Did Mary Have Other Children? (White vs Matatics)

Alpha & Omega Ministries

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

Comments are disabled.

00:00

Good evening. My name is Jason Wallace. I am the pastor of Christ Presbyterian Church and it is a great pleasure to have you here this evening.

00:07

I'd like to begin by giving you an overview of the debate that we're having. It will last roughly two hours.

00:14

We will have opening statements of 25 minutes each followed by 10 minutes of rebuttal.

00:20

We will then have a break for five minutes. We would like to then resume as quickly as possible.

00:28

We will have questions between the speakers for 15 minutes each, then closing statements of five minutes, and then we'll have questions from the audience.

00:37

I would like to ask you to show respect to both speakers this evening. Both have appeared at their own expense and we greatly appreciate the opportunity to put on a debate of this caliber.

00:50

Please hold all applause until the end when we can applaud both speakers for being kind enough to appear here.

00:58

Our first speaker is Dr. White who is doing his ninth debate for us. Most of the debates have been

01:03

LDS debates. We will be having one again, Lord willing, in April. He is a

01:09

Protestant apologist with Alpha and Omega Ministries in Phoenix, Arizona. He is in the process of authoring his 21st book.

01:16

His books include Letters to a Mormon Elder, The Roman Catholic Controversy, Mary, Another Redeemer, The Potter's Freedom, and The God Who Justifies.

01:26

To my right is Jerry Matitix. He is a former pastor in the Presbyterian Church in America, a graduate of Gordon -Conwell

01:35

Theological Seminary, and all but dissertation completed at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia.

01:43

He and his close friend Scott Hahn, along with Steve Wood and others, left Presbyterian pulpits for Roman Catholicism in 1986.

01:52

Mr. Matitix is the founder and president of Biblical Foundations International. He has been a frequent guest on EWTN and is the former co -host of Where Catholics Meet with the late

02:02

Dr. William Marra. The subject of our debate this evening is the perpetual virginity of Mary.

02:09

The question is, did Mary have children after Jesus? We will begin with Dr. White.

02:23

Thank you very much for being here this evening. For many who are unfamiliar with the dogmatic teachings of the

02:29

Roman Catholic Church, our debate this evening may seem like a complete waste of valuable time.

02:35

Why not debate the gospel, something really important? But it is the gospel that brings me here this evening, for the gospel is communicated to us in God's perfect word, the scriptures.

02:47

The gospel is perverted when the supremacy of the Bible as the sole infallible rule of faith is denied, and I believe this is what

02:54

Rome does. In this debate, we will see what happens when the rightful supremacy of the scriptures is replaced with the ultimate authority of the

03:03

Bishop of Rome. You see, my opponent this evening has said in open debate in the past that another of the

03:08

Marian dogmas, one with even less historical or biblical defense, that is the bodily assumption of Mary, is part of the gospel of Jesus Christ itself.

03:19

If he is consistent, he will likewise confess that the dogma of the perpetual virginity of Mary is likewise a de fide dogma, a part of the gospel.

03:29

And so we are in effect discussing the gospel this evening, for by demonstrating what happens when you deny sola scriptura, we will be continuing the ongoing and necessary work of vindicating the true source of the gospel against those who seek to pervert it.

03:46

Since we may have a number of people with us this evening who are neither Catholic nor Protestant, allow me to briefly note the center of the conflict.

03:54

The vast majority of conservative evangelicals believe the blessed mother of our Lord Jesus Christ was a virgin when she conceived, carried, and delivered the child

04:04

Jesus. By this we mean no human agency was involved in the conception of Christ.

04:10

Here all sides this evening agree in denying the consistent teaching of the general authorities of the

04:15

LDS church wherein they teach that Christ was immortal because he had an immortal father, Elohim, who begat

04:22

Christ in the way we were begotten by our mortal fathers. But after the birth of Christ, we

04:28

Protestants believe Mary, as the wife of Joseph, lived in the proper godly relationship of man and wife with Joseph, and begat other sons and daughters who are specifically named in the text of Scripture.

04:41

We reject as a leftover of ancient Gnosticism the idea that Mary would in some fashion be defiled by being the true and proper wife of Joseph and by bearing other children.

04:53

The Scriptures do not view having children as dirty or defiling, and indeed, as Scripture says, the marriage bed is undefiled.

05:02

Rome, on the other hand, has defined as a dogma of the faith the concept of the perpetual virginity of Mary.

05:08

This not only affirms that Mary was a virgin at the time of the conception, but that she ever remained a virgin, never entering into the normal marital relationship that one would expect given the common, natural meaning of the language of Scripture regarding her relationship with Joseph.

05:24

Not only did Mary never have relations with Joseph and hence had no children after the birth of Jesus, but Rome has gone so far as to assert that Mary did not even lose her physical virginal integrity in the birth of Jesus.

05:37

I quote from the Universal Catholic Catechism, which says, the deepening of faith in the virginal motherhood led the

05:42

Church to confess Mary's real and perpetual virginity even in the act of giving birth to the Son of God made man.

05:48

In fact, Christ's birth did not diminish his mother's virginal integrity, but sanctified it, and so the liturgy of the

05:54

Church celebrates Mary as Iparthenos, the ever virgin, end quote. This concept was first enunciated, as with so much of the

06:03

Marian mythology -made doctrine, not in Christian documents, but in the early Gnostic writings, such as the

06:09

Ascension of Isaiah, the Odes of Solomon, and the Protevangelium of James. And so our debate this evening boils down to this.

06:16

One side will present the testimony of the Scriptures wherein the natural meaning of words will be the basis of the position held.

06:25

The other side will be forced due to the fact that it does not hold the Bible in the position of supreme authority, but instead holds to sola ecclesia, the ultimacy of the

06:34

Church of Rome, to constantly seek the most unusual, yet hopefully plausible, meaning of words and phrases so as to protect a teaching nowhere found in Scripture itself.

06:45

Indeed, if time allows, we may hear it said this evening that the Bible does teach the doctrine in reference made to Ezekiel's vision of an unopened door in the temple, applying this to Mary, etc.,

06:54

etc. Indeed, past generations have come up with a tremendous number of allegorical proofs of any number of unbiblical teachings.

07:02

But you, the audience, will have to judge this evening who is forced to constantly argue that the regular meaning of a word does not have to mean that, but it may mean this or that, who argues from hopeful probabilities, and who argues from the natural, historic, contextual, exegetically sound meaning of the inspired text itself.

07:22

It is not difficult at all to summarize the Bible's teaching on the question, did Mary have children after the birth of Jesus?

07:28

The simplicity of this truth was illustrated brilliantly in a previous debate between my opponent and my colleague,

07:34

Dr. Eric Svensson. Dr. Svensson asked Mr. Matitix, did Peter's mother -in -law have a daughter?

07:42

The question is brilliant because it sweeps away the smoke and dust often associated with the argument and goes to the real issue, do words carry meaning?

07:51

It is obvious Peter's mother -in -law had a daughter, since that is what makes Peter's mother -in -law his mother -in -law.

07:58

Peter married that daughter. Now, if Rome had come up with the idea that every pope they claim has sat upon the chair of Peter was in fact celibate and unmarried, we might well hear about how the term mother -in -law does not have to mean that Peter was married.

08:12

We might hear about how it might mean near kin's woman, maybe the mother of a cousin, and we would find ancient literature being ransacked looking for any possible parallel or usage to defend

08:23

Rome's teaching. But since Rome has not made such a definition, the basic contextual meaning of the term is allowed to stand.

08:30

We do not need to have Peter's wife named. We do not have to have it spelled out in painful detail that Peter married this woman's naturally born daughter.

08:39

The phrase mother -in -law communicates meaning sufficiently, just as brother and sister do.

08:47

And yet my opponent this evening has more than once demanded just this level of explicit testimony regarding Jesus's brothers and sisters.

08:53

He has directly demanded the explicit appearance of phrases such as Mary had other children, Mary's sons,

08:59

Mary's daughters. The inconsistency will become all the more clear as the debate progresses.

09:06

Following the canonical order, primarily a compilation of the relevant text from the books of Christ reads as follows,

09:13

Matthew chapter 12. While he was still speaking to the crowds, behold his mother and brothers were standing outside seeking to speak to him.

09:20

Someone said to him, behold your mother and your brothers are standing outside seeking to speak to you. But Jesus answered the one who is telling him and said, who is my mother and who are my brothers?

09:29

And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, behold my mother and my brothers, for whoever does the will of my father who is in heaven, he is my brother and sister and mother.

09:39

Matthew 13. Is not this the carpenter's son? Is not his mother called Mary and his brothers

09:45

James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? And his sisters, are they not all with us?

09:52

Where then did this man get all these things? John chapter two. After this he went down to Capernaum, he and his mother and his brothers and his disciples, and they stayed there a few days.

10:02

John chapter seven. Therefore his brothers said to him, leave here and go into Judea so that your disciples also may see your works which you are doing.

10:10

For no one does anything in secret when he himself seeks to be known publicly. If you do these things, show yourself to the world.

10:17

For not even his brothers were believing in him. Acts chapter one.

10:23

These all with one mind were continually devoting themselves to prayer along with the women and Mary, the mother of Jesus and with his brothers.

10:31

First Corinthians chapter nine. Do we not have a right to take along a believing wife even as the rest of the apostles and the brothers of the

10:38

Lord and Cephas? And finally Galatians chapter one. But I did not see any other of the apostles except James, the

10:46

Lord's brother. Now let us consider the evidence that points conclusively to the fact that we should understand these words in their normative usage.

10:56

First, many of the passages cited would be reduced to near absurdity if we read

11:02

Adolphos, brother, as meaning anything other than its normative definition. For example, when

11:08

Mary and his brothers stood outside seeking to contact Jesus, are we truly to believe that the crowd meant your mother and cousins or close kinsmen are outside?

11:17

To which Jesus replied, who is my mother and who are my cousins or stepbrothers? The ones who do the will of God are my cousins?

11:24

Or should we seriously consider that when Jesus's brothers were taunting him to go up to the feast publicly that we are reading the text correctly and in light of the author's original intention, when we read those sad words for even his brothers did not believe in him and retranslate that due to our traditions into for even his cousins or kinsmen did not believe in him?

11:47

Surely not. Secondly, the simple meaning of Adolphos and its feminine form, is brother and sister.

11:55

The term was used in the Greek translation of the Old Testament in a wide variety of ways and could in fact be used of kinsfolk and cousins if the context indicated it to be so.

12:05

But the New Testament well knows these specific terms for cousin and kinsperson and uses them sometimes even in the context where Adolphos appears, making the differentiation complete.

12:17

As Fenson noted regarding this quote, unlike its counterpart in the Greek Septuagint, there are no instances of Adolphos in the

12:24

New Testament that bear the meaning relatives, except of course for the references to biological siblings.

12:30

Indeed, Adolphos is often found in passages where relatives in the broad sense are clearly distinguished from immediate siblings.

12:37

In Luke 14, 12 we read, when you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers, your relatives, or your rich neighbors.

12:43

The word relatives, sunganese here denotes a different class of people than brothers, friends, and neighbors.

12:50

Similarly in Luke 21, 16, you will be betrayed by parents, brothers, relatives, and friends.

12:56

Here again, the word relatives, sunganese denotes a different class than brothers and the two are no more interchangeable than our parents and brothers, end quote.

13:07

I will challenge Mr. Mattox this evening to show us where in the New Testament Adolphos is used in a parallel fashion to the meaning that he is not just suggesting, not just saying is a possibility, but is saying is a dogmatic, absolute de fide necessity.

13:24

Remember, Mr. Mattox is not saying it might not be that Mary had other children, but that absolutely, positively, with the same level of confidence we know

13:33

Christ rose from the dead. Brother doesn't mean brother in these passages.

13:40

Surely he can then show us passages outside the very ones in dispute where Adolphos is used in the way he suggests, no, demands by the authors of the

13:50

New Testament itself. Thirdly, we note that if the men found in the text of scripture accompanying

13:55

Mary about Galilee are not her sons, but bear some more distant relationship to her, the entire scene becomes very strange.

14:02

Why would Mary be traveling about in the company of a group of unbelieving cousins or kinsmen? Who would ever read these passages in the way

14:09

Rome demands we read them? Were they simply to take the text at face value? Fourthly, it is relevant to note that Luke, who uses

14:17

Adolphos of the brothers of Jesus elsewhere, makes a distinction when speaking of Joseph as the father of Jesus.

14:26

He says Joseph was, as it was supposed, the father of Jesus, Luke 3 23.

14:33

If Luke, the careful historian and doctor, made clear the meaning of father in regards to Joseph so that his readers would not run the risk of confusion, why would he not likewise say the brothers, as it was supposed, of Jesus or more so use a more specific term such as cousin or kinsperson?

14:51

Again, Rome's ultimate authority clashes with the text itself. Now, aside from these direct statements, there are three other passages that are very relevant to our discussion this evening.

15:01

The first is Luke 2 7, and she gave birth to her firstborn son and she wrapped him in cloths and laid him in a manger because there was no room for them in the inn.

15:10

There is no question that the Greek term prototokos, firstborn, is used in the

15:15

New Testament of Christ with reference to his preeminence over all things. I have argued this very point in my writings in defense of the trinity and specifically in defense of the deity of Christ.

15:25

This is the proper usage in Colossians 1 15, for example. But taking all of scripture together and lay the plain references to brothers and sisters in the text and the natural meaning that would be attached to prototokos in the context of giving birth, the more natural meaning here is the normative one found in narratives of birth.

15:43

Jesus was Mary's firstborn. The Roman Catholic has to assume that here prototokos is identical in meaning with monogamous, only begotten, a term that was fully known to Luke since he uses it in Luke 7 12, but he chose not to use it here.

15:58

Again, the natural contextual reading is easily understood, while Rome must not merely suggest a different meaning, but demand it.

16:06

You cannot take prototokos and its natural meaning in this passage according to Rome. You must take it otherwise.

16:12

Keep this in mind when evaluating the evidence this evening. The same is true of Matthew 1 25, which reads,

16:18

But Joseph kept her a virgin until she gave birth to a son, and he called his name Jesus. Catholic apologists for a number of years now have quickly pointed out that the word until, in the phrase until she gave birth, does not say anything about what came after the event.

16:33

Mr. Matitix has traveled across the country speaking on this subject, each time making references to Michal, Saul's daughter, who did not have a child, 2

16:41

Samuel 6 23, tells us, until the day of her death. The term there in the

16:46

Greek subjunct is haos, one of the same terms used in Matthew 1 25, and so we have been assured that since Michal obviously did not start having children after she died, so too

16:57

Mary did not have to have children as a result of the use of the same term in Matthew's gospel. And for most of the people,

17:04

Mr. Matitix challenges to debate this subject. Pastors and other non -scholars or apologists, such a response has been enough.

17:11

However, a number of years ago, Eriks Fenson began studying not the single term haos, but the phrase it actually appears in there in Matthew 1 25, haos who.

17:21

He had studied under the eminent New Testament scholar D .A. Carson and learned that language is not to be limited to mere singular words, but meaning is often communicated through syntax and phraseology.

17:31

He recognized that there are other phrases, such as akriu, that has a distinctive meaning as a phrase that its constituent parts do not indicate alone.

