Trent Horn Continued, Debate Issues, Irenaeus and Church History

Greetings, welcome to The Dividing Line. My name's James White, along with Rich Pierce, just ran in having taken the most recent batch of French croissants out of the oven.

They smell wonderful. Actually, the only thing I've seen Rich cooking around here are the most bland sandwiches.

I mean, we're talking ham out of a plastic bag. That pig died seven years ago somewhere in the world,

I don't know where, but anyway. Anyways, what were we talking about? Oh yeah, there's lots going on in the world today, and obviously

I'm highly tempted. I sort of personally expected my inbox just to be exploding from all of the apologies from everyone who last year was saying that I had lost my mind and I was insane and fear -mongering and all the rest of this stuff because I said, hey, folks, this is how it's gonna work.

You're gonna use public health stuff as your means of destroying everyone's liberty, and then once you get these people in, they're gonna open the borders, pack the court, get rid of the

Senate rules, and get rid of the Electoral College too.

And it's just sort of like it was all written out beforehand. It's almost like I had the left's inside scoop which, because it was so obvious, anybody who just stepped back and looked at it would be able to see it.

But as the Constitution is fading into the sunset and as your religious liberties, your freedom to protect your wife and your children, to have private property, your freedom of worship and religion, as all of that disappears into the very recent past,

I just want us all to remember that we were told by a number of people that that is a perfectly good price to pay for no mean tweets.

So there you go. All your liberties, but there are no mean tweets.

So I guess for a lot of folks, that was where you go. Anyways, so I obviously tempted, but we're not going to do that today.

Sorry, because I didn't get any of those apology notes and I don't expect to, obviously that's not gonna happen.

Over the weekend, remember last week we, well, sometime at last week,

I forget it was last week. We have been doing a series of responses to Trent Horn's presentation.

We've gotten seven minutes and 38 seconds. That's not even actually seven minutes, 38 seconds, because there was a promo beforehand.

So we've gotten a couple minutes into a 40 some odd minute presentation.

But what we're doing is we're using as an opportunity to do a little bit more deep dive into church history.

As most of our regular listeners know, it is a regular temptation for me to dive into church history issues because first class

I was asked to teach upon graduating seminary as scholar in residence at Grand Canyon College at that time, now

Grand Canyon University. Man, has that place grown. Almost every building that I had classes in at Grand Canyon is gone and has been replaced by something that has like five stories.

I mean, that's just absolutely astonishing what has happened over there. But I think we had, was there 400 students at that time?

Something like that. And now there's 47 ,000 or something on, not even on, not even including the online people and the people actually on, it's just amazing.

Anyway, it was the first class I taught was church history at Grand Canyon. And you tend to develop a love for what you started with.

And I had a great church history professor that instilled that love.

And then I've had the opportunity of going over to Europe and visiting many of these places. That has been a wonderful thing.

Probably never get to do it again, but had the opportunity. And so we have been contrasting from the start the proper and appropriate treatment of church history and early church sources, the writings, documents that have been discovered over time, the huge compilations of the writings of some of these men who literally had people following around and writing down almost everything they said.

I'll be honest with you, doing that with origin was a huge waste of papyrus. But anyway, the appropriate utilization of these sources and hopefully giving an example of how that is done, recognizing the temptation that as an apologist, there is a temptation.

And if you're watching this program, you probably have interest in apologetics. There is a temptation to want to find in the early church that which looks like you and people speaking like you.

And that's just perfectly understandable. So, you know, when I teach on the Epistle of Diognetus or Ignatius or Clement, yeah, it's great to read through the sections on the imputation of righteousness and justification by faith and the great exchange and all the texts on the deity of Christ and Trinitarian language and deep

Christology and Ignatius and only 107 AD. And yeah, sure, it's great, but there's also stuff that isn't really up to that level of theology either.

And you've got to recognize that. And you've got to let each one of the early church fathers be who they were.

And I've been making the argument, and I believe it's an argument that can be very strongly defended, that the

Roman Catholics simply cannot do what I do with the early church because Rome has told them what they are to find in the early church.

You have documents such as Satus Cognitum, which specifically say that in certain, not just certain areas, but in the dogmatic teaching, the

Roman Catholic church, what you have is the faith of the ancient church. This is what the church has always believed.

Now, modern Roman Catholic historians recognize that simply isn't the truth, isn't the case.

That's not the truth. John Henry Cardinal Newman also recognized that was not the truth.

And so the very man who said to go deep into history to cease to be Protestant is the very one who had to cease going deep into history to be a

Roman Catholic. And he did so, especially in regards to the alleged infallibility of the Pope. But that's why they developed the concept of the development of doctrine over time and things like this.

And as I've said many times over the years when people ask me what classes that you took in Bible college or seminary have been the most useful to you as an apologist, the answer is always the same,

Greek, church history. Greek and church history, because Greek allows you to deal with so many of the translation issues and misrepresentations of the

New Testament and of key texts in the Old Testament because the Greek translation of the

Old Testament was the primary translation being used in the New Testament and by the New Testament church.

And then church history, because I cannot think of any cult or ism that I have dealt with over the years that did not in fact, in some way twist church history.

Jehovah's Witnesses do it, Mormons do it. And in dealing with Roman Catholicism, you obviously have to deal with a tremendous amount of church history.

And so Trenthorne did a presentation in 2019. This was back when you could still see people's mouths moving.

You could understand what they were saying. I did go into my first restaurant since June of last year without a mask yesterday.

Now it said masks recommended. I figure as long as you don't put a gun to my head and force it back out the door,

I don't care if it says masks recommended. And so I got to eat. Now I had continued to patronize that restaurant all year long.

I just ate in my car underneath a tree out in the parking lot. But I helped keep them in business.

Well, good. Well, that's, you know, I hate that, well, the workers here did, but I hate to have to tell you this, but it's not gonna last.

