Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:10] Speaker B: Welcome in to Think Deeper podcast, presented by Focus Press. Jack Wilke with you here this time. No Joe, no Will. We have a returning guest. We have Marco Arroyo from In Between Sundays. So we are very happy to. I, I say we. I am very happy to have Marco back. So I appreciate you jumping on.
[00:00:26] Speaker A: I was gonna say, last time, Will wasn't here. This time Joe's not here. Am I gonna do a solo epis
[00:00:32] Speaker B: some point one of these days? I'm just going to call you up, be like, hey, man, you got to think deeper this week.
Yeah. So Marco has the in Between Sundays YouTube channel, and man, he is on fire over there. Really doing some great work. And in fact, by the time this comes out, he will have just completed a debate on if the Church of Christ is cult like. And so that's pretty interesting. So go check that out on his channel. It's again, this will be out to the public Monday. So that debate will already be up on your channel, I assume, right?
[00:01:00] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. It'll be like in my live tab, my channel, I want it. Is the Church of Christ a cult? Because that's what the guy was calling us. And then when I said, all right, well, then let's debate that when we started messaging about it, he said, well, I'd rather say that you guys are cult like. It's like, well, why don't you say that publicly? Why don't you say cult? But. Right, so we're going to debate that. That's good enough for me, I guess.
[00:01:19] Speaker B: Yeah. So be sure to check that out. And if you're not familiar, everybody knows Marco. Marco's all over the place these days.
He does a great job with Church of Christ apologetics and getting our name out there, getting our ideas, our view of scripture out there. And one of the places he's made a lot of real head is with the. I don't know, the. I don't know what to call, what to lump them in as the traditionalist churches, the Roman Catholics, the Eastern Orthodox, those kinds of guys that are very popular online, though they have put out a lot of apologists on their side and guys like Marco, Aaron Gallagher and a number of others are doing a great job taking them on. So that's what I want to talk to Marco about today is why we're not Roman Catholic, why we're not Eastern Orthodox, those two specifically because a lot of young people right now are being pulled in that direction. In fact, we've got people who watch our videos, who comment, you know, you've Got them. We've got them. Say, well, I used to be Church of Christ, but now I'm Eastern Orthodox because of some of the things we're going to talk about. So that's our topic for today.
[00:02:18] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm excited to talk about it. I mean, my heart is really here. I've given these churches like a really honest look. I mean as honest as you can give. I'm still giving them like a serious like, look in terms of like, I want to understand what they actually think. You know, I want to be able to steel man their side. And for a lot of people, I've been finding this to be interesting just to talk about the conversion thing for a quick second.
For a lot of people I think that, like, it's weird when they start to look into these churches. I think they get overwhelmed by how, how much doctrine there really is and they get overwhelmed by like how impressive how built out the world is in that sense.
Um, and they kind of think that there is no answer to these doctrines. And that's why I'm doing this because there really only are like three guys that I can think of that consistently put out videos and stuff like that about these churches in, in, in the Lord's Church. Now I'm sure there's more people, I just don't know any other ones but like, it's like me, Aaron and a guy named Warner Haley who, who I love, who does stuff on TikTok. There's really only like three of us. So like, in a way it's kind of understandable that, you know, a lot of Christians, they look up on YouTube for like a Church of Christ, answer to some of these things and there isn't one. So that's why I'm doing all this.
[00:03:33] Speaker B: Yeah, it's very necessary. And again, on the whole numbers wise, our biggest, I don't want to say competitor, but worry for what our young people are leaving to is probably the community church thing, some Baptist churches, things like that, numbers wise. But there is a lot of noise, a lot of motion with Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox. Kind of like, I don't know, 15, 20 years ago it was the New Atheists. And a lot of young church kids were going, man, we can't answer Richard dawkins. And then 10, 15 years ago it was the Calvinist revival, John Piper and David Platt, and not David Platt, Matt Chandler, that's who I was trying to think of. And there were a lot of guys going, man, these Calvinists, they got it going on. They're doing deep Bible study. And as you're saying, we have to have answers for what people are looking for. And so with that, I wanted to start with we're going to kind of lump them together in some ways and they're going to hate us for that. And I know the Catholics, the orthodoxy is, hey, we're not them, we schism for a reason.
[00:04:30] Speaker A: Right, Right.
[00:04:31] Speaker B: But they, they in the DNA, they share a lot of doctrines that we disagree with. And so we're going to spend most of our time on that. But there are some specific to the Catholics and then some specific nitpicks with the Orthodox as well. And so I've got a few. Do you have any particular ones? That one or two things you look at me like, yeah, I can't do that. That's a big reason I'm not that one.
[00:04:51] Speaker A: Yeah, well, I mean there's like the, like the most paradigm level issues, like, like their role, like their, their view of tradition, like infallible capital T tradition, as they say. And then there are the outgrowths of the, like the paradigm issues. So like there is like the, the idea that, that the Scriptures are our only infallible rule. The only rule that's incapable of failure being, being wrong.
They would say that. And tradition proceeds from that as well. However, I lately have been focusing on some of the outgrowths and showing how these would disprove the system itself.
Like, you know, things like, you know, infant baptism or the issue of like having unqualified bishops, I think are equally condemning of these churches, just as the paradigm level issues are like, like how many authorities they have or, you know, if it's one or two when it comes to traditional. But I don't know. How do you want to start? What do you think?
[00:05:51] Speaker B: Yeah, so I'll just again, kind of on the honorable mentions thing, the Catholics I've looked at more than Roman, than Eastern Orthodox. I've got family roots that go back into Roman Catholicism. So my dad was very steeped in refuting. He's not, you know, he came out of that and so he was big on studying that. So I'm more familiar with theirs.
The Pope thing, obviously that is such a big jump to make of, well, one guy. And I know they always say you misrepresent what he does and he's not God and all that, but the single guy head thing is pretty hard to get past the Marian dogmas.
They're pretty close to turning her into a comic book character. I mean, like, okay, she's perpetual virginity. She was assumed into heaven. So she didn't die. She was like Enoch, she never sinned.
When the Immaculate Conception, that goes along with that. And she's the queen of heaven, things like that.
Okay, I think we. Respecting Mary is good. Mary is a huge part of God's story, obviously, but I really feel like that one's been overdone.
[00:06:49] Speaker A: Yeah, and, and really a lot of this stuff is like, you know, they say sometimes there's like a comedy of errors, like in other areas of. Of stuff. In this case, I. And I've been having conversations, like, honest conversations with Catholics about this, like on some of my lives and things like that, where they will say, like, yeah, we believe all that stuff because, I mean, because of our belief in original sin, we have to believe that stuff. Like, if there is no original sin, then like, well, Jesus and the woman who bore him couldn't, you know, have this or like that kind of a stuff. Or because of original sin, we have to baptize infants. That's where that comes from. So like, or. And then, you know, there's. There's all kinds of problems that come from that as well. Like, maybe we'll talk about this. We're like, because there's original sin, which is like, you know, like a false premise here, that everyone is born deprived of God's grace. You know, infants are born deprived of God's grace because it's original sin. We have to baptize infants so that they can go to heaven because baptism is what gets you to heaven.
You get to. Gets you in contact with God's grace. So then what happens to the infants who are not baptized? Well, we don't want to say if they go to hell because that seems out of character with God.
So therefore we're going to say that they go to hell, but it's on the limbus of hell, and they have this place that's like made up, called limbo, and where they don't suffer, but they're in a state of like, natural happiness.
