August 10, 2017 Show with Tony Costa on “Is Sola Scriptura a Blueprint for Anarchy?”

Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister

George Norcross in downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

Now here's our host Chris Arnton. Good afternoon

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida and the rest of humanity living on the planet earth who are listening via live streaming.

This is Chris Arnton, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this 10th day of August 2017.

And today we have as our guest for the two hours, hopefully he will be joining us very soon because he called in earlier and we were having phone difficulties with him, but hopefully he will be calling back soon.

But we are having Dr. Tony Costa on the program to address, is

Sola Scriptura a blueprint for anarchy? And Tony Costa is

Professor of Apologetics at Toronto Baptist Seminary and we are looking forward to this discussion.

He's also going to be involved in an event, an upcoming event on Long Island, New York, both in Farmingville, Long Island and in Medford, Long Island that we will let you know about.

By the way, some of you may be expecting James Dolezal, who is an author and professor at Cairn University in Langhorne, Pennsylvania.

Well, Dr. Dolezal had an unforeseen conflict in his schedule today, so he had to postpone his interview.

We'll keep you updated on when he actually will be coming as a guest on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio to discuss his book,

All That Is In God, which was the original theme for today. But thankfully, Dr. Costa came to the rescue and hopefully he is going to be joining us on the program.

But before we even introduce Dr. Costa, God willing, I have some very happy news and also some sad news or some bittersweet news.

First of all, the very happy news is that most of you are familiar with our sponsor's

Crumlin Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com, cv for Crumlin Valley, bbs for Bible Book Service dot com.

They are the ones that mail you all of the free books and Bibles that you win on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio when you submit a question during an interview when we have an author as a guest.

And all of our first -time questioners always win a New American Standard Bible that is shipped out to you by Crumlin Valley Bible Book Service and specifically by Todd and Patty Jennings, the owners of Crumlin Valley Bible Book Service.

Well, the good news, the wonderful news is that yesterday, Molly Elizabeth Pfeiffer, the very first grandchild of Todd and Patty Jennings of cvbbs and the very first baby of Chuck and Christy Pfeiffer, Christy being the daughter of Todd and Patty Jennings, well, little

Molly Elizabeth Pfeiffer came into the world yesterday, August 9th at 6 .33

p .m., five weeks early at five pounds, 11 ounces and 19 inches with all fingers and toes and both mom and baby are doing well.

Well, now for the bittersweet news, my friend Peter Jeffrey, a

Welsh pastor, author and evangelist who preached the gospel for over 60 of his 80 years on earth, went home to be with the

Lord today, August 10th at the age of 80. He was nearly 80 actually, exactly one week after his friend,

South African -born author and evangelist Errol Hulls went home to be with Christ at the age of 86.

Peter Jeffrey was ordained to the ministry in 1963 and served as the minister at Ebenezer Congregational Church in Cumbrian, Wales.

I'm sorry to my Welsh listeners if I am mispronouncing that city in Wales, Cumbrian.

In 1972, he accepted a call to Rugby Evangelical Free Church where he ministered until 1986.

And then in 1986, Peter Jeffrey went to Bethlehem Evangelical Church in Port Talbot, Wales, which was known as Sanfields.

That's where Dr. Martin Jones had previously ministered. And Peter Jeffrey pastored there until 1994.

Since then, he had an itinerant ministry of preaching and evangelism, allowing him to preach at churches and conferences all around the world, including

Calvary Baptist Church of Amityville, and then later Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Long Island in Merrick, New York, which the church in Amityville later became after a merger.

And I happened to have the privilege of being in both of those congregations in Amityville and Merrick when

Peter preached there. And Peter wrote over 40 books, which have been translated into many languages.

Many of his works focus on new Christians and the foundations of the faith, evangelism, and salvation.

And one of the reasons why Peter Jeffrey has an enormous place in my own heart is that I know that some of you have heard me tell this story on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio before, but when my mother was dying of pancreatic cancer while she was on her deathbed, and she went home to be with the

Lord six weeks after being diagnosed, Peter Jeffrey providentially was in the

United States, and he was preaching at the congregation where I was a member, Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Merrick, New York.

And I asked Peter, my mom is about to go home with the Lord, she's about to depart from this earth, and I asked

Peter, would you mind spending some time with her alone?

And he said, of course. And he came to my parents' home, and he sat with my mother at her bedside alone for at least a half hour.

It might have been longer than a half hour. And I had some concerns about my mother's eternal state.

She was a wonderful woman. She was a sacrificial woman. She was, in many respects, a very, very godly woman.

In fact, there was nothing that I could even think of to complain about her. And she put me to shame in most things regarding Christian life,

I believe. But she was a Roman Catholic, and I had very great concerns over her.

And even when she made clear biblical professions of faith in Christ, although that was a mountain of relief lifted off of my shoulders, there was still some lingering fear that I had as she lied there waiting to enter into eternity.

And when Peter emerged from my mother's sickbed, he said to me,

Chris, I don't know what you're worried about. Your mother's going to heaven. She's a Christian. She's born again. There's no doubt about it.

And that just really was a gift from God that is beyond words of description, that I can't even express my gratefulness to God and to Peter Jeffrey for that reassurance that I received from him.

So pray for all the surviving Jeffrey family as they mourn the loss of Peter, who, as I said, just went home to be with the morning, nearly at 80 years of age, and he will be surely missed.

But as is the case with all precious saints of God who depart this earth, our loss is heaven's gain, and heaven is now a sweeter place awaiting us.

And I think that something that I just said in regard to my mother's state of having come to a genuine understanding and acceptance of the true biblical gospel while on her deathbed,

I think it has some kind of measure of significance to our topic today, because we are going to be talking about Roman Catholicism.

My mother, as I said, was a Roman Catholic who eventually came to the doctrines of salvation that are articulated in the scriptures, and she embraced them as her only hope for salvation.

She embraced Jesus Christ and his death, burial, and resurrection, and his grace and mercy as the only means by which she was entering heaven.

And today, as I said earlier, Dr. Tony Costa is our guest, a professor of apologetics at Toronto Baptist Seminary, and today we are going to be discussing,

Is Sola Scriptura a Blueprint for Anarchy?, which is a charge that many Roman Catholic apologists make about Sola Scriptura, the

Reformation principle of Sola Scriptura. But it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Shepherd's Iron, Dr.

Tony Costa. Well, Chris, as always, it's always great to be with you on your show.

Praise God, and in studio with me is my co -host, the Reverend Buzz Taylor. Hello, once again.

It's good to be here. And Tony, why don't you tell our listeners something about Toronto Baptist Seminary, especially for those of our listeners who have never heard you before on this program?

Sure. Toronto Baptist Seminary is a Reformed Baptist Seminary in the city of Toronto in Canada, and it traces its origins back to 1933, around that time.

It was founded by the late Dr. T .P. Shields, who was also the pastor of Jarvis Street Baptist Church, the famous Baptist Church in Toronto.

And it is a seminary that is committed to educating young men and women in the

Christian faith. And also we send out missionaries around the world.

Some of my students are doing work in the continent of Africa, and others in Europe, and others in other places around the world.

Our model is Catechriston, which means according to Christ. And so we are a seminary that is fully committed to the tenets of the

Reformation. We are fully committed to the supremacy of Christ in all things.

And I teach apologetics, as well as other topics, systematic theology, church history, world religions, cults, and so forth.

And I also do some teaching with the University of Toronto, and I teach as an adjunct at Heritage College and Seminary in Cambridge, Ontario, also in Canada, and also an adjunct with Providence Theological Seminary in Franklin, Tennessee.

Oh, great. Well, the Rev. Buzz Taylor, my co -host, has something to say. This is primarily for Chris's benefit, this question here, before we get too far into anything that will get us off this subject, which you'll want to get off right away.

But I haven't been to Toronto in a while. I used to get there quite a bit for different functions, because I lived in Buffalo, New York. And do you still have black squirrels in Toronto?

Oh, yeah. We have a plague of black squirrels.

I've been telling my Tennyson brothers to come up here and take some back home. But yes, we are inundated with black squirrels, yes.

Well, I made a reference once to gray squirrels, and Chris was wondering, why do you call them gray squirrels?

I said, well, I've been to New England, where they're red, and I've been to Toronto, where they're black. Yeah, I asked him that, because all the squirrels around Pennsylvania and Long Island, where I'm from originally, were gray.

So it seemed like a redundant thing to say. Right. Yeah, I guess we're all leaving multiculturalism as well.

Well, I'm going to give our listeners our email address right away. It's chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Chrisarnson at gmail .com. And please give us your first name, at least, your city and state, and your country of residence, if you live outside of the

USA. And please only remain anonymous if it's about a personal and private matter that you are asking about.

