The Real Issues With Rome

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May 13, 2023

I very much appreciated the conversation between George Farmer and Allie Beth Stuckey on the issues between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. I listened to the conversation and wish to offer some thoughts from someone who has spent decades on this topic.

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00:06: Well, greetings, I'm going to try to make this, I was about to say as short as possible and I realized, complete lie,
00:14: I'm going to try to be concise, let's put it that way. For those who don't know me, we're going to put this out on our normal feeds, but I'm really hoping that this video will be viewed by a lot of folks that are not a normal part of Alpha and Omega Ministries, don't watch the dividing line.
00:38: And so let me just very, very briefly, why would I provide a response to the discussion that took place between George Farmer and Elie Wiestecki in regards to Roman Catholicism and Protestantism?
00:53: I did my first formal moderated public debate with a group called
00:59: Catholic Answers, well -known Catholic apologetics organization, in August of 1990,
01:05: St. Cyprian's Roman Catholic Church in Long Beach, as I recall, I believe it was August 16th, 1990.
01:12: Since then I've done about 35 or 36 moderated public debates with Roman Catholic apologists,
01:21: Jerry Matytix, Patrick Madrid, Father Mitchell Packer, we've done five debates over the years.
01:30: And written a number of books on the subject, Roman Catholic Controversy from Bethany House Publishers. So we've been dealing with this subject for many decades, and everything in that discussion has been covered in the debates we have done over the years.
01:47: And these are not 45 minute debates, they are moderated public debates, some of them over three hours in length each.
01:54: When Jerry Matytix and I debated the papacy during the papal visit in 1993 in Denver, Colorado, we did three and a half hours, two nights in a row.
02:03: So that was seven hours on the papacy, just in that one particular context. So I've been engaging the subject for a lengthy period of time.
02:14: And as such, when I listened to the conversation, I felt the need to minimally direct people to resources, to where they could maybe get a little more information.
02:27: Every generation has to deal with these issues. Vast majority of so -called Protestants are
02:33: Protestants of tradition and taste, not of conviction or knowledge. And a Protestant that does not know why they are a
02:40: Protestant is just a convert waiting to happen. That's all there is to it. And so many
02:47: Protestants today are far away from the Reformers. They do not have nearly as high a view of Scripture, for example, as the
02:54: Reformers had. And as such, it's very easy for them to be brought into feeling the need for something more than just Scripture.
03:06: And so I just felt it would be useful if we utilize the resources we have here.
03:12: I am sort of an itinerant speaker at the moment. I don't fly anymore.
03:18: I drive. And so I am literally in a studio that we have built in the front of an
03:26: RV. And I thought, you know what? Got electricity. Got the
03:32: Internet. Let's do this. Let's do this. So I will try to be succinct.
03:39: However, if you want more information, if you go to aomin .org, a -o -m -i -n .org,
03:45: you'll find links there to our YouTube channel and our Odyssey channel.
03:51: And you will find a large majority of those debates are available online, as well as numerous dividing line programs.
04:00: For example, we'll touch briefly on veneration of saints and angels and prayers to Mary and the saints.
04:08: And I debated Patrick Madrid on that subject many years ago. And then
04:13: Patrick did a follow -up discussion of that. So we did a follow -up discussion of the follow -up discussion that went even more and more in depth.
04:20: And so there's very often on any one of these subjects, for example,
04:27: Sermon 131 from Augustine, where he's fighting with the Bishop of Rome and rejecting the
04:33: Bishop of Rome's conclusions and forcing the Bishop of Rome to back down. That's a subject we've gone deeply into on the dividing line as well.
04:41: And there are archives of the dividing line on sermonaudio .com to go back to the late 1990s.
04:48: And so there are thousands of hours, not only on the subject of Roman Catholicism, but Islam, Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, textual criticism, church history.
04:57: I should... I didn't introduce myself for those of you who don't know me. Not only am
05:03: I the director of Alpha Omega Ministries, I'm one of the pastors at Apologia Church in Mesa, Arizona. I am professor of church history and apologetics at Grace Bible Theological Seminary and I've authored about 24 books or contributed to 24 books.
05:18: And one of those includes their own Catholic controversy. So if you are interested in that subject, again, more information there.
05:26: So what I'm going to be doing is I'm going to be playing only audio, trying to do video.
05:33: So just way too much for me to do right now to be able to get it done this evening. So I'll be playing audio.
05:40: And let me mention, I will be playing the audio at 1 .2 speed. I always mention that just so that people don't get upset that you're editing things.
05:49: No, I'm just making it a little bit faster so we can get through it a little bit quicker. I listened to it at 1 .8 to 2 .0.
05:55: So 1 .2 is actually rather slow when you get to it. All right, let's start off with this that sort of began the discussion.
06:08: And the discussions have gotten interesting because my husband planted a seed in my head that won't go away and I would not yet describe me as being in a place where that seed has fully bloomed.
06:18: But it is a question that I am struggling with as somebody with Protestant beliefs. What he essentially said to me, he was also formerly
06:24: Protestant and now he's a Catholic, was, do I believe that in the 1 ,500 years following Jesus Christ, leading up to Martin Luther, Staples, Assisis, that nobody went to heaven?
06:37: So essentially, Jesus saved us. And then for about 1 ,500 years, nobody went to heaven until Martin Luther, Staples, Assisis and corrected things.
06:45: I don't believe that. I struggle with that question. And it has been something that I have been sitting with for a very long time, of course, because that would almost imply in my mind that Martin Luther is the savior and not
06:55: Jesus. And so I've had trouble. OK, so Candace tells us and so let me just address
07:02: Candace. Candace, that's not what the reformers believed. That's not what Martin Luther said.
07:09: When Martin Luther nailed the 95 theses, the castle church door at Wittenberg, no one would have noticed it.
07:16: If someone had been walking by, they wouldn't have even noticed he was doing it because that was the bulletin board of the local community.
07:23: Wittenberg was a rural city. So if anybody's walking by, they're probably had a cow with them. And about the only conversation would have been, good morning,
07:31: Father Martin. Good morning. That would have been it. Because the 95 theses were written by a Roman Catholic priest,
07:37: Martin Luther. He was still a Roman Catholic. And he wasn't trying to start a reformation, and he was actually just trying to get a debate going for the
07:48: University of Wittenberg. Debates back then were the equivalent of modern football games. And so he was just trying to help get
07:56: Wittenberg on the map. And his concern expressed in the 95 theses was a concern that he wasn't the only one to have.
08:03: The doctrine of indulgences that he was focused upon there was embarrassing to many people.
08:11: Everybody knew the money was simply going from Germany to build St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. And they knew it was a horrific abuse of the grace of God.
08:21: It was actually after this when Martin Luther debated a brilliant man who became
08:29: Luther's enemy throughout his life, Johann Eck, at the University of Leipzig, that Luther was forced to think through the issues for the first time.
08:41: He, Eck, accused him of being a Hussite, and Jan Hus, a hundred years earlier, had been burned at the
08:48: Council of Constance for believing in things like sola scriptura and justification by faith. And Luther came to understand during the debate when he went to the library and looked up stuff on Hus that he was a
09:01: Hussite and that Hus had said many evangelical things. And this forced Luther to start thinking about not just the message that he had come to understand, which was justification by faith, that we are justified by grace through faith alone and not through the sacraments of the
09:16: Roman Catholic Church. But now, Eck attacking him made him start understanding the supremacy and the primacy of scripture, hence sola scriptura.
09:27: But this took time to develop. And none of the reformers, not
09:32: Luther, not Zwingli, not second generation reformers like Calvin, would have ever dreamed of saying that there were no
09:38: Christians between the apostles and Martin Luther. Not even the
09:44: Mormons say that. And the Mormons are far outside Christianity by any stretch of the imagination.
09:52: Even the wildest fundamentalist Baptists who have Baptists going all the way back, hiding in caves, but not known to church history, even they wouldn't say that.
10:04: So the question, I don't know why the question is even said. I think of numerous early church fathers that I have tremendous respect for, disagreements with, yes, but tremendous respect for.
10:16: I think of Bishop Fulgentius of Rusk. You're talking into the now we're getting the 5th and 6th centuries and the transition period into the medieval period.
