TDB 5 — The Conversion of Taylor Marshall

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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. Welcome back to everyone, and we're glad to be back in this second episode of the
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New Year. For those of you who are new to the Diving Board podcast, it is one of many great podcasts available at Thorn Crown Ministries.
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And this one in particular focuses on the conversion testimonies of Protestants who convert to Roman Catholicism.
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In particular, we focus on the arguments of Protestants who thought that they were so deep in history that they couldn't be
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Protestant anymore. That catchphrase, deep in history, comes from a statement that Cardinal Newman once made about his own journey from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism.
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He is arguably one of the most famous converts to Roman Catholicism because of his high position prior to and after converting.
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He was an Anglican priest until his conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1845. He was ultimately appointed to the
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Pope's College of Cardinals and wrote prolifically as an apologist for Roman Catholicism. His famous saying was, to be deep in history is to cease to be a
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Protestant. And it comes from his introduction to what is arguably his most famous work on the development of Christian doctrine.
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He wrote, whatever history teaches, whatever it omits, whatever it exaggerates or extenuates, whatever it says and unsays, at least the
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Christianity of history is not Protestantism. If ever there were a safe truth, it is this, to be deep in history is to cease to be a
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Protestant. That's from Newman on the development of Christian doctrine. That statement is the inspiration for the deep in history comment made by so many
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Protestants who convert to Rome thinking that they too are deep in history.
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It is an appeal to the pride of the intellect, but it is a surprisingly shallow claim in its substance because those who make it, including
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Cardinal Newman, who was the first to say it, are notoriously and demonstrably shallow in history.
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Our first three episodes deal with the comments of Father Ray Ryland, also a former
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Anglican who converted to Roman Catholicism, and we encourage our listeners to start there first.
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Our fourth episode was about the conversion stories of Jeff Cavins, a former non -denominational pastor, and Dr.
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Joseph Johnson, a former Presbyterian minister, both of whom converted to Rome after a mystical, historical, emotional, sensory experience with the
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Eucharist. None of these returned to an ancient apostolic religion. In the shallowness of their history, they returned to a 4th century novelty, and in some cases, a 5th, 6th, 11th, or 15th century novelty.
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All of this was in the name of getting in touch with the early church, but getting in touch with the early church is something a
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Roman Catholic cannot do because Roman Catholicism itself is a novelty 300 years removed from the apostolic church of Christ and his followers.
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This week we are focusing on the conversion of Dr. Taylor Marshall. I met Taylor Marshall when we attended
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Christ the King Presbyterian Church together in Houston, Texas, and over the next few years he converted and became an
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Anglican priest, and finally converted to Rome in 2006. Taylor Marshall is a very intelligent man.
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He has a beautiful wife and many beautiful children. He's just a really nice guy. We will not be able to discuss every single part of his conversion story in this episode, but we want to focus on a couple observations he made as he was converting from being an
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Anglican priest to being a Roman Catholic layman. First, I want to cite from his conversion story from the summer of 2006.
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It is called, My Canterbury Trail to Rome, My Conversion from the Anglican Priesthood to Catholicism.
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He wrote, The argument for the authority of Rome is not sophisticated. It is simply that Christ instituted
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St. Peter to bind and loose on earth, clearly earth denotes his universal jurisdiction, and that this office is protected by the
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Holy Spirit, so that the Catholic Church will never be led into error in the realm of faith or doctrine and morals or ethics.
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Again, that's Taylor Marshall in My Canterbury Trail to Rome from the summer of 2006.
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In addition to that, we will look at several of his arguments about the old Eucharistic liturgy of the ancient church, and how much he longs to see that implemented in all churches everywhere, and how he wants
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Roman Catholicism to return to it. But first, let's take a look at his argument for Roman authority and deal with that, and then we'll move on to the
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Eucharist. The argument for the authority of Rome, according to Taylor Marshall, may not be sophisticated, but the one that Marshall makes for it is pure sophistry.
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After Peter correctly identified Jesus as the Son of God, Jesus said, And I say also unto thee that thou art
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Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
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And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.
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That's Matthew 16, verses 18 -19. Well, we could go on and on with Roman Catholics about whether Peter alone had the authority to bind and loose, or whether all of Jesus' disciples have that authority.
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Matthew 18 says that authority is given to all the disciples. But we want to focus on something important in what
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Taylor Marshall said. Taylor Marshall said, The argument for the authority of Rome is not sophisticated, and it originates from Matthew 16.
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How did we get to Rome from Matthew 16? Taylor Marshall is reading
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Matthew 16 as if Jesus says Peter's authority will be in Rome.
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As if he said, And I say also unto thee, Thou art Peter, and thou shalt take up residence in Rome.
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And in Rome I will build my church that will be based in Rome, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against Rome.
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And I give unto thee the keys of Rome. But Matthew 16 does not say that, and Taylor Marshall knows it.
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His argument for Roman authority is actually based on his eschatology that sees the Roman Catholic religion taking over for the
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Roman Empire in Daniel chapter 7. We mentioned this briefly in episode 19 of the
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Danielic Imperative, and anyone who wants to explore that can listen to that episode.
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But since Roman Catholicism is allegedly built on Peter, and Daniel allegedly foresaw the church taking over for the
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Roman Empire, Taylor Marshall equates Peter's authority with Rome's authority.
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Of course, Daniel did not foresee Christ's church taking over the Roman Empire, but that is an eschatological dispute, and we cover it in our podcast on the
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Danielic Imperative, and we won't get into it here. But to support their view,
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Roman Catholics selectively quote various letters and other circumstantial evidence here and there that seem to support their position that Rome enjoyed ecclesiastical primacy from the earliest days of the church.
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Clement of Rome in the 1st century helped with the dispute in Corinth, and Ignatius in the 2nd century appears to use a different tone in his letter to the church of Rome than he does in his letters to the churches of Asia.
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And Irenaeus, in Against Heresies, book 3, chapter 3, paragraph 2, said it was the duty of all churches to agree with Rome, and he even included a list of bishops since the days of Peter and Paul.
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And Tertullian said that, from Rome, there even comes into our own hands the very authority of the apostles themselves.
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That's from Tertullian, Prescription Against Heretics, chapter 36. And as we highlighted in our first few episodes,
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Dionysius of Alexandria apparently deferred to the bishop of Rome on a doctrinal matter. That's from his epistle to Dionysius, bishop of Rome.
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And at Nicaea in 325 A .D., in Canon 6, the council made a ruling on episcopal authority in Alexandria based on a custom, quote, with reference to the bishop of Rome, unquote.
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And in a letter in 341 A .D., Bishop Julius of Rome wrote about the custom for, quote, word to be written to us first, and then for a just decision to be passed from this place, unquote.
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That's from Athanasius, Apology Against the Arians, part 1, chapter 2, the letter of Julius to the
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Eusebians at Antioch. And at the Council of Sardica in 343 A .D., in Canon 3, there is mentioned that in order to honor the memory of Peter the apostle, let those who gave judgment write to Julius, the bishop of Rome, before carrying out a sentence against the bishop.
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In all of these cases, the evidence is circumstantial and easily contextualized with a little simple analysis and knowledge of history.
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It is true that Clement helped resolve a dispute in Corinth, but that hardly proves Roman primacy.
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After all, Cyprian of Carthage, a couple centuries later, would help resolve a similar dispute in Rome.
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The bishops of the ancient world just helped each other out that way, and a letter from Clement, helping with the controversy in Corinth, doesn't prove
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Roman primacy at all. And it is true that Ignatius' letter to the church at Rome has some stylistic differences, but that hardly proves that he submitted to Rome.
