September 9, 2004

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From the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is
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The Dividing Line. The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.
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Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.
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This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602, or toll -free across the
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United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is
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James White. What do you mean there's no British accent? I just saw a
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British man on the channel say there's no British accent. What's he talking about? I don't know. Well, good afternoon.
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No, I'm not going to do the whole thing that way. Someday I will. I'm going to go to England next year, and so when I do that, we'll come back and we'll do the whole thing from England.
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How about we do that? We find some way and I'll call and do the whole program. The Bordel Short Circuit. The Bordel Short Circuit.
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Well that's okay. Welcome to The Dividing Line. Today is Thursday, and that means early tomorrow morning
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I head for the airport and head to Toronto, and I think that's in Canada, and we're going to be speaking up there, and then we come back.
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In fact, I come back in time for Sunday morning service, so I've been up since like 12 .30 my time in the morning.
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It's going to be tough to stay awake. That's going to be a rough one. Anyway, but then two weeks from now we're going to be down in Texas for the
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Southern Baptist Founders Conference meeting there in Texas, and I'm going to be speaking on more issues relating to justification.
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Something tells me there's going to be some interesting discussions going on at that particular point in time, but I have begun to develop the proverbial stack of stuff.
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Yes, I think everyone who is involved in doing any type of program like this needs to have a stack of stuff.
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Mine is of books primarily. I guess that's the difference between this and good old
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Rush Limbaugh. Mine is made up primarily of books. Starting off with a book that is recommended by N .T.
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Wright, and for some of you that just made it almost canonical, not comical, canonical.
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Listen very carefully, please. N .T. Wright says that this book is rooted in good scholarship.
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It's clear, punchy style makes it accessible to anyone. Tony Campolo also recommended this book presents the holistic theology the church desperately needs.
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The radical call of Christ transformed the world comes through loud and clear. This is a must read for any who want to speak relevantly to our age.
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It is recommended on certain Christian websites that sell books, and it is a
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Zondervan publication. And that used to mean something. It is a book from a
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British author, so I suppose I should read it in a British accent, but I won't because you might understand it.
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But, you know, I guess like so many books, if it says something true, and it seems to be something
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I see a lot in churches, if it says something true, then everything it says must be true.
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There are two extremes here. You've got the people who will go, oh, well, you know, he had a great insight on that point.
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Well, you know what? The Mormon prophet has great insights on a point once in a while. You know,
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I hear people talking about, well, I heard the Pope talking and he said something wonderful. I heard this guy on TVN speaking and he said something wonderful.
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So you have the people on that side that as long as you say something nice, something true, then that must mean that everything you say is true.
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Then on the other side, you've got the people and they generally draw the circle so closely to themselves.
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They're the only ones that can stand in it. And they think that if you say anything that's even slightly wrong in their opinion, then everything you say must be wrong.
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The truth is someplace in between. And I think the reason that books like this become as popular as they do is because, first of all, it is written well.
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It's very easy to read. It's not challenging in the sense of, you know, highbrow vocabulary.
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It's got good stories. I know a lot of preachers that preach like this book reads.
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And we live in a day and time when people like that. But I was reading the book and there were some things that went, oh, that's an interesting insight.
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But there was always just something that made me go, and then I started hitting some stuff.
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I was like, oh, no way. And then we get to the end. Remember, this is a Zondervan book. This is a book recommended by N .T.
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Wright. This is a book you'll find recommended by people who are known for discerning things.
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And here on page 182 and 183. We finally get to the part about this is the book is titled, by the way,
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The Lost Message of Jesus. And it's talking about the cross.
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And we run into run into this. The fact is that the cross isn't a form of cosmic child abuse, a vengeful father punishing his son for an offense he has not even committed.
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Understandably, both people inside and outside the church have found this twisted version of events, morally dubious and a huge barrier to faith.
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Deeper than that, however, is that such a concept stands in total contradiction to the statement
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God is love. If the cross is a personal act of violence perpetrated by God towards humankind, but born by his son, then it makes a mockery of Jesus' own teaching to love your enemies and to refuse to repay evil with evil.
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Wow. Talk about a complete twisting of the Christian doctrine of the atonement, a complete denial of biblical revelation.
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Just, you know, throw that baby right out the right out the window at that point. And it wasn't really my my point to, you know,
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I mean, refuting this is not overly difficult. Yeah, I mean, there are entire books, the Bible that argue the points against this kind of this kind of stuff.
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But how does how does somebody say that this is rooted in good scholarship?
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How does how does somebody get away? How does Zondervan get away with publishing this?
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And it's ironic. Before I got it, I knew that he denied the substitutionary atonement of Christ, the propitiatory death of Christ and so on and so forth.
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And you know how I knew that from the Amazon review, which is generally not really worth a lot.
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But from the actually now take that back. This was the official review, not the the ones that people post on there, which are generally completely and totally irrelevant.
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But I knew it from looking at Amazon, not from looking at Christian websites.
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So Zondervan puts it out. The last message, Jesus, Steve, I don't know if it's Chalky or Chalk. Chalke, he's
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British, and that explains a lot of it right there because he's British. So nothing I don't
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I, oh, that's one of that, you know. Oh, goodness, that one is pretty bad.
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Next. This was this was amazing.
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I'm reading from the Christian Reformed Church website, Synod 2004.
