Pints With Aquinas - 218: What does the Bible say about priests? w/ Dr. Andrew Swafford

Episode Date: August 11, 2020

It's a new episode of Pints with Aquinas, and I welcome back my friend, Dr. Andrew Swafford—this time to talk about the Biblical basis for the priesthood. If you've ever wondered what the Bible says about the priesthood (or if it says anything at all about it), then this episode is for you. Dr. Swafford and I dive deep into the topic and answer such questions as: - What does a "priest" really mean? - Why doesn't the Catholic Church ordain women? - Why do we call priests "Father" when Christ tells us to call no earthly man your father? - What is apostolic succession? - Why do we need another mediator, if Christ is already the mediator between us and God? - And more!! I think you're going to really love this episode! Enjoy! SPONSORS EL Investments: https://www.elinvestments.net/pints  Exodus 90: https://exodus90.com/mattfradd/  Hallow: http://hallow.app/mattfradd  STRIVE: https://www.strive21.com/  GIVING Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mattfradd This show (and all the plans we have in store) wouldn't be possible without you. I can't thank those of you who support me enough. Seriously! Thanks for essentially being a co-producer coproducer of the show. LINKS  Website: https://pintswithaquinas.com/ Merch: https://teespring.com/stores/matt-fradd FREE 21 Day Detox From Porn Course: https://www.strive21.com/ SOCIAL  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattfradd Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattfradd Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattfradd MY BOOKS  Does God Exist: https://www.amazon.com/Does-God-Exist-Socratic-Dialogue-ebook/dp/B081ZGYJW3/ref=sr_1_9?dchild=1&keywords=fradd&qid=1586377974&sr=8-9 Marian Consecration With Aquinas: https://www.amazon.com/Marian-Consecration-Aquinas-Growing-Closer-ebook/dp/B083XRQMTF/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=fradd&qid=1586379026&sr=8-4 The Porn Myth: https://www.ignatius.com/The-Porn-Myth-P1985.aspx CONTACT  Book me to speak: https://www.mattfradd.com/speakerrequestform  

G'day, g'day. Welcome to Pints with Aquinas. My name is Matt Fradd, and today I'm joined around the bar table by Dr. Andrew Swofford to talk about the biblical basis for the priesthood. We cover a whole range of topics, but some of the things you might be interested in is, you know, what does a priest even mean? Why doesn't the Catholic Church ordain women? How do we square our calling priest's father with Christ saying, call no man on earth your father? What is apostolic succession? Why do we need another mediator, right?

Sort of like Christ is the mediator between us and God, and now you've got a priest who's the mediator between. This just seems unnecessary. And so we tackle some Protestant objections as well. We delve deep into the Old Testament. Dr. Andrew Swofford knows a great deal about that. So that was really fun. Also, when we do these videos,

we often do a post-show wrap-up video for our patrons only. We did a really long one after this episode. It was all on whether or not infants should receive Eucharist. And we take a look at what Thomas Aquinas has to say in the Tertia Paz about this. It was about a 20-minute chat. So if you're a patron, go check out the post-show wrap-up video. If you want a bunch of perks, including post-show wrap-up videos, and you're not yet a patron, become a patron at patreon.com slash mattfradd.

Let me just say this. We disagree with Thomas Aquinas on this issue, and we think that that's okay. So I'm just going to leave it at that. You can go check that out. Who is Andrew Swofford? Well, let me put my glasses on and I'll bloody tell you. Andrew Swofford is Associate Professor of Theology at Benedictine College. He's General Editor and Contributor to the Great Adventure Catholic Bible, published

by Ascension Press, and host of the DVD series, and author of the companion book, Hebrews, the New and Eternal Covenant. We're going to talk about that today. As well as author and host of Romans, the Gospel of Salvation, yada, yada, yada. There's a lot here. He's a super established and what do you say? He's got lots of credentials, credentialed guy. He is member of the Society of Biblical Literature, Academy of Catholic Theology, and a senior fellow at the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology. He lives with his wife, Sarah, who's super cool, by the way, and their five children in Atchison, Kansas. Before we jump into the show, I want to tell you about this. Strive21.com is a 21-day detox from porn course that I created for you to check out.

We have over 19,000 men going through the course right now. It is a 21-day detox, as I say, from porn course. So if you're a man who struggles with porn or lust in any way and you're tired of it, go check out strive21.com. Strive21.com. It is 100% free and you can be as anonymous as you want. All right. Here is my episode with Dr. Andrew Swofford. G'day, Dr. Andrew Swofford. Thanks for being back on the show. It's a blessing to be back with you, Matt.

Thank you, USA. Are you wondering why we just didn't do this last time instead of flying you into Atlanta and getting you into an Uber and driving up, this is a lot easier. You know, what's funny is when we filmed it last time, it was like just on the cusp of correct tide. And the airports were thin but still there. And then all of a sudden, things just kind of fell off the rails right afterward. Yeah, yeah. Well, I had such a great time chatting with you last time.

And yeah, your passion for the scriptures, your knowledge of it, people were very, very helped by the episode we did together, I think. Well, as they are by your ministry, Matt, I just, it's been fun to kind of watch you over the years. And especially, you know,

as we were just talking before the show in the last year, two, three years, I mean, just a lot of academic academic substantive content that's exciting, compelling. You're helping so many people, so thank you. Please, God. I think everybody would like to think that they're helping people, and then we know people who think they're helping people, but you look at them and say you're objectively not, so I'm always skeptical.

But I'm praying that the good Lord would use my bull crap as manure for other people's growth. So we're here today to talk about the biblical basis for the priesthood. I'm really excited about this because I feel like this is something that most Catholics, even Catholics who have a somewhat understanding of apologetics, this isn't something they learn to defend. They might know how to defend the Eucharist or what we pray to the saints or purgatory, maybe even the Pope and Peter being the rock, but the priesthood.

How do we come at this? I have a lot of questions, but I'll let you kick it off. You know, it's interesting that you say that because I've known non-Catholics who have come right on the edge of real presence, affirming the Eucharist, but not the priesthood. And the difference at the end of the day, even though it seems like we're so close, it's actually a big chasm in that inevitably, at least in my experience, for those who came that far, it was the person's faith that made Jesus present, not an objective consecration of the Eucharist or an objective ordination of the priesthood. And that changed everything.

And I used to kind of ask this question, what do you do with the host or the Eucharist when the service is over? And inevitably, they didn't put it in a golden box called the tabernacle and reverence and worship. And so even though we seem so close, the difference was still telling by the end. Yeah, that's really interesting. You're talking about Protestant denominations that accept the true presence in one way or another? Yeah, and obviously Lutherans have a very high view of initiation and the like, but just in terms of casual conversations over the years, not even those from a liturgical background like

Lutheranism, I've had people, acquaintances who have come just on the edge and basically say to me, I affirm what you affirm, but the source of it is not a priesthood. It's the person's faith that makes – that affirms Jesus being present. Even the word priesthood has a lot of baggage, like in pagan culture and in Mormonism, priesthood. We think of like the sexual abuse crisis. I think people just in the secular world attribute that to priests. And so it's kind of like it's grown to be an icky word in the minds of many people. So why don't I just kind of ask you an extremely basic question, and maybe the answer to this question would apply no matter the religion I'm talking about. I'm not sure.

What is a priest? Oh, wow. Well, gosh, there's different layers to it. When it comes to biblical scholarship, New Testament, I would always a thousand times over say, these New Testament writers, Jesus, the apostles, they are thinking in Jewish categories. They're coming out of a Jewish tradition of the Old Testament, of the Bible, of the history of Israel. So before we kind of import Greco-Roman categories onto what's going on here, we've got to go back to the Old Testament. That's first and fundamental. And we may have parallels.

We may have links. We may have connections. Obviously, Paul preaches and goes to a Greco-Roman world. I mean, Paul, who's a Roman citizen but was also trained by the greatest rabbi of the day, Gamaliel. I mean, he's sort of, you know, a Greek-speaking Hebrew specialist, right? So, but again and again, we got to go back to the Old Testament to understand the meanings of these words. And I would just say, even for our current context, and I know I've had the good fortune of befriending a lot of priests, they are fully conscious of the fact that what they carry, what they represent,

what they live out is, as Fulton Sheen put it, treasures in clay. That at the end of the day, Jesus is the one priest. He's the one high priest. And all priesthood is a participation in Jesus priesthood. That Jesus makes his priesthood present through the priest, through the ministry of forgiving, offering sacrifice, teaching, and the like. That doesn't mean the priest is perfect. But for a Catholic in good standing and these priests, they know, they know that they carry something within them that vastly transcends who and what they are. And that's the great mystery of it. You asked who and what is a priest.

it. You asked who and what is a priest. I mean, biblically speaking, we've got different aspects in the Old Testament of priesthood, but they teach, they're teachers. They help us discern between good and evil, between the holy and the unholy, the clean and the common and the sacred. A big part of it is they offer sacrifice. They are a mediator between God and man. And one of the most fascinating passages in Hebrews, Hebrews chapter 8, verse 3, it says, every high priest must offer gifts and sacrifices. Therefore, this priest, Jesus, must have something to offer. Now, we'll come back to this passage, but Jeff Cavins and I just filmed an eight-part study on the letter to the Hebrews, eight DVD episodes, and then there's a book that

goes with it. And like no other book in the Testament, Hebrews accentuates Jesus's priesthood. And what does this passage mean? What does Jesus continue to offer? Yes, the cross, but there's a sense of which there's something still ongoing. And for a Catholic, that's exactly what's going on, is that Jesus continues to make his sacrifice on the cross present through the ordained priest in the holy sacrifice of the mass. But I'm getting ahead of myself. But this is you move from the old to the new, from the earthly to the heavenly. And Jesus is not suffering, he's not bleeding, but he has made his sacrifice present before the Father in heaven, and that heavenly sacrifice in his glorified humanity is what's present at every mass. Okay, so just generally speaking then, maybe in the Old Testament, in addition to being a

teacher, a priest was a mediator in some capacity between God and man who offered sacrifices. So would you say that that's like an essential component of being a priest, that if you're somebody who's not offering sacrifices and is not in any way a mediator between God and man, you might be a teacher. But really, the essence of it is that sacrificial aspect or no? I'd say that's that's uh yeah yeah i mean exactly right uh essential and and but there's maybe more to it but but uh that's kind of a sine qua non that's why a rabbi is not the same thing as a priest gotcha judaism after the fall of the temple in 80 70 when the romans destroyed the temple, it's very different than Old Testament religion in the sense that you don't have the Levitical priesthood, you don't have the sacrifices.

