Allen Laben - Class 6: Peter and the Papacy

Automatically transcribed. Accuracy is good but not perfect, and words are sometimes wrong. Trust the audio over the text.

1. 0:00

   So keeping with our theme for our gathering here this weekend on the story of the Apostle Peter, or Simon Peter, our brother this evening will offer a lecture to us entitled Peter and the Papacy. And there is no opening reading, so without any delay, we'll kindly ask your attention now as our brother lectures to us.

2. 0:31

   All right, good evening, everyone. We've really enjoyed this day of fellowship and conversation. And this evening, we're going to turn our attention to a subject continuing the theme of looking at Simon Peter. But this way, or this time, it's going to be a slightly different class. Instead of looking at the life and works of Simon Peter through the Gospels, we're going to look at how his legacy was corrupted in the years following the close of the Bible canon.

3. 1:01

   In our class this evening, we'll look at how the church chose a foundation of human authority over the Word of God and chose to twist the legacy of Peter as part of that justification. And if there's one lesson we take away from the class tonight, it should be the importance of reliance on God's Word over man's.

4. 1:22

   There will be three parts in our study tonight. First, we'll look at how the papacy looked to Peter for justification and authority. And then we'll take a look at two very different methods of Bible study that kind of lay behind this transition. And finally, we'll see where the origin of this error really was.

5. 1:41

   This will be a different sort of class. We're going to be looking largely at historical records. And if in your little booklet you want to turn to the second to last page, page number 15, I have a couple of disclaimers to make before we dive in. We are going to be looking at a number of different primary and secondary historical sources, primary sources written by eyewitnesses of historical events, like letters from the early Christians, secondary sources such as history books or second-hand accounts, individuals that read those primary sources and reflected upon them.

6. 2:13

   But as we do this, as we look into history, we're leaving that common, familiar ground of Scripture. And we have to be cautious as we go into a historical study. Because historical records are not complete, nor are they inspired. It's the winners that do the book burnings. And so as we look back through the pages of history, we're going to see an incomplete picture.

7. 2:33

   We only have, while it can be encouraging to see examples of others in the past that shared our same faith, and if we look back at the early Christians, it can be encouraging to see where there's commonalities, we also have to remember we don't base our faith on that. Our faith is solely based on that which we read in Scriptures.

8. 2:53

   Paul reminds us over in Romans chapter 15 and verse 4, For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, referring to Scripture, that we may, through patience and comfort of the Scriptures, have hope. And finally, that it's worth remembering we are primarily students of the Bible, not historians. And the preacher gives us that wise warning back in Ecclesiastes chapter 12 and verse 12, Of the making of many books there is no end, and much study is worrisome to the flesh.

9. 3:27

   So a couple of causes for caution as we dive into this class. We're going through a lot of material that's outside of the Bible canon, and we can't be absolutely sure about those things like we can in Scripture. In addition, I prepared a second pamphlet, which I clearly have not made enough copies of.

10. 3:43

    So there are a few up here on the table that goes into one of kind of the sides parallel stories to the main one we're going to consider tonight. We're going to primarily look at how the papacy twisted the legacy of Peter to prop up man's tradition. But a parallel account to this is as we look through this story, we're also going to see how Christians got so involved in politics.

11. 4:08

    It's the exact same path that these two different lines of thinking went down. So if you want to have more discussion afterwards, I put a bunch of discussion questions on the back and some other historical quotes in the middle, and we can talk more into the night about those things. All right. That's enough disclaimers.

12. 4:24

    Let's dive on in. So part one, the papacy looks to Peter. And the overall theme is this. As the Roman Empire begins to weaken, the church goes back and does some revisionist history. We'll consider how the church made that link to Peter. Okay. There's a number of different ways to look at the decline and fall of the Roman Empire.

13. 4:46

    There's a number of different things that we could look at to track the success of the Roman Empire and then its eventual decline. We could look at, I could put a map up here, and we could look at the shrinking territory of Rome and see how it shrank in power. We could look at how its trade spiked and then diminished over time.

14. 5:03

    We could look at the decreasing size of the military or political and social polarization, the rise of ethnic tensions, or as shown here, simply the population of the city of Rome. And just by looking at this graph here, you can get a quick sense that something happened. We go from about to 400 B.C. up to this huge rise in population around the time of the Roman Republic forming and transitioning to the Empire, peaking around the time of Christ.

15. 5:35

    And then something pretty significant happened over the next few hundred years that decimated the population. It drops off precipitously. And this chart simply shows the population of Rome. Over around 800 years, though, you see a pretty big drop. And there were a couple of things that led to this decline. Maybe this one's a bit clearer.

16. 5:57

    So you can see the population of Rome from the 2nd century over to the 11th century. So around the 2nd century, Rome was still a bustling metropolis, but then it dropped off dramatically. In 324, Constantine became the sole ruler of the eastern and western portions of the Roman Empire. And it was during his reign that the church became tied to the fate of the state, which while it lifted up Christians from a state-persecuted religion for the most part, it also meant that the subsequent decline of the empire would also mean bad news for the church.

17. 6:32

    So then when Rome was sacked in 472 by the German tribes, it was not only a crisis for the empire, it was also a crisis for the church. Because at that time, the church and the empire were tied together. Eight years later and four emperors later, the imperial system was all but finished and the city fell into disrepair.

