The Dividing Line July 31, 2008

In Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line. The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.

Our host is Dr. James White, Director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll free across the United States.

It's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is James White.

Books, Textual Criticism, and Codex Sinaiticus

Good afternoon, welcome to The Dividing Line on a Thursday afternoon. I'm trying to find an exploder here. Because it's the only one that will work on our phone system for some reason. Mozilla does not like our phone system.

It doesn't like the printer thing either, at least on my end it doesn't. But anyway, I thought I would start off today by mentioning a little something about some of the books that I'm reading these days.

Some people actually find that interesting. And as we are recording things now and posting it on the internet on YouTube, I will show you, those of you who take time to do that, this book just arrived, The Textual and Studies 3rd Series, Volume 6 from Houghton and Parker, Textual Variation, Theological and Social Tendencies?

Papers in the 5th Birmingham Colloquium on the Textual Criticism of the New Testament. My daughter almost went into seizures when I read her that. But some of the really interesting, I'm really looking forward to sitting down with Scribal Behavior in P66.

Some great little scans here and discussions of things like that. But I happened just a little while ago to be thumbing through, and Dirk Junkins has an article here with some rather humorous, it's not normal to find humor in textual critical papers at a symposium.

But there are some funny looking graphics in here. And here's one marked, Poor Old Scribe. And these are things that might be influencing the scribe's transcription. Shouldn't have had the beans yesterday.

I thought that Thomas Gospel was quite nice. Have to buy sandals. Finally, my favorite part of this book, and hallelujah. I had never actually seen anything like that in a scholarly paper on New Testament textual criticism before.

But yeah, that's going to be some interesting reading. And of course, I have two volumes here. If you buy books like this and you see Brill as the publisher, you know you spent at least three digits. And both of these were well over three digits, unfortunately.

Stays in the Textual Criticism of the New Testament, Bart Ehrman, of course, his scholarly papers. And then Eldon J. F.'s Perspectives on New Testament Textual Criticism, Collected Essays 1962 to 2004.

That one's only around 850 pages or so. And then we've got, this one's interesting, Scribal Habits of Codex Sinaiticus, which now is the rock star of all ancient books on the Internet, is Codex Sinaiticus.

Didn't see all the stuff about Codex Sinaiticus going live? Oh, goodness, yeah. The Sinaiticus website went live last week, and for the first couple days you couldn't get into the English site. So someone on the channel, I think it was a Turretin fan, had the brilliant idea of going to the German site, and it worked just fine.

Apparently I'm on it.

Well, it was discussed a good deal in the channel. Yeah, nothing to say to that one, did you? Nope, no, you got nothing to say to that at all. Yeah, Skyman says he's bought some Brill books. And if they turn out to be okay, if they turn out to be really good resources, then you feel good.

But if you get a Brill book and it turns out to be a lame duck and you look at how much you paid for it, you ain't feeling very Brill. No two ways about it. Bad stuff. Anyway, as I normally do in the mornings, as I think a lot of people are doing anymore, I almost never bother with any type of cable news or anything else in the morning at all.

I do my RSS feeds, and you scan the news headlines and stuff like that. And then I have all of my Christian ones and my anti-Christian ones and my Islamic ones and so on and so forth. And so I happened across Steve Ray's blog, which I have in the apologetics section, that is those who oppose the faith.

And I learned later in the day that, of course, Dave Armstrong, the chihuahua of Roman Catholic apologists, he just so much reminds me of one... What was that cartoon where you had the real big dog and then you had the little yippy dog who was just bouncing along next to him?

Hey, Spike! Hey, Spike! Remember him? I forget who that was. But the little yip-yip-yip-yip dog, that's Dave Armstrong, because he never does anything original on his own. He always borrows from somebody else.

So when Steve posts this video, it's not long before Dave Armstrong throws it up there. Oh, and I was going to put this up. For some reason, Firefox doesn't do the Control-T thing anymore either, at least on most of my systems.

That's because they're PCs, and I am starting to get unhappy with PCs, basically. But let me see here. Scroll down here. Yeah, here we go. He posts this video. We're going to listen to a little bit of it here in a moment.

