“How to Answer Catholic and Orthodox Claims – part 1” by Lynn Martin

The one may be overpowered by another, two can withstand him, and a threefold cord is not quickly broken. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Strength to Strength. It's a blessing to have you all gathered with us here this morning, bright and early on a Saturday morning. Our goal here on Strength to Strength is to advance the kingdom through thought-provoking topics shown with a Christocentric hermeneutic. And this morning, I think we have one of those topics. Brother Lynn Martin from Greencastle, Pennsylvania, is going to be sharing with us on how to answer Catholic and Orthodox claims, part one. So there will be another part coming up here in about a month, I believe.

And Brother Lynn also works with—actually, I'll get him to introduce himself. We'll open up with prayer, and maybe he can tell us a little bit about his work at the Curator and also about his blog. So let's begin with prayer.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for your goodness to us and your mercy. We thank you for this gathering here this morning, a virtual gathering, but a oneness in spirit. We thank you for Brother Lynn and his diligence in seeking out the truth and sharing it. I just pray that you would bless him this morning as he brings this topic, and I pray that your Holy Spirit would be near him and give him clarity of thought and freedom of speech. I just pray that you would be with each one of us as we hear. We pray, Lord, for the work of the kingdom the world over. We just pray that you would strengthen your people as we endeavor to show the world that there is a God, that Jesus Christ is alive, and that he is on his throne in power.

We just pray that the kingdom purpose would go forth this morning. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

All right, Brother Lynn, you can go ahead and introduce yourself.

Thank you. Well, I'm Lynn Martin, and I actually live in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania now. I guess we'll need to update my biography. We just moved about half a year ago.

And yes, you had asked about the Curator, which is in my bio. That's an organization that's dedicated to encouraging literature and art among Anabaptists, especially other people as well. And you're welcome to check that out at thecurator.org. We actually, I believe we have an event in the Guys Mills, Meadville area, Pennsylvania, today, this afternoon.

And there's also an opportunity, if you write poetry or if you're an artist, to submit to our magazine.

Let's see. I think the submissions deadline is next Friday. So if you happen to be one of those people, you're welcome to submit to our magazine.

And yeah, so recently, over the last year, I've been working on a blog, which Lord willing, several other gentlemen will be joining me in that endeavor, providing reasons for Anabaptism and the kingdom worldview, and comparing our beliefs with other beliefs that are out there. And I've especially been diving into Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy because I don't think as much has been done to compare our beliefs with theirs.

So shall I just dive into the topic here? All right. So in recent years, you may or may not be aware, but the Roman Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox, their churches, have become a really attractive option for some Christians who are seeking for the truth.

And the reason why is perhaps that our culture is growing more and more religiously pluralist. If you don't like something about your religion or your church, you can just go down the street to one that teaches something that's a little more appealing than the one that your church teaches.

And these churches have an appeal of their own because people really see that this is a problem. There's obviously something wrong when all sorts of different denominations say that they have the truth and they all teach something differently. So the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church have some strengths when people are trying to understand this, what is true, because they actually claim they're the one true church, and they claim that they can know precisely what true doctrine is, no question about it.

They also have old churches with old practices, and people find that very appealing. Many do. And when you're comparing the religiously pluralist culture with an ancient denomination that says, "We're the only ones," there's something appealing to that if you think that there's a good reason to think that they are the only ones.

So the goal of this talk is to teach you how to respond to the current claims of Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox apologists.

I'm going to try less to just respond to them myself and more to give you the understanding of how you can respond to them. I'm not sure how well that will happen because I'm not primarily a teacher. I'm primarily, like I try to dig into ideas and figure things out, etc., but I'll try to put on my teacher hat if I have one in this talk here.

So to start out, I really appreciate the Catholic and Orthodox churches. There's a lot that they do very well, especially for the Eastern Orthodox. There's a lot of their theology that really appeals to me. And so I'm not trying to bash them, but I do think that there are some really deep flaws in their system, especially in the way they come to true doctrine or come to understand what is true doctrine. And it's really important for us to know the truth rather than error. And that's my goal, to try to, yeah, to try to speak for the truth rather than error without unduly bashing people who are sincere in their beliefs.

