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The SEEK Podcast
A Conversation With The Man That Wrote "Pope Peter": Catholic Answers x SEEK
Dive deep into the mysteries of faith with Joe Heschmeyer, celebrated author and podcaster, in this episode recorded live at SEEK in Salt Lake City. Together, we explore the transformation of afterlife concepts from the Old Testament to the New Testament through Christ’s resurrection, and delve into the pivotal role of Peter in establishing the Church’s foundation in Rome, as detailed in Joe’s book, “Pope Peter.”
Further enriching this episode is a comparative analysis of Catholic and Protestant views on the papacy, inspired by insights from Dr. Gavin Ortlund. We reflect on the historical and ecumenical impacts of councils like the Second Council of Lyon, fostering a dialogue that bridges doctrinal divides. The conversation also ventures into the challenges of engaging respectfully online, promoting a culture of reverence and gentle discourse in digital spaces.
Check out SEEK Replay at https://seekreplay.com/welcome
Welcome to the Seek 25 podcast, featuring some of our favorite podcasters recorded live at the Max Studios podcast stage during Seek 25 in Salt Lake City.
Speaker 2:Hello and welcome to Catholic Answers Live. I am Cy Kellett, your host, and we'll be recording this and we'll be broadcasting it as a radio program. So it might not sound exactly like the podcast sound, but we'll be using it as a radio program. Our guest, of course, is the great Joe Heschmeyer. The author of the Eucharist is Really Jesus, the Early Church Was the Catholic Church and many other books, and the podcaster behind the Shameless Potpourri podcast.
Speaker 2:Thank you for being here, joe, my pleasure. You've had a bit of a cold, so are you going to have any difficulty speaking for this? We'll find out. We'll find out if we can get answers to you. We got a lot of folks lined up to ask their questions, so, if you don't mind, I'll just let the listener know we're at the SEEK conference, which is also called Catholic Coachella, I think it's. Thousands and thousands, and probably about one billion Catholics have come to it and it's in Salt Lake City this year. We're having a great time. Come on up, you can ask your first question. Yes, you, you, sir, come to the microphone and we can. You can ask your first question.
Speaker 3:All right, I have a quick question for Silo, real quick. Yeah, when are we going to be able to ask you questions? And I don't want to hear you say that you're not as good as answering questions, I just want to hear you answer them.
Speaker 2:So your question for me is when can you ask me questions? Yes, well, you can ask any time, but it doesn't matter what the question is I think you just did. Yeah, you did, but I'm just programmed this way no matter what you ask me, I'll go Joe, and then that'll be that. So you can ask whatever you like, but it'll probably be Joe.
Speaker 3:that answers All right. All right, so my question was about the afterlife. So what do the people of the Old Testament believe happened after death? I know they believed in a place going to Sheol, but what does that actually mean, and how did that change with Christ's death and resurrection?
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's a really big question because we find greater clarity as we go throughout the Old Testament. So the original sense of Sheol just means something like the grave or the underworld. So the original sense of shale just means something like the grave or the underworld, and so it's used to refer to where the dead go, whether they're the righteous or the wicked. And so as we get into the New Testament, you get more clarity that even though all were going to shale, they were not all having the same kind of experience. So in the Gospel of Luke, for example, having the same kind of experience.
Speaker 4:So in the Gospel of Luke, for example, when Jesus gives the parable of Lazarus and the rich man, we find they both die and are taken to Sheol, but one of them is in the bosom of Abraham, which is sometimes called the limbo of the fathers. It was a place of waiting before they could enter heaven, because Christ is the one who opens the doors of heaven. But the wicked are actually in a place of suffering which comes to be known as Hades. Hades is technically it can just be a translation of Sheol, but it has more of a sense of the hell, of punishment. And so you have this increasing sense that some of those are actually in a place of suffering and some of those are in a place of rest. And when Christ comes, he liberates those who are in that place of rest, the bosom of Abraham, and brings them into a place of eternal glory, into the full vision and presence of God that we call heaven.
Speaker 2:Eddie right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Eddie.
Speaker 2:Eddie, because I didn't introduce you at the beginning. Sorry, eddie, thank you very much. Appreciate the question. And then the other question. Yeah, eddie, eddie, because I didn't introduce you at the beginning. Sorry, eddie, thank you very much. Appreciate the question. And then the other question. Thanks, eddie. All right, who we got next? Come on up, ask whatever question you've got for. Joe Heschmeyer, hang on, I'm going to guess your name.
Speaker 5:It's Josh. Is it Josh? It is Josh, campus minister in the great state of Texas, san Antonio Archdiocese. So my question is on apologetics, how can we defend scripturally the primacy of Peter All the apostles had to bind and loose that authority but papal primacy and along with that, how can we confidently say that the church was based in Rome and not any of the other places in the Holy Land Great?
