Dr. Svendsen on John the Baptist

From an email, which I post with his permission:

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I think your conclusion is reasonable. John warns the Sadducees (which party included most of the priests) to repent, and he denied their claim to be children of Abraham based solely on their lineage or position (Matt 3:7-9; a principle both Jesus and Paul later affirm). I think that in itself militates against the RC view that spiritual authority is something that resides in an institution, no matter how corrupt it becomes.

I would go further and posit that as much as Jesus condemned the excesses of the Pharisees, he held much more in common with them than he did with the Sadducees, particularly in the area of the extent of the canon, the belief in angels, spirits, and a resurrection. Unfortunately for the RC position, the Pharisees were a relatively recent “protest” group (dated circa 200 B.C.) that at first aligned themselves with the priestly class during the Maccabean revolt (mid first cent B.C.), and later broke away from that same alliance due to corruption on the part of the priests. If the priests (Sadducees) were the standard bearer that Jesus countenanced, then why does he affirm the Pharisees’ authority and right to “sit on the seat of Moses” in matt 23:2-3? Now, to be sure, this is not the authority that RCs typically ascribe to this verse; rather, he is affirming the Pharisees’ right to judge disputes in a theocracy, in the same way that “Moses sat to judge the people from morning till evening” and then appointed other judges to do the same thing (Ex 18:13 ff). Nevertheless, this is devastating to the RC’s argument for monolithic authority; for sometimes Jesus countenances the authority of the Pharisees (Matt 23:2-3), while other times he countenances the authority of the Sadducees (Matt 8:4, “go show yourself to the priest”). So he simultaneously recognizes two authorities that could not have been more dissimilar. Yet, in both cases, he warns his disciples against the “teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees” (Matt 16:6-12). The only way to make sense of this is to conclude that Jesus ascribed a sort of political legitimacy to both groups while denying the spiritual authority of both.