And so what's the goal for this talk? Not necessarily to teach you how to evangelize to Catholics and Orthodox. I think that's a very valuable endeavor. But from my experience, we probably won't convince anyone who is a gung-ho, if I may say so, Catholic or Orthodox, because they have such a beautiful system that seems so perfect in their minds. And they may not be a closed-minded—they may not be closed-minded people, but they have such a strong sense of having arrived that they'll likely be more interested in convincing you than listening to you convince them.

However, I think this is really valuable because, I mean, there may be those who are interested in listening, but you may also help evangelicals or Anabaptists who are facing the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox apologetics and help them not to be swept off their feet by the claims that are made by these churches.

And in my opinion, in the next decade or so, we're going to see a small but significant number of Anabaptists, young people especially, lean towards these churches, the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, and maybe Anglicanism as well, which is a Protestant denomination, but has a lot of the same—they don't claim to be the one true church, but they have a lot of the same practices that the Catholics and Orthodox do.

And I want us to be ready for that. I don't want us to be taken off guard by that. So first of all, I'll share my screen, and we'll look at the claims of Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy.

And in this talk, I'll especially be discussing their authority claims, why they believe that they are the true church.

All right. So the first claim here is each of these denominations says, "We are the one true church," and they don't recognize each other as part of the true church.

The second claim that they make is that our bishops have apostolic succession, which makes them real bishops and their church a real church. So let's see.

So apostolic succession is basically, in their view, it's really important that bishops were ordained by bishops who were ordained by bishops, etc., etc., back in a direct line from the apostles. So the first bishops were ordained directly by the apostles, and this had to be done according to proper procedures as well. And that makes bishops real bishops.

And for the rest of us who maybe along the line, maybe one of our bishops was ordained by a congregation or by elders or something rather than bishops, we don't actually belong to real churches. So Mena Simons was a Roman Catholic priest. He had apostolic succession because he was ordained by a bishop.

But because he was a priest rather than a bishop, he isn't actually able to pass on apostolic succession in their view. So we don't have apostolic succession for us came from a priest rather than a bishop. This makes a big difference to them. So our communion, whenever we take communion, isn't really real communion. And so in that, we aren't actually in communion with anybody.

They also teach that their church is infallible when it authoritatively declares what true doctrine is. So they can actually, on the level of the apostles, they believe, basically declare what true doctrine is, and they're infallible whenever they say that in special circumstances. So Christian doctrine is based not only on what the Bible says, but also on what their church leaders say in the right circumstances. So what might some of those circumstances be? That might be in an ecumenical council, which is basically a council where all the leaders from all over the world come together, and it's accepted by the whole church, which of course means their church, rather than the whole body of Christ as a whole, or they would consider themselves the body of Christ as a whole.

Also, when the pope for the Roman Catholics, when the pope says something ex cathedra, which basically means when he says it, intending to be speaking for the whole church. So sometimes he just says things, and sometimes he says things intending to be speaking for the whole church or intending to be defining doctrine. Whenever he does that, then he's infallible. What he says is absolutely correct.

So in some, their church has special authority to teach doctrine perfectly and be a real church. Nobody else has correct doctrine or is a true church. So to answer these claims, I want to talk about what the truth is, and then we'll apply it to what I think is error here.

So let me go to the next slide here. Here are some things actually that the Catholics and Orthodox say to kind of undercut other churches' authority. They say things like, "You're missing out on sacred tradition," which they believe is the continuation of the oral teachings of the apostles. All we have is the Bible. We don't have sacred tradition, which they do have. Another thing that you hear sometimes is, "Which came first, the church or the Bible?" Well, the church came first. There were Christians in the church in the first few years of the church, but the New Testament wasn't written or compiled until a bit later.

So they say, "The church gave us the Bible, so it has authority over the Bible."

Or how many churches did Jesus establish? Well, one. And we're that church. You can trace our church back to the apostles. That means that we are the one true church. So these are a few things that you'll see on the popular level.