Bishop James White's Sola Scriptura Inanities. Hilarious YouTube montage, which, as I said, had been posted before that by Jerusalem Jones. And then right after it, and it's at how far the mighty Bishop White has fallen.

It's just so pathetic. But then right below it, open forum. Listen to this. Open forum. Please try to interact with folks with courtesy and politeness as you would do if you were face-to-face. And that's right below the other one.

You just got to chuckle a lot at Dave Armstrong. He's something else. Anyways, they both put up this video that someone posted on YouTube, which once again begins with, I don't know how they're going to get this, but same thing, Dave Armstrong, blow up a big picture of me and show the top of my head or something.

I mean, that's always real deep, brilliant, wise type of thing, and very compelling argumentation.

Definitely.

I guess that's why I wear caps now, is because I don't want Dave Armstrong to do that anymore, I guess. Anyway, and what it is, is what you do is you take little snippets. And you don't worry about context or things like that.

You take a snippet, and you only take what you hope your audience of Roman Catholics will find compelling, as long as they don't understand what the debate was actually about. And so, let me just play a section for you.

By the way, if you want to find it on YouTube, you can search for, it's XYLKE-S, whatever XYLKE is or refers to, XYLKE -Sola Scriptura Truth Edit. And there's more to that title than might meet the eye.

Yes, they had to do some truth editing on this to put it together. There's no question about it. But let's listen to a snippet of this to get us started today.

I believe in Scriptura.

Now you can show the Catholic world how you arrive at this infallible certitude about Scripture using something outside of Scripture to get to it. That's your dilemma.

And I'm going to hold you to it before the end of the night.

Now that, of course, was from the 1993 debate with Patrick Madrid. And, of course, there are pictures. My picture is being edited and flipping around and doing things to keep your mind on the screen because this is all audio, basically, with, of course, the music in the background and things like that.

That sounds just wonderful. But anyways, and I would just respond as I did in the debate by pointing out to Mr. Madrid that to attempt to make the canon infallible on that level requires that you have an infallible church.

And when we ask Mr. Madrid upon what basis he has an infallible church, what does he go to? Well, you know, we have this argument for the infallibility of the church and that argument for the infallibility of the church.

And the point is he has to go outside of the church itself to prove his point. And so his argument isn't even consistent. It accomplishes nothing. All it does is move the question of ultimate authority one step backwards.

And as I've said many times, Roman Catholics, all you're doing is moving the line backwards and then using your foot to sort of smooth out the footprints. No one can see what you've done. And they stand there and smile as if you accomplished something.

Epistemologically, you've accomplished nothing at all. That is, he wants to say, well, you need an infallible source to define the canon for you. Well, I don't say that the canon's infallible. I say the scripture's infallible.

And I base my view of canonization, which Mr. Madrid did not understand in 1993, nor was it the subject of the debate specifically, but I base my view of the canon of the scripture on the promises of God and the extension of God's power to accomplish what his purposes in scripture are.

I do not base it upon an infallible church in any way, shape, or form. God may use means, but the means he uses do not themselves have to be infallible. But the very same argumentation that Mr. Madrid just used in that comment could then be turned upon his own argumentation itself.

That is, how do you know that Rome is infallible? Well, I don't care if you use Keating's spiral argument, which isn't really a spiral, it's circular, but spiral argument or anything else, you're always going to be going to outside sources to try to establish these things.

So on an epistemological level, it simply doesn't work, it doesn't accomplish the end that the questioner is attempting to use in the debate. So the only people that will find that kind of argumentation compelling are people that are not thinking deeply enough to understand what the issues are in the first place.

And I think that's why these things keep popping up, is that the people listening to these debates don't get how their position was reviewed. They just don't understand it. They're really not following what the debate is, and so they just pick some things out of their side set, and so on and so forth.

So then we had... Then we had... I've got a bunch of stuff queued up, because I want to respond to a couple of these things. The gerrymantics section, which of course was utilized for a long time by Phil Profosnick, who likewise put just a portion of the cross-sects up on the web, and see, James White admits that the apostles and Jesus did not follow social determinism, so why should we?

And they don't give you the whole thing, where you go, how, during periods of inscripturation, when the scriptura is being formed, through the process of revelation, could you hold to sola scriptura, because the scriptura doesn't exist yet.