10:28: And these are these are people whose writings are filled with great wisdom. And we're plainly believers in the
10:34: Lord Jesus Christ. So it's not even a fair question because it's not what the reformers taught.
10:42: It's not what, quote unquote, Protestantism teaches, whatever that means anymore, let's be honest.
10:49: And by the way, I hate that term. It actually just historically comes from the
10:56: Holy Roman Empire. And it was the basis upon which some of the electors in the
11:01: Holy Roman Empire objected against Charles V's actions. As Protestants, as protesters, as the minority, that's where it came from.
11:10: It really didn't have anything to do with protesting Roman Catholic beliefs or anything. I know everybody says that, but those are the facts anyways.
11:17: And so these are things that we have to keep in mind when we when we hear these types of questions and we need to recognize that particular question just is not a valid question because it misrepresents our position rather fully.
11:33: So, by the way, when you all see me looking down over here, I have a program called Audio Notetaker and I have marked various things.
11:41: I could have marked much more, but I wanted to try to make this something we could actually get done this evening.
11:47: The Pope and the authority of the Pope. And I know that this is even a debate within Catholicism, but the infallibility of the
11:54: Pope, who the Pope is, of course, the argument is that the Pope goes all the way back to Peter, which I don't believe. And so and really just the structure and the authority of the
12:04: Catholic Church. OK, so here Alibeth was asked, what are your what's your hang ups? What what are the main problems you have with Roman Catholicism?
12:15: And so it started off and every debate I've done. When you when you push far enough, it will come back to solo scriptura.
12:26: And what we need to recognize is that 99 percent of the time Rome has a positive claim it itself is making, but they don't want to put that one out for examination.
12:41: They want to put the onus on everybody else to prove their ultimate statement.
12:47: And then if they feel they successfully refute that, then their ultimate statement becomes the default.
12:55: Let me let me say something. I believe in solo scriptura. Scripture is the sole infallible rule of faith for the church because it is the only example of the anustos,
13:09: God breathed revelation in possession of the church. Since the church is a bride of Christ, she wants to hear the voice of Christ.
13:18: The only place she has the voice of Christ is in Scripture. So the nature of Scripture is what makes it absolutely unique.
13:25: There is nothing in tradition or in church teaching that is the anustos, that is God breathed.
13:31: That is very, very, very important. So forgive me, had to take just a brief break there to take care of something around there.
13:43: So anyways, we're talking about the issues of what solo scriptura is and what it is not.
13:51: And what you need to understand is that Roman Catholicism has a positive position. I call it
13:56: Sola Ecclesia, the church alone. I say, no, no, no, no, no, no. We have a three legged stool.
14:03: Please listen. Think with me for a moment. In Roman Catholicism, what is the ultimate authority in determining what is and what is not
14:12: Scripture? The magisterium of the church. In Roman Catholicism, who has ultimate authority for interpreting what is in Scripture, the magisterium of the church headed by the pope.
14:25: In Roman Catholicism, who has the ultimate authority of determining what is and what is not tradition?
14:31: Now, I recognize in Roman Catholic theology, you have a sacred tradition and underneath that you have oral tradition and Scripture written tradition.
14:40: But who gets to determine what is and what is not magisterium of the church? Who gets to interpret that tradition?
14:46: Magisterium of the church. So you don't have three legs. You have one leg. The church determines what is and what is not
14:54: Scripture and what Scripture does and does not mean what is and what is not tradition and what tradition does and does not mean.
14:59: That's sola ecclesia. That's your ultimate authority. You can't question that. There's no way around it.
15:06: I remember very clearly back during John Paul II reign as pope. One year he'd put something out to keep the conservatives happy and next year something to keep the liberals happy.
15:19: And I pointed out that while the encyclicals that he he released.
15:25: Was in contradiction to something a pope had said officially hundreds of years earlier and a certain
15:32: Roman Catholic apologist, I remember very clearly said to me, James, you have no right. To interpret what the church has written before, only the church gets to interpret that.
15:44: So you can have you can look back at at Boniface's statement,
15:51: Unum Sanctum, and you can know exactly what he meant, exactly what the context was, exactly what the language was and what it meant to everybody in that day.
16:01: But only the church gets to interpret that. And so if the church says, nope, that's not what they meant, then you just simply have to go,
16:09: OK, that's sola ecclesia. And that they will not defend, but that is what they will always argue.
16:18: And no matter how hard they try to argue against that definition, they'll end up proving it. Just listen to it.
16:24: Like I said, go back and listen. Listen to the debate. I did with Jerry Matitix. Where I was asking him that one clip from the first debate we did on Long Island has sort of always stuck in my mind.
16:43: We were talking about the bodily assumption of Mary. I'd never said that phone's name, and I was trying to get him, we were talking about the bodily assumption of Mary and.
16:58: I was saying to him, OK, who in the first century believed the bodily assumption? I don't know.
17:04: I don't have to give you who in the second century, who in the third century. And finally said, James, I don't
17:11: I don't have to show you that every single person. Believed in the bodily assumption,
17:19: I said, I said, Jerry, I'll take just one because he didn't give me just one. And I would give him early church fathers to contradict his position.
17:28: Well, well, that's not tradition. Oh, so when one early church father says something that agrees with Rome, that's tradition.
17:35: But when they disagree with Rome, that's not tradition. Who gets to make that decision? The church does, of course.
17:41: That's how it works all the time. Sola Ecclesia is the position and they'll never, never lay on the table.
17:48: But it's always supposed to be the default. Once I attack Sola Scriptura, then you're to default back.
17:54: To this position, and that is a that is a major, major problem, but I'm already violating my just play it and give sources rule.
18:04: I knew I would. Let's let's press on. Sola Scriptura. Where in the
18:09: Bible does it say Sola Scriptura? Yes, well, the doctrine of. OK, so where does it say
18:16: Sola Scriptura? OK, that's a fair, fair question. Especially if you understand what
18:23: Sola Scriptura is actually saying, what's the claim? We're not saying that there is a phrase that says Sola Scriptura.
18:29: But we are saying that there is a positive teaching that demonstrates that Scripture is absolutely unique in having ultimate authority for the church.
18:43: And that the church possesses nothing else that can be made equal to it or superior to it.
18:50: And in fact, I would suggest to you, everyone who tries to come up with something is just equal to it.
18:55: Ends up presenting something that is superior to it. So let me refer everybody to the extensive discussions we have presented on this, not only on the dividing line, the large number of debates that we have done on this subject.
19:14: I think the best debate on Sola Scriptura that we did was with Father Mitchell Pacwa in 1999 in San Diego.
19:22: And the main reason for that is, aside from the fact that Mitch Pacwa is probably the most conservative Jesuit on the planet.
19:29: Mitch Pacwa is a man of honor. He does not engage in cheap debating trips.
19:35: And so it was an honest conversation. So, for example, during the cross examination in that debate, I asked him,
19:41: Father Pacwa, can you give us any words of Jesus that the
19:49: Roman Catholic Church has dogmatically defined that are not found in Scripture? No, no, that's never we never defined anything like that.
19:56: Any words of the apostles. That. Has been dogmatically defined as having been said by the apostles by the
20:03: Roman Catholic Church, they're not found in Scripture. No, nothing there. And that's what he said, he's very honest about that.
20:11: That's why, again, I recommend highly the five debates. There are only three of them on video. Two of them were recorded on video, but the other side wouldn't ever let us have them and wouldn't put them out themselves.
20:22: So the mass and justification by faith is only available in audio on sermon audio dot com as well.
20:29: But we have addressed the subject of soul scripture over and over again.
20:35: There is an extensive discussion. In the Roman Catholic controversy, my book on Roman Catholicism and in my book
20:44: Scripture Alone. So it's all about so much discussion of what
20:49: Scripture Alone does and does not mean, because there is a great deal of misrepresentation of soul scripture by Roman Catholic apologists.
20:59: That's just it's just a fact. I'm sorry that it's that way, but but it is. But fundamentally, what we are saying is the church only possesses one body of divine revelation that is
21:14: God speaking. And that is scripture. Tradition is not
21:19: God speaking. The pope is not God speaking. And therefore, it intrinsically, by its nature, has a unique authority that cannot be eclipsed.
21:32: That cannot in any way, shape or form be put under the authority of someone or something else.