No joys of heaven, but no, you know, torment of hell.
And then, then that's what we're going to think. And they go, but it's not official teaching, so you can't hold us to that. It's like, that's just our theory. So it's like, with a lot of this stuff, like the Marian dogmas, those kinds of things, they have to be true because of the original errors that they committed. Or as I joked with the Catholic, I said, because of your guys's original sins. Right? You guys have to have all these other ones be true.
[00:08:31] Speaker B: And that's the beauty again of the Church of Christ framework is it's very simple. They would say simplistic, but it's very simple.
And that it's not like, man, you pull this one thread and the whole thing just falls apart.
That this framework has to work together. And if you're just stacking things on top of each other and as you say, covering for one thing with another and will make up this state of limbo, that there's just no indication of anything like that, but it makes our system work. I mean, like that.
So yeah, things like again, the Immaculate Conception that comes from the Original sin and what flows down from it. One other specific one I was going to throw out was as big as I am on family and family and God's plan, the celibacy of the priesthood is just abominable to me. I cannot get my head, number one, you've got on here and we'll talk about this a little bit more, but the unqualified bishops, elder qualifications. And so if you're going to say our priests can't be married and yet elders are guys that have to be married with kids.
A, you're flying in the face of the Bible, but B, you're conceptually flying in the face of God's plan for mankind.
[00:09:36] Speaker A: Yeah. And when I talk to some of them about this, they'll even sometimes in response talk like, well, they say, well, Paul said it's better, you know, to remain single. Are you telling me that normatively, like normally it's better to be single than to have families. They're like, well, they don't like the sound of that. Right, but so then what, why are you using that? Paul said it's better. Then why are you using that? And there's also a reason why he said that in 1st Corinthians 7. It's not because it's just like, you know, super awesome to live like a single guy, one income, like, you know, no kids, like the, or like the, what is it, dual income, no kids or something. Like it's not because it's better to be on your own and have more money and more time necessarily. There, there was a reason why he said that.
So like, yeah, I have all kinds of problems with that as well.
[00:10:20] Speaker B: They say the married to the church thing, like Paul himself says, don't I have a right to take a wife? And they would say, no, you don't actually. If you're, you're serving the church, you
[00:10:28] Speaker A: don't yes, yes, that. That's another one that, like, they create all kinds of problems. I've had people tell me, well, naturally, you know, the bishops, they can't be married because they have so many responsibilities that we've given them in this unbiblical office.
[00:10:40] Speaker B: Right.
[00:10:40] Speaker A: Like, that's literally what they're telling me. It's like, well, you're messing, you're messing this up. You created this problem.
[00:10:45] Speaker B: Yep, that's a great point. So that was a few of my Catholic ones, Orthodox specific ones, before we get to kind of the shared ones. You have any.
[00:10:53] Speaker A: Yeah, I, I've said this. Like, I. Right. Like, currently, if I were. Someone asked me this if you had to go Catholic or Orthodox, just if, if, if, if it was 50, 50, and either one of these is true. I don't know. I think I might go. I, I don't. It's tough sometimes. But my biggest beef with the Orthodox probably is they're a bit of a moving target sometimes. Like, they say that their ultimate, like, the way. Because, like, you know, Catholics have the Pope and he's the final say.
[00:11:20] Speaker B: Right.
[00:11:21] Speaker A: Whenever they're trying to figure something out. The Orthodox don't have a Pope guy. They have consensus. And in a way, consensus is kind of like this nebulous floating thing where it's like, over time, the church is going to always. A consensus is always going to be true.
[00:11:40] Speaker B: And.
[00:11:40] Speaker A: Well, what's the consensus? Like, there was a time when, like, most of, especially the Eastern churches were Aryan. Like Jerome says the whole world awoke and grown to find itself Aryan or something like that, where like, these people say, Jesus is not co. Equal with the Father and, you know, Council of Nicaea, the first one was kind of built upon that difficulty they were dealing with. So it's like when the consensus where, you know, and also kind of like this Supreme Court idea. This is another thing that I have a beef with. I had an Orthodox priest tell me this, that, like, no, like, because, because we were talking about traditions and how we would say, like you and I would say there's good traditions and bad traditions. Like, there's traditions of Scripture that are good and then there's other traditions that are like, kind of like, we can discard them or not, and then other ones that are bad, traditions that are being handed down over the years. And they say. And so I say, like, how do you know we need the Bible to determine that? And they go, well, no, we need a Supreme Court, basically.
And so they said, like, you know, like the US Supreme Court they're the ones that tell you they have the authority to tell you what the law is. And what I asked, like, one of the best Orthodox, some of the best orthodox priests on this issue live one time.
What I asked him was, okay, so are you telling me that Katanji Brown Jackson is always correct about what the law truly is?
[00:13:02] Speaker B: Right, right.
[00:13:03] Speaker A: We have five, four decisions all the time too, by the way.
[00:13:05] Speaker B: Right, yeah.
[00:13:06] Speaker A: So Katanji Brown Jackson is like, always right, essentially. And he said, in a certain sense, yes, because she's. She has the authority to tell you what the law is.
[00:13:14] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:13:14] Speaker A: I was like, wow, well, that's.
I'm off the boat there for sure.
[00:13:18] Speaker B: Right, right. Yeah, yeah. And they do.
They'll say something like that. And then the schismatic kind of thing, or we're in strained fellowship with this sect or whatever, which basically means their head guys made a proclamation and we went, I don't like that. And so I'm going to go. And so they'll give lip service to the authority of the office. And then when one disagrees with what their office is doing, well, I got to pick which off, you know.
[00:13:42] Speaker A: Yeah. And the unity it provides. I feel like a lot of people would just get like.
What's the word? A false bill of goods. Is that. Is that the phrase where it's like, they're. They're sold on. Like, there's going to be all this clarity.
All of their dogmas, they're not lined out anywhere. Like, we're the church that can tell you where the limits of Christianity are. You ask them, give me a list of all the dogmas, all the necessary teachings. We don't have it. And that's what they tell, like, Protestants, quote unquote. You guys can't even tell us what all the dogmas are. You go to Catholicism and they go, well, our best attempt at that is the catechism.
And then there's like different schools of thought about how to even understand what dogmas are like. Again, it's. It's completely. It's absolutely unclear for them as well, to a very high degree. But they kind of talk like it's not like it's all been settled, basically.
[00:14:29] Speaker B: Well, to give a, like a practical example, and this is one that's kind of farther down the line, but on. On divorce and remarriage. We got a comment on one of our videos, kind of giving the Church of Christ the business for you guys. Can't agree on that. Like, well, okay, what's your view on it? And it was basically like, well, if a guy's on his fourth wife, we're going to tell him he shouldn't have done that, but basically we're going to look the other way. Like that's your answer. That's what you came up with all these years, all these writings, all these priests, this Supreme Court system kind of thing is basically like, well, we don't like it, but what are we going to do kind of thing. And I don't know, it's things like that. To your point, they present it as here's a complete system and if you just do the reading, you'll have the whole thing. And it's just, it's not that. So yeah, that's, that's a pretty good gripe with, with the Orthodox specifically.
[00:15:14] Speaker A: So it's like if you're going to say that you have that, deliver on it, you know. Right, deliver on it. And not to mention there's all kinds of wild stuff that both churches have like deal with where they say like, you know, we truly do worship God. And then there's all kinds of stories about crazy like you know, rainbow flag masses that happen like in different places and stuff. And it's like, I thought you guys were the ones, you talk about all this soft mega church Protestantism that they fall into this and then there's all kinds of examples about that in your church as well.
