2024 08 04 Apologetics RCC 1 pt 1

Scriptural Authority as the Foundation for Defending the Faith

All right. So today is the first session for our apologetics, defending our faith against Catholicism. I'll pray for us and then we will get started. Father, we're grateful that you care about us and we're grateful that we can know you through Jesus Christ alone.

We pray that you would open our hearts as we study your word and also study your history, what you've been doing. Help us to see the truth and we appreciate the fact that you have shown us the truth in Jesus.

In his name we pray. Amen. All right. So the first part today is on scriptural authority. And why do you think it's important to start with scriptural authority? Yeah, yeah. Barb said because Catholicism isn't.

I like that. It's concise. That's true. Scripture is the foundation, right, of our faith. It's the seed of truth. It's where we stand. And Barb is right. Catholicism has gone wayward from Scripture. And we will spend the next couple of weeks just on Scripture, mainly because it's that important.

For Christians, how we know what is true, not just about God, but what is true about his world, about humanity, about sin, about afterlife, anything related to our faith. How do we know anything that's true?

And it goes back to because the Bible tells me so. Right. That's why we start with scriptural authority, because you can have the right Scripture. But if you don't approach Scripture as God's word or if you don't approach Scripture properly with faith, you can get something else.

Right. So scriptural authority is where we start. So next page, this is the whole general meta question. Why defend the faith against Catholicism? The main text of defending our faith really comes from First Peter 315, among many texts.

Right. And that's where we get the word apologetics from. First Peter 315. But sanctify the Lord God in your heart and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you with meekness and fear.

Right. So First Peter 315 is the main text in which we go to, which is a command to defend the faith, defend why we have the hope in our heart. Right. Our goal isn't to convert other souls. It's not our job.

Right. God has to do that. Our goal here is to defend the faith. Right. If someone comes to faith because we defend our faith, praise God. But just because you're defending your faith and they totally reject it doesn't mean you failed.

Right. Conversion is what God will be doing in their heart when they come to come face to face with the truth. But our success or our fruitfulness does not depend on how many people change their mind.

Right. In fact, the Arnettes probably know it's so hard for the Catholics to turn. Right. In fact, it's there's some of the hardest people to evangelize to. Mainly because they use very similar terms.

You can say, yeah, Jesus saved me. Oh, yeah, we believe that it is by God's grace. Yes, we do. You know, and that's why it's hard. And this is why we're equipping ourselves. Right. So that we know the specifics.

You've got you've got to be like a lawyer here. Every word counts. Every word matters. Another reason is many Protestants are turning to Catholicism.

Why do you think that is? That's right.

Yeah. They like the rituals, church traditions. Right. Humans are de facto worshipping creatures. And what's beautiful about rituals is that it's consistent. It's the same. Right. You can do it over and over again.

Right. The danger is you can make the ritual your worship itself. I'm not saying don't have patterns like we have patterns. Right. We sing hymns and modern music. We we always have some sort of preaching from the word.

Right. Those are those are great. But when when it becomes those things become the focus. Right. Rather than knowing God personally. And Catholicism is famous for that. Right. There are so many rituals.

What you can eat, what you can't eat. What how the Eucharist is performed. That's the Lord's Supper for them. Right. The doctrine behind that. It's all ritualistic. Right. What does the priest wear? The garment, the water.

How does it need to be prayed for? It's crazy. Right. Incense, bells and smells all ritualistic. And humans like to find security in that. Right.

Yeah. Yeah. They they they they rely on traditions very much.

And what we're going to find is even though they claim that their church foundation goes all the way back to St. Peter, we'll actually go over. Throughout this course. How many times the traditions have changed or differed even among the Catholics?

And how many are how many are differing now? Even. Right. Because Catholics always say, you guys have tens of thousands of denominations. You technically do, too. You just still like to go under one umbrella.

But but but there are different sects, different different groups of Catholics. Yeah. And they they'll they say Peter's the first pope can't can't really historically find that. And we'll go over the verses that they'll claim.

But. Oh, another thing is whenever you turn on the media, whenever you get the Christian view, they always interview a Catholic priest or bishop. So that's what people get to see. Right. So when even when Protestants, non-Christians, they they're like, I wonder what Christianity is like.

