The Dividing Line, September 2, 2008

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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Anyway, I hadn't said anything about the debate, but here comes this article. And let me just read you the beginning of this article.

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You tell me if these are the words of someone who felt the debate went really, really well for their side and that this was, you know,

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I mean, Patrick's debated me twice, and from his perspective, he's won both of them. He's undefeated. So here's how it started.

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James White loves to argue. He's a fundamentalist who runs an anti -Catholic ministry, so you'd expect him to be no stranger to controversy, but White's appetite for in -your -face confrontations goes beyond typical anti -Catholic zealotry.

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That's just the start, folks. That's just how you start. Now, remember,

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Patrick knows that we go up and that we deal with all sorts of other issues, but, you know, fundamentalist, anti -Catholic, anti -Catholic is repeated twice in only three sentences.

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You've got to start beating that drum early to make sure to poison the minds of your audience.

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Look, when you hear somebody preaching against the church, then challenge them to debate, and we'll arrange a debate with them.

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They're the ones who started this debate stuff, basically, and now they're not really fond of doing it anymore, and maybe as we listen to this, we will see why.

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But, I mean, the whole article was nothing but a hit piece.

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It was incredible at how bad it is, and that's why if you want to see my response to it, it's still at vintage .aomin

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.org, slash, C -A -T -H -A -N, cathan .html, is the response that I wrote to The White Man's Burden, which was put up on the web in 1994.

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And so that's a little bit of the background of the debate that took place.

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Once again, it took place at a Presbyterian church, Orthodox Presbyterian church in San Diego. It was a very hot night, as you'll hear from my opening comments.

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There was no air conditioning in the building, and the Santa Ana winds were blowing, so it was a very warm evening.

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But it was well attended, and the subject was, does the Bible teach sola scriptura?

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Remember, Patrick Madrid and Carl Keating had hammered away on Bill Jackson and Ron Nemec, where does the

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Bible teach its own sufficiency? Now, they won that debate. There's no question about the fact they won that debate.

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It wasn't even close. It was a wipeout. On any level, it was a wipeout. The people that were debating were not prepared to engage them.

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But in this debate, I answered their challenge. And I simply ask you to note, and note one other thing.

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I have said many, many times, before we start playing this, I have said many, many times,

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I don't know when it happened, but I am 99 % certain that one day,

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Carl Keating and Patrick Madrid, and maybe Matitix had come along, maybe it was before Matitix came along,

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I don't know. But one day, in the Catholic Answers offices, they sat around and they said, all right, here's how we're going to approach sola scriptura.

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Here's the arguments we're going to use. I've addressed all of the arguments they use in books and things in the past, but here's the arguments we're going to use.

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And here's our backup plan. In the debates we do, we will wait until our opponent, until the non -Catholic, basically has no more presentation time.

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Presentations are over. We will wait until the rebuttal periods or the question and answer period, where you don't have almost any time at all.

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And this is actually breaking debate rules, because you're not supposed to bring new things up at this point. You're supposed to be only addressing what's already been presented, but rarely are those particular rules observed.

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And at that point, we'll throw out the canon. Now, we know our people don't know anything about the canon, and I have to believe these men know the circularity of their own position at this point.

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But we'll throw out the canon issue when the other person does not have any opportunity whatsoever to actually respond to it in a meaningful fashion, and then we'll bang away on he's not responding, he's not responding, he can't respond, he's not responding, and hope that that's what will stick in people's minds.

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That's exactly what Madrid does in this debate. He will wait until the second rebuttal period before he ever raises.

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I don't even have an opportunity at this point to respond to the rebuttal, because I'm going first. Listen to how he does that.

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It's not a part of his core presentation. No, no, no. He waits until later on to throw that thing out and start making challenges about, how do you know

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Matthew wrote Matthew? Now, one of the fun things is going to be, and this is, there's going to be a number of times where I'm going to interrupt myself and say, you know, today,

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I'd probably say it this way. Because this was 15 years ago, and if I haven't learned more about Sola Scriptura in 15 years,

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I've written books on the subject now, I've done more debates on the subject, my good brothers

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David King and William Webster have produced their three -volume Holy Scripture series. I have the third volume here in my hand.

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You'll hear Patrick Madrid blustering in his opening statement where he says, I have 52 pages of the early church.

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I will resist the temptation to bury James in the early church fathers. I used to have the third volume here.

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It's over 300 pages long. You know, it is humorous sometimes to listen to the bluster that these gentlemen can produce in defense of the one true church, which is what they're very busy doing.