17:41

And so, in the same way men like Granville Sharp have enriched our knowledge of the Greek language in the past by studying usages across the breadth and length of the original text,

17:50

Eriks Fenson began studying haos who. The results of his study have been published in his book, Who Is My Mother?

17:57

To boil it all down, I will be asking Mr. Matitix to provide examples of the phrase haos who that would coincide with the meaning that, again

18:04

I remind you, he must find in this passage, first in Matthew, then the

18:10

Gospels, then the New Testament as a whole. When challenged on this point in the past, Mr. Matitix has claimed that many

18:16

New Testament scholars disagree with these findings. In fact, my opponent has, what he's done in the past, has been to cite scholars who had never examined the data regarding haos who, and who wrote long before the information was available, and has asserted that they disagree with those results, such is obviously not the case.

18:34

He has likewise asserted that no lexicon gives that meaning, seemingly hoping that his audiences do not know how lexicons are arranged, nor the fact that each new edition of scholarly works does, in fact, include new and expanded meanings based upon exactly this kind of research.

18:49

Here again we encounter the conflict between the fair and balanced study of the text of Scripture and the dogmas of Rome.

18:56

The exegete of Scripture takes the combined testimony of all of the relevant passages, studies the lexical meanings of words and phrases, and concludes that it is highly likely that haos who here indicates a situation where the change, where the action continues to a particular point, and upon completion, the prevailing condition is changed.

19:16

In this case, Joseph did not engage in marital relations with Mary until she gave birth to Jesus, but as would be expected thereafter, he then took

19:24

Mary as his wife. The normal course of marriage was interrupted only for a season and only for a reason.

19:33

This constant conflict between dogma and the plain natural meaning of words and text continues when we consider

19:38

Matthew 1 .18, where we read, now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows, when his mother

19:43

Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found to be with child by the

19:49

Holy Spirit. The natural meaning is again clear. The phrase before they came together is defined by Lola Nida as before they had sexual intercourse, she was found to be pregnant.

20:00

The current scholarly standard BDAG has to unite in an intimate relationship, come together in a sexual context, again, just as Lola Nida, with direct reference to Matthew 1 .18.

20:13

Now, the term that is used is actually a rather plain word, sunerchimi, which can mean to gather together in any number of contexts, but context determines usage, and obviously in Matthew 1 .18,

20:25

the two phrases must be viewed in light of each other. What kind of coming together is relevant to the phrase, she was found to be with child by the

20:34

Holy Spirit? The answer is obvious to those who allow the text to speak for itself, but the faith of Roman Catholic cannot allow the text to speak for itself, since the text is not his ultimate authority.

20:46

Rome has said Mary had no children and was perpetually a virgin. So what does Matthew 1 .18 mean?

20:52

It means before they came together in a platonic, protectorate -style relationship. Mr. Matitix, drawing from a unique and unusual interpretation of Mary's words to the angel, asserts that she had taken a lifelong vow of virginity, a rare enough thing in Jewish culture to begin with.

21:08

Hence, Joseph, an older man, was simply arranging to protect her, not to actually live with her as her husband.

21:15

So all Matthew is saying is that before they began this living arrangement, she was found to be with child by the

21:20

Holy Spirit. Of course, not only does that assume a lot of things that cannot be proven, but it likewise turns the text on its head.

21:28

Who cares if they had or had not begun this protectorate -type living situation, since it was never intended to result in sexual union in the first place?

21:37

The only meaningful reason to note that she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit before they came together is if coming together has its plain, normal meaning, that of coming together as husband and wife.

21:49

Do I need to say again that Rome does not merely suggest that it might be better to take sunerchimias, came together in a protectorate -style relationship, a meaning not attested in the very lexical sources to which

22:01

I referred before, Matthew 118, but that Rome insists dogmatically with the force of the anathema that sunerchimia cannot mean what it normally and naturally would mean in this context.

22:14

It is also often argued that if Mary had sons other than Jesus, then Jesus was in essence violating the law by committing

22:21

Mary to the care of John at the foot of the cross in John 19, verses 26 through 27. But the answer to this is not far to be found.

22:29

Not only is John the disciple whom Jesus loved, but at this crisis point at the foot of the cross,

22:34

Jesus' brothers were as yet unbelievers. Obviously, since the Lord himself had taught that those who do the will of God are his brothers and sisters, then it follows that Jesus was indeed committing his mother to his closest brother, a believer, and the action is easily understood in this light.

22:51

Now, like a drumbeat, you will hear Roman Catholic apologists claiming that such and such a belief has been the teaching of the church for 2 ,000 years, and the perpetual virginity of Mary is no exception.

23:04

Early Christian writers of various abilities and levels of knowledge, while clearly affirming the virgin birth of Christ, did not speak of this later concept as part of the gospel.

23:14

Indeed, one such writer, Tertullian, spoke of Mary's other children with an ease that demonstrates it was not, at the time, a point of contention or argument.

23:22

Now, Tertullian became a Montanist, and so his testimony is often dismissed without ever explaining to us why it is that he could make the statements he did, and no one even batted an eyebrow.

23:34

More importantly, Basil of Caesarea, a well -known, widely respected bishop in the church, writing much later, said that the opinion that Mary had other children, quote, does not run counter to faith, for virginity was imposed on Mary as a necessity only up to the time that she served as an instrument of the

23:54

Incarnation, while, on the other hand, her subsequent virginity had no great importance with regard to the mystery of the

24:02

Incarnation, end quote. As Roman Catholic Mariologist Father Juniper Carroll has noted, quote, it is evident from this discourse that in a region of the

24:11

Greek world apparently Asia Minor, an important churchman, without any doubt the Archbishop of Caesarea, Saint Basil, did not hold the perpetual virginity of Mary as a dogmatic truth, nor did his metropolitan churches, end quote.

24:27

One truly wonders how Saint Basil managed to become a saint without believing de fide in a dogma that is now required of one by Rome.

24:35

It has likewise sometimes been argued that the fact that Mary is referred to as the Virgin Mary by ancient Christian writers shows they likewise believed in the perpetual virginity of Mary.

24:44

The illustration of a bachelor uncle has been used. If one had an uncle who remained unmarried for a long period and hence was known as the bachelor uncle, you would not continue to call him that after he married.

24:53

Hence, why call Mary the virgin if after the birth of Jesus she ceased to be a virgin? This claim illustrates something very important about Roman Catholic teaching, that being the modern tendency to define

25:04

Mary apart from the biblical role given to her as the mother of Jesus. The phrase mother of God was originally a

25:10

Christological title. That is, it said something primarily about Jesus, not about Mary. The same is true of Virgin Mary.

25:18

This speaks the fact of Mary's condition as the mother of the Lord. He was virgin born.

25:23

It says nothing concerning Mary after her role of giving birth to Christ. And I note in passing that this is the exact position made in the citation above by Saint Basil of Caesarea.

25:35

Finally, Mr. Matzik has insisted that the only reason the Roman Catholic Church teaches the perpetual virginity of Mary is because, quote, it is a historical fact, end quote.

25:46

He claims it is as much a fact as God's creation, the parting of the Red Sea, the incarnation, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

25:54

Consider for just a moment what this means. A belief that stands inalterably opposed to the plain reading of the text, that is never once enunciated as a part of Christian teaching in the inspired scriptures, is not only, according to Roman Catholic teaching, a fact of history, but is as clear a fact as that of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

26:16

How can someone make such an incredible claim? The answer is simple, sola ecclesia, the ultimate authority of Rome.

26:24

To believe the perpetual virginity of Mary is to believe in something utterly absent from the inspired text, and the only person who will believe it is the person who has rejected

26:33

Paul's exhortation to Timothy that the scriptures are sufficient to equip the man of God for every good work, which would include teaching and preaching what is necessary to the people of God.

26:43

The Bible does not teach this doctrine. It contradicts this doctrine in the plainest of terms. If you stand on God's inspired revelation, you have but one decision to make this evening in this matter.

26:54

Belief in God's truth in scripture, or embracing the traditions of men. Thank you very much.

27:12

We'll now have an opening statement from Mr. Manatex. I want to thank

27:27

Jason Wallace for giving me the opportunity here in Salt Lake City to once again defend against Dr.

27:35

James White the biblical basis of the Catholic faith. Ladies and gentlemen,

27:40

I wish to do three things in my opening remarks. First, I would like to tell you where I am coming from. Secondly, I would like to demonstrate to you this evening the scriptures support for the church's constant 2 ,000 year old teaching on the perpetual virginity of Mary, the mother of the

27:57

Messiah. And thirdly, if time remains in my opening statement, if not I'll do it in the rebuttal,

28:02

I would like to challenge Dr. White to handle himself in this debate in a manner different than he has prosecuted the debates we've had in the past.

28:10

And that made me in fact somewhat reluctant to continue debates with him, although we'd had many dozens of debates many years ago.

28:17

I would like to dedicate before I go any further this debate this evening to the honor and glory of the triune

28:23

God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, in whose image we are made and in a relationship with whom we are made.

28:34

We are made for that very purpose, to know him, to love him, to serve him in this world, and to be happy with him therefore forever in the next.

28:40

And also to dedicate it to the honor of that woman that God himself created to be the mother of the

28:47

Messiah and to recognize what Mary herself said in her

28:52

Magnificat, in her song recorded in Saint Luke chapter one, that God has done great things for her.

28:59

To recognize the great things that God has done, the special privileges that God has given to the one who would be among all the women on the face of the earth, the one with the exclusive privilege of being the mother of God the

29:12

Son. First of all, as I said, let me tell you where I'm coming from. You heard already that I am a convert to Catholicism from evangelical

29:22

Protestant faith. I was an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and went to staunchly evangelical seminaries,

29:29

Gordon Conwell Seminary for Master Divinity and Westminster Theological Seminary to get a PhD in biblical studies.

29:35

After having coursework there and taking all my oral and written exams, I kind of shocked the faculty and my fellow students by, after a long three -year agonizing struggle to resist the conclusions, ended up becoming convinced that the

29:49

Catholic faith was the original and authentic form of the Christian faith, the faith taught in sacred scripture itself, and therefore put the continuation of the completion of my doctoral work in a very difficult situation.

30:04

But I stand before you tonight still as a born -again Bible -believing

30:10

Christian who unabashedly accepts sacred scripture as God's inspired, inerrant word in written form.

30:19

I want to say this loud and clear because an insinuation was made in Dr. White's opening to the contrary.

30:28

It is a red herring, it is a misrepresentation, it is a caricature unworthy of a man of this much experience and education to say that the

30:38

Catholic claims to follow sola ecclesia. There is not a single church document, church father, ecumenical council, papal encyclical, catechism,

30:52

Catholic apologetics textbooks that says anything remotely resembling that. The Catholic church has consistently taught for 2 ,000 years that the

31:02

Bible is God's inspired, infallible, inerrant word and that its sentence is final, definitive, determinative, and conclusive.

31:13

It is not the only form in which what Jesus our Lord and the apostles taught was passed on, as the

31:20

Bible itself points to. But it is not the purpose of this debate to engage in a debate or a discussion of the merits or demerits of the

31:29

Protestant notion of sola scriptura. So I'm not going to be led off the scent, off the path, by this red herring of this attack on sola scriptura or this defense of sola scriptura and this attack on the

31:41

Catholic position. Mr. White enjoys throwing red herrings out and I'm not going to do it. For the purposes of this debate tonight, we have one standard.

31:51

What does the Bible say? Does, in fact, the Bible teach that Mary had other children after she had our

32:00

Lord Jesus Christ? That and that alone, ladies and gentlemen, is the debate. And do not allow yourself to be, by sleight of hand or rhetorical flourishes, distracted from that duty, that burden that Mr.

32:13

White must take upon himself to prove from scripture alone. And that, in fact, is what I will seek to do tonight.

32:20

I am mindful, I found it interesting that he closed his opening with a reference to the Word of God and the traditions of men.

32:26

I'm very mindful, as I stand before you this evening, that our Lord Jesus Christ had some very strong things to say in Matthew 15, one through nine, about those who nullify the

32:34

Word of God for the sake of mere human tradition. And it is in fidelity to our Lord's words that I stand before you, that I have come here, that I stand before you here tonight, for nothing could be clearer, as I believe it will be made clear to you, that the teaching of Dr.

32:46

White, that the Virgin Mary ceased, one, ceased to be a virgin, and two, had other children, is nothing but a, quote, tradition of men, unquote, that clearly contradicts the straightforward statements of sacred scripture.

33:01

Mr. White made much hay in his opening statements about the normal, straightforward statements of sacred scripture.

33:08

I'm certainly happy to abide by that standard, and we'll see how that proceeds this evening. I believe that Mr.

33:14

White does not have a biblical leg to stand on, and I believe that by the conclusion of our time together tonight, that will be apparent to every open -minded person in our midst, whether you are

33:21

Protestant or Catholic. You can remain a staunch Protestant tonight. You can walk out of here not convinced that the case for Catholicism, per se, is superior to the case for Protestantism, but you can still walk out of here, as many

33:34

Protestants down through the years have, convinced that the Bible does not teach this tradition of men that Mr.

33:40

White holds to, that Mary had other children. This is not a Protestant versus Catholic issue. It is an issue of what the

33:46

Bible teaches about Mary versus what a man -made tradition that arose among Protestantism rather recently, in the wake of the

33:54

Enlightenment, and the whole skeptical attitude that sort of propudes the extraordinary, as Mr.

34:02

White has already done. Now, furthermore, before I continue in imitation of the angel in Revelation chapter 10, verses 5 through 6,

34:09

I now wish to raise my right hand to heaven and to swear to tell you the truth tonight, even if it's inconvenient, even if it's unpopular, even if it works to my own harm.

34:22

I will not handle the truth falsely, and I will not handle the word of God falsely, and I ask

34:27

God to show who does that this evening between the two of us, for God himself to judge between us.

34:34

I ask that we put ourselves in God's hand. I publicly renounce the devil, who is a liar and the father of lies, and I utterly repudiate before you publicly, as God is my witness, to whom

34:45

I will stand, before whom I will stand on my judgment day and give account for every idle word that I speak on the day of judgment, as the

34:51

Lord warns us. And I utterly repudiate the devil, his lies, and any and all reliance upon his angelic allies and those doctrines of demons that they spread.

35:00

And I ask Dr. White, in a spirit of fidelity to the biblical teaching and an imitation of that same holy angel who stood and swore with his right hand to heaven, to follow me and to raise his right hand and to take that same oath, or affirmation if he prefers to avoid the use of oath.

35:17

Even in our civil courts, people who have scruples about that are allowed to say a solemnly swear or affirm, and I ask him to do the same.

35:23

And if he does not do so, then he disqualifies himself as a faithful and true witness who renounces any right to your credence this evening.

35:31

Now let me move to my second objective in my opening, and that is to now begin to demonstrate to you that the perpetual virginity of our

35:39

Lord's mother is precisely what our Lord Jesus Christ wishes us to believe in tonight. I wish to honor my Lord by teaching the truth of scripture concerning his mother.

35:47

I want to make some general comments here first, and if I have time in my opening, which I may or may not, I will address the specific issues that Dr.

