to the book of First Peter and Chapter 5. First Peter and Chapter 5. And I'm going to read, and if you can follow the first four verses, As Peter says something regarding the nature of church government, really, is what he's talking about in this passage. The elders who are among you I exhort, I who am a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ and also a partaker of the glory that will be revealed. Shepherd of the flock of God which is among you, serving as overseers, not by compulsion, but willingly, not for dishonest gain, but eagerly, nor as being lords over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock. And when the chief shepherd appears, you will receive the crown of glory that does not fade away." Well, we're working through the history in this book by Timothy Paul Jones. We've been in the beginning of the fifth century for a few weeks because we We're looking at Augustine and his main area of ministry and teaching overlap the early 5th century from roughly 390 to 430 when he dies. And the 5th century is a period of significant change in a number of areas. A number of things get resolved, very importantly get resolved. One of the ones that Timothy Paul Jones talks about, if you turn to pages 56-57, if you have it with you, the whole discussion about the relationship between the two natures in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. How is Christ both God and man? How do you conceive of that? How do you think about that? And what is the relationship between the two of them, those two natures? And it's very important, we're not going to get in, this is not what we're going to look at today, but it's very important that you have a biblical understanding of the relationship of those two natures, that the divine does not, as it were, meld and merge with the humanity so the humanity disappears, that there is a real man who suffers, who is subject to all that we are subject to except for indwelling sin. And the Lord Jesus Christ never sins. In fact, I would argue on the basis of Scripture, he was incapable of sinning. But that's a point that Christians have debated over the years. But that whole discussion occupied a lot of print, a lot of energy, a lot of argument. But finally, and he describes here how it was hammered out at the Council of Chalcedon, and he deals with that in page 57. And the Chalcedonian settlement or the Chalcedonian agreement is one that, for instance, when the reformers come along in the 17th century, 16th century rather, and begin to critique various elements of the Roman church in the late medieval period, begin to rebuild the foundations That's one thing that they basically take over. They recognize that what takes place in the Chalcedonian settlement is something that is for all of time, in fact, in one sense, that this agreement regarding how the humanity and the divinity are related in the one person, that argument, that kind of way of expressing it that was done in the 5th century is something that is very faithful to the biblical data. It's in the 5th century, you get, and again we haven't taken this, Augustine engagement in a major controversy over the nature of salvation. And it's known as the Pelagian controversy and he finds himself drawn inextricably, he didn't want to get involved initially, into a controversy with a man named Pelagius who was British, came from the Roman province of Britannia, had come to live in Rome and began to conceive and argue that human beings are born as innocent as Adam. And it is theoretically possibly argued for a human being to live a flawless, sinless life that is over and above the Lord Jesus Christ. And Augustine had deep problems with this because his reading Particularly the book of Romans led him rightly to see that men and women are born into this world with a bent away from God, a bent to sin. And it isn't the case that a human being by their own native strength, etc., can live a life that is as flawless as Adam's before the fall or even that of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's known as the plaguing controversy. Augustine hammers out a position. in which he affirms the sovereignty of grace and the fallenness of the human nature, which basically, again, when the reformers come along in the 16th century, they basically take Augustine's view and one of their most powerful, I think, telling critiques of the Roman church in the 16th century was you claim to honor Augustine, We'll honour him by embracing his view of salvation and when it comes to salvation, God is sovereign. So, that's hammered out in the 5th century. But the issue that I want to look at, and this is one that has fateful consequences down to the present day, and that is how should the church be governed? And under Christ, within the church, who has authority? And authority is a very important element of human life. We live under authorities. God has so structured this world that there are authorities there right from the get-go. You're born in a family, and obviously you can think about situations of orphans, but we're talking about the normal scenario. And you've got parents, and they are in God-given authority over you as a child. And one of the vital reasons for that arrangement is because that's the world in which we live. There are authorities that God has put into the world to preserve order in the world. If you're wise, you learn it in the family. You learn that your father and your mother have authority over you. And you grow up as an obedient child, if you're