Understanding the Catholic Church's Establishment

How many times have you heard somebody say that Jesus Christ established the Catholic Church? I come across it on a daily basis. But when's the last time somebody's proven this to you? I mean really proven it. Not just give some sort of claim of vague historical continuity, not make some half-baked logical conundrums that Protestants and Orthodox can't answer, but really proven the fact that Jesus Christ established the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church. I feel like I never hear it. I feel like when I go out there, I look online, I don't see people actually proving it. I just see some nonsense, you know? It just isn't good. Not good arguments. Not at all. But as you guys know, I don't like doing things that way. I like getting right into the bottom of the issue. I like giving good arguments. I am not going to give you guys any of these half-baked conundrums or these vague claims of historical continuity. You guys know I give you guys the good stuff, and that's why you watch me. just stick with me and there will be total roman catholic victory to begin i need to explain something at the outset so you guys don't completely misunderstand the purpose of this video this video will have two major sections the first section is going to be what i call the scholastic section and the second section is what i call the dogmatic section when we talk about scholastic theology we're talking about a certain method of doing theology that has many different functions But here I'm going to only use one of these functions. The function that I'm going to use is the explicative function of scholastic theology. What this means is I'm going to look into the concept of a magisterium. I'm going to look at all the parts of it, the different functions of it, the nature of it, and so on and so forth. Now, this may seem backwards to a lot of people, but this will fulfill a few important tasks for our investigation. First, When we consider the nature of divine revelation, we see that the Catholic magisterium is the natural outflowing of the concept of divine revelation. So we'll be able to demonstrate the Catholic magisterium on a priori grounds. To simplify, I will show that the Catholic magisterium makes sense. Second, this also provides the foundation for the dogmatic section of this video. In dogmatic theology, what we do is we seek the foundation for certain theses in divine revelation, whether in scripture or tradition. But before we seek the foundation for these things in divine revelation, we need to know what the thing is. Because if we don't know what the thing is in the first place, we're not going to know what to look for in the text. I'll give you an analogy. Let's say we wanted to go to the Bible and ask the question, does scripture teach the Trinity? Now, if we didn't know what a Trinity was, we wouldn't even be able to answer the question in the first place. So first we need to ask, what is a Trinity? And then after that, we can ask whether the Trinity is in scripture. So we're doing the same thing with the Catholic Magisterium here. we're asking what is a magisterium what is the catholic magisterium and then we can go into sacred scripture and find out whether this is present in that text before we begin if you like this content please consider becoming a patron at patreon.com militantomist or becoming a youtube channel member to get access to exclusive videos and more now that you're introduced to everything we need to begin with a treatment of divine revelation because when we think of a magisterium a magisterium is that which communicates divine revelation to men so it's very important for us to think about the content and the nature of the message before we think about the nature of the messenger because the messenger is for the sake of the message for example the way that a judge communicates law and the way that a mathematics professor communicates math are completely different why is this the case because the nature of the content determines a difference in role anyways what is revelation revelation is the communication of certain truths by god to men these truths are not just any truths but the truths that lead to eternal life these truths are called mysteries because they cannot be reached by the natural powers of man although sometimes even natural truths are treated in revelation insofar as there's some sort of connection between these natural truths and the end of revelation which is the salvation of mankind now as a response this revelation demands what's called the ascent of faith which is to ascend to the truths of that which is revealed Not on the basis of any sort of intrinsic evidence, but on the basis of the authority of God revealing. Now, in order to confirm that it is God speaking through the individual in Revelation, rather than merely man, God grants certain signs called the motives of credibility in order to show that it is He speaking through the individual. These include certain acts like miracles and prophecies. It is important to notice that this revelation is not merely for the sake of one individual or a group of individuals, but is for all men at all times. Revelation is meant to proclaim the obedience of faith is meant for all. God revealed to man through many generations, completing his revelation in Jesus Christ and his apostles. This revelation is brought to bear throughout every single generation after the apostles. shabon puts this in a wonderful way revelation is a fruitful principle of supernatural knowledge and life and a supreme law of faith thought and action for all men as one whole and individually through which they are to be united in one kingdom of truth and holiness whose king is god himself in order to attain the blessedness which god intended for them through conformity with god and submission to him but also in order to render god the glorification which is due him and intended by him in particular revelation should be the principle of faith for all men which affords them an infallible knowledge of the revealed truth and the rule of faith in which all men bring to god the most perfect homage of their minds end quote from this we're able to see what revelation is that is the speech of god and the end of revelation which is to bring forth the obedience of faith to all men now what's important about determining the end is that if you determine the end you can determine what the appropriate means are for bringing about that end. Let's say you wanted to take a trip from the UK and you're in the United States. If you had a car and wanted to drive there, those would not be means that are proportioned to your end. On the other hand, if you bought plane tickets, these plane tickets would be certain means that are proportioned to your end. So what we have to ask ourselves is if we want revelation to be preached to all men in all generations and bring about the obedience of faith effectively. What are those means that are proportioned to this end? It is the Catholic intention that the means proportioned to the end of carrying out revelation in that way mentioned above is only present in the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church. Now, so far so good, but we need to make an important distinction. This is the distinction between physically necessary ends and morally necessary ends. Let's say I wanted to take a trip from New York to Baltimore. I could do this by a number of means. I could walk there. I could bike there. I could drive there. I could fly there. It's technically possible that I could make it from Baltimore to New York in any one of these ways. But with two of these ways, I cannot ordinarily and easily achieve the end. Like, come on guys, I'm not going to walk from Baltimore to New York. Anyways, who'd walk in Baltimore? That's a joke. So to have a car or to fly, these two are morally necessary means to carry out the end. So on the one hand, you have physically necessary means without which you could never reach the end. And this would be, for example, a flight from the U.S. to the U.K. You have morally necessary ends, which are necessary to easily carry out the end in an ordinary manner. This is a very, very, very important distinction to make. Catholics fail to make this distinction all the time. And this actually leaves Catholics open to many Protestant attacks against Catholic arguments. which could otherwise be salvaged. So often, Protestants will argue against the Catholic position by pointing out that the passing of Revelation could hypothetically happen without certain means that are present within the Catholic Church. So for example, hypothetically, you could have union within the Church without the Pope. Or hypothetically, by learning the laws of grammar and exegesis, most people could come to knowledge of the Trinity from Sacred Scripture alone. Now, it is physically possible, absolutely, to have union without the Pope, or to read scripture and come to the conclusion that the trinity is true these are absolutely physically possible for sure and they are absolutely correct to point this out now what they're incorrect in doing is failing to distinguish between physical and moral possibility or physical and moral necessity what is certainly physically possible that the church be united without a single head it is definitely not morally possible that the church be united without a single head and while it is physically possible with scripture alone to come to this or that conclusion it is not morally possible with scripture alone for everybody to come to this or that conclusion so it is the catholic contention that not only all of those physically necessary means for achieving the end of revelation is given to the church but all of those morally necessary means for revelation are given to the church as well but a protestant may object to this and say that it is simply not the case in response to this it is important to note a distinction between the means provided for a society like a family versus the means provided for a society like the church. Let's say we have a father of a household, and he's not able to afford to buy a car. The morally necessary means that his wife needs to go to the grocery store and pick up the groceries are not present. So she would have to walk to pick up the groceries. Where does this lack of necessary means come from? Well, the lack comes from some sort of lack or poverty on the part of the head of the society, or the founder of the society. On the other hand, when it comes to Christ, Christ does not lack. He does not have any sort of poverty of supplying means. Rather, he's going to supply every necessary mean, whether physically necessary or morally necessary, to his church to carry out the end of Revelation. It is only weakness that causes some sort of lack of supply when it comes to morally necessary means to carry out a certain end. It is actually this principle of the necessity of all morally necessary means to be given to the Church that absolutely crushes a lot of the Protestant counter-arguments against the Catholic Church. It actually turns a lot of the kind of stupid arguments for the Catholic Church into not-too-bad arguments once you consider that these are morally necessary means. It is my contention that the various acts... offices, and charisms that are present in the Roman Catholic Church are necessary for achieving the end of Revelation. Now, before we continue, we need to make a distinction. We need to distinguish between that which would be super cool to have and morally necessary means. For example, somebody may object to the principle that I laid out above and say, well, it would carry out Revelation even better if not only the Pope was infallible, but every single bishop was infallible. And we know that that's not the case. Therefore... christ does not need to actually provide every morally necessary means to his church in response to this the objection completely misunderstands what a morally necessary means is a morally necessary means is a means that by a general law provide what is sufficient for carrying out the end morally necessary means don't have to be the greatest means in the world they just have to provide means that will generally bring about the end intended so you don't need to buy your wife the nicest car for her to have the morally necessary means to pick up the groceries she just needs a car now there are actually many reasons that we could seek for why christ didn't choose all of those it would be really cool means but this reply suffices for now now that we have that out of the way we can look at the general argument and then we can enter into particulars from the above principles we can rightly conclude that god would provide the propagation of revelation with certain means that would bring about quote both the full sure and communal possession and enjoyment of the truth offered in it is made possible and guaranteed to men and also the full uniform and universal homage due to god himself into his truth which is to be achieved through the recognition of his revelation can in fact reach him end quote there are a number of central attributes contained here first the truth needs to be communicated in a pure manner second the truth needs to be communicated in a universal manner third the truth needs to be authenticated and fourth the truth needs to be