Since the whole issue is that scripture is the sole infallible rule of faith for the church, then the question becomes, well, why would you even ask the question about unusual times of inscripturation, rather than the state of the church today, when both sides admit that there is no revelation taking place?

Once again, it is a means of getting around the issue, and anyone who thinks that's somehow a compelling argument, just doesn't understand what the issues are. So here's how it came out in the video.

He warned Timothy that evil men would be coming into the church. He warned Timothy that it was going to be difficult. And in Acts chapter 20, the apostle Paul warned the Ephesian elders that there would be those who would come up within the ranks of the eldership itself that would teach false doctrines.

I believe in sola scriptura.

It is not the scripture's fault that men like to have their ears tickled. In fact, the scriptures warn us that there will be those who are like the sailboats we saw out on the ocean today, blown about by every wind of doctrine.

I believe in sola scriptura.

Now, by the way, I'm glad that he's getting that stuff out there. I hope people will listen to it. Maybe they'll track down the debates and listen to the whole thing.

What is the truth about sola scriptura? Does the Bible really teach it? Did the apostles teach it? Did Jesus teach it?

I believe in sola scriptura. It's not because I'm not here.

The issues this evening are eternal. The issues this evening are vital. And I'm so thankful that you're here sharing this experience with us.

Did the people in Jesus' day practice sola scriptura?

The hearers of our Lord, yes or no?

I have said over and over and over again.

It's not because I'm not here.

That sola scriptura is a doctrine that speaks to the normative condition of the church, not to time and scripture.

So your answer is no.

That is exactly what I am saying to you.

It's no.

Did the apostles practice sola scriptura, Mr. White? Yes or no?

No.

Thank you. Did the successors to the apostles, Mr. White, practice sola scriptura?

Did Timothy only believe what Paul had written?

No.

Did he practice?

Again.

After the inscription of scripture.

Thank you, Mr. White.

So I'm glad to affirm everything you said.

Very good. So, Mr. White, you admit then that Jesus didn't practice sola scriptura.

I assert it.

His hearers do not, the apostles do not, and his successors do not. What do you mean?

That tradition to which he beholds has made many an error.

It's contradicted itself. Man, it's awfully hard to even listen to that with that techno in the background. I guess that sort of explains people aren't listening really carefully. Let me play for you portions of that.

I've got so much stuff queued up here that it's not even funny. So many things we can look at. And it looks like we've got, oh, it looks like a relevant question. Let me play this first. This is from the, no, that's not the one I want.

I want this one here. Here we go. Here is at least a portion. Of what you won't hear, Roman Catholics like this put the techno music, and I wouldn't want to put the techno music. Anyways, if you're going to put something like this, put the music at least you can think with.

And it isn't quite as loud as the people speaking, so you have to pick things out. Unless it's poor production. But anyways, this is my cross-examination. This is what came right before that section, my cross-examination of Jerry Medetich.

Let's see how well. Isn't it interesting? Jerry Medetich, they would use him today. Because Jerry Medetich isn't an Orthodox Roman Catholic anymore, and he used the very same kind of argumentation against them, but the Orthodox Catholic apologists won't debate him.

I mean, ask Chris Arnson. He's tried to get them all to go on the air with Jerry Medetich, and he can't get them to do it. Isn't that ironic? Well, anyway, let's listen to how that really went. Okay, Mr. Medetich, you've used two examples.

You talked about in 2 Thessalonians, he who restrains, Paul not mentioning what that is in 2 Thessalonians, and then you mentioned Paul preaching for three years in Ephesus. Where has the church infallibly defined what Paul meant in 2 Thessalonians concerning he who restrains, and how does your tradition give us the information from Paul's preaching in Ephesus that you say we somehow must have?

Now, just to catch you up, Jerry will present things, and he'll say, well, look, the apostles said a lot of things that are not in Scripture, which, of course, is a given. Both sides would agree with that.

And he gave as an example an interpretation of who the one restraining is. So wouldn't it be wonderful if we knew who that was? And then, I mean, Paul preached for three years in Ephesus. Here's the beginning of tradition.