You really move from, and I don't mean this in a pejorative way, but you move from Judaism being a religion based on liturgy, priesthood, sacrifice at the temple, to becoming a religion of the book in the wake. You move from the temple to the synagogue only, whereas there's a sense in which they both play a complementary role. And you can see both in the Mass, frankly, because the synagogue is where you would hear the Word proclaimed. You'd hear teaching. And temple was a place of sacrifice, of liturgy, of priesthood.

Well, where do we have the Mass? We have the Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Eucharist. It sounds like a similar transition to Catholicism to Protestantism, where you abandon the sacrificial component, you're now just expounding the Word. Yeah, I mean, it's obviously anachronistic, and I get that, but yeah, it's certainly an analogy, no doubt. Interesting. So a priest in the Old Testament, so who's the first priest in the Old Testament? Melchizedek? He's the first one explicitly called a priest, Melchizedek. But, you know, so it's, yeah, he's the first one explicitly called a priest, a kohen in Hebrew, but you can see priestly aspects going back to Adam.

call the priest, the Kohen, in Hebrew, but you can see priestly aspects going back to Adam. You can see the Garden of Eden is kind of a proto-sanctuary. So we can certainly see it. Noah offers sacrifice. So I'd say two main types of priesthood in the Old Testament. Everybody knows about the Levitical priesthood, and that's a really important foreshadowing for the New Covenant, for sure, where you have the high priest, you have the sons of Aaron who are priests, and then you have the Levites who basically are sacred assistants. They assist in the tabernacle. All priests are Levites, but not all Levites are priests. And really, there's a parallel in the church between, say, the bishop, the ordained priests, and the deacons. Now, I'm getting ahead of myself, and this terminology develops and whatnot, but so with

the Levitical priesthood, you've got Aaron, the first high priest, you've got the sons of Aaron who are priests, and then the Levites who help with the ministry of the tabernacle but are not all priests. But that priesthood really develops in the wake of the golden calf at Mount Sinai. It's important to remember that we do have a prior priesthood, which is often called the patriarchal priesthood, or the priesthood of primogeniture, priesthood of the firstborn. If you read Genesis, you see Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob doing things that are priestly prerogatives. They give the blessing. They offer sacrifice.

They do all of these things that are priestly prerogatives. And this is kind of quintessentially embodied in Melchizedek. What's interesting in the patriarchal period is you have this union of priest and king. Explicit in Melchizedek, who was priest-king of Salem, which is later identified as Jerusalem. But the patriarchs really act as royal priests. They act as spiritual and temporal heads of their families. That unity is kind of sundered at the golden calf with the rise of biblical priesthood. Even if you look at the Passover and even the covenant ceremony in Exodus 24, you still have this kind of primordial priesthood, which Aquinas identified as sort of a priesthood in the order of nature, which then forms the backdrop of the new covenant, which is grace, healing, perfecting and elevating nature, because the apostles are in effect like 12 new patriarchs. And then you have the golden calf, you have the Levitical priesthood rise after that. And this is really the burning question with Jesus, and Hebrews makes this explicit in

chapter 7. How can Jesus be a priest? He's not of the tribe of Levi. I guess one more wrinkle, though, is with the Davidic period, which, intriguingly, Melchizedek shows up both in the patriarchal period and the Davidic period, in terms of the figure Melchizedek. In the Davidic period, David clearly acts not just like a king, but a priest-king. It's pretty evident in 2 Samuel 6, 2 Samuel 8, 18, it speaks of David's sons as priests. You've got the famous passage in Psalm 110, verse 4, which in context is sort of said of the Davidic king that you are a priest according to the order of Melchizedek. Melchizedek, of course, was a priest king of Salem. David, in fact, acts like a new Melchizedek. He's a new priest king of Salem. So the patriarchal priesthood, Levitical priesthood, and the Davidic

age kind of recapitulates that patristic era with the return of the priest-king, albeit the Levitical priesthood continues alongside, and this kind of culminates in Jesus, who's a priest not according to the order of Levi, but the order of Melchizedek, which harkens back to both the patriarchal period and the Davidic period, not just restoring it, but restoring and elevating it in the apostles, as I said, as 12 new patriarchs in the new covenant. Yeah, let me ask you to kind of dwell on that for a moment. When we say Jesus is a priest in the order of Melchizedek, I don't know what that means still.

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and using Matt Fratt as the promo code. But even if you don't pay to get it, they still have content that's updated every day. So please check them out. They're really great. hallow.com, hallow.com. All right, back to the episode. Yeah, so I would take Melchizedek and there's different Jewish views as to

interpreting who and what is Melchizedek. There's lots of, the Dead Sea Scrolls for example, have intense speculation. There's a document called 11Q Melchizedek where they see Melchizedek as sort of a kind of an angelic figure who is going to be this kind of priestly messiah in this kind of messianic jewelry.

It's cryptic. There's not a lot there, but it's really fascinating. You've got the Targums that identify Melchizedek with Shem, Noah's righteous firstborn son. What's intriguing about that is that Shem, now for us, we're like, well, wait, don't they live in vastly different time periods? Well, okay, they do, right? There's a big time gap. That's a challenge there. But narratively speaking, in terms of the ages in Genesis, Melchizedek is—Shem would still be alive in Abraham's day because Shem has a pre-Diluvian or pre-flood age, and those ages are much higher after the flood, they taper down. So narratively speaking, further, Shem receives the blessing

from Noah, then Melchizedek gives it to Abraham. Well, in Genesis, you don't give a blessing unless you have one, unless you get one, and so narratively speaking, it's not crazy to see a narrative connection. Now, can we see Melchizedek then maybe as a descendant of Shem or the Lion of Shem or a carrier of the Blessed of Shem? Sure, maybe. But the point is, so you've got the Desi Scrolls who identify Melchizedek as this kind of almost preexistent angelic messianic priestly savior. And then you also have the rabbinic thought that sees Melchizedek in connection to Shem. What's intriguing there is Shem is the only righteous firstborn in all of Genesis. If you read through all the firstborns, you have some kind of

either moral failing or irregularity, whether it's Ishmael or Esau or Reuben, who sleeps with his father's concubine in Genesis 35. So it would make sense that Shem then would kind of embody quintessentially this patriarchal priesthood, which is in the father and ideally is passed to the firstborn. The irony in Genesis never happens that way. Now, if you look at Psalm 110, it's really cryptic. As I said, verse 4 speaks of the king as a priest according to the order of Melchizedek. But if you look at verse 3, there's this kind of tantalizing reflections about this Melchizedek figure, before the dawn I begot you, almost, it's poetic, but almost preexistent type thing.

And Jesus actually refers to this psalm toward the end of his life in all the Synoptic Gospels, seemingly to kind of point to his interlocutors that the Messiah, yes, is son of David, but also greater than David. And to that extent, the Dead interlocutors that the Messiah, yes, is son of David, but also greater than David. And to that extent, the Dead Sea Scroll community got something right because Jesus, okay, what does it mean to be the order of Melchizedek? I would say first and foremost... And here's the exact verse that I'm looking at in chapter 7, verses 11. What further need would there have been for another priest to arise

according to the order of Melchizedek rather than one named according to the order of Aaron? I guess that I don't understand that verse. We were verse 11. Sorry. Yeah. No, I'm with you. Verse 11. Why do we have to kind of attach Christ to the order of Melchizedek?

And what does that even mean as opposed to the order of Aaron? Well, I think there's a deeper storyline going on here, and it's in part this. The reason for the new covenant, when Jeremiah 31 prophesies a new covenant, it's because the first one was broken. What does he have in mind? The Sinai covenant. The Levitical—and when Paul says the law was, quote, added because of transgression, Galatians 3.19, I would say in large part,

he's got Leviticus and then Deuteronomy in mind. And if you trace the narrative, these things are added after major apostasy, major falls, the golden calf with Leviticus and then Baal Peor in Numbers 25. And then you have Deuteronomy given there on the plains of Moab at the end of Moses' life, at the end of the 40-year wandering.

