Devin Rose on Catholic Answers Live on Today’s Dividing Line

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00:40

And yes, there you go. I'm not sure why that was turned off, but I didn't touch nothing, man.

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Oh, yeah, sure. You're probably running in here changing stuff. You're still running music anyways.

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So welcome to the dividing line. It's a Thursday morning very early a couple days ago, or was it?

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Yeah, it was probably about Monday. Um, don't have it right here. Uh, Devin Rose appeared on Catholic answers live.

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And, uh, for those of you who have already forgotten, because things are only remembered for a brief period of time in this, uh, this particular, um, uh, time period in, uh, in life.

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Um, Devin Rose, uh, wrote a, uh, a book, the

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Protestant dilemma. And, uh, he posted a video, which he has removed, um, without ever explaining, uh, well,

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I guess he just said he didn't like the attitude expressed, but that doesn't explain, um, why he said what he said in the video, uh, other than putting, you know, the anti -Catholic bumper sticker on it and weirdness like that.

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Uh, the point was that he claimed that his book refuted mine and he faulted me for not having refuted his book, even though my book was written 10 years earlier.

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But the irony having read his book, um, uh, is to, is to now realize that I did refute his book because if he's read my book and he,

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I guess he claims to have done so. Um, he didn't understand it and didn't respond to it and, uh, did not take it seriously or something.

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I don't know, but, uh, one thing is, is obvious, um, whatever form of, uh, evangelical or Protestant argumentation, um,

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Devin Rose is, is arguing against is, is not the reformed view. He doesn't understand our view of a canon or what, um, sufficiency of scripture actually means or any of those things.

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Um, and so the irony is, um, that I did refute his book, uh, because he didn't actually end up responding to mine.

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And, uh, therefore in the process, uh, I provide arguments that are quite effective against his, um, because he didn't really respond to that.

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Well, you may recall that after we started giving some attention to Mr. Rose, um, the opportunity arose, arose.

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Um, I was contacted by Moody radio and was asked to go on, uh, their, their debate program with Devin Rose and was very quickly then informed after I said, sure, be glad to do that.

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Um, well he won't go on with you. So I was disinvited and someone else went on with Mr.

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Rose. And of course the discussion would have been significantly more pointed and focused upon, uh, the key issues had

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I been on, but that was Mr. Rose's choice was to, uh, not engage with the person that only a few weeks earlier he was, uh, selling books by telling people that he had refuted me when he actually didn't and so on and so forth.

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So that's, um, that's, that's probably not the best way to, you know, start a relationship.

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Um, but, um, that's how things are started. So Devin Rose was on a

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Catholic answers live and Turretin fan told me about it. And, uh, so I took the time yesterday to, uh, briefly grab that and I have just two, uh, brief segments at the beginning, just two brief little comments at the beginning, uh, to, uh, to look at and we will move forward from that particular point in time.

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But, um, uh, if you recall the format of the book, it's, uh, remember

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Turretin fan calling, we started dealing with the assertions that it makes and the way it's laid out.

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Once you've demonstrated that the founding assertions are errant, the whole book collapses and it is a, uh, significantly less nuanced studied, um, form of attack upon Sola Scriptura than what you find elsewhere.

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In fact, it's, it's, it's strange. I've, I've, I've criticized Catholic answers and, uh,

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Tim Staples specifically, um, many times for basically just repeating the same things over and over again.

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Now there's everything right in, you know, being focused upon the central issues and, um, you know, for us, we're constantly talking about scriptural sufficiency, the inspiration of scripture.

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It's the Anustos. There's nothing else that's the Anustos. Um, that that's, that's not what I'm saying.

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Uh, we should be constantly saying the same thing over and over again on that level, but the

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Roman Catholics just don't seem to up their game. Um, they don't, they don't seem to listen to the other side.

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Um, at least back in, at least back in the eighties, when I first started the late eighties, when

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I first started encountering Roman Catholic apologists, um, there wasn't any

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EWTN and stuff like that. And so they were having to go out and they were having to debate. And, and you could see that at least initially, uh, people like Jerry Matitix and Scott Hahn and others were developing arguments in light of the kind of argumentation they were encountering.

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Well, given that a lot of, uh,

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Protestant fundamentalist anti -Catholicism is extremely surface level as well and, um, purposefully ignores reading the reformers and things like that.

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It's, you know, you look at Catholicism and fundamentalism by Carl Keating and you know, it's responding to bad arguments, uh, against Roman Catholicism.

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And there are a lot of bad arguments out there. And I understand that Catholic apologists have to respond to bad arguments as well as good arguments.

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Got it. Understand that. But what we see is when you listen to EWTN, when you listen to something like the coming home program, you know, the coming home network stuff, it just, how many times can you repeat the same tired arguments without showing any recognition of how far the critics have gone in refining and making much more pointed and clear the criticisms that they're making.