21:42: And that there is nothing in tradition, there is nothing in church councils that can in any way equal scripture or can be said to be necessary for the interpretation of scripture.
21:57: Fundamentally. Scripture is God speaking and therefore is absolutely unique.
22:05: And so if God is if as as Peter said, who was not a pope, he called himself a fellow elder, as Peter said, men spoke from God as they were carried along by the
22:18: Holy Spirit. That cannot be said of anything else.
22:25: Rome's gotten pretty close to trying to claim those things. Vatican one, stuff like that, gotten pretty close to trying to say, yeah, that's what we're doing, too.
22:34: But that is not a that is not a biblical perspective in any way, shape or form. I've only done two clips.
22:40: This may take a while. I just want to be clear. Scripture itself does not say scripture alone.
22:46: Right. That's the point. It does not say at any point in scripture that scripture alone is to be utilized as the sole basis for faith.
22:52: Yes, but I'm saying that that's not the that's not the establishment or that's not the intention. OK. So he wants
23:00: I'm reminded when Roman Catholics argue this way of when Muslims say, well,
23:07: Jesus never said, I am God. Worship me. Well, he came awful close and in fact said things that without question teaches deity, he accepts worship, but they say you have to have those exact words.
23:26: And so if the argument is, well, but scripture doesn't use the phrase sola scriptura, and I simply say scriptura is unique, that makes it sola.
23:38: And now you simply have to argue, well, what makes something authoritative for the church? And it's pretty obvious that it's
23:45: God's revelation, God's speaking. It's real clear that Jesus, for example, in Matthew chapter twenty two.
23:55: When arguing with the Pharisees, the Sadducees, well, he argued with the
24:01: Pharisees, then he argued the Sadducees, because Sadducees saw that he had just refuted the Pharisees. So he's doing a lot of argument and Matthew chapter 22.
24:10: And in Matthew chapter 22, he refuted the Sadducees who, by the way, we'll get to it briefly here later on,
24:19: George was confused. He confused the Sadducees and the Pharisees. He flip flopped them. He said the
24:24: Pharisees denied the afterlife Sadducees affirmed it was it was the opposite of that. But because they did that, they were arguing with Jesus and gave the story about the woman who had had seven brothers, the
24:35: Levite law. And when Jesus refuted them, he started off by saying, you do not know the scriptures or the power of God.
24:42: He says, have you not read what was spoken to you by God saying, I am the
24:47: God of Abraham, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, he's not the God of the dead or the living, his refutation was,
24:54: I am the God, not I was the God. But most people don't catch what it is
25:00: Jesus said, he said, have you not read what was spoken to you by God?
25:07: Think about that normally, have you not read to be followed by what what I wrote to you.
25:14: But then he quotes words from 1400 years earlier, so to you or if you said, have you not heard what
25:22: I spoke to you? They said, have you not read? What I spoke, what have you not read, what
25:29: I spoke to you? Hmm, Jesus holds men accountable in his day for words that were written down 1400 years earlier, as if God has spoken them directly to them, there is nothing else like that, nothing.
25:46: There is no tradition, there is no church authority. That can even come close to that view that Jesus has, that scripture is
25:58: God speaking. It's God's words, it's God's speech, and it has ultimate authority.
26:12: OK, we continue with the citations of the reformers.
26:18: I don't think the contention of the reformers, because I understand you believe that it's a circular argument, it's necessarily in the same way that the
26:24: Trinity isn't, that we don't see a trinity, but we both believe in a trinity and so we understand. OK, now here's where I have to say to Allie Beth, this made me cringe just a little bit.
26:37: The Trinity is a biblical doctrine. I've written a book called
26:43: The Forgotten Trinity, my entire thesis was this is, we believe this because we believe all the scriptures, we believe soul scripture and total scripture, you'll believe the doctrine of the
26:54: Trinity. The Roman Catholic argument has always been that you need to have the church to believe in the
27:00: Trinity. And so I'm extremely sensitive to any compromise on that subject where you say, well, you know, the
27:09: Trinity is not founded. Actually, it is. It's forced on us. The Trinity teaches plainly the truth that there is one true
27:17: God. It teaches plainly that there are three divine persons identifying each as Yahweh.
27:23: And then it distinguishes between those divine persons. That is the doctrine of the Trinity.
27:29: Those are the three biblical doctrines that create the doctrine of the Trinity itself.
27:35: And so I think we need to be very, very careful that when we talk about Sola Scriptura, we are focusing first and foremost on the nature of scripture, its uniqueness and hence its authority in the church.
27:51: And the Trinity is a biblical doctrine forced upon us by the
27:57: Bible. The terminology is used to express biblical teaching to people so it will be understood.
28:07: But the doctrine itself is very, very, very much a biblical doctrine.
28:13: But the irony of that argument is you kind of have already linked it to the next point, which I was going to make, which is that you could argue that faith and infallibility is not explicitly defined in scripture in the same way that scripture itself is not defined in scripture in the same way the
28:24: Trinity is defined in scripture. And as a result, you could say, OK, so there's there's him doing that. There's the
28:30: Roman Catholic and no, papal infallibility is not found in scripture as the doctrine of the
28:38: Trinity is found in scripture by any stretch of the imagination. And not only that, the early church didn't believe any of that either.
28:45: So it is it is impossible to establish that scripturally.
28:51: And believe me, hey, again, go listen to the seven hour debate with Jerry Matadix on the papacy.
28:58: Listen to the three and a half hour debate with Mitch Pacquiao on the papacy. We've dealt with these issues for a very, very long time.
29:06: And I would direct people to those resources for more in depth. But there is a fundamental distinction between the biblical necessity of the
29:17: Trinity and the utter biblical bankruptcy of any concept of of the papacy and certainly papal infallibility to debates on that subject as well.
29:29: One with Robertson, Jennis and one with Tim Staples. So look those up if you want to get into those.
29:36: OK, but you're using an argument selectively because you're saying it in this circumstance, it applies where scripture alone must be the only argument. But on the flip side where you're talking about papal infallibility, this, however, does not apply.
29:44: I could argue, which I will do, that you could deduce from scripture that papal infallibility is actually defined in scripture.
29:50: Now, ironically. I think the vast majority of Roman Catholic apologists and scholars would recognize papal infallibility is not defined in scripture.
30:01: They might try to come up with some type of syllogistic argumentation, but it's going to be very extended. And and the idea that that was actually apostolic teaching just from a historical standpoint is just absurd.
30:14: And an exegetical standpoint is absurd as well. But it's very hard to get Roman Catholics to debate these things.
30:21: I got Robertson, Jennis to debate the bodily assumption once. But just just listen to the two debates that we did,
30:32: I think, in the same year. I think it was 1999 with Tim Staples and Robertson, Jennis.
30:37: Their their defense of infallibility was contradictory to each other. And their defense of.
30:46: Hopes who have been condemned as heretics, Pope Honorius, for example, who for 400 years when you took the papal throne and you became pope for 400 years, you had to anathematize
30:59: Honorius by name as the bishop of Rome as a heretic. You had to do that.
31:05: For 400 years. And Staples and Jennis came up with two completely different defenses as to how that doesn't change the doctrine of papal infallibility, which, by the way, is the greatest example of a useless doctrine that I've ever seen.
31:23: Papal infallibility is meaningless. Because if the pope makes a mistake, then he wasn't speaking infallibly.
31:30: And you can never know during your lifetime whether the pope was speaking infallibly or not.
31:36: Honorius proved that. So it's useless. It has no meaning. Has absolutely no meaning at all.
31:43: But we'll get into a little bit more of that as we go along. Coming back to Scripture, because I want to stay on that one.
31:50: Scripture itself. When was the canon of Scripture formed? The first example of the canon of Scripture being formed was the
31:56: Synod of Hippo, right? In 393. Yes, it's not true. The Muratorian fragment is significantly earlier.
32:03: Now, he may be talking about a statement of some type of council, but remember something.
32:11: Local councils are not infallible in Roman Catholic teaching. And so you have the
32:21: New Testament canon in the form we have it in Athanasius' 39th Festal Letter.
32:28: So you're talking about 367, something like that. And but that's not considered infallible, but neither is
32:35: Hippo or Carthage. And by the way, there are differences between Hippo and Carthage and the eventual dogmatic definition of Rome that comes over a thousand years later.
