In this episode Trent shares a portion of his rebuttal to pastor Mike Winger on the papacy and talks about how to answer objections to the idea that Peter was the first pope.
Welcome to the Counsel of Trent Podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
Trent Horn:
Hey, hey. Welcome to another episode of the Counsel of Trent Podcast. I’m your host, Catholic Answers apologist and speaker, Trent Horn. Today, I want to share with you some work we’ve been doing at the Counsel of Trent. I kind of pronounced it a bit. The Counsel of Trent. The Counsel of Trent YouTube page where we have, I think, now over 5000 subscribers and we’re doing what really very few … I don’t know any other Catholics who are doing this which is rebutting popular anti-Catholic videos on YouTube. Our most popular series is a rebuttal to Mike Winger who is a pastor here in southern California who did a series a few years ago, but it’s become very popular on YouTube, over 100,000 views, saying why Catholicism is wrong. Pastor Mike’s a genteel guy. He’s a nice guy. He’s really wrong though. I would love to have a debate or public dialogue with him. We’ll see if that manifests in the future.
But I wanted to share on today a discussion of the papacy and defending the nature of the papacy against very common protestant objections which Pastor Mike offers in this video. So here is a clip of that if you want, and this is a small clip mind you. This is a clip from part two of my rebuttal to him. When I rebut someone on YouTube, it usually takes me two to three times as long to rebut them based on how dense their arguments are and the sense of how many arguments they’ve packed into their presentation. So the whole video, parts one and two, are three hours long on YouTube. You get the audio, by the way, for free. You get the audio version of it at trenthornpodcast.com if you’re a premium subscriber. Go and check that out. Later this month if you’re a trenthornpodcast.com subscriber, you will get early access to my debate on the deuterocanonical books of scripture with Steve [Christie 00:01:49]. We’ll be hosting that next week. Very excited for that.
Yeah, so if you want that, the whole thing for just that one video is three hours long. So this is a little tidbit, sneak peek of my rebuttal to Pastor Mike’s arguments against the papacy. You want the whole shebang, go to Counsel of Trent. Search for it on YouTube. Subscribe there. We want to grow that as well. Support us at trenthornpodcast.com because the fact that we’ve reached over 700 patrons has allowed me now to expand into YouTube when I didn’t have the resources to do that before. So please help us at trenthornpodcast.com and find those videos, share them, and I hope you like this clip from my rebuttal to Pastor Mike Winger on the papacy.
Mike Winger:
So the bible teaches in a sense the opposite of the Roman Catholic view on tradition. So what is the real history? I want to do now … Move away from that, that one pillar of the church. I think we’ve taken a big chunk out of it and the rest of it’s going to fall, I think, right now as we overview what’s the real story. How did the Roman Catholic Church develop? So the Roman Catholic version that they’ve always basically believed the same things they do today, that the Roman Catholic Church is basically a slightly different version of what it was in Peter’s day, is completely untrue historically. The Book of Acts records for us the birth of the New Testament church and some of the history of the 30 years of Christianity. In spite of great persecution by the end of the first century AD, churches had been established in lots of different cities throughout the Roman Empire including Rome.
Primarily because of its location at the capital of Rome, the church in Rome very slowly over time began to get more authority, more prominence from other churches, but it happened gradually over time. It did not happen initially. In fact, the chief church in the very early church was located where? Anybody want to guess? In Jerusalem. That’s why the council in Acts 15 happened in Jerusalem, not Rome. Not just because it was convenient, but because that’s where the apostles were and that’s where sort of the center of Christianity was. When persecution increased, it seemed to move over to Antioch as far as is there a church that others are looking to.
Trent Horn:
By the way, tradition says that St. Peter served for a time as a bishop in Antioch and he was the bishop of that [see 00:03:50] before he ended his life in the city of Rome which we’ll get to in a little bit.
Mike Winger:
Then over time, it eventually started to be Rome, but there were other competitors as well. In 313, the year 313, now we’re way after Jesus already at this point. We’re generations and generations away. The Roman emperor Constantine, he brought them from persecution to legalization. He legalized the Christian faith. He ended the persecution of Christians with what’s called the Edict of Milan in 313.