These are the things that are passed down to us. Well, that's a real nice, convenient thing to say. But there's this little problem, and I didn't cue this one up, but as I asked Mitchell Pacwa in our debate in 1999, I said, Father Pacwa, is there anywhere where Rome has officially defined a single word that Christ or the apostles ever said outside of the New Testament?

And he honestly answered, well, no. So, you know, you hear these Roman Catholic apologists, well, just think of all the things that the apostles said and taught, and if all you have is sola scriptura, then you don't know these things.

But what is the implicit assertion in that kind of rhetoric? We do know these things, and we can tell you these things. But the fact of the matter is, as you're going to see, they can't tell you anything about it at all.

The Catholic Church, it is not taught by the Catholic Church, and therefore it will not be taught by me tonight, that the Church only passes on the tradition in dogmatic pronouncements. That is one way the Church passes on what Christ and the apostles taught.

It also passes it on in the liturgy. It also passes it on in a whole host of writings that come to us from the fathers that do not amount to solemn definitions. So I'll agree with you, Mr. White, but it's not injurious to my position that neither the Council of Trent nor any other council said, if any man denies that the restraint that St. Paul speaks of is this or that, let him be anathema.

There is no such dogmatic definition.

So then you do not have an infallible knowledge of what Paul refers to there, do you?

Are you asking, do I as an individual? Yes. I have not studied all the Church Fathers. I have not studied all that the liturgy contains. So I will admit that there are many things that have been passed on by the apostles to their successors, which can be found in the writings, that I have not yet personally discovered.

I've got a lifetime of study ahead of me.

So those alleged traditions that are passed on in regards to these very issues you brought up, you can't show us a theanoustos inspired of data or knowledge that would tell us what Paul meant or what Paul preached in Ephesus, can you?

On that particular point of the man of sin, no. I grant that I don't know everything that has been passed on.

Now remember, he's the one who brought up these examples. He's the one who presented them, not me. I'm not coming up with something that he hadn't presented or anything else. He presented these as part of his attack on Sola Scriptura.

And so when I say, all right, show us what these things are, now you can see he has no response.

That's something I'm admitting only because I have not read everything the Church Fathers taught. But I can give you several examples of things that...

And by the way, the Church Fathers would have taught all sorts of things about this. You can find all sorts of differing opinions on all of these kinds of things amongst the volumes and volumes of the writings of the early Church Fathers.

There is no unanimous consent on these types of issues.

See, Protestants do not believe it's clear in Scripture that Catholics do believe it's clearly passed on. The practice of infant baptism, for example, are there things in... That was taught by Christ and the Apostles.

Are there things in the tradition of the Church, things in the writings of the Father that are erroneous?

Individual Fathers can make individual statements that can and do. Err, of course.

And who determines when they're speaking the truth and when they don't?

Well, the Fathers have to be shown to be saying something that is taught by a consensus of the Fathers. If one Father is saying something idiosyncratic, then that could be erroneous. And finally, of course, when there is a dispute, when some theologians or some later Catholics might quote one Father and some might quote another, when it's necessary the Church can meet in a solemn council, just as they did in Jerusalem in Acts 15, and say, this opinion is that which was passed on by the Apostles, this opinion is idiosyncratic.

So the Church hierarchy determines what is and what is not apostolic tradition in the writings of the Fathers, ultimately.

The Apostles exercised a governing function in the Church, which they passed on to successors, as we see in the pastoral epistles.

Yes. You said that some early Fathers might teach something that's idiosyncratic. Historically, for example, the majority of the early Fathers, as we've discussed before, taught that Matthew 16, 18 is not in reference to Peter as the foundation of the Church.

Yet, a later council defined that as a dogmatic belief. How can you test the statement of the Vatican Council, that it's the ancient and historical and universal faith of the Church, on any basis whatsoever?

How can you test what the Church says to you as a Roman Catholic and still be faithful as a Roman Catholic? Now remember, given his position today, he can no longer answer as he answered that day. He has changed.

I'm exactly where I was that day. I would argue exactly as I did that day.

Well, you looked at, first of all, the basis. Because, contrary to another common misconception, the Church cannot pull a rabbit out of a hat. When the Church says, we're going to solemnly define what we have to believe about justification or baptism, what have you, there's always citation of Scripture.