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Grand Rapids, Michigan, June 16th, 2004, Synod concluded six hours of debate today. By asking an advisory committee to revise its recommendations in that all
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Synod's work, we asked a committee to revise its recommendations about altering the
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Heidelberg Catechism's description of the Roman Catholic Mass. Question answer 80, the
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Heidelberg Catechism calls the mass a, quote, condemnable idolatry, end quote, because the
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Roman Catholic Church teaches that Christ is bodily present in the bread and wine and must be sacrificed daily by priests.
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Let me just add my own commentary there. There's more to it than that. That's part of it. Concept of transubstantiation.
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But also the idea of the mass as a perpetuatory sacrifice that perfects no one is should be just as offensive and idolatrous in the minds of a believing
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Christian as anything else. I continue reading from the website, a Christian Reformed Church study committee.
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I love this, met with Roman Catholic bishops to come to a better understanding of the official Roman Catholic teachings regarding mass and the
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Eucharist. I would love to know the identity of these bishops. Were they officially assigned by the
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Roman Catholic Church or were these American bishops primarily, you know, that would be fascinating to find out.
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I would love to know. I really, really would like to know who these individuals were. But the article does not say.
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Going back to quotation based on these conversations, the advisory committee recommended adding a footnote to the catechism to say that when the mass is celebrated in accordance with official
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Roman Catholic teaching. Tune in here, listen to this. They want to add a footnote to the
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Heidelberg catechism. To say that when the mass is celebrated in accordance with official
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Roman Catholic teaching, it does not deny the one sacrifice of Christ nor constitute idolatry.
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The committee also recommended that Q &A 80 remain in the catechism in smaller type as a warning to those who would obscure and distort
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Eucharistic teaching. What is that? Delegates debated at length over this recommendation.
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Some opposed the format of the proposed changes. They suggested increasing the font, getting rid of the question and answer altogether, keeping the catechism the way it is or moving all or part of the question answer into a footnote, etc.,
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etc., etc. Wow. Well, I don't know what to say other than it's coming from all sides.
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And, you know, I can understand why this is happening here. Maybe these folks don't have any connection whatsoever to the whole area of Roman Catholic theology.
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Maybe they, you know, just have really poor understandings of where Rome has been, where Rome is, the many different perspectives in Rome, etc.,
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etc. And I guess
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I could understand it at that point. But to think that an entire denomination that bases itself upon the
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Heidelberg Catechism could totally misunderstand or not understand what
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Rome meant historically by that and the fact that it sort of introduces a little bit of a problem with regard to the concept of infallibility, if that's no longer what they mean.
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I mean, if they'd like to come out and say, you know what, we once believed this, now we believe this, especially about something as core as the math.
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Hey, great. You know, we won't have to have any more debates, Roman Catholic apologists, at least on the infallibility of the church.
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But, you know, that's not quite what they've done. And amazing. Well, I just found out that Alexander the
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Coppersmith, also known as Paul Owen, has posted something on the Cypherd controversy on ReformCatholicism .com.
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I'm looking at it. On his blog, James White has recently taken upon himself to expose the doctrinal errors of Dr.
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Mark Cypherd. No, I never did that. Of course, Paul Owen couldn't represent anything accurately of his life dependent upon it.
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But this is interesting. Who teaches New Testament Studies at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
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I wonder if any of this is actually going to interact with anything that I said.
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That would be interesting to see. Just looking at it with being in doctrinal conflict with the teaching standards of the institution where he is employed.
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Actually, again, that's what the Southern Baptist statement said. I hadn't said that. I pointed out the difference between what
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James Boyce said in his theology and what Cypherd had said on the act of the past obedience to Christ.
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Again, I would I would not expect Owen to accurately represent that because he never accurately represents anything, whether it's
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Calvin or whoever. It's just, you know, it's just the way it is. I privately and rather harshly,
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I'll admit there's a history here I won't bore people with. Yeah, the history is since 1996,
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I've gotten this kind of hate mail from Paul Owen and he cannot show my responses to him that are of the same kind as and same temperament as his.
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His have always been nasty and they remain that way. Rebuked why for his behavior. And he then chose to publicly post my email comments on his blog as a public publicity stunt to promote his image as a martyr.
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No, actually, it just simply tells people what Paul is actually all about and where he's actually going, what he actually believes, because remember, this is the same fellow who believes that it would be better if you'd be in a
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Roman Catholic church and a Baptist church. He is a Presbyterian teaching in a PCUSA church, even though my understanding is he is a
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PCA. He is involved in a PCA church, but teaches a PCUSA church college.
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Anyway, I'm not going to allow the good name of fine Christian scholar to be dragged in the mud any longer. I am going to say some things here which very much need to be said.
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Hopefully some people snap their senses and see this doctrinal witch hunt for what it is. Anyone right now who's listening, who's read my blogs already knows that Owen is being dishonest here and isn't bothering to deal with the issue.
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And so here's yet another person throwing their hat in the ring. And instead of clarifying the issue regarding the imputation, the righteousness of Christ, issues regarding the act of past obedience, we have all the personal stuff.
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And it's funny, I posted something yesterday rebuking folks who claim to sort of be on my side.
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You know, I mean, they obviously have some agenda against Southern Seminary and I rebuke them.
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I call them the firebrands and they didn't appreciate that, by the way. I got a rather nasty response back because once again,
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I've said from the beginning, this isn't about Mark Seifert or me. It has nothing to do with his name or mine. And all these people like Paul Owen, who want to use this and just score some more points, you know,
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I can say the sky is blue and he'll find a way of insulting my intelligence for doing that. You know, they're just demonstrating that what
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I've said all along is true. These folks don't want to deal with the theological issue.