communicated in such a way as to command the ascent The means that have these central attributes in order to carry out the end of the communication of revelation are those means that, quote, present to mankind over and over again through living envoys of God who are specially called and empowered to do so, the word of God that was spoken once in time by proclaiming or preaching it publicly in God's name and in his power as the principle and rule of faith, end quote. The claim here is that any version of Protestant magisteriology is going to somehow contradict one of these central attributes. whether it be the purity of the truth or it be the uniformity of the preaching or the demand for the ascent of faith no matter what there's going to be some sort of contradiction between their magisteriology and these necessary means to achieve the end of revelation in order for there to be the effective transmission of divine revelation towards all the ends described above there must be first a threefold commission to preach in order to communicate in the name of god second a threefold cooperation from god in order to be preserved in what is communicated and third a threefold action so that the truth is communicated this may sound very complicated but it's going to make sense once i start to explain things basically you have three types of messenger of divine revelation three types of assistance that god is going to give these messengers and three types of things that these messengers are going to say and all of these are necessary in order to carry out the end of revelation that i mentioned above first we can look at the three types of commission In order for revelation to be communicated to men, there first needs to be individuals habitually entrusted to communicate revelation. Otherwise, revelation wouldn't come to anyone. This level seems kind of obvious, and basically everyone already agrees to this. This level is called an official proclamation. This is the type of proclamation that a herald has of the message of a king. He just goes out and communicates it. Yet this level of proclamation simply communicates what is said in order to prompt faith. It does not actually produce... any sort of faith in the message which is spoken in order to have this the messenger must not only be habitually trusted with the office of speaking the word but also given some sort of public dignity in order that he himself may independently witness to the truth of what is said this level is called an authentic proclamation this is the type of proclamation that a public notary or respected figure may have they are meant to be figures who can independently produce faith by witnessing to the truth of what is being said yet there's a third level beyond this not only is there a simple communication as in the official proclamation and a trustworthy communication as in the authentic proclamation but there is a final level for we may prompt faith by communicating and we may produce faith by independently witnessing But this faith cannot be made uniform and universal, as the end of Revelation requires, without some ability to put some weight behind the teaching. Positively, this takes the form in the ability to give imperatives in order to order somebody to obedience. And negatively, this threatens punishments if the obedience is not given. This level is called an authoritative proclamation. This is the type of proclamation that a judge may have. it is important to note that there is an intimate relationship between each of these functions and each builds upon the other the herald has simply official powers the notary has both official and authentic powers and the judge has official authentic and authoritative powers here it is important to ask which level is necessary for the effective proclamation of revelation is it enough to have simply official powers of just proclaiming what is said or does there need to be authentic or even authoritative powers as well the answer to this should be simple enough from a comparison with human society in order to ensure the universal and uniform obedience to a law the king does not simply send official messengers that is heralds to announce that the law is the case on top of that he does not simply send notaries to independently witness to the fact that the law is from the king rather he sends heralds and then notaries and then judges to interpret authoritatively and to enforce penalties against those who refuse to obey. It is the judges that ensure the universal and uniform obedience to the law, giving authoritative and binding decrees. If I may digress for a minute, it is actually this analogy that brings forth the true glory of having a magisterium. We've mentioned a few times above that it is the glory or the rights of God or the proper subjection due to God that is the reason or end of revelation. It is the magisterium. that actually brings forth this proper subjection due to God. When you have the judge who is demanding obedience to the law and then applying punishments for those who break the law, it is for the glory of the king that he is doing this. In the same way, it's important to have authoritative officials within the magisterium so that they may effectively bring about the universal and uniform homage of the minds of men to the revelation of God. Sheban explains this very well. Quote, being the glad tidings or message of god to mankind cannot and should not be spread merely by arbitrary town criers or even merely through simple messengers or heralds of god the proclamation must instead be carried out by true ambassadors that is envoys equipped with god's power and authority and because the embassy of god in question is not to another sovereign besides him but rather to his creatures to whom the tidings are to be proclaimed as a law the ambassadors and particularly the supreme one among them, must at the same time be God's chancellors for the kingdom of his truth, and the judges appointed by him for the true interpretation and execution of his message. Basically, there's something very unique about the revelation of God to men. It's not as if one king was sending a message to another king, and therefore could have mere heralds, or even maybe send a notary or two, just in case there needs to be confirmation. Rather, this is from God to creatures. this is from authority to subordinates so there needs to be authority which is brought about and this authority is meant to bring into submission all of those to whom the message is sent basically there can be no reasonable expectation for the end of revelation to be carried out effectively unless there is official authentic and authoritative preaching within the church interestingly enough in the catholic church we actually have three different types of office that carries out each one of these roles. First, there's the simple office of preaching, which is an authorization to preach publicly and the right to carry out that mandate without independently establishing one's claims, that is official, not authentic, which is possessed by priests, deacons, and authorized laymen. Second, there's the case of authentic preaching, which is the authorization or right to preach and to independently establish one's claims by producing faith, that is official and authentic, which is possessed by bishops in general. Third, there is the case of authoritative preaching, which has the right to preach, to produce faith as what is said as an imperative, not as mere duty of respect, and to oblige the obedience to which it is said by way of punishment, which is possessed by bishops who are ordinaries, that is in charge of a diocese, and by the Pope. Now that we have discussed the three types of messenger, we can now go on to discuss the three types of assistance that God gives to these messengers. Because obviously it would be kind of useless if you know. You sent forth a bunch of messengers and that didn't help them carry out the mission. You don't only need the commission, but you also need the concursus that comes with it. In order to discuss this again, we need to remember the principle that the means are determined by the end. This becomes very important when we discuss something like infallibility. It is not necessary for the full and proper communication of divine revelation that each and every priest who officially preaches be infallible. It is necessary for the preaching of revelation that all of the authoritative witnesses to revelation not bind the entire church to falsehood. Otherwise, revelation would be completely destroyed. and its means would not carry out the end. So we need to be very careful about how we're stating the limits of all of these charisms. With that in mind, we state that there's a threefold cooperation on the part of God. One, infallibility. Two, external witness. And three, punishment and reward. In sum, the first is the internal help of God in order to ensure that the preaching of Revelation is pure. The second is the external help of God in order to make it knowable to all that this is truly the preaching of God. and the third is the support that God gives for the authoritative function of preaching. And all of this, of course, is to support the universality and the purity of the preaching of divine revelation, which is its end. As to the first, that is infallibility, it is necessary for a number of reasons. First, in order to truly preserve the authoritative function of preaching in the church. As in any body of authorities, for most of those within the church, their authority is relative. So if they give an authoritative judgment, it can be appealed above their heads. So if you have a bishop who makes an authoritative judgment that violates the rights of one of the individuals who are ordered, they can appeal above the bishop's head to a synod. Just like in the secular realm, if you had an individual judge who made a bad judgment, you can appeal to the next level. This is why it's not necessary for an individual bishop or group of bishops to be infallible, since their authoritative judgment can always be appealed to the next level. Yet this process of appeal is obviously not infinite. Eventually it reaches a certain level where it can't go higher. This is the case of the extraordinary magisterium, whether an ecumenical council or a certain statement by the Roman pontiff when he speaks ex cathedra. Or, individually, these bishops cannot give authoritative judgments that are somehow false. And this would be the ordinary and universal magisterium. Because in this case, the authoritative function of the church would fall as a whole. Now, why is this the case? Well, there would be a two-fold dilemma. in this case, if they were to err, whether the highest appeal of authority or all of the authorities as a whole, is either on the one hand, these authorities would have to be relegated to merely official status and would not even be able to give the imperative of the ascent of faith, or on the other hand, the intellect would be bound to falsehood. Both of these cases would somehow be detrimental to the end of Revelation. On the one hand, we would have the removal of the authoritative. function of the church which is necessary for the universality and uniformity of the ascent of faith, and in the second case there would be a removal of the purity of obedience. Schieben states this case in a much more concise way, quote, if the authentic and authoritative proclamation as a whole could propose an error, God would, one, appear to be the direct author of inevitable and universal error and consequently the tempter of humanity, in that through the conferral of the external authenticity, he gives men the full right and imposes on them the unconditional duty to trust in it. And he would furthermore too, by requiring men through the conferral of external authority to subject themselves to the proclaimed doctrine as divine truth, be the direct cause of the reassignment of the homage due to him alone, to human error instead, and consequently be the promoter of intellectual idolatry and the founder of a kingdom of falsehood."End quote. This actually highlights a common error that many individuals have when treating the issue of infallibility. Often what they'll do is they'll simply start with infallibility and then from infallibility go on to determine the nature of the magisterium, if it's offices, functions, etc. But what we have to remember is that infallibility is not the essence of the magisterium, but a property of the magisterium. And thus, since it is a property, it flows forth from the essence and not vice versa. So in order to determine the question of infallibility and its extent, we need to start with the nature of the magisterium, which itself is determined by the nature of Revelation. So what we need to do is we need to begin with Revelation and what Revelation's end is, and then move on to the nature of the magisterium and its offices. And then from that, we can actually begin to question infallibility and determine its extent and nature. It's actually this line of argumentation that provides a much cleaner treatment of the issue. So we can easily begin by looking at the various offices, whether authoritative or authentic. and then realizing that in order for the carrying out of the proper end of authoritative and authentic preaching, there needs to be a certain charism, and this charism is