Pints With Aquinas - DEBATE: Did Christ Establish an Infallible Magisterium? Suan Sonna and Dr Steven Nemes

Episode Date: June 23, 2021

Suan Sonna debates Protestant, Dr Steven Nemes on whether Christ established an infallible magisterium. Please support the work we're doing here: https://pintswithaquinas.com/support/

G'day g'day and welcome to Pints with Aquinas. My name is Matt Fradd and today on the show we have Suwon Sona as well as Dr. Stephen Nemesh to debate the Magisterium. We'll talk about that in a moment. Super glad to have you with us. This is going to be an epic debate between two really intelligent guys. So do us a favor, hit that thumbs up button and if you like what you're seeing please share it on social media so we can spread this intellectual goodness far and wide. Guys, it's great to see you. Thank you, Matt. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is going to be awesome. So for those who are watching right now, here's the format for the debate. We're going to be having opening statements of 20 minutes each. And I'm really glad we're having that much time I'm actually really looking forward to hearing what dr. Stephen Nemish has to say especially as a Catholic I think it's gonna be really good to give you guys both the amount of time needed to really make your case then we're gonna have about a 30 to a 45 minute discussion where I get out of the way and let Sue on and Stephen chat. Then we're going to be taking some audience questions for about 30 minutes. And then after that, we will wrap up

with closing statements of five minutes each. So before we do anything else, it would be really great just to kind of get to know each of you. So maybe we could start with you, Suan, just spend maybe a minute or so, let us know who you are, and then we'll move on to Dr. Nemesh. Spend maybe a minute or so, let us know who you are, and then we'll move on to Dr. Nemesh. All right. Thank you, Matt, for having me on again. So my name is Swan Sona. I'm a philosophy student at Kansas State University entering my senior year. I'm a convert to Catholicism. I was originally a Protestant, a Baptist, and currently I have two papers published. One was during my freshman year. I published a paper in Cornell University's Logos Journal on the presumption of innocence. And then I more recently published a paper during my junior year in the Haythrop Journal titled Roman and Catholic, a Biblical and Historical

Defense of Vatican I Papal Theology. And I just want to give a quick shout out to all the Dominican friars at Pius V Catholic Church in Chicago. I was there with them for the weekend, and one of the elderly friars, Father Ed, he's been a missionary in Nigeria. He said he tried to watch some of my YouTube videos, and he said it went over his head. But Father Ed, I hope you're watching, and I hope all the guys at St. Pius V are watching as well, if possible. So thank you. Thank you. Dr. Nemesh. So thank you. Thank you. Dr. Nemesh.

My name is Stephen Nemesh. I have a PhD in theology from Fuller Theological Seminary, where I studied under Professors Oliver Crisp and Vali Mati Karkainen. I also am an adjunct instructor at Grand Canyon University here in Phoenix. I'm married to my wonderful wife, Rachel. I like to study theology. With respect to the question that we're debating today, this may interest some people to know, I actually was very seriously considering conversion to Roman Catholicism for a while. It was at least a few years, and eventually I decided against it. So at least part of my argumentation today is going to be kind of a defense of myself, why I ended up not becoming Roman Catholic as I was planning to do. So I'm happy to be able to discuss these issues

with Swan. I'm very thankful for the opportunity to come on the show and to, you know, share my own opinion on these issues, even if we may not necessarily agree. Oh, yeah. And I just want to say, too, that Stephen's a very good friend of mine. And, you know, this is out of a place of love and, you know, and some playful, you know, fun. So, yeah, I mean, Stephen's a good friend. And I hope that, you know, people will be enriched by this conversation. Yeah, I'm sure they will, no doubt. Thanks again, guys. Okay, so the debate title is, Did Christ Establish an Infallible Magisterium? And since Swan, the Catholic, is going to be arguing the affirmative, he'll have 20 minutes, and then we will move over to Stephen. So, Swan, do you have a timer? I'm more than happy to time myself, if that would be better for you.

Yeah, I have a timer on me, and just to show the audience that I'm being fair, yeah, that's 20 minutes, if you can see it. Don't worry. That's 20 minutes if you can see it don't worry that's 20 you'll get absolutely destroyed if if it was 23 minutes because there would be someone watching on youtube who's just waiting so no we all trust each other here but i'll also whenever you start i'll click i'll click the timer as well so uh whenever you whenever you want to go all right the question before us today is did Christ establish an infallible magisterium? I will argue yes, based on scripture, history, and some philosophy. So here's the thesis I'm going to defend.

Christ established a successional and infallible apostolic teaching institution. I'm mainly going to argue from Matthew 16, 19, and 18, 18, where Jesus says to Peter and then the other apostles, whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven. Whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven. Let me begin with two points. First, the power to bind and loose is the rabbinic power to interpret scripture and discipline the community. Leandre Keck in the New Interpreter's Bible Commentary, quote, The language of binding and loosing is rabbinic terminology for authoritative teaching, for having the authority to interpret the Torah and apply it to particular cases, declaring what is permitted and what is not permitted.

Dale Allison and W.D. Davies conclude in their International Critical Commentary on Matthew, quote, This interpretation of binding and loosing in terms of teaching authority seems to us to be correct. They note on page 639 that this is the dominant use of these terms in the relevant rabbinic literature. Second, the power to bind and loose covers doctrine on faith and morals. Rabbi Samuel Tobias Locke's rabbinic commentary on the New Testament, quote, Testament, quote, bind and loose mean to forbid and or permit some act which is determined by the application of the halakha. The halakha is the legal interpretation and application of scriptures to particular cases or problems. The New Encyclopedia of Judaism explains that halakha,

quote, encompasses practically all aspects of human behavior, birth and marriage, joy and grief, agriculture and commerce, ethics and theology. The Anchor Bible Dictionary, quote, by conferring the power to bind and loose upon the church leadership, Jesus authorizes it to interpret the scriptures and establish norms for Christian behavior, the Christian halakha. On the other hand, binding and loosing are often interpreted as the power to ban members from the community and to readmit them. Mounts' complete expository dictionary of Old and New Testament words, quote, binding and loosing was a technical term in rabbinic Judaism for the authority given to rabbis for teaching and exercising discipline. The binding and loosing authority of Peter and

subsequently of the church involves the ability to admit or refuse admission to individuals into the visible covenant community based on their doctrinal orthodoxy. Such admission or refusal reflects a higher spiritual authority. Expulsion from the church indicates the judgment of God's people that a professing believer is in fact not a believer. Michael J. Wilkins in the NIV application commentary on Matthew, quote, in rabbinic literature, binding and loosing describes the authority of the rabbis in teaching and discipline to declare what is forbidden and or permitted, and thus to impose or remove an obligation by a doctrinal decision. With this necessary background, I will now defend the three core parts of my thesis and offer 10 arguments total. The three parts of the thesis, once again, are infallibility, succession, and the institutional nature of this magisterial authority.

First, how do we know that this authority is infallible? I'll offer five arguments. First, the reassurance interpretation. The future passive, whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, of Matthew 16, 19, 18, 18 implies that God is reassuring Peter and the apostles that one, whatever they declare halakha shall have already been declared halakha by God, meaning that two, they are acting as God's agents and not alone. Infallibility is therefore to be understood as God's providential promise that the authorities he instituted will not err in their definitive teachings. Let me be clear. What makes this institution infallible is God's promise,

and as I shall argue later, there are objective markers of this institution and who has this authority. John Haldane helpfully articulates my point. Quote, A is an infallible authority within a given context if and only if when A declares that P, one, P is true, two, if P had not been true, A would not have declared it. R.T. France's NICNT Gospel of Matthew commentary supports this thesis. As these methane passages imply, quote, divine guidance to enable Peter to decide in accordance with God's already determined purpose.

Charles Talbert, in his 2010 commentary on Matthew, quote, The translation, will have been bound, loosed in heaven, represents in Greek a paraphrastic future perfect passive. Traditionally, this has been interpreted to mean not that heaven ratifies Peter's judgment, but that Peter's judgment reflects what God has already determined. Second argument, the backing of heaven or God. The idea that heaven backs the rulings of the

apostles strongly implies that the rabbinic authority is infallible. For instance, Jesus mentions heaven's support for the disciples binding and loosing because the Jewish high court or Sanhedrin's rulings were also thought to be backed by heaven. Craig as Keener's 2014 IVP New Testament background commentary, quote, many Jewish people felt that the Jewish high court acted on the authority of God's tribunal in heaven, in a sense, ratifying its decrees. In his 2009 socio-rhetorical commentary on Matthew, Keener cites numerous Jewish texts where we find, quote, the rabbinic idea in which God ratifies the decrees of the earthly Beth Din or rabbinic court. Pesach, Rebekah 15.3, 23.4,

the Palestinian Talmud, Rosh Hashanah 1.3, the Mishnah, Rosh Hashanah 3.1, the Tosefta, Rosh Hashanah 1.18, the Palestinian Talmud, Rosh Hashanah 3.1. For instance, in the Babylonian Talmud, Makkah 11b, it says the following, quote, three rulings were made by the earthly court and the court on high, the heavenly court concurred with what they had done. Al-Rich Luz in the Herminia Matthew commentary writes, then to bind and to loose correspond to put in fetters or to acquit. Furthermore, it is the rabbinic conviction that God or the heavenly court recognizes the halakhic decisions and judgments of the rabbinical courts. Thus, not only the concepts binding and loosing, but the entire saying is based and rooted in

Jewish thought. The New Interpreter's Bible commentary on Matthew 18.18 concludes that Jesus invokes heaven because, quote, the Matthaeane Jesus assures the church of the divine ratification of its decisions. Third, this interpretation best explains why Jesus does not totally reject rabbinic authority. It is naively held that Jesus totally rejected rabbinic authority when his critique is actually more nuanced. This is important because I'm arguing that Jesus gave the authority of the rabbis to his apostles and did not end it. This is expected if the church is an institutional reality. Consider first what Jesus and the scriptures say,

Matthew 5, 22. "'But I say to you that everyone being angry "'with his brother will be liable to the judgment, "'and whoever shall say to his brother, Raka, "'will be liable to the Sanhed and whoever shall say to his brother, Raka, will be liable to the Sanhedrin. Jesus appears to be acknowledging the authority of the Sanhedrin. Fortunately, Jesus is even more explicit in Matthew 23, 2-3, quote, the scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses's seat, so do and observe whatever they tell you, but do not do the works they do, for they preach, but do not practice.

they tell you, but do not do the works they do, for they preach, but do not practice. Thus, among other reasons, it is unsustainable to conclude that Jesus and the gospel writers totally rejected rabbinic authority. After all, Jesus does not contradict himself. Here's my hypothesis concerning Jesus' teaching on rabbinic authority. Jesus endorsed absolute obedience to the official rulings of the Sanhedrin, i.e. in cases requiring the interpretation and application of the Torah, but not absolute obedience to the rabbinical commandments, especially the Kumra or Gezira. These were a set of laws that prevent even the possibility of disobeying the Torah. Although well-intended, these laws ended up being abused by the Pharisees to constrict the people, and moreover, the Pharisees didn't even follow their own Qumra.

We see this in Luke 14, 5, or even in Matthew 23, 4. Rabbinical legislation, although capable of being helpful, nevertheless goes against what Moses had instituted as the official jurisdiction of the courts and are therefore not protected from error. It would be the equivalent of if nine, of all nine Supreme Court justices left the courthouse, went into Congress and began to declare, oh, yeah, we can make law. This is not within the strict jurisdiction of what the court is supposed to do.

Rabbi Herbert Bassler and Marsha Cohen in the Gospel of Matthew and Judaic Traditions write, quote, But in fact, Jesus seems to object to their character traits, not their interpretations. In point of fact, there is no difficulty in reading the text of chapter 23 as is. Jesus understands the high court, or the seat of Moses, to be an institution originally set up by Moses. Jesus castigates these Pharisaic leaders for their deviation from the authentic rulings of the high court, epitomized by the example of oaths and vows, the terumah, or the korban, by reciting teachings that apparently were very common in his day and age, Jesus, in effect, says this to his opponents about the Pharisaic formula for oaths and vows. If it is a real teaching, we accept it.

But because confusion rules the day and matters are muddled, we will challenge what you claim are the authentic teachings. Likewise, D.A. Carson notes in the Expositor's Bible Commentary, quote, nor does the text say the Pharisees' authority rests in their roles but not in their doctrine. On the contrary, Matthew 23, verse 3, affirms their doctrine but condemns their practice. Thus, we may conclude with Douglas Moo in his paper, Jesus and the Authority of the Mosaic Law, quote, the verdict that there is no evidence that Jesus kept any of the oral rabbinical law cannot be sustained. So then the question is, if Jesus is saying on one hand, we can obey the Pharisees, we have to obey them because they're seated on the seat of Moses. On other hands, he's critiquing,

you know, the power of the Pharisees. How do you reconcile this without having Jesus contradict himself? This is my fourth argument. God's character. It appears immoral for God to command obedience to this authority if it were not correct in its official rulings or within its official jurisdiction. In fact, Jesus references in Matthew 23, 2-3, the very verse that the rabbis used to ground their authority in Deuteronomy 17, 11, where it says, act according to whatever whatever they teach you which gave them the power to demand absolute obedience even on pain of death in Deuteronomy 17 12 Noel s Rabinowitz notes in his paper on Matthew 23 2 to 4 quote many scholars insist that Jesus is

not issuing a sincere command Jesus's choice of words however seems to make this conclusion unlikely. His command to do what the Pharisees teach invokes Deuteronomy 17.11, the very text upon which the authority of the Sanhedrin, the sages, and later rabbis is based. Let me read to you Deuteronomy 17.11-12. This is Moses speaking. Act according to whatever they teach you and the decisions they give you. Do not turn aside from what they tell you, to the right or to the left. Anyone who shows contempt for the judge or for the priest who stands ministering there to the Lord your God is to be put to death. You must purge the evil from Israel. Rabinowitz continues, quote, nevertheless, in our zeal to harmonize the gospel, we must avoid

the impulse to reject the teaching authority of the Pharisees altogether. Because they rejected Jesus, the nation's leaders would eventually be stripped of their position of authority, Matthew 21, 43. At the same time, however, the halakhic traditions laid down by the Pharisees remained valid and provided Matthew's community with practical ways to obey the Torah. Despite the tensions that exist between Jesus and the Pharisees, he basically accepts their halakhic rulings. Now, this is important because even some rabbinic authorities argue that Deuteronomy 17, 11 to 12 applies to court rulings. So when a case is brought before a judge and then the judge gives his ruling and not to rabbinic legislation, which could be made to defend the Torah, it could be

made to create a fence around the Torah, that's not under the jurisdiction of what Moses began. And Jesus appears to want the institution of the Pharisees and the rabbis to be faithful to the power originally given to them by which the people are called to absolutely obey them. Rabbi Araya Kaplan in volume one of the Handbook of Jewish Thought writes, quote, other authorities, however, state that this commandment in Deuteronomy 1711 only applies to the decisions of the Sanhedrin, but not to their legislation. Thus, the command to absolutely obey only applies to official rulings, and therefore Jesus does not contradict himself if you understand the subtle distinction.

