In this episode, John unravels the threads of apostolic authority that anchor the Church in divinely ordained leadership, a concept as pivotal today as it was in Jesus' time. He casts light on the 'binding and loosing' entrusted to the apostles, an indisputable authority that continues to shape God's will through the Church's teachings.
The echoes of the early Church ring true in the wisdom of Ignatius of Antioch, guiding us through a reflection on the steadfast church hierarchy and its continuity into present times. He probes the legitimacy of apostolic succession and its implications for church leadership, encouraging you to contemplate the structural foundations of your own faith community. This paves the way for future dialogues about the essence of Jesus' teachings, including the significance of the Eucharist, and so the invitation stands: to question, to learn, and to live out the faith with authenticity and conviction.
Have something you'd love to hear Fr. Stephen and John talk about? Email us at myfriendthefriar@gmail.com or click here!
In this episode, John unravels the threads of apostolic authority that anchor the Church in divinely ordained leadership, a concept as pivotal today as it was in Jesus' time. He casts light on the 'binding and loosing' entrusted to the apostles, an indisputable authority that continues to shape God's will through the Church's teachings.
The echoes of the early Church ring true in the wisdom of Ignatius of Antioch, guiding us through a reflection on the steadfast church hierarchy and its continuity into present times. He probes the legitimacy of apostolic succession and its implications for church leadership, encouraging you to contemplate the structural foundations of your own faith community. This paves the way for future dialogues about the essence of Jesus' teachings, including the significance of the Eucharist, and so the invitation stands: to question, to learn, and to live out the faith with authenticity and conviction.
Have something you'd love to hear Fr. Stephen and John talk about? Email us at myfriendthefriar@gmail.com or click here!
Speaker 1:
Welcome to the my Friend the Friar podcast and thanks for listening. If you like my Friend the Friar and want to support us, please consider subscribing or following us. If you haven't already done so, and if you found us on YouTube, then don't forget to click the notification bell when you subscribe so you'll be notified of new episodes when they release. Thanks again and God bless. Welcome to the podcast. Thanks for joining me and Bertha this morning and thank you for hanging in there with us. Well, father Stephen and I took a little start of the New Year break. He's been doing a lot of traveling lately and we're working to restock the pantry, so to speak, with recorded episodes to help accommodate his busy schedule. So for a little while we'll be releasing episodes every other week until we can get enough recorded and ready to get us comfortably back to a weekly release schedule. I understand the title of this episode is provocative and that's on purpose. See, when I heard God asking me to trust him after I had walked away from the church and abandoned my faith earlier in life, I was convicted in a very particular way. If I was going to trust God and follow him, I was going to be sure I was doing it his way, not my way, and I hope to share that conviction with you. Me having my way had pretty much played out me destroying all that was good in my life up to that point, and I didn't want my way anymore. I wanted to submit to God's Lordship and I was open to whatever that was. At the time I didn't even know if it was really Christianity. That was for sure God's way. But obviously I wound up here. So when I arrived back at Christianity again, my greatest conviction, like I said, was to allow God to show me what Christianity was really supposed to be. I didn't want a personal interpretation of Christianity. With all the chaos in my life that my family and I were trying to recover from, I didn't even care to try to slowly ease into whatever Christianity was. I was even open to the potential that everything might just finish falling apart around us, as long as I could follow God, because I was so desperate to no longer be the one who was in control or responsible for what was going on. So I'm going to share two of the fundamental concepts that led me to where I am and to returning specifically to the Catholic Church, and these are two of the concepts. That answered the question for me what is it to really be a Christian? In part one today I'm going to focus on apostolic authority, and teaching In part two, which I hope you join me for, is the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. I also want to be upfront and say that I don't believe that any of these ideas are my own unique ideas. I was doing a lot of learning and data gathering, and in all my learning I read books from Dr Scott Hahn and Trent Horn and others, and I listened to presentations and on CDs and YouTube, and I found articles on the internet that there's no way I'd ever be able to even cite them at this point. So I'm sure if you've had a similar educational journey as I have, you'll hear some familiar ideas.
Speaker 1:
Okay, so getting started now. The first place I began was the Bible, and specifically the New Testament. I wanted to know what Jesus said, and so I looked for the words in red. That made for a good starting point for me, because it really limited the amount of books that I had to read. In the New Testament as well, jesus's teachings and his parables were helpful, because in broad brushstrokes, I could see quickly that to be a follower of Jesus, I needed to listen to his teachings and be faithful to them and be a good person, be rich soil for the seeds to grow in, and do unto others and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1:
But Jesus does something in the Gospels that somehow I wasn't expecting and it became the first foundational key in my mind to what it means to really be Christian. Of all his followers, he picks 12 and he names them apostles. That's not really that shocking and of course I knew that this had happened, but it's what he does with them that really gripped my mind. He gives them his own authority so that his will is actualized by them. Father Stephen has talked about the concept of being an ambassador before. So to put it another way, where the apostles are is where Jesus is. What they say and do is what he says and does, and remember. Jesus is really truly and fully God. So these very select members of his followers are uniquely given the ability to actualize God's authority. Not all of his disciples are given this authority, just them.
