Roman Catholicism: When You Deny Sola Scriptura, You Have No Foundation

Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line, second day in a row, but as far as I can tell looking at my list of materials in Evernote, nothing about Islam today.

So we talked a lot about that yesterday, but we are going to be looking at some other subjects.

There is much going on in the world. I have just caught up with the briefing after I had rather limited net access and time in South Africa.

And so as a result, I mean, there would be all sorts of stuff that we could talk about in regards to Ebola and the fact that honestly having a non -Christian worldview will impact how you respond to such things.

There is also stuff that happened with the Supreme Court while I was gone by inactively acting,

I guess is the way we could describe it. And seemingly the inside information that Kennedy has collapsed on any meaningful ethical moral understanding of marriage anyway, so what does it matter?

You have four ideologues on the court that could care less what the Constitution says, historical morality, ethics, all that kind of stuff.

And so it is pretty much done for on that level anyway. But many, many things could be discussed there.

But what I wanted to focus on today is some stuff that, well, some of it is common to my discussions, but some of it is not.

Depending on how far we get into the program and some of the things that we discussed there, we'll see what that comes up with.

Yesterday, word came out concerning a document from the

Vatican and there's been much discussion of it. As with everything in this current papacy, it seems to me that people in the press want to jump the gun, want to create news.

And this is not any type of official document in the sense of having any binding authority.

It's just a summary of presentations and discussions at the

Synod. But it's also important to recognize that what the bishops are saying at the

Synod reflects the great diversity of opinion and viewpoint that is to be found within the magisterium of the

Roman Catholic Church. And when we listen to what is being said and much more, you know, obviously, instead of reading the news reports,

I downloaded the document. And it's not like I've gone through it with a fine -tooth comb. I haven't had time to do that.

I'm still so far behind on all sorts of other things I need to get done. I haven't gone so long that I feel somewhat hurried and rushed as far as that goes.

No, it's not an NWO. NWU, Northwest University, Pachestrum, South Africa.

I got my NWU shirt on today. Anyway, great place, great guys, love teaching there and lecturing there and doing stuff like that there.

It's wonderful. Anyway, Moeller talked a little bit, and he keeps stealing my lines.

I heard Theology Matters. I don't know how many times I heard Dividing Line a couple weeks ago. I just think they're all personal little shout -outs to us.

Keep going, guys. All right, woo -hoo. Yeah, that's my interpretations. But Bakersfield.

Oh, no, no, no, no. This has nothing to do with the Vatican. What are you doing?

Everybody wants to talk about the anti -Calvinism sermon.

I finally got to listen to it. I commented briefly on Facebook. I would have rushed a little bit faster to get to it.

Yeah, the one with the baby pictures. But one of the two guys, the younger of the two guys, follows me on Twitter and has a lot of respect for the ministry.

And so, he sent me, we were in correspondence, he sent me a long email.

I owe him response. I owe, currently, my inbox has 160 emails in it.

Not all of them require responses, but about 120 of them do. I'm not sure when

I'm ever gonna get that done right now, to be honest with you. But I'd like to have a meaningful conversation, and who knows, maybe we could actually discuss it on the program.

Obviously, it was grossly biased, wildly biased.

It was a odd mixture of Dave Hunt and Brian Zond. It was a mess, but I'd like to be able to explain that in a way that's helpful to as many people as possible.

So, I'm not gonna, you know, JD Hall's been looking at it and stuff like that. And there are some wild -eyed guys in the woods of South Georgia that thinks that I'm in charge of anything that he or anybody else does.

It's Calvinist. So, they really must think that I'm a giant, pulsating brain that never sleeps.

I mean, seriously. I don't know how I could do all the stuff that they think I'm involved with.

But anyway, we will get to it, and we'll do Radio Free Geneva, but we still gotta get through the debate with Zond and Michael Brown and the two -man versus two -man debate and stuff like that.

And we'll get there. We'll get there. My hope would be that by the time we get there, maybe we could just talk with at least one of the guys and just have a good conversation on the air and try to clarify so many of the straw men, you know, get some of the smoke out of the way.

Because, you know, Calvinism destroys evangelism, which is why I was in South Africa in a mosque proclaiming the gospel as a

Calvinist, I guess. But anyway, we'll get to that. You know, I was on a roll there and you completely interrupted me with that thing, a

Bakersfield baby pics thing. I'm sorry, I couldn't help it. Well, I think you need to. It's this great big elephant in the room, and it just had to be said.

No, it's not really a great big elephant. There was nothing new there. We've heard every bit of that before.

We've refuted every bit of that before, other than I don't think we have ever had to refute the baby pictures attack on Calvinism.

Well, what I found interesting about the whole thing on the baby pictures, where's the one where the baby's defiant?

Where's the ones where the baby's got that mean face on? Yeah, where the baby's screaming and, uh, no! First word they learned, don't tell me it's daddy, it's no!

There weren't any two -year -olds in there. And Clementine has learned the line, don't say that.

When she doesn't like what you're gonna say, don't say that. And nobody had to teach her how to do that.

Anyway, back to where we're supposed to be. This is why I forgot to mention in the

South Africa report that one of the things that one of the guys said about the dividing line was he just fast forwards through the first 10 minutes because it's just you and me joking around anyways.

