The Dividing Line, September 11, 2008

The Debate Setup, Osama Abdullah, and the Coming Weekend

Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of phoenix arizona this is 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.

Our host is dr james white director of alpha omega ministries and an elder at the phoenix reformed baptist church. 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 united states it's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic.

Here is james white. Good afternoon. Welcome to the dividing line heading out to santa fe new mexico tomorrow morning. Those of you in that area look forward to seeing you at the discern oh eight conference.

I'll be speaking on the reliability of the new testament documents in one of the major sessions doing two workshops one on islam and the other on the marian dogmas. So hope to see you there. And then the next weekend as we have on uh the website you can get this information there.

Three debates two against osama abdullah and one against farhan. Um i was uh looking over osama abdullah's website and uh i was looking at his information about the lie of the crucifixion and uh things like that.

And uh i i just have to note some of these things. It's amazing to me. Uh for example he says the new testament confirms that only peter witnessed the crucifixion. Did you know that i thought uh the women and john was there.

Um but uh only peter witnessed and the new testament says that. And he he quotes uh peter's denial that he went out and wept bitterly as the only evidence that only peter uh witnessed crucifixion. And i'm just sort of left going.

Really okay all right. That's um interesting. And then he talks about third party narrations in the gospels the new testament demonstrate they're not real. And so if if it makes reference to the author in the narration that demonstrates it's not real.

So for example um for john was not yet cast into prison john 324. Um of course that's john the baptist not john the apostle. So you got stuff got a bunch of them like that. Um and this is uh the record of uh of john when the jews sent priests levites from jerusalem to ask him who art thou.

Of course at the end is different different john. And then we have the apocalypse of peter the whole almost the whole i think the whole thing is reproduced here. And he is absolutely insistent that uh this was given to peter directly word for word.

The problem is the apocalypse of peter's from the third century which means peter had to be at least 250 years old when he croaked. It's a it's a gnostic work of fiction and everybody knows it. But um uh and then he doesn't even understand what it's saying because it's uh actually is dualistic and it does say that the man jesus was crucified but the spirit christ was up above the cross and you can't crucify spirits.

And it's going to be an interesting weekend. Oh that's all i can tell you is it's going to be a very very interesting weekend. Um in dealing with that and i've listened to farhan koreshi's debate with um um nabil koreshi no relationship directly anyways same last name.

But other than that um and uh so like i said it's going to be an interesting weekend. It really really is. Oh that's right i was going to mention we're going to go back to the madrid stuff here but i was going to mention it is amazing to see the the worst of the jehovah's witness arguments from years years gone by refuted many many times being picked up by these guys and repeated that you can tell they ransack um the jw websites to come up with their arguments.

It's great i love it. And and they're not used to writing into too many people who know as much about jehovah's witnesses as yours truly does uh and has been dealing with that for that long. So as soon as i started looking through this and seeing uh uh hugh j schoenfeld's translation and moffat being translated i'm going man i've had stuff on on this topic on our website since the well we had it in print in the in the 1980s uh and then it went up on the website as soon as the website was available to put a website on.

But uh you know all the same old stuff psalm 82 and xs71 just almost taken verbatim right off of jehovah's witness websites but being used by muslims uh without really proper attribution. I would say uh to the people that they're stealing that stuff from but i remember saying long time ago uh back before the debate with the hams abdo malik i said this is just bad jehovah's witness argumentation.

It's really it's just it's not even as good as the witnesses come up with. It's just bad jw argumentation and with of course you throw in a lot of arabic in the process and there you go. So it's going to be um it's going to be a very very interesting experience uh coming up uh but again people say well then why are you debating these folks.

I mean you're debating zulfikar shah uh lord willing at duke university in november and and here's a scholar and and yeah i i want to debate the scholars i want to debate zulfikar shah and and uh people like shabbir ali uh take on the best they have.

But the fact of the matter is in lands where the persecuted church the minority christian population is under the persecution of muslim authorities it's not the islam of the scholars that is being yelled at our brothers and sisters on a daily basis.

It's this kind of stuff and so to respond to that. That's why it's different. That's why it is different from the standards that we use when we talk about mormonism or jehovah's witnesses or roman catholicism and who we wish to debate in those contexts in this instance because the persecution of the church in other lands we go ahead and we deal with these types of presentations that are not scholarly at all uh that are that are very poor just just filled with errors from right to left and easily documented but you still need to deal with them because that's the stuff that's being thrown out there and uh so that's why we do it.

