Karl Keating's Response to Eric Svenson and the State of Roman Catholic Apologetics

And good afternoon and welcome to The Dividing Line. We are live today and that means you can participate 866 -854 -6763.

Before we get into the main topic today where we're going to be looking at Roman Catholic apologetics and apologists and responding to them, listening to them in their own words and providing a response because many of them like being able to be the only ones talking.

That is they're more than happy to say things but to getting them to actually engage in debate and back -and -forth give -and -take is a much more difficult thing to do.

But before we do that and for reasons I'll explain later on, I would like to give you a comparison.

I'd like to read you something from a recent publication. I'd like to play a sound clip of someone speaking on a similar subject and let's see if you can figure out who is writing or speaking in these particular situations.

Here's the first section I'm going to be reading from a publication.

The fact that God knows what Mr. Jones will do tomorrow does not cause

Mr. Jones to do it. God's infinite knowledge of all things past, present, and future is neither inhibited by man's freedom to act nor does it conflict with man's freedom of choice.

Boyd's problem is that like Calvin and Luther and most Calvinists and Lutherans today, he imagines that if God foreknows a future event it must either be because he determined it or because it is an inevitable effect of past or present causes.

We hold that God determines and thus foreknows a settled some but not all the future. The open view is the only option that avoids the contradiction of asserting that self -determining free agents are settled an eternity before free agents make them so.

To assert as Boyd does that God could not know what man by his own choice might do in the future is to deny God's omniscience.

That would place upon the infinite God a finite limitation which would be both unbiblical and illogical.

Now let me just emphasize again the main point here and that is the fact that God knows what

Mr. Jones will do tomorrow does not cause Mr. Jones to do it. God's infinite knowledge of all things past, present, and future is neither inhibited by man's freedom to act nor does it conflict with man's freedom of choice.

Now keeping those words in mind, take a listen to this. Okay, so that will kind of tie in with predestination too, right?

Well, exactly. Then you're getting to the issue of predestination. Again, God's knowledge of where people will go does not determine where they will go.

Okay. You need to keep that clear. This is Calvin's mistake, one of Calvin's mistakes. And Calvin thought that God was specifically for ordaining people to be saved or to be damned.

Even the damned to be created to be damned precisely to give glory to God. But Calvin got in trouble by confusing some of these issues.

We want to keep in mind that God certainly must know how everything will turn out, otherwise he would not be omniscient, right?

He'd have a defect and he doesn't have any defects. So he must know what everything is going to turn out to be, but that does not mean he determines how we will use our free will.

Okay. Now there is, sounds very much the same as what I just got done reading.

Both refer to freedom of choice, free will, both making the assertion that God may know what we're going to do, but they basically assert that God's knowledge of future events is not based upon his decree.

Somehow God knows the future, but in essence both positions would force us to believe that while God knows the future, he has no control over it.

He just happens to know that it turns out the way that it did, not because he planned it to his glory, but because it just turns out that way.

Who are those two people? Well, the sound clip you probably recognize the voice. The voice is that of Carl Keating, the head of Catholic Answers, and Carl Keating was responding to a question.

This was actually this past Monday, I believe, on the

Catholic Answers live program, and a caller was asking about prayer, and then the issue of predestination came up, and you'll notice the assertion of man's free will, and so on and so forth.

And what else was I reading? Well, of course, I was reading from Dave Hunt's newest publication,

The Berean Call, the current edition of it, where in essence he makes the exact same point as Carl Keating.

Now, of course, someone's going to cry foul. There's obviously a difference in their beliefs, and so on and so forth, but folks, what you need to realize is that the

Arminian and the Roman Catholic believe the exact same thing concerning these issues of free will, man's deadness or lack thereof in sin, and God's foreknowledge.

They use the same argumentation. They hold the same position, and so the Arminian is still standing firmly against the

Reformation, and is still standing firmly in line with the Roman Catholic Church in opposing the proclamation of free grace.

And there you have it, in the very words of Dave Hunt and Carl Keating, who have been debating this issue.

You will never hear them debating the issue that was forefront at the time of the Reformation between Luther and Erasmus, for example.

They can't debate it because they believe the same things about it, and that's the exact same type of argumentation you'll hear from Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons.

Everybody wants to hold up the free will of man as the final arbiter of all things, and man's religions are all intended to do that very thing, and that is defend man's free will.

Well, we have a lot to do today. I just thought that was...I had to play that because we're going to play some Carl Keating clips later, and if you heard him...if

I did that later, then it'd be like, well, duh, it's Carl Keating. We know who that is. You've been playing a bunch of stuff from him, so we recognize the voice, but that's why

I had to do it right up front. And just to mention, we weren't here last week, and we were off in Raleigh, North Carolina, and some folks are asking me to give a report on the time that was there and things like that, but I think there's just one thing that I could do that sort of would explain in its fullness really the essence of my entire trip back to Raleigh, North Carolina.

I think this sort of sums it up. I'm not a robot. I'm British. Well, thank you for...all

the parents with kids are going, hey, hey, I've heard that before.

Yes, that's from Larry Boy and the Rumor Weed, and that's

Alfred screaming, I'm not a robot,

I'm British, and that sort of explains where I was last week and things like that. But anyways, that's all we're going to say about that.

Anyways, what I really want to do today, now that we're getting down to the nitty -gritty, is deal with the subject of Roman Catholic apologetics and apologists today.

Some of you know that the first three days of the week, well, actually Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, so it'd be the middle three days of the week,

I was Hank Canegraaff's guest on the Bible Answer Man broadcast. We did three hours on the subject of justification, and the programs went real well, and I've had some fascinating responses from people.

One Roman Catholic wrote to Steven Luker at StraightGate .com, just absolutely fuming.

I forget exactly how that one started, but it was...let me see if I've got it up here someplace.

Ah, yes, it started...Steven sends it to me, says, I received this from one of your fans, and it starts off,

Dear Mr. White, three days of you and Hank Canegraaff is enough. It only gets worse from there.

But anyways, we were on the program for three days, and the weekend before, well, before the weekend that I was on, the

Thursday and Friday of the previous week, Dr. Eric Svensson was on with Hank Canegraaff talking about his book on Mary, and oh, did that get the

Roman Catholics up in arms. And the folks at CRI told me that on Monday of this week, they took a number of shots at CRI and at Dr.

Svensson on the Catholic Answers Live program hosted by Carl Keating.

And so I took the time to listen in. There were two specific references to Dr. Svensson, both involved gross misrepresentation of what he had actually said.

I'm going to hope and be charitable and assume that Carl Keating did not listen to the programs because he never challenged the misrepresentations whatsoever.

I would think that just simple honesty would demand him to at least at some point say, Now, I didn't listen, but given your representation, if your representation is accurate, therefore, that would be the honest thing to do.

But that never took place. Instead, we just had the rip -and -slash methodology of dealing with the issues.

And I just want to give you an example of just, this seems absolutely endemic amongst

Roman Catholic apologists. I mean, let's think about it. Look at all the things that have appeared in This Rock magazine concerning me over the past number of years.

When Patrick Madrid wrote his article, The White Man's Burden, and the gross misrepresentations of the debate that we had had and the issues that were missing.

There's a big long article about this on our website. You could read, go back, and see the documentation there.

The fact that James Aiken would publish something from Tex Mars about me, as if Tex Mars were a meaningful resource to attack me.

In essence, from the Roman Catholic perspective, if it supports our side in any way, shape, or form, even if it is grossly inconsistent to use it, we will utilize it.