wise. Some of us, I won't get into my own story. Some of us aren't wise. And you have to learn it the hard way. Because when you get out into the world, that's the structure of the world. There are police. There is government. There are authorities there. Government and the state is of God-given authority. Romans 13. So, in context, it's better to have even a dictatorial state than anarchy. And you just need to look at the book of Judges The theme of judges, for instance, comes up a number of times. Everyone did what was right in their own eyes. There was no king then in Israel. And so there are authorities. The reason why all of that's important, God-given authority in the family and obedience to that authority, God-given authority in the state and obedience to it, and all the other elements of school, etc., local employment, etc., is because this world is ruled by God. And all of these areas of authority are reflections of His authority. And a wise person learns to recognize early on, this is God's world. It's not my world. It's His world. And He allows me to live in this world for a period of time. And to live wisely in this world, I live under His authority. We won't get into this. We've just gone through an election and we've exercised our democratic right and I hope you voted. And the reason why that is important is because that there is no one human being who can be given all power and all authority. And the reason why democracy is important is because men and women are fallen. But the world to come is not a democracy. We won't be voting. You know, we won't be voting on, you know, who do we want for the head of the government? Well, there won't be any vote. And that's fabulous because we will have a king who is flawless, perfect, who knows how to rule his subjects with love and kindness and so on. And so authority, and not surprisingly, they're in the church. The church has a framework of authority. I know there have been in the history of the church certain individuals, those who have argued, well, we don't want any authority figures in the church. We're all brothers and sisters, which we are. But there have been those in the early Clement brethren, for example. who I have enormous admiration for in the 19th century. In so many areas, their understanding of the Lord's Supper, their zeal for mission, their love for the Scriptures. The early proof of them, there shouldn't be any pastors. And so, they do away with pastors, elders. And it works great for a few generations, two or three generations. But it's very interesting in the late 20th century, the whole movement is breaking down completely. And if you look at the history of brethren congregations, they're not what they were when they began in the 19th century. And that's because I think one of the things that God puts in his words regarding the church is their authorities. And who in the church has authority to speak? and to teach. Who in the church has authority to receive people into membership? Who in the church has authority to say, well, we believe that you're theologically a heretic. You deny basic issues of Scripture and we believe you should leave the church. So, issues of discipline within the church and all of that, those are issues of authority. And the day we're living in is a day in which this whole area is flared up again in big time. Not so much the question that occupied our forefathers. We're going to look at the development of one type of governmental view in the church. Our forefathers were consumed with, is there one man who can say, a man who, for instance, in the Church of England, you call the bishop. Is he the man? Or if you were to look at one type of Episcopal church government, Episcopal means it's a verb, it's an adjective from the word bishop. That is the Roman Catholic Church where you've got the man at the top is the Pope and he is the representative of God. And if he says you're wrong, you're out. And the only reason anybody has any legitimate authority in the church is it all flows back to him. That's one kind of model. Another model is Presbyterian. which is the elders, classical Presbyterianism. The congregation did not vote elders in, and elders met in a geographical area. They would be known as the various things, the classes, the synod, etc. Some of you have come out of a Dutch Reformed context. Dutch Reformed, generally speaking, are Presbyterian in structure. Here in this church, it's congregational, although it has an element of Presbyterianism in terms of the actual working out of church government. But ultimately, as Coran Baptists, we believe the final locus of authority is the congregation. And those are the three models that are being historically debated. And there's nuances of all those. And actually, how you do church government in a local church, there are nuances. For instance, how do you vote according to the Bible? Is it a show of hands? Is it a secret ballot? Very interesting. I mean, we have a ballot, but other churches might have a show of hands. And we probably picked up the ballot maybe from our larger democratic system. Maybe I'm wrong. I don't know the text which says when you elect an elder, there has to be a show of hands or there has to be a secret ballot. And with those sorts of things, there is a flexibility that God has given to the church, I think, to determine within their own given congregation how that process is done. Today, and we won't get into this either, all this stuff we won't get into, the issue has flared up again and it's