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They just want to make it all personal. None of it's personal. And I refuse to let it become personal. So anyways,
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Mark Seifert is not teaching anything controversial. So go read his statements.
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Act of impassive obedience, unnecessary misleading, imputation added to the forgiveness.
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And certainly nothing which should raise any suspicions to as to his orthodoxy as a Baptist in the Protestant tradition.
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Well, there you go. James White made charges on his blog, which were they proven true could result in dismissal of Mark Seifert from his teaching post.
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Does anyone find anything in what I said on my blog about charges, accusations or Mark Seifert's job?
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Anyone, anyone in the listening audience out there? You want someone want to put your hand up? Oh, no one.
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That's because it's not there. That's right. I, I had I was dealing with someone's published book.
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That's right. I guess you're not supposed to deal with someone's published book. Something about theological summary does not tolerate doctrinal dissent from their recognized theological commitments.
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OK, we were talking here about actions which were taken, which could have resulted in devastating consequences, consequences for Dr.
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Seifert and his family. Everyone listen to what's being said here. Don't review anyone's book.
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If you're a scholar and you publish a book, you have immunity from anyone reviewing what you say.
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You can say anything you want. Paul Owen, he's come up with his own unique view of Galatians, you see. And as he has made sure that everyone knows, even though he's really written very few things and and is not really widely known, but he he's come up with his own view and he's let everybody know,
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I am a scholar and therefore I have the right to put forth new ideas.
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And that's how he thinks. And so here we have the idea you can print anything you want.
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Anything you want and you are immune from review, that's that's what that's what
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Paul would have us to believe in his rush to defend the gospel. I do not believe it is yet sunk into the head of James White, just how serious an action he took in publicly making the charges he did.
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Remember, we can't quote any of these charges because they're not there. And that's a dishonesty on an act of dishonesty and follow his part.
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But again, White says this is not about people. That is just a problem. It is about people. When you make charges which could get a person fired, that is about as personal as you can get.
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So so far, what we've learned is that if you're a scholar, you can write anything you want. And if someone reviews it, they will call it a charge that you're accusing them of something.
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So if you disagree, if you don't remember, Dr. Seifried's own book says he's contrasting his viewpoint with traditional
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Protestant understanding. So if you believe in traditional Protestant understandings and you respond to the identification of them as being misleading, unbiblical, sub -biblical, so on and so forth, you are the person attacking someone else.
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Just if you're feeling lost about now, somewhat dizzy, just sit down, sip some water.
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You'll you'll be feeling a little better later on because it is sort of like falling down the rabbit hole. Rationality has flown out the window and, you know, we just have to go on from there.
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Here is the problem. There are people in the body of Christ whose ministries revolve around controversies and fresh opportunities to defend the gospel from the latest heresy.
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He's referring to apologists there. The closer the heretic is the heart of the evangelical community, the better a notice.
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Have I ever used the term heretic? Would someone like to? Any hands? Anyone find that? Oh, that would require documentation.
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And one thing we know, Dr. Owen does not need documentation. His own Ipsodixit is more than sufficient in any type of situation.
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The close to the heretic is that so who has used this term first? It seems Paul Owen. That sounds like an elevation, don't you think?
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Don't you think that's a pretty nasty thing to say about somebody, especially when person you're reviewing didn't use it?
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Well, anyway, the close of the heretic is the heart of the evangelical community, the better because that enables the heresy hunter to shout even louder since the danger to our doctrinal purity has now invaded the camp.
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These sorts of people thrive, sorts of people. I love being dehumanized, don't you? These sorts of people thrive off of pointing out how much error there is in the evangelical community.
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Turn on TV and I say TV and I'm sorry that the network with the doctrinal name and it's on between 20 and 22 here in Phoenix because that feeds the hysteria of the masses who look to their doctrinal heroes armed with their apologetic pistols to gun down the person causing confusion.
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Do we have any any music like we should have that?
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We really need to have that before the this type of wonderful representation of what we're all about here.
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Like what? You know, from the spaghetti weapons, spaghetti weapons, spaghetti westerns.
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Yeah, that one. You know, if you didn't laugh, you'd have to cry.
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I bet you it's around someplace. And in fact, with the 4000 wave files we have in the channel,
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I bet you we could track that one down. In fact, I bet you we'll have it by the end of the program, though it will be sort of irrelevant at that point.
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Anyways, go back to the the wonderful description here. People who function with this mentality simply do not appear to think much in terms of the real world.
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Their thoughts and lives reside in a bubble of apologetics and threats to the pure gospel. They do not get caught up in personal issues because they simply do not think much about practical, earthly issues which involve personal things like ministries and careers.
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To my understanding, this man's not a minister in the church. He's not ordained. He's talking about people who are.
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That's an amazing thing. It's a falsehood again, but but but Paul Owen is so focused upon himself that he doesn't seem to recognize falsehoods any longer.
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This is the man that was just shredded in in discussion on the NCR men board in regards to Calvin.
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He kept getting he was outside in three to one and and he just get mad and stomp off and so on and so forth.
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So he's so caught up in his own infallibility that that he can sit here and say, oh, these people, they just they don't think about personal things.
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Oh, but wait a minute. They're actually involved in the church and in fact, the leadership in the church. Well, anyways.
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White, of course, is not the first person to highlight Seyfried's views. Yes. Good. But there is a difference.
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Why? Well, we'll find out. People like Robert Gundry and John Piper have noted Seyfried's views. Interesting.
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Why didn't you mention Gaffin noticing Seyfried's views? Hmm, that's interesting.
