Bible Alone - Bible Answer Man

First of all, I'd like to introduce my friend James Aiken of Catholic Answers, and he is someone that is an extremely thoughtful Christian, someone that I certainly love as an individual.

He is the author of an upcoming book, What Catholics Believe and Why. He's an apologist for Catholic Answers.

He's a contributing editor to This Rock magazine, and his religious autobiography was recently published or, yeah,

I guess it was recently published in the collection Surprised by Truth, edited by Patrick Madrid and available from Catholic Answers.

James Aiken, it's a delight to have you with us today. I'm delighted to be here. And we also have another

James in studio today, someone that is familiar to all the listeners of the Bible Answer Man broadcast. He was in studio for three separate shows in which we dealt with the issue of King James Version -only controversy.

And before I even introduce you further, James, you did a marvelous job, and I want to express to you my appreciation on behalf of our listening audience.

We've gotten a lot of wonderfully positive comments about the program. I think it did a lot of good. I am sure that it did.

And you are, of course, the founder of Alpha and Omega Ministries. You have written various books, including a book on this whole issue of Roman Catholicism, which is called

The Fatal Flaw. But now you are doing a more comprehensive work for Bethany on that subject as well.

Right. It'll be out next year. These are two thoughtful men, folks, and I am certain that as a result of this program, we are going to have, as I said, light as opposed to heat.

A couple of things that I want to deal with at the very start. Obviously, I want our listening audience to have an opportunity to ask you questions directly, but I think perhaps the primary issue that we need to begin this broadcast with is the issue of sola scriptura, or the

Bible alone as our only standard for testing what is claimed as a revelation from God, as opposed to the

Roman Catholic claim that both the Bible and the authoritative traditions of the

Church ought to be the standards by which revelation is tested. James Aiken, why don't you give your understanding in sort of a capsule form of this issue and why it's important.

It's extremely important because one of the things a person needs to know when one is deciding what to do with one's life is, of course, what

God wants from a person. And the only way we can know that is by looking at God's Word. God's Word is the only infallible source of information we have on earth about what

God wants of us, what God wants to give us, what God wants to save us from, and it is the only thing that we must model our lives after in that sense.

It is the only thing we can put our ultimate confidence in. However, one of the differences between Protestants and Catholics is

Protestants believe that the Word of God has been passed on to us in only one form, namely in the

Bible. At least that's the way the issue is commonly phrased. Catholics believe that the Word of God to us has been passed on in two forms.

In the Bible, the books that were written by the prophets and the apostles, and in sacred tradition, which is those teachings which are also passed down to us from the prophets and the apostles.

Now, just as one has to distinguish, you know, the apostolic books of Scripture from non -apostolic writings, from things that are merely writings of men and were not written under the inspiration of God, one also has to distinguish between traditions that come to us from the apostles and things that are merely the traditions of men that are not written, not taught under God's inspiration.

And so, just as we have to separate canonical from non -canonical Scriptures on the one hand, we also have to separate canonical from non -canonical traditions on the other hand.

And once we have, once we, you know, in going through the evidence and so forth, listening to the

Church's voice in deciding that issue, we are then able to come to a proper understanding of everything

God wants us to know, not simply limiting ourselves to one mode that His Word has been passed down to us, but embracing both of them.

At least that's the Catholic viewpoint. James White, your particular understanding of this issue from a

Protestant perspective. It is indeed the foundational issue in my opinion, and unfortunately it is a difficult issue to address for a number of reasons.

First of all, there's a number of different understandings amongst Roman Catholics in regards to what tradition refers to.

Many Roman Catholics today, especially in the United States, would like to limit tradition to merely the interpretive ability of the

Church. Others, more traditional, would assert that there is actually a body of oral tradition that is passed down separately, that contains revelation from God that is not found in the

Bible. Others would say no, at least in some semblance it's all found in the Bible. And so it's a very difficult issue.

I'm afraid a lot of people do not really know what the argument is actually all about.

I like to go back to the Lord Jesus Christ in Matthew chapter 15. And in Matthew chapter 15,

He encountered individuals who believed that their religious tradition had sacred traditions from God.