Well, turn on Fox or CNN. It's a guy wearing a Catholic priestly garment with this little collar. Right. And if that's all they see, that's all they're going to know. And that's what they're going to look for.

Ultimately, lives are at stake. Souls are at stake. Eternity is at stake. Right. There is a heavy weight of guilt and sin if you. Trust in the wrong God. And I say this not to say that all Catholics are unsaved.

I think some are saved because they have access to Scripture and we we hold Scripture to be foundational. However, if you believe the doctrines that the Catholic Church teaches you. It minimizes what Jesus has done on the cross to die for our sin.

And it it actually amplifies what we must do. And when that happens. All of a sudden, you start carrying the guilt and sin. And you will see that a lot of Catholics do feel guilty and ashamed despite their claim that they they believe in Jesus.

And then there are all these obstacles they have to go through in order to. Wash away the sin. Right. Some of the examples are you need to be baptized or you can't be a regenerate. We can't be saved. And that is that's a burden.

Right. What if you didn't get to get baptized before you die? Right. You need to confess to the priest. Right. Even the last rite, as in you, you go to the priest or the priest comes to you before you die.

That is a sacrament to them. Well, what if there's a priest that's not nearby? You're going to die in that feeling of guilt that it was not sufficient. Right. So so on. Lives are at stake in the weight of guilt and sin.

Anything that minimizes Christ or ignores Christ. Someone else has to carry that guilt and sin, and that's going to be people. Now, let's go to the next slide. Why is this so difficult? There are doctrinal similarities.

The Catholics are Trinitarian, as in they do believe in the triune God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Right. Death and resurrection of Jesus. They believe that, too. Right. The conservative ones, at least.

Right. The liberal ones probably don't. But doctrinally, that's that's that's in their statement of faith. They hold to the historical death and resurrection of Christ. And they also hold to the divinity of Christ.

Right. So because of these similarities, it is difficult to evangelize to them because they would say, yes, amen. Amen. Amen. Right. And there are also scriptural similarities. They do have all the books that we have, but more.

Right. That's that's why it's also difficult to. And similar theological words, grace, faith, justification. They will use all of those words, too. You have to pin them down on their definition. You can't just say, I'm saved by God's grace.

Because they'll say, yes, amen. We're of the same kind. But you have to say, I'm saved by God's grace alone. I have to do nothing else. You have to be really specific. I don't have to be baptized. Now we are commanded to be baptized.

But that doesn't baptism doesn't save me. You have to say that. Right. So we'll go over each one where we're not going to go over the doctrinal differences specifically today. It's mainly scripture. All right.

The Reformation and the Question of Justification

Next slide. So the Reformation really was the I would say the line in which it totally split. Right. Historically, it's with Martin Luther. But I would argue and we will go over it was before Martin Luther.

The the the bowl was cracking. Right. The cup was cracking. It wasn't all of a sudden Martin Luther decided, I'm going to just leave the Catholic Church. Right. It was happening. It was building up. God was working through people.

And it really comes from a commitment to the biblical truth. What does the Bible say? If you look at the reformers and even the ones before that, like William Tyndale, Wycliffe, Wycliffe, I don't know which one.

Right. They all started with a commitment to the Bible. Right. You might not agree with all of their doctrines. I don't. But that's OK. They and we will agree on the importance of going to God's word and having access to God's word.

That's what's important here. And what I want to say is the Reformation didn't stop after these folks, Luther, Calvin, Zwingli. Right. It didn't stop. And the reason is because we're always reforming as long as there are false doctrines to defend the faith against.

We can't just get passive here and just look back to 500 years ago and be like, that's been settled. No, there's always false teaching coming out. Right. They might not be new, but they're always coming out.

Right. And that's why we need to always be willing to reform back to the biblical truth. All right. Next slide. When you go back to 500 years ago, there were two causes for reformation. The first one was the material cause, which is the question on justification.

Justification is the doctrine that that part of salvation. How can a guilty, sinful man be made right with God? Right. How? Right. And the biblical view is it is through God's grace alone, as in it's a gift.

You can't earn it. You can't be made with God. God can't make you righteous by your own righteousness, but rather it is God giving it to you for free. Well, how do you receive it? By faith. You believe.

