

So it's real easy to go, well, we can look at you folks. Yeah, your system doesn't work there. You need to have people that can be in charge, you can change everything. And then you go, yeah, exactly how well has that worked down through history?

You ever heard of pornography? It's amazing. Dr. Barrett writes all these books about church history, but sometimes he says stuff that makes me go, I'm not sure how deeply you're reading at this subject.

I really, really don't. Exactly where does this external ecclesiastical authority come from? And what is its ultimate authority? And how can it be reformed if it needs to be reformed? These are big questions.

A lot of people, hey, Southern Baptists don't think about it. I get that. That doesn't mean because they don't think about it that that means we should just go ahead and, well, that didn't work. Let's grab this thing over here.

It doesn't work historically. But then we had this, and I, you know, I have had lots of church members and friends over the years that, you know, you serve together in a church and then they move away or something like that, and also discover they've changed denominations and they've changed their views on baptism.

And you would think that in the process of something important as that, that they might've contacted me. You know, they know I've done a few things and, you know, they used to think that I had won those debates rather handily.

And now all of a sudden they change their views and they don't want to talk about it for love of money. And it's because they know they still can't answer my questions, but it's just something comfortable to do.

And it felt right. And it got me into the church I wanted to get into. And so there you go. It really seems like the baptism question, everybody looks at Fritz Erba and goes, dude, just change your view.

Don't die in a hole. Just change your view. It doesn't really matter. And that's how it seems a lot of people view things. So he says, oh, wait a minute. Okay, I'm sorry. Okay, we'll get to the baptism thing.

Just one second. Let me finish up the previous point. I skipped this part of the article. After reading the book of Acts with fresh eyes, that's over the years, I've learned the terminology of converts.

Okay. You know, you also have fresh eyes when you want to get out of the situation you're in. After reading the book of Acts with fresh eyes, especially the Jerusalem council in Acts 15, it was conspicuous to me that most other traditions are far more consistent with the whole of Acts.

Presbyterians have a presbytery and synods. They do. Never-ending sources of constant friction, accusations, charges. You bring people up on charges and it goes on for years and it goes to a committee and then to a subcommittee.

And I've just listened to this stuff for years. So lots of Presbyterians I know, but they've got them. They've got them. And there are a lot of times a Baptist just has to throw his hands up and say, well, they're not a part of our church.

We're not going to think about it. Okay. Presbyterians have a presbytery and synods, and Anglicans prosper on a rich heritage of bishops and councils. Does that include Welby, you know, the head of the Anglican church?

Well, you know, Anglicanism has split up recently. It's fractured. And oh, so now you have to pick which councils and bishops and councils of bishops that you listen to, right? Didn't quite bring the unity that you thought.

After the apostolic age, episcopacy becomes the majority report in the pre-modern church for good reason. And what would that reason be, Dr. Berry? Where does that reason come from? Exegesis? All the passages in the New Testament that teach us about synods and councils.

I mean, Acts of Teens apostolic. The apostles are in that council. And you can try to say, well, that means that we should have councils and they should have authority and all the rest of that stuff. But that will require the establishment of offices that the New Testament never knows anything about.

Yeah, there are bishops. They're also called elders. It's the same office. So, episcopacy is just, I mean, that's, episcopos is a New Testament word, but those are elders in local churches, not bishops over entire regions.

That's a, that's evolutionary development and not one that took place in a overly consistent fashion either, which led to all sorts of arguments. But then there's a little footnote. Here's a little itty bitty footnote.

And it's an important itty bitty footnote. There are only four of them. This is the only one that has any substance to it. But here's the itty bitty footnote. I had to ask myself, why did the church fathers believe the New Testament naturally gave birth to bishops of which we have elaborate records?

What? Bishops, the episcopoi, and the presbuteroi, it's the same office, used interchangeably by Paul, right? You did believe that once, didn't you, Dr. Barrett? Didn't you teach that to people? So, what do you mean, naturally gave birth to bishops of which we have elaborate records?

We do have elaborate records of bishops, but what do you mean that the New Testament naturally gave birth to one of the only two offices in the New Testament? What's that even supposed to mean? And then check this out.

Are we consistent to cherry pick, stealing away the doctrine of the creeds while rejecting the polity of the councils and the office of bishop so instrumental to implementing doctrinal accountability in the church?