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Maybe this was taken from the fact that I pointed out these people had noted Seyfried's views without making attempts to call into question his theological pedigree or his consistency with the doctrinal standards of seminary where he teaches.
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Excuse me. Once again, got the hand up here. Where did I do that? Dr. Owen, could you could you document?
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Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry to ask you to document. Something is to ask you to question your own fallibility.
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So Dr. Owen says, I did it. I must have done it. Can't document it, but we don't need documentation.
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White went beyond a mere critique and immediately began to ratchet up the tension by dramatically exposing the fact that a Baptist professor who teaches at the
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Bastion of Conservative Baptist Orthodoxy has denied the invitation of Christ right to this pillar of Protestant soteriology.
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Again, all of you who've read what I said are listening to this going, wow, what planet did this guy just land from?
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I mean, this isn't even close. Doesn't he realize someone could go read those blogs and realize that he's he's the one who's ratcheting everything up here, making this up as he's going along.
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Anyone who reads the series of rambling essays on White's blog can see the tone for themselves. Yes, they can.
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That's the point, unfortunately, for someone here. And he clearly expects gasps of horror from his readers as he astutely demonstrates how compromised
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Protestant Orthodoxy has become, even within the most respected halls of evangelical education. Now, folks, in case you're wondering, that's meant to be exceptionally condescending, because Paul Owen is the king of condescension and has been, well, like I said, since 1996.
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And so that's if you're wondering, if you're reading that correctly, you read it correctly. White has made several disparaging remarks on his blog.
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I was divining a webcast about academia and scholars. Yep, sure have. I've said that academia in its current state does not tend to see itself as subservient to the church, in service to the church.
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The people in the academy in general seem to think that it's much more important to have the approbation of the world than it does of of the church and of Christ.
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And I've said that. And the number of examples of that are legion. Given the context of remarks, it is hard not to get the impression he is accusing
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Dr. Seifert of being an ivory tower academic who is not engaged with practical issues relating to preaching and spreading the gospel.
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Isn't that, hmm, isn't that what Owen just said about me? Yeah, I think that I think
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I think that is. Let me kill that myth right now, which he just made up as he went by. Seminary professors at places like SBTS are very engaged in real ministry.
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They deal with pastoral issues all the time as they teach, eat, converse, pray and counselor students, some of whom are already pastors and others of whom will eventually enter the pastorate.
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Anyone who thinks you can be a seminary professor at a place like SBTS without being connected to practical issues is clueless.
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Practical issues relating to ministry come up all the time in class and outside of class in those settings, not to mention the fact that the typical seminary professor at a school like that is already involved in church ministry and probably had considerable ministry experience before getting hired.
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Again, that's wonderful. And of course, while Dr. Owen ignores this,
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I teach at one of the seminaries, too. And so I knew all about that. But my point was that I see a schizophrenia.
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I see a schizophrenia where you have what you teach in class and then what you teach at church.
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And I've seen this at ETS, where you have the Academy, the Academy, which is the wise guide of the benighted church.
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And it's that schizophrenia that really concerns me now. Again, you won't find any of this in what
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I wrote in regards to the issue because I wasn't talking about Dr. Seifried personally because I didn't make it personal.
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Paul Owen makes everything personal. And so that's why he reads it that way. But I hadn't.
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So if you're looking for those things, you want to look at those rambling things that we're just talking about. He talks about there's a further point.
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Teaching is a ministry. Yep, I know. As these professors teach God's word to their students, they are doing ministry.
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They're contributing a whole lot more to the ministry, the body of Christ by equipping pastors and do professional apologists on the Internet who spent all their time finding some new evangelical heretic to attack in order to promote themselves.
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We all see the personal slams here, which, of course, we recognize we're not present in anything
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I said about Dr. Seifried and the fact that I teach in the same context gets missed in this particular review.
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So make no mistake about Mark Seifried is very involved in practical ministry point that never actually brought up. He has no doubt forgotten more about defaming the gospel against opponents of James White will ever grasp.
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Anyways, what about Seifried's views? They are plainly state in his book, Christ Our Righteous, pages 173 through 177. Yes, they are, which are quoted on my blog.
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There is nothing here which should cause us to break out into a panic. He plainly denies the justification involves an infusion of righteousness, which no one has questioned.
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So God's declaration is based upon a moral transformation affected by the spirit. We are righteous only because of Christ, whose righteousness saves us when we are joined to him by faith.
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Seifried does not deny the truth that undergirds the doctrine of imputation, namely that we are justified by righteousness, which is not properly our own.
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We are reckoned to be righteous only because the righteousness of Christ, when we are joined to him by faith, is righteous, becomes the basis on which we are and will be vindicated in the divine tribunal.
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What then is stripped of all the controversy? Basically, Seifried is uncomfortable with the direction that the direction that the doctrine of imputation has taken by some divines within Protestant orthodoxy.
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And what were some of those divines? Anybody remember? This is what we talked about in the last program, you know, like the
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Westminster Confession of Faith and James Boyce and everybody who believes in imputation.
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He writes, quote, It is fair to say that something of the Christ -centered understanding of justification, which Luther and Calvin grasped, was lost in subsequent
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Protestant thought, where justification came to be defined in terms of the believer and not in terms of Christ. It is worth observing that Paul never speaks of Christ's righteousness as imputed to believers, as became standard
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Protestantism, which, as all of you know, I quoted numerous times. What is Seifried saying here to anyone who reads him without a cloud of suspicion?