It's not gonna last and I'm tempted to tell you why, but let's move on and get back to church history.

Why was I saying that now I've lost the connection as to see what you went and did there? I went into a restaurant, but I don't have any idea.

Oh, yes. And the poor lady, you know, at the checkout has a mask on and she's trying to tell me something and I can't not understand her.

It's like, what, honey, I'm sorry. I just, you know, finally she's like, you know, pulls it away so you can actually communicate with someone.

So the connection was Trent Horn wasn't wearing a mask and nobody else was because this was back when sanity still had some place in American society.

And so this is 2019. So we have been letting Trent speak.

It is, I am well aware of the fact that he had a limited amount of time and I have an unlimited amount of time.

That's not fair. But by letting him speak and by presenting the fuller story,

I mean, when we first started this review, what did we do? We went deep on Augustine.

And I applauded Trent for saying this is, he's saying this is a quote that Roman Catholics should not use.

Romulo cuda est causa finitas, which Augustine never said. But even more than that, what

Augustine did say in Sermon 131 is extremely challenging to the theories of Roman Catholicism in regards to the ancient concept of the papacy.

And so we dove deep into that and now we've been, and of course, once we get back to that in the video, we'll skip over it and say, go back and see the start.

But so the last time we started looking at, because remember, this is titled

Protestant Distortions of the Early Fathers. There was a shot taken at Norm Geisler about the subject of the supper and the

Eucharist as a sacrifice, Malachi 111. And you see, Trent is addressing a

Roman Catholic conference, okay? And when I'm speaking to a

Reformed conference, then I do not have to repeat everything that I and my audience already share in common.

That would be a waste of time. I can take it for granted that most of these people would understand what unconditional election is, what irresistible grace is, what the five solas are, what inerrancy means.

These are things that we should share in common in that context. And there is an understanding amongst

Roman Catholics that Malachi 111 is a prophecy of a, well, of the idea that there is going to be this worldwide idea of a sacrifice that is pleasing to God.

And what you do then is you fill that phraseology of sacrifice with a theology that developed more than a thousand years after the time of Christ.

And then you read it back into these sources. Now, obviously, Trent would disagree with that, but I think

I could demonstrate that. And so last time we were looking at this and we looked at Justin Martyr.

And in that process, I thought just on the fly as we were doing the program, the priesthood would be a really, really, really good subject for a debate because there is no

Eucharist without it. It's absolutely central to Roman Catholic theology, it is non -negotiable and it is definitional, central.

And it's not really an issue where you have a, you know, I suppose there are some weirdos running around in Rome these days saying that the priesthood should be extended to women and stuff like that.

But, you know, I'll leave debating those folks to people like Trent and I'll applaud for him because we've got our wackos and they've got theirs.

And I personally just struggle dealing with liberals in toto, whether they're liberal

Roman Catholics or liberal Presbyterians or liberal Baptists or whatever else it might be. It's for me, and I'm not sure what

Trent thinks about this, but for me, I would much rather engage a

Trent Horne than a liberal Presbyterian. We can at least, we have much more worldview in common than we do with the people on the left.

It's just the fact. And so it's easier to engage these things and you can do so with a much lower blood pressure in the process.

So anyway, we looked at Justin Martyr. I want to look at a continuation of his statement because he used

Justin Martyr, we looked at Justin Martyr, we read Justin Martyr, and it was in that context I pointed out, what does

Justin Martyr not have? Justin Martyr does not have what is absolutely necessary for the

Roman Catholic position to be true. And that is a sacerdotal priesthood. There are no priests.

There is no prayer by a sacerdotal priest. And this is so central in Roman theology.

I won't go into it right now, but there is in modern Roman Catholic theology, the idea that at ordination, there is a indelible mark made upon the very soul of the priest that is related to his ability to perform the miracle of transubstantiation.

Now that is utterly unknown to the early church.

Utterly unknown to the early church. It's not apostolic.

It's not a part of any apostolic deposit. It is plainly and clearly a theology that develops out of numerous streams that come into the historical record centuries and millennia after the time of Jesus and the apostles.

This is why Rome must deny sola scriptura, because her fundamental foundational authority claims are based upon extra biblical concepts.

There's no question about it. There is nothing in the New Testament that talks about a sacerdotal priesthood. There is nothing in the

New Testament that talks about a mark upon the soul that allows someone to work the miracle of transubstantiation, but that's

Roman Catholic dogma. That's central to an understanding of the center idea of the priesthood within Roman Catholicism.

So I'm sitting here going, hey, Justin doesn't have any priests. He doesn't have a priest like you have a priest at Catholic Answers.

I mean, I don't listen often, but once in a blue moon, I hit the wrong button on the radio or something like that and pull it up.

And lo and behold, I'll listen in. And very frequently they'll have a,

I have no idea where I am now. Okay. Hi. They'll have a chaplain or somebody, some father, somebody who is now speaking on some particular issue on the program.

Well, Justin didn't have that. And I think personally that it would be a very good topic to debate as to why the early church didn't have something that is the very mark of the modern

Roman Catholic church. So that's what I brought up. So we're going to pick up from there, do a little bit more because what he does, he goes from Justin back to the

Didache. And so I want to look at the Didache. And then as time allows,

I want to talk a little bit about another event in early church, in the early church context that illustrates again, why

I feel that as long as the Roman Catholic and Protestant debater have done their appropriate homework, as long as the

Roman Catholic debater will not utilize fraudulent sources, which has been a long history in the

Roman Catholic church, Pseudo -Isidore and Decretals and things like that, the Nation of Constantine, as long as the

Protestant debater has enough understanding of Roman Catholic dogma to know what is, you know, know the difference between the virgin birth and the

Immaculate Conception. And unfortunately, I know a lot of Protestants. I actually know Roman Catholics who don't know what the difference there is either, sadly.

