Greg Stafford Debate Announcement

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From the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is

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The Dividing Line, ready to give a defense for the hope yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.

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Our host is Dr. James White, director of the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.

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This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll free across the

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United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341. A lot to cover today, the plate is full.

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We may be able to take some calls toward the end of the program, but not right off the bat because we have a number of things.

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First off, and as briefly as possible, yes, there still are, well, no there are not, well, hard to say.

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We actually sold out our cabins, the entire allotment we had of our cabins on the cruise.

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However, we still have the ability to sort of sneak into available cabins, in essence, certain levels of them anyways.

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It has been amazing. Just a few days ago, there were 11 cabins left, zip, just gone, and so if you've been thinking, if you haven't gotten back with Mr.

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O 'Fallon and you've said, I'd be interested, but put me on a list, but now's the time to get it taken care of.

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Let me tell you what, really, this is the time to take care of things.

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There's still a little availability. It's going to be a big group. It's going to be really incredible, more than twice the size of any group we've ever had before, and all sorts of neat, wonderful, fun people that are going to be coming along, and so now's the time to get a hold of Mr.

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O 'Fallon. Hit that link on the website and get those things taken care of. Just want to make sure

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I got that out of the way right off the bat. Secondly, important announcement to make.

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We are very excited. We have been planning for a long time to have a debate prior to the cruise.

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The night before the cruise, December 5th, 2003, at the Tampa Marriott Ballroom, we have had everyone and their third cousin bail out of doing a debate against us, against myself specifically, that evening.

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We've had all sorts of people express interest and then, well, I'm not so certain, well,

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I don't know about that. Michael Fallon back there has been pulling his hair out trying to get folks to line up to be on, to engage in a debate that evening, it is an apologetics cruise, and we first tried to do something on Islam, but no one wanted to have an

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Islamic debate, and so we had, it's been difficult, let's just put it that way.

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We had almost gotten to the point where I was just going to basically do a seminar, maybe

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Mike and I could debate the proper tennis racket grips, something along those lines, when we struck upon another idea.

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There was a debate Friday evening in Southern California between Rob Bowman and Gregory Stafford.

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Now, some of you know who Gregory Stafford is, some of you do not. Not everyone out there has an idea of Jehovah's Witness apologists or apologetics, especially since that is a very unique area, very unique field, obviously, and some of you may know that in 1998

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I presented a paper at ETS on Gregory Stafford's book, Jehovah's Witnesses Defended, an answer to scholars and critics, and that's not a royal we,

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I just like to use the plural pronoun. So anyway, we have been familiar with Mr.

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Stafford, in fact, years ago, back when I first started getting into the internet at all, back on AOL, which isn't really getting into the internet at all anyways, but there was a

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Jehovah's Witness that posted on AOL, Zetetis, or Zetis, or it started with a

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Z, that's all I recall, and it was impossible to dialogue with this person because you'd write one message and you'd get 12 back within just a little period of time, and I found out years later that this was actually a group of Jehovah's Witnesses all using one particular screen name, and so you're really taking on a group of people rather than just one individual, and Mr.

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Stafford was involved with this, and during that period of time the idea of a debate came up, at the time there was limitations put on it, it was a group in Las Vegas that wanted to do it, but the other side said well, but you can only have 50

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Christians there, we'll have 50 Jehovah's Witnesses, and nothing ever came of it. Then we were going to do a written type thing with Robertson Jenis and Greg Stafford, and I forget who the

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Mormon person was, we were going to do this whole thing, never could get that put together, didn't work out, and so anyways, there was a debate

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Friday night in Southern California, and fairly well attended, about 200 people,

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Simon Escobedo and Warren Smith from our ministry flew over to join Eddie D 'Alcour and sit in the front row, or second row, whichever one it was, and watch the debate, and since this possibility now exists, and since we have just been dying to find somebody, we extended an invitation to Greg Stafford to engage in a debate with us on December 5th, and he has accepted that, so right now we are scheduled, we're discussing the thesis, it will be relevant to the deity of Christ, the exact statement of the thesis is up in the air at the moment, in regards to whether we're going to discuss whether he's a creature or not, and just how to put things, but we are working on that, even today, emails going back and forth, working out thesis statements, so we can get some advertising done, so on and so forth, so that'll be on December 5th, so put that on your calendars, those of you going on the cruise, especially those coming from this side of the

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United States, most of the folks going with us are going to be coming in to Tampa, staying there, at that very hotel where the debates could be taking place,

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I think, that's my recollection, don't hold me to that, I'm not completely certain on that, but I think that's where we're staying, and then taking a bus to Cape Canaveral the next morning, and on the bus you do all sorts of weird, strange things, but anyways, that's coming up on December 5th, it's going to be quite the interesting experience, and one of the major debates that we've done, of course we've got one, two,

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I've got three major debates before then, so four more left this year, it's going to be a very challenging year as far as the number of debates, six debates, most of the major debates, it's going to be very, very interesting, so put that on your calendar, the subject will be the deity of Christ, and I can guarantee you it'll be much different than the discussion that I had with our

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Muslim friend Hamza Abdul -Malik back in 1999, this will be a very, very different kind of debate, we're going to try to make sure it's a full -length debate like we have on Long Island and stuff like that, so we are very excited about that, and those of you who are familiar with that area of apologetics realize that's a very major announcement.

