TDB 4 The Conversions of Jeff Cavins and Dr. Joseph Johnson

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I do a podcast. I'm not interested in your podcast. The anathema of God was for those who denied justification by faith alone.
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When that is at stake, we need to be on the battlefield, exposing the air and combating the air.
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We are unabashedly, unashamedly, Clarkian. And so, the next few statements that I'm going to make,
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I'm probably going to step on all of the Vantillian toes at the same time. And this is what we do at Simple Riff around the radio, you know.
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We are polemical and polarizing Jesus style. I would first say that to characterize what we do as bashing is itself bashing.
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It's not hate. It's history. It's not bashing. It's the Bible. Jesus said,
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Woe to you when men speak well of you. For their fathers used to treat the false prophets in the same way.
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As opposed to, blessed are you when you have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness. It is on.
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We're taking the gloves off. It's time to battle. Welcome back to everyone.
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We're glad to be back in the new year. And for those of you new to the Diving Board podcast, this is episode 4 of the
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Diving Board. It is part of Simple Riff around the radio. It focuses on the conversion testimonies of Protestants who convert to Roman Catholicism.
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In particular, we focus on the arguments of Protestants who thought they were so deep in history that they couldn't be
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Protestant anymore. That catchphrase, deep in history, comes from a statement that Cardinal Newman once made about his own journey from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism.
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He is arguably one of the most famous converts to Roman Catholicism because of his high position prior to and after converting.
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He was an Anglican priest until his conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1845. He was ultimately elevated to the
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Pope's College of Cardinals and wrote prolifically as an apologist for Roman Catholicism.
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His famous saying was, to be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant. And it comes from his introduction to what is arguably his most famous work on the development of Christian doctrine.
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He wrote, Whatever history teaches, whatever it omits, whatever it exaggerates or extenuates, whatever it says and unsays, at least the
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Christianity of history is not Protestantism. If ever there were a safe truth, it is this, to be deep in history is to cease to be a
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Protestant. That statement is the inspiration for the deep in history comment made by so many
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Protestants who convert to Rome thinking that they too are deep in history. It is an appeal to the pride of the intellect, but it is a surprisingly shallow claim in its substance because those who make it, including
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Cardinal Newman, are notoriously and demonstrably shallow in history. Our first three episodes deal with the comments of Father Ray Ryland, also a former
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Anglican who converted to Roman Catholicism, and we encourage our listeners to start there first. He spoke at the 2004
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Deep in History conference about his journey to Roman Catholicism, and we spent three episodes showing him just how shallow his grasp of history was.
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In any case, our episodes are intended to be self -standing, so the listener is free to start here, but we might make occasional references to previous episodes, so it is good to be caught up on all of them.
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So, go take a listen to the first three episodes of The Diving Board. This week we are focusing on the conversions of non -denominational pastor
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Jeff Cavins and another convert who we featured in our most recent episode of The Danielic Imperative, Dr.
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Joseph Johnson. Even though they converted to Roman Catholicism 20 years apart, we are focusing on these two because the
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Roman Catholic Eucharist, that is, the Lord's Supper as interpreted by Roman Catholics, was so significant to them in their conversion.
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We are going to be referring to an article published at the Trinity Foundation called Recovering Irenaeus, dealing with the
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Eucharistic liturgy of the early church, and we encourage our listeners to download it and take a look at it for reference.
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That article goes into a lot more detail than we will hear, but it will serve as a helpful summary for us and a detailed resource for those who want to dig deeper into the liturgy of the
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Lord's Supper in the early church. It was much different from Roman Catholicism than even
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Roman Catholics realized, and these Protestant converts departed for Rome in painfully shallow ignorance, precisely where they thought they were deep in history.
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The Eucharist is not the only topic of conversations, but the work on Irenaeus will be enlightening, at least on that topic.
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Okay, so let's start with the summaries from Jeff Cavins and Joseph Johnson, in their own words.
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These testimonies are from the Coming Home Network, a Roman Catholic ministry that welcomes Prodigal Protestants back to the fold of Roman Catholicism, and listeners are encouraged to take in their whole testimony, which they can get online.
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Due to time constraints, we'll only be able to listen to a portion of their respective testimonies. So, here's
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Jeff Cavins. As a young pastor of an interdenominational church, I studied a lot, and I started studying the early church fathers.
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As I started to study those church fathers, I started to realize that there was a whole world that I was unfamiliar with.
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And as I continued to study my early church father, older brothers and sisters, I started to realize that God had a plan for me that was bigger than any plan that I'd ever had for myself.
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And before you know it, it turned to the Catholic Church. When I made that decision to become
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Catholic, everything began to fit. It was like a puzzle with the four sides that I put together, with the papacy, and the
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Blessed Mother, and tradition, and the Eucharist. So, we're going to come back to Jeff Cavins' reversion story.
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After all, he started as Roman Catholic, and the Eucharist brought him back, especially after he'd studied the early church fathers.
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But now let's move on to Dr. Joseph Johnson, for whom the Eucharist was everything. We joined
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Dr. Johnson during his interview on the Coming Home Network, where the host, Marcus Grodi, has asked him what he would tell the
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Protestant who might be in the audience. Dr. Johnson tells the Protestant that he ought to be deep in history, and once he is, he too will cease to be
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Protestant, just like Dr. Johnson. Let's say there's a person watching this program right now from where you were.
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Where I was. Why should they make the same journey home that you made? I would say for me, the
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Eucharist was everything. Jesus' words, if you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have eternal life.
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You don't have to sit there and worry whether or not I meant it the first time. You have eternal life.
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I would say investigate the history for yourself because the famous line from Cardinal Newman is to be deep in history is to cease to be
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Protestant. That's pretty much what happened to me. I would say take the Catholic Church's claims, investigate them, and as my father always told me, go wherever Jesus leads you and maybe it would end up in the
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Catholic Church. Again, that is Dr. Joseph Johnson being interviewed by Marcus Grodi on the
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Coming Home Network. Notice that Cavens and Johnson appeal to the Eucharist and believe me, they are not the only ones to do so.
