The Diving Board, Episode 6

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And this is very significant. Not one, not even one of those Eastern bishops disputed or questioned the

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Pope's authority. I mean, the

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Eucharistic, let's just say this, the Eucharistic abuses are abuses to Jesus' DNA, his body and blood.

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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 in the Eucharist. Let's say there's a person watching this program right now from where you were.

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Why should they make the same journey home that you made? 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. And that's pretty much what happened to me. So I would say take the Catholic Church's claims, investigate them.

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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. Hello to everyone.

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We're back with a new episode of The Diving Board where we dive deep into history. This is

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Timothy F. Kaufman, and I'm your host today. The Diving Board podcast is one of several great podcasts available at the

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Thorn Crown Network. And this podcast 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 fell for the famous dictum of erstwhile

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Protestant Cardinal Newman, who once wrote, to be deep in history is to cease to be a

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Protestant. What we find in many Protestant conversion stories is that they believe they had become so deep in history that they couldn't be

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Protestant anymore. But as we have been showing and will continue to show, so many

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Protestants who convert to Rome thinking that they too are deep in history are actually only ankle deep, and indeed so shallow in history that they do not even know that they are only ankle deep.

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In fact, for Roman Catholics, ankle deep in the first four centuries is as far as they dare venture, because to go deeper than that is to discover the soft white underbelly of Roman Catholicism, and that is that there is no evidence of its existence until the latter half of the fourth century.

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Getting deep in history is therefore something a Roman Catholic cannot do, because Roman Catholicism itself is a grotesque aberration of the

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Church of Christ, a novelty 300 years removed from the Church of the Apostles and their followers.

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In our last episode, we focused on the conversion story of Dr. Taylor Marshall, former Presbyterian turned

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Anglican turned Roman Catholic, and as we showed, he ran into a historical brick wall when he tried to trace the origins of his religion to the

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Apostles. Not only did the early Church know nothing of Roman Episcopal doctrinal, judicial, or ecclesiastical primacy, but Taylor Marshall's attempt to normalize kneeling to receive communion is a departure from the practice of the first thousand years of history, after the

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Apostles, during which kneeling on Sundays was forbidden. His dislike of communion in the hand is actually a dislike for the first three centuries of the early

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Church, during which communion in the hand was the only known mode of communicating. We covered a lot more in episode 5, and our listeners can refresh their memories there, and this week we are going to turn to the conversion of Marcus Grodi, a personality with whom our listeners are at least peripherally familiar, because we have heard his voice occasionally when he interviews

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Protestants as the host of the Journey Home show on the Coming Home Network, which highlights conversion stories of those who return to Rome.

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In today's episode, we will begin to explore his testimony, which he titled, The Early Church Fathers I Never Saw, and demonstrate his failure to examine fully the early church fathers and the apostolic and sub -apostolic church, in his quest for historical evidence in support of Roman Catholicism.

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But before we do that, we want to revisit our assessment of Taylor Marshall's conversion in our previous episode.

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In that episode, we featured Taylor Marshall's recent podcast on communion in the hand, from early January.

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Since then, Taylor Marshall has received some pushback from critics about his attempt to establish communion on the tongue as an apostolic imperative.

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We want our listeners to register the intellectual poverty under which Marshall must labor to maintain that position, so today we will first revisit

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Taylor Marshall's recent attempt to rebut his critics in his follow -up episode on communion in the hand, before moving forward with Marcus Grodi's conversion story.

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Our audio on Marshall's response to his critics comes from his Communion on the Hand vs Tongue podcast from February 8, 2019, the link to which will be provided in the episode notes.

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Taylor Marshall and his guest, Timothy Gordon, record their podcasts in conversational style and it goes longer than an hour, so obviously we cannot and do not provide the entire context of their comments, but we have done our best to encapsulate their thinking by providing a few select quotes in their own voices, so you can hear the inflection and emphasis in their comments.

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And what we want our listeners to hear is the cavernous void of evidence for the belief that communion on the tongue was an apostolic precept.

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We will walk through five examples Marshall provides to prove that the early church taught communion on the tongue, so our listeners can grasp the insurmountable problem the

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Roman Catholic apologist faces, even as he believes firmly that he is very, very deep in history.

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Marshall provides evidence from Pope Sixtus I in the 2nd century, Basil and the

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Council of Saragossa in the 4th century, the writings of a 19th century visionary who heard directly from Mary that communion on the tongue was an apostolic precept, and then

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Pope Leo the Great in the 5th century. But before we get into this specific evidence, here is Taylor Marshall introducing the topic of his podcast.

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Communion in the hand. Should you do it? What did the early church do? Why did it change or did it change?

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Has there always been communion in the hand? And what do the saints say? What do the councils say? What does Thomas Aquinas say?

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And what happened in the modern church where now it's ubiquitous? We're talking about communion on the hand with co -host

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Tim Gordon. Tim, how are you? I'm excellent. Good, good. You and I all the time in these videos talk about how we are not fans of communion in the hand.

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It was basically a historically corrected error in the history of the church where they're like, yeah, this isn't working out.

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So they change it whenever. Well, I wouldn't even say they changed it. It could very well be that communion on the tongue is the apostolic original practice.

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We don't really know. Because of the nature of the underground church.

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Okay, now let's get into the details. Just listen to the evidence that Taylor Marshall thinks is a slam dunk for communion on the tongue, even as he acknowledges that he has no evidence for it and cannot prove it.

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Here is Taylor Marshall introducing the evidence from Pope Sixtus I. Fast facts.

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Our earliest reference that people use is Pope Sixtus I. All right, this is the beginning of the second century.

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I will admit that what I'm about to say is questioned, right?

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But the tradition is that Pope Sixtus I decreed that sacred vessels should not be touched by lay people.

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Why can they not touch the sacred vessels? Because the sacred vessels touch the precious body and blood of Jesus Christ.

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So it's actually an insulation towards the

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Holy Eucharist. You can't even touch the vessels that touch the Holy Eucharist. Right.

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So if that's going on in the beginning of the second century, obviously if you can't touch the chalice, you can't touch the host.

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Because the host is more holy than the chalice. Certainly. That's a slam dunk, right?

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Yeah. And we see that throughout the early church, that only the sacred ministers can touch the sacred vessels.