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Now another interesting development is the fact that an apology has appeared on the

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Catholic Apologetics International website, I guess it sort of appeared briefly then disappeared and then has reappeared and is available, you can go to catholicintl .com

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and see this, and it is an apology by Roberts and Jenis in regards to the very subject matter of this program last

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Tuesday, specifically the assertions of a Mr. X in an article that was posted on the

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Catholic Apologetics International website for, I don't know, it was about five days or so that it was there and then it was taken down and finally the identity of Mr.

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X as Michael Roberts came out and so on and so forth, and so the apology is interesting, but I'm not sure that it's really a full apology.

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First of all, there is the continued assertion, not so much that well,

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Mistress and Jenis disagrees with the thesis of the books of Webster and King, you would expect that, but there is, well let me just read some of what is said in this particular apology.

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Since I had, well let me back up a little bit, In the last week, a series of regrettable events have transpired that resulted from CAI's interaction with an individual named

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Michael Roberts. My first contact with Mr. Roberts occurred a few months ago while I was on the internet. Mr. Roberts sent me an instant message in which he claimed that he wanted to help

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CAI expose fraudulent material contained in David King's and William Webster's three -volume work on Sola Scriptura.

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I asked Mr. Roberts what precisely King and Webster did that was so alarming. He claimed that they had seriously mishandled quotes from the

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Fathers, retranslating certain portions and leaving out other portions that were not favorable to their position.

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Since I had had this same experience, I'm not sure what this same experience would refer to, with certain

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Protestant apologists, many of whom I name and critique in my book, not by Scripture alone, including

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William Webster, and moreover, since I had, and by the way, just a little thing that I've always sort of noticed, it's sort of strange,

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Bob St. Genes didn't write not by Scripture alone. He edited it. It's a compilation of all sorts of other things.

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He contributed to it, but that has always struck me as strange because the majority of the book is written by somebody else, but anyways, and moreover, since I had already done some critical work on King and Webster's books and found many patristic quotes that were indeed seriously compromised, my work on this issue shall soon be forthcoming.

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Now, back up a second. What was said was fraudulent, retranslating certain portions, leaving out other portions, retranslating?

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I mean, it almost sounds like we are hearing Mr. St. Genes say, yes, they did mistranslate these things.

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Well, they themselves made it very clear last week. We never translated anything. Nowhere in the book did we ever claim to be able to do so.

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We used Notre Dame translators in the very few places where we provided translations of texts that had not appeared in English before, but other than that, it's all very recognized and frequently

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Roman Catholic translators that are cited in the book, so I think there needs to be a clarification of that because it sounds to me like St.

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Genes is saying, well, my own work has demonstrated that, yes, indeed, they did this. There's no clarification there.

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I continue. I thought it plausible that Mr. Roberts was privy to some worthwhile information. I thus told him to do his research and get back to me.

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I discussed the IM message from Mr. Roberts with CAI staff apologist Jacob Michael, and thus we were both waiting for Mr.

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Roberts to contact us again, but he never did, which I think immediately might make you go,

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I continue. Recently, while I was away debating a Protestant apologist, I stopped for a moment. That's me.

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I wave, continue. Mr. Michael wrote and posted an article for the purpose of rebutting a fictional dialogue created by this same

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Protestant apologist. That's me again. In the lengthy rebuttal, Mr. Michael offhandedly, offhandedly referred to two relatively minor claims that Mr.

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Roberts had previously made to me regarding his relationship and work with Mr. King. Now, I wonder why we repeat this offhandedly and relatively minor stuff.

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And this is where my problem comes in. That Mr. Roberts had previously made to me regarding his relationship and work with Mr.

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King. Specifically, A, that Mr. Roberts, who purported to do research for Mr. King, was converting to Catholicism, and B, that Mr.

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King didn't know Latin or do any translating. It appears that the former was false, the latter was true.

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Well, okay, that's interesting, since Mr. King never made any claims to be able to do so in the first place, so I don't know why this is relevant at all.

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I've never seen Mr. St. Genes' Latin grammar either. It appears, however, rather than interacting with the main points of Mr.

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Michael's rebuttal, well, I'm sorry, there's lots of stuff that's posted out there, and I have to ignore the majority of it, because I have two books due by the end of the year, four major debates, teaching three classes on the seminary level.

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I don't have time to interact with everything. Someone simply pointed out that section, and I found it to be very, very interesting.

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So I continue. This same Protestant apologist angrily focused completely on a tangential aspect of Mr.

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Michael's offhand comment. I'm sorry, that's not true. This is just simply falsehood.

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I have my emails, and you can also go to the archives of the NTRMN web board, where I also address this issue, and I'll tell you right now what really bothered me about the whole thing, other than, okay, who is this person?

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You know, these, see, I have gone through this so many times, and I explained this.

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In fact, I'm going to, I hope he doesn't mind, I'm going to mention something that I wrote here, because I explained this a long time ago.

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This is in, let me see here. The first one that I have that's at least written directly and uses the name of Mr.

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Michael, Jacob Michael, this is from April 7th, and Mr.

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Michael had explained to me in a previous email, I'm not currently at liberty to reveal this information. I'm in the process of negotiating this permission as we speak, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, and I said, let me see if I understand this methodology.