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This is extremely common. In fact, in a moment you will hear Johnson's recollection at being frozen in his tracks when confronted by the ostensible real presence of Christ in the
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Eucharist. But let's listen closely to what they both said about the Eucharistic liturgy. Notice that both men had an encounter with the
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Eucharist and both assumed that if they just joined the Roman Catholic Church, they would be going back to the ancient apostolic liturgy, worshiping
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God just the same way the early church did. Here is Jeff Cavens talking about how the
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Eucharist and the incense brought him back. My whole journey actually toward the
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Catholic Church actually began the first thought of ever even maybe returning to the church or even being
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Catholic in any way or any fond thoughts of the past started when I walked into a retreat center in Dayton, Ohio, a
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Catholic retreat center, Bergamo I believe it was called, and we walked in there just about an hour or so after there had been a mass and incense was in the mass and I walked in and I smelled the incense and it brought me back.
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It brought me back and that's the sacramental dimension of Catholicism is that God speaks to us in and through the things of this world.
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We are creatures who are created to experience the world with our senses, touch, smell, taste, we hear, we think.
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We're very complex beings and in Catholicism we experience Christ in so many different ways.
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We hear, we smell, we taste, we see and it's an absolutely beautiful way to experience the
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Lord. Every part of my being can cry out and experience Christ in one way or another.
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What I was involved in before, the type of church that I was involved in was limited in somewhat to what you think and the things that you're learning, concepts and it's been so refreshing to be able to genuflect.
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It's been so refreshing to gaze upon the Lord in the blessed sacrament. It's been so refreshing to have incense and so forth.
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It's a feast for the senses. Okay, let's take these one at a time.
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Incense, genuflection, the Eucharist and the sacrifice of the Mass and sensory worship.
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So, let's see what the Catholic Encyclopedia says about incense. Now citing the
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Roman Catholic Encyclopedia on incense. When exactly incense was introduced into the religious services of the church, it is not easy to say.
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During the first four centuries there is no evidence for its use. Still, its common employment in the temple and the references to it in the
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New Testament would suggest an early familiarity with it in Christian worship. The earliest authentic reference to its use in the service of the church is found in Pseudo -Dionysius.
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Okay, that's the Roman Catholic Encyclopedia. Now, just keep in mind that the
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Pseudo -Dionysius who provides the earliest authentic reference to the use of incense was from the late 5th century.
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But what did the early church fathers have to say about the use of incense in worship? Let's see. From the
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Epistle of Barnabas dating to the late 1st or early 2nd century. This is quoting from the
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Epistle of Barnabas, chapter 2. Tread no more in my courts, not though you bring with you fine flower.
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Incense is a vain abomination to me, and your new moons and sabbaths I cannot endure. He's quoting from Isaiah 113 there.
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He has therefore abolished these things, that the new law of our Lord Jesus Christ, which is without the yoke of necessity, might have a human oblation.
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So again, that's the Epistle of Barnabas saying that God has abolished these things, including incense.
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How about the 2nd century with Justin Martyr? Now, citing from Justin Martyr's First Apology, chapter 13.
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Worshipping as we do the maker of this universe, and declaring as we have been taught, that he has no need of the streams of blood and libations and incense, whom we praise to the utmost of our power by the exercise of prayer and thanksgiving, for all things wherewith we are supplied.
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Again, Justin Martyr, First Apology, chapter 13, from the 2nd century. That doesn't sound like the early church was using incense at all.
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How about Lactantius in the early 4th century, who noted that even a wise pagan prophet,
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Trismegistus Hermes, knew better than to offer incense to the living God. Trismegistus Hermes utterly rejected incense and said,
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But let us give him thanks and adore him, for his sacrifice consists only of blessing. And what does
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Lactantius say about that? Lactantius says, And he spoke rightly. That's from Lactantius, Divine Institute's book 6, chapter 25, saying that even the pagan prophet spoke correctly when he acknowledged that we ought not be offering incense to the living
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God. In light of that explicit testimony from the early church rejecting the use of incense and the
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Roman Catholic Encyclopedia conceding that there is no evidence for the use of incense until the late 5th century, just listen again to Jeff Cavens talking about how he discovered a whole world of history when he studied the early church fathers.
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As I started to study those church fathers, I started to realize that there was a whole world that I was unfamiliar with.
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He might have found incense in the later medieval fathers, but he did not find incense in the apostolic and sub -apostolic church.
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For four centuries, the church had known nothing of the use of incense in its weekly worship. Okay, let's talk about genuflecting to the
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Eucharist. This one is fascinating, and Cavens is just way out of his depth. When Cavens is talking about the freedom to genuflect and gaze upon the
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Lord in the Eucharist, he is talking about worshipping the bread and wine of the Lord's Supper. In Roman Catholicism, the bread and wine of the
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Lord's Supper are allegedly changed into the body and blood of Christ and his soul and divinity as well, and therefore the bread and wine are to be worshipped.
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It is called Eucharistic Adoration and the appropriate body posture for such worship is to bend the knee.
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That's what genuflection means, to bend the knee before the bread and wine to worship it.
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So what drew him back to the Mass was the freedom to genuflect to the Eucharist. But what did the early church have to say about this?
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Well, nothing directly, because Roman Catholics cannot find any direct evidence of adoring the
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Eucharist in the early church. There's nothing to be found, and the reason is pretty simple. Imagine for a moment that you are a
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Roman Catholic desiring to find your current practice of Eucharistic Adoration in the early church. You would be very interested to find that in the early church they were always kneeling and bowing to the bread during the
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Lord's Supper, right? And what day is the best day to bow down to the bread to adore it? Well, the first day of the week when
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Christians got together to celebrate the Lord's Supper, of course. So the eager new Roman Catholic goes back to the early church expecting to find everyone kneeling toward the bread, because the early church heard directly from the
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Apostles that we are to worship the consecrated bread and wine, right? And to the surprise of the
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Roman Catholic, there's just nothing there, and that is because the early church did not worship the
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Eucharist. In fact, not only did they not bend the knee on the Lord's Day, they forbade bending the knee on the
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Lord's Day. It was explicitly prohibited on the very day that a Roman Catholic would have expected to find that it was required.