And that seemingly is what's happening here, too. It's sort of nice to have Dr. Svensson out there.

A couple different moving targets is a good thing. I don't want to be the only one, the more the merrier. And they're doing the same thing with him, as well.

And certainly, and I should have queued this one up, and it probably wouldn't be difficult to do, but right to the very first program, the very first caller,

I'm sorry, on the Catholic Answers Live program, was going after Svensson, and Keating went after him, and said,

Svensson's always misrepresenting what we believe, and he doesn't understand what we believe, and all the rest of this stuff. Well, later on the program, a woman calls in and goes after Eric Svensson again.

And so what I would like to do is, I'd like to play for you, first of all, the call. So you can hear for yourself, you can hear what the caller said, you can hear what

Carl Keating says, so on and so forth. And you can hear for yourself exactly what was said, and then

I'm going to play for you the section of the Bible Answer Man broadcast that they're referring to.

The contrast is striking. It truly is. Here's the phone call to Catholic Answers Live and the commentary that is made.

You know, I heard Hank's show, too, and I just, I'll be honest with you,

I was frustrated. In regards to how saints can hear us, don't we partake in Christ's divinity when we are in heaven?

And is God limited? Can he not make the saints hear our prayers?

Well, of course he can make the saints hear our prayers, which is precisely that image I gave in the book, Revelation, of the 24 elders, you know, who are offering up bowls of incense, the smoke goes up, and the smoke is, we're told, is the prayers of the saints on earth, that is, the

Christians on earth. How did those 24 elders get those prayers to pass along to the Father? It must have been that they were prayed to by the

Christians on earth. Right, and we're one body, and nothing separates us. That's right. See, when we die...

The branch and the tree, it doesn't fall off after death. That's the point. That's exactly the point. In fact, we might even say that after death, the branch blossoms instead of falling off.

Exactly, yeah. It becomes perfect in heaven. So if we can communicate with one another here, we must be able to communicate with one another there.

Yes. So your logic, I think, is impeccable. Thank you. I tried to call, but I couldn't get in. Anyways, my question is this, though, in regards to the early

Church Fathers. Eric made a point of saying that there was nothing written up until the 800s about Mary by any of the early

Church Fathers. Is that true? That's a bizarre comment, because that's not true at all. Again, I would refer you to my book,

Catholicism and Fundamentals, where I list some of those things. But we also have here at Catholic Answers, and at our website, tracts that collect writings of the

Fathers of the Church. And we have that material on our website at Catholic .com. And if you have internet access, you could simply go there and look it up for yourself.

If you don't have internet access, you could call and get a set of our 120 tracts and see among them the many that we have that are simply compilations of quotations from the

Fathers of the Church, that is, the earliest writers in Christian history. And these very topics are addressed in there.

Mary is referred to very early on. So... Can you go on a web, like, look up in... Yes, you can.

Early Church Fathers somewhere, and look up what they said about her. There are a number of sites that you can do that through.

If you call our apologists, they can give you the internet addresses of places you could do that.

Or, as I say, you could simply come at first blush to our website at Catholic .com and look up the material there.

And then if you need further material, go elsewhere. Okay, one final thing. I just... I hope that next time, if they do a program like this, if they would invite one of you guys.

I think that would be nice and fair. James Aiken has been on the Bible Answer Man program. Unfortunately, he did very well, and they haven't invited him back too often.

So, you know, I have a sense that they were a little surprised that he had an answer for everything, and a very solid scriptural answer.

So, anyway, we have had a representative there, and sure, if we were invited back, we would go and back on to the

Bible Answer Man show, or other shows, and we'd be happy to share the Catholic faith there.

Okay, there's a number of things there. Many, many things. I'm going to play that last section again here in just a moment so that we can sort of, you know, invite them to do exactly that.

That sounds like an open invitation, from my perspective, to be on other programs.

Maybe that means that they come on our program, or maybe they'll have me on Catholic Answers Live. That would be a good thing,

I think, but we'll talk about that in a moment. But first and foremost, just really quickly, did you catch the 24 elders in heaven?

Keating says, used to be humans, and now they're saints they've been prayed to. Where in the world do you get that from the book of Revelation?

Talk about just grabbing stuff out of the air, and building your foundation upon that.

And did you notice, don't we participate in Christ's divinity? No. No response was offered to that, but no, we don't become divinized in that way.

Nothing was said in any way, shape, or form to that. But the main thing was, what did the woman say?

Eric said that nothing had ever been said about Mary for the first 800 years.

Now, Keating's response was, that's bizarre. Well, it would be bizarre if Dr.

Eric Svensson, if you've looked at his book, it is thoroughly documented. There are lengthy discussions of the earliest references to Mary, and anyone who knows anything at all about the subject of Mary in the early

Church is well aware of the fact that there's large discussions of Mary.

Mary's discussed as early as, I mean, Mary's even mentioned by Ignatius, and then Irenaeus, and I mean, come on, this is ridiculous.

How could anyone even hear him saying that? Now, compare the representation of Eric Svensson with the reality.

This is only a minute and fifteen, so it's much shorter, but this is the section that the caller was referring to, and let's see if we can try to figure out the kind of thinking that would allow a person listening to this to think that what

Eric Svensson said was, nobody in the early Church ever mentioned Mary until the 8th century.

Dr. Svensson, quickly your comments, because we're coming up against a break here. Right, I've counted five or six separate issues in just that one diatribe, but I can't, so I'm not going to be able to address them all.

Staying on the topic, when we look at the views of the Fathers regarding Revelation 12, what we find is not only that the people of God view is the earliest interpretation, which dates from about the 2nd or 3rd century, but also that the number of writers in the first six centuries of the

Church who subscribe to the people of the God view, at least 16 we know of, nine of whom are canonized saints in the

Roman Church. Far exceeds the number of those who see Mary as even a secondary reference, and it isn't until the 8th century that we find the first true proponent of the

Mary interpretation of this passage. This is Ocumenius, who is not even a canonized saint in the

Roman Catholic Church. So the only canonized saint in the first eight centuries to make mention of the Marian view, in which

Mary is the primary reference, is Epiphanius, who may actually have rejected the view. So the implications of that is staggering for the

Roman Catholic, who today would say that, you know, this is unequivocally Mary in this passage. That view was not held for eight centuries in the

Church. Well now, isn't that just a tad bit different than what was actually represented in the question?

Dr. Svensson's talking about a specific subject, and that is the interpretation of Revelation chapter 12, which, interestingly enough, was a major element of Scott Hahn's book on Mary.

There's entire chapters in the subject of that, and he's addressing that subject, and he gives solid information.

Notice nothing is offered in rebuttal of what he said. I honestly don't believe that Carl Keating would be capable.

I mean, I would invite anyone, go get Eric Svensson's book on Mary, and go get

Carl Keating's Catholicism and Fundamentalism. Look up the chapters on Mary and compare them. There is absolutely no level of comparison.

They are completely different works in the sense of, one is seeking to engage in serious scholarship on the subject, and one is simply defending tradition and ignoring all the counter evidence that could possibly be brought up against the person's position.

And so he's talking about Revelation chapter 12. He's talking about what the early Church Fathers said, the interpretation that this refers to the people of God, and not to Mary, and the number of people who held those views, and says that your first full -blown support of the

Mary view is found in the 8th century. Now, how can you then hear that as saying that nobody said anything about Mary until the 8th century, unless, to give the benefit of the doubt, this lady was driving down the road with seven kids in the car, and they're all screaming at the same time, and she couldn't hear it.