infallibility. Then from there, we can begin to question the extent of it, and their limit where infallibility is found and where it is not found in the magisterium. If you wanted to rephrase this into a syllogism, the major premise would be the fact of authoritative and authentic preaching in the church, and the minor premise would be taken from the end of Revelation. and therefore we'd be able to conclude the fact of infallibility in order for authoritative and authentic preaching to reach its end besides the internal help of god that is necessary in order to preserve the purity of teaching we also need to preserve the universal recognizability of the teaching of god and this comes through certain external supernatural assistance this external supernatural assistance comes through what are called motives of credibility is why it's important what Vatican I emphasizes of the church itself and its manifest holiness and its various notes being a motive of credibility, because this is a gift which is necessary to have a magisterium. Here we can make a comparison with infallibility. If Christ was visibly present on earth, Christ obviously could just visibly tell us where the preaching of his revelation is to be found. But since Christ is not visibly present on earth, he needs to leave certain signs and marks. which designate to us where his preaching is to be found. This is the same reason for the gift of infallibility. Because if Christ was visibly present on earth, then Christ could simply correct any time there is an error in the authentic or the authoritative preaching of the church. But Christ is not visibly present on earth, so he can't do that. So there needs to be some sort of internal gift which guides them towards infallibility. So there are certain signs and seals which are given to the Catholic Church in order to authenticate. that Christ speaks authoritatively through the Catholic Church, and therefore has a right to give imperatives and to impose punishments for disobedience. Steuben explains that, quote, these signs and seals, however, can consist partly of special marvelous works of God connected with the proclamation thereof, or the acceptance thereof by faith, and partly of the general spiritual miracle entailed in the continuance and efficacy of the proclamation. what shibin is saying here is that sometimes these are signs and seals like we would normally consider them such as miracles other times these are signs and seals which are present as the effect of the preaching itself lastly besides the internal and external concursus there is the divine sanction that is the establishment of the reward for acknowledging the proclamation and of the punishment for rejecting it must first complete and perfect the compelling force of the authority in order to make submission to it imperative end quote so basically the analogy for this is that the judge gives certain imperatives and one must obey him as an authority but these imperatives and these threatenings are obviously empty promises unless the king backs the judge with force of arms in order to punish those who are disobedient in the same way god sanctions the decisions of the ecclesiastical magisterium by promising rewards for obedience and promising punishment for disobedience to the ecclesiastical magisterium now besides the three types of commissions as we've went over and the three types of assistance that we just went over there are also three types of messages corresponding to these first there must be the explication and presentation of the message of revelation second there must be the testimony where the message is authenticated as being revelation third there must be the making of the rule of faith which is the imperative form of the revelation, resulting in punishments for disobedience. Each of these are necessary for the full communication of revelation. In the legal realm, this actually tracks very closely to three types of law. First, the law of custom, which is the general way in which the law is interpreted and followed. Second, formal law, which is the law itself as it is stated. And third, the judicial decision, which is the application and enforcement of the law with certain penalties attached. Now, if you haven't noticed, these three levels directly correlate to the three types of commissions above. The official explicates the content of Revelation, the authentic testifies to the content of Revelation, and the authoritative gives the rule of faith. So the existence of these three levels of preaching flows forth necessarily from the three levels of commission given above, and therefore demonstrates it. Just as the three offices above, these three acts are actually contained in one another. thus the authoritative proclamation must contain all three the authentic proclamation must just contain the first two and the official proclamation just contains the first as schieben says The three acts can be distributed in such a way that the first initially requires merely an official agent, the second merely an authentic one, and the third essentially requires an authoritative agent. For simple teaching as a statement of doctrine requires immediately by nature, because it is primarily an act preparing for faith. Merely an official agent, independent testimony requires immediately by nature merely an authentic agent, but a precept always requires an authoritative one."End quote. Here we see the beautiful connection between the various offices, acts, and endowments which are given by God to the church for the full carrying out of the end of Revelation. And we see, interestingly enough, that all of this flows forth necessarily from what we have already determined in the tract on divine revelation. Once we know what divine revelation is, what it means, and what its end is, then necessarily we must conclude to these various different functions, levels, acts, and endowments that are present within the Catholic Church. From all of this, Sheban concludes that, As a result of what has been said, the whole Catholic concept of the living agent or organ of the proclamation of Revelation bears its justification and substantiation within itself. It does so simply because, in all its aspects, it corresponds solely and truly to the vitality and the Catholicity of the Word of God itself. while the protestant and protestantizing views deny or spoil both attributes of the word of god the catholic concept alone corresponds to the vitality of the word of god for only in it does the same word appear as a word that truly continues to live and resound organically propagating and developing asserted emphatically and comprehensively a word that is introduced into mankind through naturally living agents which are at the same time animated by the spirit of god so as to join all mankind in strength constantly renewed as the principle of supernatural life to a unified living whole to a communal supernatural life in god and to permeate regulate and sanctify the whole intellectual and moral life of mankind this concept alone corresponds also to the catholicity of revelation for it alone contains a medium through which the word of god in its full extent in utter purity and in all its strength and majesty can be effectively transmitted and asserted to all men to all times and to all places this concept is therefore true because it makes christ's words true my words are spirit and life it is true because just as it is subjectively called catholic being held and laid down by the catholic church so too it is objectively catholic as the one perfectly adequate expression of the effective catholicity of revelation itself Now that we've determined the inner coherence of the Catholic concept of the magisterium, and the fact that it flows forth necessarily from the nature and end of Revelation, we can now turn to Sacred Scripture to see if Sacred Scripture actually teaches any one or all of these aspects. Now some of you may object immediately because I said some of the parts or all of them, because you may insist that in order for this to be the truly biblical view of the magisterial authority of the Church, Every single individual part must be there. Yet, this is certainly not the case, for a number of reasons. First, even on a priori grounds, the Catholic concept of the magisterium flows forth from divine revelation and its end. Second, as we showed above, each of the charisms, acts, and offices are somehow connected with one another, so that if you prove the one, you prove the other in many cases. So, if Scripture only contains some of these acts, charisms, or offices, then the other acts, charisms, and offices can easily be immediately drawn forth from what is contained in Scripture. In this treatment of Scripture, I'm not going to go into the Old Testament background, and I'm not going to go into the epistles found in the New Testament. Rather, I'm going to merely look at the Gospels to see what the Gospels say about the ministry of the Church. I could go into those other texts, but I do want to make sure this video isn't 10 hours long. So the first place we can look is we can look at the commissioning of the apostles at the end of each one of the gospels. Some may immediately object to this procedure since the charisms of the apostles were unique to the apostles. Now this is to be conceded in one sense since there's no apostles after Saint John, but on the other hand some of their offices, rights, duties, etc. continue in a limited degree in their successors, which we can actually see from some of the phrasing of the original commission. or if the promise has some sort of necessary connection with the continuance of the church. But we will get into this in a bit more detail once we go through all of the texts themselves. The first text is at the end of Matthew. It reads, quote, Jesus coming spoke to them saying, All power is given to me in heaven and in earth. Going therefore, teach ye all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world. There are a few important things to note in this text. First, he prefaces it with, All power is given to me in heaven and in earth, before giving the content of the commission. This signifies that the direct and immediate source of the authority of the apostles is the person of Christ. Second, this text supports what we called above authoritative teaching. Here the apostles are going to teach the doctrines taught to them by Christ and give certain imperatives to them. Third, the invisible presence of Christ with the apostles. He gives the promise to them that he will be with them until the consummation of the world. Now, obviously the apostles are going to die before the consummation of the world. So this is promised to them in the person of their successors. Now, this proves some sort of aid which is given to the apostles because why would the... presence of Christ be with the apostles unless it was to help them. But what kind of aid was this? Was this the aid of infallibility? Was this some sort of other aid? Now, the reading of this as infallibility is certainly congruent with the text, and it makes a lot of sense, but it's not necessitated by the text. So we need to look at the other examples of the promise of this charism. The second text we're going to look at is the ending of the Gospel of Mark. It reads, quote, And he said to them, Go ye into the whole world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be condemned. And these signs shall follow them that believe. In my name they shall cast out devils, they shall speak with new tongues, they shall take up serpents, and if they shall drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them. They shall lay their hands upon the sick, and they shall recover. And the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God. But they going forth preached everywhere. the Lord working with all and confirming the word with signs that followed."Now there's an important distinction that we can have. In this text, the office of preaching is more emphasized. In the last text, the office of teaching was more emphasized. But as to the content of what they're going to do, that's about it. But what's more interesting is that actually there's a distinctive when it comes to the charism. So in the last text, the internal help in presence of Christ was emphasized. But in this text, the external help was emphasized. help and presence of christ is emphasized this is the emphasis on the external signs which will accompany the preaching in order to render men inexcusable these are the motives of credibility of course it's also important to note that there's a necessary connection between the preaching of the word and these signs of confirmation so as we'll see from an axiom of saint thomas aquinas this is going to be something which is perpetual and found in the successors to the apostles as well so not only is there this internal help or concursus which is present in the successors of the apostles, but also this external help or concursus that's going to be present in the successors of the apostles, which of course we already went over, along with the presence of preaching and teaching as well. Second, it also notes the divine sanctions. That's the third type of help. This is when it mentions the threatening of punishments and the giving of rewards due to obedience to this preaching. As we mentioned above, promise and reward and punishment are all