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In fact, I, I saw a tweet, uh, not too long ago. I think it was last week, if I recall correctly, um, from Patrick Madrid, um, linking people to the 1993

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Denver debate with Carl Keating and Patrick Madrid versus, uh,

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Bill Jackson and Ron Nemec. And I just,

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I'm like, well, you know, I suppose when you have, you know, that would be like, that'd be like me, uh, doing the debates

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I've done with people like Yusuf Ismail and Abdullah Kunda and Shabir Ali, but directing people primarily to debates with, uh,

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Jalal Abu Alrub or, um, um, uh, huh. Not, yeah, not their

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Achmed or Yusuf books or something like that. Yeah. Um, uh, where there really wasn't any competition.

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There really wasn't any debate. Um, because that,

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I mean, that, that was just a, it was such a slaughter, such a slaughter.

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And that's why I challenged Madrid to debate on solo scriptura. And we did later that year, as I recall in San Diego, it was because they had ducked my challenge to do that very debate.

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Um, they, oh, we're, we're too busy. We're not gonna be doing debates. All the Holy father's here. I go debate Jerry Matitix.

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And once we had the Matitix debate set up, then all of a sudden they set up the debate with, um,

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Bill Jackson and Ron Nemec. And like, like I said, it was, uh, uh, Jackson and Nemec simply should not have, they should not have been there that night.

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They were not prepared to debate and, uh, they just got slaughtered. Uh, it was, it was, it was pitiful.

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Well, anyways, all of that to, um, all that to say that, um, listening to Catholic answers live, which

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I was for awhile, you know, I'm tired of hearing, you know, the most recent, uh,

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Brian Williams joke on whatever, uh, secular talk shows on.

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And so I'll, uh, go over to EWTN cause there's a station here locally and, um, we'll listen to stuff and you know, sometimes

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Jimmy Akin's on, sometimes Tim Staples is on and I'm just, I'm just amazed that they're just constantly, you know, well, you know, we, we criticize

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Jimmy Akin's response on purgatory. There's a way to answer questions where you show that you are familiar with the refutations of your argument and to strengthen your argument.

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You don't have to necessarily respond to every possible thing. Every time you answer a question,

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I'm not saying that, but you can, you can demonstrate. We hear what the other side is saying.

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It just doesn't seem that Roman Catholic apologists do that. And certainly, uh, that is the case of Devin Rose.

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And so, uh, let's listen to a couple of, uh, his, uh, comments. Uh, I just realized, uh, this would have sounded funny.

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Uh, it would have been a Mickey Mouse. Well, you know, nice thing about this is it would not have sounded like Mickey Mouse. It just would have been people talking very, very fast.

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Uh, but, uh, I'll take it back to normal speed, not even speeding it up normal speed today because there's less than like two minutes of it anyway.

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So, uh, let's, let's listen to a couple of these. How about one of the granddaddy questions of all that's chapter 26, holy orders and apostolic succession.

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If Protestantism is true, anyone who accurately interprets and teaches from the Bible has authority in Christ's church.

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That probably loomed large in your own story, correct? The question of authority. Yes. And that question underlies every argument in the book.

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In other words, there's, there are two totally different paradigms. There's the Catholic paradigm where we know who has authority because we can trace their succession from Christ to the apostles all the way down through the centuries.

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And then the Protestant paradigm is that doesn't matter. The church became corrupted. And so whoever teaches the gospel accurately, whatever that might mean, they are the ones who have de facto authority.

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Now that's, that sounds exactly like what the

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EWTN audience wants to hear. But anyone familiar with the real issues of epistemological certainty, nature of revelation, nature of teaching authority knows that that is an extremely simplistic and inaccurate summary of things.

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It really is on, on numerous, on numerous levels. Let's, let's stop and start this time. How about one of the granddaddy questions of all?

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That's chapter 26, holy orders and apostolic succession. If Protestantism is true. Now, apostolic succession sounds so good.

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Remember when, remember when John Paul II was dying and, and you get this, this, you know, every

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Catholic apologist got his five minutes of fame on Fox news and they were talking about the, the 2000 year old church and apostolic succession.

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It sounds wonderful. Um, I've never heard anyone argue that what

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I said about this is, well, I've never heard a meaningful argument against this. I've heard people, you know, try to say, well, it's unworkable or whatever.

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True apostolic succession means teaching what the apostles taught.

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We only know what the apostles taught from the new Testament. No matter how hard Rome has tried down through the centuries, she has never been able to provide any meaningful documentation that they have access to anything else that Jesus or the apostles said other than what's in scripture.

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Remember when I debated Mitch Packer on that subject? And one of the questions I asked him was, has

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Rome dogmatically defined anything that Jesus said?