Speaker 1:
So Matthew, chapter 16, verse 19,. Jesus says to Peter and the apostles I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. So right away I recognized that something big was happening here in scripture, but I didn't really understand it. So I had to do extra biblical research to fully understand the cultural significance of what I was reading. What I learned, in short, was that binding and loosing is originally a very old Hebrew phrase and in usage it, to bind and loose simply means to permit by an indisputable authority or to forbid by an indisputable authority. In this verse I also learned that English is weird compared to other languages, and the way those languages are translated into English isn't always super helpful, so I also needed to understand what was being said in the original languages. So what this verse says per Jesus is that what Peter and the apostles bind and loose is already bound or loosed, permitted or forbidden in heaven by the indisputable authority of God himself.
Speaker 1:
So now I had this simple A to B to C logic what these guys permit or forbid, jesus permits or forbids. What Jesus permits or forbids, god permits or forbids. And where these guys go, jesus is there. Where Jesus is, god is Not all the disciples, but very specifically these guys. And so then I looked up to see if other parts of Scripture, and specifically Jesus' red words, would back all this up.
Speaker 1:
So Jesus says in Matthew, chapter 10, verses 32, 33 and 39, so everyone who acknowledges me before men, I will also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven. But whoever denies me before men, I will also will deny before my Father who is in heaven. He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake will find it. So that's showing the B to C, or the Jesus to God, part of that logic chain. So now to show the A to B, or apostles to Jesus, part.
Speaker 1:
Jesus says to his apostles again Matthew chapter 10, verses 14 and 15. If anyone, sorry, and if anyone will not receive you, the apostles, or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town. Truly I say to you, it shall be more tolerable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah than for that town. And again in Matthew, chapter 10, verses 40, he who receives you receives me, and he who receives me receives him. Who sent me? Boom, jesus used the same A to B to C, logic.
Speaker 1:
And just to show, the other parts of the New Testament scripture support this, of which there's many, but here's just one from Paul and 2 Thessalonians. So then brethren. So then brethren, stay in firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by letter. That's 2 Thessalonians, 2, verse 15. So Paul's being very clear to the Christians in all that whose teachings they are to hold on to, that of the apostles, of whom he was one. So Jesus is being extremely and explicitly clear on this teaching, and the rest of the New Testament scripture supports his teaching. So this seemed to be a fundamental concept on what it means to really be a Christian, because the teaching came from the mouth of Jesus himself, red letters and all, and when God speaks you gotta listen.
Speaker 1:
So to be a Christian, I needed to follow the teachings of the apostles, because that was the indisputable teaching of Jesus and thus God himself. This is what I wanted so badly, right. So I found something for God himself to show me what was necessary to follow him. So I've got God's teaching, jesus' teaching and the apostles' teaching. I knew there was a lot of New Testament outside the Gospels, so stuff had to happen after the Gospels ended, which must have, like it had to align with what the apostles did and taught after Jesus' ascension to heaven. But I also knew about Martin Luther and that there were tons of Christian denominations now and no one seemed to be able to agree on anything. And since I had learned that a little extra biblical ancient Hebrew knowledge helped me prior to understand what was going on with the binding and loosing stuff, it only made sense to me to check to see if there was some extra biblical ancient Christian knowledge that could help me understand what all was being said and how to sort through all the Christian denominations and their disagreements. I figured that earlier the Christian writings were that they would be the closest to the apostles themselves and thus that would lead me closer to Jesus himself.
Speaker 1:
I quickly found Ignatius of Antioch's letters and I also quickly found the controversy around. Some of the letters which were attributed to him were not really written by him. However, because I was thorough, I found that the original seven are accepted, in a scholarly kind of way, to be authentically his. So I stuck to just those first seven letters and the guy was accepted to be a direct disciple of the apostle John, and he was writing in 107 AD. So I bring up this excerpt from a letter written by Ignatius of Antioch to the Christian church in Ephesus in order to illustrate what the Christian church was like at the turn of the century.
Speaker 1:
In his letter he says, therefore, that separates himself from such and does not meet in the society where sacrifices are offered and with the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven, is a wolf in sheep's clothing, while he presents a mild outward appearance. Do, ye, beloved, be careful to be subject to the bishop and the presbyters and the deacons, for he that is subject to these is obedient to Christ who has appointed them, but he that is disobedient to these is disobedient to Christ Jesus, and he that obeyeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him, for he that yields not to obedience to his superiors is self-confident, quarrelsome and proud. For God, says the scripture, resisteth the proud, but giveth grace to the humble, and the proud have greatly transgressed. The Lord also says to the priests he that heareth you heareth me, and he that heareth me heareth the Father that sent me. He that despiseth you despiseth me, despise with him that sent me. I was blown away by what I found in his letters.
