Review of Scott Hahn's "Hail, Holy Queen: The Mother of God in the Word of God" Pt1

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One looking for issues with Dr. Hahn’s book find a “target rich environment”, with its dubious reliance on typological interpretation as opposed to actual historical or biblical data on Mary. Dr. White also tells a story from Hahn’s biographical background that may help explain Hahn’s bias when he comes to interpretation.

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This is the Dividing Line. The Apostle Peter commanded all Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.
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Your 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.
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And now with today's topic, here is James White. And good afternoon and welcome to the
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Dividing Line. My name is James White, and Lord willing, despite the fact that my voice doesn't sound all that good, it should be able to survive the ordeal of the program today.
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My apologies again for last week's difficulties, but I'm very thankful for the fact that we live in the
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United States and I was able finally to visit with a health professional, shall we say, a few days ago, and things are getting better, hopefully.
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I'd like to, this week, I'll admit, I'm pumped up. I'm excited about this program because I am going to be reviewing today a brand new book.
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It arrived this week, called Hail Holy Queen, the Mother of God in the
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Word of God, by Dr. Scott Hahn, a professor at the University of Steubenville, the
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Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio. Many of you know who Scott Hahn is.
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He is probably the most celebrated convert to the Roman Catholic Church in the past 30 years.
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He's a constant feature on EWTN, and a number of his other books have sold very well, including
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Rome Sweet Home, Our Journey to Catholicism by Scott and Kimberly Hahn.
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I'm going to be reading a section of that as well, and it is certainly the experience of anyone who has attempted to share with Roman Catholics today,
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Roman Catholics who have then gone and done some research on their own, to encounter links of citations of Scott Hahn as if Dr.
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Hahn is the be -all and end -all of all theology and teaching in the Roman Catholic Church.
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For some people, they are far more familiar with Hahn's unique perspectives than they are the history of the
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Roman Catholic Church, or even the writings of the current pontiff. I was most interested to encounter
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Hail Holy Queen just a few weeks ago as I was scanning through Amazon .com,
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because up until this point, Hahn has primarily published within the realm of tapes and things like that.
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I like to respond to written books. I like to deal with documentable stuff, and especially this particular subject of Mary.
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Why? Well, because, as I've said many, many times before, the Roman Catholic teachings on the subject of Mary illustrate better than anything else what happens when sola scriptura is denied.
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Why is it that Roman Catholic apologists view the doctrine of sola scriptura much as Jehovah's Witnesses view the
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Trinity? That is, it's the first thing they go after. It's the first thing they attack. The reason is very, very clear.
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They must, absolutely must, destroy the sufficiency of the scriptures to be able to place upon the soul of a person who will follow their system the dogmas that Rome has defined, such as papal infallibility, the
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Marian dogmas of the immaculate conception and the perpetual virginity of Mary and the bodily assumption of Mary, the dogmas concerning transubstantiation, the mass, a celibate sacramental priesthood, etc.,
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etc., etc., etc. And so scriptural sufficiency must be destroyed before these non -biblical doctrines can be placed upon someone's back and they can be made obedient to those things.
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Therefore, the doctrines concerning Mary help us more than any other doctrines to illustrate and to demonstrate the fact that Rome simply is not capable, let alone willing, to engage in meaningful exegesis of the text.
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And so I was very much looking forward to seeing how Scott Hahn would handle this. And even before the book arrived, even before the book arrived,
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I encountered a review of the book in America magazine,
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America, the National Catholic Weekly. This is a Roman Catholic magazine. It's not a super conservative
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Roman Catholic magazine, but the April 9th, 2001 edition, page 38, and you'll notice
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I'm doing one thing that Scott Hahn does not do anywhere in his book, and that is give references.
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Yes, I just gave more references by telling you it's page 38 than we got in the entirety of Hail Holy Queen.
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We'll get into that a little bit later on. But I want to read to you the review by Sally Caneen on page 38 of the
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America magazine. This is a Roman Catholic, by the way. This is what she had to say.
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This short, enthusiastic explanation of why and how Catholics should come to know Mary, the mother of Jesus, through better acquaintance with her types in the
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Hebrew scriptures, obviously springs from true devotion. The author, Scott Hahn, formerly a
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Presbyterian minister and now a professor of theology at the Franciscan University of Steubenville, is eager to share the joy and inspiration he has derived from his own journey, one that took him from tearing up his grandmother's rosary beads as a child to suggesting now that all evangelization must have a
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Marian component. But his laudable aim to help us recover the early church's sense of awe, astonishment and gratitude for the gift at the heart of our redemption is often jarringly undercut by the pop style
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Hahn favors. Chapter and section titles, for instance, include From Here to Maternity, Ark, the
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World Angels Sing, Fetal Attraction and Israel's Beast Kept Secret.
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I step out of the review for just a moment to say that is but a very, very short list of the absolutely juvenile subtitles that fill this book.
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It is truly distracting. It truly is. I continue on. The book is more seriously handicapped by an underlying ahistorical, oversimplified approach to Mary's role.
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Looking back at the early church through the clear telescope of Catholic dogmatic hindsight, he tends to flatten the complex and contentious history of those devoted to her while claiming scripture as his primary source.
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His grasp and now this is this is I'm reading this directly. His grasp of biblical exegesis is simply inadequate to the task, showing as well a distinct, though apparently unconscious, anti ecumenical bias.
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His use of types from the Hebrew scripture prophesying Jesus and Mary sometimes sounds as if he believes
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Christianity has replaced Judaism, a position that Pope John Paul II has gone a long way to discredit.
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And Hahn dismisses as ridiculous theories other than St. Jerome's about Jesus's brothers as cousins, though the highly respected
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Catholic exegetes, Raymond Brown and Joseph Fitzmyer in the classic Lutheran Catholic study,
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Mary in the New Testament, agree that there is no biblical evidence for a decision on the matter. And finally, his arguments are weakened by his theological assumption that the
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Holy Trinity is a male family that needs a mother. And so God gave us Mary. This premise obscures
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God's own compassionate motherhood, which contemporary theologians are recovering and limits Mary's role, that of a selfless, mediating mother, the very image that has made it so difficult for many contemporary
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Catholics, especially women, to see her as the sister and disciple. Pope Paul VI claimed she is here.
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She is only the virginal, spotless mother, if at times the powerful queen mother. Scott Hahn never refers to the living woman of Luke's gospel.
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It makes Mary humanly credible. He never mentions the Magnificat, for example, that powerful and remarkable canticle in which
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Mary sums up and praises the God of Israel and of Christianity that has caused perceptive theologians from Irenaeus to Elizabeth Johnson to see her as a prophet.
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Nor does Hahn speak of her attempts to understand her son at every stage of their relationship, her struggles with other members of the family, her strengthening of the cross or her support of the frightened apostles in the upper room after her son's death.
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In his foreword to the book, the Reverend Killian Healy points to Hahn's attempt to honor and love Mary as a parallel to that of St.
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Teresa of Lisieux. Teresa, however, insisted that for a sermon of the Blessed Virgin to please her, quote,
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I must see her real life. They show her to us as unapproachable, but they should present her as imitable, bringing out her virtues, saying that she lived by faith just like ourselves, giving proofs of this from the gospel, end quote.
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Had Hahn followed the lead of this inspired doctor of the church, his work would have been more balanced and persuasive.
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That is the end of the review from America Magazine. Now, obviously, I'm as far away from America Magazine as I can get in my perspective, but many of the things they said were exactly the case.
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If you want to pick up a book that will talk a lot about Mary, but never once discuss the historical person who was
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Mary, then you want to spend 1995 on the hardback version of Hail Holy Queen.
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There is nothing in the sense of true biblical exegesis in this book at all, but I'll get to that in just a moment.
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I would like to read the endorsement that is provided by Thomas Howard, which is on the inside back flap of the dust cover of this particular book.
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Thomas Howard, of course, wrote on being Catholic and evangelical is not enough. He says,
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I shall be zealously recommending this book to all and sundry Catholic and Protestant. Scott Hahn is a serious theologian, but his prose may always be counted upon to be agile and lucid.