So, can God command us to obey an authority that can bind our conscience to erroneous rulings? Much less, could he condone us to be put to death for disobeying an incorrect ruling, whether in the Old Testament or in the New Covenant? No and no. Fifth and final argument, God's breath. Protestants often use 2 Timothy 3.16 as proof that the scriptures are infallible because they are God-breathed.

If that's the case, then Jesus breathes on the apostles in John 20.22. If the inference of inerrancy holds on the one case, then Jesus breathes on the apostles in John 20, 22. If the inference of inerrancy holds on the one case, then why not the other? If it holds, then God can make men infallible. Second, this infallible authority is successional. A valid church must have a bishop who can trace his ordination back to the apostles. Here I'll offer three arguments. First, apostolic succession finds its origins in first century Judaism. Alfred Edersheim in The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah writes, quote,

The judges of all these courts, the great Sanhedrin and lower tribunals, were equally set apart by ordination, originally that of the laying on of hands. Ordination was conferred by three, of whom one at least must have been himself ordained and able to trace his ordination through Joshua to Moses. Moreover, we know that the laying on of hands for ordination was practiced in the New Testament, Acts 6, 3-6, 13, 2-3, 1 Timothy 4-14. Michael Berger, in his book Rabbinic Authority, notes, quote, those without it, ordination tracing back to Moses,

even if objectively quite erudite, are simply not authorized in the same way as the ordained scholar. Second, apostolic succession was taught at the very beginning of Christianity. Clement of Rome, who personally knew Peter and Paul, recalls in 1st Clement 44, 1-3, written in the late 60s, quote, so too our apostles knew through our Lord Jesus Christ that strife would arise over the office of bishop. For this reason, since they understood perfectly in advance what would happen, they appointed those we have already mentioned, and afterwards they added a codicil or a rule or a provision to the effect that these men should die, other approved men should succeed

them in their ministry. Irenaeus in Against Heretics, Book 4, Chapter 26, written in 180 AD, still within living memory of the apostles, writes, quote, Therefore it is necessary to obey the elders who are in the church, those who, as I have shown, possess a succession from the apostles. They, together with the succession of the episcopate, the bishops, have received a certain gift of truth according to the good pleasure of the Father. and it is necessary to hold in suspicion others who depart from the primitive succession and assemble themselves together in any place whatsoever, consider them either as heretics of perverse minds, or as schismatics puffed up and self-pleasing, or again as hypocrites, acting this way for the sake of money and pride, for all these have fallen from the truth.

We may therefore conclude it to be historical fact, based on first century Jewish practices and the practices of the early church, that Jesus and the apostles taught the doctrine of apostolic succession. Third, the seat of Moses' argument. The halakhic teaching authority does not die with the first generation of ordained men. In rabbinic literature, Moses institutes the high court in Exodus 18.26 and Deuteronomy 17.8-13. We still see Jesus upholding the high court's authority in Matthew 23.2-3, 12-1400 years after Moses. The authority did not die with the first generation, according to Jesus. D.A. Carson writes, quote, these leaders sit in Moses's seat. To sit on

X's seat means often to succeed X. Exodus 11.5, 12.29, 1 Kings 1.35, 46, 2.12, 16.11, 2 Kings 15.12, Psalm 132.12, and several places in Josephus's Antiquities of the Jews. This would imply that the teachers of the law are Moses' legal successors, possessing all his authority, a view the scribes themselves held in Mishnah Sanhedrin 11.3, Eccles 45.15-17, Mishnah Aboth 1.1, Mishnah Yebenoth 2.4.9.3. Thus, the high court retained its definitive authority from Moses to the time of Jesus, and it was still backed by heaven. Stephen needs to provide us with non-ad hoc reasons for why this enduring kind of a succession would not carry over to the teaching authority that Jesus, the new Moses, built. Third and finally, the infallible and

successional apostolic teaching authority is institutional. Here I'll offer two arguments. First, messianic prophecy holds that God will restore, not end, the courts of Moses when the Messiah comes. Rabbi Araya Kaplan writes, It is foretold that the restoration of the Sanhedrin will precede the coming of the Messiah. God thus told his prophet, I will restore your judges as at first and your counselors as in the beginning. Afterward, you will be called the city of righteousness, the faithful city. Zion shall be redeemed with justice and those who return to her with righteousness, Isaiah 1.26-27. This restoration, however, can only take place in

such a time as willed by God. The Messiah will be a king of Israel and as such, he can only be recognized by a duly ordained Sanhedrin. There is also a tradition that Elijah will present himself before a duly ordained Sanhedrin when he announces the coming of the Messiah. In Matthew 17, 11 to 13, Jesus identifies John the Baptist as the foretold Elijah. In John 1, 23, John the Baptist presents himself before the Sanhedrin and proclaims the coming of the Messiah.

Jesus, like Moses with the first Sanhedrin in Numbers 11.16, appoints 70 disciples in Luke 10.16, the number needed to form a Sanhedrin, who recognized his Messiahship, meaning Jesus was recognized by a duly ordained Sanhedrin and is the legitimate king of Israel. Jesus therefore met all these requirements down to a T, and I submit he also fulfilled the Isaiah 126.27 prophecy and rebuilt the courts of Moses for the new covenant.

Second, there are mounting parallels that demonstrate that the early church consciously modeled itself after the Jewish high court, and therefore an institutional conception of the church and her magisterium is most appropriate. Here I'll try to get through 10 parallels. First, there's early and explicit self-identification with the Sanhedrin. Ignatius of Antioch, a disciple of the Apostle John, writing to the Trellians around 98 to 117 AD, quote, So too let everyone respect the deacons like Jesus Christ, and also the bishop who is the image of

the Father, and let them respect the presbyters like the Sanhedrin of God and the band of the apostles. Apart from these, a gathering cannot be called a church. Notice Ignatius calls the presbyters the Sanhedrin of God. Second, the office of presbyter was also an office in the Sanhedrin and in the Christian church. This is attested to in the Erdman's Dictionary on Early Judaism, although because I'm running out of time, let me just get through the parallels. Third, both the successors of the apostles and the Pharisees from their binding and loosing power issued anathemas. The 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia entry on binding and loosing notes that the Pharisees had the power to issue anathemas from their binding and loosing,

and likewise, we know the successors of the apostles issued anathemas. Fourth, the rabbis, the apostles, and their successors used the binding and loosing power to excommunicate heretics. Five, both the Pharisees and the disciples claimed teaching authority from Moses, the new Moses for the apostles. Six, both the rabbis and apostolic successors claimed to rule with the authority of their founder. Both claimed the power to bind and loose. Both used the laying on of hands for ordination. Both kept succession records. And both claimed the backing of heaven. And that is why I defend that Christ established a magisterium. Okay, that was pretty incredible that you finished like exactly on 20 minutes. I actually didn't get through all the sources or quotes. And so I hope during the discussion,

we'll be able to do that. Yeah. Yeah, no worries. And just so you know, I mean, this is a friendly debate. So if you need to kind of finish your thought out, and I have to give you an extra minute i'll just give another minute to the to the yeah do you mind if i get just one minute and give the same courtesy to steven please sure sure okay sure so let me start in three excuse me three two one so for instance in the 1906 encyclopedia on jewish encyclopedia on binding and loosing quote this does not mean that as the learned men the pharisees merely decided what, according to the law, was forbidden or allowed,

but that they possessed and exercised by the power of tying or untying a thing by the spell of their divine authority, just as they could by the power vested in them pronounce and revoke an anathema upon a person. So when the apostolic successors are issuing an anathema, they are not doing something that is beyond their jurisdiction, but something that they inherited from the power to bind and loose from the Pharisees and the rabbis in the first century. And moreover, in the seventh

council of Carthage and elsewhere, we see the apostolic successors claiming to rule with the authority of Christ and the apostles. In the Babylonian Talmud, Rosh Hashanah 25a, the rabbis also said that they had the authority to rule with the first council of Moses and had the power of Moses himself. And so if you're looking at the claims from a Jewish historical standpoint, what the apostolic successors claimed is not unfounded. All right. Thank you very much. Okay. We are going to give Stephen 21 minutes. So whenever you'd like to start i'll i'll click the timer okay just tell me when to start go for it my conviction is that christ did not establish

an infallible magisterium in the church i will present three arguments in favor of this opinion first i will argue that our knowledge of theological things is only ever fallible and in principle revisable, and this is because it is obtained by means of a fallible process of interpretation. Therefore, nothing in our experience justifies us in claiming to possess infallible knowledge of some theological subject matter. Second, I will show that there is no compelling biblical case in support of an infallible magisterium in the church. The Bible everywhere recognizes the freedom and therefore fallibility of human beings. Because they are free and fallible, even the loftiest promises

that God makes about them may nevertheless not come true, or at least not stay true for long. For this reason, also, every social and ecclesial arrangement is in principle contingent and tentative. Third, I will clarify how there is no theological necessity in the notion of an infallible magisterium of the Church. Some Roman Catholic apologists, theologians, and churchmen argue that if God were to make a saving revelation in history, he would need to establish a reliable and even infallible organ of transmission to preserve it in purity for all generations. But this argument is not only logically invalid, it also presupposes two quintessentially Catholic ideas about salvation and Christian faith that I think can be rejected. So let's go over these arguments in order. My first point is that our knowledge of theological subject matters is only ever fallible and revisable in principle. This is all that our knowledge of theological subject matters is only ever fallible and revisable in principle.

This is all that our experience allows us to say. Careful attention to the hermeneutic nature of the process of reasoning will help us to see how this is the case. Whenever we reason or discourse, we are reasoning or discoursing about something or other. But it is possible to take ourselves to be reasoning about one thing when in fact all we've done is to follow a trail of ideas in a certain direction. This is because in order for us to engage in reasoning, we first have to target some object available to our consciousness and to endow it with some kind of meaning or content. We pick something and interpret it as being an X.

On the basis of that foundational hermeneutical decision, we then begin to reason as our concepts and understanding allows us. But however compelling or persuasive our reasoning may seem to us, it does not really prove anything at all about the thing we had in mind unless it really is an X, such as we supposed. If it is not in fact an X, then we have not gained any knowledge about it. Thus, suppose Swan reasons like this. The cat has just eaten, so it must not be hungry. In order for him to do this, he first had to target some object in the world of his experience and to interpret it as a cat. Furthermore, he had to interpret what this thing

has done as eating. These interpretive decisions are then paired with his prior understanding of what eating is and how it relates to hunger, which understanding he takes for granted. Thus, on the basis of a number of implicit decisions about how to interpret things, Swan is able to engage in a simple form of reasoning. This thing here, which I take to be a cat, has done something that I take to be eating, so that in light of how I understand the relation between eating and hunger, it must not be hungry anymore. But this process of reasoning does not confer knowledge

of the object in the world, unless the hermeneutical or interpretive decisions on which it is founded are actually adequate to their objects. Thus, Swan can only know his reasoning is actually correct if he tries to validate these hermeneutical decisions by turning to the thing itself and confirming them in an experience. But it is also obvious that Swan's experiences are always going to underdetermine his confidence in his hermeneutical decisions. It may be that the thing is not really a cat,

but only looks like one, or that it only appears to have eaten when in fact it did something else, or that eating and hunger are not in fact always related in the way that Swan supposed, or it may be that the thing is no longer available at all, maybe it died, and Swan is stuck with just his memories of how things looked to him to have happened, and so on. Swan's experiences are never going to provide an infallible confirmation of any of the assumptions of his reasoning. Thus, he will never be certain about the propriety of his reasoning. At best, he will have only a tentative and revisable knowledge, not an infallible one. The fallibility of Swan's reasoning is grounded in the fact that his reasoning is based on certain hermeneutical choices about how to interpret things. We have to make choices about how to interpret things

because they are not perfectly clear by themselves. But where one choice is possible, so also is another one, such as the nature of human freedom. And we cannot be sure ahead of time, nor even after the fact, that we have chosen correctly. The same thing happens in reasoning about theological things. We choose to interpret certain realities in a certain way. For example, we choose to interpret the biblical text as saying X. Our experiences underdetermine those choices, and so it is always possible that we are wrong.

Indeed, nothing in our experience guarantees that we have interpreted things the right way, since there are going to be people comparable to us in various ways who nevertheless interpret things differently. For this reason, our experience does not permit us to say anything other than that our theological knowledge, if we have any at all, is fallible, and so far as we can tell, subject to revision. Now someone will say, the Roman Catholic Church does not teach that its infallibly taught statements are known with absolute certainty, but only that they are true. That is what Christ promised in the scriptures. But this objection itself admits that the Roman

Catholic Church's idea about the infallibility of the magisterium is not an experientially grounded doctrine. Rather, it is the logical outcome of a certain interpretation of the biblical text. In other words, it is the place the church has reached as a result of following a certain train of thought. Therefore, it will be necessary to show that this train of thought, this preferred interpretation of the biblical text, is not the only one possible. This brings me to my second argument. Many times, Roman Catholic apologists and theologians will argue for the infallibility of the church's magisterium on the basis of the promises that God or Christ make in scriptures. For example, there is the promise that Christ makes to Peter. You are Peter, and on this rock I will found my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.

Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Matthew chapter 16 verses 18 and 19. The problem with an argument like this is that the Bible everywhere recognizes the freedom and therefore fallibility of human beings relative to God. This means that even the loftiest promises that God makes to a person or a group of persons need not come true, or at least not in the way they would have expected, if they do not freely cooperate with him. For example, Joshua tells the Hebrews, just as they are preparing to enter into the promised land, that the living God, quote, without fail will drive out from before you the Canaanites, Hittites, Hivites, Perizzites, Girgashites, Amorites, and Jebusites, Joshua 3.10.