Speaker 1:
The first half of Ignatius' letter to that church in Ephesus describes the Christian church and who a Christian is, and in his letter I noticed that the description of the Christian church in those early years appeared to be exactly like only a very few Christian denominations today. He spoke of altars, sacrifice, bishops, priests, deacons, and I'd been exploring many different Christian denominations and previously I'd attended services at Baptist, lutheran, evangelical, non-denominational churches, and the only one that was close, even close, was Lutheran, but it felt off. Ignatius said if someone does not participate in the communal celebration of the sacrifice, then that person is deprived the bread of God. And he continues to say that someone who separates himself from the church and does not meet in the society where sacrifices are offered with the church is a wolf in sheep's clothing, not a true Christian. So it was necessary to be a part of the community of disciples and to get together and participate in the communal sacrifice of the church to be a Christian. But there was no sacrifice at any of the churches of these modern denominations I had attended. So what was this communal sacrifice? I'd have to find the answer to this and I felt that this was likely very important and if it was, my hunch was that I'd be able to find it back in the scripture.
Speaker 1:
So the second half of this excerpt of his letter to the church in Ephesus reflected exactly what Jesus said about his authority in Matthew's Gospel, and again it did not look like the Christian denominations of today. Ignatius says you could not be a part of that Christian community if you did not live your life according to the leadership of the church, because then you were not being obedient to Jesus himself. And that leadership was very clearly defined bishops, priests and deacons. Their authority, as far as Ignatius was concerned, was the same authority of the apostles, and what the other disciples or collective body of disciples believed or taught didn't matter. Just very specifically that very well-defined leadership.
Speaker 1:
So if Ignatius, who himself was considered to be a bishop and who was, who obviously knew and was quoting the same scripture that I had read and who was supposedly taught by one of the apostles himself, if he was describing the church in such an authoritative way, did he really have such authority himself? Was there something to this? Was there a church that looked like what he was describing still around today? And it became very clear to me very quickly that most of all the Christian denominations I saw did not look like what was being described by the earliest Christians Ignatius or others, so I wondered if it really mattered. But I couldn't shake the fact that what Ignatius and the other early writers I would find that it matched so closely to what Jesus himself was teaching in the scripture.
Speaker 1:
Being race-catholic, I obviously saw the connections to church authority bishops, priests, deacons but I didn't want my personal history to be a bias that determined how I would follow God. I was convinced, though, that what Jesus had taught was explicit. His authority and the authority of God himself was actualized by what the apostles specifically did. It rested with them and not all Christian disciples. I would have to learn more of Jesus' teachings and see what the apostles then did to know the truth of what it meant to really be a Christian. Of course, I still had questions like did that authority end with the apostles' death or continue after with their disciples like Ignatius?
Speaker 1:
As I continued to read and learn, it was clear that the disciples of the apostles believed that the authority continued and was passed to them, and they clearly believed this before the earliest instances of the Bible as we know it existed. They believed this back when the fragments like the oldest fragments of the New Testament scriptures that we have were still being written, which would have been while at least some of the apostles still lived, which is why it makes sense then, that the New Testament scripture would reflect this teaching. I mean, read the book of Acts and see how some of the apostles and only some of their disciples came together in the Council of Jerusalem to authoritatively resolve issues. I really believe that anyone who suggests otherwise probably has an agenda and I'm open to somebody having a respectful dialogue with me about it and showing me otherwise. But to look at all of the historical evidence and scriptural evidence and then determine that apostolic authority ended with their death, it sounds to me like how I used to be. I wanted to be in charge, I wanted to determine what was and what wasn't, but that was what I was repenting of. My conviction was not to be the one who gets to determine what is or what was, but for God to tell me.
Speaker 1:
So I'm gonna leave you now with some questions for your personal prayer and contemplation. Ask yourself what does this say about yourself, if you're someone who claims to be a Christian. What does it really mean to follow Jesus and to be a Christian, and who's the leadership at your church that you attend, and where does that authority come from? Is any of this convicting to you in any way? I really encourage you to take it to prayer and to ask God to give you the courage to cooperate with his grace and to listen to him and obey him.
Speaker 1:
Don't be afraid to ask God the really tough questions. Don't be afraid of knowing the truth. You can't just know what he wants. You have to act on it as well. And maybe, like me, all he is inviting you to do right now is just learn, just keep learning. So that's it for today. Join me next time when I move on to the second fundamental teaching of Jesus himself, which convicted my heart, which was what he says he must do to have eternal life to believe in him and actually consume him in the Eucharist. You.