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It is difficult to imagine any ground at all from which a rejoinder to his portrait of the
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Blessed Mother might be mounted, end quote. Well, Mr. Howard, let me tell you something.
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The ground upon which a rejoinder to this portrait can be mounted would be the
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Bible taken in its own context, history taken in its own context and every form of logic known to man.
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And that is because Scott Hahn has violated every form of logic known to man, every form of exegesis and hermeneutics and has misrepresented the
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Bible and history. And that with frightening, frightening repetitiousness, shall we say, throughout the text of this little book.
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Now, it is a little book. It's under 200 pages long. It's on a fairly thick paper. It's a hardback.
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As I mentioned, it's 20 bucks. Now, the problem that we have here is
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I wrote a little book. And in fact, that's one of the reasons I'm reviewing this. I wrote a little book called Mary, Another Redeemer, which is only 160 pages long.
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However, if you compare the two books, you would discover there is significantly more text in my book than there is in Hail, Holy Queen.
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Hail, Holy Queen is a puff piece to use the term that is used in the book publishing area.
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And that is when you have a short amount of text and you want it to reach a particular size, a number of pages, what you do is you increase your margins.
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You increase your line spacing. You increase your font. And you basically puff it.
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You puff it up with air so it looks bigger than it really is. This could have been made into a 100 -page book with the proper type setting.
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And but you generally can't charge $19 .95 for a 100 -page book.
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And so to charge $19 .95, $20 a pop for this particular book, you have to make it look much longer than it is.
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Now, of course, one of the reasons that my book might be significantly longer is because my book has footnotes.
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Yes, it has references. And that is one of the maddening things about Hail, Holy Queen is that especially in dealing with the historical material, when
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Dr. Hahn will quote from an early church father, we aren't told where he's quoting from.
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We aren't told the dates. We aren't told the book. We aren't told where we can go and find this and read the sentences before and the sentences after.
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You simply are expected to take at face value whatever the professor gives to us.
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We are simply supposed to assume that he's done his homework. And what he's giving to us is not from a disputed source.
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It's not from maybe a writing of an early church father that is questionable. It's not out of context, anything like that.
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You're just supposed to accept it. Well, it makes doing research on it absolutely positively maddening.
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It slows it down tremendously. And so if you're actually wanting to know the facts about church history and the claims of early church fathers in regards to Mary, this book will not be of any help to you because it simply will not give you the references you're looking for, even for the few citations it actually provides.
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Now, I had mentioned that the book is also maddening for its style. Over and over and over again, the subtitles provided are absolutely corny.
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That's the only way to put it. They're corny. I dream of genealogy. That's supposed to be I dream of genie.
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It's just one of the primary colors. C -U -L -L -E -R -S.
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Culling stuff from the Old Testament. Mary, Mary Reliquary is another one.
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I'm just more than a woman. I'm just leafing through it here. Just looking at Mary had a little man.
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Ark, the Herald Angels Sing, where he's discussing the Ark of the Covenant. Ark, the Herald Angels Sing.
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Yeah, I know I said that before when I read the thing, but a lot of you probably didn't catch that particular.
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Chapter three is called Venerators of the Lost Ark. Yeah, Venerators of the Lost Ark. Out of Africa.
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Oh, when he's talking about Irenaeus of Lyon, it's the Lyon's Den. Instead of the Lyon's Den.
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Maternity Ward. W -A -R -R -E -D. Talking about Justin Martyr is just in time.
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I mean, it's absolutely unbelievable. I mean, I just, I turn a page and look at the next subtitle and go, how do you address an allegedly serious topic this way?
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I, it absolutely positively leaves me speechless at times.
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Well, anyways, let's start reviewing the book because there are some biblical subjects that I want to get into as well, especially about the issue of the
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Queen Mother and the Ark of the Covenant. These are some of the primary arguments that Roman apologists are using today.
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And so if you're involved, I know many of you in the chat room who are listening right now, you're involved in sharing with Roman Catholics.
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We have Roman Catholics in our chat room even right now, one of which
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I know is very taken with Scott Hahn, one of Scott Hahn's earlier works. I hope to be able to show that particular individual that Scott Hahn has no concept of meaningful biblical hermeneutics.
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But there are some issues we want to get into in regards to, for example, the Queen Mother, in regards to alleged parallels to Mary and the
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Ark of the Covenant. The tremendous confidence that Hahn uses to assert that Revelation chapter 12 and the woman that is there discussed has to be
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Mary. In fact, the woman of Revelation 12, 1 is actually the
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Ark of the Covenant of Revelation 11, 19. He strings together all of these things.
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He does so with such, well, the biblical term is subtlety of speech, persuasive words.
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That's what Paul warned us against, and that's what Scott Hahn practices, that the person who wants to hear, the person who wants to believe these things is led along.
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Those of us who have a love of truth have to stop at every point and go, wait a minute, you just left off the track again.
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There's no connection here. And yet, everything that comes afterwards builds upon and builds upon these completely questionable things.
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And so, anyways, let's go on from there. I'm simply going to sit here. You may not have this, but actually,
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I just realized that someone in the chat channel thinks I was talking about them, and I wasn't. I was talking about somebody else. But anyways,
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I'm just simply going to go through here. I've marked a lot of stuff, and I'm just going to be going through as time allows.
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I'm not going to be here next week. I'll be here the week after to continue this. I honestly think that the things we'll address here will be very, very useful on a wide variety of topics, a wide variety of planes.
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Now, on page 6, we read, Moreover, how many Christian churches are fulfilling the New Testament prophecy that all generations will call
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Mary blessed? Luke 1, 48. Most Protestant ministers, and here I speak from my own past experience, avoid even mentioning the mother of Jesus for fear they'll be accused of Crypto -Calvinism,
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Calvinism, Catholicism. Well, that too, I guess. Sometimes the most zealous members of their congregations have been influenced by shrill anti -Catholic polemics.
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To them, Mary in devotion is idolatry that puts Mary between God and man or exalts Mary at Jesus's expense.
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Thus, you'll find Protestant churches named after St. Paul, St. Peter, St. James, or St. John, but rarely one named for St.
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Mary. You'll frequently find pastors preaching on Abraham or David, Jesus's distant ancestors, but almost never hear a sermon on Mary, his mother.
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Far from calling her blessed, most generations of Protestants live their lives without calling her at all.
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Now, I had mentioned in Mary, Another Redeemer, specifically, the fact that we need to have a biblical
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Mariology. In fact, unlike Dr. Hahn, I provided Chapter 2 in my book that specifically gives us all the direct biblical references to Mary are found in Chapter 2 of my book,
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Mary, Another Redeemer. And I start off that chapter by saying there is much truth in the statement that Protestants fear
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Mary. But the reason is not too difficult to find. I believe the reason many Protestants not talk about Mary and are uncomfortable doing so is in direct response and reaction to the overemphasis upon Mary in Roman Catholicism.
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To speak of the Virgin Mary strikes many a Protestant ear as Catholic, when in reality it isn't. We've allowed an error on one side of the issue to result in a corresponding error on the other, an unbiblical de -emphasis of Mary as a great example of faith and obedience.
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Truly, all generations should never fear to call her blessed, but she would dare not ask us to call her anything more than the scriptures grant her.
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And that's what begins then the look at the key passages concerning Mary and what the
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Bible actually teaches about her. And so certainly there is much truth in the statement that we dare not allow the errors of Roman Catholicism to cause us to not speak about Mary and to preach about the example of faith that is found in her, so on and so forth.
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But that does not in any way, shape, or form give us the ground for calling her
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Hail Holy Queen, to be sure. The next subtitle is Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary.
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And this is where Scott Hahn begins to weave the emotional element which captures so many people who lose track of the issues of truth.
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And here's where he tells the story. My earliest encounter with Mary in devotion came when Grandma Hahn died.
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She'd been the only Catholic on either side of my family, a quiet, humble, and holy soul. Since I was the only religious one in the family, my father gave me her religious articles when she died.