been dovetailed with one of the favorite themes of our culture, which is gender. And the gender issue has come into the church in this area in major major force, which is who is eligible to be a ruling teaching elder in a local church? Is it both men and women? Or is it only men? And that's a big issue today. I think the Scriptures teach certain men. It's not even all men. And so some women who say, well, you know, this is really biased against us. Well, no, no, no. There are men who aren't qualified to be ruling teaching elders. It's not all men. It's certain men who are qualified. And for me, there is a very clear biblical text, 1 Timothy chapter 2, 9 through 15, which I think it's really very difficult to get around because Paul there goes back to creation and talks about creation order. That even within the family, you have issues of authority. and the husband being the head of the wife. Now, we won't get into that. I'll move on to the topic at hand, which is the emergence of the papacy. In the early church, and I'm sure you could come up with these passages, in the early church, if I would ask you the question, well, let me ask you the question. How many offices are there in the early church, the Apostolic Church, as you have it in the Scriptures? How many offices? How many leaders? Oh, good. I was expecting the answer too, but three. Yeah, there are apostles and then there are elders and deacons. You see this, at least you see the elders and deacons in Philippians chapter one, verse one. Philippians 1.1, where Paul says this, Paul and Timothy, bondservants of Jesus Christ to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi with the bishops and deacons. And Paul's an apostle, so there is apostolic leadership. The big question is, are there successors to the apostles? And I would argue no, the apostles are a generation of leadership that God uses to found the church. You don't necessarily need to look at this, Ephesians chapter 2 verses 20 to 22. Paul's talking about likening the church to a building and he says the apostles and the prophets, and I think he's talking about New Testament prophets who are given the revelation that we have in the New Testament, they're the foundation. And when you build a building, you lay a foundation. And the foundation is essential. Building, at least, the main principles of building in the Roman world and our world are the same. Which is, if you want to make sure your building is going to last and it's going to serve whatever purposes you want, you lay a good foundation. And if you don't lay a good foundation, you're in problems. And Jesus has got that story. If you remember, the man who lays these foundations of his house on the sand. And the sand is not a good place to be building the house. And the sea comes and the winds blow and the house falls. And the principle is when you build a house, you lay a foundation. And then as you're building the structure, about a third of the way up, you don't build another foundation. Your foundation is there at the bottom and it supports the entire structure. And that's what's done in the apostolic period. The apostles. Their words, their teaching that we have in the New Testament is the foundation of the church. And you don't need successors to them. And in fact, if you go through the New Testament in the book of Acts, for example, when the apostle James is slain by Herod in Acts 12, the church doesn't gather to elect a new apostle. When Paul is aware that he's a passing from this scene of history in 2 Timothy, he doesn't tell Timothy, now please gather the church and elect an apostle to succeed me. In the passage we just read, 1 Peter, Peter doesn't say, you know, you need another apostle to succeed me. But the two main orders of governments in the church are, in this passage is the words, bishops and deacons. Let me deal with deacons first. That's really not what I want to get focused on. Deacons, our word in English, it's not an English translation. The Greek word is diakonoi and the word deacon has been taken right over from the Greek. It's what we call a transliteration. So, the word is not being translated. If I were to take the word and translate it, it means servant. It actually means a waiter. When you went to a restaurant in the ancient world, which they did have next to the temples, and somebody came out and waited on your table, that was a diakonos. They were waiters. And it's interesting the word that the church took this word into its structure to talk about that order of men in the congregation who are involved in certain tasks that are mundane to some degree, need to be done or vital. In fact, one of the challenges I think of reading the New Testament is knowing exactly all, what exactly did the deacons do? They're there and I think it's a bit of a challenge at times to know exactly, like in Paul's longest section on deacons in 1 Timothy 3 and what he's interested in talking about the qualifications and not so much the job description. But they obviously serve a role in the local church. Things like mercy ministries, distribution of alms, helping the sick, etc. Those sorts of things. Not taking care of the church buildings. They didn't have church buildings. They had homes. So, you don't need to consider that. But in time, obviously, that would be one of their ministries. That's not what I want to get focused on. The other one is the one that's described here as bishops. That also is not a translation. And the Greek word is episkopos, e-p-i-s-k-o-p-o-s, episkopos, e-p-i-s-k-o-p-o-s. And