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Okay, in that case, Marshall is quoting from the Liber Pontificalis, which originated no earlier than the time of Pope Anastasius II in the late 5th century.

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Here is what the Roman Catholic Encyclopedia says about that document, the Liber Pontificalis.

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A great many biographies of the predecessors of Anastasius II are full of errors and historically untenable.

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But from Anastasius II on, the information on the ecclesiastical political history of the popes is valuable and historically certain.

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So there you go. Taylor Marshall's first piece of evidence comes from a document that even the Catholic Encyclopedia says is full of errors and historically untenable for the time period under discussion.

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Okay, now let's move on to Taylor Marshall's next piece of evidence, which is from Basil. We discussed this in our previous episode, but Taylor Marshall returns to it, and so will we.

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Here is Taylor Marshall saying that Basil said communion in the hand is only appropriate during times of persecution.

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All right, now the next one we get, so we have to move up. This is a big quote that people who use communion in the hand or remote communion in the hand, they refer to this quote by St.

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Basil the Great. So he dies, I think, at 379, right before the

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Second Council. He says the right to receive holy communion in the hand is permitted only in times of persecution, end quote.

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Right. So he is admitting that there is communion in the hand, that it is licit.

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But what's he say, Tim? That it's of a conditional nature. Precisely.

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Okay, let's go back to what Basil actually said. As we mentioned last week, Taylor Marshall is referring to the 93rd letter of Basil.

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It dates to the late 4th century. Notice that Basil's point was actually that during times of persecution when there is no minister, it is acceptable to take communion in your own hand.

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But at other times, when there is no persecution and there is a minister present, you receive communion in your own hand.

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In both cases, you receive communion in the hand. In one case, you take it.

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In the other case, you receive it. Now citing from Basil, epistle 93. Again, that's

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Basil, letter 93. Remember, Marshall has repeatedly insisted that Basil's point is that communion in the hand is only allowed during times of persecution.

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Yeah, and so that's what Basil says. He says the right to receive holy communion in the hand is permitted only in times of persecution,

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But that was not the end of the quote at all, and that was hardly Basil's point. Basil started the letter by saying that it is good to communicate daily, and that he himself communicates four times per week.

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And in times of persecution, in the absence of a minister, it is sometimes necessary to administer the Lord's Supper to yourself, that is, with your own hand.

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But when a priest or minister is present, you don't have to administer it to yourself, but rather the priest or minister gives it to you and does so in the normal way, in the hand.

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You can plainly see this reflected in the original Greek, too. In the absence of a priest, the communicant takes, λαμβάνειν, the bread in his own hand.

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But when a minister is present, the communicant receives, οὐπὸ τὴν κομμένος, the bread in his own hand.

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In other words, the difference being highlighted by Basil was between times of persecution when there is no minister present and you have to take it in your own hand, and other times, apart from persecution, when the minister is present, in which case you receive it in your own hand.

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It is not between taking it in your hand and not taking it in your hand. It is between actively taking it in your hand in the absence of a minister and passively receiving it in your hand in the presence of a minister.

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Those who would like to check my Greek on that can go to Meunier's series on the Greek Fathers, volume 32, column 485.

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But if the Greek is inaccessible to you, the English is plain enough. Under normal circumstances, communicants receive it in their own hands and sometimes keep it for later, and in all cases, people put the bread in their mouths themselves.

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Basil's letter 93 is only 10 sentences long and easy to read, and yet Marshall is still shopping it to his listeners as if Basil was rejecting communion in the hand as a normal practice, which is a grotesque decontextualization of Basil's actual words.

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Okay, let's go on to Marshall's next piece of evidence, which is the Council of Zaragoza in 380

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AD. Now the next one comes from the Council of Zaragoza. So this is

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Spain, and so we're now going way west, Iberian Peninsula. 380, so this is one year after Basil dies.

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This is the quote, "...excommunicated anyone who dared to continue receiving

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Holy Communion by the hand." And this decree was later confirmed by the Senate of Toledo.

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So in Spain, 380, it's excommunicating anyone who insists, I want to receive on the hand.

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So 380 is the same century as Constantine. It seems to be cleaning up this practice that's in the church.

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Okay, we've got to call Taylor Marshall out on this one too. It's just a gross misrepresentation of the

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Council of Zaragoza to say that they anathematized people who took communion in the hand or people who demanded to take communion in the hand.

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Just read the history of the councils and you find a completely different story. I'm about to cite from a

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Roman Catholic French theologian who summarizes the canons of the First Council of Zaragoza that Taylor Marshall is quoting.

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Now citing from Louis -Élise Dupin from page 274 of A New History of Ecclesiastical Writers in 1693.

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Again, that's from A New History of Ecclesiastical Writers by Louis -Élise

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Dupin, a French Roman Catholic theologian from 1693. Now let's turn to Carl Joseph von

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Hefele, another Roman Catholic from his History of the Councils of the Church from the original documents, published in 1872.

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Here is what he says the third canon of Zaragoza instructs. Did you hear that?

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The canon did not anathematize those who received communion in the hand. It anathematized those who receive it in church but do not eat it.

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The only way this could possibly be an issue is if people were receiving communion in the hand and then some of them were not consuming it at church.

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In other words, it appears that the Council of Zaragoza was prohibiting the practice of reservation.

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But it was not prohibiting the practice of receiving communion in the hand. In fact, it appears from the language of the

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Council that communion in the hand was normal, everybody did it, but some people left without eating it, and those were the ones who were in trouble.

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What's particularly ironic about Taylor's use of this canon is that the Council accepted the practice that Taylor condemns.

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Recall from our previous episode the situation in which a woman at Taylor Marshall's church took communion in her hand and then returned to her seat and ate it there.

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Taylor Marshall was beside himself. But the Council of Zaragoza would have had no problem with that.

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And what is so remarkable about this is that Taylor Marshall condemns the practice, thinking that he is getting in touch with the early church.

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In any case, Marshall ridiculously cited Zaragoza as if canon 3 explicitly condemned people for receiving communion in the hand, but in reality, the

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Council simply condemned those who left without eating it, an implicit acknowledgment that it was even by then still normative to receive communion in the hand and put it in the mouth yourself.

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For those who want to look at the original Latin of canon 3 of Zaragoza, you can consult H .T.