Trent Horn:
There were also some edicts a few years earlier in the eastern empire. Constantine wasn’t the first. I think it was under [Galerius 00:04:21] a few years earlier in the eastern empire, but yeah, around this time. Christian persecution was on again, off again. It was not a continuous persecution from the apostolic times to 313. There were times under Diocletian or [Decian 00:04:34] where they were heavier, other times where they were lighter or no persecution. So it would depend who you got in office basically for emperor.
Mike Winger:
The church began gaining greater prominence because now they could practice their Christianity more publicly. Now, they could just be more open about it. So they started to get more and more prominence. Most scholars outside the Catholic Church, they reject the popular teaching of the Roman Catholic Church that the church at Rome was established by Christ himself through Peter. I’m going to give you five reasons why. Number one, there is no record, none, that Peter was ever the bishop of Rome as the Catholic Church claims. None. There’s just no record of it.
Trent Horn:
When we talk about Rome being founded by Peter and Peter’s primacy over the bishop of Rome and the city of Rome, it does not relate to the fact that, “Oh, Peter was the first person to ever get to Rome and preach to people.” That’s not what the primacy is based on. If you go to the Catholic encyclopedia, for example, this is what it says. It says it is an indisputably established historical fact that St. Peter labored in Rome during the last portion of his life and there ended his earthly course by martyrdom. As to the duration of his apostolic activity in the Roman capital, the continuity or otherwise of his residence there, the details and success of his labors, and the chronology of his arrival and death, so everything else he did before his death there, all these questions are uncertain and can be solved only on hypotheses more or less well-founded.
The essential fact is that Peter died at Rome. This constitutes the historical foundation of the claim of the bishops of Rome to the apostolic primacy of Peter. So the primacy of Rome, the bishop of Rome is not founded in the bishop of Rome being St. Peter who founded the church in Rome. It’s the fact that Peter was the bishop of Rome at some time, that he died there, and that his successors in Rome continued to take up his mantle, his leadership, and his authority. So a lot of Pastor Mike’s arguments going forward are rendered moot because the Catholic claim is not based on Peter or Paul or someone founding the church there although there is some indirect evidence Peter was involved in the founding of the church at Rome and that he definitely was at Rome. He definitely died there. That’s a historical fact regardless of what Pastor Mike and others may say. We’ll get to that here shortly.
Mike Winger:
Not only does the bible not teach Peter was the pope. He wasn’t even a leader in Rome, but that’s central to the Catholic claim. They have to say Rome, the city of Rome is where authority is carried because over the centuries, other people would claim it as well. So they had to go, “No, no, only Rome. Only Rome.” Why? “Because Peter. Because Peter came here.” So then it’s like, “Peter came here and therefore it stuck, the authority stuck here.” [Irenaeus 00:07:12] is the earliest source saying that Peter was the founder of the church in Rome and he’s from 200 AD. The earliest source, 200 AD. He said that Peter and Paul founded the church in Rome. The irony here is we know Paul did not found the church in Rome. So we know half of what Irenaeus says is wrong because read the bible.
Romans, the book, shows us that the church was well-established and Paul had not been there yet. He’s like, “Oh, I want to come and visit you and I’d like to come see you. I want to impart some spiritual gift to you.” He wants to get over there, but he had not yet visited them. So Irenaeus, I’m going to say, “Hey, I know Paul didn’t. So why should I think Peter did? You’re half-wrong for sure and you’re 200 years later.”
Trent Horn:
Let’s talk then about this claim. First, we have earlier historical evidence than Irenaeus for Peter being in Rome. Read St. Ignatius of Antioch in his letter to the Romans. This is an amazing letter talking about the primacy of the church at Rome. It’s a really amazing letter written in 110 AD. So here, we have just a few decades from the death of the last apostles. I mean this is so close. In the letter to the Romans, Ignatius of Antioch, remember Antioch’s an important see at this time, Ignatius says this: “I do not, as Peter and Paul did, issue commandments unto you. The church at Rome, you never envied anyone. You have taught others.” He says, “The church at Rome presides in love.” That word, presides, he uses in his letter to the Magnesians as talking about the bishopric and presiding in having a druidical or a leader capacity within the church.