And that's something I'm sure Trent would decry as well. That when a debate takes place in that way,

I am absolutely confident that the Protestant position will win out. Because Rome's current claims regarding the concept of the ancient church in antiquity and its constant teachings, they're just not true.

They're simply not true in regards to the papacy, in regards to bodily assumption of Mary, in regards to the

Immaculate Conception, priesthood, the nature of the

Eucharist. I mean, no one's arguing that Eucharistic theology.

And see, that has a modern meaning for Roman Catholics. But there is deep theology in the early church regarding the presence of Christ with his people.

No question about that. And are Roman Catholics right to say that the

Fundamentalist Baptist who has never, who wouldn't deign, there we go, had to find a place where the lights weren't reflecting off it, who would never deign to pick this book up, let alone read it and mark it.

The Apostolic Fathers, Greek and English. This happens to be Holmes. I first read the Lightfoot edition.

That's what I still use when I'm teaching. But the

Fundamentalist Baptist who sees no value in this at all, none, and who therefore will make broad sweeping statements concerning what they would call communion, the

Lord's Supper, and would take a simplistic

Zwinglian, what they think is Zwinglian. Zwingli was not as simplistic as people like to represent him as being, but position, all right?

I get why the Roman Catholic says, I can't go there. I'm not asking you to go there. I honestly,

I'm thinking here, Matotix might have, but he's not exactly their favorite person to cite.

Hahn might've, but I don't know a whole lot of Roman Catholic apologists who would have a clue what chapter 30 of the

London Baptist Confession of Faith says about the Lord's Supper. And I think a majority of them would be stunned if they read it,

I really do. And so I will be the first person to criticize my side, but I say that as a person who over the years has preached many times on the subject of the

Lord's Supper in an attempt to make sure that at least in the congregations where I have authority,

I'm making sure that our people understand what the biblical teaching is. And I very frequently go into the historical backgrounds and issues that are involved as well.

So there you go. So let's dive back into this here.

Now, of course, I am using Windows technology here, which means that approximately 27 minutes ago, this worked.

But 27 minutes is an eternity for a Windows computer. And so the audio might now be sent to a passing

VW for all we know, because that's how Windows works, but we're going to take a shot. Let's see what happens.

Alki 111, the prophet says that in every place incense is offered to my name, a pure offering for my name is great among the nations.

And so that is what Justin Martyr says that this prophecy was fulfilled in the Eucharist, which is a sacrifice.

So Protestants will say, yeah, they believe in the Lord's Supper. Okay, and so we dealt with this. This is where we got to last time, where we stopped.

And so we looked at the reading into of the term sacrifice, an entire theology that's going to develop over hundreds of years, and in the form demanded by Rome today is not going to exist till about 1 ,000 years after the time of Christ, because you're not going to have

Aristotelian categories of accidents and substance. It is plain that in Justin Martyr's day, consecrated hosts, not by a priest, are not reserved.

There are no monstrances, no tabernacles, no worship of the elements.

These are all things that develop over time. And the Roman Catholic says that is a proper and appropriate spirit -led development of the apostolic deposit.

That's how you get around anything. And the rest of us go, the apostles never taught it.

There is no evidence that the apostles ever taught these things. And so that's really where the divide exists in so many of these particular issues.

And that's what allows Roman Catholics to read back into ancient language, because the early church does believe they're offering a sacrifice of praise, and not just in the supper, but in the entirety of the worship of the church.

And it is, I think, a diminishment that then becomes very clear. I won't take a lot of time on this, but something that has been commented upon by many, many people over the years is there was a commensurate connection between the rise of a superstitious view of the supper with the diminishment and the minimizing of the word in the preaching of the church to where now you have these homilies.

Most Roman Catholics who come to Apologia, about 15 minutes into our hour and 10 minute long sermon, not service, sermon, are wondering what they've got themselves into.

The diminishment of learning with the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, particularly, then with the rise of the sacramental, not really sacramental, superstitious concepts.

Sometime I'll go through some of the quotes that I've gone through in debates past from Schaaf on some of the things that were said once the idea of transubstantiation caught hold and began to be explained to people.

My favorite's the story of the guy that stole a consecrated host and put it in his beehive, hoping that it would cause his bees to be significantly more productive in the production of honey.

And he had to come and get the priest because the bees stopped producing honey completely.

And when he brings the, you don't remember this one? When he brings the priest back, it opens up the beehive and the consecrated host has been placed in the center of the beehive and all the bees are worshiping the host, which is why they're no longer making honey.

And so the priest takes the consecrated host and the bees can happily get back to making honey after that.

Anyway, this kind of superstition that came along at that time period, there's a connection with the diminishment of the centrality of the word, instruction.

There's a whole history behind, for example, the development of the stained glass window because literacy rates fell so low, even amongst the clergy that those windows became some of the only exposure that people had to what's even found in the scriptures, which is interesting as well.

But anyways, I have wandered, chased after that rabbit as far as we need to chase after it.

So this is where we got to. And so now we're going to switch over to the Didache.

But the first Christians just thought it was a memorial, not a sacrifice. That's not what Justin Martyr says. And I can do you one better.

I can go back earlier than Justin Martyr, who was writing in the middle of the second century. I can go back to the

Didache. The Didache is one of the first catechisms in the church's history. Now, I will be honest with you.

His description here, I find somewhat fascinating. I mean, I suppose that there are some who put the

Didache so early that they would actually play with the idea that Matthew utilized the

Didache in writing his gospel. But that's extremely unusual.

And that raises horrific problems. And I cannot possibly see how that perspective does not raise really, really, really major issues in regards to authorship and inspiration.

And again, the vast majority of the papal biblical commission would not believe that Matthew was written by an apostle of Jesus to begin with.