32:49: At the Council of Trent, April 1546, you have the first infallible definition, de fide definition of the canon on Rome's part.
33:01: So. All of the major Christian doctrines had already been enunciated, hammered out long before there was an infallible canon.
33:11: This leads to what has become known as the white question, by the way, and I'm not the one that named it that other people did.
33:20: But very quickly, I did a debate with Jerry Matitix, did two debates at Boston College in 94,
33:28: I believe, 1994. And one was on justification and one was on the
33:36: Apocrypha. I've done a number of debates on the Apocrypha. And Jerry and I had agreed, man, the
33:43: Apocrypha one's going to be a snoozer. Well, it wasn't. It ended up being far more exciting than the justification debate was.
33:50: And the Monday thereafter, we did a radio program. And I was on the phone, he was in the studio because of a mistake, but anyway.
33:59: He was still in debate mode, so we went right back at it. And I asked him a question during this on W .E
34:09: .Z .E. in Boston. I asked him, Jerry, how could a believing
34:18: Jewish man know that Isaiah and Second Chronicles were scripture.
34:24: Fifty years before Christ. Because he was arguing you need to have an infallible definition of the canon for scripture to function as a rule of faith, which you don't have until 1546 in Roman Catholicism.
34:39: And I was saying, no, you don't. Because Jesus held men accountable to scripture.
34:45: Without any infallible counsels to have defined what was the
34:51: Old Testament canon. So if Jesus could do that, so can we. And so I asked him the question 50 years before Christ, how could the believing
34:59: Jewish man know that Isaiah and Second Chronicles were scripture? It became quiet.
35:07: I grew up doing radio. And dead air is not a good thing. And so.
35:16: I the the woman, Janine Graf, I think it was her name, who was doing the interview, she she went to break.
35:28: Because it got quiet, Jerry just didn't know what to say, so she goes to break. And I'm like.
35:36: OK, I'll be interested to see what he says when he comes back when he comes back. He still doesn't have an answer.
35:44: Because there is no answer, not from the Roman Catholic perspective, if you're going to argue that you have to have an infallible counsel, an ecumenical counsel to define the canon of scripture.
35:55: Then the Roman Catholic has a real problem on many bases, for example. Carthage and Hippo had a different understanding.
36:04: Of the Deuterocanonicals, the Apocryphal Books, then Trent did, and they just didn't realize it.
36:10: So they defined different books. There's a excellent discussion of this by William Webster that you can you can get.
36:17: Bill Webster's material is great. His three volume series with David King on solo scriptura, absolutely necessary.
36:25: You need to have that in your library. Well worth the the investment in getting in getting that.
36:33: So there's differences between them on that level. But beyond that, the idea that there that it wasn't until 1546 that you could actually have scripture functioning can't work.
36:49: And so. Some of the answers that other people have come up with was, well, the
36:55: Jewish magisterium, here's the problem. The Jews never accepted the Deuterocanonical books. They didn't accept the
37:00: Apocryphal Books. They were not laid up in the temple. Another resource you need to get, the
37:06: Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church by Roger Beckwith. It is not an easy read. It is a scholarly read.
37:12: But you need to track it down. Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church, Roger Beckwith, goes through the early church in depth and demonstrates that the majority opinion did not accept the
37:29: Apocryphal Books and then basically demonstrates that you can you can trace two lines down through history.
37:37: The people that knew the most about the Jews and the Old Testament rejected them, the people that knew the least accepted.
37:45: But that you can find that the earliest and most primitive sources like Melito Sardis rejected the
37:53: Apocryphal Books. That's going to become important with more of what is is being said here.
38:02: So by the end of the fourth century is when you have the modern canon of scripture defined by the Council of Carthages, which were in the third, fourth and fifth century, which then went on to define what we now term the canon of scripture.
38:13: Well, actually, it was not even what we now term to define the canon of scripture, because of course, the Protestant Bible is without the
38:18: Deuterocanonical Books, the Apocryphal Books, as the Protestant Church put it, which the reformers themselves removed.
38:25: Now, did you catch that terminology, which the reformers themselves removed? Removed from what?
38:32: Well, the canon that had always been accepted. That is not true. If that is true, then
38:39: Pope Gregory the Great was a Protestant reformer because he rejected those books that they were not canonical.
38:46: Jerome was a Protestant reformer. Melito Sardis was a Protestant reformer. Cardinal Cajetan, who interviewed
38:53: Luther, was a Protestant reformer because they all rejected the canonical status of those books.
39:01: So are they really Protestant reformers? Or is it just simply wrong to be assuming these things?
39:08: Rome, in response to the Reformation, took the most shallow and least knowledgeable portion of the tradition and canonized it, defied it, in response to the
39:25: Reformation. That doesn't make those books canonical. It doesn't deal with Jerome.
39:32: It doesn't deal with his arguments with Augustine. It doesn't deal with Gregory the Great's rejection of these things.
39:38: None of that stuff doesn't deal with that. It was simply in response to the Reformation. That's not what infallible churches do.
39:46: And Rome is not infallible. You're then arguing to say that for 1500 years, you have a canon of scripture which has books in it, which themselves are no longer considered canonical.
39:57: It's just not true. Again, this is a false view of history. It does not deal with the reality of the fact that there were these, there was two traditions.
40:10: It just doesn't deal with that. And as a result, it's missing the important element of these conversations.
40:20: And not even 1500 years, because as I said, the canon of scripture wasn't actually defined until the end of the 4th century. So you've actually got 1200 years in which a selection of books that were then reformed by the reformers in the 16th century was used by the church.
40:34: So again, this is just it's fiction. It's fictional. Anyone who has done serious study on canon issues and on the deuterocanonicals and on the
40:48: Apocrypha knows that all the way through Cardinal Cayetan, at the time of the
40:54: Reformation, the informed opinion rejected them, did not accept.
41:01: And so that's just that's just simply erroneous. There is more. I had Mark there. Let's let's we've made our point.
41:07: Sure. And so just as a before I jump into that question, I will just on the Apocrypha. There is, you know, that is a there are several reasons the
41:16: Protestant church would argue that the Apocrypha should be removed, right? And the reason Jesus himself doesn't refer to many books in the
41:23: Old Testament, doesn't refer to Numbers, he doesn't refer to Chronicles. There's big parts. I think
41:28: Lamentations is also excluded. So a reference in the New Testament to a book in the Old Testament would exclude quite a lot of the
41:34: Pentateuch or exclude. OK, no, it wouldn't. And this is a very bad, very bad argumentation.
41:42: We know. And again, this is why you really need to get Roger Beckwith's Old Testament canon, the New Testament church.
41:48: Most people are not aware of the concept of laying up scriptures in the temple. But the
41:53: Jews, about 200 years before Christ, laid up the sacred books in the temple. What books they lay up, the 22 or 24.
42:02: Now, 22 or 24 is in relationship to the Hebrew alphabet. But it also refers to Hebrew canon.
42:09: And you might go, well, nobody has a can like that. Yes, we do. Protestants do, because they considered all the minor prophets as one.
42:18: Lamentations is with Jeremiah. When you add it all up, the books that were laid up in the temple 200 years before Christ were the exact same as we have in the
42:29: Protestant canon today. And again, Beckwith does a very good job in laying all of this out, the books that made the hands dirty, the threefold canon.
42:41: It's fascinating. The Deuterocanonical books and other intertestamental books make reference to the threefold canon, the law, the prophets and the writings.
42:51: That's why you can refer to the Tanakh, the Torah, the Nevi 'im and the Ketubim. The law, prophets and the writings.
43:01: And that division already exists. And it excludes the apocryphal books. They're not included. They're not included.
43:08: You'll sometimes find people say, well, there was an Alexandrian canon, there's a Palestinian canon. Beckwith does a very good job in debunking that common theoretical idea as well.
43:20: So it has absolutely nothing to do with what's being said here.
43:26: It's just there's bad information being presented here that needs to be corrected.
43:33: And also, the Jewish faith of the Pharisees became very important in the selection of what then became the canon of scripture.
43:39: And this is very important when it comes to the apocryphal, because the Pharisees, of course, confirmed life after death.
43:47: Again, that's reversed. That's just and I saw somewhere online. I thought I saw somewhere online where he had made a comment about that.
43:56: Yes, I mixed the two of them up. Stuff like that. That's you get under pressure.