35:54

White has. If not, I will do that in rebuttal. But in terms of general observations, I would like to point out that my ultimate goal of honoring my

36:02

Lord means that I need to teach the truth of scripture, since our Lord inspired it concerning his mother, that in honoring the mother,

36:09

I seek ultimately to honor the son and to remind all of us that as every faithful Jew bound by the

36:17

Ten Commandments, our Lord was the one who honored his father in heaven and his mother on earth.

36:24

It is he who first honored her and created her by creating her to be his mother and by endowing her with the graces and the privileges that the

36:32

Bible speaks of, and I simply seek to follow in his footsteps and to echo his sacred and infallible and inerrant voice.

36:39

Now part of honoring the mother of our Savior is acknowledging that God did something stupendous in and through her, which we call the incarnation,

36:45

God himself becoming man. The paradox, the wonder of the incarnation, if you've ever thought about it, is that now there was a person who was two things that had never been true before of one and the same person,

36:58

God and man. Up to this point, there had been God from all eternity, of course, and there was man, but there was no one before the incarnation who was both in one, and now there was, and this was and is unique.

37:14

Christians believe in one unique incarnation of God in human form. We also know from the

37:19

Bible that God chose to become a man to bring about this unique miracle and marvel of the incarnation through a woman.

37:26

He could have parachuted full grown out of the heavens had he chosen, but he chose to begin as a microscopic embryo and to grow and to gestate for nine months within the womb of a mother, to take his flesh, his human nature from that woman.

37:40

And God decreed from all eternity that the most appropriate way to enter our world was to do this through a virgin mother.

37:48

And the uniqueness of the one who was to be both God and man, two terms that to that point had been incompatible, mutually exclusive, was to be mirrored in the woman, the unique woman that he and he alone was to be born from, for she too would be two things that had never before been simultaneously true of one person, virgin and mother.

38:07

There had been virgins before at this point in human history, and there had been mothers, but never ever anyone who was both in the fullest, most literal sense of each word at the same time and perduring, continuing throughout her life.

38:21

So the one paradox, the God -man, found a parallel by God's own predestinating appointment in the second paradox, the virgin mother.

38:29

And this is from the moment of the incarnation on, Jesus was both God and man forever, never ceasing to be both at one and the same time.

38:37

So from that moment, the conception of Jesus in Mary's womb, Mary was to be likewise forever, both virgin and mother at one and the same time, never ceasing to be one or the other, or never being one at the expense of the other, any more than our

38:50

Lord has to diminish his deity to be fully human, or to somehow, like the Gnostics, again, as Dr.

38:58

White brought up as a red herring that Catholicism is rooted in Gnosticism, when it's quite the opposite, to say that somehow he had to be not fully human in order to be fully divine.

39:07

Mary was set apart for this unique vocation. God created and consecrated her, especially her body, to be the sacred gate through which

39:14

God the Son would enter our world definitively. Now Mary began her life, as we all do, as a virgin.

39:21

So much we can agree on. Virginity is a gift of God given us at birth, and the constant teaching of the church that Jesus Christ founded on earth 2 ,000 years ago at Pentecost is that God did not take away this gift that he gave to Mary, this gift he did not take away of virginity from the mother of the

39:38

Messiah, nor did she ever yield it up. Rather, she remained a virgin before, during, and after the birth of Jesus, remained a virgin, in fact, her entire life.

39:46

Dr. White at least professes to believe that Mary is spoken of in Scripture as a virgin, and he professes to believe that by the supernatural activity of God, Mary conceived our

39:54

Lord and yet did not lose her virginity in the act of conceiving him. For that I am grateful. Now, if Dr.

40:00

White is going to claim that Mary did not remain a virgin, he needs to show us when, how, or by what she lost this virginity.

40:07

He cannot simply assume that this would be the natural transformation or change of direction of her life.

40:14

He needs to show it. Dr. White says, I don't believe anything unless you can show it to me in Scripture.

40:20

Sola Scriptura is my standard. I don't believe in theories and doctrines of men.

40:26

I believe what the Bible itself clearly teaches, and so I want him to show us where the Bible shows

40:31

Mary losing her virginity. That he cannot do. Does he believe that she lost her virginity during the birth of Jesus?

40:37

He has no proof of this, and I will show that Scripture clearly teaches otherwise. Does he believe that she lost her virginity after the birth of Jesus and having sexual relations with Joseph, and thereby, and as a result, having other children?

40:47

He has no proof of this either, and I will show that Scripture clearly teaches otherwise. In short, I will show you tonight that the virginity of Mary, like the incarnation itself, is a permanent gift of God that God does not give back.

40:59

It's a gift without calling, irrevocable. One that he did not take back and that she did not give back, and I will show that the perpetual virginity of Mary is scriptural.

41:06

The denial of her perpetual virginity is not, and I mean two things by that. First, positively, that the

41:11

Scriptures contain many positive indications of her perpetual virginity, and secondly, that there's, negatively, there's nothing in Scripture contrary, that contradicts this perpetual virginity.

41:21

Now, let me concede, as I must, as an honest person, that the Church of Jesus Christ, the

41:28

Catholic Church, has never taught that the perpetual virginity of Mary is a major doctrine of Scripture, a truth trumpeted from every page, a truth as central and pervasive as, say, the existence of God, the deity of Christ, the saving power of his sacrificial death, the literal truth of his bodily resurrection, or the blessed hope of a certain future return to earth in power and glory.

41:50

Although it is not a major doctrine, however, it is a true doctrine, and therefore, it is my duty, as a

41:58

Bible -believing Christian, and my delight to defend it with every fiber of my being to my dying breath. When people say about a particular doctrine, well, that's only taught in one passage of Scripture or just a few passages, the only appropriate response for any

42:09

Christian to make is, well, just how many times does God have to say something for it to be true? Now, keeping that in mind, let's look at some of the biblical evidence for Mary's perpetual virginity.

42:19

We're not going to engage in red herrings or rhetoric, but look at the biblical evidence itself, and before turning to the New Testament, we will briefly consider a couple of Old Testament passages.

42:27

Every Bible -believing, Bible -reading Christian agrees that the features of the New Covenant are foreshadowed in the

42:32

Old by both type and prophecy. The Old Testament clearly contains types. You know what a type is, something, some person, place, event, or institution that foreshadows some aspect of the

42:43

New Covenant. And the Old Testament clearly contains types, not only of the central figure of the

42:48

New Covenant, the Messiah, but also certain persons, events, institutions, and objects associated with them. Saint Peter, for example, tells us in his epistle that Noah's flood was a type of baptism.

42:58

Saint Paul, in 1 Corinthians 10, says the same thing about the parting of the Red Sea. And he also says in that same passage,

43:04

Saint Paul, that the water from the rock and the manna from heaven were types of the Eucharist, as was the Passover lamb, he says in 1

43:09

Corinthians 5, verse 7. There are, as I just said a few seconds ago, types not only of the Lord Jesus in the Old Testament, Adam, Saint Paul explicitly says in Romans 5 .14,

43:17

was a type of Christ, as was Isaac and Moses and Joshua and David and Solomon and Jonah and a host of others.

43:24

But there are types of those that are associated with the coming Messiah as well. The Patriarch Joseph in the

43:29

Book of Genesis, clearly, every Protestant and Catholic commentator agrees, is shown to be, in addition to being a literal historical individual in his own right, functions as a foreshadowing of that Saint Joseph in the beginning of the

43:42

New Testament. He, the Joseph in the beginning of the Old Testament, in the Book of Genesis, clearly functions as a foreshadowing of the

43:47

Saint Joseph, the head of the holy family, who, like his namesake, will bring his family down into Egypt to rescue them and to bring them out again later on into their inheritance.

43:59

Now, the Old Testament gives us a prophecy right away in the opening chapters of Genesis, in Genesis 3 .15,

44:07

when God, addressing Satan, speaks of a woman from whom a seed will come. And God makes reference to this woman's seed, which is

44:15

Christ. Saint Paul makes much of the fact in Galatians that he does not say, and to seeds, and to seed, singular being

44:21

Christ. She has, in other words, no other seed, the seed singular of the woman.

44:28

That is something of doctrinal significance to Saint Paul. And I encourage all of us, in fact,

44:34

I urge and entreat all of us to submit to the solemn sentence of sacred scripture as uttered by the inspired apostle

44:40

Saint Paul. By the way, seed of the woman is obviously a strikingly odd phrase. What you expect in the Bible, what you typically find is the seed of the man.

44:47

And yet, so we have here foreshadowed the virginal conception of our Lord. We have another prophecy.

44:52

Again, I'm only going to mention one more prophecy and then one type, and I've got to move to the New Testament. In Isaiah 7 .14,

44:59

behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son. That is, she's a virgin even in the act of giving birth.

45:05

By the way, the Hebrew literally says here, not a virgin shall conceive, it's not the future, but behold, the virgin conceiving and bearing a son.

45:16

One subject, the virgin, with a compound predicate, with two verbs, that that noun governs.

45:25

Dr. White is fond of making grammatical points, and so I encourage him to pay attention to the grammar of Isaiah 7 .14,

45:31

both in the Hebrew and the Greek, and in the citation of that prophecy in Saint Matthew chapter one.

45:38

What the Bible clearly teaches here is that she is not simply a virgin in conceiving, but she is also a virgin in the act of bearing a son.

45:46

If you deny that, then you are denying the virgin birth of Christ, not to be confused with the virginal conception of Christ.

45:53

And Christians have always taught the virgin birth of Jesus Christ, although many Protestants don't understand perhaps what they're called upon to confess in that.

46:02

What we mean is that Christ left his mother's body in such a way as to not rob her of this gift of ongoing virginity, to do no violence to the seal of her virginity, just as his body left the tomb, or entered the upper room through the closed doors in Saint John chapter 20 verse 26.

46:19

And the church fathers consistently teach this, and I'll be happy to give quotes from them if Dr. White wants to contend this, that they draw analogies to show that the virginity of the temple of her body was not violated by the birth of our

46:37

Lord, that as light passes through glass without breaking it, so did the Lord pass through the body of his mother without breaking the seal of her virginity or rupturing her hymen.

46:45

Because Christ did not come to take away anything of value by his incarnation, but to restore the incorruption of our nature.

46:50

And it would not be fitting that in his birth he would rob his mother of her virginity, since he did not need to take away her virginity to be conceived by her, nor did he need to take it away to be born by her.

47:00

The Apostles' Creed says, conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary.

47:05

Not born of the previously virginal conceiving woman, but born of the Virgin Mary.

47:11

What are you affirming in that second statement? Not simply a rehash of the first point, conceived of the Holy Ghost. Now there are types as well.

47:18

Dr. White already referred rather dismissively to Ezekiel chapter 44 verse 2, this vision of the temple in the

47:26

Old Testament. The temple, of course, has many references in the New Testament, many fulfillments.

47:32

The church is spoken of as the temple of God, 1 Corinthians 3 .16. The church, by the way, is spoken of as a virginal bride as well, remember, in 2

47:38

Corinthians 11 verses 1 and 2. Each individual believer is foreshadowed by the temple in Ezekiel's vision of Ezekiel 40 through 48.

47:45

Look at 1 Corinthians 6 .18. My body, your body is, if you are indwelt by the Holy Ghost tonight, a temple of the

47:51

Holy Ghost. The body of Jesus is clearly a fulfillment of that type of a temple. John chapter 2 verse 19, we see.

47:59

And Ezekiel 47 verse 1 shows the water flowing from the right side of the temple, and St. John says, I saw this fulfilled when

48:05

I stood at the foot of the cross. But there is a connection between Mary as a microcosm of the church as a whole, and therefore her body, and this temple that is seen, that the church fathers delighted to see was fulfilled in her virginity.

48:19

And so when Ezekiel in chapter 44 verse 2 sees that, behold, there is a gate, and this gate is sealed, and no man enters this gate, and yet through this mysteriously perpetually sealed gate, the

48:32

Messiah proceeds forth. We have a type of Our Lady's virginity, even in the act of giving birth to her divine, supernatural son that every church father, the original recipients of sacred scripture who read that passage saw.

48:48

And not a single church father, I would challenge Dr. White to come up with a church father who sneers at this as he does and says, oh, there's no reference whatsoever in Ezekiel 44 verse 2 to the virginal body of Our Lady.

49:01

Let me simply quote not only the church fathers on this, St. Ambrose, for example. What is this gate but Mary?

49:06

And shut because she is a virgin. Mary then is the gate through which Christ came into this world when he was born by a virginal birth without loosing the bars of her virginity.

49:14

That's in his work on the institution of virginity, section 8. Let me simply quote the man that R .C.

49:20

Sproul, the great reformed apologist, said had the greatest mind in the 2 ,000 -year history of the church, St.

49:26

Thomas Aquinas. This is in a Protestant book called Meet the Men and Women We Call Heroes, and Sproul chose to write his on St.

49:32

Thomas Aquinas. And St. Thomas said, what means this closed gate in the house of the Lord except that Mary is to be ever inviolate, that is, unviolated, not loosing the intactness of her virginity?

49:43

What does it mean that no man shall pass through it save that Joseph shall not know her? And what is this that the Lord alone enters in and goes out by it except that the

49:50

Holy Ghost shall impregnate her and that the Lord of angels shall be born of her? And what means is that it shall be shut forevermore but that Mary is a virgin before his birth, a virgin in his birth, and a virgin after his birth?

49:59

That's from the Summa Theologiae, the third part, question 20, article 3. And he's simply quoting there St. Augustine, St. Ambrose, and a whole host of church fathers who were in utter agreement on this.

50:08

There was no church father who departed from this consensus that the

50:15

Old Testament foreshadowed the virginity even of Our Lady in giving birth to Our Lord.

50:21

Now, I have only two minutes left, and so we'll only be able to begin the New Testament evidence. I wanted to begin in the

50:27

Old because it's important to see that the New Testament, as we all know, must be read in the light of the Old. We see this truth taught from the very first day of Our Lord's mortal existence in the

50:35

New Testament, and we see it taught on the very last day of His mortal existence when He hangs on the foot of the cross.

50:40

But let's start with that first day, the day He is incarnate in the womb of His Virgin Mary. Luke 1 .34 was not mentioned by Dr.

50:48

White, I think with good reason, when the angel appears to her and says, You shall conceive and give birth to a son.

50:56

And she says, How shall this happen since I do not know man, or since I am a virgin, since I have no relations with the man?

51:03

The angel had said, You will conceive, future tense. And Mary's question makes no sense if she is merely saying that she had been a virgin up to that point in her life, and the only impediment to a future pregnancy would be an ongoing virginity, a lifelong virginity.

51:15

Mary knew as any woman knows how she could have become a mother by ceasing to be a virgin. What she did not know and could not know without a revelation from God is how she could become a virgin.

51:26

She was already engaged to Joseph for the angel to say, You shall be a virgin. If Mary was not intending to remain one, excuse me, you will conceive and give birth to a son.

51:35

If Mary was intending to give up her virginity, it would have been crystal clear. Oh, okay, I'm going to be married to him in a few months, and the first child born of our union will be this supernatural savior that you're speaking of.

51:48

But Mary had a problem. She had a question that cannot adequately be explained on Mr.

51:54

Dr. White, excuse me. Last time I debated him, he didn't have his doctorate yet, so I apologize for not giving him his due.