Speaker 4:Okay, well, first of all, if you want to afterwards go by the Catholic Answers booth and tell them I said you could have a copy of my book Pope Peter, that's going to be a fuller version of the answer I'm about to give you, Because that's just like a book-length treatment of how do we know? Peter is the first pope.
Speaker 2:Everybody here is going to go by the booth and say Joe said I could have a copy of Pope.
Speaker 4:Peter Exactly. Everyone just claim you're Josh. They didn't see the show, they don't know who he is. It helps if you have a blue polo, because I think that was mentioned. So, yeah, the short answer is this we know that there's a special role given to Peter. We know that from several ways and many Protestants, if you ask them about that, will acknowledge that he has some kind of special role. But this isn't just a special role he gives to himself. This is a special role that Jesus gives to him. We see this in big ways and small ways. Small ways would be something like this Every time the apostles are mentioned, judas is at the end, peter is at the beginning, the 10 in the middle are in different orders.
Speaker 4:So Peter always has a primacy and Judas always is taking up the last place. When Peter's mentioned in Acts, it says Peter and the apostles, which shows that Peter was distinct even from the other apostles, or Peter and the 11 in Acts 2. So you have all of these places where Peter is singled out with a special kind of authority and primacy. Now we can ask what did that authority and primacy look like? One of the clearest places to go to answer that is Luke, chapter 22, at the Last Supper, the disciples are arguing about which of them is the greatest, and Jesus doesn't criticize them for that. He rather tells them how to spot greatness. And greatness is exemplified by Christian service, that to be a leader in the Christian perspective is to be a servant of those God has entrusted to your care. This is true of every priest, every bishop, every parent, and it's true as well of the Pope. So he tells the 12 that they're to have this kind of role and he talks about how they'll sit on 12 tribes excuse me, 12 thrones, judging the 12 tribes of Israel. So he shows that all of them are to be the servants of God. But then, in the very next verse, he singles out one of them and says Simon, simon, satan has desired to sift all of you like wheat. But I have prayed for you and here he switches from the you plural to the you singular. I've prayed for you, simon, that your faith may not fail and, when you have turned back, strengthen your brethren. What do we make from that? Well, a few things. Number one of all the ways Jesus could have responded to the fact that Satan was going to try all 12, he could have said I stopped him because I'm God ways. Jesus could have responded to the fact that Satan was going to try all 12,. He could have said I stopped him because I'm God. He could have said I prayed for all 12.
Speaker 4:He chooses instead to pray for Simon Peter and then entrust the care of the other apostles to Peter. He's to be the servant of the servants of God, which is one of the titles we use for the Pope to this day. That's all built there in scripture. He has an actual spiritual authority and entrustment that is not given to anyone else. It's not just that he was a natural leader, it's something much more than that. And that doesn't even get into the really obvious places, like in Matthew 16, where Jesus tells Peter that he's rock and upon this rock he'll build his church. And then he tells Peter individually that he's rock and upon this rock he'll build his church. And then he tells Peter individually that he's going to give him the keys of the kingdom and that he'll have the power to bind and loosen. So you have all of those things, and then you still have two questions left. One, how do we know that this continued on after Peter? Two, how do we know this is tied to Rome.
Speaker 4:John 21 shows this kind of vision of the church throughout the age, and I don't have time to do this justice right now, but it's. John describes this resurrection appearance in which seven of the apostles are on the sea and they see Jesus on the shores. And one of the early Christian readings is that this is almost a sort of like vision or prophecy or parable of the journey of the church throughout the ages. That the point here is not just Jesus rose from the dead. John 20 already established that. John 21 is about the role of the church on the way to encounter Jesus on the eternal shores. And it's Peter with six others with him. And then Peter is able to drag the net ashore when no one else can. And all of this is rich in meaning if you understand how often Jesus uses the net as an image for the church, like in Matthew 13, or uses it as an image for Peter's role in evangelization, like in Luke, chapter five and in Matthew 17. So you have like all of these scriptures coming together. Well, that shows that there's an ongoing role. We might call it a Petrine role, like a Peter-ish role, from here till we meet Christ in eternity.
Speaker 4:And then the last thing how do we know that is in Rome?
Speaker 4:Well, because that's where Peter goes, and he says as much in 1 Peter, where he says that he's sending greetings from Babylon. Babylon was what the early Christians referred to Rome as, because that's who they were in captivity to. Like the Babylonians of old, it wasn't like he'd literally gone east to the ancient city of Babylon. He's clearly in Rome, and you have plenty of other ancient sources that attest to the fact that Peter's in Rome, and you have ancient sources that attest to the fact that the Roman church has a special authority. So the very last point, st Irenaeus in Against Heresy's book three talks about how it is a matter of necessity that every church agree with the church of Rome. Now he says those words in 180. This is the same document in which we first hear that Matthew, mark, luke and John are the four gospels. So there's a bunch of biblical reasons and a bunch of early Christian reasons to believe that Peter had a special role and that his successors, the popes, had those special roles as well.