So I decided I was gonna start out putting all the important stuff in the first 10 minutes just to just to get him back for that comment.

But he'll probably, he'll probably hear me say that and know exactly who I was talking about exactly where we were when we talked.

Vatican Pope, thank you CDS. Silly Brit is in channel today and he he's telling me get back on track,

Vatican Pope, thank you. So he's trying to counteract your your messing things up.

Anyway, the document, I marked a few a few things in it. It's certainly not the radical thing that a lot of the news press was identifying it as.

But, but there is some really really important stuff in here. I've been thinking that this synod could be where this current

Pope really tips his hand as to what he's really all about and what his agenda is.

And it may be, it may be. A couple things, let me just read a couple sections and then what the real thing to learn from this, other than theology matters, which again is something we emphasize a lot around here, is that the main thing to learn is that the foundation upon which you build your worldview, will depend, will determine how that worldview interacts with radical changes such as we're seeing in the world today in regards to homosexuality.

And biblical Christianity and Roman Catholicism do not stand on the same basis.

As much as people would like to say, and as much as there are are intersections of commonality, the reality is that because the denial of Sola Scriptura, you have

Sola Ecclesia. And I'll never forget, I'll never forget, I forget how long ago it was now.

I think the office was still in Rich's garage at the time. I was,

I had a little brief exchange with Robertson Jenis on,

I had posted, you know, it's not difficult to take some older documents from the

Roman Magisterium and contrast them with modern ones. And John Paul II, he would go through these phases where he was really conservative, not so conservative, you know, he's throwing a bone out this direction, throwing a bone out that direction.

I was driving and I happened to have EWTN on and they started praying to him and I was just like, oh please, go find something less idolatrous to listen to.

But it was during that time and it was very easy to contrast something

John Paul had just said with something that had been dogmatically stated by the church earlier. And Robertson Jenis' response was the classic example of Sola Ecclesia.

And that was, even though there isn't a shred of doubt as to what the context and meaning of the earlier

Roman Catholic document was, you can go back into history, you could demonstrate beyond all shadow of a doubt, beyond all controversy, what was being said and why it was being said at the time it was being said.

His response to me was, who do you think you are to interpret what the church has said? Only the church can interpret what the church has said.

And look, it makes perfect sense. I mean, what is Sola Ecclesia? What is, you know,

I've often said that one of the biggest failures of primarily

Reformed Protestants in responding to Rome, because obviously from my perspective, we're the only ones that are consistent in responding to Rome, only ones that can be consistent in responding to Rome.

And we're going to see that there are some flavors of Reformed in a moment that aren't overly consistent there either, as we're going to see in a video that I mentioned

I would review. But when we respond to Roman Catholicism, we stand on Sola Scriptura and Tota Scriptura.

Scripture alone as a sole infallible rule of faith of the church. Not a denial of looking at what early church fathers said or anything else, but they are not infallible.

They are not Theanoustas. They are subordinate standards, must be subordinate standards, Semper Reformanda, the church is not infallible, etc.,

etc. Versus Sola Ecclesia. And Rome goes, oh, we don't believe in Sola Ecclesia. And every time they open their mouths, they prove they do.

They prove they do. What does Sola Ecclesia mean? Sola Ecclesia means that the church is the sole infallible rule of authority for the church.

Well, we believe we are under the authority of Scripture, except who defines what is and what is not

Scripture? Well, the church does. Who infallibly interprets what the Scriptures say?

Well, the church does. Okay. But there's tradition. Well, who infallibly determines what tradition is?

Well, the church does. And who infallibly determines what tradition means? Well, the church does.

And now, logically, you follow that the rest of the way as Syngenis did. And what do you have?

You have the final step being, well, even once the church has spoken, the only one that can interpret the church is the church.

And so if the church said X in 1054 or 1199 or 1215 or 1433 or 1564 or whatever date you want to plug in there, if the church said

X in that context and it had meaning Y, then meaning

Y is irrelevant now because that meaning is determined by the modern church.

And so it's pretty easy to be infallible when you can just simply say, well, that's not what we meant.

I mean, it sounds a little bit like the Obama administration in many ways as to how they respond to things too.

They are the infallible interpreters of whatever it was we intended to say at that time. And whatever those words mean is what we say those words mean.

And that's what you've got here as far as Rome is concerned. And so once you have that denial of sola scriptura, the foundation upon which

Roman Catholic morals and ethics, and they talk a lot about it, oh my.

But the problem is it's shifting sand. This natural law stuff depends on how you define the natura, the nature.

You don't have an unchanging, inviolable divine revelation that is not malleable in the hands of an infallible magisterium.

You don't have that bedrock that we do have. And that you seem to feel, many of you seem to feel that that makes you better off.

I can't help but note before I go back to the document, another article that I commented on very briefly.

Where did I comment on this? Facebook or on the blog? I don't remember which one it was. But while I was in, well, it was actually before I left, but I did not see.

And so I was in South Africa. The blog article from Jason Stelman of September 23rd of 2014, less than a month ago.

September 23rd, 2012, two years ago today, I was receiving the full communion with the Catholic Church. Humanly speaking, it was one of the worst decisions

I've ever made. The last two years have brought me almost nothing but loss. Most of my fellow alumni and former professors at Westminster Seminary no longer speak to me.