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Of course, Dr. Owen couldn't read anything I've written without a cloud of suspicion. He is simply claiming, whether rightly or wrongly, that Calvin and Luther had a better grasp of the manner in which
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Christ's righteousness vindicates the believer. Rather than viewing justification as something God gives to us when we believe in Christ, he sees justification as God's gift of Christ to us.
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God does not impute righteousness to us as though it were something additional to Christ given to us when we believe. Rather, Christ's righteousness remains his own, and it benefits us only because we are joined to him by faith.
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As Seifried puts it, it is in the crucified and risen Christ that the righteousness of God has been manifest, not in us.
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It is not a fused power within the world, but has its locus in Christ and the gospel which makes him known. That's all well and good, but the odd thing is that's not what
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Dr. Seifried said in the SBTS statement. And that's part of the whole problem, because it's not resulting in clarity, which is why we've done this whole thing to begin with.
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In Seifried's view, what became the traditional understanding of imputation had the effect of viewing justification as something that is focused upon us rather than Christ.
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And I raise my hand saying, so Dr. Owen, do you actually believe that? I don't. Do you actually believe that that's what
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Westminster was saying? Dr. Dr. Owen, Presbyterian Dr. Owen, is that what you believe?
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That's not what I believe. Rather than speaking of Christ's righteousness being given to us, he feels we should simply speak of his righteousness saving us because of our union with him in Christ and in hope, the triumph over sin and death is ours here and now.
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It is not ours. We possess it only in faith. That's not all he said. He specifically, as we looked at the quotes last time, said much more than that, which
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Owen is sort of skipping at this particular point here. Wow, this goes on and on and on and on, doesn't it?
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Wow, look how long this thing is. Five. Let's see if there's anything really fun here that he actually we can get into because I still want to get to a
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Dave Armstrong today because they would be really unhappy if we didn't. I'll tell you what, in conclusion,
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James White's campaign against Mark Seifried should be seen for what it is, a publicity stunt which serves to get himself attention.
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That is a lie. And Dr. Owen knows it is a lie. We may or may not agree with all Seifried's criticisms of Protestant scholastic soteriology.
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I love that in, no, we're skipping it. I love that in scholarly circles.
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We may agree, we may disagree. It's just this wonderful, lovely, you know, we don't know, you know, one way or the other type stuff.
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We may or may not agree with all Seifried's criticisms of Protestant scholastic soteriology. But this good man has certainly said nothing which places him outside of the mainstream of contemporary reformational thinking, nor is he denied that what
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Protestant theology has attempted to secure through its doctrine of imputation, namely the vital truth that Christ and Christ alone is our righteousness.
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That's wonderful. But you know what? Once again, you know, I have to wonder if possibly
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Dr. Owen is the one here who does not understand the issue. That would be a new thought to him, because honestly,
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I do not believe that he's ever thought that there was something he could not fully and completely comprehend significantly better than I could.
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But I don't see any evidence here that he's actually dealing with the real issue, that he's looking at any of the citations that were provided by myself in regards, for example, to the active and passive obedience of Christ or anything like that.
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I don't see any evidence of it. But you know what? We will take the time to finish up responding to that when we have a little more time on the program, because I want to demonstrate that that here is a man who is is spreading confusion amongst people.
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I believe that Paul Owen is a false teacher and I'm tired of many years just simply letting his his vitriol and his invective go.
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When people stand up to him and demonstrate that that he's bluster, he runs and I'm not going to I'm not going to let this kind of stuff go any longer.
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It's not going to do it. He's misrepresenting me. He's misrepresenting the truth. He's misrepresenting this issue.
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And as I have consistently and in a documented fashion told people on both sides, this is not personal.
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Owen wants to make it personal and he can only do it in that way. And we see the personal elements in what he's saying.
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And though I've attempted to respond to it with some level of humor, the fact of the matter is that this article is filled with untruths and I will document them.
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And and of course, he will run from it because that's what he does whenever you document his errors as he runs from them.
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He will say, you're too stupid to understand what I'm saying. I'm a brilliant scholar. You're not. And he'll just but then he will run because he can't deal with those issues.
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So we'll we'll definitely put up a documented response to Paul Owen, Dr.
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Paul Owen of Montreat College, his his statement. So anyways, let's are we ready to ready to go here?
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We skipped the break. And boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Here we put it on the right thing.
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Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition. I am usually referred to as the master. There are some who call me him.
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Back to Dave Armstrong's appearance upon Catholic Answers, Catholic Answers Live, where, by the way,
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Dave Armstrong's blog has been hilarious of late again. It's it's so much fun to be in a situation where no matter what you say, the other guy is just going to prove you right.
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It's just been this explosion of of stuff that just it's just sort of sort of funny as you go on.
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But this next call is quite interesting because it deals with with material formal sufficiency, partum partum, the
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Marian dogmas, all the rest of that stuff. And so it's it's rather useful. So let us go back in time to Dave Armstrong's appearance on Catholic Answers Live 7884.
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Why we need more than the Bible. Or do we, if you have questions, comments about this topic, do join us on that available telephone line.
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Line two is where we go next. Rosemary calling from Ames, Iowa. Hi, Rosemary. Hi. My son is a senior in high school, and I he's been talking to a couple of his friends who are fathers, are pastors of Protestant churches.
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So I told him that I thought that it was true that all Catholic beliefs are either somehow implicitly or explicitly in the
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Bible. But my husband doesn't think that was totally correct. So I'm just wondering, what is the correct answer to that?
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Well, that's a good description of what's called material sufficiency. So the
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Catholic believes that. Every doctrine we believe in can be found in scripture, but it's not always explicit, so you can have indications of it and you have to make deductions.