due to authoritative preachings this demonstrates that there is authoritative preaching which is being commissioned in the apostles not merely authentic preaching the third text to look at is the gospel of luke it states penance and remission of sins should be preached in my name unto all nations beginning at jerusalem and you are witnesses of these things and i send the promise of my father upon you but stay you in the city till you be endued with power from on high and he led them out as far as Bethania, and lifting up his hands, he blessed them."Here is simply stated the authentic preaching of the apostles. Nothing about the authoritative preaching of the apostles is mentioned. Then it gives a comment on a certain charism that will be given to the apostles, but does not go into much detail about what this particular charism is going to be. Now, again, we could speculate whether this charism is the charism of infallibility, or is not the charism of infallibility, but we'll get into more definitive waters later. now all the synoptics have presented us with so far is that there is authoritative and authentic preaching that's going to be sent to mankind which is sanctioned by god which is meant for all ages and meant for all creatures and along with this will come a certain external concursus which will include the confirmation of the message and an internal concursus which will include the presence of christ in order to keep the message pure Now, all of this strongly suggests a lot of the Catholic concepts that we went to above, but this will become clear when we look at a few other texts from earlier in the Gospels. But before we go into texts earlier in the Gospels, there's one Gospel that we missed, the Gospel of John. The Gospel of John goes in an interesting direction and actually departs from the ordinary form of the other Gospels. In chapter 20, he gives a different form of the commission. Quote, He said therefore to them again, Peace be to you, as the Father hath sent me, I also send you. When he had said this, he breathed on them, and he said to them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost, whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them, and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained. Here we see the origination behind the mission. along with one of the aspects of the mission and even a charism of the mission. But what's interesting is John 20 is not the last chapter of John. There's still one more chapter of John. In each of the Gospels, what we see is the last chapter is going to contain some sort of important note about the ministry of the apostles to the individuals who are receiving the Gospel. But in the last chapter of John, something different occurs. Our Lord doesn't go to the twelve and somehow commission them. Rather, our Lord goes to one individual and commissions him. Quote, Jesus saith to Simon Peter, Simon, son of John, lovest thou me more than these? He saith to them, Yea, Lord, thou knowest that I love thee. He saith to him, feed my lambs. He saith to him again, Simon, son of John, lovest thou me? He saith to him, Yea, Lord, thou knowest that I love thee. He saith to him, feed my lambs. He said to him a third time, Now, as I said, if you follow the form of all the other Gospels, the last thing that Christ says has to do with the commissioning of a future ministry that is connected with the situation of those receiving the Gospel. Now, what we see here, is he is commissioning a certain Petrine office. That is a certain office which Peter has. And the audience who is receiving this is those in Asia Minor. And not only are these individuals in Asia Minor, but also these individuals are under a living apostle, that is St. John, and it's in the 90s. So there are no other apostles. So I'm not really sure what this is supposed to be getting across, except the Petrine office that we now call the papacy. Communicating to these individuals, that Peter was commissioned into this role would not make any sense unless we were talking about a text that commissioned the papacy. The reasoning for all of the other texts at the end of the other synoptic gospels is that they are talking about the ministry of the apostles, which were directly relevant to ruling them. So I have no idea what a text at the end of the gospel, according to St. John, is supposed to do with Christians living 20 years after the death of St. Peter in relation to the commission of an ecclesiastical authority over them. except that there was the papacy back then. This line of reasoning is actually why this is my favorite papacy text, but that's beside the point. Now that we have that out of the way, we can look at the earlier texts in the Gospels and see if they add any sort of detail to what we've already presented. First, in John 17, 18, we get a confirmation of the sending when Christ prays to the Father that, as thou hast sent me into the world, I also have sent them into the world, representing a continuation of his own mission. Second, in other passages in Luke, John and Matthew, the fact that the preaching they were sent to do was authoritative and not merely official is confirmed. In Luke 10, 16, he that heareth you heareth me, he that despiseth you despiseth me, and he that despiseth me despiseth him that sent me. John 13, 20, amen, amen, I say unto you, he that receiveth whomsoever I send receiveth me, and he that receiveth me receiveth him who sent me. Matthew 10, 40, he that receiveth you receiveth me, and he that receiveth me receiveth him that sent me. Third, we actually see something very interesting in the Gospel of John, because in the Gospel of John, that charism, or the invisible presence of Christ that we mentioned earlier, is actually explained in some detail. We see that this charism is actually the charism of infallibility, which will last unto the end of the age. This charism is said to extend to the remembrance of all truth. Thus, John 14, 26, He will teach you all things, and bring all things to your mind, whatsoever I shall have said to you. Earlier in the chapter, it is clear that this charism is one that is perpetual, as we saw above in Matthew. Since in verse 16, I will ask the Father, and he shall give you another paraclete, that he may abide with you forever. If we skip forward to chapter 16, we see the same thing repeated. When he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will teach you all things. For he shall not speak of himself, but what things soever he shall hear, he shall speak. And the things that are to come, he will show you. There's something important to notice. If we look throughout the chapter, we see that it is through the apostles. that the world is convicted of sin and justice and of judgment there is an immediate connection between the charism and the work of the spirit from all of these texts that we have went over we can actually give a nice kind of succinct, systematic account, and give all of the verse references for this, because what we see is in each of the Gospels, we kind of get a little bit of a hint or different aspect of the ministry. And when we put them all together, along with considerations of the other parts of Sacred Scripture, we see a full, systematic outline of the essentials of the Catholic view of the Magisterium. Now, this outline and summary is from Sheban. but i added all of the different verse references there's probably other verse references that i could have given this is just a succinct systematic account which is given in basically biblical language christ by dint of his own absolute power and authority on the basis of and in connection with his own mission of revelation received from the father and for the continuation and further fulfillment thereof sends out certain persons who are bound together organically under a permanent head representing christ vicariously in a special way as his envoys to all mankind who in his name and at his command and by dint of the authority and power handed down from him publicly teach preach and witness to his entire revelation concerning both his grace and also his kingdom until the end of time and consequently not merely personally but also in their legitimate successors they are to make men their disciples through baptism to lead them into the truth and to keep them unchangeably steadfast and united in it to strengthen and guide them in it and hence he also demands that men accept the word of his envoys just as they would his word however in order for the words of his envoys really to be and to remain the word of christ as well so that it can and must be acknowledged as such christ expressly provided his envoys with a threefold endowment the promise of his own effective presence and that of his own spirit to assure the inward truth of their teaching the promise of supernatural manifestations to be worked upon the faithful and through them to assure the outward proof of their teaching and the promise of eternal reward for believers, along with the threat of eternal punishment for unbelievers, to assure the effective success of their teaching. In view of this overall picture, the gaps in the individual statements disappear automatically, along with all the difficulties that might be raised from other passages in sacred scripture. The picture coincides perfectly as a whole and in its details with the Catholic view of the teaching apostolate. and whatever may still be lacking in it, such as the infallibility of the apostolate with regard to the truths that belong indirectly to Revelation, is expressed at least virtually therein. Now someone may read all of this and be very impressed that we have so systematically outlined the way in which the Magisterium worked in the Apostolic Church. It's easy for them to object that some of what I have mentioned is actually only present in the Apostles as a unique charism of them. Now it is easy to respond to this objection on three grounds. First, this attitude actually needs to be reversed. If there is some sort of commission or promise to the church, it is assumed to continue unless otherwise stated. Thus, for example, the itinerant mission of the apostles. Many of these commissions and promises and commanded acts are things which are essential to the constitution of the church. It's essential for the continuation of the gospel. So unless there is some sort of other statement, which says that these are temporary, there is no reason to assume that these are temporary. Second, some of the texts mentioned above actually do explicitly mention the continuation of these gifts, privileges, commissions, etc. until the end of the world, so we could simply respond with that. Third, there's an interesting principle which is given by St. Thomas that can be applied to individual texts. He states in Summa Contra Gentiles book 4, quote, Now it cannot be said that this power was given to Christ's disciples in a way that it would not be derived. from them by others, for it was given to them under the edification of the church, according to the apostles'words. Therefore, this power must last as long as the church needs to be edified. This is from after the death of Christ's disciples until the end of the world. Consequently, spiritual power was given to the Christ's disciples in such a way that others would receive it from them."So basically what he's saying is that if we can look at a certain commission, charism, or gift, and the principal reason why it is given is a perpetual reason then obviously the gift charism office commission whatever is going to be something which is perpetual because if the reason or foundation is perpetual then the thing itself is going to be perpetual so for example the fact that the apostles are itinerant preachers is not something which is essentially connected with the constitution of the church or any of the needs of the church but the need for an authoritative preacher of revelation is something which is perpetually needed The need for an authentic preacher of revelation is something which is perpetually needed. The need for certain motives of credibility, the need for the preservation of the preaching of the church by way of the gift of infallibility, all these things are perpetually needed. So since the reason is perpetual, so also the thing is perpetual. This is the principle of St. Thomas, which establishes a lot of what is or is not perpetual, which is mentioned in the New Testament for the preachers of the gospel. Now, speaking of the rest of the New Testament, there are plenty of other texts that I could have went to throughout the epistles, especially throughout the pastoral epistles. But I believe what I said has sufficed, especially with the principle of St. Thomas, where we can go through to all of these different texts. and we can ask the question of whether the foundational need for this charism office etc is perpetual if it's perpetual then the thing itself is perpetual we need to always keep that in mind as we read the new testament on the ministry now this has been a very very very long video i hope all of you guys appreciated this video if you did remember to like remember to subscribe remember to send it to everybody and remember to comment let me know what your thoughts are let me know if there's anything you wanted me to go into more detail in let me know if you have any questions objections and so on and that's it so as always god bless