I'm denied entrance into the church. I planted where my family still attends on Sundays. I wasn't even allowed to attend the

Christmas Eve service last year and just sit and sing the hymns as if Jason, the former pastor coming in on a

Christmas Eve is just going to sit there. Oh, I know you're not going to run around trying to convince people to papacy, but you're an apostate, man.

I told you this over two years ago. I can look you in the eye and you will have to affirm.

I told you this. Man, you weren't listening real well.

To most of my old Calvinist friends, I am simply a traitor to the gospel. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Yes, sir.

And that's the most compassionate thing anybody can say to you. Anybody who says anything else to you really doesn't have any compassion for you, or just has no idea what the truth is.

Yes, sir. Remember who told you that? Traitor to the gospel. Apostasy. Yo, over here.

Yeah. Funny looking Scottish guy. That's me. And yet, you get down to the bottom.

I commented, was this on the blog? It was. Thank you. I can't remember sometimes now whether, well, sometimes

I posted on both, and that's why I can't remember which one's which. But he says,

Catholicism is true, even though I don't like it. Catholicism is true, even if embracing it has been an unmitigated disaster.

The real tragedy of the Jason Stellman story is that Catholicism is not true, and yet he is absolutely committed now to maintaining his faithfulness to it, despite the fact that it has split his family and has been a disaster for them as well.

Pray for his family, my goodness. They seem to have held firm to the gospel. And so pray for his conversion.

Man needs to be broken. He needs to be broken. And if you want the unmitigated disaster to end, you need to change that initial statement.

Catholicism is not true. But the point is, here is this individual who, the whole reason, the whole reason that he converted was a philosophical argument about authority.

That he took a really idiosyncratic understanding of, and well, in the year 100

AD, right after John died, how would anybody know? As if there was a Pope then, which there wasn't, and all the rest of that kind of stuff. But he just became focused on that, lost all sense of balance, and now he's ruined his life.

And I don't know about you, but man, I would point anybody to his article who's thinking about converting and say, you might want to read this first.

It might give you some insights. But there you have the, I think, a rather good illustration, just on a functional level of, well, sola scriptura doesn't work.

Well, let's look at what sola ecclesia has done, shall we? I hope

Jason follows this synod, and I hope he reads this stuff and realizes, oh my goodness,

I thought I had problems as a Protestant. Ain't nothing compared to this.

Maybe Lord will wake him up. I don't know. We pray for him. In section 29 of the document that was released yesterday, conversion has, above all, to be that of language, so this might prove to be effectively meaningful.

This is not an official translation. The announcement is about letting it be experienced that the gospel of the family is the response to the deepest expectations of a person, to his or her dignity and its full realization in reciprocity and communion.

Yeah, we could hope for a more

English translation of the Latin someday, maybe. But what caught my attention was the gospel of the family.

See, Rome is under no compulsion to limit or to be guided by biblical norms and biblical usage and biblical language.

It doesn't have to be. Once you've decided that scripture is just simply the written tradition together with the oral tradition, and they're all under the big banner of tradition, which is all under the banner of the church anyways, that's just one element of things.

And so it can't function within Romanism the way that it functions within the bride of Christ as the very voice of Christ.

It just can't because when you place it under the authority, once you claim the infallibility of the church and its specific expression in the infallibility of the pope, the voice of Christ in scripture, even if you confess that it is there, is fundamentally changed as to its nature.

Fundamentally changed because it can never correct the uncorrectable church.

There cannot be a semper reformanda when you're infallible. And gospel of the family is the response to the deepest expectations of a person.

No, no, and no again. Now, I don't know what the gospel of family is here.

It can change in the next edition of this statement. That's the wonderful thing about Romanism, but the gospel itself has to do with what the father, son, and spirit have done to bring about their own glory, period, to define it as a response, the deepest expectations of a person to his or her dignity and its full realization in reciprocity and communion is babbling.

Babbling. It's babbling. And it's unbiblical.

It's backwards. It's backwards babbling is what it is or babbling backwards. Either way, doesn't matter to me.

It has no meaning. Long words all meant to define the gospel itself in terms that the inspired scriptures never do.

Inspired scriptures never do. You just find Roman documents filled with this kind of stuff.

Filled with this kind of stuff. Then under civil unions and cohabitation, section 36, a new sensitivity in today's pastoral consists in grasping the positive reality of civil weddings and having pointed out our differences of cohabitation.

It is necessary that in the ecclesial proposal, while clearly presenting the ideal, we also indicate the constructive elements in those situations that do not yet or no longer correspond to that ideal.

In other words, well, jacking up ain't that bad.

It's better than some things we can think of. Well, great.

That's lovely. Good. Okay. Faced by these situations, section 37, the church is called to be quote, the house of the father with doors always wide open, where there is a place for everyone with all their problems.

Then quote, yeah, that's found in math. No, um, that's found in first. No, um, laminate.

No. Um, oh, it's a eventually Gaudium 47 should have.

I was thinking maybe it was in the Hadith somewhere. See what happens when you, you make your points by quoting yourself, which is what

Rome's doing here. Basically the situation, the church is called on, called on by whom?

Well, by, by us in some previous thing we wrote, uh, to be the house of the father with doors, always wide open, where there is a place for everyone with all their problems.