I've mentioned this many times before, and someday we're going to have to play some clips from it, because I know

I've got the tape around someplace. And we've played it in the past. I suppose we could just pull it digitally off of an old dividing line.

But when Karl Keating and Patrick Madrid debated two fundamentalist

Baptists in Denver, Colorado, when I was debating Jerry Matitox on the papacy, I having challenged them to do that, they said they didn't want to do that when the

Pope was there. And as soon as I was arranged for a two -night debate with Jerry, then they arranged the debate with these two fundamentalists.

One of which was, I remember his name was Ron Nemec. But, and another fellow.

They were not prepared for this debate at all. And, but the thing I remember over and over again,

Keating and Madrid did was, how do you know that Matthew wrote Matthew? And I've heard that so many times, because people will repeat it from books they've read or tapes they've listened to and things like that.

Not realizing that that would be a completely valid question to ask for the majority of the scholars that the current

Bishop of Rome and his predecessors appointed to the papal biblical commission, because they don't know who wrote

Matthew. That's their official position. If you have any understanding of where these folks are coming from, then you know that they don't believe that there was a specific apostle of Jesus named

Matthew that actually wrote this book. That is what historical Roman Catholicism taught. That's historically what the reformers taught.

But, put the Protestant seminaries and the Catholic seminaries together.

I don't know where the Orthodox are on this. I'll be honest with you. I think it would sort of depend on whether they're here in the

United States or someplace else. But in the United States, mixed together, the Catholics and the

Protestants, if you think that you know who wrote

Matthew, and by the way, the name's not used, so it's not a dogmatic issue, but if you think you do, you might represent at most 10 % of the seminaries,

Catholic and Protestant in the United States. The vast majority of the rest of them don't believe that.

Don't believe that. Just keep that in mind. It's important to recognize.

So, we press on. Teaching of the 12, it wasn't authored by the Apostles, but it is associated with their teaching.

And it's so early, in fact, there is a relationship between the Didache and the Gospel of Matthew. Either Matthew drew from the

Didache in showing the correspondences between the Lord's teaching and the teaching of the early church, or the

Didache derives from Matthew, that it's easily late first century. And it says of the

Eucharist, to gather on the Lord's day and give thanksgiving after you have confessed your transgressions.

You gotta go to confession, then you can go to Mass. Okay, now, immediately, let's stop.

Now, I'm gonna read this. I'm gonna point out that this isn't actually from the

Didache's discussion of the Eucharist at all. And I'm gonna bemoan the fact that the vast majority of people in Trent's audience would never look it up to find that out themselves.

But do you hear the utilization of modern

Roman Catholic language being read back into, and the assumption being that what you have in an ancient source, such as the

Didache, which is late first century, early second century, it could be, the widest possible range would probably be 80 to 150.

Okay, I think that's a pretty, that'd be substantiatable from a number of different perspectives, all right?

So he just said, you have to go to confession before you go to Mass.

Now, Mass comes from missa, which means to dismiss. And that was when the catechumens, the people who had not yet been baptized, were dismissed from the congregation so that the supper could be had.

That's a later development. Confession, what's that gonna say to everybody who was sitting there listening to Trent?

What's necessary for confession? Oh, one of those sacerdotal priests again, right?

So you go and you confess to the father. Well, that's not in the Didache anywhere.

There are no priests in the Didache. There is no foundation for believing there are priests in the Didache. There is nothing in the context around the

Didache to say there were priests. That's just a fact. And so you see how you can, you know, remember,

I didn't come up with the title of the presentation, Protestant Distortions. Anachronism is a distortion.

It's a distortion. And everyone who's had me for church history will know that I bang away on, we can't do that to the early church any more than we can allow somebody else to get away with.

So we've got to be careful that we're not doing it. And I'm sure I have, but it was against my own intentions if I did.

And hopefully it's not as blatant and obvious as what you've got here.

I, because your sacrifice needs to be a pure one. You don't want your sacrifice to be profaned.

For this is that which was spoken by the Lord. And in every place and time offer to me a pure sacrifice for I am a great king, says the

Lord. And my name is wonderful among the nations. Now, what is that from the Old Testament? Malachi 111.

Good, we're awake. We're here. Okay, well, so what's been presented here?

Well, you've presented Norm Geisler and Geisler McKinsey, and you have said, see, they've misrepresented church history.

They have distorted church history because they say that Gregory presented this idea of sacrifice.

And you think you have now demonstrated that they have distorted church history.

When in point of fact, what we've seen so far is what you've done is you have anachronistically taken your understanding of sacrifice, which includes categories of perpetuatory sacrifice due to transubstantiation and sacerdotal priesthood, allowing this sacrament to take place.

You've taken all of that, and you've bundled it up with the express permission of your audience and transported it back to the middle of the 2nd century and now into the transitionary period between the 1st and 2nd century into the

Didache and say, see, all these guys believe what we believe. But there's a problem there.

And you can take that down if you would like from the screen. There's a problem there.

And that problem has to do with what the Didache actually says.

And to be honest with you, I was looking around going, okay, I'm teaching church history for some brothers in Germany.

And so we have been going quite a while and I haven't even gotten to Clement yet, but I taught through the

Didache just recently. And, okay.

And you can point. I know the tally lights are coming, but you can point till then. Once they come, then

I, cause it's backwards back there. So do help me out there back there. All right.

So I've just recently been reading through this stuff and talking about it.

And so let's, chapter seven is on baptism, which is fascinating.

We spent a lot of time on that. In fact, I made reference. We had a baptismal service within the past month and Jeff Durbin did the baptizing and we rent what used to be a

Baptist church that became a Presbyterian church. And there's a story behind that that I will not go into right now.

But we got there and this was in like January or February and the water heater no longer worked.