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You make an assertion in a public forum. The CIA website is a public forum, is it not? You use the assertion as an implied argument, and if you go back, and we did this on the show last week,

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I read this, there was an implied argument. The implied argument was, oh, you're citing

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Good and Whitaker and Salmon and Webster and King. Well, is that the same

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Webster and King whose research assistant is converting to Roman Catholicism? The implied argument was that conversions are apologetically relevant,

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A, and that there was something in this conversion relevant to the nature of the books that I had recommended.

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That is, that those books are somehow improper or not properly written, which is exactly what

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Mr. X went on to assert, and which is exactly what was put in the article on the CIA website, and so this is an implied argument.

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I continue on my email. When challenged, you cannot or will not substantiate the assertion. Am I following this correctly?

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Truly, Jacob, can you not see what this says about your methodologies? I'm simply amazed, and here's where I explained what

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I'm all about here. I have had people claim to have been intimately involved in my ministry, who converted to this or that, and, upon challenging the claims, have been shocked at how people

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I knew at a church, or who attended a class I taught, or things like that, somehow determined that they were my right -hand man.

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Claiming someone was a research assistant could mean this person once checked a local library for a resource or any such innocuous thing.

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You and I both know what you are implying by your statement, and to have posted this kind of assertion before you can back it up is simply reprehensible.

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This is the kind of thing Scott Butler has polled in the past. He once spread the rumor that half a dozen of my closest ministry associates had become

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Roman Catholics. He was referring to a single former Jehovah's Witness who had become a Roman Catholic six years or more earlier.

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This kind of thing is irregular from your side of the fence. I am so thankful that we don't even have to consider such behavior.

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I said, by the way, honesty demands that if your source refuses to be honest, you should not only pull the claim, but publicly apologize to William Webster and David King, which

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I stopped for a moment and say, he did. And if this person, in fact, did something more than buy a book, look up a source, etc.,

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an apology would likewise be, or did nothing more, I'm sorry, than buy a book, look up a source, etc.,

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an apology would likewise be in order. Gracious, I aided in looking up references and even translating patristic citations, and I would not be called an historical research assistant.

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And I was referring to the use of my TLG CD -ROM there that I mentioned last week. And so there was, there was, that was my concern.

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And it always has been my concern that I did not believe such a person existed. And what was more, what really concerned me was the fact that this is being used as an implied argument against the validity of the

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Webster and King work. And so I just don't believe that this, this apology is accurately representing in any way, shape or form, my concern, let alone me.

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And I'm not sure why there's no reason to mention me, since obviously, I'm the one that's being spoken of here and all this stuff.

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So Mr. Michael was somewhat shocked and intimidated by the intensity and focus of this Protestant apologist complaint. Consequently, he rushed to contact

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Mr. Roberts for further corroboration. Well, I would hope so. Since Mr. Michael remembered his screen name from his initial

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IM correspondence to me a few months ago, he was able to contact him. And then he has this interview in which it's interesting,

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Mr. St. Genes says he embellished his accusations and allegations, I don't doubt it.

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That should have been a red flag right then and there, I would assume. But then notice this.

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However, after he uses the term embellished, it says in the interview, Mr. Roberts embellished his accusations and allegations.

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However, since I had already confirmed to my own satisfaction,

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Mr. Roberts initial information about King's and Webster's mishandling of patristic quotes.

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Now again, if you go back to that original allegation, it involves mistranslation.

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So this is the second time that St. Genes has continued to allege, in this alleged apology, mistranslation.

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When last week, a week ago today, both Bill Webster and David King said, we didn't translate anything.

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We never claimed to be Latin scholars. We never claimed to do our own translations. And in fact, we used money to pay people at Notre Dame to do that.

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So keep that in mind. I think there's this apology.

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It certainly could have been written a lot differently than it was. Then it says, since I had already confirmed my own satisfaction,

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Mr. Roberts initial information about King's and Webster's mishandling of patristic quotes. When Mr. Michael ran the interview by me,

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I assumed that Mr. Roberts was a credible witness. Now back up just a second. That's not all he said.

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Mr. Roberts did not simply say that there had been a mishandling of quotes.

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There was stuff about conference calls and there was all the rest of this weird stuff that just made no sense whatsoever.

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So how could he be a credible witness when you tie together people like Colin Smith and Rich Pierce and Andy Anderson for crying out loud?

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This thing had red flags waving from every porthole. Although we still had some questions about him and his information.

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Duh! CAI, that's not in the apology, that's a comment on my part, CAI accepted his additional claims enough to post them on the website in Mr.

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Michael's interview article. As soon as the interview was posted, it received a couple of strenuous objections from individuals other than Webster and King.

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I'm not sure exactly who that was unless that was me. It'd be nice if they just put the names in there.

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To address their objections, yeah, there was no apology to Andy Anderson's family.

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Well, I guess because he's not there anymore, huh? To address their objections, CAI did a further investigation into the additional claims of Mr.

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Roberts. We made calls at various phone numbers that Mr. Roberts gave us in the interview. The numbers and addresses were in New York.

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We reached both numbers, but no one by the name of Michael Roberts could be located or at least admitted to being

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Michael Roberts. Nope, that's not me. Nope, never heard of him.

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Hence, CAI cannot substantiate any additional claims made by Mr. Roberts, and thus I am forced to judge him as false, and I'm happy to do so.