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I looked at them with horror. I held her rosary in my hands and ripped it apart, saying, God set her free from the chains of Catholicism that have bound her.
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I meant it, too. I saw the rosary and the Virgin Mary as obstacles that came between Grandma and Jesus Christ.
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Even as I slowly approached the Catholic faith, drawn inexorably by the truth of one doctrine after another,
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I could not make myself accept the Church's Marian teaching. And then here's the paragraph
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I want you to hear. The proof of her maternity would come for me only when
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I made the decision to let myself be her son. Despite all the powerful scruples of my
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Protestant training, remember just a few years before I had torn apart my grandma's beads, I took up the rosary one day and began to pray.
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I prayed for a very personal, seemingly impossible intention. On the next day, I took up the beads again, and the next day and the next.
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Months passed before I realized that my intention, the seemingly impossible situation, had been reversed since the day
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I first prayed the rosary. My petition had been granted. Now, keep in mind,
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I would say to you, this is the reason that Scott Hahn believes what Rome says about Mary.
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It has nothing to do with the Bible. It has nothing to do with an honest examination of Church history in any way, shape, or form.
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But obviously, at some point, he was willing to compromise. He was willing to engage in an idolatrous action.
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Yes, I said an idolatrous action. It is idolatrous to pray to anyone but God.
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Prayer is an act of worship, and that worship is directed only to God.
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So, the Scriptures tell us that when someone refuses to look at the
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Scriptures, and when someone refuses to receive the love of the truth, they will receive a lie.
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And so, as soon as a person is willing to compromise on the most basic and fundamental truths, and this is a man who, at one point anyways, should have known, should have known the truth.
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I think we see in Rome Sweet Home that it's possible he didn't, or if he did know it, he's now simply being deceptive about it.
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In any case, here's someone who, at least professing to know the truth, is willing to compromise that truth, and then receives a spirit of deception as a result.
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That should be a sobering thing for all of us to realize. On page nine, he says, with this book,
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I wish to share that insight, that insight that is that Mary is our mother, the mother of Christians.
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With this book, I wish to share that insight and its unshakable scriptural foundations with as many
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Christians as will listen to me prayerfully with an open mind. I wish especially to address fellow
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Roman Catholics, because many of us need to recover our mother, etc., and etc. Down below, for Mary fills the pages of scripture from the beginning of the first book through the end of the last.
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She was there in God's plan from the beginning of time, just as the apostles were, and the church, and the
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Savior, and she will be there at the moment everything is fulfilled, is what is said on page nine.
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Chapter one is called, My Type of Mother, and the word type there is meant to refer to typology.
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One of the subtitles here on page 17 is, Let's Get Metaphysical. Unbelievable.
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Traces of love long ago. Divinity is as divinity does. I wonder if that has anything to do with Forrest Gump.
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I sure hope not. But this introduces the typological interpretation that Hahn is going to rely upon for the vast majority of his argumentation, and the specific direction that he's moving is to attempt to establish
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Mary as the Ark of the New Covenant, and this Ark of the
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New Covenant then he's going to tie into Revelation 11, 19, and Revelation 12, 1 through 6, and 13 through 17, and since that is the primary focus of the next section of his argumentation,
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I think it would be good if you have your scriptures to turn that direction, and I'm bringing it up here as we speak, and let me read to you from the
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New American Standard Bible. This is the primary force, the primary section he's going to use.
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Revelation 11, 18, And the nations were enraged, and your wrath came, and the time came for the dead to be judged, and the time to reward your bondservants, the prophets and the saints, and those who fear your name, the small and the great, and to destroy those who destroy the earth.
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And the temple of God, which is in heaven, was opened, and the Ark of his covenant appeared in his temple, and there were flashes of lightning, and sounds, and peals of thunder, and an earthquake, and a great hailstorm.
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A great sign appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars, and she was with child, and she cried out being in labor, and in pain to give birth.
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Then another sign appeared in heaven, and behold, a great red dragon having seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads were seven diadems, and his tail swept away a third of the stars of heaven, and threw them to the earth.
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And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she gave birth he might devour her child.
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And she gave birth to a son, a male child, who was to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, and her child was caught up to God and to his throne.
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Then the woman fled into the wilderness, where she had a place prepared by God, so that there she would be nourished for one thousand two hundred and sixty days.
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There was war, and there was war in heaven, Michael and his angels waging war with the dragon, the dragon and his angels waged war, and they were not strong enough, and there was no longer a place found for them in heaven.
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And the great dragon was thrown down, the serpent of old, who is called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world, he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.
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Then I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, Now the salvation, and the power, and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his
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Christ have come. For the accuser of our brethren has been thrown down, he who accuses them before our
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God day and night. And they overcame him because of the blood of the lamb, and because of the word of their testimony, and they did not love their life even when faced with death.
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For this reason rejoice, O heavens, and you who dwell in them! Woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has come down to you, having great wrath, knowing that he only has a short time.
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And when the dragon saw that he was thrown down to the earth, he persecuted the woman who gave birth to the male child.
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But the two wings of the great eagle were given to the woman, so that she could fly into the wilderness to her place, where she was nourished for a time, and times, and half a time, from the presence of the serpent.
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And the serpent poured water like a river out of his mouth after the woman, so that he might cause her to be swept away with the flood.
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But the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened its mouth, and drank up the river which the dragon poured out of his mouth.
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So the dragon was enraged with the woman, and went off to make war with the rest of her children, who keep the commandments of God, and hold the testimony of Jesus."
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Now there's the passage. And the fundamental assertion that is going to be made by Scott Hahn is that the woman here is
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Mary, and the Ark of the Covenant that's seen in 1119 is actually the woman of 1201, even though the text never says that.
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And this then is going to become a primary foundation for then going into church history and saying, seeing this is something that Christians have always believed, it's an apostolic teaching, so on and so forth.
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Well, is that the case? We'll be taking a look at that when we come back from this break.
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We'll be right back. Answering those who claim that only the
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King James Version is true, and that it's not of God, James White, in his book, The King James Only Controversy, examines allegations that modern translators conspired to corrupt scripture and lead believers away from true
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Christian faith. In a readable and responsible style, author James White traces the development of Bible translations, old and new, and investigates the differences between new versions and the authorized version of 1611.
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You can order your copy of James White's book, The King James Only Controversy, by going to our website at www .aomin
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.org. Evening services are at 630 p .m.
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on Sunday, and Wednesday prayer meeting is at 7. We are located at 3805
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North 12th Street in Phoenix. You can call for further information at 26 Grace, or look us up on the web at www .prbc
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.org. Millions of petitioners from around the world are employing
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Pope John Paul II to recognize the Virgin Mary as co -redeemer with Christ. Elevating the topic of Roman Catholic views of Mary to national headlines and widespread discussion.
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In his book, Mary, Another Redeemer, James White sidesteps hostile rhetoric and cites directly from Roman Catholic sources to explore this volatile topic.
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He traces how Mary of the Bible, esteemed mother of the Lord, obedient servant, and chosen vessel of God, has become the immaculately conceived bodily assumed queen of heaven, viewed as co -mediator with Christ, and now recognized as co -redeemer by many in the
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Roman Catholic Church. Mary, Another Redeemer is fresh insight into the woman the
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Bible calls blessed among women, and an invitation to single -minded devotion to God's truth.
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You can order your copy of James White's book, Mary, Another Redeemer, at www .aomin .org.
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And welcome back to Dividing Line. My name is James White, and we are looking at Scott Hahn's new book,
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Hail Holy Queen, the Mother of God, in the Word of God. And we are looking at the attempt made to insert the
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Roman Catholic concept of the exalted personage of Mary into the text of Scripture.
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It certainly is not surprising that the actual passages that talk about Mary directly are the ones that aren't used.
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Instead, we come up with this strange and fanciful attempt to find in types and shadows and this and that thing, the viewpoint of Mary, because if you simply read what the
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Bible says about Mary, you'll never come up with that. So since Rome has gone so far beyond that, then the Scriptures have to be twisted into a pretzel so that they will present these concepts of Mary as immaculately conceived and bodily assumed and all the rest of this type of stuff.