And so I think part of what's going on here is that Leviticus was good. Leviticus gave them a kind of means of, again, the whole tabernacle apparatus is both positive and negative. On the one hand, it's God's presence on the sun and going with his people. It's an amazing, amazing portion, frankly, of the Eucharist, of God dwelling with them. At the same time, there is a real sense of God distancing himself from the people because the people of their fallen state. And again, I know as moderns, like, how could you do that? We do need to, I think, recover a sense of the sacred, the reality of sin, that the wages of sin are death, as St. Paul says. So there's a sense in which Leviticus, the whole apparatus, is sort of a symbolic way to atone for sin, but not really. And Hebrews 10 makes this explicit, that the law was

but a shadow of the good things to come. So I guess maybe one more prior step. In Exodus 24, when you have the covenant ceremony of the sacrifice, the way this kind of covenant meaning would have been understood in the context is the sacrifice yes communion but it's also may this happen to me if I'm unfaithful well the Israelites are unfaithful the golden calf and if you look at Exodus 32 verse 33 34 there's a sense of which God suspended or delayed that covenant curse did not meet it out allowed the Levitical priesthood sacrifice to kind of bear those things symbolically but not redemptively until one could come who could offer a sacrifice not just in sacrifice is really ritualized self-offering Jesus sacrifice is perfect as he offers himself in other words I think part of

the backdrop is that the Levitical priesthood as Hebrew says several times made nothing perfect it was a temporary stopgap. But as Jeremiah and Ezekiel the prophets see, the true sacrifice that will bring about the gift of the Spirit, the new heart, it will empower us to walk in His ways. That's where this is all heading. So I think part of what's going on is in the patriarchal age, if you look at the New Covenant, the Abrahamic patriarchal age, the Davidic period, that forms really the kind of

key backdrop. What dies in Christ and or fulfilled in Christ is Leviticus and Deuteronomy. Those things kind of expire in Christ. The Old Covenant that St. Paul sees, for example, that gives way to the New is not simply what came before Christ. Rather, the new is rooted in the Abrahamic and the Davidic. The old that dies in Christ is that post-Golden Calf mosaic, principally Leviticus and Deuteronomy. So I think part of that deep storyline is what's going on there. All right. Okay, fair enough.

So Christ was a priest. You know, you could say like the fathers of the household in Exodus offered the unblemished lamb. And in that sense, that was sort of a sacrificial thing. And they acted as a priest. Christ offered himself for the salvation of mankind. Sorry. What is going on?

That was Jimmy Akin playing on my phone. Why do we need priests after Christ? Didn't the veil tear in the temples, you the temples that broke whatever was dividing us and God? Why do we need this ministerial priesthood as sort of go-between when we can go directly to God now? Right. It's the whole point that there was a distancing after the golden calf, and now we have direct access to our Lord through Jesus, that in Jesus we see the face of God. And one of my favorite passages in Hebrews, Hebrews 10, 20, where it speaks of the veil, the curtain, the catapultasma, and it says we have access now through the curtain that

is through his flesh. I'll come back to that. So I think on the face of it, that's a very good argument. Can I maybe just read two texts from the O.H. Please. Because I think this is a help. And again, as Catholics, it's not just the modern church is making a series of exegetical points. It's, ah, I think we can have a priesthood now.

Rather, the priesthood is there from the beginning. And let's face it, everybody reads the scriptures through a tradition. And nobody denies this. The most radical postmodern skeptical scholar will readily admit this but here's two texts from clement and then ignatius so here's saint clement uh he here's he's the fourth bishop of rome he's writing around 96 ad is when this is typically uh dated so here's someone who's writing from rome to the church of corinth within a generation of p of Peter and Paul dying as martyrs in the holy city of Rome.

He says, Preaching accordingly throughout the country and the cities, they, that's the apostles, appointed their firstfruits after testing them by the Spirit to be bishops and deacons of those who should believe. And this they did so without innovation, since many years ago things had been written concerning bishops and deacons. That's chapter 42. And then two chapters later in 44, he speaks of succession.

Our apostles knew through our Lord Jesus Christ that there would be contention over the bishop's office. For this cause, having received complete foreknowledge, they appointed the above-mentioned men and afterwards gave them a permanent character so that as they died, other approved men should succeed to their ministry. Chapter 44, Clement's letter to Corinth. And then one more from St. Ignatius of Antioch, who's writing around 107 AD. Again, take Ignatius, though, just for a quick second. So he writes these letters as he's being brought to Rome to die the martyr. If Ignatius is never arrested and brought to Rome, we might not have these letters. So we have to acknowledge the kind of happenstance

of what we actually do have. But here's Ignatius. Let all follow the bishop as Jesus Christ did the father and the priest as you would the apostles. Reverence the deacons as you would the command of God. Apart from the bishop, let no one perform any of the functions that pertain to the church. Let that Eucharist be held valid, which is offered by the bishop or by one to whom the bishop has committed this charge.

And here's the famous line, wherever the bishop appears, they'll let the people be, as wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic church. That's the letter to the seminarians in chapter 8. Catholic church. That's the letter to the seminarians in chapter eight. I think the way I would approach this is, okay, look at that early witness. Are there clues throughout the Bible, the biblical narrative, and then in the New Testament that picks this up, that the priesthood is something that Jesus wants? In other words, I would hesitate to use the language of kind of proof text and the like, and I think we can make our case. I absolutely do. But I think we're naive to think that the significance and clarity of the tradition is not helping us.

So I think that's maybe how I would start. And I would maybe back up with this. And a lot of – there's Protestant scholars who are seeing this, that Jesus brings about this new exodus. And if you look at the prophetic hope, new creation, new temple, new exodus. Well, if there's a new temple, will there be a new priesthood? Will there be a new liturgy? If there's a new, look at the first exodus. It culminated on Mount Sinai and it led to worship.

So if there's a new exodus, does it end at the cross? Or does it lead to something? And this is what Hebrews 8-10 is all about, is this Jesus has offered his sacrifice in the heavenly sanctuary, the heavenly temple, with a heavenly offering, a heavenly liturgy. And in the Old Testament, the liturgy was thought of as an imitation of the heavenly. Exodus 25, verse 9, verse 40, Moses told him to make the tabernacle according to the top leaf, according to the pattern that's been shown to him on the mountain. But in the New, think about Revelation 11, 19,

John sees the temple in heaven opened. In the New, it's not an imitation, but a participation. So I guess I'd take it off. Let's think in terms of clues. Let's pay attention to the witness of the early church. This was very clear to them. Are they wildly mistaken, or is there something here? And that bit about the elders, I mean, maybe

I guess one more passage, Acts 14, verse 23, how in every church they ordained, they appointed elders through the laying on of hands. Again, we can speak about, and that word for elder is presbyteros, from which we get priest. And I'm not saying that the New Testament verbiage of diakonos and episkopos and presbyteros is exactly the same as it develops in Ignatius in terms of clarity. But I would say, so here's Acts 14, 23, And when they had appointed elders for them in every church with prayer and fasting, they committed them to the Lord in whom they had believed. Again, elder, presbyteros, okay, we might think, oh, just this is the kind of senior membership, the council,

right? But I would look at elder as pointing back to that patriarchal priesthood. And then further, take Timothy. First Timothy 4.12 speaks of Timothy's youth. And as a youth, verse 14, Paul speaks about his receiving the gift. Don't neglect the gift you received. How? Through the laying on of hands. This is not just being old. This is assuming liturgical and sacerdotal and sacred leadership in the early church on the pattern, the type, the portion of the patriarchs. Yes, the Levites, the typology is there. But there's something happening in the new covenant which Yes, the Levites, the typology is there, but there's something happening in the

new covenant which fulfills the old. So I think fundamentally, I think we have to keep this in mind too, the Augustan dictum that's quoted in the Catechism 128, 129. The new has concealed the old, and the old has revealed the new. The church always read the Bible typologically. The old is foreshadowing the new, and the new is fulfilling the old. The church didn't read the new as a rupture with the old. I think that's an important principle that we should acknowledge. Yeah, that's really good. You know, you were just asking me prior to our interview how my discussion with Cameron Batuzzi went on Sola Scriptura last night, and that kind of comes into play with what we're talking about here, right? This idea that the kind of, I feel more comfortable

with the sort of totem totem view of scripture, but it doesn't, not the whole way. So Dominican theologian Yves Congar, right, says there is not a single point of belief that the church holds by tradition alone without any reference to scripture, just as there is not a single dogma that is derived from scripture alone without being explained by tradition. I'm not sure how far you want to push that. I don't know if I agree with him the whole way. I think there seems to be certain things that aren't talked about in Scripture that we're bound to believe. We can talk about that if you're interested. But so, yeah, so I think is that kind of what you're saying?

Like, obviously, like we can read the Scriptures as Protestants and Catholics, and it's not so abundantly clear that you can come up with a ministerial priesthood without the help of tradition. Is that kind of what you're saying? Or did I totally misunderstand you? No, no, I'd be happy to acknowledge that. I mean, I think, you know, in what King Gar and Dulevac and those guys were after back into a kind of a renewal of scripture, we can say prima scripture. I mean, there's a sense of which scripture has a primacy. Absolutely. But not solo. And yeah, I think we're maybe overextending our apologetic selves by saying I can prove to this. Right. I just had a Twitter discussion the other

day. I generally kind of avoid this, but I posted something and I got this response about how Jesus is not God. And the person was quoting the King James Bible. And I'm like, this is interesting. So I kind of we had a little bit of friendly kind of back and forth. And if you've ever talked to a diehard Jehovah Witness or the like, again, I think the case in Scripture is pretty clear. But if someone has a certain set of lenses, that, I mean, even something so central as the divinity of Jesus, um, we're naive to think the tradition doesn't help us there as well. I think what we can do consistently is make it a reasonable case. We can offer reasons for our faith. Um, and some, maybe there's, there's more preponderance of evidence than others. Uh, but yeah, I, I others. But yeah, when you really get into dialogue, everybody brings a set of glasses to it.