Perhaps you are a Roman Catholic, and you don't want to identify yourself. Perhaps someone in your family, your own spouse, is

Roman Catholic. Or whatever the case is that compels you to remain anonymous, please let us know, and we will let you remain anonymous.

Other than that, please give us at least your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence, if you live outside the

USA. Well, Dr. Costa, I think that the subject that we are primarily speaking on today,

I'm not saying it's exclusively going to be the topic, but the topic that we are primarily speaking about is

Sola Scriptura, a blueprint for anarchy, which is a charge that has been made by especially

Roman Catholic apologists against Protestantism. This is,

I believe, one of the key issues that separates us from the

Church of Rome. In fact, it is the very reason that many former

Protestants claim they converted to Roman Catholicism out from Protestantism.

They say that they found the defenses for Sola Scriptura wanting, and they found

Protestant apologists incapable or inadequate to biblically defend this topic.

So therefore, you have a lot of people who have abandoned ship and swam the Tiber River all the way to Rome, some of them over this one issue, and then, since they became convinced that Rome was indeed the true

Church in their minds, they just really forced themselves to acquiesce to all of the other dogmas of Rome, some of them with different levels of fervency than others.

I have spoken with a couple of Roman Catholics where the other doctrines that separate us, like the veneration of Mary and the saints, some of these men don't even seem to be that keen on those things, but they believe that they are true just because Rome tells them that they are true and that they are worthy of being practiced.

But first of all, let's obviously get into a definition of Sola Scriptura. What is

Sola Scriptura, one of the watchwords of the Reformation? Well, Sola Scriptura is a

Latin phrase that means scripture alone, and Sola Scriptura means that when it comes to faith and practice and that which is related to God's revelation, the only sole authority for faith and practice and theology is the scriptures alone.

Now, there's some misunderstandings about Sola Scriptura that is very commonplace among even evangelical

Protestants, and that is that they assume that Sola Scriptura means that the

Bible answers everything. So everything there is to know, anything there is to... any epistemological understanding of the universe or math or science, whatever it may be, there's some folks who think that the

Bible can explain everything, equals mc squared for instance. And some Roman Catholics also have that misunderstanding that Protestants just hold to the scriptures and there's nothing outside of the scriptures.

In other words, there's no truth outside of scripture. That's not what Sola Scriptura means. What Sola Scriptura means is that the scriptures alone are that which is truly

God -breathed, theanostos, as Paul says in 2 Timothy 3 .16, all scriptures, theanostos, breathed out by God.

Only scripture is called theanostos. Now, that does not mean that there is no truth outside the

Bible. Obviously, there are truths outside the Bible as well, but Sola Scriptura is not exhaustive.

It doesn't tell us everything there is to know. We don't know what was Jesus's favorite menu.

We don't know what was his favorite color. We don't know, for example, what was the apostle

Paul's favorite Greek philosopher. But what scripture does give us,

Sola Scriptura says, is that what we need to know in terms of salvation is sufficiently given to us, revealed in the pages of Holy Scripture.

So, it's not exhaustive. Sola Scriptura doesn't say that everything we need to know about God in terms of these auxiliary issues, matters.

Sola Scriptura does not say that we have exhaustive knowledge in that. But what it tells us is that what we need to know for salvation, to be in relationship with God, has sufficiently been given to us in Holy Scripture.

And therefore, the

Roman were correct, and scripture alone was the ultimate authority of faith and practice, well then, the authority of the

Church is demolished. And therefore, you'll notice that the main linchpin here that the

Roman Catholic Church seems to go after all the time is Sola Scriptura, because if they can remove that linchpin, then they know that they can argue that they are the true guardian of the scriptures, they are the creators of the canon, and therefore,

Mother Church must be the source that we must ultimately give ascent to.

And the scriptures, according to biblically historic

Protestants and biblically faithful Protestants, I meant to say historically accurate

Protestants and biblically faithful Protestants, uh, we believe that Sola Scriptura does not teach that scripture is the only authority, but it's the only infallible inerrant authority that we have for the

Church. It's the final authority. In other words, we do have other authorities outside the Bible, don't we? Yes, absolutely.

I mean, there's authority in the Church, there's, of course, ecclesiastical authority that God has put in the hands of elders and then the deacons under them.

There's authority in government that we are told to obey, but scripture alone is that which we go to to hear the voice of God.

The voice of God is not heard in Church tradition, which is the claim of Rome, that it is also found in sacred tradition.

God's voice is not heard in extra -biblical literature, whether it be

Gnostic Gospels or even the Book of Mormon or the Watchtower magazine from Jehovah's Witnesses or the

Awake magazine and so forth. So that's the key word, it's theanostos. That word that Paul uses in 2

Timothy 3 .16 is a term that is only applied to Scripture. The Church Fathers never called their writings theanostos,

God -breathed. They only appropriated that term only to the Scriptures. And so, when it comes to the

Supreme Court, the ultimate authority in Revelation, the Scriptures stand uniquely alone.

Yes, and obviously one of the major texts that we who are

Protestant cling to as a defense for Sola Scriptura is that found in 2

Timothy 3 .16 verses 3 chapter 3 verses 16 through 17.

All Scripture is inspired by God or God -breathed and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be adequate equipped for every good work.

That means that everything that is a good work is in the Scriptures.

It's detailed in the Scriptures, it's mentioned in the Scriptures, it's commanded in the Scriptures, and therefore a

Roman Catholic cannot really logically and consistently hold to 2

Timothy 3 .16 through 17 because the teaching of the veneration of Mary is not in the

Scriptures, and that would be a good work according to them. The teaching of worshipping the elements of the

Eucharist is not found in the Holy Scripture, which they would believe is a good work. And you could go on and on and on with unique teachings that are found in the

Church of Rome that they believe that anyone, were they to teach against those things or define them as false, the

Church of Rome would anathematize, and it has already anathematized, everyone for all posterity who is against these things, which are not even mentioned in the

Scripture. So it is, I think, an interesting task that they have ahead of them to defend those things that are outside of the

Bible, when this text here in 2 Timothy 3 is not speaking of tradition at all, is it?

No, not at all. And I think it's important for our hearers to understand that while Rome will say, well, you know, this solar business is just the

Protestants, they're with Sola Fide, Sola Gatia, Sola Scriptura, Sola Christi, and so forth, but it's important to realize that Rome herself has a sola, and the sola of Rome is

Sola Ecclesia, Church alone, the Church alone determines authority, the

Church alone determines the canon, the Church alone speaks for God, and the

Church alone has the right to interpret Scripture to the laity. So Rome holds to a very interesting and peculiar sola, and that is

Sola Ecclesia. And I have a quote here I just wanted to read out from Ignatius of Loyola, and Ignatius of Loyola, who's canonized as a saint in the

Roman Catholic Church, was the founder of the Jesuits, which were formed to counteract the

Reformation in Europe and beyond. Well, here's a quote from Ignatius of Loyola, and I think this really hits home on the authority of Rome over everything else, and I'm quoting now, that we may all together, that we may be all together of the same mind and in conformity with the

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

So if the Roman Church says this is black, even though it looks white to us, it looks white to our senses, because the

Church says it's black, we ought to pronounce it black in conformity with the

Church. Now, going back to a definition of sola scriptura, this also does not mean that we who are

Protestant deny a role for tradition in our Church either, does it? No, no.

In fact, every year when Christmas comes around, there's a lot of traditional things we do during Christmas that are not in Scripture.

The Bible does not command us to observe the birth of Christ, nor does it forbid it. We observe

Mother's Day, we observe Father's Day, we observe Thanksgiving Day. You guys have it in November, we have it in early

October. But the fact of the matter is, there's tradition. Even within the

Bible, we see tradition. For example, when the Lord Jesus had the

Last Supper with the disciples, it says that he took bread and he took the cup. And we know that during the

Passover Seder, originally the Passover meal was to include unleavened bread, bitter herbs, and the

Passover lamb, but there's nothing said in Exodus 12 about the cups at the

Passover Seder. There were four cups of wine. But interestingly enough, there was a tradition that developed within Judaism where the cups were brought into the meal, and so today when

Jews celebrate Passover, they not only eat the bitter herbs and the unleavened bread, they don't eat the lamb, obviously, because the

Temple is gone, they can't sacrifice anymore, but the Lord Jesus took that cup, and that cup was not commanded by God to be part of the

Passover meal. So here's an example where we have a tradition that our Lord sanctioned, but this was not a tradition that conflicted with Scripture.