The more sophisticated apologists have moved on from just the gotcha points that these appear to be. But this is kind of basically the claims that they make in a simple form. So the question that I'm going to ask to understand what the truth is, is who is upstream from Christian doctrine? And by that, I mean who, whenever they say something, is that Christian doctrine?

Let me give an example here. So I hope all of you love Parmesan cheese. I love Parmesan cheese. It really doesn't matter whether you do or not. But one interesting fact about Parmesan cheese is that for it to be technically Parmesan cheese, it must be made in a specific region of Italy. I mean, the region of Parma, Reggio, Modena, and there's another place as well, I think.

You can see over here on this slide here, this is the region of Italy that Parmesan cheese can come from. If it comes from there and, of course, is made properly, it's Parmesan cheese. So they're upstream from Parmesan cheese. However, here's Pennsylvania, where I happen to be. Pennsylvania is downstream from Parmesan cheese.

So if, let's say, this distributor we sell Parmesan cheese incorporated is trying to sell Parmesan cheese, if they get it directly from Parma or one of the other regions where Parmesan cheese is allowed to be made, or where it actually, if they make it, it's Parmesan cheese, then it's Parmesan cheese. They're selling Parmesan cheese. So they're downstream from Parmesan cheese, whereas Parma is upstream. Now, Pennsylvania could act as a middleman. Pennsylvania could sell Parmesan cheese to We Sell Parmesan Cheese, Inc.

But they would have to get that Parmesan cheese from Parma or one of these other regions. If they make the cheese themselves, it's just not Parmesan. It can't possibly be Parmesan because it's not made in Parma. So the question that I'm asking is, who is upstream and who is downstream from Christian doctrine? Who is it that if they say it, it's Christian doctrine?

And who is it that if they say it, well, we have to check whether it's Christian doctrine or not because they aren't the source. We have to compare them to the source and see whether that doctrine actually came from, as I could say, Parma.

So these are the two different views that are commonly held on who is upstream from Christian doctrine. So the Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox believe that scripture is upstream from doctrine. If it's in scripture, it's true. But they also believe that ecumenical councils and the pope, in the case of the Roman Catholic Church, are upstream from doctrine. And some would believe that individual saints are also as well, that the fathers, as in special saints who are considered fathers of the church, if they all agree on something, maybe that's upstream from Christian doctrine as well.

For Protestants and for Anabaptists, we would say only scripture is upstream from doctrine.

So I'm going to give some reasons why I think that our view is correct. But first, how can we find out what the truth is? We need to find we need to use some method that we can all agree on. So the Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox say, "We're the same church as the original church. We don't contradict any of their consistent teachings." The Anabaptists would say, "All of Christian truth was taught by the original church, and we endeavor to hold that truth today." So you can see how there's a common denominator here. We can all agree that we should believe what was consistently believed by the apostles in the early church.

If something was consistently believed by the apostles in the early church, then obviously it's going to be what we consider to be true. It's also going to be what the Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox at least should consider to be true.

All right. With that aside, let's see what the apostles in the early church taught about Christian doctrine. So here are the points that I'd like to defend and show you how they can be defended. So first, Jesus and the apostles were upstream from Christian doctrine.

Second, the faith that was taught in the first years of Christianity cannot be changed. Third, all doctrine was complete and public. Fourth, no one else besides Jesus and the apostles was ever placed upstream from doctrine. And finally, the books of the New Testament derive their authority from the apostles and not from the church.

So let's just look at what scripture and the early church believed on these points. So first, Jesus said these words to the apostles, "When the Spirit of Truth comes, He will guide you into all the truth, for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears, He will speak, and He will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take what is Mine and declare it to you." So since Jesus was the Son of God and obviously still is, He has authority to define Christian doctrine. Nobody would disagree with that. No Christian at least should.

But here he's saying the apostles are also going to know what all Christian doctrine is. A lot of people think of these words as spoken to the whole church or maybe to church leaders. But what's really interesting is that he's actually speaking these words directly to the 11 faithful apostles. This is after Judas has left the room, and he's speaking to the 11 faithful apostles. And he's saying that these 11 are going to know all the truth.