They believed these sacred traditions had been passed down, that they were divine in origin, and they were authoritative.

And when the Lord Jesus encountered these individuals, the scribes and the Pharisees, and they used these traditions to accuse

Him of wrongdoing, I think we need to follow His example of what He did. We all know what happened in Matthew chapter 15, when the tradition of the elders was thrown up in the face of the

Lord Jesus. How did He respond? He said, Jesus replied, this is verse 3 of chapter 15,

And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? For God said, Honor your father and mother, and anyone who curses his father and mother must be put to death.

But you say that if a man says to his father and mother whatever help he might otherwise have received from me as a gift devoted to God, he is not to honor his father and mother with it.

Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your traditions. You hypocrites, Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you, etc.

Now remember, these individuals thought that the tradition they were using was divine in origin. They had used their best efforts, shall we say, to determine whether this extra -scriptural tradition was in fact from God or not.

The point is, the Lord Jesus Christ subserviated all traditions, whether claimed to be divine or human, to the ultimate authority of scripture.

And the question then comes down, are the Roman Catholic traditions subserviated to scripture?

And does the Roman Catholic system, as it is set up with the teaching magisterium, have the ability to honestly apply

Matthew chapter 15? And I would submit that that is not what takes place, and I would submit that when we look at the doctrines that have been defined on the basis of tradition, doctrines such as the

Immaculate Conception, or the Bodily Assumption of Mary, or Papal Infallibility, we see that Matthew chapter 15 cannot be functionally applied.

The Protestant position is that the scriptures, being God -breathed, are the ultimate authority for the man of God, that they are able to thoroughly equip the man of God for every good work.

That does not mean that we don't believe that the church has a role in teaching. It does not mean that we throw the

Holy Spirit out the door. It does not mean the church cannot grow in its understanding of what the scriptures teach.

What it does mean is that there is no authority higher than scripture. It should be noted that you have written that Athanasius fought a sometimes lonely battle in defense of the deity of the

Lord Jesus Christ. When he did, he stood against the full weight of the Church of Rome. He, at that particular point in time, refuted his enemies, not by reference to oral tradition, but by a logical, insightful exegesis of scripture.

I use Athanasius because of the simple fact that he was dealing with, really, what was at the time the fundamental defining aspect of what

Christianity was to be. Were we going to have the truly divine Savior, or were we going to have a

Savior that was very much like the religions of the world? And Athanasius, in his defense of the faith,

I think is a glowing example of the very same type of apologetics that we see going on today when a

Jehovah's Witness calls into this radio program. The very same type of passages are going to be cited.

You don't find him saying, well, Mr. Arius or followers of Arius, you are in error because the

Church of Rome says this, the teaching magisterium says this, we have these extra -biblical traditions that say this.

No. You find him exegesing these things from the scripture and presenting that as the final authority.

These individuals will or will not bow to it. That's the issue for him. By the way, just so I don't confuse everybody here, we have a

James White and a James Aiken, so I may refer to you as Mr. Aiken, not because I don't personally care for you, or Mr.

White, just so that the listening audience knows who I'm talking to. Again, Mr. Aiken who represents

Catholic answers your comments. Well, I'd have to say a number of things. Just in regard to the scripture text that Mr.

White referred to, Matthew chapter 15 and he recited verse 3 and so forth. I'm afraid he engaged in a little bit of exegesis there.

If you continue reading in that passage and you get down to verse 9, you find Jesus giving a quotation from the book of Isaiah and applying it to his pharisaical opponents.

It says that, In vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men. The problem here was not simply that they were using traditions.

Jesus did not here condemn all traditions. All he condemned were traditions of men. Mr. White, in fact, talked about the tradition of the elders.

Well, the tradition of the elders was wrong. So merely the fact that Jesus said in this case that this tradition is wrong, the traditions of the elders are wrong, and they're teaching as doctrine the precepts of men, that doesn't mean all traditions are wrong.

This comes out even more clearly in the Mark in parallel to this in Mark chapter 7 verse 8 where Jesus says bluntly,

You leave the commandment of God and hold fast to the tradition of men. So the problem is tradition of men, not all traditions.