Speaker 2:Josh, thank you very much. Thank you, don't forget to go get your book. I want to just say to Eddie that's why I don't answer questions, I can't do that. So nice job, joe. Nice job on that. I'll tell you all, at booth 1448, that's our booth way over there in the corner, joe's going to be signing books after this. So if you'd like to get one of Joe's books and have him sign it, just go all the way over to the corner there to booth 1448. Jordan, I got the name right, right.
Speaker 8:All right, nice to see you. Welcome. Go ahead with your question for Joe. Yes, sir. Hello Joe, I love watching your content. By the way, you did a great job. Thank you very much.
Speaker 8:So my name is Jordan. I'm actually a Protestant. I'm discerning right now between Protestantism and Orthodoxy and I'm convinced of apostolic succession and the Eucharist. So that's kind of like the Eucharist kind of what hit the nail for me. But my question right now, one thing I'm struggling with, my paradigm, is so I believe baptism saves, but I struggle with infant baptism. And so, to give you an understanding, my paradigm right now comes from a Church of Christ background, so I believe that baptism does save, but I just struggle. So my belief is also and I want you to help me understand the infant baptism paradigm but in that and I've heard of people talk about infant faith and how John the Baptist, you know he had the Holy Spirit, and so what my question is I want help in understanding and getting a reasonable understanding of how infant baptism works, even if a child, baby, does not have faith.
Speaker 4:So yeah, can I ask you a couple of questions? Actually, absolutely. Just to get a better sense of where you're coming from. So do you believe in original sin?
Speaker 8:In what sense? Like in a.
Speaker 4:Okay, that's a good question, that there is some kind of lack, there's a sort of distortion, that, based on our parents sinning and you know, we then add to that with our own individual sins, but that we are born not in the union with God that we want to be in.
Speaker 8:Yeah, kind of like how Father Michael Schmitz talked about it.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I didn't actually get to see it because I was at the booth. Way to rub that in.
Speaker 8:I'm sorry, but yes, yes, yes, yes.
Speaker 4:Okay. So the short answer is this In baptism, it's not just the forgiveness of sins, it's not just the salvation of our souls, it's also the entry into the people of God. In Acts, chapter 2, it says that 3,000 were added to the church when they were baptized. Like, right there, this is like the doorway into the church, right. And that's just talking about Pentecost, right? So we want little children to come to Christ, and Jesus does too. He says as much. He says let the little children come to me. And so in the old covenant, the way a young boy would come to enter into the covenant on the eighth day was circumcision. St Paul compares baptism to circumcision as, like the new circumcision. And so it's the doorway into the church.
Speaker 4:Because otherwise you have this problem of, like, what happens if a baby dies? Because you can say, well, they don't have faith, but they also have never committed any sins. So then you're in this strange kind of place. Well, the solution to that that Christ gives us is to let the little children come to him. You don't want to be left in a situation where you're questioning what happens to unborn children or children who've just been born, rather that kind of question I know many Protestants will debate like can we say our children who die in infancy are saved? Those kind of questions go away if you baptize your kid. So what's the biblical basis for it? One biblical basis is, as you say, baptism now saves you. 1 Peter 3.21. If you believe baptism saves you and you believe that Christ wants to save everyone, including small children, and he's very clear about that then this is the means by which he gives us access to salvation. Now he can save people other ways. I don't mean to deny that he could do things differently, but the way he tells us is with baptism.
Speaker 4:So another thing I'd add to that is the notion of the so-called household passages in Acts. So you know, you've got things like Acts 17, lydia and her whole household are baptized. Stephanus in 1 Corinthians, his old household gets baptized. We are not told in all of these verses like what are the ages of every member of the house. But we know enough about the demography of the first century that people tended to have large families with older and younger kids. So it'd be very strange if in all of these household baptism cases not one of them had any small children. Like it's not impossible, but it's improbable to read all the household passages. So we know that salvation was being promised to you and your household in the preaching of the gospel and we know also in 1 Corinthians 7, st Paul says even this. He says 1 Corinthians 7, verse 14. Paul says even this. He says 1 Corinthians 7, verse 14, the unbelieving husband is consecrated through his wife and the unbelieving wife is consecrated through her husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean. But as it is, they are holy.
Speaker 8:Could you actually I mean my friend, me and my friend were talking about that. I don't, I'm sorry, everybody behind me. Could you go just a little bit more into that, Because that's one thing I haven't understood yet. But that did kind of point towards that a household could be saved through the either head or the woman or the man of the household.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so there's something mysterious about it and Paul gives us exactly like one to two verses where he explains this big theological bomb. But we know this. Go back to the Old Testament. As for me and my house, we shall serve the Lord. You have an actual spiritual authority that you can exercise as a parent, and we come from this very Western, very individualistic culture where it's every man for himself and that is just fundamentally not Christian. That is not the worldview of the Bible, old or New Testament. We can do things to bring other people to Christ. We do it in any number of ways. Remember the paralytic man.