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Well, I'm not so sure about, uh, oh, thank you. I'm not so certain about how happy Mr.

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St. Genes is to say this, especially since he continues to send emails to Eric Svensson.

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And a week ago, a week ago when we're exposing all of this, he was saying, thank

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God for Mr. X, and thank God that this stuff has come out, and we are going to bury you six feet under and all this braggadocious stuff, and it's really amazing.

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So, uh, it goes on from there. There is, um, let's see, he also claimed that he was their research assistant, was involved in a multi -line conversation with Webster, Andy Anderson, Rich Pierce, and Colin Smith.

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By the way, that's how I read it initially. That's how

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I understood it originally, but, and I'd be interested if a certain person and channel would confirm this.

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Last week, during the program, as I re -read the article, I don't think that it was saying that Colin Smith was the person who was helping

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Webster on the phone. I think you can make an argument just in the way it was written that Colin Smith was not necessarily part of the phone call.

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At least that's how I, when I re -read it and really thought about it closely, sort of how you'd have to examine it in a legal setting,

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I don't know that Colin Smith was a part of that. He said there was another person who was helping Webster, and then later he mentions

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Colin Smith, and even here, it looks like Robertson Jennis reads it the way I first read it, but the closer you look at it,

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I think you could, you could not come up with that conclusion. There may be other things that were said.

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Yeah, I referred to another assistant, but it never said it was necessarily Colin Smith. I think you could read it that way.

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Maybe there's some other stuff in the, in the rest of the interview that wasn't posted.

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Obviously, what we saw was only a portion of it, where that was made, you know, a direct statement.

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I don't know. Since we never saw it, we have no way of knowing. Discussing material that was going to be published in the book, in the alleged conference call,

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Mr. Roberts said that William Webster asserted he was going to purposely alter quotes from the fathers to his own advantage.

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Although it is clear that Mr. Roberts had, has indeed interacted with these individuals in the past, and there's no question about that.

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His nick and channel was RW. He was in channel for about two years. Mr. Roberts has refused to supply proof of his alleged donations or proof of the alleged conference call.

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Well, that's what we said from the start. As such, we must consider these claims false, and thus we owe

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Mr. King, Mr. Webster, Mr. Pierce, and Mr. Smith an apology. And I am forthwith making that apology now on behalf of all of us at CAI.

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That's very good and accepted. I think you should add there the family of Andy Anderson as well, since his reputation was sullied by allegedly being a part of this plot as well.

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And now it is interesting why

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Mr. Roberts or someone posing as Mr. Roberts would make up these particular false allegations we do not know.

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Now, I would like to believe, I really would like to believe that this is someone misrepresenting the person we knew as Michael Roberts, but I don't see any reason on God's green earth to think that.

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The email addresses, the screen names were consistent with the individual we knew as Michael Roberts.

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There is no question about that. People in our channel still had the same screen name in their buddy lists from a few years ago when he was in channel as Michael Roberts, as RW, the whole nine yards.

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I just don't see any reason whatsoever to question that. He seems to get some macabre satisfaction out of pitting one side against the other.

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Whatever his or the person posing as Michael Roberts' motives, he has caused undue harm to both the above named individuals and CAI.

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If anyone knows how to contact Michael Roberts or where he lives, please forward that information and an email address is given and we will contact the proper legal authorities to take care of the matter.

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Well, I don't know what that's all about. I don't know what's going on with this man.

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We tried. In fact, the folks at CAI will confirm that we tried once we figured out who it was to contact him.

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As soon as he came online, we were instant messaging him. I was instant messaging him saying, you know,

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Mike, let's talk. What's going on with you? What's happened? A number of us were so much so that he had to sign off and switch screen names.

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And as far as I can tell, he closed that AOL address as well. We tried and he had no interest whatsoever in talking to us at all.

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He hasn't. There's been no contact whatsoever. We'd love to talk to him, not to stick legal authorities on him, but we'd love to talk to him too.

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We at CAI fully acknowledge our error. In fact, as Mr. Michael has already indicated, the parties involved, he has chosen to take a hiatus from apologetics since he feels very badly what his comments in the original articles have spawned.

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As for the interview itself, unfortunately, there was a mishap in our protocol and thus it did not pass through our new personnel director before it was posted.

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A volunteer I had recently asked to edit articles with respect to these kinds of issues.

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And so, Robertson -Genis has apologized as of the 5th,

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May 5th, 2003, in regards to this. But at the same time, as I said,

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I take issue with the accuracy of both my initial concerns and what

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I said both on the NCRMIN web forum as well as my own emails as I read one and here on the program and as well as the continued seeming accusation of a purposeful mistranslation of patristic citations which just simply isn't there.

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So, there we have that. When we come back from our break, I have some interesting citations, some interesting comments from Scott Hahn to play and respond to here on The Dividing Line.

29:07

We'll be right back. Mary as co -redeemer with Christ.

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Elevating the topic of Roman Catholic views of Mary to national headlines and widespread discussion. In his book,

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Mary, Another Redeemer, James White sidesteps hostile rhetoric and cites directly from Roman Catholic sources to explore this volatile topic.