I'm going to give you, most of you probably remember this, but I'm going to give you a very quick history of how the Greek word episkopos becomes the English word bishop. Language changes over the years. The Greek word episkopos, E-P-I-S-K-O-P-O-S, when you translate that into Latin, which the Latin Bible did, I have to take the word over, it becomes, they didn't translate it either, they translated it as E-P-I-S-C-O-P-U-S, episkopos. And then in the course of time, in what's known as vulgar Latin, which isn't rude Latin, It's the Latin that the average person spoke who had no education and had an accent. The E got dropped off at the front and it became Biscopus. P's and B's in Indo-European languages often do a flip and you can have a word that's got a P and it can become a B. I don't know all the ins and outs of why you pronounce P's and B's, but you can do a flip with them. So, Episcopus becomes Biscopus. When that comes into Old English, which is Anglo-Saxon, the origin of our language, those of you who are Frisian will be delighted to know that English's closest cousin as a language is Old Frisian and Anglo-Saxon was like Frisian and when it comes into English, it becomes Biscop. You drop off the U.S. And by the time you move through Middle English into Modern English, which begins around 1500, you get Bishop. So, Bishop is not a translation. I think, I might be wrong on this, but I think the King James Version translators should have translated it. It would have avoided a lot of headache. And the word would have been translated as maybe overseer. And it's a very difficult word to translate because when I think, at least for me, when I think of the word overseer, I think of a guy managing a factory. And that's not what the word means. The word has to do, it's a government position in the Roman world. Overseers were, the word anyway, episkopos in the Roman Empire was a man who was in charge of the governance of a city. Like a mayor, really. And he oversaw the city for the state. And so, it's got the idea of governance. It's got the idea of leadership. That's not the only word that's used of that level of leadership in the church. There's another word that's used, too. By the way, notice it's plural, not just one, plural. There's more than one bishop in the Church of Philippi. What's another word that is used? Peter used it. Shepherd, good, that is used there in 1 Peter. If you go back to, well actually if you go back to Ephesians, just on the way to 1 Peter, if you go to Ephesians chapter 4, and someone could read 1 Ephesians 4, 11. Good, thank you. There you've got the word. The word pastor is the word shepherd. It's very interesting, the word pastor is not the most frequent word to use of this office in the scriptures, and if we had a few hours. we would be able to look at the history of the terminology and the understanding of the senior level of leadership in the local church and we'd find out the word pastor, it only becomes a frequent term of usage in the evangelical revivals. In the 16th century, the formers and the Puritans would describe that level of leadership as a preacher or a minister. In the 18th century, the word pastor becomes It's drawn, obviously, from the Bible, but it's only in the 18th century that word becomes a commonly used word. So, you've got pastor. There's another word, though, that Peter uses. He does use that implication in 1 Peter 5. If you go now to 1 Peter 5, but there's another word he uses there for the level of leadership. Elder. Yeah, he uses the word there, elder. He actually calls himself an elder. 1 Peter 5.1, the elders who among you I exhort, I am a fellow elder. And again, you've got the plurality of elders and he is identifying himself as an elder. Those are the two most common terms that are used, elder and bishop. Are they the same? And if they're the same, how would you show that to be the same in the New Testament? This is a big question. Historically, it's a very big question. Is the elder the same as the bishop? You have to find a passage where they're used interchangeably. Very good. Are there such passages? Does anybody know? And Pastor Muller is excluded from answering the question. Does anybody know of such a passage? Let's say you're engaged in a conversation with somebody who's convinced that bishops and elders are not the same. How would you show from Holy Scripture that either Presbyterian or Congregational Church government is the biblical model? Very good. Yeah, Titus 1. And if you could read for us Titus 1, verses 5 to 7. Thank you. Well, there you go. I mean, it's quite clear that the word bishop and the word elder are the same. They're describing the same office. They're looking at it from different vantage points. The word bishop looks at it from the vantage point of the whole issue of governance and leadership. The word elder looks at it more probably from the vantage point of spiritual maturity. It's interesting, the word bishop is a word that was used in the Greek and Roman governments. The word elder is the word that's taken out of Jewish synagogue. Because in the synagogue, the leaders in the synagogue were the elders. Normally, the elders are those who are older. The Greek word that lies behind elder is praesbyteros. That's where we get Presbyterianism from. And praesbyteros literally means the person who is older. It's initially got to do with chronological age. In this context, it's not chronological age at all. And because all of you and I know that sometimes