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Brun's Canonis Apostolorum et Conciliarum Secularum from 1839. We'll put the canon in the link in the episode notes.

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Okay, Marshall's next piece of evidence is pretty interesting, and it comes to us from the 19th century. Here is

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Marshall again. My take on this is, I believe, this is just Taylor Marshall's belief,

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I can't prove it, but this is how I think things went down. The apostles administered Holy Communion on the tongue.

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We see these kind of things in the Old Testament where, you know, a coal is applied to Isaiah's lips.

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We see prophets, they receive words from God that God places into their mouth.

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We see this in the Old Testament. So we have this idea that prophetic words are placed directly by God into the mouth.

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So I think the apostles were administering Holy Communion in the mouth. I think Anne Catherine Emmerich says that in the early church, in her visions, people receive on the tongue.

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Now this one is way out of chronological order, and frankly, it's just way out anyway, but I'm just providing the evidence in the order that Taylor Marshall provided it to his listeners.

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I will just say, for information for our listeners, that Anne Catherine Emmerich was a 19th century mystic and stigmatist who received visions from apparitions of Mary, and that is

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Taylor Marshall's source for communion on the tongue in the apostolic church. What I mean by visionary is that she had mystical encounters with something claiming to be

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Mary, and when I say she was a stigmatist, she developed sores on her hands and feet that were allegedly similar to the sores that Jesus would have had by being nailed to the cross.

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So that's Taylor Marshall's source for communion on the tongue in the apostolic church. That's it. A visionary from the 1800s had a vision of Mary, and that vision told her that communion on the tongue was instituted by the apostles.

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Hmm. Okay, let's move on. Taylor Marshall's next piece of evidence is from Leo the

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Great in the 5th century. Again, here is Marshall. All right, now here's another quote that I found in St.

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Leo. This is Leo the Great. He died in 461. This is Sermon 9 on the

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Gospel of John. I have to read the Latin because the Latin is the important part.

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It doesn't really work in English. So the Latin is, So he literally says,

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Now, the word for mouth here, it's in the ablative.

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It's ore, O -R -E. And in the ablative, it's instrumental. So you could just say, he's not saying we receive it in the mouth because everything you eat is in the mouth.

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But he says, And so I argue that this is communion on the mouth, communion on the tongue.

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You receive it by means of the mouth. Not by instrumentation of the hand, but by instrumentation of the mouth.

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That's the Latin. So I think that's important. Again, it's subtle. You know,

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I realize it's not the best one. He doesn't say, and not by the hand. Well, even

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Taylor Marshall knows that is not compelling evidence. Just listen to what he says. Again, it's subtle.

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You know, I realize it's not the best one. He doesn't say, and not by the hand. Now, from that point on, the

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Communion on the Tongue podcast really becomes a discussion about later church canons and various medieval and modern councils and writers.

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And we won't get into them. But keep in mind that when Taylor Marshall tried to rebut his critics, he went back to the early church to prove that communion on the tongue was an apostolic rite.

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The question is, did he succeed? Let's summarize his arguments. First, he cited evidence from the biography of Pope Sixtus that even the

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Catholic Encyclopedia acknowledges is full of errors and historically untenable. Second, he cited a misquoted section from Basil's Letter 93 in which

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Basil actually acknowledges that taking communion in the hand is okay when it is a time of persecution, when no minister is present, but receiving communion in the hand is the normal way of communion when the minister is present.

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Third, he misquoted Canon 3 of Saragossa as if communion in the hand was forbidden and condemned.

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But the canon simply says that it is forbidden to receive communion and leave the church before eating it, an implicit acknowledgment that communion in the hand was normative and practiced by everyone.

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Fourth, he cited a 19th century apparition of Mary. Not much more to say about that one.

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So fifth, he cited a 5th century pope who said that we use the mouth to receive communion, something even a child knows to be true, and something even

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Taylor Marshall acknowledges is not very good proof that communion on the tongue was an apostolic rite. Now that's the evidence that Taylor Marshall did cite.

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He did not cite Tertullian from the 3rd century who describes a woman who had taken some bread from communion home with her after church in his work

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To His Wife, Book 2, Chapter 5. He did not cite Cyprian of Carthage from the 3rd century who described the reception of the elements in the hand as he exhorted the faithful to proceed on toward martyrdom in Epistle 55,

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Paragraph 9. He did not cite John Chrysostom late in the 4th century in his 82nd homily on the

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Gospel of Matthew, Paragraph 4, in which the communicant is twice reminded that he touches the body of Christ with his hands when he receives communion.

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But he did return to another mid -4th century writer who does testify of communion in the hand in the early church and that is

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Cyril of Jerusalem in his Catechetical Lecture 23. In the lecture, Cyril encouraged the recipient of the bread and the cup to take it in his hand, touch it to his eyes, ears, forehead, and nose before eating it and drinking it.

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Marshall rejects Cyril of Jerusalem for suggesting something that is nothing less than sacrilege to Taylor Marshall's Roman Catholic ears.

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And that just undermines his whole attempt to prove that communion in the mouth is the apostolic norm. You can't just dismiss evidence because it is inconsistent with your foregone conclusion.

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Marshall's whole position on communion on the tongue is due to his belief that the early church thought the bread is

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God and the second person of the Trinity and should not be touched by laity. His position on kneeling while receiving communion is based on his belief that the early church believed in Christ's real presence in the

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Eucharist. And yet he can find no evidence of kneeling and communion on the tongue in the early church.

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All he can find is evidence against it, so he has to rely on an erroneous history of Pope Sixtus, a comment from Basil that is ripped from its context, a grossly misrepresented canon 3 of Saragossa, a 19th century visionary mystic, and a 5th century citation from Leo that even

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Taylor Marshall agrees doesn't prove his point. Our listeners will recall from our previous episodes that Marshall appreciates the ornate, embroidered vestments used by priests because they show reverence to the real presence of Christ in the

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Eucharist. But as we showed in our citation from the Catholic Encyclopedia and from Jerome, the real difference in clothing between clergy and laity does not emerge until the 5th century.

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And that is Marshall's problem. The early church does not share his belief in the real presence of Christ in the

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Eucharist. They did not kneel to it. They did not take it in their mouth. They did not have ornate vestments.