How many times have you heard somebody say that Jesus Christ established the Catholic Church? I come across it on a daily basis. But when's the last time somebody's proven this to you?

I mean really proven it. Not just give some sort of claim of vague historical continuity, not make some half-baked logical conundrums that Protestants and Orthodox can't answer, but really proven the fact that Jesus Christ established the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church. I feel like I never hear it.

I feel like when I go out there, I look online, I don't see people actually proving it. I just see some nonsense, you know? It just isn't good. Not good arguments.

Not at all. But as you guys know, I don't like doing things that way. I like getting right into the bottom of the issue.

I like giving good arguments. I am not going to give you guys any of these half-baked conundrums or these vague claims of historical continuity. You guys know I give you guys the good stuff, and that's why you watch me. just stick with me and there will be total roman catholic victory to begin i need to explain something at the outset so you guys don't completely misunderstand the purpose of this video this video will have two major sections the first section is going to be what i call the scholastic section and the second section is what i call the dogmatic section when we talk about scholastic theology we're talking about a certain method of doing theology that has many different functions But here I'm going to only use one of these functions.

The function that I'm going to use is the explicative function of scholastic theology. What this means is I'm going to look into the concept of a magisterium. I'm going to look at all the parts of it, the different functions of it, the nature of it, and so on and so forth.

Now, this may seem backwards to a lot of people, but this will fulfill a few important tasks for our investigation. First, When we consider the nature of divine revelation, we see that the Catholic magisterium is the natural outflowing of the concept of divine revelation. So we'll be able to demonstrate the Catholic magisterium on a priori grounds.

To simplify, I will show that the Catholic magisterium makes sense. Second, this also provides the foundation for the dogmatic section of this video. In dogmatic theology, what we do is we seek the foundation for certain theses in divine revelation, whether in scripture or tradition.

But before we seek the foundation for these things in divine revelation, we need to know what the thing is. Because if we don't know what the thing is in the first place, we're not going to know what to look for in the text. I'll give you an analogy. Let's say we wanted to go to the Bible and ask the question, does scripture teach the Trinity?

Now, if we didn't know what a Trinity was, we wouldn't even be able to answer the question in the first place. So first we need to ask, what is a Trinity? And then after that, we can ask whether the Trinity is in scripture.

So we're doing the same thing with the Catholic Magisterium here. we're asking what is a magisterium what is the catholic magisterium and then we can go into sacred scripture and find out whether this is present in that text before we begin if you like this content please consider becoming a patron at patreon.com militantomist or becoming a youtube channel member to get access to exclusive videos and more now that you're introduced to everything we need to begin with a treatment of divine revelation because when we think of a magisterium a magisterium is that which communicates divine revelation to men so it's very important for us to think about the content and the nature of the message before we think about the nature of the messenger because the messenger is for the sake of the message for example the way that a judge communicates law and the way that a mathematics professor communicates math are completely different why is this the case because the nature of the content determines a difference in role anyways what is revelation revelation is the communication of certain truths by god to men these truths are not just any truths but the truths that lead to eternal life these truths are called mysteries because they cannot be reached by the natural powers of man although sometimes even natural truths are treated in revelation insofar as there's some sort of connection between these natural truths and the end of revelation which is the salvation of mankind now as a response this revelation demands what's called the ascent of faith which is to ascend to the truths of that which is revealed Not on the basis of any sort of intrinsic evidence, but on the basis of the authority of God revealing. Now, in order to confirm that it is God speaking through the individual in Revelation, rather than merely man, God grants certain signs called the motives of credibility in order to show that it is He speaking through the individual. These include certain acts like miracles and prophecies. It is important to notice that this revelation is not merely for the sake of one individual or a group of individuals, but is for all men at all times.

Revelation is meant to proclaim the obedience of faith is meant for all. God revealed to man through many generations, completing his revelation in Jesus Christ and his apostles. This revelation is brought to bear throughout every single generation after the apostles.

shabon puts this in a wonderful way revelation is a fruitful principle of supernatural knowledge and life and a supreme law of faith thought and action for all men as one whole and individually through which they are to be united in one kingdom of truth and holiness whose king is god himself in order to attain the blessedness which god intended for them through conformity with god and submission to him but also in order to render god the glorification which is due him and intended by him in particular revelation should be the principle of faith for all men which affords them an infallible knowledge of the revealed truth and the rule of faith in which all men bring to god the most perfect homage of their minds end quote from this we're able to see what revelation is that is the speech of god and the end of revelation which is to bring forth the obedience of faith to all men now what's important about determining the end is that if you determine the end you can determine what the appropriate means are for bringing about that end. Let's say you wanted to take a trip from the UK and you're in the United States. If you had a car and wanted to drive there, those would not be means that are proportioned to your end.

On the other hand, if you bought plane tickets, these plane tickets would be certain means that are proportioned to your end. So what we have to ask ourselves is if we want revelation to be preached to all men in all generations and bring about the obedience of faith effectively. What are those means that are proportioned to this end?

It is the Catholic intention that the means proportioned to the end of carrying out revelation in that way mentioned above is only present in the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church. Now, so far so good, but we need to make an important distinction. This is the distinction between physically necessary ends and morally necessary ends. Let's say I wanted to take a trip from New York to Baltimore. I could do this by a number of means.

I could walk there. I could bike there. I could drive there.

I could fly there. It's technically possible that I could make it from Baltimore to New York in any one of these ways. But with two of these ways, I cannot ordinarily and easily achieve the end.

Like, come on guys, I'm not going to walk from Baltimore to New York. Anyways, who'd walk in Baltimore? That's a joke.

So to have a car or to fly, these two are morally necessary means to carry out the end. So on the one hand, you have physically necessary means without which you could never reach the end. And this would be, for example, a flight from the U.S. to the U.K. You have morally necessary ends, which are necessary to easily carry out the end in an ordinary manner. This is a very, very, very important distinction to make.

Catholics fail to make this distinction all the time. And this actually leaves Catholics open to many Protestant attacks against Catholic arguments. which could otherwise be salvaged.

So often, Protestants will argue against the Catholic position by pointing out that the passing of Revelation could hypothetically happen without certain means that are present within the Catholic Church. So for example, hypothetically, you could have union within the Church without the Pope. Or hypothetically, by learning the laws of grammar and exegesis, most people could come to knowledge of the Trinity from Sacred Scripture alone. Now, it is physically possible, absolutely, to have union without the Pope, or to read scripture and come to the conclusion that the trinity is true these are absolutely physically possible for sure and they are absolutely correct to point this out now what they're incorrect in doing is failing to distinguish between physical and moral possibility or physical and moral necessity what is certainly physically possible that the church be united without a single head it is definitely not morally possible that the church be united without a single head and while it is physically possible with scripture alone to come to this or that conclusion it is not morally possible with scripture alone for everybody to come to this or that conclusion so it is the catholic contention that not only all of those physically necessary means for achieving the end of revelation is given to the church but all of those morally necessary means for revelation are given to the church as well but a protestant may object to this and say that it is simply not the case in response to this it is important to note a distinction between the means provided for a society like a family versus the means provided for a society like the church.

Let's say we have a father of a household, and he's not able to afford to buy a car. The morally necessary means that his wife needs to go to the grocery store and pick up the groceries are not present. So she would have to walk to pick up the groceries.

Where does this lack of necessary means come from? Well, the lack comes from some sort of lack or poverty on the part of the head of the society, or the founder of the society. On the other hand, when it comes to Christ, Christ does not lack. He does not have any sort of poverty of supplying means.

Rather, he's going to supply every necessary mean, whether physically necessary or morally necessary, to his church to carry out the end of Revelation. It is only weakness that causes some sort of lack of supply when it comes to morally necessary means to carry out a certain end. It is actually this principle of the necessity of all morally necessary means to be given to the Church that absolutely crushes a lot of the Protestant counter-arguments against the Catholic Church.

It actually turns a lot of the kind of stupid arguments for the Catholic Church into not-too-bad arguments once you consider that these are morally necessary means. It is my contention that the various acts... offices, and charisms that are present in the Roman Catholic Church are necessary for achieving the end of Revelation. Now, before we continue, we need to make a distinction.

We need to distinguish between that which would be super cool to have and morally necessary means. For example, somebody may object to the principle that I laid out above and say, well, it would carry out Revelation even better if not only the Pope was infallible, but every single bishop was infallible. And we know that that's not the case. Therefore...

christ does not need to actually provide every morally necessary means to his church in response to this the objection completely misunderstands what a morally necessary means is a morally necessary means is a means that by a general law provide what is sufficient for carrying out the end morally necessary means don't have to be the greatest means in the world they just have to provide means that will generally bring about the end intended so you don't need to buy your wife the nicest car for her to have the morally necessary means to pick up the groceries she just needs a car now there are actually many reasons that we could seek for why christ didn't choose all of those it would be really cool means but this reply suffices for now now that we have that out of the way we can look at the general argument and then we can enter into particulars from the above principles we can rightly conclude that god would provide the propagation of revelation with certain means that would bring about quote both the full sure and communal possession and enjoyment of the truth offered in it is made possible and guaranteed to men and also the full uniform and universal homage due to god himself into his truth which is to be achieved through the recognition of his revelation can in fact reach him end quote there are a number of central attributes contained here first the truth needs to be communicated in a pure manner second the truth needs to be communicated in a universal manner third the truth needs to be authenticated and fourth the truth needs to be communicated in such a way as to command the ascent The means that have these central attributes in order to carry out the end of the communication of revelation are those means that, quote, present to mankind over and over again through living envoys of God who are specially called and empowered to do so, the word of God that was spoken once in time by proclaiming or preaching it publicly in God's name and in his power as the principle and rule of faith, end quote. The claim here is that any version of Protestant magisteriology is going to somehow contradict one of these central attributes. whether it be the purity of the truth or it be the uniformity of the preaching or the demand for the ascent of faith no matter what there's going to be some sort of contradiction between their magisteriology and these necessary means to achieve the end of revelation in order for there to be the effective transmission of divine revelation towards all the ends described above there must be first a threefold commission to preach in order to communicate in the name of god second a threefold cooperation from god in order to be preserved in what is communicated and third a threefold action so that the truth is communicated this may sound very complicated but it's going to make sense once i start to explain things basically you have three types of messenger of divine revelation three types of assistance that god is going to give these messengers and three types of things that these messengers are going to say and all of these are necessary in order to carry out the end of revelation that i mentioned above first we can look at the three types of commission In order for revelation to be communicated to men, there first needs to be individuals habitually entrusted to communicate revelation.