That's very important. This tradition did not conflict with God's revelation. Where our

Lord came down hard on the Pharisees was when those traditions violated the commandments of God, as we see in Mark 7.

So there's nothing necessarily wrong with tradition, and historically Protestants have understood that as long as tradition is under, subservient to Scripture, and not on par with Scripture, which is the

Roman Catholic position. Yeah, one of the dangers that Protestants have fallen into over varying issues is when they deny that they have a tradition, and they will start being involved in eisegesis, and they will start importing things into necessary Christian belief and practice that are foreign to the

Bible. To give you an example, you will have many evangelicals and fundamentalists who will be absolutely appalled that typically

Reformed Christians do not have altar calls, do not have invitations where people get up out of their pews and walk forward, and have a pastor or evangelist pray over them or pray with them in order for them to receive the gift of eternal life.

Now, there are some Reformed people, some Reformed churches that still do that, but I think by and large the vast majority do not.

But here you have these Arminian churches, or churches that would be outside of the

Reformed faith, who would would say that we are either liberal or we are unconcerned about the salvation of souls, because we do not practice this practice, or this what has become a third ordinance or a third sacrament, the altar call, because we say, well, first of all, we don't do it because we don't believe in the

Bible, and secondly, historically it didn't even arise on the scene until the 19th century.

And thirdly, you can cry out to God for salvation right where you're sitting. You don't need to make a public parade of it or a public ceremony where you're walking forward.

In fact, the only time that we are commanded to do a public or participate in a public ceremony revolving or involving our salvation is when we're baptized.

Right. Absolutely. Well, you know, that ties in with the problem that the Barna poll showed that most

Americans think that when they were asked to preach the Sermon on the Mount, they thought it was Billy Graham. Billy Graham is also famous for the altar calls where people get up and sing,

O Lamb of God, I come, etc. And you're absolutely right. I mean, the practice of altar calls, and what's with the word altar, by the way?

The altar has been fulfilled in Christ. Christ is the temple. And therefore, when they say there's an altar call, wait a minute, where's that coming from?

There is an altar in the New Covenant. Christ is our Passover lamb. And so, as you know, a lot of this originates with Charles Finney and many in the holiness movement.

And so it's very common. And then with the altar call, remember, it's not just people come forward to give their life to Christ, but how many of them have rededicated themselves?

So now you have people who've been born again, and then they've been born again and again and again and again, and, you know, they had eternal life and they lost it.

Now they're getting it back again. So yes, there's a lot of tradition there, to be sure.

And of course, that was one of the large controversies with the Puritans, and the Puritans believed that if it's not in Scripture, that we shouldn't do it.

And the Anglicans argued that as long as it did not violate any

Scriptural norms, then that was fine. Yeah, the different ways of treating silence in the

Bible. One group saying silence prohibited something, the other group saying silence gave permission.

Yes, I mean, if you want to take that to a logical conclusion, you know, the Bible never says that Jesus laughed, so maybe we shouldn't laugh.

And we get into a lot of silly ideas that begin to emerge.

But then again, if you read the Church Fathers, the Church Fathers, some read them as if they're all

Reformed Baptists. I think Dr. James White is correct when he says, look, let's let the

Church Fathers be the Church Fathers. And when you read them, yes, Augustine's going to come across and defend predestination, he's going to defend the authority of Scripture over Nicaea, but then you're going to come across the

Church Fathers who think like Irenaeus thought that Jesus was 50 years old when he died. So you're not always going to find agreement, but the

Church Fathers never claimed that they were infallible or that their writings were on par with Scripture.

So let's give them some plaque here. Yeah, and we're going to go to a break right now, and we already have quite a number of listeners waiting for their questions to be asked and answered.

But if anybody would like to join them, if you'd like to get in line, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. And please don't forget to at least give your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence.

If you live outside the USA, you may remain anonymous if it is involving a personal and private matter that you are asking about.

Don't go away. We'll be right back with Dr. Tony Costa, Professor of Apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary.

On the theme, Is Sola Scriptura a Blueprint for Anarchy? Right after these messages. Hi, I'm Pastor Bill Shishko, inviting you to tune in to a visit to the pastor's study every

Saturday from 12 noon to 1 p .m. Eastern Time on WLIE Radio, www .wlie540am

.com. We bring biblically faithful pastoral ministry to you, and we invite you to visit the pastor's study by calling in with your questions.

Our time will be lively, useful, and I assure you, never dull. Join us this Saturday at 12 noon

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Or go to BatteryDepot .com. That's BatteryDepot .com. Welcome back.

This is Chris Zarnes, and if you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours with a little less than 90 minutes to go is

Dr. Tony Costa, Professor of Apologetics at Toronto Baptist Seminary, and he is also going to be speaking at an upcoming event that we want to make sure that you are aware of.

This event is involving the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, or the 500th anniversary technically of when

Martin Luther nailed the 95 Theses, or his 95 Theses, which were a protest against the practice of selling indulgences that the

Church of Rome was known for. He nailed those 95 Theses to the door of the

Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany, which was actually just a common practice in the 16th century, at least in the academic realm, where people would tack things to the church door to spark debate amongst other clerics and students and scholars and theologians, and this happened to catch on like wildfire and eventually led to the

Protestant Reformation. People were taking Luther's 95 Theses off of the door and copying them and distributing them, and it really was used powerfully by God to begin the

Protestant Reformation, and this is going to be held at the Word of Truth Church in Farmingville, Long Island, New York, and Dr.

Costa is going to be joined by some local Reformed pastors there, Pastor Caleb Bunch, Pastor Bruce Bennett, who is the pastor of Word of Truth Church, Pastor Dave Corson and others, and this is going to be held

Friday, September 29th, and Saturday, September 30th, and for more details on that, go to wotchurch .com,

W -O -T, which stands for Word of Truth, church .com, wotchurch .com, and also call 631 -806 -0614, 631 -806 -0614, and then also the very next day,

October 1st, at 11 a .m., Dr. Costa is going to be preaching at the

Hope Reformed Baptist Church of Medford, New York, and if you'd like more details about that, you can go to hopereformedli .net,

hopereformedli, for longisland .net, or you can call 631 -696 -5711, 631 -696 -5711, and ask for more details about that and directions and so on, and there may also be another addition to that lineup for Sunday evening that we are working on, but we're not 100 % about that yet.

We'll keep you updated on it, but Dr. Costa, do you know yet exactly what theme specifically you're going to be speaking on at either of those events?

Well, I'll be speaking on the Friday Saturday. I'll be speaking on, I believe, justification.

I'll be talking about the formal cause of the Reformation and the material cause of the Reformation, so it'll be themes that are tied into the

Reformed doctrines of grace. Great, and we'll be mentioning that information later on,

God willing, during the program. When we left off before the break, and before I go to any of our listeners, because there are a number of them,

I just want to make things clear again for our listeners. We who are

Protestant, we who are historically accurate and biblically faithful in regard to the

Reformation, we do not believe there is no such thing as tradition in the life of Christians and in the life of the

Church. That would be absurd. It would really reveal that you were blind to reality if you don't recognize that.

In fact, every church service involves some level of tradition, like the order of worship and so on.

There is not a liturgy that is God -breathed that is to take place in every worship service.

These are things that people, through their own creativity and so on, have come up with that they don't believe is in violation of the

Scriptures or unnecessarily adding things to the Scriptures. It's just basically how things must function, to be orderly and so on.

Am I right? Yes, absolutely. And as we said before also, it's a danger when you import your traditions into Christian practice to distort or even eliminate the true teachings of God, the true gospel of Jesus Christ, and anything that would be human that would dare to be intruding into that which is especially salvific.

That's when you get into a very, very dangerous area. I'm going to go to some of the listener questions now.

Let's see here. I can't find them. Oh, here it is.

We have Andrew in Avon Lake, Ohio. That's interesting. There is an Avon Lake right in Amityville, Long Island where I was born and raised, and I used to visit that lake quite often as a child especially.

But Avon Lake, Ohio is where Andrew, our listener, is from. And he says, would it be true to say that sola scriptura doesn't mean that the

Bible is the only authority? We already addressed that. He asks also, how do

I answer a Catholic that might say if I use the Bible alone as my final authority, then my ultimate authority is really myself because I am relying on my own ability to interpret the

Bible? In other words, we have Protestants made ourselves our highest authority. Yes, I have heard that accusation by Catholic individuals and Catholic apologists who have actually used the term that we make ourselves little

Protestant popes by using our own discernment and wisdom and mental capacities to determine what the

Bible is teaching. But if you could comment on that. Yes, I mean, all we're doing is we're doing what the

Lord Jesus told us to do. And the Lord Jesus told us to search the scriptures. They're the ones that testify about me.