But the Gibeonites, who are described variously as Hivites and Amorites, are not driven out because of a deception, and neither did they drive out the Geshurites or the Makathites. Similarly, God tells the prophet Ezekiel, quote, though I say to the righteous that they shall surely live, yet if they trust in their righteousness and commit iniquity, none of their righteous deeds shall be remembered. But in the iniquity that they have committed, they shall die. Ezekiel 33, verse 13. So that means that God can tell you, you shall surely live. And yet if you sin, you will die, despite the unconditional and uncompromising nature of God's earlier words.

unconditional and uncompromising nature of God's earlier words. Once more, the fulfillment of a divine promise is contingent and not infallible whenever it involves the free cooperation of human beings. In the same way, God tells the prophet Isaiah that he will take the robe, sash, authority, and key of the house of David from Shebna and give it to Eliakim, Isaiah 22 verses 15 to 25. But what Eliakim inherits is what Shebna earlier possessed. It was taken from the one and given to the other because the former had sinned. Thus, its possession is contingent and fallible, not certain. If it could be taken from one of them because of sin, it could also be taken from the other, even though God makes such lofty promises about Eliakim.

Eliakim is described as a peg fastened in a secure place, verse 23. And yet Shebna also was a peg fastened in a secure place, and nevertheless he was about to be cut down and fall, verse 25. Thus the promises that God makes are contingent and tentative, insofar as their fulfillment depends on the free cooperation of the human being. So also in the case of the promise in Matthew 16, suppose that we grant, although I don't think we have to, that Peter was given a position of headship over the college of the apostles. It does not follow that he or one of his successors could not have erred in such a way as to disqualify himself for the very position he occupies. Neither does it follow that such an arrangement is permanent.

Human beings are free, possessing a measure of independence from God. This means that things can go wrong and the promises that God makes to them go unfulfilled. And yet, God is flexible. He does not let the mistakes of some people ruin his providential purposes. To the contrary, he is free to make use of whatever means he has available at any point in time. Thus, he leads Israel first by Moses, but Moses does not make it into the promised land. Then he leads by Joshua, then by the judges, then by the kings, and then when the kings become corrupt by the prophets, and so on. The fact that God establishes an arrangement does not entail that it will remain forever. And God is free to make use of whatever means are available to him at any point in time in order to accomplish his purposes. This leads me to my third and final

argument. I've suggested that our very experience teaches us that our knowledge of theological subject matters is only ever fallible and subject to revision. Moreover, the biblical case in support of an infallible magisterium is fatally undermined by the fact that the Bible everywhere recognizes the freedom and therefore essential fallibility of human beings and their arrangements. But sometimes Roman Catholic apologists and theologians will give something like an a priori argument for an infallible magisterium. They say that if God were to reveal some saving truth, then he would make provisions for its reliable transmission over time. And in order to prevent corruption as history marches on,

it's to be expected that he would establish an infallible teacher or body of teachers who can interpret it in such a way that the truth is not lost. The first point to make about this argument is that it is logically invalid. God would certainly make provisions to ensure the reliable transmission of the saving truth from generation to generation, but it doesn't follow that he needs to make use of any one particular means for doing so. His own infallibility as a preserver of the truth over time does not need to translate into the permanent infallibility

of any particular medium he works through. He led the people of Israel at times through Moses, at times through the judges, at at times through Moses, at times through the judges, at times through the kings, at times through the prophets. No one office is infallible. God alone is infallible, and he makes use of whomever he wills. So also, in the history of the church, God can make use of whatever means are available to him at any point in time in order to preserve the saving truth for his people. Now there's something else to notice about the a priori argument for the magisterium. First, it would appear to assume that the saving truth that

God reveals must necessarily be something obscure and easy to lose track of. That must be why the risk of error is apparently so great. Second, it assumes that salvation is fundamentally, or at least in part, a matter of assenting to certain well-defined doctrinal statements and dogmatic formulas. But both of these assumptions must be called into question and I think can even be rejected. In the first place, God can have made provision for the reliable transmission of the saving truth throughout the generations precisely by making this saving truth something clear enough for the average person to understand and appreciate. In other words, God can have made provisions for the reliable person to understand and appreciate. In other words, God can have made provisions for the reliable transmission of salvation by revealing something perspicuous

and easily accessible. Consider the example of water. Everyone knows that water is good, that it hydrates, that it's healthful, that it benefits human life in various ways. There's no need for there to be an infallible water master in order for the human tradition of appreciating water to be reliably transmitted throughout the generations. Indeed, it would be ridiculous for anyone to claim that he is an infallible guide on water. Our knowledge of water is the same as our knowledge of anything else outside of ourselves, fallible and revisable. But it is still true that the most important things about water, for example, that it's necessary for us and that it improves our lives in various ways, are so clear and obvious that we have no need of an infallible teacher in the matter. In the same way, the saving truth that God has revealed is perspicuous like this.

Now, what is this truth? It is the truth that fellowship with the one it is easy enough for anyone to appreciate it. This is the message that Irenaeus says can be clearly, unambiguously, and harmoniously understood by all in the Scriptures, Prophets, and Gospels. Against Heresies, Book 2, Chapter 27, Section 2. This is the message that Origen says was delivered by the apostles with utmost clarity to all believers, on First Principles Preface, Section 3. This is the message that all the Christian churches everywhere plainly and obviously teach, according to both of these church fathers. Thus, it is not only possible, but also traditional,

to say that God has made provision for the reliable transmission of salvation by revealing something that is clear enough on its own. This undermines the necessity of an infallible magisterium. Now, somebody will object, but what about all the heresies that have afflicted the church throughout the ages? The truth can easily be mixed with damnable error. As I mentioned before, this line of argument presupposes that salvation is at least in part, if not fundamentally, a matter of assenting to certain well-defined doctrinal statements and dogmatic formulae. Moreover, it is clearly looking at church history through the lens of contemporary Roman Catholic dogma. This argument for the necessity of an infallible magisterium seems sooner to express

a fundamentally Roman Catholic conception of salvation and its conditions, but I say that it's open to us to reject both the one and the other. Salvation is not first and foremost a matter of believing certain well-defined doctrinal statements. It is friendship with the Father and the Son in the Holy Spirit, 1 John 1.3. In other words, it is about a relation between persons and not necessarily an appreciation of some theoretical truth. It is obviously possible to enjoy friendship without the theoretical aspect. For example, I can enjoy a conversation with my friend JT, even if I do not have a well-defined opinion about JT's ontological

constitution from the point of view of philosophical anthropology. I might be a substance dualist or a physicalist or a hylomorphist, or I might have no opinion whatsoever about what he is. That does not stop me from joking around with him or debating with him. In the same way, a person can enjoy fellowship with God and his son, Jesus Christ, in the Holy Spirit, even if he is unsure how to understand God from the perspective of the Christological and triadological controversies of church history. Indeed, even if he has never even thought about these issues at all. This personal friendship or communion between God and the human being is realized by the preaching of the gospel. It is in the preaching

of the gospel that faith is produced in people, and faith is what makes it possible to enjoy this friendship or communion. Furthermore, the preaching of the gospel can accomplish this effect Now somebody might say, but if heresy is preached, then it does not produce saving faith. But this assumes that saving faith is assent to certain well-defined doctrinal statements rather than an orientation toward God through Jesus Christ. It is enough to be told about Jesus Christ as the way of access to friendship with God on the basis of his life and death, and when that happens, people turn toward Christ in faith and hope and love. They cling to him and praise God through him in the Holy Spirit, even apart from a very theoretical understanding of the finer details. There is thus no need for an infallible magisterium in any of this. These then are my arguments.

Christ did not establish an infallible magisterium in the church. Our experience teaches us that our knowledge of theological things is only ever fallible and subject to revision. The Bible itself everywhere recognizes the essential freedom and essential fallibility of human beings and yet god saves us by revealing something which we do not need to be infallible in order to enjoy he invites us to friendship with him and his son jesus christ in the holy spirit and we can enjoy this friendship even if we are mistaken about various things

or even if we do not attend to the various problems and nuances of speculative theology at all. Matt, you're muted. Thank you. Stephen, does that conclude your opening statement? Yes. Yeah, excellent. Thank you so much. All right, everybody, we are going to move into a time of just discussion between Swan and Stephen, about 30 to 45 minutes. And so take it away, guys. So is it 30 or 45, just to be clear? You're muted again. Sorry, Matt.

How about we say 45 unless it dries up? Sure, sure. Okay. Or one of you convinces the other, and then we can just all go home early. Maybe. Okay, let's see. Let's say 45. Go for it.

Okay. Do you mind if I start? Yeah. Well, I mean, look, here's the thing. I don't think you guys need me to moderate this. I'm happy to do that, but you guys know each other well. I think this will go just fine, don't you think? Yeah, yeah. I trust Stephen. All right. So, yeah, Stephen. Okay. So, with respect to some of your arguments, what I'm worrying about, and this is the same

kind of concern that Nicholas Noyola raised in his interview with you, is that your standard almost seems to be too unbearably high and beyond what we ordinarily would call knowledge, right? And so, for instance, you know, I remember once I asked you, do you believe that Jesus is infallible, right? And you said, you'd say yes, correct? Yeah, I think that Jesus is infallible. And then how do you know that Jesus is infallible? If you, for instance, the words that you get from the Gospels are mediated by other human beings who wrote down oral tradition. You're getting their interpretation sometimes of the events that went on in the New Testament 2,000 years ago. So how can you justify,

based on your epistemology, the belief that Jesus is infallible? Well, I think that Jesus is infallible because I think that he is God. If I didn't think that he was God, I wouldn't think he were infallible. But I think that Jesus is God, so I think that he's infallible. And I think that Jesus is God because I think that that's the most reasonable and appropriate interpretation of the way the New Testament speaks about Jesus. about Jesus, and I believe the way the New Testament speaks about Jesus, because I think that the apostles and the earliest followers of Jesus had a genuine encounter with God through him. Now, I can tell more about that later, but basically, I would say that my belief in Jesus's infallibility is, you know, sort of a consequence of various other beliefs and commitments that I

have. So, it's a part of your faith, you would say. You believe it's the part of the content of the faith, the deposit given to you by the apostles, the gospel writers, and Jesus Christ himself as reported by them. Well, none of the gospel writers, as far as I can tell, as far as I can remember, ever say that Jesus is infallible. But I do, I mean, it would be very strange for any of them to think that Jesus made a mistake about something. So I would say that it's a part of testimony. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt, but you trust their testimony. Yes, I believe what they tell me as best as I can understand it. Yeah. Okay. So then, for instance, when Jesus says in John 14, 6, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

No one can come to the Father except through me. Or when Jesus says in John 8, 24, unless you believe that I am he that I claim to be, then you shall die in your sins, right? These claims, which have salvific significance, you would say that you trust Jesus's words on them right because he's infallible and because from your interpretation you believe he's God yeah that sounds right and so you you so in

essence you're willing to say that based on your interpretation Jesus says things that could very well damn certain people. Well, Jesus is the judge established by God at the end of the world. So I have no idea whether anybody will be damned, but Jesus speaks in certain ways. And the ways that he speaks, you know, leaves us to understand that if we opt for a certain course of action or a certain attitude towards him, then the only possible end is damnation. I agree. Okay. So then you trust, based on your interpretation, what Jesus says in the scriptures that these could possibly damn people if they don't obey his teachings. You trust that he's infallible, even though you haven't had a direct experience of Christ in the

first century, 2000 years ago. So it seems as if your epistemology really fundamentally depends upon trust. Would you agree or disagree? I do think, yes. I mean, what you're calling trust, you can call hermeneutics or, you know, whatever you want. The idea is that when we know, when we try to engage theoretically with the world, we make certain assumptions. We sort of take a stance on things and we try to make sense of things in accordance to this, you know, in accordance to some picture that we choose for ourselves. You can call that trust. You can call it a hermeneutical wager, for example, like the philosopher Richard Carney calls it. It doesn't matter. It's more or less the same thing. Okay. And then also you mentioned, and so I want to go into just go through,

go down the flow of the arguments that you presented. And by the way, if I'm taking up your time, feel free to ask me questions too, Steven. I mean, is there a question you want to ask me? No, Phil, go ahead. Okay. Yeah. Cause I don't want to, I don't want to dominate. All right. Okay. So then in, so for instance, in my reassurance interpretation, which was the first argument on the infallibility section, I mentioned the language that's used in the gospel of Matthew, the future perfect passive, right? And then I also mentioned John Haldane's formulation of infallibility. For the sake of the audience, let me rearticulate it. And then the question is, what do you object to this particular formulation? All right. So here's the formulation.

A variable is an infallible authority within a given context if and only if when A declares that P, one, P is true, and two, if P had not been true, A would not have declared it. Where in the definition do you object? Well, I'm willing to admit that that's one way of understanding the notion of infallibility. That's fine by me. Okay, and so would you agree that, would you agree with, for instance, when I cited R.T. France, Charles Talbert, and then Talbert cites other biblical scholars, that Matthew uses the future perfect passive when he says, whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven. Would you agree with that?

In terms of the Greek grammar. What do you mean? What do I agree with? What exactly? So do you agree that Jesus is using this future perfect passive when he says, whatever you bind on earth

shall have been bound in heaven. So in other words, when Peter declares something or the apostles bind and loose, they can know that once they have used that official function, it was a decision that had already been backed by heaven itself. And that would, in effect, justify the second part of Haldane's definition of infallibility. Well, I mean, I'm willing, I mean, I don't have the Greek text in front of me, and it's been a while since I've worked on my Greek grammar. I've been out of seminary for, you know, like seven, well, not seven, maybe five years, six years. So I can't speak as an expert on this issue, but I see that as a possible interpretation, sure. Yeah, and I mean, also,

I have a Greek-English interlinear New Testament, and it also specifies that it's in the perfect future passive. So the proper translation in the NASB and others would be, will have been bound. Right. So it's saying that when Peter binds, it's not that God afterwards ratifies it, but that Peter only binds what God has already bound. So, I mean. That's a possible interpretation. Yeah, that's... Right. And then when you say it's a possible interpretation, I'm interested in what makes you say it's possible and not the most plausible, or in fact, given how grammar is based in some

extent upon the rules of logic, why it wouldn't be the only possible interpretation, given the grammar and the tenses? Well, I don't know. It seems to me that the text doesn't demand one reading or the other. You can say that whatever it is that Peter is going to decide, God will already have decided it in the end, or that, I don't know, perhaps whatever Peter decides in the future will at the same time, or roughly at the same time, or at the judgment, I don't know, will have been decided by God. Okay. And then you mentioned the fact that often, like when we're doing hermeneutics, we have to make a choice, right? So I interpret a particular phenomena and then I might get the basics, the essentials, but then when I make something more

precise in terms of, I don't know, a judgment or interpretation of a passage, I mean, that's a choice, right? And so it's fallible. You would say that, and just to rearticulate for the audience or ask for the audience, you're saying that hermeneutics is an intrinsically fallible enterprise. Yes. I mean, that's as far as we can tell.

