The Pope. Do we need one?

Kirk and Sheldon take a look at whether a pope is really a necessary thing. What does Matthew 16 really mean?

Creators and Guests

Host

Kirk Durston

Scientist, philosopher, clergyman, outdoorsman, husband to the Queen of Hearts and father to six young adults.

Host

Sheldon Kotyk 🇨🇦

Father and Husband. “Fantastic and terrible in equal measure.” Probably not being serious.

What is Quest with Kirk Durston?

Kirk is a philosopher, scientist, husband, and a legit Christian. His podcast is mostly about exploring assumptions and questions pertaining to God, philosophy, science and life that he ponders about, hence the name Quest with Kirk Durston.

Kirk wants you to join him on that Quest or perhaps you're on your own quest about such matters and you can explore together.

All right.

Hello, Kirk.

How are you doing?

I'm doing fine, Sheldon.

How about yourself?

I am doing pretty good today.

Pretty good.

Although I did just come out of a

budget meeting, which are always fun.

There was some good news in it.

There was some, but, uh, Oh,

you're muted again.

You're muted.

In the stream yard,

just above your head in the stream yard,

you're muted.

There we go.

No, you're not.

I can hear you.

Am I muted?

No, you're quiet.

You're quiet, though.

Yeah,

so I was in a budget meeting for

next year's fiscal year,

and so those are always exciting.

But not as exciting.

You went on vacation.

I didn't realize that we gave people

vacation here.

Oh, my motto is take them regardless.

Yeah, good job.

No, I just stay sane.

You know,

it's good to take some time off every

once in a while,

so I went and visited my aunt and

uncle.

Nice.

warm environment?

It was, yeah.

Quite warm compared to here.

They live down in the Caribbean.

So it's handy to have a place where

you can go with relatives,

close relatives who live in the Caribbean.

Yeah, I'm a big fan of that area,

especially in the winter months.

I'm surprised you didn't go in January,

but that's... Well, yeah,

I figured everybody and his dog is going

to be visiting him in January,

so I thought I'll wait till April.

Nice.

Nice, nice, nice.

Well, welcome back.

We're in election season in Canada,

which is always exciting.

All I can think of is who is

the next group of people that we're just

going to have to completely surrender to.

Yeah,

and more so as the years go by.

For years, for years.

I'm sure they want the best for us.

And a Pope passed away.

The Pope passed away.

Always big news.

I'm looking forward to seeing cameras

trained on the chimney of the Vatican

office building where they're going to be

camped out for the next however many days.

waiting to see who wins the vote.

Yeah,

it's like whether you're Catholic or not,

it doesn't really matter.

You can be an atheist,

but one has to acknowledge that the Pope

has enormous influence in global affairs.

I was just checking ChatGPT.

It claims there's about a billion,

a billion Catholics.

Now,

As we all know,

there are the serious committed people for

any particular religion or denomination,

and then there's the nominal ones,

so that number is probably an upper limit.

But still,

the Pope is a position that influences a

lot of people.

And we'll get into that in a little

bit here,

just in terms of why the Pope is

given that influence.

And whether, obviously being Protestants,

we don't give the Pope much relevance in

our life other than it does influence a

lot of policy globally.

But is there anything else in the news

in terms of science or philosophy or

anything that you can think of?

Oh, there's always a steady stream.

I've been following up on some of the

trends in science to start looking at an

immaterial reality to explain what's going

on.

um the mind uh origin of life believe

it or not even even the universe uh

now a fellow by the name of tegmark

well it's not recent but i mean there

was a recent article on it is um

claiming that maybe maybe mathematics

defines reality not just the universe but

even life within the universe so that's

one area i've been following up on so

what does that look like

Like,

is that because it was used to be

like physics,

put all the laws in place and all

the building blocks.

Like now we're talking mathematics or is

that?

Well, I think scientists are realizing,

some at least,

are realizing there's something,

they've been using some tools to do

science without realizing that those tools

are not, they're not even material,

they're not even,

science can't explain them.

For example, the law of non-contradiction,

the causal principle both in logic and in

the material world.