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And just to give you the idea of the type of argumentation that is used, let me just give you an example here.
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The early Christians, this is from page 32, the early Christians consider the beginning of Genesis with its story of creation and fall and its promise of redemption.
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To be so Christological in its implications that they called it the protevangelium or first gospel.
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Actually, they were referring to Genesis 315 there. But while this theme is explicit in Paul and the church fathers, it is implied throughout the
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New Testament. For example, like Adam, Jesus was tested in a garden, the garden of Gethsemane. Like Adam, Jesus was led to a tree where he was stripped naked.
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Like Adam, he fell into the deep sleep of death so that from his side would come forth the new Eve, his bride, the church.
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That's the kind of typology attaching this, that, and the other thing.
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Even if the New Testament writers don't make that type of thing, as long as it can be used to promote his position, it's implicitly there in Scripture.
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Even if the New Testament writers themselves do not do so. And remember, for the Roman Catholic, that's just fine.
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Because all you have to do is say, well, that's tradition. See, you've got to read the
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Scriptures in the light of the tradition of the church. Well, what's that? Well, nobody knows.
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Nobody has the foggiest idea what the tradition of the church is in a specific sense.
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And so, well, it's implicitly there. And as long as it's supportive of the exaltation of the
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Virgin, then we can go with it. By the way, the next subtitle is Cutting the Unbiblical Cord.
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C -O -R -D. I don't make this kind of stuff up, folks. I really don't.
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I could not even imagine these things. Then we're given an example from page 34 of also how you should do this type of interpretation.
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You see, if you look at the first few chapters of Genesis, Genesis, John, you'll notice that John uses the phrase, the next day.
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He uses it in 129, 135, and 143. So, Han argues, okay, well, if you follow the next day, and the first day is the beginning of John, then by the time you get to 143, you're to the fourth day.
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And then the wedding feast at Cana is on the third day. And so, four days plus three days is seven days.
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And so, we then read, do you notice anything familiar? John's story of the new creation takes place in seven days.
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Just as the creation story in Genesis is completed on the sixth day and sanctified, perfected on the seventh when
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God rests from his labor. The seventh day of the creation week, as of every week thereafter, would be known as the
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Sabbath, the day of rest, the sign of the covenant. We can be sure then that whatever happens on the seventh day in John's narrative will be significant.
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And what happens on that day? Well, of course, it's the wedding in Cana of Galilee. And John chapter 2 becomes the basis upon which you have the majority of the
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Mediatrix intercessory concept of Mary introduced. Because Mary goes to Jesus and says, all right, they've run out of wine.
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And Jesus' response to her is, woman, what have you to do with me? My hour has not yet come, et cetera, et cetera.
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And so, somehow, we're supposed to believe that because the use of the phrase is the next day, that you're supposed to add them up.
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And then you have the third day. So, that becomes the seventh day. And that becomes the
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Sabbath day. So, that's really significant. And therefore, it's really significant that the wedding in Cana takes place then.
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And that, therefore, is important about Mary. If you didn't follow that, don't worry.
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That probably means that you have been taught how to do exegesis properly. But, anyways. And so, now we have a long discussion of Mary as woman.
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And the long and short of why Jesus said, woman, what have I to do with you, becomes the basis upon which
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Han then says, well, this woman, actually, the term woman here becomes a parallel to Eve.
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Page 37 says, yet we miss more than Jesus' sinlessness if we reduce the word woman to an insult.
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For Jesus' use of that word represents yet another echo of Genesis. Woman is the name
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Adam gives to Eve in Genesis 2 .23. Jesus, then, is addressing Mary as Eve to the new
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Adam, which heightens the significance of the wedding feast they're attending. So, that's why he says woman, is because he's paralleling this with Genesis.
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And I'm sure everybody who heard that, everyone who heard that undoubtedly thought, oh,
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Adam and Eve, woman, yes, new Adam, yeah, uh -huh. I'm sorry.
40:39
Sometimes this kind of stuff just makes me, it's just, it's just silly.
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Uh, page, uh, 38, uh, under maternity ward, W -A -R -R -E -D.
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Woman redefines Mary's relationship, not only with Jesus, but also with all believers. When Jesus gave her over to his beloved disciple, in effect, he gave her to his beloved disciples of all time.
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Like Eve, whom Genesis 3 .20 calls the mother of all living, Mary is mother to all who have new life in baptism.
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At Cana, then, the new Eve radically reverses the fatal decision of the first Eve.
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It was woman who led the old Adam to his first evil act in the garden. It was woman who led the new
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Adam to his first glorious work. There you go, folks. What, what happens when, when you have an external authority?
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All of a sudden, John chapter 2, the wedding at Cana of Galilee becomes the new
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Eve, leading the new Adam to, instead of sin, to do his first glorious work.
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There you go. These images hark back to Genesis, verse 38, where Eve faces the demonic serpent in the garden of Eden, and where God curses the serpent promising to put enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed.
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Yet the images of Revelation also point to a new Eve, one who gave birth to a male child who would rule all the nations.
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That child could only be Jesus, and so the woman could only be his mother,
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Mary. So here comes the, the beginning of the, of the assertion that the woman in Revelation 12 must be
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Mary. And he goes to, to Justin Martyr. And at that point, he quotes from Justin Martyr, where he,
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Justin Martyr paralleled Mary with Eve. Now, Justin Martyr did not identify
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Mary as the Ark of the New Covenant. In fact, one of the, one of the things that truly, truly angers me about this book is how much it doesn't tell you.
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How many facts are readily available that completely change the only logical outcome of the argument that simply aren't mentioned.
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For example, much is made of this Mary as the Ark of the New Covenant, Revelation 11, 19 argument.
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But when early church fathers are cited, they are invariably talking about Mary as the parallel to Eve.
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And even when they call her the Ark of the New Covenant, they do not identify her with the
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Ark in Revelation 11, 19. Now, as a result of that, a person reading this book would assume, because of the, the many statements made by Han, that that was what early
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Christians believed. And I run into this all the time. I'm constantly getting emails from people who will make the most wild statements.
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Oh, people have always believed that. And I go, where did you get that? Do you know who the first person to say this was?
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No, no, but I know that people have always believed that. And why do they say that?
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Because people like Scott Han told them. They haven't checked it out for themselves. And few of them could, even if they wanted to.
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You see, if you go to Roman Catholic sources, in fact, one of the best ones you can get, and it's a
44:33
Roman Catholic source, so it's, you know, it's not exactly unbiased, but Michael O 'Carroll's book,
44:38
Theotokos, A Theological Encyclopedia of the Blessed Virgin Mary. A very thorough work.
44:45
This is a Michael Glaser book, liturgical press, Collegeville, Minnesota. And it's a fairly lengthy thing.
44:52
And if you will look up the discussion of Mary as the
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Ark of the Covenant, he will tell you, unlike Dr.
45:04
Han, Michael O 'Carroll, a Mariologist scholar, will tell you that the first people that we can document, not speculate about, but document, made that kind of connection were the
45:21
Carolingians. Now, who in the world are the Carolingians? Well, the Carolingians, the
45:28
Carolingian Renaissance, with Charlemagne and all the rest of the gang, took place in the 9th century, the 800s.
45:40
And yet, Han will talk about the early church and the universal belief of the church and all the rest of this wonderful, fun stuff.
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And you go, wait a minute, when did the Carolingian Renaissance become the early church? It is absolutely amazing.
45:56
It is no wonder that Dr. Han won't put this kind of material to the test of debate.
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Because the only way he can make this work is if he doesn't have to be cross -examined about it by anyone who can open up a book and say, okay, now you said this, but Roman Catholic scholars say this.
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Could you please explain this? It is truly, truly an amazing thing.
46:21
So he goes through Justin, he goes through Irenaeus of Lyon, and they're paralleling Mary and Eve, and so on and so forth.
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And he talks about a lot of quotations, interestingly enough, from Cardinal John Henry Newman, which is interesting to me because he will make statements that Newman would never make.