And I think the best way of reading this is all the truth about Christian doctrine. Then he says, "This will come through the Holy Spirit," because he's not going to tell them just literally everything, or they aren't able to receive literally everything right now. But then the apostles did receive the Spirit on Pentecost, and then they began to teach. They waited to teach until Pentecost. So I think that's the time when the Spirit gave them all the truth about Christian doctrine, and they taught it from there.

So this is actually the early church held to this view as well, that the apostles were upstream from Christian doctrine. So Tertullian says, "Jesus said, 'When He, the Spirit of Truth, shall come, He will lead you into all the truth.' He thus shows that there was nothing of which they, the apostles, were ignorant, to whom He had promised the future attainment of all truth by the help of the Spirit of Truth. And assuredly, He fulfilled His promise, since it is proved in the acts of the apostles that the Holy Ghost did come down." So he's presenting basically that view.

And there are hints of this all through the New Testament and through the early Christian writings. I'm just giving you some of the clearest things here. I'll point you at the end of this to my website, which digs into this in more detail and brings up quite a few more quotes that I think are also helpful.

Victorinus also shows that he believes this as saying, "It is evidently shown that the doctrine of the apostles can be separated from rectitude by no tempest of contradiction," as in the apostles were telling the truth. Jesus entrusted them with the truth, so we can trust them to have the truth.

So the second point, the faith that was taught in the first years of Christianity cannot be changed. So this is a passage we probably know fairly well, where Paul says, "Even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preach to you, let him be accursed." So the faith that they had proclaimed in the first years of teaching, if even one of the apostles came around and contradicted that, they would be wrong.

Even if an angel from heaven contradicted what they had taught in those first years, that would be wrong. That would let him be accursed, he says.

And Paul also says in 2 Thessalonians, "So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter." So he's saying, "Hold on to what was delivered." And there are lots and lots of statements all through the New Testament. If you read watching for these statements, especially in the letters that the apostles wrote near the end of their lives or near the end of the apostles' ministry, you see statements like this, "Hang on to what you have because you have the truth."

Now, Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox point to the word tradition, and they say, "Hey, we've got tradition. You guys are the ones that don't have the tradition that was spoken by word. All you have is what was by our letter."

However, the Greek word translated tradition can be translated as ordinance, precept, or doctrine. It doesn't necessarily mean something that it doesn't necessarily have the exact same meaning of tradition that we hold or that we use the way we use the word today. So I would ask, what does it mean here? What does it mean? What our church has taught for centuries, or does it mean what the apostles taught in the beginning? I think it's very clear that it means what the apostles taught in the beginning, and it doesn't mean something that was handed on for centuries and centuries, and no one's quite sure exactly where it got started.

So I think that, and I think there are other places in the New Testament where the word tradition comes up. In some cases, it's talking about human traditions, but in many cases, it's talking about apostolic traditions, the things that the apostles handed down directly to the churches.

And of course, many of the things that they said are recorded in the New Testament.

All right. And this is also what the early Christians held to, that faith cannot be changed. In the disputation with Manny's, it says, "If anyone preach another gospel unto you, then that which you have received, let him be accursed." And note, they're using these same passages to argue for the same thing.

And consequently, in addition to what has once been committed to us by the apostles, a disciple of Christ ought to receive nothing new as doctrine. I think that's pretty clear. Polycarp said, "Wherefore forsaking the vanity of many and their false doctrines, let us return to the word which has been handed down to us from the beginning."

So that faith from the beginning is what is true.

I'm also going to suggest that all doctrine was complete and public to the early Christians. They had it; it was delivered to them all, and it was widely known. So there was no question about it for the church. So Paul said to the Ephesian elders, "Therefore, I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all, for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God."

And in Jude 3, this is probably the simplest and most straightforward statement of this. He writes, saying, "I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints."

This is also, again, what the early Christians believed. Irenaeus says, "For if the apostles had known hidden mysteries," the Gnostics claimed, "the apostles taught our teachers hidden mysteries that they didn't teach to everybody else." Irenaeus says, "If they had known these mysteries, which they were in the habit of imparting to the perfect apart and privately from the rest, they would have delivered them especially to those to whom they were also committing the churches themselves." So the church leaders, he's saying, would have known everything that the apostles taught.