When you read the other letters of St. Ignatius of Antioch, the Smyrnaeans, the Trallians, the Magnesians, these different letters, you point them on a map, they’re all little communities in Asia Minor which are probably under Ignatius’s authority. He corrects people, he rebukes people, he tells them, “Hey, get your act together,” but then Ignatius sends a letter to Rome where he’s going to be taken because he’s now been arrested. He’s going to be martyred in Rome, and he sends letter and we know from historical research at this time that a person in Roman custody could send letters. That doesn’t mean these are forgeries or anything like that. He sent a letter during his captivity just like Paul sent letters in his captivity.
What is his letter to Rome, a very faraway church from him, the furthest church he’s ever written to? What does he tell them? He never corrects them. He never rebukes them. He only has one request, “do not try to rescue me from my martyrdom,” but he heaps voluminous praise on the Roman church people listen to, that it has an authority. Very different from any other church at that time. Of course, he attests to the existence of Peter being there, that Peter and Paul were there and that they commanded people there.
So what about Irenaeus though? So Irenaeus in Against Heresies, I think this is 3.3.3, it’s easy to remember this important part of Against Heresies, St. Irenaeus’s five-volume work, very important work in early church history. In section 3.3.3, he talks about the apostolic foundation of the faith, specifically the successors of St. Peter, Roman primacy. He says, “That tradition derived from the apostles of the very great, the very ancient, and universally founded church, universally known church founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul.” Okay. Now, we do know that Paul was in Rome for a time and he commanded people there. The very last verses of the Book of Acts say in Acts 28, Verses 30 through 31, Paul lived in Rome two whole years at his own expense and welcomed all who came to him preaching the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ quite openly and unhindered.
So what Irenaeus here means by Peter and Paul founding the church at Rome, it’s not like they were the first people to get there, but their stamp of approval as apostles, as the prince of the apostles and Paul, the apostle who wrote most of the New Testament, that they taught there in a special way and lent their stamp of approval to the Roman church and were crucial in founding it and building it up as an important see or church within the early Christian community. That’s what Irenaeus means here and it’s the same … That is the same kind of language that’s used in later church historians in the early church that we’ll get to here when Pastor Mike talks about Eusebius.
Mike Winger:
Eusebius, now this guy Eusebius, I’m going to give you … These are the five reasons. Number two is this. Eusebius, who is called the father of church history, is a historian. He lived between 260 and 341. He never mentions Peter as the bishop of Rome. Now, check this out. He’s a believer who writes about the history of the church and he never mentions Peter as the bishop of Rome. Imagine a Catholic today writing a survey of Catholic history and never mentioning Peter, the first pope. You can’t. It’s like not mentioning George Washington in writing a survey of American history. Why doesn’t he do it? Because the later claims about Peter hadn’t happened yet so it wasn’t important to them to do that and he wasn’t part of what is now the Roman Catholic Church. That’s not what Eusebius was really part of. How could he ignore the first pope?
He does say this. Here’s all he says. “At about the end of his days, Peter went to Rome and was crucified there.” That’s it. Somebody else stared the church there. Missionaries, I don’t know, individuals, some lady that heard the gospel in Jerusalem and went back to Rome and just started telling people about it. We don’t know. It just happened organically because the church is an organism. How do we grow? I don’t know. Just like the same way a baby in the womb grows, just really in cool ways. It just does.
Trent Horn:
Let’s actually see what Eusebius had to say about this. So what Eusebius says, first, he talks about Peter’s … He doesn’t just say, “Oh, by the way, Peter died in Rome and that’s it.” He has lots to say. He talks about who Peter’s successors were to the episcopate in Rome. He says, “After the martyrdom of Paul and of Peter, Linus was the first to obtain the episcopate of the church at Rome. Paul mentions him when writing to Timothy from Rome in the salutation at the end of the epistle.” So Eusebius attests to all of Peter’s successors who held the office that he held in Rome. He talks about that that authority, the successors to the episcopate after the death of the apostles, he lines them all up. It starts with Peter and then he gives a list of all the successors.
