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Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line. The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.
Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll-free across the United States.
It's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is James White.
And good afternoon. Welcome to The Dividing Line. Like I said, I should never be reading something as we come on the air, but I was just reading something off the Envoy magazine web board here, and I see Patrick Madrid saying to, yeah, mic test, working, testing, one, two, three, yeah, we're working, okay.
And I see Patrick Madrid trying to say to Art Sippo, Art, for the sake of elevating the tone of discussion here and as a way to add another safeguard to help prevent folks from giving or taking offense by what's posted here, wonder where that came from, please don't use terms like deformation, deformers, prots, etc.
At best, those terms are unhelpful speed bumps that jar the reader, they jar me. At worst, they come across as gratuitous and mean-spirited. Okay, so I've said that Art Sippo is gratuitous and mean-spirited for how many years now?
Now we have Patrick Madrid saying the same thing. Let me scroll down here. There it is. Pat Madrid has asked that I use the more conventional terms, reformation, etc. He is the moderator, and I will accede to his wishes, but please be clear that I do not think that the Reformation was anything of the sort.
It was an innovative and rebellious movement that rejected solemnly declared church teaching, which had been guided by the Holy Spirit in favor of the opinions of mere men. How long will that last? Not long, I don't think.
That's funny. Anyways, I shouldn't be reading those things, like I said, when I get started. But yes, it is nice to give Madrid a hand. Sippo has only been doing it for how long? Someone finally got around to saying, okay, you know what, that's enough of that.
But I personally, eventually what will happen is either Sippo will go someplace else to post his stuff or he'll just start doing it again. And that's just all there is to it. Anyway, I have a number of clips to play today, and they are not which I do have, you know, we can continue on with where we've been.
But I actually did a little digging around and picked up some new clips to play. And so we're going to do that. I'm not sure which one I want to start with first here. I think I'll probably, I think I'll start with this one first.
These are from the Catholic Answers live program. Most of you know that Tim Staples has gone on staff at Catholic Answers. And I know personally I would love to try to arrange now that Mr. Staples is no longer with St. Joseph's Communications.
And I wrote to Tim years ago, and I told him, look, as long as you're with St. Joseph's, we can't do anything with you ever again, because St. Joseph's lied to us and promised us things in writing. And even when we showed him what was there in writing, they, you know, wouldn't do it and just hung up on us and so on and so forth.
So they're dishonest, and so we can't deal with them. And so we can't deal with you unless you, you know, go someplace else. Well, I got the indication a few years ago he was looking to go someplace else, and now he's gone with Catholic Answers.
And we had contacted him last year to be involved in the debate on Long Island, but they said that he could not, for the first year they didn't want him doing any debates. But now, as I was listening to Catholic Answers Live earlier today, not the program today, but listening to some of the archives, and they were saying there, and I just now got an email saying that someone had contacted him and said he couldn't participate in 2006.
We need to double-check that. But I would really, really like, the Catholic Answers Live program had a promo for having Tim Staples come and speak in your parish, and your church, and so on and so forth.
So they want him out on the road, so I would love to have him out on the road. And, in fact, he is going to be doing all this, he's got a three or four CD set coming out on Mary. He's got a book coming out on Mary.
That seems to be his area, and that's what I would like to get him to debate on, especially in a debate where we'd actually have a moderator that would hold him to what he agrees to do beforehand. That would be wonderful, unlike the last time when Jerry Escher just stood there staring at us all.
And that would be wonderful, because I would love to get some of his claims about Mary in cross-examination, where you actually have to defend the statements that you've made, and he's made a lot of statements.
I mean, yeah, I remember Tim Staples saying that every single church father that ever addressed Matthew 16 -18 understood it the way Rome does. Every single one. Now, anyone who knows anything about history knows that's absurd, but that's the kind of stuff that Tim Staples was spouting when he first started being a quote-unquote Catholic apologist rather shortly after his conversion.
And so he makes some just incredible statements that would be most interesting to get some answers on. It really, really would. And since he is now taking over some of the on-air duties, freeing up Carl Keating and Jimmy Akin, he's out there.
He's doing his thing. And so I think it would be very, very, very good to get an opportunity for him to do that. In fact, let's start with this one. I'm going to go with this one. This was a when Staples was on, they were going to do another program, which I think they said they're going to be airing August 15th.
I'm certainly going to be looking at it with Mark Miravalli of Franciscan University in Steubenville on the Marian dogmas. And not only now, remember, this has been an interesting experience of mine.
As I have talked with various Catholic apologists about the fifth Marian dogma, and some of you may recall I wrote a book a while back. It's actually gone out of print now, which I would like to get the rights to that and expand it out and do something more with the particular subject of Mary, especially in response to the Scott Hahn book, which is we already reviewed that on this program.