Cyprian writes in a letter, "Very many of the bishops who are set over the churches of the Lord by divine condescension throughout the whole world maintain the plan of evangelical truth and of the tradition of the Lord and do not, by human and novel institution, depart from that which Christ, our Master, both prescribed and did." So he is especially stressing that this all comes from Jesus. It's not like the apostles were originating this themselves. They're upstream from doctrine because Jesus entrusted them with the truth.

But he's saying, "Follow the tradition of the Lord. Do not, by any human or novel institution, depart from that."

And no one else was ever placed upstream from doctrine. So the New Testament doesn't mention anyone else as being upstream from doctrine. It mentions that church leaders have authority to teach, bishops or elders have the authority to teach, and that they are intended to teach, but they're not upstream from doctrine. They're like Pennsylvania on the map. They're not Parma, which can actually make Parmesan cheese. They simply have to receive that Parmesan cheese and pass it on to us.

When they list sources of doctrine, the early Christians consistently speak of Jesus and the apostles.

That just seems like, again and again, the thing that they're pounding, "Our doctrine comes from Jesus and the apostles." And there are a lot of quotes on my website that you can check out as well. And for hundreds of years of Christianity, no hint is given that anyone else is upstream from doctrine. The quotes that I gave you are some of the clearest. There are other clear ones as well. They're very representative of what the early church believed.

So what can we conclude from this so far? The Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox say, "Our church's decisions are upstream from doctrine. According to the historic faith, only Jesus and the apostles were upstream from doctrine." They say, "We have authoritative traditions that aren't found in the New Testament."

In fact, those traditions were not apostolic traditions. They weren't taught by the apostles. And they say, "Our doctrine has developed." This is more the Roman Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox. The Eastern Orthodox mostly say that their doctrine hasn't changed from the apostles, but there are some who recognize that it has developed. But they say, "Our doctrine has developed authoritatively from the original apostolic deposit." But as we saw, doctrine cannot change or develop from what was once for all delivered.

So let me now look at the final point, which is, "The books of the New Testament derive their authority from the apostles and not from the church."

So there are two categories of what can be considered apostolic teaching. That is, books that were written by apostles directly or books that were written by what the early church called apostolic men. That's people who worked together in close association with the apostles.

And the reason that those would be authoritative is they spent their time with the apostles all the time. An example of this would be, say, Luke or James, because if they spent so much time with the apostles and they worked under the apostles, we can be sure that they were teaching what the apostles were teaching as well. So the question is, what books were written by apostles or were written by apostolic men?

So here's basically the way the history of the canon went down. I'll summarize it very briefly. I look into it more on my site. I'm not trying to sell you a book here. When I mention my website, it's just I can't get into just everything here. I'm trying to communicate the main points and have time for Q&A.

But there's more that you can look into. So first, they started out by carrying what books contained the apostolic teaching, what was written by apostles or by apostolic men. And from the very earliest times, there were 21 books that the early Christians consistently considered apostolic. There was just no disagreement. That includes the Gospels, most of Paul's letters, if not all, and multiple other books as well.

And then there are several books like 2 and 3 John, James, Hebrews that they weren't quite as sure about, but they were very, very sure about these 21. There were about 11 other books that they recognized. These agree with those definitely apostolic books in doctrine, but these books don't contain further doctrines from those apostolic books.

And these 11 books were all considered apostolic by some early Christians. Some were considered apostolic by one or two. Some were considered apostolic by more.

And over time, the churches around the Mediterranean reached the consensus that six of these books were apostolic and the rest were merely doctrinally correct books. So those six were Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, and 2 and 3 John. I'm trying to think if that is six, but if it's not, correct me later.

So our New Testament canon comprises these 27 books, the 21 books that just everybody recognized. Yes, these were written by apostles or apostolic men. And then six more books that over time, they finally reached a consensus saying, "Yeah, we're sure on these books as well."

So this is the general history. And I'd like to correct a few misconceptions beyond the one that Constantine decided what the canon was and the Council of Nicaea. That's when I've heard. There's absolutely no history of that. The Council of Nicaea did nothing about deciding the canon.