18. 6:54

    But as the political system of Rome started to fall, the power started to shift to the church. As Rome fell, the church of Rome began to rise. And it's pretty well documented. You can see Rome in despair between 530 and 540. And here, local power shifts away from the governing authorities of the Roman Empire to the church.

19. 7:18

    It's so well documented, you can look it up in Wikipedia. Local power in Rome devolved to the pope. And over the next few decades, both much of the remaining possessions of the senatorial aristocracy and the local Byzantine administration in Rome were absorbed by the church. This left the church in an interesting position.

20. 7:40

    By 610, it's the bishop of Rome that's ruling the city. You get up to 781, you actually have papal states down in the Italian peninsula and the Holy Roman Empire being ushered in around 800. The church was now in a unique position. And this was actually a subject of one of the councils around the time when a lot of this was boiling over.

21. 8:01

    Or the Council of Ephesus in 431 began to wrestle with this problem. Where was the church going to find its strength and its power if not from the Roman government? What would be their new source of legitimacy? So at 431, in this Council of Ephesus, they tried to answer this question. Where would the church go back and find a foundation to build its own power and authority if they couldn't rely on the government anymore?

22. 8:26

    And the conclusion at that Council in 431 is they would look back to Peter. Reading an excerpt from there. No one doubts, in fact, it is obvious to all ages that the holy and most blessed Peter, head and prince of the apostles, the pillar of faith and the foundation of the Catholic Church, receive the keys to the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Savior and Redeemer of the human race.

23. 8:47

    Nor does anyone doubt that the power of forgiving and retaining sins was often given to the same Peter who, in his successors, lives and exercise judgment even to this time and forever. However, from a human standpoint, the approach was brilliant. By tying their authority to Peter, the church could separate itself from the political fate of the faltering Roman Empire and separate itself from the fate of any single government.

24. 9:11

    And in doing so, the papacy and the church truly showed itself to be that woman riding the beast of Revelation chapter 17, a system that rode on the back of many governments, not just tied to one, and took those other political systems and made them subject to her will. And that claim of power can still be seen today.

25. 9:30

    That same claim made back in 431 at the Council of Ephesus is still on the words of the current Pope. Regimes have come and gone. Emperors have come to power and fallen from it. And yet, the papal system remains strong today. As it repeats the same claims that were first made some 1,500 years before.

26. 9:51

    That the church has power and authority in itself because of Peter. They say Peter was that foundation. And while the Catholic Church doesn't often concern itself with finding a biblical reason for its teachings, and we'll see why in a minute, they do actually try to make the argument here that there's a biblical foundation for this belief that Peter was the first Pope and the founding of this papal legacy.

27. 10:17

    Reading from a document from 1981, The Primacy of the Pope and the Church, we read that it's a matter of faith that the blessed Apostle Peter was constituted by Christ the Lord as the Prince of all the Apostles, the visible head of the whole church militant. The church affirms that this is witnessed by the testimony of the gospel and the very clear teaching of the Holy Scriptures.

28. 10:37

    They claim that the Scripture established Peter as the Prince of the Apostles, the visible head of the whole church, authority he would be giving to a series of hundreds of popes after him. And so that's the claim. That there's an unbroken chain of popes going back to Peter, giving the church authority to act in Jesus' place on earth.

29. 11:00

    So I just want to pause there for a second, because there's something here that should give us a kind of a red flag. Which came first? Did someone sit down and do a Bible study one evening and said, Hey, look at this. Peter's a pope, and there's this passage that said he's in charge of everyone.

30. 11:17

    He passes this power down through his successors. Or did a social need come first? Did a group of individuals realize they were in a power crisis and then go back to Scripture after the fact and conveniently reinterpret it to support their position? The papal claim was baseless. If the claim was true, you'd think you'd see a hint of it in the Scriptures.

31. 11:43

    You'd think you'd see a hint of it in Peter's epistles especially. You would think that Peter would claim some sort of this power overtly. But if we look at Peter and how he refers to himself in the epistles, he simply refers to himself as an apostle or a servant of Jesus Christ. The same type of terminology Paul used.

32. 12:07

    He identifies the foundation as Jesus. He was the chief cornerstone. And the only title Peter ever used was fellow elder. And in that context, Peter actually prohibits others from lording any sort of title over another. At the root of this problem was a wrong approach to Bible study. While Peter submitted to the word, the papacy tried to supersede it.

33. 12:32

    And there's two different ways to approach Scripture. We're going to dig into that a little bit right now. One approach is coming to the Scripture with our preconceived notions. It's the term eisegesis, which comes from two different Greek words. Eise, which means into, and Jesus, or e.g., which means to lead. So it's kind of to lead your ideas into the text.

34. 12:58

    That's the approach when we take preconceptions or biases that we might have and then go to the Bible and try to find support for it. Where we might have a preconceived notion of what we think is right and then we conveniently go through Scripture and find just those verses that we can use to support our opinions.

35. 13:14

    It makes the text subservient to the reader. The process that we should use is the opposite. Exegesis, exa, or exit. You bring the meaning out of the text. So you read the Bible and you get your beliefs from that. It's not allowing preconceptions or biases to define interpretation. Instead, you make yourself, the reader, subservient to the text.