Returning to Patrick Madrid’s 1993 Opening Statement

So we continue on with our review of uh the debate from 1993 with patrick madrid we are getting right near the end of his presentation. Uh in fact i'm looking at the waveform here and you can sort of tell about how long things go from just looking at waveforms sort of like the people in the matrix you know they can see what's going on the matrix from stuff like that.

Uh but so we're getting right toward the end of his opening statement. So let's continue on with uh patrick madrid a few examples.

John the baptist testified and he testified authoritatively to jesus christ the word of god but john the baptist did not have authority over jesus christ. Same in the same way the church as the bride of christ recognizes christ's voice and serves as an accurate faithful witness to it.

But that does not mean and catholics do not claim that the church has authority over the word of god.

Okay now i remember as i said last time i i closed the program out or at least closed the review portion of the program out. We had a little discussion later on uh about joel hemphill but i pointed out that that while the roman catholic may want to try to avoid openly recognizing the role of the church as the one that determines the extent of scripture and the meaning of scripture even though she doesn't do that very often we haven't been able to find that inspired commentary yet.

Sure would be nice to get hold of that thing. I hope they publish it soon. But um uh as well as defining what is tradition what is not tradition and what tradition says. If you are the sole infallible determiner of the extent of scripture and the meaning of scripture and the extent of tradition the meaning of tradition.

Don't tell me. You're under their authority. It's just not possible. Those things cannot correct you once you make a decision. Even if it's a wrong decision how can you be corrected in that type of situation.

That's what they're trying to avoid here. Take number five.

Many say we can't have more than one ultimate authority on the surface. That might sound convincing but notice that it's false when you. When you look at it more carefully the four gospels matthew mark luke and john are equally ultimate and equally authoritative.

Now think about that.

One for just a moment. Put your thinking caps on. How would you respond. Uh if you are uh a fellow non-roman catholic how would you respond to patrick madrid's argument there. And in fact what is presupposed by patrick madrid's argument there.

Think about for just a moment before i mention it the four gospels. And they're equal with one another. Doesn't that show us that the church can be equal with without lording over scripture. But what are the four gospels.

Well aside from the fact they're all scripture they're all theanistos. And if you'll listen to patrick's argument the only way for the argument to have any meaning at all is if he is in fact asserting that the church is theanistos it is god-breathed.

But where does he get that the god-breathed scriptures don't say the church is god-breathed. So the parallel doesn't exist. There is no parallel between books of scripture and the church and the scripture unless you're going to identify.

The church as in fact being theanistos and one gospel does not subjugate the other gospel. The same with the prophet isaiah and the prophet jeremiah. Here were two prophets of god walking the earth at the same time delivering inspired oracles of god for his people.

He didn't subjugate one prophet over another. They were both ultimate authorities in their own way. And yet there was.

No subjugation they worked harmoniously together. Well again you're talking about two inspired authors and so the only way this could be relevant to the idea of the church is if you're making the church itself inspired.

But if the church is of a completely different nature it's not revelatory it receives revelation. Unless you're going to say the church in essence receives revelation and that revelation is theanistos but it doesn't come into existence outside of her or something like that.

These arguments are irrelevant. They involve basic fundamental category errors.

Mistake number six which we have already heard tonight the attempt to shift the burden of proof. Sometimes less scrupulous and honest protestant apologists will attempt and that's the end of.

The Catholic Reply on Sola Scriptura and the Burden of Proof

That particular recording. So we continue on with this one. It was not read in your hearing but i'll read it for you but you might. Oh whoa whoa whoa. Uh oh i know what happened it in schuldigung of uh auf deutsch.

Uh i think i zoomed in on this one and that's why. Aha aha aha. My apologies. I had that zoomed in and that's why uh it went to where it went. Let me see if i can find where in the world we were there.

My apologies. A little bit of a uh malfunction here on the um slide that over but it looks different on this all right. See if we can find something in here. Let's see.

In various ways mistake number four confusing testimony with authority. Some protestants argue that if we were always number six weren't we sometimes less scrupulous and honest. Protestant apologists will attempt to divert attention away from their very weak case for sola scriptura by claiming that the catholic must prove the catholic position on tradition.