[00:15:43] Speaker B: Right. And they say, oh well, that doesn't count somehow. And yeah, yeah. And to your question you brought up earlier, like which one you prefer if you had to go to one or the other. And obviously people hate hypotheticals like that. Well, I would just not go to either. It's a thought experiment. People play the thought experiment. If I had to go to one or the other, I would go with the Catholics because the fruit has been better over 2000 years. I feel like they have done had more impact on the world and that bears out the strength of what they have. But man, there are so, so many problems. And so that's my view on it. I'm not going to make you answer
[00:16:12] Speaker A: unless I forgot to answer.
I actually I told this guy that would choose Catholicism probably as well. Cuz like they seem to have won in terms of like, you know, who won the breakup.
[00:16:25] Speaker B: Right.
[00:16:26] Speaker A: They, they seem to be the ones that, you know, got like real healthy and got successful and stuff like that. The other one kind of, I mean the Orthodox are making a comeback. Maybe they played the long game, you know, but very, very.
[00:16:44] Speaker B: Hey folks, I want to tell you guys about this Week's book from our sponsor, Cobb Publishing. Catholicism Against Itself.
Catholicism Against Itself uses only books officially endorsed by the Catholic Church to show what Catholic historians admit about the history of their church, their hierarchy, their practices and their claims. This isn't someone outside of the Catholic Church making arguments against the legitimacy of it. These are the Catholic experts and historians, all of them stamped with the official seal of approval and endorsement of the Catholic Church's itself. They admit the Catholic Church forged documents in order to convince the laity to go along with whatever the hierarchy wanted to do and that some of their practices to this very day are based on those forgeries. O.C. lambert once possessed the largest library of Catholic books and documents in the United States outside of a monastery. After producing two volumes of Catholicism Against Itself, he challenged any representative of the Catholic Church to a public debate. No one dared. Available@cobb publishing.com, cobb publishing.com Amazon and many other online bookstores.
All right, so those are the specifics, the two, the things that they do share. I think maybe the biggest one is the sola scriptura is a reason why we are not Catholic or orthodox is we believe in the sufficiency of scripture. We believe that that Scripture can be understood and interpreted, that it doesn't take a pope or a priest or a hierarchy to tell you what it is. And so I'm going to throw back at you an argument they'll make. They go to First Timothy 3:15. The church is the pillar and support of the truth. So basically what the church says about the Scriptures is all is basically equal with the Scriptures is how they take that verse.
[00:18:26] Speaker A: Yes. And there's multiple issues, not with the Scripture, of course.
[00:18:31] Speaker B: Right.
[00:18:31] Speaker A: But that idea of them being the pillar, they usually try to like leverage that into saying, therefore the church is infallible. And the problem with that is there are like that. That term of someone or something being called a pillar is not an uncommon thing. Some of my, again, like Warner and Aaron have done stuff about this. Some of my friends on this were like, they'll point out that there are different church fathers who are called a pillar or the pillar people. Yeah, all the time we're called pillars and stuff like that. So it's not like a necessarily and like this guy is infallible or the church is infallible, but rather what is the role of the Church. It is to be the pillar of the truth. Like we are supposed to be the bastion of God's truth and promoting that in the world, holding to that. So like when you look at that verse, and you didn't know what Catholicism was, and you saw the pillar. The Church is the pillar and ground of truth. You wouldn't think, oh, therefore that must mean, you know, the Church is infallible. And either in Orthodoxy, the consensus will always be infallible, or, you know, the Pope will always. His rulings will always be infallible. You would just say, well, then, therefore, that's the Church's role. It's to support and uphold God's truth. And they like to compare it sometimes to say, you see, it doesn't say they're. The Bible is the pillar and ground of truth. Right?
[00:19:50] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:19:50] Speaker A: It says the churches, of course, that's our responsibility. It's to hold up God's word.
[00:19:55] Speaker B: Right?
[00:19:55] Speaker A: To be the pillar of that.
[00:19:57] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, just the language of it itself. It's the pillar in support of the truth. It doesn't say the Church is the truth. It's kind of the I am the law, or the.
To be a Star wars nerd here for a minute. I am the Senate. You know, like, I. Whatever I say is what it is, and that's what they're doing. That's not what that verse says it is. The truth exists and the Church is there to be, to make sure it's held up, but not that they really blend those things. They bring them together in a way that doesn't work. And so the result of that is the Scriptures. Number one, the Scriptures aren't enough. You need the tradition, you need the history of those kinds of things. And one of my big critiques on both of these is history is not a monolith.
And so can you speak to that some. That when they say, well, we're going by the tradition of the Church, there's still some picking and choosing in that, isn't there?
[00:20:49] Speaker A: Absolutely. And again, they'll say, it's not picking and choosing. It's just like the sorting out and the consensus kind of comes out of that. You. They like to talk about, like 2 Thessalonians 2:15. Therefore, brethren, stand fast and hold the traditions which we're taught, whether by word or our epistle. So they use this verse sometimes in tradition is just paradosis, which means, like handing down.
And so they say, yeah, they were told to hold fast the traditions which they were taught. And then there's two ways where they were taught that, by word and by epistle. So they try to use this to say, you have, like, what was written, the written traditions, and then you have unwritten traditions. There's this interesting quote by a church father.
[00:21:33] Speaker B: I see.
[00:21:33] Speaker A: Church father. He's an early church writer. St. Basil is what they call him. And he said, like, there, you know, there was a stuff that was written down, and then there were some traditions that were so beautiful, so dignified, that it would have been, like, undignified to even write them down down. And so it was just. I know. So it's just handed down from bishop to bishop to bishop and their idea of apostolic succession. And so it's like, hey, real quick. Like, you know, we have the Scriptures, but here's some other stuff that my former bishop got from his former bishop, who got this from Paul. And then it's like all kinds of stuff that's not in the Bible, as
[00:22:08] Speaker B: if the telephone game has never gone wrong or been misunderstood, you know.
[00:22:11] Speaker A: And again, yeah, there's all kinds of like, well, what does that exactly mean? Right? Because, you know, if I talk to a Catholic and there's, like, different schools of thought on how to even understand the Church Fathers in general. Some people prefer, like, the Aquinas way of doing it. Some people prefer another guy named Molina. Like, there's. There's different schools. There's another guy who told me, he's like, I'm a Scotist. And so the way I read the Church Fathers is this way. So there's all kinds of different ways where this could go awry. And it obviously does. And so, like, our view is so much better because they say, hold fast the traditions by word or by epistle. Well, again, that doesn't mean that there's a. If this verse doesn't teach, there's a separate system of teachings. That was never in an epistle. That just means that the Thessalonians were given the counsel of God. And some of the ways that we're given the counsel of God is by word. Some of the ways they're given the counsel of God was by the epistle. But we would have the belief that the Bible in its whole would include all of the counsel of God. Right? That, you know, they received it in those two ways because he preached to them and then he also wrote to them.
But we have the whole counsel of God that would be, you know, the view that we hold. So the problem with their view is, like, they would point to stuff like that. In Matthew 23, Jesus says about the Pharisees, he says, like, do what they do what they say, not what they do. Jesus says, you got to listen to them. Right? Do whatever they say, but not what they do. And this indicates some kind of a teaching authority.
[00:23:37] Speaker B: Moses, they say, you know.