46:44
He will make statements that say that everybody in the early church believed X, Y, or Z. And the whole reason that Newman even said what he said in regards to his development hypothesis is because he knew that wasn't the case, that you couldn't make this broad type of statement in regards to all those in the early church believed
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X, Y, or Z. So I'm not really sure why he would be citing from him so often, but he cites from him as well.
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He cites from Tertullian and so on. And even when he cites from Tertullian, interestingly enough, he says, his precision is all the more remarkable, considering that his
47:24
Mariology and other areas is quite confused, erring, and it odds all of the sources. So he admits to Tertullian.
47:31
And why is that? He doesn't mention why. But Tertullian is one of a number of early church fathers who recognized that Mary committed personal sin.
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Now, you could read this entire book and never know, never even have the inkling that there was a widespread testimony to the idea that Mary had committed sin.
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You wouldn't know because it just doesn't fit. And then in chapter three, we have venerators of the lost ark.
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And it is very, very interesting here. This is where we have the attempt to turn the
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Ark of the Covenant that is in the temple of God in Revelation 11, 19 into the woman.
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Now, I'd like to take you back to that passage just a moment before we delve into this. And putting aside all the goofiness of later generations, let's just ask some things of the text here.
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Okay, question number one, does the text say that the
48:52
Ark of God's Covenant, Revelation 11, 19, is the woman clothed with the sun,
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Revelation 12, 1? Answer, no. None at all. Number two, the woman is clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet and on her head, a crown of 12 stars.
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Does the text make any type of explicit identification that this is
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Mary? Answer, no. It does say, though, that she was with child.
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And Mary certainly was with child at one point. But then again, so was Elizabeth and numerous other people.
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And she cried out being in labor and in pain to give birth. Now, immediately, one must stop.
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And Han does address this. We'll get to it in time. Why would she cry out in pain?
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Because pain and childbirth was a part of what? Well, it's a part of the curse.
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Well, Mary wasn't subject to that because she didn't have the stain of original sin, correct?
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So why would she be crying out in labor and in pain to give birth?
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Especially if, as Roman Catholicism has dogmatically asserted, that she was ever virgin.
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And that, in fact, even the process of giving birth did not physically change her being ever virgin.
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A Gnostic concept, by the way, if you trace it back to the original sources from which it came, doesn't come anywhere from the
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Bible. But it does come from Gnosticism. And I think totally undercuts the reality of the incarnation.
50:38
And in fact, the prophecy is that a child is born to us. Yalad, the Hebrew term that is used there, is the normal term for birth.
50:49
And so instead, you have this Gnostic idea of Jesus sort of appearing, not a true birth taking place.
50:56
But all of that stuff aside, the fact remains that the passage says this. Now, interestingly enough, the explanation that is offered is that Mary is still in travail in heaven, giving birth to all of us who are her children.
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She is the mother of the church. And one of the things that just three times that I have marked, three times that I have marked in the text,
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Dr. Hahn says, look, the term the Bible uses here is
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Adelphos. And that means from the same womb.
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Adelphos means from the same womb. Three times he asserts that when he's talking about the family of God and how this makes
51:52
Mary our mother. So when we're called the brothers of Jesus, that means from the same womb.
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But when he in a mocking fashion deals with anyone who would deny the perpetual virginity of Mary, based upon the use of the term brothers and sisters, he forgets what the word is in the text.
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And in fact, when he discusses it, he never says what the word is in the text.
52:30
Instead, he jumps to the idea that anyone who knows the
52:36
Hebrew language would know that in point of fact, this is a term that in the
52:44
Old Testament had to do with not only brothers, but cousins as well.
52:53
So in some places, in some places that's been taken literally from the same womb.
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But then in other places, in fact, here it is, I found it. Let me see here, page 103.
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Let me just read this to just give an example, and we'll go back to Revelation chapter 12. I know I'm bouncing around, but it's really hard not to bounce around when there's so much error to deal with.
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For those of you who know the reference, if you're hunting for error,
53:27
Dr. Hahn's book is a target -rich environment. Heretics in the early church occasionally challenged this teaching, but they never gained much ground.
53:37
This is page 103. Their purportedly scriptural arguments were easily refuted by the likes of St.
53:44
Jerome, the great biblical scholar of the ancient church. Jerome was also a great name -caller, and he reserved his most scathing insults for those who dared to question
53:54
Mary's perpetual virginity. What were the arguments of these heretics? I have to wonder, just in passing, if Jerome is such a great biblical scholar, why didn't he hold to Dr.
54:06
Hahn's view of the canon of scripture, maybe? Well, anyways, the bulk of their arguments rested on the
54:12
New Testament passages that refer to Jesus as brethren. We find in St. Mark's Gospel, for example, is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joseph and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?
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In Matthew 12, 46, we see, Behold, his mother and his brethren stood outside asking to speak to him. In Luke 2, 7, we read that Jesus was
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Mary's firstborn. I'm on page 104 now. This is virtually a non -issue for anyone who has a glancing familiarity with Hebrew customs.
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The Hebrew word for brother is a more inclusive term applying to cousins as well.
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In fact, in ancient Hebrew, there is no word for cousin. To a Jew of Jesus' time, one's cousin was one's brother.
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This familial principle applied in other Semitic languages as well, such as Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke.
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Furthermore, precisely because Jesus was an only child, his cousins would even assume the legal status of siblings for him as they were his nearest relatives.
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Finally, the word firstborn raises no real difficulty because it was a legal term in ancient Israel that applied to the child who opened the womb, whether or not the mother bore more children afterward.
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Heretics also quoted passages that seemed, again, to those unfamiliar with Jewish modes of expression, to imply that Mary and Joseph later had sexual relations.
55:31
They would cite Matthew 1, 18, Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way, when his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph. Before they came together, she was found to be a child of the
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Holy Spirit. Saint Jerome's antagonist, Helvidius, placed his question squarely on the word before in that sentence, claiming that Matthew would never have applied before they came together to a couple who did not eventually come together.
55:51
Helvidius also cited a passage later in Matthew's first chapter that declares that Joseph knew her not until she had born a son.
55:59
That's Matthew 1, 25. Again, Helvidius said that Matthew's use of until implied that Joseph knew
56:04
Mary afterwards. Now, here's the quote that I sort of gave you before. This is a classic example of amateur exegesis.
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It was definitively and easily refuted by a professional biblical scholar, and that was
56:22
Jerome. Now, some of you who are aware of the work of Eric Svensson and know that he, right now,
56:29
Calvary Press is working on publishing his book, his doctoral thesis on Mary, know that there is an entire chapter in that work on the subject of heos, who?
56:40
And if you would like to see how Dr. Han's good friend,
56:45
Jerry Matitix, has failed consistently to be able to deal with heos, who?
56:52
And that is the phrase that appears in Matthew 1, 25. And the study of that phrase, instead of just simply the word heos, which is what most of these folks have done.
57:01
In fact, that's what Jerome did as well. You can hear that in the debate that I had with Jerry on Mary, the debate that Eric Svensson had with Mary, with Mary, with Jerry on Mary, Jerry and Mary.
57:15
And I think, I'm not sure, but I think the debate, yeah, I think the debate between Eric Svensson and Jerry Matitix on the
57:22
Immaculate Conception, or is it Perpetual Virginity, is one of those topics, is on straightgate .com,
57:29
which I'm not sure if that's up yet, and then rescued, or just what situation is there at the moment.
57:36
But it is there, I think, and will eventually be taken care of.
57:42
So Matthew 1, 25, heos, who? The word until. Eric Svensson has done excellent work on that.
57:50
But then he, after having said amateur exegesis, he says,
57:55
Suffice it to say that those who question Mary's virginity don't have a page of scripture to stand on, and Christian tradition is univocally against them.
58:07
Nowhere in any of that does he ever tell you that the very words that he is now interpreting as cousins is the word adelphos.
58:21
Never tells you that. You wouldn't know unless you listen to this program, or unless you can read
58:26
Greek. But he's not writing for us, and he's really not writing for anybody who can check him out. I find that absolutely, positively amazing.