I want you to hear that again, because this is central. Are we consistent to cherry pick, stealing away the doctrines of creeds? So, the Nicene Creed, okay? You have the symbol that is defined by the council, but they did other stuff.

They had canons and decrees that had to do with the polity of the councils, and that polity was about, you know, where did Rome have authority? Where did Constantinople have authority? Where did Alexandria have authority?

Well, it wasn't really Constantinople in Nicaea, but later on. You hear what's being said here? Because one of my statements is going to be, quite simply, there's nothing in this article that fundamentally could not have been said by Matthew Barrett if he had become a Roman Catholic.

There's nothing about Catholicism, nothing about the gospel, nothing about justification by faith, papacy, nothing there. And the language he uses is the exact same language that converts to Catholicism used as well.

I found the beauty of the Anglican church. I found the beauty of the Catholic church in the liturgy, okay? So, the question that all of us should have is, what makes us think, given what Matthew Barrett has said, that this is the end of the road?

What's the barrier that keeps him from going across the Tiber, or across the Bosphorus, for that matter? So, what has been one of my consistent criticisms of the rise of this neo-scholastic Thomistic movement amongst once conservative Reformed evangelicals?

You're cherry-picking. You can talk about the necessity of the Nicene Creed, but then you go, yeah, but everything else they believe, we can chuck. Don't have to worry about their ecclesiology. Don't have to worry about their polity.

Don't have to worry about the elevation of bishops, the denigration of presbyters, the transformation of presbyteros to priest. Don't have to worry about any of that stuff. All these, you know, we can go to calisthenics, exact same thing.

Don't have to worry about the canons. That's just church stuff that, yeah, they didn't get that one right. They got the main stuff right, but all this other stuff. Okay, that's, my point was, the authority of the creeds has to be subscriptural, just as we use a scriptural standard to reject the canons and the creeds.

I'm consistent. You guys aren't. Now, what he's saying is, are we consistent to cherry-pick? Answer is no. Stealing away the doctrine of the creeds, oh, we hold a council, oh, we hold a Nicene, while rejecting the polity of the councils and the office of bishops so instrumental to implementing doctrinal accountability in the church.

That's Rome's argument for the papacy. That's Rome's argument for the papacy. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, you don't have to go that far. That's Rome's argument for the papacy. How are you going to argue against it?

Once you buy that you have to accept the polity of the councils, they're all under the submission of the Bishop of Rome. Well, not, okay, not initially, but from the Roman Catholic perspective today, those councils have authority because the Pope approved them.

So, what do you do with the fact that the Nicene, the sixth canon, the Council of Nicaea, talks about an overriding authority of the Bishop of Rome in certain areas? Not overriding the authority of the Bishop of Alexandria in his areas, but there's a form of episcopacy, right?

So, when Leo writes his tome, Chalcedon, just continued development, and that's why I say, what stops somebody where they are? What's going to stop Matthew Barrett here? Because with a statement like this, well, we can't cherry pick.

Have you looked at what these councils said about church polity, things like that? And how easy would it be for him to go, well, I just read the Book of Acts again with even fresher eyes, and all of a sudden, I see the necessity of the papacy, right?

Right. All right. So, back to point three, God took a sledgehammer to the third pillar, baptism. When forced to account for the whole of ecclesiology in the Book of Acts, I simultaneously could not escape the Apostle Peter's stalwart promise at Pentecost.

Okay, now look, Presbyterian brothers, hitch up your girdle, whatever, get ready. I have made this criticism for a long time, all right? And it's an absolutely valid criticism. Absolutely valid criticism, I don't care what you say.

You cannot pick on me for pointing this out. But it's pretty astonishing how fast it is. Once you adopt the paedo-baptist position, and hey, you know, if you think there are differences between federal visionism and non-federal visionism amongst Presbyterians, you can make a whole lot stronger arguments for a quote-unquote federal vision, baptismal, regenerational perspective in Anglicanism than you can from the Westminster Confession, that's for sure.

So, how fast is it, once you adopt paedo-baptism, that the last part of Acts 239 disappears from your Bible? Because you all never quote it. And I've proved it. I've proved it. At the end of an evangelistic message, Peter calls on the crowd to repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of sins and receive the Spirit.