You can go back and listen to the archives, but just a horrible work, not only in what it argues, but in the just cheesy subtitles all the way through the thing. Just enough after about ten of these subtitles, you just want to start shooting things.
It's just a bad thing. But anyway, I wrote a little book on the subject of the fifth Marian dogma, the definition of Mary as a co-redemptrix, co-mediatrix, and advocate for the people of God. And they're going to have they had Miravalli on, and they're going to play it on the 15th.
I don't know why they didn't just do it on the 15th. Maybe he isn't available or something. I don't know. But it was interesting listening to them introducing this program. Listen carefully to what Tim Staples says to Miravalli, because I've talked to these Catholic apologists.
I've talked with some who oppose it, and yet it seems like the most support the definition of the fifth Marian dogma, which many people recognize, would be a major stumbling block to ecumenical activity with the Eastern Orthodox especially.
But let's just listen to a section of this with Mark Miravalli.
We're going to be joined by our good friend, Dr. Mark Miravalli of Franciscan University of Steubenville to talk about Marian dogmas throughout history. And Mark joins us now for a minute from his home in Steubenville.
Mark, welcome. Thank you, Jerry. Looking forward to having you with us for the taping in the next hour. What are we going to talk about?
Well, we're going to talk about the history of Marian dogmas. In fact, we're going to kind of race through about 2 ,000 years of Marian proclamation from the proclamation of the Mother of God in 431 to the most recent dogmatic proclamation of Our Lady concerning her Assumption in 1950.
So we're going to kind of do a cliff-note version of the Marian dogmas in the history of the church and also speak about what has not yet been defined in terms of that fifth doctrine regarding Our Lady as the spiritual mother of all people.
So that's kind of our overall purview for the program.
Hey, Mark, this is Tim Staples. Hello, Tim. Hey, how are you? I'm doing well. It's nice to hear your voice. Yeah, I just wanted to mention, you know, for the two or three people out there who might not know who you are, that you guys are in for a treat because it doesn't get any better when it comes to Mariology than Dr. Mark Miravalli.
He has written some tremendous, I think, your work, Mark, on the fifth dogma that we're praying for is just phenomenal.
Did you catch that? The fifth dogma that we are praying for. And so you certainly get the idea of where Staples is coming from. And so he's definitely, and that makes me wonder, all right, when's this book coming out?
When can we get hold of it? And is that going to be a part of the presentation as well? And I recognize it's hard to get these folks to defend this stuff because, let's face it, they at least are open about this.
The only reason anyone believes in the Marian dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church is because they've already accepted the authority of the Roman Catholic Church to define these things. You're not going to come to these conclusions on the basis of Scripture.
You're not going to come to these conclusions on the basis of the study of Church history. You are going to have to come to these conclusions because you've abandoned Sola Scriptura. You have accepted the implicit condemnation of Sola Scriptura, which would be a multi-Scriptura position, that there are multiple infallible rules of faith, and that one of those infallible rules of faith that you've accepted forces you to accept as a dogmatic belief, or as at least a doctrinal belief, the issue of these Marian dogmas.
And therefore, since they're open in recognizing that there's a number of issues you've got to address before you can get to the Marian dogmas, a number of them say, look, I'm not going to debate this because the fundamental issues are Sola Scriptura, the authority of the Church, papal infallibility, ecclesiastical infallibility, development of doctrine, so on and so forth.
And then once you accept everything, we teach about all that. Once you follow all these long arguments about Petrine Primacy and all the rest of this stuff, then you're in a position, finally, to simply accept De Fide, the dogmatic teachings of the Church regarding Mary, because you're not going to get that from the early Church Fathers.
You're not going to get the bodily assumption of Mary, but you have to believe the bodily assumption of Mary, De Fide, to be a faithful Roman Catholic. And so we hear, and that's one thing that eventually when we have all of the great debates on DVD and available in that form, and you just listen to all of them in a row, you're going to hear the wide range, the wide spectrum of things.
You're going to hear in the last debate the possibility of the salvation of the Muslim and the pagan and so on and so forth that follows after the truth of God and the will of God in their lives, and yada, yada, yada.
And on the other hand, you're going to hear people like Jerry Matatix and others talking about the bodily assumption of Mary as part of the Gospel itself, and that we have the exact same level of epistemological certainty in believing in the bodily assumption of Mary as we have in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
That was one of the most amazing things. In fact, I totally forgot, I apologize for this, but I totally forgot to... I was going to do it, just couldn't get to it. I was going to pull up the WAV file or MP3 file for the Madrid debate, and I was going to play the section from Patrick Madrid where he was talking about...