And I joked that this was the folks at the church going, oh, so you're going to immerse, huh?

Well, and then snipping a little wire so the water heater won't work.

And I did notice that Jeff was baptizing a little faster. The younger kids were shivering and stuff like that.

But I joked because in this chapter in the Didache, it says, and concerning baptism, thus baptize ye having first said all these things, baptize into the name of the

Father and the Son and of the Holy Spirit. By the way, that's extremely important because there are a lot of people who say that that is a later addition to the

Gospel of Matthew and things like that. It wasn't, there's no evidence that whatsoever. Baptize into the name of the

Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit in living water, which would be running water. But if you do not have living water, baptize into other water.

And if you can't, cannot in cold, in warm. So the default was to baptize in cold water.

And then notice it says, but if you have, do not have any of those, pour out water three times upon the head in the name of the

Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. So there was an option in the

Didache for a non -immersive form of baptism, but it was the last extreme option.

If you simply did not have water available to you. Hello, if you didn't have water available to you, that is what you did.

So that's the subject of baptism. And then there was fasting and prayer, including the

Lord's Prayer. And then after this comes the Thanksgiving, the Eucharist. And so I'm looking at this and I'm listening to Trent and I'm going, what is he reading from?

Is that a longer Latin edition or what? I mean, it seemed to me that he was saying the

Didache says this about the Eucharist. And I'm reading a section on the

Eucharist. And this is what it says. This is chapter nine of the Didache. Now concerning the

Thanksgiving, the Eucharist, thus give thanks, first concerning the cup, we thank you our

Father for the Holy Vine of David, your servant, which you made known to us through Jesus, thy servant, to you be the glory forever.

And concerning the broken bread, we thank you our Father for the life and knowledge, which you made known to us through Jesus, thy servant, to you be the glory forever.

Even as this broken bread was scattered over the hills and was gathered together and became one. So let your church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into your kingdom, where yours is the glory and the power of the

Jesus Christ forever. But let no one eat or drink of your Eucharist, but they who have been baptized into the name of the

Lord. For concerning this also the Lord has said, give not that which is holy to the dogs.

So there's the whole section. And it's very simple.

It's not ornate. There are no priests, there are no censors, there are no statues, there's no artwork, there's no procession, there's no pixies and monstrances and ciboriums and genuflecting and none of that stuff.

It's really straightforward. Very, very simple. And that is the specific section in the

Didache on the Eucharist, not what was read. That's the worship service.

The assumption is that the supper is going to be celebrated in the worship service, there's no question about that.

But we'll get to that one in just a moment. So there's, here's just like Justin, you have a simple, basic celebration of the supper without all the development and trappings that have come with Roman Catholicism at later points, at later times.

No sacerdotal priests, not a Roman Catholic friend.

Don't skip over that. Don't skip over it just because I'm the one pointing it out to you.

There are no priests here. You can assume they're there if you want, that's what you have to do, but you have no evidence of it.

You are having to assume what you've been taught against the silence of the data itself.

That's not how you handle church history. Then the prayer after communion is chapter 10, but after you are filled, thus give thanks.

We thank you, Holy Father, for your holy name, which you did cause the tabernacle in our hearts and for the knowledge and faith and immortality which you made known to us through Jesus, thy servant, to you be glory forever and ever, and it goes on.

Again, it's just a long prayer of thanksgiving. Hosanna to the

God, the son of David. If anyone is holy, let him come. If anyone's not, let him repent. Maranatha, these are just biblical phrases strung together.

And there you go. So that's what you have in the Didache. And so when

I'm listening to Trent and he's reading this and finally look it up and I go, oh, you have to go past chapter 11 concerning teachers, apostles, and prophets.

Oh, and then you have to go to the reception of Christians, chapter 12.

And then you have to go to the support of prophets, chapter 13. Finally, you get to chapter 14,

Christian assembly on the Lord's day. And lo and behold, now we find the section that Trent was reading before.

But every Lord's day, gather yourselves together and break bread and give thanksgiving after having confessed your transgressions, that your sacrifice may be pure, but let no one that is at variance this fellow come together with you until they be reconciled, that your sacrifice may not be profaned.

For this is what that which was spoken by the Lord in every place and time offered to me a pure sacrifice for I am a great

King, saith the Lord, and my name is wonderful among the nations. What's he talking about?

The worship of the gathered body. Did that include the Eucharistic sacrifice?

Yeah, it also included doing baptisms and preaching of the word and prayers and singing of Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs and everything else.

It wasn't just the quote unquote sacrifice of the Eucharist. And so in reality, for example, but let no one that is at variance this fellow come together with you.

That's talking about coming to the service. So you're to have peace amongst the brethren as they come and as they gather, not just for the

Eucharist, but for the entire thing, because that's the offering of praise to God that the

Didache is talking about. The whole worship of the gathered church, which by the way is significant today.

Here you have a situation where in the early church, the gathering of the body is understood not just as worship to God, but as a pure sacrifice of praise to God.

But what are the people in the audience hearing Trent saying? They're hearing him saying, because of where this started with Geisler and McKenzie.

What were Geisler and McKenzie talking about? Geisler and McKenzie were talking about the concept of Eucharistic sacrifice in the developed

Roman Catholic sense of today. That is an abuse of the

Didache to read that back into that ancient context.

It really is. I recognize that again, you're told by Rome, this is the apostolic faith.

So that's what's being spoken of, but that's not what a fair reading of the original text would lead you to.

How many people in that audience listening to Trent Horne would be aware of that?

That's the question. Now, I want to give you an example. You don't have to bring this up.

In fact, I'm going to, hopefully

I can bring it back. I'm not sure that I'm actually going to be pulling anything up over there.

So I'm not sure. Well, I guess if I, I'm not going to be playing anything more either. So I guess we're good.

