Episcopos/Presbuteros/William and Steve Ray

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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This morning I once again saw Steve Ray promoting the works of William Albrecht in regards to this time the subject of the priesthood.

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And as I scanned through William's argumentation, I was once again amazed. Not so much that William really doesn't know the field very well, but that someone like Steve Ray, who is given a national platform on Catholic Answers to act as a

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Catholic apologist, could promote the works of someone who is just so far removed from having any serious knowledge of the issues at hand.

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Strong words, but let me document them. I read from Mr. Albrecht's paper, which

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Mr. Ray is the one who is promoting this. I read, quote, It is common knowledge that in the

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New Testament era, the Greek terms presbyter and episkopos were used interchangeably.

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But nowhere at all does the Bible even come close, all caps, to hinting that the offices are equal.

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Well, the reality is, of course, that there are only two offices in the New Testament, that of the elder bishop, they are used interchangeably, as we're about to see, and of the deacon.

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There's no office of the priest mentioned. The term priest is used, but there is no office, there is no qualifications indicated, nothing like that whatsoever.

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But we continue. One good example of this that speaks volumes of the Catholic position can be found in the pastoral epistles,

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Titus, 1st and 2nd Timothy. Now I break again to simply ask, why the artificial imitation?

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Because without it, the rest of his argument will collapse, as we will see. He continues. In the pastoral epistles, episkopos, bishop, is always, all capitals, singular, and presbyteroi, plural.

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In the pastoral epistles, we find episkopos, referring to the office of the bishop, the overseer, mentioned five times, each time in the singular form.

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Now, here we have biblical facts. Or are they biblical facts?

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Well, we've pointed out that William struggles with biblical facts, and once again, he has missed the boat here as well.

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Episkopos only appears twice, not five times, in the pastoral epistles. In 1st Timothy 3 -2 and Titus 1 -7, he confused the two terms here himself.

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He interchanged them even in the number of times they appear. In both times it appears, it is in the discussion of the qualifications of the elder.

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That's why it is singular. You're talking about the qualifications for that office holder. That's why you're going to use it in the singular.

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Now, we also see here why he limited this to the pastoral epistles, because if you allowed the entire New Testament to speak, his point would collapse.

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Because in Acts 20 -28 and Philippians 1 -1, it appears, but it appears in the plural, not in the singular.

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In those cases, it demonstrates the plurality of elders in each of the local churches.

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Never a single bishop, that kind of a viewpoint would develop at a later time in church history.

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That's why he's had to artificially limit the discussion to the pastoral epistles, because if you let the entirety of the

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New Testament speak, he has no position whatsoever. He continues on. When we switch over to the

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Greek term presbyter, we find the term mentioned in Titus 1 -5 in the appointing of numerous presbyters.

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The term is used in the plural form. We also find this term in 1 Timothy 5 -17. Well, like I said, it's actually found five times.

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But once again, the very text that William cites, when read in context, demonstrates the interchangeability of the terms.

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Paul speaks in Titus 1 -5 of the appointment of elders, plural, presbyteroi, in the churches.

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And then when he lays out the qualifications of these presbyteroi, what term does he use?

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Well, Titus 1 -7 tells us, and it's episkopos. Titus 1 -5, presbyteroi.

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When you say, appoint the presbyters, and then he tells Titus what their qualifications are, guess what term he uses?

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He uses episkopos, showing clearly that in Paul's mind, in the apostolic order, these are interchangeable terms.

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Now, ironically, in a recent video that William Albrecht posted on his

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YouTube site, he recognizes that, in fact, these two terms are used interchangeably in this text.

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But without explaining how or why, he simply says, oh, but the offices are not interchangeable.

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He gives us no exegesis. He doesn't show us how we have qualifications for a presbyteros over here or an episkopos over here, especially since the qualifications are for the same office.

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Gives us no explanation at all. Just simply notes it, asserts it, puts it out there, and we're just supposed to accept it.

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Here's what he did. The Greek word for bishop is episkopon, as I previously mentioned.

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A few passages before this, the Greek term for presbyteros is employed also, showing that in the early ages of Christianity, that the terms of presbyter and bishop were interchangeable, but nevertheless, the offices were not equivalent.

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Well, the reality is, of course, that they are. When the artificial restraint that William has introduced into the data that we can even examine from the

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New Testament is removed, and when his basic errors on the uses of the terms are removed, we see that the differentiation between singular and plural disappears, that episkopoi is used in the plural as a description of the plural elders in the churches, and that Paul uses these terms interchangeably in talking about the same office.

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The fact is that honest Roman Catholic historians recognize that the sacramental priesthood developed over time.

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It was not a part of the primitive church. All the sacrificial language in the world, and I know the sacrificial language that's used in the

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New Testament, the gospel of Jesus Christ is about the sacrifice of the Son of God. There's going to be sacrificial language.

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All the sacrificial language in the world is not going to be able to explain away the fact that though there is a perfectly good

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Greek term for priest found in the New Testament, it is not used by the

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New Testament writers of an office in the New Testament church.

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All believers are priests. We have only one high priest, but all of us are priests.

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Not that we are offering some new sacrifice, a partially propitiatory sacrifice upon an altar.

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We are offering ourselves. And so once again, we find Steve Ray pointing us to information that is simply flawed.

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We have documented so many errors on Mr. Ray's part that after a while, you would really think that the more serious

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Catholic apologists, and there are more serious Catholic apologists, would contact Mr. Ray and would say to him, why don't you just stick to doing videos of you riding camels with your

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Indiana Jones hat on over in Jerusalem someplace and leave the apologetics to people who actually check their facts.

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Mr. Ray does not do this, and as such, he gives fodder to anyone who wants to say, you know, things are not well on that side of the

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Tiber River. There was no sacramental priesthood in the primitive church. The New Testament bears this out very, very clearly.