[00:23:38] Speaker A: Yes, yes. But the problem is that in Matthew 16:11 and 12, Jesus also says, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees. And what is the leaven? It says, then they understood that he did not tell them to beware of the leaven of bread, but of the doctrine of the Pharisees, of Sadducees. So Jesus says, they have authority, listen to them, but also beware of what they teach in another passage. So therefore, there has to be a way, a framework by which we can understand what are the good traditions, what are the bad ones? When do I submit to the Pharisees? When do I not submit to the Pharisees? What would that be? That would be God's understandable word that we use to have as the rule over the traditions. So again, that's another place where I have to get off the boat and go like, no, I could never say that traditions are equal with what God has revealed in His Word. They always have to be subject to it and either accepted or rejected on that basis.
[00:24:30] Speaker B: Right? And you use the word understandable. That is a big one.
The fancy term is the perspicuity of Scripture, right? The we can understand and read it. It's something that can be discerned. You can look at it and go, well, it means what it says. And yes, there's all kinds of debate in the Protestant world and all that.
The fact that these two groups are schismatic in themselves is really funny to me that they kind of breeze over that in this. Well, you guys are so divided because you're all interpreting the Scripture for yourselves. Like, how'd you pick Catholic over Orthodox? Or how did you pick Orthodox over Catholic? Your interpretation of the Scriptures that you believe was understandable and that you believe that this set of traditions and interpretations is better than this one. So at some point, everybody believes in perspicuity. At some point, everybody believes. You can pick it up, read it for yourselves and find the answer.
[00:25:21] Speaker A: Yeah, like arriving at the correct conclusion here. The correct conclusion is interesting because when it comes to the idea of the Scriptures being perspicuous, or sometimes it's called the formal sufficiency of Scripture, they would say, like, no, you need the Church Fathers to faithfully exegete the Scriptures.
And so the interesting thing about this is, okay, so the omnipotent, omniscient, omni. Benevolent God wrote His Word, and you can't understand that. Like, he gave it. He wrote it to People, and you can't understand that. So what you need from that infallible word to understand it is fallible men to tell you what it means. And you can understand them, right? These, these not omnipotent, not omniscient men who are writing this stuff. And much of that gets discarded by the Church over time. Where they go, like, we like a lot of what Augustine said here. We don't like this part here. We like what Aquinas said here. But Thomas Aquinas, for example, he, you know, he had a much later view on when a life is a life. He didn't have the life as that conception view, for example. So we don't like that part of it as Catholics. So these fallible men who have stuff that we would say they're wrong about all the time, you know, I'm speaking as a Catholic or Orthodox, we can understand them. But the Lord of heaven and earth who created all things, was not able to give us a word that we can understand.
He was not able to make that clear enough on his own. He needed all these fallible men who are going to make errors and all on all kinds of things. Like, you know, there's a church father who said that Jesus died at 50, right? Yeah. And he's pretty early as well. So it's like. Yeah, yeah. So I get a great point there.
[00:27:03] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a great point. And it goes to what you said earlier about the.
They present it as we've got like, it's, here's a pat, a box. We can just give you a box. And it's the whole thing. We've solved all your problems. And where I've seen people in the church drawn to it, it's when man, we divide over new heavens, new earth, alcohol, divorce and remarriage, all these kinds of things. And they'll look at it and go, well, look, you guys can't even figure out and there's nobody to tell you, and it's just my word against yours. But I can go over to these guys and they've got the whole thing already figured out. And you're just kind of, you're ceding your interpretive authority. You're ceding your interpretive ability to just say, you know what, handle that for me, do that for me, because you've already done it. But then as you're saying, the thing they sell you and what they actually practice are not the same thing. It's just not.
[00:27:55] Speaker A: Yeah, and it's kind of an atheist argument where they go, you know, an atheist will say, well, if there was a, was a God, then why would there be so many religions, right? If there was a God, then why is he, why has he not made it clear to people? And we have so many religions and what they say is, well, if the Bible were understandable, if it were clear, then why are there so many denominations of Protestantism? Why is there so many disagreements? Why in the, in the church of Christ do you guys disagree about some of these issues?
And again, it's basically like an atheist style argument where you go, you appeal to disagreement to say, therefore there is no rule, there is no standard. And that doesn't necessarily follow at all because people make errors in methodology or even errors in intention, therefore misunderstanding the word of God, therefore it's not clear enough on its own to be able to be rightly understood. One thing that's kind of hilarious too, by the way, and you were alluding to this, there was someone that was saying, you guys divide over instruments, you guys divide over, you know, mdr, that kind of stuff. This orthodox priest and he, he told church, he told Aaron, he said, when we schism over stuff, it's about way bigger issues.
It's about like who the Trinity is, right? So our schisms are bigger than your schisms is basically the argument that he made. And I was hearing that thing and like, you know, that's not nothing to brag about, right? I don't, I don't really think, I can't think of ones the last time I've had to in the Lord's Church, like distance myself from a non trinitarian.
[00:29:19] Speaker B: Right?
[00:29:19] Speaker A: Or I can't think about like, hey, this church abandoned the Trinity, right? We, we, we disagree about stuff. But you know, it's, he literally said, he was like, no, we disagree about like the biggest of things. And that's what we schism over. It's like, well, that's not, you're supposed to be able to deliver on not having those problems, right? And yet you're not doing that.
[00:29:37] Speaker B: No kidding. That is completely backwards.
[00:29:39] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:29:40] Speaker B: So one, I'll throw steel man their argument for you before we move on to another one.
Two things they'll go to is Acts 15. The church gathers together, gets the apostles in the room. They say, hey, we're out baptizing all these Gentiles. What do we teach them? We teach them to follow the law. They got to get circumcised. What are we doing about that? And they bring everybody together to get a decision.
And so they say that Establish the ecumenical councils that establish the hierarchy of authority, things like that. So there's that one. And then the early church history shows they went to the lone regional area bishop thing pretty quickly, which I would say, unfortunately, I would say that was man's tendency to, you know, oh, I'll just take this power, I'll hang on to this myself. But they'll say, well, Timothy was the bishop over all of Ephesus. He was the guy.
And so to those two things that they say, establish the system that they have that they can say, look, this is in Scripture. What is your answer for those?
[00:30:39] Speaker A: Yeah, for the Acts 15:1. This one's actually kind of easy here. And this is what I've told people, you know, because they go, oh, look, we have a council in Scripture. And then so therefore we have councils today. Your church doesn't have councils. Right. That's kind of what they say. And they go, you see, we do.
[00:30:56] Speaker B: We have ptp. The harbor lectures. Yes, yes. Free lectures.
[00:31:00] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Not, not peppered eyed though, right now.
[00:31:03] Speaker B: So, yeah, Harbor, I did throw them in there, but they're, you know, they're the east, west, you know, kind of thing.
[00:31:08] Speaker A: Yeah. So no, they'll say, like, we have councils. You know, you guys don't have councils. And it's like, yeah, but you know what that council, that. And you know, Rick Grumback, professor at Freed Hardman, calls it a so called council. He doesn't even like to call it that because he says this is fundamentally different than what they do. And I think I agree with that too, that I've told them this. Okay, so who are the miracle workers who are inspired of the Holy Spirit at your council?