Eusebius, he also mentions a letter from Dionysius who was a bishop of Corinth writing throughout the year 170 AD. So he quotes part of the letter and this is what he says. So this is what Eusebius says about Peter’s relationship to Rome, totally different from what Pastor Mike is giving us. Eusebius says that they both suffered martyrdom, Peter and Paul, at the same time as stated by Dionysius, bishop of Corinth, around 170 AD. In his epistle to the Romans in the following words, so now here Eusebius quotes the original epistle from 170 AD. So this is mid-second century testimony. “You have thus by such an admonition bound together the planting of Peter and of Paul at Rome and Corinth for both of them planted and likewise taught us in our Corinth, and they taught together in like manner in Italy and suffered martyrdom at the same time. I have quoted these things in order that the truth of the history might still be more confirmed.”
So notice Eusebius here quoting Dionysius as saying that Paul and Peter, they were involved in founding, planting the church at Rome. They didn’t found it like in Corinth, for example, but they did teach together in Italy. They taught together in like manner and were involved in building up the church and founding it in that way. Let’s see. What do I have here? Oh, one more thing. We have good evidence … We also have evidence from Peter himself that he was in Rome. This idea that Peter was not in Rome, the scholarship and history is just so far against that thesis. I mean you can only find it in quoting 19th century anti-Catholic scholarship. It’s just not the case. 1 Peter 5:13, St. Peter says, “She who is at Babylon who is likewise chosen sends you greetings and so does my son Mark.” So Peter is talking about here being at Babylon.
Now, some people have said, “Oh, well Peter is the apostle to the Jews so he was with the Jewish community in Babylon in modern-day Iraq. That’s where Peter was at this time.” Well Sean McDowell who is an evangelical scholar, he wrote a great book. I think it was his doctoral dissertation turned into a book. It’s on the fate of the 12 apostles, like what happened to the 12 apostles, how did they die. McDowell, Sean McDowell who’s the son of Josh McDowell, the famous evangelical apologist who wrote Evidence That Demands a Verdict, so Sean McDowell has a great book on the death of the 12 apostles. This is what McDowell says about Peter being in Rome, about being in Babylon and Rome. McDowell says, “The Old Testament city of Babylon, so in Iraq, was in ruins so Peter could not have been referring to that city. Rather, it was a relatively common cryptic name for Rome, the enemy of God.”
So here, Peter refers to himself in a cryptic way in his writings so that he’s not outed by the authorities. They’d probably be after him, the authorities operating for Emperor Nero. So he doesn’t want to give away his location so he says Babylon which is a code name for Rome. Peter’s writing from Rome because he was in Rome and he served there as a leader of the church and then he died there and his successors followed him.
Mike Winger:
Number three, the third reason why we should reject the Roman Catholic view of history here, the apostle Paul in his letter to the church at Rome greets more then two dozen people by name at the end of his letter. See Romans Chapter 16. You’re like, “Why is this in here? All these names are just people being greeted.” Two dozen people, but who does he leave out? Peter. He greets all kinds of businessmen. He greets different random people, fellow workers. Not Peter. That would be a strange omission if Peter was living in Rome, especially if he was the bishop and the first pope of the church, to ignore the leader of the church. Supposedly, Peter was the pope. Why doesn’t Paul mention him?
Trent Horn:
Okay. What should we conclude from the fact that Paul doesn’t mention Peter in his letter to the Romans, at the end of the letter to the Romans? Well there’s lots of different things we can conclude, but we should avoid rash hypotheses like, “Oh, well that means Peter was never in Rome at all. So we should conclude that.” That sounds to me like seeking evidence for the conclusion Peter was never in Rome rather than letting the evidence bear that out. So what are the different things we can conclude from the fact Peter is not mentioned in Paul’s letter to the Romans, he’s not addressed at least? He’s not addressed in it explicitly.