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He traces how Mary of the Bible, esteemed mother of the Lord, obedient servant and chosen vessel of God, has become the immaculately conceived bodily assumed queen of heaven, viewed as co -mediator with Christ and now recognized as co -redeemer by many in the

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Roman Catholic Church. Mary, Another Redeemer is fresh insight into the woman the

30:51

Bible calls blessed among women and an invitation to single -minded devotion to God's truth.

30:57

You can order your copy of James White's book, Mary, Another Redeemer, at aomen .org.

31:03

What is Dr. Norman Geisler warning the Christian community about in his book, Chosen but Free, A New Cult, Secularism, False Prophecy Scenarios?

31:11

No, Dr. Geisler is sounding the alarm about a system of beliefs commonly called Calvinism. He insists that this belief system is theologically inconsistent, philosophically insufficient, and morally repugnant.

31:24

In his book, The Potter's Freedom, James White replies to Dr. Geisler, but The Potter's Freedom is much more than just a reply.

31:30

It is a defense of the very principles upon which the Protestant Reformation was founded. Indeed, it is a defense of the very gospel itself.

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In a style that both scholars and laymen alike can appreciate, James White masterfully counters the evidence against so -called extreme

31:45

Calvinism, defines what the Reformed faith actually is, and concludes that the gospel preached by the

31:50

Reformers is the very one taught in the pages of Scripture. The Potter's Freedom, a defense of the

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Reformation and a rebuttal to Norman Geisler's Chosen but Free. You'll find it in the Reformed Theology section of our bookstore at AOmen .org.

32:03

This portion of the dividing line has been made possible by the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. The Apostle Paul spoke of the importance of solemnly testifying of the gospel of the grace of God.

32:15

The proclamation of God's truth is the most important element of his worship in his church. The elders and people of the

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Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church invite you to worship with them this coming Lord's Day. The morning

32:27

Bible study begins at 9 .30 a .m. and the worship service is at 10 .45. Evening services are at 6 .30

32:34

p .m. on Sunday and the Wednesday night prayer meeting is at 7. The Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church is located at 3805

32:42

North 12th Street in Phoenix. You can call for further information at 602 -26 -GRACE.

32:49

If you're unable to attend, you can still participate with your computer and real audio at prbc .org

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where the ministry extends around the world through the archives of sermons and Bible study lessons available 24 hours a day.

33:31

Welcome back to the Dividing Line. We have about 25 minutes left in the program today and I have a couple of cuts that I need to play.

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It sounds like the microphone's doing its wonky thing again here. Wake up, wake up microphone. I have fallen into the pit of despair as John Bunyan would put it and I can't hear myself anymore.

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But hey, you know, that's just how life goes because for some reason our microphone sort of falls asleep

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I think. I'm not sure what the problem is with it. But anyway, we have some cuts

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I want to play here. We had someone come into channel and it's always interesting.

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IRC chat is obviously a little bit on the anonymous side and I'm not sure who this individual was but they did direct me to some interesting comments.

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The individual asked how it was that I could handle the cheap shots that are always being sent my direction and we discussed a few examples and he said yeah and especially the things like what

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Scott Hahn said about you and I said what are you referring to? Well on Catholic Answers Live and I'm like I must miss that one and so he directed me to the

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December 16th program from last year interestingly enough right before the

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Christmas season and I had not downloaded or listened to that one and so I started listening to it and found some interesting comments.

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I didn't take them as completely cheap shots. I mean I know who he's referring to. He is obviously denigrating me to a certain extent but the first one

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I'm going to play is an interesting discussion on the subject of debates and as you know

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I think the last meaningful debate that Dr. Hahn did was in 95 and it wasn't really a debate so much as it was a series of debates in Dallas.

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I had been invited to it and then at Hahn's insistence was disinvited from it. He would not be there if I was and so before that about the only one that you can really look at is the one that he will mention here a debate with Professor Knudsen.

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Dr. Knudsen I don't think expected this to be a debate but it was and it was distributed far and wide because he didn't do overly well and so it's interesting.

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Basically what Hahn says in this is I'm a showman. He came to, he says he's attended, well actually he attended one, two, three, four, he's attended four debates, at least four debates that I did all with gerrymantics and I'll tell you a little story about what happened after one of them here after we listened to this section from Catholic Answers Live December 16th of last year.

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I have another quick question for you Dr. Hahn. Go for it then. I've been listening to a lot of debates lately especially between James White and some of the other

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Catholic apologists which I don't think that Catholics, some of them don't do quite as well as I think they can from studying a lot of church history.

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It doesn't seem like they're defending the faith quite as well as I think they could. I was wondering why,

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I know you're really good and I love a lot of your stuff. I like you out of all the

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Catholics. I was wondering if you were going to do any debates between any

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Protestants. That would be great. That's a fair question Ben. I was involved in debates over ten years ago with Professor Robert Knudsen who was chairman of the

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Department of Apologetics and Systematic Theology at Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia. A great man, a true scholar and somebody who became a kind of friend, a brother in Christ.

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We talked for months and months leading up to that. We established a friendship and at the same time we really went at it.

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I respected him as a scholar and the two of us really agreed to make this thing the most we could.

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But what it wasn't was a theatrical performance. Later on when I got to moderate a debate

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I watched James White debate a Catholic and I watched what really felt totally like a theatrical performance.

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As far as I'm concerned my own decision to become a Roman Catholic was based upon a really hard fought struggle.

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It was for me personally and professionally almost a suicidal act. God has been good in blessing me in many ways after that.