We just,

science is based on the assumption that if

you have the necessary and sufficient

systems in place you will get this result

here and that causal principle extends to

logic which also is fundamental to science

but science didn't create logic uh science

logic and math doesn't come out of science

science is founded on those things so

where do those things come from so their

tag mart posits something that's very

close to uh platonic reality and that just

refers back to plato

Plato believed that everything in this

world, ultimately,

there were forms in this immaterial

reality, like the form of a chair,

for example.

There are certain basic characteristics of

a chair that don't reside in this world.

They reside in this other kind of

immaterial reality,

but they define chairs.

And Tegmark talks about mathematical

objects.

mathematical objects,

like what are those and do they have

any causal properties?

There are some problems, of course,

with his theory because it's almost like,

and I've seen this several places,

it's almost like scientists

are positing everything except the mind.

But the things they're positing,

the most rational explanation for where

those things come from,

for where they may originate from,

is actually some ultimate mind,

say the law of non-contradiction,

the principles of logical inference.

It would be really astonishing if these

principles of logical inference just sort

of exist in this disembodied,

mindless material reality.

Much more explanatory.

A mind, an ultimate mind,

is a better explanation for things like

axioms or laws of mathematics,

laws of logic, that sort of thing.

So I got a lot of things in

the hopper right now.

I just think of a two-year-old asking the

question, why?

Why?

Why?

Until there's no answer.

And I find that when you're saying that

mathematics is the reason, well,

where'd that come from?

Where'd that come from?

Well, where'd that come from?

And eventually you run into the issue

where there's no answer.

You have to have some sort of,

even in physics,

we use things like reference frames.

So you would have, in relativity,

you have this moving reference frame,

and then it would be relative to some

other larger reference frame.

But you have to have some sort of

an ultimate reference frame.

You just can't go back ad infinitum.

In fact, there's a fallacy

Oh,

I keep forgetting the name of that fallacy

where you just keep going back forever and

ever.

But back to the two-year-old.

The two-year-old,

what's amazing is that a two-year-old can

ask the question, why?

That right there is a huge revelation

because what that tells you is a

pre-programmed into the two-year-old's

mind is the causal principle.

they see stuff,

and they see things happening,

or things started to happen,

or this effect came into you.

They ask why,

and the assumption right there is the

causal.

There's got to be some explanation for

this,

some either logical causality or material

causality behind things,

and that's why we...

A fence post doesn't ask questions why,

not even...

You know not even at we have no

evidence at least that animals will ask

Philosophical questions,

but that's a different problem over there

the difference in minds between animal

minds and human minds Yeah,

I do get a question from a dog

every once in a while like why am

I not getting a piece of that cheese

Mm-hmm.

You could see it in his eyes Yeah,

but are you sure it's a question versus

I want that cheese.

I want some please I

True.

It could be.

All right.

Well, let's talk the Pope.

So do we need a Pope?

Well, okay.

Well,

let's make the distinction right off the

start between the Roman Catholic Church,

the Orthodox Church,

of which there's many different varieties,

and then Protestants.

Probably I'm missing a few other groups,

but those are probably the big ones.

Those are the three big ones.

So let's get into it.

Why does the Roman Catholic Church... Now,

does the Orthodox Church have similar...

No, in fact,

they hit the bishop level and then stop,

right?

Well, they do.

Yeah,

the Eastern Orthodox split from the

Catholic Church in ten fifty four A.D.

And one of the reasons there was several

reasons,

but one of the reasons is that they

disagreed with the increasing power that a

pope had or the authority of the pope.

So in Eastern Orthodoxy,

you have what might be called

self-governing churches,

but that would include sort of an

overarching succession of bishops,

not one, but a number of them,

and councils.

So there's not one man at the top

in Eastern Orthodoxy.

But a bigger question, some might say,

well, of course, if you're a Protestant,

you don't need a pope.

But that's not really the question I'm

interested in,

that a lot of people are interested in.

The real question is,

does Christianity need a pope?

Does one need a pope to be a

good, to be a sincere Protestant?

practicing Christian?