Not works, not by working, but by believing in what Jesus had done for you by dying on the cross and rising from the dead. That's the material cause that that was the main cause for the Reformation. And to this day, the Lutherans, right.

The conservative ones, they actually like the Bible. Their main thing is really justification. That's their theme. Right. And then there's the formal question. The formal question is the question of authority of Scripture.

Who wields the authority? Is it the church? Is it the pope? Is it the bishops? Is it the council or is it Scripture? That's what we're going to go over today and the next couple of weeks. Who wields the authority?

Right. That's the formal cause. And that's because they're related. Right. You can't get the wrong view of justification unless you're holding on to a wrong authority. Right. If you hold Scripture, the Bible to be the highest supreme authority, you can't get a false doctrine on the justification.

Right. To this day, the Catholic Church believes that you're justified by faith and works. That's why we have to say we're justified by faith alone. Right. Because the Bible said so. That's that's what we're that's our authority.

Sola Scriptura and the Authority of Scripture Alone

All right. Next slide. So what do I mean by a scriptural authority? Did it pause or? Oh, OK. All right. This is the doctrine of Sola Scriptura, Aladdin for Scripture alone. Right. Scripture alone. What this means is the ultimate authority is Scripture.

The ultimate authority is Scripture. This does not mean we ignore church history. Right. I think that's a straw man argument against Sola Scriptura or against the church. Protestant church. Right. This does not mean we ignore church history.

No. Right. It also doesn't mean we ignore commentaries. No. Right. This also doesn't mean we ignore faithful preaching. What this means is all of those can be helpful. But ultimately, the highest authority of all of all is Scripture.

Right. Scripture is the standard for truth, which means if any of those church history commentaries, faithful preaching go against what Scripture says, which one's right? Scripture. That's Sola Scriptura.

Right. You know what? You will find people you disagree with in church history and you'll find people you agree with in church history. That's fine. What's the guiding line? Scripture. Right. How do you disagree with origin?

But you might agree with, you know, Tertullian or, you know, Scripture. It's based upon Scripture. So Sola Scriptura is Scripture alone is the highest authority, not Scripture alone is the only authority.

Right. Scripture alone is the highest authority. And everything else is judged based upon Scripture. All right. Next, we have to go all the way back to 1518, although we could go earlier. Augsburg, 1518.

The Imperial Diet. This is not food. It's about the General Assembly for the Holy Roman Empire. Right. Martin Luther, an Augustinian monk. So he, Martin Luther was a Catholic. Right. In fact, he he really wanted to stay with the Catholics.

It's just that at one point he just couldn't. A, he was excommunicated and would have been killed. And then B, you just couldn't see himself submitting to that kind of authority. In fact, Luther argues all the way back in 1518 that popes can make errors.

All this is important because nowadays Catholics would say there's papal infallibility. Infallibility means that popes cannot even potentially err when they are making an authoritative statement from their church.

Right. Ex cathedra from their chair. If they make an announcement or proclamation papal bull, they would say, no, it's inerrant. It's infallible. You can't. There's no error in it. But all the way back to 1518, Luther had no problem as a Catholic.

Right. Arguing that popes can err. And that's because papal infallibility was not concretized, as in it wasn't their church doctrine officially until 1870.

Yes. Yeah. We'll go over that.

It's it is a slippery thing to try to get the Catholics to see that there are a couple of more than a couple of popes going against each other. And we're going to see many examples of that. To my knowledge, some of the modern.

Arguments is. The Catholic doctrines are like a tree growing. Yeah, right. It's funny, right? It's like a tree growing. So over time, there's the growth and, you know, the previous pope might not have seen it, but then the later pope does.

And then there's the fruit and then leaves. Right. That idea comes from John Newman. Not Paul Newman for the grape juice, but John Newman. John Newman was an Anglican priest. Right. The Church of England, who converted to Catholicism.

And wrote stuff like that. Cat, the Catholics love him. In fact, many university campuses have the Newman Center. You might have driven by it today on the way to church. The Newman Center named after John Newman.

Right. It's it's it's that idea. They say it's continually growing. That's right. And we will see a lot of changes that have happened to a reasonable, rational mind, reasonable, rational mind. It would be like that's contradicting each other.