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And that is Marshall's problem. He wants to prove that the proper way to reverence the real presence of Christ in the

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Eucharist is for priests to wear vestments and for Christians to receive communion on the tongue while kneeling.

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But he simply cannot find evidence that the early church was as reverent toward the real presence of Christ in the

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Eucharist as he is. In other words, the early church was not reverent toward the real presence of Christ in the

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Eucharist because the early church did not believe in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

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Taylor Marshall cannot find evidence of his religion in the early church. And thus, he is left to apparitions of Mary, and fictionalized accounts of history, and his own personal conviction that it's just got to be true in spite of the evidence, not because of it.

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To conclude our brief return to Taylor Marshall, here is his co -host, Timothy Gordon, decrying some people's attempts to use

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Syril of Jerusalem to prove communion in the hand as normative in the early church when there is so much evidence to the contrary, in his opinion.

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It shows a lot that they're really pumped that they found one... One quote.

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One quote from one kind of early father, not Augustine or Ambrose or Thomas on any of these, but one minor father, and they're like, yeah, we got one.

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Yeah. Yeah, okay, but I have a thousand saying do it the real way. Well, thousands might be a little bit of an exaggeration.

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After all, when it comes to the early church, even Marshall acknowledges that he actually has not proven his case at all.

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He has no evidence of what he claims to be an apostolic practice. It could very well be that communion on the tongue is the apostolic original practice.

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We don't really know. Are you saying then that this documented...

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Are these documented examples surrogate for the lack of any documented examples of the more explicit question about reception, basically?

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Right, yeah. Since there aren't... We don't have them. Yeah, we don't have them. Yeah, we don't have them.

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Got it. That's what I figured. I will admit that what I'm about to say is questioned.

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Again, it's subtle. You know, I realize it's not the best one. He doesn't say, and not by the hand. And yet, despite that,

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Taylor Marshall has the audacity to conclude his episode by imploring his listeners to get back to the early church.

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Look, you got to get with the early church communion on the tongue. Now, Taylor Marshall's galactic failure to find actual evidence for communion on the tongue is significant to us in today's episode, and it relates to Marcus Grodi, because Marcus Grodi obviously faces the same problem.

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Any Roman Catholic apologist who tries to find evidence of his religion in the early church runs into a brick wall toward the end of the 4th century, and can't get back any further than that.

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So he has to exhaust himself trying to bridge a 300 -year gap that simply cannot be crossed.

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The religion of Roman Catholicism emerged three centuries after the religion of Christ, and the

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Roman Catholic apologist can't close that gap without doing some serious intellectual acrobatics to get there.

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And in the end, he simply has to ask you to grant him those 300 years, because he just can't get there.

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That approach is what I call the presumption of apostolic continuity, and we want our listeners to be very familiar with the term.

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The presumption of apostolic continuity is the assumption that the end of the 4th century is so much closer to the 1st century than we are that we ought to assume that whatever the state of religion was in the late 4th century, it must be what the apostles taught and indeed what they intended.

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I want to give you a few examples of this because it will come up repeatedly. Let's start with an 1851 book by Roman Catholic priest

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John Brand Morris, who acknowledged that devotion to Mary in the early centuries was invisible, but we can assume that the practice as it manifested in the late 4th century must be what was intended all along.

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Now citing from John Brand Morris, Jesus, the son of Mary, from 1851.

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Apply this to the Catholic religion. If there are early traces of identity of belief, they may be invisible, except to the eye of a

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Catholic, but perfectly clear to him. For an immense number of minute expressions, observations, and practices prove to him that the genius of his faith is what it always was.

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What is intended is not to assert that the present devotion to Mary existed in the early ages, that may or may not be so, but that the principle on which it is based naturally led to it and may be assumed to have been intended by God to lead to it.

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Again, that's Jesus, the son of Mary, by John Brand Morris, Roman Catholic priest, 1851.

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That is the presumption of apostolic continuity. Unable to find evidence for his religion in the first three centuries of Christianity, the

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Roman Catholic simply assumes that whatever those guys believed and practiced for the first 300 years must have been intended by God to lead to whatever those guys were practicing at the end of the 4th century, and therefore, what was believed and practiced at the end of the 4th century must have its origins in the first.

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See? Apostolic continuity. Here's another example. This time from Fr.

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William Saunders on the use of incense. He was answering the question, Why is incense used during the

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Mass? Here is his answer. We do not know exactly when the use of incense was introduced into our

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Mass or other liturgical rites. At the time of the early church, the Jews continued to use incense in their own temple rituals, so it would be safe to conclude that the

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Christians would have adapted its usage for their own rituals. Now, keep in mind that the

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Catholic Encyclopedia acknowledges that there is no evidence for the use of incense until the 5th century.

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And yet here, when Fr. William Saunders has to answer the question about when it began, he says,

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We kind of have to assume that it must have been used that early because the early Christians would have known about it.

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See? Apostolic continuity. We have no evidence from history on the use of incense in the early church, so we just need to make a grand assumption that will cover the gap.

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Here's another one, this time from Cardinal Newman, the one who coined the phrase, To be deep in history is to cease to be a

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Protestant. Now citing from his famous essay, On the Development of Christian Doctrine, Chapter 4,

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Again, that's Cardinal Newman. And in his essay, Cardinal Newman concludes that we may use the clear light of the 4th and 5th centuries to interpret the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd.

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See? Apostolic continuity. Here's another one on the perpetual virginity of Mary.

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That is the belief that Mary retained her physical virginity prior to, during, and after delivering

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Christ. This is just from the comment section on a Catholic website, but it so powerfully showcases the presumption of apostolic continuity that I just wanted to share it.

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Here's the quote. It is incredible that for centuries, Christian tradition has always affirmed that Our Lady remained a virgin throughout her life.

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We know that by the 4th century, at the latest, a popular title for Our Lord's Mother was,

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Ever Virgin. I believe this qualifies as a universal truth held by all Christians in all places, in all ages, in all times.

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See? Apostolic continuity. The person writing that is referring to the first reference to Mary as ever virgin that is found in the late 4th century in the writings of Athanasius.

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See? 4th century at the latest. So it must be a universally accepted apostolic truth from the very beginning.

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Here's another one, and it's one of my personal favorites. This is from the book called Apostolic Origins of Priestly Celibacy by Christian Caccini.

