Are the Marian Doctrines Authentic Christian Teaching?

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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Greetings and welcome to The Vowing Line. My name is James White, and we are coming to you live today along with Riche Pierre, the second most popular

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Frenchman in the world, only second to Inspector Clouseau himself.

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I've seen a lot of similarities, personally, between Inspector Clouseau and Brother Riche.

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But anyways, it's good to be with you, and we are going to do a deep dive into church history again today, sort of continuing a little bit with what we started on the last program when we went into the subject of the

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Immaculate Conception. I think it's very important for anyone who's going to be doing any apologetics work at all to have a very, very serious understanding.

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Well, look, for decades now, whenever anyone has asked me, what two classes, what classes did you take in college and seminary that have been the most important to you in apologetics work?

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And I've always had the same answer, Greek and church history. And not everybody gets to take

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Greek, though there's lots of opportunities these days, honestly, to be able to do so, lots of ways of doing so, even on your own, though that's a little bit tough.

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But church history is that area. It's the one area that allows us to see ourselves.

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It really is. It functions as a mirror. We are too close to the conflicts and controversies of our own day to really have any perspective.

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But when we look back in church history, the neat thing about Christian church history that you don't have in any other history.

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Now, OK, you do have it on one level. We're all human beings. We're all made in the image of God.

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So therefore, there are consistencies. There's a reason why, for example, in military training, you still study the battles of people who lived long, long, long ago.

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Why? Because they were human beings and human beings will behave in a certain way.

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In the same way, even more so in church history, what you have is you have the reality of the fact that we are dealing with the work of the spirit of God in building the church for a extensive period of time.

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And so we can get somewhat of a little bit of a perspective to look at ourselves when we study church history.

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And so it's extremely valuable just on that level. Apologetically, however, it's vitally important.

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And we can also, as a result of studying church history, see the relationship between that area of study and sola scriptura.

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If you don't see how scriptural sufficiency has been absolutely central in understanding how the history of the church has developed, you're going to be in a world of hurt.

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And so we're going to get into the subject of the

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Marian dogmas. Once again, we touched on one. Well, I commented on some others.

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But specifically in reference to the issue of sola scriptura, are the

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Marian dogmas Christian theology? Are they representative of what the apostles themselves taught, or do they come from another source?

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That really is the question. So I have a presentation to be able to show you, and hopefully it will come across fairly clearly.

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Here is the beginning of that presentation. I'll go back and forth, though you don't really need to see me all that much anyways.

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I'm not much to look at. What's the fundamental issue that we want to get to today?

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If a person who had never heard of the Bible, never read the

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Bible, picked it up and read it and was asked, does this book teach that Jesus's mother is the sinless queen of heaven, who was bodily assumed into heaven at the end of her life, conceived without the stain of original sin, and never had other children, the look of confusion on the face of the reader would be fully understandable.

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But this illustrates, really, the central issue. And the central issue is sola scriptura.

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Not solo scriptura, not the scripture by itself outside of the context of what

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God is doing in the church. Not solo scriptura in the sense of you and your

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Bible under the tree, and that's all that God ever intended. You're never to look at what

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God has done in preceding generations. We don't look back upon history. No, none of those things are true.

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Sola scriptura is simply the teaching that scripture is the sole infallible rule of faith of the church.

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It doesn't mean we do not have secondary rules of faith. It does not mean that we cannot learn from church history.

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But scripture has a nature of authority that is fundamentally different than any other authority available to the church, that God has specifically given to the church to be used by the church in her ministry and in her following of Christ.

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So if one believes in solo scriptura, one will never embrace the Roman Catholic dogmas on Mary.

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For the simple reason that no meaningful form of exegesis would ever lead you to those conclusions.

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The interpretation Roman Catholic apologists use to derive the Marian dogmas differs markedly from that used to defend the

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Trinity, for example. This is a very, very important point. It's a point we make over and over again, but we need to emphasize it.

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And that is you look for consistency of interpretation.

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You look for consistency of interpretation. We have emphasized this repeatedly, that the best way to detect tradition, even as Christians debate with one another, as I've made the allegation that when

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I debate my Presbyterian friends on the subject of baptism, all of a sudden they start using a different form of exegesis in the defense of their view of that.

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And that to me is that's the sign of tradition. You've got a tradition there. And so you're moving your way around it as best you possibly can.

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Well, when we move outside of the Orthodox faith and start dealing with those who claim to be

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Christians, but have other sources of authority and things like that, immediately you discover that they don't really have any commitment to a consistency of interpretation, a consistency of hermeneutics, a consistency of exegesis, how you interpret the text.

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That's somewhat understandable because sadly, most Christians do not. Most Christians simply do not have a consistent commitment to an understanding of how to interpret

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Scripture. That's just the way things are. But this is the hallmark of truth.

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People are always asking, well, how can you tell? You know, this person says this and that person says that. And how can anyone really tell?