But to a Catholic, not so. It's a very cultish behavior. In fact, like the Jesuits, there are sects of Catholicism. Right. The Jesuits founded by Ignacio Loyola. He's famous in saying, give me a child until the age of five and I will make him a soldier for the pope.

Why do the Catholics care about their Catholic school so much? Right. Get to the brain early. What's another thing he said? If the pope says, I forget if it's vice versa, but I got to look it up. If the pope says it's something's white, but it's black, it's white.

I forget. It might be vice versa if it's black and then it's he says it's white, then it's white. But either way, it's just like you look at that allegiance. Right. The Jesuits. All right. Next, let's go over the Roman Catholic view of authority.

This is not our view. This is their view. Yes, Victor. OK. OK. All right. There are a couple of authorities in the Roman church, the papal decisions, papal bulls. Right. Church councils, church councils are basically a gathering of the archbishops.

Right. They gather together and they make the decision that that would be that the council. And then Luther says scripture is the highest, actually. Because Pope and councils cannot speak infallibly as an infallibly potential to err.

Right. That was Luther's argument. Now we go to the diet of worms. Next slide. Diet of worms, not worms. That would be a horrible diet. But diet of worms. Worms is a location. 1521. Luther actually gets called up to the emperor, Charles V, a Holy Roman emperor.

I think we went over it before. Charles V was not really a strong emperor. And that was God's grace because there were regional princes who were stronger because in Holy Roman Empire, they get voted and emperors get voted in.

The regional princes were stronger. And the the emperor had to walk a fine line. Luther was actually protected by one of the princes. That's why he lived. Right. And this is the famous statement. Unless I am convicted by scripture and plain reason, I do not accept the authority of popes and councils where they have contradicted each other.

As you can see, this is nothing new. My conscience is captive to the word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise.

God help me. Amen. That's the famous one right here. I stand Luther's speech. As early as 1521, Luther made it publicly clear that the papal bulls and the church councils are not 100 percent trustworthy.

Therefore, he. Said scripture is the ultimate authority. Right. So this has a historical backing and we'll go over more history of it. Right. We're mainly going over the authority of scripture in the Catholic Church.

So according to Luther and to us, scripture has is greater than popes and the councils because they can err. They can make errors. Right. Next slide. Let's go over the developing Catholic view of scripture.

What that means is their view of scripture. Develops kind of like that tree metaphor that John Newman said it it grows. The Council of Trent was the church council that was in response to the Protestant Reformation.

Right. With Luther's, Wingly, Calvin, all that. The Council of Trent, all these Catholic bishops, cardinals, they meet and then they try to nail down. What do we believe that this is what they said? All the books, both of the old and the New Testament, seeing that one God is the author of both.

So they do believe in the divine authorship of both the Old Testament and the New Testament. So. It's important to know what they believe and it's in their council. And remember, with their Catholic view, whatever is written by the council, agreed upon, voted upon, cannot be changed.

Right. That's infallible to them. Right. So this is important to know what they truly know. All right. Let's go over what happens next. Then we get to Vatican I. Vatican I is another council, 1869 to 70.

You can see again, cardinals, bishops, they all gathered. They hold to the divine authorship. They have God as their author and they also hold to inerrancy, their revelation without error. Inerrancy means it's that the doctrine of inerrancy is that there's no error.

Right. All right. And then we get kind of funky here. 1943. Next slide. Divino affilante spiritu. This is from a pope inspired by the divine spirit. So this is this is not a council. It's a pope statement.

The interpreter must, as it were, go back wholly in spirit to those remote centuries of the East, accurately determine what modes of writing, so to speak, the authors of that ancient period would be likely to use and in fact did use.

This opened the floodgate for the Catholic Church. The modes of writing means the genre, right, like the type of writing. And what do I mean by genre? We subconsciously know what genres are, even if we don't use that term.

It's a type. It's a kind of writing. Right. When we you read a comic, we read it differently than how we would read a newspaper. Right. When we read the weather section, we read it differently from how we would read fiction.

Right. Nonfiction fiction. There's a different way of reading it, obviously. We don't take fiction as literal. Right. Nonfiction. Hopefully we can take that as literal. There are different genres. So the pope is saying it depends on the mode of writing.