44:02: You you speak fast. And the Pharisaic tradition was the one which, you know, post
44:07: Christ Judaism became very focused on. And that was that is often cited as the reason, for example, that.
44:14: Well, but here's the problem. The Jews already had a canon before Jesus came. And that's the whole point of Matthew 22, that's the point of the white question, for example, they'd already laid up the the scriptures in the temple.
44:29: So even if you want to try to make some distinction between Pharisees and Sadducees and stuff like that, this is still before Christ.
44:37: Very same, very similar time framing for the development of the Old Testament canon and the
44:42: New Testament canon, no angels from heaven, no infallible councils, God working with his people not to create canon.
44:50: I would again highly recommend discussion. The fastest way to do it is to go to the
44:58: G3 YouTube page, G3 conference page. I think it was twenty eighteen.
45:04: I've been twenty nineteen. I think it's twenty eighteen. When Dr. Michael Kruger and I did a little over hour long discussion on the nature of the canon as theology.
45:16: And we go through all these issues, so I highly recommend Dr. Kruger's books on this, the issue of the canon.
45:23: And then I address it in scripture alone as well. These fundamental resources will help you to understand what the canon is and is not.
45:37: These councils, we're not saying we have the authority to tell you what scripture is. These councils are primarily concerned with people bringing in books that have never been accepted by the church.
45:51: But they recognize that the authority of these books come from their nature, not from the church.
45:57: That's very, very important to see the book of the book of Tobit, for example, was considered to be removed by the reformers because it mentioned life after death, whereas a lot of.
46:06: So why did Pope Gregory the Great do that? Almost a thousand years earlier.
46:14: These little historical things are very inconvenient for people to have to deal with.
46:19: How many times has papal infallibility being utilized in its entire existence? The very fact that there isn't even a discernible answer from the
46:31: Roman Catholic perspective on this, he goes on to try to say that it was used in a number of different places.
46:38: It'd be fascinating to go through these things. But again, it is an irrelevancy.
46:46: If Honorius can write a letter to Sergius agreeing with monothelitism, you if you follow
46:55: Honorius' teaching during his lifetime, you would have been led into formal heresy, but you'd have no way of knowing during his lifetime.
47:04: What good is it if you look back at popes that made mistakes, you just go.
47:13: He wasn't speaking infallibly. And if he says what the modern church says, there's papal infallibility.
47:21: If he says what the modern church doesn't say, you reinterpret it some other way. It's useless. It's empty.
47:26: It has no meaning. If the pontificate of Francis has taught you anything.
47:34: Hasn't it taught you that? And you might. I mean, what good is it?
47:40: The pope right now. Has filled the College of Cardinals with his own acolytes, people who think like him.
47:48: Liberation theologians. And the pope, the pope has recently scandalously.
47:54: Put two pro -choice advocates on papal commissions in Rome.
48:00: What does that tell you about where the pope's at with his affirmation of of.
48:07: Pro LGBTQ advocates and what does that tell you?
48:13: Well, but it's not infallible. That's right. Nothing is. As long as it's an error by someone who comes later, then it's.
48:23: It wasn't infallible. It's convenient, but it doesn't mean anything. It doesn't actually accomplish anything is what
48:31: I'm saying. And then before that, you're back into the first millennia of Christianity when it's defining things like the arguments against historianism, religionism.
48:40: And as I say, that's not. So you sometimes in 2000 years, the reason that papal infallibility.
48:46: OK. Nobody. And in fact,
48:51: I love that that he mentioned plages. I would highly recommend to George that he look into Sermon 131.
49:00: You can go to a .org, put in Sermon 131. There is an extensive article that I wrote years ago documenting the fact that Roman Catholics, when
49:11: I debated Father Peter Stravinsky, highly recommend a debate with Father Peter Stravinsky on the subject of purgatory.
49:18: It was one of the most fascinating debates we ever did. And while the clearest debates we ever did. And during that time period, during that debate.
49:28: Peter Stravinsky quoted misquoted, but it was the standard misquotation that you see in Roman Catholic literature today.
49:37: Misquoted. Augustine in saying Rome has spoken, the case is closed.
49:45: Augustine never said those words. When you look up what he actually said. This was in reference to the great battle that took place between the
49:55: North African bishops, led by Augustine. And different Roman Catholic popes regarding plagians.
50:02: Rome had rehabilitated plagians. And the North African bishops said. No. Not accepting that.
50:12: And the bishop of Rome backed down. To the North African bishops.
50:18: Same thing happened during Cyprian's time. Much earlier, but we don't have time to get into all that. That's happened a number of times.
50:25: Nobody. Nobody outside of maybe Rome itself dreamed that the pope had ultimate authority to define these things.
50:33: Nobody. Didn't believe it. It wasn't it wasn't the pope that decided plagianism.
50:41: The North African bishops. Augustine argued the case. The North African bishops agreed.
50:47: And the pope of Rome eventually said, OK, if you say so. That didn't make it.
50:53: That didn't mean the pope of Rome decided these things. This is just it's it's anachronism in history being practiced.
51:03: Rome has to do this. See the difference. Like I said, I'm a professor of church history. And I have said over and over again,
51:11: I can let the early church fathers be the early church fathers. I can let them contradict me.
51:19: I can let them speak in their own contexts. Because I don't have some predefined this is what you need to find in the
51:27: Roman Catholic or in the early church of documents. Rome claims over and over again.
51:35: Look at the document Satus Cognitum, for example, in regards to papacy, the constant and ancient faith of the church.
51:44: It claims that this is the constant ancient faith of the church. And it wasn't.
51:51: And it wasn't. If it was, there wouldn't be need for things like the donation of Constantine, the
51:57: Pseudo -Isidorean Decretals and the long history of fraudulent documents that Rome used to establish its own position.
52:06: Wouldn't have needed those things. We wouldn't have needed the Council of Nicaea. In fact, and I would challenge this to George, show me a single bishop at the
52:19: Council of Nicaea that dogmatically believed everything you have to believe is a Roman Catholic. Just one.
52:25: Just one. There weren't any. There weren't any. So you can sit here and claim that was my church.
52:33: But if they believe completely different things than you do on many different issues, how do you mean it's your church? How does that how does that even work?
52:42: I think it's important to keep that very much, very much in mind. Be concise,
52:49: James. Be concise. Because there is no central teaching authority from which the church itself can draw.
52:54: OK, now you're talking about the Anglican Church. So you get what is exactly happening in the Anglican Church right now. You get the
53:00: Global South declaring itself independent of the Bishopric of Canterbury. You get all kinds of different denominations springing out of the
53:08: Anglican Church. You get Anglican Catholicism, which in itself is a sort of hybrid church. OK, so you're saying, see, you know, this is this goes back to a phrase that was used a lot back when
53:18: I first started engaging Roman Catholics. Sola Scriptura, the blueprint of anarchy. What's happening in Germany, guys?
53:27: What's happening in Germany? I guess Sola Ecclesia doesn't get rid of that problem, does it?
53:35: How do you deal with the fact that your current pope is a liberation theologian? You're going to try to say.
53:43: That, well, you know, the pope just can't can't change things, your pope has, and you even use the right example,
53:52: I'll wait till we get to that, I'll wait till we get to that. But point is. Forced unanimity is not an argument for the papacy because there's just too much history of the papacy that blows that away.
54:07: Going to scripture to say this is our ultimate authority, but that is different from only.
54:13: Right. So I think we need to figure out the Latin term would be for like ultimate, like ultimum Scriptura, only
54:18: Scriptura and Sola Scriptura, but it's still the only comes from, because it can work in tandem.
54:26: Yes, but because I don't believe that a pastor. No, the response is no, it can't work in tandem.
54:33: And we've already defined why. Because you're taking that which is the Anustos and joining that which is not.
54:40: So you're taking that which has a unique character and nature because of its origin and source, and you're joining it with something that has a lesser nature.
54:48: You cannot put those in tandem. Look at look at what happens when the
54:56: Jews did that. Mark and Luke both record for us. The discussion of the
55:05: Korban rule and Mark and Matthew both record the
55:12: Korban rule. Anyway. And in those discussions, you had the
55:19: Jews claiming a tradition coming from God. That you could take your possessions and you could.
