What Does a Christian Know About Roman Catholicism? Session 1

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We are in the flight path, aren't we? Well, it is excellent to be back here.
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I was a little surprised when Michael reminded me that it's been three years since we were here last, but my how time flies.
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And I do recall that the last time I was here in that conference, I was joined by a young fellow by the name of Jeff Durbin, and little did we know at that time what was going to be happening in the future.
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How many of you have already seen the antifreeze debate? Ah, yes, very good.
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Someone told me yesterday that my entire career is going to be known as B .A. and A .A.,
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before antifreeze and after antifreeze. I could tell you some funny stories in the background of that, but we don't have time for that this morning.
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There's lots of funny things there. But anyway, we do have some very important things to discuss this morning in the first session, dealing with a subject that is definitely designed to keep your ministry very small and unpopular, and that is to deal with the subject of Roman Catholicism.
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We live in a day, of course, where even those who trace themselves back to the
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Protestant Reformation do so almost with apologies and with some embarrassment at the excesses of that time, and certainly as we look at the wars that were fought over religion in Europe, we can certainly recognize that there were excesses and that, in fact, the connection of the political realm to religion in those days created all sorts of difficulties and problems.
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If any of you have ever seen it's only five minutes long. I did a little five -minute video two years ago, right about now, when we were in Germany for the 500th anniversary of the
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Reformation, and we visited the site where Fritz Erba was imprisoned in the
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Wartburg Castle, the same castle where Luther translated the New Testament into German and hid from the
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Emperor Charles for a period of time in 1521, and this pit into which this, what we call today an
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Anabaptist was thrown and somehow survived for seven years before his death. We talked about the reality of how sacralism, the relationship of church and state at that time was so vitally important to an understanding of how that could happen.
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Luther knew he was there. He did not lift a finger to see him freed. Did he see the tension that we see in that?
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There's all sorts of issues like that that we can get to, and because of that, because we can properly talk about those things, many people feel that when it comes to our day, maybe we should reanalyze all those anathemas.
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I mean, does anyone really believe that kindly old fellow in Rome really wants to anathematize all of us?
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Well, to be perfectly honest with you, I think there's a pretty good reason to question whether that kindly old fellow in Rome is even a
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Trinitarian, let alone as there's really good reason to believe, he is a universalist, that he believes everyone's going to be saved.
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He doesn't believe the large number of things that his predecessors did believe, which is one of the complicating factors that we have to consider as we talk about our relationship with Roman Catholicism today.
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What is it? You could define it much more clearly and much more specifically in 1950 than you can today.
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And it's ironic. There is a big conference going on here in Sydney today with the
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Roman Catholics. Roman Catholic apologist Tim Staples, I think, is probably speaking right now as I am speaking here.
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And Tim and I have debated a few times. We tried to get them to debate, and at first they said yes, and then they said no, and so here we are.
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And one of my first suggestions was, let's debate Pope Francis.
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It's not a good day to be a Roman Catholic apologist. Every day you have to wake up and there's that gnawing fear.
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What has he said now? And to whom did he say it? And how am I going to spin this?
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I'm absolutely serious. I've been doing this for a long time. I mean, my first debate was in August of 1990 in Long Beach, California, against a man by the name of Jerry Matitix.
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I think I've debated him 13 times. And he was a celebrity convert to Roman Catholicism.
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He was John Gerstner's student assistant.
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He was all but dissertation at Westminster Seminary, graduate of Gordon Conwell, the first PCA, Presbyterian Church of America, ordained minister to become a
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Roman Catholic. So he was sort of a celebrity. Today he is more
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Roman Catholic than the Pope, which isn't difficult to do, actually, given this Pope. But he is what's called a sete vacantis.
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I don't even know where he is right now. The last time I saw Jerry honestly, he was on Jeopardy. He was on Jeopardy with Alex Trebek.
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I'm serious. Game show, very famous there in the United States. He lost, but that's the last time
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I saw him. I don't know what he believes anymore, but back then he was the big dog. And when we first began those debates, you could have an understanding of where Roman Catholicism was coming from.
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It's tough today. It is really, really tough today to define it. I can tell you what ancient orthodoxy was, and if the question is going through anyone's mind, well, when do you think
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Roman Catholicism started? That's actually a very important and good question. I suppose we should define that first, huh?
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Because a lot of people have the idea that Roman Catholicism starts with Peter.
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Maybe it was the Council of Nicaea, Constantine. No, as I've pointed out, if you look at the official dogmas of the
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Roman Catholic Church that you have to believe to be a Roman Catholic today, no one at the
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Council of Nicaea believed what you have to believe to be a Roman Catholic today. But some of those dogmas were not even heard of in the first 500 years of church history.
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I mean, you simply can't point me to an orthodox -believing Christian in the first 500 years that believed in the bodily assumption of Mary as a dogma of the faith.
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There just isn't anybody there. I mean, people later tried to...they created fake pseudepigraphal writings, forgeries, to try to make that, but it just doesn't happen in the actual writings of the early
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Christian church. So, where do I think Roman Catholicism really begins?
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Well, the problem is, if you ever see a tract or a book that has a list of dates, be very skeptical.
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Because nothing just comes into existence overnight. You don't have people going to bed one night, believing one thing, and then they wake up the next morning, ah, purgatory, yes.
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No. There has to be lots of development. There has to be all these sub -beliefs that start coming together to form these things over time.
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And that's exactly what you do see in church history. So, for me personally, I think the most ah,
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I think the best date that I can use for the origin of what would be modern
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Roman Catholicism would be the fourth Lateran council in 1215
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A .D. Why? Because when you look at Roman Catholic worship even to this day, except in the most liberalized forms of it, the central act of worship has remained the same for pretty much a solid 800 years.
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And that is the concept of the mass. And once you start having the reservation of the host, now how many former
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Roman Catholics do we have here? Okay, so you know what the reservation of the host is. You know that if you're walking into Roman Catholic church, back in the back there would have been a little thing with some holy water in it.