And this opens the door for the liberal theologians of the Catholic Church to read Scripture as myths and legends. Yet they would say, I still hold to the divine authorship. Yet they could say, I still hold to the inerrancy.

Right. Because you can argue, well, Adam and Eve, that's a myth. And don't believe that Adam and Eve were actually real people, but they would say there's no error in Scripture. Right. Do you see what I mean?

Jonah and the whale. Oh, that's a that's a legend. Yet there's no error in Scripture. You know, you can do that. The scriptural authority shakes a bit when you get to decide what the genre is rather than the Scripture itself.

Right. All right. Next, we get to Vatican II. Vatican II to most conservative Catholics is like the council that they didn't want. It was influenced so much by this, like, globalist, liberal agenda. 1962 to 1965.

Look at this. The books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error. That truth, which God wanted to put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation. That's that totally limits what Scripture can do, doesn't it?

For the sake of salvation. Now, why is this concerning? When you add that clause for the sake of salvation. Right. It's it's it's the Bible speaks more than just the salvation. There are parts of the Bible that don't tell you about salvation.

Right. Yeah. So what they could do is, well, this part, this part's not about salvation specifically. Therefore. It is not without error. Do you see that? Do you see the slippery slope? That's what how you could read it with Vatican II.

A Vatican II is also the also the council that overturned the practice of withholding the communion wine from the lay people. For centuries, since really the medieval times, the Catholic Church did not give the communion wine to the lay people because they thought it was the real blood of Christ.

They still do. And then they're like, they're going to spill it. Remember, the bread is put by the priest. So they're not going to mess up. Right. So let's give them the body, but let's not give them the blood.

And for centuries, Catholic lay people did not get that. And then they overturned it in Vatican II. It is a stain. Vatican II is a stain in the Catholic Church. Whether people know it or not, like directly goes against what they've been practicing for centuries.

Friends of mine would say, well, I know they're doing it. Was that dealt with there?

Yeah, that also.

Yeah.

So many things that the Catholic Church have dearly hailed to have been overturned at Vatican II.

Yeah.

Victor's right. They were only allowing Latin masses and you could only read the Latin Bible.

Right.

Vulgate. But they changed it in Vatican II.

Yeah.

Did you have a question, Dexter? Yeah, that's right.

Right. Right. Yeah.

The accessibility of Scripture is also quite limited and restricted for the Catholic lay people. There's a whole section on that which we will go over as well. But Dexter is right. It's cruel. It is cruel.

Yeah, Jim. The Catholic argument for us is that like, oh, in the Protestant church, they just let everyone interpret, have their own interpretation of Scripture. Not true. The Protestant church's view of scriptural interpretation is that Scripture interprets Scripture.

You don't get to just say whatever the Bible says just because you wanted it to say it. It has to be done through Scripture alone, through the Spirit alone.

Right.

Not some elite group of people.

Right.

That tells you how you must read it.

Right.

Because they, too, also can err. Again, the questions also become more about the historical or scientific matters in the Bible. Right. Yes. I know the science of the book. The Bible is not science. It's not a science textbook, but it does talk about things that matter to science.

For example, creation.

Right.

How can we have something out of nothing?

Right.

The Bible does talk about that. But with that, for the sake of salvation part in Vatican II, that greatly limits what the Bible can say.

Right.

What the Bible can say without error. And all of a sudden, who gets to decide what's with error or not? The church. Or the people.

Right.

Or the bishops. Whatever. It's no longer authoritative when we get to this point. Yes.

So was there a single person that kind of was the seed of this Vatican II? Or was it the council?

It's the council.

Yeah.

The council.

Yeah.

Some Catholics would argue the councils are greater than the pope because they get to vote in the pope. There was a time in which there were three popes in church history.

I know.

I get that look. It's like, yeah, there was. Because you get to the bishops and cardinals, and all of a sudden, they're not just religious figures. They're political princes.

Right.

They get appointed.

Right.

And then all of a sudden, there were three. And that's a problem. Like, ooh, there weren't three Peters.

Right.

How did they decide which one? Well, the council decided. Some argue that it's the council that's higher than the pope. But I would say neither.

Scripture, Tradition, and the Problem of Authority

All right.

Next. Slide. So there's an ongoing division over this. How is Scripture treated? The conservatives would say, historically, we've decided all of Scripture is inerrant. So let's not touch that.