I guess that would be the only way that, at least without bringing in some concept of a mental unwillingness to hear what was being said, that would be the way to explain the particular situation we have going on here.

But that's the kind of unchallenged misrepresentation that we have going on in that particular program that took place.

Now, let's replay this little section right here. Okay, one final thing.

I just, I hope that next time if they do a program like this, if they would invite one of you guys.

I think that would be nice and fair. James Aiken has been on the Bible Answer Man program. Unfortunately, he did very well, and they haven't invited him back too often.

So, you know, I have a sense that they... Okay, let me stop, let me stop right there. James Aiken was on with me, and I believe we make those tapes available.

And that was, what, 1996, I believe.

And those will be available at aomin .org if you'd like to purchase them and listen to them yourself.

And it's very interesting to me the way that Keating is putting this.

Well, he has been on, and he did so very well that they haven't had him back. Folks, since 1996, we have challenged

Catholic Answers to debate many times. Just last December, we did a debate with Father Mitchell Pacwa in San Diego.

Now, realize, San Diego is the hometown of Catholic Answers. That's where they are.

And we contacted them, and we invited James Aiken, and we invited Carl Keating to debate right there.

They didn't have to, they wouldn't have to go anywhere other than get in their car, and they'd drive right in their own city.

They wouldn't have to get on an airplane. They wouldn't have to get on a bus or a train or anything else. They could come, and they could debate, and they declined.

They have consistently declined. In fact, Carl Keating has declined our challenges to debate since 1990.

Eleven years now, we have been inviting Carl Keating to debate, and he won't debate.

Now, it sounds to me like he's saying, sure, we'll come on to the Bible Answer Man broadcast. Well, then let's do it.

I sent an email to CRI, sent them this very clip, and said, hey, sounds like Carl Keating and James Aiken would like to come on BAM.

Let's do Mary. Let's do what I've challenged many times. I've challenged

Carl Keating to defend what he says about Mary. Now, he's still referring people to his book. If you listen to the

December 17, 2001 radio program, Catholic Answers Live, he's still referring people to his book.

He's pointing people to his book for explanations about Mary. It's an older book now, but he's still pushing it out there, so let's discuss what he says about Mary.

Let's compare his chapters on Mary with my book on Mary. How does that sound? I bet you anything that Hank Hanegraaff would be happy to have us on.

I bet it would go three hours again. In fact, I will say right now, Mr. Keating, Mr.

Aiken, I would be more than happy to fly to California, and I will do

Catholic Answers Live, and I'll come alone, and you can have yourself, James Aiken, Scott Hahn, and Tim Staples in studio, all of you together with Jerry Usher as the moderator, and I'll be there alone if you'd like, and we'll talk about Mary there too, or we can talk about purgatory, or we can talk about other things that will come up later today.

Let's do it. It sounds to me if what Mr. Keating is saying to this particular caller is really truthful, that he would just jump at the opportunity of either having me on their program, or Mr.

Keating, come on ours. We'll pay the phone call. We'll have you here on the dividing line.

We'll go for three hours here on the dividing line. No problem at all. We'll take callers. We will promote on the website.

We will do the whole thing, make the tapes available. Let's do it. How does that sound? Let's see what happens.

Let's listen to this one more time. Okay, one final thing. I hope that next time if they do a program like this, if they would invite one of you guys,

I think that would be nice and fair. James Aiken has been on the Bible Answer Man program. Unfortunately, he did very well, and they haven't invited him back too often.

So you know, I have a sense that they were a little surprised that he had an answer for everything, and a very solid scriptural answer.

So anyway, we have had a representative there, and sure, if we were invited back, we would we would go and back on to the

Bible Answer Man show or other shows, and to be happy to share the Catholic faith there.

All right. Let me just...one more time for this. Sure, if we were invited back, we would go and back on to the

Bible Answer Man show or other shows, and to be happy to share the Catholic faith, there.

back on to the Bible Answer Man show or other shows. Other shows. I think he said other shows.

I think this is a show and I think it's other. So I think

I need to send this particular clip over to Catholic Answers to say, hey, we've got one.

Come on. Let's discuss these things. Let's tape it. Let's make it available.

Let's do what your own caller said.

Let's hear both sides. Just like last July when Tim Staples was on for three hours with me.

Both sides. When Tim Staples was on BAM a couple years earlier than that. Both sides.

Mr. Akin was on with me three hours. Both sides. That adds up to nine hours.

Nine hours that there. Not last. Well, yeah, of course.

It's July of 2000. Nine hours of Roman Catholic apologists on the

Bible Answer Man broadcast. I want to ask a simple and direct question.

How many hours have they had myself or Bill Webster or Rob Zins or Eric Svensson on their program?

How many hours? I'd really be interested in knowing because I've never been on and I don't know of any of those gentlemen who've been invited to be on.

Does that sound a little bit like a double standard?

We want to be on your guys' programs but we don't have to have you on ours. That sounds a little strange.

I'm not sure why that would be. Well, anyways, that's just we're just getting started.

We're just getting started. When we come back, we're going to listen to some comments from Mr.

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And welcome back to Dividing Line, my name is James White. We are looking at Roman Catholic apologetics today, and apologists.

We've been looking at some comments made just recently on the

Catholic Answers live broadcast that did not exactly meet high standards in accurately representing what was said by Dr.

Eriks Fenson on the Bible Answer Man broadcast. I think that could have been handled very, very much better in regards to at least being semi -fair and at least saying, well, you know,

I haven't listened to it myself, but if that's what was said, etc., etc., but that's not what happened.

I forgot to play this earlier, well, I guess it wouldn't have fit anyways, but I was listening to a program that Tim Staples did also on Catholic Answers Live, and it was fascinating.

If you were here at the beginning of the program, I played a section from Carl Keating talking about free will and things like that, and then read from Dave Hunt, where they basically are saying the exact same things.

Well, just to show you the consistency of this, the fact that this is the very essence, the heart of Romanism truly is a emphasis upon the fact that it is man, and man in the final analysis that determines the act of salvation.

God's power is dependent upon the synergistic cooperation of the will of man.

Here is a section from from Tim Staples, and here he is responding to quote -unquote non -Catholic callers, and this one sounds a little bit like a bit of a setup,

I don't know, but anyways, listen to what he has to say. Javier and Austin, we're short on time, but we'll try and help you out.

What can we do for you? Kind of a follow -up on that last question. Do Catholics believe in 100 % assurance of going to heaven, if they live a

Christ -like life and accept Jesus Christ as their Savior? That's a great question. We believe that we can, as 1

John 5 13 says, we can know we have eternal life. It's these things that I've written unto you that you may know that you have eternal life.

We say that as Catholics. We can have what we call a moral certainty or confidence that we're saved if we are keeping the prescriptions of our faith and so forth.

However, we have to remember that that word knowledge is not a metaphysical certainty that I used to teach, you know, when

I was a Baptist, that we have. No, in fact, if you look at verse 14, the next verse, it says, and this is the confidence that we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us, and if he hears us, we know we have the things which we have asked from him.

John draws a parallel between the certainty we have in petitioning God with the certainty or the knowledge we have of our salvation.

So that knowledge is not absolute. In other words, when I ask God for such this, this, that, and the other thing,

I can believe and have confidence that God will grant me that, but ultimately I don't have any sort of strict metaphysical certainty.