Forgive the wetting of the whistle, but a little warm in here. All right. One of the issues that has come up is

I informed Trent that I had addressed him and was going to be addressing him again today in Twitter.

And I invited him. I said, on April 13th,

I said to Trent, I said, I plan on continuing my church history distortion response to your presentation on Thursday, by the way.

I also offered a debate invitation. The apostles established a sacerdotal priesthood in the early church. He responded, thanks for the offer,

James, but did you post a response to the previous offers to debate me on is apostolic succession true and Jimmy Akin on his sola scriptura true.

This would be more fruitful as it gets to the heart of our disagreement and more interesting for the audience. Now, let me just comment on that.

When Jerry Mattox and I debated at Boston College in 1993, we did the apocrypha and justification by faith.

And we agreed that we were concerned that we might not be able to be heard over the sounds of snoring during the apocrypha debate.

We were wrong. It ended up being significantly more interesting than the justification debate was and more hard fought and more audience participation.

And I just completely disagree. The issue of sola scriptura has been debated dozens of times.

I've done many of them going back to the 1990s. Well, that was subject to my first debate, which was over 30 years ago with Catholic Answers.

And it was discussed between Jimmy Akin and I on the Bible Answer Man broadcast, not a formal debate, but it was.

But we live today. And as much as you guys want to hide from this, the reality is that I know that the

Bishop of Rome today and the Bishop of Rome that Carl Keating and Patrick Madrid directed me to, and Jerry Mattox directed me to, and Mark Brumley directed me to, in the early 1990s, do not believe the same things.

They do not interpret the Bible in the same way. This is a fact, gentlemen.

It's the reality you live in. And you all may have gotten together and said, well, one thing we are never going to do is we are never going to get ourselves in a situation where we have to say anything in defense of Francis.

Maybe you're hoping that Francis is going to resign and join the old

Pope's Club along with Benedict. Problem is, Francis has done to the

College of Cardinals what the Democrats want to do to the Supreme Court, but much more so. He has packed the college with his acolytes, with his liberation theologians.

Now, might you end up with someone more conservative than Francis? It's possible. You could end up with someone less conservative than Francis.

That's the problem in having an alleged infallible vicar of Christ. But the reality is, we have defended

Sola Scriptura. We've written tomes on Sola Scriptura. But we can't get you guys to defend your ultimate claims of authority.

You just don't want to do it. You want to attack everybody else's. It's like when Jehovah's Witnesses come to your door.

What do they want to do? They want to attack the Doctrine of the Trinity. They think that's the weak point. But you guys won't stand up and defend the guy that you're actually telling us is the infallible vicar of Christ on earth today.

You want to debate Sola Scriptura, you think it's wrong, but when we say, well, what's the right thing? You got to point to Francis.

He's the ultimate final authority. Your own church defined him as being infallible in teaching on matters of faith and morals.

You're stuck with it. And some of your own guys have been quote unquote red pilled, right?

They've recognized what's going on in the Vatican. They know about the mafia and all that stuff going on in there.

So you guys have gone, yep, we ain't touching that one with the 10 foot pole. Well, okay.

Now, I didn't know anything about what Trent had said. And evidently, and I did get the link from Trent Horn to an article from November of last year from Jimmy Akin.

I'd never seen it. And I asked Rich, I said, has anyone called or sent anything in that even informed us or even showed interest in us responding to something from Jimmy Akin, an article from Jimmy Akin from November of last year?

And he's, no, not a thing. So I did not even know it existed. So I've grabbed hold of that and I'll look at the material being presented.

But I said, in response to Trent, I said, but the priesthood is central to Roman Catholic theology, central to the sacraments, the

Eucharistic theology and the facts of the New Testament teaching and its development in church history, clear and compelling.

It would seem far more specific than the much more nebulous idea of apostolic succession, which can be defined in numerous ways.

In fact, it is a more concrete way to address apostolic succession, since the point is it is a dogmatic assertion of Rome that is not apostolic at all.

Two birds, one stone, as they say. So the point is, he's saying, well, let's do this,

I think, very nebulous idea of apostolic succession, because that can be interpreted and has been interpreted.

That was interpreted in numerous ways in the early church, let alone today. And I'm like, okay, if apostolic succession is true within Roman Catholicism, then the dogmas of Roman Catholicism are binding as they come from the apostles.

The sacerdotal priesthood is one of those dogmas. And you cannot have a

Roman Catholic church that claims to have its basis in the founding of Jesus that does not have a sacerdotal priesthood.

Therefore, if there is no priesthood from the apostles, Roman Catholicism is proven to be a false claim.

Right? Isn't that pretty clear? I think it cuts through everything.

And something tells me there's a lot of people that would like to see that one debated. Have I debated before?

Once with Mitch Pacquiao. And that was more on the, well, you know, he told personal stories about his ordination and we had a group of little old

Roman Catholic ladies in front row. If they had had rotten fruit,

I would have eaten it. It would have, I would have been hit with it. I can guarantee you that.

But we have done one, just once, the only time. And he wasn't representing Catholic answers.

So Trent responded, if you would like a more specific resolution, here is one, resolved.

Some individuals have unique pastoral authority within the body of Christ in virtue of being successors of the apostles.

Who are these individuals? Is that the Bishop of Rome? Is that the

Magisterium as a whole? Is that bishops viewed as bishops, but only in communion with the

Bishop of Rome? Because, I mean, your system, while it collapsed under its own weight at one point during the

Babylonian captivity of the church and had to be rescued by conciliarism, then turned around and shot conciliarism.

That's the history of the Council of Pisa and Constance and all the political maneuvering and machinations that came after the

Babylonian captivity. Which, if you're not up on your church history, there was a time when there were two competing popes, one in Avignon, one in Rome, and they anathematized each other.