That is such utter rot. It's supposed to be the spotless bride of Christ.

Maybe this is why Rome doesn't do much of that church discipline stuff. Maybe that's why, you know, the idea of having

Roman Catholics that go to church twice a year and do their little confession thing. And they're good.

That, that is so common. It's not biblical, but biblical is not the standard for Rome.

And that's the point. That's the point. Um, the church is not called to be the house.

The father with doors always wide open, where there is a place for everyone with all their problems. That is not the description of the church in the new

Testament. In fact, it's exactly contradicted by the vision of John in the book of revelation, where the dogs and the liars and everybody else are aware outside.

Oh, but the doors are what? No, the gates are shut. Oh, wow. That's not really very inclusive.

Uh, no, but it is focused upon the glory of God and his accomplishment of, uh, well,

Titus chapter two, you know, the redemption of a particular people, uh, uh, zealous for good deed.

You know, that's all that biblical stuff. Let's just quote some more evangelical,

Gaudium and we'll be, we'll be just fine. Yeah. See, there's a huge difference.

Then there's a bunch of stuff about divorce and so on and so forth. And then under the title, welcoming homosexual persons.

Sounds like somebody there is already given into the idea that you can be identified by, you know, your desires and that that's okay.

Section 50 homosexuals have gifts and qualities to offer to the

Christian community. Could we put other people in there?

How about pedophiles? How about those involved in intergenerational sex incest?

Um, why not? What's, what's the problem?

Oh, you're comparing them, pointing out the category problem. Nothing more.

Don't, don't jump off the cliff. Just think with what's being said. Are we capable of welcoming these people, guaranteeing to them a fraternal space in our communities?

Um, I might've missed it because like I said, didn't have a lot of time to work through it. I, but I, I think

I'm probably correct here that the, um, the term repentance, no, not that often they wish to encounter a church that offers them a welcoming home.

Are our communities capable, capable of providing that accepting and valuing their sexual orient, valuing their sexual orientation without compromising

Catholic doctrine on the family and matrimony? I think the rather obvious answer to that question is no, but the very fact that it's being addressed and the language is being addressed seems to think, lead me to think that the bishops are saying, we'll need to find a way.

We'll need to find a way that of calling to repentance.

Uh, here you have, uh, the weasel words of Rome.

Don't believe in sola scriptura. You're always stuck with weasel words. That's all you got left.

Um, second, next section, the question of homosexuality leads to a serious reflection on how to elaborate realistic paths of effective growth and human evangelical maturity, integrating the sexual dimension.

It appears therefore as an important educated, educative challenge. It's education.

Really? I would think the first thing to determine is what does

God say about it? Uh, what's the creative norm? Uh, what's the call of the gospel repentance, you know, that kind of thing.

The church furthermore affirms that unions between people, the same sex now here, here, at least there's at least somewhat of a line drawn.

Thankfully, almost nobody's saying about this, but that's because of all the weasel words. The church furthermore affirms that unions between people, the same sex cannot be considered on the same footing as matrimony between man and woman, nor is it acceptable that pressure be brought to bear on pastors or that international bodies make financial aid dependent on the introduction of regulations inspired by gender ideology.

Well, yeah, duh. But even then, um, same footing, uh, doesn't sound overly strong to me.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I look at that and go, Ooh, I wonder what's going to come out of here.

I can, I can pretty much guess one thing. I can pretty much guess one thing. Whatever does come out will not be a strengthening of Rome's position on this.

It will lead only to further confusion and what you're going to see, what you're going to see, we are, you've already seen this.

You, you go look at the responses just to this preliminary document. That's just talking about what, what's being discussed.

And you will read an entire spectrum of interpretation as to what this actually means.

And that's the problem with Rome's denial of sola scriptura. Well, we need the church to clarify.

And as soon as the church speaks, does it clarify? No, because whenever it says it has to be interpreted too, and you'll have,

I mean, look at all of the different interpretations of Vatican too. And any honest

Roman Catholic has to go, well, you know, John Paul's second has his interpretation of Vatican too.

And a Ratzinger still has his interpretation of Vatican too. And, and Francis seemingly has a really different interpretation of Vatican too.

And what does that tell you that Vatican too clarified zippity -doo -dah. That's what it tells you.

And that's why I said years ago in the debate with Mitch Pacwa closing statement,

I dragged all those books out, backed them all up, said, now this clarifies

Romans 5 .1 or this muddies Romans 5 .1. Muddies it obviously, obviously.

So you just, it just makes you wonder how far will these guys have to go before people like Jason Stellman and the call to communion guys finally go, hey, this doesn't work.

This is, we, we got sold a lemon. Yeah, you did. You, you did get sold a lemon.

Did you catch Fox News Sunday, this last Sunday morning? No, I'm a Christian. I was at church.

Well, it was before church. He, they had, because the Supreme Court turned down last week, cop out, they had

Tony Perkins from the Family Research Council and apparently Ted Olson, uh, the former solicitor general for,

I believe the Bush administration. Yeah. Um, yeah, but he's the one that's been defending. He's the one that's been defending him.

So you got two Republicans sitting there and, uh, essentially, and, uh, one's defending legally, uh, the gays for gay marriage and talking about, oh, you know, all these arguments were made back when, uh, you, you know, you couldn't interracially marry in all these states.