And I think we're naive to not acknowledge how helpful the Catholic tradition is in terms of allowing us. What I would say, too, is it's sort of the tradition of making explicit what is implicit. That's good. Yeah, I like that. It's not there. The tradition is not adding something that's not there. It's not the evolution of doctrine. It's the development of making explicit what is already... Oh, that's a really great way of summing it up. Yeah, that's really good. Okay. Right. Should we dive into some text here, you think?

What'd you say? Should we dive into some text here? Sure. I was about to ask you when Christ ordained the Twelve to the priesthood, but I'm sure we'll get around to that. But feel free. I've got my Bible in front of me. I'm looking forward to opening to wherever you want to go. Yeah, well, I think that's maybe a good place to start. I mean, so traditionally,

the church has seen the ordination at the Last Supper when Jesus says, do this in memory of me. You could see that in Catechism 611, for example, that the church bids them to perpetuate his sacrifice. Now, one thing that we could say, think about this. So Jesus speaks of the blood of the covenant, the new and everlasting covenant. This is the blood of the covenant. And I actually think two birds can be hit with one stone if we think about this.

That phrase comes directly from Exodus 24a. What does? Well uh well depending which synoptic gospel you're looking at the the phrase the blood of the covenant oh gotcha the blood of the covenant so the haime um yeah or the uh the the domber reef in in the old testament so um that's lifted directly from exodus 24 8 in exodus 24 8 moses says behold the blood of the covenant what's really actually Um, that's lifted directly from Exodus 24, eight and as a 24, eight, Moses has behold the blood of the covenant. What's really actually fascinating too, just as an aside, Hebrews nine 20 quotes from Exodus, but then says two top, this is the blood of the covenant. In other words, what Hebrews is doing there is actually getting us to think of both passages

together at the end. Interesting. But, but, but it's Hebrews nine20. But here's the point, though. Moses there, that's the sacrifice that seals, that ratifies the old covenant at Sinai, the blood of the covenant. And by the way, it's not just the sacrifice. Three verses later, there's a communion meal in Exodus 24, verse 11, in the very presence of God. And so you have there sacrifice and communion meal when Jesus says the blood of the Covenant there at the Last Supper he's directly lifting

that from Moses because Jesus becomes the sacrifice that seals and ratifies the New Covenant and you also have a communion meal at the Last Supper this where the Eucharist fits in but here's the point I'd like to make think about there's you know plenty people say oh Jesus thought the world was getting in within a generation, right? He couldn't possibly have established a church. He couldn't possibly have established a priesthood. He couldn't possibly have envisioned this liturgical practice. Well, how much time, friends, transpired between when Moses gave those words and when Jesus gives those words?

I mean, depending on when you take the Exodus, some 1,500 years 1500 years, 1300 years. I'm not giving a timetable here, but the biblical logic means Jesus expects a significant interim between the Last Supper and when he comes again. That is, Jesus expects here by saying, do this in memory of me, perpetuate the sacrifice. He is talking about a fairly long sacramental age of the church so i think right there just biblically speaking the biblical logic points to not jesus i mean because here's how it goes often well jesus expected the world to end within the generation jesus said nothing cared nothing about priesthood church all these all these things. They kind of hang together. But if you see, one more time, Jesus seems to have expected a liturgical interim here. And that's part of his ascension, is that he sends the Spirit so he can be with us. Friends, I mean, for a Catholic, with the eyes of faith, the sacraments are not lesser than the miracles Jesus performed in

Palestine. Now, by the way, miracles are still happening today. Look at Fulton Sheen's canonization. Miracles are still happening. but the sacraments are greater than those because they heal the soul, not just the body. In a real sense, Jesus' presence among us now is even greater than before he rose because he can be with us anywhere, anytime, at any place on the globe, in the sacrament of the altar, in the confessional, etc. So I would just say right there, you've got a sense in which Jesus is appealing back to Moses. This kind of, and we could go further. There's lots of ways we could go. But one of the things about the tabernacle was the bread of the presence, the lechem hapanim,

which actually is the bread and the wine of the presence. And this is really a communion meal that commemorates that Sinai banquet. What's Jesus doing? So we often talk about the Passover background of the Last Supper, and that's obviously there. But there's also more things than just that. Jesus is giving the apostles in the Last Supper, do this in memory of me. This is the communion meal that will commemorate, make present this founding communal meal, just like at the top of Sinai. So I get proof text. I'm not saying that. But if you read with

faith and you think typologically about what the tabernacle was, what the temple was, and that Jesus is not, I came not to abolish, but to fulfill, Matthew 5, 17. If you don't read it in terms of rupture, all of a sudden lots of vistas open up. And maybe I'll just give you just one more. Jesus's temple actions. And this is from Rabbi Neusner, a Jewish New Testament scholar. He wrote this article in 1989. Fascinating. You look at the action of the temple, overturns the temple, and he cites from Isaiah 56, seven, Jeremiah seven, 11. Right. So my house should be called the house of prayer. And you've made it a den of robbers. The first one's from Isaiah, second one's from Jeremiah. That that action, by the way, is not just about economics.

It's not just about the coinage and the currency. And I know I'm going to we can go into this if you like. But it's really, as most scholars see it, an acted out prophecy of the coming demise of the temple. Jeremiah 7, it's really ominous when you read the context. I mean, Jeremiah is basically dealing with people who I like to call false Zionism. They think they got it made in the shade. God dwells in the temple. Nothing will happen to him. He's like, will you steal?

Will you cheat? Will you kill, commit adultery? And then do all these things, then come by and stay in this place, the temple, and say, we are delivered. Has this house become a den of robbers? I mean, it's an ominous quote. And then Isaiah 56, 7, my history calls it the house of prayer. That quote finishes, as I think Mark's gospel gives the whole thing, a house of prayer for, quote, all nations. I had no idea that Christ was quoting two lines from two

different prophets there yeah he's splicing what is that what is that rabbinic teaching tool called because he did it on the cross as well as he yeah well maybe it doesn't matter what it's called but what is it basically is it when you cite something from the old testament and the person is supposed to get the context it precisely precisely you see a common theme common pattern or or maybe it's what you might not see it on the face but now that he's joining these two things, we think of them together. Yeah, I think what that's coming from in the rabbis, it's a geziva shava. I should know the term of that. It's okay. It's seeing the Bible as God's Word.

Interesting. And so there's actually a unity of authorship because there's a divine author, not just the human author. of authorship because there's a divine author, not just the human author. But if I could just, Isaiah 56, real quick, it speaks about this eschatological temples, what's going on there in Isaiah, that actually will fulfill the original purpose of the temple. So with Solomon, for example, you see the temple is actually international. In Solomon, 1 Kings 8, verse 41, 43, praise that when foreigners come, Lord, hear their prayer. There's a real sense in which the temple embodies the kind of international purpose of the covenant. By Jesus' day, it had come to mean the exact opposite. There's a sign that held, we've actually found fragments of this twice. It

was in Greek and in Latin. Josephus talks about it, that any alien or any non-Jew that enters not just the outer court, but the inner courts is the lone response for the death that follows. So the temple had come to kind of embody in Jesus' day something opposite of its original purpose. So here's where I'm going, though. Jesus' actions there are indicting the temple because it's come to stand, to mean something that's actually opposite of the original temple

and the movement of the new covenant, which is bursting forth and fulfill that Abrahamic promise of bringing in all the nations, etc. Okay, what Newsom receives, Rabbi Newsom, he says, well, gosh, the temple is where you have the tamid, the daily offering. What he sees, and what a number of scholars have seen, is you really have to look at the temple actions,

the negative, and the Last Supper is the positive. Tamid for tamid, atonement offering in the temple, no more, replaced by a new one, a new daily offering. Because in Jesus, he really begins his sacrifice on the cross at the Last Supper. He consummates it on the cross. He rises and ascends into heaven. Again, this is what Hebrews is all about. He presents that glorified offering to the Father, and that's what he continues to offer.

He continues to offer himself. How? Through the New Covenant priesthood. So I'd say if you look at the blood of the covenant, if you look at the time, Jesus expects there to be a good swath of time, and that's why he's appointed the apostles to do this liturgically in memory with it. Yeah, anamnesis in Greek or zikron in Hebrew, this is not like, just don't forget. This is make liturgically present. That's how the ancient Jews look at it. That's fascinating.

Because when you do pick up the scriptures with modern eyes, you know, I can see people looking at Catholics being like, what are you talking about? All he said was do this in remembrance of me. In other words, if you guys want to get together and just do this little thing, you know, offer the bread, offer the wine, because it'll remind you of the sacrifice, and just, you know, maybe have a sort of, what do you say, a sort of, I don't know,

solemn tone about it. But that's all it is. It's just remembering. I mean, obviously, Protestantism is a vast movement, and many Protestants have different views on this, but that's sort of the Baptist view. They look at us, and they're like, what are you talking about? It sounds so complicated. Why make it so complicated? And they'll look at, not necessarily Baptist, but some, and this is where I think secularism often is kind of apostate Protestantism. I don't mean that pejorative to the Protestants at all. I like it. No, no, no. Well, there's a book called The Unintended Reformation by Brad Gregory who makes this case in like 700 pages.

But what I was about to say is that the Enlightenment kind of errs and, say, your anti-Catholic Baptists sometimes join forces in tearing down the Catholic Church. And what I was about to say is, so where does this liturgical Eucharistic stuff come from? Then they'll start pointing to like the Mithras cult or the Greco-Roman stuff and not see it as rooted in the Jewish backdrop. I think the key thing that anybody could do that I would invite them to do is read the Gospels as an ancient Jew. Read with Jewish eyes. Read with Jewish eyes that don't despise the law, don't despise liturgy, don't despise sacrifice. Take like Julius Wellhausen. So the kind of, he wasn't the first, but he's the name that kind of really codified, made popular that kind of documentary hypothesis of the Pentateuch.