That's what our experience teaches us. Okay, so for instance, in Exodus 28.30, God is, or I think it's Moses speaking, it mentions the Urim and the Thummim, okay? And so one of the things that I'm worried about with your interpretation is that it actually proves too much and would undermine, for instance, the ideas of prophecy, divination, or, you know, what seems to be infallibility in the Old Testament. So for instance, with the Urim and the Thummim, it was two stones that the high priest would wear in his breastplate. And this is described in Exodus 28.30. And what would essentially happen is that when Aaron or the high priest following his bloodline would shake the breastplate, they would then look at the Urim and the Thummim

and interpret the divine will. And this was in ancient Israel, one of the only few ways in which people were allowed to actually get access to the divine will itself. And so we see God using a seemingly fallible process of just randomly shaking around rocks in a breastplate to give divine revelation or to reveal his divine will. And so I'm interested in then why would this be a counterexample

to your definition based on what the scriptures have provided us? I don't understand exactly where the counterexample is supposed to be. Can you? So yeah, sure. So for instance, you're saying that an intrinsically infallible, excuse me, fallible process cannot lead to infallible judgments. And what I'm saying is, is that in the Old Testament, an intrinsically fallible process as shaking the Urim and Thummim allowed the Israelites to gain access to the divine will, right? And so this intrinsically fallible process somehow produced an infallible judgment. And I think the whole—well, I'm not going to get into my interpretation just yet—but I mean, wouldn't you agree that that seems to be a counter-example? An intrinsically fallible process leading to an infallible judgment? Why does it lead to an infallible judgment? Because God promises in Exodus 28 30 that so long as Aaron does this and his ancestors,

that this is the way that they can discern the divine will. And so it was a way in which they could directly access God through the high priests using this particular medium. I mean, do you believe that they could access the divine will in the Old Testament? I mean, that's a big question. I don't know. Plenty of people in the Old Testament wonder what God's will is, and they visit prophets, and sometimes the prophets are false. I'm not sure. I don't know what I think about it. Okay, let me go to the second point then. And by the way, Stephen, seriously, if I'm dominating and you want to ask a question, ask away, okay? Are you good, Stephen? Can I keep on going? Go ahead. Yeah, go ahead.

Okay. And then going to your second point then on there being no biblical case for the infallibility that I talked about. So you mentioned this basic principle, right? And tell me if I'm saying it properly. So the principle is that, principle, right? And tell me if I'm saying it properly. So the principle is that, you know, so God doesn't actually guarantee the promise of infallibility because we see in the scriptures, men fail, they disobey God, and they get stripped of their positions, right? You mentioned Eli, Kim, and Shebna, and I mean, the Pharisees are a good example. And so would you say that this is then evidence of fallibility and not infallibility? Well, I think it's I think that it's a recognition of fallibility in human beings, which is which goes hand in hand with human freedom. Anything that God says, the you know, the fulfillment of which involves the free cooperation of a human being.

It doesn't have to happen. It can happen. It doesn't have to. Sometimes human being, it doesn't have to happen. It can happen, but it doesn't have to. Sometimes it turns out it doesn't happen. And though, okay, so for instance, okay, so you mentioned the point about human freedom. I want to get back to that. Let's see here.

Okay, so take for instance, John 11, 51 to 52, in which it reveals that Caiaphas, the high priest of the Sanhedrin, he had received divine revelation or prophecy. And it says at the year that he served as the high priest in Jerusalem, there's a Jewish significance to that, but I won't get into it now. And it says that Caiaphas had prophesied that Jesus would die for the sins of Israel and unite the children of God, right? And so, how do you explain Caiaphas receiving this kind of power, even though he was a morally deficient man and rejected the Christ? How did he still get this revelation?

Well, you said that's in John 11? John 11, 51 to 52. Sure, let me read the text and I'll answer your question. John 11, 51 to 52. Which translation are you using? I have the NRSV. Okay, cool. Yeah. Well,

I think that this situation with Caiaphas is interpretable because my inclination is to say that Caiaphas did not appreciate the real truth and significance of his own words. I think that when he says that Christ is about to die and the people of God are going to be gathered together again, he probably was not a Christian. He wasn't thinking that Christ was about to be sacrificed for the atonement of the sins of the world. He did not imagine whatsoever that the Gentiles are going to be gathered in with the people of God. And that's going to be the... he's probably thinking of something else altogether all right and you could not know at the time when he was speaking that he was actually prophesying the truth but afterwards once uh christ had died and had risen again from the dead and was ascended

into heaven and you have the expansion of the church and inclusion of the gentiles and so on then it becomes apparent that oh look what he said was actually a prophecy, but he didn't know that and he didn't claim it for himself. And you would not have known that at the time when it was happening. Good. So nonetheless, in spite of his personal flaws and his rejection of the Messiah, in spite of him not really knowing, right? Like he received a prophecy. That's all we know. In spite of all that, God still used him to accurately tell the future. Well, yeah, but I mean, is it really God telling the future? Is it really God using him to tell the future?

Is it more of a matter of this guy was right and he didn't realize it? I mean, in the Old Testament, God speaks through an ass, right? You can talk through, he talks through animals. Christ tells the Pharisees that, you know, he can raise up the rocks to worship him. Obviously Christ can use whoever he wants to speak. Right. I mean, he can, right? He can, he can use anyone that he wants to speak on his behalf. Yes, of course. Right. Okay. And then, um, let's see here. So then it's interesting that it's, that John 51, it says he did not say this on his own, but being high priest that year. So it seems to not connect it to his intrinsic power or natural abilities, but rather to his office. Right.

But being high priest that year, he prophesied. We know that in the Jewish literature, the belief was that the Sanhedrin was essentially carrying on the spirit of Moses and that because they were in Jerusalem, they would have the power of prophecy. All right. And so based on this historical knowledge, doesn't it seem to be the case that this is tied to his office and not necessarily? So in other words, his prophetic power was tied to his office, but not his individual self. Would you agree that that's a plausible interpretation of John 1151? It's possible, yeah. Okay. And so then I want to propose a counter-biblical principle to the one that you proposed, right? And so here's my counter-biblical principle. So God removes immoral individuals

from offices that he instituted, but God never destroys the office itself. So take, for instance, King Saul, who is immoral. He gets replaced by David. Shebna was immoral. He gets replaced by Eliakim. The Pharisees are immoral, and I'm arguing they're replaced by the apostles. So it seems as if God doesn't destroy the office itself, but he removes the individual. Do you at least think this is a possible interpretation? I think it's possible. And do you believe that the apostles received the power of the Pharisees to declare halakha? I don't know. So then, when Jesus says, whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, whatever you loose on earth shall have

been loosed in heaven, what's your interpretation? Well, I don't know. There are fathers of the church, for example, who interpret that passage as referring to the power of the church to forgive sins. Augustine, for example, really makes use of that interpretation. So also you find that in some of the Eastern fathers. I don't really know for sure. I mean, to some extent, I find your interpretation very plausible, but I don't know that I have to take a stand on it. I'm not sure really what I think about it. Okay, so then I want to ask you then about historical methodology. So suppose that I'm trying to interpret an ancient text, right, and I'm not sure what a particular phrase is. Wouldn't you say that it is historically proper to use the surrounding historical closest documents in the context,

in the culture, in the time period, whatever, to interpret that piece? Well, it may be, but it depends on to what extent those other documents are going to be representative of the person who authored the text in question. Sure. I mean, so then do you think that Matthew would have used the terms binding and loosing? I mean, so for instance, when Ulrich Luz in his Hermeneia biblical commentary says that the entire phrase is based upon the Jewish roots of Scripture, or it's rather rooted in Jewish thought. I mean, would you agree that Matthew is using the terminology of a Palestinian Jew 2,000 years ago? Well, he might be, but what is the significance that he ascribes to it? You know, to what extent

does he agree with, you know, with its interpretation? I don't know, because all I have is those words that he wrote, and he didn't tell us exactly what it means. That's up for later people to determine. Okay, and then, for instance, you mentioned the power to forgive sins. You mentioned, what else did you mention as the father's saying about the biblical, excuse me, the meaning of binding and loosing? Well, Augustine, at least, and I think John Chrysostom refers to, referred to it with respect to forgiving and, you know, forgiving sins and

excommunicating and so on. Right. And we know based on the judicial use of binding and loosing, particularly Josephus in the Antiquities of the Jews written in the first century actually uses the terms binding and loosing for the administrative power of the Pharisees. Craig Keener mentions this in his commentary, that binding and loosing, when Jesus says, whatever you bind shall be bound in heaven, whatever, that whatever could encompass both a person and it could cover also doctrine, right? And so for instance, you know, let me articulate this clearly, right? I'm saying that wouldn't you agree that the fathers that you're mentioning aren't actually counterexamples, but coinciding with the original Jewish interpretation of those terms? No, I don't think so, because I don't think that they ever

imagined that the church has the authority to, you know, make statements of dogma and bind and loose in exactly the way that the Pharisees thought. For example, if you read, you know, the story about the excommunication of Rabbi Eliezer in Bava Metzia 59b, it's very clear at that point that the notion of binding and loosing and the rabbinic authority is an unconditional and sort of unilateral authority of this body of rabbis, which is basically ruled according to, you know, the will of the majority. You have Rabbi Eliezer excluded, even though numerous miracles are performed, even though he has a response to every argument that you can bring against him, and even though God is on his side.

So when the, at least from the point of view of at least some people, because again, these things are not so clear. You know, there are people who interpret rabbinic authority as infallible in one sense, and there are other people who say that rabbinic authority is not infallible, strictly speaking, at all.

You know, and they'll point to passages like these, which show that the notion of infallibility, if it means anything whatsoever, it's basically, you know, unquestionable final authority, but it doesn't necessarily mean that what they say is true. And I don't think that anybody in the church thought that the church has a power to define doctrine that is, you know, that has no connection whatsoever with the truth of the doctrine in question, just because we say so, that's what we're going to believe. I don't think anybody in the early church thought about the church's authority in those terms. Okay, so then, for instance, well, okay, so I want to ask you a quick question, then I'll go back to my original line of questioning. So I'm interested, like, why doesn't your position just

leave us in agnosticism about how to interpret the Bible? Why don't we just say, well, you know, well, you know, just, it seems like you're assuming that a more Protestant kind of interpretation is the default position, but why not be agnostic and say, well, I can't really make a justified choice on either side because either interpretation is possible. Why not be agnostic? Well, it's true that we're stuck with interpretations and that we can never be sure of the propriety of our interpretation, but it doesn't follow that every interpretation is equally good. And I happen to think that the interpretations, the Protestant interpretations of scripture are more compelling and a little closer to the meaning of the text

than some of the other ones. So, I mean, like when you talk about closer to the meaning of the text, right? I mean, how would you go about then interpreting things like, you know, binding and loosing? How would you, you know, like when you talk about closer to the meaning, what particular meaning are you talking about, right? I mean, surely the historical context is what we're talking about, right? When we talk about meaning. Well, it's true, but we also have to interpret the, if not the meaning, then the significance, if you're willing to admit that distinction, if not the meaning, then the significance of these texts in light of 2,000 years of Christian history. So I'm, you know, in my mind, I can grant everything that you say about

the apostolic college, the halakha, all that stuff. I can grant everything that you say about the apostolic college, the halakha, all that stuff. I can grant all that you say. It doesn't follow that there's anything like that that exists today, or even if that body does exist today, that it's infallible or that, you know, none of that follows. Okay, so then, for instance, would you—oh, sorry. I don't want to derail this excellent line of questioning. I just wanted to make you aware that we're halfway through this time of discussion, and Swan, you've brought up a couple of times that maybe Stephen would like to lead the discussion, and maybe Stephen's happy not to do that. I just didn't want to get to the

end of this time, and people think, gosh, you didn't even get Stephen a chance to kind of cross-examine Swan. So would you like to do that, Stephen, or are you happy with the way things are going? I'm happy either way. I'm fine with things as they're going now. I mean, I, you know, Swan is, Swan has brought up a number of sources and arguments and places that I don't even remember all of them, you know, because he gave like 10 arguments. So I can't remember everything he said, and I can't question it all. And I have to say that I think Swan's interpretation of things is a coherent picture. So I'm not denying its coherence or its possibility. I will say this, the more arguments you give for a conclusion, the less you are presenting just a, you know, a thesis and the more you're presenting a comprehensive worldview or a comprehensive

system of interpretation. And I have to admit that between Swan and I, there exists a radical difference on this point. I don't think that we really have, or I wouldn't say that we don't have any common ground, but I would say that between the two of us, there are some very, you know, profound and fundamental differences at the level of theology and philosophy. So, you know, I'm willing to grant Swan everything he says. I start from a different place, So, you know, I'm willing to grant Swan everything he says. I start from a different place. You know, I have a different foundational principles. Presupposition, right? Yeah, maybe different presuppositions, if you want to use that word. So, you know, so I don't have any problems, Swan, if you want to continue the questioning. I don't really, I mean, you brought up so much and it's on a subject, you know, it's on issues that I have no expertise in the subject matter. So I'm fine to just leave what you say as, you know, one possible picture of things.

Okay, keep you feel free to continue, Swan. Yeah, okay. Yeah, I mean, so I mean, we can probably talk about the presupposition point as well. So I mean, Stephen, what would you say is your presupposition that prevents you from kind of saying that my interpretation is probably the most plausible one? Well, there are, again, there are three. One of them is, you might call it sort of broadly philosophical. One of them is biblical, and one of them is theological. In the first place, on broadly philosophical grounds,

I don't think actually that we possess infallible knowledge of theological subject matters. Okay. In the second place, I don't think that there is actually a biblical guarantee of infallibility. And I also don't think

in the third place that salvation, Christian salvation, the actual enjoyment of the benefits of Christ depends on the sorts of things that the, you know, the, the idea of a, of an infallible magisterium is supposed to serve. So those are, you know, basically my three arguments that I presented. Those are, I intended my arguments to be sort of foundational and to attack at the roots. Sure. Yeah. And I mean, like, I think I'm, I mean, like, I don't really use the theological necessity a priori argument, you know, so I'm

trying to just say, here's the evidence and, you know, here's the synthesis of it and so on, so forth, and what seems to be the best approach or interpretation, right? And so, let me see here. Okay. So then, so are you saying that it's so going back to haldane's uh formulation of infallibility right a is an infallible authority within a given context if and only if when a declares that p and then you know first condition p is true second condition if p had not been true a would not have declared it um you're not saying that it's impossible for God to set up a structure and institution that way. Yep. You're saying it's not impossible.