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His letters dealt largely with the Gnostic heresy that was spreading through Asia Minor, but had not yet reached Rome, so his letters to the
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Asian churches would of course be substantively different than the one he sent to Rome. And it is true that the
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Latin version of Against Heresies by Irenaeus did say, it is a matter of necessity that every church should agree with this church, that is, the church of Rome, on account of its preeminent authority.
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But it is also true that Irenaeus wrote in Greek, and we do not have the original Greek of that particular paragraph, and the
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Latin translation is known to be of the most barbarous character, and it is not altogether faithful to the original
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Greek. What is more, Irenaeus is known to have disagreed with the church at Rome, as we will show shortly, and in fact
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Irenaeus wrote about Polycarp's disagreement with the bishop of Rome, saying that the fact that they disagreed on the matter of the
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Lord's Supper, but still got along, proved that the disagreement in regard to the manner of celebrating the
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Passover confirms the agreement in the faith. That is from Eusebius' Church History, Book 5,
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Chapter 24, Paragraph 13. So not only did Irenaeus disagree with the church at Rome, but he described
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Polycarp's disagreement with the bishop of Rome, and said that their ability to disagree and still get along, confirmed the faith.
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When understood in that context, and knowing that the Latin translation of Irenaeus is absolutely barbaric, there is only one thing we can conclude.
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Irenaeus did not say that it is a matter of necessity that everyone has to agree with the church of Rome.
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And yes, it is true that Irenaeus listed the line of bishops since the days of Peter and Paul in his work against heresies, but it is also true that against heresies was primarily directed against Valentinus, a
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Gnostic who had once been a candidate for bishop of Rome. You can find that in Tertullian, against the
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Valentinians, Chapter 4. Once that is clear, it is evident that the list of bishops was to show that we know where we get our teachings, but nobody had come teaching
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Valentinian's Gnosticism until Valentinian. As Irenaeus wrote in the next chapter,
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For prior to Valentinus, those who follow Valentinus had no existence.
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His point is obviously that Valentinus would not have been a very good bishop of Rome if he was teaching things we had not received from the apostles.
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And where are we to find such teachings? Irenaeus tells us, Since, therefore, the tradition from the apostles does thus exist in the
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Church and is permanent among us, let us revert to the scriptural proof furnished by those apostles.
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Yes, Irenaeus listed a long line of bishops because he was countering a heretic who had once been a candidate to be bishop of Rome, but when he wanted to find documented evidence for the teachings of the apostles, he reverted to the scriptures.
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And yes, it is true that Tertullian said that from Rome there comes even into our own hands the very authority of the apostles themselves.
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But that statement was written in the context of all churches in every place receiving their authority through the churches established by the apostles in every place.
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And he mentions Corinth, Philippi, Thessalonica, and Ephesus. And in that same work,
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Tertullian says churches can only be considered apostolic if they are the offspring of apostolic churches.
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As even the Catholic Encyclopedia suggests, Carthage appears to have been an offshoot of the
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Roman church in North Africa. So yes, Carthage's apostolic authority derived from Rome, because Rome appears to have planted the church at Carthage, which is precisely the point
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Tertullian was making in his prescription against heretics. But Tertullian was not saying that every church on earth derives its apostolic authority from Rome.
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Some churches derived their apostolic authority from Corinth, from Philippi, from Thessalonica, and from Ephesus too.
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Each church derived its authority by being the offspring of an apostolic church, and some, like Carthage, derived their apostolic authority from Rome.
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And yes, it is true that Dionysius of Alexandria apparently deferred to the Bishop of Rome on a doctrinal matter, as you can see in his epistle to Dionysius, Bishop of Rome.
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But as Eusebius reported, Dionysius of Alexandria had been deferring to Dionysius of Rome, while Dionysius of Rome was but a presbyter before he was ever elected bishop there.
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That's from Church History, Book 7, Chapter 7, Paragraph 6, and it shows that the Alexandrian Dionysius' deference was not due to the
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Roman Dionysius' office. It was a fraternal respect, not a hierarchical one.
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And what is more, Dionysius of Alexandria is known to have written critically of Stephen and Sixtus, bishops of Rome, on matters of baptism, saying that they were not teaching the same things as the apostles and were deviating from the historical faith.
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You can find that in Dionysius of Alexandria in his letter to Stephen on the baptism of heretics and a similar letter on the same topic to Sixtus.
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And oh yes, Canon 6 of Nicaea in 325 absolutely does say that the bishop of Alexandria retains his ancient jurisdiction over parts of North Africa based on a custom related to the bishop of Rome.
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That is true. For this we will invite the intention of our listeners to an article we wrote at the
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Trinity Foundation called Nicaea and the Roman Precedent. Once the context is understood, it is clear that the 318 bishops at Nicaea did not confer authority on the bishop of Alexandria based on the authority of the bishop of Rome, but rather because Alexandria was the second -ranking metropolis in the
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Diocese of Oriens and Rome was the second -ranking metropolis in the Diocese of Italy at the time.
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Alexandria was therefore allowed to rule over a few provinces in the Diocese of Oriens, leaving the rest to Antioch, because according to a recent custom,
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Rome was allowed to rule over a few provinces in Italy, leaving the rest to be administered from Milan.
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The precedent having already been established for a lesser metropolis in Italy, such a custom was suitable for the
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Episcopal boundary dispute in Alexandria that had been raised for the consideration of the Council. And finally, regarding the whole dispute about Athanasius in the 340s
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AD, we already covered this in Episode 3, but simply put, once Athanasius decided to appeal his case to Rome, nobody was allowed to argue the case in front of the emperor until Julius of Rome completed his duties as an appellate judge and compiled the evidence from both sides and forwarded them to the emperor for review.
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That's what Julius meant about the custom of writing to us first in Rome so that a just decision may proceed from this place.
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Athanasius' accusers kept arguing their case against Athanasius in front of the emperor, even after Athanasius had lodged his appeal in Rome.
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And if you will recall from our brief synopsis on Nicaea, there were at the time two metropolitan cities in the
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Diocese of Oriens, the cities of Alexandria and Antioch, and there were also two metropolitan cities in the
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Diocese of Italy, the cities of Rome and Milan. And since Constantine's reforms required appeals in each diocese to be advanced to the imperial court through the metropolis, the
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Council of Sardica ruled that henceforth all appeals had to go through the metropolis of each diocese.
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Nicaea had already settled the problem in the Diocese of Oriens, but Italy also had two metropolitans as well, so the
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Council of Sardica settled the matter for the Diocese of Italy. Those appeals lodged in Rome had to be handled by the
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Bishop of Rome, and outside of Rome, but within Italy, appeals could be handled in Milan.
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That's it. Nothing fancy, nothing complicated, and nothing about Roman papal, judicial, or episcopal primacy.
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So in the end, the fog of circumstantial evidence for Roman ecclesiastical, judicial, and doctrinal primacy is dispelled by the light of history.
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There is just nothing there in the first three centuries of Christianity to support it. But as we are about to show, there is an awful lot of evidence to disprove it.
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But let's just assume for a moment that Taylor Marshall is right, and we'll assume for the sake of argument that Jesus established his church on Peter at Rome.
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Surely, the early church in the first generation after the apostles must have known this, because Jesus would have taught this to his apostles, and the apostles would have taught it to worthy men after them.