Right.

And then the liberals, they would say, no, no, no, no. This is the progress of the church. It's growing like the tree.

Right.

It's the progress. We're actually headed somewhere. We're getting closer to the truth.

Right.

In fact, Cardinal Franz Koenig. Cardinal is right there. The highest up there before the pope.

Right.

In fact, the pope is technically the cardinal cardinal of Rome.

Right.

Right.

So Cardinal Franz Koenig says the Bible contains historical and scientific errors. I mean, that is crazy thing to say from the archbishop of Vienna, Austria.

Right.

Because he's the liberal side who say, well, finally, we can say it now and without getting killed.

Right.

Or getting sacked. Again, do the Catholics have multiple denominations within the church?

Right.

Right.

In the Protestant church, if you say that kind of stuff in a denomination that would.

Split.

Right.

If they're conservative members and they're liberal members, then once there are errors, it's like we're done. We're not the same body.

Right.

The Catholic church, they just want to cover that. But don't let them say that the Catholic church is one denomination. You can't have that as one denomination.

Right.

That's tremendously alarming.

All right.

Next slide. So overall, the Catholic church, they have mainly two authorities, scripture and tradition, which is developing. As we can see, it is developing.

Right.

They didn't just end at the Council of Trent. They kept on improving.

Right.

So to say. Now, the question is, who gets to decide the correct interpretation of the church? I mean, scripture versus the church, the Roman Catholic church. That is the only acceptable interpretation of scripture, which means.

Next slide. Who gets to hold the power over the people, the church, the pope, the priest?

Right.

Not the lay people. The lay people have to go through some sort of ecclesiastical authority, church authority, whether the priest, bishop, archbishop, cardinal or the pope. What that means is. Next slide.

Scripture is what the church says they mean at a given moment. That's what scripture becomes.

Right.

Because if you can't believe what scripture says as it says, and it's dependent on what the church says, then that's what scripture is. It's at any given moment what the church says the scripture says.

And then tradition is what the church says that they are at a given moment. Because as we've seen, the tradition changes too. And the Council of Trent holds to this. Remember, church councils cannot change.

They have to hold on to this. Seeing clearly that this truth and discipline are contained in the written books and the unwritten traditions. To this day, there's no like a book you can buy from the Catholic library or bookstore that has like all the traditions held by the church.

There's no such thing. There's no single commentary in which how you can read scripture either. This is why it is hard to argue against the Catholics. Because if there were a single commentary, how to read scripture, each book by book.

Except sealed and approved by the Pope himself.

Right.

If you had that easily, you could argue against it. No, because there is not a single book or even a group of books. It's like trying to grab water.

Right.

Slips through. So they would argue the truth of God is contained in both scripture and tradition. And both of them are heavily, heavily influenced by the church. And they're equal.

Right.

All right.

Next slide. This is the catechism of the Catholic Church from 1995. Sacred tradition and sacred scripture then are bound closely together and communicate one with the other. For both of them flowing out from the same divine wellspring come together in some fashion to form one thing and move towards the same goal.

So, again, they equally hold to both the tradition and scripture.

Right now.

Next slide. The question is, who is the highest authority? The Roman Catholic Church. And it's the clergy.

Right.

Because they get to interpret scripture.

Right.

And when I say clergy, it includes from the pope to the priest.

Right.

All the way.

Because the lay people don't have the authority. They don't have the capacity. What's the problem? Well, then the clergy controls the masses with traditions.

Right.

If you can say that this is not the proper way of reading Paul's letter to Romans on justification by faith alone. Well, then you have the wrong doctrine of the justification by faith. All it becomes that the Bible interpretation becomes the church's job.

It's the church. It has to be according to church's tradition. In that sense, traditions become greater than scripture, although they say they are both equal. Well, if the tradition impacts how scriptures read, even the plain reading is overruled by the tradition of the church, then.

Well, it seems like the tradition is trumping scripture.

Right.

That's that's concerning. Because the traditions keep changing, even if they say it's without error. But it keeps changing.

Right.

All right.

Next slide. Let's give let's let's go over this. First, Timothy two, five. One mediator also between God and man himself, man, Christ Jesus. I don't know about you. I don't think you can get any clearer than that.