No person in this room could fail to pick up the canons of the Council of Trent, for example, and not see in the footnotes that they quote Scripture copiously in support of the assertions they make. They can quote previous councils and previous Church Fathers, too.

But how can you test? Am I allowed to look at the citations at the bottom of the page and say, they were wrong?

Obviously, if they say something like, you know, John chapter 1 alludes to this or that, and, in fact, you look up the reference and it has nothing to do, it says nothing about Mary or baptism or wherever it is, then any reasonable person could say, wait a minute, there's some slip of the pen here or something.

But do I have the right as an individual priesthood-holding believer before God to look at Roman Catholic arguments and teachings based upon tradition and say their use of Scripture is wrong?

Well, I don't know what you mean...

Can I give you an example?

Yeah.

Matthew 16, 18 is a misuse of Jesus' words to Peter to establish the papacy. Am I wrong to say that, and if so, why?

You are wrong to say that. I don't know what you mean by, do you have the right, you certainly have the freedom to look at things and you have the freedom obviously...

And be right with God.

And you have the freedom to come to an erroneous conclusion. God grants us that freedom. We are free of sin.

How do you know it's an erroneous conclusion?

Simply because, ultimately as you say, yes, the Church is the pillar and foundation of the truth.

Sola Ecclesia! We all heard it coming, he just didn't want to say it. I mean, is that not clear? I'm watching people on the channel, they all saw that coming up. Here's Sola Ecclesia. The Church defines what is Scripture, what Scripture says.

The Church defines what is tradition, what tradition says. Sola Ecclesia, there is no way to test what Rome says infallibly. That's all there is to it. That's his ultimate authority. And Scripture is not equal to that authority.

Scripture cannot be interpreted outside of what that authority says Scripture says. If we can ever figure out what it says. What that infallible authority says about Scripture. So, anyway, very, very, very clear.

He just didn't want to go there.

It upholds the true teaching of the Word of God. And the Church Fathers, is there any... The Church Fathers, which did not make explicit the fact that this could have some application to Peter, do not exclude that possibility.

I think, again, many times, with all due respect, Protestant apologists sometimes say, because this Church Father doesn't say something about this verse, that a later one does, he would have been explicitly excluding it.

Let's just let people know, you and I have done an almost seven hour debate on that. They can get the tapes from either one of us if they want to find out if that's the case. If 2 Thessalonians 2 .15 is, as you say, a command to hold on to oral traditions, and these oral traditions contain data that is outside of Scripture itself, then does it not follow that I am, in fact, consistent to ask you to be able to demonstrate to me that the Thessalonians had delivered to them the very same doctrines that you say I must believe on the basis of tradition today?

Of course I can make the assertion that the Thessalonians had an obligation to pass on everything that Paul taught them because the command is right there in Scripture. But if you're going to ask me for a laundry list of everything that I know was specifically taught at that congregation, then the Catholic Church doesn't make...

You're asking, you're building up a straw man. And the Catholic Church simply says everything that we do believe as a doctrine does come from the apostles, whether those things were all taught at Thessalonica or whether they were taught at Corinth or whatever.

All right, Jerry, let me put it this way. Somewhere along the line, somebody, one of the apostles, Paul or another, taught orally to somebody in the early church that indulgences were true, right?

The principle behind them, yes.

So then is it... No, no, no, please, no. Then is it consistent then for me to ask you to show me something in the copious writings of the early church that demonstrate that they had that belief?

Sure. That's perfectly legitimate. And if this were a debate on indulgences, as perhaps we ought to have, I'd be very happy... No, excuse me, ladies and gentlemen.

No, no, no.

Don't groan. This is a debate on sola scriptura. And I'm going to ask Mr. White to defend from Scripture that thing. For him to say, now, be ready at the drop of a hat, Mr. Matitix, without my telling you ahead of time which doctrine I'm going to bring up, you've got to give me Peter 6 in support of indulgences.

All I asked, Jerry, is it a valid question to ask?

Of course it's a valid question. Absolutely. And I'm willing to meet that challenge.

Now, Jerry, was Athanasius wrong in standing against the majority of the organized church of his day?

He was right to stand up for what the church had officially taught at the Council of Nicea, even though bishops had apostatized from that faith. As the church has always admitted, individual bishops can and do err.