52:00

If I slip into calling him Mr. White from time to time, it's only the habit of many previous debates with him.

52:06

But what she didn't know and what she couldn't know without a revelation from God is how she could become a mother while remaining a virgin. If Mary had planned on having sexual relations in her married life with St.

52:17

Joseph, it was obvious how she could fulfill the angel's words and become with child. Her question only makes sense if she knew she wasn't going to have relations with him.

52:26

And her words to the angel make this clear. She says, how will this be since I do not know man? This not knowing man defines her, describes her way of life.

52:34

It's in the present tense, not since I have not known man up to this particular point. I do not know, present progressive tense.

52:41

This not knowing her, as I say, it would be as if a suppose a prophet said to you, you will die of lung cancer. And you would say, how can this be since I do not smoke?

52:49

Not since I have not smoked at this moment, but if you want me to start to take up the habit of smoking, I gladly will.

52:55

How can this be since I do not smoke? At the end of her life, we find the exact same truth taught.

53:01

In John 19 .26, we have our Lord hanging upon the cross, taking time out of his passion to clearly prove, although that is not his, of course, ultimate or primary purpose, but to care for his mother that she had no other children to care for her.

53:16

When he says, behold your son, and it indicates the beloved disciple standing there. And we know that the obligation that the commandment imposes upon us to honor our father and mother is an obligation that is non -transferable in Jewish law.

53:30

If other children, flesh and blood children, existed, they would have had the obligation to care for her throughout her life in extreme old age.

53:39

And that could not be passed on to anyone else. It would have been a violation of the law itself, which our

53:44

Lord, of course, could not break as the faithful and obedient son of God, for him to take her out of her flesh and blood children's hands and give her into the hands of someone else.

53:53

And the canar that, oh, but they weren't believers, is utterly unworthy of an apologist for this

54:01

Protestant tradition of men. When the same person agrees that these, if believing these brothers of Jesus are the ones mentioned in the continuation of scripture in the book of Acts, they become believers mere days later.

54:13

We see them believers, praying with the apostles and so forth. So there was no reason why our

54:19

Lord could not have known that days hence they would be believers and able to take care of her.

54:25

Clearly, she has no other children. And there are old testament passages, of course, that speak of the grief of Zion when the

54:31

Messiah dies in the darkness over the earth as the grief of a mother for her only child. That is exactly, of course, what our

54:37

Lord sees here in the grief of his mother at the foot of the cross. So there are positive indications here of her virginity.

54:46

And now what we need to do in the rebuttal time is to look at whether there are negative indications.

54:52

Are there, in fact, any Bible verses that disprove or dispute the virginity of Mary?

54:58

Do, in fact, the verses that Dr. White cite show that, A, she had relations with Saint Joseph, and,

55:05

B, that children resulted from this? And I'm going to argue when we look more carefully in the rebuttal time at Matthew chapter 1, verse 18 through 25,

55:13

Luke 2, 7, the firstborn, and the reference to the brothers of Jesus, they do not, in fact, teach what Dr.

55:18

White requires them to teach for him to win this debate on what does the Bible say? Does it say that Mary had other children?

55:25

Thank you. We'll now have rebuttal from Dr.

55:31

White. It was said that it is a canard and unworthy of me to refer to sola ecclesia.

55:48

Sola ecclesia is a terminology that I use that recognizes the Roman Catholic epistemology.

55:54

What is supreme in the Roman Catholic interpretation of Scripture? Is it the text of Scripture itself, or the dogmas of the

56:00

Roman Catholic Church? There is no question that sola ecclesia accurately represents what's taking place this evening.

56:07

Consider with me just for a moment. Sola ecclesia, according to Rome, who defines what Scripture is and what

56:12

Scripture says infallibly? Rome. Who defines what tradition is and what tradition says infallibly? Rome.

56:18

How can Rome be under the authority of two sources that she defines and that only she can infallibly interpret?

56:23

We will see this evening that fundamentally this is a circular argument and that each denial of sola ecclesia will only prove it.

56:30

I would like to give you an illustration of exactly how it functions. These are the words of Ignatius of Loyola.

56:37

This will tell you what sola ecclesia is all about. That we may be all together of the same mind and in conformity with the

56:42

Church itself. If she shall have defined anything to be black, which to our eyes appears to be white, we ought in like manner to pronounce it black.

56:51

That is following the ultimate authority of the Roman Church. We had some discussion,

56:58

I don't know where in the world it's coming from, about doing like angels and putting your arms up and doing things like that.

57:04

My friends, I come to you as an elder of the Phoenix Reform Baptist Church, as an elder, I serve the Word of God in ministering to the people of God.

57:10

That is all the affirmation that anyone should ever have to give. To honor

57:16

Mary is to speak only what God has revealed about her. I do not believe that the exaltation of Mary to the status that has been bestowed upon her by the

57:27

Roman Catholic Church in any way, shape, or form honors Mary. In fact, I am very thankful that Mary has no concept of what is taught about her this day.

57:37

Her heart would be broken if she understood the people that are seeking her assistance rather than going to her only begotten

57:46

Son, Jesus Christ. Listen to this. I read this prayer to Mr.

57:54

Matitix 10 years ago. This is what I'm talking about when I refer to the view of Mary.

57:59

O mother of perpetual help, thou art the dispenser of all the goods which God grants to us miserable sinners. If this reason he has made thee so powerful, so rich, and so bountiful, thou mayst help us in our misery.

58:09

Thou art the advocate of the most wretched and abandoned sinners who have recourse to thee. Come then to my help, dearest mother, for I recommend myself to thee.

58:16

In thy hands I place my eternal salvation, and to thee do I entrust my soul. Count me among thy most devoted servants.

58:23

Take me under thy protection, it is enough for me. For if thou protect me, dear mother, I fear nothing, not from my sins, which thou would obtain for me the pardon of them, nor from the devils, because thou art more powerful than all hell together, nor even from Jesus, my judge himself, because by one prayer from thee he will be appeased.

58:38

But one thing I fear, that in the hour of temptation I may neglect to call on thee, and thus perish miserably. Obtain for me then the pardon of my sins, love for Jesus, final perseverance, and the grace always to have recourse to thee,

58:50

O mother of perpetual help. When I read that prayer, Mr. Matitix looked across a radio studio at me and said,

58:57

I look forward to the day, Mr. Whitewin, you'll be able to pray that prayer with me. That is the result of the denial, the sufficiency of scripture, that is the result of soul ecclesia, and that is not honoring to the

59:10

Virgin Mary in any way, shape, or form. Now it's very difficult for me, technically we're supposed to here do rebuttal.

59:19

Rebuttal periods aren't for presenting new material. This is where we're supposed to rebut what's been said before, but I have almost nothing to rebut.

59:27

We've been told the Incarnation was unique, that's not in dispute, it's not relevant to the debate tonight. We were told that Jesus was born of a woman, that's not in dispute, it's not part of the debate tonight.

59:37

We have heard claims, Mr. Matitix has claimed the uniqueness of Christ was to be, quote, mirrored, end quote, in Mary, but he gives no basis for this assertion whatsoever.

59:48

Where is that found in the Bible? It makes for good preaching, but it's lousy forensics. Mary was to be forever virgin, again, an unfounded claim, no evidence even offered, and in a debate must be dismissed because no foundation is given.

01:00:03

He mentioned the idea of Gnosticism and claimed that my reference to it was a red herring. Isn't it fascinating that the earliest recorded historical references to a belief being affirmed here this evening is a red herring?

01:00:15

These beliefs first appear in Gnostic writings. We heard no rebuttal of that.

01:00:22

I gave you the books they are found in. Are we going to hear a rebuttal of that? I'd like to find out. I'd like to hear how that can be a red herring.

01:00:29

If that's where these beliefs are first found, how is that a red herring? Mr. Matitix calls virginity a gift, a permanent gift, but again, no foundation was provided.

01:00:40

He says that I have to show how Mary lost her virginity. The normal biblical meaning of words concerning husbands and wives, sons and daughters, firstborns coming together, all those things seemingly are irrelevant, and Mr.

01:00:56

Matitix is not going to have time in 10 minutes to even begin to address the lexical meanings of those particular terms, at least in a scholarly fashion.

01:01:06

Mr. Matitix has then gone to the Old Testament, and he said, well, the woman's seed, and he says she has no other seed.

01:01:14

Was that meant to be an assertion that she did not have other children? Where does the text say that? Where has

01:01:19

Rome defined that that's what the text says? Invalidly, or is this just Mr. Matitix's personal interpretation?

01:01:26

Where is the perpetual virginity in the statement that Jesus would be born of the seed of the woman?

01:01:31

No one's disputing that in any way, shape, or form. Isaiah 7 .14, again, where does

01:01:36

Isaiah 7 .14 say that after the birth of Jesus Christ, there were no other children born naturally to Mary as she fulfilled that natural role given as a wife to Joseph?

01:01:48

Where is that in Isaiah 7 .14? It's not found anywhere. Mr. Matitix was very kind to point out that sometimes we discuss grammar, and that I should pay attention to the grammar of the text.

01:02:01

Well, I appreciate that kind recommendation. However, I would point out that it is in the

01:02:07

Hebrew of Isaiah 9 that the birth, the son that is given to us, the child that is born to us, that particular term, yalad, that is used there is of natural birth, not

01:02:20

Jesus somehow sort of beaming out of Mary. That concept, again, first shows up where?

01:02:26

In the Gnostic writings. Jesus was born of a virgin that's a true birth.

01:02:35

He was truly a man. We hear discussion of God did not rob,

01:02:42

Jesus did not rob his mother of her virginity, as if, again, we have this whole anachronistic later development of the concept of virginity that is not a part of the

01:02:53

Jewish culture in which we are looking at the New Testament, and we're reading it back in as if this vow of virginity had taken place in all the rest of these things.

01:03:03

We had Ezekiel 44, too, put forward, but again, we were just told, well, there are types and shadows. Well, what

01:03:09

New Testament writer ever went to Ezekiel 44? I'm glad, at least in this debate,

01:03:15

Mr. Mattock said, those early church fathers that talked about Ezekiel 44. Before he said, all the early church fathers.

01:03:23

No, actually, you'll have to go a number of centuries before you find any of them even making reference to the passage, and that only once the

01:03:30

Marian dogmas begin to make development. How are we supposed to know that this gate is about Mary?

01:03:37

He even mentioned that the church is a holy temple. Our bodies are holy temples. Why isn't this in reference to the

01:03:43

Holy Spirit? How can we know these types and shadows, and how is it that a type and allegory from Ezekiel 44, we can't even begin to dogmatically state anything about, how come that is more plain than, is this not

01:03:56

Jesus? Do we not know his brothers by name? Are not his sisters with us? Which is clear evidence.

01:04:04

It's very clear. Saint Thomas Aquinas was quoted. I'm glad R .C. Sproul likes

01:04:10

Saint Thomas Aquinas, but I hope everybody realizes we're talking way past, you know, we're talking second millennia here, you know.

01:04:18

1 ,200 years after the events, no one's questioning that Marian dogma had developed that point.

01:04:25

Certainly not all the Marian dogmas Rome's developed since then, but certainly Marian dogma developed at that point.

01:04:32

It was said that I didn't mention Luke 134. Actually, I think Mr. Mattox was just busy writing or something, because as I mentioned, it is

01:04:39

Mr. Mattox who gives this unusual understanding of the words of Mary to the angel. And so you need to understand that whole final discussion that was presented to you was a way to try to convince you that Mary had taken a vow of perpetual virginity.

01:04:56

Where do you find that in the text? Y 'all know how women viewed children in Jewish culture, right?

01:05:04

So she had taken a vow of perpetual virginity? That's what Luke 134 is telling us?

01:05:10

No, the present tense is she recognizes the angel is talking about something that's going to happen now before the finishing of her betrothal period, her marriage to Joseph.

01:05:19

How can this be since I am not knowing a man? I am not yet married to Joseph. How can this be?

01:05:26

You see, Rome forces us to read all sorts of foreign concepts into the text. And every time we see that being done tonight, folks, we're seeing sola ecclesia proven before our eyes.

01:05:38

Thank you. We'll now have a 10 minute rebuttal from Mr.

01:05:49

Manitics. I knew that Dr.

01:06:04

White would sidestep my challenge to take that perfectly biblical and innocuous oath and he did not disappoint me.

01:06:10

He said many times in his statements just now that such and such was not a part of the debate tonight. Well, I could say the same thing about all the red herrings.

01:06:17

You know what a red herring is? You're on the track of a criminal and someone drags some smelly fish across their trail so that the bloodhounds all of a sudden get distracted and go off in a different direction.

01:06:28

Look at all the red herrings, listen to all the red herrings that we've heard about tonight. Papal primacy, sola ecclesia, the bodily assumption of Mary, whether Peter's mother -in -law poses some problem to the later development of celibate clergy.

01:06:44

The Catholics never deny that Peter has a wife, not because it's an inference, because the Bible says so. He even quoted the passage where St.

01:06:51

Paul says, do we not have a right to take a wife along with us? That is why we believe that, not because it's some inference from the fact that we mentioned she has a mother -in -law, the propriety of asking

01:07:02

Mary to pray for her when she spent time reading that prayer again. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the same old tactic that I am tired of of enduring during these debates.

01:07:13

It is not my purpose tonight, it is not my task tonight to defend the biblical propriety of Christians interceding for each other.

01:07:23

The Bible clearly shows that happening. And the propriety of believing that when a Christian dies and goes to heaven that he or she continues to exercise charity for their fellow believers on earth and prays for them.

01:07:34

The Bible shows beings in heaven praying for those on earth. In Revelation chapter 5 or Satan, Revelation 8, 13, that is not the purpose of the debate tonight, ladies and gentlemen.

01:07:43

The purpose of the debate is a simple one. Does the Bible clearly teach that Mary had sexual relations with Joseph and that she had children?

01:07:53

Are there people named in the Bible called the children of Mary? And because Mr. White cannot bring out

01:07:58

Bible verses that say that, he has to engage in this song and dance and these distracting evasive actions and to bring up all these other things that he thinks are an embarrassment to the

01:08:08

Catholic faith when they're not at all. I mentioned the seed in Genesis 3, 15. He says, where,

01:08:13

Jerry, is that just your own private opinion? No. I quoted St. Paul in Galatians 3, 16 who makes a doctrinal point of the fact that the seed of the woman was a singular,

01:08:24

Christ, and not a plural, Galatians 3, 16. I quoted Isaiah 7, 14.

01:08:30

He says, where does that show the perpetual virginity of Mary? That wasn't my point, Dr. White. Please listen to what I'm saying and not what you would like me to be saying or what you think

01:08:37

I'm saying. What I said was that Isaiah 7, 14 teaches that Mary remains a virgin not only in the act of conceiving but in the act of giving birth.

01:08:45

Of course, it says nothing and no Catholic has ever claimed that it says anything about her perpetual virginity.

01:08:51

But Dr. White denies the fact that Mary remained a virgin in the act of giving birth even though the scriptures teach that and every single recipient of the sacred scriptures in the

01:09:02

New Testament era, every church father teaches that Mary remained a virgin in the act of giving birth.

01:09:09

It was not a natural birth, Dr. White. It was a supernatural event we call the incarnation.

01:09:16

Yes, certain things happen to women when they're not giving birth to the Son of God, certainly. But this was special,

01:09:21

Dr. White. This was unique. And as a result, something special happened. Women, Dr.

01:09:27

White, don't normally conceive without a human father. You do grant that. So what normally happens in conception and birth is not relevant here,

01:09:35

Dr. White. We're talking about a miracle which the Bible predicts. Now, I'll be happy to not sidestep his challenge and to show you that his biblical arguments are, in fact, insufficient to prove his point.

01:09:48

The first one he makes going through the order in which the verses occur in the New Testament is Matthew chapter 1, verse 18.

01:09:54

He made much of the fact that before they came together, she was found to be with a child. Aha, he said.

01:09:59

This coming together, this soon -elf thing, must refer to sexual relations. And what point would it be to say that she was found to be pregnant before they had sexual relations if they didn't have them afterwards?

01:10:10

But even the normative Protestant lexicon, Bauer, Arndt, and Gingrich, and I'm happy, Dr. White, to spend time on grammar.

01:10:18

I'm happy to talk about the Greek. I had the privilege of starting to study Greek at a prep school,

01:10:23

Phillips Exeter Academy, one of the few prep schools that still teaches Greek at the high school level. I did a self -designed major in classical

01:10:30

New Testament and patristic Greek at University of New Hampshire. I went on to study Greek at the master's level and at the doctorate level.

01:10:36

And these Greek arguments have been shown to Greek scholars, who far outstrip both my competence and Dr.

01:10:43

White's, who have simply laughed at this. And I can give you a whole article by Father Ronald Tasselli, who has shown these arguments about heos who.

01:10:50

This thing has been blasted to smithereens and even retired by Protestant apologists, and yet it's still being dredged up tonight.

01:10:57

That heos who, in contrast to heos, the Protestant heos, must mean that something is true only until a certain point and not afterwards.

01:11:05

But before we get to that, in verse 18 of Matthew 1, before they came together, even the normative Protestant lexicon,

01:11:11

Bauer, Arndt, and Gingrich says, quote, in the marriage contracts, in the papyri of this period, sunelfane, this very verse, means to marry.

01:11:20

Does not have to have a reference to sexual relations. And so it's simply saying before they were married, there was a difficulty.

01:11:28

There was a social awkwardness, because she was clearly seen to be pregnant.

01:11:34

This was a concern. There was a potential scandal here, which there wouldn't have been had they already been married, because not all people would have known, necessarily, if they were living a celibate life, if she became pregnant within the, quote, socially acceptable context of marriage.

01:11:47

He then moves on to Matthew chapter 1, verse 25, and says, it said that he had no relationship with her until she gave birth, but that must mean, because it's heos hu, that he had relations with her afterwards.

01:12:00

Dr. White, I'd be happy in the cross -examination to answer your challenge. Show me one place in the

01:12:05

Bible where this preposition, actually, he got it wrong, of course, because heos hu is not a preposition, but a conjunction.

01:12:12

The reason Matthew uses a conjunction here and not a preposition is because it's followed, prepositions take a noun, conjunctions take a verbal clause in their wake, and that's exactly what we see, not only here, that's why he uses heos hu, but many places in the

01:12:27

New Testament where heos hu is used, and it indicates that there's no change after it. So, to say that they had no relations with each other until they gave birth to Jesus does not mean, grammatically, that they had to have relations after that point.

01:12:41

I can prove that simply from other references in the Bible itself. Now, the next thing that he went to is

01:12:48

Luke, chapter 2, verse 7. This proves it because the simple, straightforward, natural meaning of prototokos, firstborn, means that others are going to follow.

01:12:55

That is absolutely false, ladies and gentlemen. You can go right to the very consecration ceremony for the first, consecration of the firstborn in Exodus 13, and see that once parents had a child, they were required to acknowledge it as the firstborn and consecrate it to God and name it as the firstborn.

01:13:12

And they didn't say, they didn't say, hey, Bernie, what are you doing? We have to wait the firstborn.

01:13:17

On the contrary, it can be called firstborn even if it's the onlyborn. You can read in a

01:13:23

Protestant lexicon again, look up the word prototokos, and you will see that in 1922, we found corroboration of this in a tombstone indicating that this young woman had died.

01:13:34

Here lies Rachel, who died giving birth to her firstborn son. Exact same words, ladies and gentlemen.

01:13:40

Surely, in this case, the firstborn was not followed by other children. One's firstborn could be, in an instance, one's onlyborn.

01:13:47

We're not saying that the word firstborn teaches that she's perpetually a virgin. We're simply saying it doesn't teach what

01:13:53

Dr. White needs for it to teach, that there are other children in the wings ready to come out. There is nothing in Luke 2 7 to help him prove.

01:14:01

He needs to prove, not suggest the possibility of it. We certainly grant that Luke 2 7 is in itself indeterminative.

01:14:07

What he needs to do is prove somewhere in the Bible that there's one Bible verse, however little, that teaches that Mary had other children.

01:14:16

Matthew 1 18 doesn't prove it. Matthew 1 25 doesn't prove it. Luke 2 7 doesn't prove it. And lastly, all the references to the brothers of Jesus, which pose no problem to the

01:14:24

Catholic in Matthew 12, 46, 47, Matthew 13 55, etc, etc, etc. These do not provide a problem at all.

01:14:32

These brothers of Jesus mentioned in Matthew 13 55, James, Joseph, Simon, and Jude, if Dr. White would simply take the time to fast forward exactly 14 chapters to Matthew 27 55, 56, we're told that at the foot of the cross is not only the

01:14:44

Mary, the mother of our Lord, but another Mary we are told, the mother of James and Joseph, two of these four children.

01:14:51

In fact, she is identified in John 19 25 and 26 as the wife of another man, not

01:14:57

Joseph, not the widow who was once married to Joseph, but this Mary is the wife of, it says the other

01:15:02

Mary, is the wife of Cleopas. And it mentions that this other Mary is the sister, here the word is

01:15:09

Adelphae, of Mary. Now that should show how the evangelists are using the word. The Bible can use the word

01:15:15

Adelphos, the masculine, and Adelphae to mean a sibling in the strict sense. We don't deny that.

01:15:21

Of course it can mean a literal brother or sister, but the Bible itself uses this term constantly to also mean near kinsman.

01:15:28

Abraham can refer to Lot as his brother, Adelphos, in the Septuagint, the Greek Old Testament, even though we know that he is his uncle and Lot is his nephew.

01:15:37

Jacob and Laban can refer to themselves as brothers, brothers in Genesis 29 15 that are not brothers, literally siblings, but relatives.

01:15:45

And clearly that's what this other Mary is. She could not be the strict sibling sister of Mary because even a

01:15:51

Protestant Bible dictionary or book of Bible customs will show you that in the biblical times, parents did not have the practice of having a child and naming her

01:16:03

Mary and then having a child who will call her Mary too. Every child had a unique name.

01:16:09

And so if Mary had a sister with the same name, Mary, it's clear proof, you see, that St.

01:16:16

John and St. Matthew are using this word to mean, in a broader sense, she's a kinswoman of Mary, but not her sister.

01:16:25

As a result, we don't have to bring in the Catholic tradition that Mary was the only child. I'm simply saying the Bible itself indicates this.

01:16:31

And so these brothers of Jesus pose no problem to us. Of course, Jesus had relatives.

01:16:37

He had kinsmen, but they are never spoken of as the children of Mary. Jesus is called Huyas Maria, the son of Mary.

01:16:44

These children, James, Joseph, Simon, Jude, and the others, and the sisters, are never called the children of Mary, a glaring omission for Dr.

01:16:51

White's particular problem tonight. We will now have questions between our speakers.

01:16:59

We will start with Dr. White's questions for Mr. Matitix. Mr. Matitix, in your last statement, you made the assertion that the standard lexicon of the

01:17:21

Greek language is bar, English, and Duncan. I didn't say the standard. I said a standard.

01:17:27

Okay. And did you indicate that that lexicon does not, in fact, give as the definition provided at Matthew chapter 1, verse 18, the definition that I provided in my opening statement, specifically, to unite in an intimate relationship, come together in a sexual context?

01:17:47

It mentions that as one of the meanings of sunalthema. It says it's not the only one because it can simply mean to marry.

01:17:54

That was my point. So is it your assertion that this lexicon does not list Matthew 1, 18 as the reference for the definition that I gave?

01:18:02

No, that's not my point. You're, again, misrepresenting me as you have on other occasions. Are you not aware, sir, that Bauer, Gingrich, and Donker is out of date and it's now

01:18:10

Bauer, Donker, Arndt, and Gingrich went through the edition change, and I'm quoting the third. You may be quoting the second.

01:18:16

That's the same holds true in the third. Okay. And you've examined it in the third. Yes, I have.

01:18:22

Okay. And so would you agree or disagree with its giving of that particular meaning of sexual union in Matthew 1, 18?

01:18:29

It mentions it as one of the meanings of the verb. It says one can never conclude that the idea of sexual union is necessitated by the use of the verb sunalthema.

01:18:43

And it says that about Matthew 1, 18? Yes. Okay. You mentioned the idea of the relationship of the brothers to Christ, Simon, Joseph, Judas, etc.

01:19:02

You gave as an example of this the Matthew 27 passages. You are aware, of course, that there are many scholars, including

01:19:09

D. A. Carson and others, who have recognized that there are four women in Matthew 27? Yes. Have you developed a refutation of that since that was presented to you a number of years ago by Dr.

01:19:20

Svensson? What I'm willing to refute is the nonsense that the

01:19:26

Mary, who's the mother of James, Joseph, and Simon, and Jude in Matthew 13, is not the

01:19:33

Mary who has the mother of a James and Joseph in Matthew 27. I think it's extremely stretching the point to say that there were two women, both named

01:19:42

Mary, mentioned as sisters, who also had two children named James and Joseph. I think that's a coincidence beyond possibility.

01:19:51

Mr. Mattox, are you not aware that those who see four Marys do not even begin to suggest what you just suggested, that is, that they do not believe that there are two women who are sisters who are named

01:20:00

Mary, that that is the whole point of seeing four Marys in Matthew 27, four women in Matthew 27? I am speaking to the issue of whether the

01:20:07

Mary, who's the mother of James and Joseph, is the mother of our

01:20:12

Lord. And who is this Mary, if she's not the Virgin Mary?

01:20:19

She's a kinswoman of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Mentioned anyplace else? Sorry?

01:20:25

Mentioned anywhere else in the New Testament? Well, I mentioned John chapter 19, verses 25 and 26. No, this particular woman.

01:20:31

Pardon? This particular woman, this Mary, is she mentioned anywhere else in the New Testament, or does she just sort of appear here and not anywhere else?

01:20:39

I don't know how else to answer the question the way I already answered it. She's mentioned in John chapter 19.

01:20:46

Doesn't that fulfill your requirements for being mentioned somewhere else? I don't think you're understanding what

01:20:51

I'm asking about the four Marys, but I'd like to move on. What is the relationship of the brothers of Jesus?

01:20:58

Are they cousins? We don't know. We're not given the specific information. We're not given the

01:21:04

Greek words as cousins. We're simply given a generic term that means a near kinsman. Okay, so Roman Catholicism tells us that we can know what adelphos can't mean here, but then does not positively tell us what it does mean.

01:21:18

They could be near kinspeople. They could be children of Joseph by previous marriage. They could be cousins.

01:21:24

We just don't know. Right? You're misrepresenting the Catholic mission again. It doesn't say that we can know that the word adelphos could not, in this context, mean a sibling.

01:21:34

We agree that the word adelphos, per se, can mean sibling, but we also point out that it can mean other things.

01:21:41

It can mean near kinsmen. But it cannot mean sibling in regards to the brothers of Jesus. That we know not because of the word used in Matthew 13, 55.

01:21:50

That we know because to do so would be to fly in the face of the other biblical evidence that Mary was a virgin, and the fact that they are not mentioned as the children of Mary, and the fact that we have a consensus in the early church that Mary, in fact, had no other children, which would have been instantly laughed at if, in fact, people said, wait a minute.

01:22:09

We remember her and we remember all these children she had. How are people getting away with going around saying she was ever virgin when that title is used in the earliest liturgies we have?

01:22:17

Could you explain why Basil of Caesarea would say what he said, that it is not contrary to faith to believe that Mary had other children?

01:22:24

I have to be very honest and say that I would need to see. I do not have that quote of Basil of Caesarea in front of me, and I'd have to see it and look at its context.

01:22:32

What I do have in front of me are all kinds of quotes from all other fathers that say that the moment that Jovinian and Helvidius began to assert that Mary had other children, the church fathers said, this is sacrilege, this is impious, this is madness.

01:22:46

No such thing has ever been heard among the Orthodox believers. So even though I just gave you the

01:22:51

Greek, Latin, and the citations from Father Juniper Carroll, so even though that material is, in fact...

01:22:57

Can you point to me where you want me to look at, please? I gave you the entirety of both citations, the footnote references, the bibliographical information, and the references from the

01:23:09

TLG CD -ROM and the Latin from Minge, and you can keep that. My point being that you said you had not seen it before, so it might be unfair to ask you about this, but since it is from a source that you have cited,

01:23:21

Juniper Carroll's references, which you cited in the debate against Eric Svensson, I'm a little surprised that you're not aware of it.

01:23:28

Would you care to offer any kind of commentary on it whatsoever, or you're just simply not prepared to do so?

01:23:35

I don't think it's the part of a responsible person to comment on something off the top of their head that they've just seen for the first time.

01:23:43

Okay. Juniper Carroll, by the way, just so people don't get the false impression here, does not quote these passages of Basil of Caesarea and then provide comment upon them.

01:23:53

What do you mean? So I'm saying these full quotes that you're giving me here do not occur in Juniper Carroll's book.

01:23:59

Yes, you noticed the reference. There's a reference to them, but I'm saying is the actual content of the citation there?

01:24:06

Yes. Okay, then I stand corrected. I've given you the quotations right there. It just seems that that would then fly in the face of what

01:24:13

Carroll himself says when we get to the patristic testimony concerning the...

01:24:24

If I can find his... He said it was the United Patristic Testimony. Exactly. Basil believed in the perpetual virginity of Mary, but not as a dogma.

01:24:32

There is a difference between believing something and believing it as a dogma of the church. Would you not agree? Of course. Okay. I think that puts together the context.

01:24:41

I'd like to press on since you said you didn't want to make a comment on it, or his particular viewpoints on things is only relevant insofar as he gives accurate information.

01:24:51

Mr. Mattox, you have said this evening that the historical evidence for 2 ,000 years that this has been a belief.

01:25:05

Is it not true, sir, that in our debate in 1996, in your closing statements and in your debate with Eriks Fenson, that you've presented as an evidence against my position the quotation from Josephus, where you allege that James, the brother of our

01:25:22

Lord, was thrown off the parapet of a temple, and that he was in his 80s when this took place, in the 60s, demonstrating that James could not have been the literal offspring of Mary?

01:25:34

Do you still make the assertion that Josephus made that statement, and if so, have you been able to track it down?

01:25:43

I have to be honest and say that since that was a number of years ago, I don't remember the specific reference.

