Jesus and Elijah

FGO from the August 13, 2013 meeting, based on this written bit.

Peter and Eliakim

Here's a quick Biblical reason why the Pope continues to exercise Peter’s authority:

In Isaiah 22, King Hezekiah has discovered that his household steward Shebna has been stealing money from the King. The obvious evidence is the pricey tomb Shebna has made for himself:

“What have you to do here and whom have you here, that you have hewn here a tomb for yourself, you who hew a tomb on the height, and carve a habitation for yourself in the rock?”

The King banishes his corrupt chief steward:

“Behold, the LORD will hurl you away violently, O you strong man. He will seize firm hold on you, and whirl you round and round, and throw you like a ball into a wide land; there you shall die, and there shall be your splendid chariots, you shame of your master's house.”

And makes a new one of Eliakim. He dresses him in the official clothes :

I will call my servant Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, and I will clothe him with your robe, and will bind your girdle on him, and will commit your authority to his hand; and he shall be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and to the house of Judah.”

And gives him the key to the Kingdom, the House of David:

 “And I will place on his shoulder the key of the house of David; he shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none shall open…and he will become a throne of honor to his father's house.”  Of course when Eliakim dies or falls out of royal favor, the King will get himself yet another prime minister- it’s not a one-time status unique to Eliakim.

Centuries later, Jesus borrows from this scene of a King authorizing his #1 official when he tells Peter:

“And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven."

So Peter is entrusted with the keys not to an earthly kingdom, but the Kingdom of Heaven. Like Eliakim, he will be a father, a papa, to the people. And being a key-holder, when Peter dies or retires a new prime minister will take his place.

Trinity vs. Oneness

Jason Rhoad's FGO for May: 

A few months ago, I was invited by a friend to join a group on Facebook called “Spiritual Debates”. It is a place where people like me who are interested in discussing the things of God can go and make the case for our beliefs. Over the course of a few weeks and months, many different topics have been discussed. Topics ranging up and down the theological spectrum and as you might have figured, with great disagreement on most of it. It is in fact a microcosm of Christendom these days and an ultimate demonstration that Christianity struggles to be all it can be with so many voices competing for truth. It also highlights an age old truism that in order for something to work the way it was intended, somebody has got to be in charge.

Well, one of the topics that has had quite a bit of staying power on the forum is a debate that I had previously not given much thought to. It is a debate over the Trinity. I knew that Mormons and Jehovah Witnesses both denied the Trinity, but I was only vaguely aware of another group known as Oneness or “Jesus only Pentecostals”. Where the Latter Day Saints and JW’s tend to minimize who Jesus was in their denial of the Trinity, this group goes in the other direction. They believe that the person of Jesus is the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and that they are not three distinct persons. There is only one person – Jesus.

As it turns out, “Spiritual Debates” makes for strange bedfellows. There are around 400 members in the group, and I am only aware of one Catholic other than me. So on most things I’ve chimed in on, about the only thing that the other members can agree on is that the Catholic guy is definitely wrong. But on this particular debate at least, my mainstream Protestant friends found themselves in full agreement with the Catholic guy. I watched them go back and forth with one another, making the case for their position, but it struck me that the Protestants who believed in the Trinity had no better argument for their belief than the Protestants who considered themselves Oneness. The best they could do was to argue their interpretation of what they thought the Bible taught. One guy argued that “no one could read the Bible and come up with anything other than belief in the Trinity”. Well obviously they can or we wouldn’t be having this debate. And thus is the state of Christendom. “I think the Bible means this” vs. “I think the Bible means that”.

After watching for a while, I posted several quotations from the early church fathers concerning the Trinity and ultimately the teachings of the council of Nicaea in A.D. 325. Both sides were unaware (for the most part) that this question had been settled centuries ago. I challenged the Oneness advocates to produce any evidence from Church history that would indicate that their position was the true historical position of the Christian faith. Of course no evidence came (because none exists) and all the Trinity believing Protestants who were engaged in the debate were quick to join forces with the Catholic to dispel the heresy.

But as the implications of where the evidence came from began to become clearer, my new friends were not so friendly anymore. It began to take them to a place that they did not want to go. You see their argument for the Trinity was no better than the other side’s argument for Jesus only. At the end of the day, neither side accepted any other authority other than their own interpretation of scripture. One side says “The Bible clearly teaches the Trinity” while the other side says “The Bible clearly teaches Oneness doctrine”. There is simply no way to settle the matter.

The Trinity is a revelation from God. It has been revealed to us. Though it is not contrary to reason, it is not something that can be come to by reason alone. So the question becomes, how was it revealed? Ultimately it is revealed through the teachings of Jesus, through the teaching authority of His Church. This revelation of the Trinity occurs similarly to another revelation in scripture that we read about in this week’s liturgy in Acts 15. There was a question about whether or not Gentiles had to first become Jews (and be circumcised) before being allowed to become Christians. Here we see the teaching authority of the Church at work. We see the leaders of the Church coming together to discuss and pray and be led by the Holy Spirit. It culminates in the first council of the Church, the Council of Jerusalem. There, the Church definitively teaches that no, the Gentiles did not have to become Jews first. This is the exercise of the teaching authority of the Church, given to it by Christ with His promise of the protection of the Holy Spirit to protect it from formally teaching error.

And so it is with the Trinity. When questions began to arise about the nature of Jesus, the leaders of the Church met, discussed, prayed, and exercised again the teaching authority of the Church at the Council of Nicaea declaring the revealed truth of the Trinity and of the nature of Jesus. But for my Protestant friends to acknowledge that without this teaching authority of the Church, their arguments for the Trinity basically boil down to “just because”, was a bridge too far. They could give no credit to the Catholic Church for settling this matter for the faithful because if they did, then what else does this teaching authority teach that I must also believe? And so it turns out that the Catholic Church just happened by chance to be right about this issue. It was right only because its teachings agree with the scriptural interpretations of the Protestants who believed in the Trinity, not the other way around. Let us be thankful brothers that we do not have to rely on our own sinful, fallen, fallible human interpretations of God’s word in order to determine eternal truth. After all, we may be wrong. Rather we follow the sure guide, holy mother Church, given to us by Christ, with His protection from teaching error so that we may know the truth on this matter and all others He has chosen to reveal.