Speaker 8:He's brought to Jesus by his friends, do you?
Speaker 4:remember what it says. Jesus looked at their faith and healed the man. Didn't just heal him, saved him. So you should bring everyone you can to Christ. Let him sort out the details Maybe. Oh well, they had to do it themselves. Fine, he can sort that out. You do everything you can to bring your family and your friends before God, and one of the ways we do that is by bringing our children to the font of baptism.
Speaker 8:That definitely makes sense and definitely in accordance to the Old Testament paradigm of honoring your father and mother as well. So thank you so much.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Thank you. Thank you for you know, as a Protestant person coming up and asking your question, that's very, it's very gracious of you to let us have the opportunity to do that and everyone listening please offer a prayer for him. David's going to give you a book one of Joe's books before you go, because we're trying to get you. We're trying to get you in the Catholic Church. Come on up, matthew, Catholic or Protestant no, we're only taking Protestants. Now that we got him, okay, go ahead. You can go now that we got them.
Speaker 9:Okay, go ahead, you can go. Howdy, I'm a student at Kansas State University. Hey, go Wildcats. Yeah, cradle Catholic at St Michael's. So I had a hypothetical brought up by a friend that he used to sort of justify why he believes hell shouldn't exist with a loving God. And the hypothetical was if I have a wife and I tell my wife, if you don't love me, I'm going to set you on fire, does she have a choice? And am I loving husband?
Speaker 4:It's a good way of capturing how atheists misunderstand hell. So let's reframe it. Let's say you're deeply in love with your wife and she's the only person who could satisfy the longing of your heart. And then one day, in a peak of anger, you divorce her, cut off all contact with her, delete her number from your phone, move to the other part of the world and cut off all contact forever. Your heart is aching in a way that cannot be healed because the only one who could ever heal it you've cut off contact with her completely. Does that make her unloving? Absolutely not. It's precisely because of how lovable she is that you would feel that tremendous ache in her absence.
Speaker 4:So love always includes vulnerability. First thing, vulnerability is the ability to be wounded. Second, we are made with our hearts with an infinite longing, so that there is, frankly, no one on earth and nothing on earth that can fill the longings of your heart or my heart. God alone can fill that longing and if you've ever tried to fill that longing with anyone or anything else, you know like it'll lead to the worst codependent relationship. When you're trying to fill the God-shaped hole with another person, it'll lead to the worst excesses and food and drugs and sex and you name it, if you're trying to fill it with something other than God. God alone can fill the chasm and the ache in our hearts. And so if we cut off contact with him forever and we say I don't want you, he can't give us some other God that'll fill that infinite longing. There isn't one and there couldn't be one. If God created something else, it wouldn't be the infinite, uncreated God.
Speaker 4:So we will always have that unfulfilled, unsatiated longing and that is truly hellacious, like imagine eating and never being full. There's in Eastern mythology the notion of the hungry ghost. You know the ghost that continues to eat, but the more you eat, the larger your stomach gets and the hungrier you get. And it's just this notion of unfulfilled longing and it is hellacious, genuinely, definitionally hellacious. That's what it is to have this unfulfilled longing in our hearts. That's not God, just being like I'm upset, you didn't choose me. That's God being the only one and only thing that is infinitely worthy of love. So it's just a matter of, like atheists, getting the basic metaphysics right.
Speaker 2:And so don't set your wife on fire, I just want to my wife's already smoking. Okay, oh, joe, nicely done. Thank you, matthew, julian Correct.
Speaker 10:All right, julian, come on up. Hi Joe, my name is Julian. I'm from SoCal.
Speaker 4:Nice, oh, never mind, that's a conversation for one-on-one.
Speaker 10:Yeah, I love your content. Shameless Potpourri. I listen like I'm caught up, Love it. I also really enjoy Dr Gavin Ortlund's work, and something that he mentions in one of his videos is that the Protestant church is more Catholic than the Catholic church.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean, follow that logically, you'd have to say the most Catholic people are the people who believe in nothing, because then there's nothing you have to believe in. So I think when you just think about the argument logically for a second, it's like well, that doesn't make any sense. Sense, because what this is and you'll find this many times in Protestantism is this idea that to be one, we have to find the merest version of mere Christianity. How much stuff can we get rid of Christianity and just have like that we can all agree on and that is a zero? Like that tendency towards minimalism is ultimately going to bankrupt us, and significantly.