The catholic church can demonstrate the biblical grounds for this doctrine. But tradition is not on trial here tonight unless you use tradition.

Your understanding of tradition as your main argument. And of course again i simply point out why haven't we heard roman catholic apologists defending this position. I have challenged them over and over again.

When i challenged patrick he's just a debate junkie and you know uh all they want to do is they want to go after sola scriptura. They do not want to apply the same standards their own position. Why i assert.

Because they can't. Because if they applied the same standards their own position it would be self-refuting and then that would be obvious to everybody. And so they avoid that very assiduously. It is my assertion that the standards that the average roman catholic apologist uses against solo scriptura would be just as effective against his claims in regards the authority of the roman catholic church.

And that is why they only want to debate sola scriptura. They don't want to debate the subject of tradition. But he identifies that as unscrupulous on my part. And that's a nice big word no matter what mr white may tell you.

Sola scriptura is on trial. If you don't believe me then go get the flyer that mr white produced which says does the bible teach sola scriptura. That's the issue. Don't forget that. Don't let him try to fool you if he tries to shift the burden of proof onto my shoulders saying i must prove the catholic view.

I don't have to. I don't have to prove the catholic position on tradition mr white. Or infant baptism or the papacy or even bingo. The question is does the bible teach sola scriptura.

Yeah yeah like i said patrick was just nasty in this debate he was he was not a nice person. And i think if people want to use the same standards those used to identify as me as a mean terrible horrible nasty person then they're gonna have to identify him as a mean terrible horrible nasty person as well because uh that's pretty much uh he was pretty aggressive and unfriendly in many ways.

And all i'm saying again is if you're going to assume the catholic understanding of tradition as a part of your argument then guess what you're gonna have to defend it. And it is awfully strange uh that so many of my opponents when they attack the bible whether it's muslims or roman catholics they want to come in as atheists.

I have nothing to defend at all. I am not here as a catholic. I am not here as a muslim. I am not going to allow you to to hold me to a consistency of the use of sources or argumentation. I want to be free to throw everything including the kitchen sink at you it doesn't matter.

If i'm refuting myself i don't need to be consistent with my world view now you know. Um if you want a food fight i guess that's what you can do. But if you actually want a serious uh debate where you're actually willing to be consistent the argumentation you use and that's what i do.

Uh i never knowingly or purposefully i might out of ignorance no one's ever pointed out to me. But i might out of ignorance use an argument against another position. That would be self-refuting of my own uh but i do everything in my power to avoid doing that.

Now could i come up with lots of arguments that would sound good to shallow thinking people but that would be self uh refutational of course. That's sadly what a lot of people do. Uh but why do we debate if you're a servant of jesus christ you debate to his honor and glory he who is the truth.

Therefore you have to have the highest standard of truth in your service to him right. Well that's just what's gotta. That's what's gotta drive the uh drive.

The agenda and the way you engage in debate. Mr white uses the pen analogy. I find that very intriguing. He argues that to prove there is no other pen like this pen he would have the impossible task of searching the entire earth all the bookstores all the pockets.

Now let me remind.

You what i had said. I had gotten out my cross medalist pen. I don't have one with me today but i've got a i do have a pen here but it's uh has a laser in it. I can shoot right through it through the window there.

Uh and i got a pen. I had said look what i'm saying is this is the only if i said this is the only pen there is. And i'm saying scripture is the only example of of uh say anustos revelation we possess.

And i said this is the only pen there is. Then the way to refute me is to hold up another pen identical to it. Right next to it. It is irrational to say well unless you can prove that there's no other pen just like it then by default there is.

See that's where the roman catholic is trying to play a game here uh he is trying to play a game where uh he's gonna say well if the bible doesn't say by name it doesn't say this isn't a revelation this isn't a revelation this isn't equal.

And that isn't equal then well maybe something else is. And by default we claim that our tradition is that which is necessary and established by god. And blah blah blah blah. And so it would seem to be easy.

Wouldn't it. And i asked my roman catholic listeners i know you're out there. Um why can't your guys walk up with the identical pen. Why can't your guys remember remember mitch pacwa mentioned us last time.

Father pacwa can you name a single word. Jesus spoke paul spoke. Any of the apostles spoke peter spoke a single word that the roman catholic church has dogmatically defined that does not appear in the canon of scripture.