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And I, I may have included apostles, but maybe it's just Jesus, but it's the same either way.

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Has Rome dogmatically defined anything Jesus, I think it said, and the apostles said outside of what's found in scripture.

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And he honestly admitted no. So you get this nebulous tradition thing, which changes from Pope to Pope era to era.

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I can guarantee you no honest person could ever argue that what is considered to be apostolic tradition by the

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Pope who wrote the papal syllabus of errors and the current Pope would be two different things.

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There's no question about that. No question about it. If you think otherwise you are self deceived.

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You're living in a fantasy land. You're like the guy on Twitter this morning. There's a guy on Twitter this morning.

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He actually used the name Athanasius, which was funny because Athanasius did not have his attitude.

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But he's just a radical papist. And, and I mean, we're talking Kool -Aid drinking papist here because I, I pointed out, uh, you know, he said something about Jerome and, uh, and, uh, the perpetual virginity of Mary.

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Um, and I pointed out all these other dogmas that Jerome obviously didn't believe in.

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And he said, well, if there had been a council to speak authoritatively, he would have agreed.

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And it's, it's just like, yeah, just like Cardinal Newman, Vatican one, right? Right. Exactly.

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Um, you know, keep your job, close your mouth, change history. Uh, that, that's what

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I mean by Kool -Aid drinking, you know, just whatever the Pope says, if the next

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Pope says the opposite with this Pope says, I'll believe that too. It's okay. I'm just following the

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Pope, you know, that, that kind of abject, uh, capitulation, you know, here's my brain do with it as you wish type stuff.

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So anyway, uh, we, we had some of that, uh, this morning on, um, on Twitter with, with that particular fellow.

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And it just, it just gives you that this, this idea, apostolic succession to be a meaningful phrase

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Must mean that you teach what the apostles taught point to the idea that you can actually in any meaningful historical fashion, trace an unbroken line of succession through the morass of heresy, politics, and immorality.

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That is the history of the Roman sea. Likewise involves pure self -deception, pure self -deception.

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Anybody who has taken any time to even in a semi -unbiased fashion, read the history of the

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Roman papacy for the first 1900 years.

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We'll recognize the central role of external political authorities, the role that Constantinople played and the emperor played and invading armies played in the selection of bishops of Rome.

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They will recognize that there were Popes and anti -Popes, which one was, which we don't have a clue at the time.

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Only going back in history, Rome goes, ah, we'll take these. Nobody knew at the time.

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You have councils condemning Popes. Remember Honorius?

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And at the time, nobody could know which one was right. It's only hindsight where you just sort of, you know, it's, it's sort of like, you know, my wife goes through various phases of things, you know, for a long time, she collected these little miniature cats, but we don't have any miniature cats anymore.

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And then it was miniature shoes. There's still a few hiding around, you know, but my daughter says that my wife needs an intervention on bicycles.

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Oh yeah, they're all through the house. If a picture has a bike in it, she'll, she'll buy it and she'll find a place to put it.

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And then she'll want to change stuff. And so she has to take stuff down, puts new stuff up. So she's constantly filling in holes with, with the putty stuff, you know, and then you have to repaint stuff.

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And, you know, it's just, just how it works at our house. And I just sort of sit back and go, yes, dear. Because we've been married for 33 years and that's why.

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But anyway it's, it's filling in holes and changes stuff around. That's what you, that's what

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Rome does with history is, oh, well, I think we'll trace the line through this

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Pope here and then that Pope there. And yeah, that Avignon papacy thing. And yeah, I know there were two

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Popes and they were anathemizing each other and anathematizing each other. Yeah. And then there were three.

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Yeah. I know. And, and, and a council had to, had to fix the whole mess, but it, it's still the infallible papacy.

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And, and, and you, and you go, oh, okay. And then the, how about, um, uh, how about all those

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Popes that were, you know, like poisoned and poisoning each other and buying the papacy. And you had Alexander riding through Rome in his armor and he's a general.

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And, and yeah, the pornography, of course, back in the 10th century. And, and, and, and you just go,

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I'm sorry, but no one, no. And it's funny. I was listening to a

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Muslim critiquing Christianity. And one of the things you got to deal with is the fact that the

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Muslims will point to Roman Catholicism and go, if you can believe that, that and that, boy, you people are really silly. And they'll use that as an argument against Trinity.

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Um, Rome has brought much, great disrespect, uh, upon, upon the gospel itself.

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Um, so apostolic succession sounds wonderful, but if you seriously think that you can trace a line, a meaningful line, and that that's somehow guarantees that the socialist liberal in Rome today called

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Francis is somehow guaranteed to be teaching what the apostles taught in first century self -deception, nothing but self -deception.

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Um, and I'm, I, by the way, I'm really looking forward to this, this papal encyclical on global warming.