We're also told to test all things. And we tested by a standard of scripture. The Lord himself, the

Lord Jesus and his ministry quoted the scriptures over and over again as his ultimate authority, as did the apostles, as did

Paul and his letters and John and James and the other apostolic writers and so forth.

And so we're not doing anything that is different than what the Lord Jesus himself did, what the apostles did, the church fathers themselves,

Athanasius, the great defender of orthodoxy, when he defended the faith against Arius, against all odds,

Arius contra mundum, Arius against the whole world. He spoke of the scriptures. He said, these are the fountains of salvation.

These are the sources that we go to, to determine ultimate truth and orthodoxy.

So we're not claiming to be little popes at all. What we're saying is that God has given us his word. We believe in what's called the persecutory of scripture, which means that God's revelations are clear to his people.

He does not keep us in the dark. He speaks to his people through his word. He's given us the Holy Spirit who helps us discern spiritual things, that we might know the deep things of God.

And so the reason why the Roman Catholic Church responds this way is, again, because it claims to be the sole interpreter of the scriptures.

And that is something that, again, is not supported by the scriptures themselves.

So scripture is our ultimate authority. Just like the Lord Jesus appealed to the scriptures when he debated the

Sadducees and the Pharisees, he told them that the source of their error, he says, you err because you do not know the scriptures or the power of God.

I remember a very famous statement by Jerome, the writer of the Latin Vulgate.

Jerome said ignorance of the scriptures is ignorance of Christ. And so we're simply following in the footsteps of the early

Church, we're following the steps of the of the fathers of the Church, and the Reformers understood the same.

So the modern claim that Roman Catholics make that you're just being little popes, it's an ad hoc argument, because within that argument, there is a presupposition that only the pope and the magisterium have the right to interpret the scriptures, and that's not what the

Bible says. And Reverend Buzz Taylor has something to say. To add to that, though, because of the questioner,

I think we have to admit the fact that there is a lot of anarchy out there because of people who basically interpret the scriptures any way that they want to.

To say that there isn't a problem isn't going to make it go away. But you know, there's an assumption there,

I think, behind that kind of reasoning, that there are no rules, no guidelines to the scripture interpretation, that everybody is just left to himself, like what it means to me, therefore it must mean that.

But because of that kind of I believe Luther was warned, wasn't he, about if you translate the scriptures into the common language, there will be no end to abuses, and we have seen that certainly come true, but that's because of certain people's abuses and certain prides that step in and people who think they're the only ones that are right and all that, it does not negate the fact that you can discover truth from the scriptures.

It's not that elusive as some people might think it is. Yeah, well wouldn't Dr. Costa, the fault, the problem that Buzz is talking about, about people interpreting the

Bible any way they want to, that is not the fault of sola scriptura, it's number one, the fault of sinful men, and number two, the

Bible itself does not allow for people to twist the word of God in any way he or she chooses.

In fact, there are certain requirements one has to have to be a teacher, am I right? That's correct, absolutely, and one of the reasons why, for example, we do have a number of cults in the world today is because they have taken it upon themselves, and they've done actually, it's quite interesting, when you look at the structure of these cults, many of these cults have taken to themselves absolute authority and claiming to be the true interpreter of scripture, just like Rome claims.

So the Mormon Church, for example, claims that the president of the church, who is believed to be a living prophet, he and the apostles, they believe in modern -day apostles, they have the ultimate authority to interpret scripture.

The Watchtower claims that the governing council has the ultimate authority to rightly interpret scripture.

So that is not to say that there are not abuses of biblical interpretation, and that's why we as Christians also believe that there is something called context, there's something called language, there's something called exegesis, there's the hermeneutical principle where we just don't take the

Bible and just make it fit into our mold and make it say whatever we want.

So I think it's a good point that was just made, that soul scriptura does not mean that you could just willy -nilly take the scriptures and do whatever you please and conform it to whatever world view you want.

There is definitely a hermeneutical principle where we interpret scripture based on context, historical, is this an apocalyptic text, is it prophetic, is it poetic like the

Psalms and so forth. So we don't throw a reason to the wind and just assume that the

Bible is just subject to any and anyone's interpretation. And isn't it a bit hypocritical to say the least for Catholics to make this charge against us anyway, this charge that we are little, we make ourselves little popes because we interpret the scriptures as we see fit, and now obviously that that is not even true because if a person is behaving biblically they are not only going to be subject to the elders of their church, and the elders of the church would discipline them if they were coming up with all kinds of heretical and bizarre notions, but the

Catholic church has no real business, if you will, or has no legitimate ability and logically consistent ability to make that claim anyway because you have a multitude of little popes who are

Catholics who are interpreting what their infallible interpreter says to begin with, because you don't have some kind of unanimous agreement amongst

Catholics as to what papal encyclicals mean, or even dogma.

There are Catholics who I speak with regularly, even those that are very conservative, that will say, well the anathemas at the

Council of Trent, they really don't mean that you're a curse to hell, that just means that you can't be a member of the

Catholic church in good standing, or what have you. You don't have unanimous agreement in the

Catholic church on nearly anything, it's not really a monolith as some might say, so to say that we are guilty of turning a sola scriptura into a license for anarchy is absurd because they themselves are not monolithic and are not in full agreement and have a host of divisions that might even be far greater in number than those who are conservative and evangelical.

That's right, exactly, and I think it's important for us to realize that if we examine

Roman Catholic history, I mean, there was a point where there were three rival popes claiming to be the true successor of Peter.

We had Honorius, who was a monothelite, who believed that Christ only had one will rather than the orthodox position that Christ had two wills, divine and human.

We would have, for example, Augustine today would not be considered orthodox because Augustine did not believe, for instance, in the

Immaculate Conception of Mary, Augustine did not believe that the rock that Jesus spoke about in Matthew 16 was

Peter, rather he said that the rock was the confession of Peter, thou art the Christ, the Son of the

Living God. And so throughout church history, you've had contradictions, you have the city vacanists today who argue that the present -day pope is an apostate and that the seat of Peter in Rome is vacant, and so they're awaiting the return of an orthodox pope.

You have, I mean, you have the Latin right churches, churches that claim that only

Latin should be used in the Mass, and they reject the Second Vatican Council's imposition of putting the

Mass into the vernacular language and so forth. And I've even met Roman Catholics who told me that they hold to the same view of the

Eucharist that I do, that it's only symbolic when the official view of Rome is transubstantiation.

So it is by no means a monolith. And that's because it's a non -sequitur.

To say that sola scriptura is a blueprint for anarchy is the same as me saying that the papacy is a blueprint for anarchy.

So it just does not follow in both cases. Yes, years ago,

I actually invited Father Benedict Groeschel, who many Roman Catholic listeners would immediately recognize that name.

He had a program on EWTN. I'm not sure if he is still with us or not, because he was quite elderly, even when

I spoke to him years ago. But Father Benedict Groeschel, I invited him to debate

Dr. James R. White on the subject of the Mass, and he actually said to me that he did not think that the subject was worth debating, because he has many brothers and sisters in Christ that do not believe in transubstantiation.

And I remember thinking, in fact, telling him, wait a minute, the Council of Trent anathematizes you if you don't believe in transubstantiation.

And he didn't think that that was really applicable in a severe and hostile manner today.

And he was just really, I was amazed that he thought that that was not one of the major issues to debate, because that seems to be the pinnacle of the things to the

Roman Catholic Church, in addition to veneration of Mary and the saints. Right. Right. I mean, the

Catechism of the Catholic Church makes it very, very, very clear that transubstantiation is to be believed by Roman Catholics.

And in fact, the Catechism of the Catholic Church makes it abundantly clear as well that people who do not believe in transubstantiation or are not baptized

Catholics should not be participating at the Eucharist. So if a Protestant is visiting a

Roman Catholic Church for a wedding, for instance, or a funeral, the Catechism of the Catholic Church clearly states that that Protestant should not be taking the

Eucharist, because he or she does not believe what Rome believes about the Eucharist. And on that point,

I definitely agree. We should not be participating in their communion table, nor vice versa. Right.

Well, we'll be right back after these messages, God willing, so don't go away.

This is our longer break than normal, but we have to accommodate Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

FM in Lake City, Florida. Congregation looks forward to meeting you.

Call them at 631 -929 -3512 for service times, 631 -929 -3512, or check out their website at wrbc .us.

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That's liyfc .org. Welcome back.