So the canon was not settled by the decisions of the institutional church, but by the consensus of Christians throughout the world. So it wasn't like the church got together and said, "All right, these are the books. These are the books that are the New Testament canon.

These other books aren't." It was, as I said, there were many of them that were just unilaterally accepted all throughout the Christian world. And then there were others that it took them a little bit of time to be sure of whether they were apostolic or not. But they came to that point by consensus, not by some decision. And all throughout the Christian world, they came to that same basic consensus.

Second point, the apostolic teachings can be found in the 21 undisputed books. So the doctrines of the apostles, they're all there in the 21 undisputed books. There's nothing that the other books contain that aren't in those other books.

And since the 11 disputed books all agree with the undisputed books on doctrine, no doctrine actually hinges on whether or not the disputed books are apostolic. Now, I agree with the church's consensus that those other six books were apostolic books.

But even if they had come to a different consensus and had accepted maybe not quite all of those six books or maybe had included one of the other books like 1 Clement or the Epistle of Barnabas in the canon, that wouldn't change our doctrine because they all agree with those undisputed books and they don't have extra doctrines. And there aren't doctrines that hinge on the six disputed books that were added, that were included in the canon.

So these are important points to note because these misconceptions make it possible for the Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox to try to say that we should follow their church rather than follow the New Testament. So here are the implications. So the Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox might say, "You can't know Christian doctrine without having an authoritative canon." Since we say we get our doctrines from Scripture, they say, "You know, if you don't actually have an authoritative canon that was decided by the church, and if you don't recognize the church as being able to decide that canon, then how can you trust the canon that you have?" Well, Christian doctrine can be found in the 21 books that were accepted before the canon was even, the consensus of the canon even happened.

They might also say, "Our church decided the canon, so we have authority over Scripture." So I mean, we trust these 27 books, right, as Anabaptists. And they can say, their wish is to say, "Yeah, our church decided that those 27 books were apostolic. So you should trust, if you trust our church on that, why don't you trust our church on everything else as well?" But as I pointed out, the canon became clear through consensus, not through church authority. It wasn't a decision of their church that established the canon. It was the consensus of the whole church.

So so far, I've responded to the third point. The third point of their authority claims that their church is infallible when it authoritatively declares what true doctrine is. I showed they're not upstream from doctrine. Doctrine is contained in the Christian doctrine is contained in the New Testament, the teachings of the apostles. And of course, that all stems from Jesus' teachings.

So there are two more authority claims that they make, that they're the one true church and that their bishops have apostolic succession. So each of these, we could really dig into. We could go in depth and show all the issues with each claim, but I'm trying to keep this short and memorable and keep things simple here. So I would just ask this question. If you aren't in agreement with the apostolic faith on the way that we know doctrine, how are you the apostolic church, that one true church? How is it possible that the one true church would be wrong on a question that's this central to what the faith is?

And how do you have apostolic succession? The point of apostolic succession is, I mean, it says apostolic right there in the name for it. The point of that is to be succeeding the apostles. And if you're not succeeding the apostles in what they taught, it just can't be real apostolic succession. And that's what the early church would agree with me on that, saying that if somebody doesn't have apostolic doctrine, no amount of "apostolic succession" will help them.

So let's recap a bit to cover the material that I've covered here.

When we ask the question, who is upstream from Christian doctrine versus who is downstream from Christian doctrine? Well, Protestants and Anabaptists say Scripture, and we have very good support from the Scriptures and the early church for this point. The Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox would say, yes, Scripture is upstream from Christian doctrine, but that Ecumenical Councils are, the Pope is, etc.

Their traditions are also upstream from Christian doctrine. And that's where their extra doctrines come from. Because whenever we point to Scripture saying, where is that in Scripture? They can say, yeah, well, Scripture isn't the only source that's upstream from Christian doctrine. They probably won't use the word upstream, but I use that to simplify things. They can say, yeah, well, the Pope can say something and it's infallibly true.