I was going to contrast it with something that Tim Staples says here about images and stuff. I mean, you're just going to be able to hear so much contradiction that it really is illustrative of how inconsistent the defenses of this allegedly infallible church really can be.
It's amazing. Let's continue on with Staples and Miravalli here a moment.
You know, everything is plagiarized from Holy Mother Church. There's no original ideas here, but what the church has said about our Blessed Mother is profound. I think of St. Maximin Colby who says he ends his life asking questions like, you know, who are you, Immaculata?
That's what we do. The dogmas are there, but it's not like we've captured the fullness of these mysteries. And also regarding her relationship with us, I appreciate it very much, Tim, but it's really the glories of our holy faith, and I'm happy to enlighten and speak about that.
Well, Mark, I just made the remark on the air a few minutes ago that you and I could easily fill the whole hour, but we don't want that to happen. We want to hear from folks, so what kind of questions do you think people might have for you in the next hour?
Well, I think it would be good for people to examine, you know, first of all, what is a dogma? Sometimes we throw these terms around, but we don't really explain them. What's a dogma? Why is it different than a doctrine?
How is it changed and altered from a discipline in the church? Secondly, what's the relationship between what the church has said about Mary in relation to what the church says about Jesus? Because we're going to see, historically, the truth about Our Lady really protects the truth about Jesus Christ.
And I think, thirdly, what is Our Lady's relationship to us right now at the beginning of the third millennium? Why do we have to focus on it, and why is it possible that we need to articulate it more clearly, even potentially in the form of another dogma, as Tim mentioned, so that everyone knows, both Catholics and non-Catholics, what exactly we hold about the Blessed Mother and her relationship with each human being?
Now, catch that. There you have... And Mary Vallee is... He's certainly the American leader of the push for the Fifth Marian Dogma. There's no question about that. And his works, which I have read, which I have in my library, are certainly the most balanced, shall we say.
He's obviously very, very sensitive to criticisms regarding the objections to the Fifth Marian Dogma and the concept of Mary as co-redemptrix, co-mediatrix, and advocate of the people of God. Every time he uses co-, for example, he will emphasize the word with.
He will emphasize that co does not mean equal to. He's really trying and is obviously very well aware of what the objections to these things are. But now you just heard, from a positive side, the assertion that this somehow protects the uniqueness of Jesus.
Now, obviously, I come to the opposite conclusion. That it, in fact, denigrates, detracts from the uniqueness of Christ because you end up with this very clear, very obvious parallelism of each of the unique offices and activities of Christ in Mary.
That's what Rome's doing all along. And I included a whole section of this at the end of my discussion in Mary Another Redeemer and so on and so forth. But you can hear how you can spin these things. And even when promoting a doctrine that actually detracts from the uniqueness of Christ, you can try to turn it around and say, well, actually, it protects the uniqueness of Christ.
And the last few statements right there about we need people to have clarity concerning what we believe about the Blessed Mother, that is in response to those who are saying we can't do this because of the ecumenical roadblock it would throw up in regards to the Eastern churches, which do not hold to these as a dogmatic belief.
And every time we define these things, you can see back in 1950 when the bodily assumption was defined, it ends up being an ecumenical roadblock. It ends up being another situation where, especially for the Eastern Orthodox, it's the Bishop of Rome lording over those that are supposed to be his compatriots and claiming to represent the entire church, which, of course, is Rome's position in the first place.
But, you know, we're living in an ecumenical day where that's not nearly quite as popular.
I think these are some of the caveats we could entertain.
All right. Well, we'll have you back on the line.
And we'll go on from there. So I'm looking forward to that particular program on the 15th of August. I'm going to have to be listening to that and see what's there. Play one more here, and then we've already got one caller.
And I guess we can take some others at 877 -753 -3341. During the break, I'm going to have to I forgot to queue up what I wanted in this one section. So I'm going to have to look for it, hope I can find it during the break.
And, well, we'll see if that works out. But a caller called in, and I don't know about you, as I listened to this man respond to Staples when Staples asked him, have you come to the point of believing the Catholic Church was established by Christ?
I wasn't overly convinced by his response. It sounded to me like he had other questions, and he sort of got snowballed here. But here you have a guy calling in. He's looking at Catholicism. He basically says, you know, but I still have questions.
What should I do? And it is very interesting to consider the epistemology that exists behind Staples' response to him. It really does. Now, I just realized now as I'm looking at this waveform that I may have double-saved this.
In other words, it may start a little bit later on. Let's see where it starts here. I may have to skip down to get to the actual thing.
A whole lot of tape sets coming out real fast.
Oh, okay. This was something I wanted to play anyway, so we'll go ahead and play it and then pick up the caller. Listen to the stuff that Staples is talking about in regards to what he's got coming out.
This is where he's talking about the stuff that he's producing for Catholic Answers. Here.
They're in the process of being edited right now. I'm doing a new series. In fact, I have a new version of my conversion story that's completed, and it's kind of an updated version. It's three CDs long.
Three CDs long.
Wow, that's a conversion story. I sort of fill in the gaps here, what has happened in the last 17 years since my conversion. That's coming out very soon. I also have a series on the Blessed Mother coming out that's going to be three tape series.
They're being edited. I have a tape series completed on the papacy that's being edited right now, a biblical series on the papacy. I'm going to be doing one in the Fathers of the Church. I've got eschatology coming up.
I've got the Eucharist. We've got a ton of stuff in the works right now. And I'm also finishing up a book on the Blessed Mother that should be finished here real quick. So I am very busy and excited to be here at Catholic Answers.
Now, it is interesting to me. Some of you may recall the last debate that Staples and I had on papal infallibility that St. Joseph's did not make available. We heard all sorts of stories after the debate was over.
They were going to add a third tape to the debate because I had lied so often. And they were going to try to fix all my lies. And then he was going to write a book. And then his hard drive crashed and the book disappeared.
And he couldn't rewrite it. And so on and so forth. So it will be interesting to see if his experience in that encounter had any impact upon what ends up coming out in the papacy stuff or if that's even going to deal with infallibility.
Because even though the debate was supposed to be on infallibility, he spent all his time just talking about the papacy, which wasn't what we were supposed to be talking about anyways. But anyhow. Well, it sounds like it.
I tell people a story. I'll tell it to the audience to listen to. Let me skip down a little bit here.
Anti-Pope, anti-John Paul II. And clarifying the joint declaration in making between Lutherans and Catholics the teachings of the church, the catechism, and the Tridentine Mass. It's a tremendous history.
And it's a beautiful liturgy. But there again, we have to caution and say in the 21st century, you would have seen a church we're not ever splitting from. Let's try it out.
I'm a Protestant who is looking at the Catholic faith. There we go. And there's a lot of things that I have questions about, a lot of things I understand or I see the point. But there's other things that I don't.
And I'm wondering how many, you know, how should one approach looking at these things? You know, is it just something I have to take on by faith? Or should I do some more looking? Right. That's a wonderful question.
Absolutely. You and I, as men, have a responsibility to search for the truth. We are made, as St. Augustine said, we are made to know the Lord. You know, we're made for him. And our hearts will remain restless until they rest in him.
And so we have a responsibility to search. Now, as you are searching in Catholicism, and let me ask you this. Are you to the point now where you can say that you believe that the Catholic Church is true and was established by Jesus Christ?
Yes, I believe so.
Okay. Once you reach that... Now, I don't know about you, but come on. I believe so. You know, we just got done hearing him say, I've got these questions, these things I understand, blah, blah, blah. I'm sorry.
That didn't carry much water with me. Not at all. But still, it doesn't really change too much of the rest of Staple's response here.
Point. And I know in my own, I don't know if you realize this, but I'm a convert as well. I used to be a youth minister in an Assembly of God church. And it was a long struggle for me when I began to study Catholicism.
In fact, I studied it to disprove it. But as I studied it, I found more and more truth. But there was a certain point where I came to see that Jesus Christ, who I already believed really lived, died, was resurrected.
He was Almighty God in the flesh. I saw that historically he established a church, and he gave that church his authority to speak for him. So that just as when Jesus was walking the earth, when he said, you know, for example, this is my body. You can believe that he meant what he said.
Did Jesus ever say that while preaching? I don't remember that. In fact, he didn't. He did, while preaching, say that no man comes to the Father, no man has the ability to come to me unless the Father draws him, and all the Father gives you will come to me.
He did preach that stuff. And he preached openly a couple of different times the fact that you should test all tradition by the highest authority of Scripture. And he did preach all that stuff, and you can believe that.
But what if Rome says those things are wrong? Then what do you do?
That's a good question. God, he did miracles to prove the fact that he was God, and you can take him at his word. Well, Jesus gave his authority to his church to speak for him. So that I reached a point where I could say that, let's say, you know, Jesus were to say to you, Jake, it's Jake, am I right?
Yes. Okay, Jake, that, you know, when I said unless you eat the flesh and the Son of Man drink his blood, you have no life in you, I meant exactly what I said. You need to receive the Eucharist, and in that Eucharist, you will receive life.