There is no absolute assurance, basically. Right. Okay. Because we, like Jerry said, we have free will,

I can choose to reject Christ anytime, either by faith or by my works,

I can reject him. Right, and that question is posed to, I'm in a Catholic discovery class, and it's posed a lot as, you know, as I'm going to become

Catholic, and that's the big question is, do you know 100 % you're going to heaven? And my answer is no.

Right. That's right. Good. All right, Javier. I appreciate it. Have a good day. You too. God bless you. We'll pray for you and for all of our listeners as well.

Yeah, Tim, I mean, we read so many places in the Bible where we are warned, you know, we hear about how you can, you know, have a taste, like I mentioned,

Hebrews 6 before, those who have tasted the heavenly things, be careful that you do not fall away. Exhortations are almost constant in the

Bible. We have to remember, these are written to Christians. That's right. And they're there for our admonition.

We can fall away, we can choose to fall away. God would never reject us, but we can reject him.

Well, there you have it, and again, the emphasis upon free will, the emphasis upon, oh,

God would never cast us away, but we can choose. It's all up to us. It's all our mighty will, and while God's will may be for our salvation, our will is the final determiner.

Man, man, man, man, man. It is an anthropocentric perspective. It is not theocentric.

That's what synergism is all about, and that's why monergism is such an important thing. I don't understand how these folks,

I would love to be able to ask someone like Tim Staples or Carl Keating or James Aiken, how can the

Father say what the Father says to the Son, and say it is my will for you that you lose none of those that are given to you in light of what was just said?

It just simply cannot follow. It cannot be done, but that is, of course, the very essence of human religion, and that's what

Rome is presenting to us. So there's yet another example of the emphasis upon the free will of man, so on and so forth.

Well, I have so much more to do, and so I need to get to this next section, and that is in that same program, earlier in that same program, again with Tim Staples as the guest, handling questions from non -Catholic callers.

It was sad to hear most of the calls, and what

I mean by that is most of the calls were from people who had an exceptionally surface -level knowledge, both of their own faith as well as the

Roman Catholic faith, and really much of the resurgence of Catholic apologetics, especially the individuals such as Carl Keating and Tim Staples, Envoy magazine, are aimed not at a meaningful, thorough, biblical response to Roman Catholicism, but instead at a jack -chick style fundamentalism that knows nothing whatsoever of history, knows nothing whatsoever of biblical exegesis or biblical languages or anything like that.

It's just, it's meant to be effective with individuals who simply are not prepared to provide much in the way of a response.

And one of the callers, a number of the callers in this program made reference to Mary, and the responses that were given were, at every single point, completely challengeable from a historical perspective.

And you have to wonder, doesn't Tim Staples know this? I haven't debated him on Mary, but as we'll see later on in an article that was just recently appeared in Envoy magazine, it doesn't matter if you have already explained to Mr.

Staples the errors in his arguments, he just repeats them anyways, and in fact does not even incorporate into a re -presentation of his arguments a improvement or even state the argument in such a way as to provide an answer for the objections that have already been given to him.

It is extremely frustrating to see the surface -level apologetic being repeated over and over again.

It seems to me that Roman Catholic apologists have a very hard time, a very hard hill to climb, in the sense that they, in essence, have to be continually finding a new audience.

And the new audience either has to be Roman Catholics who have not heard their stories that they repeat over and over again, or the

Protestant who is not really a Protestant of knowledge, but is instead just a

Protestant because, well, that's what I am, that's what I've been raised, I don't know anything about it, I don't really have any vested interest in it, it's just what

I am, and I don't think Catholics know what they're talking about anyways, but I've never really considered it. And those are the ones that become very easy to convert and to respond to when they look at you like, wow,

I didn't know you Catholics had answers like that, whoa, that's really cool, you know, that type of thing. That must be the only way they can keep an audience, for the simple fact that when you repeat the same arguments that have been refuted over and over again, eventually, if you have only one group of people listening to you, they're going to get tired of that.

They want something new, and so you have to keep moving on to a new group of people over time.

And so, one of the callers called in, asked about Mary and the Immaculate Conception, and again, sadly, you know, these

Catholic apologists must be absolutely like a Jehovah's Witness staying at the door. When you mention

John 1 -1, their mind shuts down and their mouth starts moving automatically with the pre -programmed response to John 1 -1.

Well, it would seem that the Immaculate Conception question is similar for Roman Catholic apologists, because they immediately start into the stuff about, well, yes,

Mary did need a Savior, but it was pre -emptorily applied to her, the merits of Christ pre -emptorily applied to her, before she contracted the stain of original sin, and da -da -da -da -da -da -da.

And the Protestant sits there going, wow, never heard that before. It would just be wonderful if someone would call in the

Catholic answers, and when Karl Keating uses his illustration about pulling someone back before they fall into a pit of mud, rather than pulling them out of the pit of mud, that's what

God did for Mary. She didn't contract the stain of original sin. He pulled her back before she fell in. He's still her

Savior as a result. It would be wonderful if someone would just call in and go, excuse me, Mr. Keating, are you suggesting that when

Mary uttered the words, God my Savior, that she didn't mean them like all other

Jewish women of her age would have meant that, but that she had what you just said in her mind, that she was actually making reference to a dogma that did not come into formal existence and statement in the way you believe it for, like, 12 centuries, and a monk named

Edmer is the one that gave it its final form, and you really think that that's what she had in mind?

And if you think that, then why is it that people, especially a bunch of Eastern fathers, had no concept of it, in fact, believed that she had committed acts of personal sin?

But that's not what you hear. You just hear people going, well, I just sort of stick with the

Bible and hadn't really thought of that, you know, that type of thing. It's just, it's just, it's maddening to listen to these things, and that's why you need to have debate.

Anyone can sound good if you do not have to undergo cross -examination. Anyone can get on a program and you can just sound very passionate and very straightforward if you don't have cross -examination.

That's why I like the fact that, hey, our phone lines are open. If Tim Staples is sitting out there, Tim Staples can call.

If Carl Keating is sitting out there, Carl Keating can call. When I'm on the Bible Answer Man broadcast, who knows what's under those blinking lights?

We're being heard on hundreds of stations, and people can call in all over the place and ask whatever questions they want to ask.

So that, you know, that's what, and in debate, that's even better, because it's an even thing.

You know, when you call into a program, you basically only get one shot in many of these situations, because the person sitting there has control of the button, and they can get rid of you real fast if you're asking something that they don't want necessarily to answer.

And interestingly enough, I don't have that power, because I don't have power of the phones where I'm sitting. Those are the folks on the other side of the wall, actually, so I don't have that situation.

But be that as it may, debates don't have that issue involved. You've got an even amount of time, you've got cross -examination.

That's why they're so vital and so important. And so anyways, with that in mind, here is a section.

This is about a three -minute clip, two minutes, 56 seconds. Here is a section of Tim Staples' response to a non -Catholic caller in regards to Mary, and I especially want to focus in on some assertions that are made regarding Jeremiah chapter 31.

Listen in. Just mentioned real quickly, Mary was the beginning of the new creation.

We see in the writings of, for example, Saint Jerome in his epistle against Talvidius and Jovinian in the 4th century, he mentions

Mary in fulfillment of Jeremiah 31 .22, the beginning of the new creation, which is really a beautiful image when you look at it biblically.

In Jeremiah 31 .22, God says, Behold, I do a new thing in the earth. And this is in the context of Jeremiah prophesying about the coming of Jesus.