Does one need a pope?

For example,

are the Protestants missing out or the

Eastern Orthodox people missing out by not

having a pope?

And so that's kind of the question I

had in mind at this point because now

the Catholic Church is choosing a new

pope.

So I just watched this video by,

I think, Capturing Christianity,

I think is the YouTube channel.

But because they're Catholic,

he's Catholic there.

And I was trying to figure out, okay,

what is the biblical basis that they're

using right now?

And so he had a video about the

biblical basis for it.

And let me just pull up the verses

that they use.

So this is basically the verses that they

use to justify where the instructions of

having a pope are.

So they would say Peter is the first

pope.

And in these verses, there's succession.

There's the ability to give doctrine.

The infallibility was used.

There's lots of things.

I think there were four different things

that these verses give the Roman Catholic

Church as to why there should be a

pope.

Yeah, well,

that's reading a lot into that particular

passage, but nevertheless,

the passage is one of the primary ones.

In fact, as you've mentioned,

Peter is regarded as the first pope.

But when we talk about Peter being the

first pope, well, first of all,

we need to realize that the formal

institution and the authority of pope as

we see it today,

and as it's been over the last

more than a thousand years,

was not what it began with.

It began with just the bishop of Rome.

But the first bishop, the first pope,

is thought to be Peter.

So let me,

rather than give you a history of how

the authority of the Pope built up and

didn't come into full bloom until

probably, you know, late fifth century,

five,

six hundred years after the time of

Christ.

But Peter,

this is a very interesting passage.

So what I realize,

I just finished working my way through

Richard Bauckham's book, what's it called,

Jesus and the Eyewitnesses?

It talks about how the New Testament

Gospels... Kirk, you're cracking up on me.

I don't know if other people are hearing

that too,

but your mic seems to be going in

and out.

Okay.

Mama K, you're in the chat.

Is Kirk's microphone going in and out,

or is that me?

Yeah, I don't hear you at all now,

Kirk.

Now you're muted.

And Mama K, I can answer that question.

Yes, they were.

Yeah.

Okay, I'm switching to MacBook.

Okay, now I can hear you.

So you're on your Mac.

I don't know what's going on with this

one here, but I'm switching.

So back to...

Back to this passage here, what emerges,

and you can see that in the work

by Richard Baucom, is that Peter became,

or was regarded as the custodian for the

teachings and whatever scrolls there were

that had been written during the time of

Christ's ministry.

And we don't have those scrolls,

but Peter was regarded.

So Mark gets his information from Peter,

and that's recorded by Papias.

And it is thought that Matthew also and

Luke got a lot of their information from

Peter.

And so when Jesus says,

I will build my church upon this rock,

essentially the New Testament synoptic

gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke,

Peter seems to have been a very important

source, if not authoritative source.

And the reason I say authoritative,

because Peter only wrote two books,

two letters in the New Testament,

first and second Peter.

But in second Peter,

he talks about the writings of Paul.

And he refers to Paul's writings as

handling the difficult things of, say,

Christian theology.

He talks about how people will want to

distort what Paul wrote.

But the most important thing is that the

Apostle Peter endorses Paul's writings as

scripture.

He refers to his writings along with,

I quote, the other scriptures.

And so here again we have the Apostle

Peter in a position regarded as the one

who can make authoritative statements on

the teachings of Jesus Christ.

And I think it would be astonishing if

nothing was ever written down during the

three years of Christ's ministry.

So he would have had the custodian of

those as well.

But not just that.

He's authoritative when it comes to the

writings of Paul,

which is a substantial part of the New

Testament.

So when I see Jesus saying to Peter,

we've got to realize that there's two

different words there.

There's stone and rock.

And so people will say, well,

he's talking about Peter as kind of like

the stone that starts the thing,

but then there's the whole rock being much

larger than Peter.

The idea here is that Peter is the

custodian of the New Testament gospels,

as well as the endorser,

recognized endorser of the writings of

Paul as scripture.

And it's upon this,

that the whole church of Christ is built,

the New Testament.