And then eventually they tried to get together and fix that. All they ended up with was a third pope for a little while,

Council of Pisa. And then the Council of Constance comes along, which is the council that burned Jan Hus and got rid of everybody else and created a single papacy.

So the papacy had to be rescued by a church council. And then very quickly after that, people are going, well, if the papacy has to be rescued by a church council, then maybe councils outweigh the power of the papacy.

And the papacy made it very clear shortly after that that that was not the case. A little historical background there.

So who's even being referred to here? Because see, from a biblical perspective, the successor of an apostle is a person who teaches what an apostle taught.

We have only one example of what the apostles taught.

It's called the New Testament. That's all we have. Everything else you can claim came from the apostles, but you can't document came from the apostles.

So I believe in an apostolic succession of truth. When you teach what the apostles taught, you have to believe in apostolic succession.

That's not what you believe. And in the early church, there was no concept of, when

Cyprian told Stephen and when Augustine told

Zosimus, go stick your head in a cold lake someplace, they clearly did not see that their authority as bishops either in Carthage or in Hippo was based upon their unity with the

Bishop of Rome. And so the whole position that would be being defended by the

Roman Catholic is an anachronistic position that wouldn't represent the situation in the early church.

And so who are these individuals? And what does it mean to be a successor of the apostles?

Apostles. This would be such a wide ranging thesis that even trying to establish it meaningfully one way or the other would take far more time than any debate would ever allow.

So again, we could illustrate whether such things as, here's the illustration.

You want to prove apostolic succession exists, then prove that the apostles established priests.

Right? I mean, you say the priest is an alter Christus, yes? Of course you do.

You say that the priest's authority is central to the Eucharistic adoration of the church,

Eucharistic worship of the church, the perpetuatory nature of the

Eucharistic sacrifice, all of this, absolutely central, right? It's at the writings at the time of the

Reformation all the way through, you can find it in Vatican II, right? So here's the perfect opportunity.

You want to demonstrate apostolic succession? It's definitional. It's clear.

It's a perfect example. I don't see one up. I don't see one up. So I'm certainly up for it.

I think it would be very, very, very useful, but I know

I've actually gone beyond timeframe here, but I did want to give, I said I wanted to give one other example and I would like to do that.

So give me just a second here. Oh man,

I'll tell you. These things, you know, these super insulated bottles, the ice stays in there for like 24 hours, you know, that cold water out here in the desert.

Mm, mm, mm. That is a, that's a wonderful thing. Thankful for it.

Anyway, let me give you an example from church history. Let me, let me, since Trent was doing his thing at his presentation, let me just try to do this as quickly as I can.

One of the most important of our early church writers was Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyon, toward the last portion, 170s, 180s in, in Gaul.

So Western, the Western portion of the empire. And in fact, if you recall, when we were doing all that stuff last year about Gnosticism and Manichaeism and all the rest of that stuff, we talked a lot about Irenaeus because up until the discovery of the

Nag Hammadi library and other sources like that, we pretty much, our knowledge of Gnosticism was pretty much based upon Irenaeus' description of it in his

Against Heresies. And so it should be, Irenaeus would be central to any discussion that would be had about apostolic succession because he was big on it.

And so God to Jesus, Jesus to the apostles, to the apostles, to the bishops, not the

Bishop of Rome, but to the bishops. So his doctrine of apostolic succession is not the

Roman Catholic doctrine. It's a simpler version because you don't yet have the development of the idea of a monarchical episcopate, monarchical papacy, the monarchical episcopate, you do by that point in time.

But you don't have the idea of the Bishop of Rome is the uber papa.

So he does have a belief in a charism of teaching ability that is given to the bishops, which is what makes them different from the

Gnostics. Now he's fighting Valentinian Gnosticism. And if you remember last year, when

I went into Valentinian Gnosticism, I mean, this is, talk about satanic.

It is the specifically designed way of trying to imitate the

Christian faith. I mean, it was, like I said, it's hard when you read the

Valentinian Gnostics, it's hard not to think that there's portions in the

New Testament that were prophetically warning about what was coming. That's how dangerous it was to the church.

So Irenaeus is a step in what would be the final argument of Trenthorne on apostolic succession.

Let's put it that way. And see, I as a Protestant go, I see that. Augustine's could be another step later on.

And there's development over here and there's development over there. Cause it's all, you know, I've said over and over again, if you read these books where you have this doctrine developed in this year and this one in that year, those are wrong.

You don't just have a new thing that develops. I have no idea how that's working.

I heard it over there someplace. You think it was coming through that tablet? I have no idea.

That's interesting. Rich is playing with his phone back there. Oh, not you. I know that, but I thought

I saw something in the channel. I wonder how that got to that.

Anyways, sorry. We're sitting here. Well, you're holding your phone and then there's stuff coming from over here.

The man who sits behind the controls has all the blame. That's just how it goes.

That's all it goes. If you're sitting behind those things, if it goes wrong, it's your fault. That's just all there is to it.

Just, it goes to the job description, dude. That's the only thing over there that could make a noise, as far as I can tell.

And that's what it sounded like, unless these cameras can speak, which would scare me. But I didn't, you know what?

I wonder if that's what it was. Well, this is on back here, but so you're saying something came through that.

No, I don't know. No. We're having fun here, folks. It's, hey, cool.

Technology. You know what? Irenaeus never had to deal with this.

Not once did Irenaeus ever have to deal with strange noises coming through electronic devices.

It just didn't work. Okay, anyways. We can recognize how things came together and developed over time.

And say, see, that's where an error was made that led to that error. Then you put all these errors together, you got a bigger error, and we can go, yeah, no problem.

And I can still read Augustine and go, thank the Lord for him. A lot of people can't do that, on my side and on the other side, unfortunately.