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And this is not just some guy commenting on a blog. This guy is quoted by the Vatican in support of the apostolic origins of clerical celibacy.

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Now citing from the introduction to the book. We will therefore choose the late 4th century as our chronological basis for inquiry on the birth and development of the law on clerical celibacy rather than the year 325, the date of the first ecumenical council.

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Now isn't that interesting? Even the canons of Nicaea early in the 4th century actually refer to a married clergy.

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And therefore, someone researching the apostolic origins of clerical celibacy has to begin his search late in the 4th century in order to figure out what the apostles taught in the 1st.

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Wow. Just think about that for a minute. So whether it is

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Mary as the Ark of the Covenant or Mary's sinlessness, the sacrifice of the Mass, Mary's perpetual virginity, the use of incense, the list goes on and on and on.

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From the 1st century until 350 AD or thereabouts, there is nothing at all to suggest what emerged as the

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Roman Catholicism of the late 4th century. And when it does finally emerge, it practically comes out of nowhere but emerges as if it enjoyed the full faith and credit of the apostolic church even though it was plainly a novelty.

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Just keep that in mind whenever you listen to the arguments from the Roman Catholic on the apostolicity of his religion.

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We'll take one more example from Scott Hahn, former Presbyterian minister turned Roman Catholic and in fact one of the people who was influential in the conversion of Marcus Grodi.

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This is from his book, Hail Holy Queen, the Mother of God and the Word of God. The Immaculate Conception was a commonplace of the early church.

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St. Ephraim of Syria testified to it in the 4th century as did St. Augustine in the 5th.

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Again, that's Scott Hahn, Hail Holy Queen, the Mother of God and the Word of God, page 96.

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And by the way, Ephraim of Syria, referred to by Scott Hahn, is a reference to a late 4th century writing from 360

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AD. See? Late 4th century. Therefore, apostolic continuity.

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Roman Catholics can only trace their religion back that far and no further. Now, as we prepare to dive into Marcus Grodi's conversion testimony and what he discovered in the early church fathers, keep in mind that this is the same struggle that Marcus Grodi faces.

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We're running out of time in this episode but there's a lot to discuss with Marcus so we will not run out of material and we'll certainly have to do another episode on it.

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But the presumption of apostolic continuity is relevant here so I want to begin with something

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Marcus says at the end of his show when he started taking questions from his listeners. This one is very enlightening.

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Keep in mind that Marcus Grodi's whole point is that he discovered the truth and antiquity of the

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Roman Catholic religion by studying the early church fathers. But listen to his defensive tone as soon as someone raises the question about current practices that were denied and rejected by the early church.

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This is Marcus Grodi from his Journey Home show on the Coming Home Network.

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Let's go to this email. This comes from Brent in Atlanta, Georgia. Good evening. Like you,

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I came back to the Catholic Church after a brief time in various Protestant and Pentecostal churches after reading the church fathers.

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My question is, why do some church fathers speak of outward rituals such as incense and feast as unnecessary for Christianity?

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Well, this is a good point. This brings me to the point why we don't go to the early fathers as if they carry the same authority as the church.

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They are not the church in the same way that just because today some bishop out there might say something contrary to the teaching of the church when that happens, that doesn't negate the authority of the church.

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That means that that bishop at that point was saying something outside of the teaching of the church.

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When we see the early church fathers, we find lots of things from time to time that aren't right on base with the teaching of the church.

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Now, keep in mind, this is in Marcus Grodi's own testimony on how the church fathers taught him about the church.

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And then he takes a question about contrary evidence in the early church and he says not to listen to it. The church knows better.

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That is very informative. What this really comes down to is Grodi trying to find things in the early church that agree with him and rejecting things that don't.

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Incense is just one example. The other examples we gave are similar. That's pretty much the situation that Taylor Marshall found himself in as well when it came to communion on the tongue.

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And the only way you can read the early church and find Roman Catholicism is if Roman Catholicism is what you were looking for in the first place.

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Unfortunately, that's exactly what a lot of Protestants do, thinking that they are very deep in history, and Grodi is no exception.

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Okay, so Marcus Grodi categorizes his analysis of the church fathers into four main areas.

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The church hierarchy, that is, bishops, presbyters, and deacons. The Eucharist, that is, the

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Lord's Supper and the Roman Catholic mass sacrifice. The primacy of Rome and the unity of the church.

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We will walk through each of these topics with Marcus and let him explain his thinking. Please note that Marcus Grodi's comments take about 35 minutes, so we will not be able to include everything he says, but we will interact with his main points and we'll provide a link to his testimony in the show notes.

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Okay, let's start with the church hierarchy, and we'll only get to make our start at it, but we will pick up on this in the following episode.

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Here's Marcus Grodi on what he discovered by reading the letter of Clement of Rome to the Corinthians dating to late in the first century.

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And let me begin. It's hard to pick. What was the one early church father quote that opened the door for me to the

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Catholic Church? That was hard for me to pick. But I'd like to begin with the verses that address the topic of the church and the hierarchy, the bishops, the priests, the deacons, and that structure in the early church that was not there in my

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Presbyterian church or in the congregational church that I served for a year. And let me begin by a quote from St.

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Clement. And he wrote a letter to the Christians in Corinth.

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And let me read this. He said, Our apostles knew through our

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Lord Jesus Christ that there would be strife for the office of bishop. For this reason, therefore, having received perfect foreknowledge, they appointed those who have already been mentioned and afterwards added the further provision that if they should die, other approved men should succeed to their ministry.

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Now, all these quotes, I could spend a lot of time going through all the details, but I want to point out a few things that awakened me that I never saw before.

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Here's one of the earliest churches, one of the earliest writings outside of the

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New Testament, and he's talking about that there would be strife over the office of bishop. Well, I was a

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Presbyterian. I didn't believe in hierarchy in the church. When I was a Congregationless, I didn't believe in any authority outside the local church.

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But here he's talking about that there's a battle going to be over the office of bishop. There will be men driven by their own pride who want to be in charge, who want to establish their own churches, who want to set up their own way of understanding the gospel so that others will gather around them and follow them.

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And so St. Clement says that the apostles knew this would happen, and by the perfect foreknowledge they had received, in other words, what

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Jesus had promised in John 14, 15, and 16, they would then appoint others to follow them and set it up so that when their followers died, then they would be succeeded by other men.