58:38
Well, it's time for another break. I've still got a lot of stuff to be covering, so we'll be coming back right after this.
58:59
Is the Mormon my brother? Bethany House Publishers presents James White's book, Is the Mormon my brother?
59:05
In television campaigns, parachurch events, and clergy fellowships all across the United States, Mormons are presenting themselves as mainstream
59:12
Christians. Is it unloving or backward to say they aren't real Christians? In contrast to Christian monotheism, the belief in one
59:20
God, Mormonism teaches that God was once a man who lived on another planet and was exalted to the status of God, and that Mormon men can also become gods upon death and resurrection.
59:31
In his book, Is the Mormon my brother? James White demonstrates how this fact alone means Mormons and Christians are irreconcilably at odds at faith's most basic level.
59:41
Is the Mormon my brother? is now available from Alpha and Omega Ministries Book Ministry. You can order Is the
59:46
Mormon my brother? from our website at www .aomin .org.
59:53
I'm James White, author of The Same Sex Controversy and The Roman Catholic Controversy, announcing two upcoming debates
59:58
I'm having on Long Island, New York. First, I'll be facing notorious liberal activist Barry Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State on the theme,
01:00:07
Is Homosexuality Compatible with Authentic Christianity? Thursday night, May 24th at 7 .30
01:00:13
at Central Presbyterian Church in Huntington. Next, I'll be facing renowned Catholic scholar and priest
01:00:18
Peter Stravinskas on the theme, Purgatory, Biblical or Mythical? Thursday night,
01:00:24
May 31st at 7 .30 at the Huntington Townhouse Catering Hall. For information, call toll -free 1 -866 -DEBATE -1.
01:00:32
That's 1 -866 -DEBATE -1. I hope you can attend both the
01:00:37
May 24th debate on homosexuality and the May 31st debate on Purgatory.
01:00:43
Call toll -free 1 -866 -DEBATE -1. The Conference on Rome. Over 13 hours examining major doctrines and issues that separate
01:00:51
Roman Catholicism from Biblical Christianity. Featuring the leading Protestant apologists on Rome and America today.
01:00:58
Listen to Dr. Eric Svensson's presentation, Rome has spoken, the matter is debatable. When the
01:01:03
Roman Catholic apologists insist that the principle of Sola Scriptura has resulted in over 25 ,000 denominations, we should in turn insist that the principle of Scripture plus an infallible interpreter has resulted in an even greater number of religious cults.
01:01:18
Pastor Rob Zins addresses the evangelical romance with Rome. There was not a Roman Catholic Church in the first five centuries.
01:01:25
There was, to be sure, a Catholic Church, but this is the universal designation of the body of Christ.
01:01:32
It is not Romanism. Pastor David King, the impact of Romans 117 on Martin Luther.
01:01:38
How is one himself to have that righteousness which God requires, yea, demands, and which is utterly indispensable to salvation?
01:01:50
It is by faith, and by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and we lay hold of the
01:01:57
Lord Jesus by faith alone. And Dr. James White examines the veneration of saints and images.
01:02:05
Do you think if such a person were brought before Moses, having just been caught bowing down before a statue and lighting candles and rocking back and forth in prayer, do you think
01:02:16
Moses would have accepted the excuse, I wasn't giving Latria, Moses, I was only giving
01:02:21
Julia. Other topics addressed in this tape series. Is there something about Mary? Scripture sufficiency, the
01:02:26
Roman versus Protestant view, canonizing the Apocrypha, an assault on scripture, Rome's sacraments, an assault on Christ's gospel, and purgatory, an assault on Christ's perfect atonement.
01:02:37
Look for this tape series and many others at aomin .org. That's A -O -M -I -N dot
01:02:42
O -R -G, the Conference on Rome. I love it when it does that.
01:02:53
Welcome back to Dividing Line. My name is James White, and we are looking at Hail Holy Queen, the
01:03:00
Mother of God and the Word of God. Brand new book by Scott Hahn, the author of The Lamb's Supper.
01:03:06
And we are noting all sorts of problems and inconsistencies in the argumentation, both in what is not said that would absolutely have to be said to have any particular meaning, as well as the,
01:03:23
I don't know how to describe it, the wild misuse of typological interpretation. I was mentioning just a moment ago, looking at Revelation chapter 12, that it talks about the woman who was with child, crying out, being in labor and paying to give birth.
01:03:40
And if you noticed, that same section of the book of Revelation also talks about other of her offspring as well.
01:03:53
Now, one of the things that Hahn does is, well, this has got to be a person. These are people who really exist in reality.
01:04:01
But the problem is he ends up having to pick and choose what elements in this apocalyptic literature are literal and which ones are not.
01:04:14
And there's really, there's no way to determine exactly how you put them together.
01:04:22
For example, verse 14 says, but the two wings of the great eagle were given to the woman. Okay, what does that mean?
01:04:29
Did Mary fly to heaven? Is this the assumption? Where's the connection there?
01:04:37
Where's the historical connection to a real person here? What is the time and times and half a time?
01:04:45
What's the river that the serpent pours out after the woman so that he might cause her to be swept away with the flood?
01:04:53
How did the earth help Mary? By opening its mouth and drinking up the river, which the dragon poured out of his mouth.
01:05:00
Interestingly enough, Hahn identifies the dragon with the Herodian dynasty, which
01:05:05
I don't even begin to understand. How does any of that have to do with anything?
01:05:11
Well, once you start this type of typological, let's not worry about what the text specifically says, you don't have to worry about that.
01:05:18
So the dragon, verse 17, was enraged the woman and went off to make war with the rest of her children. Well, I thought she was perpetually virgin, but she has children.
01:05:29
Oh, yes, that's a different kind of children. See, once you start the wonderful world of typological interpretation, none of the rest of this really makes any sense.
01:05:39
It doesn't really matter. And so you have, for example, on page 62, the anguish of the woman of the apocalypse could represent the desire to bring
01:05:48
Christ to the world, or it could represent the spiritual sufferings that were the price of Mary's motherhood.
01:05:54
Yeah, that's why she suffers. It really doesn't have to do with anything in regards to...
01:06:01
I think it has regards to do with the birth of Christ. It's really hard to even discuss this kind of interpretation because the term
01:06:13
I've used in the past, it's like trying to nail Jell -O to a wall. There's nothing of substance there to grab hold of.
01:06:20
So it's very, very, very difficult to try to respond to this kind of thing because since there's no rationality in the argument and there's nothing providing the source of where the connections are coming from, how do you refute that?
01:06:39
I mean, this might as well be a prophecy of some woman who's alive today if you're going to start doing this kind of thing.
01:06:47
In fact, we had someone call this past week. Richard Pierce talked to him that was wanting to arrange a debate with an apostle.
01:06:57
Maybe this is the apostle's wife. Who knows? Once you start going this direction, there's no end.
01:07:05
This kind of argumentation can go absolutely anywhere. Well, all right.
01:07:11
Let's move on to the next section here. And under heading for the hills, we have the argument that I first heard presented by Gerry Matitix.
01:07:26
Now, give you a little background here. If you have listened to, and it is on straightgate .com
01:07:33
and you can get the tapes in the ministry. If you've listened to the debate that I did with Gerry Matitix in 1996,
01:07:40
I believe it was, on the four Marian dogmas, very fast moving debate. You may have gotten lost at one point.
01:07:48
Because Gerry tries to present the same argument that Han presents in this next section of Hail Holy Queen.
01:07:57
And it is based upon the idea of identifying the
01:08:05
Ark of the Covenant in the Old Testament and specifically in 2 Samuel 6,
01:08:11
I believe it is, with Mary. And I first heard this when
01:08:17
I was prepping for that debate. I received tapes of Gerry Matitix lecturing on the biblical evidence for the
01:08:28
Virgin Mary in the Old Testament. And I'm going to tell you, when
01:08:34
I first heard Gerry present this argument, I just sat back and went, wow, how am
01:08:43
I going to respond to that? Because it was presented with such confidence.