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Consistency. Consistency. If you claim to be a Trinitarian, now,

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Roman Catholics will often say that without the church, you could never understand the doctrine of the

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Trinity anyway. And it required the church to do this, the church to do that. They don't really fundamentally believe that the

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Bible is sufficient to present the doctrine of the Trinity. But for those who believe in the

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Trinity have defended the Trinity from Scripture. You know the methodology, you know an understanding of the language, the background, consistency of Scripture from one

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Scripture to another Scripture, etc., etc. This is not the kind of interpretation that is used to substantiate reading into Luke 1 .48

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an entire edifice of theology regarding Mary.

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It's not the same methodology at all. And so there will be a markedly different way of interpretation for that particular individual.

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So, no topic to me more clearly demonstrates the absolute necessity of holding the

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Scripture as the sole infallible rule of faith in the Roman Catholic dogmas and doctrines that are now taught 2 ,000 years after the birth of Christ, almost 2 ,000 years after the last apostle had died, and yet are being taught as if they are dogma, as if they can be bound upon the very hearts and minds of believing individuals.

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And so this is, I think, extremely important. It's not just important in regards to dealing with Roman Catholicism.

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It's important in dealing with almost any group that you would be working with.

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Let's go back to the presentation here. Before looking at the facts, biblically and historically, let's ask a question.

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What constitutes authentic Christian teaching? I would like to submit to you that the

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New Testament does, in fact, give us an answer to that particular inquiry. What is authentic Christian teaching?

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First, Jesus plainly held men accountable not to unwritten traditions, but to revealed truths of Scripture.

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In Matthew 22, verse 31, remember when the Sadducees present the story of the woman who had seven husbands, seven brothers, according to the

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Old Testament law, and they all died, who she would be married to in heaven, et cetera, et cetera.

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Jesus's response to them at that time was to point them to Scripture.

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Have you not read what God spoke to you saying?

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So Jesus held men accountable. He's holding men accountable to the written Scriptures, even though those

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Scriptures had been written 1 ,400 years earlier. He says that these were words that were spoken to them.

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That is how centrally important the Scripture is to Jesus's understanding of how

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God communicates and how God holds men accountable for what they find in Scripture.

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Of course, we know the key text, all Scripture is God -breathed, it's breathed out by God, and is therefore profitable for what?

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For us to just simply have our own personal interpretations and, well, this makes me feel this way or feel that way.

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No, all Scripture is God -breathed, and because it is God -breathed, it is therefore profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness.

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Now, these are the things that the man of God needs to be doing in the church. There needs to be teaching. There needs to be communication of divine truth.

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And since Scripture is God -breathed, therefore it's profitable for that. So what does that mean? That which is not

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God -breathed cannot be as profitable as that which is God -breathed for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness.

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Here is the unique soul character of that which is theanoustos,

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God -breathed. Nothing else the church possesses is theanoustos.

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The church is not theanoustos. And because the church has this resource, so that the man of God may be proficient, qualified, equipped, sufficient for performing every good work, there cannot be a good work defined for the man of God that the theanoustos

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Scriptures does not equip him to perform. And certainly, teaching that Mary is bodily assumed into heaven, that Mary is immaculately conceived, that Mary is a perpetual virgin, these are things that a

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Roman Catholic will tell you are good deeds, but Scripture does not ever even begin to hint at such beliefs.

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If a belief is based in that which is not God -breathed, it is not binding upon Christians and is therefore not authentic Christian teaching.

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Now, listen carefully to this. I think this is very, very important, and I noticed that a lot of my friends who are paddling around out in the

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Tiber River don't seem to feel the weight of this observation, but I've never had anyone provide much of a meaningful response, to be perfectly honest with you.

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Not a single bishop who met at the Council of Nicaea in AD 325.

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And if you're new to study of church history, if you're new to this program, I've said many times before that if you take church history from me, you just know that on the final, one of the things you must know is the date of the

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Council of Nicaea. So you just tattoo it on your brain, just get it down,

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AD 325, Council of Nicaea. And of course, we spend time digging into what happened at that particular council.

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But it's considered the first ecumenical council, the first council of the whole, all the church, the world.

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And of course, at the time, they didn't know that. At the time, there was no knowledge on their part that this was the first ecumenical council or there'd be other ecumenical councils.

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They were simply meeting because there was a tremendous division in the church over the nature of Christ and his relationship to the

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Father. And so they met in council in AD 325. And here's the point.

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Not a single bishop who met the Council of Nicaea, central to the definition of the relationship of father and son, and therefore everything else in theology, everything else flows from this.

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Everything else is relevant to this. Not a single bishop at that council believed what modern

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Roman Catholicism defines as dogmatically true about Mary today. Not a single one.

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Now, if Rome's claims are to have merit, they all should have believed these things.

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But Roman Catholic historians recognize that's not the case. But people need to understand that the church was able to deal with an issue like this without anyone there believing what

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Rome now says, de fide, you must believe to faithfully follow

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Christ and his church. Think about that. Think about what that means.

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If modern Roman Catholic teachings are true, then God allowed many centuries to pass without anyone believing the full truth about them.

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So, think about it this way. How important can the bodily assumption of Mary be if God allowed 1 ,900 years to pass before making sure people understood it was a divinely revealed truth?

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And how is it that you could literally have the first five centuries of the

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Christian era pass before anyone even mentioned it, and then when they mentioned it, they mentioned it only as the teaching of heretics, not as something that was taught by Christians?