One, Paul and Peter could have been on the outs. If Romans was written … We think Romans was written sometime … Paul was probably in Corinth. I think it was probably around 56 AD when the letter was written. Maybe the two had had a falling out ever since Paul confronted Peter in Galatia and they were just kind of on the outs with each other. So they just kind of had bad blood between them a little bit because of that episode. So it could have been a personality conflict why Paul didn’t want to mention Peter. So they were just on the outs. That’s one possibility. Of course, by putting out possibilities, we don’t know which one is the correct one. The point is there are lots of possibilities beyond Peter was just never in Rome at all.
Number two might be that Peter wasn’t there, he wasn’t in the city at that time when Paul was writing. Maybe Paul knew that Peter had returned to Antioch or he was visiting other churches at that time or Paul was or Peter was nearby him or he knew where he was. So Paul could have known Peter was not in the city at that time and simply didn’t reference him because of that. So that’s another possibility. Could have slipped Paul’s mind. You never know, but just all of these things, we shouldn’t rush to the rash conclusion that Peter was never in Rome at all because Paul doesn’t address him in the letter. There also is a hypothesis that Paul does mention Peter and he specifically avoids mentioning Peter by name to avoid the Roman authorities coming after him. Paul doesn’t mention any of the other elders or the leaders of the church at Rome either. So that’s a surprising omission.
He does say in Romans Chapter 15, I think it’s Romans 15:20, it’s 20 or 25, Romans Chapter 15, Paul says that he does not want to build on a foundation laid, that has been laid by another man, but he doesn’t mention who this individual is. If you reach Richard [Bauckham 00:19:33], Bauckham talks about this in the gospels as well and some of the earlier gospels like Mark’s gospel. There are individuals who are described but not named. The reason may be that some individuals who are referenced in the bible in the New Testament but are not named is because they want to avoid Roman persecution so they don’t want to out who these people are. So just as Peter does not reveal that he’s writing from Rome in his letter 1 Peter, he talks about writing from Babylon, Paul may not want to reveal that he was writing to Peter and that Peter was in Rome for the Roman authorities to intercept this letter or any of the other important leaders in the church at that time. He may have indirectly referred to Peter using this kind of coded language in Romans 15 where he said he didn’t want to build the church on a foundation laid by another man or someone else in other translations.
So the point here is just that it’s not my burden to prove it’s any of these hypotheses. It’s the burden on Pastor Mike to say, from this omission, he can prove his conclusion Peter was never in Rome at all which is a gigantic stretch and just can’t be sustained by the evidence because it’s also contradicted by the other evidence we have clearly linking Peter to the city of Rome including the fact he was buried there and we found his tomb there.
Mike Winger:
The fourth reason is that Peter in 1 and 2 Peter, he never calls himself … I’ve already read to you in 1 Peter Chapter 5 the passages. He never calls himself by any title that puts him above any other church leader. He never calls himself by any title that puts him above any other leader. He’s just an apostle. In 1 Peter 1 and in 2 Peter 1, in the introduction to both those letters, he just says Peter and apostle. Not like the chief or the leader, none of that kind of stuff which you might be like, “Well he was just being humble.” I’m like, “Well there’s not really very much humble about calling yourself an apostle.” I mean “I’m an apostle.” You’re not exactly humble here. You’re just stating facts, but he just puts himself on even playing field with all the other apostles.
Trent Horn:
But that’s not the case though because Peter was given an elevated title above the other apostles. He doesn’t refer to himself that way in his epistles. In Galatians 2:9, Paul says that he refers to James, Peter, and John as those who are esteemed as pillars in the church. So James, John, and Peter are called pillars of the church which is … So they’re higher up than the other apostles. They were esteemed as the pillars of the church. So Peter is a pillar of the church by Paul’s own teaching in Galatians 2:9. Peter had the title of pillar of the church, and yet Peter doesn’t write in 1 Peter, “I, Peter, a pillar of the church, speak to you,” because he’s being humble much like he doesn’t lord over others the primacy that he had as the leader of the church amongst the other apostles because as Jesus said, the greatest among you is the one who serves, not one who lords his authority as the gentiles do.