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I want to begin first in the catacombs, not for any appeal to authority, but to register the shocked disbelief of the
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Catholic Encyclopedia when it is discovered that the ancient church's practices were at variance with Rome's current modern norms.
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Pay special attention as Rome dismisses the standing posture of prayer as merely symbolical of actual kneeling.
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So desirous is Roman Catholicism to find evidence of her modern practices in the early church.
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Now citing from the Roman Catholic Encyclopedia on genuflection. It is remarkable that the orantes, or praying figures, of early
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Christian art are in the catacomb frescoes invariably depicted as standing with arms extended.
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Some remarks of a Roman Catholic archaeologist suggest that a probable explanation may be found in the view that these orantes, or praying figures, are merely conventional representations of prayer and of suppliance in the abstract.
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They are symbols, not pictures of the actual. Again, that's the Catholic Encyclopedia on genuflection trying to understand why the early representations of the praying posture in the early church was standing and not kneeling.
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So there you go. The early depictions of prayer in the catacombs have the Christians standing rather than kneeling to pray.
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And in order to make it fit Roman Catholic practice, the standing posture depicted in the catacombs is understood to be symbolic of actual kneeling.
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That's quite a bit of a stretch. But those standing depictions were quite actual indeed, since Irenaeus in the second century wrote in his treatise on Easter that we do not bend the knee on Pentecost because it is of equal significance with the
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Lord's Day. That's Irenaeus fragment 7. That's right. We don't kneel on the
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Lord's Day because kneeling on Sunday was prohibited in the early church. And we don't kneel on Pentecost either because it is of equal significance with the
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Lord's Day. Fast forward to the third century and we find that Tertullian considered it unlawful to pray kneeling on the
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Lord's Day. He wrote, We count fasting or kneeling in worship on the Lord's Day to be unlawful.
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We rejoice in the same privilege also from Easter to wit Sunday, that is from Passover to Pentecost.
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That's from Tertullian, De Corona, chapter 3, from 204 AD. Note well that kneeling was considered unlawful not only on Sundays all year round, but also on every day from Resurrection Sunday to Pentecost.
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A little more than a century later and the prohibition against kneeling on the Lord's Day would be codified into law.
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At the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, the 318 assembled bishops declared that some people had been found to be kneeling on the
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Lord's Day and the bishops insisted that such kneeling must cease in order to bring the church into uniformity of worship.
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Now citing from Canon 20, the Council of Nicaea from 325 AD, For as much as there are certain persons who kneel on the
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Lord's Day and in the days of Pentecost, therefore, to the intent that all things may be uniformly observed everywhere in every parish, it seems good to the
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Holy Synod that prayer be made to God standing. Notable, at least because of its relevance to our current topic, is the fact that the bishops of Nicaea did not require kneeling in order to bring everyone into conformity with those who knelt.
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Rather, they forbade kneeling in order to bring everyone into conformity with those who stood. In light of the frescoes in the catacombs and Irenaeus and Tertullian's objections, we suspect that Nicaea thought standing to pray was the standard.
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It was not a new practice at Nicaea. It had already been the norm for centuries. We, of course, have no problem with kneeling for prayer.
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We merely wish to highlight the fact that the early church was against it. And the bishops assembled at Nicaea did not think it was appropriate to genuflect in worship, and especially not on the
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Lord's Day. Fast forward to 374 AD and we find Basil the
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Great explaining why Christians do not kneel on the Lord's Day. Now citing from Basil de
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Spiritus Santo chapter 27 We pray standing on the first day of the week, but we do not all know the reason.
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We remind ourselves of the grace given to us by standing at prayer, not only because we rose with Christ and are bound to sink those things which are above, but because the day seems to us to be, in some sense, an image of the age which we expect.
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On this day, the rules of the church have educated us to prefer the upright attitude of prayer. Again, Basil de
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Spiritus Santo chapter 27 Fast forward another 77 years to the
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Council of Chalcedon in 451 AD and the very first canon reaffirms all the canons of Nicaea, including the prohibition of kneeling on the
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Lord's Day. We deem it right that the canons hitherto issued by the saintly fathers at each and every synod should remain in force.
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That's canon 1 from the Council of Chalcedon. Though prohibition against kneeling on the
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Lord's Day was not rescinded. Fast forward another 102 years to the second council of Constantinople in 553
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AD and the bishops gathered there restate their affirmation of the four preceding ecumenical councils, emphatically condemning those who do not agree with what was defined by them.
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We repeat our formal confession that we accept the four holy synods, that is, of Nicaea, of Constantinople, the first of Ephesus, and of Chalcedon.
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Our teaching is and has been all that they have defined concerning the one faith. We consider those who do not respect these things as foreign to the
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Catholic Church. Again, that's the second council of Constantinople. The prohibition against kneeling on the
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Lord's Day was not rescinded, and anyone who knelt on the Lord's Day, contrary to Canon 20 at Nicaea, was foreign to the
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Catholic Church. Fast forward 123 years to the third council of Constantinople in 681
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AD and we find the bishops there reaffirming the divine tenets of piety of the council of Nicaea in all respects unaltered.
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Wherefore this holy and universal synod of ours, following without deviation in a straight path after the holy and accepted fathers, has piously accorded in all things with the five holy and universal synods, that is to say with the synod of the 318 holy fathers who gathered at Nicaea against the madman
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Arius, and etc. etc. Reaffirming the divine tenets of piety in all respects unaltered.
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Again, that's the third council of Constantinople. And take note, without deviation in all respects unaltered, the prohibition against kneeling on the
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Lord's Day was not rescinded. Fast forward 11 years to the local council of Trujillo in 692
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AD and the council explicitly affirms that canon 20 of Nicaea is still to be honored.
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The council prohibited kneeling from Saturday evening until the following evening in recognition of the resurrection.
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Canon 90 of Trujillo says we have received from our divine fathers the canon law that in honor of Christ's resurrection we are not to kneel on Sundays.
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Fast forward 95 years to the second council of Nicaea in 787 AD, and we find the assembled bishops emphatically reaffirming everything taught by the preceding councils, especially that which was decreed at Nicaea.