Speaker 4:That's not how early Christians approached the faith. They didn't say what is the least we can believe in. They wanted to know the most they could about God, because they wanted to understand God better. And so with the creed you can say well, did they need every line in that? Well, not if you're approaching it from a minimalist perspective, but if you're approaching it from trying to understand God better, then it's appropriate.
Speaker 4:So Catholic means we are of the whole, which means we have the whole faith, not just a mere sliver of it. And so the way the word Catholic is used from the very beginning is not the way Gavin uses it. Catholic was used to distinguish Christians who had the fullness of the faith from people who called themselves Christian but believed in heresy. Now if we just said we're not going to get into the details on heresy and orthodoxy, we could have been Catholic, in quotation marks in the way Gavin uses it, of like let's all just get along, but that's not what the word means historically. So we want to understand what did the early Christians mean by one holy Catholic and apostolic church?
Speaker 4:And you can trace the usage of Catholic all the way back to Ignatius of Antioch and it very clearly is one visible body with common doctrines and a common Eucharist, one bishop per church. You can see all of that in Ignatius' writing and he's even clear you don't have a church if you don't have the bishop, presbyter, deacon, structure. So all of that is right there. It's only by redefining what we mean by Catholic and by switching from the early Christian approach of let's understand Christianity as best we can to what's the least we can understand in common. So there's no disputes. Final thing on this, the pivotal thing is if you believe that the church is infallible, then you want more definition because you can trust more definition. If you think the church isn't infallible, then you want less definition, because every time you make a claim about God, you're doing your best, but you could get something wrong. So you'd want fewer and fewer claims about God, whereas if you believe in infallibility, you want more and more.
Speaker 2:That makes sense, yeah, so there you go, all right, thank you. Thank you, julian. Thanks very much, cale. I got that right. Yeah, all right, cale, welcome, go ahead with your question.
Speaker 11:First of all, I want to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. So my question as a young man discerning between Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism, I'm aware that reading the early church fathers is essential in order to find the one true church, but is that all I need to do? It seems like a never-ending intellectual battle that much smarter people than I have landed both sides on. That being said, if you were in my position, how do you go about discovering the one true church?
Speaker 4:That's a really good question and in the book Pope Peter I call it the church's most distinctive doctrine. Here's what I mean. Like if you were at the car dealership and you said I don't know if I should get a car or a truck, and the person said what do you want to do? And you said I want to haul lumber, they would say you need a truck for that, because the distinctive feature about a truck is that it has a truck bed. That is not the most important feature of a truck the engine is more important than the truck bed but it is the most distinctive. It is the identifying. How do I know which one to do? Okay, well, if I know I need one with a truck bed, I'm obviously going with a truck. So when you're talking about Catholicism compared to Orthodoxy or Coptic Christianity or Protestantism, the distinctive doctrine is the papacy. So if the papacy is true, everyone should be Catholic. If the papacy isn't true, no one should be Catholic. Is the papacy true? I would ask that question. Notice how your workload has already been narrowed quite a bit.
Speaker 4:One of the ways we find out if the papacy is true is from scripture. I talked about that earlier. Another way we talk. We understand it is looking at how the early Christians approached it. In both the East and the West, there's agreement that the Bishop of Rome has some kind of special role. We might debate what the exact nature of that is, but it is more than just honorary. There's actual authority that the bishop of Rome carries. Now, where do we find that authority today In the Catholic church? These Orthodox don't even claim to have the bishop of Rome. And so if the bishop of Rome is this part of Christianity from the first century and is there by the will of God and for this special role, one of the eastern fathers refers to the role of the pope as Cori Phaeus. Now, in ancient Greek, like theater, this would be the person who would lead the song and dance, so he would keep the tune. He would lead the song and dance, so he would keep the tune, he would lead the dance, et cetera, like kind of the band leader that keeps everybody else in rhythm. That's the Pope's role. He keeps every other bishop on the same page in rhythm. That role is still being played by the Pope today.
Speaker 4:So then, the last thing I would say is twice in the history of the church Second Council of Lyon and then the Council of Florence. There were these reunion councils and the Council of Florence was actually successful for a while, where the Eastern Orthodox came back into union with the church and confessed, at an ecumenical council, the authority of the Pope they repudiated it later. The authority of the Pope they repudiated it later. But if ecumenical councils mean anything, florence has all the appearances of being an ecumenical council. It's agreed to by not only the Catholic delegates but the Eastern Orthodox and the Coptic delegates, the Byzantine emperor, the patriarch of Constantinople, like all of that happens. And so the very last thing, I'd say so if you look at ecumenical councils, they should make you Catholic.