Anything you keep telling us you've got all this stuff anything. And father pacwa was very honest in saying well no no the church has not defined a single word that jesus or the apostles spoke outside of the canon of scripture.

So why can't you do that. Why can't you bring that other pen forward to show us yeah this this other rule of faith. If you can't give us another infallible rule of faith then if sola scriptura is scripture is the sole infallible rule of faith isn't that the debate.

You would think that it is the whole earth. You have to.

Visit the moon. You have to search all the planets in the solar system. You would have to search the entire universe to make sure that no other pen like this pen existed. No mr white tonight. This bible is your universe.

This is what you have to search. You don't have to go to any other planets tonight mr white. I invite you to stay right here on planet earth and simply show us where in the.

Bible the doctrine of sola scriptura is found. I'm so sorry for defining for folks what the.

Proof of the universal negative is now in our remaining moments. Let's examine some key scripture passages that are frequently brought up. Let's turn immediately to 2nd timothy 3 16 verse 17 pardon me 3 16 and 17 which mr white leans so heavily upon and let's take a look at what it really says.

He quoted it for you already so i won't feel the need to quote it again but i do want to quote from his book. This is on page 42 of his book answers to catholic claims. I believe that the case for sola scriptura is so flimsy that if you want to find how flimsy it is you can just go right to mr white's book answers to catholic claims which purports to deal with the sufficiency.

Or the formal sufficiency of scripture. Wow. Okay there you go. Now again. Uh hey. Fine go ahead and say that. You know. But when i say that roman catholic apologists and catholic answers as a whole produces shallow flimsy argumentation that we have refuted over and over again.

And they don't bother to listen to refutations and rehabilitate themselves. They just keep repeating the the already refuted arguments over and over again. Oh you're terrible. You're uncharitable. And you're mean.

And and oh we'll have nothing to do with you. We're so offended. And blah blah blah blah. Hey if you can dish it out like madrid did during this debate why can't you take it is basically a simple question that someone would ask you.

Uh why. Why are roman catholics so thin-skinned. And yet they'll they'll sit behind this kind of rhetoric. Um i hadn't used that kind of rhetoric in my opening statement. Uh. But madrid wanted to. So that's fine.

If he thinks that my arguments are so shallow let's find out if he actually deals with them. Remember we went all the way through the debate on veneration of saints and angels looking for the painfully obviously stuff.

We never found it. We found that patrick madrid could not handle the text of scripture. He can't do exegesis. And every time we got into the text of scripture he lost badly. That's just the nature of things.

Now he's going to try to get into the text of scripture. And guess what. He's going to get his head handed to him on a platter. Why. Because roman catholicism isn't scriptural. That's why.

And that's what's being demonstrated. This book i think shows how flimsy that case is. Mr white says. 2nd timothy 3 16 and 17 literally screams sufficiency. Well this verse is screaming. But it's only because of the way mr white is twisting it and his attempt to shoehorn sola scriptura into it.

2nd timothy 3 17 does not teach the formal sufficiency of scripture folks it simply doesn't. It teaches perhaps material sufficiency which i would be perfectly happy to go along with. But just because scripture contains all the necessary equipment remember paul is saying that the man of god through scripture will be equipped will be competent will be thoroughly furnished as it says in the king james for every good work.

Every catholic says amen to that. There's no argument. But just because it will give you all the equipment that you need doesn't mean that it will necessarily make you able to use that equipment properly.

Let me demonstrate. Scripture says we must rightly divide the word of god. That means that some people can wrongly divide it. They can wrongly use it. Some of you here tonight will think i am wrongly using the word of god so that in effect proves what i'm saying.

Some people.

Will use it correctly. Others won't. And some people will use the dogmatic cans and creases the catholic church correctly and some people won't. Uh that is the nature of a written document and it is once again the demonstration of the uh shallowness the flimsiness since that seems to be the term of the day of pat madrid's argumentation that he does not realize that.

Again if you're going to make the argument well someone someone could misinterpret what the bible says. Therefore you need something else. Well then it follows. Someone could misinterpret what the catholic church says.

Therefore you need something beyond the catholic church. Right. If you use arguments that refute your own position those arguments are irrational and by using them you are demonstrating that you do not hold the truth.

You don't understand it. You don't think clearly. You don't think.