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Here is the second council of Nicaea. Therefore, with all diligence, making a thorough examination and analysis, and following the trend of the truth, we diminish not, we add not, but we preserve unchanged all things which pertain to the
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Catholic Church, and following the six ecumenical synods, especially that which met in this illustrious metropolis of Nicaea.
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Just listen to that language. We diminish not, we add not, but we preserve all things unchanged.
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Late in the 8th century, and they are still not genuflecting on the Lord's day, Pope Hadrian I, who was pope during the second council of Nicaea, in his letter to Tenacious of Constantinople affirmed the six ecumenical councils to date, and included the council of Trujillo in that list.
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The prohibition against kneeling on the Lord's day was not rescinded. So fast forward 87 years to the fourth council of Constantinople in 870
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A .D., and we find the bishops emphatically reaffirming all the canons of the previous councils.
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Therefore, we declare that we are preserving and maintaining the canons which have been entrusted to the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church by the holy and renowned apostles, and by universal as well as local councils of orthodox, and even by any inspired father or teacher of the church.
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That's fourth council of Constantinople, canon one. So we are late in the 9th century, and kneeling on the
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Lord's day is still prohibited. And just think about this. In light of nearly a thousand years of testimony from Antonicene and Postnocene fathers, popes, and local and ecumenical councils, that bending the knee on Sunday is prohibited, it is absolutely stunning that Jeff Cavins can walk into a chapel where they just celebrated
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Mass and quote, feel the freedom to genuflect and gaze at the Lord in the Eucharist, unquote, as if this practice somehow connects him to the
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Apostolic Church. To the early church, the celebration of the Lord's Supper was an occasion for standing, not kneeling.
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And that is why on the first day of the week, kneeling was prohibited. Imagine that. The one day the
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Roman Catholic would have expected kneeling to be required in the early church in order to show reverence to the
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Lord in the Eucharist is the day upon which the early church forbade it. Fathers, councils, and popes maintained that prohibition repeatedly and emphatically until the 11th century, which is when
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Eucharistic adoration really began, and when kneeling was actually added to the clergy.
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And to show that, all we have to do is go to the Catholic Encyclopedia. On genuflection, the
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Roman Catholic Encyclopedia says the practice of kneeling during the consecration was introduced during the
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Middle Ages and is in relation with the Elevation, which originated in the same period.
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By Elevation, the Encyclopedia refers to the practice of elevating the consecrated bread for people to worship, immediately following the consecration.
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Regarding that practice of Elevation, the Encyclopedia concedes what we now know is the
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Elevation of the Mass is a rite of comparatively recent introduction.
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Again, that's the Catholic Encyclopedia on the practice of elevating the
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Eucharist during the Mass for worship. And thus, kneeling, or genuflecting, or bending the knee in adoration of the
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Eucharist, is a comparatively recent introduction, not in the least connected to the practices of the
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Apostolic Church, and certainly not even introduced to Roman Catholicism until late in the 11th century.
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This inconvenient reality is plainly evident in the halting attempt Roman Catholics make to convey the allegedly ancient origin of Eucharistic Adoration in the
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Church. I am summarizing this, but I am here referring to the history of Eucharistic Adoration as related by Father John Hardin, a
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Jesuit priest, but first I want to introduce you to an important concept called Reservation. In the context of the
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Eucharist, or the Lord's Supper, Reservation refers to the practice of keeping some of the consecrated bread for later use, that is, reserving it for later.
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This was common in the early Church. Now, it is important to notice that the practice of keeping some of the bread for later is not worship.
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It is Reservation. It is just keeping some of the bread for later, and transporting it to someone outside of the normal liturgy.
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But when a Roman Catholic tries to showcase the history of Eucharistic Adoration, he has to talk as if Reservation is
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Adoration, because without that connection he cannot find any Eucharistic Adoration in the early Church.
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So, with that information on Reservation, here is a summary of Father John Hardin's history of the worship of the
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Eucharist. And notice, for the first thousand years, the only evidence he has of Eucharistic Adoration is
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Eucharistic Reservation. Now citing John Hardin, and again, this is abbreviated.
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Early hermits reserved the Eucharist in their cells. From at least the middle of the 3rd century, it was very general for the solitaries in the
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East, especially in Palestine and Egypt, to preserve the consecrated elements in the caves or hermitages where they lived.
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This practice certainly goes back to as early as 120 AD. Already in the 2nd century, popes sent the
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Eucharist to other bishops as a pledge of unity of faith, and on occasion bishops would do the same for their priests.
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As monasticism changed from solitary to community life, the monks received something of the same privilege of carrying the
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Eucharist with them. They would have it on their persons when working in the fields or going on a voyage. As early as the
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Council of Nicaea, 325, we know that the Eucharist began to be reserved in the churches of monasteries and convents.
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As far as we can tell, the Eucharist was originally kept in a special room, just off the sanctuary, but separated from the church where Mass was offered.
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Certainly by the 800s, the Blessed Sacrament was kept within the monastic church itself, close to the altar.
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The practice of reserving the Eucharist in religious houses was so universal that there is no evidence to the contrary, even before the year 1000.
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Toward the end of the 11th century, we enter a new era in the history of Eucharistic adoration. The churches of Europe began what can only be described as a
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Eucharistic Renaissance. Processions of the Blessed Sacrament were instituted. Prescribed acts of adoration were legislated.
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Visits to Christ in the picks were encouraged. The cells of anchoresses had windows made into the church to allow the religious to view and adore before the tabernacle.
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From the 11th century on, devotion to the Blessed Sacrament reserved in the tabernacle became more and more prevalent in the
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Catholic world. Okay, so that is John Harton's history of Eucharistic adoration.
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Some people kept the consecrated bread and wine, and sometimes they took it with them, and sometimes they kept it in their caves and convents and things like that.
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And then in the 11th century, Eucharistic adoration was taken to a whole new level. Translation? We can't find any evidence of Eucharistic adoration prior to the 11th century, so we have to sell reservation as if it was adoration.
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Just keep that in mind as you hear Jeff Cavins talking about gazing adoringly at Jesus in the
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Eucharist. It's a practice that is a thousand years old, not two thousand years old. And remember this when
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Jeff Cavins finds it refreshing to smell the incense and genuflect before the bread and gaze adoringly at the
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Eucharist. They are all novelties, completely foreign to the early church, and utterly absent from the early church fathers, with whom he thinks he is in unity.