He did mean exactly what he said. And that's why I would, I was joking in Chandler before the program started up, I really have a strong desire to write a very full book of, on John chapter 6. The entirety of the chapter, especially focusing, of course, on 35 to the end of the chapter.
But the whole thing. And I'm talking about exegesis. I want to address every possible interpretation that has been offered of the key texts in 37 through 45, 67, so on and so forth. That's something I'd really, really like to do.
And I was joking before the program that I'm going to have to set up a special fund so I can stop traveling for like four or five months to actually do it. Because it's just not possible, for me anyway, to write while you're traveling.
It just doesn't work. You have to have consistency, you need to have your resources around you. And sitting at a holiday inn someplace, I don't care what the commercials say, you just don't write well in that particular context.
So I'm going to have to set up a special fund. If you'd like to see this book written, then here's, you know, donate here to cover the cost of not traveling for four or five months to get that type of thing done.
But if you look at John 6 and you follow, instead of just ripping John 6 50 and following out, and making it stand on its own, and ignoring the fact that this is the means by which Jesus presses home the truth that he's just announced to them in regards to the issue of his centrality as the source of spiritual life.
This is not about what Rome's making it about. If you just see the connection, this whole thing falls apart. And so to hear, you know, I would love to try to get someone like Tim Staples to actually defend his utilization of the text in this way in light of what came before that.
I mean, I can provide a very clear, consistent, connected exegesis of the passages in regards to eating my flesh and drinking my blood in John 6 that goes right from the beginning of John 6 right through the end.
Tim Staples cannot. Can't do it. Because as soon as you hit 35 and following, any synergistic system collapses. It just falls apart. It can't survive it. If you want to see what happens when you try to get a Roman Catholic to deal with that text, go back and look at the clips on our website when I asked Bill Rutland about it.
Now, would Tim Staples do the same thing Bill Rutland did? I don't think he would. I really don't think that he would respond the same way. But would he be able to give a greater, more exegetical response?
I don't think so. I don't believe so. Be happy to find out if that's the case or not. Let's hold it right there because it's time for the break. We'll come back with a few more comments from Tim Staples and our phone calls at 877 -753 -3341.
We'll be right back.
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All right, let's continue on with this response offered by Tim Staples to a caller who is looking into the Catholic Church. The caller didn't get much of an opportunity to dialogue here. He will not even get the opportunity of saying what it is he's looking at.
Instead, he's basically being told, stop worrying about it and believe in the Church, because the Church says it. And listen, some people have said, eh, you know, Matta-Tix, he's gone off into na-na land.
But you know, what he said in our debate, the first debate, great debate number one, when he said that we have the same epistemological certainty in believing in the bodily assumption of Mary that we have in the Resurrection.
I think that is consistent with a full-blown acceptance of the infallibility of the Roman Catholic Magisterium. Because the highest level of authority you could have is the word, the infallible Church.
If the infallible Church says Jesus Christ rose from the dead, and the infallible Church says Mary is bodily assumed into heaven, then you have the same epistemological warrant for both, don't you? And so, people have sort of looked at Matta-Tix saying, eh, listen to what Staples says.
I don't think Staples would disagree. In fact, I think he'd say the exact same thing.
Well, if you and I don't have full intellectual understanding, well, what exactly did you mean? We take what Jesus said on faith, always seeking to go deeper and to understand deeper the faith that he gives us.
But we must always begin with faith. If we wait, Jake, to have full intellectual understanding of every tenet of faith, before we act in faith, well, then we will never act in faith. Because we will never fully comprehend the mysteries of the faith, like the Trinity, the Eucharist, and so forth.
So, my recommendation for you is, in your heart of hearts, as you seek and you pray and you're asking God for truth, if you believe that the Catholic Church is true, well, then when the Church officially and formally declares something as a matter of faith, then you can take that to the bank.
That is Jesus Christ speaking through the Church, and you can be just as certain as though Jesus Christ walked right up to you and said, for example, yes, Mary is the mother of God. Yes, Mary has been bodily assumed into heaven.
The Church says so. Now, then you begin a journey of seeking and studying and going deeper and discovering. Wow! Take the assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. We can look at Revelation chapter 12 in the Bible and see, yes, we have evidence for the assumption of Mary.
We see this glorious Queen, crowned with a crown of twelve stars, standing on the moon, giving birth to the Messiah and to all of us. There you have Revelation 12, this glorious woman bodily being depicted in heaven.
Okay, Mr. Staples, cross-examination time. It also says she is in pain giving birth, and that's a part of the fall, that's a part of the curse, and if Mary was in fact immaculately conceived and hence not under that element of the curse, then could you please explain, since you want to use this in such a literalistic fashion, why this is Mary and why the early Church in their first references to this passage did not see it as Mary but actually saw it as the Church?
If that is the container of tradition, and if you are looking at this in a dogmatic fashion, could you answer those questions? I'd be very interested to see if, in point of fact, he answers those questions in his book, or if it's just going to be another one of those, this is for the cheering crowds, the students, my adoring students who aren't going to question these things, aren't going to bring up these kinds of issues, what kind of a book it's going to be.
I would hope that there would be a slightly higher standard at Catholic Answers than there was at St. Joseph's on something along those lines.
There we have some biblical reinforcement for what you and I believe as Catholics. Does that make sense, Jake? Yeah, it does. All right, and if there's anything in particular...
The poor guy can't get a word in edgewise. You know he wants to ask a question, he ain't going to get it asked.
...that may be bothering you, give us a call here at Catholic Answers. You can talk to, we have apologists...
Call us up off the air, we don't want to talk about this on the air.
...standing by at the 619 -387 -7200 line who will talk to you in more detail than I can hear on the air. But, you know, I'll leave you with this thought, because I know we have to move on, but St. Anselm, a wonderful 12th century theologian, once said that the essence of the Christian faith can be summed up in this phrase, It's Fides Quaerens Intellectum, which means faith seeking understanding.
We begin with faith and we spend our lives seeking to go deeper and deeper into our understanding.
Now, one thing before I go to our calls, one thing I wanted to point out that is, I think, rather important, not that what we were talking about before wasn't, but if someone, if a Roman Catholic called this program, and we've had things like this happen over the years, I mean, if you include the times we did the dividing line on the air, on KPXQ, KHEP, KXEG, we've been, we've had the program, we started the program back in the 80s.
I don't remember what the first year was, but probably 20 years ago. And we've had, 1987, so we're getting close to 20 years, we've had people call up who were thinking about converting. They were thinking about leaving one of the various groups that we deal with.
And, of course, you like to hear someone calling up saying something like that. But what do we do on this program when they call up? When someone comes into our chat channel and says, you know, I'm thinking about leaving the Catholic Church.
I'm thinking about leaving Mormonism. I'm thinking about leaving Jehovah's Witnesses. What do we do? I think I've been very consistent through the course of my ministry, because my first question to that person is, why?
Why are you thinking of leaving? Well, there's this priest down the road. Now I'm really angry with him. Wrong reason. Wrong reason. That's not conversion. That's just apostasy from whatever position you were in before.
That's not conversion. You're not turning from something to the truth. You may be turning away from one version of untruth, but you certainly haven't been captured by the glory of the gospel. And did you hear anything in what Tim Staples said about the gospel?
About recognizing one's own sinfulness and conversion? See, conversion there was all a matter of acceptance of the ultimate authority of the Magisterium of Rome. It wasn't, see, when I talk about conversion, this is the neat part about being a Calvinist, by the way, is that if true conversion takes place, then the Holy Spirit of God changes the heart, changes you from being a God-hater to being a God-lover.
You have the Holy Spirit within you, and the Holy Spirit is going to lead you to the words of Christ, the words of the shepherd, and is going to close your ears to the false shepherds. I don't have to instill in you a love for sola scriptura and the word of God.
The Spirit's going to do that. That's the neat thing about that. And so we handled that situation very, very differently. If someone called in here and said that to me, I'd be talking to them about, what do they understand about the gospel?
When did they come to understand their need of Christ and their need of repentance and what justification is and the finished work of Jesus Christ? That's what I'd be talking about. And what's Tim Staples talking about?
The bodily assumption of Mary. It is quite obvious to me, Roman Catholics believe, have far more as the central aspect of their approach in this context, sola ecclesia, mines solus Christus. Yes, I believe in sola scriptura, and I will address the issue of sola scriptura with someone, but the fundamental concern I have is the person's relationship to Christ.
The rest is going to fall into place at that point. So a very, very different way of approaching that particular subject than we just saw. Well, one brave soul has called 877 -753 -3341, so we are finally going to get around after making the poor fellow sit around all program.
Let's talk to Charles in South Carolina. Hi, Charles. Hi, Dr. White. How are you?
I'm good. How about yourself? Doing all right. Good. I guess mine is sort of off the subject of what you're on now, but I've been listening to several of the debates. I really learned a lot of the debates I've downloaded from you guys.
And one, I had a question. I don't question the doctrine of training. I believe that's the clearest explanation in Scripture of what I understand. But in a debate that you had with the oneness man. Robert Sabin.
Sabin. You gave the distinctions. You were saying there's one being that's God, but there are three persons. And I know that's the thing that we've communicated to our children. There are not three gods, but there are three persons who are God.
And yet, I wonder if some other people who heard that might be drawing from the sense as humans. For instance, we recognize different persons, different people, but we would also reference each individual person or we would see them as individual human beings.
Is that correct?
Well, and that's why whenever I have addressed the issue of the doctrine of the Trinity, either in lecture or in debate, I have said we need to define the terms we're using within the context in which we are using them.
And we are differentiating in the human use of such terms as being or person. In using them in regards to divine nature, we need to recognize that when we talk about the being of God, unlike us, we are finite.
We are limited in time and space. The being of God is not. And when we talk about person, we need to set aside the baggage of the terminology itself, which carries with it the idea of a separate individual with a body that exists in one particular time and space, separate from anybody else.
And we need to recognize that we're talking here about individuals who can refer to one another. The son refers to the father. The father speaks of the son in the spirit. The son speaks of the father in the spirit.
They use personal pronouns. And yet the one divine name is used of all three. We are simply believing in all three of the foundations of the doctrine of the Trinity that are revealed in Scripture. The fact there is only one true God, the existence of the three divine persons, and the equality of those persons as to their participation in the divine nature.
And so, yeah, I mean, there's no way to address the nature of God without using language, and human language utilizes analogies. It utilizes comparisons. And so, are certain people likely to misunderstand that?
Certainly. Is there anything that can be done about that? Not at all. So you, thank you. You try, little guest appearance by Fido. You try to do everything that you can to warn somebody that they are misunderstanding you when you do that.
But, you know, once you've made the best effort, you go from there.
Right. I guess that was one of the things. I know the statements and such. That seemed to be the approach that he had. That he was not making that distinction, but he seemed like when he would question you, it was in line.
We would look at and we would say, well, there's three human beings. They're obviously three different persons. And they're distinct not only in their person, but they're distinct in their being, even though they are all human.
Well, and he's starting, I remember Robert Sabin was starting from the same assumption of the Muslim debate, and I debated three days before that, Hamza Abu Malik, in regards to the subject of Unitarianism.
They both share that. They come to completely different conclusions as a result, but they both share that fundamental commitment to philosophical Unitarianism. And when you try to get them to examine that Unitarianism, they're not too willing to do so.
Right. Now, a follow-up to that, if I could ask, is that there's a mention of the Athanasian Creed. And I know that some people have said, well, you can't be a Christian unless you believe in the doctrine of the Trinity.
And I'm wanting to understand. I mean, I know all of us are converted at different points and different understandings. And I believe that there has to be, like what you were mentioning there. Sorry, my dog is being loud.
But I know there are different places that we all are converted. Some of us are very ignorant. Some of us have some knowledge, and some of us are in the scripture when we're converted. So how far is that to be taken?
Well, yeah, we've discussed that a number of times. And it is important because there are many today who would like to tell us that such things as a doctrinal framework that defines the God that we believe in or the Christ that we worship is not important.
Certainly, I was converted without a doctoral-level knowledge of the Trinity. Now, the people who proclaimed the gospel to me, that was the God they were proclaiming to me, even though every single one of them had less than a perfect knowledge.
And I've mentioned a couple of times that when I first started studying cults and isms in high school and I asked about the Trinity of religious leaders around me, I was almost invariably given a modalistic or what I would consider to be very sub-biblical responses, even in my own church.
And so there's no question that you're able to be saved without perfection of knowledge in regards to such things as the hypostatic union. I mean, there will be many people in heaven who have never heard of the hypostatic union.
However, I draw the line at the fact that someone like Robert Sabin does know what the hypostatic union is and does know what the doctrine of the Trinity is and openly, firmly, without question rejects that and substitutes something else in its place.
That's something very different than simply being ignorant of something. And of course I believe that the children of God will be subject to the truth of God and therefore when they desire to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, then there will be a desire to come to know these things and upon exposure to these things, there will be an acceptance of and a love for the truths that God has revealed about himself.
But certainly I do not believe that a person is saved by having a perfection of knowledge of the doctrine of the Trinity because if that's the case, I don't know that there's anyone who ever has been saved for that matter.
Right, right. And I agree with you. I agree that the person who's truly converted, the Spirit of God puts a desire within his heart to want to understand. And those have been some of the discussions. You know, I've had some friends say, well, you can't be a Christian if you don't believe in the doctrine of the Trinity.
And when I asked them, can you define that for me, because I'm a foreign believer, I said, well, if we have to believe God as he has revealed himself, I said, then wouldn't we have to put the same thing on people?