01:08:51
I mean, boy, how did he just, he just ripped through it.
01:08:57
He was quoting everything by memory. He was throwing passages out left and right.
01:09:03
And if what he said was true, it would have been a devastating argument. I mean, he was saying the very same term is used here and in Samuel that's used in Luke.
01:09:14
And Luke is clearly paralleling this here by using the same words and the
01:09:19
Shekinah glory of the temple. And this is the Shekinah that's spoken of in the New Testament. Just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
01:09:26
And he did it so fast and so convincingly that I just went, wow. So I stopped the tape, went over to my little computer at the time.
01:09:36
And I rewound it and started playing it. Start, stop, start, stop, type, type, type, type, start, stop, stop, type, type, type, type, type.
01:09:45
Typed it all out. And I still have that somewhere hiding in the cavernous hard drives of our network.
01:09:53
And I then went back through each line. And I said, okay, he said that the exact same word is used by Luke that's used here in the
01:10:03
Old Testament. Let's look it up. So I fire up BibleWorks, which back then was probably version 2 .4
01:10:12
or something like that, 2 .5. And I look it up in Luke and I would get the
01:10:19
Greek. Then I go back to the Septuagint, which would be the only way it could be the same words.
01:10:26
I looked at Septuagint and it wasn't the same word. So I go to the next line.
01:10:32
Same words used, I look it up, wasn't the same word. And if you've listened to that debate that I was talking about earlier, that's the background of the one section you may have gotten lost on because he brought up really quickly.
01:10:44
He didn't have time to develop it. I didn't have time to develop his argument for him and then refute it. And so there's this going back and forth a little bit about actually, well, you're wrong about that.
01:10:54
It doesn't use the same terms. Well, yes, I am right about that. And unless you had that background, it isn't one of the most useful parts of the debate.
01:11:02
Well, got to give Dr. Hahn a positive comment here.
01:11:11
That's the first one I think we've had so far. The artwork on the front's nice too. And that is he is much more reserved in developing this argument than Gerry Matitix was.
01:11:25
Maybe he heard that debate. I don't know. It's possible. But when he develops this on pages 64 and 65, he's much more reserved in the way in which he develops it.
01:11:39
Here's basically, here's the presentation. See what you think of it.
01:11:47
Luke was a meticulous literary artist, beginning on page 63, by the way, who could claim the additional benefit of having the
01:11:53
Holy Spirit as his co -author. Down through the centuries, scholars have marveled the way Luke's gospel subtly parallels key texts of the
01:12:00
Old Testament. One of the early examples in his narrative is the story of Mary's visitation to Elizabeth.
01:12:06
Luke's language seems to echo the account in the second book of Samuel of David's travels as he brought the Ark of the
01:12:12
Covenant to Jerusalem. Now, as I'm going to finish reading this, but just for a moment, try to just hear this as if you were hearing it for the first time and you don't know in the back of your mind
01:12:23
I'm going to be refuting this. How would you respond to it? Okay, I continue. The story begins as David arose and went, second
01:12:32
Samuel 6 -2. Luke's account of the visitation begins the same words, Mary arose and went,
01:12:38
Luke 1 -39. In their journeys then, both Mary and David proceeded to the hill country of Judah.
01:12:45
David acknowledges his unworthiness with the words, how can the Ark of the Lord come to me? Second Samuel 6 -9.
01:12:53
Words we find echoed as Mary approaches her kinswoman, Elizabeth, quote, why is this granted me that the mother of my
01:13:00
Lord should come to me? Oh, goodness. I think we have a storm going outside and I don't know if we just lost live streaming or what, but we just had the lights flash.
01:13:14
So if all of a sudden we disappear, folks, don't worry about us. The storm must be a little bit stronger than I thought it was.
01:13:22
Ah, da -da -dee -dee -dee -dee -dee -dee. Let me pick up with words we find echoed as Mary approaches her kinswoman,
01:13:30
Elizabeth. Why is this granted me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?
01:13:35
Luke 1 -43. Note here that the sentence is almost verbatim, except that Ark is replaced by mother.
01:13:43
We read further that David danced for joy in the presence of the Ark. This is
01:13:48
Second Samuel 6 -14 -16. And we find a similar expression used to describe the leaping of the child within Elizabeth's womb as Mary approached,
01:13:58
Luke 1 -44. Finally, the Ark remained in the hill country for three months,
01:14:05
Second Samuel 6 -11, the same amount of time Mary spent with Elizabeth, Luke 1 -56.
01:14:14
Well, there's the argumentation. Now, most of what is said is accurate.
01:14:24
I mean, you can certainly see a parallel between Second Samuel and Luke chapter 1, at least a rose and went, and a rose and went look similar.
01:14:37
Of course, anybody who arises and goes, you can make a parallel there, but they do look similar.
01:14:44
And there are similarities between how can the Ark of the Lord come to me? And why is this granted to me that the mother of my
01:14:53
Lord should come to me? But the problem is not so much that, it's the entire concept of the typological interpretation.
01:15:03
Because while you can draw parallels, there's one little problem. You have to ignore a bunch of stuff.
01:15:12
First of all, those things I've presented to you are not in order. That is the dancing before the
01:15:22
Ark isn't in the same order. If you notice, it jumps to 6 -14 and back to 6 -11.
01:15:28
And so the dancing of David before the Ark takes place as it's after the three months.
01:15:34
And the leaping of the child in the womb, which is not the same term at all, and I find a rather tenuous connection, takes place before the three months.
01:15:42
And so there's not a strict parallel there either. But there's all sorts of other stuff in the second
01:15:48
Samuel passage that doesn't have any connection. And of course, the typological interpreter will say, well, that's fine.
01:15:57
There doesn't have to be any type of connection there.
01:16:03
We can ignore the fact that, well, who was the
01:16:08
Uzzah for Mary? Who reached out and touched the Ark? If she's the Ark of the Covenant, then who reached out and touched her?
01:16:16
And then died as a result? Well, that's not there. There's all sorts of things within the original section that don't find any parallels.
01:16:28
Well, why not? How come Dr. Hahn or whoever gets to choose, well, we don't have to do them in order, but we can parallel this here and this here and this here, and we just ignore all the rest of the stuff.
01:16:42
How does that work? Couldn't we use this to draw parallels to basically almost anything that way?
01:16:48
If you get to choose what you're going to parallel and what you're not, well, that is, in fact, the way that it works.
01:16:57
Well, even with this tenuous argumentation at the end of that section, Hahn says, was
01:17:02
Luke in his quiet way showing Mary to be the Ark of the New Covenant? The evidence is too strong to explain credibly in any other way.
01:17:15
Such confidence from such tenuous argumentation may cause us to go, not quite.
01:17:23
The next section under primary colors, C -U -L -L -E -R -S, the woman of the apocalypse is the
01:17:30
Ark of the Covenant in the heavenly temple. He's never proven that, and the woman is the
01:17:36
Virgin Mary. He's never proven that either. This does not, however, preclude other readings of Revelation 12.
01:17:44
Scripture, after all, is not a code to be cracked, but a mystery we could never plumb in a lifetime. So this isn't the next amazing part of the type of interpretation that fills
01:17:56
Hail Holy Queen, is that now you don't have any one meaning to Revelation 11 and 12.
01:18:05
There's all sorts of meanings. I mean, there may be meanings we don't even know yet.
01:18:11
There may be things we can connect this to in the future that no one's even thought of yet. Isn't it wonderful?
01:18:16
It's theological Plato. We can make anything we want out of it. That's the eisegesis of the
01:18:27
Roman system coming to a head. On page 66, as Mary birthed
01:18:34
Christ to the world, so the church birthed believers, other Christs, to each generation.
01:18:42
As the church becomes mother to believers in baptism, so Mary becomes mother to believers as brothers of Christ.
01:18:50
The church, in the words of one recent scholar, reproduces the mystery of Mary.
