July 14, 2005

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.

Opening Banter and Critique of Catholic Answers

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.

Marian Dogmas and the Proposed Fifth Marian Dogma

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.

Break and Sponsor Messages

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Catholic Conversion, Authority, and Marian Dogma

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.