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Oh yes. Uh, at least back in the seventies when it was global cooling, uh, the, uh, the, the

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Pope didn't decide to weigh in on that, but don't worry. Don't worry. I've done enough debates with Roman Catholic apologists to know that it doesn't matter what

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Francis says, because how does papal infallibility work? It's real simple.

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If the Pope's ever wrong, then he wasn't infallible. That's what we learned.

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Isn't it? That if listen to my debate with staples, then the debate with some Janice and functionally, that's how it works.

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If the Pope's ever wrong, what he said wasn't infallible. If it's not wrong, then what he said was, and you can never know which is which, and it might change tomorrow with a new

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Pope, but that's the system. And that's what gives us certainty, man.

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Oh yeah. We know Devin Rose knows until the

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Pope says otherwise. And then he'll know that what the Pope then says is true.

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See, and that's, that's what I mean by drinking the Kool -Aid because that's exactly, you know, this, it, it, it's a mess.

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Anyway, anyone who accurately interprets and teaches from the Bible has authority in Christ's church.

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Now there's, there's, there's an element of truth to that because if you accurately represent and proclaim what the apostles themselves taught in inspired scripture, that teaching is authoritative.

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Now they wouldn't dare want to talk about the reality that Protestants actually believe in bishops, elders, overseers, uh, who have authority in the church.

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They would, they don't want to reckon because remember the, the, the paradigm that they are wanting to create in everybody's minds is you've got

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Rome and authority and order, the ancient 2000 year old church, et cetera, et cetera.

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Protestantism, free for all, no order, uh, you and your

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Bible under the tree, 77 billion denominations, um, whatever that, and there's, and in the between, nothing at all.

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That's, that's the mindset that, that they want you to have. And so if you, if you actually talk about meaningful, serious, uh, well of course from their perspective, there is no such thing as a

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Protestant church. Um, if you, if you really understand what the Popes have said, that's one of the things

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I pointed out in regards to Rick Warren. We talked about our, at our church, Saddleback is not a church from Rome's perspective, not a

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Christian church. It does not have true sacramental authority. And what was it? I think that was the name of it.

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It was, uh, John Paul II, if I recall correctly. Anyway, um, the idea of a serious church to take seriously biblical standards, seriously attempts to practice sola scriptura, which the vast majority of churches, they do not.

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Um, well that would introduce all sorts of problems. And so they, they don't want to do that. So they just, yeah, that's good.

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Let's go with the easier way. That probably loomed large in your own story, correct? The question of authority. Yes. And that question underlies every argument in the book.

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In other words, there's, there are two totally different paradigms. There's the, it knows only two. We know that there are actually many more.

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And we know that within Roman Catholicism, there are multitudes of understanding of even how papal authority is supposed to work, et cetera, et cetera.

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But no, no, we need to keep things very, very simple. The Catholic paradigm where we know who has authority because we can trace their succession from Christ to the apostles all the way down through the centuries.

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So when you actually can't do that, So is this why

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Devin Rose won't debate? Because it would be too easy to demonstrate that the central argument of his entire book is historically laughable.

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All you've got to do, don't, don't, don't get my book. I don't have it here. It's in my history section, but don't get my book.

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Go get Kelly's book, Encyclopedia of the Popes. Just read it for yourself.

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He's not a polemic assist. He's just, he's just walking through each of the

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Popes and the anti -Popes and he just, just gives you the facts and there will be more than enough right there for you to go.

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No, we can't draw some line through this morass of politics and sin and evil and corruption and, and ignorance and every, no, there's no line here.

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What are you babbling about? And so your knowledge, the, the, the, the depth of your knowledge, the certainty you have of the

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Christian faith is based upon that line. That's a, that's bad.

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And then the Protestant paradigm is that doesn't matter. The church became corrupted. And so whoever teaches the gospel accurately, whatever that might mean, notice that did you catch the, the necessary radical agnosticism and skepticism that he believes must exist.

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If you can't trace the one line of the papacy, papacy through the mess of history, then no one can know what the gospel is.

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There you go. That's Romanism in all of its blasphemy.

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That's the same attitude, the same attitude. I remember 19, somewhere in the nineties,

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I'm not going to bother trying to remember the nineties now. But when

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I was debating gerrymatitics on the Marian dogmas, and we were talking about the bodily assumption,

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I don't remember if this came up in the sola scriptura one the next year or that one itself, one of the two.

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But in one of those two debates, and I remember the crowd gasping and rightfully so, gerrymatitics demonstrated what it means to totally drink the

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Kool -Aid. Now he's spit it up since then. Either that, or he's gone so far beyond the

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Kool -Aid to the next level that it's hard to say, because he's, I don't know what

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Jerry is anymore. No, no one, no one knows, but one of the two, but in that debate, he made a statement that we have the exact same epistemological warrant foundation for believing in the bodily assumption of Mary, as we have the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

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And that's the church of Rome. That's the church of Rome. And that's, that's what

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Devin Rose is saying right here. He's just not saying it in such a way for you to really go, wait a minute, wait a minute.