55:28: Commit them to the temple, and therefore you couldn't use them to support your parents. But they are Korban, they're given to the to the temple.
55:37: They claim, look at tractate of both in the Mishnah, the Jewish traditions.
55:43: They claimed that that tradition came from Moses orally outside the scripture.
55:49: What did Jesus do? He rebuked them and said that they were breaking the scriptures for the sake of their tradition and called them hypocrites.
56:00: So Jesus taught us, even when someone claims divine authority for a tradition. Scripture is the ultimate authority.
56:09: Even when you say, well, there's a way outside. No, there's not. No, there's not. No, there is not.
56:17: This is a fairly lengthy little clip here. I'll take the current Pope, which I'll throw in some deliberate controversy.
56:24: But basically, the Pope came out the other day, a while back, and said the death penalty was inadmissible.
56:30: Now, let's be honest. He changed the Catholic catechism, the teaching of the
56:36: Catholic Church, the guide that you're supposed to go with. The Catholic Church had said in the past.
56:44: That capital punishment. Is in concert in harmony with the teaching of God.
56:50: Now, the Pope says it isn't. And he's changed the universal Catholic catechism to reflect that.
56:57: That's what he's talking about here. What does inadmissible actually mean? It's wonderfully ambiguous. But basically, this cannot be church doctrine.
57:07: And the reason that it cannot be church doctrine. Right. So it cannot be an infallible statement from Pope is because scripture and countless ecumenical councils and tradition speak to the fact that the death penalty is clearly not inadmissible.
57:20: Who gets to interpret that? Who are you? You're not even a prelate, not even a bishop.
57:27: Who do you think you are? I'm sorry, but your system does not allow you this freedom.
57:33: I know you want it. I know that you're sitting here going, but if we don't make this claim.
57:41: The Pope could, the Pope could say anything. Yeah, that's right. That's right.
57:49: You see, just history again here. Remember, you once had three Popes. The Babylonian captivity of the church, when the papacy moved to Avignon, France, and then was reestablished in Rome.
58:02: And then you had the two anathematizing each other. And so they call a council, the Council of Pisa. They come up with a new
58:08: Pope, but the other two won't step down. So now you have three Popes. And so finally, you have the Council of Constance.
58:15: You had to have a council to heal the papacy. Now, there was a brief chance there.
58:22: There was a brief period of time where maybe conciliarism might have conquered and said, you need to have church councils.
58:31: Didn't last. Didn't last. And in fact, conciliarism became a heresy by the later
58:39: Popes who claimed such astounding authorities and powers. Which one was the right
58:45: Pope during that time? You don't know. You have no way of knowing. It's impossible to know.
58:52: But you had three of them. And who gets to interpret those anathemas that were going back and forth?
59:01: Who are you to interpret? You have the infallible Vicar of Christ. And he interprets those councils in scripture to say, it's inadmissible.
59:13: Who are you to contradict him? This is what happens when you reject sola scriptura.
59:19: You don't have an unchanging standard. And what happens if the next Pope? And again,
59:27: Francis has packed the College of Cardinals with his own acolytes.
59:35: He's put on the papal biblical commission.
59:40: This is a big one. I was going to say this earlier. He has put on that council.
59:46: George is going to say, we believe in inerrancy. I bet you less than 5 % of the scholars on the papal biblical commission would affirm the doctrine of inerrancy.
59:59: In fact, it's possible none of them would. And I'll bet you nobody that Francis has put on the papal biblical commission would affirm inerrancy.
01:00:07: I'll bet you none of them. What does that mean? Well, you got to deal with reality as it exists.
01:00:15: It is not against the word of God, because the word of God says you can kill people. Who's interpreting that?
01:00:22: Who gets to interpret that? Who did you say gets to interpret that? The church does. Who speaks to the church? Well, we have all this history, but you have to interpret that history.
01:00:32: You're the one saying you need the interpreter. In circumstances, there are several circumstances where God decreased death.
01:00:39: So again, the magisterial, that's magisterial authority, which is handed down from ecumenical councils, which is handed down from tradition, which is handed down from scripture, forms the corpus of the authority of the church.
01:00:49: And this is also why, for example, it takes hundreds of years, decades, hundreds of years to define new authority within the church, new doctrine.
01:00:59: Really? How'd that work with Immaculate Conception? Bodily Assumption?
01:01:06: I can point you to seven popes that rejected the concept of the Immaculate Conception. It's easily done.
01:01:14: It's not difficult. Even Aquinas believed the modern form of that. Bodily Assumption, man, that popped in quick.
01:01:24: What if some pope someday, John Paul II came close, but didn't do it, defines co -mediatrix and co -redemptrix?
01:01:31: I mean, popes have been teaching that as doctrine, just not de fide for a long time. What about that?
01:01:38: Clear examples of what happens when you deny sola scriptura. But tradition forms the basis for the interpreter.
01:01:47: Oops, I'm sorry. I skipped this one. Sorry, sorry. Authority. Scripture is inerrant, right?
01:01:53: The Catholic Church teaches this. That was, I wanted to play that again. Go to Boston College.
01:02:02: Go to any Jesuit institution. But tradition forms the basis for the interpretation of scripture.
01:02:10: Right? And so this is why, for example, when... What tradition? Defined by whom? I can present you tons of patristic citations supporting sola scriptura.
01:02:22: Athanasius. Scripture is sufficient for the establishment of the truth.
01:02:27: I can provide you with lots of stuff like that. Going back to the earliest sources. But your church doesn't define that as part of the apostolic tradition.
01:02:38: You see the circularity here? There's no way to avoid it. That's not a scripture. I go back to those first 400 years and say, the oral traditions of Christianity in those first four centuries were the teaching of early church.
01:02:51: There was no scripture. There was only individual texts of scripture. Some... There was no scripture?
01:03:02: I, one of the favorite classes I've ever taught is development of patristic theology. The Greek Septuagint was the scripture of the early church.
01:03:13: You bet they had scripture. You're probably talking about New Testament, but you bet they had scripture.
01:03:19: And when you talk about oral tradition, you're talking about something that was passed down by the apostles? Prove that any apostle ever taught the bodily assumption of Mary.
01:03:29: You've defined it on the basis of supposed tradition, but it is self -evident that nobody in the time period of those 400 years believed what you believe about that.
01:03:39: It's self -evident. Very, very clear. Very, very obvious. Almost done with the first of the two, etc, etc, until the church itself came together.
01:03:50: And this is also one of the reasons that we afforded such, we afford their councils such authority, because the councils themselves defined what scripture was.
01:03:58: It defined what was to be used. Okay, so here's the claim.
01:04:04: These early councils actually created canonical authority. No, they didn't.
01:04:11: And why didn't the ecumenical councils even touch canon? Nicaea didn't, Ephesus didn't, Chalcedon didn't, didn't even touch it because they weren't operating with a modern
01:04:22: Roman Catholic epistemology. Okay, I have much less and pretty much only at the beginning in the second of the two programs.
01:04:31: So I might get this done tonight. I apologize, but I knew this was going to go long, but hopefully it's useful to you.
01:04:39: I'm going to get pretty illogical here. Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. 1 .2,
01:04:45: not 2 .0. We don't need chipmunk version of the thing.
01:04:50: And I'm going to get pretty illogical here, kind of very quickly. So the Council of Ephesus in 431 defined
01:04:57: Mary as the mother of God. And the reason, okay, a little background here. Again, I wrote a book called
01:05:06: Mary, Another Redeemer? It's available on Kindle. Wrote it in the late 90s because there was a lot of speculation that John Paul II was going to define the fifth
01:05:16: Marian dogma. He didn't, but it's a whole discussion of the preceding
01:05:22: Marian dogmas might be very useful to you if you wanted to pick up a copy of that. But I give a defense of the use of the term
01:05:32: Theotokos, which literally means God bearer. Now, it's been translated as mother of God in English.
01:05:39: The reality is, and this is what I teach in all my church history classes, and originally,
01:05:45: Theotokos was a Christological title. It had to do with the nature of Jesus, not with Mary.
01:05:59: Zoom went bye bye. I hope we didn't lose too much there.
01:06:05: I was talking about the term Theotokos. I can't go back and find out where I was.
01:06:10: So I'll just pick up at that point. Theotokos was a term about Christ, not a term about Mary.