Everything,

almost everything we know or we can use

for teachings of Christianity comes from

the New Testament.

And if that is not grounded on something,

we got a problem.

And so I see this as being grounded

on,

Jesus is kind of prophetically saying that

Peter's gonna be the one.

who is going to be the custodian and

the authority on what constitutes

scripture in the first century.

But of course,

there was no real discussion elsewhere.

There were no church meetings,

as people like to assume.

So backroom meetings of old boys or

anything like that.

So yeah,

so back to Peter as the first pope.

It's

Peter was married,

but he doesn't fit the description of a

normal Pope.

In fact, as we mentioned earlier,

you don't really get the Pope starting to

become a significant position religious

figure until the Edict of Milan in about

thirteen thirteen AD when Christianity

became legalized and at that time the

Bishop of Rome happened to be the bishop

in

a very important city in the Roman Empire,

and therefore it was regarded as a very

significant position.

Then later on,

Pope Leo really strongly promoted papal

supremacy,

and especially in his Tome of Leo and

his involvement in the Council of

Chalcedon in four fifty one AD.

So just to summarize,

when we talk about Pope today,

we should not be talking about Pope,

our understanding of what constitutes the

Pope today or the position and authority

of the Pope today was not at all

what was in place in the first century

at the time of the apostles and even

for a few centuries afterwards.

It's more of a slow tradition.

And whenever you see a slow tradition

building up, one must ask the question,

If this was not required for the origin

of Christianity and the explosion of the

church across the Roman Empire,

not the kind of what we're talking about

today,

then is it necessary for Christianity?

And I think there's some things we can

talk about with regarding that in regards

to that.

So Mama K is asking the question,

weren't they standing at Pansgrado,

a mountain, a.k.a.

on a big rock?

Yeah, I don't know.

It's often the case that Jesus would use

immediate things to illustrate his point

or to compliment what he was saying.

I use paintings and pictures when I'm

speaking to compliment what I'm saying or

to help drive home the point or to

give a visual picture of something I'm

talking about in a spiritual sense.

So Pan's Grotto isn't in Israel,

I don't think, though, is it?

Well, that I don't know.

Let me just take a look here.

Oh, damn.

Pan's Grotto, where is that?

There might be a couple here.

Caesarea Philippi.

Ancient Greek Roman world.

Oh,

there's supposed to be one in the Golan

Heights.

That would be around Hermon.

That's probably the one.

Yeah,

I don't know if we can say with

confidence that that's exactly where they

were.

I'd have to look at the passage.

North area of Bashan.

That's what she's saying.

Yeah.

So anyways, yeah,

it doesn't say that in there,

but I don't think it says where they

are.

But I guess the real question is,

is that justification for what we regard

as the authority and supremacy of the Pope

today?

And looking back at the New Testament,

at the writings of Peter and the early

church as documented in the book of Acts,

no.

When we see a major question coming up,

there was no one person that decided.

So the major question was in the book

of Acts,

should the Gentile believers in Jesus

Christ,

should they follow the Jewish Torah,

the law?

What's up with that?

So they went to Jerusalem.

It's called the Council of Jerusalem,

or it's nowadays referred to as that.

And it was a meeting of the elders,

of the apostles.

And they were the ones who decided.

But when they reach their decision,

they don't just say, we decided.

or he decided, referring to Peter.

No,

it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and

to us, it says.

So they were praying,

they were relying on the guidance of the

Holy Spirit in this decision,

and there was a group of them,

and there was a mutual concord there,

a mutual consensus that the New Testament

Gentiles don't need to follow the law

given to the Jewish people at Mount Sinai.

So that's the way I would argue that

the New Testament church seemed to work.

There was no one person in charge.

In fact, we're actually told,

it's stated that Jesus Christ is the head

of the church.

Now, when I say church,

I'm talking about the gigantic population

of true believers,

authentic Christians around the world.

And I should state that

authentic Christianity, I have met,

it really depends.

You see,

when we start looking at the authority of

a human being and traditions that human

beings have come up with,

we can run into some pretty shaky ground

pretty fast.