The four sources, which is constantly being revalued, the priestly source, the JEDP, if you're familiar with that. But part of the reason he dated the priestly source so late is he just despised liturgy, sacrifice. And he thought the prophets, well, they're the best. They're the oldest because he saw himself in the prophets.

They care. Their liturgy is morality. But this is the Immanuel Kant. This is not ancient Judaism, right, if that makes sense. This is religion within the prelimits of reason from Kant. And what numerous scholars have shown is the prophets were not anti-liturgical. They weren't anti-temple. Ezekiel was a priest, for crying out loud isaiah sees all this eschatological temple

coming in so my point is let's not read the gospels with the old testament with enlightenment eyes with moderate eyes and again i i don't mean this in a disrespectful i love my present friends but i i think the and frankly the new wave of scholarship among Catholics and Protestants is seeing the Jewishness. We talked about this last time. Yeah. And that's just created such a new conversation because now it's like, well, maybe Jesus wasn't anti anti liturgy. There's a new book just came out. I just read a couple weeks ago by Matthew Thiessen, Jesus and purity laws in the first century. And he's making a thoroughgoing case that Jesus was not anti. We hate these purity laws. He's like, look, the purity laws for the ancient Jews did two things.

One, it preserved the holiness of God. But two, they were motivated by compassion. Because if we recognize the holiness of God, he actually cited Narnia. I loved it. He's like, remember when Aslan was described by Mr. Beaver as, oh, he's good, but he's not safe. Yes. Remember that?

I loved it. It's so jarring for the moderns. But his point is, these pretty boys were not like this drudgery. They were motivated by compassion, because if we know the holiness of God, we need to prepare ourselves for it. Now, there's other aspects, right? I mean, Jesus, there's the intimacy. Absolutely. But that's the whole point. I think we need to not throw the baby up the bathwater. That's really, mean, Jesus, there's the intimacy. Absolutely. But that's the whole

point. I think we need to not throw the baby up the bathwater. That's really, really, really, sorry. This is just fascinating because we have heard this, you know, it's not about religion. It's about a relationship. And basically the idea that like Christianity is about realizing that you're not okay and that's okay because Christ saved you. And as if like holiness has nothing to do with it. I know Protestants wouldn't say that. They obviously agree that holiness is a big part of it. But you get the sense that being a Christian just means admitting that you're a sinner. Like, hey, just a sinner.

It's like, well, stop it. Stop being a sinner. No, you're so right. And I get where they're coming from. But I guess I do want to— It's like half right. Well, it's half right. And every culture

has blinders. Every culture is going to have things that make parts of the gospel harder to see. And I just wondered, and I've got, again, that's an important part of the gospel. We say before receiving the Eucharist, Lord, I'm not worthy to have you come under my roof, but only say the word and I shall be healed. Because I'm not worthy. But your word makes me worthy. That's the whole point. Grace is prior. Aquinas, everybody would agree with that a thousand times over. But the authentic faith combines that kind of surrender, just surrender to the Lord with a radical call to holiness.

Be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect. Matthew 548. And I love to combine that verse with matthew 19 26 with god all things are possible you can't do this by yourself but but to what you're saying i just wonder that kind of hyper uh just surrender just acknowledge you're a sinner uh that's all that matters how much of that is the gospel and how much of that is our modernist lenses kind of tweaking and distorting the gospel? For sure.

I like to capture it because it's about the covenant. And the covenant is a familial. I mean, if you read Scott Hahn very long, you'll see. And he's right. This is absolutely right. It's a covenant familial bond. And a father loves his kids just the way they are, but too much to leave them that way. Love that line.

And I think that captures the unconditional love, which is what the surrender folks are getting at, and that's right, but a father doesn't say, you know, that's okay, just be whatever you are. A father calls you to greatness because he loves you, and you don't earn his love, but that's what the love empowers and brings out,

and then I guess one more wrinkle, John Barkley, this Pauline scholar, wrote a book called Paul and the Gift a couple of years ago. And it's just revolutionary. What Paul meant by gift is not what we think we mean by gift. We think of gift as no strings attached, no reciprocity. And he actually, as an Anglican, he actually attributes that to the legacy of Luther. He says, in the ancient world, gift expected reciprocity. The gift that Paul gets at is the gift of grace empowers the reciprocity. The gift makes possible the reciprocity. And that's

how Paul can say, you're saved by works in Romans 2, 6, and you're saved by faith. This is how the world is not as incoherent for Paul as it is for us moderns. Would you be okay if we did a bit of something like a lightning round? I reached out to my patrons and said, like, what are your questions on the priesthood? And a bunch of really insightful ones, but I was wondering, do you think it'd be possible to kind of throw these at you? I'll do my best. I know you spend your life studying this stuff, so I'm sure we could devote an episode to each of these questions, but maybe we'll try to keep these snappy. Simon says, I guess the obvious. Let's see. Why can't women be priests? He's asking.

Well, OK, so I think we have to. Sister Sarah Butler wrote an important book on this. The reason I'm hedging a little bit is I think we we can give reasons. But I think the ultimate reason is we're bound by what Jesus gave us. I think we have to acknowledge that. If anybody, any of the disciples that you would assume would be part of the inner circle would be Mary, right? And I think Pope Francis is right to say it's the height of clericalism to say that I can only be important if I'm a priest. So it's actually these kind of ironic clerical mentalities. I'm only important if I'm doing this,

because we think kind of functionalistic, just in terms of being able to say the Mass or what have you. Whereas we all have important essential roles, but not the same role. So it really comes down to what Jesus gave us. And John Paul II taught this, I think, in 94, that, look, the church doesn't have the authority. It doesn't have the ability to overturn what Jesus gave us. I think now, so if I were to dig into explaining

that, that'd be the next step. But I think what does our faith here hinge on? It's just we're bound by Jesus and what Jesus gave us. Two, I think the patriarchal priesthood is really a backdrop here. If you look at Judges 17, because really, so we didn't say this earlier, priesthood, yes, sacrifice, yes, meteor, it's really spiritual fatherhood, spiritual fatherhood. If you look at Judges 17, because really, so we didn't say this earlier, priesthood, yes, sacrifice, yes, media, it's really spiritual fatherhood, spiritual fatherhood. If you look at Judges 17 and 18, you have this man named Micah who speaks to a younger Levite, and he says, if you look at Judges 17, I think it's verse 18, verse 19, and then 18, verse 19, be to me a father and a priest, be to me a father and a priest. And that's really the vestige of that patriarchal sense of the priesthood as spiritual father. So I think that's what's going on. What

the patriarchs have in the natural order is perfected and elevated in the apostles and their successors in the supernatural order. I guess maybe thirdly, Jesus, he's the eternal son, but he assumed humanity and he died and he rose and he right now exists as a glorified and risen man. He is the one priest, the priesthood that is made present. He makes his priesthood present through the priest. There would be a kind of dissonance with the sacramental sign if it were. How so? How would there be a dissonance? Well, the fact that Jesus is

a man. At least there's a symmetry with the male priesthood in Jesus as the one high priest. And of course, sometimes you'll hear the objection, yeah, but he also chose like first century Jewish people who probably had brown eyes and maybe brown

hair, so shouldn't priests just have brown eyes and brown hair? What does being a man have to do with anything? I don't believe that, but that's what I've heard. No, I think the patriarchal priesthood is the backdrop here, right? So there's the father in the home who was a spiritual father, spiritual leader. And the new covenant, the apostles become 12 new patriarchs. So again, why do we believe it?

Because of what Jesus gave us. And by the way, Jesus broke cultural tradition all the time. So again, why do we believe it? Because of what Jesus gave us. And by the way, Jesus broke cultural tradition all the time. So you can't just say he was bound. The only reason you would think that he's bound is if you don't believe he's who he says he is. Right, right, right. I've heard Peter Crave say like, was Christ a sexist?

You know, because that's what you would have to kind of claim if you wanted to say that he was just bound by the sexist traditions of his time. Exactly. Okay, next question, and this kind of has to do with what you just said, regarding Matthew 23 9, this person Michael says, I am a Catholic and still struggle with this after listening to many Catholic responses, it doesn't seem like hyperbole. When and how did the tradition of calling priests father begins. Why do we call priest's father when Christ says,

call no man on earth father? Yeah, I mean, so maybe St. Paul. I mean, so if we take him literalistically, we've got a contradiction, right? So St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 4, I became your father in Christ. We have Jesus in Luke 16, 24, speaking about father Abraham.

Paul refers to Timothy as his son. Peter refers to Mark as his son in 1 Peter 5. So if we take it literalistically, we've got a contradiction. I would say in context what Jesus is getting at in Matthew 23, the final kind of final standoff with the Pharisees, he's talking about the seeking after honorific titles. The desire to be the one held up as, because it's both teacher and father. So I frankly, I mean, I don't mean to give a cheap answer, but I think partly common

sense. I mean, what do you call your mother's husband? Okay. And then two, well, let's look at the praxis of the early church. And by early church, I don't just mean Clement and Ignatius and Augustine and Athanasius. I mean, St. Paul. 1 Corinthians 4, I think it's verse 15 or so, I forget, but he says, I became your father in Christ. So I suppose as a way of giving God a fair shake, a charitable read, if we can read these two as not contradictory, I think we should. I suppose that that's really maybe a principle that I'm operating with. So, yeah, if we take Jesus literalistically, we've got a contradiction. Jesus spoke hyperbolically. Right.