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Ah, you're supposed to cross yourself and genuflect. Why? Because normally some place up here, normally over on that side, there is a tabernacle, ah, some other words for the containers, pyx, cyborium, monstrance.
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Um, there would be a place where one of the hosts from the mass that have been transubstantiated, they have been turned into body, soul, blood, and divinity of Jesus Christ, ah, are kept and so because of the doctrine of transubstantiation then you believe that God is physically present in the church building and you are bowing to God.
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That's why, that's why you genuflect, that's why you do what you do. That dogma was unknown in the first thousand years.
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Well there was definitely a belief that Christ is spiritually present with his people in the supper.
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If you've ever read both the Westminster Confession of Faith and the London Baptist Confession of Faith on the
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Lord's Supper, it says the same thing. Not in the Roman Catholic sense, and in fact very strongly differentiating itself from the
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Roman Catholic idea, but a spiritual presence of Christ with his people when they are obeying his own command to do this in remembrance of him is one thing.
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Physical presence through the transmutation of Aristotelian categories of accidents and substance was something that was developed long after the time of the apostles and in fact comes into vogue about a thousand years after Christ.
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After his birth. So that concept is made dogma at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215.
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So for me you have a strong functioning papacy by that time, you have a strong functioning papacy in the
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Middle Ages too. But you have a papacy, you have transubstantiation, the priesthood of course began to develop in the third century, that has become part and parcel of the entire concept.
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So modern Roman Catholicism in that sense, now someone might argue yeah, but Mary is so central to the modern
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Roman Catholic conception and the Marian dogmas the two last
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Marian dogmas do not come about for the 600 years after that. 1854 and 1951 you don't, yeah, but that's way too late there obviously was a
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Roman Catholic Church against which the reformers reacted we do recognize there's been change in Rome and the change has always been for the negative and even today as many
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Roman Catholics are moving away from many of the things that we have objected to they're doing so for the wrong reasons.
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It's not because there is a reformation based upon biblical authority saying you know we shouldn't really believe in the bodily assumption of Mary.
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I mean it was obviously designed to parallel Jesus and it's actually based upon preceding errors about Mary and you know it's part of this whole exaltation of Mary there's even another
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Marian dogma that many Roman Catholics do believe and are pushing to have defined and there was a possibility back in the late 1900s, 1990s that John Paul might have established this particular dogma and it's the idea that Mary is co -redemptrix co -mediatrix for the people of God.
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So co -redeemer co -mediator with Jesus for the people of God. Popes have taught since the 1800s that no grace flows to anyone except through Mary.
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Mary is the head Mary is the neck that turns the head that is God's grace so it all flows through Mary.
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This centrality of Mary is very much a part of the experience of certain strands of Roman Catholicism today.
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But I also recognize that there are Roman Catholics who have almost no connection to Mary at all.
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That just tells you how much wider the expression of Roman Catholicism is today than it was only a few decades ago.
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I mean in my dad's day there wouldn't have been any discussion of these things.
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What Rome believed was pretty straightforward. What the popes taught was pretty straightforward. Yes, I would agree that there were undercurrents taking place within Rome and within the
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Curia. But no one I think could have guessed just how far those things were going to go.
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And I would say the modern church of Rome faces a tremendous challenge.
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The pope himself has used the word schism of late. There are powerful forces and that's all to say that I understand why there is another conference going on someplace else in Sydney today and those speaking there though we have debated in the past aren't debating me today especially on that topic because if I were them
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I wouldn't want to either. The fact is they don't know where he's going to go and they don't know what's going to happen. And it's a tough day to be a
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Roman Catholic apologist there's no question about it. That doesn't change our duties. Why?
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Well, let's transfer the subject of discussion here in a place where there is a very large
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Anglican influence. Now as you all know, Sydney Anglicans are a breed unto themselves and we are very thankful for this.
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The first few times I came here I was brought over here by David Old and the
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Sydney Anglicans and I was asked to speak on subjects like inerrancy and justification by faith and all these wonderful things like that and there are such
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Anglicans around the world. I did a debate only last year in Belfast Northern Ireland with a
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Roman Catholic. Can you believe that? We had a public debate with a Roman Catholic in Belfast last year.
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For those of you old enough you're sitting there going wow if you remember the 1970s then you know that that was a pretty amazing and historic thing to be able to actually have that kind of debate.
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But we debated indulgences with Peter Williams there and he's a believing
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Roman Catholic, old style Roman Catholic and he's not afraid to say hey this is what
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Rome has always taught even though he knows that's not really what's going on today in the Curia. But that church was an
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Anglican church, a GAFCON Anglican church there in Belfast. But you know once you leave the
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Sydney area that elsewhere in Australia not all of the Anglicans are nearly as conservative as they are in Sydney and Anglicanism as a whole has always because of its history had to deal with the inborn desire for the via media the middle way.
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That's what started the church that's what started the Church of England and that's still very much a part of the thought process.
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How far you can take that I do not know given what's going on today, given movements within many
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Protestant denominations today. Just yesterday a friend of mine in South Africa sent me a statement from the reformed churches in South Africa collapsing on the subject of marriage given that this is happening here as well eventually there has to be a line that cannot be crossed.
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You just can't keep scooting a little bit farther away and a little bit farther away to try to make room.
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And when it comes to Roman Catholicism the real question for all of us if you know the history of the city of Rome you know that her western border is formed by what's called the
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Tiber River and so you know that it has been a phraseology that has been used for a long time to convert to Roman Catholicism is to swim the
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Tiber to cross that boundary into Rome. And I have said for a very long time that that's a good illustration and the problem is we have many, many, many non -Roman
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Catholics. They are not in submission to the Pope. They do not practice the sacramental system of Rome.