Speaker 4:If you look at what? The early Christians thing? I'd say so. If you look at a community councils, they should make you Catholic. If you look at what the early Christians said about Rome, that should make you Catholic. If you look at what scripture says about Peter, that should make you Catholic. But also if you just ask yourself logically well, christ prays that we're all going to be one, where and how is that going to happen? It's not going to happen in any one Protestant denomination. It's not going to happen in Russian Orthodoxy or Greek Orthodoxy or any of the other various Orthodox churches. If it's going to happen, it's going to happen under the earthly authority of the Pope.
Speaker 2:I would like to recommend. We have a book called Answering Orthodoxy and we don't have it here, but you can order it. Or, if you want to call us and remind us that we had this conversation, we can just send you a copy. We'd be happy to send it to you, cale.
Speaker 4:Yeah, Michael Lofton and Eric Ibarra have done a lot of good work on these kind of questions.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Michael Lofton wrote that. He wrote that book for us Answering Orthodoxy. I do want to let folks know that if you don't know about us, you can find us at catholiccom. Catholiccom is the second most used Catholic website in the world after the Vatican's own website. It's now in English and in Spanish, so if some of you are on mission or working with folks who would like to use the materials in Spanish, that's available. We have 40 years worth of questions and answers about the Catholic faith there and we are more or less I mean, I guess our rule is to answer questions as best we can, the way the church answers those using the documents of the church, particularly the catechism of the Catholic church and the Bible, of course. So check it out at catholiccom, if you would, Cale. Thank you very much. Thanks again, guys. Thank you and Zach, you are next. All right, Zach, we're glad you're here. Go ahead with your question.
Speaker 7:Hello, I'm Zach, love you guys, Love what you guys do, listen to you guys all the time, thank you. Yeah, I'm from Nebraska. Just say shout out, go Big Red. But yeah, my question is Um. So if sacred scripture, uh, can we consider Jesus as sacred scripture If John, the gospel of John and many other parts of the Bibles? Bible refers um, refers John or, excuse me, refers Jesus as the word and as the word of God? So good, question.
Speaker 4:So we wouldn't call Jesus scripture, we wouldn't call scripture Jesus. But there is a relationship between the two. That word of God refers to the revelation that comes forth from God, the way the father reveals himself. He reveals himself in many and various ways. Hebrews 1 says the written form of that. So the word scripture just means writings. So the written form of God's self-revelation is what we call scripture. So it's something that's called the small w word of God.
Speaker 4:But the fullness of revelation isn't scripture it's actually not scripture in tradition together. No, the fullness of revelation is Jesus Christ himself. He says if you have seen me, you've seen the father. So the Bible is revelation and Jesus is revelation. But Jesus is the fullness of revelation, and so we call them both the word of God. We don't call Jesus scripture because he's not written, he's alive, but he's the word of God that's living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword Like that's who? Jesus is the one who will judge us. But yeah, so when you're reading verses in the Bible talking about word of God, sometimes we hear that and immediately think that means Bible, that means revelation, which could mean the Bible in context, but other times means other things, like a part of the Bible, or the oral preaching of the apostles, or Jesus himself.
Speaker 2:All right, thank you, trenton. Oh no, trenton's next. Wait, what's that? Melissa Welcome.
Speaker 4:I wonder why he sent Melissa to the front of the line.
Speaker 2:I think look at that collection of dudes right there. I think I know why they sent you to the front of the line. I think look at that collection of dudes right there. I think I know why they sent you to the front of the line. Oh, they're all gentlemen, and they all agreed. Some of them look bitter. Melissa, I'd be careful, Walk away that way. Don't go back that way. All right, where are you from?
Speaker 12:I'm from Minnesota originally but I go to North Dakota State University in Fargo, North Dakota, Nice, at North Dakota State University in Fargo, North Dakota, Nice. Warm weather area. Go ahead with your question, Melissa. So mine kind of has a bit of a premise. On my campus there is a few people, but one person specifically, who just like kind of constantly spams like our internet pages and like some of them are like public servers for NDSU with like biblical content, and him in specific is a Baptist, but there's a couple like evangelical and he likes to talk about like how the Catholic church is the blank of Babylon and you know that sort of stuff.
Speaker 2:You can even say the word. It's in the Bible. So you're okay to say if you want to.
Speaker 4:I like that you had the prudence not to find out.
Speaker 2:Yeah right.
Speaker 12:EWT had to be hitting the dumb button on us, but basically the rest of campus finds him super annoying and really obnoxious and it actually kind of gives us a bad rep because people give it a quick glance and see a Bible verse and think, oh my gosh, it's those Bison Catholics over there. Basically, my question is how do we encounter the world and take criticism and spread the gospel without being seen as irritating or annoying or like that guy?
Speaker 2:Joe does not know the answer to that.
Speaker 4:I can tell you yeah, I'm generally irritating about everything. Talk football with me after this. I'm from Kansas city, I'll be insufferable, but now I would say this in second Timothy, chapter two insufferable, but now I would say this in 2 Timothy, chapter 2, st Paul gives this counsel. It begins in verse 23. He says have nothing to do with stupid, senseless controversies. You know that they breed quarrels and the Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome, but kindly to everyone, an apt teacher, forbearing, correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant that they will repent and come to know the truth and they may escape from the snare of the devil after being captured by him to do his will.
