I was on Reason and Theology

On Saturday I made an appearance on the show Reason and Theology.  They invited me on to talk about the early Roman episcopate.  As some of you may know, there is a revisionist theory that there was no early monarchial bishop at the Church of Rome.  I have written several articles in the last six weeks in support of this position.  This was in preparation for the interview.

I knew Erick Ybarra from before.  I had interviewed him on my Youtube channel to talk about the evidence for the papacy in the first four centuries since Protestants deny that it existed.  I got to meet William Albrecht for the first time which was pretty awesome.  I’ve been watching the guy on Youtube for a long time.  He has been refuting James White for the last two decades.

They told me that they wanted a standard video that they can point to so that when this objection comes up; they have a reference.  Of course this topic has recently come up because of James White and Jerry Walls.

Jerry Walls wrote an article and tried to point to liberal Catholic historians and asked why we as Catholics don’t listen to them when they say that there wasn’t a monarchial bishop in Rome until the mid-second century.  Of course I quoted a very well known Catholic historian Warren H. Carroll to show that there are Catholic historians who hold the traditional view.  So yes, we are believing our historians, just the good ones.

I talked about 1 Peter 5 and how Babylon actually refers to Rome and I quote the earliest Christian historian Eusebius to prove that it’s the case.  I also read Clement of Rome’s letter which shows his familiarity with Peter and Paul being in Rome which meshes perfectly with the rest of Church tradition.  I showed that St. Ignatius’ letter to the Romans is of completely different character than his other six epistles.

I want to thank Erick and William for this opportunity.  Unfortunately Michael Lofton was busy and couldn’t be on the show.  Hopefully I’ll get to meet him sometime.

Anyways, let me know what you think.  How did I do?  This was the first time that I was on a big livestream.  In addition to this, I recommend this channel to everyone.  It’s a great channel.  They’ve had high profile Catholic guests like Scott Hahn and Bishop Athanasius Schneider.  They’ve had famous non-believers like Bart Ehrman and Dan Barker.  They also had Fr. Josiah Trenham who is probably my favourite Eastern Orthodox priest on the planet.  It’s a great show and it’s growing.  I was honoured to be a part of it.