Matt Fradd (165:16)
Because in one you're just saying where is the church? And the other you're deciding whether you agree with the teachings or not. Because in the case of someone saying, okay, well, Peter's head of the church, whether I like it or not. And look, there's a certain element where you have to do some discernment. Like anyone deciding to become Christian at all has to do some theological reading. So when I criticize, like self shepherding, I don't want to, don't understand that in the absolute sense of you're not allowed to learn anything. Clearly, clearly not the case. And you should absolutely be doing supplemental theological reading and not just blindly just saying, well, whatever my pastor tells me, I'm not saying any of that. But I think we should watch out for the fact that we've gone so far to the opposite extreme, that there's no authority, no deference given to the visible church, that that's a real problem. So if we want to know what the visible church is, we shouldn't just look with what we think it teaches or ought to teach. We should look to what it looked like, what it looked like in terms of its DNA, as it were. And so, number one, it's visible. Catholics and Orthodox are going to agree on that, and Protestants who don't. I would just challenge you to read what the New Testament says about the visibility of the church. I'll leave that aside since that's not really the focus. And two, it has this Petrine dimension. And Orthodox will actually affirm that, that Peter is in some sense at least primus inter Paris, like first among equals. He has some kind of authority. And you start to delve into what that looks like. And you'll find early Eastern sources that talk about a primacy of honor. But the twist here is honor in the ancient world didn't mean we're imagining of, like, a ceremonial pomp. It meant, like, your honor. It meant, like, an office. And so, like, the honorable so and so isn't just saying, like, really good guy, we're talking about them having some role in office. So a primacy of honor is a primacy of office. So if there's a primacy of office that is tied to Peter, and it's not just because of the Roman Empire, it's because of Peter, then we should expect that that's part of the DNA of the Church, as it were. And if I want to find that, I know where to look. And there's a few things I'd use to supplement this number. One, John 21. Now, this could be a much deeper conversation, but John 1:20, you hear about the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. And then John closes by saying, these things have been written so that you can believe he hasn't told you everything. There's not enough books in the world to include all the things Jesus did. But this has been written for you to believe. And you expect it to just say, like, the end. But then there's an epilogue, still written by John, but clearly written in the style of epilogue, where it's. And then there is another appearance of Jesus. And you say, what is this about? And the way a lot of people. This is when you have Jesus appearing to the disciples, telling them to. It's actually the third miraculous catch of fish. You have the first one in the Gospel of Luke, where you have the four disciples and he calls Peter and says he'll be a fisher of men. You have the second 1 in Matthew 17, where this is one people always forget about, where Jesus sends Peter to catch one fish to pay for the temple tax, just of Jesus and Peter. Fascinating. Rich. This third one, they're on the sea, and it's Peter with six others. So it's seven, which is the number of perfection. It's the eschatological number. And Peter says, I'm gonna go fishing. The six say, we will go with you. And I think to understand what's going on there, the first thing to know is about these other two miraculous catches of fish, that there's something connected to Peter about this. He's a fisherman, of course. So you've got two fishing miracles that Peter is very central with and explicitly is tied with evangelization to Be a fisher of men. And then in Matthew 13:47, 50, the kingdom of heaven is compared to a net containing good and bad fish. So the net is the church and fishing is evangelization. Peter says, I will go fishing. The other leaders, the other apostles say, we will go with you. Not we're going to go do our own thing, we're going to start our own boat and form our own denomination. They're going to go with. And while there they catch nothing because they're doing it on their own. But Jesus appears on the shore, tells them to cast the nets on the other side of the boat, and at his word, they catch so many fish that they can't haul them all in. That's going to be an important detail, that all seven of them together can't bring the fish in. Just like they couldn't catch the fish on their own. They can't bring their fish to the eternal shores with Christ on their own. But Peter, seeing as Jesus swims towards Jesus and then the apostles kind of haul the boat closer to shore, Jesus says, go and get some of the fish that you've caught. Even though he already has fish, he's already been cooking fish, he does not need the Church's fish. He can bring fish any way he wants to. He sends Peter. And Peter single handedly does what all seven of them together couldn't do, which is to bring the nets ashore. And it says he does them without the nets tearing. Schismo is a word which is where schism comes from.