No, that's not impossible. Of course not. Okay. And then would you agree that if someone could have like historical certainty in the same way that I have historical certainty, you know, so a qualified certainty, of course, that, you know, Abraham Lincoln was the president of the United States during the Civil War, or the certainty that there was a place once called, that the Roman Empire was once occupying Palestine, right? Would you agree that, would you accept if you could authenticate that Jesus actually said and gave such a structure for the church? Would you believe that if you could have that same kind of historical certainty about this claim?

Well, I don't know, because in the first place, I think once more that the Bible does not sort of, you know, foresee the possibility of human infallibility. And more than that, you know, if somebody, I'm willing to admit the theoretical or ontological or whatever you want to call it, the metaphysical possibility of somebody who was infallible in exactly the way that you've described drawing from Haldane. But my point is that nobody has any reason to think that that's actually what they do. Okay. Or that, that, that, that condition actually applies to them and nothing can, you know, nothing can provide that kind of, um, you know, can provide that kind of evidence because of the structure of knowing because of the way that we actually come to know things. Okay. So then I think the next question would be,

um, concerning succession and the transfer of this particular authority, right? And so, for instance, I mentioned three arguments for the succession of this particular power not dying with the first generation. Okay, so the first argument was based on the practices of the Pharisees and the rabbis in the first century. The fact that, one, they used the laying on of hands to ordain men, and so did the apostles. The fact that one, they use the laying on of hands to ordain men, and so did the apostles. And also, the Pharisees kept succession records from Moses to their time, as did we see, for instance, at least Irenaeus is the most explicit about it, right? And so my question to you is, would you agree that it appears as if the early church consciously modeled itself after the Jewish high court? Well, I don't know, because again, Tertullian and Irenaeus give these lists of successors to the office of bishop, although their lists are not perfectly identical. I mean, I don't know of any lists.

You know, Irenaeus says that it'd be possible to give a list of succession in all the churches of the apostolic seas. I don't know whether he's telling the truth. I really, you know, maybe he's exaggerating or maybe he believes that, you know, sincerely, but it would not actually be possible if he were to try it. Also, there are plenty of churches in the, you know, the first and second centuries after Christ. And I don't know that all of them are run in exactly this way because we have so little evidence. Okay, but then, so where did Irenaeus then get the idea of this kind of succession being necessary for a valid church or ministry? Or like, what is the, well, what is the most historically probable source of the teaching? Well, what is the most historically probable source of the teaching?

Well, I'm sure that if Irenaeus is saying this, it's either because it's an idea that he came up with that was beneficial to make his argument against the heretics, or else because that's actually what people at his time were saying and doing. And so, I mean, don't you think it's kind of a convenient coincidence that he's teaching something that was taught by the first century Pharisees? Well, it may be a convenient coincidence that he's teaching something that was taught by the first century Pharisees? Well, it may be a convenient coincidence. It may just be that, you know, this is a very nice and generally efficient way to run things. You know, it could be that it's just the practice itself that kind of lends itself to being used in this way. Okay, and then second, when Clement of Rome is writing to the Corinthian church, and he talks about how, you know, Jesus knew that there would be strife over the office of bishop, and so— The apostles knew, rather. Say that again? The apostles knew. You said Jesus knew.

Well, I mean, Jesus and the apostles knew, right? So the apostles knew through Jesus. It says, so too our apostles knew through our Lord Jesus Christ, But yeah, it's a small thing, but yeah, sorry. So let me just read it one more time. So to our apostles knew through our Lord Jesus Christ that strife would arise over the office of bishop. For this reason, since they understood perfectly in advance what would happen, they appointed those we have already mentioned. And afterwards, they added a codicil to the effect that if these should die, other approved men should succeed them in their ministry. Do you think that Clement's memory is reliable? Do you think he's reciting a memory here? It's possible. It's possible.

Okay, so suppose, so let's say that it's possible, right, that he's reciting a teaching, right? What's the other possibility? Well, the possibility, that he's reciting a teaching, right? What's the other possibility? Well, the possibility is that he's reciting something that he heard from somebody else who came before him, or he, you know, he's telling or communicating something that he had learned when he became a Christian or whatever. I don't know who wrote 1st Clement. You know, I'm willing to, I'm happy to admit that Clement wrote it and that it was written roughly in the first century and so on. Yeah. You know, so all this stuff is certainly possible.

I mean, so then, so even if he heard it from somebody else, right, it would have been something he heard in the first century. Sure. And you're saying, but that doesn't necessarily guarantee it's veridical, right? No, I'm not denying anything that Clement says is true. I think that's exactly right. The apostles, you know, established bishops and presbyters and so on in the churches, and they told them that when these people die, get somebody else to take their place. I'm willing to grant that point. Okay, and then, so basically, how does, how would, in what way does this not get us to apostolic succession? Well, it gets us to apostolic succession in a

sense because, you know, assuming that every church that the apostles had founded, assuming that they, you know, created some sort of list or that they had, you know, they kept registers of this sort of thing, then you could probably, you know, you could create a list that traces back in some way to an original apostle founding the church. So in some sense, it provides you with apostolic succession, assuming that the record keeping is, you know, perfect and that there are no hiccups or that the church doesn't die out and then get refounded or whatever. It does not get you apostolic succession necessarily in a sense that I consider more important, which is that later persons will be teaching exactly what it is that the apostles teach, or that they won't teach anything contrary

to the apostles. And it seems to me that, you know, at the end of the day, it is the succession of doctrine, if you want to call it that, rather than this more bureaucratic notion of succession that is fundamentally important. And I would also emphasize that Clement says that the people who are to be ordained are to be approved men. And this is something also that you find in Scripture, you know, the qualifications for the bishop or the deacon and so on or the presbyter. It seems to me that the people who were to, you know, to inherit these offices were people who should already have had a grasp of the gospel, of the content of the apostolic preaching, and an ability to communicate it very well. So in my understanding, there is nothing about the position of presbyter or bishop or whatever that guarantees that you

know theology very well, that you're able to communicate the apostolic teaching, that you're, you know, more or less right about the essential things. There's nothing about the mere fact of being a presbyter that makes you, you know, a qualified theological authority. I should think rather that you have to be qualified ahead of time in order to, you know, rightly be ordained for that position. But of course, there's nothing that guarantees that the right people are always going to be ordained. I mean, and then also in first century Judaism, the requirement for ordination to get the laying on the hand of the elders was precisely what you just articulated. You have to be well-versed in the Torah. You have to know,

you have to not have a love of money. You have to treat your wife and your children well. I mean, all these requirements that you're saying are basically aligning with what the first century Pharisees and rabbis were teaching. And so my point is that it seems as if you inevitably, with these parallels and these arguments that you're mentioning from the scriptures, we have the first century Jewish institutional equivalence. But remember, Swan, I told you I was already willing to grant you this whole interpretation. That it's an institution, right? I'm willing to grant all of that, yeah. So then you're also willing to grant then that in first century Judaism, which is articulated, as I mentioned, with Michael Berger and also by Irenaeus, that you don't have the same authority as someone who can trace a succession back to Moses or in

the New Covenant case, the new Moses. You would accept that then, right, if you accept the institutional parallel. Well, what do you mean? Do you mean that nobody has to listen to me or that I'm not equally capable or more so capable than somebody who happens to have the requisite position of authority? It means that when you issue like a judgment and you're in the case of the Sanhedrin or making a kind of body, so Irenaeus conceives of it as a kind of body or a council, which is inherited from rabbinic Judaism, this idea of councils and synods, right? That particular council or synod has more authority than one united together without the members being tracing the ordination back to Moses. That's the kind of objective authority I'm talking about.

Well, it can have more authority, but it does not have ultimate authority. I mean, just because a bunch of people are gathered together, they can still be wrong, and I can still be right, even if I'm alone. Okay, so then do you accept the institutional parallel, though, that in Judaism, the idea was that if you could trace your ordination back to Moses and you formed a council, that council would have more authority than anybody else assembled who claimed to know the Torah and who didn't have succession back to Moses. Would you accept that? It may have more authority in one sense. It may have, you know, sort of like a greater initial credence, but that is not the ultimate authority. Just because people gather together and they come up to the, you know, they have the same idea about something, it doesn't mean that they're right. And if I'm alone in the world, but I actually see things rightly, then I am in a more important sense, more authoritative than these other people. Okay. And then, and then would you agree

that in the rabbinic literature, it talks about how the rabbis, their decisions are ratified by God? I mean, would you accept that that's at least what they claimed near and around the time of Jesus? Not always, because again, in the case where Rabbi Eliezer is excommunicated, God himself is on Eliezer's side, but they nevertheless excommunicate him. They say, you know, the rabbis, for example, tell Eliezer that the Torah is on earth. It's not in heaven. It doesn't matter what God says. We have been entrusted with the Torah for its interpretation. And then, for example, tell Eliezer that the Torah is on earth. It's not in heaven. It doesn't matter what God says. We have been entrusted with the Torah for its interpretation. And then, of course, there's the story some years later that Elijah, you know, or somebody, you know, runs into Elijah and says, well, you know, what was God doing during this time?

How did God react to the excommunication of Eliezer? And God says, my children have defeated me. So at least if you take that story, the authority of the rabbis to interpret scripture or whatever is greater even than God's own authority. And it's binding even on God. So it's not true that just because the rabbi says something, God himself agreed with it because we have this case, you know, the Bava Matziah 59b, where the rabbis agree with something against God, but they say it doesn't matter because the authority to interpret Torah was given to them and not to God. Right. And then I think Michael Berger mentions in the

book Rabbinic Authority that in that particular case, God actually sides, even though God initially sides with Rabbi Eliezer, he eventually sides with the other rabbis because they use the proper procedures that were instituted by God through Moses in the Sanhedrin. And so nonetheless, God stands behind the decision, even though in a sense, the will is frustrated, but he stands by it. Is that correct? I'm not sure that he does stand by it because later after Eliezer is excommunicated, you know, there's all kinds of troubles and problems that happen. You know, he looks to the left and everything catches on fire. He looks to the right and things start to go bad. And then the guy who excommunicated, I forget his name, is it Rabbi Jeremiah or whatever his name is, he's going out

on sea, right? So he's riding on a ship out at sea and, you know, the waves are going to swallow him up and he knows it's because he mistreated Rabbi Eliezer. So he prays to God and he says, Lord, have mercy on me because you know that I didn't do it for my own honor or for my own glory, but so that there would not be any more disputes in Israel. So then the ocean calms. So what this is telling me, the way that I interpret this story is that there are two ways to go about it. And I think that the Bible recognizes that there are always two sides to the story. On the one hand, Rabbi Eliezer had this impenetrable doctrine that could not be refuted and was even miraculously supported. On the other hand, the majority disagreed with him.

So they excommunicate him, and so then God begins to punish them. But they tell God, listen, we just did this so that there wouldn't be any more arguments, and then God also recognizes the legitimacy of that as a motive. But in my mind, the truth of the matter is besides all of this. So just because God is willing to accept, you know, his exclusion, or at least he stops punishing him because he did it for the sake of unity, that doesn't mean that he was right. Okay, so then, for instance, I talk about in my original argument that I'm saying that this applies to court rulings, right? And are you saying that when the rabbis excommunicate,

that this was a use of that ruling power? Well, I have no idea. I'm not an expert in rabbinic Judaism. Because what I'm tempted to say is that actually the particular, okay, so two things, right? The first is that when Jesus talks about, you know, obey whatever they teach you because they're seated on the seat of Moses. My argument was first is that you don't have to qualify Jesus's absoluteness in that statement. The second point is that it appears as if Jesus is only talking about the original jurisdiction of the courts, which was to hear cases, right? Yeah, but I disagree about both of those things. I think you're wrong on both counts. Right. And then why would you disagree?

Well, I think, for example, that when Christ says, do whatever they tell you, but don't do as they do, I think he is just giving them a piece of advice. Don't cause scandal and don't cause problems for yourselves. Because what follows immediately in that chapter is a point by point refutation and, you know, diatribe against the Pharisees, which touches not only on matters of practice, but also on matters of teachings. Right.

Right. Is it openly disagrees and disobeys the Pharisees all the time? Right. But I mean, like, yeah, I mean, my interpretation also accounts for that because it says precisely what Jesus

was distinguishing, right? The court rulings versus the rabbinic legislation, which was in addition to what Moses had already, what Moses originally said was the original jurisdiction of the court. I mean, that's a fine detail, but it seems to me that what, I mean, this is a fine detail and I'm not saying that what you're saying is impossible. I have no way of knowing it. It can be fine as far as it goes. However, the text doesn't talk about any of that. If you just read the text and you have no idea about any of this stuff,

as the majority of people throughout Christian history have ever read this text, you get the impression that Christ does not actually care for the Pharisees and he thinks that they're wrong. And it seems to me clear that he disagrees with them both on matters of practice and teaching. And so why does Jesus say, you know, obey whatever they teach you? He seems to be binding the conscience of the people to their authority to what they say no I mean wouldn't it be in more reading it as an authoritarian you're reading it as an authoritarian Catholic right you're

assuming that if Jesus says something like you must mean I don't think that's fair to me because what Jesus says let me read to you Matthew 23 the passage again right so So Jesus says, So Jesus is citing Moses' seat, which is an institutional reality. And then he says, So do and observe whatever they tell you, which goes back to Deuteronomy 17, 11 to 13, or yeah, 11 to 12. Well, I think what Jesus is saying is sort of with an ironic touch. He says, do whatever they tell you, because again, they're on Moses's seat.

But how seriously does he actually, I mean, when they, for example, decide that anybody who believes in Jesus is to be kicked out of the synagogue, they're supposed to believe whatever they tell them? They're supposed to do whatever they tell them? I would think not, obviously. And then obviously, you know that like, you know, the whole hypothesis that I've been giving is that Jesus transfers the power of the Pharisees to his apostles, and then the apostles use the succession methods of the Pharisees to pass it on. Okay, but when does he do that? When does he do it? When he says, whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven.

Whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven. When he breathes on the apostles in John chapter 20, verse 22, when Peter begins to give halakha in Acts 15 in the council of Jerusalem, that's when it starts. That's when it begins, post-resurrection. I understand. Well, okay. But he tells the, does it happen post-resurrection or does it happen when Christ declares to Simon that he is Peter? Because this passage in Matthew 23 comes after the, you know, thou art Peter passage, but it comes before the crucifixion. Well, we know that in the New Testament that Jesus would temporarily give the disciples the power to, you know, abdicate demons and so on and so forth.

And so maybe there was some power beforehand. But what I'm saying is that the power of binding and loosing was applied post-resurrection and that in between the Pharisees, well, that gets into the topic about the trial of Jesus, which I also have an approach to. But I'm saying that, yeah, they got the power when Jesus ascended, post-resurrection, they received the power. Well, okay, I'm willing to grant that this is a coherent picture of things, but again, I don't think anybody has to agree with you. It seems to me perfectly consistent to read Christ in this ironic way. He is recommending that his disciples obey the Pharisees for the sake of avoiding scandal and problems for themselves,

but he does not mean anything like an unconditional binding of their conscience to obey them, because obviously the Pharisees eventually are going to turn against the Christians. Okay, we've reached the 45-minute mark. I'm sorry to cut you off. This has been a really fantastic discussion. A lot of people in the chat are really pleased with both of you. It seems like a very substantial discussion and one that's happening cordially. So what we're going to do next, guys, is we are going to move into a time of Q&A. So if you haven't sent us your question here in the live

chat, feel free to do that. But I just want to take a moment to say that Pints with Aquinas is getting to the point where we need to hire a full-time camera person. I'm beginning to do these in-person interviews every week, and I need to pay someone a just wage, and I need someone full-time so that they're dedicated to this. It's really exciting. If you had told me five years ago when I started Pints with Aquinas that we'd kind of get to this point, I wouldn't have believed you. We are 92% of the way there. If you would like to support us, you can go to patreon.com slash mattfradd or give to us directly at pintswithaquinas.com slash give. Really excited about this, actually. It's kind of scary because it's a lot of money and you're going to possibly pay health care and things like this. of scary because it's a lot of money and you're going to possibly pay healthcare and things like this. But I think it's going to be awesome. So if you appreciate Pints with Aquinas and can give us five bucks or 10 bucks a month or whatever, you'll get a bunch of free stuff in return, like Pints with Aquinas beer, Stein sent to your door, book sent to your door.

Swan's actually leading a seven-part series on the papacy right now, which only patrons and those who support us get access to. So please consider that, and we'd be super, super appreciative for it. Okay, so I also want to say before we move into a time of Q&A, I want to say thank you to Homeschool Connections. I don't know if you have kids or if you homeschool them, or if you're considering homeschooling them. Frankly, I think that's probably a good idea. But go check out homeschoolconnections.com. There is a link in the description below. You can supplement your homeschooling or you can use this to homeschool your kid entirely. There's fantastic classes from people like Trent Horn teaching apologetics.

Imagine that. Imagine teaching your kid, homeschooling your kid with Trent Horn as your instructor. Joseph Pierce, who's an excellent author, teaching English. So all those are faithful to the magisterium of the church, which depending on what side you're on means a lot, or maybe not. So again, please go check them out, homeschoolconnections.com slash Matt. Again, the link is in the description below. It's very affordable and very professional. I know as someone who homeschools my kids, sometimes it's nice to have different heads saying the same thing. And so having excellent presenters and even live classes at your disposal can be really helpful. So go check it out homeschoolconnections.com slash Matt. Be sure to put in slash Matt so that they know that we sent you. Okay.

All right. So we're going to move into a time of Q&A, guys, and we're going to take about 30 minutes to do that. What I'd like to do is, you know, pose the question and then kind of give each of you, you know, one to two minutes to respond each. And maybe I'll try to direct the questions back and forth. And then after that, we'll have a five-minute closing, so provided we're all good, let's see here. We'll begin with a question here from Colin Gordon. He says, Stephen, do you believe it's possible for an individual to lose his salvation based on an incorrect interpretation of an indeterminate passage of Scripture? Well, I mean, I can come up with fanciful scenarios in my mind all the time.

So, for example, suppose somebody reads a passage of scripture and they come to believe, wrongly perhaps, that this passage teaches against faith in Christ. And this person is so convinced of this passage that he abandons faith in Christ. He thinks, you know, that Christ was cursed by God, that he was a false messiah and so on. That situation is not impossible in my mind. I mean, I would think that such a person is reading things incorrectly, obviously, because I'm a Christian, and I think that the Bible, both Old and New Testaments, bears witness to Christ. But there's nothing impossible about me to the scenario,

impossible to me about this scenario in which somebody interprets a passage, I would say misinterprets a passage in such a way that it leaves them away from faith in Christ and they give up on faith in Christ altogether. Now, does that mean that that person will eventually be damned? I don't know because God knows that, but I think it's certainly possible for a person because of a misreading of scripture to lose their own faith in Christ

and to walk away from the faith while they're in this life. I think that's a conceivable scenario. Swan? Yeah, I have that's a conceivable scenario. Swan? Yeah, I have no objection to what Stephen said. Okay. Okay, let's question here from Joel Montero. He says, Swan, if you have two or three popes, how can one know which one is the true pope?

Wouldn't we need another ultimate authority? I mean, it depends on if he's citing a particular historical episode. But I would say that the argument that I would give... Obviously, I didn't get into the full structure of the magisterium or even the headship of Peter and so on and so forth. And so I want to keep the topic limited as I can. on so forth. And so I want to keep the topic limited as I can, but I would argue that if one can go back to the original source, which is the scriptures, and discern a particular Petrine commission, and then see throughout history that Petrine commission being given to a certain successor, right, and then so on so forth, then one can use that same standard of what I call

historical certainty, which grounds all of our other faith claims in Jesus Christ being the only way, the truth, and the life, the Messiah, so on and so forth. Use that historical certainty to then discern who is the true Pope. Okay. Stephen, do you want to respond to that? This is a question that, I mean, I can understand where the question is coming from. The idea basically is that you, you know, we can grant the formal possibility, for example, of a single person who is an ultimate authority in the church, but then what do you do when you have multiple parties who are claiming the same thing? on historical grounds or whatever. But I wonder whether that's actually true. I mean, you have churches that disagree with each other and that have mutually excommunicated each other,

but they are equally inheritors of the apostolic succession. For example, the Coptic church, the Nestorian churches, and so on. So this is an interesting problem. I don't mean to press it. It's not an argument necessarily that I would care to give, but I do think that it's maybe not as easily established on historical grounds as Swan might think. I think there would also be inevitably certain theological problems

that have arisen as well. That dude says, and let's direct this to Stephen first, do you believe the Bible is infallible, and if so, why? I think that, well, I should put it this way. I read the Bible as though what I understand it to say is true. And the reason why I think that is because I think that God speaks through the Bible. And the reason why I think that is because I think that God speaks through the Bible. And the reason why I think that is because I think that the apostles in their lives had an encounter with the Word of

God while they were following around Jesus Christ from place to place. So in my dissertation, I address this question, what would it be like for somebody to have an experience of the Word of God? And I give a very precise answer to this question, drawing from examples in scripture, as well as examples from the lives of particular Christians. Basically, what I say is that if a person is to experience the word of God, you know, while they're reading scripture, for example, what would happen is this. They are reading, and in the course of the act of reading, meaning or a sense a proposition if you want to call it that spontaneously suggests itself to their consciousness which is not what the historical

author could possibly have meant and neither is it what you would normally come up with just as you're sitting and reading right there's a kind of a third meaning here that you know this this meaning is spoken by a third voice, which is not your own hermeneutical voice as a reader, nor is it the authorial voice of the human author of the text. And to give an example of what this sort of event is like, you can think of Augustine

when he is converted to Christianityianity the whole story with tole lege he hears what he describes as a child's voice which is saying pick it up and read pick it up and read okay and he says well you know i've never heard any child's games that included these words but he had the immediate sense that what these words are demanding for him to do is to go into his home and to pick up the Bible and to read the first passage that, you know, his eyes light upon. And he does so, and he reads from Romans chapter 13, therefore, you know, live as in the daytime, not as in the night, not in drunkenness, not in orgies, and so on. And he understands by reading this passage that he should, in fact, take up a life of chastity and become a Christian, because that was the dilemma that he was going

through. And there's also the case of Anthony when he, you know, the first monk Anthony, when he goes into church and he's thinking about how the apostles had sold all their possessions and so on when they first became Christians. And he hears it read from the gospel, sell everything that you have and come and follow me. And he understands immediately in that moment that he has to sell all of his possessions and to become a monk and to live in the desert. Now, what's happening in these cases is that these people are hearing or they're reading a certain passage from the Bible, and a meaning suggests itself to them, which is not what the text means. Because of course,

the gospel text for Matthew is not addressing Anthony. It doesn't, you them, which is not what the text means, because of course the gospel text for Matthew is not addressing Anthony. Matthew did not know that Anthony would exist. Likewise, the text in Paul in Romans chapter 13 has no connection to what Augustine is stressing out about, because Augustine wants to know whether he should take up a life of chastity and become a, you know, a member of the office of the teaching office of the church. That's what he's dealing with, whereas what Paul says has nothing to do with that. However, what happens in these experiences is that these people are either reading or listening to scripture, and some meaning, some sense, some proposition suggests

itself, you know, as though it came from a third voice, that we're using the words of the human author to speak to them about something particular about them. And I'm suggesting, I suggest in my dissertation that what it would mean to encounter the word of God is precisely to undergo an experience like that, because in that experience, you can distinguish between your own voice as a human interpreter, the voice of the author as the person who wrote down the text, and then this third voice, which doesn't belong to either of us and seems to be saying something different from what either of us would have said or would have expected to be said. And I'm suggesting that the apostles had exactly this experience, and this is where actually the origins of the typological interpretation of

the Old Testament comes in. So if we go to John chapter 2, for example, when Christ clears the temple, it says towards the end of that section, his disciples remember that it was written, zeal for your house will consume me. Okay, now this is a big theological controversy with interpreters of the Bible, because they look at the way the apostles read the Old Testament as pointing to Christ, and they oftentimes say things like, oh, this was to fulfill what was written by the prophet Isaiah, and so on and so forth. But the original passages seem to have nothing to do with Christ. So some scholars will say that the apostles were just looking for anything that they could in the Old Testament and picking out texts at random and, you know,

trying to come up with a story to explain why Jesus is the Messiah. But my suggestion is something is different. No, actually what I think happened is that they were following Christ around from place to place. And as Christ is doing various things or as they learn various things about Christ, they had exactly this experience like Augustine had, like Anthony had, where they remembered a biblical passage. Only now, you know, face to face with Christ, it seemed to say something different to them than it would have said to them otherwise or that they might have expected it to say. And what even the human author could have possibly have intended to say. So I think that's what it would mean to experience the Word of God. That's what an experience of the Word of God actually is. And I think that the apostles had that experience. But the difference is this. You can only see this if you read the New Testament in more or less the way that the church has traditionally read it, which is as a truthful

testimony to the, you know, firsthand encounters of the disciples and apostles of Christ to what happened with him. So if you read the scripture with this assumption in mind, that it's fundamentally truthful, that what it says it's true, that it's not the product, you know, it's not this damaged product of centuries or decades or whatever, of redaction and so on, as long as you read it and more or less take for granted

what it says at surface level and take it as true, then you can see how there is an encounter with the Word of God here. But if you have different presuppositions, then you lose all that. So that's why I believe that Scripture is truthful, or I read it on the assumption of its truth, so to speak, because I think if you do this, you can see how, you know, something happened with the apostles. All right. Thank you, Stephen.

So I'll give you, you know, the same amount of time to kind of respond to that. So I guess if I remember, yeah, go for it. Well, sorry. Sorry to interrupt. Yeah. Well, so one of the problems that I find with Stephen's epistemology is on one hand, I don't see how he can say the Bible is infallible. But then on the other hand, he will say it's infallible because he trusts the testimony of the church. He trusts the testimony of the apostles and events that he did not directly experience or was phenomenologically disclosed to him, but rather through another medium, through another person, he'll trust that testimony. And so I feel as if there's a problem here in what's going on. So for instance, when he talks about how the church has historically

interpreted these passages, well, the church has historically interpreted binding and loosing to give it institutional powers to declare on doctrine and morals. Historically speaking, we can trace back these ideas to the Judaism during the time of Jesus. And so it seems as if there's a selective standard that's being applied here and one that worries me. The second thing is that he talks about, for instance, people hear this third voice and this third voice makes them say things or believe things that other than what they would have believed themselves. Well, we see that in John 11, 51 to 52, when Caiaphas, despite being a bad person, is able to nonetheless, as high priest of the year, give prophecy, which the Jews said would happen because the high court was located in Jerusalem and was descended from the prophet Moses. And so all of this, I think, can be not only taken into an institutional

interpretation, which would already, you know, set Protestantism at odds, let's say, with history, or at least it would be more difficult to be a Protestant in light of this interpretation. But I would say, basically, that, you know, for instance, and even the fact that Jesus tells the disciples, whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven. Whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven. That divine promise from Christ, because I believe in Christ and I trust the words of Christ. And then he says to his apostles and the disciples, you know, whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven. I trust the apostles by virtue of Christ.