He also said, call no man master. That's where we get the word mister, right? Teacher. We get doctor from there. So you can't say teacher, can't say doctor, can't say mister. So if you're comfortable saying mister, master Master Teacher, then you shouldn't be comfortable. You should be comfortable saying, Father. Right. And if you don't hate father and mother, you can be my disciple.

I mean, what is really going on? Right, right, right. And then keep in mind who Jesus, you know, whom is Jesus speaking to? He's not giving a kind of a lecture just on a Saturday afternoon. He's you're getting a snapshot of him engaging with the people who are about to see to his death in short order. So I think that has to be a good answer. I think it's a great answer. I love how much scripture you can memorize and spit out like that. I wish I had that gift. Or maybe I do, I just haven't studied that.

You've got it, Mr. Fradd, you've got it. Here's a very good question. This Caden says, I guess my question is very basic. What is apostolic succession? Do bishops have the same authority as the apostles? It's clear in the Bible that Christ gives authority to his apostles, but in what way and order of magnitude does authority pass from the apostles to the bishops? Good job, Caden Cramsey. That's a great question. Yeah, I mean, so on the one hand, and again, this actually makes sense in a Semitic context. Take Luke 10.16 or Matthew 10.40.

He who hears you hears me. Jesus the apostle says, he who hears me, here's the one who sent me. So clearly the apostles, to reject the apostles, Luke 10.16, is to reject Jesus. If you look at Acts 1, when they, by the way, they cast lots to replace Judas with Matthias. You know, it is a separate thing, but the lot casting, as a number of scholars have pointed out, this really has priestly overtones.

Think about how Luke's gospel begins. Zachariah is appointed by Lot to burn incense in the temple. And now here we have part two, the sequel of Luke's gospel, casting Lots to pick Matthias, Judas' replacement. So the office of apostle is unique in that the apostles are witnesses to Jesus, his ministry, his resurrection. And then Paul is a unique apostle called as one untimely born, as he says. The bishops become successors of the apostles, but they are not the same as the apostles. So think about the authority to bind and loose. This might be a good way to do it in Matthew 16 with Peter or Matthew 18 with all the apostles. The authority to bind and loose, and you can look at Catechismatic 555 points this out, but in a submitted context, it means the authority to teach authoritatively,

the authority to govern, to include and exclude within the community. So you think about like excommunication or like, and the authority to forgive sins. That's what bind and loose means. So that authority to bind and loose, and this is connected to Jesus as priest, prophet, and king, to teach. So prophet is the teaching office teaching office king as the governing office and the priest the sanctifying office uh the apostles share in that threefold mission and the bishops as success the apostles share in that same threefold mission they are not apostles but they are commissioned with the authority to teach to govern and to sanctify and forgive sins and think about you know this is connected to sins. And think about,

this is connected to other, I mean, think about John 20, verse 23, about Jesus, you know, grieving on them, say, receive the spirit whose sins you forgive are forgiven, whose sins you retain are retained. Think about Paul, I mean, 2 Corinthians 3, 6. I know we think of Paul as just like this charismatic evangelist who just went around preaching, but he calls himself a, quote, minister of the new covenant. He does not think of himself as having, quote, changed religions. He thinks of himself as having experienced and been revealed the fullness of the faith of his childhood, that it was fulfilled in Christ. And so that Jeremiah 31, prophecy of the new covenant, Ezekiel 36, that informs all of Paul's thought. So I know I'm getting off base here a little bit, but he said the bishop is success of the apostles,

shares in that authority to teach the government to sanctify, but it's not the same as the apostles in terms of being a witness to Jesus directly. Maybe one last comment. If you look at the church, if you're there in 180, 150, what have you, and you say, how do I know where the true church is? People like Tertullian, people like Irenaeus, people like Joseph Martyr, they're going to say it's succession. And Tertullian says famous things like, unroll your line of bishops and heretics, and we'll see who goes back to the apostles. In other words, there's no printing press. There's no, like, private Bible study going on. Where you heard the scriptures read was liturgically in the context of the Eucharist.

By the way, Scott Hahn, in a book called Consuming the Word, made an extended argument that for the first basically two centuries, when the Eucharist referred to the New Testament, Testament is the Latinization of the word covenant, they refer to the New Covenant. And they meant by that the New Covenant sacrificed the Eucharist. In other words, as he in as he puts it the new covenant the new testament was a sacrifice before it was a document that it came to refer to the documents because those were the documents fit to be read in the context of the eucharistic sacrifice so but my point is um it wouldn't be find your find your little kind of tract of bible and let's have a debate right what is the regula fide, the rule of faith, the publicly taught, how would you know that? Are you in communion? I mean, look at Ignatius,

are you in communion with the bishops? That really would have been the test. I know that's so counterintuitive to our Protestant brothers and sisters, but I think it's important to recognize that's how the other church would have handled this. And what we know is Protestantism really couldn't exist until after the turning of the class and the widespread dissemination of literacy and the like. Literacy is a great thing. I love Bible study, but what this means then as a Catholic aspiring biblical scholar is that the study of the sacred page, private Bible study, really should lead to and ultimately be subordinated to the sacred liturgy. lead to and ultimately be subordinated to the sacred liturgy.

I should go from word to sacrament, from word to sacrifice, just like, by the way, the road to amaze. He opened up the scriptures to them and he was made known in the breaking of the bread. I also think of the council at Jerusalem in Acts 15, you know, when there was these people saying you had to be circumcised to be a Christian. You know, Paul and Barnabas, what's interesting is he said Paul and Barnabas went up to the elders. It's interesting to think that Paul had an elder, right? And at the council, they didn't kind of roll out the Old Testament and use proof text, but rather James and Peter and James spoke authoritatively and the matter was settled.

And that's what we see today, right? Yeah, absolutely. All right, here's a question on celibacy okay i understand right that celibacy we could say is a small t tradition uh i go to an eastern catholic church my priest is celibate but many aren't and we can have priests who are married i got a bit more of a specific question for you though i want to know how to reconcile sort of what Cardinal Seurat had to say in his recent book, From the Depths of Our Heart, Priesthood, Celibacy, and the Crisis of the Catholic Church with the legitimacy of married priests. So I'm springing

this one on you, but let me just kind of say here, the Cardinal explains why he and Pope Emeritus Benedict wrote the book, namely to warn that separating celibacy from the priesthood, even just as an exception, would remove the priest's imitation of Christ as spouse of the church and turn her into a mere human institution. How do we reconcile that with the legitimacy of married priests in the East and in the West, say from converts from Anglicanism? Yes. So you're almost asking me to give an apologia for married clergy is what the question sounds like. It's important that we separate this from, say, the women's ordination question. Women's ordination is something that, as I said to Jean-Paul II, is not something that

can change. Coordination is something, as I said, Jean-Paul II taught, is not something that can change. Celibacy is a discipline that we could, in theory, change that has not always been the same. And even though the secular media lumps these all together, we have to separate these. In part, I suppose we have to look at the practice of the church, you know, the church as authoritative. There is a book called The Apostolic Origins of Priestly Celibacy that is phenomenal, does a job. The only apostle that we know of that was married, there's really evidence about, is Peter. But again, sometimes it's said they maybe left their families and the like. She may, you know, who knows if she's still alive and

there's just a lot of it in the dark we just don't know but um the i i say first why so let's do the easy part is first um there's a fitting symmetry of the sign right so it it's a fitting imitation of christ imitatio christi right so jesus um? So Jesus affirms celibacy in Matthew 19, so does Paul in 1 Corinthians 7, as sort of maybe a superior way to live this out. So there's a sense of which it's not an accident that we've had this long-sang tradition. And yes, it became officially authoritative around 1126 or thereabout, but it existed long prior. The reason for that decree is because of abuses, right? That's typically what happens. When there's abuses, we've got to reformulate this, but it didn't start then.

It started really way back. Okay, so where was I going? I think this is one thing to say. Where was I going? I think this is one thing to say. I guess to add to that, and I know some converts who are married priests. They'll be the first to say typically that they get the wisdom behind celibacy. They're very thankful that they can continue to exercise their priesthood. They're very thankful for their families. But the notion of kind of uh pastor's son syndrome is a real thing and again i know some pastor's kids who are great christians and the like uh but i also know other stories whether and whether it could be a pastor it could be just

someone who's active like like we are in ministry and the like um that that can um yeah yeah so there's there's some wisdom there's at practical order, but also at a theoretical order. I think that's what Benedict and Carnesir are getting at. Now, why is it legitimate for a priest to be married? I guess you're asking me to defend a harder one. I think because the only answer I can really give you is the understanding and really you're always meeting the present magisterium, not just Scripture and tradition, but Scripture and tradition and the magisterium to help you sort out what is authentic tradition from what is simply small t.

The Church's understanding that the practice of married clergy, say, in the East is a legitimate expression and practice of the priesthood. I don't know that I could say more than that. No, that's good. That's good. That's good. I appreciate that. Yeah, it certainly does. I remember speaking to a priest who said to me, like, it's really bloody difficult having a family. Like, this was a married priest, and he said, you know, like, when I get a call in the middle of the night from the hospital and my child's sick, like, who do I go to? You know, there's a legitimate issue there, I think. Yeah. I also think that, like, do I go to? You know, there's a legitimate issue there,

I think. Yeah. I also think that, like, as I was speaking, I had an interview with Dr. William Lane Craig recently, and we went back and forth on priestly celibacy. And I got the impression that he had this idea that in order to be effective with, you know, in evangelization, your only option is to be a priest. In other words, it's priests are on the front lines and the rest of the late, now he didn't say this explicitly, so I don't want to put words in his mouth, but I kind of got that impression. And I wanted to say, I reach way more people

than most priests do just through this podcast. And you, Andrew Swofford, probably reach a lot more people. So it's not as if in order to be effective in evangelization, I've got to be a priest. Totally.