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The, the, the idea that was dogmatically defined in 1950, that generations of Christians lived and died without ever even making reference to, we have just as much certainty of that as we have the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

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Folks, this is what you get when you deny sola scriptura. Okay. Once you, once you knock the walls down, which is what denying sola scriptura does, you have no basis left for objecting to this kind of abject heretical foolishness, but that's what you get.

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That's what you get. So that's what he's saying.

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That's, that's what you, you can't even know the gospel unless you have the papacy.

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And what's making all of this so strange these days is many people are recognizing just how radical

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Francis is. I mean, this guy is a glowing leftist socialist liberal.

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And I can guarantee you there have been non leftist, socialist, liberal

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Popes in the past. And he keeps letting stuff go and saying stuff.

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And of course the Catholic apologists do their spin that thing as much as possible.

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And of course, eventually all you got to do is say, well, that wasn't infallible that whatever he says on global warming, that that's not infallible.

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That's it. You know, that's just, you know, that's, that's an encyclical and you know, we got to listen to what he's saying, but it's not infallible.

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See, you know, it's just, it's just, there's always way around everything. You know, if you want to believe almost anything, you can, you know, sacrifice your, your mind and you'll, you'll, you'll find a way to it.

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They are the ones who have de facto authority. So the ones who teach what the apostles taught in scripture are the ones who have authority.

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Yeah, that's right. You got it. You got it. And they go on.

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Okay. How about, uh, soul scripture? If Protestantism is true, Protestants should be united in their interpretations of the

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Bible. Now I would say that certainly, certainly no later than 2000 when, when was the, yeah,

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I was no, uh, nine, when did, when did we debate staples on, uh, on, you know, the

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Eucharist and when was the papal infallibility? Is that before that?

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I thought, I thought one was 96 and the other was 2000, 97 and 2000.

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Okay. All right. So without a question by 2000,

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I and others had addressed this argument dozens and dozens of times in debate and in print.

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And in fact, in the book, mine doesn't have a cool anti -Catholic bumper sticker on it, but in, in this book, which

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Devin Rose claimed to have refuted, but didn't seem to have read first. There is a specific discussion of this very question.

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Should solo scriptura does is one of the requirements for solo scriptura to be true is one of the requirements that I'm having trouble with my books down here.

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They're all falling over. There we go. Is one of the requirements to solo scriptura that there be a unanimous opinion is, is, is that, is that what comes from that?

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Well, let's, let's just show the painfully obvious inconsistency of the

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Roman Catholic to even raise this question. I remember, you know, I, I don't think

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Patrick Madrid made it up, but he certainly popularized or was central in popular popularizing the idea specifically that solo scriptura is the blueprint for anarchy.

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He used that argument over and over and over again in debates and so on and so forth.

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So it's, it's been around for a long time. It's always been a self -defeating argument for anyone who has even the slightest, again, honest understanding of the current state of affairs within the

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Roman Catholic communion. You know that the simple response question can be this.

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So has the sufficient Roman Catholic magisterium resulted in unanimity of opinion amongst

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Roman Catholics? And the answer obviously is no. So you've got a living infallible

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Pope, the magisterium of the church, and yet I can find

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Roman Catholics who believe almost anything under the sun. So it is grossly hypocritical and self -defeating for Roman Catholics who know, and the

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Roman Catholic apologists do know this, uh, this Athanasius guy on Twitter.

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I mentioned the historical reality that there was no monarchical episcopate in Rome until the middle of the second century.

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It's just a historical reality. Both Catholics and non -Catholic historians recognize this.

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It's not a function of a secular worldview. It's not a function of liberalism.

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It's a historical reality. Well, his response was, oh yeah, sure. You'll quote liberal

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Catholics against us. Good luck. Um, you know, in your arguments against Muslims, when they quote liberals against you had nothing to do with liberalism, nothing to do with liberalism at all.

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It's just simply a fact of history. It's not coming from some, uh, secular mindset that has to look at history in a particular fashion that has to say, well, there can't be anything supernatural, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

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Uh, completely bogus application, any honest analysis of the modern situation,

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Roman Catholicism will tell you that there is a massive range of understanding, even of what

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Vatican two said, let alone Vatican one or going back in history.

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And that's because even when you have a council, even when you have a quote unquote, living magisterium, the reality is that as soon as words are put into print, as soon as words are uttered, they must be interpreted as just, as I said, at the end of the debate with Mitch Pakla years and years ago, you can pile up a pile of commentaries and decrees and canons as high as the roof.