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So let's go back in time, and find out whether in the first few centuries, the church understood
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Matthew 16 the way Taylor Marshall understands Matthew 16. And remember, the way
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Marshall understands Matthew 16 is that the argument for Roman authority is not sophisticated, it is simply that Christ instituted
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St. Peter to bind and loose on earth. See? Matthew 16, and therefore
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Roman authority. That's Marshall's interpretation of Matthew 16. Now let's find out if the early church believed that.
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Let's start with Polycarp. According to Irenaeus, in Against Heresies, Book 3,
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Chapter 3, Paragraph 4, Polycarp was not only instructed by the apostles, and conversed with many who had seen
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Christ, but was also, by the apostles in Asia, appointed bishop of the church in Smyrna.
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Again, Against Heresies by Irenaeus, Book 3, Chapter 3, Paragraph 4.
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So I'm guessing that Polycarp, having been instructed by the apostles and ordained bishop of the church in Smyrna, must have shown abject submission to the bishop of Rome, and that we should all follow
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Polycarp's example, right? Because, you know, Matthew 16, 18. Well, here's what church historian
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Eusebius wrote about Polycarp's encounter with Anicetus, bishop of Rome.
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This is quoting from Church History, Book 4, Chapter 14, Paragraph 1.
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While Anicetus was at the head of the church of Rome, Polycarp, who was still alive, was at Rome, and he had a conference with Anicetus on a question concerning the day of the
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Paschal Feast. Yes, it seems that they disagreed on what day the
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Lord's Passover and Resurrection should be celebrated. So remember, according to Taylor Marshall's version of history,
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Polycarp has been instructed by the apostles, and the apostles taught Polycarp that Jesus built his church on Peter in Rome, and Peter's successor in Rome has the power to bind and loose and has ecclesiastical, judicial, and doctrinal primacy from the outset.
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So, obviously, Polycarp raised the question of what day Passover should be celebrated and then accepted whatever the pope said, because that's what the apostles told him to do, right?
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Because, you know, Matthew 16, 18. No, that is not what happened.
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Eusebius picks up the story of the dispute in the next book and explains what happened. This is citing from Eusebius, Church History, Book 5,
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Chapter 24, Paragraphs 16 -17. Quoting from a letter written by Irenaeus.
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And when the blessed Polycarp was at Rome in the time of Anicetus, and they disagreed a little about certain other things, they immediately made peace with one another, not caring to quarrel over this matter.
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For neither could Anicetus, bishop of Rome, persuade Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, not to observe what he had always observed with John the disciple of our
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Lord and the other apostles with whom he had associated. Neither could Polycarp persuade
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Anicetus to observe it as he said that he ought to follow the customs of the presbyters that preceded him.
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But though matters were in this shape, they communed together and Anicetus, bishop of Rome, conceded the administration of the
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Eucharist in the church to Polycarp, manifestly as a mark of respect, and they parted from each other in peace, both those who observed and those who did not, maintaining the peace of the whole church.
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Again, that's Eusebius' Church History, Book 5, Chapter 24, Paragraphs 16 -17.
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Man, that kind of happened the opposite of what we were expecting. Shouldn't Polycarp have deferred to Anicetus as a mark of respect?
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Now keep in mind, in Roman Catholicism, there is nothing as important as the Eucharist, because the
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Eucharist is God, and God needs to be handled respectfully, and the Eucharist needs to be celebrated the way
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Jesus instituted it, and if there is a question about how to celebrate the Eucharist, there is nobody who ranks higher than the bishop of Rome in determining the right way to do it.
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And still, Anicetus, bishop of Rome, could not persuade Polycarp to celebrate the Lord's Supper differently than how
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Polycarp had learned it from John and the other apostles. I wonder if Polycarp understood
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Matthew 16 differently than Taylor Marshall does. And when the same controversy arose with Pope Victor just a little while later, a lot of the
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European and Asian bishops agreed with him on the date that the resurrection should be celebrated, but the bishops of Asia Minor disagreed, and Pope Victor excommunicated all of them.
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So that settled it, right? Well, no, it did not. Even the bishops who agreed with Victor on the date of Passover sharply rebuked
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Victor for his actions, including Irenaeus. That's from Eusebius' Church History, Book 5,
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Chapter 24, Paragraphs 10 -11. And when Eusebius summarizes the story, he concludes by saying that Irenaeus quote, fittingly admonished
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Victor, unquote, for his behavior. So we not only have Irenaeus and the
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Western bishops sternly rebuking Victor, and the bishops of Asia Minor saying that they're going to celebrate the way they want to, and they're not going to be terrified by Victor's threats, but you also have church historian
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Eusebius approving of the way that Irenaeus admonished the bishop of Rome for his behavior.
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Man, that kind of turned out differently than we were expecting. Well, let's move on.
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Irenaeus said Polycarp traveled to Rome to help Pope Anicetus deal with the error prospering under his administration.
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For Valentinus came to Rome in the time of Hyginus, flourished under Pius, and remained until Anicetus.
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That's against heresies book 3, chapter 4, paragraph 3. And remember,
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Valentinus was the Gnostic who was introducing the heresy in Rome. But guess who comes riding to the rescue to save the city of Rome from the
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Gnosticism that is flourishing under the bishops there. Polycarp coming to Rome in the time of Anicetus caused many to turn away from the aforesaid heretics to the
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Church of God, proclaiming that he had received this one and sole truth from the apostles, namely, which is handed down by the
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Church. That's Irenaeus against heresies book 3, chapter 3, paragraph 4.
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Now, if the bishop of Rome is the rock upon which Christ built his church, why did
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Polycarp have to import the sole truth of the apostles from Smyrna in Asia Minor?
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Why was heresy flourishing under Popes Hyginus, Pius, and Anicetus? And later that century,
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Irenaeus is authorized by his presbytery in Gaul to travel to Rome to deliver a letter to Bishop Eleutherius of Rome, according to Eusebius' Church History, book 5, chapter 4, paragraphs 1 to 3.
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And what does Irenaeus discover upon his arrival but that Eleutherius himself was writing letters approving of the
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Montanist heresy? That's from Tertullian against Praxeas. But let's move on to Irenaeus' disciple
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Hippolytus. I'm citing now from Refutation of All Heresies, book 9, chapter 2.
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And here Hippolytus, who was already in Rome, is writing complaining about the many heresies being advanced by the bishops of Rome and how he had repeatedly had to rebuke them to get them to turn from their error.
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Now citing from Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies. At that time,
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Zephyrinus, bishop of Rome, imagines that he administers the affairs of the Church. An uninformed and shamefully corrupt man, and he, being persuaded by proffered gain, was accustomed to connive with those who were present for the purpose of becoming disciples of Cleomenes.
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But Zephyrinus himself, being in process of time, enticed away, hurried headlong into the same opinions.
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And he has Callistus as his advisor and a fellow champion of these wicked tenets. But the life of this
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Callistus and the heresy invented by him I shall after a little explain. The school of these heretics during the succession of such bishops continued to acquire strength and augmentation from the fact that Zephyrinus and Callistus helped them to prevail.
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Never at any time, however, have we been guilty of collusion with them. But we have frequently offered them opposition, and have refuted them, and have forced them reluctantly to acknowledge the truth.
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And they, abashed and constrained by the truth, have confessed their errors for a short period, but after a little, wallow once again in the same mire.
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Again, that's Hippolytus from Refutation of All Heresies complaining that he constantly has to rebuke the succession of bishops in Rome because of their constant tendency to wallow and wander into heresy.
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And again, Eusebius confirms Hippolytus' observation, saying that all the early teachers and the apostles received and taught what they now declare, and that the truth of the gospel was preserved until the times of Victor, who was the thirteenth bishop of Rome from Peter, but that from his successor,
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Zephyrinus, the truth had been corrupted. That's Eusebius, Church History, Book 5,
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Chapter 28, Paragraph 3, talking about Zephyrinus, bishop of Rome, corrupting the truth.
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And let's not forget Formilian of Caesarea, who wrote to Cyprian of Carthage to complain that Rome's apostolicity had been compromised by its bishop.
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He wrote, They who are at Rome do not observe those things in all cases which are handed down from the beginning, and vainly pretend the authority of the apostles.
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That's Cyprian of Carthage, Letter 74, from Formilian of Caesarea. And let's not forget the
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Roman congregation that wrote to Cyprian of Carthage, confessing their own crimes and degeneracy, acknowledged that they had fallen far from the apostolic praise heaped upon them by Paul, that your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world.
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Instead, they confessed to Cyprian, Again, that's
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Cyprian, Epistle 30, Paragraph 2, a confession from the Roman congregation on their crimes and degeneracy.
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And what of Cyprian's later response to bishop Cornelius of Rome, telling him that he needs to read
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Cyprian's letters aloud to the Roman congregation so that, That's Cyprian, Epistle 54,
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Paragraph 20, in his letter to the bishop of Rome, explaining that to purge the Romans of their heresy, they probably need to read some of Cyprian's letters or have them read aloud to them by the bishop there.
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Or what of the Spanish bishops who had resigned from the Episcopate and were reinstated by Stephen, the bishop of Rome?
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The Spanish congregation wrote not to Rome to appeal the matter, but to Carthage, asking for a second opinion from Cyprian.
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And Cyprian of Carthage said those two bishops had gone to Rome and deceived Stephen, our colleague.
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And Stephen of Rome was ignorant of what had been done and, lacking discernment, had been heedlessly surprised by fraud.
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That's Cyprian, Epistle 67, Paragraph 9, responding to the Spanish congregation who had asked his opinion after Stephen of Rome had attempted to reinstate two bishops who had stumbled into idolatry.
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So, let's review the papacy in the 2nd and 3rd centuries. Polycarp has to travel to Rome because heresy is flourishing there under three successive
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Roman bishops, Hygenus, Pius, and Anicetus. And Polycarp has to quench the flames of heresy based on the truth he had received, not from Peter, but from John, and he had to import it to Rome from Asia Minor.
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While there, Polycarp refuses to take the bishop of Rome's position on the celebration of the resurrection, because Anicetus, the bishop of Rome, cannot persuade him to deviate from what he had received from the rest of the apostles.
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And so Anicetus, bishop of Rome, defers to Polycarp out of respect. And then the bishops of Gaul send
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Irenaeus to Rome to help fight heresy, and upon his arrival, Irenaeus discovers that Eleutherius, the bishop of Rome himself, is actually writing letters supporting the heresy.
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And then the Asia Minor bishops later refuse to submit to Victor, the bishop of Rome, on the celebration of the resurrection.
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And when Victor excommunicates them, the rest of the western bishops sternly rebuke Victor for his behavior, and Eusebius records that Irenaeus fittingly admonished the bishop of Rome, and in fact was among those who sternly rebuked
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Victor. And Irenaeus' disciple, Hippolytus, has to rebuke the bishops of Rome, Zephyrinus and Callistus, for their heresies, forcing them to acknowledge the truth reluctantly, and even after that, they return to their error, while Eusebius records that under Zephyrinus, the bishop of Rome, the truth began to be corrupted.
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And Formilian of Caesarea writes to Cyprian of Carthage in 256, during the administration of Stephen of Rome, complaining that the bishops there vainly pretend the authority of the apostles.
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And the Roman congregation writes to Cyprian confessing their crimes and degeneracy on other matters, while Dionysius of Alexandria writes to two successive bishops of Rome, Stephen and Sixtus, complaining that they are teaching contrary to what we have received from the apostles and do not comply with the customs of the ancients, while Cyprian of Carthage writes to the
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Spanish congregation that the bishop of Rome had been deceived and had been surprised by fraud when he reinstated two
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Spanish bishops, and that Stephen's intervention could be ignored. And by the time you get to the early 4th century,
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Rome is still a second -tier metropolis within the Diocese of Italy, analogous to Alexandria, which was a second -tier metropolis within the
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Diocese of the East, as recognized by the Council of Nicaea in 325. And by the middle of the 4th century, the bishop is still just handling appellate court cases for the emperor and forwarding them dutifully to him for his august consideration and final review under Constantine's judicial reforms, just like every other metropolitan in the empire.
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Well, when you look at it that way, it seems that the rest of the church knew very well, for 300 years, that Rome was just a small fish in a big pond, and her bishops needed to be reminded frequently of that fact, when they presumed to think otherwise, as they often did, and many times the rest of the church had to come to Rome's aid to fight heresy, so inept were the occupants of the episcopal chair at resisting it.
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That's not what it looks like when people think the bishop of Rome is in charge and is supernaturally protected from advancing error and supernaturally enabled to keep the church at peace.
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No, that is the opposite of what it looks like. The early church, for the first 300 years, would have had no idea what
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Taylor Marshall was talking about. We think we have made our point. The early church simply did not interpret
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Matthew 16 the way Taylor Marshall interprets Matthew 16. In fact, many times the early church discovered that the bishop of Rome was not the solution, but rather was the problem, and many of the bishops of Rome were disturbing the peace of the church and introducing heresy to boot.
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Now, having heard all the errors and disruptions of the bishop of Rome in the early church, and not only that, but how often the bishops of Rome were rebuked and corrected by the early church, let's go back and revisit
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Taylor Marshall's words from his conversion story. The argument for the authority of Rome is not sophisticated.
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It is simply that Christ instituted St. Peter to bind and loose on earth, and that his office is protected by the
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Holy Spirit so that the Catholic church will never be led into error in the realm of faith and morals. Because, you know,
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Matthew 16. And that is why the early church, for the first three centuries, totally deferred to the bishop of Rome, right?
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No, we don't think so, Taylor Marshall, and if you were deep in history, you never would have proposed such nonsense in the first place.
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The abject submission to the bishop of Rome did not start until the latter part of the fourth century.
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Okay, so now I want to go on to Taylor Marshall's recent podcast, in which he discusses a little more of his conversion from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism.
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And we want to focus especially on his realization that as an Anglican, he had been celebrating the
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Eucharist more properly than the liberal Roman Catholics were, and now that he has converted, he is trying to get
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Roman Catholics to celebrate the Lord's Supper the way it was originally celebrated. We are taking our audio in this case from his
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January 9 podcast, just a couple of weeks ago, but we'll also pull from some of his other online commentary.
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His January 9 podcast is called Liturgical Abuse in the Novus Ordo Mass, in which
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Taylor Marshall and his co -host, Timothy Gordon, lament the novelties that have been introduced to the
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Roman Catholic Mass since the new rite of the Mass, or the Novus Ordo, was introduced in 1965.
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To be clear, they do not believe the Novus Ordo is heretical. And to be even more clear, some of their concerns are valid, in that the
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Lord's Supper should be celebrated reverently. One of Taylor Marshall's complaints is that once in a church service, the person administering communion did so wearing a
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Grover t -shirt, that is, a t -shirt with the Sesame Street character on it. And I agree with him, that is a ridiculous way to celebrate the
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Lord's Supper. But in any case, their main concern in the podcast is that the Novus Ordo is conducive to disrespect toward the real presence of Christ in the
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Eucharist. In their eyes, the Novus Ordo came with many offensive novelties, including female altar servers, a position formerly available only to boys, versus populum, by which we mean the priest faces the people instead of facing ad orientum, or toward the
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East, when he offers the sacrifice of the Mass. What is more, under the Novus Ordo, the people are allowed to receive the bread of the
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Lord's Supper in the hand instead of on the tongue, and to receive it standing instead of kneeling.
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And the last point we'll address is that Marshall is upset because receiving communion on the hand is conducive to the practice of reservation, something we discussed in episode 4 of The Diving Board, because some of the lay people may take some of the consecrated bread into their hand and then bring it home with them.
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So, in summary, what we'll address today are four of Taylor Marshall's main objections, versus populum instead of ad orientum, communion in the hand instead of on the tongue, reservation of the
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Eucharist, and standing while receiving the Lord's Supper instead of kneeling. Now, before we get into Marshall's particular objections,
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I want to spend a moment letting Marshall and Gordon explain why they are so deeply offended at the disrespect of the
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Eucharist in the first place. The reason, so they say, is that the bread is the body, blood, soul, and divinity of the
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Logos, and as such, the bread is the person of God, who is worthy of our worship and respect.
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I mean, the Eucharistic, let's say, our abuses to Jesus' DNA is body and blood.
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And it's divinity and soul. It's the whole person. You're offending the divine person, the
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Logos. It's serious. Look, this is God. I mean, you can't mess around with this.
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This is sacrilegious. I mean, this is sacrilegious to the body and blood and the soul and the divinity of God.
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We've been so desensitized to it that we're almost like insensate. So much desensitization, you lose a feel for reality, and that's what's happened with respect to the
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Eucharist. And just to remind our listeners, the Roman Catholic believes that the bread and wine are the body, blood, soul, and divinity offered to God as a representation of Christ's sacrifice on the cross.
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Now, of course, I do not share their idolatrous view of the Eucharist or their abominable view of the Lord's Supper as a sacrifice of Christ's body and blood and soul and divinity, but it is important to understand why they are so zealous to guard the sanctity of the bread as if it is
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God in the form of a wafer and to guard the sanctity of the sacrifice of the Mass.
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I don't agree with them, but I understand their novel view, and it is indeed a novelty. Let us not forget that Marshall is trying to get people back to the way the
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Lord's Supper is supposed to be celebrated, the way Christ instituted it, the way the apostles taught us, and the way the early church practiced it.
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Now, that said, let us get into the particulars, and we will discuss them one at a time, ad orientem, communion on the tongue, reservation, and kneeling while receiving the
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Eucharist. So here is Taylor Marshall explaining that as an Anglican, he was already celebrating the
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Lord's Supper ad orientem and was shocked to discover when he converted that some
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Roman Catholics were walking away from it. When I was an Anglican priest, a cleric, at my parish, we only had ad orientem.
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The high altar was against the wall. You couldn't possibly have said, versus papulum, in that church.
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Really? Yes. Every single one that I ever said was ad orientem.
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The only exception was if I was, like, subbing in at another church, even then I probably would have done it ad orientem.
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I would go once a month to the nursing home, and they had it set up, guess by whom?
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Catholics. Roman Catholics. Who would set the whole thing up versus papulum. So I had to do it versus papulum, because that's how the
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Catholics did it. Of course. We did it ad orientem, and we also had altar rails, and you had to do it kneeling.
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There's no way you could receive, even though it's not a valid communion, you couldn't receive communion there unless you were kneeling at the altar rail.
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And then I became a Catholic, and it's kumbaya, and people standing up, and lay people handing out communion. You didn't have lay people handing out communion in the
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Episcopal Church. Priests. Wow. Priests did it. So I left that.
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Oh, I'm going to become Catholic. Transubstantiation, real presence, you know. Episcopalians, they're too light.
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And then I walk into a no sort of Catholic Mass, and it's guitars, and it's people walking up in a line to receive communion with their hands out.
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Wow. Wow. That's crazy. The new, the
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Protestant convert is like, this is way too Protestant. Well, it just wasn't reverent.
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It wasn't reverent. Okay, I've got a couple more here where Marshall and Gordon bring out the orientation of the priest at the consecration, when the priest utters the words of Christ, this is my body, this is my blood, and the bread and wine are alleged to become the body and blood of Christ, and then offered to the
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Father. But the big issue is the liturgical, you know, the posture.
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Orientation. Yeah, the orientation at the consecration. That's number one for me, and I think people that try to understand what the
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Mass is really about. And finally, here is Marshall complaining that Versus Populum is an attack on the sacrifice of the
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Mass. Versus Populum attacks the idea that the Mass is a sacrifice.
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Instead, the priest is offering it to us. Okay, there is something very important here, and I want to highlight the fact that Marshall believes not just that the priest and the people should face east, but that the priest should be facing east at the consecration, because Christ's body and blood should be offered to God facing east.
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Taylor Marshall has something right here, and we want to give credit where credit is due. The early church faced east.
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There is no doubt about it. Our English word, orientation, in its modern sense, means to get our bearings so that we are facing the right way.
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But the root word is orient, or east. And the word literally means to get our eastern bearing, to make sure that we are facing east.
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It is not mandated to us in the Scriptures, but neither is facing Jerusalem. And we know that Daniel would face toward Jerusalem when he prayed, according to Daniel 6 .10.
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He was in captivity, and he longed for Jerusalem, and so he faced Jerusalem as he directed his prayers upward to God.
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Hezekiah prayed with his face to the wall, casting himself upon the mercy of God. I don't think either is an ideal orientation for prayer, but I'm not going to complain about folks praying in a certain direction, either.
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I think you can make a case that it simply doesn't matter. But there is something more significant we need to address, and that is
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Marshall's insistence that we face east at the consecration of the bread and wine, because we are offering
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Christ's body and blood toward the east. And I want to emphasize something here that we covered in our previous episode, and that is that the early church really did offer sacrifices.
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The early church understood Malachi's prophecy in Malachi 1 .10 -11 to refer to a time when the church would offer sacrifices.
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And following the apostolic instructions, the early church implemented sacrificial offerings accordingly.
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Thanks, praise, hymns, good works, sharing, caring for one another, and prayer.
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These were the holy, acceptable, well -pleasing oblations of a grateful church, and the early church embraced them, and so do we.
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The scriptures compel us to offer to the Lord such sacrifices of praise. You can read more about this in our article at the
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Trinity Foundation called Recovering Irenaeus. But in the early church, tithes of the harvest were collected for distribution to the poor, thanks were offered to God for his provisions, and from the tithes, baked bread and mixed wine were taken for the celebration of the supper.
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Those prayers of thanks were the sacrifice the early church offered in accordance with Hebrews 13 15 -16, that is the fruit of our lips giving thanks to His name.
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Keep in mind that the sacrifice that the early church offered was prayer, and it was offered to the
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Lord for His provisions of food to His people, and for the poor. It was not the words of institution, or as Marshall referred to it, the consecration of the elements, from which point the bread and wine are then called the body and blood of Christ.
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The prayer was thanks to God, and that is when they turned east. Here are some early references to turning east, and take note what is offered.
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Tertullian in the 3rd century, responding to the accusation that Christians worship the sun, wrote
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The idea, no doubt, has originated from our being known to turn east in prayer.
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That's from Tertullian, Apology chapter 16. Clement of Alexandria, also in the 3rd century, noted that Christians turn east to pray.
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In correspondence with the manner of the sun's rising, prayers are made looking toward the sunrise in the east.
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That's Clement Stromata, Book 7, chapter 7. Origen, later in the 3rd century, wrote that he's not sure why
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Christians do it. He just knows that they do. The east is the only direction we turn to when we pour out prayer.
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The reasons for this, I think, are not easily discovered by anyone. That's Origen, Homilies on Numbers, Homily 5, paragraph 1.
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Now, please note in all these cases, what is offered to the east is prayer. And as I mentioned in the
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Trinity Foundation article, Recovering Irenaeus, in the early church, the Eucharistic oblation was the tithe offering for the poor.
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And together with prayers of gratitude and thanksgiving, it was considered a sacrifice of praise to the
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Lord, in accordance with Philippians 4 .18 and Hebrews 13, 15 -16.
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All they were offering to God facing east was prayer. None of these state that they were offering
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Christ's body and blood to the Father. They were offering prayer. But listen to Taylor Marshall.
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Because in the Eucharist, the priest is offering Christ to the Father, to the Eternal Father. And to drive our point home,
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Marshall thinks people need to offer the Lord's body and blood facing east in order to be consistent with the practices of the early church.
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But just think through those citations on the eastern orientation in the early church. They were offering prayer and thanksgiving by setting aside food for the poor.
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And then from that collection, they took the bread and wine to celebrate the Lord's Supper and offered that to each other.
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What they did not do is offer Christ's body and blood to God. They offered prayers to God facing east and then consecrated the bread and wine and offered
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Christ's body and blood to one another under the figures of bread and wine. What Marshall is describing as the mass sacrifice offered ad orientem is actually a novelty of the late 4th century.
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Prior to that, what they offered facing east is what the apostles instructed them to offer. That is, let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name, and I am full, having received of Epaphroditus the things which were sent from you, an odor of a sweet smell, a sacrifice acceptable, well -pleasing to God.
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Okay, let's get on to communion in the hand rather than on the tongue and the issue of reservation.
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And I'm going to group these two topics together, reservation and communion in the hand, because Taylor Marshall is really worried about communion in the hand precisely because it could lead to reservation, and that is true.
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You really can't keep the bread for later if it is placed directly in your mouth. Here is Taylor Marshall describing an event that occurred at mass in which a woman received communion in the hand and then returned to her seat without eating at first.
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I do occasionally find myself at the Novus Ordo, including this year at a kids'
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Christmas mass, and I saw a woman take the host in her hand and hide it and walk down the aisle.
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Really? And I watched her, and then I went to the lay Eucharistic minister and said there was a woman who just received communion and didn't conceive, and he goes get her.
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Follow that car, yeah. So I chased her down, and I found her in her seat, and I kind of in the corner of my eye was going to walk across the people to just be nice to her and explain what the situation was.
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But then I saw her what I thought put in her mouth, and she was chewing, and I was like, okay, well, nothing
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I can do now. It's not good, man. Communion in the hand is bad. We're going to talk all about that, aren't we? I know you don't like it.
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Of course. Of course. Bad deal. And now here is Taylor Marshall saying that if it were up to him, he would abolish communion in the hand altogether.
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If you could only change one thing, what would you change? Would it be Ad Orientum? Would it be communion in the hand?
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Well, first off, that's just... Yeah, the Ad Orientum. You've got to go with that. But it would be killer to only have one.
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I don't know. I think I'd go, I would abolish communion in the hand first, if I only had one. And once again, here is
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Taylor Marshall saying that the practice of receiving communion in the hand is actually an attack on the real presence of Christ in the bread.
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And to show true respect for the Eucharist, only the clergy should be allowed to touch the consecrated bread.
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Communion in the hand is really more of an attack on the real presence. It's degrading the presence of Christ and bringing it into a more common food that we handle and that we touch.
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I mean, yes, I know there are examples in the patristic era where people would take communion home in persecution.
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But we're talking about the catacombs, people. We're not talking about right now, this year, in America. Even in the
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East, in the West, unless you're in holy orders, you can't touch the Eucharist. Okay, so Taylor Marshall will agree, and he is aware that the early church actually used to receive communion this way, in the hand, but for some reason relegates it to the period of the catacombs and the time of persecution.
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Although, as we will see, his claim lacks any basis in the historical record and is due to what can only be a hopeful, gratuitous misreading of the historical data.
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And keep in mind, just bookmark the year 313 AD when Christianity was legalized and Christians came out of the catacombs.
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And let's see if communion in the hand and reservation was abandoned as soon as Christians got out of the catacombs.
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Let's start with Tertullian in the 3rd century. In his letter to his wife, Book 2,
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Chapter 5, in which he describes a situation in which a wife reserved some bread and concealed it from her unbelieving husband, he wrote,
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Will you not be thought to be engaged in some work of magic? Will not your husband know what it is which you secretly taste before any food?
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And if he knows it to be bread, does he not believe it to be that which it is said to be?
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Again, that's Tertullian to his wife, Book 2, Chapter 5. Obviously, he's referring to a case in which a woman, who is a believer, but is married to an unbelieving husband, had reserved a piece of communion for consumption at home, and she could not have done that, practically, unless she had received it in the hand.
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Now, let's look at Cyprian of Carthage, from the 3rd century, who describes a reception of elements in the hand as he exhorts the faithful to resist the persecution that would require them to engage in idolatrous sacrifices, and encourages them to press on to martyrdom.
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He wrote, Let us also arm the right hand with the sword of the Spirit, that it may bravely reject the deadly sacrifices, that, mindful of the
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Eucharist, the hand which has received the Lord's body may embrace the Lord himself, hereafter to receive from the
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Lord the reward of heavenly crowns. That's Cyprian of Carthage, epistle 55, paragraph 9.
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Obviously, he thought it was pretty normal for someone to receive communion in the hand. Okay, let's look at Cyril of Jerusalem, in the middle of the 4th century.
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In his catechetical lectures, he is instructing the first -time communicants on how to receive communion.
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He, too, described reception of communion in the hand, while standing, as each communicant walks forward to receive the
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Lord's Supper under each element. And remember, we are way past the catacombs now.
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It is the middle of the 4th century. In his catechetical lecture on the sacred mysteries, he described how to receive the
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Lord's Supper in the hand, standing up, without spilling anything, approaching the elements reverently.
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Now citing from Cyril of Jerusalem, catechetical lecture 23, paragraphs 21 -22.
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In approaching, therefore, come not with your wrists extended, or your fingers spread.
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But make your left hand a throne for the right, as for that which is to receive a king.
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And having hollowed your palm, receive the body of Christ, saying over it, Amen. Then, after you have partaken of the body of Christ, draw near also to the cup of his blood, not stretching forth your hands, but bending, and saying with an air of worship and reverence,
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Amen. Hollow yourself by partaking also of the blood of Christ. Again, that's
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Cyril of Jerusalem, catechetical lectures, lecture 23. Now, let's first observe that people were receiving communion under both elements, bread and wine, something the
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Roman Catholic Church abandoned later and only recently reintroduced. But this particular citation from Cyril is of great interest to us because it is quite controversial within the
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Roman Catholic Church. On the one hand, advocates of the real presence of Christ in the
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Eucharist use Cyril of Jerusalem to prove early adoration and reverence for the elements, because of his very specific instructions to make a throne out of your hand, and to approach the wine bowed down.
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We analyzed this particular piece of literature at my blog site under an article called, The Great Write -In
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Write -Out Campaign, so named because of Rome's penchant for writing out of the historical record whatever does not comport with their modern practices, and writing into it whatever does.
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But we'll just say that Cyril's objective was for new Christians to approach the table reverently, because the bread and wine were antitypical, that is, symbolical, of the body and blood of Christ, and the sacrament ought to be approached reverently.
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In fact, when my children receive communion at church, and pass the tray of bread and another with the fruit of the vine,
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I am just as concerned as Cyril that they do not spill it. And when Cyril is read in context, that was his point.
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The fact that he was not prescribing Eucharistic adoration here is evident first in the fact that Cyril does not say we should approach the bread bending, or saying
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Amen with an air of worship and reverence. Why only do that to the wine? It doesn't make sense that he would only prescribe that for the wine if he truly meant that we should be worshipping it because it is truly the body and blood of Christ.
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But it is what else he says that shows that he did not believe the bread and wine to be the actual body and blood of Christ.
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He says that when you receive the bread with your hands, touch it to your eyes, and of the cup while the moisture is still upon your lips, touch it with your hands and hollow your eyes and brow and the other organs of sense.
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Taylor Marshall in an article on his blog disputes the authenticity of this lecture precisely because of what
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Cyril says we should do with the bread and wine once we receive it in the hand while standing up.
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We should touch the elements to our eyes, ears, and face before eating it. Marshall says that would be disrespectful.
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But it is entirely consistent with the administration of communion in an era when the elements of the
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Lord's Supper were taken to disprove the Gnostic belief that Jesus did not have a physical body as we discussed in our article on Irenaeus.
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And it is also entirely consistent with the administration of communion in an era when they believed that the bread and wine were symbolical of Jesus' body and blood but were not actually
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God. Okay, so let's move on to John Chrysostom late in the 4th century.
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In one of his homilies on the Gospel of Matthew, he reminds the listener, Since the word says, this is my body, let us both be persuaded and believe, and look at it with the eyes of the mind.
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How many now say, I would wish to see his form, the mark, his clothes, his shoes.
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Lo, you see him, thou touchest him, you eat him. And thou indeed desirest to see his clothes, but he gives himself to you, not only to see, but also to touch and eat and receive within you.
01:00:00
That's John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel of Matthew, Homily 82, paragraph 4.
01:00:07
That sure sounds like John Chrysostom thought people received the bread in the hand. I suppose
01:00:13
Taylor Marshall could make the argument that in this case, what is handed over to the recipient is handed over to him on his tongue and we see him with our eyes and touch him with our tongues and eat him with our mouths.
01:00:24
But that does not seem to be the sense of Chrysostom's teaching. He uses the same word the scriptures do when they refer to people touching
01:00:32
Jesus or Jesus touching them. You can see, for example, in Matthew 14, 36.
01:00:39
And as many as touched were made perfectly whole. Or in Mark 10, 13. And they brought young children to him, that he should touch them.
01:00:47
That's the same word John Chrysostom uses when he says of the bread of the Lord's Supper. You see him, you touch him, you eat him.
01:00:57
He gives himself to you, not only to see, but also to touch and eat and receive within you.
01:01:04
Those who want to double check my Greek on that, can find the word in column 745 of volume 58 of Menier's series on the
01:01:11
Greek fathers. It is the same word that has of late entered our English vocabulary because of the pervasive use of mobile devices.
01:01:19
When you want to change the way you interact with your mobile device, you change the haptics. That is, you change the way you touch the phone.
01:01:28
John Chrysostom thought we should touch the bread before putting it in our mouths ourselves. Okay, let's move on to Basil the
01:01:36
Great, also from the late 4th century. I kept Basil for last because Taylor Marshall actually thinks
01:01:41
Basil makes the case for him. Namely that communion in the hand is the exception to the rule and is only recommended in times of persecution.
01:01:49
That is where Marshall got the idea that people were receiving communion in the hand, only until they got out of the catacombs.
01:01:56
Yes, I know there are examples in the patristic era where people would take communion home in persecution.
01:02:03
But we're talking about the catacombs people. Now, I'm not entirely sure what the catacombs have to do with it. If you're hiding in order to continue steadfastly in the apostles doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread and in prayers, why compromise on something important like communion on the tongue, precisely when none of the persecutors can see you doing it?
01:02:22
As we will see, Marshall's reference to the catacombs is just his hopeful, ambitious reinterpretation of history as he desperately tries to find the evidence of his novel religion in the early church.
01:02:34
I'm going to read for you Taylor Marshall's blog in which he tries to make the case from Basil the Great in letter 93 that communion in the hand is only acceptable under times of persecution.
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Now citing from Taylor Marshall's blog entry entitled Did the Church Fathers Practice Communion in the
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Hand? Not Exactly. Here is what he wrote. St.
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Basil explicitly explained that communion in the hand was only allowed under certain circumstances.
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If one feels he should in times of persecution, in the absence of a priest or deacon, receive communion by his own hand, there should be no need to point out that this certainly shows no grave immoderation, for long custom allows this in such cases.
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In fact, all solitaries in the desert, where there is no priest, reserving communion in their dwellings, receive it from their own hands.
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So then St. Basil says that communion in the hand is allowed, first, under times of persecution where there is no priest, and second for hermits and ascetics in the wilderness who do not have priests.
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Okay, again, I was quoting from Taylor Marshall's blog entry, Did the
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Church Fathers Practice Communion in the Hand? Not Exactly. So in that blog entry,
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Taylor Marshall has cited letter 93 of Basil on communion in the hand, thinking that Basil makes the point.
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But Marshall has completely missed it. Letter 93 of Basil is affirming the practice of reservation, not denying communion in the hand as normal.
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If you have kept some of the consecrated bread for later, and it is a time of persecution, it is not a sin to celebrate the
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Lord's Supper alone, because you have no other way to gather with the brethren. But there is more. Keep in mind that Basil's letter 93 is exactly 10 sentences long.
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That's it. It is a very short letter, and Taylor has only quoted sentence 5 and sentence 6.
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Now I am going to read the rest of the letter for you, starting where Taylor Marshall left off, that is, sentences 7 -10.
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That's it. That's sentences 7 -10 of Basil's letter number 93.
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I want you to hear it, not only to show, first, that Marshall tried to make Basil say that communion in the hand is only acceptable during persecution when there is no priest, but Basil went right on, four sentences later, talking about communicants taking communion in the hand directly from the priest.
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Communion in the hand was normative, and notice Basil's language. The recipient takes it with complete power over it, and so lifts it to his lips with his own hand.
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But here is Taylor Marshall. Communion in the hand is really more of an attack on the real presence. It's degrading the presence of Christ.
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Second, I wanted to read those last four sentences to you to show that Basil was also talking about reservation, and it was perfectly normal for laity to reserve the
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Lord's Supper in their pocket and take it home with them. Reservation was normative, even for the laity, and in fact,
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Basil has the priest giving several portions to some of the laity who want to take it home with them.
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In other words, the priest was entirely complicit with the reservation by the laity. But here is
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Taylor Marshall. And third,
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I wanted to read the rest of Basil's letter to show you that if Taylor Marshall had only read four more sentences of Basil's letter, he would have seen this.
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But here is Taylor Marshall. And that is something our listeners need to know.
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Taylor Marshall does not want to know this. Taylor does all he can to ignore the obvious practice of the first four centuries, and the first real evidence he cites that communion on the tongue is normative came from Pope Leo the
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Great in the 5th century and Pope Gregory the Great in the 6th. Up through the 4th century, it was normative to receive communion on the hand.
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The early church allowed reservation and communion in the hand, even by the laity. Before we leave the matter of communion in the hand,
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I want you to listen to Marshall's guest, Timothy Gordon, as he explains an occasion when his wife wanted communion on the tongue, but the priest denied it to her and forced her to take it on the hand.
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Here is Timothy Gordon expressing his indignation. I went, I bolted to my car, got my iPhone, got up the letter of dispensation generated by the
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Holy Office in 68 or 69, and it says, like, in bold, the original way of receiving will never ever be abrogated or something like that.
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So I went in there, took it to the priest, he's like, well, if you don't like receiving on the hand during cold and flu season, then you can go somewhere else in town.
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Timothy Gordon, communion in the hand was the original way. You and Taylor Marshall are the ones trying to abrogate the original way of communicating.
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Okay, the next item is kneeling. Here is Taylor Marshall again. We have heard him say a few things already about kneeling, but here he registers his surprise to find that he left
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Anglicanism, in which he celebrated the sacrifice of the mass facing east, and people received communion on the tongue while kneeling, and then he entered the
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Roman Catholic Church and found in the Novus Ordo that people were standing up with their hands out to receive communion.
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And I'll just say for the record, they were doing it the way they did in the early church, but here is Marshall. And so I left that, oh,
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I'm going to become Catholic, transubstantiation, real presence, you know, Episcopalians are too light, and then
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I walk into a Novus Ordo Catholic Mass, and it's guitars, and it's people walking up in a line to receive communion with their hands out.
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Well, Taylor, if you take off your Rome -colored glasses and read about the practices of the early church, it was forbidden for a thousand years to bend the knee on the
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Lord's Day, as we discussed last week, and therefore it was impossible to receive communion kneeling.
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Recall from our previous episode that Canon 20 of Nicaea prohibited kneeling on the Lord's Day, and on any day from Passover to Pentecost.
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And Canon 90 of the Council of Trujillo in 692 said, If the people received communion on the
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Lord's Day and kneeling was prohibited on the Lord's Day, then the people did not kneel for communion in the early church.
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Okay, one last thing and we'll wrap it up. Here is Taylor Marshall again talking about the last time he received communion in a
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Novus Ordo Mass, and he came face to face with Grover of Sesame Street, and it was the last straw.
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We are bringing this up because Marshall says two things that are important, and this is where we will wrap up today.
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He said the Catholic Church had been embroidering beautiful vestments because of the sanctity of the Mass, and he did not want to raise his children with the perception that the one true church has no icons, statues, or images for them to venerate.
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I was at a Mass, and I was struggling with everything you were doing. I was still going to Novus Ordo, and I went up for communion and the
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Eucharistic minister was wearing a Grover t -shirt. I'm going to put it up on the screen here. It's a giant blue shirt with the face of Grover, like this big.
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Right? And he's like the body of Christ. And I was receiving, and he was like, this is so ridiculous.
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For a thousand years, the Catholic Church has been embroidering the most beautiful vestments for priests to wear because of the sacredness of the
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Eucharist, and I'm literally receiving the Logos, the second person in Trinity, while staring into the blue shirt, the blue face of Grover from Sesame Street.
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And so that was it, man. After that, I was like, Latin Mass, here I come. No turning back.
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As I turned to the pew, I thought inwardly, the Church is empty of any
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Catholic images, statues, or icons. The only icon that I can gaze into at this moment is the
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Eucharistic minister's Muppet shirt. This is ridiculous. I don't want my children to grow up with this as the perception of the one true faith.
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That is an interesting observation from Taylor Marshall. Just think about this. Did you know that images, statues, and icons were unknown in the early
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Church? Listen to the Catholic Encyclopedia on this topic. This is the Catholic Encyclopedia under the topic of The True Cross.
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In the first ages of Christianity, when converts from paganism were so numerous, and the impression of idol worship was so fresh, the
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Church found it advisable not to permit the development of this cult of images. But later, when that danger had disappeared, when
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Christian traditions and Christian instinct had gained strength, the cult developed more freely. Again, that's the
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Catholic Encyclopedia on the True Cross. In other words, veneration of images, statues, and icons was not allowed in the early
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Church, but eventually the cult of images was allowed. The first evidence for veneration of relics in the
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True Cross does not come down to us until the 4th century. Even by then, as we have elsewhere shown,
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Epiphanius of Salamis was still claiming that according to the scriptures, the image of a man was not allowed to be displayed in Church.
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That's Jerome, Letter 51 from Epiphanius, paragraph 9. And what about those priestly vestments?
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The Roman Catholic Encyclopedia says this about priestly vestments in the period before Constantine, who died in 337
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A .D. In the period before Constantine, priestly dress did not yet differ from the secular costume in form and ornament.
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The dress of daily life was worn at the offices of the Church. Again, that's the
01:13:39
Catholic Encyclopedia under the topic of priestly vestments. There is a claim from some that the different priestly vestments may have originated under Sylvester, Bishop of Rome, who died in 335
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A .D. But the evidence for that comes to us from a document that originated in the 11th century.
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The first reliable testimony of the origin of priestly vestments for ministers of the Gospel is from Jerome's commentary on Ezekiel, early in the 5th century.
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The divine religion has one dress in the service of sacred things, another in ordinary intercourse and life.
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Again, that's Jerome from his commentary on Ezekiel, dating from early in the 5th century.
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That's the first reliable evidence we have that there were different vestments for priests and ministers than there were for the laity.
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Now, let's conclude this episode by thinking about all the things Taylor Marshall has suggested to us as his reasons for converting to Rome.
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He thinks Matthew 16 -18 means that the church is headquartered in Rome. But as we have shown, nobody believed that for the first 300 years of Christianity.
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He believes we should face East to offer the body and blood of Christ to the Father. And yet, for the first 300 years,
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Christians offered their prayers to the East. And it is not until the end of the 4th century that people started offering what they claimed was
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Christ's body and blood to the East. He believes that communion on the hand should be outlawed.
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But for the first three centuries of Christianity, communion on the hand was normative. His first evidence that communion on the tongue was the correct way to administer communion comes from Pope Leo in the 5th century and Pope Gregory in the 6th.
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He believes that reservation of the elements is wrong, because only ordained clergy should be able to touch the consecrated elements.
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And yet, until the end of the 4th century, the laity were still reserving the Eucharist and touching it with their own hands and lifting it to their own mouths and sometimes taking it home with them.
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He believes kneeling to receive the Eucharist should be required. But for the first 1 ,000 years of Christianity, kneeling was forbidden on Sundays, making it impossible for believers to kneel on the one day they were most likely to receive communion.
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He believes the church should have images, statues, and icons. And yet, even the Catholic Encyclopedia acknowledges that the church originally did not permit that kind of veneration.
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In fact, for the first 300 years it was forbidden, and the first evidence of veneration of the true cross does not emerge until 350
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AD. And relics and images do not even come until after that. He acknowledges that his love for embroidered vestments is love for something that only goes back 1 ,000 years.
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And in truth, there were no priestly vestments at all until the beginning of the 5th century. Now, doesn't it strike you as odd that Taylor Marshall joined the
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Roman Catholic religion in order to get back to the religion of the Apostles? And yet, the things he thinks are central to the religion of Christ—the sacrifice of the
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Mass, kneeling, vestments, communion on the tongue, papal and Roman primacy— all came along at least 300 years after the
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Apostles, and some came even later than that. Goodness, he may as well be Mormon. Just remember that when a
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Roman Catholic like Taylor Marshall comes to you saying that you need to return to the Apostolic Church Jesus Christ founded, tell them that you cannot in good conscience abandon the
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Apostolic Church that Christ founded in order to join him in his late 4th century novelties. And that is why we say here at The Diving Board that to be deep in history is to cease to be a
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Roman Catholic. This is Timothy F. Kaufman, and you have been listening to The Diving Board. We'll see you next time.