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Okay, so next we want to talk about his comment on the Eucharist and the sacrifice of the Mass, and I want to return as well to Dr.
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Joseph Johnson and his claim of the continuity of the liturgy since the days of the apostles. Again, here's
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Dr. Johnson. And thinking about the Eucharist, I remember coming through and I because it wasn't
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Presbyterian to dip your fingers in the holy water and cross yourself, so I avoided such nonsense. But my eye caught the tabernacle, and I thought, is that really you?
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And I got this, I mean just beads of sweat on my forehead, tears streaming down my face.
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I was stuck in one spot, couldn't move, and I thought, oh my goodness, what am
32:03
I willing to admit to myself? It just struck me. Nobody else was there, nobody looking around, it's just a moment that struck me.
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But just the beauty of the liturgy, the consistency of the liturgy, the historicity of the liturgy, where its origins go all the way back to the synagogue.
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We learned all that in church history. I knew all that when I got there. But just seeing it before my eyes, there was a consistency that made me think that I'm standing in a long continuity of God's faithfulness.
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Just by way of reminder, we are highlighting these two conversion stories because both of these Protestants decided to go back to the
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Catholic Church after some kind of mystical, historical, sensory encounter with the Eucharist, and both assumed that they were just going back to the ancient liturgy instituted by Christ and his apostles.
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So let's just think about that liturgy for a minute. Modern Roman Catholics think the kneeling part of the liturgy connects them with the early church, but we have shown that to be false.
33:09
They think the incense part of it connects them to the early church, but that is demonstrably false too.
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They think the adoring part connects them with the early church, but that is false as well. What about other parts of the liturgy?
33:21
Let's first talk about the Roman Catholic practice of mixing water with wine during the Lord's Supper. We covered this in a lot more detail in our episode on the mingled cup, and we'll provide that to our listeners in the show notes.
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But, here's a brief summary. According to the Roman Catholic Catechism, during the Lord's Supper, the priest is to add some water to the wine at the altar prior to consecrating it and administering it to the people.
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But what is the origin of that part of the liturgy? We covered this in a previous podcast, and you can get some of the details on this from our article in the
33:53
Trinity Foundation called Recovering Irenaeus. But the short story is this. The early church did not mix its wine during the liturgy.
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There are multiple references in the early church to the use of mixed wine, but those references are to the standard agricultural practice of mixing water with fermented grape juice, or what is called mirum, to make wine.
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And those references are often in the same context as mixing water with flour to make bread. Both refer to secular manufacturing processes, and neither refers to a liturgical practice of mixing water with wine or water with flour during the supper.
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But Roman Catholicism has read into that historical curiosity a liturgical step, and has even assumed that Christ must have mixed his own wine at the table during the
34:37
Lord's Supper, about which there is no mention in the scriptures or in the early church. In fact, the first actual reference to a liturgical mixing of water with wine at the altar does not occur until the late 4th century with Ambrose of Milan, who explained why water is poured into wine at the altar.
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This is quoting from Ambrose of Milan, Concerning the Sacraments, Book 5, Chapter 1,
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Paragraphs 2 and 3. We said, therefore, that the cup and the bread are set on the altar.
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What is poured into the cup? Wine. And what else? Water. But thou sayest to me,
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How then did Melchizedek offer bread and wine? What means the mixture of water? The priest touches the cup, the water streams in the cup, springs up to eternal life.
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And the people of God drink, who have obtained the grace of God. That's, again, Ambrose of Milan, Concerning the
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Sacraments, Book 5. There is nothing in the first three centuries of the church indicating a practice of having water and wine at the table and mixing it as part of the liturgy.
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And certainly no evidence to suggest that Christ had mixed the water and wine himself at the Last Supper. Just keep that in mind as Jeff Cavins and Dr.
35:49
Johnson tell you that they converted to Roman Catholicism because of its liturgical connection with the early church.
35:55
The current liturgical practice of mixing water with wine during the Lord's Supper is a novelty of the late 4th century and cannot be traced back to the
36:03
Apostles. And yet, it is a critical part of the Roman Catholic liturgy. Along those lines, we'll spend a little time on the sacrifice of the
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Mass. And again, we'll defer to our article on Irenaeus for those who would like to explore this further.
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But here is a quick summary of the sacrifices the early church offered. And make no mistake about it, the early church offered sacrifices, but they did not offer what
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Rome calls the sacrifice of the Mass. Through the prophet Malachi, the
36:31
Lord condemned the unacceptable burnt offerings of the Jews, and foretold a day when in every place incense shall be offered unto my name, and a pure offering among the heathen.
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That's Malachi 1, 10 -11. Indeed, the Apostles left instructions that sacrifices must and would continue under the new covenant, but these sacrifices would take the forms of praise, the fruit of our lips giving thanks,
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Hebrews 13 -15. Doing good works and sharing with others, Hebrews 13 -16.
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Spiritual sacrifices, 1 Peter 2 -5. Providing for those in need, Philippians 4 -18.
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And your body is a living sacrifice, Romans 12 -1. Such sacrifices are holy and acceptable,
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Romans 12 -1, 1 Peter 2 -5. And well -pleasing to the Lord, Philippians 4 -18 and Hebrews 13 -16.
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The spiritual incense that accompanies these spiritual sacrifices is the prayers of the saints offered on an altar in heaven,
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Revelation 5 -8 and Revelation 8 verses 3 -4. There is no more offering for sin, according to Hebrews 10 -18, but that does not mean there are no more sacrifices at all.
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A temple of living stones had been constructed for the very purpose that these new sacrifices would continue, according to 1
37:47
Peter 2 -5. The early church, thus understanding Malachi's prophecy and the apostolic instructions, implemented sacrificial offerings accordingly.
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Thanks, praise, hymns, good works, sharing, caring for one another, and prayer.