36. 13:37

    So we draw out the meaning from the Scripture. It's letting the Bible speak for itself and making our base of belief on what the Scripture says. This is the process we've committed to as the body of Christ, as a community and individually. It's the process of searching out the Scriptures daily like they did back in Acts 17-11 to see what things were so.

37. 14:01

    It's reading the Scriptures and from there establishing our belief. But the Church's use of exegesis introduced a problem of control. As it went back and read into Scriptures its ideas of papal authority and a connection to Peter, it started to create a bit of a crisis. The Church used exegesis to make the Bible support the doctrine of papal supremacy, among other things, and they read that interpretation into the text.

38. 14:28

    But that raises a question. What's to keep someone else from doing the exact same thing? If you leave the common ground of bringing your beliefs out of Scripture, what's to keep others from simply reading their own ideas back into Scripture? I mean, that's one reason why there's over 200,000 different versions of Protestant Christianity in the world today.

39. 14:46

    It's because a lot of people have come to the Scriptures and read their own interpretations into it. Once you start with exegesis reading into the text, anyone can make the Bible say anything they want. So how was the Church going to both reinterpret the Bible the way it wanted to, but stop anybody else from doing it so it could maintain its level of authority?

40. 15:07

    So to maintain control, the papacy employed three different approaches. First, it elevated tradition as parallel with inspired revelation in the Scriptures. It limited access to the Bible. And it reserved interpretation just for the Church. Let's take a look at the first one. The claim is this. Just like God revealed Himself to Old Testament and New Testament authors, the Church claimed that He continued to speak to and inspire the leaders of the Catholic Church.

41. 15:35

    In other words, the traditions and teachings of the Church continue on as inspired canon, right along with the Old Testament and New Testament authors. And you can see where this is headed, can't you? They're laying the justification for why the Church can practice exegesis, reading things into the text, while others cannot. And the problem with this approach is we're told how God speaks to us today, aren't we?

42. 15:58

    We're told that He speaks to us through the Scripture. Paul writes that these Scriptures are God-breed. That is where we go for God's Word. The Bible talks about the revelation of Jesus as the final chapter in God's revelation to us. Hebrews chapter 12, verse 1. I'm sorry. Hebrews, if we look at the opening words of Hebrews chapter 1, we see this laid out beautifully for us.

43. 16:29

    Hebrews chapter 1, in verse 1 and 2. Look at how it's said in the Catechism, a collection of the official Catholic beliefs and practices. The Bible is not considered to be an exhaustive, holy, sufficient reference. The Bible is not considered to be the comprehensive teaching of the Christian faith. Rather, sacred tradition and sacred Scripture in the Catholic view together are considered the integral source of divine revelation.

44. 17:10

    This means that the papacy feels it's in a unique position to read things into the text of the Bible because, they say, well, the papacy is inspired as well. So, if elevating tradition as inspired revelation was the first step, limiting access to the Bible was the second. We could spend a whole week on the history of the Bible's preservation and how remarkable it is that we have a Bible today.

45. 17:36

    The fact that the record was preserved for us as long as it was and as accurate as it was is truly remarkable, especially since the Catholic Church sought to limit its distribution for so long. Ironically, it was, in fact, the Catholic Church that kept many of the best manuscripts of the Bible, including those that eventually became the basis for the King James Version of the Bible.

46. 17:59

    Once the church got in the habit of promoting its own tradition, it became the overwhelming tendency of the church to keep the Bible away from the people. At the Council of Constantinople, there's a number of places we could look for this, but just for the sake of time, we'll take a look at a few key councils.

47. 18:14

    But look at what was written as one of the statements coming out of this council in 395. A generation after Constantine became the sole emperor of the Roman world, the church declared this. The laity, or the non-priest population, is forbidden to read the word of God or to exercise their judgment in order to understand it.

48. 18:35

    So not only could you not read the word of God by this declaration, you are not allowed to have your own opinion on what you might have heard from your individual priests in your area. And it gets worse. Move forward some 900 years and it hasn't changed much. In fact, it's gotten more restrictive.

49. 18:53

    And in 1229, we read, We prohibit also that the laity should be permitted to have the books of the Old or New Testament. We most strictly forbid having any translations of these books. So not only could they not read it, they couldn't even possess it, especially not if it was in a language they could actually understand.

50. 19:13

    Going forward a few more years in the Council of Tarragona, No one may possess the books of the Old and New Testament in the Romance language, and if anyone possesses him, he must turn them over to the local bishop within eight days after promulgation of this decree, so they may be burned, lest be he a cleric or a layman, he be suspected until he is cleared of all suspicion.

51. 19:36

    Historian Michael Schaeffer comments, Far from championing the spread of the Bible and translation into the vernacular, the Catholic Church has a long history of oppression and censorship in this regard. Here we have even the clergy limited from having copies of the Scripture in a language they could understand. By the 13th and 14th century, possession of a Bible was punishable by a lady or clergy as a criminal offense.

52. 20:02

    It would be punishable by whipping, confiscation of personal property. And it's rather ironic, in many churches of the time, the copy of the Scriptures that was at the church would literally have chains around it, so it would never go missing and no one would risk taking it home. The final step was reserving interpretation solely for the church.