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But at the same time it's hard for me to relate to people who really seem to polish a sort of showmanship and who seem more concerned about their theatrical display.

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Some people live for an argument. Some people live for debate and they make it into a kind of performer like role.

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I've watched and I've listened to many debates and I find that few and far between are really serious scholars about this sort of thing.

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That's the kind of thing I have been open to. I've issued invitations to R .C. Sproul and other men who

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I really do respect as brothers in Christ and as scholars and as truly grounded reformed theologians.

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I would be very open to that as a possibility. But the one thing I want to avoid is the kind of circuit that I perceive around the country.

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God uses that there's no doubt. Much good comes from it. But it isn't the kind of thing I really take that seriously.

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It isn't the kind of thing that I would really want to get involved in unless we're talking about some serious scholars who can get down and dirty in a fraternal sort of way and do it in a really respectable and a responsible manner.

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And to that I remain open. Ben, thank you very much for your time. Well, I think we can all read between the lines as to what's being said there.

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Basically I am a showman. I live for debates. It's a theatrical performance.

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Now those of you who have watched the debates, for example, with Mitchell Pacwa, the debates that have taken place on Long Island with a wide variety of individuals, including an individual who was, you know,

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Jerry Matitix was Scott Hahn's close friend in seminary. I don't think they're really close friends today given the positions they take.

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But anyone who's watched those has to immediately recognize that there's something more going on here.

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Anyone who listens, and we're going to listen in a second to this lengthy and somewhat rambling response to a question that in fact

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I have developed on the subject of the canon, such, you know,

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Scott Hahn is actually very theatrical in his responses.

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He is very much passionate about the things that he says, and I would be surprised if having passion is what he's referring to.

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He says, and I am well aware of the fact that he has always been willing to do debates with big names.

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He would debate R .C. Sproul in a heartbeat. But is someone actually going to seriously suggest that R .C.

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Sproul has more experience in debating Roman Catholic issues than I do?

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And are they going to seriously suggest that R .C. Sproul has more experience in debating Roman Catholic apologists in a broad spectrum than I do?

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It's a little bit difficult for me to listen to Dr. Hahn talking about serious

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Reformed scholars when I read his book on Mary, and every chapter title is a horrific pun, and the argumentation on an exegetical level is simply laughable.

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I demonstrated that in our responses. We did two weeks' worth of replies to his book on Mary last year,

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I believe it was, maybe the year before that. I think it was last year. It's very difficult for me to take that kind of assertion seriously.

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Anyone who examines the debates that we have done with meaningful Roman Catholic apologists will recognize that we handled those debates in a meaningful fashion and provided a meaningful and scholarly response to the

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Roman Catholic position. So, if Dr. Hahn would like to say

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I don't want to do debates, that's fine, but I find it rather disingenuous to say

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I will not debate certain people because they're not serious Reformed scholars. I don't think that R .C.

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has written a whole lot of books on Roman Catholicism and I would direct anyone to take a look at The God Who Justifies, its exegetical defense of justification by faith and say, oh well, that's just not serious.

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So, I think that the caller didn't exactly get an answer to his question, other than well,

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I just don't want to do this. Now, this next section, it's going to be hard for me to fit it all in because it's so very, very long.

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In fact, I can't fit it all in. I just realized that. So, why don't we,

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I'll try to get some of this in. I'm not going to be able to get all of it in, but this caller asked an interesting question and let's go ahead and start it and I'll start and stop it and make comments along the way.

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I guess, garden variety Christian. Okay, well, welcome to the program. What can we do for you? Thanks. My wife's

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Catholic and we just got married, so I've been investigating the Catholic Church. If you don't hear too much, you don't learn too much about it when you're outside the faith.

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I get a lot of my information from Catholic .com. Actually, a lot of apologetic arguments and whatnot.

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One of the things on there that I'm kind of having trouble with is, I read on there where you get your authority and Protestants get it from the soul of Scripture.

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The arguments on the site kind of set forth, well, where would I as a Protestant get that, my authority, because the argument is the

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Bible is based. You get the Bible from the Catholic Church. You only know it's the true word of God if the

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Catholic Church tells you to, essentially. So, how could I reject the Catholic Church, I guess, if I believe in the

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Bible and the fact that, I guess, you have to look outside the Bible to realize that it's a divine authority anyway.

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I hope that pretty much summarizes the argument on that. My question is, well, how would the people in the

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Old Testament know that the Bible was the word of God and they were bound to it when the

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Catholic Church didn't exist at that time? Good question. Jim, thanks for calling. First of all,

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I would say that the argument that you have summarized concerning the Catholic view of authority is not wrong, that we look to the authority of the

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Church and from the Church's authority we receive the gift of the Scriptures, the canon of the

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Old and New Testament that we find being decided by the bishops that met at the councils of Hippo and Carthage in the 390s.

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Let me stop it just there for a moment. Now, first of all, the gentleman asks a question that is very much based upon the question that I asked of Jerry Matiticks on WEZE in Boston back in 1993,

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May or June of 1993, and that is, how did the individual before the time of Christ know, and the specific books

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I used, it's Isaiah and 2 Chronicles for Scripture, and it's a very difficult question for a

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Roman Catholic to answer. But I find it interesting that Hahn would utilize

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Hippo and Carthage at this point, unless he's only referring to the New Testament, because in regards to the books where there would be dispute,

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Hippo and Carthage, while utilizing the apocryphal books, does not utilize the exact same canon as Trent.