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These are the holy, acceptable, well -pleasing oblations of a grateful church. The weekly gathering of Christians to partake of the
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Lord's Supper became the venue where those sacrificial offerings were made. Tithes of the harvest were collected for distribution to the poor, thanks were offered to God for His provisions, and from the tithes baked bread and mixed wine were taken for the celebration of the
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Supper. We covered this particular aspect of the early liturgy in Semper Ephraim radio episodes 28 and 32, and we encourage our listeners to go check those episodes out, which are available here at Thorn Crown Ministries.
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You can also find this addressed in our article on Irenaeus as well. But here's the bottom line up front.
38:44
Roman Catholics like to use the early Church Fathers' references to the tithe offering, that is, the sacrifice of the firstfruits for the care of the poor, as evidence for the sacrifice of the
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Mass, which would be the sacrifice of the Lord's Body and Blood, a sacrifice that plainly did not exist in the early
39:01
Church. When these Church Fathers are read in context, their references are to the Eucharistic tithe offering that took place prior to the
39:09
Lord's Supper, not to the offering of the Body and Blood of Christ after the consecration of the bread and wine.
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It is not until the latter part of the 4th century that it was first proposed that Christ's suffering is what we offer in the
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Lord's Supper, and it came from Gregory of Nysa in 382 AD, when he was trying to determine how
39:29
Jesus was in the ground for three days if he was crucified on a Friday and raised from the dead on a
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Sunday. Perhaps, thought Gregory of Nysa, Jesus really was dead on Thursday night and therefore truly had sacrificed himself at the supper.
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Jesus, transcending time and space to die on Thursday night, solved the three -day problem, but also moved the new
39:52
Passover right where Roman Catholicism needed it to be on Thursday night, now citing
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Gregory of Nysa Oration 1 from his work On the Space of Three Days. So when he made his disciples share in eating his body and drinking his blood, already in secret by the power of the one who ordained the mystery of his body, had been ineffably and invisibly sacrificed, and his soul was in those regions in which the authority of the ordainer had stored it, traversing that place in the heart of the earth, along with the divine power infusing it, he offered himself for us, victim and sacrifice, and priest as well, and Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
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When did he do this? When he made his own body food and his own blood drink for his disciples.
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Again, that's Gregory of Nysa, On the Space of Three Days Oration 1. That is the first explicit reference in the early church to the belief that Jesus had sacrificed himself for us on Thursday night at the
40:53
Last Supper, rather than on Friday at the Cross. We highlight this history on the origins of the
40:59
Mass to show once again that the allegedly ancient liturgy to which both Jeff Cabans and Dr.
41:04
Joseph Johnson thought they were returning, is actually a comparatively novel liturgy developed at the end of the 4th century.
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It is not the liturgy of the church of the first three centuries, and it is most certainly not the liturgy of Christ and his apostles.
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For 300 years after the apostles, the church considered thanks, praise, hymns, good works, sharing, caring for one another, and prayer as the fulfillment of Malachi 111.
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These were the holy, acceptable, well -pleasing oblations of a grateful church, and only at the end of the 4th century did the sacrifice of the
41:38
Mass arise. Now before we move on from the Mass, I want to highlight something Jeff Cabans said about his appreciation of full sensory worship.
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Here is his comment. And that's the sacramental dimension of Catholicism is that God speaks to us in and through the things of this world.
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We are creatures who are created to experience the world with our senses, touch, smell, taste, we hear, we think.
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We're very, very complex beings. And in Catholicism, we experience
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Christ in so many different ways. We hear, we smell, we taste, we see.
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And it's an absolutely beautiful way to experience the Lord. Every part of my being can cry out and experience
42:26
Christ in one way or another. Now, before addressing Caban's comment,
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I want our listeners to become familiar with something Roman Catholics call quote, incarnational worship, unquote.
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The general sense of incarnational worship is that God, who is spiritual, became united with matter in the incarnation in order to communicate
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His grace to us. And in doing so, He established a principle of interacting with us and communicating
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His grace to us through matter. To embrace the principle, so they say, is to embrace the incarnation.
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Thus, baptismal regeneration, holy water, holy oil, blessed salts, veneration of icons, images, and relics, the use of candles and incense, transubstantiation, and Eucharistic adoration are all aspects of this principle of incarnational worship.
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As such, Roman Catholics say that when Protestants reject these practices and concepts, we are formally rejecting incarnational worship, but also rejecting the incarnation itself.
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We are, so they say, anti -incarnational. The Roman Catholic apologist
43:33
Mark Shea explains it in this way, and I'm quoting now from his 2014 article,
43:40
Fear of the Incarnation and Its Discontents. The emphasis on seeing the incarnation as a single event 2000 years ago on the other side of the earth often makes evangelicals tend to vaguely see the incarnation as an episode which ended with the ascension of Christ into heaven.
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Many tend to speak as though the grace of God now only reaches us in spiritual read disembodied ways.
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And fleshing that grace in people today is too much, too close. In the same way, evangelicals delight in the biblical picture of Jesus healing at the pool of Siloam in John 9 by means of water, but fret at the
44:19
Catholic idea of holy water or blessed salts, which likewise seems somehow vaguely magical or fleshly.
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Again, that's Mark Shea, Fear of the Incarnation and Its Discontents from 2014. In that article,
44:33
Mark Shea is explaining a little about incarnational worship and how wrong Protestants are to reject it.
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Now what is interesting is that Mark Shea invokes 8th century John of Damascus to justify what he considers incarnational worship.
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Here is Mark Shea again. Quote, as St. John of Damascus is happy to point out, icons are simply an emulation of what
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God himself did in becoming an icon in the person of Christ, according to Hebrews 1 .3.
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End quote. And Jeff Cavins seems to have found incarnational full -sensory worship as a doorway back into the
45:08
Roman Catholic Church, and in particular a way for him to reconnect with the early church. Now, with that said, what did the early church think of incarnational worship?
45:18
We have already shown what they thought about incense. They rejected it. What of relics? We have already shown in episode 51 that the early church buried the martyrs until the end of the 4th century, when people started digging them up and venerating their bones and kissing them.
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What did the early church think about kneeling on the Lord's Day during the Lord's Supper? They rejected it. Eucharistic adoration?
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They knew nothing of it for a thousand years. What about baptismal regeneration? You can read my series on baptismal regeneration in the early church to see that they rejected that too.
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The series is called That He Might Purify the Waters, and we'll provide the link in the show notes. What about venerating images and icons?