Right. Christ, right? And so I'm saying there that, you know, using the same kind of epistemology of trust, of testimony, of faith, so to speak, I'm able to arrive at another conclusion, which I think is more historically plausible and closer to the original intent of the scriptures, and which has been the historic interpretation of the church. Let me see if I can, if I had something else that I wanted to say. I mean, and also, for instance, in Luke chapter 10, verse 16, Jesus talks about when he sends out the 70, which is basically the same number that Moses instituted for the Sanhedrin, that whoever hears you hears me, whoever rejects you rejects me, and whoever rejects you rejects the one who sent me, right? When Jesus says these particular words,

I think that this gives us even more grounds to trust those who are sent by God and sent by the apostles, and that we have objective markers and indications of the succession based on what was there already in Judaism, what Irenaeus teaches. And I guess that's all the time I have, but that's what I'll say. Yeah, thanks. We'll have to move on here. We have a lot of questions, and let's try to keep our answers to about one or two minutes. I know it's difficult because these are big discussions. Real atheology... Oh, yeah. Yeah, I got the wrong question there. It's always good to have atheists in the live chat. And I

think this person brings up a good point. Do you think disagreements between smart Catholics and Protestants like yourself is expected on Christianity. From the outside looking in, this makes choosing the right form of Christianity harder. Maybe, Swan, you can go first this time and then Stephen. Well, the question that we have to begin with is who is Jesus, right? Jesus, we both claim to believe in Jesus, so let's take the common ground that both these smart Protestants and Catholics have. They believe in Jesus, they believe that he's the Messiah, they believe that 2,000 years ago he was a Palestinian Jew, they believe certain things about the apostles, they believe that we can historically study Jesus and that we can see what he was like 2,000 years ago

to some extent. If you are a standard New Testament scholar, you know, I cited predominantly Protestant New Testament scholars in my presentation. There is possible common ground in order to begin discerning what happened in the earliest centuries of Christianity. And what I'd argue is that the mere fact of disagreement is not, I don't find that problematic, right? For instance, I mean, even in the New Testament, it talks about anticipating heretics and divisive men. I didn't get to get yet to say this in my opening statement, but for instance, in Matthew 18, 17, in cases of discipline, when a brother sins, if he doesn't accept the authority of the church, it says, even if he doesn't obey the church, then you are to cast him out and treat him as a heathen. In Titus 3.10, it talks about a divisive man who has to be thrown out and he's to be treated as he's a divisive man.

The Greek word there is hereticon to describe the divisive man. And that's where we get the word heretic from. So clearly then, what I would say is that if you just use the standard practices of historical methodology, which are available to both Protestants and Catholics, and then you begin to synthesize, why did the early church believe what it believed? Where did they get these ideas from? Who was the Messiah? Was the Messiah going to rebuild the courts of Moses? Based on these common grounds, I think you can get a stronger conclusion that doesn't leave us in total skepticism. All right. Thank you. Stephen? My opinion is that there is no such thing as

the one right version of Christianity. Christ calls you to repent of your sins and to believe in him, and through faith in him and in the Holy Spirit, you have fellowship with God, and that's what you have to do, and that's what the imperative is, the gospel imperative. There is no imperative to join this or that church. I don't think that the apostles foresaw exactly the situation that would exist now, 2,000 years from now, But what they did call to, and what every Christian more or less agrees to, is that you must repent of your sins and believe in Christ and enjoy the benefits of salvation that are offered by Him. Okay.

Laura Anderson, and we'll direct this towards Stephen. Do you believe Jesus made Peter the rock? And I suppose we say, if know, if so, if not, why? Well, I would note that that interpretation is not shared by very many important church fathers. For example, Augustine explicitly denies this on a few occasions. He thinks rather that the rock is Christ, or he thinks that Peter's confession of faith in the divine sonship of Christ is the rock. John Chrysostom says that the faith of Peter is the rock on which Christ founded the church. Origen likewise denies that Peter alone is the rock in any unique way,

but rather he achieved this title or this honorific of rock because of his confession of faith. So there are very many church fathers who don't have that interpretation. faith. So there are very many church fathers who don't have that interpretation. Even so, I'm willing to grant that Swan's project and Swan's arguments are plausible. They make a lot of sense. And I can see why somebody would think that Peter is the rock. But I don't think that that's significant in the way that he takes it to be. Because again, Peter can be the rock. That's all fine. It does not mean that anybody who sits in the successor, you know, the seat of Peter is for that reason infallible in specified conditions, that things can't go wrong,

that that arrangement of the church can't be later abandoned or done away with altogether. None of that, you know, is excluded just because I grant that Peter is the rock. Even though, like I said, very many church fathers do not grant that he is the rock. So on. Yeah, so in response, I mean, there's church fathers do not grant that he is the rock. So on. Yeah, so in response, I mean, there's been some dispute about, for instance, I think

Augustine says near the end of one of his chapters, he says, but I leave this open to the discretion of the reader, right? And even Trent Horn in his book, The Case for Catholicism, I think he presents certain arguments questioning kind of the standard argument that like, oh, the patristics are divided upon this particular issue. And so I need to look at the sources. But of course, Stephen is familiar with the five arguments that I give for Peter being the rock. It's in my paper in the Hathrop Journal. And, you know, so then I would just use those particular arguments. And also the fact that it's been the consensus since the 1970s, among scholars that Peter is the rock upon which Christ

built the church. This is the consensus among Protestants and Catholics and so on and so forth. And so, you know, like, I mean, the point that I'm really wanting to emphasize is then when Stephen says that, well, the rock doesn't mean that the church will last forever or something like that, that arrangement, right? Well, one is that we know and this is the the things that i mentioned in my scholarship that whenever a rock was used in jewish tradition it was always used to describe a foundation that was immovable and secured so for instance the dome of the rock which is uh right now in israel originally that's where the temple was located

and the jews believe that that rock upon which the temple was built was there from the beginning of creation and would last. And so my position here would be that no, the rock, the fact that Peter is the rock, at least under my arguments, which I think are plausible, would imply not that it's a peg that can go away. And I mentioned this in my paper as a symmetry breaker. So once you include the Jewish traditions upon this particular passage, I think that the idea of Peter being the rock on which Christ built the church, that's not meant for something temporary, but something that's everlasting and reliable. I'm going to put forth my own question here, if you don't mind. I'll direct this to you, Stephen, because I want to really try to understand where you're coming from. Sometimes this discussion, it can feel like it gets into the weeds, at least for the uninitiated.

But why not think this, right? We both believe that God has revealed himself ultimately in the person of Jesus Christ. And that the magisterium simply means we can know infallibly what it is that he said. Like we don't have to be confused about what he said. We don't have to get into endless quabbles, debates rather, about that. So, because it sounds to me, and I think a lot of people are saying this in the chat,

that this just kind of leads to a sort of Christian relativism. You know, you say, well, the majority of Christians think that we need to just repent and believe. But I could see someone saying, well, but okay, maybe that's just your interpretation, and your interpretation is wrong. It's sort of, wouldn't it be good if not only God would reveal himself to us, but that he would see to it that we can know without doubt what it is he meant by that revelation? Well, that would be nice, but imagine this scenario, right? You and I are married, right? So let's think back to the days when we were single.

Imagine you ask a girl out on a date and she says no, and you get upset and you say, well, how can you say no to me? If you say no to me, how are we ever going to get married and have children and grow old together? Right? Sometimes you don't get what you want. Sometimes reality is, you know, disappointing. Sometimes something would be really nice

and it would solve a lot of problems, but it isn't there. So I think that's actually how things are. You know, if you consider very carefully the actual process by which we means, by means of which we come to know things, if you consider carefully the biblical story, if you consider the, you know, what actually salvation is and how, you know, how, how much, how much a work of God rather than a work of human being salvation is, it seems to me that, you know, there simply is no, there is no such thing as the infallible magisterium. But I happen to think that that's not a problem because the conditions of, you know, the problems that the infallible magisterium would address are not problems that actually matter all that much.

There may be very interesting. They may be very important, but they are not the problems that matter. What matters is that a person enter into fellowship or friendship with God and his son in the Holy Spirit. And you can do that, like I said in my presentation, even if you don't have any opinion at all on these more highfalutin matters of theology and metaphysics. I'm going to resist the temptation to be a third debater in this dialogue and just hand it over to you, Swan. Yeah, I mean, I want to be careful about a priori arguments and just saying it would be nice, right? But then there's a difference between saying not only would it be nice, but it appears as if God has provided the means by which this nice thing could be attained.

And so for instance, Rob Koons raises this particular argument in Lutheran's case of Roman Catholicism, where he says to will the end is to also will effectively the means. So if God wanted unity among his people, how would he do it? Well, we know in ancient Israel

that the unity of the Jewish people was found in the Sanhedrin. That's explicitly said in Rabbi Araya Kaplan's book, The Handbook on Jewish Thought. And what would happen is the Jewish people, when they had a question about the Torah, they could go to the great Sanhedrin and universally have a question settled about the nature of God. And the reason why is because they understood when the revelation was given by Moses on Sinai, that God was so serious about his people obeying his commandments and knowing him. And so God did not abandon his people. He gave him the institutions and structures by which they could visibly objectively know that what they had to believe in order to have Torah piety. And so I would say that we see in the New Testament, the continuation of the structure.

Torah piety. And so I would say that we see in the New Testament the continuation of the structure. We see Jesus as the new Moses, as the Messiah, rebuilding the courts of Moses and fulfilling messianic prophecy. And moreover, when you look at the concept of unity in Middle Eastern culture, it's often based around some type of unified authority or the community in one cohesive creed and being able to decide what that is. And finally, the point that I'd mentioned is just the three arguments I gave for the succession of the apostolic authority, right? So I talked about, for instance, how Jesus acknowledges the authority of the high court 12 to 1400 years after Moses built it. I talked about the two arguments about apostolic succession, the laying on of hands, the succession

list. Clearly, the early Christians, even during the time of the apostles, believed that Jesus created an institution and could continue, in a sense, being that high court in the new covenant. And so I would say that Jesus communicating to the Israelites and communicating to us as the new Israelites gave us that institution of unity. Okay. This question will direct you Swan comes from Matt he says well actually let's give it to you Swan because I want you guys to have

each of you to have the last say on each of these questions so it's fair if the council of well but this really is directed to Stephen I'm sorry so Stephen if it's okay with you maybe answer it if the council of Nicaea was fallible do you think you could be open to becoming an Arian or a Jehovah's Witness since we rely on their decree to say Jesus is God?

Well, even if I were to reject the Council of Nicaea, it would not follow for that reason that I give up on the notion that Jesus is God altogether or that I adopt a specific form of language. So, you know, the fallibility of the Council of Nicaea does not mean the truth of any of their particular opponents. But I should think, like, nothing excludes the possibility that Nicaea might have been mistaken. If some future exegesis, you know, school of exegesis were to come about and were to show very convincingly that the Nicene doctrine of Christ is just utterly wrongheaded and does not at all reflect, you know, according to historical standards or whatever preferred method you might have, that does not at all reflect the actual apostolic teaching and understanding of Christ. I mean, why would you hold on to Nicaea at that point if all the best evidence tells you contrary?

You know, at that point, you're just reasoning sort of, you're giving a kind of a transcendental argument for the necessity of Nicaea, because obviously Nicaea is true and everything that's contrary to it, however convincing, must be wrong. I don't know that, why believe that, right? Because Nicaea, as much as the same as these hypothetical future exegetes, are trying to interpret the Bible. And if these guys can have a better interpretation of the Bible, then you should agree with them, you know, if their interpretation truly is better. Nothing in my mind excludes the possibility that in the future, you know, perhaps Nicaea will have to be rejected. I think that is highly unlikely, right? Because I think actually that the Nicene interpretation of Scripture is true to the triadic structure of the process of salvation, as we find in Paul and in other writers in the New Testament. And I think that the Nicene

doctrine of consubstantiality solves a lot of metaphysical problems. So I think that this is highly unlikely. I don't think actually you're going to get a better interpretation of New Testament than Nicaea, but that's not impossible just because I think it's in, you know, just because I would have a hard time believing it, it doesn't follow that it's impossible. So, so on. Yeah, I mean, to be fair to Stephen, I actually do agree that, I mean, yeah, I mean, so, yeah, I mean, you could independently reason and come to these certain conclusions. Although, of course, I don't want to make an a priori argument necessarily, but it does seem quite strange that God wouldn't want his people to definitively know his nature or the nature of his son, and would be willing to just let them privately interpret that, rather than the fact that in the Old Testament, God had a Sanhedrin, God built the courts by which the issues of Torah could be

settled, and that, you know, we see that Jesus appears to have continued the structure. So I just think it's really surprising if that structure didn't carry over when we know the intentions of God and how dearly He wants His people to know Him. All right, let's do two more questions. We'll direct this one to Swan and then next to Stephen. We'll just take the first part of this question from Jonathan, who says, Swan, can we infallibly know what an infallible definition means? Yeah, I mean, so infallibly know what an infallible definition is yeah I mean so infallibly know what an infallible definition is I mean so I mean in one sense I feel as if maybe you know for

instance I think there's sufficient semantic clarity in and when we speak to each other right and so maybe you know sometimes philosophers have talked about like maybe you could really know something or have knowledge but not necessarily know all the justifications that go into what makes it the case that you have knowledge, right? Or even in the case of ordinary language or us speaking to each other, I mean, I think it's sufficiently clear when someone is speaking or saying something. And of course, we can go and interact. And I mean, this is an argument that I'd say is why we need a living magisterium, right? So that if we have questions about how to interpret what one council said, we can go to that living magisterium as that continuing voice. And so I don't know if this is necessarily a problem because I don't even know if you need infallibility necessarily in order to have knowledge in the first place. And at least, you know, a lot of contemporary philosophers have moved away from that direction. And at least, you know, a lot of contemporary philosophers have

moved away from that direction. And especially since, you know, for instance, we have to base our lives off of trust. Like every single day, we don't always have absolute certainty or knowledge, but nonetheless, we can operate and know certain things. And so with the things of faith, we know, in a sense, by virtue of faith, and to some extent, to knowing that the faithfulness of Christ and that he was who he claimed to be. And so I would just say that part of this deposit of faith, I'm arguing, is the magisterium because of who Jesus is as the new Moses. And so I don't think that this is an actual problem. Because it's false to say that we're just in total skepticism, even if, quote unquote, we don't have this infallible absolute certainty in the

Cartesian sense perhaps. Stephen, do you have anything to add to that? Yeah, I mean I think that this objection is getting onto something true. It's true that when the magisterium teaches infallibly its statements are irreformable. However, at the same time Cardinal Avery Dulles says

that an irreformable statement nevertheless may need to be reformulated or reinterpreted or reconceptualized, whatever, in light of future evidence and so on. You know, so he says statements, although they are irreformable, nevertheless can be, you know, are nevertheless possibly in need of much revision without being reversed. You know, refinement perhaps would be a better word to use instead of being reversed. But then the question arises, what constitutes a revision and what constitutes a reversal or what constitutes a genuine refinement rather than a reversal and so on? And then the only answer that you're allowed to give as a Catholic is once more the magisterium.