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It really seems to me that requires an extremely low view of the importance of the early church.

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An extremely low view of the importance of the early church. That these de fide dogmas would not even be known to them.

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They wouldn't even know anything about it. Hmm. I wonder how that works. I don't think that it does.

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And it's something, again, I'm asking that you think about what these things mean.

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Now, in fact, I think it is indisputable that no one in the first 1 ,500 years of church history believed as dogma what modern

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Roman Catholicism has defined to be true. And I mean that in the entirety of what

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Rome has revealed to be de fide dogma, which would include, for example, the last three doctrines that have been defined by Rome, the

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Immaculate Conception, papal infallibility, and the bodily assumption of Mary. Yet, despite this reality,

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Rome claims her teachings are true and ancient. And she condemns with the anathema those who would reject her claims.

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That means this is not a matter of possibilities. Rome makes eternity rest upon these very teachings.

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This isn't just a matter of opinion. This is a matter of eternity itself.

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Now, if you would like to do some reading in yearly church, and I highly recommend that, obviously, there are certain fundamental foundational truths to recognize when reading in church history.

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We'll be talking a lot about that during the course of our study today. But Bishop Fulgentius of Rusp, Bishop Fulgentius of Rusp, now he was not well known in the past.

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More of his writings have become available, really, over the past century.

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Reading him is indeed a breath of fresh air, especially given his time frame.

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You will notice that he is post -Augustinian. So he is born about two -thirds of the way through the 5th century and dies in the first third of the 6th century, given the dates there that you can see.

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And notice these words from him, given the references there. PL, by the way, is always

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Patrologia Latinae, the huge, massive collection of the writings of church fathers in Latin over against Patrologia Graecae, which, of course, is the

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Greek version thereof. This is the grace whereby it came to pass that God, who came to take away sins because sin was not in him, was conceived and born a man in the similitude of sinful flesh.

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The flesh of Mary forsooth, which had been conceived in iniquities after the manner of men, was indeed sinful flesh, which bore the

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Son of God in the similitude of sinful flesh. We must believe that the only begotten

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God did not derive the defilement of sin from the mortal flesh of the

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Virgin. Truly, therefore, Mary conceived God the

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Word, which she bore in sinful flesh, which God received.

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Now, Bishop Fulgentius is living after Augustine, after the

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Pelagian controversies, long after all of the Christological controversies leading up to, for example, the

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Council of Chalcedon. And yet, he speaks like this.

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He says that the flesh of Mary was indeed sinful flesh, which bore the Son of God in the similitude of sinful flesh.

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We must believe that the only begotten God, I appreciate that phrase, the only begotten God, if you're not familiar, why

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I appreciate that, look at John 118, did not derive the defilement of sin from the mortal flesh of the

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Virgin. Truly, therefore, Mary conceived God the Word, which she bore in sinful flesh, which

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God received. Now, we know that Fulgentius was a learned bishop, he was well acquainted with Augustine's writings, yet plainly had no concept of the

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Immaculate Conception, never breathed a word about the bodily assumption, no evidence of any belief in such concepts as Queen of Heaven, or Mary as co -redemptrix, mediatrix of all graces, etc.,

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and etc. Was Fulgentius just ignorant of the apostolic tradition, or is the real fact that there was no such tradition?

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Now, I think we need to, at that point, we need to recognize that when

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Rome claims tradition as the source of her beliefs, this is a very convenient source, because Rome can never tell you what tradition is.

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I remember when I first started doing debates on Roman Catholicism, of course, those were the first debates we did, back in the 1990s, and I was debating

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Gerry Matitix, when I would quote from an early church writer, what would happen would be, well,

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James, he's not representing tradition there. But he can quote from anything from patristic sources, and, well, that's tradition, that's what we're supposed to hold to, that's what

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Paul said when he said hold to the traditions, there, there it is right there, but then I quote from that material, and that's not tradition, because who gets to say what tradition is?

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Rome does. This is why, once again, let me emphasize this,

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I believe in sola scriptura, the consistent faith Roman Catholic believes in sola ecclesia, that the church is the sole infallible rule of faith.

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And no matter how hard a Roman Catholic tries to get out from under that rubric, that name, every attempt that they make only proves the point, especially when you raise the issue of the dogmas that Rome has defined, especially in regards to Mary or in regards to the papacy.

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So, what is scripture? Well, Rome tells you. Rome has canonical authority.

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What does scripture mean? Well, Rome tells you, because Rome can interpret scripture infallibly. Well, what is tradition?

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Rome tells you. That's tradition, that's not. What does tradition mean? Well, Rome tells you. She's the infallible authority there as well.

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So, that's what sola ecclesia means. She cannot be under the authority of a source that she defines and interprets by herself.

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She is in a dialogue with herself. She's in a monologue with herself. That's why no real reform can take place, because there's no external source to be able to provide that kind of reformation.

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And so, sola ecclesia is where Rome is coming from. Sola scriptura is where we are coming from.

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And when you compare the two, you can see that one is a self -defeating position.