You know, we start throwing all kinds of stuff on there and I'm not one who says we look for the least common denominator by any means. I believe we ought to give the whole counsel of God and give it as he says and not break it down to this least common denominator.
I don't believe that. But I said, could we not go the same step and say, well, they have to believe in the sovereignty of God the way he's revealed himself as being sovereign. And I guess because of grace and things of that nature.
Why is that? I really don't understand that among the children of God. I understand it among the others, but I don't.
I fully understand where you're coming from. The issue is when you are dealing with someone who has been given a falsehood about something like the doctrine of the Trinity or the gospel, that's when that becomes an issue to where I would say that a person, I would very much question the salvation of a person who, coming from a background like that, says, well, okay, I believe what you believe about the gospel now, but I still reject the Trinity.
Okay, that would be an issue. That's different from someone who just, you know, it's not even a part of their experiences yet. They're not even aware of it, so on and so forth. So I think you have to take each case within that context and treat it in that fashion.
And, you know, the main thing to try to avoid is the specter of what we've run into a number of times, the hyper-Calvinists out there who demand an absolute perfection of knowledge before salvation can take place.
That's truly a real issue. Hey, brother, take care of the dog. I'm going to try to sneak one more caller in before the end of the hour. Thank you for calling today, and thank you. God bless. Let's talk to Brian real quick also over toward the east side of the country down in Georgia.
Hi, Brian. Hey, Dr. White. Hey, real quick. We've only got a couple seconds.
Real quick. Ecumenical groups, workforce groups, meeting at national sales meetings where they say, hey, let's all come together, let's all join hands in prayer, you know, Catholics, Christians, and as I explained to my boss, you know, what you said in the book, The God Who Justifies, Paul, Paul didn't have any ecumenical discussions about the gospel.
You know, when you look at Galatians, what good are we doing, and do you think it's wrong for us to come together? Well, let me tell you a story.
Boston College, 1993, I believe it was April, we had two debates with Jerry Matatix. Most of the people in the room where we had the debates were monks and priests. There were lots of tonsure cuts and stuff like that, and of the two debates, the one that was actually the most interesting and amazing enough was the Apocrypha debate, not the Justification debate.
I'm not quite sure why, but at the end of the debates, there were audience questions, and someone got up and said, you know, I don't know about these debates. I think they tend toward division, and what I would like to ask us to do is demonstrate the unity of the body of Christ by all joining together and standing and praying together as all believers in Christ.
And I looked at this person, and I said, I will not do that. And then I, if I recall correctly, I don't remember if I even got a chance to explain myself, because unfortunately the moderator who was with InterVarsity at the time said, that sounds like a great idea.
And so all these people stand up, and I'm sitting down. And the moderator and them do their prayer. I didn't do it, and there were a number of other people who refused to do it. And so as we were leaving that evening, and it was cold, and you know how it is in April in Boston.
There's this icky snow all over the place. I was heading out to my car. I just had surgery back then. I was still walking with a cane, as I recall, and I was having to be very careful on the ice. This woman comes running up to me, and she is just really angry that I refused to engage in that prayer.
How dare you refuse? Who do you think you are? And so I stopped, and I said, well look, she needs to understand that I believe prayer is an act of worship, first of all. And the context in which this was placed was a context that in essence was demanding that I say that the gospel is not what defines Christian fellowship.
It's not what defines true Christian worship, that the gospel is not at the heart of these things. Or if it is, that the Roman Catholic gospel and my gospel are close enough that we just don't really need to worry about it one way or the other.
And so you were asking me, whoever it was that asked that we do this, was in essence asking me to compromise my faith, to give up my faith. And I refused to do that. And she just could not believe that I could be so narrow-minded and so unloving.
But she also showed no understanding of what it was I was saying and why I was saying what I was saying. And so there you go. I think that illustrates it. When that type of thing is happening within a business context, that's a very difficult thing to deal with.
No two ways about it. You know what I told my boss, and he's one of these guys, he's a leader in his church, but he's big on the message now, translation, which is nuts. And then he said, you know, he goes to Michael Eusefs' church.
And then he said, well, you know, I said, what do you do if somebody breaks out in prayer and starts saying the Hail Mary? He said, well, you don't have to participate with them in doing that.
I'm like, that's wrong. But would you have the freedom to rebuke them and to talk to them about the true nature of worship and the gospel? That's the problem. I won't put myself in a position where I can't speak the gospel with clarity.
That's the issue. Hey, brother, thanks for calling today. We are out of time. Thanks for listening to Dividing Line. We'll be back on Tuesday morning, 11 o 'clock my time, 2 o 'clock Eastern Daylight Time.
See you then. God bless.
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