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In other words, this early quote references apostolic succession.

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Jesus, the apostles, and then those that they appoint, and then those that they appoint, and on and on, so that there would be a continuing authority in the church, not left up to every individual

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Christian, every individual church, fighting over who had the right interpretation. There would be an apostolic succession.

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Now, this is pretty interesting. Grodi has started off with his realization that the early church hierarchy was different from what he knew as a

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Presbyterian or a Congregationalist, and provides a quote from Clement of Rome from late in the first century, highlighting for us the hierarchy in the early church, namely, bishops on top, presbyters in the middle, and then deacons.

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So there's your original hierarchy in the church, bishops, presbyters, and deacons. And for the sake of our listeners,

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I'll just tell you that Marcus Grodi considers presbyters to be priests and sometimes refers to them that way.

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And to focus on Grodi's point, the apostles knew that there would be strife regarding the office of bishop, but Christ set up apostolic succession so that it would not be left up to each individual church.

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Well, let's start with the very first thing Grodi mentioned, which is, basically, that what he was reading in the early church fathers was totally foreign to his

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Presbyterian and Congregationalist backgrounds. What is interesting about Clement's letter is that the problem at Corinth was actually not about the office of bishop at all, but rather about the office of the presbyters.

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In Greek, the term for bishops is episkopos, and the term for presbyter is presbyteros.

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Although Clement says the apostles knew there would be strife over the episcopate, he nevertheless indicates that the problem the

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Corinthians were experiencing was related to presbyters. Notice his language, now citing from Clement's letter to the

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Corinthians, paragraph 47. It is disgraceful, beloved, yea, highly disgraceful, and unworthy of your

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Christian profession, that such a thing should be heard of as that the most steadfast and ancient church of the

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Corinthians should, on account of one or two persons, engage in sedition against its presbyters.

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Again, that's paragraph 47 of Clement's letter to the Corinthians. The sedition in Corinth was not a sedition against the bishop, but against duly elected presbyters who had done nothing wrong.

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I am not nitpicking here with Grodi, and there was indeed a sedition against the church leaders, and Corinth had written to Rome for advice, and Rome had written back.

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Grodi has that much correct. My only point here is that Clement was using the term bishop and presbyter interchangeably.

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When you read through Clement's letter, that is exactly what you will find. In his first paragraph, he remembers the early days of the apostolic church of Corinth when they submitted to their presbyters.

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For you did all things with that respect of persons, giving all fitting honor to the presbyters among you.

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Again, that's from the first paragraph of Clement's letter to the Corinthians. In chapter 42 of his letter,

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Clement refers to what the apostles did when the church was first spreading, now citing from chapter 42 of the same letter.

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And thus preaching through countries and cities, they appointed the first fruits of their labors, having first proved them by the

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Spirit, to be bishops and deacons of those who should afterward believe. Nor was this any new thing, since indeed many ages before it was written concerning bishops and deacons.

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Here he appears to quote Isaiah 60 verses 17 from memory, saying, For thus says the

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Scripture in a certain place, I will appoint their bishops in righteousness, and their deacons in faith.

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Then he complains that they have removed perfectly honorable presbyters from office in paragraph 44, as in,

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Blessed are those presbyters who, having finished their course before now, have obtained a fruitful and perfect departure from this world.

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For they have no fear, lest anyone deprive them of the place now appointed for them. But we see that you have removed some men of excellent behavior from the ministry, which they fulfilled blamelessly and with honor.

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That's paragraph 44. And then in paragraph 47, It is disgraceful, beloved, yea, highly disgraceful, that one or two persons engage in sedition against their presbyters.

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And in his conclusion he implores them to submit themselves to their presbyters. This is quoting from paragraph 57.

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You, therefore, who laid the foundation of this sedition, submit yourselves to the presbyters, and receive correction so as to repent, bending the knees of your hearts.

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Again, paragraph 57. The point here is that Clement had not been making the case for a hierarchy of offices of bishop, presbyter, and deacon, but rather was using the term presbyter and bishop interchangeably.

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The Corinthians had had some strife related to some of the presbyters not being accepted by a minority of the people in the congregation, and Clement writes to them and says that Paul knew this would happen because the apostles said that there would be strife related to the office of bishop.

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Clement was using bishop and presbyter interchangeably and was not establishing a hierarchy. I'm not going to dicker with Grodi on whether the early church organization had its

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Episcopal leanings. There is no doubt that it did, but it was a loosely defined Episcopalianism that did not at all mirror the modern

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Roman Catholic hierarchy. We will return to that presently. And to a more immediately relevant point,

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I do happen to know, as does Grodi, of a modern mode of church organization in which the terms bishop and presbyter are used interchangeably, and in which there are also really only two church offices of presbyter and deacon, or bishop and deacon, and those officers are nominated by their congregations and voted on by their congregations.

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That mode is Presbyterianism. It is just interesting to me that Marcus Grodi cited

47:41

Clement's letter to the Corinthians thinking that Clement was describing something Grodi had never encountered as a

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Presbyterian, and yet Presbyterianism is precisely what Clement appears to be describing. When you read his letter, it is clear that the strife regarding the office of bishop had to do with the

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Corinthians not submitting to a plurality of duly elected presbyters. There is no mention in the entire epistle of there being strife in Corinth related to the bishop.

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But there is something more. When Clement suggests to the guilty party that they either submit to the presbyters or depart, he suggests something that is strikingly

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Protestant at its core, something that you would never ever find in a Roman Catholic congregation. Clement says that those engaged in the sedition should defer to whatever the majority had decided.

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Now citing from Clement's letter to the Corinthians, paragraph 54, in which he provides a sample sentence that the guilty parties could recite in order to demonstrate their sincere repentance.

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He said, Let him declare,

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Again, that's paragraph 54 of Clement's letter.

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Do whatever the majority commands? Can anyone in the listening audience think of a mode of church organization in which church decisions are made by simple majority in a congregational vote?

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Hmm, that's an interesting question. Since Marcus Grodi used to be

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Presbyterian and also used to be Congregationalist, I'll bet he can probably think of at least two.

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Again, I'm not disputing that the early church indeed gravitated toward a loosely Episcopal hierarchy, and we will return to that when we get to Ignatius of Antioch next.