you can have an old fool. And to simply cut your old in years doesn't mean you're wise. There's a lot of old fools in our culture. No disrespect intended. A lot of men and women who should know a lot better, but they don't. But normally, the expectation is this. You live in this world long enough, you gain a degree of wisdom, if you're wise, that is. And so, that's the idea then. It's that idea of wisdom that comes with age or should come with age. And those who are elders in the local church do not have to necessarily be chronologically old, but they do have to be mature. So you're looking at the same office from two different vantage points. The other place, if you want to go for this, is Acts 17. We won't turn there. Acts 17, what Paul calls the elders of Miletus. Acts 17, I think it's around verse 17. And then in the midst of that fabulous speech in, sorry, Acts 18. I didn't have it written down. That'll teach me. Acts 20, thank you. It's Acts 20, 17. Is that right? Acts 20, 17. Thank you very much. Acts 20, 17, where he calls the elders from Miletus. And then in verse 28, he described the elders as bishops or overseers. So that's another indication that they're the same. And he uses the word shepherd there, which is great because that indicates pastoral leadership, eldership, and governance in the local church. Now, we could spend a lot of time. It's very important we think these issues through, that we have some idea of what is a biblical form of government. I do differ from my earliest Baptist forebears when Baptist movement begins in the 17th century. Our Baptist forebears believed that they could find a complete accurate blueprint of church government in the New Testament. They shared that view with all of the rest of their Puritan fellows. All of the Puritan movement believed there was an accurate blow-by-blow blueprint of church government in the New Testament. The Presbyterians believe that. That's why the Presbyterians had problems with the Baptists. That's why the Presbyterians sometimes imprisoned the Baptists, etc. And because they all believe that there's an exact blueprint. I don't think there's an exact blueprint. We're not told every detail how to run a church in detail. In fact, one of the things that's very striking about the elder's position is I do believe we're given a job description. I need to hurry. But the focus in Holy Scripture is on character. Very interesting. If you go through, I've been to all kinds of ordinations over the years and the whole focus often is on the theological competency of the person being examined for ordination. But if you go through the list in 1 Timothy 3, and I hope this is being done, I've never been party to this done in private, but I hope it's done in private, questions need to be asked like, what do your neighbors think of you? If we were to ask people who may have heard of you, do you have a blameless reputation? What do you like in your house? Are you a quick-tempered person? And those sort of questions which you can't ask, I know you can't ask those publicly, but I would hope that those things are asked when you're considering, you're thinking about elders and so on. Anyway, so you've got these two offices then in the New Testament. The exact details how that works out in terms of governance in the local church, there is a degree of leeway. And I'm a committed Congregationalist and I don't believe Presbyterianism captures the full picture of New Testament governance. However, there is a lot of, I think Presbyterians have a lot of scope for their arguments and in fact I do think I'm modeled here with, I mean we're Congregationalists but we have a Presbyterian element and we won't get into all the details of that. I think it captures perfectly in many respects what's going on in the New Testament. But there is room for disagreement. So, when I've got a Presbyterian brother who disagrees with me on congregationalism, well, we're still referring to the same scriptures. What I don't agree with at all in any way, shape or form is Episcopal church government. What amazes me is how gracious God is and has used Episcopalians down through the years, ranging from James Usher, the Anglo-Irish bishop in the 16th century, through the Wesleys, through George Whitfield, through Simeon, through John Stott today and Anglicans today. God is gracious. But there is one form of church government which is deeply problematic because it violates so much of Scripture and that is monepiscopacy. which is the model that we have in the papacy. The question is, and the big question is, how do you move from a fairly simple model of church government to the papacy? And there are probably three key steps. The first one is, after you move outside the New Testament, there is a man named Ignatius of Antioch who separates, we know this from his writings, and this is around the year 110, he separates the office of bishop and elder. And in his writings, he talks about how there should be in churches a bishop and then the elders under them, one bishop and then the elders. And he says things like you should never have the Lord's Supper without the bishop. Or you cannot have a marriage in the church without the bishop. That actually is the first mention of pastoral involvement in a Christian marriage. Again, I think you can reason from principles in the New Testament, but that's the first clear evidence, that passage. And he invests an enormous amount of authority in the bishop. Obey the bishop. Do nothing without the bishop's consent. And