And Tony eventually, after shooting Ted down right and left, then just asked a simple question because there was so much time and he was not going to be able to elaborate on it.

Where's your boundaries? He just looked at Ted and he says, where are the boundaries now? And Ted ran from that like an

Arminian run from John 644 and run away, run away from the text. And he asked it over and over and Ted never once answer.

Well, it's not this and it's not that. And no, where are the boundaries now? Because there were guardrails there before, and now you're taking those away.

And I'm telling you that this isn't just about what you're trying to make happen and dad could not answer it.

No, no. And, uh, they don't have any answer. Uh, it's, there's no place for him to go.

Um, and, uh, a lot of people thought that Rome would stand firm on this, but, uh, I don't believe that she really has the foundation to be able to do this, which leads us into the next subject on the program today.

And that was, uh, this morning, someone posted a, uh, or last night,

I forget which one it was. Someone posted a link to a ask Doug Wilson segment. And, uh, obviously, uh, given the fact that we don't even have it up yet, but we'll, by hopefully the end of the week, a lot of people have not seen my debate with Doug Wilson.

Uh, we debated in 2004, I believe in Los Angeles. And, um, we debated our

Roman Catholics, our brothers and sisters in Christ. And, uh, Doug, as a good federal visionist says that you evangelize

Roman Catholics by grabbing them by their baptism, uh, which, um, is a euphemistic way of saying, well, they've, they got baptized, right?

Because it was Trinitarian baptism. And, uh, therefore they're in the covenant, but they need to be called to live like they're in the covenant.

And of course, my response was, I don't care what somebody did to you when you were a baby or what words were spoken over you.

Christianity isn't about that kind of thing. Um, and unless you are an ex opera operato sacramentalist, uh, you have no basis for limiting the gospel to something that man does in the appropriate way by saying the appropriate words.

I mean, I'll be honest with you that max to me of good old papalism. And this goes back.

If, you know, historically to the division between the Northern Presbyterians and the Southern Presbyterians and Southern Presbyterians wouldn't accept

Roman Catholic baptism and Northern Presbyterians would. And they argued about it and went back to sacramentalism.

And fundamentally, I unashamedly say, uh, that the gospel is what determines the

Christian faith period and the discussion. Now that includes who Jesus Christ is, which is Christ did as part of the gospel.

Uh, without a God, man, you don't have a divine gospel, but, uh, the gospel is not merely some ancillary thing that you can just put off to the side.

That's why the mere Christianity guys don't have a problem with Rome. They may not become Roman Catholics, but don't have a problem with Rome because they don't have enough of a robust definition of the

Christian faith during the problems with Rome. Um, and I find that just utterly and completely incoherent and unbiblical.

And certainly Paul writing in Galatians would not have understood that perspective that they take.

So we'll be getting, we've bumped up posting. We've been posting lots and lots, lots of debates.

If you haven't been watching a YouTube channel, um, we should have been throwing each one of them once it came up, up on the blog.

So you could see that it was there and probably should go back and start doing that. But, um, we've pushed this one up the list, so it should be up hopefully by the end of the week where, uh,

Doug Wilson and I, uh, debate this very issue. And obviously you can see in this situation, a lot of what we were dancing around was infant baptism and the propriety thereof or the nature thereof or what it means and covenant children, all the rest of that kind of stuff.

But, uh, still my focus was rather obvious. And that is that, um, you can do everything right if you don't have the gospel, it's not

Christianity. And Rome doesn't have the gospel. Rome doesn't have the gospel. Um, if you know

Roman Catholicism, and unfortunately many people who call themselves Protestants today are, are Protestants of taste rather than conviction.

Um, if you know the Roman Catholic gospel, if you know the dogmatic gospel, not the ishy -squishy Pope Francis, who am

I to judge homosexuals, uh, post -modernism stuff, but the historic dogmatic stuff.

If, if you understand what the state of grace is, if you understand that baptism places you in the state of grace, that it makes you objectively pleasing to God, uh, that that's the means of justification.

And then you understand the sacraments and the priestly ordinances and, and the role of the priest as an alter

Christus and the mass is a perpetuatory sacrifice and the concept of, of penance and, uh, re -justification at the commission of immortal sin and the, and temporal punishments for sins do the venial sins and purgatory and satis passio and indulgences and, and all the stuff that still sits there in the dusty dogmatic archives of, um, of, uh, the

Roman Catholic dogmatic writings. If you understand all that and you understand

Paul's intent and message in the book of Galatians, they don't go together. And when you boil it all down,

Rome's gospel does not give peace. It cannot give peace because it does not have a finished sacrifice. The concept of the, the concept of the perpetuatory sacrifice of the mass, uh, utterly undermines

Rome's ability to offer true peace because there is no finished work.

You can approach the cross of Christ in Roman Catholicism, 10 ,000 times your life and die impure. The false gospel, it is under the anathema of Galatians chapter one.

And that's why we must evangelize Roman Catholics. Well, that's what

I said. And Doug, as a good Calvinist wants to agree with much of my criticism of Rome, but his federal visionist theology and sacramentalism, uh, forces him into what

I think is an utterly untenable position of saying, well, there are, there are unregenerate brothers and sisters in Christ.