And we can easily show that by referencing it to, for example, the Apostle Paul's writings. If you look, for example, at 2

Thessalonians chapter 2 verse 15, Paul says, So then, brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by letter.

So Paul here is exhorting people to hold on to traditions. And in fact, if you read a little bit further into chapter 3, he in fact commands us to stay away from those who don't live by the traditions he imparted.

And so the problem is not all traditions. That's something, you know, I'm afraid I have to say that Protestants insert into the

Matthean text. The problem is traditions of men versus traditions of the Apostles.

If it's a tradition that came to us from the Apostles, if it's something that the Apostles taught, then it is binding on us.

It has the authority of the Apostles behind it, regardless of whether it's written or not. The mode in which we receive the tradition is irrelevant.

If we receive the tradition in writing and Scripture, that's fine. If we receive it orally, that's fine too. The key thing is does it have apostolic authority behind it?

So Jesus certainly was not condemning all traditions or he couldn't have commissioned his Apostles to then go out and pass on tradition.

Now, in regard to Athanasius, again, there's a bit of a flaw in the argument to say

Athanasius reasoned from Scripture in dealing with the Arians. Therefore, that means

Sola Scriptura is true or that Athanasius taught Sola Scriptura is true. In fact, he didn't. If you look in his writings elsewhere, he has a very healthy respect for tradition.

I have to say that I'm afraid Mr. White is out of sync with some early church scholars, such as the great

Protestant early church historian J. N. D. Kelly, when he talks about how we don't find in the early

Christian writers appeals to traditions when combating heretics. In fact, in Dr.

Kelly's book, which I have right here, Early Christian Doctrines, he makes precisely the point that in the early conflicts with heretics, it was tradition that was appealed to primarily because the heretics used the same

Scriptures by and large. And so they would both just put their own interpretation on it, just like a J .W.

does today. The Arians did in the 4th century. The Gnostics did in the 2nd century. And the appeal was, well, wait a minute.

I mean, we are living in a church whose leaders have come down to us from the Apostles and they have passed on these teachings from the

Apostles, and that tells us what the correct interpretation of the Scripture is. If you're teaching some novel interpretation of the

Scripture that no one's ever heard before in church history, then it's not in accordance with the apostolic tradition, and so you must be wrong, because the

Apostles did not only give us their teachings and writings, they also gave them to us orally. And the two have to sync up.

Okay, I want to give James White an opportunity to respond to that. Before you respond to James Aiken, James White, the

Council of Trent in 1565, November 13th actually, 1565, said that all faithful Catholics must agree, quote,

I shall never accept nor interpret Holy Scripture otherwise than in accordance with the unanimous concept of the

Fathers. Consent of the Fathers. Excuse me, yes, the consent of the Fathers. What did I say? Oh, I'm sorry, consent of the

Fathers. Well, and that, of course, brings us into a whole other area that I can barely even touch upon, and that is the fact that Rome does claim in Vatican II and in other places that the office of interpreting

Scripture, the role of interpreting Scripture has been entrusted solely to the teaching magisterium of the Church. And when

Trent said that similar words earlier on while Calvin was still alive, his response was basically, well, the war is over, because in reality there is no longer any basis upon which we can have any meaningful dialogue based upon Scripture because if you say that the only one who has the right to interpret

Scripture is Rome, then how can we have any Biblical discussion on any of these issues? For example, if we turn to Matthew chapter 16,

Rome tells us what this means, and that is the end of the discussion as far as that goes.

How can we have any further discussion of it all? And so I would say that on this issue of authority, and maybe we'll have to let you respond to that and then let me respond to other things, but on this issue of authority,

I think we do develop a very circular situation, and that is that while Roman Catholic apologists such as the folks at Catholic Answers, Mr.

Aiken here, may present to us Biblical arguments on the basis of the exegesis of a passage of Scripture, in reality there are passages of Scripture where Rome has said, this is it.

There can be no other opportunities, there can be no other interpretations than this interpretation. And there are about eight of those passages.

A very small number, which in and of itself is rather intriguing to me too, but the point is those passages have been infallibly defined.

Rome says we have the final authority to interpret these passages, and there can really be no discussion beyond that point.

And I would say that illustrates a situation where you have an authority that has been placed above Scripture, especially when you talk about the unanimous consent of the fathers.

Look at Matthew chapter 16, there's no more glowing passage than that, where you can demonstrate that the majority of the early church fathers did not take the position that has now been infallibly defined by Rome.

No, that's clearly inaccurate. I mean, the early church fathers were strongly of the opinion that Peter was the rock that Christ was referring to there.

There's no way you can say that a majority of the fathers didn't teach that. Well, not only do most church historians say that, but most

Roman Catholic church historians would say that the interpretation infallibly defined by Rome is not the interpretation of the majority of the early fathers.

You've read Launoi, you've read these people who have tallied these things up, and I don't know when you want to cut off the point.

Yeah, and they're misreading the way the early fathers approached that passage, and I could debate that at further length.

We'd be glad to do so. What do we do about this whole issue? There seems to be, in my estimation, a lot of revisionism going on, at least by one side or the other, and I won't put myself on one side or the other, but just to say, how do we resolve that issue from either one of your perspectives?

I think we're doing it in the sense that I just did a four and a half hour debate at Boston College on the papacy.

I did a six hour debate during the papal visit in Denver. And obviously

Catholic Answers agrees with me on this. I'm one of those really backwards people that isn't into all the political correct stuff in the sense that I think...

Neither are we. Well, that's the point. I think that there is a real need for public, open, moderated, scholarly debates on these issues to get the facts out.

And it's real easy for one side or the other, if there's not a counterbalance there, to make everything look like everything supports them.

But when you put people with an even amount of time face to face, unfortunately sometimes it draws a lot of folks and sometimes it doesn't.

But I think that's one of the best ways to handle it. I agree. The solution to the problem of the two sides distorting the history in their favor can only be solved by the other side having its chance to respond.

For example, Fox's Book of Martyrs is a classic illustration of that. Fox's Book of Martyrs is a grossly distorted historical work, which even

Protestant scholars will admit is very ahistorical. But there hasn't been a Catholic response to that in recent years.

In fact, as one of my future writing projects, I want to write a... Not an equivalent.

I don't want to have the same level of invective. But I want to write a balanced piece called

The Protestant Inquisition about the persecution of Catholics by Protestants. But is that really going to help?

And the reason I'm doing that is not to say Protestants are bad or that Protestants... Because you once were one.

Exactly. It's not to say Protestants are bad or Protestants are tyrannical, cruel servants of the devil and similar things that John Fox said about Catholics.

But just to balance the playing field and say, look, there were errors on both sides, and they're approximately equal, and it's really not going to do any good to keep dredging that stuff up.

It doesn't get us to the truth of the theological system to say, well, gee, have people not lived the way they should have?

If you had used that standard in the Old Testament and looked at the Jews and said, are these people living like they should and used that as a test for the true religion, you would have missed the true religion.

And so I would say that, you know, let's just level the playing field and move on from that. I would only comment that I think the relevance of the

Inquisition, those situations, has to do with Rome's claim to infallibility on doctrinal matters, not to the issue of impeccability.

But should I take a second or two to just address those three issues before we totally lose the conversation?

In terms of equal time, I have several things I'd like to respond to that he said. Well, you know, obviously, I think both of you know that my desire is to be fair with both of you because I think that you're both thoughtful, reasonable, and also two guys that have really done their homework.

And so I want to treat both of you as fairly as possible, and if there's any inequity, we'll try to make it up whenever we can. Go ahead,

James. This is James White. That is going to become very confusing, but back to the issue of...

Ah, just call me Seamus. Back to the issue of the Sola Scriptura, just a few things, and I'll be very, very brief.

First of all, I didn't feel that James Aiken's response to what I had said dealt with what

I had said. I wasn't talking about all traditions. I was saying that Jesus, when he addressed the issue of traditions, and he addressed individuals who made the claim that their traditions were divine, subjected them to the authority of Scripture, and that's what we need to do with anyone who claims that their traditions have a divine origin or source.

The issue is even when, from his own people's perspective, these were divine traditions, he subjected them to the authority of Scripture and demonstrated no, they are not.

Therefore, when someone presents to me on the authority of tradition the concept of the infallibility of the

Pope, I am going to subject that tradition to Scriptural scrutiny. That was my application of Matthew 15.

I'm going to try to be brief. 2 Thessalonians 2 .15, I believe, is badly misused by Roman Catholic apologists at this point.

First of all, I wasn't trying to say that the New Testament does not use the term tradition. I would assert that in 2

Thessalonians 2 .15, the term tradition that is used there, in its context, if we would exegete the passage in its context, is not referring to some extra -biblical revelation of doctrines that may not even be known for 1 ,800 years, but in that context is referring to the gospel itself, if you look at the context itself.

And in regards to Athanasius, Mr. Aiken said, well, Mr. White's saying we don't find appeals to traditions.

That's why I asked for the chapter. I've written a chapter in a book on the

Sola Scriptura that will be coming out in February from Soli Deo Gloria, and one of the main things I focus in upon is when people like Irenaeus use the term tradition, what do they mean?

Do they define what the term tradition is? I am in no way, shape, or form in conflict with J.

N. D. Kelly. The fact of the matter is the tradition to which he appeals to is not an extra -biblical tradition of some other revelation.

When you look at what he defined the tradition to be, it is firmly and solely based upon Scripture itself.

It is the concept of the fact there is one God, and you and I both know if the Scriptures teach anything with clarity, it's the fact there's only one true

God. And so my problem there is I was not saying you will not find appeals.

What I was saying is you will not find appeals to tradition as it is interpreted today by Rome.

Big difference between the two things. James Aiken. Okay, well, there's more on my plate than I can respond to at the moment, but just to nail down a couple things.

One of the things about 2 Corinthians 2 .15 is Paul doesn't limit it to just traditions concerning the

Gospels. He says, therefore, brethren, stand fast and hold to all of the traditions you have received, whether by word of mouth or by our epistle.

So you can't say this is just traditions on a certain topic. Anything that Paul has taught the Thessalonians in person or by writing is up for grabs in terms of that verse.

That is part of the all traditions he refers to. Now, as Mr. White is using an assumption which when he deals with the term tradition, he is assuming that the term tradition means something that has been passed down from the

Apostles that is not written in Scripture. Okay, some extra biblical revelation. And he can't simply facilely make that assumption because one of the open issues in Catholic theology right now is a debate over whether Scripture is materially sufficient.

The position of material sufficiency claims that all theology, all the material you need to do for theology is either contained or implied in Scripture.

And the difference between that and the sola scriptura position is that it says that even though Scripture is materially sufficient, it has all the material you need.

It contains or implies it all. It's not formally sufficient. The material isn't in the form you need to do theology in all cases.

And so you need to use tradition as an interpretive grid to help you understand like which passages gain primacy.

Does Jesus saying, before Abraham was I am, gain primacy? Or does Jesus saying, why callest thou me good?

There is none good but God gain primacy. Which passage do you use as the foundation of your interpretation?

Which do you then harmonize with it? That's the role tradition plays for you in the material sufficiency view.

So when Mr. White says that Catholics have to come up with some extra biblical revelation in order to validate their view of tradition, he's simply wrong.

Because some Catholics say there are no extra biblical traditions in that sense. There are no extra biblical revelations that have been passed out and everything is either contained or implied in the

Bible. Now I wanted to touch just for a minute on the passage you read from the Council of Trent. This is often misunderstood in Protestant circles.

The teaching of that passage is not that we can't interpret the Bible for ourselves. We can and we must.

That's why God gave us intellects. You know this was something that Thomas Aquinas with his big emphasis on natural law and the divine gift of the human intellect that separates us from animals and so forth.

The rational soul that separates us from the sensitive souls that animals have. Is something that requires us to read and study

God's word. What Trent is saying is that when the fathers unanimously interpret a passage one way, that's when you can't go against it.

So if you have a case where every church father has said this is what this passage means, that's when you can't go against them.

But if there's disagreement among the fathers, if there's not a unanimous consent, then you can go against it.

Just to give an example of a passage where there is unanimous agreement among the fathers, I would point to John 3 verse 55. Every single early church father there is from the second century on said that when

Jesus said you must be born of water and spirit, he was talking about baptism.

Water baptism. A unitary baptism involving both water and the spirit.

Every single church father from the second century on said that. That is something that I have searched diligently trying to find references to early church fathers who didn't say that and I can't, there aren't any.

Every single one I've checked says that and that is a tradition that was accepted by all Christians up until the time of the

Reformation, at least all mainstream ones. You had Augustine saying that, you had Aquinas saying that, you had

John Wycliffe saying that, you had Martin Luther himself saying that. The first person to really deny that as far as mainstream theologians would go would be

John Calvin. Everyone before him said that that is talking about baptism.

And so that would be a passage where a Catholic would say, well no, the fathers are unanimous on this. I can't go against this.

A couple things just really quickly and it's going to be 30 seconds. I'm going to wrap up and then we're going to come back, the last segment of this broadcast, we're going to take calls, but I want to give both of you an opportunity just to summarize the importance of the issue that we're dealing with.

Go ahead, just 30 seconds. Well the issue that he brought up in regards to the open question in Roman Catholic theology right now,

I would just invite anyone to read the Council of Trent in the fourth session, read the background of what they were talking about, it's an issue called partly partly, some in tradition, some in Scripture, and just be warned of one thing.

Many of the modern Roman Catholic theologians who are affirming material sufficiency, their view of Scripture is far removed from what a conservative

Protestant's view of Scripture would be, and in fact they are farther away from us in many of their views of what

Revelation is than the conservative Roman Catholic would be. I do, before we go on, want to commend both you guys for the fact that you were able to communicate with one another in a respectful manner.

You are modeling what ought to be happening in this very essential debate.

The differences between you, we can't minimize, they are profound, and yet you are great examples of how we ought to treat one another in this kind of debate.

I am kind of interested, James Aiken, in your perspective on some of the literature that comes out from Protestant publishers, like even a book that just came out by Dave Hunt.

How do you react to that kind of literature? Well, concerning Dave Hunt's book, I have to say it's a joke.

I mean, the man's scholarship is appalling. In fact, I learned an interesting term from William F.

Buckley that I think aptly describes the kind of writing Dave Hunt does. The term is sciolist, S -C -I -O -L -I -S -T, and a sciolist is a person who has the affectations of scholarship without the substance.

People have the idea that if you just have a lot of footnotes to your book, it makes you a scholar, but the problem is if you're footnoting idiots, then it doesn't make your book scholarly.

And Dave Hunt's book, I thought, was just a joke in terms of scholarship. Just to name one example in it, he made the claim at one point that Pope John XXII back in the 1300s had dogmatically defined that Jesus and the apostles were wealthy men, and thus you had the pope teaching the health and wealth gospel and so forth.

And I said, that's nuts. And so I reached across my bed and grabbed my book of official papal statements, and I looked up the encyclical he referenced, and what

John XXII actually said was that Jesus and the apostles possessed some property at least in common.

So he was dealing with a controversy in his day where there was a group of radical spiritualists who were going around saying that the epitome of spirituality was not owning any property at all, not even communal property.

No private property, no communal property, no property. And therefore, since that's the epitome of spirituality,

Jesus and the apostles must have not had any property even in common. Well, Scripture says they did. I mean,

Peter had a boat, he had nets, they had houses, they had a common money purse that Judas stole from.

They clearly had property, at least communally. And so the pope, what he actually said was that Jesus and the apostles did have some property at least in common.

Scripture repeatedly says so. And Mr. Hunt either didn't read the source very closely or more likely just read an account of it in a secondary source, didn't check the original source, and he garbled it into the idea that the pope was teaching that they were wealthy and that he was teaching the health and wealth gospel.

Your perspective, James White, on some of the literature that has been written by Protestants, which may be less than helpful.