But when I find people either in the

Eastern Orthodox Church or the Catholic

Church or the Protestant Church,

who see as their authority, no human,

but what the Bible actually says.

And then what I have found is that

what I would describe as an authentic

Christian can be found in all three areas.

And what this requires is that when we

say the word Protestant,

that's not just one homogeneous thing.

Or we say the word Catholic,

that's not one homogeneous thing.

I've run into...

I don't want to get people into trouble

here,

but there was one priest in a particular

city here in Canada that I know of

that

for all intents and purposes,

he was an evangelical Protestant and

teaching his congregation or the people in

his parish how to share the gospel exactly

like an evangelical Christian would.

In fact, using the same tools,

the same outlines that evangelical,

what's called evangelical Protestantism

would use.

And in discussing this with one of his

parishioners,

We should not assume that everybody who

says I'm Protestant is automatically a

Christian.

In fact,

I know that is not the case.

And it's quite concerning as to what

percentage might not actually be a true

follower of Christ.

We can't assume that they all are or

not are.

The real question is,

have they been spiritually reborn and what

do they regard as their ultimate

authority?

And some of them, including Catholics,

have quite a different view of the Pope

than what the official Catholic Church

teaches and don't regard the Pope as

having any particular authority.

credence or credibility.

Really, they depend on the Bible.

So there's a spectrum of people within

Eastern Orthodoxy,

within the Catholic Church,

and within Protestantism.

And there is an overlap within the three

spectra.

And within that overlap,

these are people who first and foremost

see the scripture as authoritative and see

the only way that they can have eternal

life in this relationship with God is

through by faith alone in Jesus Christ and

they don't necessarily subscribe to the

other aspects like for example veneration

of the saints or of relics and so

forth.

I don't know if that helps at all.

Well,

I would even say in the Protestant world,

you also have a group of people that

will follow their pastor down the wrong

path.

Or they'll worship things that shouldn't

be worshipped.

And I think that's just that narrow road,

wide road that's talked about in Scripture

where to actually be theologically

accurate and actually doing what God is

asking you to do,

that's just, it's a very narrow road.

He says that.

Yeah.

That's a very good point.

I just want to say something about that,

Sheldon,

about what's going on sometimes in

evangelical Protestantism.

There are,

I would regard it as a pretty large

problem that I have observed is that young

men,

zealous to really take a shortcut in

learning what God actually says about

this, that, and the other thing,

will read a book on systematic theology

and then spend the rest of their lives

trying to make the Bible fit that.

I have had conversations,

particularly with some followers,

or some people would describe them as,

say, reform Christians,

who almost regard the teachings of the

church fathers,

let's say the Institutes of Calvinism,

as they wouldn't say it's equal with

scripture, but just about,

just pretty much.

In fact, they would argue that

John Calvin would have the correct

interpretation of scripture on some

points.

Now I don't want to brand all Calvinists

or all reformed theologians with that same

picture as well or that same narrow idea

because once again we do have a spectrum

of

people who would say they're Reform.

They hold to a kind of a Reform

theology.

But the traditions and the teachings of

the so-called Church Fathers,

the problem with that is that when you

go to, let's say,

the Eastern Orthodox Church,

they would have their Church Fathers or

their

revered teachers and so would the Catholic

Church and so the mere fact that some

man lived a long time ago who waxed

eloquent and wrote about theology and it

so happened that his writings were

preserved or he got a large following it

does not follow from that that therefore

he's correct and I think that's

one of the issues that i have one

of the reasons i the dangers of uh

papal authority and that is that it

appears in the book of acts that god

wants each person actually to take

responsibility for evaluating anything

they hear from the pulpit anything they

read from a so-called church father they

must search the scriptures to see these

things have actually true in my basis for

that

is in Acts when the apostles went to

Berea.

And the believers in Berea, it says, were,

and I quote,

more noble-minded than the people in other

cities.

And why was that?

It says because they searched the

scriptures to see if the things that Paul

was saying was true.

And now keep in mind who Paul was.

He, from Paul...