There are unregenerate brothers and sisters in Christ. He said, I linked to an audio version.

It's on YouTube and we'll get the video version up. I think it'll be a whole lot better to be able to watch it. Um, but the audio visual audio version is out there.

If you just have to listen to it today. Um, I haven't listened to it. I don't know what quality is, but somebody just probably ripped it from all the

DVDs or MP3s or something and put it up there along with a still picture of Doug and I.

Um, so here comes this, uh, this question.

And the question is about great Roman thinkers.

And were they Christians? So let's take a look at it. Let's, uh, listen to what Doug had to say and then respond to it.

These are real questions. Yeah. People send these in. Right. They do. And I've watched it before.

I've always wondered, are they real? Or do you guys craft them in such a way to where you get a chance to talk about things you want to talk about?

No, they just send them in and we compile them and get through as many of them as we can. All right, here we go. Number one, do you think that J .R

.R. Tolkien and Chesterton were saved? Well, let's just put it this way.

If they were not that I'm in a lot of trouble. Okay. All right.

I assume that there's a follow -up question. No, no. Sorry. Got to stop there. Got to stop there.

Um, you know, I appreciate so much of Doug Wilson has done.

He's a wordsmith on a level. It's amazing. But this just leaves me shivering because when you ask, if you ask me that question, my answer is not gonna be based upon me.

And that's the problem here is that the answer here is going to be based not upon the nature of the gospel, not upon Rome's gospel, but there it's upon, well, they're a better Christian than me.

I can, I can look at people in almost any world religion that will outperform me in certain areas of humility or service to others or whatever else it might be.

And if that's the, if that's the standard, then there's really no reason to present the gospel to anybody.

But isn't the whole point of the gospel is that the standard is perfection. And did any of those men reach that standard, including

Doug Wilson? Well, he would say no, certainly not. So the point is what is the gospel? What is the gospel that Tolkien believed in?

What is the gospel that Chesterton promoted? Did it have a finished work of Christ?

Did it bring true peace or did they truly believe in the gospel of Rome?

Now I've answered this question 20 ,000 times before, but we get new folks. And so let me say it again.

Will there be Roman Catholics in heaven? Yes, there will be, despite there being Roman Catholics, but they're not going to be there because they believed the gospel of Rome.

There is no salvation in believing the gospel of Rome. There are people within the Roman Catholic communion that believe the simple gospel of Jesus Christ.

And they do so in opposition to the official teachings of the

Roman Catholic church. Sometimes you'll get a renegade priest someplace, uh, that'll find out he ain't no alter

Christos. And, um, that hocus pocus he's doing up there isn't repeating or representing, uh, to use their terminology, the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

Um, you'll have some simple people that have just heard a simple presentation. God's grace is not limited by the name of the church on the door, but without hesitation, if you believe what

Rome actually teaches, if you believe the gospel as she presents it, a gospel of sacraments, a gospel purgatory, a gospel of incomplete work of Christ, a gospel of priests, there is no salvation in that gospel.

I don't know how you can read Galatians or Romans and come up with that and say, oh, sure there is. You have to twist it, turn it.

You've got to do everything that Rome does come up with that kind of a perspective. And so when people say, oh, you're just saying it's the name of the church on the door.

That's that's no, no, there can be plenty of people that are going to go to the flames of hell from a

Baptist church pew. The issue is the gospel. The issue is the relationship you have with Jesus Christ, period, end of discussion.

And Rome's gospel does not bring you into that relationship with Jesus Christ.

If you want to assert that it does as a Calvinist, go for it. Let's talk indulgences.

Let's talk priests who are an altar Christus, another Christ. Let's go there, but I hope you won't even try.

The issue is the gospel. And so that's the wrong start immediately.

Wrong start immediately. And Doug Wilson's a bright guy, but he's not encountered nearly as many

Roman Catholics as I have. And again, 10 years ago,

I explained all this stuff to him, too. So what can I say? On that, but because you're talking about their

Catholicism, right? Okay. So there's actually a very important point here.

Some people, some Protestants, rock rib Protestants think if you start allowing

Catholics to be saved, you know, Chesterton and Tolkien and people like that, that you're going soft in your

Protestantism. Right. Right. I don't care about my Protestantism. It's about the gospel.

I mean, I am so sick and tired of modern reformed guys dancing around out here in the tulips someplace rather than going for the key issue.

And that is, does this gospel save? I'm sick of it.

It just, I don't know what's causing it. Will the gospel of indulgences and purgatory and saddest

Pacio and moral and mortal and venial sins and, and, and, and priests and rejustifications all focused upon what

I do save. I don't know how anyone who even pretends to be a quote unquote

Calvinist can say, yeah, sure. I disagree with some of that, but close enough.

Really? I mean, you got to realize some, the gospel of Rome has gotten worse since the days of Calvin.

Can you imagine what Calvin would have done with the dogmatic claims of Rome since his day claims of papal infallibility, immaculate conception, bodily assumption, making them dogmas that must be believed to be saved.

Gotten worse, not better. Rome's gone farther away, not closer.

People seem to forget that sort of trying to do the rapprochement thing, right? But the reason

I believe that Roman Catholics can be saved is because we're not saved by works.

