In today's episode, we're going to examine Gavin Ortland's case against the papacy and see that his methodology actually provides evidence against Protestantism and for Catholicism.

But before we do that, I'd like to thank Gavin for reviewing the script for today's episode because these kinds of reviews help us to create better arguments, because we then clearly understand the person who's being critiqued.

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And of course, liking this episode and subscribing to the channel are always appreciated.

All right, so let's look at some of Gavin's arguments, but first, a disclaimer.

The papacy is an interesting topic to debate because it deals with the question of what

offices Christ instituted in his church, and there's a wide variance in the common ground

that a Catholic might have with a critic of the papacy.

For example, Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox agree bishops and

patriarchs have saturdotal apostolic authority. Where we disagree is on aspects of the Pope's

jurisdictional power and his infallibility. The Orthodox are even willing to say that the Pope is a

first among equals, kind of like how Anglicans view the Archbishop of Canterbury, except the

Pope is not a lady. Anglicans and many Lutherans and some Methodists would agree that Christ

gave us bishops, along with pastors and deacons. They just disagree over the idea that one bishop

has greater authority than the other bishops. Other Protestants would say the church is not governed by bishops at all,

but by general presbyteral councils, or even that each congregation governs itself independently.

So to convince many Protestants of the papacy,

you'd have to show that Sola Scriptura is false,

since the pope and the bishops united with him can teach infallibly,

and that God gave us the office of bishop. And finally, that bishops do not all have equal

authority in the church. Given this difficulty, I'm going to propose two simple approaches

...