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The early church rejected it. Epiphanius of Salamis, when he entered a church in 394
46:04
AD, found a curtain with an image of a man on it. He says, seeing this and being loathed that an image of man should be hung up in Christ's church, contrary to the teachings of the scriptures,
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I tore it asunder. That's Jerome letter 51 from Epiphanius paragraph 9.
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And what of Lactantius in the 4th century, who said, for if God is not seen, he ought therefore to be worshipped with things that are not seen.
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That's from his Divine Institutes, book 6, chapter 25. What about the use of candles in worship?
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Lactantius ridiculed pagan Rome's use of candles in worship, noting that it is inappropriate to use them in the worship of the true
46:45
God. That's from Divine Institutes, book 6, chapter 2. And what of Origen in the 3rd century, who said we must worship
46:52
God incorporeally rather than corporeally? Quote, it is the same too with the expression,
46:58
God is a spirit. And because the prescriptions of the law were obeyed both by Samaritans and Jews in a corporeal and literal manner, our
47:06
Savior said to the Samaritan woman, the hour is coming when neither in Jerusalem nor in this mountain shall you worship the
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Father. God is a spirit and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.
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That's Origen against Celsus, book 6, chapter 70. Were all these men afraid of the
47:26
Incarnation? Of course not. The problem for Roman Catholics in general, and for Jeff Cavens in particular, is that the early church did not practice the full sensory worship that brought
47:36
Jeff Cavens back to the Roman Catholic Church. They did not use incense. They did not kneel to gaze adoringly at the
47:42
Lord in the Eucharist. They did not venerate images and icons, and insisted instead that an unseen
47:48
God should be worshipped with things that are not seen, and an incorporeal God should be worshipped incorporeally, for worship should be in spirit and in truth.
47:58
Now listen again to Mark Shea. Returning to his article, he wrote, That is
48:23
Mark Shea describing Protestants as afraid of the Incarnation. Well, if Protestants are afraid of the
48:30
Incarnation because we reject the carnal worship of Roman Catholicism, then the early church was full of Protestants, because the early church rejected the religion of Mark Shea, and, to our point, the religion of Jeff Cavens, who thought he had rediscovered the true church by getting to know the church fathers and immersing himself in full sensory worship.
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Now, to conclude this episode, I want to focus briefly on a comment of Dr. Joseph Johnson, which he made regarding the canon of Scripture.
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Something that struck Dr. Johnson was the matter of the canon of Scripture and the fact that the Roman Catholic canon of Scripture was defined at the
49:06
Council of Rome in 381 A .D. Here is Dr. Johnson on the Coming Home Network again.
49:13
And one of the questions was the canon of Scripture. You know, who determines the canon of Scripture when people say, well, we just use the
49:22
Bible? I began to question, what Bible are we talking about? The Catholic Bible is bigger.
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The Orthodox Bible is even bigger. The Orthodox Church in Ethiopia is much bigger.
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Which Bible are we talking about? And on whose authority do I accept that canon of Scripture?
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One key issue, too, along those lines was discovering that the canon of Scripture was settled in the
49:50
West in 381 by Pope Damasus I. And then two years later he told Jerome to publish the whole thing in Latin for the whole empire.
50:00
And when I thought that process through, we always said, well, yeah, the Bible is inspired, it's inerrant, and God used human beings to write it.
50:09
Well, suddenly I was thinking, and God used a pope to confirm it at a council, the Council of Rome.
50:15
You know, this is the canon. That continued to be a discussion between East and West on for centuries, but at least in the
50:23
West when the Vulgate was published, these are the books we're to be read at Mass. And that was, when
50:30
I started thinking about that, I guess you could say the issue of the papacy began to creep back up for me.
50:39
Please note that Johnson is accepting the extra books in the Roman Catholic Old Testament canon, including 1 and 2
50:45
Maccabees, or what Protestants call the Apocrypha. Just keep that in mind, and we'll come back to it in a moment.
50:52
First, there's a glaring error in Johnson's appeal to conciliar or papal infallibility in the declaration of the canon in 381
51:00
AD. So, let's briefly touch on the matter of infallibility in the Roman Catholic Church.
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Here is the Catholic Encyclopedia. When we speak of the Church's infallibility, we mean that the
51:13
Church is infallible in her objective, definitive teaching regarding faith and morals. Again, that's the
51:19
Catholic Encyclopedia. Infallibility of the Church. So, how does the
51:25
Catholic Church exercise infallibility? The Encyclopedia goes on. Having established the general doctrine of the
51:32
Church's infallibility, we naturally proceed to ask, what are the organs through which the voice of infallible authority makes itself heard?
51:40
For practical purposes, and insofar as the special question of infallibility is concerned, we confine our attention to ecumenical councils and the
51:49
Pope. Again, that's the Catholic Encyclopedia. So, basically, an ecumenical council is a council to which all bishops of the world are invited and participate, and its decrees are considered infallible.
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The Encyclopedia says, an ecumenical or general, as distinguished from a particular or provincial council, is an assembly of bishops which juridically represents the universal church as hierarchically constituted by Christ.
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Again, that's the Catholic Encyclopedia describing an ecumenical council. Note well that a particular or provincial council, say a council called in a certain city or for a limited region, is not ecumenical and therefore not infallible.
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We'll come back to that in a moment. So, what about the infallibility of the Pope? Here, again, is the
52:38
Catholic Encyclopedia. The Vatican Council has defined as divinely revealed dogma that the pontiff, when he speaks ex cathedra, that means from the chair, as in from the chair of St.
52:51
Peter, that is when in the exercise of his office as pastor and teacher of all
52:56
Christians, he defines by virtue of his supreme apostolic authority a doctrine of faith or morals to be held by the whole church.
53:04
Okay, so here is the problem with Dr. Johnson's sudden realization of the authority of the papacy because the
53:10
Pope at the Council of Rome had settled the canon in 381 A .D. First, the
53:15
Council of Rome was a provincial regional council and therefore was not infallible. The Catholic Encyclopedia does not list the
53:22
Council of Rome in its list of ecumenical councils. And second, the decree of Pope Damasus from that council was not an ex cathedra decree.