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There is a difference in regards to the books there, it's only one book difference, but one book is one book, and evidently the men at Trent were unaware of this particular difference, and besides that, these were provincial councils, they were not ecumenical councils, and so I'm a little surprised by that, but just in passing.

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I think your question points us back even deeper, and something that has to really be emphasized, and perhaps even discovered by Catholics, that the church didn't just drop out of the sky, it really comes at the culmination and at the climax of a long covenanting process that God the

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Father has been up to through the ages of salvation history. In my book, A Father Who Keeps His Promises, God's Covenant, Love, and Scripture, I go into this a great deal, as well as a tape series entitled

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Salvation History. I look at the sequence of covenants that God has made down through the ages of salvation history, with Adam in the creation, then with Noah after the flood, and then with Abraham in Genesis 12 and following, and then finally with Moses, the 12 tribes of Israel becoming a nation, a kind of national family, and what you do, at least what

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I've discovered, is as you trace the covenant that God has made with his people down through the ages, you see what

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God is really up to. He's fathering an ever -growing family from a marriage under Adam to a household under Noah.

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It was a tribe under this chief named Abraham. Abraham's grandson, Israel, had 12 sons.

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It became 12 families and eventually 12 tribes. Now remember, this man's asking a question, how did a person before Christ know what the books of the canon were?

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And we're three minutes in, and well, you can see we're really wandering far and wide here.

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God had to reunite those 12 tribes as one national family, which he did at Mount Sinai, but down through the ages, whenever God, the

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Father, reunites his family, he does it by means of a covenant, and there's always a great deal of revelation that accompanies that covenant.

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You can find some of it in the opening chapters of Genesis. You can find some more revelation in Genesis 8 and 9 that pertained to the covenant with Noah when

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God's people were a household. More revelation still when they grew to the size of a tribe, and then this constitutional convention, this covenantal confederation at Mount Sinai, is where you find the greatest amount of revelation of all.

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And there, of course, you also find the five books of Moses. Whenever God does a new thing covenantally, he gives new revelation, and he also gives authority.

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In this case, of course, it was to Moses, as well as to the 12 princes that he chose to help him rule the 12 tribes of Israel, along with his older brother

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Aaron, the high priest. But those men to whom God committed this divine authority, not only gave

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Israel the Word of God, but they also gave the Israelites the means by which that divine word could be recognized.

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And so, with the law, and then later on, when the covenant was made with David, and then through Solomon, we have the tradition of wisdom literature, and the prophets that come to administer the

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Davidic covenant after that. All of these men represent covenant power, covenant authority, and they have covenant offices as kings, or as prophets, or as priests.

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Now, let me just stop there in case you have completely lost. What it sounds like is, when

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God's doing something covenantally, he gives authority, and by that authority, these individuals gave a way by which the

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Word of God may be recognized. Unfortunately, we weren't told what it was. So, if the assertion is being made that, and eventually he's going to get into Moses' seat, and things like that.

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If the assertion is being made that this came from the, quote -unquote, Jewish magisterium, remember, the

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Jews never accepted the Roman canon as defined by the Council of Trent.

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We'll see if that even comes up. As you'll notice, the collar, if we can get to it in time, and I don't think we're going to, was completely lost by this entire thing.

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And you also see at every single point along the way, an unbroken line of succession. You see it from Noah, through Shem, down to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, all the way through Moses, to his successor

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Joshua, then the judges, leading up to Samuel, who anointed Saul the king, and then David, and then

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Solomon. And this unbroken line of succession shows us how God is fathering his people, through father figures on earth below, that though fallible sinners, nevertheless,

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God entrusts to them, not only the truth, but this authority, so that all of God's people can see in these men, the responsible people who are passing on this truth.

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When you come to the New Covenant, at last. Okay, responsible people who are passing on this truth, is the truth the canon?

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And if so, then you would have to argue from a scholarly perspective, which evidently

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I can't do, but others who are scholars would be able to argue that in light of the laying up of the books in the temple,

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Josephus' witness, Philo's witness, then that truth which was passed on, is not the Roman canon of the

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Old Testament. That seems to be the only logical response.

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You find the full and definitive revelation of God the Father, in giving us his own son, the eternal word made flesh, but that also is found in the word of the

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New Covenant, the New Testament. And just like Moses chose 12, Jesus chooses 12, and just as he commissioned them with his own spirit, so Christ does.

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And Christ goes on to say, he who receives you, receives me, and him who sent me, he who refuses you, refuses me, and him who sent me.

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And so the stakes are high, the authority is divine, but the pattern of the New Covenant that we find in the

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Catholic Church is really the fulfillment of a consistent pattern that we see established at every point in salvation history, down through the ages of all the covenants that God has made in raising us up to be his universal family, as we call it the

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Catholic Church. And so I would say that in ancient Israel, you have the same covenantal means by which you could discern the truth, as well as the real authority of God being exercised by the high priesthood of Aaron, and then in his grandson

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Phineas, and down the line of the Zadokites. So what is this covenant authority?

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So the idea is that the covenant authority that existed for the Jews becomes the covenant authority of the

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Roman Catholic Church under the New Covenant, with a priesthood in the whole nine yards. I would argue that's directly against Hebrews, but be it as it may.