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But it truly, there are times where I go, for example, when he does the

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Matthew thing. I think my response was appropriate, but the first response

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I'd give today is, I would quote his own leaders to him, his own leading theologians, who say, we don't know who wrote

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Matthew. And when the leading theologians of the various papal commissions say, we don't know who wrote

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Matthew, to hear Madrid pounding away, you need to know who wrote Matthew. We know who wrote

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Matthew because we're the Catholic Church. We can tell you that. Then to hear the Catholic Church saying, well, not really, you know, again shows the chasm that exists between the scholarship of Roman Catholicism and its apologists, because there is a huge chasm between the two.

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And so we will be looking at that as we go into it as well. So we start off, we only had 20 -minute opening statements.

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We start off with my 20 -minute opening statement. Not sure how much interruption I'll be doing during this particular portion, maybe once or twice.

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But here is my opening statement from San Diego in 1993.

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Good evening. It's good to be with you. I am very thankful to the Church for allowing us to be here.

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I need to thank all of you San Diegans. I understand there's a big push on to make this a very friendly city.

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I think it's very friendly of you to bring in Phoenix weather just for me while I'm here. Very kind of you.

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Except in Phoenix, all of our buildings have air conditioners, and you need to sort of put those two things together, and that will make things a whole lot easier.

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There have always been those who have refused to give the Scriptures their proper place. There have always been those who wished to add to Scripture their own authority and the unique teachings that set them apart.

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Indeed, Basil of Caesarea ran into some of the same problems long ago in replying to his opponents who appealed to their customs and traditions as relevant and authoritative.

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He said, If custom is to be taken and proof of what is right, then it is certainly competent for me to put forward on my side the custom which obtains here.

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If they reject this, we are clearly not bound to follow them. Therefore, let God -inspired

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Scripture decide between us, and on whichever side be found doctrines in harmony with the word of God, in favor of that side will be cast the vote of truth.

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And so we gather this evening to debate the same question. Is the Bible the sole and infallible rule of faith of the

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Church, or must we have other revelation from God? Do we need the Book of Mormon or the writings of the

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Watchtower or Mary Baker Eddy or the so -called apostolic unwritten traditions of Rome?

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Does the Bible teach its own sufficiency to function as the sole rule of faith of the

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Church? Well, we must begin by defining the doctrine under discussion this evening. And let me begin by defining what the doctrine of Sola Scriptura does not say.

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First of all, it is not a claim that the Bible contains all knowledge. The Bible is not exhaustive in every detail.

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John 21 -25 speaks to the fact that there are many things that Jesus said and did that are not recorded in John or in fact in any book in the world because the whole books of the world could not contain it.

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But the Bible does not have to be exhaustive to function as the sole rule of faith of the Church.

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We do not need to know the color of Thomas' eyes. We do not need to know the menu of each meal of the apostolic band for the

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Scriptures to function as the sole rule of faith of the Church. Secondly, it is not a denial of the

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Church's authority to teach God's truth. 1 Timothy 3 -15 describes the

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Church as the pillar and foundation of the truth. The truth is in Jesus Christ and in his word.

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The Church teaches truth and calls men to Christ and in so doing functions as the pillar and foundation thereof.

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The Church does not add revelation or rule over Scripture. The Church, being the bride of Christ, listens to the word of Christ which is found in God -breathed

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Scripture. Thirdly, it is not a denial that God's word has been spoken.

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Apostolic preaching was authoritative in and of itself. Yet the apostles proved their message from Scripture as we see in Acts 17 -2 and 18 -28.

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And John commended those in Ephesus for testing those who claimed to be apostles, Revelation 2 -2.

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The apostles were not afraid to demonstrate the consistency between their teaching and the

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Old Testament. And finally, Sola Scriptura is not a denial of the role of the

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Holy Spirit in guiding and enlightening the Church. What then is

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Sola Scriptura? The doctrine of Sola Scriptura simply stated is that the Scriptures and the

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Scriptures alone are sufficient to function as the regula fide, the rule of faith for the

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Church. All that one must believe to be a Christian is found in Scripture and in no other source.

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That which is not found in Scripture is not binding upon the

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Christian conscience. To be more specific, I provide the following definition. The Bible claims to be the sole and sufficient rule of faith of the

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Christian Church. The Scriptures are not in need of any supplement. Their authority comes from their nature as God -breathed

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Revelation. Their authority is not dependent upon man, church, or council. The Scriptures are self -consistent, self -interpreting, and self -authenticating.

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The Christian Church looks to the Scriptures as the only and sufficient rule of faith, and the

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Church is always subject to the Word and is constantly reformed thereby. Now, given that, let me just pause there just for a moment and make a comment on the concept of self -authenticating.

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Obviously, I was quoting there from Lundenbap's Confession in 1689, and it doesn't seem that Mr.

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Madrid understands what that means. He will later falsely attribute to me the idea that we determine canon based upon how

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I feel about Scripture, that I read a verse of Scripture and it authenticates itself to me.

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That's not what the Confession is talking about at all. This goes back to some subjects that we've addressed in the past concerning the nature of what is theanoustos, what is

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God -breathed, and it is not about canon.