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It truly, truly is. Now, no meaningful exegetical approach to scripture will ever lead one to believe the

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Marian dogma. I said that before. I'm repeating it again. No meaningful exegetical approach.

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So, in other words, when Roman Catholic apologists camp on Ciccara to Mene to try to turn it into an assertion of Mary's being full of grace at the

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Annunciation, that's not how you would handle any other text of scripture.

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It's not how they deal with caritao when it's used of believers. It's not how they deal with perfect passive participles when it's dealing with believers.

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There is no consistency. So, no meaningful exegetical approach to scripture will ever lead one to believe the

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Marian dogmas, because those dogmas contain as an essential element of their own definitions material that is derived from outside of scripture.

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Mary is presented in scripture as the blessed servant of God, but one who is a redeemed woman, not immaculately conceived.

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When she called God her savior, she meant that as any Jewish woman in the

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Tanniatic period would have understood that language. She was not utilizing definitions that would not become dogmatically defined until 1854.

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While Theotokos, or in modern Greek it's normally pronounced

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Theotokos, while Theotokos as a Christological title, what does that mean?

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Literally, it means God -bearer. God -bearer, to give birth.

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Theos, God. Theotokos, the one who gives birth to God. Hence, often rendered as mother of God.

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While Theotokos as a Christological title is biblical, when used as an exaltative of Mary, it is not.

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Now, let me expand upon this just for a moment, because I think this is very important.

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Many evangelicals become very, very, very, very uncomfortable around this term, just like they become uncomfortable around the term

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Eucharist, even though it's the

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Greek term to give thanks, which we're supposed to do all the time. There is a biblically appropriate, historically appropriate utilization of the term

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Theotokos. It is proper to call Mary the mother of God, in the context in which that phrase first arose.

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That's completely different from calling her mother of God within the system that has developed in Roman Catholicism that exalts her and makes her one to whom you pray, seek grace, entrust yourself for your salvation, all these other utterly blasphemous concepts.

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Theotokos was originally a Christological title, Christological, not

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Mariological, Christological. It was about Jesus. It was affirming that when

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Jesus is born, he is already the God -man. Over against such early errors as adoptionism, the idea that Jesus was adopted as the

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Son of God at a point in time later on, and what would become known as Nestorianism, though Nestorians may not have believed it, the affirmation is that the hypostatic union is not a later event in Jesus' experience.

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It is definitional of who he is from the very beginning. Theotokos protects the unity of the personhood of Jesus, one person with two natures.

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Therefore, it's important. Therefore, it should be affirmed by anyone who is really familiar with the theological issues that we are attempting to address.

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Why, then, is there an objection to it? Why, then, did even

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Nestorians have an objection to it? Because it does raise some interesting questions.

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God doesn't have a mother, and that's not what it was originally saying. It wasn't saying that God has a mother.

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It was saying that when God became incarnate, that he truly became incarnate.

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He's truly man. And if you're truly man, you have a mother, unless you're Adam, and that's not what's being asserted. So we need to be very, very careful, affirm the terms proper utilization, recognize the improper utilization, and be able to explain the difference.

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Be able to explain the difference. I think that is rather important.

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Okay, let's go back to the presentation here. The allegorical methods used to find fitting parallels to Mary, or to say there is at least nothing in opposition to various Marian beliefs, is insufficient for the grounding of positive dogmatic beliefs.

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Anyone who has listened to the presentations of Roman Catholic apologists and speakers and Mariologists and the like know that allegory, fitting parallels to Mary, are the sum and substance of the argumentation that is given.

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That's not how you prove the Trinity. That's not how you demonstrate the resurrection. But that is all you have for the

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Marian dogmas, is fitting parallels. The Ark of the

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Covenant and Queen Mother parallels are not only exceedingly weak, they are further damaged by simply asking how many centuries it took for any

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Christian writer to see them. Let me just very, very quickly explain what that's all about.

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I've told the story before. I'll go ahead and tell it again, once again, because we have so many new listeners, people who haven't heard the program before.

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I remember very, very clearly, and I'll go ahead and give you the timing on this because you younger folks find this to be somewhat humorous for some reason.

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I was riding bike. I've been riding bike for a long time. I started in 93. Sometime during that 93 to 98 period, that was my first period of riding.

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Then I got off bike and became a weightlifter and got real big and got back on bike in 2005.

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I've been riding ever since then. Even back then,

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I would use that bike riding time as a time of study. Back then, we had these,

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I should have grabbed one. I'm not sure that I even have one here at home. Probably do.

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I probably got one over there. We had something called a cassette tape. Yes, a cassette tape.

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That's how you listened to things, is you buy cassette tapes or you record stuff on cassette tapes.

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I decided on a ride that I was going to listen to Jerry Madetik's presentation on Mary in the

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Bible. Now, I was raised as a good, conservative, independent, fundamental, well, actually, we're

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GRB, but it's sort of the same thing. General Association of Regular Baptists, before joining a

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Southern Baptist Church in my teen years. To say that the

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Marian dogmas would not have been much of my upbringing is to speak the obvious.

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What I listened to blew me away. Blew me away. I did not know how to respond to it.