Ecumenical Councils can say things and it's infallibly true. Or we have these traditions that have just lasted since the time of the apostles, and these are also infallibly true. But as I showed, our doctrines are based on the New Testament. So recapping this, what did the early church and Scripture teach about who is upstream from doctrine? Jesus and the apostles were upstream from doctrine.

The faith that was taught in those first years of Christianity cannot be changed. Paul wrote Galatians and said, "If anyone preaches another gospel, let him be accursed." He wrote that somewhere around AD 50. So if your doctrine appears before AD 50, there's a much better chance of it being true. Unfortunately, their doctrines do not. All doctrine was complete and public. There was no doctrine that was later. Oh, right. Not everybody knew about this doctrine, but the apostles did teach it, so it is authoritative as well.

No one else was placed upstream from doctrine, and the books of the New Testament derive their authority from the apostles, not from the church. So we can trust those books because they're from Jesus and the apostles. We don't have to assume that the Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox Church is the one true church in order to trust whether those books are correct.

And again, the implications, our church's decisions are upstream from doctrine. No, only Jesus and the apostles were upstream from doctrine. We have authoritative traditions not found in the New Testament. Those were not authoritatively taught by the apostles. They may have these traditions that they consider authoritative, may have arisen, say, in the 4th century, 5th, 6th, etc., but they did not arise in the 1st century before the apostles finished their teaching.

And our doctrine has developed authoritatively. No doctrine cannot change or develop. And then the implications of the New Testament canon. It's not true that we can't know Christian doctrine without an authoritative canon because Christian doctrine can be found in the 21 books that were accepted before the canon. It's not true that their church decided the canon because the canon became clear through consensus. So they do not have authority over Scripture.

All right. I think that is my final point. So I can feel free to ask questions, I guess. I don't know if one of the other brothers here is going to be moderating the question and answer time, but I'd be very happy to answer questions about these points. If anything's unclear, I can also pull up slides again. And yeah.

Yes, excellent. Thank you, Brother Lin, for that. We will open it up for comment and questions. I appreciated your presentation here this morning. One thing that came while you are formulating your questions, I'll pose one. One thing that came clear or came through clearly for me was this question of authority.

And so they hinged a lot on their authority. And maybe just speak a little bit on how it was interesting to me. So they have the authority of the apostle or the authority of Christ through the authority of the apostles. And then it just layered on from that. So is this where sacred tradition starts to happen because of this authority? Maybe you can speak a little bit about the role that their belief of authority played in. I mean, it came through quite a bit.

Yeah. So sacred tradition, technically, in the very beginning, what tradition always meant was something that came directly from the apostles. And for hundreds and hundreds of years, that's what they actually meant whenever they said tradition. My understanding is, and I haven't researched this myself, but my understanding is that that's still what they meant in the Middle Ages. They thought that their traditions came directly from the apostles. Now, obviously, over time, we can see that they were changing and changing.

And what they believed in the Middle Ages was very different from what was believed in the beginning. Today, whenever people say sacred tradition, they typically don't mean what came directly from the apostles because it has just become more and more clear that these teachings, that these extra teachings they have didn't come from the apostles. So sacred tradition has become kind of this mystical thing that's a little hard to define. But basically, it's kind of a grab bag for or an umbrella term or whatever for the things that they've taught for a long time and would like to be authoritative but haven't been settled by the Pope or by an Ecumenical Council. That would be my understanding of it.

And I hope I'm not misrepresenting it, but that's the general sketch of it that I would say. Okay. Thank you.

Comments or questions?

Yes. Can you hear me? Yes, I can. Good. Number one, quite worth getting up for on a Saturday morning. Thanks. Number two, I really enjoyed the example of the upstream concept. Two other examples that came to mind were Roquefort cheese. You can have blue cheese. If it doesn't come from Roquefort, it ain't really Roquefort. In champagne wine, you can have fizzy wine, but if it doesn't come from champagne, it ain't really champagne.

I could have wished that you would have addressed some of the uniquely Roman Catholic doctrines that do come from their tradition and are not supported by Scripture. The three that come to my mind are the Blessed Mary, Ever Virgin, the Immaculate Conception, and the Mass of the Eucharist.