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Even the Trinity is sort of thing in a certain sense, because you don't have one verse that says
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God is one God exists in three persons, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and they're all equal in glory and power.
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Oh, wait a minute. Hey, we've got a Web user here. I wonder if the Web user is actually Dave Armstrong. It says,
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When will Dr. White finally accept Armstrong's longstanding challenge to have a written debate? After all, Dr. White is a published author and shouldn't have problems engaging
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Armstrong in that forum. Web user, when will Dave Armstrong accept our invitation to have a real debate, a live debate where instead of just listening to him and letting him have his say by playing his stuff, we can actually have back and forth that is not that does not involve the kind of dodging questions that you can do in the written format.
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For example, the written format in books like Debating Calvinism, where people have complained that, you know,
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I would make one point and I couldn't force Mr. Mr. Hunt to respond to that point.
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And that's the problem that we have here. Mr. Armstrong writes forever.
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The problem is he likes to turn, for example, brief interchanges or brief, on my part, interchanges from years ago into alleged debates.
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He won't do those kind of debates. And that's the kind of debate that is to be the most useful for everybody else.
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That's the important part, you see. And unlike Mr. Armstrong, I don't just sit around writing for the
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Internet all day long. I have a lot of other things we need to be doing. So web user, whoever you are, whether you be maybe someone related to Mr.
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Armstrong or something like that. And for those of you who are listening by archive, we have a channel. Someone came in in the midst of this and and made that kind of statement.
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There's an answer to your statement. But please notice, going back to what Mr. Armstrong said, you all should have known as soon as as you start hearing about this implicit stuff that you've got the issue of the
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Trinity. And as soon as I hear somebody say, realize what's being said here. Remember, Jerry Matitox, remember the debate we did many years ago where Jerry Matitox made the statement and I should have had this queued up, but it's it's in the it's in the statement.
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It's in the debate that we did that we have the exact same level of certainty in knowing the resurrection of Christ as we have in the bodily assumption of Mary.
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Now, think about that a second, the resurrection of Christ, the very heart of the faith, we have the same level of certainty concerning the resurrection of Christ as the bodily assumption of Mary.
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That's what happens when you believe this kind of stuff. And so when I hear people say, well, look at the Trinity, the evidence for the
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Trinity. Is pan canonical from beginning to end of Scripture, every element you are forced to the doctrine of Trinity by the weight of the biblical evidence, you are not forced to any
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Marian dogma by the weight of the evidence, I assure you of that. And we're about to be given an excellent example of this.
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And so forth, it's not all in one place, but but when you take different indications from different places, you come out with a strong doctrine.
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So say for the Marian doctrines are always the example because they're they don't have.
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Many times explicit biblical evidence, but you can build a strong case. To give one example, the
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Immaculate Conception of Mary in Luke one twenty eight, the word there that translated full of grace or favored one means perfectly enduringly endowed with grace.
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Oh, let's stop that one right there. So this would it's easy to make that kind of assertion in, you know, on Catholic answers, because I can guarantee you the guy who's sort of doing the program, they're going to stop you.
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But to car to many, that's what it means. Really, and what lexical source would would establish that that's what that word means.
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I have a bunch of them on my computer here and none of them say that. Um, it's a fact that says bestow on freely perfect passive parcel means favored.
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Hmm, well, that doesn't seem to say that full huge thing that that Dave Armstrong just mentioned.
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So if we were doing cross examination, I would say, Mr. Armstrong, lexical source, please. And I would look across at him.
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And this would be going through my mind. And we get to the end and you know what would happen, we still wouldn't have an answer because that's not what it says.
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Oh, by the way, the Mormon guy on Jeopardy lost yesterday. Seventy five programs, two million dollars, but seventy five programs.
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I just thought you all want to know that. Oh, unless you were you didn't want to hear that. I'm sorry. That's sort of like during the
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Olympics telling you who won the gold. That's that's not that's not nice anyway. Is that what that word means?
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Well, if that's if if the root of the word. Means that maybe maybe what he's saying is that car means that but the problem is car is used of believers in Ephesians one six, and in fact, that's placed in eternity past.
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And so believers have been carotid. He freely bestowed this upon us in the beloved one.
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So would that mean that that we are full of grace and hence immaculately conceived?
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No, no, maybe they want to look at the fact that this is a perfect passive participle, but the problem is the perfect passive participle is used in Matthew twenty five thirty four.
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Come, you are blessed by my father. Does that mean we've eternally been blessed and hence blessing?
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Because that that refers to God's favorite means we likewise were immaculately conceived and sinless or maybe first Thessalonians one for knowing brethren beloved by God.
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That means we've had an eternal love from God. And so so it makes sense that implicitly what that means is that he'd protect us.
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From from from sin, maybe second Thessalonians two thirteen, but we should always give thanks to God for you, brethren, beloved by the
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Lord. Yeah, well, you start to see that actually that's not something you really do with the with the
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Greek language. And so we would have a good time doing cross examination on that if we could have enough time to do it.
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So. If you do a comparison, grace. Grace means that you're it's the counter of sin in Scripture.
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Grace is the counter of sin in Scripture. And so the root in Caratao in an angelic greeting in Luke in a different context would mean that you see how this works.
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So if you're full of grace, the way I think about it is like a glass of water.
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If you fill the water to the top or fill the glass with water to the top, there's no room for any air.
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That would be like grace. If you're full of grace, you have no sin. So if you're if you were graced.
