Interview With Erick Ybarra

I hope that all of my Canadian followers had lots of turkey on Monday as it was Canadian thanksgiving.  My family had our thanksgiving dinner on Sunday so on Monday I was free.  I did the three hour drive home and then got ready because I had an interview booked.  It was with Catholic apologist Erick Ybarra who blogs at erickybarra.org and is a co-host along with Michael Lofton on Reason and Theology.

While I try to focus mostly on Islam and Church history, I wanted to talk about the history of the papacy.  I suppose the history of the papacy falls into the church history category.  I had first heard of Erick Ybarra several years ago.  I’ve always been impressed with his knowledge of the papacy and other subjects.

I wanted to focus the discussion on the Ante-Nicene period, though we went later into the fourth century when talking about St. Athanasius of Alexandria.  I brought up James White who is a huge critic of the papacy and Ybarra pointed our that White likes St. Athanasius and then went to talk about his important role.

One topic that I really wanted to focus on was the controversy of Cyprian of Carthage and Pope Stephen.  This is a common argument used against the papacy so I wanted to get Ybarra to share all the details.  We also talked about Cyprian’s interesting view on Matthew 16:18 which is a bit unusual at first glance.

The discussion was focused in a way to address Protestant objections, though Eastern Orthodoxy did come up.  Even Oriental Orthodoxy and Nestorianism came up.  It’s hard to talk about the early church without bringing up these groups as they all claim the first four centuries as there own.

At the end of the discussion I asked Ybarra to recommend some books on the papacy.  He actually started out with a recommendation from Eastern Orthodox scholar Edward Siecienski.  Siecienski has written a book on the papacy called The Papacy and the Orthodox.  I was actually pleased to hear this recommendation as I’ve just finished his book on the Filioque which is the probably the biggest Orthodox criticism of the Catholic Church after the papacy.  It’s a great book so I have do doubt that his book on the papacy is good, not to mention Ybarra’s endorsement.  He gives a bunch of other book recommendations as well but you’ll have to watch the interview to hear them.

Thank you Erick Ybarra for joining me on allanruhl.com.

If you want to find Ybarra’s work, it can be found at the links below:

https://erickybarra.org/

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Enjoy and God bless!