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When you're raised with the assumption that the other side has no biblical arguments, then you're never going to be ready for their biblical arguments.

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That's one of the things that once your horizons expand and you start dealing with more people, you start learning to prioritize your beliefs, what's core, what's central, the circles, so on and so forth.

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That's when you really start gaining maturity and a firm grounding.

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It also helps you to respond to new things that you'd never even thought of before.

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As I listened to Jerry Madetik's, remember, Madetik's at the time was

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ABD Albert dissertation at Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia. He was John Gerstner's favorite teacher's assistant.

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Very bright guy. Finished, I think, an undergraduate degree in Greek. Jerry, I don't know where Jerry is these days, but he can probably still out -talk me by a long shot.

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Like I've said, I don't think Jerry Madetik has lungs. I think he has gills, so he can just keep on talking, never has to take a breath.

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He blew me away. I came back from that bike ride going, oh my goodness.

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I remember taking that cassette tape, I remember the cassette tape deck.

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Now, you go, how would you listen to cassette tape on a ride? We had something called a Walkman. Yes. A Walkman would weigh about 10 times what an iPod would, especially the really cool iPods

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I ended up getting. I've still got one over here. Here's one of my,

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I mean, that weighs about what a two -hour cassette would have weighed right there.

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I remember exactly what the cassette tape, because it was a cassette tape deck that I used in my car.

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I didn't have one when I went to high school. This is after high school, but I had kept this one.

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This is the one that I put on the seat next to me. That was my music when I drove to school, because I had a long drive to school.

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That's how I'd listen to the Imperials and stuff like that while I was driving to school. I remember putting that cassette tape in there and starting that thing.

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I sat down at my, wow, was that a, it might have been an 8088.

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I might have had a 380 by then. Were we up to Pentiums by then? I'm starting to lose track of that stuff.

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I'm not exactly certain. I'm thinking 8088 right now, maybe.

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Maybe I opened a WordStar file, put in a few dot commands. I'm really dating myself here.

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We're really talking ancient history here. Anyway, I opened up a file and I started listening again to the cassette tape.

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When he would make a claim that such and such a verse, like I remember very clearly that he said in the

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Greek Septuagint, the term that is used for the glory cloud over the

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Ark of the Covenant is the same word that's used over here by Luke or something like that.

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Stop the tape. Back then, I did not have Accordance, Logos, Olive Tree, PC Study Bible, whatever.

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There was no internet at this point in time. I think it may have just been being started.

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I'm not right around that time, but there was no such thing as Google.

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There wasn't even an Alta Vista back then, which was before Google. Anyway, I had to get books out and do this the old -fashioned way.

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He says that the term in Luke is the same in the Greek Septuagint. I've got my old

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Ralph's Greek Septuagint, which is right back there, and same one.

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I'm looking at that and I'm looking at the Greek New Testament and I'm checking everything out that he's saying.

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It took hours for just one presentation. It took hours, but I had to do it.

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He was wrong about almost everything he'd said. It sounded good. It could not survive someone sitting there with the

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Greek New Testament, the Greek Old Testament, the Bauer, Arndt, Gingrich, and Donker.

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Back then, it was the green second edition, BAGD instead of BDAG. It couldn't survive that kind of analysis, but I had to do the analysis because I had never heard anything like this before.

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I had never heard anything like this before. I was challenged by it, and so I had to check it all out.

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I did, and I can say for myself, I found out where the errors were and have brought those errors up to Mr.

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Matitick over the years in the debates we've done since that time. When you first hear them, when you first hear about the

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Ark of the Covenant, and you hear someone drawing all these allegorical connections between the

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Ark of the Covenant, Mary, and say, see, this is the connection here, and there's a connection there, and the word that's used when the baby leaps in the womb is the word used when the priest, or was it when

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David left before the Ark, and stuff like that. There are parallels. There are certain parallels, especially when you're dealing with similar context, but there are certain parallels that can be drawn.

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New Testament writers do try to make parallels to Old Testament texts. That's not even really a question, but it's the unique teachings about Mary, unknown to the

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New Testament writers, that are just simply not there. They're being read in, and being read in very, very poorly, but when you first hear it, man, it sounds convincing.

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I fully get it. I can see how someone raised within fundamentalism, raised within standard evangelicalism, would be very impressed.

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See, here's the thing. If you are dissatisfied with where you are, all of a sudden, you have a significantly more open mind to hearing what someone else is saying.

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Someone like that. I've seen that happen over and over again. Thankfully, I've seen people who have left for these falsehoods who then came back years later.

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Unlike the arguments for true Christian teachings, such as the Trinity, the resurrection, the atonement, the virgin birth, are the arguments for the

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Marian dogmas. I was once asked by a Roman Catholic apologist if I could provide a single text in the

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Bible that specifically said Mary had committed a particular sin, or that Mary had specifically born other children.

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Of course, the Bible does not specifically note, by name, 99 .999

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% of all who have committed acts of sin. So, on that basis, the vast majority of humankind must be sinless, because they are not specifically accused of a specific act of sin by name.

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Right? Of course. Now, the modern complex of Marian dogmas and doctrines shows that Rome's claim to function on the basis of scripture and tradition is utterly fallacious.