Would you have any comments on those? Yeah, great question. So I'm actually splitting this topic into two halves. I do want to address at least two of those, I think, in my next topic, which will be on May 5th.

So yeah, those are very important things to address. But I wanted to especially hit the authority claims because that's where those stem from. But yes, I do want to look at those extra doctrines. And I think that since those doctrines didn't come from the very beginning, they're another great evidence that these churches are not the one true church because if they're incorrect on these points, then obviously they're able to make errors as they don't believe they can.

Very good. I will await your second presentation with bated breath. Great.

We did have a question come in on the chat. It says, "How do we engage those of similar Anabaptist faith but who have taken more of the Roman Catholic belief in the one true church?"

I would assume this would be like the Church of God in Christ, Mennonite, the Holy Mens. That's right.

Well, I think that these points, a lot of them could really work for many groups like that because if I understand right, they believe that some of the things that they've taught are also upstream from doctrine. And these points would show, no, they're not only Jesus and the apostles were. On the one true church point, I was considering having a section on the one true church here and how I would respond. And I think I actually have a few points here in my slides.

Okay. A few points that I would make on that is, what does the New Testament mean by church? Does the New Testament define church in such a way that it means that there can be one true church? And let me just share this slide here that covers that. I was going to I can share my screen. Great.

Okay. So it started from the beginning. Well, let me. Okay. Can you all see that? Yeah. Okay. So it started from the beginning. But so the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Church would say that the church is this visible institution composed of bishops and their churches who are in communion with each other and in submission to that institution. That's probably a similar view to what these other one true churches would hold, that the true church is this institution.

Anabaptists would typically hold, and this is similar to what Protestants would believe as well, that the church is the sum of the local visible congregations throughout the world. So there isn't really one true institutional church. It's the sum of the churches. I hope this makes sense. Also, questions that we'll want to ask is, which of the one true churches is the one true church? In many cases, it's very unclear. And one would think that it should be pretty clear which one true church is the one true church if there really is a one true church.

Say that five times fast.

One of the purposes of this talk that you mentioned in the beginning was to help guard against maybe the appeal of this, even amongst ourselves.

And one of the great appeals that I've heard is that it's ancient. There's something deep and ancient about this. How would you advise to speak against that? What is the appeal of the fact that it's ancient? And there's so many old authors to read throughout the centuries. And yeah, how would you word against that?

Great question. So I think that the wish to be ancient is a well-founded one. I think that it's a good one because, after all, what we want is their original faith. We want to be that ancient. Where it goes wrong is, I think, when people don't want to be ancient enough.

Basically, they're willing to go back to something that, yes, that's ancient, that's 1,500 years old, but we want to go to what's 2,000 years old. And I think that what often is the case is that people feel like, well, if it was taught in AD 500, that was the same church as what was teaching things in AD 100. So this is in continuity with the early church. But the question is, is it?

In many cases, it may be in continuity with the early church. And whatever is truly from the apostles, we should go back to that. But in many cases, we can actually go back and look at the sources and see that, unfortunately, they've changed on multiple things. So the ancientness of, say, Eastern Orthodoxy is one of the things that really does appeal to me. I look at that tradition, and they're like, "Wow, it's such a beautiful tradition that goes back to about the 400 or 500s." And I'm like, "If only it went back to the apostles. If it went back to the apostles, I would join the Eastern Orthodox." Unfortunately, it doesn't go back to the apostles.

Yeah, that's a really good point. It's not ancient enough. That's good. There is an appeal to dig through thousand-year-old tomes. It seems like there's got to be something there. And if you pit that against just picking up your New Testament, you can see why there's an appeal there to digging through old literature. I mean, 1,000 years old, I mean, it's got to have some truth in it. But we do have the New Testament, which is older.

I'm not sure how to—excuse me. I'm not sure how to ask this question, but when you quote from the early Christians, how do you avoid circularity in your arguments? So you gave a couple of quotes from a couple of fathers that would be contemporaneous with other fathers who believe in the perpetual virginity of Mary. I don't want to get into that topic per se. But how do you decide which quotes you're going to use to reinforce your points and which ones you'll say, "Well, that was a digression from apostolic practice"?