Speaker 4:Now some people listening need to be reminded. You actually have to correct people who are in error sometimes, and the reason you have to correct them is because you love them and you don't want them to go to hell. Like if you're standing in the street and a car is coming. I'm not going to be like. I don't want to be rude, I don't even really know Melissa. I'll be like a car is coming, get out of the road because I love you enough to not want you to die, even though I don't really know you. On the other hand, some of us need to be reminded to avoid stupid controversies and quarrelsomeness and all of that stuff, because we just like fighting and being right. And then some of us need to be reminded if you're going to fight, it's okay to have opponents, it's okay to correct errors, but you have to do it gently. So make sure it's not pointless, make sure it's motivated out of love for their soul and make sure that it's being done gently. Those are the ground rules that St Paul gives us.
Speaker 2:Now there's a lot of St Peter too. I'm sorry to interrupt. Oh yeah, St Peter 2, in all gentleness.
Speaker 4:That's right. In 1 Peter 3, 15, this is, you know where the word apologetics comes from is this word defense, apologia? Always be prepared to give a defense for the hope that is within you. But then he goes on. For the part, nobody likes where he tells us how to do it, and it's to do it, and it's to do it gently and reverently. We're to act with humility, and so if you are acting in that way where you're not just like rubbing people's faces in the truth, but are actually gently, lovingly sharing these things with people, that's much more winsome and inviting.
Speaker 4:Now, look, know this at the outset no matter how good of a job you do and you're going to make mistakes no matter how good of a job you're going to do, some people will be annoyed because you are confronting the fact that they're sinning. They prefer the deeds of darkness to the deeds of light. They had this reaction to Jesus. Some people will find it attractive and God will reach them through your ministry. So the more you can just bring people in with what you love, I think, the more you can attract them. So that's the last thing I'd say. We are sometimes called to correct, and that's the uncomfortable work, the much more comfortable work is just the sharing of what God has done in your life, and people are much less put off by that Because that's just like an amazing witness to why you have joy and hope. Does that help?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 4:That works.
Speaker 12:Yeah, thank you so much, thank you so much.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you very much Thanks for bringing the question. I do. I mean it's harder and harder because of the social media environment. I mean one of the things we need a community of people to help us to be loving. It's easier to be loving when you're in a community of people. If it's the middle of the night and you're responding to someone else's post, it's actually very easy to be negative and not to be reverent and gentle.
Speaker 4:It turns out when you are underslept and you should be in bed and are instead on your phone. You make a lot of mistakes, and one of those can be being a jerk to a random stranger online for no reason. Yeah, and so a good mental practice would be imagine if someone rang your doorbell or whatever and then said hey, did you just say this to me? And then if you would be like, yes, I did. Or would you be like I am so sorry Because we can forget that it's a human being on the other end I mean, it's like you in traffic. You see all those cars you forget there's people in there who are just scared for their life. Being behind you, it's you know we can lose sight of the common humanity.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that is my primary problem too, traffic Trenton we made you wait, but thank you for waiting. Oh, you're good.
Speaker 13:So I'm a Catholic, I go to Nebraska. Can you just get a little?
Speaker 2:closer to the microphone. Another Nebraska Catholic. Is there any other kind of person in Nebraska, like it's all Catholics, I guess.
Speaker 13:Actually, the question does come from my friend. He's Protestant, oh okay, so his question was about we were talking about mother of God, believe it or not. That always gets brought up between Protestants and Catholics. So his question was that if Mary is the mother of God and not the source of the divinity of Jesus, that if Mary is the mother of God and not the source of the divinity of Jesus.
Speaker 4:Why does she need to be sinless? I don't know that needs is the right frame for that, because God could do things a whole lot of ways. I'm going to give you a couple answers to that. The first is, if you take out your Bible and sit down with your Protestant friends, you got to put a ribbon in 1 Samuel, chapter 6 and then Luke 1.
Speaker 4:In 1 Samuel, chapter 6, king David arose and went into the hill country of Judah and he's trying to take the ark into Jerusalem. But he can't take the ark. He didn't do it the right way, he didn't bring the Levites, he just tries to do it himself. And the ark is so holy, not because it's special apart from God, but because it has the overshadowing of God. The ark is so holy that Uzzah, one of the guys with him, touches the ark and is struck dead. And so he's stuck there in the hill country of Judah for three months and he says how can the ark of the Lord come to me? And then he dances before the ark when he finally is able to bring the ark into Jerusalem.