Otherwise, revelation wouldn't come to anyone. This level seems kind of obvious, and basically everyone already agrees to this. This level is called an official proclamation. This is the type of proclamation that a herald has of the message of a king.

He just goes out and communicates it. Yet this level of proclamation simply communicates what is said in order to prompt faith. It does not actually produce...

any sort of faith in the message which is spoken in order to have this the messenger must not only be habitually trusted with the office of speaking the word but also given some sort of public dignity in order that he himself may independently witness to the truth of what is said this level is called an authentic proclamation this is the type of proclamation that a public notary or respected figure may have they are meant to be figures who can independently produce faith by witnessing to the truth of what is being said yet there's a third level beyond this not only is there a simple communication as in the official proclamation and a trustworthy communication as in the authentic proclamation but there is a final level for we may prompt faith by communicating and we may produce faith by independently witnessing But this faith cannot be made uniform and universal, as the end of Revelation requires, without some ability to put some weight behind the teaching. Positively, this takes the form in the ability to give imperatives in order to order somebody to obedience. And negatively, this threatens punishments if the obedience is not given. This level is called an authoritative proclamation. This is the type of proclamation that a judge may have.

it is important to note that there is an intimate relationship between each of these functions and each builds upon the other the herald has simply official powers the notary has both official and authentic powers and the judge has official authentic and authoritative powers here it is important to ask which level is necessary for the effective proclamation of revelation is it enough to have simply official powers of just proclaiming what is said or does there need to be authentic or even authoritative powers as well the answer to this should be simple enough from a comparison with human society in order to ensure the universal and uniform obedience to a law the king does not simply send official messengers that is heralds to announce that the law is the case on top of that he does not simply send notaries to independently witness to the fact that the law is from the king rather he sends heralds and then notaries and then judges to interpret authoritatively and to enforce penalties against those who refuse to obey. It is the judges that ensure the universal and uniform obedience to the law, giving authoritative and binding decrees. If I may digress for a minute, it is actually this analogy that brings forth the true glory of having a magisterium.

We've mentioned a few times above that it is the glory or the rights of God or the proper subjection due to God that is the reason or end of revelation. It is the magisterium. that actually brings forth this proper subjection due to God.

When you have the judge who is demanding obedience to the law and then applying punishments for those who break the law, it is for the glory of the king that he is doing this. In the same way, it's important to have authoritative officials within the magisterium so that they may effectively bring about the universal and uniform homage of the minds of men to the revelation of God. Sheban explains this very well.

Quote, being the glad tidings or message of god to mankind cannot and should not be spread merely by arbitrary town criers or even merely through simple messengers or heralds of god the proclamation must instead be carried out by true ambassadors that is envoys equipped with god's power and authority and because the embassy of god in question is not to another sovereign besides him but rather to his creatures to whom the tidings are to be proclaimed as a law the ambassadors and particularly the supreme one among them, must at the same time be God's chancellors for the kingdom of his truth, and the judges appointed by him for the true interpretation and execution of his message. Basically, there's something very unique about the revelation of God to men. It's not as if one king was sending a message to another king, and therefore could have mere heralds, or even maybe send a notary or two, just in case there needs to be confirmation. Rather, this is from God to creatures.

this is from authority to subordinates so there needs to be authority which is brought about and this authority is meant to bring into submission all of those to whom the message is sent basically there can be no reasonable expectation for the end of revelation to be carried out effectively unless there is official authentic and authoritative preaching within the church interestingly enough in the catholic church we actually have three different types of office that carries out each one of these roles. First, there's the simple office of preaching, which is an authorization to preach publicly and the right to carry out that mandate without independently establishing one's claims, that is official, not authentic, which is possessed by priests, deacons, and authorized laymen. Second, there's the case of authentic preaching, which is the authorization or right to preach and to independently establish one's claims by producing faith, that is official and authentic, which is possessed by bishops in general.

Third, there is the case of authoritative preaching, which has the right to preach, to produce faith as what is said as an imperative, not as mere duty of respect, and to oblige the obedience to which it is said by way of punishment, which is possessed by bishops who are ordinaries, that is in charge of a diocese, and by the Pope. Now that we have discussed the three types of messenger, we can now go on to discuss the three types of assistance that God gives to these messengers. Because obviously it would be kind of useless if you know. You sent forth a bunch of messengers and that didn't help them carry out the mission. You don't only need the commission, but you also need the concursus that comes with it.

In order to discuss this again, we need to remember the principle that the means are determined by the end. This becomes very important when we discuss something like infallibility. It is not necessary for the full and proper communication of divine revelation that each and every priest who officially preaches be infallible. It is necessary for the preaching of revelation that all of the authoritative witnesses to revelation not bind the entire church to falsehood. Otherwise, revelation would be completely destroyed.

and its means would not carry out the end. So we need to be very careful about how we're stating the limits of all of these charisms. With that in mind, we state that there's a threefold cooperation on the part of God.

One, infallibility. Two, external witness. And three, punishment and reward. In sum, the first is the internal help of God in order to ensure that the preaching of Revelation is pure. The second is the external help of God in order to make it knowable to all that this is truly the preaching of God.

and the third is the support that God gives for the authoritative function of preaching. And all of this, of course, is to support the universality and the purity of the preaching of divine revelation, which is its end. As to the first, that is infallibility, it is necessary for a number of reasons.

First, in order to truly preserve the authoritative function of preaching in the church. As in any body of authorities, for most of those within the church, their authority is relative. So if they give an authoritative judgment, it can be appealed above their heads.

So if you have a bishop who makes an authoritative judgment that violates the rights of one of the individuals who are ordered, they can appeal above the bishop's head to a synod. Just like in the secular realm, if you had an individual judge who made a bad judgment, you can appeal to the next level. This is why it's not necessary for an individual bishop or group of bishops to be infallible, since their authoritative judgment can always be appealed to the next level. Yet this process of appeal is obviously not infinite.

Eventually it reaches a certain level where it can't go higher. This is the case of the extraordinary magisterium, whether an ecumenical council or a certain statement by the Roman pontiff when he speaks ex cathedra. Or, individually, these bishops cannot give authoritative judgments that are somehow false.

And this would be the ordinary and universal magisterium. Because in this case, the authoritative function of the church would fall as a whole. Now, why is this the case?

Well, there would be a two-fold dilemma. in this case, if they were to err, whether the highest appeal of authority or all of the authorities as a whole, is either on the one hand, these authorities would have to be relegated to merely official status and would not even be able to give the imperative of the ascent of faith, or on the other hand, the intellect would be bound to falsehood. Both of these cases would somehow be detrimental to the end of Revelation. On the one hand, we would have the removal of the authoritative. function of the church which is necessary for the universality and uniformity of the ascent of faith, and in the second case there would be a removal of the purity of obedience.