[00:31:32] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:31:33] Speaker A: And they go, well, no, it's like the whole council under orthodoxy, it's the consensus of the council. Well, that's not what held here. It seemed good to us. And the Holy Spirit who was directly inspiring these men is, you know, it seemed good to us. And the Holy Spirit is what said. But the Holy Spirit was inspiring these men. They were inspired miracle workers at this council, again, like Paul, that they were listening to. So this is not the same thing as your guys's councils, where you all say, no, we are all fallible men, but we believe that the Holy Spirit is not going to let us make an erroneous decision here. Which, I mean, if you think, if you learned about the history of some of these councils, man, it is kind of insane. Like, can I give you a quick example before we talk about the. All right, so you know, about Nestorianism. John MacArthur doesn't like to say, or didn't like to say, Mary is the mother of God. And they say, well, Jesus is God and he has a mother named Mary. Therefore Mary's mother games. Yeah, yeah. And so the story, there's an idea called Nestorianism out there, and. And there's a guy named Nestorius that he. That it was named after. Now, the interesting thing about this is Nestorius was kind of exonerated from being the author of Nestorianism. He apparently didn't believe it, but he hadn't. He had an op. An enemy, Saint Cyril of Alexandria, who really.
It basically started like, the story is from, like a misconception. History says it's like a misconception about what he meant. Different languages and what they mean by being and person and stuff like that. And so Nestorius is, like, on his way to a council, to the council to decide about this. And St. Cyril goes early with a bunch of armed bishops and basically holds them at, you know, sword point or whatever and is like, we have to start this council early. Nestorius is not here. None of his friends are here yet. And he forces the council to start early. And then he, like, slanders Nestorius in his position. And before Nestorius or anyone who can defend him even gets there, he exiles him and he's excommunicated. Excommunicated from the Church. And so then it just saddles him with Nestorianism, ruins the rest of his life.
And he didn't really get exonerated of this until, like, I think, the late 1800s when they discovered one of his writings where he did not believe in the story, the Nestorianism doctrine that they saddled him with.
[00:33:47] Speaker B: Poor guy.
[00:33:48] Speaker A: And there's more examples like this, like, you know, Saint Maximus the Confessor, he had his tongue cut out and his right hand cut off so that he could never teach or write ever again.
After his death, they realized, oops, we made a mistake. He was actually correct on everything that he said, or at least correct according to them. So.
[00:34:04] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:34:05] Speaker A: Could you imagine if something like that were in scripture or Paul's like, you know, cutting off wrongly a guy's hand and. And tongue and stuff like that? No, we had inspired miracle workers at these councils. You guys don't. So, yeah. On the bishop thing, by the way, or I. Don't you want to say something?
[00:34:22] Speaker B: No, no, no, no. Yeah. I mean, that. That really is. What it comes down to is like, how many apostles you got at your council? Oh, none. Okay. So it's just a consensus of dudes who might or might not like, yeah, so go ahead.
[00:34:32] Speaker A: And again, you're.
They're fundamentally different councils here. Like, they're fundamentally different than the one that we read about in Acts 15, which is why, like, do we even call this a council? Maybe in the lowercase c sense. Yes. On the bishop saying like, yes, Ignatius is the first guy and he's very early to say, like to talk about this idea of a single singular bishop and one that would be regional by nature. And yeah, that's super early. But with him there's also before Ignatius, there's the Didache, which some even date that back to the first century, which only indicates two offices, presbyters and deacons.
And presbyter and bishop are used interchangeably. There's guys like Catholic scholars Raymond Brown, Eamon Duffy who say that in the beginning these were interchangeable.
And so you have the Didache, the shepherd of Hermas, Polycarp and Clement of Rome who talk about the offices of the church and they only indicate two offices.
There's the local plural, presbyters, bishops, and then the deacons. He's the first one to really have the different view here. So I think it's actually that early, that early documentation is documenting a development and it makes pragmatic sense. Like they did want to preserve unity. And that's why I think I would go Catholic, because like, that's the easiest way to preserve unity. I guess if you have one guy at the top, pragmatically it makes sense. Right? And they were thinking that way. They were thinking pragmatically on that and on other issues as well. However, it's sadly not taught in Scripture. Like, Timothy's never called a bishop, as you mentioned earlier, Timothy, he's never called a bishop at all. The only way they understand Timothy as a bishop is they, they do this. Timothy is a bishop because what Timothy does in the Scriptures is what our modern day bishops do. Like they're literally reading it back in.
Yeah, they're reading it back in. He's a bishop because he does what our bishops do.
And so the question is though, does the Bible call him a bishop? And was his role one of a bishop which could never be established?
[00:36:31] Speaker B: Right. I was having an argument with some orthodox the other day and to me, both of these camps are just role playing the Old Testament, bringing as much of the Old Testament system into the New Testament as they could, even all the way down to the incense and things like that, some of the decoration and it's like the Old Testament informed us. I'm a big Old Testament guy. But just taking the same structure and going up to a high priest and calling him the Pope, that's very clearly done away with. And the system is very much changed. Jesus is the high priest and everything that they have developed underneath that. And so the local priest idea, again, they got that from the Old Testament and not the New. And I think that's one of the issues. And again, bringing it back to the churches of Christ, strength.
That is what you see is, as you're saying in the early writings, the offices, locally, multiple guys, what Timothy and Titus were told, put these guys in.
I really feel like, as you're saying, it has to be circular of, well, we came up with this so that I'll shove that back in there and say that's what they were doing the whole time.
[00:37:37] Speaker A: Yeah, that's essentially what it is. It's like they read it back into there and they need it to be true. Like, they want to be able to establish this somehow. And they see Timothy and they go, well, then that's perfect. And again, they don't realize that, like, well, this is not how it was in the beginning. Right. The earliest references don't back this idea up of having a regional or diocesan diocese bishop in the area.
And, you know, they say stuff like, well, you know, it's ridiculous if you believe that, you know, Jesus wouldn't qualify to be a bishop. It's like, Jesus wouldn't qualify to be someone's wife either. Right.
[00:38:12] Speaker B: He didn't qualify to be the high priest of under Aaron, like, exactly. Things he didn't qualify for.
[00:38:17] Speaker A: It doesn't diminish at all. The only begotten Son of God.
[00:38:19] Speaker B: Right.
[00:38:20] Speaker A: The Creator of all things. So it's like it. Those are. There's all kinds of, like, kind of silly arguments that come from this.
You know, sometimes there's a conflating of the lowercase episcopos, overseer, bishop, and uppercase. Right. There's a. There's a general sense in which someone, like, I'm a bishop over my family in the sense that I oversee my family, but I'm not a capital bishop. Like, I have bishops here at the church where I serve. So, like the same thing with deacon, right? There's lowercase and uppercase deacon. There's a general sense of being a servant and then the uppercase sense of, like, the formal office and there's requirements that are given for the formal office of a bishop, which is something that I, you know, argue about. As well, because it's a major problem for them.
[00:39:05] Speaker B: Hey, folks, you've probably heard us talk about Focus plus and the Deep End. If you're wondering what that is, Focus plus is our subscription service available through Patreon.
Every week, members get all kinds of Christian content for your walk, including daily devotionals, a sermon of the week, and our understudied teaching series, which Joe and I lead through obscure and less covered books of the Bible like Leviticus and Revelation. We also have the Deep End, of course, which is our bonus segment exclusively for Think Deeper listeners, where you can submit your comments on an episode and we will respond and have a bit of a Q and A each and every week that drops every Friday. So if you're interested and want to know more, check that out. Go to patreon.com and search focus or go to focuspress.org/plus.