Well, first of all, it's on both sides. I would look at a book like the Catholic Controversies as being similar from the other direction, but sometimes utterly irresponsible in its representation of Protestant beliefs.

But my concern is, and this is going to reiterate something that I said when we were on the

King James Only issue, my concern is that a lot of really bad argumentation, people who are not careful about citations, are not careful about accuracy, are not careful about backgrounds, are not careful about logic, that's the type of book that's going to sell, and it's going to have the largest impact, sadly, in our nation today.

That may be a very pessimistic assertion on my part, but it just seems to me that for most people...

See, this is why we need the Index of Forbidden Books. Well, I think

I've written a few that you'd want on there, too. But the problem is,

I think that a lot of Protestants today, I think one of the reasons, and James is sitting far enough away from me that he can't smack me upside the head for saying this, but I believe that one of the reasons that Catholic Answers has been able to get as large as it has and have the impact that it has, is that the vast majority of Protestants no longer know why they're

Protestants. And sadly, a large number who have converted from Roman Catholicism did so for reasons that were not biblically sound, or this priest,

I didn't like him, he was a meanie, so on and so forth. I think we have a real problem amongst Protestant churches.

We don't know why we were Protestants in the first place, and the simple fact of the matter is, issues like Sola Scriptura, or Sola Fide, justification by faith, don't sell books, they're not at the top of the priority list, and most people would not list them as being definitional of what it is to be a

Protestant in the first place. They'd be way down the totem pole if anyone knew what they were there for in the first place. I think you would agree,

James Akin, with that statement. Trash sells. Yeah, there's no two ways about it. Can you summarize very quickly the importance of the issue of Sola Scriptura as well as tradition, as opposed to Sola Scriptura?

I guess that's a contradiction. The Bible and tradition as opposed to Sola Scriptura. Can you summarize the importance of that issue in just a minute or so,

James Akin, then we're going to go to some phone calls. Sure, no problem. One of the problems that you have when you have cults come along, whenever a cult starts, they always take one or two or a small set of verses and absolutize them.

They will say these verses have to be taken in this sense, and all other verses pertaining to this subject have to be warped to this understanding.

For example, you have the JWs picking out verses that sound, at least if you take them out of context, like Jesus might be denying his divinity, and therefore they warp all of the verses in the

New Testament that affirm his divinity. Similarly, you have the Mormons taking verses like in John, for example, you are all gods and so forth, and they absolutize that and then warp all of the numerous citations of the fact that there's only one

God in Scripture. What tradition does for you, if you're listening to the apostolic tradition, remember

I'm not talking traditions of men, but if you're looking at the teachings that have come down to us from the apostles, it tells you which verses are primary and which verses have to be harmonized with them, and so it enables you to obtain a doctrinal balance and get at the true sense of Scripture in that way.

That is what tradition does for you, that's its primary function. Now it may or may not have some additional revelation outside it that's not mentioned in the

Bible, but its primary function is to tell us the meaning of the Bible. That is what it does. It's a mirror for Scripture that gives us a different perspective on the same teachings.

James White, summarize your perspective on this issue. I'll try to keep it very, very short. I would submit to you that Matthew 16, 18 and the papacy,

Luke 1, 28 and the huge edifice of doctrinal beliefs that have been hung upon that passage in Roman Catholicism is an excellent example of what happens when you have one passage and everything else has to be twisted to it.

So I would say again, it's real nice to be able to say, well, we have an ultimate authority that's going to give you that doctrinal balance.

The simple fact of the matter is Roman Catholicism over its history has demonstrated that doesn't work for them either.

That doesn't work for them. It still results in the twisting of Scriptures. You're just simply moving the ultimate question of authority back one step.

It doesn't really answer the question. I want to go to Vincent in Fresno, listening on KCIV.

Vincent, you're on the air. Hi, Hank. Are your kids in studio with you today? No, they're not.

James White brought a couple of kids with him. They're not even in here either. They're just making faces at us through the glass.