Protestants are right. In other words, I think a lot of the diehard Protestants who say, no, um, you're, we're saved by faith, by grace through faith, not of works, lest any man should boast, then turn around immediately and, and then say, and you

Catholics over there, you are saved by works, right? Because there's something you're not doing. Yeah. Or there's something you are doing that's wrong.

Okay. That's something you are doing. That's wrong.

What? What? We're talking about the nature of the gospel here.

We're not talking about, well, you know, I don't like the extra things you guys do. They make it part of the gospel.

What did Paul say in Galatians chapter five? If you start down that road of law keeping,

Christ will be of no benefit to you. The Galatians said they believe in Christ.

The Galatians said faith in Christ is necessary. And Paul said, you've been severed from grace.

You, you, you fall, but fall of grace, severed from Christ. He'll be of no benefit to you. It's not some extra things.

We're not saying, oh, well you are saved by work. This is a complete canard.

It's missing the point, started the wrong foot and now is running the wrong direction.

Right. Well, of course, I'm not, I'm, I'm as a Protestant as you get.

I believe that Chesterton and Tolkien were wrong. And if the Protestants are wrong about solving, what were they wrong about?

What were they wrong on the gospel?

Okay. Let's put, let's, let's, let's put Tolkien Chesterton Judaizers.

Okay. Now what, how is Chesterton better with all the extra perversions of the gospel?

How is he better than the Judaizers in the churches in Galatia? What makes him better?

Being only of grace, right? Then people who pray to pictures are in trouble, right?

You're in big trouble. It's, it's idolatry. I think that there are a number of things that the

Roman Catholics do that encourage people to stumble over essential parts of the gospel.

Unfortunately, a bunch of Protestants stumble over the same thing, right? We're not saved by works.

We're not saved by doctrinal works. You know, suppose I get up to the pearly gates and God says, okay,

Wilson, before we let you in, we're going to sit you down and give you a justification by faith alone test.

Right. These are your, these are your comprehensives. Right. Right. And you've got to get a hundred percent on justification by faith test administered by St.

Peter here to get into heaven. Who, is this the PCA or is this heaven? Heaven.

Oh, sorry. I got confused. Who is going to get a hundred percent on any doctrinal test administered by the celestials or by God?

You know, I, I, I, I'm not even sure what to say, to be honest with you on some of this, because this kind of argumentation would render

Paul's argumentation in Galatians superfluous. He wasn't talking about the perfection of my understanding.

He was talking about the fact that the gospel has been clear, has been, has been revealed with sufficient clarity to be able to tell the difference between the true gospel and a false gospel.

Isn't that what he's saying in Galatians? And now we've got the idea.

Well, you, we're saying you need to get a hundred percent. Um, no, we're saying that there are true gospels and there are false gospels and that a false gospel is under the anathema of God and that those who proclaim a false gospel are under the anathema of God and that a false gospel will not save and that we can know the difference between the two.

The, the, the gospel has been declared with sufficient clarity to know that. How does this have anything to do with that?

I have no earthly idea. I have no earthly idea. I, it just troubles me.

I believe if you go through any vibrant, healthy, evangelical church where the people are manifestly saved and sit them, get them all taken a pop quiz or a pop test.

Okay. Let's, I, I believe you could over, uh, uh, turn over enough flat rocks to come up with any number of heresies, bad, bad heresies or problematic

Trinity. And you'd probably have every nice Sunday school teacher do the analogy to the egg and they'd be wrong.

And it's a nice ice water steam. Yeah. There's all kinds of sweet Christian people who've got, okay, you're gonna lose it here.

I, I, I don't know who the fellow over on the left is not even going to drag him into it.

Um, and Doug has put himself out there. On important issues, but the inconsistency here just drives me insane.

Um, how many times have I talked about the functional non -Trinitarianism of many

Protestants warned against it explained why modalists can sing concerts in our churches at Trinity Baptist church and nobody seems to care, but to try in essence to muddle the clarity of Rome's gospel heresy by pointing out that we don't do a really good job explaining the interpersonal relationships of the

Trinity almost makes me think someone in the

Vatican made this one up. That's a good way to get people blunted in proclaiming the gospel of Roman Catholics.

I mean, the category errors here are really difficult to even begin to address. And I'm trying to control myself here because we've addressed this subject a few times.

Rome goes so far beyond anything that Judaizers ever contemplated that it's unbelievable.

And yet here we've got a Christian leader, a well -known Christian leader, a brilliant man, but he's dancing out in the outer boundaries someplace and not bringing clarity.

I can't see how anybody would be encouraged to put themselves out to bring the true message of the gospel to a

Roman Catholic after watching it. And that is a crying shame. Teaching heresy every

Sunday. Right now that doesn't make teaching heresy. Okay. Right. That doesn't mean that I approve of it.

It doesn't make it not sinful. It doesn't make it not a problem. It is a problem, but it's not the kind of thing that I'll just boil it down.

I'm a Protestant. We're not saved by works. We're not saved by our doctrinal works. We're not saved by our ethical works.

We're saved by the grace of God. Period. We are saved by the grace of God through the gospel of our

Lord and savior, Jesus Christ. That grace is not separated from the gospel, which

Rome doesn't have. I must be a really simple minded man.

I don't, I guess I just get, don't get all these nuances or maybe I just haven't sat around in awe of Chesterton's intellect.