So the magisterium then becomes this body that effectively is constantly interpreting itself and its word is to be trusted. But it seems to me that that's impossible because the magisterium does not try to describe itself. It tries to describe other things, all right? And the only authority, the only true canon, the only true measure for your description of a thing is that thing itself. And the magisterium, as I've argued, has the same fallible access to all the things that it talks about as we do. Now, it's true that if there were an infallible magisterium in the church, that would be very nice, but nothing about the experience of the magisterial figures, you know, when they sit down and do theology, nothing about their experience tells them that

they are infallible. And at the same time, these people claim that if you don't agree with them, and if you don't submit to their, you know, infallibility that you're putting your soul in danger for example if you don't agree with them that the virgin mary was assumed into heaven rather than dying and being buried on earth if you don't agree with them than that even though a very good number of christians in the world don't agree with that or about the immaculate conception of mary which again very many christians disagree with people who also can claim the Apostolic Succession, and so on. If you disagree with them on these points of issues, you are clearly, you know, opposing Christ, you're opposing the Church. Here is, I think, there are always two sides, you know. From one point of view, the Magisterium can

look very attractive, but there is also this other side, where the Magisterium makes claims about things that it could not possibly know infalliblyibly and it demands that you submit to them and believe them which to my mind as a protestant looks you know questionable fair enough more than once now you've said it would be nice if the magisterium like were a thing if it were true why why would it be nice what would be good about that i don't know that necessarily would be nice all things considered but it would be good about that? I don't know that necessarily would be nice, all things considered, but it would be nice from the point of view of a person who wants an answer to every question. You know, some people, when they study theology, they get caught up in the problems, and they want to know what the truth is, and this zeal motivates them to study, and it would be nice if we had, you know, some body of people who could answer every question that we have.

Now, actually, we do have such body if Roman Catholicism is true, and yet the Roman Catholic magisterium does not make an effort to answer every question. There is no, you know, magisterial statement on the doctrine of predestination or on the doctrine of atonement or on any number of things that Catholics disagree about and wonder about these days. And, of course, there are also Catholics who think that, you know, whether rightly or wrongly, they nevertheless think that things went off the rails at the Second Vatican Council. So, if I really wanted to be polemical and I wanted to push the point, I would say that it seems that actually having an infallible magisterium does not contribute to unity at all. It doesn't actually solve the problems that it would, you know,

it seems like it would be nice that we could have one. All right, fair enough. Final question, I'll direct this to you, Stephen. Swan, you can give the concluding thought, and then we'll move into our closing statements. This comes from Joel, who says, for Dr. I keep wanting to mispronounce your name, Dr. Nemesh, I apologize. How can a church excommunicate someone if no one can know true doctrine? Well, I've never said that nobody can know true doctrine. I've said that we don't have infallible knowledge in matters of theology. But how can a church excommunicate someone?

Well, very easily. You know, someone in the church begins sleeping with his mother, his stepmother. Paul writes them a letter and he says, hey, this is something that even the pagans don't do. How could you possibly tolerate something like this? You must kick him out for a while. And so they do. And once this person repents, then they're, you know, he's welcomed back into the communication, into the communion of the church. This sort of thing happens all the time.

You know, this is like saying, why, you know, why, why can we punish people in our society unless we have infallible knowledge of what the right and wrong thing is to do? Clearly, we don't have infallible knowledge of right and wrong. We might be wrong about a lot of things. Future generations could look back and think that we, you know, some things we consider to be crimes are not really reasonably considered crimes at all. Nevertheless, we have to do this sort of thing for now, right? Because we can't just let people do whatever they want. So I think that it's necessary for a church to have some sort of order, and that could mean practices of excommunication. It doesn't mean that they're right every time they excommunicate

somebody, but, you know, sometimes that's what has to happen, and God will be the judge of things at the end. So? Well, I mean, so even the acknowledgement that the church has the power to excommunicate, well, there are two things I want to say. One is that Stephen said that he didn't say that we can't know true doctrine, right? And so I think that's interesting because if he says that, then I think that the kind of knowledge that he's talking about, the standard is much too high for basically what I'm proposing, which is an epistemology similar to his and to some extent, which is that we can have historical certainty or historical knowledge about what was claimed, about what was intended in the first place. And so then the

second point was about excommunication. And the question is, where did they get this idea, at least in the early church, that they could excommunicate heretics? Well, not only does it come from the scriptures talking about excommunicating or treating them as heathens or refusing them from the community, but we also know that this came from binding and loosing. And then so either way, I think that you have to go back to the historical context of the scriptures and see what kind of institution and what kind of prerogatives were given to it by the historical Jesus. Okay, well, thanks a lot, guys. This has been a really excellent discussion.

I've really enjoyed it. We are going to move into a time of closing statements. Five minutes each. Swan, I believe you're going first since you began. So let me know when you're ready. All right. Let me begin by thanking Stephen for having this conversation with me. It's kind of hot in Kansas right now, so I might be sweating.

I hope I didn't come off losing my temper or anything. So, I mean, thank you, Stephen, for this conversation. So let me reiterate what I argued. I argued that Christ established an infallible and successional apostolic teaching institution. I gave five arguments for the infallibility of this institution. In particular, the fact that the gospel of Matthew actually provides us with the inner workings of how infallibility works. Because Matthew doesn't say, oh, whatever Peter binds, then God will ratify. It says that whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven. We know this from the Greek paraphrastic future passive. We know this based on the structure and the logic of the grammar of the sentence itself.

And moreover, I mentioned the second point, that there are cases in which God does bind, or rather ratify the decisions of the earthly Beth Din or the earthly court. And so I think this clearly implies infallibility if God stands behind a particular decision. So the language of all of this seems to suggest that when whatever Peter binds on earth shall have been bound in heaven, that the decision that he is binding on earth, it shall have already been declared correct by God. And so one could argue that actually, even if the rabbinic court maybe sometimes made certain mistakes or whatever, I would argue in the rabbinical commandments, there's an elevation of authority when it's given to the apostles,

because it's already saying that the decision you've already, that the decision you've declared has already been protected by God, such that you would not have declared it had it not been protected by God in the first place. And thus, when we try to make sense of, for instance, Jesus's teachings, it's interesting that Jesus does not dismiss the authority of rabbinic rulings. Even though Stephen argues for this kind of more ironic or exaggerated interpretation, the reality is that Jesus cited the authority of the Pharisees on the seat of Moses in order to then tell the people to obey them. And so if Jesus didn't want the people to obey the Pharisees on the seat of Moses in order to then tell the people to obey them. And so if Jesus didn't want the people to obey the Pharisees, then why did he say

this particular thing? I think it's really dangerous and imprudent of Christ to say this, but because I don't believe that Christ is imprudent and because I can interpret that passage in light of its Jewish context, inherent to the context of the scriptures itself and the gospel of Matthew and the gospel of Matthew and the time in which it was written, we can see that we don't have to do Stephen's maneuver in order to reconcile this interpretation, but rather with the growing consensus of scholars, Jesus had a much more nuanced view of rabbinic authority. And hence, that's why he gave the authority of binding and loosing to his apostles. Jesus didn't give this unreliable broken authority to the apostles.

He gave them this power to bind and loose so that they could guide the people forward. And so the fourth argument I gave is that, you know, of course, it would appear immoral for God to command people to absolutely obey an authority that can bind them to error. So suppose that Stephen says, OK, Matthew 23, 2 to 3. That's only you know, that's ironic. Right. suppose that Stephen says, okay, Matthew 23, two to three, that's only, you know, that's ironic, right? But then in Deuteronomy 17, 11 to 12, God gives the power to the judges during Moses's day to make these declarations that people have to absolutely obey them. It's explicit in that Deuteronomy passage. And that if they don't, then they have to face the death penalty. And so Stephen never engaged this particular argument that I'm making, which is that if it holds in the Old

Testament, then I see no reason why it doesn't hold in the New Testament. And then finally, I mentioned the God-breathed argument, which is that if the inference of infallibility or inerrancy holds for 2 Timothy 3.16, then why not John 20.22? And I want to emphasize this point that even Stephen acknowledges at some point in his epistemology that he has to just have faith that the apostles were being accurate, that they had these kinds of experiences. Well, what was the experience of the apostles? Jesus gave them the power to bind and loose. Jesus says, whoever hears you, hears me. When the apostles built the church, they used the laying on of hands in order to ordain men. Where'd they get that idea from? From the institutions that were there during their time.

And so it seems clear to me then that the apostles and the early church consciously modeled itself after the institutions of law that were there during the time of Jesus. And this is why I mentioned the importance of the successional arguments. The fact that Jesus recognizes the authority of the Sanhedrin 12 to 1400 years after it was originally instituted. The fact that you have the Jewish roots of apostolic succession and it claimed in the very early church. Or even the fact that one, it was the messianic have the Jewish roots of apostolic succession and it claimed in the very early church, or even the fact that, one, it was the messianic prophecy that the courts of Moses would be rebuilt by God when the Messiah would come. And so if Jesus is the Messiah, you have good grounds for believing that he rebuilt the courts of Israel, because that's what the book of Isaiah says, and we know Isaiah gives prophecy as attested in the New Testament.

And then I mentioned 10 mounting parallels for why we can know that the church consciously modeled itself after the institutions that were there during the time of Jesus. And so what I want to say is that if you are going to base your arguments off of faith in Jesus, or you're going to begin in a position of faith in Jesus, faith in the gospel writers, then go there, study the historical context, and see what came later. And when you ask yourself, why did the later church claim these certain prerogatives and powers? I think what you will find is that they weren't claiming some new innovation, but rather they were going back to the roots, the Jewish roots of what Christ claimed and what he intended for his church,

because he was the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament. All right. Thank you, Son. Stephen, whenever you'd like to start, I'll click the timer as soon as you start speaking. I gave three arguments why there is no infallible magisterium in the Church. One of them is because if we just pay close attention to how it is that we actually know things, we'll find out that we don't have infallible knowledge about anything that's outside of us. The second argument is that in the Bible, it's clear that the promises that God makes to a person may not come true, even if, you know, however unconditional and however confident the language, the original language of the promise might have been, if that person doesn't cooperate or if that person goes off the rails. And the

third point that I made is that given what salvation actually consists in, given what actually the experience of salvation is, the infallible magisterium is unnecessary. So I've suggested that if we just pay close attention to what is actually happening when we do theology, there is no notion that anybody has infallibility. There's no evidence to suggest that we do. The Bible, it seems to me, even if it makes very confident promises, it nevertheless grants always, there's two sides to the story. You know, for example, in the Proverbs, it says, answer a fool according to his folly. And then it says, don't answer a fool according to his folly. Because it recognizes that there is one way of looking at things and another way of looking at

things. There is this path to take, and there is that path to take. And sometimes you can come up with reasons for both. And finally, it seems to me, you know, that there are passages in scripture that suggest that really the important things are so clear and obvious that you don't need an infallible magisterium. You don't need somebody claiming authority over the consciences and the souls of other people because it's obvious. For example, John writes in his first epistle, you have the anointing and you don't need anybody to teach you, right? You know if somebody says that Christ did not come in the flesh, he is not of God. You know that very clearly. So I would say that there is no infallibility in the, there is no infallible magisterium in the church for these reasons. But even if somebody finds Swan's arguments very

convincing, and I'm willing to admit that Swan's arguments are compelling, he presents a very coherent and a logical line of reasoning for coming to a certain conclusion. Nevertheless, as I said at the beginning of my discussion, it's one thing to follow a train of ideas in a certain direction. It's another thing for that actually to be true. And when we actually turn to our experience where everything takes place, which in my mind is the ultimate measure of things, we find that there is no such infallibility.

For as much, you know, for as convincing as Swan's arguments may be, there's going to be someone who comes later and who refutes him or who comes up with a totally opposite view of things or who undermines his claims, you know, or his interpretations of the rabbinical history and so on. For as compelling as the Roman Catholic doctrine seems, nevertheless, it makes all these statements that cannot be verified. And very many people recognize, for example, that the Nicene case or the exegetical case for various doctrines that are taken for granted in Roman Catholic theology simply cannot be made on the

basis of scripture alone. That's why very many Roman Catholic theologians throughout history thought that scripture was materially insufficient for its teaching and it needed to be supplemented by tradition. There are always two sides to the story. And so what I would say is that in a world where there are always two sides to the story, in a world where one person, you know, states his case and it seems right, and then someone comes along and cross-examines him and suddenly you're not so sure anymore. In a world like that, it seems to me there is no place for an infallible magisterium. Nothing can justify a claim that one person makes over another that I am infallible and you should submit to me. So I cannot help but to see in the claim to infallibility a kind of,

even if it's unwilling, even if it's unconscious, a kind of a power play. All right. Thank you very much, both of you, for the time you took to study and to engage in this debate. I really appreciate it. As we wrap up, tell us where we can learn more about you and the work you're involved in. Stephen? Well, you can go to my website, stephennamesh.com. There I have my CV and I have various things. I also have a website, christisforeveryone.com, which is kind of an online ministry of mine where I post meditations and blog posts and commentaries on biblical passages and so on.

And the tagline of the website is celebrating the goodness of life and the love of Christ. So my goal with Christ is for everyone is to show how Christianity, the teachings of Jesus Christ actually make our lives better and how they bring us, like Christ said, a joy that nobody can take away, a peace that the world cannot offer, freedom, and life in abundance. Thank you. Swan? Yeah, so I have a podcast, a YouTube channel, and yeah, podcast and YouTube channel by the name of Intellectual Conservatism. Stephen and I, we've done a few written debates on the Medium website, so you can find some of the written stuff that I've done there. And then I do have a few papers on academia.edu. I'm hoping to share some of my other work, and I'm currently doing research

upon rabbinics and Judaism and hopefully talking to some rabbis soon. Yeah, and I mean, I would just say, just as Stephen articulated the purpose of his ministry, the purpose of my ministry is to return to the ancient Christian faith and what Christ originally intended for his church and devotion to the Messiah, the true King and final King of Israel. All right, guys. Well, thank you again. This has been absolutely fantastic. I want to let people know, too,

we are trying to raise money to bring someone a full time to do video editing and camera work here in the studio. You get many kind of, I think, bonuses when you become a patron, say, at patreon.com slash mattfradd. One of those things you'll get is a seven-part video series, really a masterclass taught by Swan on the papacy. So if you want to kind of take this a little slower

and get access to that as well and a ton of other material, go to patreon.com slash mattfradd. Please don't forget to subscribe. We've got some excellent debates and interviews lined up, including a discussion between Jimmy Akin and Dr. William Len Craig on the Kalam Cosmological Argument. Obviously, both are Christians. Jimmy Akin agrees with Thomas Aquinas that the Kalam Argument, at least the philosophical version, doesn't work.

So to have two powerhouses like Dr. Craig and Jimmy Akin on the show is going to be fantastic. So please subscribe and click that bell button so you won't miss out. God bless you and a big thanks. See ya. See you later, man. Thank you. សូវាប់ពីបានប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្� Thank you. Bye.