Yeah, so we do a whole episode on authority, scripture and all that. But I think I would be remiss if I didn't get to infant baptism while I've got you here. And this is different than what you'll see in some Presbyterian reform circles, things like that sometimes. And I think the Orthodox, it is a lot of times by immersion, right? I mean, they fully dunk the baby sometimes. So that's it's one of those, like, you get a little bit right here. The Lutherans get a little bit right. The Catholics, they get a little bit right because it's for forgiveness of sins. But then, you know, everybody is getting bits and pieces. But we would say you're missing out. I think, to start with what separates Catholic and Orthodox, instant baptism, instant infant baptism. I mean, it's pretty instant after they come out. But infant baptism, with what you see in what people are more familiar with, you know, again, Presbyterian or things like that, a Reformed version of it.
[00:40:42] Speaker A: Okay, so what separates theirs from, like, Protestant infant baptism? They believe it's necessary for salvation on. In both groups, Catholic and Orthodox. Now, they have different reasons why it's necessary, which is interesting. But they, they believe Catholics and Orthodox is necessary for salvation, which it's like, great, because that's always been a great common ground that we can start at and then go like, now who needs baptism? Exactly right. Who, like, yeah, who needs it? But like a Presbyterian, like, you know, in the Westminster Confession of Faith, it says it's a great sin not to baptize infants. They've got to do it. But for them, they believe in faith alone. I was just watching one of the most famous Presbyterians today redeemed Zoomer.
[00:41:20] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:41:21] Speaker A: Have a conversation with a friend of the show needgod.net here.
And they were talking about Catholicism and Presbyterianism and Presbyterians try to have their cake and eat it too in a way where they say, and historic Protestants even try to say this, that baptism is like normatively necessary while still hold. So it's necessary, but they still hold to faith alone, that it's really the faith that saves baptism is normatively necessary. Whereas you have like more modern evangelical guys like needgod.net who say like, no, it's a nice thing to do, you don't need to do it, you should do it, but you don't have to do it. You know, God doesn't really care as long as he has your faith.
So yeah, that's, that's how they would view baptism. It's like a good idea under the evangelical view.
Historic Protestants, it's normatively necessary for the person, but if they never end up doing it, they're saved by faith. Some say they must never just reject it outright and that's good enough as long as they have faith. Whereas the Catholics and Protestants say, no, you can't be a part of the church. You can't be have any assurance that you may are even saved.
Any real assurance at least if you, if you aren't baptized. They have different reasons for it. But yeah, they both hold that as necessary as opposed to Protestants who do it.
[00:42:34] Speaker B: All right. And their original sin doctrines, I've been told, and I, I, this part I haven't looked into, so I'm just running this by. You live here. And their original sin differs a little bit from the, the traditional denominational Presbyterian, Protestant, whatever version.
[00:42:51] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, so like Catholics say original sin.
Western Orthodox also said original sin, but that's because they use more Latin terms. The, the way Orthodox like to say today, and I think it's fair, is ancestral sin. And so like for Catholics, it's original sin because of Adam's sin. We're all born outside of God's grace.
That's how we start our lives outside of God's grace.
For Orthodox, they say baptism is for ancestral sin. Baptism of an infant is for ancestral sin because it heals our sinful nature that we inherited from Adam, so our ancestor Adam gave us a sinful nature. And so baptism heals that or, you know, begins the healing process of that so we can be closer to God. And so they don't believe necessarily that we are born. The Orthodox don't believe that we're born outside of God's grace, like the Catholics do. But they do believe that you need baptism as soon as possible because our relationship with God is wounded by the fact that we have a sinful nature, which it wasn't that way in the beginning.
[00:43:53] Speaker B: Yeah, interesting variants there.
So, again, making their case for them, they're going to point to the household baptisms in scripture, of course, and this is one of these that, as with so many of these things we've talked about, they grab that as proof because it's other doctrines built up to it. Their view of original sin, their view of, well, obviously you're sinful, you need to be baptized to have your sins washed away. And as a baby, we got to do that for you. So that's. We're going to do it. But by the way, we do have scriptural proof and that the households were baptized. So that's not a new argument. But what's the response for that one that you go with?
[00:44:28] Speaker A: Yeah, there's two ways you can look at this because, like, you know, one thing they say about the household baptisms is, you know, this is just like, you know, circumcision. Baptism, circumcision.
Essentially, the fulfillment of circumcision is baptism.
Now, I don't go all the way, I don't think, and say circumcision is baptism. Baptism, circumcision. There's really only one passage that ties them together in Colossians 2. And it doesn't seem to be speaking of it as a fulfillment. Let's say it's a. I don't know. Either way, I don't really need to die on that hill necessarily. But when you think about circumcision, though, you have in the Old Testament this patriarchal system that, you know, existed for the vast majority of human history until the US Of A. Baby. Thank you, feminists.
And you know where, like, the man would be. The. Get this, Jack. Men used to rule their families and decide which religion their families would be. And they didn't ask their wives and children, like, hey, do you guys, you know, you like this church? Love God? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Do you like this church? Hey, son, is like, you know, children's church fun enough for you to still come here or something like that? They didn't do that stuff. And so in patriarchal systems, if he said, we're. We're gonna ask for me and my house, we will serve the Lord, that's what the whole family is going to do. That's the understanding under patriarchy, like, good biblical patriarchy. And so that does carry over culturally into the New Testament. But there's differences as well in the covenants, where, like Jeremiah 31, 3134 is a crucial passage for this. God's going to make a new covenant, not like the one he made with their fathers in Egypt. And there's a difference where, like, in the old covenant, you're born into it and then you learn about it over time. And the idea is in Jeremiah 31:34, that it's going to be different, where it says, no more shall every man teach his neighbor. Know the Lord, for they all shall be taught of God.
Right. And they're going to learn from God. And so in the new covenant, it is where you were not born in the covenant, you learn about it, and then you come to God in faith and you enter into the covenant. And this is like the idea of John 6:44 and 45, where Jesus says, no one can come to me unless the father draws him. And then he says, so no one can come to me unless the father draws him. John 6:45, and everyone who has heard and learned from the father comes to me. So you have to hear now and learn first to be able to come to the father through Jesus.
So it's different, fundamentally different in the covenant. So when you have household baptisms in the book of Acts, like In Acts chapter 10 or Acts 16, the Philippian jailer in his household, or Lydia and her household, you do still have people having the patriarchal system and the culture, however, they would all be coming to God in faith. So, like, one great example, actually, in none of these, just to be clear, household baptisms have evidence of infants. They have evidence of a household, but none of them have infant evidence or anything like that of anyone who couldn't understand that can't be proven. It's kind of like saying the thief on the cross was never baptized. Right. You can never really prove that one way or the other.
But what you do have in the data, like in the biblical data, is the Philippian jailer. Sirs, what must I do to be saved? Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. You will be saved. They hadn't even preached the gospel to him yet. It says, then they preached the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house.
[00:47:41] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:47:41] Speaker A: Paul and Silas preaching to every member of his family.
I don't think, like, would you maybe you'd agree with this or not? Like, do you think that, like, when you preach on a Sunday, you're preaching to the babies as well, right?
[00:47:53] Speaker B: Yeah, I Got six week holds. I can go preach to them right now. I don't know.
[00:47:56] Speaker A: It's gonna take exactly like, I don't think that, like they, yeah, they don't preach the babies. I don't think there was like a six month old there in the Philippian jailer's house. And they were like, hey, look, and you too, you're born with ancestral sin or you have original sin.