37:43

If you want to, it does not clarify anything in the Bible. If anything, it declarifies, it muddies, it complicates.

37:54

So it's just it so obvious that this kind of argumentation now that's the first problem.

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It's a self -defeating argument. Second problem, where has anyone ever claimed that solo scriptura will produce unanimity of opinion?

38:16

Where, where is that even amongst meaningful statements of the concept from the reformers?

38:25

Where, where do you get that? It's a canard. And again, if Devin Rose can't see it's a canard, then he never was much of a

38:32

Protestant, was he? And since, you know, the, the big, the big, uh, attraction to these guys is allegedly their, their celebrity status as converts.

38:45

Uh, and we, we see how well that has worked out with, uh, Gerrymatitics and, and others. Um, if they, if they don't show any understanding of what they allegedly once believed, why are we giving them this status?

39:00

Why are we concerned? Uh, or, or why we give them this, this weight, this, this expertise.

39:08

The reality is scripture could be sufficient in of itself. And when we come to it, we can come to it with all sorts of things that keep us from hearing what it's saying.

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One of the biggest things to keep us from hearing what it's saying is tradition, tradition.

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You come to the written scriptures with a traditional understanding of what they're supposed to be saying.

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And it's going to be very hard for you to separate that tradition from what's actually there. There's also the reality of ignorance.

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All of us have great gaps in our knowledge that impact the conclusions we come to ignorance, tradition.

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We have desires to find things in scripture that are not actually there that may not be due to tradition, but just simply to our lusts, to the fact that we are in a particular situation.

40:11

And therefore we want to find certain things in scripture. The scriptures could be absolutely clear and perfect in what they say.

40:19

It's human beings are the problem. You say, well, that's why you script the soul scripture can't work.

40:26

Well, that's why what Protestants believe is that in this world, the church in her journey is going to have to, in every generation, the term is contend earnestly for the ones for all delivered to the saints faith.

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But just because we have to contend for it doesn't mean that it hasn't been delivered. It has been, and we have to learn from others.

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We have to practice sola scriptura, but the only way you will ever practice sola scriptura is if you believe that it's based upon the truth.

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And that is the scripture is the honest dots that men spoke from God, as they were carried along by the Holy spirit, that what we read in scripture is what

41:17

God has spoken to us as Jesus, Paul, and Peter all taught. And sadly, there are only a certain number of churches and denominations that take seriously the necessity to be practicing sola scriptura.

41:34

All of this has been discussed over and over and over and over and over again.

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All of this has been discussed repeatedly. Devin Rose shows no knowledge of it.

41:50

None. Nothing at all. It's amazing. I don't know. It's shocking to me.

41:56

This is huge. It's related to the authority question. Of course, if, if the Protestant theory of the perspic,

42:03

I'm going to say right perspicuity or the perspicaciousness. In other words, the, the utter self -evident simplicity of scripture.

42:10

If that's, um, that's not what perspicuity means. And this isn't

42:15

Devin Rose, by the way, but it's someone who should know better. Um, what, how did, how did he, what was, what was the description here?

42:24

In other words, the, the utter self -evident simplicity of scripture. The utter L self -evident simplicity of scripture.

42:34

I, again, evidently actually reading the other side is not what

42:39

Roman Catholic apologists do. Uh, it's just not, not their thing. Perspicuity has nothing to do with simplicity.

42:51

It has to do with clarity. Um, you can write, uh, a perspicuous book on fractals, but it will not be simplistic.

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It can't be due to the nature of what it's describing. It may be perspicuous.

43:08

But not simplistic. And the idea that what we're saying is, is that the, the, all the truth of God just lies on the surface of scripture.

43:18

The one has to do no work. Um, that there's nothing about languages or backgrounds or all that stuff is irrelevant is of course an absurdity.

43:29

And it should not shock us that Roman Catholics continue the, um, decades long tradition because they are in the tradition, the decades long tradition of misrepresenting solo scriptura.

43:48

We have documented the misrepresentation of it over and over and over again.

43:54

I can't tell you how many times I've told people, if you know what solo scriptura is, you'll discover that the vast majority of arguments against solo scriptura are empty straw men arguments because they're assuming something, reading something into it.

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And so often non Roman Catholics end up defending a straw man themselves because of the misrepresentation of the side and their own ignorance.

44:25

I've seen it happen over and over and over again. Sometimes it's subtle.

44:30

Sometimes it's like that debate on solo scriptura from Denver where, you know, the Catholics go, well, how do you know?

44:37

Uh, some, you know, Matthew wrote Matthew. Oh, it says in my King James Bible, the gospel according to Matthew.

44:44

And you just want to go. Uh, you know, sometimes it's real obvious like that.

44:50

And most of the time it's, it's not that obvious. If that's the case, two questions arise.