01:25:49

I do recall reading in Josephus' book that, yes, the person that is referred to as James, the brother, again, leaving the question as to what sense the word brother is being used here, the brother of our

01:26:02

Lord was thrown off a parapet of the temple by a Jewish mob who was angry at him for being a

01:26:08

Christian leader, and this occurred in the year 62 AD. And that he was an aged man. Beg your pardon?

01:26:14

And that he was an aged man in his 80s. Yes. I don't know whether Josephus is the one who makes the statement that he is in his 80s in that passage.

01:26:20

I only remember him referring to him being thrown off, and what I may have been doing there was making a synthesis between that statement and other information we have about James in some other writer, perhaps, or another passage, perhaps, in Josephus that mentions that he's in his 80s.

01:26:33

But my point was that if we know that Jesus is the firstborn, as you yourself say, then

01:26:39

Mary could not have had children BC who are, in other words, brothers of Jesus, such as James, could not be children of Mary, or it would have made

01:26:48

Christ no longer the firstborn. But though you promised to look it up, you did not do so? I don't recall promising to look it up, but I'm happy to do so now that you've reminded me.

01:26:55

In fact, I have the quotation. Well, you should have reminded me since then. Actually, I believe

01:27:03

Dr. Svensson has. In 1992, you made this statement. In regards to Luke 134, how can this be since I am a virgin?

01:27:11

You said that these words mean, this is my vocation, that's why I'm called to be. She had taken a vow of virginity.

01:27:17

Tradition tells us, although the Bible doesn't show it clearly enough, she had taken a vow of virginity in her youth to dedicate herself to God.

01:27:24

She was giving something up, you see. She loved God so much she was happy just being his spouse.

01:27:29

And so what she's saying to the angel is, how can I be the mother of Messiah when I am under a vow not to be the mother of anyone?

01:27:36

I am a virgin. That is my consecrated state in life. The question makes no sense in any other way. Do you still hold that position? I hold the position that Mary's words in St.

01:27:44

Luke chapter 1 show that she is called to a life of special virginity. I never made the insinuation that you're making that Luke 1 is a teaching that she took a vow.

01:27:55

I'm simply saying, why would someone say I cannot give up my virginity unless they had obviously taken such a vow?

01:28:01

Well, are you saying you have not said tradition tells us, although the Bible doesn't show it clearly enough, she had taken a vow of virginity?

01:28:07

That's the point I'm making now. Of course, tradition tells us that Mary was a virgin in her entire life because that had been her resolve from a young age.

01:28:16

But it's not my contention, because of any Catholic apology, that the passage refers to the vow, even explicitly or implicitly.

01:28:24

Well, could you properly interpret the passage without that tradition? My point is that you cannot interpret the passage without asserting that Mary is perplexed how she can ever be a mother without giving up a virginity she intends to live her entire life.

01:28:39

The idea of a vow, some formal ceremony, is not required by the passage now. It's not my contention.

01:28:44

You made the assertion that the present tense that is used there is somehow in reference specifically to...

01:28:55

The present tense is ongoing and sort of a futuristic element to it. Why can't you take that as a simple present tense and do the fact of the state of the betrothal and the fact that she was not yet married to Joseph, she could not at that point in time conceive because she was not having relations?

01:29:11

Because that makes hash of the grammar. The angel says, you will conceive. He's not saying you're going to conceive this instant.

01:29:20

He's saying you will conceive. And for Mary to say... So you throw us off down the road? Sorry? So you say, you will conceive has to throw us way down into the future someplace beyond the point where Mary would have been married to Joseph.

01:29:32

There's nothing in the angel's words, if you want to stick to the text of the scripture, which you seem to want me to do, that says,

01:29:38

I am offering you right now a conception at this moment. There's nothing that indicates this is going to be instantaneous. Where is there anything the text that says it's down the road far enough that it would cause a problem with her saying,

01:29:47

I am not now currently married? That's not my point. Okay. All right. Who in the second century gives evidence of this tradition that you claim indicates that Mary had taken a vow of perpetual virginity?

01:30:02

Why are we restricted to the second century, for example? I'm just asking for names. If you say it's a tradition,

01:30:07

I would assume that you can trace it meaningfully back to the sources that would have provided it.

01:30:13

So I was just wondering who in the second century believed this tradition that your entire position on Luke 134 is based upon?

01:30:21

No. My entire position is not based upon the presence of a vow. My entire position is based upon the fact that Mary is saying, how can

01:30:29

I, a virgin, ever become a mother?

01:30:36

If that was a godly virgin who is not engaging in sexual relations, she says,

01:30:41

I do not know a man. I am not now in a position to know a man, and she was not yet ready to be married to Joseph.

01:30:49

Why is that not the clear, natural meaning of the text that does not require the insertion of a tradition that I'm asking you to show us where it appeared in history?

01:30:59

Because then there would be no question. If the angel were simply saying, look, you're an engaged woman.

01:31:05

You're going to be married to Joseph. You're going to have natural sexual relations with him. And as a result of that, a child is going to be produced.

01:31:13

Why would there be a need for a question? Well, the whole point, you're answering a question with a question.

01:31:18

I'm not going to do that. Can you give anybody in second or third century, sir? Again, I know several people in the early church who taught that she'd taken a vow,

01:31:29

St. Gregory of Nyssa, Ambrose, Augustine, but they don't satisfy your sort of arbitrary insistence that they be second century men.

01:31:36

So these are second or third century. This concept develops around the same time as a number of the

01:31:41

Marian dogmas do a little bit later on that. It's not something you can find in Irenaeus or anyone like that, right?

01:31:49

I do not know who the first person is who mentions the possibility that Mary's personal virginity was as a result of a vow.

01:32:00

And I cannot give you an exact date for that. That's not required by my position. One last question.

01:32:06

Are you aware that Tichelli's article has been thoroughly responded to? By? We will now have questions from Mr.

01:32:19

Menendez to Dr. White. Dr. White, this is a rhetorical question, but I want you to answer it anyway.

01:32:26

You do understand, don't you, as a debater and I think a skilled one, if you don't mind my complimenting you, that the concept of burden of proof.

01:32:35

Most certainly do. Thank you. And you do understand that the purpose of this debate, the thesis we both agreed to discuss tonight was the proposition that the

01:32:45

Bible teaches that Mary had other children after Jesus. That's why I've crafted my opening statement the way that I did.

01:32:52

Yes, sir. Well, I know why you crafted the way you did, but I guess my question is, you do agree that Mary is presented to us in the opening scenes in which she first appears in scripture as a virgin and she's spoken of as a virgin.

01:33:05

That is not even a point of dispute in this debate. Exactly. I'm trying to establish the commonality of our ground.

01:33:12

Therefore, for you to satisfy your obligation to shoulder the burden of proof, to end up where you need to be by the end of the debate, that Mary has ceased to be a virgin, can you provide for this audience or for me, anyone, any one passage of scripture that speaks of Mary as losing her virginity or as becoming a mother?

01:33:37

Yes, sir. I did that, I think to the satisfaction of any person who allows the text to speak for themselves by demonstrating the existence not only of the brothers and sisters of Jesus in Matthew chapter 13, the sisters, by the way, still being with the

01:33:50

Jews who were making mention of this, that is they had married into those families, but I also demonstrated from numerous other passages demonstrating that you have to utilize the most unnatural possible meaning of each and every one of those passages to escape the logic that was demonstrated in my first statement, seemingly you still do not understand about Peter's mother -in -law.

01:34:09

Let's... Words carry meanings and if those people are Jesus's brothers and sisters, then you do not have to have a word that says

01:34:18

Mary ceased to be a virgin at such and such a time in such and such a place. So your contention then is that the moment

01:34:24

I come up against a verse that mentions the brothers and sisters of Jesus, my only option as someone faithful to the text, as you put it, is to conclude that these are siblings.

01:34:34

No, no, my assertion has been that when you take the entirety of the text, you do not have an overriding dogma that tells you what you must see in the text, which you have in the perpetual virginity of Mary.

01:34:44

I'm not asking you to comment on the writing dogma. What I'm asking you, Dr. White, to comment on... Yes, you are. No, I'm not. Listen to what

01:34:50

I am asking you. I'm asking you, do you agree, will you acknowledge that the

01:34:55

Bible uses the word brother, the Greek word adelphos, in the

01:35:01

Bible to refer to people that are clearly not siblings? Abraham, Lot, Jacob, and Laban.

01:35:08

No, sir, not in the testament. Well, I believe... Do you accept the inspiration of the Old Testament? Talk about a red herring.

01:35:13

Of course I do, but I also accept the scholarly recognition that you define terms as they are used within a writer.

01:35:20

You will not be able to demonstrate to me the use of adelphos by Matthew in the way that your dogma insists it must be taken.

01:35:26

You will not be able to show me a use by Luke of adelphos in the fashion that you insist, and I would challenge you in your closing statements to prove me wrong.

01:35:33

So your contention then... And you cannot do so. Your contention then is that St. John is teaching that the parents of Mary had two daughters and named them both

01:35:46

Mary. Of course not, as seemingly you have not ever taken the time to examine the exegetical issues regarding the four women, because if you had, and I happen to know having listened very carefully to your debate with Eric Svensson, that it's been explained to you very clearly before, that he demonstrates, and it is discussed, if you have not taken the time to read it, there's an entire section.

01:36:08

I haven't. Okay, then there's no excuse for misrepresenting this, because then you know without any question that the viewpoint that sees four women there is the only way that you can avoid saying that there are two

01:36:21

Marys here that are daughters of the same people. All right, so your position before us this evening then is that the

01:36:28

Bible does not say that Mary had a sister named Mary. Is that... Yes or no? Of course. Okay.

01:36:34

Are you aware, Dr. White, of any early councils in the church that taught that Mary had other children?

01:36:42

No. Are you aware of any councils, any dogmatic definitions put out by...

01:36:52

Are you aware that there are... Do you admit that there are councils that met and condemned the idea that Mary had other children? No question about it.

01:36:58

Okay, thank you. Isn't it true... Let's move on to the people that you would perhaps find more authoritative than early church fathers.

01:37:05

Isn't it true, Dr. White, that Martin Luther, who affirmed the same principle as you do, of sola scriptura, scripture alone, taught that the

01:37:14

Bible teaches the perpetual virginity of Mary, looking at these same passages that we're looking at this evening? Well, no, I don't believe that Martin Luther had any knowledge of who, and I don't believe that he had any opportunity of engaging in any of these issues, but he most certainly did, and that's why

01:37:27

I don't believe in the infallibility of Martin Luther, and I realize that you don't. But you somehow do believe, it seems, in the infallibility of your interpretation of scripture, thanks to advances...

01:37:35

That's a red herring, sir. That is one of the misrepresentations you've been accusing me of. So you admit then that your interpretation of these passages could be wrong.

01:37:48

Any human being who would say otherwise is not operating with a full set of french fries. But the

01:37:55

Bible does, of course, speak of the church as the pillar and foundation of the truth. Yes, pillar and foundation holds up the truth.

01:38:01

It does not define the truth. It does not hold the truth in slavery. It serves the truth. That's the function. But certainly the church that's the pillar and foundation of truth would be able to arrive at an accurate understanding of what the passage means, a promise that's not made to the individual.

01:38:14

A promise not made to the individual. There certainly is promises made to the individual in the church's collection of individuals, and you must, in every single instance, hold the teaching of anyone to the higher authority of scripture.

01:38:25

But I thought that you had complained that I somehow was hijacking the debate by dragging off into those other issues when

01:38:32

I was simply explaining why it is that Rome can define, can interpret these passages that are so plain in a way that is completely contrary to the normal meaning of the words.

01:38:41

But it seems to me then that your position requires you to believe that when Luther said, quote, Christ was the only son of Mary and the

01:38:48

Virgin Mary bore no children besides him, I am inclined to agree with those who declare that brothers really means cousins here for holy writ, and the

01:38:54

Jews always call cousins brothers, that Luther was not interested in the plain meaning of scripture. No, I would believe that Luther did not have the opportunity of doing the study that has left, less led the vast majority of the papal biblical commission to no longer believe what you just quoted themselves.

01:39:09

As you are well aware, a large number of Roman Catholic scholars could be cited who likewise would say cousin is not even a possibility at that particular point, and those are individuals that the

01:39:20

Pope has placed on the biblical commission. My point is that I am not enslaved to anything that Martin Luther said.

01:39:27

I'm not asking him to buy the scriptures in the same way I'd ask anyone else. That's not my point. Is it not a fact that John Calvin, the great

01:39:34

Protestant reformer, the founder of that school of thought to which you would hear Calvinism, also taught that the

01:39:41

Bible clearly teaches that Mary was perpetually a virgin and said, in fact, quote, Helvidius, the man that Saint Jerome wrote the definitive proof of the perpetual virginity of Mary against, he says, quote,

01:39:53

Helvidius displayed excessive ignorance in concluding that Mary must have had many sons because Christ's brothers are sometimes mentioned.

01:40:01

He says on Matthew 125, the passage you referred to, the inference that he, Helvidius, drew from it was that Mary remained a virgin no longer than till her first birth, and that afterwards she had other children by her husband.

01:40:11

No just and well -grounded inference can be drawn from these words as to what took place after the birth of Christ. What took place afterwards, the historian does not inform us.

01:40:19

No man will obstinately keep up the argument except from an extreme fondness for disputation. If Calvin were here tonight, as if Luther were here tonight, would he not, extrapolating from this, accuse you of, quote, excessive ignorance and, quote, an extreme fondness for disputation?

01:40:33

Is that not a fact? Because he was a sound exegete, he would be very appreciative of the information regarding the fact that you cannot show us a single use of who by Matthew that falls into the category that you use.

01:40:43

Oh no it has to be. And in fact, I'm going to finish this because you took the time to read long quotes, and in fact he would be very appreciative of that information and he would recognize the need for the continuance of the study of the text to come to new conclusions about it, just as you,

01:40:57

I think, are grossly inconsistent if you, for example, utilize Granville Sharpe's rule in defending the deity of Christ, Titus 2 .13

01:41:04

and 2 Peter 1 .1, which I believe you would believe in the use of Granville Sharpe's rule, and you would defend the deity of Christ on the basis of that, that rule was not formulated until the end of the 18th century.

01:41:16

It was not even published until the late 1700s. Now, if someone were to argue that that somehow...

01:41:22

Can I get on to my next question, please? Thank you. Well, you seemingly don't want to hear why Calvin would not accuse me...

01:41:27

I understand your point. Your point is that somehow the true meaning of a verse can only perhaps be come to light and be definitively established thanks to advances in Greek scholarship.

01:41:39

No, sir, that is not my point at all. My point is that if, unless you are going to sit here this evening and say that Titus 2 .13

01:41:45

and 2 Peter 1 .1 should not be translated our great God and Savior and overthrow all of current Catholic biblical scholarship in the process, then you are being grossly inconsistent because that rule did not exist in the days of Calvin and Luther and they would have embraced it.

01:41:59

Do you reject Granville Sharpe's rule? I don't reject it, but it's a fallacy, a logical fallacy to say that because a rule didn't achieve some articulation until a certain point in time, that the truth that those verses express was therefore somehow up for grabs or in jeopardy in question.

01:42:15

You never said that it was, but the clarity of those passages has been made much clearer by that study.