53. 20:23

    They built the case for their tradition, limited access to the Bible, and then made the case that only the church, only the papacy, had the authority to interpret Scripture. There were a number of popes that advanced the unique authority held by the papacy to interpret Scriptures, but this man, Pope Innocent III, did more than most, and he's not nearly as innocent as he looks there.

54. 20:46

    In 1199, Pope Innocent noted that the illiterate, uninitiated, have difficulty understanding them, but also the educated and the gifted. He argued that it didn't matter if you could read or not, if you were educated or not, no one, save the papal authority, could understand the Scriptures as they were written. And here's how it's said today.

55. 21:11

    Those claims weren't just made back in medieval times. Those claims continue on now. The ideas of having your property burned and confiscated and being whipped aren't really promulgated too much today, but the spirit of the message is still the same. We read that the church today, the Catholic church, is the only divinely constituted teacher of revelation.

56. 21:34

    God never intended the Bible to be the Christian's rule of faith, independent of the living authority of the church. All right. So what does the Bible say about all this? What's the Bible's opinion on these three steps that the church took to draw its connection and supremacy from Peter? What does it say about elevating sacred tradition?

57. 21:58

    Well, Jesus had the opportunity to talk about that, didn't he? Didn't he encounter a group of religious leaders that had elevated their own sacred tradition to the extent that it superseded some of God's word? Jesus said in Mark chapter 7, verse 9, Ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition.

58. 22:18

    Did Jesus ever have any experience with individuals limiting access to the Bible? Luke chapter 11, verse 52, Ye have taken away the key of knowledge. Ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered. What about interpretation by church? Does the scripture have anything to say of that? That interpretation is reserved for an individual's own private opinion?

59. 22:41

    Well, Peter talks about that quite directly. No prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. Though this is not a class about how the office of the papacy has manifested kind of the spirit of the Antichrist for hundreds of years, there is no missing the ironic fact of this. Consider 2 Thessalonians chapter 2, verses 3 through 4.

60. 23:02

    Let no one deceive you by any means. That day will not come unless the falling away comes first. And the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshipped, so that he sits as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.

61. 23:23

    And just looking at this arc, and the church's approach to scripture, and its maligning of Peter's legacy, we can see that spirit of Antichrist revealed. The papacy practiced exegesis, reading their ideas into the Bible to build their own authority, elevate tradition, and suppress the word of God. Peter was the exact opposite. Peter was a man that practiced exegesis, drawing the word out of the scriptures, drawing his words from Jesus Christ, elevating Jesus, and sharing the word of God.

62. 23:54

    And if we, you can see this in your handout as well, if we look through one of Peter's defining characteristics, and we've seen this some already in our classes today, one of the things that defined Peter was his love for the word. We see this in his calling. In Luke chapter 5, verse 5, At thy word I will let down the net.

63. 24:12

    We saw that in our second class, of Peter walking on the water. In Matthew chapter 14, 28, Bid me come unto the water. And it's when Jesus said, Come, and Peter heard that word, that he stepped out of the boat. In John chapter 6, verse 68, that confession of Peter, Peter said, Thou hast the words of eternal life.

64. 24:28

    When all the others were chasing after the temporal food, Peter realized it was his word that had real value. And we see this continue through the end of the gospel canon, into Acts, and into the first and second epistle of Peter. It was not Peter's authority that he tried to promote. It was the word of God that dominated his teachings.

65. 24:52

    So just pausing here for a minute, there are a couple of lessons we can pull out from this. One is to put the Bible first, and not reinterpret it in the face of social or economic pressures. You'll recall that the harlot in Revelation is described as having daughters. The Protestant church's legacy is, or was originally supposed to be, about breaking away from the Catholic church.

66. 25:14

    But it ended up keeping many of its teachings, and many of its practices. And one way we see this played out is in the hierarchy of Protestant churches today, that has the same incentive to do the exact same thing that the Catholic church does, maintain control by reading into the text what they want to see.

67. 25:32

    But there's another, more subtle way we can see eisegesis emerge, and one that is very close to each one of us. It's perhaps the most common form of eisegesis that we can, unknowingly, sometimes engage in. And that's reinterpreting the Bible based on the changing social norms of the world around us. Whether it's the matter of roles of brothers and sisters in Christ, the Bible's teaching on sexuality, or another topic, we will face temptation from society around us to change the way we read Scripture to make it more conform with the norms of today.

68. 26:09

    We do not want to practice that form of maligning the Word of God to make it more palatable to society around us. Our approach should be one of drawing the beliefs from the Scriptures, not trying to make it subservient to what we think it should say with our modern sensibilities. All right. How are we doing on time?

69. 26:29

    8.30, right? We have to do 8.30? Yes? Excellent. Keep going. Okay. So this is kind of the breaking point where we can go one of two ways, but we're going to go all in and dive a little bit deeper here. So we saw how it happened, right? We saw kind of what were the steps that had the papacy tie itself to the legacy of Christ and how that worked, but why?

70. 26:50

    Why did the church depart from something so basic as following the Word of God? And this is where we get to the origin of error. That's a pun because the individual had a significant role in this, was a man by the name of Origen. Origen Admantius learns about Jesus and puts on a philosopher's robe.

71. 27:11

    Origen of Alexandria lived in the 2nd and 3rd century and is among the most influential individuals in the history of Christianity, which is ironic because lots of his views were declared heretical shortly after his death. That being said, he had a huge impact on the trajectory of the church. And if we were to make a list of the top five most influential figures in the history of the Catholic church, Origen would certainly be on the list.