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But Clement's letter provides absolutely no proof of it, and that is why it is so foolish for Marcus Grodi to cite

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Clement to support a Roman Catholic view of the early church. Clement's letter has only two offices in it, bishops, who he calls presbyters as well, and deacons, and he used the term for presbyter interchangeably with bishop.

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And in Clement's view, the sedition was not against a bishop, but against presbyters who had been lawfully elected by the majority of the congregation.

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Clement's advice to them was not to submit to the bishop, but to submit to the majority decision of the congregation, and if anyone should know that in modern

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Roman Catholicism, the congregation isn't allowed to decide anything for themselves, much less to elect their bishops, presbyters, and deacons.

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It's Marcus Grodi. Now, before we move on to the next point, just listen to the words of the

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Didache from the first century, in which the local congregation is instructed to elect their own bishops and deacons.

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Now quoting from Didache chapter 15. Okay, and here is similar advice from the shepherd of Hermas, indicating that the local church was ruled by a plurality of presbyters.

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This is quoting from Shepherd of Hermas, vision 2, chapter 4. And by the mid -fourth century,

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Bishop Julius of Rome was still insisting that it is wrong to impose bishops other than those desired by the local congregation.

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That's Athanasius against the Arians, book 1, chapter 1, paragraph 35, citing a letter from the

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Bishop of Julius of Rome. We will return shortly to the office of bishop and its prominence in the early church, especially when we talk about Ignatius of Antioch.

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But Grodi attempted to use Clement to establish the primacy of the bishop. And all Clement did was establish the primacy of the plurality of elders and the majority rule of the local congregation, something that is completely foreign to modern

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Roman Catholicism. But that is exactly what is found in many Protestant denominations, including the two that Marcus Grodi left behind.

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Now, to get back to one of Marcus Grodi's main points, in order to preserve the faith and maintain the peace in the church, the apostles established apostolic succession.

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And Grodi thinks that that leads to Roman Catholicism, where there is peace and unity and happiness and continuity and unanimity and everyone believes the same thing.

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Well, we all know that's not true. Just look at modern -day Roman Catholicism and you see nothing but strife and dissent and arguing and accusations against each other.

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And that's just the PG -rated disputes that are going on within Roman Catholicism. Half of Roman Catholicism thinks

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Francis is a reformer and the other half thinks he's a heretic. But in the early church, the local congregations were allowed to elect their own bishops and presbyters and do their own thing.

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And even in the first century, after the apostles, there were disagreements about the right way to do things and, in fact, divergent customs had emerged regarding the celebration of the resurrection.

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As we have noted in previous episodes, when there was a disagreement between congregations about the right way to celebrate the

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Lord's Supper, some having learned from Peter and others having learned from John and Philip and the other apostles, disagreements were allowed to stand precisely because individual congregations were allowed to do things their own way based on what they had received from different apostles.

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Listen to Irenaeus, writing at the end of the second century, explaining that the churches far and wide had developed varying customs and celebrated things differently and that was okay.

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Now citing from Eusebius, Church History, Book 5, Chapter 24, Paragraphs 12 -13, in which he quotes a letter from Irenaeus about the disagreement about how to celebrate the resurrection.

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For the controversy is not only concerning the day, but also concerning the very manner of the fast.

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For some think that they should fast one day, others two, yet others more. Some, moreover, count their day as consisting of forty hours day and night.

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And this variety in its observance has not originated in our time, but long before in that of our ancestors.

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It is likely that they did not hold to strict accuracy and thus formed a custom for their posterity according to their own simplicity and peculiar mode.

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Yet all of these lived, nonetheless, in peace. And we also live in peace with one another, and the disagreement in regard to the fast confirms the agreement in the faith.

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Again, that's Eusebius, Church History, Book 5, Chapter 24, Paragraphs 12 -13, quoting a letter from Irenaeus about the diversity of traditions that had evolved, because congregations were allowed to decide for themselves, and notably, different churches had received varying customs from different apostles, and the early church accepted that everyone wasn't going to do everything exactly the same way.

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And when Pope Victor of Rome in the 2nd century attempted to use the iron fist to force everyone to do it the same way, everyone else told him that he was wrong.

55:00

But as regards apostolic succession, as Grodi has pointed out, it is true that the apostles appointed bishops and presbyters and instructed them to select deacons and to appoint successors, but it is also true that Paul warned that apostolic succession was absolutely no guarantee of orthodoxy.

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Even Grodi knows that. Today, some bishop out there might say something contrary to the teaching of the church.

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When that happens, that means that that bishop at that point was saying something outside of the teaching of the church.

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Just listen to Acts 20, verses 28 to 30. Take heed, therefore, unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over which the

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Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood.

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For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock.

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Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them.

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Again, that's the apostle Paul to the Ephesian elders that he'd gathered at Miletus to warn them that apostolic succession was no guarantee of orthodoxy.

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Marcus Grodi has offered up apostolic succession and the primacy of the bishop as the obvious solution to the diversity of opinions and disagreements among Protestants, and yet we know from the scriptures that apostolic succession, the way

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Marcus Grodi describes it, was no guarantee against error. After all, Paul several times laments that his own disciples,

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Hymenaeus, Philetus, and Alexander, had run after error, as 1 Timothy 1 .20 and 2

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Timothy 2 .17. And Peter also warned that there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you who privily shall bring in damnable heresies.

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That's 2 Peter 2 .1. And we all know the story of Diotrephes and 3

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John, someone who'd been appointed over a congregation and was no longer even receiving the apostles.

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Paul, Peter, and John acknowledged that even with their system of recruiting, training, and ordaining men to succeed them, deceivers would still arise within their ranks in order to mislead.

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Now that's something important to think about. Did the apostles establish an infallible system of episcopal succession?

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Of course they did not, and they knew they did not, and they warned us that it would not be reliable as a mode of guaranteeing orthodoxy.

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Otherwise, they would have commended their sheep to the system. Something like, obey whatever the bishop says, because obeying the bishop is how you go to heaven, and nobody who disobeys the instructions of a bishop can be saved.

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No, they did not say that. They said basically, despite our most sincere efforts to leave you in good hands, the

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Holy Spirit has foreseen that the office of bishop will be corrupted by heretics, so you have to hold to the infallible guidance of the scriptures, and test those who obtain to the office, and try them against the scriptures.