01:42:21

Of course, and that is exactly what you are required to defend, therefore, to say that there was a clarity of these passages that somehow

01:42:30

Luther didn't see, Calvin didn't see, Zwingli didn't see, Heinrich Bulliger didn't see,

01:42:37

John Wesley didn't see, but you see it now because of advances in Greek scholarship. And I'm just questioning,

01:42:43

Dr. White, whether you're even open to the possibility that the truth of those passages, the true interpretation of those passages, is something that God expected people to be responsible for in the 1500s and the 1600s and the 1500s without Granville Sharp and other rules that arrive later on.

01:43:02

Is that a question or are you just preaching? No, that's a question. Okay, I'm going to answer the question then, and the point is that yes, everyone was responsible for studying the

01:43:10

Word of God, but not everyone was able to engage every issue that is there. They continued to hold traditions that were theirs.

01:43:15

It is our job to continue to hold even them to the higher standard of the Word of God. The Word of God has never taught this doctrine, and if you're telling us that in looking at these passages, they should have seen the clarity of Exodus, of Ezekiel 44.

01:43:28

They should have seen the clarity of analogies and allegories and things like that. I would say to you the clear meaning of the text of Scripture has already been explicitly laid out here, and there has been no refutation of what those passages actually say.

01:43:40

No, there is an option. What we've been contending all along is there is an option when we come to a particular verse like this to take it in a strict sense, for example, brother in a sense meaning a sibling, or a broader sense, and you're saying, no, you cannot take it in the broader sense.

01:43:56

You can only take it in one sense. Well, if you would offer to me, no, actually, it's the Roman Catholic who says that you cannot take it in any other sense that would disprove the perpetual virginity of Mary, but if you could give me some references where Adelphos is used in that way in the

01:44:11

New Testament. This is my time of cross -examination. I didn't think we'd hear this. You made the point several times that the teaching of the perpetual virginity of Mary that comes to expression in works like the

01:44:22

Odes and Psalms of Solomon, the Purdo Evangelium of James, and so forth, that these are all Gnostic works. Can you cite for this audience, please, one editor of these apocryphal works that says that all of these works are

01:44:35

Gnostic? For example, what is your authority for saying that the Odes and Psalms of Solomon is a

01:44:40

Gnostic work? It is a Gnostic work because it gives clear evidence of dualism, and in that particular instance, it's called

01:44:48

Valentinian Gnosticism. Really?

01:44:54

The Odes and Psalms of Solomon are written by Valentinian, you're saying? No, I'm saying that these texts give evidence of Gnostic beliefs, such as dualism, that was very clearly seen in what developed in Valentinus, what developed in Marcion, things like that.

01:45:09

I did not bring my pseudepigrapher with me, I did not bring references to the

01:45:14

Gnostic Gospels. They are, however, referenced, I believe Ludwig Ott discusses them in his...

01:45:19

Certainly there are Gnostic Gospels, this is not the issue. The issue is you dismissed, before this audience, all first -century and early second -century documents which provide some allusion to what the

01:45:32

Catholic would contend is a historical reality, that Mary was perpetually a virgin, and said all of these can be dismissed because they're all

01:45:39

Gnostic works, and I'm asking you to give us any evidence of that. I mentioned three works that are recognized by every single scholar that I know of as being tinged.

01:45:48

Name one scholar who argues that the Odes and Psalms of Solomon is a Gnostic work, just name one.

01:45:54

Every single person who's looked at, okay. Any Church of... Chadwick. Which Chadwick?

01:46:01

The author of the early Church, Henry Chadwick. Okay. How about it? And he teaches that the Odes and Psalms of Solomon is a

01:46:06

Gnostic work. Recognizes them as being proto -Gnostic in their form, yes. Well, I'd like to see the evidence for that, because the

01:46:13

Odes and Psalms of Solomon was... I came here to debate the issue of... I understand, but therefore you can't make dismissive, disqualifying statements about literature, which the consensus is was written by a

01:46:26

Jewish Christian prior to 70 AD, and say this is a work of a Gnostic. Which one was that written by a Jewish Christian prior to 70

01:46:32

AD? The Odes and Psalms of Solomon. I see. So we do have early works then that, although they are not inspired, and the

01:46:41

Catholic Church doesn't claim that they're inspired, give evidence of an early belief that Mary was a perpetual virgin.

01:46:48

You were asking me earlier... If you want to buy those as your source, I will more than happily give them to you and invite everyone to go read them.

01:46:56

And I would say that... Because are these not the same sources where Jesus creates little birds and makes them fly away?

01:47:02

The same sources that say that Jesus struck people dead when they broke the rules of games that they were playing? The Odes and Psalms of Solomon, you're saying?

01:47:10

I was referring to the Ascension of Isaiah... Well, I'm not... I'm not... I'm not quoting the Ascension of Isaiah in favor of...

01:47:17

I'm quoting what I specifically gave as references. You made the... you made... The Ascension of Isaiah, chapter 11, verses 8 through 14...

01:47:24

You made... And the Proto -Evangelium... You made reference to the Odes and Psalms of Solomon. And the Proto -Evangelium of James and the other.

01:47:30

Let's stick with the issue there. We will now have closing statements. Following that, we will have questions from the audience.

01:47:37

If you need paper to write your questions, there is paper up here and also in the back, and there are some pens in the back.

01:47:46

We'll start with a closing statement from Dr. White. This evening, as I predicted, we have seen two very different presentations.

01:48:01

One has given you a number of biblical references, has discussed them within their native context, has allowed you to listen to the words and define the words within their contextual meaning.

01:48:14

The other has asked you in each and every instance to take the most unusual meaning possible, and then on the basis of these hoped -for probabilities, create, remember folks, a dogma.

01:48:28

Not a suggestion, not we might take it in another way, but a dogma that you must believe.

01:48:35

You cannot reject it and remain in good faith within the Roman Catholic community. Obviously, when we consider this particular issue, we recognize the overriding authority of the

01:48:47

Church of Rome in the interpretive method that has been demonstrated to us this evening.

01:48:52

Can anyone seriously suggest that a gate in a vision in Ezekiel is a solid foundation for a dogma when

01:49:01

Matthew 13 talks about, are not his mother and father and brothers and sisters known to us, is somehow not clear enough to tell us what those words mean.

01:49:13

Remember, Rome tells us, we don't know what those words mean. Might be cousin, it might be near kinsman, we don't know.

01:49:19

Yes, we do know, and Mr. Matitix, though he has assiduously avoided doing this, knows that he cannot give you, and he will not give you, any references in the writings of the

01:49:31

New Testament writers themselves where Adolfo functions in that way.

01:49:36

He has misunderstood the entirety of the issue about the number of women at the foot of the cross, evidently has not interacted with that material and has misrepresented it, but that's the one reference that he tries to give.

01:49:47

Other than the disputed references, can he show us where Matthew or Luke or any of these writers use

01:49:54

Adolfo in this way? He cannot and he will not. The same is true of Heosu.

01:50:00

I would very strongly encourage you, please take this tape, listen to it again slowly, transcribe it if you need to, check the facts.

01:50:10

Sometimes we get talking a little bit too quickly, and so both of us are fallible men, but check the facts yourself.

01:50:20

Look things up. Go get Ron Tiselli's article on Heosu, compare it with Eric Svensson's presentation.

01:50:26

It's not even close. The idea that it's been blown away is absolutely ridiculous, and you know the easiest way to do that?

01:50:34

You know, if it was really blown away, what do you do? Walk up here and give us an example. Walk up here and give us examples in the writing of Matthew.

01:50:45

He's got plenty of references. I have all the references to Heosu right here on my table. Give us an example.

01:50:50

That's not going to happen. You know why? Because it can't be done. That would be the easiest way to win the debate. Simple meanings of words, natural context.

01:51:02

We've seen very clearly the vast difference, and we've heard absolutely no meaningful basis provided at all to believe that as a dogma, you as a

01:51:13

Christian believer must believe in this dogma and what's all the rest of it.

01:51:19

We were told that I somehow was trying to bring up red herrings. I demonstrated why

01:51:26

I talked about sola ecclesia. It's the explanation as to why Rome could look at these clear passages and come up with a meaning that has no connection whatsoever with the context.

01:51:38

Why a vow of virginity could be read into Luke 134 and all the rest of these kinds of things.

01:51:45

What do we see this evening? We see a man -made tradition that grew up over the history of the church, and there are many others of them.

01:51:55

Bodily assumption, immaculate conception, papal infallibility, and we see it being forced into the text of scripture.

01:52:05

And what allows someone to do that? A denial of sola scriptura. The man who sits to my right is the first person who ever challenged me to a debate.

01:52:15

He called me on the phone. The first debate we did, guess what was on? Sola scriptura, Long Beach, August 1990.

01:52:23

We've debated that subject many times before, and debating the Marian dogmas demonstrates what happens when it's not the text of scripture from which we derive our truth, but we get our truth from an infallible bishop and councils, and then we read it into the text of scripture.

01:52:43

That's what happens with Mary. That's what happens with the mass, purgatory, papal infallibility. This explains all of it, folks, and it's why we as believers must believe in sola scriptura.

01:52:54

Thank you very much. We'll now have a closing statement from Mr.

01:53:03

Matitix. I want to remind you again of what

01:53:14

I said to Dr. White earlier about burden of proof. The topic of debate tonight was not can

01:53:21

Catholics come up with sufficient biblical support for the assumption of Mary or the primacy of the

01:53:28

Pope or whether there are other rules of faith alongside sacred scripture, although scripture, as we've done in our debates, certainly points to a tradition that we must hold fast to alongside the written word of God.

01:53:39

St. Paul talks about it in 2 Thessalonians 2 .15, the pillar and foundation of the truth, and so forth.

01:53:45

Those are not the topics of debate. The topic of debate tonight is does the Bible clearly teach that Mary had other children and therefore lost the virginity which the

01:53:55

Bible itself shows her as possessing when she first comes on the scene. And despite,

01:54:01

I think, a very valiant effort on the part of Dr. White, and I think a very sophisticated one, he has not succeeded in shouldering that burden of proof for the following reasons.

01:54:13

Number one, the perpetual virginity of Mary is something that the

01:54:21

Old Testament foreshadows. Now, no one has argued, and I did not argue tonight, that Ezekiel 44 is the foundation for this idea that we read that we just know that Mary's going to be a virgin her entire life.

01:54:37

I never claimed that. Types, by definition, are only suggestive. Even prophecies are suggestive and often not clear in their meaning until they are fulfilled in the

01:54:46

New Covenant. Even the New Covenant, by the inspired statement of Scripture itself, has words that are sometimes hard to understand.

01:54:55

Does not St. Peter warn us about this in 2 Peter 3, verse 16? He says, the writings of St.

01:55:01

Paul, like other scriptures, contain things that are hard to understand which the ignorant and unstable can twist as they do the other scriptures to their own destruction.

01:55:08

Is it possible for an individual to read a Bible verse and say, I don't think it's teaching something that, in fact, it is teaching?

01:55:16

Yes, if you are a Bible -believing Christian, you have to admit that is possible, because St.

01:55:22

Peter, inspired by the Holy Ghost, tells us that it's possible. What I have been trying to do tonight is to show you that, in the light of these

01:55:30

Old Testament types and prophecies, when we come to the New Testament passages, which we admit that, by themselves, can be read in more than one possible sense.

01:55:41

No one denies that. I'm not saying, no, the word Adelphos cannot mean sibling. Of course it can, by itself, per se.

01:55:48

The question is, is the language of any of these passages that St. Paul makes, or St.

01:55:55

Matthew, or St. Luke, rather, sorry, I shouldn't have said St. Paul there, any of the Gospel writers, does any of these require not just the

01:56:04

Protestant interpretation, but the one Protestant interpretation that Dr. White says you must gain tonight?

01:56:11

And the answer is clearly no. The proof of that is the fact that Protestant Reformers, such as Martin Luther, John Calvin, Ulrich Zwingli, Heinrich Bollinger, and many others,

01:56:22

John Wesley, read the same passages that Dr. White did, and does, and said these do not refute the constant teaching of Christians that Mary was a virgin her entire life.

01:56:37

Even Dr. White admitted that Basil of Caesarea, although he made a technical distinction, said it's not a dogma, of course.

01:56:45

Dogmas come to be dogmatically defined in the course of time. Every Catholic agrees that transplantation was not a dogma until it was defined as such, but the concept behind it was part and parcel of the faith of Christians before it was solemnly defined in a scientific way.

01:57:02

The fact is the perpetual virginity of Mary is articulated in the first century by the Odes and Psalms of Solomon, in the second century by other documents, and by church fathers, and no church father ever denies it.

01:57:15

And that is why, on the basis of fidelity to the teaching of Scripture, and the teaching of the constant teaching of the church fathers, and all the councils that speak of this issue, which

01:57:24

Dr. White admitted no council taught the contrary, even Protestant reformers said, this is what we must believe.

01:57:31

But we don't have to fall for the trap that says, oh, but modern scholars with their modern Greek clearly overthrow this, because the fact is, ladies and gentlemen, that even modern

01:57:40

Protestant commentators, like Robert Gundry, who's written perhaps the most massive commentary on Matthew that an average little pundit has produced, admits that Matthew 125, the word until, does not require us to believe that they had relations afterwards.

01:57:53

And I could cite Greek lexicons. I encourage you to do what Dr. White said. Get hold of Greek lexicons,

01:57:59

Greek concordances, and you will find that none of them say that heos means one thing, but heos who means something else.

01:58:05

They will show you that there's the same range of meaning between the two of them. You can check

01:58:10

Greek lexicons, Greek concordances, and all the technical tools that Dr. White uses and that I use in our exegesis of Scripture, and none of them support

01:58:20

Dr. White's contention that you cannot believe what Christians have believed for 2 ,000 years. Dr.

01:58:25

White, therefore, has not given you an overwhelming proof that overturns 2 ,000 years of Christian consensus that Mary remained a virgin her entire life.

01:58:36

He has given you no Bible verses which require you to believe, no verses that mention the children of Mary, no verses that say the brothers of Jesus are the children of Mary, as opposed to Kinsman.

01:58:47

We don't see a mention of other children when they come back on the flight to Egypt, when they find our

01:58:52

Lord in the temple, and when he's 12 years old. You'd expect, if they're having this normal sexual relationship, where are the other children mentioned in these stories?

01:59:00

They're not there, and that is why you should hold fast to the constant teaching that Mary was a virgin her entire life.

01:59:06

There's nothing in Scripture against it. Thank you very much. If you have questions, please bring them to the front as expeditiously as possible.

01:59:27

We'll conclude with questions for each speaker. We'll have several of them, and we'll start with Dr.

01:59:36

White. Dr. White, who was Mary the wife of Cleopas?

01:59:43

Is there a reference given to that? The reference about the four Marys? Yeah, it's

01:59:53

Matthew chapter 27. I'm afraid it was introduced in such a way that it was very confusing right off the bat.

02:00:01

The question is, as you look at the women who are at the foot of the of verse 56, and you have

02:00:15

Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mothers of...

02:00:23

Is that the right passage? Yes, that's one of them. I don't think that's the specific one that we're looking at.

02:00:30

Yes, that's the one in Matthew. Oh, okay. She was the wife of Cleopas.