Speaker 4:Then read Luke 1. It says Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country of Judah and she's there for three months and John the Baptist dances for joy before we're told the mother of my Lord. And Elizabeth says why is this that the mother of my Lord should come to me? And Elizabeth says why is this that the mother of my Lord should come to me? So she has this much more like awe-inspired reaction where David is just kind of impatient. But you see the clear parallels and very clearly Mary is being presented as the Ark of the New Covenant. And that's not enough. Right before that, in Luke 1, when Mary asks how this will be because she's a virgin, gabriel tells her it'll happen because the Holy Spirit will overshadow her. Now that word doesn't mean a whole lot to us, but the Greek word being used there is the word used in the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Old Testament, to describe the overshadowing glory of God above the Ark of the Covenant in places like Exodus 40. So it's all of this Ark, language and imagery.
Speaker 4:And so then you could say well, why couldn't the Ark of God just have been an ordinary box? Because it wouldn't have been appropriate, like the whole reason the temple is built is because David has a good sense to realize it's not appropriate that the glory of God should just be in a tent. So the ark is placed in a glorious temple. Well, likewise, when God comes into the world, he could have done it through like the worst, most sinful woman who'd ever lived. But that wouldn't have been fitting, it wouldn't have been appropriate for the grandeur of God. You wouldn't put the ark in a lavatory right, you put the ark in a temple, and likewise you put the glory of God in an ark. So hopefully that makes sense. Yeah, that was perfect.
Speaker 4:Well, I've got one more reason as well. If Mary's a sinner, it would seem now this is more speculative. So do with this what you will. It would seem that Jesus would be owed original sin, and so then he would have to save himself, and that is absolutely inappropriate. He is the sinless one, he's the perfect one by his very nature, his human and divine nature. So I would say those two things would be where I'd go. Thank you guys. Thank you Chetan.
Speaker 2:I think we. Are you going to give away merchandise to people? What are you doing over there? You got merchandise to give away. I think they're going to throw it out to you. In the meantime, why don't you come on up and ask your question?
Speaker 6:Hello, my name is McGivney Swanson. I'm another Nebraskan Catholic, really Uh-huh.
Speaker 2:Boy Boy. Catholic Radio must be powerful up there. It's very good. You guys do a great job. I love listening to you. It's on us Spirit Catholic Radio. They're great.
Speaker 6:But go ahead with your question. Okay, my question for you is I know that the Orthodox Church has the real presence of the Eucharist. I'm not quite sure about the Anglican Church, but I went and toured one today and I wasn't quite sure if I was supposed to kneel or how I was supposed to act in the church because of the real presence, Like what is the appropriate way to act? Good, question.
Speaker 4:So the Orthodox have valid sacraments and, as a result, they have the Eucharist, and so, yeah, you should approach. I mean, the Eucharist is the Eucharist. It isn't like Orthodox Jesus is over there, it's just Jesus and so reverence him as you would Jesus. The Anglicans do not have valid holy orders. Pope Leo was very clear that their orders are absolutely null and utterly void. Now to be clear originally the Anglicans did have holy orders. Like when Henry VIII broke away from the church, they still had valid holy orders. You can have a priesthood even if you're in schism, like when Henry VIII broke away from the church, they still had valid holy orders. You can have a priesthood even if you're in schism, like when the northern and southern tribes in Israel break. There are still priests in both places.
Speaker 4:The problem is the rite of ordination was changed after the Reformation to make it no longer a priesthood but something closer to like a Protestant pastor. And the church said we don't find that to be valid and so we don't recognize their sacraments, and so because of that, most Anglicans don't even think that they have transubstantiation. The 39 articles that the Anglican use kind of loosely as a confession of faith call transubstantiation a blasphemous fable or blasphemous superstition Maybe this is the language, but they explicitly reject that. They have a valid Eucharist, basically. But you will find some Anglo-Catholics who still think they do, but they don't have holy orders any more than you or I do, like if I went home and decided to say the words of institution. That isn't how that works. I can't just make the Eucharist by saying the right words. I don't have the spiritual authority to do that and, unfortunately, neither do the Anglicans.
Speaker 2:That got you what you wanted to get to. Yeah, great answer. Very good, thank you very, very much.
Speaker 2:Thank you, I think we're about to come to the end here. I want to thank our guest, joe Heschmeyer. I hope you will check out Joe's work at shamelessjoecom. Shameless Potpourri is the podcast and it's growing in popularity because of this, because Joe does this with great good humor and also with depth of insight. I want to thank the guys from Max Studios for the wonderful audio and video that they were able to provide us. Thank you very much and thank you all for helping us to make a radio program. We really are grateful. You can check us out every afternoon. We're on 6 to 8 pm Eastern time, 3 to 5 pm Pacific. You figure out where we're on where you are, and please check us out at catholiccom. Like I said, I'm Cy Kellett, the host, and I'm super grateful. Thanks very, very much for coming.
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