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The term of self -authentication is not an issue that is saying that individuals read a portion of Scripture and just feel that it's inspired because of that.

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Now, Madrid's going to falsely accuse me of that, but that's not, in fact, what that phrase means at all.

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I would like to explain how I plan on winning my debate this evening with Mr. Madrid. Sola Scriptura is both a positive and a negative statement.

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Positively, the doctrine teaches that the Bible is sufficient to function as the sole infallible rule of faith for the

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Church. Negatively, it denies the existence of any other rule of faith as being necessary for the man of God.

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Hence, logically, I must do the following things. First, I must demonstrate that the

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Bible teaches that it is a rule of faith for the Church. Secondly, I must demonstrate that the

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Bible is sufficient to function as the sole rule of faith for the Church. That is,

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I must demonstrate its sufficiency, or in the language used in the New Testament itself, that the Bible is partia.

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And thirdly, I must demonstrate that the Bible, as a sufficient rule of faith, does not refer us to any other rule of faith.

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Absent the demonstration on Mr. Madrid's part of some other rule of faith, the preceding is sufficient to establish the fact that the

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Bible teaches the doctrine of Sola Scriptura. Now, some opponents of Sola Scriptura have engaged in what can only be called cheap debating tricks in attempting to force the defender of Scriptural sufficiency to prove a universal negative.

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That is, the less honest debater might attempt to force me to prove the non -existence of another rule of faith.

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Since I am saying that Scripture is unique in its function as the rule of faith of the Church, some might challenge me to demonstrate that no other rule of faith could possibly exist.

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To illustrate this, I call your attention to my pen. Yes, to my pen. If our debate this evening was that I was going to stand here and say this is the only pen of its kind in all the universe, how would

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I go about proving it? Well, the only way I could prove the statement there is no other pen like this in all the universe is if I looked in all of your purses and all of your shirt pockets and in all the stores in the world that carry pens and looked through all the houses and all over the planet

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Earth and the moon and the planets and the solar system and the entire universe looking for another pen like this.

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And, of course, I could not do that. But it would be very easy for Mr. Madrid to win that debate. All he needs to do is go out and get a cross -medalist pen, walk up here, hold it right next to mine and say, see, another pen just like yours.

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And he's won the debate. In light of this, I would assert that Mr. Madrid must either recognize this reality and not attempt to win this debate by doing nothing more than depending upon an illogical demand, or he must demonstrate the existence of the other pen.

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That is, he must prove to us what the Council of Trent said was true. I quote, It also clearly perceives that these truths and rules are contained in the written books and in the unwritten traditions which, received by the apostles from the mouth of Christ himself or from the apostles themselves, the

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Holy Ghost dictating, have come down to us, transmitted as it were from hand to hand.

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Now I just stop for just a moment to once again, and I know that many of our listeners are already aware of this, we have lots of new listeners and some people who are not familiar with the arguments with Rome.

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One of the problems that all of us have documented many times in attempting to deal with the claims of Roman Catholicism is the fact that the individuals representing

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Rome often adopt a mutually contradictory position, sometimes in the same presentation.

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Part of this is due to the fact that their own history demonstrates there has not been a single

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Roman Catholic position on certain issues of authority, that in fact it has been a matter of development over time and that there have been disagreements.

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The Council of Trent's words that I just quoted were understood by the majority at the

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Council in what is called partum partum. That is partly in the written traditions, partly in the oral traditions.

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And there are going to be sometimes, Madrid's going to say, the position of the Church is material sufficiency.

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He's just being naive at that point. This was something they were just then developing. It wasn't new as far as Roman Catholic theology is concerned, but they were just getting into it.

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It wasn't something, I mean go through Catholicism and Fundamentalism, the original edition, prior to this debate. That's not something that was laid out there and say, oh see, here's the position of material sufficiency.

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That is that everything is found at least implicitly in the scriptures, in the written traditions.

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Of course, I would argue that there's all sorts of stuff the Rome teaches that isn't even found implicitly anywhere in scripture. But they want to try to say that as long as you can find, you know,

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Cacare Temene and Luke 128 is implicit enough for the entire realm of the Marian dogmas and Matthew 16 is enough for the entire realm of infallibility of the

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Pope and all the rest of that stuff. That's how you can put anything into the written. But the fact of the matter is, it's obviously clear that what they're really arguing is, we don't have enough in the scriptures.

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We need to have something else. Well, what do we need? Well, the teaching magisterium of the Church. Okay, but is the teaching magisterium of the

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Church just interpreting scripture for us? No, they have access to what's called oral tradition, you see.

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Well, that oral tradition must contain something other than what's in the written for the written to be insufficient.