So they preach the Lord, the word of the Lord to him in his house, then they're all baptized. Philippian jailer in his entire household is baptized. And so like in the New Covenant, here's the argument. Baptism is something that is done in faith. And that's even that passage that unites circumcision and baptism together in Colossians 2, 11 and 12. It's something that is done through faith in the working of God. It even says there. So it's an act of personal faith to remove personal sin, the cutting off of the flesh there in Colossians 2, 11 and 12. So I think when you see all the biblical data now in the new Covenant, this circumcision made with our hands is something that is done in faith by the individual to remove their individual sins.
[00:48:49] Speaker B: Right. Well, and all the talk about Abraham, right, that you were sons of Abraham. And he tells him, hey, you're going to be replaced by people, you know, God can raise up sons of Abraham. It's going to be taken from you and given to a people producing the fruits of it and all of the things of. Yeah, there's a change here. It's not who your dad was, who your great, great great grandpa was. And that was the circumcision. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and so forth. And now it's, you are all sons of Abraham by faith. So anybody who has their faith in Christ and baptized into him, you can get in the Galatians 3 text and all that. These are now Abraham's children.
And so it has to be chosen. It has to be. It is not who your mom or dad was and what their faith was. And I really feel like I know the household thing, as you say, it can't be proven one way or another. And so they feel like that works for them.
Don't you think it would be explicitly spelled out? Because man, circumcision was really explicitly spelled out. Moses was almost killed because he didn't practice the covenant of circumcision. Right.
I mean, the, the Abraham, Isaac, the whole thing around circumcision there they couldn't find three verses to, to throw in there, like, oh, and by the way, we baptized this guy's baby. Or, hey, make sure you baptize your children.
[00:49:59] Speaker A: Yes. And that's the thing again, back to the baptism circumcision passage. You know, the New Testament tells us how these, if, if this is type and fulfillment with circumcision baptism. The New Testament, we all agree, tells us how these things are similar and how they're different.
[00:50:14] Speaker B: Right?
[00:50:15] Speaker A: Sometimes people will say, well, you know, knowing this family, that's a type of baptism. 1 Peter 3, 21. Right. Okay, so then, like, is everything the same? About that one guy told me, yes. I said, okay, so when you baptize someone, do you stand them in the Baptistry and then sprinkle water on their heads until the baptistry fully fills up and they're baptized? Right? Like, clearly, no. He's like, no, don't be ridiculous. It's like, so the New Testament tells us how they're similar, and it also would exclude certain differences when it tells us how they're similar. And that's what, again, with the circumcision. Now, it's done in faith. It's to remove personal sin. So, like, we see in the New Testament how they're similar and how they're different. And when the fulfillment of circumcision is given, it's now, you do this in faith and it's to forgive your sins, not Adam's sins. And as you mentioned, sometimes we'll say, well, you know, in that time period, they're starting Christianity, so naturally they're preaching first to all people who can understand to be converted. And then they're going to teach those people to baptize their infants once they start having kids. It's like, wait, wait a second. They were preaching at a singles convention or something, right? They're preaching on the day of Pentecost to who knows how many people, 3,000 are baptized.
You think none of these people were parents who needed to know that their kids, you know, were needed to be baptized? That's insane, right? There's nowhere in all of the New Testament information that we have, there's nowhere where they say, hey, and by the way, your children are born outside of grace, or by the way, your children have this inherited sinful nature from Adam and they need baptism for this. Not even remotely, like, not even a little bit.
So this is not really like making an argument from silence as much as it's saying, if that is such a necessary teaching or the teaching at all. It is shockingly, shockingly absent from any and all of the New Testament fulfillment information that we have. Right. That would not be missing at all. And. And we'd have to start arguing stuff like what they do, which is say, well, that's going to be explicated later on by the church fathers because first they just wanted to start the religion. No, you can walk and chew gum at the same time. You can command baptism for the guys on Pentecost and for their children as well.
[00:52:22] Speaker B: Right, right. Yeah. I mean, for something that important, salvation spent on. Yeah, yeah. And yeah, I mean, like my kids. I want my kids to be saved. I would really like guidance on that. So I'm going to go with the amount of guidance I have, which is not that much. And they need to choose it by faith. Like that's all we have to go on. So, yeah, that one really, I think is weak, but it's one they stand behind. And again, I think it's one where we do really strong because if you just run by what the Bible says, you're going to find baptism is for the forgiveness of sins and it is done by those who have the cognitive abilities to repent and put their faith in Jesus Christ. And that's all you have to go on. We got about five minutes left or so. I want to throw one more in there. That was not. We didn't discuss this, but this is kind of a personal favorite of mine that I think is a fair critique. They might deny it. I don't care.
Of both of these groups, they mass produce nominal Christians that for all their. All the priesthood, the authority structure, all that, more than just about anybody else, they produce people who claim the name.
They got the C and E Catholics right. The Christmas and Easter. And there's been this revival in the last decade of Orthodox. But if you go back to surveys on which religious groups in America are most pro abortion, pro gay marriage, stuff like that, Orthodox was really high up there, attendance, things like that.
Not that strong on both of these groups.
Now, there's not any religious group that doesn't have nominal Christians, like nominal members. We're not above that. Nobody's above that. I think it is a big issue for both of these groups that they mass produce people like that. And so that's not one that comes up in these discussions a lot. But I wanted to get your thoughts on it.
[00:54:07] Speaker A: Have you been watching My dad's side of the family? How did you know that about my dad's side of the family? That, like, I come from.
[00:54:13] Speaker B: From Catholic stock, man. Like, I know.
And not to like Throw her under the bus or anything. But my dad. My grandma came to worship with us one time, and she said, well, that's the difference, is you guys have a different Bible than us. And I know they have a few extra books, but you guys were studying this book in Bible class, and we don't have that one. And dad went to her apartment, found her Bible and said, yeah, it's right there. You just haven't. Like, this is not. You don't know. They don't teach you this stuff. And there's not that expectation that you're going to grow in the grace and all. Like, just do your rosary, go to confession as you know, as much as you'd like to, and then you can count it. And I think that's a glaring hole in the system. Yeah.
[00:54:51] Speaker A: What's interesting to me is, like, they do teach. They definitely do teach that if you skip Sunday mass once with. They say this with full consent of the will, like, fully knowingly, that you were rebelling against God, then that's a mortal sin and you will lose your salvation because of that. And you'd have to go to confession to be able to receive, you know, the Eucharist again.
And so they teach that officially, but it's like, no one gets the memo on this. And. And I think it's because, like, they have so many qualifiers in Catholicism, like, so many qualifiers of, like, you know, my first beef with Catholicism was, you remember when Bishop Barron, your friend, friend of the show, Bishop Baron, who was on Ben Shapiro's podcast many years ago, like seven years ago now or something, eight years ago. And Ben Shapiro basically said, I'm an orthodox Jew. I don't believe in Jesus. I reject that. He's a messiah. Am I going to hell? And, you know, am I basically done for? And Bishop Barrett said, well, not necessarily, because, you know, we have in our official teaching that, like, you know, when people who follow their conscience, it was something like they're following the. It's the aboriginal, like, vigor or presence of Christ within the soul or something like that.
[00:56:09] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:56:09] Speaker A: So, like, when you do your best as someone who rejects Christ, you know, as someone who studied this as an orthodox Jew, and you reject Christ when you do your best in your life to live a good life and, like, just follow what you believe is true, you also do have hope of salvation as well in your rejection of Christ. Even atheists can be saved. And that was my first, like, beef with them.