Way more theology came out then from St.

Peter.

If you were going to look for someone

instrumental in the early church,

you would look for the man who wrote

the largest chunk of the New Testament.

Yet,

God or the Holy Spirit speaking through

the writer of Acts, which would be Luke,

describes the Bereans as more noble minded

because they're checking Paul out.

And the way they do that is by

searching the scriptures.

So my point is,

if God thinks it's a good idea to

check out the writings of Paul,

at least for the Bereans,

then I think it would be a good

idea to check out the writings of any

so-called

any human being,

I don't care if they're the Pope or

John Calvin or so-called church father,

so to speak,

we always have to evaluate in light of

what the scriptures have said.

Now, someone might point out and say,

well, hold it, Kirk,

you're assuming now that Paul wrote

scripture,

but I do that on the basis of

what the apostle Peter said,

where he clearly put Paul's writings in

exactly the same category as, quote,

the other scriptures.

So I make a,

I make a step of faith there,

but I have a step of faith that's

quite explicitly and literally grounded in

what the apostle Peter wrote.

So I want to get into the infallibility

side of things here a little bit,

because I think like, if you're,

if you're giving a human.

the classification of infallible

Now,

they make a distinction in the Catholic

Church.

It's only when they're speaking as the

Pope on specific topics of the Church.

He's not sinless.

He's able to make mistakes in other

things.

But when he's talking about Scripture,

when he's saying things as the Pope,

that's where they say he's infallible.

Now, again, they go back to this.

And they say,

whatever you bind on earth will be bound

in heaven.

Whatever you release on earth will be

released in heaven.

That's the wording that gives it that

infallibility.

Now, I think it's a stretch.

It is a stretch,

especially when you see later on that

Peter gets reprimanded by,

I think it's Paul.

Now let me just look that up.

The incident was this that, was it Peter?

It had to do with eating with Gentiles

and everything was going fine.

But until some of the people from

Jerusalem came and then all of a sudden

one of the apostles went by.

I should have this at my fingertips.

Okay,

let me just see if I can find

that.

This would be later on in the book

of...

Let me try a different search term here.

Yes, it's not an axis in Galatians.

um yeah okay so here's a case where

peter in this case he's called cephas

which is stone it's the name jesus gave

him it says this but when cephas came

to antioch i opposed him to his face

this is paul writing because he stood

condemned

For before certain men came from James,

he was eating with the Gentiles.

But when they came,

he drew back and separated himself,

fearing the circumcision party.

And the rest of the Jews acted

hypocritically along with him,

so that even Barnabas was led astray.

So the point here,

and then he says to Peter before them

all, if you, being a Jew,

live like a Gentile, not like a Jew,

how can you force the Gentiles to live

like Jews?

and he refers to this whole thing as

hypocrisy so we and this is after jesus

made that statement to peter this is after

jesus has died rose again and returned to

heaven that peter is involved in what paul

describes as hypocrisy and he gets rebuked

and this is recorded for all history in

the scriptures for all believers to read

And so it would be risky to infer

that Peter is infallible when in fact the

Holy Spirit speaking through Paul when he

records the book of Galatians sees

necessary to write this down for all the

church to read.

Now, I guess the infallibility side,

they would say it is something that was

existed in medieval theology,

but it really didn't actually come into

play officially until.

Yeah.

Um, at the first Vatican council.

So like, again,

doctrines that's happening,

two thousand years after Jesus was on the

earth.

And they're coming up with it through one

verse that doesn't actually say what they

say it does.

That's right.

You have to read into it.

I'm hesitant to base a doctrine off any

one verse, first of all.

But if you're basing it off of a

verse that doesn't actually say it

clearly, I don't know.

Yeah, it is a risky thing to do.

Now, I'm trying to think of,

like I have Catholic friends,

and I'm trying to think of their response,

and the response might be to go back,

as you already mentioned,

that the Pope today,

forget about the eighteen hundreds,

there has been some modification of where

the papal infallibility comes.

But it does not, personally,

he is regarded as, yeah,

he could be fallible as a man if

he's speaking of his own opinions and

whatever.