44:56

Why isn't there unanimity among Protestants on the question of biblical interpretation? And why does

45:02

St. Peter remark about how difficult the writings of St. Paul can be? Now notice again, uh, here's, here's someone who is, um, who is supposed to be an apologist at the very least.

45:22

Again, this isn't Devin Rose. Um, this is Patrick Coffin. I think,

45:27

I think anyways, I didn't watch the video part. I've got it on my computer at home, but, um, no, no, no,

45:33

I don't know. I don't have it on the computer at home. All I got was the, uh, video portion.

45:38

Maybe don't eventually they put up video clips. I think, I think sometimes they do because that's what we did with the

45:44

Jimmy Akin one. So maybe, you know, but I think it was Patrick Coffin. Anyways, I could go back to the beginning and it would tell me who it is, but the point being someone who should know better, should know better.

45:57

And yet what, what is their argumentation? Well, all, if soul scripture was true, then all

46:04

Christians would agree on how to interpret scripture. And please demonstrate what the connection between the two is. We're saying that scripture is the sole infallible rule of faith.

46:14

How does that then guarantee that everyone who claims to be a

46:20

Christian will agree with every other Christian on the subject of biblical interpretation?

46:27

Connection is what we're not told. Well, well, it would have to be why?

46:34

Well, because our arguments get soul scriptural work if it's not. Okay.

46:41

Um, and then, well, Paul did, uh,

46:46

Peter did say there were difficult things to in, in Paul. Okay.

46:52

And what's the false assumption here? The soul of scripture means that everything's simple in the Bible.

46:57

And that, as we pointed out, when he defined perspicuous, he completely mystified perspicuous.

47:05

In fact, um, here it is. Assuming this was

47:11

Patrick Coffin, if he, uh, if he'd taken the time to do what, you know, what we often do, um, you know, we'll, we'll grab things like, um, you know, the, uh, catechism of the

47:28

Catholic church and, and, uh, stuff like that. And we'll, we'll read portions out of that.

47:33

Here's, here's the, uh, you know, there's the catechism of the Catholic church, you know, and so we've got stuff marked in here about indulgences and stuff like that.

47:43

And we'll, we'll read whole sections, you know, well, here's the whole section on the apostolic constant, uh, uh, apostolic succession.

47:50

And, and, um, well, here's a very interesting one. As a result, the church to whom the transmission interpretation of revelation is entrusted does not drive her certainty about all revealed truths from the

48:02

Holy scriptures alone. Both tradition, scripture and tradition must be accepted and honored with equal sentiments of devotion and reverence.

48:10

Well, there you go. You know, we've, we've talked about all that before we actually use their stuff and, and, uh, you know, cite sources and do things like that.

48:19

But that only seems to be primarily one side because right here in, in my

48:26

London Baptist confession of faith, this is the modern language version, the 1689, uh, in the very first chapter, very first chapter, huh?

48:37

Uh, the sum total of section six, let's start with that one. The sum total of God's revelation considering all things essential to his own glory and to the salvation of faith and life of men is either explicitly set down or implicitly contained in the

48:51

Holy scripture. Not whether a supposed revelation of the spirit or man's traditions is ever to be added to scripture.

48:58

The same time, however, we acknowledge that inward enlightenment from the spirit of God is necessary for the right understanding of what scripture reveals.

49:05

There's something spiritual about the interpretation of scripture. We also accept that certain aspects of the worship of God and of church government, which are matters of common usage are to be determined by the light of nature and Christian common sense in line with the general rules of God's word from which there must be no departure.

49:21

Then we have section seven. The contents of scripture vary in their degree of clarity and some men have a better understanding of them than others.

49:34

Yet those things which are essential to man's salvation and which must be known, believed and obeyed are so clearly propounded and explained in one place or another that men educated or uneducated may attain to a sufficient understanding of them if they but use the ordinary means, which sounds to me like they might have to study.

49:56

They might have to actually look into things. They will, they have to study.

50:02

Yeah. Yeah. So that's what our stuff says.

50:08

Why won't you respond to that? Why won't you define it in a meaningful fashion?

50:15

Well, because it's it's more useful for us to paint

50:20

Protestantism as this simplistic jack chicken thing because we, we like demonstrating that jack chick arguments can be totally shredded, which they can't.

50:33

Okay. Well, if that's the best you got, that's the best you got. So we go to Devin Rose.

50:41

Yeah. Those are good questions, Patrick. I wish someone could answer those because then I might still be Protestant. Wow. Devin, welcome home.

50:51

We had answered them long before you left in books that you have pretended to have refuted.

51:02

So when should we expect to hear that you've repented? And yeah, of course,

51:10

I don't ever think you, I don't think coming back would actually mean anything because I don't have any real foundation to believe that you really once were, you know, went out from us because they were not truly of us.