This is Chris Arns. And if you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours with a little less than an hour to go is

Dr. Tony Costa, Professor of Apologetics at Toronto Baptist Seminary. Our theme today is,

Is Sola Scriptura a Blueprint for Anarchy, which is the charge made by many

Roman Catholic apologists and Catholic individuals against historically accurate and biblically faithful Protestants.

If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com.

But before I return to our discussion with Dr. Costa, I have a few important events to announce. First of all, as I mentioned before, the

Word of Truth Church, in cooperation with Long Island Spurgeon Fellowship, present the

Gospel of the Reformation, a 500th anniversary, featuring our guest today, Dr.

Tony Costa, Professor of Apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary. And he will be joined by Pastor Caleb Bunch, Pastor Bruce Bennett, and Pastor Dave Corson.

That's at the Word of Truth Church in Farmingville, Long Island, New York. For more details, you can go to the

Word of Truth Church website, wotchurch .com, wotchurch .com,

or you could call 631 -806 -0614, 631 -806 -0614, 631 -806 -0614.

The event will be held from Friday, September 29th through Saturday, September 30th at the

Word of Truth Church in Farmingville, Long Island. And then the very following day,

Dr. Costa will be preaching at the 11 a .m. service at Hope Reformed Baptist Church of Medford, Long Island, New York.

And if you'd like more details about that service, go to hopereformedli .net,

hopereformedli .net, or call 631 -696 -5711, 631 -696 -5711.

And I hope to be at all three of those events, God willing, on Long Island, and perhaps even a fourth that Sunday night that we are working on that we have not yet been able to verify as of yet.

Then, coming up in November, the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals is having their annual

Quakertown Conference on Reformed Theology, where I plan to have an exhibitor's booth for Iron Trumpet and Zion Radio, at the

Grace Bible Fellowship Church in Quakertown, Pennsylvania, on the theme for Still Our Ancient Foe, referring to Satan from Martin Luther's Reformation hymn,

Mighty Fortress. And the speakers include Kent Hughes, Peter Jones, Tom Nettles, Dennis Cahill, and Scott Oliphant.

That's November 17th through the 18th in Quakertown, Pennsylvania. If you would like to attend that conference, go to alliancenet .org,

alliancenet .org, and then click on Quakertown Conference on Reformed Theology.

And then we have, coming up after that in January, from the 17th through the 20th, we have the

G3 Conference, which is returning to Atlanta, Georgia. And the

G3 Conference stands for Grace, Gospel, and Glory. And the speakers at the

G3 Conference include such men as Dr. Stephen Lawson, Votie Baucom, Phil Johnson, Keith Getty, H .B.

Charles Jr., Tim Challies, Josh Bice, a mutual friend of my guest and mine,

Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries, Dr. Tom Askell, Anthony Mathenia, Michael Kruger, David Miller, Paul Tripp, Todd Friel, Derek Thomas, and Martha Peace.

The January 17th edition of the conference will be exclusively in Spanish, and from the 18th through the 20th, the conference will be exclusively in English.

The theme will be Knowing God, a Biblical Understanding of Discipleship. If you want more details, go to g3conference .com,

g3conference .com. And please, always, if you go to any of these organizations to inquire more about their events or to register for those events, please let them know that you heard about them from Chris Arnsen on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

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Thank you very much. And as I said earlier, we are talking about is

Sola Scriptura a blueprint for anarchy with Dr. Tony Costa today. And the fact that there are all different kinds of interpretations amongst

Protestants, and many denominations amongst Protestants, does not mean that there is full -blown anarchy or any more anarchy than you find under the umbrella of Rome.

As we mentioned before, there are all kinds of Roman Catholics, even who are clerics, even who are teaching in seminaries and universities without any kind of censoring against them or discipline or what have you.

You have Catholics all the way on the liberal end of the spectrum who are in favor of getting homosexuality legitimized.

You have social Marxism embraced by many Roman Catholics. Some even argue that Pope Francis is a

Marxist, and I think that they have a lot of grounds to make that claim. You have all kinds of liberals that are still remaining under the umbrella of Roman Catholicism without being disciplined or excommunicated.

And then you have also Roman Catholics on the far right. There is even a disagreement amongst

Catholics as to whether or not Fenianism is a heresy, the belief that Father Feeney had that a person could not enter heaven without Roman Catholic baptism and other things.

It's really a fallacious claim, going back to what we said before, isn't it, Dr. Costa, to make the claim that sola scriptura is a blueprint for anarchy just because they see divisions amongst

Protestants. They're making a claim when they have perhaps even more divisions than conservative evangelical

Protestants have among themselves. Absolutely. And it's interesting you mentioned that priest earlier who seemed to think that those who deny transubstantiation were still brothers and sisters in Christ.

I recently heard a Roman Catholic priest openly admit in an on -air television program that Jesus was the biological offspring of Joseph and Mary and thereby denying the virgin birth, and he's still a priest in Rome.

So the idea that sola scriptura leads to this anarchy is based on a myth that Catholic answers and others have put out there based on a misinterpretation of an encyclopedia text, which they claim that there's 30 ,000 different denominations in Protestantism, and of course those numbers are hugely overinflated.

And this is where you hear a lot of Roman Catholics today just quote that mantra, that there's over 33 ,000 denominations in Protestantism, and we keep hearing it even today.

And as I said before, that is a citation from an encyclopedia that also openly admits that there are in their own listing 242

Roman Catholic denominations as of the year 2000, and they're speculating by the year 2025 there's going to be 245 denominations, the very same text.

So it's a common myth that we hear all the time, but it is a fallacious myth, because to say that sola scriptura is a blueprint for anarchy, as I said, is no different than saying that the papacy is a blueprint for anarchy.

Right, and you cannot prevent division arising amongst fallible sinful men, because it even arose amongst the apostles.

I mean, I'm not saying that the teachings, the God -breathed teachings of the apostles in the

Bible are in opposition to one another, but you had obviously the famous instances where Peter came to agree with the

Judaizers and had held on to his bigotry against Gentiles and wouldn't eat with them, and had to be rebuked by his fellow apostle

Paul in that regard. So I mean, because of the fact that the apostles, even though the

Word of God that came through them is inerrant, they were themselves not inerrant. Exactly, and we see that even in the

Old Testament. You see it in the Book of Judges. Gideon is called by God to be a judge in Israel, and then he ends up—we end up reading that later—that he had idols, and so forth.

So, and the same can be said about Moses, who incurred the wrath of God to the point that God forbade

Moses from entering into the Promised Land. And so, it's not the prophets or the apostles themselves that are infallible.

It is the Word that they spoke by the Holy Spirit, and that's exactly what 2 Peter 1 tells us that—and this is a common text that our

Roman Catholic friends usually quote against us, that it's taken out of context. In 2

Peter 1, verse 20, they usually quote from the King James Version that says, knowing this first, that no prophecy of the

Scripture is of any private interpretation. And they stop there and say, you see, there you have it.

There's no prophecy of interpretation. You cannot have a private interpretation of Scripture.

You need Mother Church. But that's not what Peter is talking about. Peter is saying that the prophecy that came through the prophets was not their own.

It did not originate with their own impulses or their own imagination. And then in verse 21, he says, prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the

Holy Spirit. And so, that text, which is commonly cited out of context, actually shows us that it's not the prophets or the apostles themselves that were infallible, but it was the

Word that the Holy Spirit spoke through them. Now, isn't it true that Rome has not even claimed an infallible interpretation for nearly any verse in the

Scripture anyway? Yes. Raymond Brown, who is seen as a liberal by many conservative

Roman Catholics, Raymond Brown openly admitted that Rome has not infallibly defined or interpreted any piece of Scripture.

And I'm assuming that you agree, in spite of anything liberal about Raymond Brown, I'm assuming that you agree with his findings.

Yeah, he's absolutely correct. Absolutely correct. And, well,

I'm going to go to another listener question. We have Chris in Runnels, Iowa. Thank you for having

Dr. Costa on the program today to discuss this important Reformation doctrine. I'm curious if Dr.

Costa is aware of any Roman Catholic line of argument against Sola Scriptura that does not resort to a blatant straw man representation of the

Reformed position. In light of this, how much more careful must we be in avoiding the same mistakes, building straw men, when defending the truth against error, like those found in potpourri?

Thank you, Dr. Costa, for your defense of biblical truth, and Chris for putting together another very edifying episode of Iron Trump and Zion.

I can tell you one time of the year that I absolutely love potpourri. That's Christmastime.

I get that little potpourri kettle cooking, and the whole house is smelling like cranberries and apple pie and pine needles.

I didn't hear you, Buzz. What did you say? I said you heard it here first, folks.

But if you could respond to Chris in Runnels, Iowa. Yes, I think, yes, you said potpourri.