But it's only when he speaks as a

pope, he's making an official statement,

that he becomes infallible.

But that is, wow, like,

who makes up these criteria?

Why would you put such criteria?

In fact,

there's a very important principle within

authentic Christianity and it's called

accountability.

and we're all accountable.

And what's interesting is even the elders,

and often the Greek word there is

translated as bishops, the overseers,

even they can be confronted in a

respectful way,

that's stated in the New Testament.

If an elder has sinned or a bishop

has sinned, you need to confront them,

but in a respectful way,

as you would an elder person who you

greatly respect.

But anybody, anybody, even a child,

in a respectful way,

can question an overseer or a bishop or

however you want to describe it.

Basically,

one of the leaders within the church at

any time in history.

And that accountability is very important.

I often, when I speak, I say,

don't believe a word I say.

Always check the scriptures to see if what

I'm saying is true.

And this is the pitfall of a pope

is that no human being,

even speaking as a pope,

like that's a really thin limb to walk

out on.

that because he's speaking as a Pope,

therefore he's infallible.

That should be distinguished from having

authority.

Okay,

if you give someone authority such that

what they say is the final word, okay,

but just remember that's not a

God-established rule.

That is just the way things work with

any institution.

If you're a boss working in a secular

organization,

But let's not confuse that with

infallibility when you're speaking of

theology and things pertaining to God,

is that all of us, God expects,

need to check the Apostle Paul out,

as the Abrians did, or the Pope.

Now, I do want to be clear.

There are some limitations to the

infallibility side when it comes to the

doctrine.

So I'm not saying it's whatever he says

goes.

That's not what I'm saying.

But that's where you get things like Mary

was always a virgin.

That's where you get things like the,

they call it the assumption of Mary,

but giving Mary divine status almost.

And so it's something that,

It's really hard,

and this is why Protestantism took a big

thing in Martin Luther.

It's really hard to go against the

teachings of a church that somebody can

just add doctrine to it or make something

more specific than it might have actually

been.

Oh, you're muted again.

When I think of things in our statement

of faith and stuff,

we keep our statement of faith very broad

because we want people to be able to

work together in the same organization,

even though there might be a Pentecostal

person versus a Baptist person versus even

a Catholic,

if the Catholic agrees with their

statement of faith.

We have some Catholics on staff.

It's just where when you're giving one

person the ability to say, actually,

this is truth,

and there's no

There's no necessarily any debate on it,

because in that status of pope,

you're declared infallible if you're

talking about theology in an official

manner.

That's risky.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well,

there are a few conditions for

infallibility, as you pointed out,

Sheldon,

and one is that they must be speaking

in the official capacity as the Pope,

and number two,

it's on a matter of morals or faith.

The Pope is regarded as...

infallible if they're intending to define

a teaching a christian teaching or binding

doctrine for the entire church the

universal church all christians so to

speak but it does not include them never

sinning or never being mistaken in their

own opinions which they would distinguish

from this but putting one's faith in a

particular human being

that just does not seem to be consistent

with what the New Testament commands

followers of Christ to do.

The other thing is that it's important to

remember that there is only one mediator

between God and humanity.

And I'm just quoting from the New

Testament.

It says there's one God and there's one

mediator between God and man,

the man Christ Jesus,

who gave himself as a ransom for all.

So

Another place it says that Christ is head

of the church.

That's first Corinthians eleven.

He is the head.

So there is a church.

It's helpful to look at church governance

in the New Testament.

It was basically elders and deacons.

Well, not deacons,

but elders and overseers.

And they were always they should be a

group.

And if there was a particular local church

that had a question,

they could bring it before a larger or

authority or let's say not authorities

bring it before overseers or apostles who

were regarded as

more authoritative than, let's say,

a local church,

but who oversaw a broader area.

Let's say the church in Jerusalem was

where they went when they needed a

question resolved,

but there was a council.

