You've Got Mail! #1

I originally started doing these video blogs to save myself some time, basically. I don't have a large staff and try to do a lot of things at the same time.

So far, it really hasn't been actually saving me much time because of the fact that, well,

I don't yet know the programs all well. I've changed programs a couple times, changed cameras a couple times. And I also put a little bit more information into these than maybe

I probably should, like the time when I subtitled the fellow reading the Qur 'an. Probably not too many people really were blessed by that.

Maybe a few Arabic -speaking Muslims, that's nice of you to do that. It's good for my Arabic, but other than that.

So this time I'm going to try to be a little more disciplined and actually just provide some quick responses, not put a bunch of PowerPoints together and things like that.

First is our friend William Albrecht has posted some responses to my series on Ignatius.

Now, what that was, was I went through the second portion of Ignatius's, second chapter of Ignatius's Epistle to Smyrnians and did that a number of years ago on the dividing line.

I just took that, gave you the text. And what I'd like you to do is, I invite you to track down William Albrecht's videos.

I really would. I would invite any rational person to watch what

I've said, listen to what I've said, look at the original materials, and then listen to William. And honestly,

I can allow you to make the decision from there. It's just that obvious.

Painfully obvious. For William, the early church believed what I believe. And anybody who says otherwise, just take him out of context.

That's it. And there's no reasoning with someone who does not realize that they have to back up what they're saying.

They cannot start with conclusion of their argument. And I have come to clear conclusions, many other people have in the past, that there is no reasoning with William.

But unfortunately, William represents a lot of the way people think in this area.

And you respond to what they say, you demonstrate where they're wrong, you move on from there. There's no reason to do anything else. But here's an example from the beginning of William's response on Ignatius.

But now I'm here and I want to deal with a few things that James White has been up to once again. A little while back,

James White posted a video series dealing with St. Ignatius of Antioch. And if you watch his video set, he criticizes

Catholics in a very ugly manner. Excuse me. He even gives impersonations of us in a little bit of a very, in a very, very rude manner.

You know, James White sometimes lacks a lot of respect. He needs to be put in his place. And that's what I'm here for. I'm here to defend the

Catholic Church that Christ has founded. The church of which the gates of hell will never prevail over.

I'm here to defend it. I do my best to serve Christ in the fullest. And I believe that James White is very dishonest when it comes to the usage of the church fathers.

And I believe he has to be. You know, as a Protestant, James White is stuck in a rough position. You know, the early church did not believe or view the

Bible in the way that he does. So it's rough for him to really read the early church without ripping them out of their context.

And, um, well, you know, I know that James White knows that the early church was not Protestant. So I do not, that is why

I do not understand why he can rip them out of context the way he does. But anyway, we're going to touch upon the series in which he deals upon.

He actually is attempting to, uh, to, to, uh, to make Steve Ray, a Catholic apologist to whom

I've, uh, uh, spoken with, uh, look bad. He's attempting to make Steve Ray look bad here.

And, uh, I think I'm going to go ahead and try and, uh, lend Steve Ray a hand here. Cause I know, uh,

I know he's really busy right now. And, um, I want to start off with this video. It's, uh, and we're going to cover all five of the videos and the relevant parts that we need

James White has done on Ignatius. A minute and 28 seconds into the video, we hear James White making that, make the accusation that Roman Catholics cannot handle the early church fathers in an accurate fashion.

Then we hear that only really Protestants can handle the early church fathers. I couldn't help, but laugh a little here.

The early church, which believed in the primacy of the Pope, prayer to the saints, gave respect due to Mary, did not believe in the millennial rapture, believing the presence of Christ in the

Eucharist and the early church to give us a Bible, not the Protestant Bible, lacking seven books, but the complete Bible. It's that early church that the

Protestants can handle, right? That makes no sense whatsoever, but it's no wonder why

James White has never been able to deal with the early fathers in a cogent manner. In each one of my videos I have done, I've demonstrated that James never dealt with any of the fathers that I mentioned that referred to the

Eucharist being the substantial presence of Christ. Now the irony in all of this, of course, is that right at the same time

William is faulting me for disagreeing with him that the early church fathers were 21st century

Roman Catholics, believing everything that modern Rome teaches.