Well, what a lot of folks don't realize, and what I discovered, is right before that prophecy concerning the new covenant, he says,

Jeremiah says in Jeremiah 31 .22, Behold, I do a new thing in the earth. Behold, a woman, or the woman, shall encompass the man.

Which is a very powerful image here, because if you think about it, in the Old Testament, God formed man out of the earth, and then woman came out of the man.

Well, what God is saying to us in Jeremiah 31, is he's going to reverse things in the new covenant.

In the new covenant, the new creation begins with Mary. God forms

Mary in the womb from the moment of her conception, to be the beginning of the new creation, and then it's out of the woman.

Instead of out of the man coming the woman, in the new covenant it's out of the woman comes the man.

And there's much we could talk about here, but just real quick. If the Old Testament beginning of the creation of man, the beginning with the earth, and God forms man out of the earth, was untouched and pristine.

Remember, this is before the fall, obviously, when in Genesis 3 .16, God would curse the earth, curse the land, so that from the sweat of the brow, we would bring forth, you know, our veggies and all that stuff we're going to munch on.

Well, this is before the curse, the earth was pristine. Well, in the new covenant, then, we would have to say,

Mary, as the beginning of the new creation, could not be stained by original sin.

She would have to be free from original sin to be that pristine land, so to speak, or the beginning of the new creation, out of which

Christ would come. Just a couple of thoughts that helped me, and there are obviously many more, but I would just encourage all the listeners to consider that the

Catholic faith is much deeper biblically than many give us credit for, because so few, unfortunately, know some of our biblical tradition.

Our biblical traditions. It's much deeper biblically. Jeremiah 31 .22,

as a picture of Mary as the beginning of a new creation, and relevant to the new covenant, is deep

Bible, according to Tim Staples. Wow.

Hopefully you've looked at Jeremiah chapter 31 now. It's a very important passage, obviously.

This is the passage that the writer of the Hebrews quotes from in regards to the new covenant and the work of God in changing hearts and minds.

But beginning in verse 20 of Jeremiah chapter 31, let's take a run at some context here and see if, in point of fact, there's something relevant here.

Is Ephraim my dear son? Is he a delightful child? Indeed, as often as I have spoken against him,

I certainly will remember him. Therefore, my heart yearns for him. I will surely have mercy on him, declares the

Lord. Set up for yourself road marks, place yourself guideposts, direct your mind to the highway, the way by which you went.

Return, O virgin of Israel, return to these your cities. Now, let's just stop right there.

What is this about? Well, the historical context, which

Mr. Staples never mentioned, of course, the historical context is the return of exiles from the land of Israel.

God, in the verses we just read, speaks of Ephraim, his dear son.

We dare not turn these things first into allegories, as Rome is most tempted to do constantly, especially if the term woman appears anywhere.

And Ephraim is referring to Israel, to those who have gone into captivity.

And God says, as often as I have spoke against him, I will certainly remember him. And certainly we see many prophetic oracles against the people of Israel, against Ephraim.

Therefore, my heart yearns for him. I will surely have mercy on him, declares the Lord. So, punishment has come, and now

God has shown mercy. So, verse 21 says, set up for yourself road marks, place for yourself guideposts, direct your mind to the highway, the way by which you went.

Return, O virgin of Israel, return to these your cities. What's that about? Well, they had gone down the road away from Israel in captivity, and now

God is saying, set up road marks, place for yourself guideposts. It's sort of like when you've been on a long, long journey, and it's like when we used to drive up to Salt Lake City, and you're coming home, and you start seeing those

Phoenix signs, and first it's Phoenix 400 miles, and then it's Phoenix 300 miles, and then 200 miles, and then 175, and you're always looking for that next lower number, because you know you're getting close to home.

And that's what God is saying here in Jeremiah chapter 31. He's addressing the captive Israelites, saying, come back, return,

O virgin of Israel, return to these your cities. Now, right there, you have the word,

O virgin of Israel. Now, if we're going to, if we're going to, I mean, and that's the specific term,

Bethula, that is used of virgin. Isn't that,

I mean, if we're going to start reading Mary into Jeremiah 31, you'd think this would be it. So, is Mary in captivity someplace, and has to come back?

You say, well, that's not what he said. But the point is, once you start saying this means this, and that represents that, once you go allegorical and leave the context, there's no end to what you can do.

Look at what Harold Camping does. I mean, there's absolutely no end to the kind of teaching you can come up with once you overthrow context, once you overthrow the actual meaning of the text you're examining.

So, here's the context. So, we go to verse 22. Jeremiah 31, 22.

How long we go here and there, O faithless daughter, for the Lord has created a new thing in the earth.

A woman will encompass a man. Let's go ahead and read the next verse. Thus says the Lord of hosts, the

God of Israel, once again they will speak this word in the land of Judah and in the cities. When I restore their fortunes, the

Lord bless you, O abode of righteousness, O holy hill. So, has anything changed in the context?

If verse 21 and verse 23 are about the restoration of the people, then if context means anything, then verse 22 is probably about this as well.

Now, did you hear any of this from Mr. Staples? No, no, no. We heard what a powerful image this is.

A woman will encompass a man. And we were told rather straightforwardly, well, this refers to, this refers to Mary and giving, carrying a man.

In fact, let's, let me see if I could find the specific, this is gonna sound sort of goofy because I'm gonna play some sections, but I want to find the specific assertion here.

"...against Helvidius and Jovinian in the fourth century, the beginning of the new creation."

Okay, here we go. "...really a beautiful image when you look at it biblically. Jeremiah 31, 22, God says, behold,

I do a new thing in the earth. And this is in the context of Jeremiah prophesying about the coming of the new covenant."

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, that comes a little bit after that, Mr. Staples. This is, actually, we're talking about the re -establishment here.

It is important to the new covenant, by the way. No question about that, but, but that's not the immediate context of a verse, of the verse we're looking at here.

"...31 is quoted in Hebrews 8, 8 as a reference to the new covenant.

I will establish a new covenant, I will take away your sins, and so forth." And so, yeah, that sounds real good.

And this is something that I've found very common with Roman Catholic apologists, is they will demonstrate wonderful biblical knowledge of things that are not at all relevant to what they're saying.

So, so, ah, well, did you know that Jeremiah 31, later on, is quoted in Hebrews 8 about the new covenant?

Well, that's fine and dandy, but it has nothing to do with what we're looking at here, does it? Seemingly hoping that there's going to be, you know, a transfer of weight, a transfer of believability from being correct about that to being correct about what's actually being asserted.

Well, what a lot of folks don't realize, and what I discovered, is right before that prophecy concerning the new covenant, he says,

Jeremiah says in Jeremiah 31, 22, "...Behold, I do a new thing in the earth. Behold, a woman, or the woman, shall encompass the man."

Okay, now did you catch that? Did you hear what, did you hear what he said? He says, a woman, or the woman, will encompass the man.

Actually, it's not the woman. This is a common feminine singular noun, and it is a specific term in the

Hebrew that is used simply to distinguish a woman in contradistinction from a man.

There's no article here. It's out in his commentary on Jeremiah, as well, as one of the reasons why this can't be interpreted in regards to Mary, but we'll get to that in just a moment.

But notice, he restated it as the woman. And you know what

I need to do here? Choose display version. Where's the Douay Rheims? Douay Rheims, there it is, right there.

Oh, Douay Rheims. Ah, look at that. It says, a woman shall encompass a man.

Now, interestingly enough, they've put a woman in caps. I don't know why. Maybe that's, hey, it's a prophecy of Mary.