Mike Winger:
Lastly, much is said about the structure of the church and it doesn’t involve a pope or anything similar to Catholic government. So what we’re saying here is this. The papacy is not old. I mean it’s older than me and you, but it is not original. There’s nothing OG, original gospel, about the papacy. So let’s talk more about the history. Rome was the capital of the Roman Empire. As the church in Rome allied itself with the Roman government, we can imagine how this happens. You just begin working more and more closely. They start to consult. They go, “Hey, will you pray for us? We’re going to do this thing.” You start to get more and more authority. It continues to grow in its authority and influence.
Originally, there were multiple bishops and leaders in Rome. As early as the third century, the leaders of the church in Rome were claiming for themselves a supremacy over other churches throughout the empire when it came to matters of doctrine. So by the third century, 300 years later, somebody is saying, “Hey, I have the authority to tell you what the right doctrine is. You should come here and ask me.” However, nobody else acknowledges this authority. It’s only the guy in Rome claiming it which sounds kind of empty. There’s a dude in Mexico even right now claiming he’s Jesus. That doesn’t really do much for you though unless … I mean it’s more impressive if everybody else agrees or if perhaps the bible doesn’t go against people claiming they’re Jesus. Jesus is like, “Hey, when I come, you’ll know.”
Now, by the sixth century-
Trent Horn:
This is not a case. I’m not sure what Pastor Mike’s referring to here, second century or 300 years later, third century 300 years. Third century would be 200 years later. Maybe he’s saying it’s not until the time of Constantine, the fourth century, roughly 300 years or so after Pentecost, but that’s not what the historical record bears out. Let’s see here. When you see about this papal authority at the end of the first century, Clement exercises his authority to the church in Corinth. So the Roman church exercises its authority to the Corinthians even while the apostle John was alive. So the apostle John was alive living near this area, and yet Clement is the one who intervenes and warns them about not obeying his authority, the authority of the Roman church, to put the deposed elders, the leaders of the church that had been deposed, back to their rightful place. In fact, Clement, bishop of Rome Clement and [inaudible 00:24:18], the letter of Clement and the letter of Pope [inaudible 00:24:20] were considered so important in the early church that they were read inside church services alongside sacred scripture.
So the writings of the bishop of Rome were considered that important. They were read in church alongside scripture itself. At the end of the second century, Pope Victor I excommunicated a bunch of churches and they knew they were excommunicated. Irenaeus told Victor, “Hey, you shouldn’t excommunicate them,” but he recognized Victor had the authority to excommunicate them based on the fact that they weren’t celebrating Easter on the proper date. That’s part of what’s called the quartodeciman controversy in the early church about what calendar, what dating system should we use to celebrate Easter. That’s a subject for a different video, but here Pope Victor is exercising the authority at the end of the second century, still long before Pastor Winger says the papacy came into existence. Let’s see. Well I think he’ll probably bring up Irenaeus here shortly. Let’s continue.
Mike Winger:
The church in Rome was exercising jurisdiction over other churches and thus, the Roman Catholic Church was born. Now, we begin to see something like you would call it, “That’s the Roman Catholic Church,” right around that time, the sixth century.
Trent Horn:
Way too late. Absolutely way too late. I mean I was even reading JND Kelly the other night, his Oxford dictionary of popes. He’s an Anglican scholar, but he recognizes this authority long before the second century, early third century. He goes so far as to say Pope Innocent I at the beginning of the fifth century was the first true pope having a plethora of different kind of sovereign accounts over the church. Of course, I would disagree with Kelly on that point, but he puts it in like the year 400, not in like the 500s or 550s. No scholar puts the papacy originating at that time. We have evidence far earlier of Rome having much more authority in the church than that.
So you go to Irenaeus. St. Irenaeus says of the church at Rome, “It is a matter of necessity that every church should agree with this church.” Remember this is writing about the year 180 AD, end of the second century. “On account of its preeminent authority that is the faithful everywhere in as much as the tradition has been preserved continuously by those faithful men who exist everywhere. It’s a matter of necessity that every church should agree with this church, the church at Rome, on account of its preeminent authority.”
Mike Winger:
Eventually, the Roman Catholic Church started the claim that only if you’re directly in submission to the pope can you be saved. That was a new thing. It was not original. It was very new. Most scholars say the beginning of the Catholic Church was about 590 AD. It’s not like this clearcut thing. It was a slow evolution over time, but if you’re going to have to put a date on it, 590 AD is as good a date as any.