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And it is. It is. That's why a lot of people will say, why do you focus so much just on the

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Marian dogmas? Why are you constantly talking about something like that? The reason is not difficult to find.

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Two of the three dogmas that have been defined over the past 170 years are about Mary.

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The other is papal infallibility. And so, where else are you going to go to examine

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Rome's claims to being consistent with tradition than to what she herself has defined as being that tradition, and has done so within the most recent timeframe?

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Where else are you going to go? These are the issues that we have to address. So, I assert that these

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Marian dogmas, including those that were defined before, such as perpetual virginity of Mary, shows that Rome's claim to function, and Rome will always claim, no, we function on the basis of scripture and tradition, scripture and tradition, that claim is,

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I believe, utterly fallacious. The two most modern

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Roman teachings, the doctrine Mary is queen of heaven, mediatrix of all graces, co -redemptrix of Christ, doctrine taught by popes for 100 plus years, and the dogma of bodily assumption are simply unknown in either scripture or tradition.

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Now, let me, you're looking at these and going, what is any of that?

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Again, terms that we are not familiar with at all within conservative

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Christian backgrounds. Mary as queen of heaven, automatically you start seeing these pictorial representations with stars over her head and things like that.

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But mediatrix of all graces and co -redemptrix of Christ, now these are not dogma, but they are doctrine taught by popes for over 100 years.

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You can go back into the late 1800s and find popes utilizing this language when speaking of Mary in their teachings.

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That does not make it a dogma. It doesn't have to be believed by faith.

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That's what de fide dogma is. But it has been taught by the popes for over 100 years.

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I don't know what the current pope's view of these things is, but neither does anybody else. And the dogma of the bodily assumption, 1950 defined with the anathema, are simply unknown in either scripture or tradition.

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The only way you can define tradition in such a way as to get the bodily assumption into it is to go well past the first half millennium of church history.

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You have to include what you get out of the medieval period as part of tradition.

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And there are some that are willing to do that. One can search tens of thousands of pages of sermons and books from the first millennia of Christian writings without finding these teachings to have any sound evidence of having an apostolic origin.

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Even when exalted, hyperbolic language is used of Mary in this period, and that certainly happens a lot.

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It lacks the foundational context to be made even slightly relevant to the full definition of these doctrines as they are used within Roman Catholicism today.

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This is what a fair reading of that material will show you. As we work backwards, we find the next dogma, the

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Immaculate Conception, finding its first formulation in a British monk named Edmer at the beginning of the 12th century.

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Even then, it was opposed in its modern dogmatic form as an innovation by Bernard of Clairvaux, Peter Lombard, Alexander of Hales, Bonaventura, Albert the

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Great, Albertus Maximus, and Thomas Aquinas.

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Going further back, we find a consistent universal teaching that Jesus and Jesus alone was conceived without original sin and born sinless in this world.

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This includes not only the great theologians, despite numerous later forgeries misrepresenting such luminaries as Augustine, but numerous bishops of Rome as well.

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Roman Catholic writers list numerous patristic writers who had no problem seeing the biblical narrative indicating acts of sin on Mary's part, including

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Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen, John Chrysostom, Cyril of Alexandria, and Basil of Caesarea.

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Eamon Carroll has written regarding the period of Augustine, quote, many more centuries of thought and prayer were required before the church would realize that the

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Immaculate Conception was among the gifts God provided for his mother.

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Quoting from Mary in the Documents of the Magisterium in Mariology, Volume 1, by Juniper B.

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Carroll. So notice, many more centuries of thought and prayer were required before the church would realize.

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So no one then, remember what I said, no one at the Council of Nicaea, well, there's confirmation of that, would realize that the

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Immaculate Conception was among the gifts God provided for his mother. So no one knew it then, none of the apostles knew it,

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Mary certainly didn't know it, but you have to believe it as dogma now. Think about what that means.

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Finally, we come, and notice the title that I have here, Undercutting the

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Incarnation. Undercutting the Incarnation. Finally, we come to what may be the most troubling, even though the most ancient of the

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Marian doctrines, the perpetual virginity of Mary. Now, the natural reading of the text of Scripture speaks of Jesus' brothers and sisters and the family of Joseph, Mary, Jesus, and his brothers and sisters living in Nazareth.

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That is the natural reading of the text. The biblical narrative of the birth of Christ contains not a hint, not even a hint of the concept of the birth being painless or unnatural.

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The Greek term is ticto, it would be the same, it's just like going back into the Old Testament and looking at Yellad and Yellid in the prophecy in Isaiah chapter 9.

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Ticto means to give birth. And there is nothing provided in the text that in any way gives us a foreign context to the giving of the birth.

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For Jesus to be our sin bearer, his humanity had to be real.

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He has to be the God -man. He truly has to have entered into flesh, not just took it on in appearance for a brief period of time, but especially in light of the nature of the imputed righteousness of Christ.

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Then his life had to be a life that was truly lived as a man.

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The Roman Catholic concept of perpetual virginity is unknown to Scripture. So where did it come from?