I don't know. But even they do not put in the definite article. It's not there. Hmm. Well, I'm not sure why we did that, but let's continue on.

The man, which is a very powerful image here, because if you think about it, in the

Old Testament, God formed man out of the earth, and then woman came out of the man.

Well, what God is saying to us in Jeremiah 31 is He's going to reverse things in the New Covenant.

In the New Covenant, the new creation begins with Mary. Whoa, we just leaped across the

Grand Canyon! Are you listening to that? How in the world...

First of all, has Rome ever taught this? No. Mr. Staples is functioning as a private exegete at this point.

This is personal interpretation. Has Rome ever ever defined the meaning of this passage?

No. Rome has never defined the meaning of this passage. And we've just made leaps and bounds without providing even the slightest foundation for explaining why.

How did Mary get in here? We've already seen that the woman doesn't work. This is just simply a woman.

There's nothing there specifically about a specific woman at all. And what's this about coming forth?

Does encompass or to surround mean to bring forth?

That's not what the word means. Saviv does not mean to give birth. It's never used that way. So the

New Covenant is another eight verses down the road. It hasn't been introduced before this.

It's getting there, but it's not there yet. So we read something from later on. We read it back in. Throw Mary in there.

In essence, as long as the term woman is used, that must be Mary. If we can come up with something in the context to make it sound like it's

Mary. Oh goodness, goodness, goodness, goodness. Well, we're going to continue with this and start taking your phone calls.

If you'd like to join us, 866 -854 -6763. 866 -854 -6763.

And we'll be right back. Is the

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.org. And welcome back to The Dividing Line, coming up on our last half hour here, and just a quick reminder,

I was reminded to remind you, and provide you with a reminder. We are coming up on the last week we're going to be offering the special price on the

Roman Catholic Response Pack. There has been a tremendous response to it.

This includes the tremendous three -volume work on Sola Scriptura by Bill Webster and David King, Eric Svensson's book,

Who Is My Mother?, and my book, The God Who Justifies, a special steal -of -a -deal price, and this is, we're coming up on the last week we're going to be offering this, so if you've been holding off, gather together all your little

Christmas money, dig the last pennies out from the the Christmas sock, and take advantage of it that last week, because after that,

I don't know what we're going to do after that, we'll come up with something. But this will be the last week for that, so those of you who have been procrastinating, now is the time to end your procrastination.

So make sure to make sure to get your orders in for that particular offer, and as I said, many, many people have.

Many people have taken advantage of that. And of course, the powers that be to take care of the finances are also reminding me the year end is coming up as well, and that is quite the case.

We've never, you know, really been a year -end ministry, actually. We sort of live on the third week of July or something along those lines.

But yes, the year -end is coming up as well, and for those of you who were just waiting to the end of the year to bless

Alpha Omega Ministries, yeah, the year -end's coming up. Anyways, we are talking about Roman Catholic apologists and apologetics, and we are looking at the comments of Tim Staples in response to a non -Catholic caller regarding Mary and the

Immaculate Conception. We're looking at Jeremiah 31, 22. And in case you didn't catch that as it went by, how long will you go here and there,

O faithless daughter? For the Lord has created a new thing in the earth. A woman will encompass a man.

And so what's being asserted, I guess, is for the Lord has created a new thing in the earth, even though that sounds a little past tense to me.

Sounds like it has something to do, actually, with the restoration of the people of Israel to their land.

Instead, we're being told that the Lord will create a new thing in the earth. We're going to switch it to the future tense.

Let's not really worry too much about the issue of the actual language of the text. A woman will encompass a man becomes

Mary carrying Jesus in her womb. And that becomes the assertion that is being made here.

And so let's continue listening to Tim Staples as he explains this. The new creation begins with Mary.

God forms Mary in the womb from the moment of her conception to be the beginning of the new creation, and then it's out of the woman.

Instead of out of the man coming the woman in the New Covenant, it's out of the woman comes the man.

And there's much we could talk about here, but just real quick. If the Old Testament beginning of the creation of man, the beginning with the earth, and God forms man out of the earth, was untouched and pristine.

Remember, this is before the fall, obviously, when in Genesis 3 .16 God would curse the earth, curse the land, so that from the sweat of the brow we would bring forth, you know, our veggies and all that stuff we're going to munch on.

Well, this is before the curse. The earth was pristine. Well, in the New Covenant, then, we would have to say

Mary as the beginning of the new creation could not be stained by original sin.

She would have to be free from original sin. Okay, there you go. I think we've heard enough of that.

So what's being said is, well, this is Mary, and since it's in the same chapter as the

New Covenant, we're just going to connect them together, and we're not going to really bother to actually go to the text and demonstrate how they're connected together.

And in fact, we're going to ignore the actual immediate context, which is the restoration of the people of Israel to their land, which is what the verse before and the verse after is about.

But we're going to take this verse out, connect it to what comes, you know, about eight verses later, nine verses later, make this the new work, which has already been made, but that's in the future, but we're going to ignore that and make it a future thing, and say, so the new creation marries the first new creation, even though this word woman here is not a specific word, but we're going to make it

Mary anyways. And so since she's the beginning of the new creation, in the old creation, the earth is pristine, so she has to be pristine, which means that God has to apply the merits of Christ, even before the cross of Christ, to her preemptorily to avoid the stay of original sin, and then out from her comes the man, which means that surround means to give birth, even though it's never used that way in the

Bible, and the man therefore becomes Jesus, and that's where the New Covenant comes from. And if that doesn't demonstrate to you that it is almost hilarious, then to hear the last statement of Mr.

Staples, which was like this. "...faith is much deeper biblically than many give us credit for, because faith is much deeper biblically..."

Yeah, that's pretty deep. That's deep. Very, very deep. Very, very deep indeed.

Unbelievable. I'm sorry, folks, I get a little worked up. Remember when we did the programs on Scott Hahn and his stuff on Mary?

I get a little worked up when people utilize this kind of utterly and completely inane argumentation, and then sit there and say, oh, it's just so plain, it's so clear, it's so deep.

Yeah, it's deep, all right, but it's not deep because it's any good, I can guarantee you that. Now, Dr. Charles L.

Feinberg has written a commentary on Jeremiah, and this is an excellent example.

I know we have a caller online, we'll get there as soon as we can, but I want to be able to make some points here because this is what

I've been thinking about all week long. And by the way, next week, next week, I'm going to be reviewing

Dr. Scott Hahn and his attempt to explain what it means in the book of Hebrews that Christ died once for all.

And you're not going to want to miss that. You're not going to want to miss that because that is vital and important.

But one of the things I wanted to address was this tendency for a gross double standard amongst

Roman Catholic apologists. It's easily seen in historical stuff.

I mean, when you talk to a Roman Catholic about the fact that historically such dogmas as the bodily assumption of the

Immaculate Conception are simply not historical doctrines. They were not believed by all the faithful.

This is no apostolic tradition that's been passed down through time in any way, shape, or form.

But all they have to do is find one father someplace who used the term immaculate.

It doesn't matter if no one could possibly prove that what he meant by that is what is believed by Roman Catholics today.

As long as Epiphanius said immaculate, then that means it's apostolic and this is evidence of a tradition.

You can look at it in the desperate attempts being made to find some sort of historical connection with the bodily assumption into the early church through heretical groups.