the big question is, why is he doing that? And the big issue that has come up in the second century is the heresy we call narcissism. We've already looked at it. And one of the ways of fighting heresy is you invest one man in the local church with significant authority. So if the one man in the local church is sound theologically, the church is fine. And you see this actually at the beginning of the, in the 20th century, early 20th century, in the battle against liberalism. In the battle against liberalism, a number of pastors in North America in non-episcopal churches, churches that don't normally have bishops, ruled their churches like bishops. And so the other elders or deacons in those churches had no say in anything. And the pastor was the man. And I can understand why you do that. Because if you're fighting against liberalism, if the pastor is sound, he secures the church. There are other reasons why the pastor's authority would grow. The Roman world was completely hierarchical. It wasn't a democracy. And churches often take on the coloring of their culture. Some of our democratic processes in this congregation. I wonder, are they influenced by our culture? Obviously, we're trying to be true to scripture in terms of the congregationalism, but you can see maybe we have a secret ballot. I'm not saying we should change these things, but the secret ballot. I mean, prior to the, when does the secret ballot come in? I think in the 19th century. Prior to that, everybody would show hands. It's interesting, at faculty meetings down at Southern, you do a verbal A, I. When we vote on issues, it's always I. And that means anybody who dissents has to say no publicly. And there are various ways of doing the voting, but. Yes. It's probably, they probably had little, maybe pebbles or tokens, something like that. There was a lot that would be cast. I don't think that's a precedent. I think Luke is simply describing what they did. I don't think he is prescribing. There's a difference between prescriptive and descriptive. I don't know. Maybe it's coins. I don't know. Yeah, yeah. I don't think Luke is telling us there that that is a prescriptive. I think he's simply describing how they did it. We won't get into voting patterns. So it's easy to see how in a context of heresy you invest authority in one man. And then the Roman world's hierarchical. It's interesting, for example, after the fall of communism, if you look at the life of Baptist churches in Romania, for example, or some of the Eastern European countries, how much authority is invested in the leadership. And it reflects to some degree the larger hierarchical society. And then in the Roman world, normally speaking, only a very few percentage of people could write. If this was a typical early Christian congregation in the Roman world, 10% of you could read and write. Sorry, 10% of you could read. I'm here today, but let's do it arbitrarily. The first two or three rows here can read. And because it includes the number of women, they can't write. Maybe one of them can read and write. And the rest of you can't read and write. And so if churches are writing to each other, normally the person who gets the letters, he's got a degree of authority because he knows what other people are telling him. And often that man was an elder. In fact, it occurs to me, and I don't know of any evidence against this, it occurs to me that in the early church, almost one of the unspoken qualifications to be an elder was you have to be able to read. which limits, that limits even again, the number of men. Because the elder has to preach, he has to teach, he has to read the scriptures, he has to study. So, he has to be able to read. That means in a given congregation, only 10% of the men probably were qualifiable as an elder. And you can see then how that would again, if you did have elders who couldn't read and write, that elder who could read and write would have a degree of growing authority. By the time you get to the fourth century, you have the structure, and it's not uniform initially, but by the time of the fourth century, you've got in a local church, you have a bishop, then you have elders, and then you have deacons. Why did one bishop come to claim significant authority, namely the Bishop of Rome? One of the questions that sometimes people ask me is, when did the Roman Catholic Church begin? It all depends on how you define what a Roman Catholic is. If the Roman Catholic Church is defined by two key pillars, the mass, then you're probably, you might almost be pushing it into the Middle Ages because it's not until 1215 it becomes dogma that you must believe in transubstantiation, the transformation of the bread and the wine into the very body and blood of Christ. If you're arguing that the Roman Catholic Church is the papacy, then it's in the middle of the 5th century. when you have a man named Leo, who is the Bishop of Rome from 440 to 461. And Leo argues that the Bishop of Rome is the heir, H-E-I-R, of Peter. And Peter is the first Bishop of Rome. If you go back, by the year 200, it was believed among certain Christians that Peter had been one of the founders of the church in Rome. Peter and Paul had founded the church in Rome. And Peter was buried in Rome. There's no evidence he founded the church in Rome. No biblical evidence. He is buried in Rome, I think. I think there's very good archaeological evidence for that, which we won't go into. So, he founded the church. The argument was he founded the church. He's the first bishop. And