And, you know, I get their. I get the case for it. Like, I get where they Say, like, you know, God, they have something called invincible ignorance where, like, someone. This is just all they knew. And, you know, there's just nothing like, you know, they couldn't.
[00:56:42] Speaker B: Terms that they, like, came up with. It is great.
[00:56:45] Speaker A: And I think those things give a, you know, give a. A license to a lot of Catholics to go, like, well, you know, I. I trust in God, and like you said, like, I pray the rosary and I'm trying to live a good life. And I think a lot of priests would say, well, as long as they're not knowingly on purpose trying to rebel against God, you know, they, you know, they have a hope of salvation, too, even though they're committing all kinds of mortal sin.
And, well, really, it would be mortal sin if they did it with full consent of the will, which is, again, if you ask them, what are all the mortal sins? What are the venial sins? And they go, well, there's not really a list. It's more of a, A, A posture, in a sense.
[00:57:22] Speaker B: Well, again, going back to, like, the infant baptism, salvation thing, boy, you'd sure like to know which sins are going to send you straight to hell.
[00:57:30] Speaker A: That'd be nice. Yeah.
So, yeah, that's. I think that's probably the cause of it, that, like, there's all kinds of qualifiers about, like, well, because they wanted. The Catholic Church wants to be Catholic. They want to be universal. They want to be ecumenical. And that's why they said, like, you know, Muslims and Christians worship the same God, which Orthodox have a big beef with that. They don't like that idea.
And so, yeah, Muslims and Christians worship the same God, whether the Muslims know it or not. There was even Jimmy Akin recently said that when they built the golden calf. Jimmy Akin is one of their best apologists. When they built a golden calf in Exodus, he was asked were they potentially worshiping God? And he said very possibly that they were still worshiping the Lord of Heaven and Earth when they worshiped the golden calf.
[00:58:13] Speaker B: Yeah, God seemed to take it that way.
[00:58:16] Speaker A: Yeah. God didn't go like, oh, they're a little misguided or something.
[00:58:18] Speaker B: Thanks, guys. Yeah.
[00:58:19] Speaker A: Yeah, they think I'm a golden calf. Yeah, that's the thing about that. Sometimes you think God is a golden calf. So. And God was like, I get it. No, so, like, they try to be ecumenical as much as possible to try to.
[00:58:31] Speaker B: They have the view that basically everybody is a Catholic. They just don't know it yet. Yeah, that's really kind of the view they seem to espouse. And that's what leads to the. So, you know, we're not going to be too hard on you if you're not really actually engaged in any of this. And, you know, as a big church discipline guy, as a big, hey, set expectations for the members. Like, we want you to grow. If you're going to be part of this, you got to be different.
I can't get my head around basically just saying, yeah, we'll let you kind of wear the name. And as you said, the.
Okay, they got to go to confession to get the Eucharist if they've been skipping church or whatever. But, man, I drive by the Catholic Church on Easter, and, I mean, they don't have enough parking.
Everybody's there, and it's like, all right, we're turning everybody away. Or is it, hey, guys, you coming back next week? Or what's going on here? No, what we'll see at Christmas, and that's okay.
I have a big problem with that. And I feel like it is a flaw in both of these religions that there is room for just not taking it seriously to an insane degree.
[00:59:33] Speaker A: No, yeah, I think that. I agree with you. I think that's a problem, too. And again, I think it's because their system is so built out and there's so many qualifiers. It allows for that stuff.
They would say, well, it's not supposed to. Right. But. But it does. It does allow for that stuff for people to say, well, I just don't know. So, like, for example, like, my, you know, my grandparents, my grandmother's pretty devout, and I say, pretty devout for my family. Like, I love you, Grandma, if you're watching.
Pretty devout for my family in terms of, like, one of the more devout people in my family, but, like, almost never goes to church, and she doesn't think, like, well, I don't care about what the Pope wants. Right. It's just. That's just what the system kind of would allow for. Whereas, you know, there's like a. An abject lack of. Lack of discipleship. It seems, on a broad, broad scale.
[01:00:23] Speaker B: Right.
[01:00:23] Speaker A: That, like, our paradigm doesn't really allow for in the way that that one does.
[01:00:28] Speaker B: Right. Yeah. When you really start to measure something by its fruits, every religious ver. Every, you know, group has fruits that you look at and go, I don't love that. I mean, we've got some in the churches of Christ that I don't love. Yeah, but this is a really big rotten fruit that you're going to have a lot of members that just don't have to go to church. Don't have to do any of these things. So again, that's one I threw in there as a bit of a twist, but I think is worth looking at if somebody is considering these things. So we did cover a lot of ground here and I really appreciate your time. Marco is the guy for Church of Christ Apologetics on Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism.
Again, that debate is up on his channel now once you're seeing this.
[01:01:10] Speaker A: So let's hope, let's hope I didn't lose him. We're in a cult, Jack.
[01:01:13] Speaker B: That's right. Yeah. I don't want to be a cult member, so I'm kind of on pins and needles here to see what, what the result is.
Anything else you want to promote?
[01:01:23] Speaker A: I. I don't think so, no. Just that again, I appreciate very much, man, you invited me on just in between Sundays on YouTube and yeah, if anyone ever wants to talk, anyone's like interested in Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy and you know, we have like members of the church who are interested in this stuff and they're thinking about it. Reach out to me, reach out to me on YouTube or send me a message on X or Instagram in between Sundays. And I would love to talk to you and maybe help with some of the concerns. Most of the ones I hear from people in the Lord's church when they start to think about going to Catholicism or Orthodoxy are very handleable or they're not paradigm level issues. Like at worst, maybe your congregation is wrong on this aspect of doctrine, but it's. This is fixable or it's not like paradigm level stuff. So anyone who's watching, young men, young whatever, whoever it may be, and you're interested in this Orthodoxy, Catholicism and yeah, reach out to me and I'll give you all the help you need, man. Yeah, yeah, I'll keep it, keep it private, personal, of course, all that stuff. And yeah, we can just talk.
[01:02:25] Speaker B: Yeah, he's a great resource to have, so be sure to check him out. I got to get better at the Patreon promos. Like, like you do. You slide them in. I never see them come in. They're perfect. I just do them here at the end. So if you guys want to support the work, Think Deeper podcast. We are on patreon. Go to focuspress.org/plus and you can support us for a few bucks a month, get an exclusive episode every week. And I mean tons of content, deep dive bible studies, daily devos, all kinds of stuff.
[01:02:50] Speaker A: So all that for just five bucks.
[01:02:53] Speaker B: 10 bucks, 10 bucks all that for just 10.
[01:02:55] Speaker A: What a steal.
[01:02:55] Speaker B: More expensive than Marco. So, yeah, there you go. He's. He's doing promos for me. He's the promo guy.
[01:02:59] Speaker A: What a steal. That can't be real, Jack.
[01:03:02] Speaker B: Whoa. See? Listen to Marco support in between Sundays. Support Think Deeper podcast. But thank you everybody who's tuned in. Thanks a bunch to Marco, Joe and Will. No, they're not going to be back next week. Will might be back next week, you'll see. You don't know who's going to be in the chair. It might be Marco going solo. We'll see you guys next week.
Hey, guys, Jack Wilke here. If you enjoy our work with podcasts like Think Deeper and Godly Young Men and our books, articles, seminars and want to support the work that we do, the best way to do so is to go to focuspress.org donate that's focuspress.org donate thanks again for listening.