51:23

If they'd been of us, they would have gone out from us. You know, you know, that, that terminology. Wow. If I could answer those questions,

51:29

I would have remained a Protestant. Now, if there were meaningful, if there was evidence within Devin Rose's book that he really understands the positions that he's denying and provides an answer to that, then we could just simply go, well, you know, maybe before this program started, they sat down and said, no, look,

51:55

Devin, we really want to, we really want to be simple today.

52:03

You know, we've got a lot of people in the audience that need very simplistic answers. So let's, let's just, let's just stay, you know, real, real basic.

52:14

I suppose we could do that. The problem is the Protestant dilemma doesn't show any meaningful understanding of these things.

52:23

And so you're left going, well, come on, Devin, I want an answer here. Well, and I did too.

52:30

But yeah, the argument is, as you said, if soul scripture is true, that means it's by God's design.

52:36

It was a foundational tenet of the very, you know, founding of the

52:41

Church, which means then we would expect that unity Christ prayed for in John 17, it would be manifested evident and it would also, um, or it would come directly from that soul of scripture.

52:55

Now notice what they want to do. They want to try to demand that soul of scriptura produce something, um, that we never say it was intended to produce when the apostles were walking the planet, speaking the very words of God, there were false teachers and division.

53:22

So you, you are creating a result that is actually opposed to our understanding of the nature of the church and saying, well, if it doesn't create that result, then it must not be true.

53:34

It's absurd. It's a, it's a straw man definition of soul of scriptura.

53:41

And here again, we're in 2015. And what does, what do we find

53:50

Catholic answers and Devin Rose and Patrick, what are they doing? They're lighting up straw men right and left.

53:58

And evidently that's how you get donations. That's how you get people to keep you on the air is you just, you know, wow, look at that go.

54:07

What looks just like last week on the coming home network. Yeah. It looks just like as it is

54:12

Protestants not only don't agree on interpreting the Bible, but don't even agree on which issues are the essential ones and which ones are not.

54:21

Now, is it not the case that when you look at the

54:29

Protestant denominations that believe in scripture alone and that reject any external edition of revelation, interpretational authority, books of scripture, et cetera, et cetera, which separates

54:54

Rome out because she's got all that kind of stuff, not books of scripture, but certainly when it comes to the most recent dogmas, might as well.

55:04

When you look at the denominations that Syria to take solo scriptura seriously and you ask them, what are the central doctrines of the faith?

55:13

Are you telling me that they're all over the map? Of course not. Of course not.

55:21

I mean, think of, you know, not get rid of the liberals because the liberals are ishy squishy, you know, they changed all the time.

55:32

What have we defined as the central doctrines of the faith from the reformation onward? Trinity, deity of Christ, incarnation, cross, resurrection, entire field of soteriology, though many people these days are, but only by abandoning solo scriptura do they do that.

55:55

And the sufficiency of scripture and a high view of scripture. Um, we've been focused upon that and we've defined the central doctrines.

56:07

In my experience, when I meet Roman Catholics who attend mass regularly,

56:16

I find them to be in a, as in a whole abysmally ignorant of what actually defines the

56:23

Christian abysmally. I mean, let's talk

56:30

Trinity. Let's go talk Trinity with, uh, with a group of people coming out from, uh, from mass, uh, this coming

56:37

Sunday at your local Catholic church. How well do you think we'll do? Um, let's talk soteriology.

56:47

The reality is that when you look at denominations that take solo scriptura seriously, they are significantly more united than Roman Catholicism is significantly more united.

57:02

And that's, it's just a fact, just a fact. Now I had not intended, had not intended to spend the whole hour on Devin Rose and those brief little segments.

57:17

In fact, right here on my screen, I had Tim Staples book on Mary up because, and I had, uh,

57:24

Mary and other redeemer over here. And I was going to get into, um, some of the incredibly fallacious argumentation that Tim Staples uses.

57:36

And I was just, what I was going to do. And what I will eventually do is I have, this is one nice thing about Kindle. You got to admit,

57:42

I have every reference to me in his book right there. And so we can just go right down and respond to each one providing fuller context because this is pretty much the only, only primary source that he looked at.

57:57

Um, and we'll, we'll have to find time to continue to do that. I was, I would, like I said,

58:02

I was going to do that today and, um, ended up talking a little too much about background issues,

58:09

I guess. Sorry about that. Um, but there you go. A little, uh,

58:15

Roman Catholic response day on the dividing line. Thanks for listening. Lord willing, we will be back next

58:22

Tuesday on the program. Who knows what we'll be talking about. Might do some of that.

58:28

Need to get back to David Allen on the atonement. There's, there's all sorts of stuff that we've left threads hanging here, there and everywhere.

58:35

Need to get to them and tie them together. Could probably do a three hour edition and still not get caught up, but don't worry.