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Well, we don't want to say that. Madrid's going to try not to say that. Well, then don't ever quote to me 2 Thessalonians 2 .15 and point out the one body of tradition delivered in a written form and an oral form as if that's relevant to your position.

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If you quote it, then you're not using a material sufficiency position. What Madrid's going to do is, he's going to use both.

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He's going to claim material sufficiency and fault me whenever I refute that, but then he's going to quote 2 Thessalonians 2 .15

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and insist that we need these oral traditions. So he's actually contradicting himself and then using that when

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I refute part of his claims as if I just don't know enough about what in the world I'm talking about and we believe in material sufficiency, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

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You've got to keep your eye on the balancing ball. And when you do so, you find all of these

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Catholic apologists will at one point take one position and then instead of defending that, they'll back up to the other one and say, oh no,

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I'm saying this. And then they'll go right back out there and make that claim again. When you refute that claim, oh, you just don't understand. This is the methodology that they use.

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It's frequently very confusing to people who haven't listened to it enough times, heard enough people doing it to really be able to follow it.

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End quote. Hence, I shall demonstrate that the Bible teaches its sufficiency to function as the sole rule of faith in the

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Church. And if Mr. Madrid wishes to attempt to show us some other rule of faith, I will gladly respond to such an attempt.

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Now the doctrine of Sola Scriptura is based upon the inspiration of Scripture.

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Our primary passage this evening, I hope you have your Bibles with you, will be found in Paul's second letter to Timothy.

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The gentlemen from Catholic Answers have made it a practice for years to assert that Protestants cannot provide a single verse that teaches

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Sola Scriptura. Yet they are quite mistaken in this, though they have been corrected a number of times in the past, and let us examine the passage to see if this is the case.

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2 Timothy 3, verses 16 -17. All Scripture is

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God breathed, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for instruction, for training in righteousness, in order that the man of God might be complete, fully equipped for every good work.

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We begin by knowing that Scripture is God breathed.

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The term is very strong. I refer anyone who wishes a full discussion of this term to B .B.

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Warfield's excellent treatment of it. All Scripture is

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God breathed. It is common for Roman Catholic apologists to follow an error made by John Henry Cardinal Newman with reference to this passage.

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Indeed, Carl Keating, Patrick's associate to Catholic Answers, makes the same mistake in his book,

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Catholicism and Fundamentalism, and he repeated it again only recently during a debate on this subject in Denver during the papal visit.

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Newman said that if this verse proves the sufficiency of Scripture, it proves too much, for Paul is talking here only about the

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Old Testament, which would leave the New Testament as an unnecessary addition. But such is not

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Paul's point at all. Scripture, Paul's point is, if it is Scripture at all, is

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God breathed. Paul is not speaking about the extent of the canon, but the nature of Scripture itself as originating in God.

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All Scripture then, including the New Testament, is God breathed. Because Scripture is

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God breathed, and hence represents God's very voice speaking, it is profitable for the work of the ministry and the church of Jesus Christ.

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We are told that the work of teaching, and rebuking, and correcting, and training in righteousness can be undertaken due to the nature of Scripture as God breathed.

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Now let me just stop for just a moment and emphasize once again, the context of this passage is about the man of God teaching in the church.

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Teaching, rebuking, reproving, training in righteousness, this is the foundation, the lifeblood of the exhortation of the man of God in the church.

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This is where his authority flows from. Now one of the things, one of the major blunders, and I do identify it as a blunder in the debate, that Madrid makes, is he tries to get around this text by, again, ignoring the original languages, and going to other places where completion or maturity is mentioned in the

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New Testament. But none of them have any relationship to this text in regards to the fact that this is where the man of God derives his authority for teaching in the church.

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Madrid just grossly mishandles the text, as we saw in the debate on the veneration of saints and angels. Every time these men get into the text, they grossly mishandle it.

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That is why I think they're trying to avoid it as much as they possibly can now, because that's just a fact.

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When they get into the text of Scripture, they cannot handle it, because it does not teach consistently what

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Roman Catholicism claims it teaches. What is Paul's point? The church is not left without the voice of God.

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For when the church listens to Scripture, she is hearing her Lord speaking to her. The authority of the church, then, in teaching and rebuking and instructing, is derived, despite Roman Catholic claims to the contrary, from Scripture itself.

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Now, Mr. Madrid will certainly disagree for in addressing this very passage less than 50 days ago, in a debate on this topic, he said, speaking specifically of verse 16, quote,

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I defy you to show me where it says sufficient. In your remarks, you said, when you cited 2 Timothy 3 .16,

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you said sufficient, but that is not what the Bible teaches. End quote. Of course, no one asserts the term profitable in verse 16 equates to sufficiency.

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When his opponents referred him to verse 17, Mr. Madrid said, quote, Well, 17 doesn't say sufficient either. 17 says that, so the one that belongs to God may be competent and equipped for every good work.

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That does not teach sufficiency. Where does the Bible teach that it is sufficient? End quote.

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Is Mr. Madrid correct here? Well, let's see. Verse 17 continues the thought of verse 16.

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The fact that the church has God's voice always present with her and God reads Scripture, means the man of God, specifically here, of course,

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Timothy, but I doubt anyone would disagree that these comments referred to all those who belong to Christ and who are a part of his body, the church, might be complete, fully equipped for every good work.

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The first term to examine is the adjective translated complete, the Greek term artios.

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We know that it is related in its root to the second term we will examine, the verb which is translated fully equipped, that being the verb exartizo.

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Paul is here providing us with a play on words, the verb compounding and emphasizing the meaning present in the adjective.

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Now, the term artios, Vine tells us, means fitted, complete. Bauer, Arndt, Gingrich, and Donker tell us the term means complete, capable, proficient.

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That is, as they say, able to meet all demands, giving the specific citation of 2

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Timothy 3 .17 as the reference. One of the newest lexical resources, Loewenita's Greek -English lexicon based on semantic domain, uses the term qualified as well.

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The great Greek scholar Richard Trench in his Synonyms of the New Testament said with reference to this term, quote, If we ask ourselves under what special aspects completeness is contemplated in artios, it would be safe to answer that it is not as the presence only of all the parts which are necessary for that completeness, but involves further the adaptation and aptitude of these parts for the ends which they were designed to serve.

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The man of God, St. Paul would say, should be furnished and accomplished with all which is necessary for the carrying out of the work to which he is appointed.

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End quote. I pause only long enough to note that Paul here asserts that the man of God can be complete, capable, proficient, and qualified because he has available to him always

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God's inspired scriptures. Surely, here Paul would have to direct us to any and all other rules of faith that we would need to be complete, but he does not.

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But Paul was not satisfied to merely state that the man of God may be artios, complete, but he goes on to define what he means.

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Fully equipped for every good work. The term is ex -artizo, here in the perfect passive participial form, the prefix ex -having, as Robertson noted, the perfective force.

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Vine tells us that here in Second Symmetry it means to fit out, that is to furnish completely. Bauer, Gingrich, and Donker express this with the term equip.

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Hendrickson makes reference to a related term, catartizo, and it's used at Luke 640 where it is translated fully trained.

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We see here then that Paul teaches that the man of God is thoroughly or completely equipped for every good work.

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Now what does it mean to say that one is fully equipped, if not to say that one is sufficient for a task?

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I've recently taken up long distance bicycle riding and I've found a lovely little bike shack, a bike store where they are able to give me everything that I need the clothes and the gloves and the helmet and the bike and the tires and tubes which you need a lot, they are able to fully equip me for the task of riding a bike.

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Does that not mean then that they are sufficient as equippers for their task? Most definitely it does.

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Now it's going to be very interesting, I know I'm anticipating, but I listened to this last Saturday, so it's going to be fascinating to see the ways that Madrid's going to try to get around this illustration and this information.

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First of all he's going to dismiss all the lexical information I just provided and I provided a pretty wide range.

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He's going to dismiss them all as being a bunch of Protestants. Now I know and you know and everybody else listening knows that if Patrick Madrid had any

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Roman Catholic scholarship that refuted that lexical information, remember most of the sources

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I was citing are actually produced by groups that are mixed Catholic and Protestant, like the

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UBS committees and things like that. And so it was just a bogus argument on his part. If he had any meaningful

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Roman Catholic lexical information to refute what I was saying, he would have given it. He didn't have it. He had never studied it.

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He couldn't handle that information. And so all he could do is just mock the use of Greek and say, well I brought my Bible this evening, which

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I thought was probably, it's up in the top ten lamest responses ever given to me during a debate.

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And given that I've debated people, wow, the list is illustrious.

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But given some of the people that I've debated, to be in the top ten of lame -o responses is not really good.

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But anyway, one of the ways he's going to try to get around this, he's going to try to say, yeah, but the bike store can't teach you how to ride the bike.

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And see, that's what the Roman magisterium does. Now, how in the world? First of all, it completely ignores the fact that in 2

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Timothy we're talking about the man of God. There is a context here. And so man of God equals bicyclist.

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That's a given. That's not even a part of the illustration, so it's a completely bogus response and irrelevant. But let's run with it for a second.

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How does Rome teach you to ride the bicycle? How does Rome teach the man of God to be the man of God?

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What is it that Rome has defined by her traditions? We keep asking for her infallible interpretation of the

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Bible, and she won't give it to us. After all these years, we still can't get her to infallibly define the

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Bible for us. Any particular text. There are certain Roman Catholic scholars who have admitted there is no infallible interpretation of any text.

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Some people say, well, there's seven. Seven verses. Let's say there's seven verses. The major verses that we need to have an infallible interpretation on, we aren't given an infallible interpretation of at all.

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And in fact, Patrick later in the debate is going to make a claim that our tradition tells you what restrains in 2

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Thessalonians 2. We know what restrains is. But has that been dogmatically defined?

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Of course it hasn't. And so he doesn't really know. It's his opinion. It's amazing how many times it was just Patrick Madrid's opinion that he was giving as to what

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Rome teaches. He could never ever use the standards in defense of his position that he uses in the criticism of mine.

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Never. Can't do it. That's the demonstration of the falseness of the Roman Catholic position, beyond any question.

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And they just don't have any answer for that. Ask them. And listen to them spin off into all sorts of other subjects.

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They'll never be able to give a meaningful response to that particular question. At all. So just be prepared for the response that's going to be given.

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We further see that the Scriptures can equip the man of God for every good work.

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And Mr. Madrid, do you not believe that it is a good work to pray to Mary? Yet the Scriptures nowhere teach this.

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Do you not believe that it is good to believe and teach that Mary was bodily assumed into heaven? Yet the

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Bible does not teach this. Do you not believe that the man of God should teach in the Church that the

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Pope in Rome is infallible in his teaching office? Yet the Scriptures know nothing of such a concept.

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We see then that the Roman position is contradicted by that of the Apostle, for he knew of no other rule of faith that was necessary so that the man of God could be equipped for every good work.

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No other rule of faith, that is, than the Scriptures. But finally, we remember

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Mr. Madrid's challenge to show him a verse that teaches sufficiency. Mr. Madrid, I would like to direct you to the scriptural standard by the mouth of two or three witnesses shall a fact be established.

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I first refer you to Lo and Nida's Greek -English lexicon where we encounter the definition given for the semantic domain of Ex Artidso, I quote, to make someone completely adequate or sufficient for something, to make adequate, to furnish completely, to cause to be fully qualified, adequacy, end quote.

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I pause just for a moment to assert that Patrick Madrid had never looked into the meaning of any of the terms in 2nd

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Timothy 3. Maybe Theano Stas, but certainly not Ex Artidso. And as such, this is the first time he was ever hearing this.

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And so part of the bluster and part of the kind of response you're going to hear is simply due to someone who has made a repeated challenge to other people and now someone has answered his challenge who he never thought would be able to do so and now he just doesn't really know what to do about it.

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They translate our passages completely qualified for every good deed. While Lo and Nida give us two witnesses,

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I wish to direct you as well to the well -known scholarly resource by Fritz Reinacher and Cleon Rogers entitled

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Linguistic Key to the Greek New Testament. Here we find the following in regards to both terms here in verse 17, quote,

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Arteas, fit, complete, capable, sufficient, i .e. able to meet all demands.

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Ex Artidso, completely outfitted, fully furnished, fully equipped, fully supplied, end quote.

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Hence we see the following. Number one, Paul here teaches that the Bible is a rule of faith for he says the church's function of teaching, rebuking and instructing is to be based upon God -inspired scripture.

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Number two, we see that this passage teaches the sufficiency of the scriptures to function in this way.

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And number three, we see that Paul not only does not refer us to another rule of faith but implicitly denies the necessity of such a rule of faith by his teaching on the ability of scripture to completely equip the man of God.

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Therefore, I assert that the doctrine of sola scriptura is taught plainly in this passage. Mr. Madrid must be able to fully refute the information

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I have provided to you to win this evening's debate. Now one might well ask, is this the only place where sola scriptura is taught?

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Most certainly not, though it is the clearest. For example, we find this concept plainly enunciated in the words of the

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Lord Jesus Christ when coming into conflict with the traditions of the Jewish leaders. Note the words recorded in Matthew's Gospel, chapter 15.

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Some of the Pharisees and teachers of the law came to Jesus from Jerusalem and asked, why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders?

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They don't wash their hands before they eat. Jesus replied, and why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition?

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For God said, honor your father and mother, and anyone who curses his father and mother must be put to death. But you say that if a man says to his father and mother, whatever help you might otherwise have received from me is a gift of God, he is not to honor his father with it.

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Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition. Here we find the Lord providing us with the example that we must follow this evening.

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The Jewish leaders objected to the fact that disciples did not follow the rigorous hand -washing rituals of the

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Pharisees. They identified this as a breaking of the tradition of the elders. They firmly believed that this body of tradition was authoritative, and some even believed that it had been passed down from Moses himself, though this surely is without warrant.

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But does Jesus accept this claim of authority? Not at all. Instead, he launches a counterattack against these leaders by pointing out how they nullify the command of God for the following of their own traditions, specifically in this, with reference to the

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Korban rule. The Lord Jesus holds this traditional teaching up to the light of Scripture, and finds it wanting.

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In the same way, we too must hold any tradition up to the light of Scripture, for no tradition is on the same level of authority as Scripture.

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Traditions are not God -breathed, and hence are subject to examination on the part of the higher authority of Scripture. Even though the

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Jews believe their traditions to have authority, they are held responsible for recognizing that God speaks to them in Scripture, not in their traditions.

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The same is true tonight. While Rome may claim divine authority for her supposedly sacred traditions, and even subjugate

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Scripture so as to make it a part of sacred traditions, needing other aspects, such as the supposedly apostolic, unwritten traditions, and the authority of the magisterium of the

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Church, the person who wishes to follow the example of Christ will hold such traditions up to the light of Scripture, knowing how fearful it is to be found guilty of nullifying the word of God for the sake of merely human traditions.

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And so, my friends, I present to you the wonderful doctrine of the sufficiency of God's inspired Scriptures. As a follower of Jesus Christ and a minister in his

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Church, I gladly proclaim to you the glorious grace of God in giving to the Church the

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Scriptures, so that we can always be assured of hearing God's voice speaking to us.

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We need not wonder about supposedly authoritative traditions whose origins are obscure and whose teachings are suspect.

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Instead, we have the certainty of holding in our hands the same Scriptures that our Lord Jesus described as the very speaking of the

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Father himself. This is the firm ground upon which the Church can stand in an uncertain and threatening world.

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This is the rule of faith that constantly calls the Church to Christ's likeness. Let us never abandon the firm foundation of God -breathed

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Scripture, the word of God, the Bible. Thank you. So, there was my 20 -minute opening statement emphasizing the biblical evidence.

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And why did I do so? Because less than 50 days earlier in Denver, over and over again, and if I can find that debate,

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I'll track it down, I have a feeling, I see a stack of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 tape boxes right there.

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The big tape boxes. I have a feeling that's where it is. Because it was sent to me, this was in the days of the cassette tape.

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Yes, the young people on the channel are going, What? What are you looking at me like I'm speaking in tongues? What? The debate with Madrid and Keating versus Jackson and Nemec.

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And it was sent to me by someone up in Denver shortly after it took place, after we had gotten back from being up there.

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And I've not seen it online. You know, I'm going to have to see if Catholic Answers offers it. I hadn't even thought of looking there.

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They should. I mean, talk about a wipeout. But I'll see if they've got it online. And otherwise, it's probably...

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Actually, there's a whole other bunch of them over there, too. That's a good hour's worth of scanning through stuff.

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But we'll see if we can track that down because it would be fascinating to go through it. They had hammered away on where it doesn't say sufficient.

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It doesn't say sufficient. It doesn't say sufficient. And I just proved, yes, it does. It does, right there.

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And so what you're going to hear in the response, then, is going to be what happens when you've been challenging somebody to do something for a long, long time.

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They go ahead and do it, and you're left going, well, all righty then. What do I do now? Is what you're going to hear.

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Now, let me just mention before we start into the next section, because we're only going to get a few minutes into Madrid's presentation before we need to take a break.

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On Thursday, on the dividing line, I'm going to have Alan Kirshner on with me, and we are going to be discussing a textual variant at Luke 2334.

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So I'm not sure we're going to get back to this at all. We might. Maybe we'll just do a half hour on it and then go back to this.

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I don't know. It sort of depends. We might just be so geeked out that we go the whole hour, or otherwise we become embarrassed in our geekiness and stop and go back to this or something like that.

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But there is a fascinating textual variant in Luke 2334 that we're going to be looking at.

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So people who are really into textual criticism and textual variation and issues like that will definitely want to be listening on Thursday when

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Alan, who is one of the members of Team Prasapalagiyan, the blog group.

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He is a student in seminary and recently wrote a fairly lengthy paper on this subject from one of the leading textual critical scholars in the

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U .S. right now. So he is having an opportunity of doing very high -level scholarship.

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But thankfully, even though he's in the Boston area, he has not picked up that horrible accent. So hopefully we'll be able to understand him.

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But we're going to do that. We had already scheduled that before I decided to do this. And so we're going to do that textual variant.

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And then either that program or a week from today, coming back here on Tuesday, continue with our review of this particular debate.

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So there's my opening. Hey, watch it, Kruber. Kruber just said, Doc laughing at horrible accents.

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I would have no idea what you would be referring to. We don't allow horrible accents here.

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We only allow very, very excellent accents here. And if Kruber is not careful, we may have to do an entirely

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British dividing line from London again just simply to prove exactly how well some of us can do that.

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But anyway. Kruber laughing. The show is going so well. Kruber laughing.

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Let's continue on now with Patrick Madrid's opening comments. The Bible says in Proverbs 18, 17, the man who pleads his case first seems to be in the right until his opponent comes and puts him to the test.

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Folks, that's what I'm here to do tonight. I'm here to test the claim of sola scriptura. My opponent has just given you a very forceful, a very smooth presentation of the

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Protestant doctrines for the Bible alone, a case which may seem convincing at first glance.

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My job is to show you why he's wrong. Mr. White has appealed, at least very briefly, to the writings of the early church fathers in an attempt to bolster his position or to prepare your disposition to hear it, claiming that a few of the church fathers taught sola scriptura, or at least by giving that implication.

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I will resist the temptation to bury Mr. White under a mountain of quotations from the church fathers proving they did not teach sola scriptura.

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There are going to be a number of times through this review that I'm going to go, OK, Patrick, let's do it.

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In other words, if Patrick Madrid has beaten me in every single debate we've done, and we've only done two, then it would seem that if Patrick Madrid is a

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Christian Catholic apologist, and given the fact that I do have an audience at least as large as his, wouldn't it be very wise if we were to do more debates and he were to remain undefeated, and we could debate the papacy in the early church, and we could debate the

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Marian dogmas and the bodily assumption of Mary, and we could debate transubstantiation. I'd be happy to defend my belief in Reformed theology and predestination, election, and justification by faith alone.

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And maybe Patrick would actually be willing to positively defend his assertions he made in this debate regarding Catholic tradition and the role of the papacy and things like that.

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And so you're going to hear all these statements he's going to make that would logically result in the idea that he should be willing to defend these things.

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But is he willing to defend these things? That will be the question. 52 pages of quotations from the early church fathers.

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And I have here 315 pages of quotations of the early church fathers in the third volume of the

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Webster King set. And we can go back and look at Whitaker and Good and all these other sets. That's not how you do a debate, okay?

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He said he was going to resist the temptation. He didn't resist the temptation at all. He gave in to the temptation. He makes a bunch of claims here.

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But since he's resisting the temptation, then he doesn't have to back them up. I actually read somebody.

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Why doesn't he just refute what I read? Why not go into the context of the quote I gave and demonstrate it's not saying what it said?

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Instead, we have a packet of 52 pages of printed out alleged quotations.

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And that's supposed to somehow be convincing argumentation. Including Cyril of Jerusalem, Athanasius, and all the other fathers that James might like to quote, showing that they did not teach sola scriptura.

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And also showing that Mr. White, if he chooses to refer to them, is misrepresenting their views just as the

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Jehovah's Witnesses misrepresent the Church Fathers on the Trinity. Now, if you're going to make that kind of a statement, don't you have to back it up?

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I mean, if I were to make the assertion that Patrick Madrid's argument is just like a cultist or something like that,

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I would not make that in the context of, but I'm not going to spend my time documenting this.

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No, I'm not going to do that. This is the kind of cheap debating trick.

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Which, again, is very convincing to the non -discerning listener. The person who's just blown about by the wind of doctrine.

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They primarily are emotional rather than critical in their thought. This kind of thing is great for them.

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And if those are the people you're trying to impress, then this is the kind of behavior you're going to engage in.

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Those aren't the people I'm trying to impress. Sorry, this doesn't work for me. That's not where I'm going.

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So there's a little bit of an issue there. The way a kidnapper might cut and paste a newspaper to make a ransom note, he may try to cut and paste quotes from the

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Church Fathers to create the illusion that they believed in Sola Scriptura. This ploy would be unfortunate, because what the

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Church Fathers believed, or didn't believe, is not the subject of our debate tonight. And I had not made it the subject.

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I had simply illustrated my position with the words of an early Christian writer.

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Now, again, I'd be happy to debate Mr. Madrid on this subject. I would be happy to debate, did the early

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Church hold the same view of tradition that Patrick Madrid holds? Let's debate that.

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Let's debate, did the early Church believe in the papacy that Patrick Madrid holds?

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And he wouldn't have a chance, because the truth is just too well known. The only reason that Newman had to develop the development hypothesis was because he had to admit that it came along later.

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So why even be arguing this? I'm not sure, but yeah. The subject is, does the

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Bible teach Sola Scriptura? What the early Church Fathers believed is irrelevant, so I won't waste time by raising or responding to any material that's not under discussion.

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Even though we just did. Now, many of you here tonight are Protestants. You've been raised to believe in Sola Scriptura, the notion that the

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Bible is the sole rule of faith for Christians. In fact, you probably take it for granted that the Bible teaches this.

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So my task is to demonstrate that Sola Scriptura is unbiblical. I don't have to prove the case for tradition.

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Mr. White claims that I must be able to prove everything. Let's pick it up right there, because this is going to be one of the key issues.

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He wants to be able to be the good atheist diagnostic. He's going to use Rome's authority, but he's not going to defend

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Rome's authority. That's one of the major pitfalls that Roman Catholic apologists face in this particular task.

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We will continue with this, like I said, either in the next program, after we look at Luke 22 -34, or certainly next