And is that not old? And I don't mean to pin this on Craig, but to think that way, is that not old school clericalism? Yeah. pin this on Craig, but to think that way, is that not old school clericalism? Yeah. That you can't be important unless you're a priest. I think Francis was exactly right to say this push for women's ordination is falling into

the trap of clericalism, that I can't be important unless I am a priest. I think that's exactly right. If I could just add one thing to this discussion. When Jesus and John Bergson did some good work on this. Matthew 19.26 speaks of eunuchs for the kingdom. There are some who are present eunuchs for the kingdom. Who in the world is he

talking about? Because it's often said, well, celibacy is unnatural. It's anti-Jewish. This never makes sense in a Jewish context. But that's not exactly true. I think what Jeremiah was celibate. How do we do that? Well, he said he's told by God not to take a wife. Oh, that'll do it. Yeah, yeah, right. I didn't know that. And he seems to have obeyed. But

Bergman has argued, and it's certainly plausible, who does Jesus have in mind? He may well have in mind the Essenes, the Dead Sea Scroll community, who seem to have lived. So there seem to be different groups of Essenes, some scattered throughout, almost like a third order, like a Benedictine or Dominican. But the core of the community down at Qumran on the northwest shores of the Dead Sea, they seem to have lived celibate lives. They seem to have lived celibate lives and they were held by people of the day as sort of intensely holy, just like people thought of St. Benedict and the monks later. So with you know, it's not crazy. It's not foreign. It's not the norm. Of course not. It's it's it's sort of like we might put it this way. We've got to distinguish between natural and normal. And by normal, I simply mean something descriptive.

Sin is normal, but it ain't natural. Natural is something that is fitting and consonant with our rational nature. But then further, the way in which the supernatural, the order of grace, heals, perfects, and elevates nature, that celibacy is not unnatural, but it is assuming something really supernatural and entering into a supernatural spousal union now. And if I could just quote JP2 in his Evita Canta Carta at the end of that, he says, the celibate vocation, the religious, the nun, the priest, especially in our day, it's such an incredible sign. I don't mean a sacramental sign, but more than just psychological, of a total devotion to God.

Someone living an otherworldly life that in our secularistic age, man, we need that sign more than ever. I had a dinner with Cardinal Harvey with a priest friend who knew him well when I was in Rome a couple years ago, and he was really close to John Paul II and Benedict, and he had some really insightful things. But he said, you know, we've talked about the loss of the priesthood in our country, in the States.

His theory was that when the nuns left the schools, that they were such a pivotal role. It wasn't just the priest, but the nuns saying, hey, you would be a great priest, that kind of motherly, sisterly role. And gosh, I mean, you know, it's hard to distinguish causation from correlation, but as the nuns left, so too vocations plummeted. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, thanks. That was good. Here, I got one more question from one of our patrons. It sounds like he might be coming from a Protestant background. It's really cool to think that I have patrons who are Protestants. He says, and we've touched upon this, okay, already, but maybe you want to kind of laser in just a little bit more if you'd like. Or you can say I've already answered that and just refuse to say anything more.

That would be awkward, but that's an option for you. He says, I understand that all Christians share in Christ's mediation to the world, Revelation and 1 Peter. But why would Christians need an extra mediator between them and God? And he says, I won't entertain, which maybe that's his fault. I won't entertain reference to the Jewish priesthood because of Hebrews 7, 11 through 12. It's a good question, which we've touched upon, but I think it'd be good to make this a little clearer. Okay, so we've got one mediator, right? Christ. He's the mediator

between us and God. And now you're like, okay, and then there's another mediator. So it's like you, then the priest, then Christ, then God. The saints, right? Just keep adding later. Yeah. It's a good question. That's a great, great question. Let me, I guess, if I could maybe give a three-pronged

answer real quick. So one, let's go back to that veil you mentioned. So the, because I think that's tied into this, the tearing of the veil of Jesus' death. It's not, and I think where this person's coming from, they probably see that. So the tearing of the veil, I would suggest it points to two things. One, the giving way of the temple destroyed in 70 AD, and that embodied the end of the old covenant world, the end of the priesthood, the sacrifice, et cetera. But two, the unleashing of God's presence to the world. So we've talked favorably about the Old Testament priesthood, even Levitical priests and the like.

But as I said early on, there's also a sense in which God is now distanced from his people. So take the Holy of Holies, where God dwells, where the Ark of the Covenant is. Only the high priest, and only once a year, can go through that veil. So that veil that's being referred to there separates the Holy of Holies from the Holy Place. Only the high priest, only once a year on the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, can go through that veil. So on the one hand the terror that veil jesus death symbolizes the giving way of the temple giving away the old covenant but also the unleashing of god's presence to the world because now and this is the way i would put it anywhere any one of us can go especially to our churches this this person

not gonna like this answer but the tabernacle the blessed sacrament now we all have access in a way that we didn't before um and then hebrews20, I mentioned that earlier. Now we have access through the veil that is through his flesh. I would argue that is a Eucharistic image. He's talking about the Eucharist now is the veil through which we enter the heavenly Holy of Holies, the catapetasm, the same word in the gospels as in hebrews 10 20 um the um let me give i guess just one more prong and then i'll hurry up here though but i think we have to say um i think often a protestant looks at this with kind of a zero-sum uh paradigm meaning there's a piece of pie and and any piece you give

to Jesus, or rather, any piece you give to the sacraments, the priesthood, the saints, Mary, you take it away from Jesus. Whereas for a Catholic, it's really a participation paradigm. It's always Jesus through the sacraments. It's Jesus through the saints. It's Jesus through the sacraments, Jesus through the priesthood. It's all about Jesus. And take like confession. Can God forgive sins by himself? Of course he can.

Confession is a gift to us that, as Aquinas would put it, reaches us in accordance with our nature. We learn things through the senses and the like. And so how powerful is it? And you hear people say, gosh, I come away from confession. I've said this to Catholics. I don't feel forgiven. I'm like, brother, you need to take God and harmful to exactly this way. Take God at his word.

The objectivity of hearing you are forgiven is a powerful gift to us. It's not because God is hamstrung, not because God can't do it a different way. It's a gift to us. So why the sacraments why the priesthood why the mediation because it's God's Condescension to us to meet us where we are Let me just throw one more thing we could kind of elaborate on this if you'd like that we didn't get to In Matthew 16, which is gives Peter the keys of the kingdom and this past I know, you know The background Wells as an apologist,. It gives him the keys of the kingdom, which you bind and loose should be bound and loose should be loosed in heaven,

Matthew 16, 18, 19. And Jesus, as many Protestant scholars have seen, is directly referring to Isaiah 22, where you have this office of the alba yet, which means the one who's over the house, who has the key of the house of David. And Isaiah 22, verse 22, has the authority to, quote, open and shut. That parallel is binding, loosing keys, keys, open, shut.

So it's pretty clear. And this person, as it's typically explained, was really second in command to the king. If you look at 2 Kings 15, 5, the albaeet rules. So the king gets leprosy, and the albaeet, the one who's over the house, actually rules in his stead. The same phrase is used of Joseph in Genesis 41, verse 40, when he becomes second in command of Egypt to Pharaoh. He's al-Bayit, he's over the house. So it's typically presented as Peter is assuming some kind of royal authority. Jesus is going to leave.

He's reestablishing the Davidic kingdom in a heavenly key, and Peter becomes the new al Abayit, and he will govern in the king, in Jesus' name. And by the way, some Protestant, well, typically when Protestant scholars see all this, they say, ah, ah, ah, but his promises are only for Peter, not for, what do you get successors? Here's the key, pun intended. Succession is built into the keys, because the keys symbolize an office. In other words, an office always transcends the man. The presidency is always greater than the president, whoever it is. The papacy is always greater than the pope, whoever it is.

Jesus is restoring not just something about Peter, but an office, which implies success. The point I want to go to, though, is Jewish tradition makes this explicit, and it's implicit in Isaiah already. Eliakim, who's becoming this new Abayit, the background that's past Isaiah, is presented in priestly guise. So for example, if you look at Isaiah 22-21, it speaks of his coat or tunic, kutonek, and then Isaiah 2-21, same verse, his sash, his abne. The pairing of those words, if you look at Exodus 28, say verse 4, Exodus 29, Leviticus 16, 4, the pairing of those words is priestly. In other words, the role that Peter's assuming is not just secular, not just governing, but also priestly. And the Targum of Isaiah, if you look at Isaiah 22, 22, where it says, so if you look at Isaiah, it speaks here

about, I'll place on his shoulder the key of the house of David. The Targum says, I'll place on his shoulder the key of the sanctuary and the house of David. In other words, the rabbinic Judaism sees Eliakim here as priestly. The priestly imagery is implicit in the text of Isaiah with the words of Nate, Sash, and Kutona, Tunic. The role of Peter here, so it's not just the Last Supper, do this in memory of me, your ordained priest. Actually, there's priestly imagery

embodied in Peter's new role. So the why of it, why the priesthood? Because of our weakness. God is meeting us where we're just like the incarnation. He comes down, he didn't drop an idea. He's not, here's Plato, here's some truth for you. He becomes one of us, we can see him, touch himself with him. He comes down. He didn't drop an idea. Here's Plato. Here's some truth for you. He becomes one of us. We can see him, touch him, step with him.

He gives us the sacramental economy so we can see, touch, feel his abiding presence with us. The priesthood is simply part of that. And I guess maybe one last thing. I'm so sorry. No, don't be. Well, think about it. This is gold.