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The earliest sources to promote the idea of an unnatural birth of Jesus are not

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Orthodox, but are instead tinged with Gnostic concepts. These include the

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Protevangelium of James, the Ascension of Isaiah, and the Odes of Solomon. You may put each one of these names into the search bar.

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If you want to, go ahead and put those names. Protevangelium of James, Ascension of Isaiah, Odes of Solomon.

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Put that in the search bar at aomin .org. And you will discover previous editions of the

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Dividing Line. We called them Story Time with Uncle Jimmy, where I read the entirety of these works.

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All of it. So you'll, I mean, you can find all of them online. They will be in some interesting sources, but you can't find them all.

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Read them for yourself. Listen to them. See just how massively different they are in character and scope and message than what we have in the

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New Testament. Check it out for yourself. I think it'll speak for yourself, speak to you, and it'll be very, very clear.

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The Roman Catholic concept found in these sources.

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You'll find the parallels in these, and where do they come from? Well, indeed, when

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Clement of Alexandria, now Clement of Alexandria was one of the early writers in the

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Alexandrian school. And certainly one that one would find highly questionable in his exegetical prowess, shall we say.

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When Clement of Alexandria defends the idea of the perpetual virginity of Mary, he makes specific reference to the protevangelium of James, which he evidently accepts as a valid trustworthy source.

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It most surely is not a trustworthy source. But just here we see the danger of abandoning sola scriptura, and Clement fell into that problem in many, many places.

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So let's look at some of these. Like I said, we've read these in times past, but let's just look at a few of the quotations from some of these sources that Roman Catholic sources themselves recognize as being central to where this concept came from outside of Scripture.

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From Odes 19, Odes of Solomon. And mixed the milk of the two breasts of the father.

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Then she gave the mixture to the generation without their knowing, and those who have received it are in the perfection of the right hand.

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The womb of the virgin took it, and she received conception and gave birth.

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So the virgin became a mother with great mercies, and she labored and bore the son, but without pain, because it did not occur without purpose.

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And she did not require a midwife, because he caused her to give life.

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She brought forth like a strong man with desire, and she bore according to the manifestation, and she acquired according to the great power.

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And she loved with redemption, and guarded with kindness, and declared with grandeur. Hallelujah.

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Now, I think it is important to recognize some of that terminology.

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Only a few of you who are still awake at this point did, and you did because you were listening carefully to the

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Ken Wilson response. Because the language of the great power and other phraseology that's used there comes straight out of Gnosticism, and hence finds place even in Manichaeism as well because of the

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Gnostic influence. But that's where it comes from. None of this comes from the worldview of Scripture. None of it comes from the apostles.

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It comes from outside of Scripture, and yet is central to the development of one of the primary

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Marian dogmas that then gives rise to the other Marian dogmas as well. So, continuing looking at the undercutting of the incarnation from the ascension of Isaiah.

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And after two months of days, while Joseph was in his house and Mary his wife, but both alone, it came about, when they were alone, that Mary then looked with her eyes and saw a small infant, and she was astounded.

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And after her astonishment had worn off, her womb was found as it was at first, before she had conceived.

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And when her husband Joseph said to her, What has made you astounded? His eyes were opened, and he saw the infant and praised the

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Lord, because the Lord had come in his lot. This is the ascension of Isaiah.

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So notice, Jesus does not have a normal birth. Instead, Mary looks, and ta -da!

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There he is. He's just beamed out. And her womb was found as it was at first, before she had conceived.

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Now, some of the sources go into great detail that I'm not going to go into about this examination of Mary.

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Let me just put it this way. Rome's dogmatic teaching on this subject is that Mary's virginal integrity was kept intact, not just spiritually, but biologically as well.

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Let me just put it this way. A baby cannot be born if the virginal integrity is intact.

01:00:00

So, the only way that Jesus can come out of Mary is basically to beam out in some kind of miraculous, physically impossible, but spiritually accomplished event.

01:00:18

And it is first discussed in sources such as these. And from the protevangelium of James, And immediately the cloud disappeared out of the cave, and a great light shone in the cave, so the eyes could not bear it.

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And that light gradually decreased until the infant appeared and went and took the breast from his mother

01:00:43

Mary. There's this great, great light, and everyone's blinded by this great, great light.

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And then as the light slowly diminishes, there's the baby.

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No birth, no blood, no pain, Star Trek beam out.

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There he is. Scotty was up there. I got him, Captain. That's what you've got.

01:01:16

That's what you've got. This thoroughly undercuts the Incarnation.

01:01:22

Thoroughly undercuts the reality of Christ's human nature. Does not come from scriptural sources, or even from truly

01:01:33

Christian sources, if you know anything about Gnosticism at all. And in fact, the more you study

01:01:41

Gnosticism, the more you realize, oh yeah, okay. Well, they wouldn't want a natural birth, not for one who has such an exalted position.

01:01:53

So yeah, you just have a big old light, and it comes from the realm of light, and therefore there he is.

01:01:59

And yeah, that makes perfect sense within Gnosticism. And within Roman Catholicism.

01:02:08

That should tell you everything you need to know right there. That's why solo scripture is so important. That's why once you deny it, you end up believing

01:02:14

Gnostic myths. Didn't even know how you got there, but you do. So once again, are these authentic Christian teaching?