53:30
In other words, neither the Pope nor the council acted with extraordinary magisterial infallibility in their decree on the canon, and therefore the canon was not settled in 381
53:40
A .D. That is, the decree on the canon in 381 A .D. was not infallible. What is more, please note the comment by Dr.
53:48
Johnson that Pope Damasus settled the canon of scriptures and then Jerome translated it into the
53:54
Latin Vulgate for the whole empire. What is interesting is that when Jerome translated the
53:59
Old Testament into Latin, he set aside the Apocrypha and said that it was not canonical. And what is more, here is
54:06
Pope Gregory the Great, 200 years later, on his exposition on the book of Blessed Job, and he was still not convinced that the books of Maccabees were canonical.
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With reference to its particular, we are not acting irregularly if from the books of Maccabees, though not canonical, yet brought out for the edifying of the church, we bring forward testimony.
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That's Gregory, Moralia, on Job, Volume 2, Book 19, Chapter 34.
54:34
Now keep in mind that within a quarter century of the statement by Damasus, who commissioned
54:39
Jerome to translate the Bible into the Latin Vulgate, Jerome's introduction to the Old Testament book of Kings was denying that the extra books were canonical.
54:47
And Pope Gregory the Great, two centuries later, would explicitly deny that 1st Maccabees was canonical.
54:53
No, Damasus had not settled the canon at all. Now there is one thing that Dr. Johnson said that is true in a particular sense.
55:01
The early church thought some of the books in the Apocrypha were valuable in the edification of the people, and even in our series on the
55:08
Danielic Imperative, we have relied heavily on the books of 1st and 2nd Maccabees as historical references to events that took place in the intertestamental period.
55:17
I don't object to their use, and personally, I think Christians should be familiar with the history of the Jews in the 2nd century
55:23
B .C., because it is critical to our understanding of the fulfillment of Daniel 8, 9, and 11.
55:29
But to say that those books are useful, and should even be read in the church, is way different than saying that they are canonical.
55:36
And Dr. Johnson is either ignorant of the history of the canon, or he is playing fast and loose with his terminology in order to mislead.
55:44
We'll be charitable and assume that he's just ignorant. The first actual list of the canon from an allegedly infallible
55:51
Roman Catholic source, and thus, the first time the canon was actually settled in Roman Catholicism, was not until the
55:58
Ecumenical Council of Trent in the 16th century, more than 1500 years after Christ established the church.
56:04
We could go on and on with Roman Catholics about who can authoritatively establish the canon, and that's for another day.
56:11
But Dr. Johnson's claim that Pope Damasus had settled the canon by a fallible decree at a fallible council in 381
56:19
A .D., is a statement of grotesque ignorance. The fact is that the Roman Catholic Church left the canon undefined for 1500 years before they ever settled the matter at an infallible council.
56:33
And in those 1500 years, their very best apologists like Jerome and Pope Gregory denied what
56:40
Damasus supposedly settled for all time. Dr. Johnson's comment is just simply false.
56:46
So, where we'll leave off on this episode of The Diving Board is simply to revisit Cabins and Johnson on how they thought they were getting deep into history and thus decided to become
56:57
Roman Catholic. As I started to study those church fathers, I started to realize that there was a whole world that I was unfamiliar with.
57:05
And before you know it, it turned to the Catholic Church. I would say investigate the history for yourself because the famous line from Cardinal Newman is to be deep in history is to cease to be
57:18
Protestant. And that's pretty much what happened to me. So I would say take the Catholic Church's claims, investigate them, and maybe it would end up in the
57:28
Catholic Church. Well, actually, if you get to know the early church fathers,
57:33
Jeff and Joseph, you will find that they knew nothing of your novel religion. And evidence of your religion does not emerge until the latter part of the 4th century.
57:42
Prior to that, they did not mix water with wine during the liturgy, they did not offer the sacrifice of the mass, or use incense or candles in their worship, and they did not venerate relics.
57:51
It was not until the 11th century that they even started kneeling during the Lord's Supper, or elevating or exposing the bread so people could gaze adoringly at it on their knees.
58:00
The fact that you are 1 ,000 years off on when the allegedly apostolic practice of genuflecting to the
58:06
Eucharist began, suggests to me that you are not as familiar with the early church fathers, popes, and councils as you think you are.
58:12
And they did not venerate images or icons either. And they most certainly did not practice what Jeff Cavins would call full sensory worship, or what
58:20
Roman Catholics call ostensibly quote, incarnational worship, unquote. They insisted on the opposite, that we ought not worship
58:28
God with what we can see and smell, because true worship of God is in the heart, in the mind, and our sacrifices are spiritual, and the altar of our sacrifices is in heaven, not on earth.
58:40
And that tells me that you did not become as familiar with the early church fathers as you thought you did. Again, many of the practices that Jeff Cavins thought he was returning to originated at the end of the 4th century, and some at the end of the 11th.
58:55
And as for Dr. Johnson, yes, people were reading the Apocrypha long before Pope Damasus claimed it was canonical at the
59:02
Council of Rome in 381 A .D. But reading the Apocrypha and canonizing the
59:07
Apocrypha are not the same thing. And Pope Damasus most certainly did not settle the issue, since the guy he commissioned to translate the scriptures into Latin denied that the
59:16
Apocrypha were canonical less than a quarter century later, as did Pope Gregory the Great 200 years later.
59:22
The Apocrypha were not canonized until the Council of Trent in the 16th century. You are 1 ,200 years off in your guess.
59:30
By saying that Pope Damasus settled the matter of the canon in the 4th century, when even
59:35
Jerome and Gregory were completely unaware of it, tells me either that you have special knowledge to which even
59:40
Jerome and Gregory did not have access, and I jest, of course, or and this is the obvious answer, you are not so deep in history after all.
59:49
And the continuity of liturgical faithfulness that you think can be traced to the apostolic era is actually a novelty that originated at the latter part of the 4th century, no earlier.
01:00:00
And that is why we say here at Semper Ephraim Monterradio that to be deep in history is to cease to be a
01:00:06
Roman Catholic. This is Timothy F. Kaufman and you've been listening to The Diving Board. We'll see you next time.