01:19:01
One paragraph down. Read in the light of the fathers. Revelation 12 can illumine our subsequent reading of all the
01:19:07
New Testament passages that describe Christians as brothers of Christ. Yeah, let's go to Revelation 12, then go back and read everything else in the
01:19:13
New Testament. That's, I'm sorry, I shouldn't. Read in the light of the fathers. Revelation 12 can illumine our subsequent reading of all the
01:19:21
New Testament passages that describe Christians as brothers of Christ. Here's one of those quotes. The Greek word for brother,
01:19:28
Adolphos, literally means from the same womb. From John and Irenaeus through Ephraim and Augustine, the early
01:19:38
Christians believed that womb belonged to Mary. The passage proves to be remarkably rich.
01:19:46
Other fathers saw the woman of the Apocalypse as a symbol of Israel, which gave birth to the Messiah, or as the people of God through all the ages, or as the
01:19:55
Davidic empire, set in contrast to the Herodians and the Caesars. She is all these things, even as she is the ark of the covenant.
01:20:04
Isn't that wonderful? So Mary, Mary is Israel and Mary is the people of God through all the ages, and Mary is the
01:20:12
Davidic empire. And Mary is the Arizona Cardinals. Oh, he didn't say that, but why not?
01:20:21
The Cardinals have wings and the woman in Revelation 12 has wings. And she goes to a place for a time, a time, a time and a half, and they've taken,
01:20:30
I bet you in football games, they've taken two and a half timeouts. So there's the connection.
01:20:39
I mean, this is, there's no end to this. There's, she is all these things, even as she is the ark of the covenant.
01:20:50
Yet while each of these interpretations suffices in a subsidiary or secondary way, none can fulfill the primary meaning of the text.
01:21:00
How in the world can we find a primary meaning of the text? All of these symbolic readings point beyond themselves to a primary meaning that is literal historical, or as Cardinal Newman put it, the
01:21:13
Holy Apostle would not have spoken of the church under this particular image unless there had existed a blessed Virgin Mary who was exalted on high and the object of veneration of all the faithful.
01:21:23
That is Theobabble. That is Theobabble. It is making an assertion without the slightest foundation for making it.
01:21:34
That's all it is. Where did any of that come from? I haven't the foggiest idea
01:21:42
Well, the woman of the apocalypse must, in the words of another scholar, be a concrete person who embodies a collective.
01:21:51
The primary meaning, moreover, for the woman as for her male child must belong to the individual, the historical person, the blessed
01:21:57
Virgin Mary, who at once became mother to Christ and the members of his body, the church. We're not told why.
01:22:03
And we're not told that if this is a literal historical fulfillment, then that means that she had birth, that means she was under original sin and the condemnation for original sin.
01:22:15
That means she had other children. That means she had wings. And, you know, that stuff just is conveniently explained away.
01:22:24
Just, you know, it just goes away. I'm sorry, but I don't understand that.
01:22:33
And in fact, I have a sound effect here that really explains a lot of this for me.
01:22:43
That's, you know, after I get done reading that kind of Theobabble that has no basis in the text, ignores entire realms of the text, says, oh, well, we just have to interpret this this way or or when early church fathers said this about Mary and they or they said this about this past revelation, chapter 12.
01:23:03
She's all those things. Mary's Mary's everything. I just I feel very, very strongly like just turning to someone who would write that kind of thing and simply simply say to them.
01:23:19
Something that I can't say right now, because no one has my sounds turned up. That's a shame.
01:23:25
It would have been good, though. It would have been very, very good if oh, oh, I hear I hear something in the background and I can and I can turn to them and say, you are the weakest link apart.
01:23:39
I love that show. That's a really that's the best thing to come from England a long time. Anyways, I just I that was a that was a a tension breaker because the next section.
01:23:52
I don't think I'm going to have time to really get in the next section. I'm going to have to start here.
01:23:58
Two weeks from now, May 5th. The next section is on the
01:24:03
Queen Mother. In fact, what I'd like to do. What I'd like to do is nobody heard that, did they?
01:24:11
That's great. CDS didn't hear that. That's probably a good thing. No, no, no, not not that.
01:24:17
I mean, nobody in the chat room, I think, heard. I'm not going to play another one. Don't worry about it. I don't think anybody in the channel actually heard heard what
01:24:23
I did. But anyways, the argument about the Queen Mother, I think what I should do is let me just throw out this argument real quick.
01:24:34
And and let's have you mull on it and see if you come up with the same response that I do.
01:24:41
The next section in the book is on Mary as Queen Mother.
01:24:49
And the passage that that Jerry Matatix and Scott Hahn love to dwell on is the passage where Bathsheba comes to Solomon and he gets up and he bows before her and he commands the throne be brought for her to sit on it.
01:25:14
She is the Queen Mother. And if you read the chapter in Hail Holy Queen on the
01:25:23
Queen Mother, you will believe that the Queen Mother was a vital and important part of the
01:25:32
Davidic Kingdom. And since the Davidic Kingdom is the model for the Kingdom of God, then we need to have a
01:25:38
Queen Mother and Mary is the Queen Mother. Jerry Matatix in talks and in our debates has dwelt a tremendous amount upon this idea.
01:25:54
And Scott Hahn cites the passage as well. It talks about Bathsheba as the
01:26:01
Queen Mother. And yet neither one of them in their talks nor in this book bother to tell you what actually ended up happening in that particular instance.
01:26:18
That was interesting. We just had a cricket crawl into. Oh, that's interesting. I know exactly why that happened.
01:26:24
I have something called weather bug on my system and a alert has been just given for our area for a bad thunderstorm heading our direction.
01:26:36
That's great. Well, anyway, and that interesting how it worked. That's just fascinating.
01:26:42
Anyways, the argument is presented, but not once. Do they tell you what happens at the end of that incident?
01:26:52
Here's what I'd like you to do. Look at the passage. Look at the story of the first Kings.
01:27:00
Look that up. Find out what happened. And if you're going to make a parallel to Bathsheba, then what must you do logically if you follow the parallel through?
01:27:12
Not only that, look up some of the other queen mothers. Find out what they like.
01:27:20
Is this really a meaningful parallel to Mary?
01:27:26
I think you'll discover that as normal, it's not what these
01:27:32
Catholic apologists are saying. It's what they're not saying. Their selective use of so much of the text of Scripture.
01:27:41
It's truly, truly incredible. You might say, boy, I'll tell you, you've said some strong things.
01:27:46
Yeah, I sure have. This is deceptive material. It's deceiving people into a false gospel and a false system.
01:27:57
And Dr. Hahn knows that he has a standing challenge for me to debate these things in a scholarly, moderated fashion.
01:28:07
He's been to a number of my debates. He moderated one of the debates I did with Jerry Matotix. He attended the debate we did on eternal security.
01:28:15
And he attended two of the debates I did with Mitchell Pacwa in San Diego. So he knows that I am more than capable of engaging a debate on a subject and keeping it directly on the subject.
01:28:27
But he won't do it. You know why? I'll tell you why. Because this kind of teaching cannot stand up to any kind of meaningful cross -examination.
01:28:41
It can't do it. And so he won't do it. And that's why all these excuses have been given.
01:28:50
Oh, he's not scholarly enough or this, that or the other thing. Hahn won't defend this stuff because, folks, it's indefensible.
01:29:00
And it's important for us to address these issues because of the fact that this is the kind of stuff that quiets the conscience of the person that allows them to then believe that justification is something that is infused into us, that the mass is a propitiatory sacrifice, that purgatory is real and that Christ is not enough to save in and of himself.
01:29:28
So it's important that we address these things. We're going to continue doing so two weeks from now. Next week, I'm going to be out of town, but that does not mean that you have an excuse for not being here.
01:29:38
No, indeed, you need to be here because the boys will be back and they'll be doing something what
01:29:44
I have not the foggiest idea, but it'll be good, whatever it is. And therefore, you need to be here.
01:29:50
So I hope you'll join us next week here on The Dividing Line. Thanks for being with us. God bless. The Dividing Line has been brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries.
01:30:28
If you'd like to contact us, call us at 602 -973 -0318 or write us at P .O.
01:30:34
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01:30:41
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