It doesn't matter as long as it was there that validates our use. But then when we come along and we quote

Athanasius and we quote Augustine and we quote this person or that person denying this element of Roman Catholic teaching or that element of Roman Catholic teaching, oh, not only is, oh, you should never quote them because you disagree with them on other things, but, oh, he was just a private theologian there.

Well, why wasn't Epiphanius a private theologian when he used the term immaculate? Well, because that's a part of tradition.

See, sola ecclesia all over again. Even the church gets to choose what is and what is not tradition.

The double standard is striking. And when we look at the early church fathers, whether what they say about Scripture or what they say about doctrine, folks, if there was a massive earthquake or volcano or something that basically covered the earth today and a few people survived and civilization comes back again eventually thousands of years down the road and they they're digging up the remains of our civilization or trying to figure out what we were like, if they dug up a

Berean Christian bookstore and worked through the books in the

Berean Christian bookstore, what would they think about the state of Christianity in our day? I mean, they'd have to believe that the primary focal point of our faith had something to do with the prayer of Jabez and left behind.

Now that ain't the focal point of my faith. In fact, neither one of them have anything to do with my faith.

But that's what they'd have to conclude. And when we look at the early church fathers, why is it that people assume that as long as you lived in the year 400 that makes you a biblical exegete?

It doesn't make you a biblical exegete. In fact, once people lost the knowledge of the

Old Testament, the backgrounds to the Old Testament, the Jewish backgrounds, once there was that complete schism and rend between the two, between the

Christian church and the Jewish church, and once the Old Testament was looked at as primarily an allegory, a field of allegories that we can just go through and find anything we want in, once that happened, then many people living in the fourth century or the fifth century would actually be in no position to do any meaningful exegesis at all.

I mean, why don't we look at those individuals the same way we look at the people who write books today and say, is this person really in a position to be able to do meaningful exegesis?

Do they know the biblical backgrounds? Do they know the biblical languages? Can they do exegesis? Or are they just simply importing their own ideas into the text?

When you look at Augustine, and you know, I saw a Roman Catholic mention on a board

I've been doing a little bit of posting on, and a Roman Catholic said, ah, you better not quote Augustine there, he's the one that developed the

Latria -Dulia distinction. Okay, let's say he was. Augustine didn't know

Hebrew, and he barely knew Greek. What is the ultimate refutation, the

Latria -Dulia distinction, for those who aren't familiar with what that is? In Roman Catholicism, you give Latria only to God, that's true worship.

Dulia is service, that's given to saints and angels. Hyperdulia is given to Mary, and as I've documented in the

Roman Catholic controversy and other sources, that distinction breaks down when you recognize that both terms in the

Greek Septuagint are translations of a single Hebrew word, which means to worship. And the Hebrew mindset, to serve and to worship, are not two different things.

So the distinction doesn't exist. Now Augustine wouldn't have known that. Augustine could not trace the

Septuagint back to the Hebrew text and see where the error was. His primary language was Latin. So why in the world should we accept the distinction he made when he wasn't in a position to make it with any meaning?

That's the problem of what, that's the problem you get when you invest the early Church Fathers with some kind of authority that extends beyond our ability to examine them on the basis of Scripture.

When their traditions become the lens through which we read Scripture, we have been totally cut off from Scripture itself.

All we're left with is their traditions of what they thought Scripture should say. That's why we must practice

Sola Scriptura, and that's why we must examine those early Church Fathers in the same way. Now, what does any of this have to do with Jeremiah chapter 31?

It's real simple. The early Church, as far as I can tell in the number of sources

I've looked at, most of the early Church Fathers thought this was Mary. They looked for anything in the

Old Testament that they could turn into a Messianic reference, a reference that had something to do with the New Testament, even if the context would not allow it.

Now remember, the primary methodology of interpretation of the Old Testament was allegorical.

The fact that Jeremiah chapter 31 verses 21 and 23 have to do with the restoration of the people of Israel to the land would not be relevant.

That would not be considered an important issue. The important issue is, can we make this relevant?

Can we see something about Christ in these things? And so, Dr. Charles L.

Feinberg has written a commentary on Jeremiah, and he mentions that this last phrase is incredibly difficult.

In fact, to be honest with you, he concludes by saying, the meaning is beyond present solution.

Well, I don't think he's right about that. He lists, I think, about seven different interpretations, but the one thing he does is he provides the following comments.

Many scholars admit that a satisfactory solution is not attainable. No interpretation has been accepted by a majority of scholars.

The verse is difficult because the background is lacking. One view sees here a prophecy of the virgin birth of the Lord Jesus Christ.

This is an ancient interpretation coming from the church fathers, but it is rejected by the majority of interpreters.

Notice Mr. Staples didn't mention that little thing. It is based on the concept of the

Lord's creation of a new thing, obviously something miraculous, and the idea of a woman in some way controlling a man. This view is invalid for the following reasons.

Number one, the word woman, literally a female, does not even have the definite article.

Compare with that Isaiah 714 where it does. The word woman cannot be made to mean a virgin.

In fact, it is a most general word for a woman in contradistinction to man. Number three, the verb sevav, to surround, is poles apart from the idea of conceiving.

Number four, the interpretation is ill -suited to the context. How does it flow from its context?

Granted that the word virgin occurs in verse 21 and early in verse 4, but it is plain that these references are to Israel, not an individual.

The interpretation is reverent, but not possible. Well, that didn't take me long to track down.

Do I think that Tim Staples is unaware of those things? I don't know. I don't know.

But I know one thing. We're not going to get to it today. I had it all queued up here ready to go, but I've spent too much time on other things.

Eventually, I'm going to review an Envoy magazine article, Nuts and Bolts in the

Lion's Den by Tim Staples on Sola Scriptura. If I don't get to it in the dividing line -up, maybe

I can just put something on the web about it. I'm not sure. But anyways, I know one thing. That was written long after he and I had our debate on Sola Scriptura, and he repeats the same tired, worn -out phrases in that article that were refuted clearly in our debate, and there's no evidence.

I don't see any evidence that there's a serious attempt to think about the response and to formulate a stronger response based upon that.

So, I don't know what Mr. Staples would do if he had the information that, in point of fact, even

Roman Catholic scholars would recognize that the final phrase of Jeremiah 31 -22 is hardly fit for the use that Mr.

Staples made of it in that particular situation. I honestly don't know what he would do with that.

Well, we've had one caller do the work of calling 866 -854 -6763, and that, of course, is

Johnny over in California. And, you know, Johnny, when we were over in California recently, we made sure to wave at every single

In -N -Out burger that we passed and yell, Hi, Johnny! And that way, if you were at one of them, then we greeted you.

Well, I didn't know about it. I feel honored that you guys would do that, though. Yeah, but then we stopped at one, and I'm gonna have to admit, the entire van said the same thing.

It was like, um, so what? Oh, man!

I mean, we could have gone to McDonald's for this, you know, and we wouldn't have had to have waited this long, you know?

That was sort of the entire, you know, response. Sorry about that, Big A.

I guess it takes getting used to, man. Oh, well, yeah, great. Move to California and get used to our food so you'll like it.

Yeah, there you go. Well, you got a couple of stores down there? Actually, yes, we do, and I've never been to one.

Well, you should. Why? I've been to them out in California, and I went, hey, it's a hamburger. Why should

I wait in line for 15 hours for a hamburger? I work at Store 47, which is in Santa Fe Springs.

It's on the corner of Carmonita and Telegraph. Santa Fe Springs. Where's that at? Next to Whittier.