I think some of us in Canada pronounce it potpourri. But anyway, yes, and I appreciate that statement.

We have to avoid using straw men on both sides, not just Roman Catholics, but also

Protestants as well. What Roman Catholics generally do in order to buttress their position that Scripture is not the only rule of faith is, they'll quote passages like 2

Thessalonians 2 .15, where Paul says, So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letters.

And then also 1 Corinthians 11 .2, Now I commend you because you remember me and everything and maintain the traditions, even as I deliver them to you.

So Roman Catholics, usually the go -to verses, 2 Thessalonians 2 .15, where Paul mentions these traditions, that they were taught either by spoken word, oral, or by letter, written.

And so if you remember as well, Chris, that's one of the texts that Dr. St. Genes quoted in our

Immaculate Conception of Mary debate in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. And here's the problem, is when they read the word traditions there in 2

Thessalonians 2 .15, and spoken or written, they assume that what

Paul is saying there is he's talking about two streams of authority in the Church. One is oral and one is written.

But that is not what Paul is saying. The traditions that Paul delivered to them were the apostolic teachings.

That is the Gospel. And obviously, he uses the past tense, obviously, because Paul had spoken to them orally, gave them the

Gospel orally. And so he tells them to hold to those traditions. Now, when Roman Catholics say, well, that's what we mean by the

Immaculate Conception, the Assumption of Mary, Purgatory, that's what we mean by Papal Infallibility, what they're doing is, they are committing an anachronistic fallacy.

They are assuming that the Apostle Paul believed in Papal Infallibility. He believed

Peter was infallible. He believed Mary was sinless at conception and so forth. That's quite a leap to read these passages and force later

Roman Catholic markings into them. If you allow the text to speak, it's very clear, Chris, that what these traditions are, are apostolic teachings.

They have nothing to do with one stream of authority versus another stream of authority.

Oral and written, it's the same message that was communicated. And so these traditions are the apostolic doctrines.

Yeah, isn't it true that at that time that that verse came into being, the canon was not closed?

The Word of God was still being transmitted through a revelatory miracle to his apostles, and so therefore there was a lot of the

Word of God being preached where that had not yet been inscribed or inscripturated.

And then on top of that, the Roman Catholic Church doesn't even have any of these non -biblical traditions that they claim to be speaking of.

In other words, the only thing that we have today that the apostle could have been speaking about is the

Word of God in the New Testament. Yes, and so the onus is on them to, and this is what

I asked Dr. St. Jennison to debate, I don't know if you remember in the cross -examination, I asked him, can you tell us what these oral traditions that Paul's talking about, what were they?

Can you please define them for us? Well, Rome has not infallibly interpreted what Paul meant by those traditions, but when you press a

Roman Catholic friend and say, what were these oral teachings or oral traditions that Paul was teaching? Well, you don't know what they were, but all we know is whatever

Paul taught was in conformity with what he wrote. And therefore, the onus is on them to prove and show that what

Paul meant by tradition is what Rome means today by tradition. And that's quite a leap. And in fact,

I believe Raymond Brown in his commentary on the New Testament, I believe in his commentary on 2

Thessalonians, I think he called out the fact that the claim that what

Paul is talking about here is the sacred tradition in the Church that is equal to Scripture.

I think Raymond Brown himself pointed out that that view cannot be sustained by this text. Now, another thing that the

Roman Catholic will bring up as something in opposition to Sola Scriptura is they say that we cannot logically use the verses that we claim affirm

Sola Scriptura in the New Testament, because they will say, since the canon wasn't closed, like I just mentioned earlier, these apostles were referring to the

Old Testament only, they will say. But is that true? Were they referring to the

Old Testament only, even though some of what was later to be declared

Scripture, even by Rome, even though it had not yet come to be? Let me give you an example of what

I mean. We have a very classic text in Mark chapter 7.

And I'm going to read a portion of Mark 7. Mark 7.

The Pharisees and some of the scribes gathered around him, meaning Jesus, when they had come from Jerusalem, and had seen that some of his disciples were eating their bread with impure hands, that is, unwashed.

For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they carefully wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders.

And when they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they cleanse themselves. And there are many other things which they have received in order to observe, such as the washing of cups and pitchers and copper pots.

The Pharisees and the scribes asked him, meaning Jesus, why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat their bread with impure hands?

And he, Jesus, said to them, rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, the people honor me with their lips, but their heart is far away from me.

But in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men, neglecting the commands of God you hold to the tradition of men.

He was also saying to them, you are experts at setting aside the commandments of God in order to keep your tradition.

For Moses said, honor your father and your mother, and he who speaks evil of father or mother is to be put to death.

But you say, if a man says to his father or his mother, whatever I have that would help you, is korban, that is to say given to God, you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or his mother, thus invalidating the word of God by your tradition which you have handed down, and you do many things such as that.

Now the Roman Catholic, when we will bring that up, they will say, well of course

Jesus isn't talking about the tradition of the church. These are anti -biblical, or these are traditions that are not in accord with God's law, will, and pleasure.

These are unique traditions of men that have nothing to do with what we are talking about. And they will say, you can't say that the

Bible is the only inerrant word of faith, because whenever you have the scriptures being mentioned in defense by the apostles, or even by Jesus himself, they are only referring to the

Old Testament, since the New Testament canon had not yet been established. So how do you respond to that?

Right, well let me first say about Mark 7, about Jesus condemning the tradition of the elders, the

Roman Catholic virtually shoots himself in the foot there, because the argument that they use is that there has always been this authority over the people of God.

Well, the oral law that the Jews today, Orthodox Jews, believe that Moses received two laws on Mount Sinai, the written

Torah and the oral Torah. The oral Torah became what is now known today as, later it was known as the

Mishnah and the Gemara, and then together you have the Talmud. The Talmud is considered the oral law that God gave to Moses.

No different than the Roman Catholic claim that they have an oral tradition. Jesus condemned that oral law because it violated the written word of God.

And therefore, the Jews held to this view that there was this second stream, the second, the sacred tradition that was on par with the written scriptures.

And again, as I've said before, this is still held by Orthodox Judaism, that it's not just the written

Torah, but the oral Torah that is in the Talmud today, which contradicts, of course, the written

Torah. So the tradition of the elders was also considered to be sacred and equal to the written scriptures.

That's precisely the view that Rome has upon authority. Let me just address your question,

Chris, about the 2nd Timothy 3 .16. And they will say, well, this is only referring to the Old Testament.

And they point to verse 15, where Paul talks about how the Holy Scriptures, Timothy knew the

Holy Scriptures from his youth and that they're able to make you wise into salvation. But it's important to realize that this is the period of inscripturation.

And in 1st Timothy 5 .18, we have this very interesting quote, where the

Apostle Paul talks about elders being counted worthy of double honor. And then he says, for the scripture says, you shall not muzzle an ox when it treads up the grain, and the labor deserves his wages.

Now, if you notice, Chris, the very first quote there, you shall not muzzle an ox when it treads up the grain, comes from Deuteronomy.

The second quote, the labor deserves his wages, is not found in the

Old Testament. It comes from Luke 10, verse seven. So already by the time

Paul writes 1st Timothy, Luke is already considered to be scripture, and he cites it as scripture.

And therefore, since all scripture is the honest thoughts, and Paul quotes from Luke's gospel, then

Luke's gospel is also scripture and the honest thoughts. And then 2nd Peter, chapter three, verse 16,

Peter there is referring to Paul's letters. He says that there are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction as they do the other scriptures.

So what is Peter doing? Peter is placing Paul's on the same level in the category of scripture.

That's why he refers to Paul's letters and the other scriptures. So what does this tell us?

It tells us that by the end of Paul's life, Paul wrote 2nd Timothy as his farewell letter, and he talks about his impending martyrdom in chapter four.

And of course, 2nd Peter, Peter is also speaking about his impending martyrdom. Both these apostles clearly indicate by the end of their lives that portions of the

New Testament are already considered to be scripture and God breathe. Amen.

And we have to go to our final break up. Dr. Costa, I've already forwarded you a question from Joe in Slovenia, because it's rather lengthy, and you can mill it over over our final break.

And we'll have you respond to it when we return. So if you could look for that email that I just sent you forwarded from Joe in Slovenia.

So don't go away, folks. We're going to be right back at Boeing in a few minutes. And if you have any questions of your own before we run out of time,

I would send it right away to chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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This is Chris Arns. And if you just tuned us in, our guest today for the last 90 minutes and the next half hour to come has been and will continue to be

Dr. Tony Kost, a professor of apologetics at Toronto Baptist Seminary. We are discussing, Is Sola Scriptura a

Blueprint for Anarchy? And before I go to Joe and Slovenia's question, Tony, I just wanted to basically reaffirm some things that we were mentioning before the break.