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In the beloved one, in Ephesians one, that would follow, and that means we just found a way to.
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Get rid of the doctrine of sin amongst Christians, we are now sinlessly perfect. And as someone the channel just point out,
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I thought righteousness was the opposite of sin. And that's right. And sinlessness is the essence of the
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Immaculate Conception, which is only a development of the idea that Mary is without sin. So you have to have development of doctrine, which is another old subject and.
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But that's why we have a subject in theology, and there's a lot on my website about that, too. Oh, yes.
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He loves Cardinal Newman. There's no question about it. Got to have that development. Just you can't have a sufficient scripture to be the guide of that development.
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OK, but that's why we need the interpretation of the magisterium to help us with those implicit ideas.
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Yep, because without the magisterium to tell you it's there, no one would ever dream that it was. Well, you have to develop those doctrines.
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That's your church authority. And we're not all on our own. I don't think that's a biblical teaching. We're not our own
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Pope, so to speak. We have to have authority. That's New Testament teaching as well as Old Testament.
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Red herring alert, red herring alert. We heard that one, didn't we? As if, well, you have the one
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Pope in Rome or you're all Popes. Let's not have elders in the biblical form of church government, stuff like that.
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OK, thank you. Yeah. Thanks, Rosemary, for the call. Triple eight three one eight seven eight eight four.
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Our toll free phone number. Dave, maybe we can make the point that it would be safe to say that in a sense, as the church was in its earliest years, its infancy stages, so to speak.
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The Bible had not yet been at least all brought together. Some of the books were in the process of being written and so forth.
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But the Bible sort of flowed out of a lived experience of the early church. And of course, the church had on its mind defending things like the divinity of Christ and just the basic foundational issues facing us.
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So something like the Immaculate Conception of Mary, even though the church was maybe wrestling with something like that, it's not going to be, you know, first and foremost on their minds and and therefore maybe explicitly found in Scripture.
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Yeah, that's right, because some of these things take centuries, even things we agree on, like the two natures of Jesus and Trinity weren't fully defined until the fourth and fifth centuries.
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So what an amazing, you know, people wonder why do you get so worked up about some of this stuff?
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To take doctrines that are. That you are not you could never argue, you could assert it, but you could never meaningfully defend the idea that you're forced to this belief by the weight of the exegesis of Scripture and compare it to such divine truths as the relationship of the of of the divine and the human in Christ is to blaspheme
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God's truth. It is it is to compare God's truth to falsehood.
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And it's amazing today that people just sit around and go, oh, that's an interesting view, and they and they think you're not supposed to get worked up about that.
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They think you're supposed to go, well, you know, he has a right to believe that. Well, he has the right to believe that under the
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Constitution of the United States. But that's not really going to be an overly good excuse once God actually asks him, why in the world did you blaspheme my truth in that way?
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These things took time to reflect upon. It doesn't mean the earliest Christians didn't believe in the
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Trinity, but they didn't understand it in the depth and that they did later on through reflection and fighting heretics who denied it.
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All right, let's move along to our next caller. Appreciate the patience of those on hold and do invite others to join us on an open phone line there at 888 -318 -7884.
48:39
Over the line four we go. Sacramento, California. Hi, Ben, how are you doing today? Good afternoon. I just wanted to mention a couple of things and ask a question.
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First of all, I think I believe Catholics actually follow Sola Scriptura more than any other
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Protestant or any other denomination. And I know we don't believe in Sola Scriptura, but we follow,
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I believe, the Bible more than anybody else. The Catholic councils that assembled it and it's more
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Catholic than it is anything else. And when I dialogue with Protestants, I feel it's real helpful when we discuss words and if the words aren't literal, especially in the
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New Testament, that you need interpretation. In other words, like when the
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Lord says, this is my body and they're saying it's not, obviously that in itself showing that you need somebody else to interpret it for you.
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Oh, yeah, that Bible couldn't possibly give you the context to understand those things.
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You couldn't follow along. And and let Jesus define his words.
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I mean, certainly we humans could write books that well, but God couldn't do that. Well, that's odd.
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Yeah, well, I mean, interpretation isn't that simple of a thing. You have what appears the words are overwhelming in Catholic, and if you're not going to try, by the way, how many how many books of the
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Bible have been infallibly interpreted by Roman again? Why do people keep saying this when then you you press and say,
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OK, so what's the infallible interpretation of Romans 5? One? Well, what's the infallible interpretation of John one?
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Eighteen. Well, what's the infallible interpretation? Second, this leads to the two. Well, I I have
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I don't know what kind of Protestants these folks are talking to, but they must not be the ones who actually ask decent questions.
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That's the problem. But I'm that way, especially in the New Testament. You need an interpreter. So that defeats all the scripture right there.
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Oh, that's what they like in James, where you go to the Presbyterian to confess your sins and they're saying, don't go to the
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Presbyterian or in James, it says faith without works is dead. Hmm. Presbyterian.
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Oh, you mean a priest? Wow. There's a huge leap. We've if you want more documentation of how huge that leap it is, you might want to listen to the debate we did on that particular subject a couple of years ago on Long Island.
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And it doesn't mean that for a Protestant. So you need an interpreter to tell you what those words mean.
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But then don't sir, don't you have to then interpret what the interpreter says?
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Is that why there's so many you can go on the Web and see all the debates that Catholics do with other
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Catholics? Because once the interpreter writes or speaks, don't you have to interpret, see the circularity of the position?
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Second, Peter 120, he says no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation.