72. 27:34

    He lived during a turbulent period of the Roman Empire when barbarian invasions were sweeping across Europe, threatening the stability of the empire. This was also a time of periodic state persecutions of the church. And during his lifetime, he saw three waves of state-led persecution. In fact, he died in one of those persecutions as well.

73. 27:55

    But in spite of the turbulent surroundings, from an early age, Origen proved himself to be an unmatched scholar in his day. He was educated in classical Greek studies as well as biblical studies. And by the age of 17 years old, he became the headmaster of the Christian Catholic school in Alexandria, Egypt. His devotions to his studies were immense and the stuff of legends.

74. 28:19

    The 4th century historian Eusebius, an admirer of Origen, is where we get most of our information about this individual. And he probably exaggerated, so take all these facts and figures with a grain of salt. But here's what Eusebius, the 4th century historian, wrote about Origen. He said that Origen wrote over 6,000 different works, including commentaries on every single book of the Bible.

75. 28:39

    And this was due to one of Origen's rich benefactors hiring a small army of scribes to walk around behind Origen, scribbling down the things he would say, which were later turned into some of these 6,000 books. His reputation spread across the Roman world. He converted those considered heretics. He rationalized the Christian faith to its most ardent opponents.

76. 29:00

    He was even invited to correspond with the Roman emperor's house to help explain the reasons for Christianity to the court. He trained himself to subsist on a minimal amount of sleep each night. He said he only slept three to four hours each night so he could maximize the amount of time he poured into his study.

77. 29:19

    It's even said that he castrated himself. And you'll see why this is ironic. He took literally what Jesus said about becoming eunuchs for the kingdom of God's sakes. You'll see why that's ironic in a minute because he didn't take anything else literally. But he did this so he would be above the accusation of sexual misconduct when he taught young women in the faith, though that might be an embellishment added later on.

78. 29:42

    His teachings, though, did not stand the test of time. Many of Origen's doctrines were not adopted by the church and were rejected as heretical shortly after his death. He taught things such as the preexistence of human souls, a type of universal salvation. He had a near-gnostic view of the material world where anything material had this kind of deep-rooted seed of evil.

79. 30:03

    And most of these views were cast out by the 5th and 6th centuries. But what did last, his lasting legacy and why he was such an influential figure was his approach to the Bible, his approach to Bible study. We can get a hint of that approach in just how he dressed. So in this painting of Origen, you can see he's draped in a long flowing orange robe.

80. 30:29

    This garment known as the pallium was a symbol of moral virtue. It symbolized self-sufficiency and wisdom. This was the philosopher's robe. It was kind of the sign of office. If you were an individual trained in Greek philosophy, you would wear a pallium, one of these robes. It was an outward symbol of one of Origen's principal impacts on the church.

81. 30:50

    He merged the study of the Bible with Greek philosophy. And while he was an astute critic of pagan philosophy of his era, he defended the Christian faith against pagan philosophers who were critical of Christianity. Origen also learned much from it and took principles from philosophical teaching and grafted them into his approach to the Bible.

82. 31:12

    In his study on Origen, historian Roman Geer writes this, Origen approaches Scripture with preconceptions that are in great part determined by his philosophical training and bent of mind. At this level, it's possible to charge him with simply importing Greek philosophy into his interpretation of Scripture. Origen imported this Greek philosophical approach when he read the Bible.

83. 31:35

    In a minute, we'll talk about what that meant. But from just the start, we can see he's practicing eisegesis. He's approaching the text with some preconceived notions of how he should approach it and how he should read it. And as a result, he sets up a very different way to read the Bible.

84. 31:53

    Geer goes on to say what it means that he imported Greek philosophy into the text, writing, He is fully acquainted with the rhetorical methods of the pagan scholars and with their allegorical approach. The impact of all this upon Origen's writing is immense. So what does it mean that he used Greek philosophy to interpret the Bible?

85. 32:12

    Well, it meant that he read the Bible like he would any Greek myth. So when he read the Iliad or the Odyssey, you don't read those in a literal sense, that these epic poems actually literally happen, that there's a cyclops on some far-off island that eats human flesh. No, you interpret that as an allegory.

86. 32:29

    And so, too, when Origen approached Scripture, he did so with an allegorical mindset. He saw everything as a great allegory, not something to be taken literally, not something to be read and applied as it's written on the page, but an allegory, a lesson that, a figurative lesson that can be interpreted in a whole host of ways.

87. 32:50

    As a result, this is what led to many of Origen's very outlandish opinions. This is what led to his belief in reincarnation and pre-existence of consciousness. This is what led to Origen arguing that Genesis 1 through 3 were simply a myth and there was never actually a person named Adam. This is what led Origen to believe that there was no physical resurrection and, as you will see, no literal kingdom of God that was going to be established on the earth.

88. 33:15

    And that was truly his legacy. And this isn't just a small opinion. If you look at ever-reliable Wikipedia, you can see this is the thing that Origen is remembered for, his allegorical approach to Scripture. And after perfecting this method, Origen spent much of his life popularizing the allegorical, non-literal reading of the Bible.