Oh, OK. Well, I don't know if we went by there or not. We were pretty much around I -10 and stuff like that.

Well, if you guys ever want to stop me, you'll catch me on the corner of Telegraph and Whittier. OK, well, you know, even when we went in, we're going out.

Now, watch for someone who looks like they might call the dividing line all the time and say hi to him. Well, I'm going to ask you a question.

I called you the Bible Answer Man. Yes, I know. We didn't get to you. I saw you there, and I knew it was you. I knew it was you, but I have no control over what calls we take.

All right, well, my question has to do with Romans 2, verse 13. And I remember in a couple of debates that you got on justification, you had one against Fr.

Mitchell Pacwa, and the other is against Robert St. Janis. I don't recall if Pacwa brought this up, did he?

I think he did. I don't remember. Well, actually, maybe not in the justification, but remember you did the two debates with Fr.

Mitchell Pacwa, one on justification and one on the Mass. OK, the one on the Mass, you know, he mentioned because both debates are very intertwined together.

And he said that the problem with the Protestant position on this is because the justification is a process where you'll find passages that deal with being saved in the past, being saved presently, and being saved in the future.

And he went to passages, and one of the passages he alluded to, I believe, was Romans 2, verse 13, and also Robert St. Janis. Right, right, right.

But they go to the Greek word, and I believe it's dikaiosune, right? Well, that is the noun form.

Dikaios is the verbal form. OK, well, they say, and this is what I understood by Robert St. Janis, is that the term is a present active kind of thing.

I don't know Greek the way you do, but it means, it indicates that it's an ongoing thing, and I don't know that you dealt with it from the grammatical standpoint.

And my second question, really briefly, because I just need to know this. In your book, The God Who Justifies, on page 200, you have a quotation from Basil the

Great, but no translation. I believe it's on Sola Fide or something like that, but you can't read it.

No, actually, the translation's in the text. Oh, you're right.

Well, yeah, that one, I think at some point, the

English translation was in the text, and evidently, in the editing process, it disappeared.

But let's see here. If you look at the last section there, truly his own righteousness, but by faith alone in Christ Jesus, he has been made righteous, is the last, the relevant phrase right before the quotation at the bottom there on page 200, right before where you see

Basil's Caesarea, if you take the Greek back from there, you'll find a comma after Alithius, then you have, but by faith only, which is in Christ Jesus, and then you have a perfect participle, he has been justified.

So that was, I'm glad you're looking that closely at that.

I'm almost certain that there was a translation of that at some point in the text, but it must have disappeared, and I may have thought it was a double citation and deleted,

I don't know. But he uses the term monos there, faith alone or only, in regards to having been justified, which is interesting.

He puts it in the perfect tense right there, and in Romans 2 .13,

that is in the future tense, there is no present tense in Romans 2 .13,

it says they shall be justified. And again, I did address this rather fully in the comments on Romans 2 .13,

because this is being used in a conditional sentence, and that is, you are not justified, the

Jews believe that by merely hearing or possessing the law they would be justified, but their own scriptures contradicted them at that point.

It was not the doing, it was not the hearing, but doing of the law that would bring justification if a person could do it.

So there's no present tense here. The only place where there is a present tense use of that in Paul, as I recall, is 3 .24.

Being justified as a gift by His grace and redemption, which is in Christ Jesus. And that's not describing our experience of it.

That may be the passage, after all. Yeah, I think Romans 3 .24 uses the present passive participle of dikaioh, that's probably what you're referring to there.

Right. Well, again, that is the assertion made by Rome, this is an ongoing thing, you are being justified, etc.,

etc. Every place they go to, to try to establish that, whether it's Romans 2 .13 and saying it's a future tense,

Romans 3 .24 is saying it's a present tense, therefore it's an ongoing action, every place they go to is stating a general truth.

That is, God justifies freely by grace. It's not used in a place where it's saying, you are experiencing justification.

It's always in a place where a general truth is being stated. Now, general truths are experienced individually, and when you talk about what the

Scripture says about our own experience of justification, it is always in the past tense, as in Romans 5 .1.

And so, there is, there, keep one thing in mind. There's, there's two kinds of, there's two levels of knowledge of the

Greek language. You can take a beginning level Greek course, and maybe go a little bit into some advanced topics, and you will learn basic grammar, and you'll learn, for example, that the basic meaning of the present tense is ongoing action.

However, as you get beyond that, in your advanced studies of the Greek language, you discover that language is not made up merely of simple units that are strung together.

Instead, language is made up of expressions of thought, and you express expressions of thought through phrases, and hence the study of syntax begins.

And syntax is the relationship that words bear to one another. Yes, it takes into consideration, obviously, their grammatical form, but each word, then, is related to other words.

And once you start getting into that study, then you realize that you can't just simply go, oh, it's a present tense, therefore it has this meaning.

It is a present tense, but in the context in which it is being used, is the writer expressing an ongoing action, or is this simply, for example, a general truth?

The present tense is used in the statement of general truth, that there's nothing at all in the verb that is emphasizing the ongoing action at all, instead is being used to present a gnomic truth, or a general truth.

This is a syntactical category you learn later on. Many people who attempt to address various issues apologetically, in fact the vast majority of apologists, whether they're

Catholic or non -Catholic, don't know the biblical languages, they have not gone beyond basic studies that they did, and they certainly don't teach them.

And so as a result, you get very confident assertions that in reality shouldn't be nearly as confident as they are.

And so, it's interesting, I don't have it in front of me right now,

I could grab it, but I'd be willing to bet that Fitzmeyer, for example, would not place a tremendous amount of weight on this.

I don't know, I mean, I'd have to look at it, but because people who really actually read the language recognize that what this simply is saying is this is a continuation all of sin falls short of the glory of God.

Jew and Gentile, everyone has to be justified freely by his grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, because everybody's in the same boat.

Jew is not in a position of greater privilege than a Gentile, both have fallen under sin, therefore they are justified freely by his grace through redemption which is in Christ Jesus.

Uh, James, one more thing, and I don't know if we have enough time. I have my uncle on the line and he'd like to ask you a question if that's possible.

Uh, sure. How you doing, James? Hey, how you doing? This is, my name is

Raul. Hello. And I've been telling my nephew here about, uh, Nicodemus and Jesus Christ conversation at that evening, when he says you must be born again, he says you must be born of water and of the

Spirit. Mm -hmm. And I tell him that born of water is the actual birth that takes place.

We're in a water bag and we are then born of water, and then we must be born of the Spirit.

It's not really a question, but I guess you could say. Well, uh, I understand that interpretation and, uh, there, there are many people who have held it that, uh, born of water is the natural birth and born of the

Spirit is spiritual birth. Uh, I'd like to suggest, however, to you a, um, uh, what

I think is maybe a, a better, uh, understanding from Ezekiel chapter 36, verses 25 through, uh, 27.

And if you might, maybe you could take a look at that, uh, passage. Uh, I'm out of time right now, but if you could take a look at that passage, you'll notice.

Let me say one more thing, you know, cause it says, you must be born again, born of water and of the Spirit. And then you say, if your birth, if the baptism is the, is what's saying that you're born again of water, then that would be pre -birth.

I, I, I do understand exactly what you're saying. And, uh, I think Ezekiel 36, 25 through 27 is the best background to that.

But the music in the background tells me I'm out of time. Remember next week, Scott Hahn and once for all, did

Christ die once for all? What does that mean? Right here on The Dividing Line. We'll see you then. The Dividing Line has been brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries.

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