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And if you look a little more closely, what he's talking about, the origin of scripture does not come from the prophets themselves, has nothing to do with this misapplication.
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Mr. Armstrong. Absolutely. Peter also says, second Peter three, 15 and 16, our beloved brother
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Paul wrote to you, according to the wisdom given him, there are some things in in them, his letters, it means hard to understand which the unstable twist to their own destruction, untaught and unstable twist their own destruction, which means that if you're taught and stable, that means you can accurately handle that.
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Right. And is that only the Bishop of Rome, which did not exist at this particular point in time, Mr. Armstrong, as they do the other scriptures?
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So, again, right in the Bible, it talks about having authoritative interpretation.
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I missed that word. Where did that come from? Not in the Roman Catholic sense, not of some bishop in Rome giving infallible interpretations, which he doesn't tend to do with much regularity.
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And of course, Protestants every Sunday listen to a big, long sermon. And yes, usually interpreting scripture, usually talking about truth, you know.
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Yes. And that's exactly what Paul told Timothy to do. The public reading of the scriptures, the exhortation, the prayers, the hymns.
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It's called the church. Yeah, they agree with us on many things. But that presupposes that.
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In other words, why have a sermon teaching you about the Bible if you can grasp everything yourself?
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Oh, I really believe that. Oh, that's right. We don't actually believe that ourselves, because if Mr.
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Armstrong, you would actually represent Sola Scriptura properly, as you certainly have had more than enough information provided to you that would allow you to do so, then you would recognize that not only do we believe in the importance of the teaching and preaching of the of the word of God to people, but that there is nothing in Sola Scriptura in any way, shape or form is relevant to what you just said.
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And anybody who could just go, go, you know, after doing this for I remember 19, was it 93?
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Was that when that debate in Los Angeles was with Cure and the three
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Roman Catholics versus the three Protestants? And I remember even before that, maybe it was 94. Before that,
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I had been demonstrating that what Karl Keating and Patrick Madrid were attacking in Sola Scriptura was not at all reflective of what the
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Westminster Confession said, the Lennebaps Confession said, talked about the difficult passages, it talked about the use of ordinary means, all the rest of that stuff.
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And it's funny to hear that stuff coming back during the debate, even though I wasn't part of the debate. But, you know, if you don't keep on these folks, they will just constantly keep sliding back into misrepresentations of what the doctrine actually is.
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And I know there have been people who have over and over and over again explained these things to Mr.
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Armstrong. But you get them back into a Catholic context and all of a sudden it's like, yeah, yeah, you're right about that.
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Oh, yeah, you're right about that. And it's a misrepresentation. It was like when when Jerry Matitix was talking about the
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Doctrine of Perseverance and he he gave gave this completely erroneous view of what the Doctrine of Perseverance was.
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And Chris Arnson caught him on it because he had talked to a professor that the Matitix had had in seminary where Matitix had written an excellent paper on John Owen's Doctrine of Perseverance.
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And he says, why in the world would you tell those Catholics that that's what we believe when you know better? When you know better.
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That's that's that's a that's a constant theme. Well, we thank again. And we will, of course, come back and and revisit the.
55:27
Yes, we will come back and revisit. Continue listening to Mr.
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Armstrong. There's a great call toward the end of the program. We're getting right there. It's a great call with a guy who knows what he's talking about.
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And all of a sudden they run out of time. Hey, I know about running out of time.
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The problem was they actually had plenty of time to answer the question that's been asked. So it's sort of it's sort of humorous and funny.
55:53
We'll take a look at that. I just want to make one more comment in the last couple of moments. I had not seen until the program started that Paul Owen had decided.
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Very sadly, to not only engage in more misrepresentation and falsehood, but.
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I have done everything in my power and and a year from now, looking back on this situation,
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I am going to my hope and prayer is that I'm going to be able to look the situation go from the very start.
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I stayed focused on one issue, one purpose, and I refused to get dragged into this personal stuff.
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Now, Owen is always personal. Owen is the king of insults. I mean, just just anybody who knows him knows that that is him.
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That's just the way he is. But for him to personalize this.
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I want everybody to know he's the one who did it. You you put his writings next to mine.
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You look at the dates, not only to discover that he makes things up as he goes along. He sort of lives in a fantasy world along those lines.
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But you look at the dates and you will not find that it was
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I who used those terms, that it was I that did anything that made this personal. It is not personal.
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But folks, I'm going to tell you one thing. If we've come to the point where the academy has become so much a cult unto itself, that you can write a book and you can say the things that have were said in Christ, our righteousness about the imputed righteousness of Christ, the act of the passive obedience of Christ.
57:31
You can say those things with absolute impunity. No one has the right to even begin to say, wait a minute.
57:38
We've always believed this. We believe the scripture says this. If we've come to the point where you can no longer review those things without being called all the names that Paul Owen comes up with, your motivation's impugned, your intelligence impugned and everything else, your character impugned.
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If we've come to that point, then it's a dark day. It's a dark day indeed.
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If it's Christian scholarship, folks, if what you stand before a class, you won't say from the pulpit, then you shouldn't say it.
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If what you say in a seminary class, you would not say in front of a Sunday school class, then you shouldn't say it.
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I'm not talking about the in -depth, complex stuff with Greek grammar and things like that. I'm saying you need to be the same person in front of your class that you are in front of your flock, because it's all supposed to be one and the same thing.
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And I can say that with passion, because you know what? Anyone who stayed under me knows
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I'm the same person in class that I am at my church. We'll see you next
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Tuesday. God bless. Brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries.
59:43
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59:50
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59:55
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