Now, how many people in that audience recognized how dishonest that answer was? How bad that answer is? Probably not many. And that's one of the problems with debates. People have to go back and they have to check these things out.

Let's remember, there were councils that met and anathematized Athanasius and compromised the Nicene Creed that had more bishops at them than Nicea did. There were decades that passed when this was the majority view of the bishops of all the churches in all the world.

The Roman bishop himself signed the Arianized Sirmium Creed. That's why it was Athanasius contra Mundum. So, did you hear what he just did? Well, there might be individual bishops. No, there were councils.

Decades. And Athanasius stood against them all. If he's going to be consistent. Now, remember this came up on Iron Sharpens Iron when Jerry and I were on last year. Because now he has to take a different view.

Now he has to look to Athanasius as support. Because now he's in the minority standing against his organized church. To see the people moving around from position to position.

And what's interesting is about his response there is that his position today in reference to the current bishop of Rome would be apostasy.

Right, exactly. Things they do, a change. Were there not councils after Nicea that condemned Athanasius? Yes or no?

No.

There were none. You've not read the proceeds of any of the Arian councils.

Oh, Arian councils, yes.

I thought you said a council of the church. Yes, exactly.

The next council, Mr. White, is you well known as the council of Constantinople in 381.

Now, notice what he's doing here. Again, these folks love to play with church history but they won't accurately handle church history. Because the whole idea of ecumenical council is yet well into the future at this point in time.

And the very fact that Nicea did not have quote-unquote ecumenical standing in the minds of people is clear from every bit of historical information available to us. Nicea had to fight for acceptance.

And so here you have all these other councils that meet of more bishops and how do you know before Constantinople how do you know during the Arian resurgence that Athanasius is wrong and the established church is right or vice versa by modern Roman Catholic standards the person living that day could not know.

They could not know. That came out in the debacle with Tim Staples on papal infallibility where he fell apart. And I pointed out that given his defenses of the various papal errors that I documented that during the lifetimes of those popes who gave those erroneous understandings and teachings no individual alive at that time could possibly know what the truth of those matters was.

Could not. Could not. That's the problem with the system when you deny sola scriptura when you make another authority equal and in function superior to the authority of the scriptures. ...which indicates an ecumenical council but you have Ariminum, you have Seleucia you have even Liberius signing the Arianized creed of Sirmium.

In the years between 340 and 350 Athanasius was almost alone. Even the bishop of Rome didn't stand with him. When the majority of the church.

Stood against Athanasius.

Why then would he stand up and say the reason I don't accept this is because the scriptures are self-sufficient for the preaching of the truth.

You, Mr. White, give us one passage from Athanasius where he says the scriptures are self-sufficient.

Contra Gentiles 1 .1. I just gave it to you.

Will you read it out loud to the people?

Do you have this?

No, but I'd be happy to pay for a copy of it.

I'm buying this one. I'm giving it to Jerry.

I'll pay for it.

He nowhere says, Mr. White, that the scriptures are self-sufficient to establish all the doctrines.

And that actually was my citation of Contra Gentiles 1 .1. And that was the end of the first cross-examination period. Hey, you know what? I will submit that whole period to anybody. That was right at 11 minutes in length or so.

10 minutes in length. And, you know, I don't think those anonymous folks on YouTube are going to be putting too much techno music to that particular cross-examination and posting that. And I wonder why.

I think it's pretty obvious. Our first caller, before we go back to some of this other stuff, is right on this actual topic, which is exceptionally unusual. So let's go ahead and talk with Paul on Sola Scriptura and the early creeds.

Hi, Paul.

Hey, how are you doing?

Doing good.

Good.

The question I had regarding this, what value do you think those early ecumenical creeds have for orthodoxy in light of Sola Scriptura?

Well, you know, I've addressed this a number of times because there are a number of evangelicals who rather glibly will say something along the lines of, well, of course, we accept the first seven ecumenical councils.

And I just want to go, have you read what each one of those seven ecumenical councils said? Normally what they're referring to are the symbols or the creeds in regards to Trinitarian and Christological issues that are a part of those councils, not the entire council itself, the canons and decrees and things that were associated therewith.