01:06:16: It was an affirmation of the unity of the two natures in Christ.
01:06:25: This whole section here gets a little bit complicated because I think George is just confused about Nestorianism and Christology in the early church.
01:06:34: He seems confused about the terms nature and person. A couple of times he started to say person, then he would say nature. The early
01:06:41: Christological controversies in post -Nicene development, I like to use my hands to illustrate what we're looking at.
01:06:50: The hypostatic union, the intimate connection of two natures in one person in Jesus Christ.
01:06:57: The errors are Apollinarianism, where a part of the human nature is not there and is replaced by the logos.
01:07:06: That's Apollinarianism. If you mix the two natures together, where you've got 50 %
01:07:11: God, 50 % man, that's Eutychianism. Where you separate the natures, that's
01:07:17: Nestorianism. Now, that's Nestorianism as we define it today. There's pretty good evidence Nestorius didn't actually believe that, but that's a whole other issue if you separate them.
01:07:26: So Nestorius would not call Mary Theotokos. He would only call her
01:07:32: Christotokos, mother of the Messiah. And so that's where the allegation of the separation of the natures came into being.
01:07:44: And so there's the issue. There's the problem. How do you define the two natures, divine and human, in the one person of Jesus Christ?
01:08:00: OK, so let me take this back here. This is the background of the term Theotokos, and hence
01:08:07: Council of Ephesus, and much more importantly, the Council of Kaostan 41. And I'm going to get pretty theological here, kind of very quickly.
01:08:14: So the Council of Ephesus in 431 defined Mary as the mother of God. And the reason that the Council of Ephesus, as one of the authoritative church councils, defined
01:08:22: Mary as the mother of God was because it was facing the Nestorian crisis of the time, which I mentioned earlier.
01:08:27: The Nestorian crisis said, led by Bishop Nestorius, said that Christ was two persons and he was he was two natures within Christ.
01:08:39: It could not. And this was the whole, and I'm really abbreviating here, and there's a lot more literature written on this by much better people than me.
01:08:45: OK, I think he's confused because the Orthodox understanding is that Jesus has two natures in one person.
01:08:53: That's the Chalcedonian definition. But he's seemingly denying that Jesus has two natures because he first says two persons.
01:09:02: And then he says two natures. It's very confusing. But it is worth looking into this, because basically what this was saying is that Christ was two natures, right?
01:09:11: He was, if you hear that, trying to say person, but then he says two natures. Yes, Jesus did have two natures, divine and human.
01:09:18: That's what the hypostatic union is all about, in one person. Human nature, and he was his divine nature, right?
01:09:26: And what the church eventually came to define was that Christ could not be two natures.
01:09:32: He had to be one nature. Right. That's just not true. That is that's heretical.
01:09:38: I think he's just confused. But no, that he's he does seem to understand difference between nature and person, how it was used at the time, the
01:09:47: Cappadocian fathers, Chalcedon, none of these things. And the fact that he starts saying person and says nature, there's just some serious confusion.
01:09:56: Hypostatically unified, right? Which is what exactly? Because you cannot divide the nature of God. Right. Right. And in doing so, the church anathematized
01:10:06: Nestorius and excluded him from communion with the church.
01:10:11: And the reason being was because, as I said, you divide the nature of God. And then there's a whole conversation about persons and how do you unify a person, et cetera, et cetera.
01:10:18: These were the Christological debates of the church faced by certain centuries. OK, that was just confusing.
01:10:26: But there is a biblically defensible use of theotokos because it's referring to Christ as truly
01:10:35: God when he is born of Mary. So that that's what we should get out of that.
01:10:40: But I think there's some serious confusion there on George's part that hopefully he can clear up. And his adoration,
01:10:47: Latria, is the full adoration of God ascribed only to God. It can only be given to God.
01:10:54: It is what is celebrated in the mass. It is what is celebrated in adoration of the best sacrament. Julia, which is a second stage, which is what would be described as veneration, can be ascribed to Mary.
01:11:07: Now, what is actually described to Mary is hyper Julia, because she contains this unique position of being the mother of God.
01:11:15: The saints are granted Julia, which is veneration. And the conversation around saints, for example, I would say is similar to like, you know,
01:11:22: I think this is the most applicable metaphor would be like, please pray for me. Right. We say that to Christian brothers and sisters the whole time.
01:11:29: Please pray for me. Please pray for me about this issue. Please pray for me about this topic. I'm struggling with this. I'm struggling with sin, et cetera, et cetera.
01:11:35: In the same way that we ask other Christian brothers and sisters to pray for us, we are asking the saints that the
01:11:41: Catholic world, you would say, that doesn't stop at that. OK, let me again refer you to the debate that I did with Patrick Madrid on.
01:11:55: Prayers to saints, angels, we got into Latria and Julia.
01:12:01: There is no biblical distinction between Latria and Julia. That is a made up distinction. It is actually contradicted by the meaning of the
01:12:07: Greek term. Aha. I'm sorry. Hebrew term Ahav in the Old Testament, which can mean both to worship and to serve and is translated by both
01:12:16: Latria and Julia. The reformers point out this was a complete charade.
01:12:21: It is made up distinction that has no meaning. And that this argumentation.
01:12:28: Well, we're just asking the saints to pray for us. Do me a favor. Do me a favor. And I especially say this to to Candace, go get a
01:12:42: Roman Catholic book. It's by a doctor of the church. Now, you may not know what the doctor of the church is. Thomas Aquinas was a doctor of the church.
01:12:49: Alphonsus de Liguri is a doctor of the Roman Catholic Church. His book, The Glories of Mary, has gone through over 800 editions.
01:12:59: Eight hundred editions. Read The Glories of Mary and tell me that's not worship. Now, I I warn you,
01:13:08: I warn anybody. Reading Liguri was one of the most spiritually degrading experiences of my life.
01:13:19: Seeing Mary exalted in this way, seeing Jesus demoted in this way. Let me let me give you an example.
01:13:25: Since I mentioned this, let me just tell the story.
01:13:31: In fact, given how long I've gone, I'm just going to finish with this. OK, well, no, I do need to need to talk about the gospel at the end.
01:13:37: Sorry, Zoom has already stopped on me once. I may have already lost half of what
01:13:43: I've recorded before. I don't know. Well, we'll find out. Lord, make it work.
01:13:52: When I debated Jerry Matitix at Boston College, before we did that, we also did a radio program.
01:13:59: We did a radio program afterwards. I already mentioned that one. We did a radio program in studio beforehand. I have a picture of Jerry and I in the studio.
01:14:10: And I had a little booklet in my briefcase with me that I had found in the seat.
01:14:18: In the chapel at the hospital where I was a chaplain in Phoenix, Arizona, and I opened the booklet up and I read this prayer to Jerry.
01:14:29: Now, Jerry is a convert to Roman Catholicism, and I fully expected him to go, oh, James, James, James, that's that's not what we believe and et cetera, et cetera.
01:14:39: Here's the prayer. Oh, mother of perpetual help, thou art the dispenser of all the gifts which
01:14:45: God grants to us miserable sinners. And for this end, he has made thee so powerful, so rich and so bountiful in order that thou mayest help us in our misery.
01:14:53: Thou art the advocate of the most wretched and abandoned sinners who have recourse to thee. Come to my aid, for I recommend myself to thee.
01:15:00: In thy hands, I place my eternal salvation and to thee I entrust my soul.
01:15:06: Count me among thy most devoted servants, take me under thy protection, and it is enough for me.
01:15:12: For if thou protect me, I fear nothing, not from my sins, because thou wilt obtain for me the pardon of them, nor from the devils, because thou art more powerful than all hell together, nor even from Jesus, my judge, because by one prayer from thee, he will be appeased.
01:15:33: But one thing I fear, that in the hour of temptation, I may through negligence fail to have recourse to thee and thus perish miserably.
01:15:42: Obtained for me, therefore, the pardon of my sins, love for Jesus, final perseverance and the grace ever to have recourse to thee, oh mother of perpetual help.
01:15:54: This is the essence of Liguri's book. I read that to Jerry Matitix, fully expecting him to go, oh, you know what he did?
01:16:07: He looked across those microphones in that radio studio and he said to me,
01:16:13: James, my prayer is that someday you'll be able to pray that prayer with me. This is not an
01:16:21: Orthodox. This is Orthodox Roman Catholic Mariology. And it says.