Why perpetuate the sacrifice? Because the paschal mystery, the death and resurrection of Jesus, is never locked in the past. It's never just a historical event. What the Eucharist does, what the priesthood does, which makes the Eucharist possible, is it makes it ever-present, so Christians of every generation can enter into his sacrifice, into the Paschal Mystery, and as we hear at the Mass, be offered up in him, with him, and through him to the Father. The entire Christian life is about the Holy spirit reproducing christ's life death and resurrection in through each one of us that begins in our baptism what does paul say you

are baptized into his death and thereby show his resurrection romans 6 3 and 4 or colossians 2 10 11 12 um it's it continues through the spirit's ongoing transformation of our lives and it's consummated the eucharist whereby we enter into His sacrifice. What does Paul say? Look at Romans 12, 1 and 2. Make of yourselves a living sacrifice. That spiritual worship that he talks about there, which is sometimes, again, I love my Protestant friends, but they tend to just spiritualize it away.

It's logike. It's the worship of the logos. It's the liturgy. It's the Eucharist. All of this enables us to enter into his paschal mystery and be entering his death and his resurrection. This is what the sacrament economy is for. This is what the priesthood makes possible. I'm sure you get into this in even greater detail in your new bible study on hebrews um i i just love i i'm so excited about this i'm sorry what what you just spend some time telling people about it

and i assume it's you can you i'd love you to send me the link so i can put them just below so people can get it i'm sure i assume it's not just dvd but you could probably download a digital version can you exactly not a digital virgin a digital version there's you? Exactly. Not a digital virgin, a digital version. There's a book and a DVD, and you can buy the DVDs, but they've also made a digital version. It's only $10, the digital version is. The book's like $27, I think, something like that. But yeah, and I really was preparing for this.

I wrote the book before COVID hit, but especially getting ready for the presentations, which we just filmed at the end of May here, I just had a sense of divine timing here because Hebrews, on the one hand for me, it's like the Holy of Holies of biblical theology. Like how the way in which Christ fulfills all that's come before, it just opens up in a powerful way. And what you really get a sense for is the heavenly grandeur of the new covenant i think far too often we think of the new covenant we think of being a christian is just be a good boy scout or girl scout yeah i think it is you know i mean let's be honest be a republican you're from the midwest and you just kind of do

the right thing and you like capitalism okay some of that uh some of those things might be might be good but but, but that's not what it means to be a Christian. That's a really reductionistic thing, uh, to be a Christian and Christians don't fit in that box. We all know this, right? Um, maybe Christianity is a global religion. Well, I mean, Christians have such a base in Africa, in North Africa. I mean, how many Christians came from Egypt or Augustine or Athanasius was known. His enemies called him the little black dwarf. Iraq's church is ancient.

I mean, the problems of thinking, I mean, so in other words, I think Hebrews gives you, it's not about what's the least I got to do to avoid hell. I like to say it this way. How much of the divine life do you want? That's what it's about. It's about the, in Christ, heaven and earth are reconciled. In Christ, we share in this heavenly worship, heavenly liturgy. Do we recognize the heavenly grandeur before us? Because when Jesus comes at the end of time he won't have an ounce more glory than he does right now in the eucharist the only difference

will be in our ability to see so i might might when i was preparing these the the book as i said it was written before coming but afterward it's just this sense that um because hebrews is all about the priesthood the eucharist the liturgy in fact people it's it's just this sense that um because hebrews is all about the priesthood the eucharist the in fact people it's it's commonly thought this is an ancient homily we call we speak of the letter to the hebrews but there's no letter type introduction you know paul to the church of corinth um the very end of it speaks of the whole document as they quote word of exhortation which is the exact same phrase that describes paul's sermon at pisidian antioch in acts 13 15 and you have all these references to speaking and hearing throughout. So imagine Hebrews.

And by the way, it's also, it's very clearly pre-70 AD. This is the first generation of Christians. This is a liturgical homily. This is the early Christians in a context of persecution gathering in worship, which then once you get that context, it heightens all the liturgical themes throughout. Oh man, you're pumping me up. I'm actually showing people the ascensionpress.com screen right now as we're talking so they can see it. This looks so fun.

You can preorder it now. It'll ship in August. I guess to make the point that I'm kind of fumbling over is I think we've been doing a lot of Bible studies. We've been doing a lot of watching mass on the computer, which has been—we've got to do, and again, if it's not safe, let's, you know, I get all that. But as great as Bible study is, if we really dive into Hebrews and we see what Hebrews is unveiling, the New Covenant is not a text. It's not a document. The New Covenant is a living liturgical reality, Christ present among us, especially in the

Holy Eucharist. My prayer is that Hebrews will help galvanize the church to get back to Jesus and the Blessed Sacrament and see the centrality of the priesthood and the Eucharist as, what is that I can too say? Source and summit. This is the divine life of Jesus. This is our strength. This is our life. This is the font of life. And yes, we can encounter Jesus in many ways. We can encounter him in the poor, Matthew 25. He's present wherever two or three are gathered in his name, Matthew 18, 20. He's present in the Scriptures. Amen.

I get prima scriptura, the prime Scripture. I love, absolutely. But he's present in a most singular way in the blessed sacrament of the altar. In all the sacraments, Christ acts by his power. In the Eucharist, we have Christ Himself. Beautiful. So an eight-week Bible study program.

Suppose somebody just hasn't studied theology at all. Is this going to be overwhelming? I'm sure the answer is yes. Well, it might be partly yes. We try to do a good job. And so Jeff Cavins is with me on the presentations. If you've ever seen Cavins, what a masterful teacher. I mean, he is very good. We try to do a good job of not assuming anything, but also taking you deep.

So it's really about give and take in that balance. So we will explain background. But so I think for someone who's really versed in Bible studies, there's a lot they're going to get. Someone who's never done it before, we're going to summarize salvation history. We're going to kind of give you the backdrop. So I think you'll, like any of the Gospels, if you haven't studied Scripture for a long time, you'll get something out of it.

I think what's great about this is that Hebrews is a relatively short letter. It's just 13, I think, short chapters. It's just an eight-part series. So it's not like you've got to dive into this like 52-week series where you start out all enthusiastic, and by week four, you're like, ah, I just couldn't be bothered. This is like a sprint, and it's a great way to kind of get back

into the Word of God if you feel like you haven't been attentive to it in a while. I think that's right. I think one thing is we did Romans the year before, and Romans was so much fun for Ascension again. And these are all available at ascensionpress.com, so ascensionpress.com. Hebrews, there's kind of one theme throughout. So imagine the context of it.

So there's probably a homily that was written down. Some of the tradition in the East connected to Paul, but there's open questions about this from the beginning. Cardinal Van Waugh has a fascinating authorship theory because by the end of it, it switches from first person plural, first person singular. And he actually suggests,

I talk about this a little bit in the book, it's not a main point, that perhaps Paul wrote this kind of ending because it speaks of Timothy, our brother Timothy, as a way to vouch for the contents. It was commonly connected to Luke. So we don't really know for sure, but it probably has some connection to Paul. This is partly why it's in the canon, because everything that's in the canon of the Testament is either written by an apostle or by an associate of the apostles, like Luke or Mark, for example.

Luke's a disciple of Paul, Mark's a disciple of Peter. So probably some connection to Paul, but it doesn't read. There's some similarities with Paul's letters, themes like the inadequacy of the law, the redemptive sacrifice of Jesus and its atoning significance. But then there's also tons of vocabulary that are all over Paul, like in Christ, in Christ Jesus, that don't show up in Hebrews. So Cardinal de Bois thinks someone else, he thinks Barnabas,

actually wrote the homily and that Paul attached the end of it as a kind of way to vouch for its contents, that this was originally given in the context of a liturgical homily and then written down and disseminated, which to me is just absolutely fascinating. And again, you can tell it's pre-70 AD because it speaks of sacrifices going as ongoing in the present. They're still going on. And so here's, it's kind of like a mini catechism.

I mean, you've got Christology, priesthood, Eucharist, from the first generation of Christians. So that's just a powerful thing. So I think because there's kind of one theme throughout, whereas, you know, Paul in Romans, I mean, there's kind of one thing, but there's a lot of different things at different places coming together. By the end, he's talking about kind of very practical applications, just because my faith and that works. Hebrews is kind of like, you know, imagine a homily. You set up the intro, you expound it, you recapitulate it.

I think that makes it a little easier, oddly enough. As hard as it can be, a little easier to read. Awesome. Well, this little easier to read. Awesome. Well, this has been super helpful. Thank you for helping us to see the biblical basis for the priesthood. Man, I can't thank you enough for having me on. I appreciate so much what you're doing. I pass your stuff on to my students.

My students will share stuff you've done with me, and it's just you're helping so many people. And I just think today it's not enough to be just to be orthodox the c.s lewis had a great line in mucro charity about faith he said neither this neither this belief nor any other will remain alive unless it's fed there's so much kind of count you know um secularism working against us whether it's a subtle, if there's not a countervailing force, and you've got kids, raising kids, it's just not enough to be orthodox. We have to have conviction, deep conviction. So I do think there's a place, study's not the end-all be-all, but we have to feed our minds. If our faith matters to us, we have to feed it. And if we don't, we shouldn't be surprised by the kind of slow erosion of the faith.

Yeah, totally. Thank you for all you're doing and giving kind of academic content and power and winsome. So thank you. Yeah, you got it. Thanks. G'day, g'day. I hope you bloody enjoyed that chat with Dr. Andrew Swofford. Awesome guy.

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