So Irenaeus, important, but he is also a real trouble spot for those who want to assert the existence of a papacy in the early church, in the modern

Roman Catholic sense. One of the, if you ever want to win

Bible church trivia, or if there is such a thing as, what's that game where you have the letters and you have to form words?

Scrabble. If you have Bible church scrabble, I'm gonna give you the winning word right now.

Okay, just write it down. Kids, homeschool kids, if you actually have stayed awake this long, which

I don't think anyone could, but, Quartodeciman, Quartodeciman.

Okay, the Quartodeciman controversy. What was that?

The Quartodeciman controversy had to do with when you celebrated the resurrection of Christ.

What's the Sunday of Easter? And early on, two traditions developed within the church.

You had an Eastern tradition and a Western tradition. The Eastern tradition pretty much went with the

Jewish calendar and hence Passover. And the Western went a little bit differently, which could result in a couple of weeks difference in when the celebration would take place.

Well, that causes problems, especially in those areas that are sort of between East and West.

And if you're gonna have pilgrimages or anything like that, you know, this can be an issue.

And so Victor, the Bishop of Rome, toward the end of the second century, he thought this was so important that he threatened the

Eastern churches with excommunication. He threatened to divide the church between East and West and excommunicate the

Eastern churches unless they bowed the Western method of determining the date of the celebration of Easter.

Now, we look at something like this and go, really?

But today, for example, amongst the Orthodox, there is an equally big argument about calendars, what calendar you're to use.

And they're lobbying nuclear -tipped missiles at each other on that subject right now.

So it ain't the first time that something like this has happened. So the

Eastern churches say, hey, our way of determining Easter came from the apostles.

Now, this is the time period where this type of claim starts to develop because it's Irenaeus who is going to claim, he's the first person to use the phrase apostolic tradition.

He's the first person to claim that he knows something that has been passed down outside of scripture from the apostles.

Only problem is that nobody in the world actually believes he was right. Irenaeus developed a concept or was taught a concept called the recapitulation theory, where Jesus has to recapitulate all the ages of man to redeem all the ages of man.

And so he taught that Jesus was an old man when he died. And he claimed this was taught to him by the apostles.

This is an apostolic tradition. That Jesus was more than 50 years old when he died. Now, nobody

East or West actually believes that, but that's the earliest example of quote -unquote apostolic tradition in the early church.

So when the Eastern churches basically said to Victor, um, you can't excommunicate us for following the apostles.

You don't have that authority. You aren't the head of the church. Now, Irenaeus, who is the

Bishop of Lyon, which is in the West, not in the East, writes to Victor.

And in the name of the entire region of Gaul, he rebukes the rash actions of the

Roman Bishop and says, don't you remember what your predecessors did? And here's what

Irenaeus wrote to Victor. For neither could Anicetus persuade

Polycarp to forego the observance in his own way in as much as these things had been always so observed by John, the disciple of our

Lord, and by other apostles with whom he had been conversant, nor on the other hand could Polycarp succeed in persuading

Anicetus to keep the observance in his way, for he maintained that he was bound to adhere to the usage of the presbyters who preceded him.

And in this state of affairs, they held fellowship with each other, and Anicetus conceded to Polycarp and the church the celebration of the

Eucharist by way of showing him respect, so that they parted in peace one from the other, maintaining peace to the whole church, both those who did observe this custom and those who did not.

And so Irenaeus says to Victor, cool your jets, dude. Polycarp and Anicetus managed to maintain fellowship.

What's gotten under your saddle is basically what he says. Now, if we switched this around, and if it was

Irenaeus who had rationally threatened the Eastern churches with excommunication, and Victor had written to him, rebuking him in counseling peace,

Victor's words would have been used as evidence of the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome, because anything will be used as evidence of the supremacy of the

Bishop of Rome. That's all there is to it. But what you have is the reverse.

And so Victor does not follow through with this, because he is rebuked for so doing, as was appropriate to do, because no one had yet come up with the idea that the

Bishop of Rome was the final authority in all things. One other thing about Irenaeus, and then we'll wrap up.

When Irenaeus says that tradition is necessary for a proper understanding of God's truth, what did he mean?

Did he mean some unwritten body of revelation that no one can show us in ancient church history anywhere?

No. What Irenaeus meant is quite different than what is often asserted.

Here is his definition. This is from the Annihilating Fathers, volume one, page 414 to 415, if you want to look it up.

Here is the tradition that Irenaeus said was necessary to properly interpret scripture.

Listen. These have all declared to us that there is one God, creator of heaven and earth, announced by the law and the prophets, and one

Christ, the son of God. If anyone do not agree to these truths, he despises the companions of the

Lord. Name more, he despises Christ himself, the Lord. Yea, he despises the Father also, and stands self -condemned, resisting and opposing his own salvation, as is the case with all heritage.

There it is. And what is it? Foundational, one

God, creator of heaven and earth. Why is that so important? Because that's the very thing the Gnostics denied. The very thing the

Gnostics denied. Now, is the scripture teacher, is one God, creator of heaven and earth? Is this some new revelation that exists outside of scripture?

No, it's an ordering principle. It's a foundational reality of what is already taught in scripture, that if you reject it, you end up, well, not only with the wacky interpretations of the

Valentinian Gnostics, the regular Gnostics, the Manichaeans, but Joseph Smith as well.

You have to start where the Bible starts. And if you don't, you're going to end up turning into a mishmash. So there you go.

That was the actual tradition that Irenaeus is making reference to. So there you go.

A little bit of a deep dive into church history stuff. There are only a few of you,

I realize, that enjoy it as much as I do, but it is important to,

I think, remember what has come before. And at least we still have this information available to us.

Keep those paper books, folks. Hide your set of the Adonisian Fathers in your mom's shelter, because it will help us as we look forward as to where we're going to remember where we have been.

And we will never stand separate from those who have come before us. So hopefully you found that to be useful.