01:02:25

The Trinity is an authentic Christian teaching. Why? It is based upon sound principles of pan -canonical biblical interpretation.

01:02:38

From Genesis to Revelation. It's solo scriptura and tota scriptura.

01:02:49

Scripture alone, and all of scripture. That makes it authentic Christian teaching.

01:02:59

It is necessarily contained in the very words of scripture. You cannot make sense of what scripture says, unless you're a

01:03:10

Trinitarian. That's why it's so easy when Jehovah's Witnesses want to say

01:03:16

Jesus is Michael the Archangel. A created being. The greatest of all created beings, but still a created being.

01:03:24

And the Holy Spirit's an impersonal active force. Then you go, oh, so we are to be baptized in the name of Jehovah God, Michael the

01:03:34

Archangel, and an invisible active, impersonal invisible active force.

01:03:41

So they share one name. These three completely different, well, only two are even persons.

01:03:49

Is that what you're telling me? Once you force false systems of teaching to take their conclusions and then put them back into scripture, the errors become very clear.

01:04:07

So you can't make sense out of the New Testament. You cannot make sense how Jesus is treated.

01:04:12

You cannot make sense of the places where Jesus is identified as Yahweh. Unless you're a

01:04:17

Trinitarian. So it's necessarily contained in the very words of scripture itself. And it is found in the most ancient

01:04:25

Christian sources after the New Testament period. So at this point, we could stop if we wanted to. And we could just simply run over to Clement of Rome.

01:04:36

We could just run over to Ignatius of Antioch. And just see reference after reference after reference to Jesus as God.

01:04:45

Being used in a way that would make it very, very plain. This is not something that came along at the

01:04:51

Council of Nicaea later on, etc., etc. This is the real thing. That is authentic Christian teaching.

01:05:00

However, the Marian dogmas, the

01:05:07

Marian doctrines of Rome are not authentic Christian teaching.

01:05:13

No meaningful, meaningful as in consistent, meaningful as in usable in any other area.

01:05:20

No meaningful form of exegesis leads us to conclude these doctrines are true. History shows these doctrines developed either from non -Orthodox sources or developed centuries and even millennia after the time of the

01:05:38

Apostles. That's what is demonstrated by any meaningful examination of these teachings in the light of history itself.

01:05:53

So we have to conclude these are not authentic Christian teaching. They cannot be bound upon the hearts and minds of believers.

01:06:01

And as such, must be rejected by those who love the

01:06:08

Triune God, love His Word, and love His Church. Because His Church has never taught these things either.

01:06:15

Pretenders to that term have. Remember that even to the current day, the

01:06:24

Bishop of Rome bears the titles of the Trinity upon himself. Without rejecting them.

01:06:30

He is called Holy Father, which is a phrase only used of Jesus, of God Himself, God the

01:06:37

Father Himself. He is called an Alter Christus. Every Roman Catholic priest is in his ordination, identified as an

01:06:46

Alter Christus, another Christ. And he's called the Vicar of Christ. And of course,

01:06:53

Vicar, Vicarius, the one taking the place of. Who is the one that is sent to take

01:06:59

Jesus' place in the life of believers? The Holy Spirit of God. Holy Father, Alter Christus, and the

01:07:08

Vicar of Christ. Titles of the Trinity that he bears himself. And will have to answer for bearing and allowing people to use those phrases.

01:07:21

Of himself. I think now you see why it is that so many groups attempt to attack the doctrine of solo scriptura.

01:07:33

They have to. If they have doctrines and teachings that they wish to present as true, which they have them uniquely, and therefore this is how they gain followers and keep followers.

01:07:49

Then the ultimate authority of Scripture has to be denied. Some other mechanism has to be brought into play that will allow them to.

01:08:01

In essence, get around the problem of inspired Scripture.

01:08:06

That objective truth that does not change. That once for all delivered to the saints faith. One thing is for blessedly certain.

01:08:15

When Jude talked about the once for all delivered to the saints faith.

01:08:21

That faith did not include. The bodily assumption of Mary. Papal infallibility.

01:08:30

The immaculate conception. Purgatory. Transubstantiation.

01:08:38

The perpetual virginity of Mary. Priests who are called in Alter Christus.

01:08:44

Seven sacraments. That once for all delivered to the saints faith.

01:08:51

Didn't contain any of that stuff. And that's what happens when you deny solo scriptura.

01:08:59

So there's a reason why we emphasize its vital importance. And it's not just because we give a defense against the claims of Roman Catholicism.

01:09:11

It is because it is central to a proper meaningful understanding. Of Christian theology as a whole.

01:09:19

And to the practice of Christian apologetics specifically. So I hope you found that to be very useful and helpful.

01:09:27

I think it's important to go back and to get this grounding. And let's just be honest.

01:09:35

There aren't a whole lot of people that would find this to be the most exciting program. To present.

01:09:42

But I think it's. Especially our audience is well aware. Of the importance of dealing with these particular types of topics.

01:09:51

So I appreciate your watching. I hope it's been useful to you. And we'll see you the next time on The Dividing Line.