Go ahead with your question. Anyway, my question deals with the Apocrypha and I don't think anyone's going to agree with my opinion, but it seems to me that where you have instances such as Matthew 12, where in rebuking the

Pharisees Jesus makes what seems to be a direct reference to Ecclesiasticus 27 .7,

almost a word -for -word quote, you've got him submitting to a festival that's established in the Book of the

Maccabees, you have a magnificent prophecy of Jesus Christ in Wisdom, Chapter 2. Does the

Eastern Orthodox Church maybe have the most balanced view of considering these books deuterocanonical, since there are obviously some problems in these books, so it just seems that they don't seem to come up to the standard of fully full

Scripture, but it seems like it doesn't seem correct to throw them out at the same time. Yeah, it is true that the

Eastern Orthodox Church considers them deuterocanonical, but in the sense of being on a lower footing.

Well, I would, I think the caller may be a little confused about the meaning of the term deuterocanonical.

It doesn't exclude them from the canon. It means a second canon, literally. Well, or secondarily included in the canon.

They are not as primary as some of the other books. I mean, there's obvious differences in the primacy of different books of Scripture.

I mean, Matthew is more important than 3 John, Genesis is more important than Esther, you know, and so forth. And they are not the most important books of Scripture, but according to both the

Eastern Orthodox and according to Roman Catholics, they belong there, and that was the position of the early church.

But isn't there a distinction there, James Akin, that in terms of emphasis, but the

Eastern Churches also honor them as Scripture in the fullest sense. I mean, they are the inspired

Word of God, just like the proto -canonical books are. In fact, I was joking with your secretary,

I was looking around your bookstore out in the front office, and you had in the bookstore a set of the complete

Bible on cassette and I told her, well, I was looking at all the neat books you have here, but you've got a little bit of false advertising right here because it doesn't include the seven deuterocanonicals.

Well, the problem I have, of course, is I don't believe those books are scriptural, and I would just point out that in the early church it seems to me that as I've studied this issue, the more an early church father knew of the

Old Testament and the Jewish people, the less likely he was to accept the apocryphal books as Scripture.

Look at Jerome. Look at Origen. Both knew Hebrew. Some of the very few early fathers who knew the

Hebrew language, neither one of them accepted the deuterocanonical books, the apocrypha, as fully scriptural.

No, I'm sorry, Jerome for example, in one of his letters, is adamant in defending the deuterocanonical portions of Daniel, and he specifies the reason why he defends them.

He says, I don't care what the Jews today say. The Jews have lost their place as far as being able to recognize

Revelation, and I will go with the church's judgment. What does it matter to me if modern day

Jews are saying that the deuterocanonical portions of Daniel don't belong there? Similarly, Origen, and this is a point that Kelly makes,

Origen regarded the deuterocanonicals as Scripture. In fact, I have quotations from him to that effect, but because they are not accepted by Jews, he recommended against using them in debate.

That's the same thing I would do as a Catholic. I mean, Protestants mostly don't accept them, and so I don't cite the deuterocanonicals, at least not usually, when

I'm debating a Protestant. And that was exactly Origen's position, and Kelly makes this point in his book Early Christian Doctrines.

I'd simply refer anyone to Beckwith, not to the Beckwith that we know, but another Beckwith's work on the

Old Testament canon of the New Testament of the church, for a full and in -depth and scholarly examination of this issue.

Gerry Matitix and I debated this issue at Boston College, if they'd like to hear a debate on the issue. It would be,

I think, counterproductive in the time we have left to be throwing apocryphal quotations at one another.

But the simple fact of the matter is, I don't believe that the New Testament writers, the apostles themselves, treated these books as Scripture, and I think that we have an example here.

Why should we believe that the Council of Trent, which I think James would agree is the first ecumenical council, well, he's saying no, but most

Roman Catholic, even the Roman Catholic Encyclopedia... The first ecumenical council to deal with the issue of the canon was the

Council of Florence in 1442. Not the issue of the canon. I didn't say the issue of the canon, I meant specifically citing all those books as...

Well, that's dealing with the issue of what belongs in the canon, and the Council of Florence included those, but they've been included far earlier than that in 382 at the

Council of Rome. Vincent, I hope we've helped you. I'm going to have to put a comment at the conversation because the clock is running out on us.