Rationally and that means you lose the debate. Just having the bible alone is not enough to fully equip the man of god in the sense that he may have all the raw materials. He may have all the equipment but he may not know how to use it properly which is a different uh definition of.

Course of solo scriptura than the one i've presented or that prostance have presented because obviously uh the whole idea of using god's revelation is uh not the point in this context uh riding the bike isn't the point in this context and so he's trying to shift uh the the definition there to one that uh is not even really relevant to solo scriptura.

Mr white used a very.

Quaint example about a bike store and how the bike store can outfit him thoroughly. Give him everything he needs bike tires inner tubes helmets and all the various things that he might need. But what about.

What about mr white if you don't know how to ride a bike. The whole point is that we're.

Talking about the man of god you made a man of god by the work of the spirit of god. We're talking about christians here the man of god in the church. And if he's going to teach rebuke reprove and exhort in godliness what is the source that he is to go to.

He is to go to the inspired scriptures. That is the only source that he is directed to go to to function in that way. And rome can't have that because to teach roman catholic theology you can't go to the bible alone.

You have to add these other things to it. So again we're clearly missing the entire context that is actually being presented. And that is speaking of the man of god. What is the source what has god given to the man of god in the church to teach god's truth.

It is that which is the honest us is that which is god breathed it is the scriptures. There is nothing here in regards to how to learn to ride a bike or anything else is irrelevant to this particular point.

Uh in the.

Presentation that i made. But what if you don't know the rules of the road. But what if you don't know the proper way to handle a bike in difficult terrain or in bad weather. The church and sacred tradition which the bible does talk about and we'll show later tonight is in that support role.

Sure the bible will fully equip the man of god but it doesn't presuppose that the man of god automatically knows how to use that scripture. That's where the church comes in in sacred.

Tradition. Yeah and again what has been defined on the basis of this alleged sacred tradition. The how of riding the bike. No the stuff of theology uh papal infallibility and purgatory and transubstantiation and priestly absolution and all the marion dogmas and all the none of this is about riding the bike.

Uh we're talking with forked tongue here. Oh we come along and we we help you how to see how to use these things. No you don't. You add things to it things that are clearly not there. Oh well it's implicitly there.

But see uh you know when angels say kakar to many uh we can build entire buildings of theology out of that. Because that's what the church. That's riding the bike. Uh that's what you're getting told here for the ways that the.

Church helps to guide the man of god in the proper use of sacred scripture. Don't forget that point.

The proper use of sacred scripture i .e to teach what we tell you to teach even when those things are were not even believed by anybody in your early church whatsoever. Uh. And that's of course has been what rome has done in these last doctrines that she has defined and defended.

We do have a caller online about this subject. I'm going to see how much farther madrid has to go before we are going to get wrapped up and that would be a natural place to take the call. So.

Let's continue with them. Finally how can mr white assert that paul has in mind the formal sufficiency of scripture when in the very same epistle in second timothy 2 2 which i'm sure he'll get to later paul charges timothy with handing on oral tradition.

Actually a second to the 2 2 says to.

Timothy that he is to pass on to men who are capable of teaching those things that he has heard from paul in the presence of many witnesses. And as i will say in my closing statement and i will criticize myself for my closing statement i did not do it.

Well i had all the stuff i wanted to get to and i decided to get to it. In the closing statement it's not that it wasn't relevant it's not that i broke any of the rules debate anything else. I should have summarized the issues and refocused instead.

I tried to get. I was still in that until 1993 and i had a conversation with somebody i don't even know who it was. I was still in the get as much as you can into the presentation mode of debating and not so much recognizing that.

You know sometimes you just can't get everything you want to get to. And so what i do in the closing statement i'll criticize myself for this statement i hit second thessalonians 2 15. I agree with everything i said about it was important to say but i should have just summarized it and not gone into detail with it.

And i got into this text as well as i recall and i quoted uh tertullian i think i'm going off top my head here but i believe it quoted to tell him who used this text against the gnostics. And the interesting thing was the gnostics were saying that the apostles had a secret doctrine a doctrine that was not written scripture that was passed down outside the canon scripture and that this secret doctrine was where they were getting their interpretations from.

And tertullian said no no no this passage tells us that what is passed down is not secret it's public it's known to everybody it has been presented timothy knows by paul in public. And therefore you can't say that there's this other stuff that you have to go to to be able to understand the scriptures.