Trent Horn:
That is a late date to be sure. We can find [inaudible 00:27:03] of papal authority long before that point. Let’s try the fourth century for example. St. Basil the Great and Athanasius, they needed the pope’s intervention, the bishop of Rome to deal with the dispute about Aryan bishops in the east. They sought his intercession in the matter because he had preeminence and primacy over them. You go to St. Jerome writing to Pope Damasus. This is what he says long before 590 AD. “As I follow no leader save Christ, so I communicate with none but your blessedness, that is with the chair of Peter, for this I know is the rock on which the church is built.” All right. So that’s long before 590. I think what he’s talking about here … And of course, you go all the way back to St. Ignatius of Antioch is when the Catholic Church was born. St. Ignatius of Antioch used the phrase, the Catholic Church, in the year 110 AD. He said, “Where the bishop is, that is where the Catholic Church is, [kataholos 00:28:02],” according to the hole.
I think maybe Pastor Winger is picking 590 as the time when the pope’s authority also included having military power and more temporal authority which makes sense. Not entirely, but I mean for the first 400 years of the church’s history, for the first 300 years, the church was basically persecuted. Then the church was growing after its legalization under the Roman Empire. Then you have the collapse of the Roman Empire not on the exact date, but historians pick 476, the sacking of … What is it? Alaric I sacking Rome 476 AD? So it’s pure chaos. So the bishop of Rome and the Roman church is now able to aspire as the Christendom rises in the fall of the Roman Empire, and we see the emergence of Christendom. The pope is able to attain more of having even military authority it didn’t have under the Roman Empire under the Roman emperor. So that might be what he’s talking about, but the pope had ecclesial and jurisdictional authority long before 590 AD. The Catholic Church of course is recognized as the Catholic Church 500 years before that.
Mike Winger:
Leader of the church in Rome, Gregory I, expanded the authority of the church to include, check this out, military and civil power and he set the church on a new course. So Gregory is like, “Hey, yeah. I get to control the government too.”
Trent Horn:
Yeah, because Christ is king. Christ is king. Christ is king of the universe which includes the earth which includes temporal affairs. So the church, in understanding its role at this time in history especially with the fall of the Roman Empire, the church Christendom, its job was to maintain civilization to keep the barbarian hordes at bay. That is what its role was. Christ is king now and the church exercises its sovereignty in the absence of the Roman Empire.
Mike Winger:
And that’s the claim of the Catholic Church. There’s been times in history where the Catholic Church was in control of the governments and other times where the government was in control of the Catholic Church taking the pope out of office, putting a new pope in, kind of a puppet, and it kind of went back and forth depending on who had more power at the time. Rome’s claimed supremacy and legal jurisdiction, it was vigorously-
Trent Horn:
Yeah, so we had lay investiture controversy of secular leaders appointing bishops and those who held their offices at that time, but the church recognized that apostolic continuity, apostolic succession still emerges even if the king says, “I want this person to be bishop.” If the person is validly consecrated by other bishops, they’re a bishop and God is able to work through these kinds of secular thorns that appear in the church’s side.
Mike Winger:
… resisted by other churches. In fact, it was never able to be enforced in the eastern part of the whole empire, the whole chunk of the Roman Empire where the churches there said, “We do not acknowledge your claim to have authority over us.” Eventually, it led to the first major split called the first schism or the first schism depending on where you’re from, and this was in 1054. Or schism I guess if you really want to … I like schism. It’s got a nice ring to it. In 1054, the first schism or what in Roman-
Trent Horn:
Schism would be like the scholastic philosophers or the architect got me those good schematics, but maybe it’s a Hebrew way of pronouncing it. I don’t know. I’m not going to make fun because I mispronounce things all the time. What do I do bad? Irrevocable. I think it’s irrevocable. Palatable, palatable. I’m so bad. So I don’t give him grief on that, but let’s … The part he’s talking about here about the east, by the way, grossly oversimplified. The eastern empire, because of differences in language, tradition, and custom, and not mutual understanding and tolerance for different ways of celebrating the faith, led to the churches growing apart. There wasn’t a day or a year that the churches grew apart. Even hundreds of years after the great schism, there would have been people worshiping in the eastern empire who thought they were still under the pope and didn’t know it had happened.