He was a bright guy. He was a bright guy, but there've been a lot of bright

Hindus and Buddhists and Muslims too. And I don't let it cause me to become confused into the nature of the gospel.

Because that's true, because the Protestants are right, Catholics can be saved.

Right. Right. Does that make sense? So this is not a split the difference or, or sort of a creeping ecumenical.

Let's just call it all good. Now, I think the issues of the Protestant reformation were essential for powerful preaching, but justification by faith does not mean believing in justification by faith.

Canard warning, canard warning. So now the purity of the gospel is just for really good preaching, powerful preaching.

And nobody says you're saved by believing in justification by faith. That's a canard.

It's a, it's a federal visionist canard. I'm sick of it. But again,

I just ask you take this back to Galatians and say, what would Paul have said? If Paul had gotten to watch this after he got over the shock of modern technology and video, um, what would his response have been?

You think he would have gone, that guy, he's got it right? I don't think so.

Justification by faith means that Jesus saves us. And here's how we, here, here's how we explain what he's doing from the scripture.

Another illustration I used, it's like electricity.

Justification by faith is like electricity. I want any two year old child can turn on the lights in a room, right?

But I wouldn't let the two year old wire the house. Okay. So I want,

I want, um, men who are being examined at presbytery for the ministry. I want them to understand sola fide.

I want them to understand it upwards and upwards and downwards, backwards and forwards, because they're the electric, they're the electricians, right?

They're the ones showing up and running wire on all the houses. And if they, and if they don't do it right, you're going to burn the house down.

Right? Right. So it's very important, but it's very important for ordination. Right.

But if you stop a five -year -old and say, um, is the righteousness of Jesus Christ imputed or infused?

Right. Okay. I bet you could get a bunch of saved five -year -olds to answer that question wrong.

Right. Right. Well, okay. So there you go. Chesterton was a saved five -year -old.

Wow. Wow. Really? Chesterton was a saved five -year -old.

I guess that fits with the Roman Catholics are our unregenerate brothers and sisters in Christ.

You know, they got baptized, right? Got that father, son, Holy spirit thing going. So magic, it just happens.

I guess we better finish it off. Don't ordain them. Right. Right. But someone's hearing this and saying, yeah, but pastor

Wilson, that's the five -year -old. Right. If you ask that question to Chesterton, if you ask that question to Tolkien, right.

Right. What level are you going to hold them at? Well, I'm going to hold the base. Basically what

I want to know is, is the, is the grace of God present in their life?

Is the spirit of God active in their life? Now, if they say that is not the question, the question is what gospel are they confessing faith in that?

That's not even in here. I did the, all the illustrations have completely left out the fundamental distinction that the new

Testament itself presents and that there are two gospels. There's a true gospel, just one.

And then there are perversions there of that are false gospels. Where has that been here? I just, one word, just one word.

I haven't heard a thing. How could that be when they send over here or they send when they're sending doctrinally?

I, Chesterton exasperates me, especially when, when, whenever he edifies me and exasperates me at the same time, whenever he gets onto Calvinists, he just talks.

He talks nonsense, right? But the reason that's so glorious is because we're not saved by works, right?

He's, he's failing. He's sinning. He's stumbling at that point. And I don't approve of that. He's failing.

He's sinning. He's stumbling as if he was even following a true gospel to begin with.

I, I, you can tell the level of frustration here is very high because he's a bright man.

But here's an illustration. Here's an illustration of how your traditions, no matter how bright the light is, can completely throw you right off the mountain on key issues.

It can happen to every one of us. It can happen to any, any one of us. Just, just amazing.

Absolutely, positively amazing. Somebody in channel is saying something here, but before we go, let me, let me at least take a look at it.

See what this is all about. I don't know what

I, evidently, according to someone who interacted with Doug, he pointed to Colossians 4, 10 through 11 as evidence that you can have once been a

Judaizer and then get saved. And I don't have any earthly idea what that is.

It was called justice. These are the only fellow workers of the King of God who are from the circumcision, and they have proved to be an encouragement to me.

Wow. Well, I guess if you're looking for something, you can find it. I didn't get to what would have been probably the one thing that everyone talked about, about this program.

I'm gonna have to hold off to the next one, but on the next dividing line,

I'm going to have to talk some eschatology. On the next dividing line, a member of my own church posted a link to an article by Kenneth L.

Gentry Jr. on 2 Timothy 3. And I'll admit,

I think 2 Timothy 3 is one of the main reasons I'm not a post -millennialist. I'm a non -millennial. And I read

Brother Gentry's words and I went, huh? What?

And so, um, I want to respond to what Kenneth Gentry said about, um, 2

Timothy 3 .1. That's an article, post -millennialism and perilous times, question mark.

And, uh, I'm going to provide a, uh, a non -millennial response to Kenneth L.

Gentry on that particular text. We might have someone tune in next time.

Cause I told you, I told you it might be, uh, a little out of the norm, a little out of the norm, but unless something else happens, we may end up what?

Oh, watch the next DL or you'll be left behind. Ha ha ha ha.

I've heard there's a movie out about that or something. I, I, I'm not, I didn't see, no,

I'm not going to see, no, no, no. There are a lot of movies that I would see before that and I don't see many movies.

So anyway, next time, Thursday, Lord willing on the dividing line.