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They would not identify a priest as well every priest even to this day when he is ordained in the
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Roman Catholic system. One of the phrases that is used of him is he is an alter
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Christus. Alter Christus. A -L -T -E -R. Latin phrase. Alter Christus.
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When I debated Mitch Pacwa on the priesthood back in the 90s and I still my debates with Mitch are in my opinion the best
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Roman Catholicism that I've done because Mitch just doesn't play games. He's honest, he's straightforward, he doesn't try to get cheap debating tricks which
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I could name a number of other Roman Catholic apologists of which that is not true. And he was straightforward.
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He said yes, I am another Christ. That's what alter Christus means. I am another Christ. I minister in the place of Christ and I am another
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Christ. That, you know, there are many who will say
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I just won't go there. But when it comes to certain fundamental issues that were part and parcel of the
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Reformation, many today are either on Rome's side or, more to the point, they're paddling around in the middle of the
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Tiber River. They're not on the far side calling people out of Rome.
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They're paddling around in the middle in a position of compromise. They don't even know it. And part of that's because most of us don't know much about the history of the church and we don't really care where we stand when it comes to where our forefathers stood and how they were consistent in their practice.
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And so that picture to me, I'm often saying to these people, you need to quit paddling around out there, bring your boat to shore on this side, break it up, build an altar and call people out of Roman Catholicism.
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But that's just not how a lot of people want to do things today. That seems too radical.
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This is some place where a lot of folks who otherwise will very much appreciate John Calvin or Ulrich Zwingli or their successors or Martin Luther for that matter, will appreciate what they said on certain things, but when it comes to this, well, things have changed.
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How have things changed? When it comes to Roman Catholicism, Rome has only added to the number of errors that she teaches.
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She has not corrected any of them. Some people say, oh, Vatican II changed all that. Like what?
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The documents of Vatican II have more sections on indulgences than they have on justification.
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Think about that for a second. Indulgences are still a completely valid concept within Roman Catholic theology.
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And this Pope, though I don't think for a second, I hate to call him
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Francis because he strikes him more as a Frankie, Pope Frankie. Pope Frankie the cool.
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I think that's probably how he's going to be remembered. Pope Frankie the cool still gives out what are called plenary indulgences.
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A full remission of all the temporal punishments of sins upon your soul for doing certain things.
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Now, do I believe for a second that he really believes that that actually happens, that it's actually necessary? No. I don't.
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Even for the year of Jubilee that just happened recently where in the history of Roman Catholicism what you would do is you would, there would be in certain cathedrals, only in cathedrals, the seats of the archbishop, only in certain cathedrals there would be certain doors that would be opened like this one.
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That really wouldn't be all that important. But that are always closed and when you open these certain doors in the year of Jubilee by going through those certain doors, and of course there is the requested donation to be allowed to do that, but by going through these certain doors you would receive indulgences.
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This is long history within Roman Catholicism. Well, Pope Francis, along comes the year of Jubilee a couple years ago and nobody is showing up.
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Worst attendance ever. And so he just expands on it and gives the right to other people to assign certain doors just to try to get more people to try to come through.
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And it's just obvious that the historical basis of what that was based on, the idea of a literal purgatory and a literal transfer of merit and the whole idea that eventually you stand before God robed in a garment of righteousness that's made up of Jesus' righteousness,
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Mary's righteousness, every saint that's ever lived, and your own. That's what the official dogma of the church is.
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I don't think Francis believes any of that because if he can sit there and tell that little kid that his atheist daddy is going to go to heaven because his atheist daddy allowed his kids to be baptized that's not somebody who believes in the doctrine of purgatory in any meaningful fashion.
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In fact, it's not somebody who believes in the wrath of God in any meaningful fashion. So I don't think he believes any of that stuff, but he still utilizes the forms.
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I mean, that's what liberalism does. And the man is a liberation theologian. He's as liberal as they come.
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And what they do is they use old terminology and old forms, but they fill them with new meaning.
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And in the process they eventually destroy them. It's going to be fascinating to see who comes after Francis.
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It really is going to be fascinating to see who comes after Francis. I have no predictions. All I can tell you is right now there is tremendous confusion and there is the possibility, strong possibility of schism.
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There's tremendous corruption in the Vatican and everybody knows it. And we've even got the freaky situation of having two contradicting popes right now.
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Not officially, but Ratzinger Pope Benedict XVI is old time, not old time as in 1800s, but far more historically orthodox as far as Roman Catholicism is concerned than Francis.
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They're both alive at the same time. And everybody knows that they're at loggerheads with one another. Everybody knows.
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It was only a few months ago that Ratzinger actually put out a statement contradicting the current pope.
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This is a weird day in which we live. Last time stuff like that happened was in the well, they needed to call the
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Council of Constance in 1414 to get rid of three different popes and establish one.
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That's where they also burned Jan Hus. And so that's about the last time we had a situation like this.
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So it is fascinating. The world's media could really care less. They don't really care too much.
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In Italy they do because it's like local corrupt politics. But it is a day that is very challenging for those who are seeking to defend
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Roman Catholicism. And I've noticed a major, major decrease in the number of debates that Roman Catholic apologists are doing.
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Major decrease. We've had something to do with that, but I think much more than that the whole situation.
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They're more concerned about keeping their own people in right now. The boat has sprung some leaks.
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And they're trying to patch those things up. So anyways, for people who are paddling around in the middle of the
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Tiber River, let me remind folks of what I think the issues really are.
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Back in the 1996, I think, I wrote a book called
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The Roman Catholic Controversy. I'm thankful that Bethany House has kept that in print all these years. And nothing's really changed since then.
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And the argument that I made in that book is that all the other issues we can deal with, papacy, certainly the foundational issue of sola scriptura, scripture is the sole and infallible rule of faith of the church, all these things are all subservient to and a part of what it takes to get to the discussion of what the gospel itself is.
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It would be obviously very advantageous for us if we could simply redefine
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Christianity the way that many people are redefining Christianity today, as mere
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Christianity. Now I don't think C .S. Lewis went this far, but there are people who use the title of his book and they will say, look,
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I just defend mere Christianity. Which is what? Which is the Trinity, the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
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Period. It's not an inspired and inerrant revelation from God. It is not the gospel.
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The gospel, let's just be honest, even though scripture promises the truth of the gospel would abide with us, even though Paul talked about the truth of the gospel, we did not put up with them for even a moment so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.
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The fact of the matter is, in 97%, 98 % of theological education that has some type of Christian attached to the name around the world, the confidence that we can actually have, that we actually possess a clear enough revelation from God to know this is the gospel and that isn't is no longer believed.
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It's no longer believed. Most of the people coming out of our seminaries have been so compromised when it comes to their bibliology, their belief that God has spoken in His word, that their theology is much more of a guessology.
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Sort of guess this, sort of guess that, really don't know, I'm not sure. My church history professor years and years ago, you've heard me say it before, had a saying, what is a mist in the pulpit is a fog in the pew.
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And so if the one up front doesn't have a clear view of what the truth is, the people in the pew are going to have a less clear view than even he has of that issue of truth.
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And so when it comes to how you define Christianity today, it would be a whole lot easier if I went with the mere
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Christianity view. Because we could get a real, you know, we could still put together a decent number of people if you just didn't have to worry about that gospel thing.
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Now for me, I'm like, yeah, well, what good does it do to have the triune
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God, death, burial, resurrection of Jesus if you can't explain what that means? So you've got an empty tomb.
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What does that mean? Shh, can't talk about that. That gets into the gospel thing. What good is that?
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How does that accomplish anything? If the power of God, the only power given to the church is the gospel, then saying, well, we're really not really sure how to answer a bunch of really tough definitional questions on that, how does that help anything?
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It seems extremely debilitating to me. And so of everything,
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I mean, it's pretty obvious that if you worship the wrong God, then you're separated from what would be called the
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Christian faith. But of all the things that come after that, it seems to me the gospel is the most central in the apostle's thinking, at least as I read
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Galatians chapter 1, which is why so many people consider Paul to have just gone off the rails there. He was a little over the top.
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A little over the top is the terminology that Barry Lynn used in a debate against me in 2001 when we were talking about that.
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He was ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, which left the gospel about 80 years ago.
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But he felt Paul was a little over the top. Of course, he believed he could receive revelation just as Paul did, too.
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So maybe that's canonical revelation. A little over the top, I don't know. That's what happens when you're getting personal revelation.
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But be it as it may, the real issue that I pointed to in the
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Roman Catholic controversy is the gospel. And if you understand
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Rome's teaching on the nature of the mass, the nature of the priesthood, and the nature of forgiveness and the sacraments, then you must come to the conclusion that if Paul was right to anathematize the
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Judaizers for adding one requirement by saying to get into the New Covenant, you've got to get into the
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Old Covenant first before you can then get into the New Covenant. So you've got to be circumcised before you can become a follower of Jesus.
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They added one thing. You've got to follow the same path the rest of us have followed.
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If Paul was right to say that is anathema, that is not even Christian, you are separated from the faith by your action of doing that, then logically, when you look at all of the additions that Rome has added to the gospel, then
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Rome's gospel likewise must be considered to be under the anathema of Paul. Otherwise, you just simply have to throw out
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Paul's authority. Or you have to say, well, you know, back then an apostle could do that.
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We can't do that today. We can't tell what a true gospel is today. Even though we have their example, even though we have page after page after page of New Testament writings that illustrate these things, no.
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We just, it's not coherent enough. It's not consistent enough. There are too many contradictions. That's what you'll be taught in many seminaries and Bible colleges.
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Too many contradictions. We just can't know. So we just need to sort of get along with everybody. As long as they say Jesus, everything's good.
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When you understand that there is no finished work of Christ within Roman Catholicism, there isn't.
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There is no finished work. That priest right now in services,
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Roman Catholic churches around the world, there are priests who believe that they are re -presenting, not a, they believe it is a re -presentation of the same sacrifice of Calvary, but in an unbloody manner.
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They are re -presenting the one sacrifice of Christ, and that it is a propitiatory atonement.
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It's a propitiatory act. Once you understand that, then you think through that.
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What that means is, in Roman Catholicism, you can come to the cross over and over and over and over again, and still die impure and have to go to purgatory, or still die impure, in fact, having committed a mortal sin, losing the grace of justification, and going to hell, even though you went to the cross literally thousands of times in your life.
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And central to that is the idea of the necessity of the Roman Catholic priest, who because of his sacerdotal authority is able to call
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Jesus down from his throne, and render him present upon the altar of the church over and over and over again.
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That's their terminology, not mine. That's their language. You have to have that.
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That's why there is one true church. And you have to accept the sacerdotal authority of the
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Roman hierarchy so that you can have that one true church. The sacramental system becomes the means by which the church controls the grace of God, and therefore the people of God.
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And if you remember anything about the Reformation at all, you should remember at least the material and the formal principles.
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The material principle of the Reformation, one of the five solas, sola fide, it was the substance that was preached.
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Justification by faith alone. Not justification by faith, plus this act, plus that act, plus the continuation of this, plus that, hoping that someday you can grow in enough justification to be able to make it.
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No. Justification by faith alone, because of the nature of that saving faith, and because of the nature of the grace that makes it possible.
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That was the material principle of the Reformation. The formal principle, the sola scriptura.
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Scripture as the sole infallible rule of faith of the church. Because the only way to actually substantiate a denial of sola fide is to add the authority of traditions.
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And you get to choose which traditions there are. Because when you look at the early church, when you look at the history of the church, there's all sorts of traditions you can draw from, if you want to, to build yourself a system of theology.
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Those were the bywords of the Reformation. Not that they purposefully knew what the five solas were.
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Luther or Calvin would wonder what you were talking about if you asked them about the five solas. If you asked them, maybe they had a five solas t -shirt or something like that.
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They would look at you like, are you a witch? Doth thou need to be burned? Because the five solas are us looking backwards at what they taught and identifying what separated them and what defined their teaching.
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They're accurate, but they're a later formulation based upon looking back upon where the Reformers are coming from.
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But they identified very, very, very important realities. And those realities remain central to this day.
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How is a person made right before God? And the fact that there has become so much confusion now and so much hesitancy on the part of Bible -believing evangelicals who hold to the
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Pauline gospel in the sense of the emphasis. Paul had to deal with the reality that when you preach the grace of God, the natural result of man is to react like a
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Pelagian. Now that's anachronistic, I know. Pelagius is very angry that we use his name in that way.
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That's fine. He's dead, so it doesn't matter. But there is an inherent
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Pelagianism in the heart of man. An inherent belief that I am good and God owes me something.
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And I am able. I am capable. One of the tracks we wrote long ago for the
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Mormons, because they are about as Pelagian as you can get. I mean, if Adam fell upward, you're a
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Pelagian. If you think you can become a god by your own freedom, you're a Pelagian. I wrote a track for them called
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No Man is Able. No man is able. Let's just get right to the point and start there.
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No man is able. That's biblical language, by the way. No man is able to come to me unless the
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Father who sent me draws him. That's Jesus' own words. But when grace and the sovereignty of grace is proclaimed, man's natural response is to create systems to control the grace of God.
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And that control fundamentally is to allow man's will to be sovereign over God's will. That's the essence of human religion.
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I don't care which religion it is. You break it on down. That's what it's meant to do. And so Paul, once that gospel is now proclaimed, the gospel of the risen
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Jesus, he has to deal with the reaction to that, especially as it's seen amongst the people who think that because of their genetics they are in right with God in the first place.
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And that's what you get in Romans and Galatians and other places as well, but especially in extended format in Romans and Galatians to illustrate the reality that it is to the one who does not work but believes on him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned as righteousness,
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Romans chapter 4. That is destructive of all human boasting, and that's why it's so unpopular and will always be unpopular until the day
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Jesus returns. Amongst worldly people it will always be unpopular to destroy any ground of arrogant boasting and pride on man's part.
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It takes the control out of our hands. And so there are many today who trace themselves back to Protestants but don't believe what the early
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Protestants believed on that very issue. And so they're the ones in the middle of the Tiber and they just don't know that they're there.
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We need to be very clear on this because if what Galatians 1 says is true, if what
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Galatians 2 says is true, if the anathematizing of the Judaizers is correct, and if the statement in Galatians chapter 2, we did not put up with them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel might remain with you.
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And Paul identifies them as pseudodelphoi, false brethren. That means they look like us, they talk like us, they use our language, but they're false brethren.
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If that is true, then I would say to anyone who says, nah, you're overreacting, give me some explanation as to how you can make the
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Roman Catholic gospel fit with Paul's teaching of justification.
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Show me. And the very fact that most of my debates with Roman Catholics has been on sola scriptura.
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That's the one topic I've done more than any other. Why? Because Rome rejects it. Why? Because you can't using sola scriptura and tota scriptura, all of scripture and scripture only, you cannot come up with Rome's dogmas.
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You have to have external authorities, you have to have a lens through which to read the scriptures and then you have to be bringing in external stuff to put this all together.
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And so Rome denies the sufficiency of scripture. And it's not surprising that there is a constant every single generation battle for us to continue to believe in the sufficiency of scripture.
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And it's not just because of Rome, it's not just because, well I guess there are some people who do theorize it's all a big
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Jesuit plot. The Jesuits are lost as well, they don't know what in the world they believe.
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Liberalism will do that to everybody. And you know the Pope's a Jesuit, so that helps explain that. I don't think it's a
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Jesuit plot, but there is no question of the fact that there is a constant and consistent attempt on the part of the world to undermine our confidence in the sufficiency of scripture.
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Because once you've lost that, there is no basis for you to be concerned about evangelizing Roman Catholics or anyone else.
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You don't have anything that you really have to communicate with them, it's all a matter of opinion anyways. If there is no sure word from God, let's all cut this whole thing short and go home.
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Because we are wasting our time. We are wasting our time. If there is, then that word consistently testifies that there have always been those who seek to insert themselves into the gospel and steal
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God's glory in that process. And Roman Catholicism is just one example of that.
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And you might say, but it has such ancient roots. Well, what is that supposed to mean?
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If what that means is there have been streams moving away from the purity of biblical revelation from the start, yeah, you see that in the
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New Testament. And that those things didn't just end at the end of the apostolic age.
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That's true too. And that's why every single generation is called to epagonize, to agonize, to contend earnestly for the once for all delivered to the saints faith.
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Every generation has to do it. Every generation. And every single time let's say, let's look at quote unquote,
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Christian Europe. Every single time that the church becomes confident we've got it.
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We have established ourselves. We are in control. We've got it.
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Within two generations. Apostasy is everywhere. Because the faith is not something that is passed on genetically.
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We have to call every single generation to a living and abiding faith.
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To agonize for the once for all delivered to the saints faith. To recognize the threats that exist against that.
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And that's not just true about Roman Catholicism. It's true about many of the attacks upon our faith today.
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We may be passionate about it. But we have to pray that the next generation and the next generation.
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And God's more than capable of doing that. I'm quite confident that Jesus Christ is still
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Lord. Despite all of the horrific things happening in western culture.
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Where we are demonstrating our absolute hatred of the fact that we are made in the image of God. I mean our culture hates that.
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And so many of the things that we talk about almost every day that we see going on around us. It all boils down to the fact that when you are at enmity with God, you want to suppress the knowledge of God.
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And you know you're made in God's image. And therefore you can do everything you can to efface and erase everything that reminds you of who you really are.
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Because you're not submitting to that God that you know is there. That can take many different forms.
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But that's what's happening. So here's the point. Two things. I was a day late getting here.
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Some of you saw on my Facebook page that I think it was due to auto fill.
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Rich just goes I'm sorry. But my when
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I got to the airport to fly out, we had attached my ETA, the visa thing. Sort of just a little tax to come visit you all down here down under.
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We call it the kangaroo tax. Had been attached to my old passport.
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I had to get a new passport. I had gotten to Russia earlier this year. And the Russians want you to send your passport in.
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And they send it back. And they've used up a bunch of pages. And I ran out of pages. I've been traveling so much, my passport ran out of pages.
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I had to get a new passport. With a big thick one. With all the extra pages in it. And somehow the old passport number got attached to the
46:00
ETA. Instead of my new one, I get to the airport and I ain't flying. And so I'm like oh man, well we had built in an extra day.
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So we'll just do the best we can. And so I've got to get home now. And my wife's got something going on.
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So I Ubered home. I get in the car. And my Uber driver is
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Hispanic. And that doesn't necessarily mean anything. I just started telling him about what had happened and what are you doing down there.
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Started talking about stuff. Well, halfway home he says well you know I'm I grew up in the
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Roman Catholic Church. But you know after the sex abuse stuff, I really started becoming disenchanted. And it's like, well let me tell you.
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And so these are the things I shared with Jose. You can pray for Jose. Romans 5 .1
46:49
Therefore having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our
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Lord Jesus Christ. Having been justified by faith. I told him the story about Mitch Pacwa.
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And the question I asked Mitch during a debate we did on justification in January 1991. It was during Operation Desert Storm.
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I remember it clearly. San Diego, California. Wish we had the audio still up.
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They never gave us the videos. But I asked him if the greatest commandment is love the
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Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And if breaking the greatest commandment isn't a mortal sin, then what would be a mortal sin?
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Then isn't it possible that before your head hits the pillow this evening you could commit a mortal sin?
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In Roman Catholicism, a mortal sin destroys the grace of justification, which you get by baptism and then by being re -justified when you commit a mortal sin.
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Isn't it possible that you, Mitch Pacwa, could commit a mortal sin before your head hits the pillow tonight?
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And as such, Mitch Pacwa speaks 12 languages. He knows Hebrew. He knows that the Hebrew term shalom means peace.
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So when Paul says here we have peace with God, that's shalom, true shalom. There is no shalom in Israel right now.
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As long as Patriot missile batteries are on 24 -hour alert, there is no shalom in Israel. Shalom is a wellness of relationship.
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If that relationship could break down at any moment, that's not true peace. So, Mitch, if you could become the enemy of God before you go to bed tonight, how can you say you have true shalom with God?
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Now he gave an answer at first that didn't actually answer my question. So I had the opportunity to redirect and I really focused in on it.
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And the one thing I like about Mitch is that in his response to that focus, there was silence and then he said,
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I don't know. See, most of my opponents would never say, I don't know.
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They'd come up with something. Maybe the dumbest thing they've ever said on the planet, but they'll come up with something. He didn't.
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He said, I don't know. No Roman Catholic can answer that question in a meaningful fashion because of the preceding chapter, which when you read
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Romans 4, 4 -8, Paul says to the one who works, his wage is not reckoned as a gift or according to grace, but was owed to him.
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So if you do work, then if you receive something back, that's just simply what you're owed. But to the one who does not work, but believes on him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned as righteousness.
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It's the faith that is not putting something in its hand going, can I give you something? Can I give you 100 bucks? 200 bucks?
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What's it going to cost me? Here's all this stuff. No, it needs to be an empty hand of faith that grasps the hand of God's grace.
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That's his point there in Romans 4. And in fact, so radical is that that Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism when he came up with his own translation of the
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Bible, which was not a translation at all, he changed Romans 4, 5 in his version to the one who does not justify the ungodly.
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He called God the one who does not justify the ungodly. He undid the gospel in his own version of the
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Bible. But then starting in verse 6, Paul talks about the blessing, he quotes from David, the blessing upon the man to whom
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God will not impute sin. Now how can that be?
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And I explained to Jose, I said think about it. In Roman Catholicism if you commit what's called a venial sin, which does not destroy the grace of justification, to whom is it imputed?
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It's imputed to you. That's why you have to go to purgatory. It is because the stains of temporal punishments of sin that you haven't worked off in your own life.
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That's why you go to purgatory. If you commit a mortal sin, who is it imputed to?
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Well you, and you lose the grace of justification, you have to be re -justified. There is no non -imputation of sin in Roman Catholicism.
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So I've asked, you've probably seen if you want to see how this plays out, watch the debate online between myself and Father Peter Stravinskis on the subject of purgatory.
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Because I asked him, Romans 4, 8, blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin.
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Who is that? Who's the blessed man? His first answer was Jesus. So blessed is
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Jesus because the Lord will not impute to Jesus Jesus' sin. Obviously he had never thought about that before.
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So I said, I think we can all agree that doesn't make any sense. You want to try that again? And he goes, well
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I hope to be the blessed man someday. That's the best they can do. Because there's nothing in their gospel that can explain to them the non -imputation of sin.
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They reject the idea of the imputation of Christ's righteousness. Righteousness is infused into you at baptism.
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It makes you good. That's why Luther told the story of the dung hill. In Roman Catholicism when you're baptized, you're a pile of dung.
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And see that, Luther was an earthy guy and he told that story because that's how you fertilized your fields.
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You picked up your cow's excrement and you piled it up and it smelled because in the spring you needed to spread that stuff out over the field so it would fertilize the field and you'd be able to eat.
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So it was a common thing to see. When the wind was going a certain way, you knew right where they were. And the whole idea is in Roman Catholicism, when you are baptized, you become a pile of gold.