You would have to be able to demonstrate that the early church that these christians have always believed these things. And that's the very thing rome can't do with their tradition. That's the very reason that madrid's trying to retreat to the material sufficiency viewpoint rather than the part and part of viewpoint is because he knows that he cannot even begin to demonstrate that what paul said the thessalonians was mary's bodily assumed heaven.

Of course he would argue that mary hadn't died yet. That's why he isn't but uh that mary is the queen of heaven. Uh that mary was was immaculately conceived and all the rest of this stuff. Because that's not what the early church believed.

You can't trace it that far back it just wasn't a part of this alleged tradition that does not find its place in scripture. And i will bring that up as i said later on in the debate.

Oral Tradition, 2 Timothy 2:2, and the Gnostic Secret Tradition Claim

Oral tradition. One other point mr white places a very heavy emphasis on greek and greek grammar.

And all. Okay now listen to this. Listen to this. I mean you really got to tune in here. If you've sort of been doing something else i'm like listen to this. Representative of the roman catholic church which claims to be the sole infallible rule of faith.

So on. So what have i. What did i do in my presentation since madrid and keating had been hammering away on on bill jackson and ron nemec. Where does the bible say. Sufficient. Where does the bible say.

They just hammered away on it. And i'm i'm gonna you know put out the plea to everybody. If anybody has that debate let me know let me know how to get it digitize it for me. Do something. Because i would really like to get it because i'd like to play some sections where they're just hammering away on this saying show us where it says this show us where it says it's over and over and over again.

Uh and uh. So they've been going at this really really hard. And so what do i do. I provide them with the very thing they were demanding just 40 or 50 days earlier to be given to them. And what's his response.

Well you're you're listening.

To all those other fancy ways of studying scripture but they're irrelevant tonight for tonight's purpose because we can take mr white let me let me play it over again because i i think you.

Really need to hear this whole thing. Uh uh to to. Really let's us remember this is irrelevant one.

Other point mr white places a very heavy emphasis on greek and greek grammar and all of those other fancy ways of studying scripture but they're irrelevant tonight for tonight's purpose because we can take mr white's principle his interpretive principle and apply it to another passage very similar and find out if it works mr white says in effect because the bible says it will make you perfect and complete lacking in nothing for perfect and complete fully equipped therefore you don't.

Need anything else. It excludes everything else. Now. Uh not quite. What i said was that for what the man of god is doing that is teaching rebuking exhorting. When the man of god wishes to teach god's truth that which is the anus dos is sufficient for him to do those very things.

That's what i said. I didn't say. You don't need anything else. As in oh that's just all there is to it. And now what happens is you don't need the spirit. You don't need the church. You don't need any of the stuff you just just got to have.

You and your bible out in the woods didn't say that. But that is the.

Common type of presentation uh that people make. Let's apply that for example to james 1 4. James 1 4 paul says here let your perseverance be perfect and complete. Let your perseverance be perfect so that you may be perfect and complete.

Lacking in nothing. Now. What does that mean mr white. Does that mean that if i persevere that i'm perfect and complete therefore i don't need the bible. Does that mean. I don't need fellowship. I do not need prayer.

Now notice what he's doing.

I had never said he's mixing categories here. He's doing exactly what i said he was going to do. He's misrepresenting what i said in regards to the sufficiency of that source of scripture so that the man of god may do what the man of god needs to do right.

So i didn't say that the church wasn't important or fellowship wasn't important or prayer was he's. He's completely misrepresenting that point. And he then is completely misrepresenting the original language which at this time in 1993 he could not read and hence uh blunders badly at this point as i will point out in my uh rebuttal.

I don't need to do the good works that paul talks about so often as those that accompany.

Saving faith. What does that have to do with my argument. Absolutely positively nothing. Total waste of time because nowhere did i say that. Well as long as you have the scriptures and you're teaching and preaching then the bible says nothing else about sanctification it says nothing else about the fellowship the saints says nothing else else about anything at all.

Obviously that's not what the debate's about or even relevant to the presentation that i made. What about those i do.

Need all of those. But if the bible is to be sufficient if it's proved to be sufficient from second timothy 317 simply because it will it says it will make you complete then the bible proves that perseverance and by the way the context in james 1 and 2 is perseverance in good works.