Schieben states this case in a much more concise way, quote, if the authentic and authoritative proclamation as a whole could propose an error, God would, one, appear to be the direct author of inevitable and universal error and consequently the tempter of humanity, in that through the conferral of the external authenticity, he gives men the full right and imposes on them the unconditional duty to trust in it. And he would furthermore too, by requiring men through the conferral of external authority to subject themselves to the proclaimed doctrine as divine truth, be the direct cause of the reassignment of the homage due to him alone, to human error instead, and consequently be the promoter of intellectual idolatry and the founder of a kingdom of falsehood."End quote. This actually highlights a common error that many individuals have when treating the issue of infallibility. Often what they'll do is they'll simply start with infallibility and then from infallibility go on to determine the nature of the magisterium, if it's offices, functions, etc. But what we have to remember is that infallibility is not the essence of the magisterium, but a property of the magisterium. And thus, since it is a property, it flows forth from the essence and not vice versa. So in order to determine the question of infallibility and its extent, we need to start with the nature of the magisterium, which itself is determined by the nature of Revelation. So what we need to do is we need to begin with Revelation and what Revelation's end is, and then move on to the nature of the magisterium and its offices. And then from that, we can actually begin to question infallibility and determine its extent and nature. It's actually this line of argumentation that provides a much cleaner treatment of the issue. So we can easily begin by looking at the various offices, whether authoritative or authentic. and then realizing that in order for the carrying out of the proper end of authoritative and authentic preaching, there needs to be a certain charism, and this charism is infallibility. Then from there, we can begin to question the extent of it, and their limit where infallibility is found and where it is not found in the magisterium. If you wanted to rephrase this into a syllogism, the major premise would be the fact of authoritative and authentic preaching in the church, and the minor premise would be taken from the end of Revelation. and therefore we'd be able to conclude the fact of infallibility in order for authoritative and authentic preaching to reach its end besides the internal help of god that is necessary in order to preserve the purity of teaching we also need to preserve the universal recognizability of the teaching of god and this comes through certain external supernatural assistance this external supernatural assistance comes through what are called motives of credibility is why it's important what Vatican I emphasizes of the church itself and its manifest holiness and its various notes being a motive of credibility, because this is a gift which is necessary to have a magisterium. Here we can make a comparison with infallibility. If Christ was visibly present on earth, Christ obviously could just visibly tell us where the preaching of his revelation is to be found. But since Christ is not visibly present on earth, he needs to leave certain signs and marks. which designate to us where his preaching is to be found. This is the same reason for the gift of infallibility. Because if Christ was visibly present on earth, then Christ could simply correct any time there is an error in the authentic or the authoritative preaching of the church. But Christ is not visibly present on earth, so he can't do that. So there needs to be some sort of internal gift which guides them towards infallibility. So there are certain signs and seals which are given to the Catholic Church in order to authenticate. that Christ speaks authoritatively through the Catholic Church, and therefore has a right to give imperatives and to impose punishments for disobedience. Steuben explains that, quote, these signs and seals, however, can consist partly of special marvelous works of God connected with the proclamation thereof, or the acceptance thereof by faith, and partly of the general spiritual miracle entailed in the continuance and efficacy of the proclamation. what shibin is saying here is that sometimes these are signs and seals like we would normally consider them such as miracles other times these are signs and seals which are present as the effect of the preaching itself lastly besides the internal and external concursus there is the divine sanction that is the establishment of the reward for acknowledging the proclamation and of the punishment for rejecting it must first complete and perfect the compelling force of the authority in order to make submission to it imperative end quote so basically the analogy for this is that the judge gives certain imperatives and one must obey him as an authority but these imperatives and these threatenings are obviously empty promises unless the king backs the judge with force of arms in order to punish those who are disobedient in the same way god sanctions the decisions of the ecclesiastical magisterium by promising rewards for obedience and promising punishment for disobedience to the ecclesiastical magisterium now besides the three types of commissions as we've went over and the three types of assistance that we just went over there are also three types of messages corresponding to these first there must be the explication and presentation of the message of revelation second there must be the testimony where the message is authenticated as being revelation third there must be the making of the rule of faith which is the imperative form of the revelation, resulting in punishments for disobedience. Each of these are necessary for the full communication of revelation. In the legal realm, this actually tracks very closely to three types of law. First, the law of custom, which is the general way in which the law is interpreted and followed. Second, formal law, which is the law itself as it is stated. And third, the judicial decision, which is the application and enforcement of the law with certain penalties attached. Now, if you haven't noticed, these three levels directly correlate to the three types of commissions above. The official explicates the content of Revelation, the authentic testifies to the content of Revelation, and the authoritative gives the rule of faith. So the existence of these three levels of preaching flows forth necessarily from the three levels of commission given above, and therefore demonstrates it. Just as the three offices above, these three acts are actually contained in one another. thus the authoritative proclamation must contain all three the authentic proclamation must just contain the first two and the official proclamation just contains the first as schieben says The three acts can be distributed in such a way that the first initially requires merely an official agent, the second merely an authentic one, and the third essentially requires an authoritative agent. For simple teaching as a statement of doctrine requires immediately by nature, because it is primarily an act preparing for faith. Merely an official agent, independent testimony requires immediately by nature merely an authentic agent, but a precept always requires an authoritative one."End quote. Here we see the beautiful connection between the various offices, acts, and endowments which are given by God to the church for the full carrying out of the end of Revelation.

And we see, interestingly enough, that all of this flows forth necessarily from what we have already determined in the tract on divine revelation. Once we know what divine revelation is, what it means, and what its end is, then necessarily we must conclude to these various different functions, levels, acts, and endowments that are present within the Catholic Church. From all of this, Sheban concludes that, As a result of what has been said, the whole Catholic concept of the living agent or organ of the proclamation of Revelation bears its justification and substantiation within itself.

It does so simply because, in all its aspects, it corresponds solely and truly to the vitality and the Catholicity of the Word of God itself. while the protestant and protestantizing views deny or spoil both attributes of the word of god the catholic concept alone corresponds to the vitality of the word of god for only in it does the same word appear as a word that truly continues to live and resound organically propagating and developing asserted emphatically and comprehensively a word that is introduced into mankind through naturally living agents which are at the same time animated by the spirit of god so as to join all mankind in strength constantly renewed as the principle of supernatural life to a unified living whole to a communal supernatural life in god and to permeate regulate and sanctify the whole intellectual and moral life of mankind this concept alone corresponds also to the catholicity of revelation for it alone contains a medium through which the word of god in its full extent in utter purity and in all its strength and majesty can be effectively transmitted and asserted to all men to all times and to all places this concept is therefore true because it makes christ's words true my words are spirit and life it is true because just as it is subjectively called catholic being held and laid down by the catholic church so too it is objectively catholic as the one perfectly adequate expression of the effective catholicity of revelation itself Now that we've determined the inner coherence of the Catholic concept of the magisterium, and the fact that it flows forth necessarily from the nature and end of Revelation, we can now turn to Sacred Scripture to see if Sacred Scripture actually teaches any one or all of these aspects. Now some of you may object immediately because I said some of the parts or all of them, because you may insist that in order for this to be the truly biblical view of the magisterial authority of the Church, Every single individual part must be there. Yet, this is certainly not the case, for a number of reasons. First, even on a priori grounds, the Catholic concept of the magisterium flows forth from divine revelation and its end.

Second, as we showed above, each of the charisms, acts, and offices are somehow connected with one another, so that if you prove the one, you prove the other in many cases. So, if Scripture only contains some of these acts, charisms, or offices, then the other acts, charisms, and offices can easily be immediately drawn forth from what is contained in Scripture. In this treatment of Scripture, I'm not going to go into the Old Testament background, and I'm not going to go into the epistles found in the New Testament. Rather, I'm going to merely look at the Gospels to see what the Gospels say about the ministry of the Church. I could go into those other texts, but I do want to make sure this video isn't 10 hours long.

So the first place we can look is we can look at the commissioning of the apostles at the end of each one of the gospels. Some may immediately object to this procedure since the charisms of the apostles were unique to the apostles. Now this is to be conceded in one sense since there's no apostles after Saint John, but on the other hand some of their offices, rights, duties, etc. continue in a limited degree in their successors, which we can actually see from some of the phrasing of the original commission.

or if the promise has some sort of necessary connection with the continuance of the church. But we will get into this in a bit more detail once we go through all of the texts themselves. The first text is at the end of Matthew. It reads, quote, Jesus coming spoke to them saying, All power is given to me in heaven and in earth. Going therefore, teach ye all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.

And behold, I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world. There are a few important things to note in this text. First, he prefaces it with, All power is given to me in heaven and in earth, before giving the content of the commission.

This signifies that the direct and immediate source of the authority of the apostles is the person of Christ. Second, this text supports what we called above authoritative teaching. Here the apostles are going to teach the doctrines taught to them by Christ and give certain imperatives to them. Third, the invisible presence of Christ with the apostles. He gives the promise to them that he will be with them until the consummation of the world.

Now, obviously the apostles are going to die before the consummation of the world. So this is promised to them in the person of their successors. Now, this proves some sort of aid which is given to the apostles because why would the...

presence of Christ be with the apostles unless it was to help them. But what kind of aid was this? Was this the aid of infallibility?

Was this some sort of other aid? Now, the reading of this as infallibility is certainly congruent with the text, and it makes a lot of sense, but it's not necessitated by the text. So we need to look at the other examples of the promise of this charism.

The second text we're going to look at is the ending of the Gospel of Mark. It reads, quote, And he said to them, Go ye into the whole world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be condemned.

And these signs shall follow them that believe. In my name they shall cast out devils, they shall speak with new tongues, they shall take up serpents, and if they shall drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them. They shall lay their hands upon the sick, and they shall recover.

And the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God. But they going forth preached everywhere. the Lord working with all and confirming the word with signs that followed."Now there's an important distinction that we can have. In this text, the office of preaching is more emphasized. In the last text, the office of teaching was more emphasized. But as to the content of what they're going to do, that's about it. But what's more interesting is that actually there's a distinctive when it comes to the charism. So in the last text, the internal help in presence of Christ was emphasized. But in this text, the external help was emphasized. help and presence of christ is emphasized this is the emphasis on the external signs which will accompany the preaching in order to render men inexcusable these are the motives of credibility of course it's also important to note that there's a necessary connection between the preaching of the word and these signs of confirmation so as we'll see from an axiom of saint thomas aquinas this is going to be something which is perpetual and found in the successors to the apostles as well so not only is there this internal help or concursus which is present in the successors of the apostles, but also this external help or concursus that's going to be present in the successors of the apostles, which of course we already went over, along with the presence of preaching and teaching as well. Second, it also notes the divine sanctions. That's the third type of help. This is when it mentions the threatening of punishments and the giving of rewards due to obedience to this preaching. As we mentioned above, promise and reward and punishment are all due to authoritative preachings this demonstrates that there is authoritative preaching which is being commissioned in the apostles not merely authentic preaching the third text to look at is the gospel of luke it states penance and remission of sins should be preached in my name unto all nations beginning at jerusalem and you are witnesses of these things and i send the promise of my father upon you but stay you in the city till you be endued with power from on high and he led them out as far as Bethania, and lifting up his hands, he blessed them."Here is simply stated the authentic preaching of the apostles.