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And that's why you go to heaven is because God likes gold. I'm not sure why God likes gold. He made it, but He could make all
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He wanted to. But it's gold and so you get to go to heaven because you're made of gold. And what
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Luther was saying is no, justification does not turn you into a pile of gold. It's that first snow that covers over the offensiveness of that pile.
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It doesn't change you, but it takes away your offensiveness in God's sight. Now Luther was not saying that God does not glorify you and change you in sanctification, but he was making the proper biblical distinction between the two.
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And Roman Catholics loved to mock that, but here's the point. In Roman Catholicism, when you commit a venial sin, all of a sudden flecks of dung start to appear on the surface of the gold.
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And so now the gold has to go to purgatory to have all that stuff burned off. And if you commit a mortal sin, what happens to you?
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Poof! Now you're a pile of dung again. And the worst thing is, you don't know which one you are.
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You can't tell. That's why so often those who die within Roman Catholic communion don't have any assurance about where they're going, even within their own system.
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That's why it's important to know the difference between justification and sanctification, intimately related, but they are different things.
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In Roman Catholicism, they've been conflated into the same thing. And that's where the problem lies.
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So, pray for Jose, and if you're here today, and you've never thought of the fact, who is the blessed man of Romans 4a?
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Let me tell you something. Any meaningful reading of the passage, every single true believer in Jesus Christ is the blessed man of Romans 4a.
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That's what it means to be a Christian. And if you don't know that your sins have already been paid for on the cross of Christ, and that his righteousness has been imputed to you, then talk to us.
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Let us introduce you to this wonderful gospel, and this wonderful Savior, who saves to his own glory, and he doesn't share his glory with any other.
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He is a powerful Savior. Okay, with that, the man who is, if they ever come up with a way of genetically implanting the phone into the body, there's your first man, right there.
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There's your first man. He's going to be on the volunteer list. Thanks, James. Look, I've got about a dozen different questions, and so we clearly won't be able to get through all of them, but I've just chosen two or three.
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As Reformed people, how should we view Mary, especially in conversations with Roman Catholics?
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Biblically, all generations should call her blessed. She was a wonderful servant of Christ, she had great faith, but the problem is what
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Rome has done with her is turn her into something that the Scriptures never ever described her to be, and have turned her into basically a
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Savior alongside Jesus, who's actually more compassionate than Jesus is. I could give you a whole bunch on that, but I won't do that right now.
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We shouldn't be afraid of Mary. We are because of Rome. We should not be afraid of Mary.
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We should not be afraid to point to her, but she was in the upper room just like everybody else was. She was a disciple of her
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Lord and Savior, and she in the Magnificat in Luke chapter two specifically refers to God her
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Savior. It is an amazing thing to realize that even she was saved by the one to whom she gave birth.
56:19
Second question, what is the most effective way to evangelize a secular
56:25
Roman Catholic? You know, the universalist, liberal kind. Yeah. Well, if you don't have to get them religious to get them saved, then don't bother with that part.
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The problem is so many of them still have filters functioning from their
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Roman Catholic background that can be dangerous. In other words, the onus is on us to make sure that what we're saying is being clearly understood by the person to whom we're speaking.
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If you know that there is a Roman Catholic background, then the danger is when you talk about grace, it's going to be redefined in their mind as something obtained through sacraments or whatever else it might be.
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We just had an incredible conversation. Pray about this, too. Jeff and I had an incredible conversation with a
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Mormon couple a week ago today in Salt Lake City. They want out of Mormonism.
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They know that it's not true, but they just don't know what to believe. We spent an hour with them. I'm really hoping that eventually you'll be able to get to watch that because they allowed us to record the whole thing.
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At one point at the end, Jeff was saying, we'd like to let you go be by yourselves, talk about this, pray about this.
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I saw something in the young lady's face and I jumped in and I said, I don't mean to pray about getting a feeling.
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I mean to pray that God would change your heart. She's like, oh. She had been confused.
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Why? Because in the Mormon mindset, she had reinterpreted what
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Jeff was saying as pray to get a feeling. Pray to find out whether Mormonism is true. Pray to find out what we've said is true.
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We were saying, no, no, no, no. That's not what we were talking about. There was a lens that was still functioning there.
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Even though there was a recognition that Mormonism isn't true, if it's what you were raised in, it's still going to impact how you hear things.
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The same thing with Roman Catholicism. Be careful. You don't have to get them to become religious before you can address the fact they're made in the image of God.
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They are at enmity with God. They need to have peace with God. You don't even have to get into all the rest of that stuff, unless they bring it up.
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Then you have to deal with it. How do you respond to Roman Catholics who say that Paul's issue in Galatians 2 .16,
58:45
for example, is specifically with works of the law done under the old covenant and so what he says doesn't apply to works done after justification?
58:54
Right. This is the standard Roman Catholic response that has been used ever since the time of the
59:00
Reformation. The problem is that when Paul himself is discussing these works of the law, yes, there is an element in which there are the covenant signs that Jews boasted in.
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There is that element of things. But Paul himself said that it was by the law that he had knowledge of his own sin.
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That in the same context of the conversation and so he didn't have knowledge of his own sin because he was circumcised.
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He had knowledge of his own sin because the ninth commandment said you shall not do this, you shall not do that, or the tenth commandment, you shall not covet, and so on and so forth.
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That's the one he uses of himself. And so he plainly does not limit the law to which he's referring to only as to the external signs under the old covenant, but to the whole concept of obedience to God.
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And that's why he frames his language the way he does in Romans 4, 4 through 5, to the one who works, whatever that work is.
01:00:02
If you think that you can do something and God has set it up to that by your doing it, you're going to get something back from God, you've got something in your hand.
01:00:12
And as long as you have that something in your hand, you're not going to be able to grasp the hand of grace.
01:00:17
You've got to get rid of that. And it doesn't matter what that is. If it's specifically the
01:00:23
Jew who is boasting in his circumcision, or if it's the Roman Catholic boasting in how many times he's gone to mass, and the last confession that he had, it doesn't matter.