It was not one person, and that council,

there's discussion,

there is mutual accountability if someone

raises something off the wall,

and ultimately the whole council

recognizes the supremacy of God,

and that's what we saw

in the Council of Jerusalem with regard to

whether Gentiles should keep the law given

to the Jews.

It states,

it seemed good to us and the Holy

Spirit.

So they're acknowledging that God is

actually the head of the church,

specifically Jesus Christ working in the

church today through the Holy Spirit.

So we only have a few minutes left

here because you've got another meeting

you have to head to.

But I just want to get into how

they pick the Pope.

Because if you're going to give somebody

status as infallible,

you better have the right people picking

them.

Yeah.

Now, it's by vote.

It's a democratic process with,

I believe it's all the cardinals pick.

But we don't know what's going on in

that room.

And I think a lot of the more

conservative Catholics would have said

that the last pick was pretty liberal.

there were a lot of decisions that were

made that really went against a lot of

the historical teachings of the Catholic

Church.

So you get a group of people in

the room that

Who knows?

Well, you would hope, and that's a hope.

Speaking about disagreement within the

Catholic Church, there was a...

I forget the name of this YouTube channel,

but it's run by a Catholic sister.

And wow,

she certainly made her disagreement with

the Pope crystal clear.

And I listened to some of her arguments,

and I thought, wow, sister, right on.

Like, I totally... This is a problem.

And so there are...

conflicting beliefs within the Cardinals.

Well, this wasn't a Cardinal,

but within the Roman Catholic Church.

But there's still some safeguards in

numbers in mutual discussion.

But my problem is, why would you ever

It's always dangerous to hitch your wagon

to one person in history,

whether you're talking politics,

whether you're a Christian hitching your

wagon to some political figure,

whether you're a Christian hitching your

wagon to some religious figure,

because they're human.

They're not infallible.

be, some people might believe they are,

but no,

there is no human that's infallible.

It's really the scriptures and Jesus

Christ.

And we test our own understanding of the

scriptures with mutual discussion.

We don't go to one person because I've

been around the Christian situation all my

life.

And I know that different individuals will

hold

different views.

And ultimately,

we have to search the scriptures ourselves

and see what in the world and then

hold ourselves accountable by talking.

So the election of the new pope,

I think it's it's a decent system when

you have the next level of leaders.

But we know that not all of those

leaders have impeccable records.

I don't want to mention too many issues

here,

but it's been in the news the last

thirty years.

And so we'll have a mix of people

who are sincere and devoted to God versus

people who are sincere but are misled in

their theology.

And then you'll have people who just

simply want power,

and they're using the religious vehicle to

do that.

And you have people

who commit heinous sins,

all within the ranks of being a cardinal.

And amazingly, and they're all human,

which means that at any point one of

them can fall.

Absolutely,

and I don't put them on a pedestal

at all, of course, being a Protestant,

but at the same time,

I wouldn't put myself on a pedestal

either.

We're all in this same boat together,

every one of us.

And God says,

take heed for anyone who thinks they

stand, lest they fall.

So Mama Kay said it would be safer

if people were more biblically literate to

catch when something seems incongruent.

Absolutely, a hundred percent,

a hundred percent.

And also,

it would be safer if people didn't give

another human status.

A dangerous thing to do.

Because that's when you're getting into

the

issue of potential idolatry,

you're getting into the space of just

giving somebody the ability to have power

over belief.

Yeah, an important belief.

We're talking about things of God here and

being misled,

no matter how well-meaning the person in

authority might be.

They might be wonderful people,

impeccable lives, but they're still human.

And so my suggestion is stop

at the highest level should be a council

of believers,

a council of elders and overseers like the

Protestants do and like Eastern Orthodox

believe in.

That's one of the reasons they departed

from... Preferably with public minutes.

Oh, yeah.

Our beliefs should be completely

transparent.

We should be able to defend them in

the public and lay out why we did

this.

In fact,

the Bible tells us that's what we need

to do is give a defense for the

things that we believe.

Nothing decided behind closed doors.

All right.

You got to run.

I'm going to let you go.

I'll throw the little video up.

But, yeah, we'll see you next week.

Yeah.

Bye-bye.