89. 33:36

    He taught others to do the same. And here's a dramatic oversimplification of his approach in two easy steps. His first step to Bible study, so Bible study by Origen, step number one is to realize that what it says isn't really what it means. Going back to Rowan Gere, first, following the rules of Greek literary analysis, Origen argues that the narratives of Scriptures are filled with impossibilities and incongruities.

90. 34:00

    These stumbling blocks mean that the letter of the text cannot be followed and that a deeper meaning must be sought. He described the literal text as a husk on a grain of wheat that you must rip off to get to the kernel underneath. In Origen's words, he wrote that the Scriptures are of little use to those who understand them as they are written.

91. 34:19

    All right, so after you reject the literal meaning of the Scripture, Origen had step two, and step two was, well, kind of up to the interpreter. You find the hidden meaning. Origen wrote, the source of many evils lies in adhering to the carnal or external part of the Scripture. He described the literal meaning of the word on the page as the husk you have to rip off, and then you have to get to that allegorical sense.

92. 34:43

    Let us therefore seek after the Spirit and the substantial fruit of the Word, which are hidden and mysterious. We don't have time right now to go into examples of this, but this led to some really outlandish reinterpretations of familiar biblical text. We'll take the parable of the sower, and Origen reinterprets it to be about how you get a different number of angels assigned to you in heaven based on your various acts during life.

93. 35:06

    It leads to some very outlandish readings because it opens up the floodgates for fanciful interpretations of Scripture. Origen was the one that popularized the idea of reading into the text, taking a fully allegorical approach to Scripture. And yes, the Bible does have things that are allegories. When Jesus says, I am the door, we don't look for a knob on him.

94. 35:29

    But we use context, cross-references, and good biblical common sense to determine what's literal and what's not. Often the key there is for us in one of those three things. So one of the lessons we bring from this is to realize that the Bible means what it says. We are to draw the meaning out from the text as opposed to read what we want to read into it.

95. 35:48

    So to review where we've gone so far, the church had become tied to the state by the time we get to the 4th and 5th century. But as the Roman Empire began to weaken, the papacy looked to Peter for authority. And it reinterpreted the Bible to show a connection with Peter. It elevated tradition, suppressed the Bible, and said that only it could interpret the Scripture.

96. 36:07

    And what made that all possible? How could the church take that step? Well, this type of departure from the plain meaning of the Bible was introduced and justified and popularized by Origen, who taught what it says isn't really what it means. And there's one other avenue here we're going to look at briefly that laid the groundwork for papal power.

97. 36:30

    If we're to disregard the literal reading of the text, then what about one of those things that the Bible talks about quite a bit, it seems to be quite literal, the coming kingdom of God on earth. What did Origen have to say about that? Well, the answer, again, helps explain how the church got the temporal power it did and also its current involvement in the world today.

98. 36:53

    So if we were to take a minute and look through what the Bible says about the kingdom, we could list out a whole bunch of things. I've thrown them up on the left-hand side of the screen, some of the main things we're looking forward to about the kingdom. We're looking forward to the kingdom being established on earth with its capital at Jerusalem, with Jesus as the king.

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    We're looking forward to the domination of that kingdom being worldwide, the government being one that will bring righteousness and peace without end. We know this will happen when Jesus returns, literally to the earth, to raise the dead, to judge them with the living, and to give his followers everlasting life in the kingdom.

100. 37:26

     Our hope is caught up in the belief of a literal kingdom of God on earth. And what's neat is if we look back to the earliest Christians after the close of the biblical canon, this belief was shared. The earliest accounts after we have of the close of the New Testament is from a Christian named Papias.

101. 37:41

     And he talked about his hope in the kingdom, very much like we talk about ours. He wrote about a millennial reign of Christ on the earth and the resurrection as the core of his hope that there will be a millennium after the resurrection from the dead when the personal reign of Christ will be established on the earth.

102. 37:57

     Moving forward to the second century, we see Justin Martyr speaking of the kingdom in terms of fulfillment to the promises of Abraham and Israel restored. Later in the second century, Irenaeus in his work against Heretics talks about his belief in the Lord coming and fulfilling the promise to Abraham. The kingdom was seen as a fulfillment of those promises made all the way back to Abraham.

103. 38:22

     In the third century, Tertullian talks in his book's orations about his hope in the kingdom. How can some pray for a lengthening of the age when the kingdom of God, which we pray that it may come, tends to a consummation of the age? We wish to reign earlier. So this aspect of the kingdom being a literal government was well understood even into the third century.

104. 38:46

     And to the middle of the third century, Cyprian noted that his belief was in immortality, peace and joy that would come at the ushering in of the kingdom. And he believed it would be coming very soon. Actantius toward the end of the third century wrote, Jesus shall destroy unrighteousness and exercise his great judgment.

105. 39:07

     Then they who shall be alive in their bodies shall die not, but during those thousand years shall produce an infinite multitude. And to show it isn't just me cherry picking some quotes, historians agree that this was the common understanding of the Bible all the way up through the, toward the close of the third century.

106. 39:25

     Historian Edward Gibbon wrote in Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, that the assurance of such a millennium, the kingdom of God on earth, was carefully inculcated by a succession of fathers from Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, who conversed with the immediate disciples of the apostles, down to Lactantius, who was the preceptor to the son of Constantine.

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     Though it may not have been universally received, it appears to have been the reigning sentiment of Orthodox believers. What happens if we look forward a few hundred years? If we skip forward to the fifth century, so around the time period that we saw the church is now in power, taking authority for itself, there's a very different opinion out there.

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     Andreas, who wrote a commentary on Revelation, wrote this, Note that he says others believe that. He isn't confessing his own faith here. He's not talking about the official teaching of the church. He says this is the belief of someone else. Going on. The church does not receive this teaching, holding to a reign in the third heaven and advocating this interpretation.

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     By the thousand years we understand the preaching of the gospel or the time of the gospel dispensation. So, what a change in what was popularly held about the kingdom of God. As Edward Gibbon continues on his observations, he wrote, The doctrines of Christ's reign upon earth was at first treated as a profound allegory.

110. 40:56

     Thank you, Origin, for that. Was considered by degrees as a doubtful and useless opinion, and was at length rejected as the absurd invention of heresy and fanaticism. So, if the Bible is allegorical, as Origin argued, then what would the kingdom of God be? We're supposed to throw out the literal reading of the text and we don't believe the kingdom's coming to be established on the earth, then what are we supposed to interpret that?

111. 41:20

     Well, Origin had some ideas of his own. He wrote that the land promised to the righteous does not refer to Judea or any portion of the earth because the earth is cursed and therefore is not fit for inheritance. The land which is pure lies in the pure region of heaven. George Nathaniel, in his book, The Theocratic Kingdom of Our Lord Jesus Christ, wrote that the literal sense once held is discarded, and another sense, which is pronounced as the true one, is given to the kingdom, and a complete reversal of opinion follows.

112. 41:47

     So that in the estimation of many, the former believers are no longer to be regarded as in sympathy and belief with the church. By teaching the kingdom was not literal, Origin created this void. The belief in the kingdom of God on earth was rejected. But another man would step in and offer the explanation for what he thought the kingdom was going to be.

113. 42:10

     Enter Augustine of Hippo. He was a pagan intellectual who converted to Christianity. I would also put him on the list of the top five most influential figures of the Catholic Church in Western Christianity. And his major work, in which we see a lot of his opinions, was entitled The City of God Against the Pagans.

114. 42:27

     And he was the one that filled the vacuum, that popularized the belief that the church later adopted of what the kingdom of God referred to. And just very briefly, here are two excerpts where you can get a sense of what he proposes. He wrote his church, which is the city of God. So the church is the city of God.

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     And a little bit further down, he parallels the kingdom to the city of God. Can you see the connection he's starting to make? Augustine of Hippo argued that since the literal return of Christ and the kingdom on the earth was not something that was going to be in keeping with the teachings of the church, that the kingdom was the church.

116. 43:03

     That the kingdom was already here. The kingdom had come. There were other factors as well that led to this. When early Christians were disappointed that Christ hadn't returned, they looked for alternate explanations. They thought, well, maybe Jesus wasn't literally coming back because he hasn't yet. Constantine's relief from persecution, Eusebius writes that many Christians saw Constantine lifting the persecutions off the Christians, seemed like a type of Christ coming.

117. 43:28

     Maybe Constantine's kingdom was the one they should be looking forward to. Also, the rise of anti-Semitism made the idea of restoring the kingdom to Israel less popular. It was less popular as you had a larger Gentile church to think that you were linked back to the promises to Abraham grafted in to that Jewish tree.

118. 43:46

     This belief had implication. When the belief in the kingdom of God changed, so changed the character of the church. Augustine, in his book, The City of God Against the Pagans, after he presents this idea that the church is that city of God is the kingdom, he talks about how that changes the role of the church.

119. 44:05

     The church could not be called his kingdom or the kingdom of heaven unless his saints were even now reigning with him. So Augustine argued all those things that we read about in the kingdom in terms of judgment, expelling unrighteousness, now applied to the church. From the church, Augustine argued, those reapers shall go out and gather out the tares which he suffered to grow with the wheat until the harvest.

120. 44:29

     Augustine argues that since the church is the kingdom, the church has this right to exercise judgment, to separate the wheat and the tares, for the harvest is now. This belief had huge implications. It gave the church the sense they could bring judgment, separate wheat from the tares, reign with Christ's authority. And in it laid the foundation for how political churches, not just the Catholic church, but many Protestant denominations are today, how political they are.

121. 44:56

     Today, the church is intensely political in contrast to the clear teaching of scripture and precedent of the earliest Christians. Once the doctrine of the kingdom was changed and the power was given to the church and the papacy, so too did the church's approach to political involvement change as well. At the same time that we see the papacy grabbing power, reinterpreting the Bible, we see the church become very political.

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     That involvement in politics has continued down today. And it's a stark contrast from what the scriptures teach and from what the earliest Christians practiced. There's a little bit more of this in the handout that I provided, but one of the arguments that the early Christians made for the reasons they wouldn't get involved in politics was what we see here in John 17, verse 14, because simply they weren't part of this world.

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     They saw Jesus' exhortation in John 17 as one to remove themselves from the temporal governments, from political involvement, from taking political positions. Interestingly, they used the whole of John 17 in some of these arguments, also referencing that how when Jesus called them to be one, that was also a call to repudiate political involvement, which often sows division and divisiveness.