I'm directed to a website called Catholic Visions. I'd like to tell you something about whoever's behind it, but I can't.

I couldn't find any meaningful information about the person on their own blog site, but it's catholicvisions .blogspot

.com I think. I grabbed a couple of quotes here that are interesting.

In today's apologetics world, many Protestants now more than ever are misinterpreting the early church fathers just as they do the sacred scriptures.

For example, James White over at his Aloha, I mean Alpha Omega Ministries. I'm not sure what that was.

Was it because I went to Hawaii? Me and R .C. Sproul took D. James Kennedy's place on his cruise last

June? I don't know. Anyways, seems to have an absurd fallacious idea that we must find every single doctrine that the

Catholic church teaches in the second or third century church father writings or they are simply not true.

Where he has come up with this absurd chuckle -headed theory is anyone's guess. What is equally absurd are these Catholic apologists who humor him by trying desperately to find some one -line passage from an early church father to prove some doctrine of the

Catholic church. Well, obviously, I don't believe that finding a single -line early church means that we should or should not believe that.

I think I've been pretty clear over the years that the only reason a Christian should believe something is because it's found in divine revelation, that is, in the sacred scriptures.

But when I'm dealing with Roman Catholics who claim that their beliefs are, in fact, the consistent teachings of the early church fathers, then if I demonstrate that's not the case, then all

I've demonstrated is that their arguments are untrue. This guy isn't even slightly seriously interacting with what 90 % of everybody who watches the debates, listens, has some modicum of fairness in their thinking is clearly able to see.

Here's another example. If we read Saint Cyprian when he writes of the Eucharist in a mystical symbolic verbiage, does this mean that he did not believe in the real presence?

Notice these folks cannot grasp the idea of recognizing the historical difference between real presence and transubstantiation.

They can't do it. They just go tilt, stop working, sort of like Vista. Just can't handle it.

James White and those like him would like to think so. Doesn't it make more sense that he was addressing something entirely different than the doctrine of transubstantiation?

Yeah, since no one was talking about that. Would we even expect such a term to be used from that era?

No, I wouldn't, because they didn't believe in it. I don't think so. This, however, is certainly no proof that Saint Cyprian denied the real presence.

See the flipping back and forth between two different concepts? All this hurling early church father quotes back and forth is just as absurd as hurling sacred scripture verses back and forth.

This is the madness of amateur apologetics. Unfortunately, many of these do -it -yourself, hasteed apologists are making money hand over fist putting out inept information and passing it off as reliable.

Well, there you go. Once again, it is not, now listen to this, it is not the writings of the fathers themselves, nor that of sacred scripture alone, but the correct interpretation of them that matters.

All this, once again, comes down to authority and historicity. The apostolic succession that passes on doctrine by the guidance of the

Holy Spirit is what matters. And isn't it funny? We could put these two guys in the room,

William and this fellow, and they would have to completely disagree with one another. He's clearly taking a completely different position than William does.

And both of them assume the other guy is just so completely wrong, it's not even funny. But then they all come back to the same idea.

And it's the idea that you need this apostolic tradition, you need this mechanism whereby you can interpret both the scriptures and early church fathers.

Evidently, if you write something, no one can possibly interpret it except for the church.

Those are people that can do it. We can go back and we can look at the context of Ignatius, Cyprian, we can look at the words he used, we can examine his writings, his grammar, everything like that.

Not enough. You've got to have the church to tell you what even St. Cyprian meant.

Well, I know what St. Cyprian meant. I know what he meant when he rejected the meddling of the

Bishop of Rome in the North African seat. I know what he meant. But you see, once development takes place, and Rome will tell you, oh, he didn't really mean that.

That's the kind of magical, patristic interpretation that someone like the fellow at Catholic Vision.

And finally, real quickly, because I'm almost out of time, over at mormonapologetics .org, a thread started, because in commenting on Ahriman, I just very briefly said that Mormons have a very low view of God.

They do. When you believe that God's exalted man, that's a very low view of God. That's not the

God of the Bible. I just direct this to those folks over there. Isaiah 29, 16, you turn things upside down, as if the potter were thought to be like the clay.

Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, he did not make me? Can the pot say of the potter, he knows nothing?