01:00:34
That's not the hand of grace. Do the Orthodox Church have the same theological issues as the
01:00:43
Roman Catholics, or can we consider them as brothers? Oh, goodness. Well, so much for getting through all 12.
01:00:51
You said you could speak fast. But speak well and fast are not always the same thing.
01:00:59
The subject of Eastern Orthodoxy, or Orthodoxy in general, is one that I have avoided assiduously to go into, simply because it requires so much nuance and so much background that the risk of being misunderstood is massive.
01:01:24
Here's the issue. Eastern Orthodoxy is not just simply popeless
01:01:31
Catholicism. If you think that's what it is, then you don't really understand true
01:01:36
Orthodoxy. And, of course, Orthodoxy has different expressions around the world. Russian Orthodoxy, Greek Orthodoxy, and all sorts of mixtures in between.
01:01:43
We have an American branch that isn't really true to either one of those things, to be honest with you. It just smells and bells.
01:01:54
Orthodoxy does not have a specific systematic theology. Orthodoxy is mystical.
01:02:03
Orthodoxy is Eastern. Orthodoxy rejects both Catholics and Protestants.
01:02:09
They just think Protestants are the mirror image of Catholics. They reject the idea of having things like canons and decrees and confessions and things like that, because from their perspective, the liturgy and prayers of the
01:02:24
Church are the theology of the Church. Now, Orthodoxy rejects
01:02:29
Sola Scriptura and basically has found itself stuck in the 7th and 8th centuries, where the tradition became formalized, and the system no longer has any way of reformation or even reinterpreting those traditions, which have now formed its faith.
01:02:53
So, as I said, if you ask an Orthodox person, how are you justified? That's not a category that they even think in.
01:03:02
And that's the problem, because the categories they do think in have been derived from tradition, and they become a very thick lens that really mutes the ability of Scripture to speak to them.
01:03:12
That's been my experience. So, on the one hand, you have to say that the denial of Sola Scriptura and the positive teachings regarding baptism and things like that that are found in the traditions of the
01:03:27
Church are extremely dangerous, they're sub -biblical, and very often lead to a very, very surface -level cultural religiosity that bears little resemblance to a living faith.
01:03:40
But, there is because of its wide expression, the possibility, there was a patriarch of the
01:03:50
Roman Church after the Reformation who embraced Reformed principles and beliefs. Now, he's been rejected by almost all of them since then, but the point is that I have had conversations with a small number of Orthodox people who took advantage of the freedom of the lack of a specific systematic theology.
01:04:11
Outside of the Trinity, by the way, they are extremely Trinitarian. I wish most of us were as knowledgeable of the
01:04:16
Trinity as many Orthodox people are. But outside of that, there's such a lack of concrete places to put your finger on.
01:04:26
I've talked to a few Orthodox people that, like that patriarch, have seen biblical concepts, and I have good reason to believe that they're actually, truly trusting in Christ and Christ alone for their salvation.
01:04:39
But, I've also been, I've spent a lot of time in Ukraine. The Orthodox Church there, you go there because there are certain places where the
01:04:49
Energia is, and it's folk religion. It's not regeneration and dying to self and discipleship of Christ.
01:04:59
It's folk religion. And so, there's such a wide manifestation of it that I avoid getting into it because it's just, it's hard to get
01:05:09
Western thinking people to start even trying to understand the categories in which they speak, to even ask the right questions.
01:05:17
So, that's a tough one. Sorry I took up all the rest of the time. I obviously have more questions, but we have a short break in a moment.
01:05:25
James, people may not be familiar with these books, and we have them in the bookstore.
01:05:30
Looks like they were designed by the same guy, huh? We were thinking of getting some of the elders here to sign them and give you a gift.
01:05:37
Can you tell us a little bit about them? Thanks, I would love that. Tell us about these books, James. This one took me longer to write than any other book that I did.
01:05:51
It's the God Who Justifies. Now, if you're into new perspective on Paul and T.
01:05:57
Wright and stuff like that, I specifically say in here, sorry, that's not what I'm getting into. What I really wanted to do is something more along the lines of a modern, updated
01:06:05
Buchanan. I'm functioning on a full doctrine of the inspiration of scripture in writing this book.
01:06:14
A lot of people writing on justification today are not. That's just not where they are. I think the doctrine of justification is truly seen most beautifully when it's seen as it is revealed in all of scripture.
01:06:27
Many of those writing on justification today don't believe that Paul wrote half of what Paul wrote. They don't have a real firm foundation to come up with something consistently.
01:06:37
This isn't an easy book. The first eight chapters, you'll sort of go rah, rah, rah, and then I get into the exegesis and the exegesis can get rather thick, but I think it's important.
01:06:47
If you've ever dealt with James chapter 2, there is a 34 page,
01:06:53
I think it's 34 page chapter in here on James chapter 2, because I felt that was absolutely necessary to deal with faith that works is dead and so on and so forth.
01:07:01
God who justifies and then scripture alone, a smaller work, not nearly as complicated as the justification book, especially chapter 9 onward.
01:07:10
I do deal with the Chicago Statement on Inerrancy, the issue of the canon, alleged contradictions, why should we believe that scripture is sufficient in and of itself.
01:07:22
Again, I'm very thankful that my publisher has been, it's a good publisher to be with because they have a long track record of keeping books in print for lengthy periods of time.
01:07:35
I write on subjects that really haven't changed that much in the history of the church. It's not like you have to really worry about it being different next year or something along those lines.
01:07:45
So, yeah, those would be both relevant, very much relevant. And the Roman Catholic controversy, of course, would be very relevant.
01:07:52
And my first book, The Fatal Flaw and Answers to Catholic Claims, those first two books, are also available on Kindle if you want to get a hold of those ancient works.
01:08:03
Well, I will save those questions and after the final session we'll see if we can create some extra time for those questions again.