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     Just a few brief passages as we wrap up here. There's a number of different ways we can look at this. We can look at this from an angle of citizenship or being strangers and sojourners, right? Paul in Philippians 3, verse 20 talked about where our citizenship was. He said, Our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior.

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     1 Peter 2, verse 11, Peter wrote, Beloved, I beg you as sojourners and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lust. We could go to a number of different places to see this same point. And if you look at the elements of public office and public life we choose not to participate in, they're all joined with this idea of citizenship.

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     If we're not citizens of this country, if we're citizens of a heavenly country, then we shouldn't be participating in the rights that go with temporal citizenship, judicial service, or voting, military service, and holding public office. And it was these verses that the earliest Christians cited as well. Tertullian writing in 195 wrote, We have no pressing inducement to take part in your public meetings, nor is there anything more entirely foreign to us than affairs of state.

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     Right? Look at the words he used. He says, Your affairs of state are foreign to us because we're citizens of a foreign country. We're citizens of heaven. So I'm not going to get involved in the political wranglings of the Roman world, wrote Tertullian, because my citizenship is elsewhere. Over in Matthew 5, verse 38, we see another angle on this same principle.

128. 47:43

     Matthew 5, verse 38, Jesus said, You have heard that it was said, an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. But I tell you not to resist an evil person. But whosoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. The idea of holding to this principle while also being involved in the judicial system or the military is hard to imagine.

129. 48:05

     You can't fulfill Jesus' command being caught up in the judicial system or the military of today. And this passage was another one of those cited by early Christians to explain why they weren't involved in the Roman judicial proceedings or in the military. Justin Martyr, who we cited earlier, writing in 160, said, We who formerly murdered one another now refrain from making war even upon our enemies.

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     Or Athenagoras, writing in 175, We have learned not to return blow for blow, nor to go to law with those who plunder and rob us. Matthew 26, verse 52, Jesus said to Peter, Put your sword in its place, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword. And if there was one time for a Christian to take up arms prior to the kingdom, this would have been the moment, wouldn't it?

131. 48:57

     Jesus' statement here is clear. There could be no more just cause than to fight for Jesus, the sinless man. But even then, Jesus told Peter to put away his sword. Early Christians cited this as a precedent for their uninvolvement in military service as well. It is true that soldiers came to John and received their instructions for their conduct.

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     It is true also that a centurion believed. Nevertheless, wrote Tertullian, the Lord afterwards, in disarming Peter, disarmed every soldier. Hippolytus, writing around 200, wrote, A soldier of the civil authority must be taught not to kill and to refuse to do so if he is commanded and refuse to take an oath. A military commander or civic magistrate who wears the purpose must resign or be rejected.

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     The purpose referring to the official garb of office. Finally, Matthew chapter 4, verse 8. We read, Again, the devil took him, Jesus, to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in their grandeur. It's not that we're against the concept of government. Our whole faith is tied up in a worldwide government that is run by Jesus Christ and we hope to be a part of that system.

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     The point here is that the time is not yet. It was tempting to Jesus to have all the kingdoms of the earth bow to him. It was tempting to him to get involved with the governments of today. It was tempting to his followers. We saw that several times in our classes. But it was the wrong time.

135. 50:24

     So too with us. The right thing at the wrong time is the wrong thing. Origen, who had one or two good opinions. So, right, there's a, on a side note, all the individuals I quoted where they had citations where we could nod our heads, they had also other citations where we might raise our eyebrows a little bit.

136. 50:44

     So again, remember our faith is based on scripture, not on any one individual text. So I know your eyebrows might go up a little bit when I'm quoting Origen after all the things we said about him. But here he makes a good point. Origen wrote, it is not for the purpose of escaping public duties that Christians decline public offices.

137. 51:00

     Rather, it is so they may reserve themselves for a more defined and necessary service in the church of God for the salvation of men. So we're right about at our time. So we'll go ahead and conclude. What does all this look like today? Well, today, the Catholic system is still alive and active.

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     And just by focusing on the Catholic system, I don't mean at all to limit these observations only to the Catholic church as opposed to the Protestant church. Many of the same principles have been taking the wrong interpretation of the text exist there as well. But today, in the papal office, is the people's pope.

139. 51:37

     Pope with a record approval rating. Not since John Paul II have we even come close to these kind of approval ratings for a pope. Pope Francis has been seen as bringing a fresh look to the Catholic church. Has been seen as bringing new hope to overcoming some of the Catholic church controversies. But it's exactly the same message we hear from him as from all the preceding popes over the last 1,500 years.

140. 52:04

     In October 20th, 2015, Pope Francis said, we guarantee the obedience and conformity of the church to the will of God, the gospel of Christ, and the church's tradition. Elevating the tradition of man over the word of God. He continues to malign that memory and teaching of Peter. The fact that the Senate always operates with Peter and under Peter, wrote Pope Francis, as justification for his authority.

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     So the question for us as we close tonight is which comes first for us. Do we follow the example of Peter? Put the word first? Draw our beliefs and understanding out from it? Or do we start with our ideas and go and try to read that into the text? Trying to reinterpret the world to conform with the ideas of today.

142. 52:53

     The exhortation for us here is just like Peter. From that call to his final days, desired the word, so should we. In 1 Peter 2, verse 2, Peter exhorted us to desire sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby. joy of the word,