It is interesting, isn't it, that Rome will even claim that their traditions, although they will claim they are binding, they don't believe that they are

God -breathed in the same way that Scripture is. They do see a difference. Of course, the indifference seems to have very little importance when put into practice, but just because they can say in their minds—now

I use that phrase very purposefully—in their minds, they say they can trace their teachings through apostolic succession all the way going back to the first century, even if that were true, which we know is not true, because many of the

Church Fathers would have believed polar opposite on certain issues, on many issues, to what the

Church of Rome in the 21st century believes. And there are some things that the

Church of Rome has declared as dogma that were totally absent from the Fathers, from what we can prove, anyway, from their writings.

But even if they could trace all of their teachings back to the New Testament era, just as the false teachings that the

Pharisees were passing on through rabbinical tradition, it even says in the text where Jesus is speaking in Mark 7 that these things were passed down from generation to generation, but they were false.

So this antiquity that they attach to their teachings is not a seal of some kind of authentic words from God or words for his

Church that God would want his Church to comply with. Right. I mean, there's a fallacy called the

Appeal to Age, which basically says, because something is very old, it must be true. And of course, that does not necessarily follow.

Something could be very old and still be false, and you've rightly pointed that out. Modern -day Gnostics could say, well, we can trace our teaching right back to the first century, where 1

John is attacking Gnostic teachings about Jesus, or Paul's attacks on Gnosticism in Colossians, or we have modern -day

Judaizers who, my heavens, their forefathers are mentioned in the letter to the

Galatians. But that does not necessarily mean that they go back to the apostolic teachings, the orthodox teachings that are at the

Anastos. And just like the tradition of the elders were passed down from generation to generation, even until today,

Jesus said that these are the doctrines of men, and he quotes Isaiah 6 against them to point out that their hearts are far from me, they glorify me, they approach me with their mouths, but their hearts are far from me, and calloused, and so forth.

So you're absolutely right. Just because something is very old does not mean it's true.

In fact, modern -day New Age teachers who tell us that we are

God, or that we are gods, in fact, they're even much older than the Gnostics and the Judaizers, they go right back to Genesis 3, where the serpent said, you shall be as God, knowing good and evil.

So the lie that man is a god, or that he can become God, is something that originates right from the very beginning in the

Garden of Eden. But that does not logically follow, that because it's very old, it is the truth.

Right, and even the authors, the human authors of the New Testament, warned against false teachers rising up in the

Church. Yeah, Acts 20 is very clear. Paul told the Ephesian elders, I know that after my departure, he said, savage wolves will come in amongst you, and they will arise, false teachers will arise, teaching false things.

And 2 Peter 2 says, as there were false prophets among the people of Israel, so there shall be false teachers among you, bringing in damnable heresies, and even denying the

Master who brought them. So already in the Apostolic Age, there were already false teachers in the

Church. Paul warns against Hymenaetus and Philetus, who have erred, he says, and have caused shipwreck to the faith of many, teaching that the

Resurrection has already occurred. So there was false teaching from the get -go, and Luther was right, wherever God plants

His Church, Satan builds his chapel. He's not far behind. That's a good line. Okay, Joan Slovenia says,

Thank you for your labor of love to bring us great instruction from some of the best Christian leaders like Dr.

Tony Costa. My question is about Sola Scriptura in practice. As Reformed Baptists, we necessarily affirm the doctrine of Sola Scriptura, and we teach and preach accordingly.

However, it is just my experience, is it just my experience, or is it all too common that when there arises a conflict or question in the

Church or among brothers, we don't intentionally focus ourselves on Sola Scriptura in working out disagreements, misunderstandings, and questions of preference and opinion?

It seems like when tension occurs, the Bible is often the first thing that is set aside, and we go about our debate ignoring

Sola Scriptura. What good is an affirmation of the doctrine of Sola Scriptura if it isn't adhered to as our sole authority of all areas of faith and practice?

Thank you for mentoring and discipling countless believers around the world. Now, I'm not really sure what Joan Slovenia is talking about, other than perhaps he is thinking of when we refer to the

Second London Confession, or when our Presbyterian brethren refer to the Westminster Confession, or when our

Congregationalist brethren refer to the Savoy Declaration. I'm not really sure what he means, because when

I'm having, even with my co -host, Reverend Buzz Taylor, when we have our friendly discussions and heated debates privately, we are usually going to the

Bible and, you know, defending what we believe according to something that we're reading in the Scriptures.

So I'm not really sure what Joe means, but maybe you do. Well, I'm not sure either, but maybe he's referring to differences in opinion, for example, between Credo Baptist and Paedo Baptist.

And my response to that would be that our Reformed Brethren in the

Paedo Baptist circles would affirm the very same thing we affirm in terms of the doctrines of grace.

Where we differ would be, for example, in areas like baptism. Now, again, baptism, while it is important, baptism is not a core belief of what it means to be a believer in the

Lord Jesus. We are saved by grace alone, without works, which would include the ordinances or sacraments.

And so there is room for debate, there's room for discussion, but these are areas where, again, this has to do with how we interpret the practice of baptism.

And our Presbyterian Brethren are very steeped, historically, in the

Calvinistic idea of the...faculism, that is the idea of the state church, and where there's the idea of the civil authority being used in conjunction with ecclesiastical authority.

The Anabaptists rejected that model, they believed that the church was not to have any relationship to the state, that we are in the world but we're not of the world, and so there's always room for debate in these areas.

But the one thing we have to remember is that while we both affirm sola scriptura, where we are arguing are on issues that do not pertain to our eternal salvation.

And so as much as baptism is important for myself as a reformed Baptist, I'm not going to divide fellowship with a

Presbyterian Brother like R .C. Sproul, because we disagree on baptism. Now, in terms of church conflict, he may be referring to conflict in the church where there's division and strife, and we know many churches where people have leapt over various divers and sundry matters, some things that are really not central to the gospel.

At the end of the day, and I think you mentioned this earlier, Chris, at the end of the day we have to realize that we are fallen people, there are still fallen people within the church, and unfortunately sometimes our fallenness gets the best of us.

That does not take away from sola scriptura. Sola scriptura is the position that all that God has given to us in terms of sufficiency, to know what he says in terms of salvation and so forth, is there in Scripture.

Do we always live out the prescriptive commands of God in Scripture? No. We come short of them.

Unfortunately there's still a lot of sanctification that has to go on in the church, and so if that's what our brother is referring to, then

I would point out that we are still fallible people, we are still sinful people, as Luther said, justus etecetor, we are justified, but we are still sinners.

Justified while still sinners. And so we come short of that. Sola scriptura is not a remedy for perfection, it doesn't mean churches are going to be perfect, it doesn't mean

God's people are going to be perfect, not yet, but we're working on it. Yeah, and if Joe is referring to the great creeds and confessions, like the three forms of unity in the 1689

London Baptist Confession, and the Westminster Confession, and the Savoy Declaration, and the 39 Articles, whatever branch of the

Reformed faith you happen to be from, even if he is referring to that, most people, if they're rightly using those creeds and confessions, are not saying that these documents have the final and inerrant answer.

What they are saying when they refer to those documents is that greater minds than ours, who have wrestled through these issues, have come to believe from the scriptures that this is so, or that is not true, etc.

I mean, going back to using creeds and confessions, those who rightly use them are not saying that they are on par with the

Bible or above the Bible, because they are just summaries of biblical teaching.

Yes, in fact, when Tertullian spoke about the regula fide, the rule of faith, he clearly said that this rule of faith is derived from the teachings that are already in Holy Scripture, and they're simply being communicated to the

Church. So when you look at Nicaea, for instance, the Council of Nicaea, the statement of Nicaea, homoousios, for instance, that the son is of the same substance as the father, or we don't have that term in the

Bible, what Nicaea is clarifying against Arianism is true.

I mean, their statements are in agreement with Holy Scripture. And so creeds are never meant to supplant

Scripture. Creeds are meant to detail what it is that we believe.

And in saying what we believe, we are at the same time saying that we are against what we believe.

In other words, we believe that Christ is of the same substance with the Father, that He is very

God of very God, which means that we deny the opposite of that. We deny that Christ is not

God. We deny that Christ is, as the Arians thought, a creature. We deny that. So the creeds have never been meant to supplant

Scripture or to be read in the same light as Scripture.

They're simply, as you rightly said, summaries of what we believe. And you will notice, usually when creeds are published, whether it's

Nicaea or Chalcedon or any of the great creeds, Constantinople, all of these creeds were published in response to heresy.