If you want a good history of that, get Aidan Nichols’s book Rome and the Eastern Churches. Very good book I recommend on that subject. If you have an affinity for the east and you’re interested in the Catholic faith, check out an eastern Catholic church. There’s all kinds of different ones. If you’re in India, you have Syro-Malabar. You got Maronite. You got Chaldean. You got Byzantine that I go too. So if you’re an Eastern Orthodox watching and want to learn more about the Catholic faith, try and eastern Catholic church. If you’re in San Diego, come to my church. You’ll feel right at home. We got an iconostas. We’ve got [inaudible 00:32:26] clergy. We’ve got infant communion. We don’t even have pews. No pews at all. So think about it.
Mike Winger:
Roman Catholic history, they call it the great schism. This was when the whole eastern church just broke away from the Catholic Church in Rome. The church in the east went on to become known as the Eastern Orthodox Church, also known as the Greek Orthodox Church. They were like, “You guys are just getting more and more power hungry. We’re out of here. We do not agree with your claims to have this power.” They broke off and they’ve never come back. Now, the churches were-
Trent Horn:
Some of them came back. The church I attend, the Ruthenian and a lot of the other churches that were Eastern Orthodox eventually came back into full communion with Rome and that’s where these eastern churches emerged from. So it’s super sad, by the way, when there’s … Once again, it was not boop, and they disappeared. It was building centuries and there were centuries of fallout. The sacking of Constantinople by Western crusaders is still a sore spot in history between the East and the West, but when you look at it, we have to have a genuine spirit of ecumenism and understanding with our eastern brethren.
A bishop, a Catholic bishop in the US, John Ireland, is considered the founder of Eastern Orthodox in the United States because he wouldn’t recognize the valid holy orders of an Eastern Catholic priest who came to serve in his diocese and he wouldn’t recognize him. “You’re Eastern. You’re married.” I don’t remember if he was married or not. He probably was, but he didn’t recognize him and he treated him so harshly that guy ended up founding the Eastern Orthodox church in the United States. We all have to learn. Ecumenism is not a bad word. It can be misused, but we have to recognize genuine commonalities we have with each other so we can move together closer to be unified as the one body in Christ that Jesus wants for us.
Mike Winger:
Really hard in this century and in the latter part of the 1900s to create, make a bigger umbrella of the Roman Catholic Church to try to say, “Hey, you don’t have to agree with us, but we can still sort of fellowship with each other.” They’re just trying to increase their influence in a whole different style than they used to. Before, it was like, “Come under our authority.” Now, it’s like, “Sort of agree with us about certain things and just let bygones be bygones,” kind of thing. It’s a different-
Trent Horn:
That’s progress, ecumenical progress. It’s okay.
Mike Winger:
… strategy. The Roman church is evolving, continuing today to evolve. The next major split in the church happened in Wittenberg, Germany on … Well it started on October 31, which we might know as Halloween, in 1517 when Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses, his statements about issues he thought were in the Catholic Church. Now, he was not trying to start a reformation or a revolution. He was just trying to say, and this was an acceptable way of doing it, “Hey, let’s talk about these issues.”
Trent Horn:
True and false. True, he was not trying to start a reformation. False, and it’s apocryphal story and most people believe it, he didn’t actually … There’s very little evidence he actually nailed the theses on the door. That’s kind of more of a story that’s developed, but yeah, he wasn’t trying to start a reformation. Sorry. He wasn’t trying to start … He was trying genuine reformation, but it eventually turned into revolution, breaking away from the church. Real reformation happened at the Council of Trent. Where have I heard that before? So check that out to see real reformation where the church saw, “Hey, Luther’s right. Some of these priests are horribly formed. We have to reform seminaries. We have to reform the training of priests. We have to get rid of … So many things that have to be changed to make sure priests are properly formed.” The Council of Trent is reformation. Protestantism is revolution.
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