Jesus gave to Peter all kinds of privileges. And the key passage which has been battled over for 1,500 years, is Matthew chapter 16 and verses 16 to 18, where Jesus asked the question, who do men say that I am? And Peter says, you're the Christ, the Son of the living God. And then Jesus says this to Peter, verse 17. Jesus answered, Matthew 16, 17. His answer said to him, blessed are you, Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father is in heaven. And I also say to you, you are Peter, and on this rock, and the word Peter is Petros, you are Petros, and on this Petra, I will build my church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. And I'll give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven. Whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. And Leo asked the question, What privileges did God give to Peter? Well, he says he gave him the privileges of being the foundation of the church. He gave him the keys. He's the doorkeeper. And he gave him the power to admit into the church and to kick out the church. The power of excommunication and the power of admission into membership. Now, if that is true, which I would deeply question, if that is true, what does it got to do with him? Well, it all hangs in the little word, heir. Now, our English word, heir, comes from the Latin word, heirus, which is the word, the language Leo was using. Let's say tomorrow, I won't single any of you up, Stephen Harper phones one of you up and says, I'd like to make you my heir. And then Stephen, our Prime Minister, has an unfortunate accident. and passes away, what would you inherit as his heir? Would any of you become the next Prime Minister of Canada? No, our inheritance laws don't work that way. Inheritance in our context, you inherit debits and credits or possessions and debts. Pushing that little analogy, let's just hope that that did happen. There's a lot of more credits than deaths, but you won't become the prime minister. In the Roman world, your heir took over your social position in life and political position. So, you got all kinds of Roman emperors make people their heirs and that meant if they die, when they die, that person becomes the next Roman emperor. That's the model that Leo is dealing with. The Bishop of Rome is the heir of Peter. It is a Latin inheritance model. If you go on to the Vatican website, www.vatican.org, the first page you'll hit will be what language you want to proceed in. You hit English. The next page you'll see, now I haven't done it with Benedict. I did it with John Paul II. And I remember seeing John Paul II is the heir of Peter. Which means all the privileges of Peter are the Pope's. And that theological argument is the critical argument. Leo lays that foundation. Does everybody agree with it? No, of course they don't. But he lays that foundation in the 440s. And that becomes the foundation of the medieval papacy, which essentially is with us today. There were people who opposed the idea that the Bishop of Rome was the single major heir. The churches in Alexandria, Jerusalem, Antioch, Constantinople, but with the fall of the Western Roman Empire, those churches were sundered. And the churches in the West were living in a very different political reality. None of the churches in North Africa agreed with the Bishop of Rome, but that didn't make any difference after 700, because after 700, the followers of Muhammad, coming out of Saudi Arabia, had taken out all those churches. And, for instance, Augustine, Augustine would never have bought this argument. On one occasion, when the Bishop of Rome was about to recognize Pelagius as Orthodox, he told the Bishop, you do that, we'll cut off, we'll excommunicate you. If Augustine had bought into the papacy, that's not, you can't excommunicate the Pope. Like, is the Pope Catholic? And I mean, he is! He's the Catholic Church. And the one group we're going to look at very quickly next week, because this issue turns on this group, too. The one group that did oppose the papacy in this regard were the churches founded by Patrick in Ireland. And we want to talk about Patrick next week. I'm sorry, that was very rushed. Again, I look at that clock and There is an amazing thing that happens. Time just speeds up in this hour. I don't know if you've noticed it, but anyway. Just very quickly looking ahead, next week we'll draw a close to the study we'll be doing. We'll look at Patrick. I had a choice of ending with Leo or Patrick, and I want to end on a positive note, so we'll look at Patrick. And then our brother Stephen is going to do four weeks, right? And then when we come in late June, John and I were going to do something on pacifism, but we're going to do that in the fall. So, we'll have two sessions at the end of June, and I'm not sure what we'll do. So, next week, Patrick, and then Stephen will do four weeks into the middle of June, and then two final weeks before the summer. Let's pray. Father, thank you that you place this under authority. Authority of our parents and those in the States. And we thank you that we are under authority in the life of your church, but that ultimately we are under your authority. Thank you for being our God and our ruler and our king and giving us the great king, your son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Help us to be biblical, to think these issues through. For your blessing in the hour to come. May we hear your word. not only sit under it physically, but seek to live under it in all of our lives. For Jesus' sake. Amen.