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When Paul left the Ephesian elders at Miletus, he did not commend them to the system of apostolic succession, but rather commended them to the word of God.

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Quote, And now, brethren, I commend you to God and to the word of His grace, which is able to build you up, and to give you an inheritance among all them which are sanctified.

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That's Acts 20, verse 32. And Peter's last task before departing was not to tell the sheep to place their unwavering trust in the shepherds who might very well attempt to mislead them, but rather to tell them,

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Be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and of the commandment of us the apostles of the

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Lord and Savior. That's 2 Peter 3, verses 1 -2. And sure enough, we find in Revelation that the churches had indeed done what the apostles commanded.

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Jesus commends the Ephesian church, saying, Thou hast tried them which say they are apostles, and are not, and hast found them liars.

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That's Revelation 2 -2. And we also find in the early church the practice of removing bishops and presbyters that stumbled into error.

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For example, we can look at Cyprian of Carthage in the late 3rd century. Roman Catholics appeal to Cyprian's soaring rhetoric on the office of the bishop and the seat of St.

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Peter and ignore Epistle 63, in which Cyprian implores the congregation of Asure not to follow their bishop into error, but rather to turn the minds of the brethren toward truth.

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Now citing from Epistle 63, paragraph 4, But being sound, let them maintain the constant tenor of their salvation and of the integrity preserved and guarded by them.

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Again, that's Cyprian, Epistle 63, paragraph 4. And what of Epistle 67, in which various congregations kicked out their bishops, and Cyprian of Carthage wrote back to them and said that they had done the right thing?

01:00:07

Not because Cyprian said so, but rather because the Scriptures had said so. This statement by Cyprian is abbreviated for the sake of time, but we will provide the link in the show notes.

01:00:18

I'm now citing from Epistle 67 of Cyprian. Again, that's

01:01:02

Cyprian, Epistle 67. We will return again to Cyprian in the future, but here the point is simply that when two bishops were kicked out of their office,

01:01:13

Cyprian responded that they had done the right thing not because of tradition and not because of his personal opinion, but because of the divine precepts found in the

01:01:22

Scriptures, prescribed by the law of God. Our point here is simply that neither the Scriptures nor the early

01:01:28

Church taught or believed the integrity of the Gospel and the purity of the Church could be preserved through a succession of men in the office of bishop.

01:01:36

In the end, the purity of the Church was upheld not by the bishop, but by the individual congregations being familiar with the

01:01:42

Scriptures and kicking out bishops who did not uphold orthodoxy. That is a scriptural position and it was the practice of the early

01:01:49

Church, and for Marcus Grodi to suggest otherwise is to reveal a deep, abiding ignorance of history.

01:01:56

Okay, let's move on to the next citation from an early Church father from Marcus Grodi. This time it is

01:02:01

Ignatius of Antioch who died early in the second century, sometime between 107 and 110

01:02:07

AD. He was a martyr in Rome. Again, here is Marcus Grodi. Let's go to another quote,

01:02:14

St. Ignatius of Antioch. We have a little bio about St.

01:02:21

Ignatius. He was born in Syria around AD 50. In other words, he was born just about 20 years after or so after the death and resurrection of Jesus.

01:02:31

He died at Rome a martyr between 98 and 117. It's very likely that St. Ignatius may have bumped into Clement when he was possibly traveling to Rome to be martyred.

01:02:41

It is with great probability that with his friend St. Polycarp, St. Ignatius was a close acquaintance of the apostle

01:02:47

St. John. And if we include St. Peter, Ignatius was the third bishop of Antioch. The first quote we had was

01:02:53

St. Clement of Rome over in Italy, and then now we have St. Ignatius of Antioch way over by the

01:03:00

Promised Land, north of Jerusalem. Read his quote, Letter to the

01:03:05

Smyrnians. He wrote a number of letters to churches on his way to his martyrdom. He said, You must follow the bishop as Jesus Christ follows the

01:03:13

Father, and the presbytery as you would the apostles. Reverence the deacons as you would the command of God.

01:03:20

Let no one do anything of concern to the church without the bishop. Let that be considered a valid Eucharist, which is celebrated by the bishop or by one whom he appoints.

01:03:30

Wherever the bishop appears, let the people be there, just as wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the

01:03:37

Catholic Church. Now, as far as we know, this is the earliest reference to the

01:03:43

Catholic Church, the universal church, that there is one church established by Christ that has a hierarchy, as it referenced here, of bishops and presbyters.

01:03:53

The word presbyter would become priest. It's those that help the bishops, and it says the necessity of following the bishop, not your own interpretation, not some popular man you see on TV, but you follow those who have received this appointment from the apostles and their successors.

01:04:12

Okay, let's think about this. Follow the bishop as Christ follows the Father. Honor the presbytery as the apostles and the deacons as the commandment of God.

01:04:22

Just listen to Grodi again. Follow the bishop as Jesus Christ follows the

01:04:27

Father, and the presbytery as you would the apostles. Reverence the deacons as you would the command of God.

01:04:35

Wow, those are pretty strong words, folks. But there was a reason that Ignatius talked this way, and this is not the only letter in which

01:04:43

Ignatius actually spoke so highly of the officers of the church. There's a very specific reason for what he said and how he said it, and we're going to come back to that in the next episode.

01:04:52

What we want to do when we come back is read through all the letters of Ignatius where he refers to the hierarchy, work through the

01:04:59

Gnostic heresy that was spreading throughout Asia Minor, and examine how Ignatius wrote against that particular heresy in all of his letters, and that will help us understand why he was so focused on bishops, deacons, and presbyters, and why he was so focused on the unity of the flesh and the spirit.

01:05:17

So we'll leave off there in this episode. We'll come back in the next episode to talk about the conversion of Marcus Grodi.

01:05:23

We're going to need the entire hour for that, and we're going to cover a lot more citations from the early church, but we're going to spend a lot of time talking about Ignatius of Antioch and the

01:05:32

Gnostic heresy that was spreading throughout Asia Minor that led Ignatius to write the way he did.

01:05:38

Without that context, we cannot be truly deep in history, and we will be misled by the

01:05:43

Roman Catholic interpretation of Ignatius' words. This is Timothy F. Kaufman, and you've been listening to The Diving Board.