01:16:28: Three things I fear, my sins, the devils and Jesus, my judge.
01:16:36: And I say to you, if you fear Jesus, you've never come to know
01:16:41: Jesus. You don't know the gospel. I have more to say about that in a moment.
01:16:53: Where did my cursor go? Oh, there it is. OK, just a few more here.
01:16:58: And there are references in Hebrews to the fact that continuous offerings are being made in heaven on part of the part of the priesthood, which is also in communion with how we as Catholics identify the mass.
01:17:10: There is no such thing. There is no such thing. There is no sacerdotal priesthood in the
01:17:17: New Testament. See my debate with Mitch Paco on the subject. There is no sacerdotal priesthood in the
01:17:23: New Testament and there are no continuing offerings. In fact, the emphasis of Hebrews. Is upon Epipox, Epipox and Epipox, the once for all sacrifice, the finished sacrifice that perfects those for whom it's made of Jesus Christ.
01:17:40: That is the emphasis of Hebrews seven of Hebrews nine and Hebrews 10.
01:17:48: The difference that Hebrews lays out between biblical Christianity and the biblical gospel and the
01:17:54: Roman Catholic understanding is very stark. In Roman Catholicism, you have the repetitive offering of the sacrifice of the mass.
01:18:04: That's what transubstantiation is all about. Christ is present, made present by the sacramental authority of the words of ordination by the priest.
01:18:15: And so he is offered in an unbloody fashion. And that's why the sacrifice of the mass is considered to be propitiatory in Roman Catholic theology.
01:18:25: But in the Bible, you have one sacrifice, Epipox once for all time.
01:18:33: And in Hebrews chapter 10, it is laid out for us. The repetitive sacrifices remind us of sin for New Testament Christians.
01:18:45: What you have is a finished sacrifice that perfects you.
01:18:51: And therefore, what we have in the Lord's Supper is not a repetitive sacrifice.
01:18:58: It is a remembrance of the sin bearer, not our sins. If it's repeated over and over again, it means your sins have not been dealt with in the
01:19:06: Lord's Supper. What does Jesus say? Do this as an anamnesis, a remembrance of me, the sin bearer.
01:19:14: He bears our sins, the great exchange. He who knew no sin, God made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him and to Candace and to anyone else.
01:19:32: The reason not to become a Roman Catholic. Is the gospel, all this other stuff we've been talking about, it's important, but it's the gospel.
01:19:40: Romans five, one says, therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. True peace, true shalom, not a ceasefire, true wholeness of relationship.
01:19:53: Because you see, if you truly know Jesus Christ, then you know that you have his righteousness imputed to you.
01:20:01: That is not a Roman Catholic teaching. In fact, Rome calls that a fiction. And that's why you can't have true peace.
01:20:11: That's why that relationship can be broken by the commission of a mortal sin. But according to scripture, it's the righteousness of Christ that has been imputed to us.
01:20:23: And so I want to I want to close. There was some more things that was good play, but I got into the gospel there. It's gone a long, long time.
01:20:30: Let me show you some. Let me let me present this to you. And I hope it'll be useful to you.
01:20:36: But I think it's just vitally important. OK, I highly recommend to you the reading of Romans chapters four and five.
01:20:51: But let's let's look at what scripture says, OK? In fact, I'm going to sorry, need to annotate the screen here.
01:21:05: And I want to make this big and I want to I can't do that. So I will have to keep that a little smaller.
01:21:11: I'll just push it out here for you. Sorry, doing this live. I do this for you quickly, but this is very important.
01:21:18: Romans chapter four. OK, for what does the scripture say, Abraham believed
01:21:25: God and it was counted to him as righteousness now to the one who works, his wage is counted according to is not count according to grace, but according to what is due.
01:21:37: Please notice something in the original language. Verses four and five start off identical, except for the word not so to the working one, the wage, but verse five to the not working one, but believing.
01:21:55: And so what was the point? The one who works, if you do something to get something, his wage is not counted according to grace or as a gift, but as something that is owed what is due to him.
01:22:09: But to the one who does not work. But instead believes upon him who justifies the ungodly, declares the ungodly righteous, his faith is counted as righteousness.
01:22:26: That's the kind of faith that brings about righteousness. Why? Just as David also speaks of the blessing on the man to whom
01:22:36: God counts righteousness apart from works, apart from works.
01:22:43: Then he quotes from Psalm 32. Blessed are those whose lawless deeds have been forgiven and whose sins have been covered.
01:22:52: Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will not take into account.
01:22:59: Here's what I want you to see. Blessed is the man whose sin the
01:23:05: Lord will not take into account. Here's my question for any
01:23:12: Roman Catholic or anyone else. Are you the blessed man of Romans 4a?
01:23:20: Are you the blessed man? No Roman Catholic can say he is. No Roman Catholic can say he is.
01:23:29: If you want to see how this works out, search YouTube. James White, Peter Stravinskas, you will find a clip from our debate on Purgatory where I asked him, are you the blessed man?
01:23:41: His first response was when I first asked him, who is the blessed man? He said, Jesus. Blessed is the man whose sin the
01:23:51: Lord will not take into account. Jesus had no sin to take into account. So he realized he'd never been asked that question before.
01:23:57: So he realized that wasn't a good answer. And so I redirected the question and he said, well,
01:24:05: I hope to be. I hope to be. Think about it. In Roman Catholic theology, if you commit a venial sin, it is imputed to you and you have to work off the temporal punishments of sin.
01:24:18: That's why you go to Purgatory. If you commit a mortal sin, it's imputed to you. You lose the grace of justification.
01:24:24: You have to be re -justified. There is no non -imputation of sin in Roman Catholic theology.
01:24:30: Everything Paul is talking about here just simply isn't a part of the traditions of Roman Catholicism, but it is a part of the teaching of Paul.
01:24:40: Folks, every single believer is the blessed man of Romans 4 .8. That's the whole point.
01:24:47: The whole point of Romans 4 .8 is that you can have peace with God.
01:24:54: You can have righteousness because your sins have been imputed to Christ.
01:25:01: He has borne them in his body on the tree and his righteousness is then imputed to you.
01:25:08: Let's see, Rome doesn't have a finished work. Because of the mass, there is no finished work. And so you can't have peace.
01:25:16: You can't have that righteousness. And so to every
01:25:21: Protestant that I've ever talked to, that was thinking about swimming the Tiber and becoming Roman Catholic, I look at them and say, what have you ever believed about your relationship to God?
01:25:30: Don't you understand the righteousness you have in Christ? You're going to give that up for the treadmill of Roman Catholic penances and sacraments, sacramental forgiveness.
01:25:42: It's been very clear to me that those that made that trip never understood, never recognized that the sole ground of your peace, the reason you can have true shalom,
01:25:54: Romans 5 .1, therefore having been justified by faith, we have peace with God, the whole ground of that, my sins imputed to him, his righteousness imputed to me, that's what it means to be in Christ, wrath of God has no place in me because I'm in Christ and he loved
01:26:19: God perfectly in my place, his righteousness, the only claim that I have before God to have peace with God.
01:26:31: That is the issue. When I wrote the Roman Catholic controversy, that's how I concluded the issue is the gospel.
01:26:38: The issue is how you have peace with God. All these other things of varying levels of importance,
01:26:44: Sola Scriptura, very high. But if it gets in the way of the gospel, that's the issue.
01:26:52: That's the issue. So I hope you found these things to be useful. We've probably gone through them too quickly.
01:26:58: And I want to finish with the gospel because Ali did. And I think that was very important. And the key issue of the gospel.
01:27:06: Is the finished work of Christ and the nature of the imputed righteousness of Christ. That's the issue.
01:27:13: And far too often when Protestants, Roman Catholics talk, that's not what we're talking about. That's the only thing we should be taught.
01:27:20: That's the only thing we should be taught. AOMin .org, our website will take you to our
01:27:25: YouTube channel. There's an entire Roman Catholic segment where we have a lot of stuff.
01:27:32: We go in, I've done entire series. We've gone into early church fathers.
01:27:38: We've looked at Ignatius and Clement and believe me, we've been doing this for a long, long time.
01:27:43: There's a lot to get into. And sometimes it can become confusing. That last section was the most important. How do you have peace with God?