Nothing about the authoritative preaching of the apostles is mentioned. Then it gives a comment on a certain charism that will be given to the apostles, but does not go into much detail about what this particular charism is going to be. Now, again, we could speculate whether this charism is the charism of infallibility, or is not the charism of infallibility, but we'll get into more definitive waters later. now all the synoptics have presented us with so far is that there is authoritative and authentic preaching that's going to be sent to mankind which is sanctioned by god which is meant for all ages and meant for all creatures and along with this will come a certain external concursus which will include the confirmation of the message and an internal concursus which will include the presence of christ in order to keep the message pure Now, all of this strongly suggests a lot of the Catholic concepts that we went to above, but this will become clear when we look at a few other texts from earlier in the Gospels.

But before we go into texts earlier in the Gospels, there's one Gospel that we missed, the Gospel of John. The Gospel of John goes in an interesting direction and actually departs from the ordinary form of the other Gospels. In chapter 20, he gives a different form of the commission. Quote, He said therefore to them again, Peace be to you, as the Father hath sent me, I also send you. When he had said this, he breathed on them, and he said to them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost, whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them, and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained.

Here we see the origination behind the mission. along with one of the aspects of the mission and even a charism of the mission. But what's interesting is John 20 is not the last chapter of John.

There's still one more chapter of John. In each of the Gospels, what we see is the last chapter is going to contain some sort of important note about the ministry of the apostles to the individuals who are receiving the Gospel. But in the last chapter of John, something different occurs. Our Lord doesn't go to the twelve and somehow commission them.

Rather, our Lord goes to one individual and commissions him. Quote, Jesus saith to Simon Peter, Simon, son of John, lovest thou me more than these? He saith to them, Yea, Lord, thou knowest that I love thee. He saith to him, feed my lambs. He saith to him again, Simon, son of John, lovest thou me?

He saith to him, Yea, Lord, thou knowest that I love thee. He saith to him, feed my lambs. He said to him a third time, Now, as I said, if you follow the form of all the other Gospels, the last thing that Christ says has to do with the commissioning of a future ministry that is connected with the situation of those receiving the Gospel.

Now, what we see here, is he is commissioning a certain Petrine office. That is a certain office which Peter has. And the audience who is receiving this is those in Asia Minor.

And not only are these individuals in Asia Minor, but also these individuals are under a living apostle, that is St. John, and it's in the 90s. So there are no other apostles. So I'm not really sure what this is supposed to be getting across, except the Petrine office that we now call the papacy.

Communicating to these individuals, that Peter was commissioned into this role would not make any sense unless we were talking about a text that commissioned the papacy. The reasoning for all of the other texts at the end of the other synoptic gospels is that they are talking about the ministry of the apostles, which were directly relevant to ruling them. So I have no idea what a text at the end of the gospel, according to St. John, is supposed to do with Christians living 20 years after the death of St. Peter in relation to the commission of an ecclesiastical authority over them. except that there was the papacy back then. This line of reasoning is actually why this is my favorite papacy text, but that's beside the point.

Now that we have that out of the way, we can look at the earlier texts in the Gospels and see if they add any sort of detail to what we've already presented. First, in John 17, 18, we get a confirmation of the sending when Christ prays to the Father that, as thou hast sent me into the world, I also have sent them into the world, representing a continuation of his own mission. Second, in other passages in Luke, John and Matthew, the fact that the preaching they were sent to do was authoritative and not merely official is confirmed.

In Luke 10, 16, he that heareth you heareth me, he that despiseth you despiseth me, and he that despiseth me despiseth him that sent me. John 13, 20, amen, amen, I say unto you, he that receiveth whomsoever I send receiveth me, and he that receiveth me receiveth him who sent me. Matthew 10, 40, he that receiveth you receiveth me, and he that receiveth me receiveth him that sent me.

Third, we actually see something very interesting in the Gospel of John, because in the Gospel of John, that charism, or the invisible presence of Christ that we mentioned earlier, is actually explained in some detail. We see that this charism is actually the charism of infallibility, which will last unto the end of the age. This charism is said to extend to the remembrance of all truth. Thus, John 14, 26, He will teach you all things, and bring all things to your mind, whatsoever I shall have said to you. Earlier in the chapter, it is clear that this charism is one that is perpetual, as we saw above in Matthew.

Since in verse 16, I will ask the Father, and he shall give you another paraclete, that he may abide with you forever. If we skip forward to chapter 16, we see the same thing repeated. When he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will teach you all things. For he shall not speak of himself, but what things soever he shall hear, he shall speak. And the things that are to come, he will show you.

There's something important to notice. If we look throughout the chapter, we see that it is through the apostles. that the world is convicted of sin and justice and of judgment there is an immediate connection between the charism and the work of the spirit from all of these texts that we have went over we can actually give a nice kind of succinct, systematic account, and give all of the verse references for this, because what we see is in each of the Gospels, we kind of get a little bit of a hint or different aspect of the ministry. And when we put them all together, along with considerations of the other parts of Sacred Scripture, we see a full, systematic outline of the essentials of the Catholic view of the Magisterium.

Now, this outline and summary is from Sheban. but i added all of the different verse references there's probably other verse references that i could have given this is just a succinct systematic account which is given in basically biblical language christ by dint of his own absolute power and authority on the basis of and in connection with his own mission of revelation received from the father and for the continuation and further fulfillment thereof sends out certain persons who are bound together organically under a permanent head representing christ vicariously in a special way as his envoys to all mankind who in his name and at his command and by dint of the authority and power handed down from him publicly teach preach and witness to his entire revelation concerning both his grace and also his kingdom until the end of time and consequently not merely personally but also in their legitimate successors they are to make men their disciples through baptism to lead them into the truth and to keep them unchangeably steadfast and united in it to strengthen and guide them in it and hence he also demands that men accept the word of his envoys just as they would his word however in order for the words of his envoys really to be and to remain the word of christ as well so that it can and must be acknowledged as such christ expressly provided his envoys with a threefold endowment the promise of his own effective presence and that of his own spirit to assure the inward truth of their teaching the promise of supernatural manifestations to be worked upon the faithful and through them to assure the outward proof of their teaching and the promise of eternal reward for believers, along with the threat of eternal punishment for unbelievers, to assure the effective success of their teaching. In view of this overall picture, the gaps in the individual statements disappear automatically, along with all the difficulties that might be raised from other passages in sacred scripture.

The picture coincides perfectly as a whole and in its details with the Catholic view of the teaching apostolate. and whatever may still be lacking in it, such as the infallibility of the apostolate with regard to the truths that belong indirectly to Revelation, is expressed at least virtually therein. Now someone may read all of this and be very impressed that we have so systematically outlined the way in which the Magisterium worked in the Apostolic Church.

It's easy for them to object that some of what I have mentioned is actually only present in the Apostles as a unique charism of them. Now it is easy to respond to this objection on three grounds. First, this attitude actually needs to be reversed. If there is some sort of commission or promise to the church, it is assumed to continue unless otherwise stated. Thus, for example, the itinerant mission of the apostles.

Many of these commissions and promises and commanded acts are things which are essential to the constitution of the church. It's essential for the continuation of the gospel. So unless there is some sort of other statement, which says that these are temporary, there is no reason to assume that these are temporary. Second, some of the texts mentioned above actually do explicitly mention the continuation of these gifts, privileges, commissions, etc. until the end of the world, so we could simply respond with that.

Third, there's an interesting principle which is given by St. Thomas that can be applied to individual texts. He states in Summa Contra Gentiles book 4, quote, Now it cannot be said that this power was given to Christ's disciples in a way that it would not be derived. from them by others, for it was given to them under the edification of the church, according to the apostles'words.

Therefore, this power must last as long as the church needs to be edified. This is from after the death of Christ's disciples until the end of the world. Consequently, spiritual power was given to the Christ's disciples in such a way that others would receive it from them."So basically what he's saying is that if we can look at a certain commission, charism, or gift, and the principal reason why it is given is a perpetual reason then obviously the gift charism office commission whatever is going to be something which is perpetual because if the reason or foundation is perpetual then the thing itself is going to be perpetual so for example the fact that the apostles are itinerant preachers is not something which is essentially connected with the constitution of the church or any of the needs of the church but the need for an authoritative preacher of revelation is something which is perpetually needed The need for an authentic preacher of revelation is something which is perpetually needed. The need for certain motives of credibility, the need for the preservation of the preaching of the church by way of the gift of infallibility, all these things are perpetually needed. So since the reason is perpetual, so also the thing is perpetual. This is the principle of St. Thomas, which establishes a lot of what is or is not perpetual, which is mentioned in the New Testament for the preachers of the gospel. Now, speaking of the rest of the New Testament, there are plenty of other texts that I could have went to throughout the epistles, especially throughout the pastoral epistles. But I believe what I said has sufficed, especially with the principle of St. Thomas, where we can go through to all of these different texts. and we can ask the question of whether the foundational need for this charism office etc is perpetual if it's perpetual then the thing itself is perpetual we need to always keep that in mind as we read the new testament on the ministry now this has been a very very very long video i hope all of you guys appreciated this video if you did remember to like remember to subscribe remember to send it to everybody and remember to comment let me know what your thoughts are let me know if there's anything you wanted me to go into more detail in let me know if you have any questions objections and so on and that's it so as always god bless

Transcript for:Understanding the Catholic Church's Establishment

Transcript for:
Understanding the Catholic Church's Establishment