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So that doesn't answer the question, because that covenant authority in the

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New Covenant is not what the man was asking about. He was asking how you knew the canon beforehand. And again it takes us back, if you're saying you knew it through the

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Jewish magisterium, through this authority that existed, then you have a real issue, which certainly

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Dr. Hahn is well aware of, and that is the Jews did not have the canon that he has of those very same books.

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God is consistently raising up people, and then protecting their successors to vouchsafe, to protect the infallible revelation that he's given.

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And this is only continuing on since Peter and the apostles through their successors that we call

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Catholic bishops. Hope that helps Jim. I guess so. I mean

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I can't tell you I followed all of it. I mean are you saying that there was an infallible, I guess, interpreter of scriptures, and an infallible,

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I guess almost definer of scriptures, even in the Old Testament? Perfect question. Perfect.

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Here's, you know, this is the whole point I've had. Actually yes, the Jews did have a very strongly defined canon.

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Perfect question. Let's see how Hahn responds. That would de facto stand in the place the Catholic Church does today? I would make a distinction.

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I would say that only with the coming of the new covenant do we have the full and definitive revelation of God, and that is what really ushers in what we would call infallibilities.

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So, okay, now that sounds like they didn't infallibly know what the scriptures were until the

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Roman Catholic Church defined it. The problem is Roman Catholic Church did not infallibly define it until April of 1546.

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So, no one knew? The believing Jew didn't know when Jesus held men accountable for what was in the scriptures?

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Why didn't they respond? Well, we didn't know. As far as infallible human authority, but what you do find in the

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Old Testament is a binding authority that is truly divine. As Jesus himself says in Matthew 23, he speaks of the scribes and the

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Pharisees who sit on Moses' cathedra, his seat, and so Jesus says you must do whatever they tell you to do.

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Well, Moses has been dead for 14 centuries when Jesus says that, but there is a seat, a cathedra, just as we speak as Catholics of the

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Pope speaking ex cathedra. So Jesus recognizes that there was binding authority being exercised that emanates from a divine origin even in the

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Old Covenant. Okay, now I hardly have time to address the issue of Matthew 23, but this is such a common refrain amongst the modern

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Roman Catholic apologists I should at least stop to point out that if they want to claim that Moses' seat is a divine tradition that is passed down outside of scripture rather than the historical reality, it was the place where the law was read from in the synagogue and that was what its authority was derived from, was the reading of the law, not from anyone who sat in it.

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But be that as it may, if they want to argue that then they have a whole lot of other problems in identifying what are and what are not allegedly infallible

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Jewish traditions including the Corban rule which is identified as coming down from Moses as well, but Jesus taught us to reject it on the basis of the examination of scripture.

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But only with the coming of the full revelation of Jesus do we have a clear gift of infallibility imparted to humans, namely the 12 and those successors.

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I guess my question is then why do I need infallibility to be bound by the

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New Testament but they did not need infallible knowledge in the old? Perfect!

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I certainly hope this caller got some of these questions from listening to this program or at least from the

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Roman Catholic controversy because he's following this right down the line and excellent, excellent call.

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I have no idea who the caller is but excellent call. Do you follow me there? Yeah and let me fall back upon the distinction

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I made earlier whether or not you would recognize divine infallibility in the successors to Peter like in Pope John Paul II.

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The one thing you do find in ancient Israel as well as the Catholic church is binding authority and so when you receive the gift of the

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New Testament from the Catholic bishops at the end of the fourth century you're basically submitting either consciously or unconsciously to their authoritative determination that these 27 books of the

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New Testament are inspired and hence all Christians must receive these as the word of God.

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Interestingly enough no one at that council thought they had such authority, another historical anachronism, but what do

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I know? Not only that but that canon had already been determined prior to those bishops meeting and you can find it in Athanasius's 39th

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Festal Letter so on so forth from 30 years earlier. Now the Catholic bishops go on to say that not only do they make such decisions with finding authority but they do so because of this incredible gift that Jesus gave to his church that is something that we call infallibility.

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They did not claim that. I would invite you to examine those documents and see where they claimed this type of infallible authority or power.

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Indeed Augustine who was a part of those councils said that the Holy Spirit is the one who gives the canon to the church not that the church has the authority to define these things on their own.

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Well that was an excellent call. We've actually gone a little bit right up to the border here.

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We're pretty much right on time I think. Excellent call. I really appreciate the individual who came to channel

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JSB who let me know about that and so I had the opportunity of taking a look at it and very interesting material.

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A little bit rushed in our giving our response but hey that's all right. We managed to squeeze everything in.

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Covered a lot of stuff today. Thanks for listening. Appreciate all of you in the chat channel who listen and who interact.

59:29

Those of you who listen by archive remember if you've been thinking about December 6th through the 13th now with the debate with Greg Stafford on the deity of Christ the night before at the

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Tampa Marriott. It's going to be an awesome time. Lots of neat folks going to be there. We'd like you to be there as well.

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Hit the web link. Get hold of Michael Fallon. Find out all about it. Thanks for listening today. We'll see you

59:52

Thursday evening five o 'clock here on The Dividing Line. Web at AOMN .org

01:01:10

that's AOMIN .org where you'll find a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates and tracks.