02:00:36

I mean, I'm not sure what the question is meant to be asking other than if it's asking... The question is in regard to the discussion about her being the sister and having the...

02:00:51

Yeah, I guess the issue is you can break it down, and here's the passages.

02:01:00

For those who want something fuller than two minutes is going to get you. Who is my mother? Page 95 and following even gives you charts breakdown of Matthew 25 -56,

02:01:10

Mark 15 -40, and John 19 -25. Puts them in parallel and breaks them down into the possibilities of how you can identify each individual.

02:01:19

You can see Mary Magdalene. You can see mother Mary of James and Joseph. You have also here his mention of Mary, the mother of James, the younger, and Joseph's in Mark's account is almost certainly be acquainted with Mary, the mother of James and Joseph.

02:01:36

If you put them in parallel, and there's just no way to do this in a brief time without an overhead, you can put them across one another.

02:01:43

It seems when you do that, that Mary, the wife of Cleopas, John 19 -25, Mary, the mother of Zebedee's sons, is identified in Mark 15 -40 as Salome, that that's the parallel that should be drawn there.

02:01:59

Hence, the four women that you have in John 19 -25 is Jesus's mother, Jesus's mother's sister,

02:02:05

Mary, the wife of Cleopas, and Mary Magdalene. Those are the four that are mentioned when you put them in parallel between Matthew 27,

02:02:12

Mark 15, and John 19. Mr. Matitix, in 1 Corinthians 7 -5, Paul speaks of temporarily refraining from marital relations for fasting and prayer, but exhorts couples to return to normal married life lest Satan overcome them.

02:02:26

In the King James Version, this refraining is termed defrauding in the Vulgate Fradare.

02:02:33

Why do you insist that such abstinence is virtuous if done in the pursuit of maintaining virginity when

02:02:39

Scripture makes no such exception? 1 Corinthians 7 -15, did you say?

02:02:45

7 -5. Oh, 7 -5, sorry. I think you said... Well, I am glad the person brought up that very verse.

02:02:53

It says, defraud not one another except perhaps by consent for a time.

02:03:00

Obviously, what's going to happen here in the vast majority of cases is that people are going to, just as there's nothing wrong with eating food, and I resented the implication that the doctrine of Mary's perpetual virginity arose out of this idea that having children is somehow dirty, or that sex between children is dirty.

02:03:16

No one has a higher view of marriage and of the sexuality within marriage than the

02:03:22

Catholic Church, which teaches the sanctity of marriage so much so that it's an indissoluble union. It is

02:03:29

Protestantism that has desecrated marriage, not Catholicism. But one can give up the practice of something good like eating for the sake of a higher calling, for a time when we fast.

02:03:42

The fact is that there are many instances in the tradition of the time of people giving up marital relations, even for ongoing...

02:03:53

I have a whole article here showing that, for example, when

02:03:58

Moses... You know, all the Jews were called to fast abstaining from sexual relations for three days when

02:04:05

God came down to Mount Sinai, but the Jewish tradition was that Moses remained celibate the rest of his life because of his entering into this intimacy with God.

02:04:16

And we have instances of other people called to celibate lifestyles, the Nazarites, for example, in the Old Testament.

02:04:21

So the idea of someone living a celibate life out of complete devotion to God is not without precedent even under the

02:04:29

Old Covenant. For someone, and this is said about many of the prophets. So for Mary, who lives a kind of prophetic existence to aspire to a perpetual virginity, is not unheard of in the

02:04:45

Jewish world in which she was born. And so 1 Corinthians 7, 5 referred to the vast majority of us would indicate only an abstinence for a time.

02:04:52

But there is nothing unbiblical in Mary and Joseph deciding that they would live a life of perpetual celibacy in order to devote themselves to this unique presence of God Almighty in the flesh in their midst.

02:05:09

And Joseph, to look upon Mary's body as so sanctified by the presence that God Almighty himself lived in it that he would no more put it to a lesser use.

02:05:17

It's not that sex with Mary would have been dirty or sinful, but rather that her body would be derogated to a lesser calling just like you don't take the

02:05:27

Ark of the Covenant home on the weekend if you're the high priest and prop your feet up on it and use it as a coffee table or something.

02:05:32

It's been in contact with Almighty God and so to the special consecrated temple of Mary's body.

02:05:41

Dr. White, what is the importance of this subject to Catholics if you are correct and they are wrong?

02:05:52

Well, you know, obviously believing a tradition of men is not going to consign a person to the pits of hell.

02:06:01

The problem is that Rome has defined this as a dogma. It is not a probability.

02:06:07

It is not just one possibility of understanding it one way. This is a dogma and it is a de fide dogma.

02:06:14

It has been defined by the church and you cannot question that dogma and remain in true fellowship with the church.

02:06:19

So that does not mean that there are not many, many, many, many people, including leaders of the church, who do in fact question this belief and are not acted upon by the

02:06:30

Pope or anyone else and in fact end up as members of the papal biblical commission, all sorts of things like it.

02:06:36

But the fact remains that Rome has defined it and as such introduces not only destructive things like what we just heard.

02:06:45

Roman Catholic writers referred to the carnal commerce in regards to sexual relationship.

02:06:53

And it wasn't just an intimidation on my part. That is a term that has been used by Roman Catholic writers.

02:07:00

That kind of a perspective ends up leading to the binding of all sorts of unbiblical concepts and beliefs upon people's souls.

02:07:09

And if we love God's truth, then we want God's truth to be alone believed by God's people. And we want any tradition of man to be subject to the correction of scripture.

02:07:20

This is not a belief. There is no evidence that I could present to Mr. Matitix that could cause him to not believe this because fundamentally the question is the difference between the ultimate authority of the bishop of Rome and the interpretation of the text of scripture.

02:07:35

And so that's what I see as vitally important here is that what it goes to is the issue of the gospel in the sense of what is the binding authority of the gospel.

02:07:44

How do we know what the gospel is? We know what the gospel is either because God has given us his word and he preserves it and makes it alive in our hearts.

02:07:53

Or we embrace this concept of the necessity of some form of sacred tradition with a capital

02:07:58

S and a capital T and all the issues in regards to soul of scripture. And as I said, Jerry and I debated that.

02:08:03

That was the last subject of our debate in 1997 on Long Island.

02:08:10

And the tapes of that, I imagine Jerry makes them available and we do too. Mr. Matitix, you stated that it was abnormal to refer to the seat of a woman.

02:08:24

How would it be fair to say that that is an argument for the perpetual virginity of Mary when the children that Dr.

02:08:33

White describes would be the seat of Joseph? I'm not sure

02:08:40

I'm understanding the question, but my remark was not intended to refute anything

02:08:46

Dr. White had said. My remark was simply to point out that the phrase seat of the woman points forward to the fact that Mary will conceive virginally, something that Dr.

02:08:59

White and I both agree on. In other words, that the phrase that you usually see when talking about seed in scripture is the seed, it is the man that provides the seed.

02:09:08

And I'm saying that Genesis 3 .15, in which reference is made to the seat of the woman, is the first intimation we have in scripture that there is something supernatural that goes on in the incarnation.

02:09:21

That is that Christ comes into the world through a departure from the norm. Normally a man provides seed and that is how a child is begotten.

02:09:31

In this case, there is no male seed provided. There's this anomaly of the seat of the woman. And my point was simply that since we already have an anomaly here, something that is only possible by the supernatural intervention of God, it is arbitrary on Dr.

02:09:46

White's part, on the part of any Protestant, to say that's the only aspect of the incarnation that is abnormal.

02:09:53

After that, everything is just absolutely normal. Why not recognize that the entire event itself is sui generis, that is in a class by itself, and that if the conception is supernatural and departs from the norm, normally women don't get pregnant when they're virgins.

02:10:11

That the birth of Jesus could likewise be abnormal in the sense that she remains a virgin, as Isaiah 7 .14

02:10:19

explicitly teaches. Jerry, could I just, I think I understand what the question was asking.

02:10:25

I don't think that you do. I think what he was referring to, whoever it was, he or she,

02:10:30

I'm sorry ladies, I'm not politically correct at times. I think what they're asking was, you said it was to seed, not seeds.

02:10:38

You made a plural out of that. That's seemingly, my understanding, maybe I misunderstood you, maybe the writer was too, but my understanding was you were saying that because it's singular seed, that this is the only child

02:10:50

Mary had, and that she had other children that would have been seeds. That's how I understood what you were saying.

02:10:55

Is that not what you were saying? I was making two points. This question was only about the first point. This question did not say what is your argument for the virginity of Mary from Genesis 3 .15.

02:11:06

If that's what the person is asking, although this card says nothing about that, yes, my point was that the fact that the seed of the woman mentioned in Genesis 3 .15

02:11:14

is singular, and Saint Paul, inspired apostle that he is, draws our attention in Galatians 3 .16

02:11:21

that it is singular, and it's therefore Christ, and not a plurality of persons, that Mary only has a single seed,

02:11:29

Christ, and there's no mention in Genesis 3 .15 or Galatians 3 .16 of her having other children.

02:11:35

That would violate the very theological point that Saint Paul is making. That's a separate point, but I make that one too, sure.

02:11:41

Dr. White, there's a question for you on the same vein. Basically, it's asking for your take on the point of it being seed versus seeds.

02:11:53

The original question, as it was written, said why is that relevant in light of the fact that the other children that were born of Mary were not of the seed of Mary, they were of the seed of Joseph.

02:12:04

That's the whole point. No one would argue that Simon and Joseph and Judas were of the seed of the female.

02:12:14

They were begotten in the natural way that children are begotten. Therefore, the entire argument of it's not seeds, well, all

02:12:22

Paul's talking about is Christ. He's not addressing any of the rest of this. To drag that in is, to use the term that's been thrown out a lot, a complete red herring.

02:12:29

It's irrelevant. To say, well, because it's not seeds, then this proves the perpetual virginity of Mary.

02:12:35

The second point is exactly what the first question was asking. The seeds would be of Joseph, not of Mary, and hence that's completely and totally irrelevant as well.

02:12:44

Mr. Mandetix, Ezekiel 8 speaks of the north gate of the temple in reference to idolatry.

02:12:52

What in Ezekiel 44 makes you believe that the east gate refers to Mary? I think he's looking at 14 if you're looking for it.

02:13:11

Sorry? I see a reference to that in verse 14 if you're looking for it. Ezekiel 8 verse 14? At least

02:13:16

I see a reference to the north gate and abominations in verse 15. I think that's what he's...

02:13:24

Yeah, I don't see anything about the east gate in Ezekiel 8. I only see this reference to...

02:13:30

In Ezekiel 44, it has the east gate. Right. I think the person, I think the questioner is confusing two entirely different entities here.

02:13:40

In the earlier part of Ezekiel's book, Ezekiel is what we call an exilic prophet.

02:13:46

The prophets are divided into pre -exilic if they prophesied before the temple was destroyed by the

02:13:55

Babylonians in 586 BC because of its abominations and profanations. Those that prophesied during the time of the exile in Babylon and those that prophesied afterwards, post -exilic.

02:14:06

What we have happening in the early part of the book is Ezekiel being shown what was going on in the actual literal temple in Jerusalem.

02:14:16

He saw people bowing down towards the sun. He saw fertility worship. He saw all kinds of things that God said made his temple an abomination of desolation which is why his wrath was put out upon it and it was destroyed so that not one stone was left upon another.

02:14:31

The person is confusing this, talking about the actual temple and the sinful practices of the actual literal priest in that literal physical temple that resulted in the punishment of God.

02:14:41

With something that's happening in the last part of the book, we're talking about a mystical vision. In Ezekiel 40 -48,

02:14:48

Ezekiel is now being shown a temple that is totally pleasing to God, a temple that is holy and heavenly and that has no stain or compromise or anything in it that violates

02:15:03

God's holiness. And this temple God speaks of in glowing terms and we're showing all kinds of mystical aspects of this temple and the point

02:15:12

I was making is that this temple in Ezekiel 40 -48 has therefore all the connections that the temple image in the

02:15:19

Bible in general does when it's spoken of in positive terms. It's referring to the temple of our bodies sanctified by our entrance into the body of Christ which is called a temple.

02:15:29

Our Lord's body is called a temple but Mary's body since it contained Almighty God was also a temple and therefore in Ezekiel 44, the fact that this temple has as one of its features a gate that is shut that no man enters in by it and yet the prince shall enter by way of this shut gate and go out by the same way, this was seen as an intimation.

02:15:55

It's not a proof, no one's claiming it's a proof but it's an intimation which is all that we have in the

02:16:00

Old Testament that there would be a historical reality in the New Covenant of a woman the gate of whose temple would remain sealed and yet the

02:16:09

Messiah would enter to be conceived there and he would exit without violating the the intactness, the seal of that gate.

02:16:16

Dr. White, can you comment on the recent discovery of the James Ossuary and the term that is used for James the brother of Jesus on it?

02:16:27

Not really, I saw pictures and I heard, I've understood there has been articles written since then strongly questioning its authenticity.

02:16:39

I really have not been able to keep up with that particular issue. It is interesting that James was clearly known, he is mentioned as the brother of the

02:16:51

Christ in Josephus, nothing about him being thrown down from the temple or how old he was, anywhere in Josephus, but he was known in the early centuries there and it would not be shocking in any way given the importance of his role there but I do not claim any expertise in the current status of the examination of the

02:17:13

Ossuary. Mr. Matitix, you argued for a difference in Christ's body but you were referring to his post -resurrection body.

02:17:23

Are you arguing that he had a different type of body in terms of his incarnation prior to the resurrection?

02:17:34

Different from what? Passing through as light through glass.

02:17:41

Okay, I think I understand the question. Every Orthodox Christian believes that our

02:17:48

Lord's body underwent a tremendous transformation in the resurrection, that it went from being mortal to becoming immortal, it went from being passable that is able to suffer to being impassable and that and Christians look forward to receiving the same type of resurrection body because of their union with Christ in their resurrection.

02:18:08

They will have a body that likewise has all these extraordinary powers and properties it does not have. However, it would be, that's only half of the truth, it would be fallacious to say that our

02:18:18

Lord's body even before the transformation of the resurrection did not possess extraordinary powers.

02:18:25

It certainly was mortal, it was capable of suffering, he felt hunger and so on and so forth. It was like ours yet without sin the

02:18:33

Bible says and yet Christ clearly used his body to perform miracles.

02:18:39

It was an instrument that God could use to do extraordinary things and what church fathers have always taught is that Christ certainly would have the power even before the resurrection to do miraculous things with his body and the

02:18:52

Bible shows that happening. He walks on water for example, his body begins to radiate with a radiance like the sun on the man of transfiguration as recorded in Matthew 17.

02:19:02

So that was simply my point that you don't have to wait for the resurrection for Christ's body to have the power to do things that our bodies don't normally do like walking on water, healing people just by their coming in contact even with a garment that's touching his body and other things like that, you know, the transfiguration.

02:19:24

It has been a great pleasure to have our speakers with us this evening and appreciate your patience with some of the delays in getting started.

02:19:31

Sorry for getting you out this late. If you would like to be on our mailing list for future debates there's a signing sign up list on the table in the middle and each of our speakers has materials.

02:19:43

Dr. Weitz are on this side and Mr. Matatix are on this side. Please join me in thanking our speakers for being gracious enough to be with us this evening.