When the Westminster Confession of Faith was published, it was not so much published in response to heresy or the

London Baptist Confession of Faith. The London Baptist Confession of Faith, mind you, the first one of 1649, it was published to respond to the false calumnies that were being raised against the

Reformed Baptists in England, and it was published to clearly summarize what it is that Reformed Baptists believed.

And going to those councils, see, that is another strong argument that—I'm not saying it's strong in its essence—I'm saying that the

Roman Catholics strongly make the argument, with much fervor and vociferousness, that those councils prove, even when we refer to them, even when we refer to Nicaea and Chalcedon, that is proof that we are relying on Mother Church, the

Church of Rome, to glean truth from the scriptures that we otherwise would never have been able to see with our own eyes or hear with our own ears, lest Mother Church set it down for us at these councils.

Isn't one of the first mistakes being made by the Roman Catholic apologists when making those statements is that those councils were

Roman Catholic? Isn't there a difference between a Catholic council with a and a

Roman Catholic council? Yes, indeed. And it's quite humorous when you think about it, because none of the bishops in Nicaea, the 318 bishops at Nicaea, none of them—not one of them—believed anything that the

Roman Catholic Church believes today. Not one. And they would have been absolutely shocked if they were told that this was a

Roman Catholic council. You mean they didn't believe in the things that are unique to Rome? They obviously believed in the

Virgin Birth and the Deity of Christ. Oh yes, yes, they didn't believe in the Marian dogma, the Assumption of Mary, the Mass at Conception, the

Mass, the Transubstantiation. They didn't believe this, the way Rome has taught today.

And second of all, the Council of Nicaea, the Bishop of Rome, was not even there. He was not even present at the

Council of Nicaea. A representative was sent, but the Bishop of Rome was not even there in Nicaea.

So it's very strange if the Bishop of Rome was the head of the Visible Church, certainly he should have been overseeing that council, but he was not, because the idea of the papacy was not yet developed in 325.

So when we look at the councils, what we find is that those who convened the councils—not

Constantine, but folks like Athanasius and then other bishops—if we listen to their very words, what they tell us is that what these councils have done is they simply reiterated what

Christians believe about God, about Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, the Church, and salvation, and so forth, but they were never intended to supplant the authority of Scripture, and they were most definitely not

Roman Catholic. Most of these creeds, even the Nicaean -Constantinoplan creed, which

Protestants reject—that's the creed in 787 AD that condoned the iconodulic practice of venerating relics, and images, and icons of the saints, and Mary, and so forth—none of these councils were

Western councils. They were all in the East. They were all Eastern councils.

And so the idea that these were Roman Catholic councils are absolutely ludicrous, because they were

Eastern in nature. If I could just quickly quote Athanasius here, Athanasius said about the

Scriptures, These are the fountains of salvation, that they who thirst may be satisfied with the living words they contain.

In these alone—wow, that sounds like sola scriptura—in these alone is proclaimed the doctrine of godliness, and no man adds to these, neither let him take from these.

For concerning these the Lord put to shame the Sadducees, and said, You doer, not knowing the

Scriptures. And he reproved the Jews, saying, Search the Scriptures, for these are they that testify of me.

So even Athanasius, who also formulated the council, the

Nicene Creed, even Athanasius tells us it is the Scriptures that are the fountains of salvation.

In these alone are found eternal life. Well, you are either a prophet or a mind reader,

I say that tongue in cheek, because I was going to bring up Athanasius, because obviously there is a reason why there is such a phrase that has been passed on through antiquity until our present day,

Athanasius contramundum, Athanasius against the world. If you could explain why that phrase came into being in regard to Athanasius that has a lot of bearing on our subject today.

Yes, well Athanasius opposed Arius of Alexandria. Arius was a presbyter who began to teach that Jesus, the

Son of God, was created, and that he was also of a different substance, heteroousios, of the

Father. He was not of the same substance. So that the Son was a created being. Athanasius opposed him.

But here's the catch, Athanasius was attacked, because once the

Nicene Council passed, it was not too long before, after Constantine's death, the whole empire reverted to Arianism.

Athanasius was exiled a number of times, he was basically attacked for his orthodoxy, while the whole world was going

Arian, this man stood alone against the world, contramundum. And the whole church was going against him.

Yeah, including, surprise, surprise, surprise, the Bishop of Rome. And it was

Athanasius who stood his place and defended the doctrine of the eternal deity of the

Lord Jesus Christ, and he stood firm to the very end. And what was it that he said convinced him of the deity of Christ?

Was it the tradition of the church? No, he said the Scriptures and these alone. It was the

Scriptures that convinced Athanasius of the doctrine of the true deity of the Lord Jesus.

Amen. And that was his real sole appeal, was it not? I mean, especially he never appealed to any alleged infallible pope, because one was not even existing, and even according to Rome's own dogmas at that time, there was no...

Unlike what the Roman Catholic apologists will claim today, that that belief has always been held, there was no infallible pope when

Athanasius... Exactly. And Augustine, if I may just quickly quote Augustine, Augustine here, writing to Anarion, says, and I quote,

I must not press the authority of Nicaea against you, nor you that of Arminium against me, that's

Anarion's counsel, I do not acknowledge the one and you do not the other, but let us come to ground, let us come to ground that is common to both, the testimony of the

Holy Scriptures, close quote. So what he is saying here is, look, I'm not going to press Nicaea on you. But that's strange, because if Nicaea was an infallible counsel of the

Church, then it would have been authoritative. But Augustine says, look, I'm not going to press Nicaea on you, you can't press

Arminium on me, the Arion counsel, but let's come to that which is common ground, the testimony of the

Holy Scriptures. What is Augustine doing? He's placing the Scriptures above the counsels, and that's exactly what we do.

Now, I very recently asked my friend

Robert St. Genes, who you debated, a Roman Catholic apologist, I asked him if he would want to debate someday on the theme, is

Pope Francis a faithful shepherd? And he could not give me a decisive answer, and he said, that sounds like a trick question.

The reason I bring that up is because with all this talk about Protestants being without a faithful shepherd, an infallible papacy, an infallible magisterium, their popes aren't even viewed as infallible unless they're declaring something ex cathedra, and that hardly has ever happened in history.

Am I right? Yes, absolutely, absolutely. And so our infallible head is the

Lord Jesus Christ, He's our infallible head, He's given us His Word, He's appointed pastors, teachers in the

Church to equip the saints, and so forth. And so the

Roman Catholic Church claims that they have this infallible head, but as you correctly noted, the last time anything was infallibly defined as a dogma was 1950, with the

Assumption of Mary. And so I think that the Roman Catholic claim here, at the end of the day, really is wanting.

It really has a lot going on. Well, I could say one thing that I agree with Pope Francis 100 % on, is when he said, who am

I to judge? I mean, he is no one to judge, and that's why you will have your conservative and traditionalist

Roman Catholics saying, at least in private, when you bring up horrific things that Pope Francis has said, they'll say, well, we don't have to believe that, we don't have to believe that, that's not dogma, that's not ex cathedra, we don't have to believe that.

But anyway, we're actually out of time now. I am sorry to Tyler in Mastic Beach, Long Island, and some of our other listeners that didn't have their questions asked and answered, perhaps on our next discussion with Tony Costa, you could join us.

I also want to remind everybody, hey, why not allow my sponsors,

Todd and Patty Jennings, to be more generous to their daughter, son -in -law, and specifically their new grandbaby, by giving that little child more gifts and so on.

Why don't you help them do that by going to cvbbs .com, cvbbs .com, and purchase something from Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service in celebration of the

Jennings' new granddaughter, their very first granddaughter, that was born yesterday. And go to cvbbs .com

and tell them Chris Arnsen sent you. And Dr. Costa, I know that the Toronto Baptist Seminary website is tbs .edu,

tbs for torontobaptisteminary .edu. Any other contact information you care to share? Yes, if they want to check my website, my website is

TonyCosta, all one word, .webs .com. T -O -N -Y -C, as in Charlie, O -S as in Sam, T as in Thomas, A, and then what was the rest of it?

.webs .com. Is that webs plural? W -E -B -S. Okay, .webs

.com. They can go to Google if they want, but Tony Costa, Paul Jennings, it's the first hit. Great.

Well, I look forward to seeing you, God willing, next month at the celebration of the 500th anniversary of the

Protestant Reformation in Farmingville and in Medford, Long Island, and I really thank you so much for being able to fill in at the very last minute for James Dolezal, who could not be with us today due to an unforeseen conflict in his schedule.

Thank you so much, brother, for being available today. My pleasure. And I want everybody to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater