September 14, 2004

Casting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line.

The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.

Our host is Dr. James White, Director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an Elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.

This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll -free across the

United States. It's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is

James White. Well good afternoon or morning, whichever it is for you, welcome to The Dividing Line.

We are live today on September 14th, 2004.

I was just telling Angel about some AVI's we have hiding on my family's site.

I just realized that could really cause poor Angel some nightmares, especially if you like watermelon.

That would be a really bad thing. 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number if you want to be involved.

We haven't taken phone calls in a long, long time. And some of you are probably thinking that, oh please, don't even mention that.

Someone just mentioned the cheeseburger I had at Harvey's up in Canada and that was just wrong.

That is the only way to describe it. That cheeseburger was wrong. Was that actually beef?

I looked a couple of times and I was just so hungry at that time and it was so late in the evening that I ate it anyway.

But it was just... It was a Canadian cloned cow. A Canadian cloned cow.

That would explain it because that was just... It was wrong. That's the only way to describe it.

This morning I was going over to get destroyed in tennis and that's what happened.

I played the best I've played in a long time, but you just can't... Getting this body to accelerate is an ugly, ugly thing.

And anyway, I was on my way over early in the morning, because you have to play early in the morning to really survive here in Phoenix right now, and I was listening right at the beginning at 6 o 'clock to the

Laura Ingraham show and she was late. The theme music's on and they're putting her on on her cell phone.

Then she'd get in the elevator and it would disappear and she comes running into the studio five minutes late.

I mean, they're on the air. And she was talking about traffic and of course she immediately pulled the sexist card.

Well, it takes us women longer to get ready. It's like, yeah, mm -hmm, yeah, sure, mm, right.

Anyway, I haven't done that. I don't think we've ever been... The only time we've ever been late on this program was if we couldn't get the computer to work.

That was the only time. No, not at night under the lights. I don't see the ball under those lights.

Let's put it this way, I haven't found lights that work well enough that I can actually see the ball. I don't see the ball until it's over the net and that's just too late if you know anything about tennis.

I was once a very good tennis player, really. I went to state as a sophomore and I really,

I do know the game. And in fact, I can teach the game pretty well. It's just convincing your body to do what it did 20 years ago.

It's a sad reminder of the passage of time. It really is.

Anyway, we haven't taken phone calls in a long time and some of you are probably thinking there's no way you'll be taking phone calls today.

And the reason for that is, I know, not even with my miracle glasses, yeah,

I've got those volleys that allow you to see the optic yellow real well, but not under lights. It just doesn't work.

And I let Rich try those and he didn't like them. That was funny.

Oh yeah, 20 years, I was playing, even longer ago than that, I remember one summer when I was about,

I don't know, 14 years old. Me and a friend, we would go out and we would play tennis in Phoenix from like noon to three or one to four in the afternoon.

Now if you know anything about Phoenix and there's no shade, we were playing for like three hours at anywhere from 105 to 112, somewhere around there, depending on, and that's in the shade and you were not in the shade.

I almost looked like I was a different race at the end of that summer. And yeah, it was just, when

I get into a sport, I really get into that sport big time. And tennis is great.

But you know what, you got to have fast footwork. You got to just be moving all the time and it's great aerobic stuff.

But wow. Anyway, at least the person who beat me is a member of the

United States Tennis Association and is a pro. So getting four games wasn't overly bad,

I guess. In fact, I played the best I've played in two years, but I have no backhand anymore and it was sad.

So anyway, that's neither here nor there. I'll get wiped off the court again tomorrow morning, in fact, as well.

So 877 -753 -334, we haven't taken phone calls. Some of you are saying you're not going to because you keep yapping about tennis and talking to people in the chat channel and I'm sorry about that.

And the reason being that most of you are probably assuming that I'm going to sit here and do nothing but respond once again to Dr.

Seyfried, who wrote a three and a half page response to me yesterday, and I'm not going to do that.

I might deal with like the first paragraph, but I've already started writing my response, but my response could take the form of an open letter and I'm not going to rush it.

In fact, it was odd. There almost seemed to be a complaint that I responded too quickly to stuff before.

Evidently, it doesn't matter what I say. It doesn't matter how I say it. I'm going to be wrong for even bothering to say it.

Evidently, since the seminary has spoken, that's it. Whether my questions and whether my concerns have been addressed doesn't seem to matter.

It just seems to be you're not supposed to question these things. You know, scholars have the right to say what they want to say and if you happen to believe the things that they say are wrong and sub -biblical, just take it, man.

That's just the way it is. Anyway, no matter what I say, no matter how careful

I am in saying it, it's not going to make any difference one way or the other. If I make sure not to say anything personal about Dr.

Seifried, then he will have all the freedom to say everything personal about me. He'll be able to refer people to Paul Owen. Oh, by the way, obviously, those of you who read the blog know that last week

I challenged Paul Owen to come on this program. He wrote a lie -filled article that I started to review last week and it's just, you know, it's just in -your -face, razor -type stuff, you know, that's all it is.

And by now, everyone's got an idea of who Paul Owen is and everybody has an idea of the level of his behavior and that's just the way it is.

But I, you know, I challenged him to come on the program because, you know, he went after me personally.

He somehow has the ability to read my motivations and so I got an email back from him and of course he said that, you know, he wasn't going to do that and da -da -da -da -da and I told you last week he wouldn't because he knows.

He's a very bright man even though he constantly has to attack my intelligence and say I'm stupid and hey, maybe

I am. I'll let the readers decide. You all go get all of Dr. Owen's books and all of his articles and pick up all of his debate

DVDs and things like that and you compare him with what I've done and I'll leave it up to you to decide, you know, if he has any basis for his, not only attacks upon me but you'll notice what

I post on the web. He really doesn't feel that if you've been benefited by this ministry that you're an overly intelligent person either and he also has an odd view of the pulpit ministry.

He definitely is the poster child for modern academia. He definitely shows us what the academy can devolve into and what

I don't want to ever, ever be a part of personally. If that's what it means to be a part of the academy, well, you can have the academy.

I'm not interested but we invite him to come on the program. He won't because he knows that I will then ask him, okay, you said this.

Where did I say that about Dr. Seifried? You said this. Where did you get that? Could you document this? And he can't and he knows that.

He's an intelligent person. He knows that he's engaging in very childish behavior and that he won't defend it.

So we gave him the opportunity and of course he was not willing to do that and so, you know, that's how it is.

I mentioned that that was the way it was going to be and that's just how it ended up working out.

So anyways, we won't have their, that won't be happening.

Uh -oh. This is our new

Paul Owen theme song. That's actually somebody else's theme song.

We used that for poor Rusty. Rusty's in channel now. But you know what?

It fits so much better for a guy who is just a little bit, he suffers from little man's disease.

That's the problem. Hey, I heard that from you, you know. I never heard that until you introduced me to it.

You don't need to turn on your microphone. They can hear you laughing through the door. That's just all there is to it, man.

I'm sorry, but you know, life is life. I've been listening to enough Laura Ingram recently that I'm starting to develop a backbone.

Rusty just heard me mention him. Hi, Rusty. Rusty is the man who has the most nicks in channel. I think he's getting close to 1 ,800 nicks so far since January.

I'm sorry? You know, if academia keeps up this kind of dialogue, we may have to get a picture of Spurgeon or Boyce and put it on a milk carton.

Have you seen me recently? Ah, you've been thinking about this too,

I see. Have you seen this theologian? We haven't seen anything like him in years. Have you read this theologian?

Is he just a fallible human being? Well, you know, I think he is a fallible human being. Maybe that's what he claimed to be, but that's an odd way of putting it.

Anyways, we'll get around to it eventually. Anyhow, but no, I'm not going to sit around and do that today.

That's just not, it would be too boring. However, we do, being encouraged very strongly, go ahead, go ahead, do it, do it.

No, no, no, no, you all just do not understand. And we need to do other things like...

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition! I am usually referred to as the master. There are some who call me...

Tim? Yes, indeed, it is time to continue our review of Dave Armstrong on Catholic Answers.

And we have definitely rejuvenated Dave's experience on his blog.

He's been cranking them out. And it's really, it's really shrill.

In fact, what it reminds me of a little bit is, you know, if you listen to Rush Limbaugh years ago, he had that theme song for the

NEA crowd, the feminazis. And they had this thing from this rally where this was, we're feminists and we're in your face!

And then he just kept making it get squeakier and squeakier and squeakier. That's what keeps going through my mind whenever I...

Whenever I just sort of zoom past Dave's blog the past couple of weeks, because it's just been...

Wow! Like I said, it just keeps proving my point as we keep going along.

Hey, you've got to do one of two things. You're going to laugh, you're going to cry. You know, it's just one of those two things.

So that's what we're going to do. So we're picking up with Dave Armstrong. And like I said, right toward the end of this program, there's this great call.

It is really, really good. But we stopped. I keep putting little sticky notes on my computer screen, which, of course,

I don't put sticky notes on a computer screen. But I have the sticky note program, which is really cool, by the way.

And so I just keep putting in there where we are in the program. And as I recall, we stopped somewhere around here.

All right, let's take a short break here on the program. Dave Armstrong with us for the first time on Catholic Answers Live.

First time. Dave, you're doing a great job. We appreciate your insights here. And we have more questions and the calls to get to on the other side of the break.

And I believe we have an open phone line at, by the way, Ben, thanks for that phone call, 888 -318 -

Let's skip to the break here. Let's hear it. And how to make the world a better place. Well, that sounded really odd, didn't it?

Make it more Catholic. Oh, make the world a better place and make it more Catholic. The voters guide published by Catholic Answers.

Oh, voters guide, you need that. Let's listen. Let's get to the back of the thing here. 888 -31 -TRUTH.

That's 1 -888 -318 -7884. And now, more answers live.

That's Yanni in the background. Yanni's coming to Phoenix. Back to your great questions for Dave Armstrong. Today, line number one, we go to Toronto, Canada.

Toronto? Welcome to the program. How do you do, sir? Very well, thanks for the call. Good. I thought

I would contribute to the discussion by recalling in the

Acts of the Apostles on Pentecost Sunday, Peter addressed a large crowd. Three thousand or so were converted to his proclamation.

And it goes on to say at chapter 2 of Acts, verse 42, these remained faithful to the teaching of the apostles, as well as to the brotherhood, to the breaking of the bread, to the prayers.

But my emphasis for this conversation is remaining faithful to the teaching of the apostles as opposed to written scripture.

Wow. Let's stop that right there. Hmm. So to be relevant to the issue of sola scriptura, what would have to follow?

Well, what would have to follow is that what is in the teaching of the apostles is different than what they then inscripturated under the guidance of the

Holy Spirit in the writings of Paul, the writings of Peter, and things like that, right? That's what would have to be relevant because we're talking here about before the writing of the

New Testament. So that's how it would be relevant, and I'm sure that that will be brought up here as we continue on.

I think that is something worthwhile keeping in mind in view of the topic. Yeah, that's good.

The second thing is, just from my own experience... Wait a minute! Was that a comment? I think we just missed a comment.

Yeah, that's good. Okay, there was the comment. People that I have talked to who express a conviction about sola scriptura...

That would be me. Well, I do. At the same time, a number of these people will say they have such a close relationship with Jesus themselves that they don't need any other man for the forgiveness of sins.

Whereas, at the end of John chapter 20, Jesus specifically gives to those who were present when he appeared on the evening of the resurrection the power to forgive or to retain sins.

The power of the keys, which of course is in regard to the proclamation of the gospel. But if you sort of lost the connection here, especially in regard to sola scriptura...

Yeah, so did I. If people really believed in scripture, they would want to find out who those people are that have the power to forgive or retain sins.

Yeah. So that's all I was going to contribute. I don't really have a question, but if that helps, there you go.

Those are good comments, Dave. I'm sure if you didn't have the passages there and those ideas in your arsenal, you're probably going to add them now.

Well, I had to ask you 42, but I'd like to... I like that. I like that.

I want to hear that again. So that's all I was going to contribute. I don't really have a question, but if that helps, there you go.

Those are good comments, Dave. I'm sure if you didn't have the passages there and those ideas in your arsenal, you're probably going to add them now.

Well, I had to ask you 42, but I'd like to quote one more. I don't think I mentioned. 2

Timothy 1, 13 and 14 is similar because Paul says, So that doesn't mention writing.

It says words, but it's oral words. Wow, that doesn't mention writing. Well, wait a minute.

When Paul wrote to Timothy before he left, let's see, he says in 2

Timothy, That must be those oral traditions.

So why does Dave hold to the material sufficiency viewpoint if clearly that's part and partum?

Oh, well, you know, it's convenient to just, you know, sort of go back and forth between each one. But when Paul's actually getting ready to depart, what does he refer

Timothy to? Does he refer Timothy to the oral traditions outside of Scripture, or does he refer

Timothy to that which is Théanoustas? Oh, I think it's the Théanoustas stuff.

That's where it came from. So it's definitely that motif in Scripture that it's the oral teaching.

And that's really what, when you read Acts and see what the first Christians did, they went out and they preached the gospel, which is

Jesus Christ dying for us, rising from the dead. They didn't hand out Bibles. They didn't hand out

Bibles. Of course, the New Testament hadn't been written yet. And wow, when they did go into the synagogue, what did they do?

They said, the Scripture says, and that was the final argument. Again, does anyone else notice that these folks just aren't overly, there doesn't seem to be a concern here about actually addressing the position of anyone other than, shall we say, and I don't get angry here, but shallow theological fundamentalists.

And what I mean by that, conservative people, they've got the right ideas in general, but they've never really thought through why they have those ideas.

This type of argumentation would only be relevant to those people. They're not trying to convince myself.

They're not trying to convince people like that. They're not trying to convince the people on our chat channel, the people in my church, because we think past those issues.

We discuss those issues far beyond this. It's just this, well, you know, listen, the apostles had oral teaching.

What does that have to do with Rome? Has Rome ever defined a single word that they taught, that they actually spoke outside of Scripture?

No, they haven't. Where is this tradition? We keep asking, can you show us this tradition today?

Before you come up with some new dogma based upon it and claim it came from the apostles, can you tell us what's in this tradition today?

And they cannot do so. You can't come up with what teachings exist within this alleged tradition.

You just can't do it. He didn't have as many, he didn't have the printing press. So no one can deny that it was an oral proclamation.

I think that's relevant. Now, some people make the argument that, well, yeah, in those days it was oral, but then when the

Bible was finished, now it's solo scriptura. Well. Now, what would be the difference between the

Book of Acts, the period described in the Book of Acts, and a period one century later,

Dave, that you and I would both agree on? This is where the debate thing works, because if this was cross -examination, then this would be his time to answer.

But he won't do that. So I will need to answer for him. And that is the difference being that we both agree on is that there's no more revelation taking place.

So the scriptura has come into existence, whereas in the primitive church in the

Book of Acts, the scriptura that is in the New Testament is still being written.

So, solo scriptura speaks to today. What is theanoustos today? What is binding today?

Do you have apostles? No, we don't have apostles. Do you have continuing revelation? No, we don't have continuing revelation.

And Roman Catholics get upset, because sometimes they're misrepresented. People misrepresent the Pope as if the

Pope is like the prophet in Salt Lake City, who, a hundred years ago, not anymore really, but the prophet in Salt Lake City, you know, receives these revelations, and you write it down, you make it scripture.

That's a misrepresentation. That's not the understanding of the concept of revelation. They'll get upset when they're misrepresented that way, but if they're going to be consistent, then you're going to have to admit that, in reality, something did change.

And you need to address the issue as it is today. What is theanoustos today, and how do you know?

And when you look at what Rome has done over the years, when you look at what she's done in her dogmas, you know, people, they all get upset when

I keep focusing on Mary. Well, I'm sorry, but the last three dogmas that have been defined, alleged in the basest tradition, two of the three are about Mary.

One's about the infallibility of the Pope. And when we debate these issues historically, folks, go listen to the debate we did.

The sound, sadly, is terrible. This was long before we began doing our own sound recording and video recording.

But go back and listen to the first debate in Long Island with Jerry Medetix on Mary. And listen to the cross -examination.

And you'll see that when we debate these issues historically, it doesn't go real well for the other side.

It really doesn't. And that's why we address those issues, is because this is where tradition is most clearly seen as Rome understands it and as Rome uses it.

I don't think that applies logically. The Bible has authority, but it's not the only authority.

Ah, so there is another equal authority? Evidently. That would be the only way to understand that statement.

But as soon as you say, well, you know, we've got the three legs, and da -da -da -da, and that would mean those other things are what?

They're theanustas. Where do you find that in Scripture? You don't find Paul teaching there's something else that's theanustas.

Why didn't Paul tell Timothy? Why didn't Paul tell the Ephesian elders? Look to Peter. Look to the successors of Peter.

Look to the oral tradition. He didn't do any of those things. He didn't identify those sources as being theanustas.

Right. Brian, thanks again for the phone call and for joining us. You've got us on EWTN Global Shortwave Radio.

Let's move along to line four. We will talk next with Betty, calling from Rochester, New York. She has us on WVOA today.

Hi, Betty. Oh, hi. I was talking with your screener, and I told her,

I think a wonderful book that would resolve this problem for not just Protestants, but for a lot of Catholics, because today everything is a little bit mixed up.

The most wonderful book I ever have read is Rebuilding a Lost Faith by an American agnostic,

John L. Stoddard. And in that book, he stresses that Jesus Christ never wrote a book, and he never asked anybody else to.

It was the church he founded and the authority he gave the power to that decided that the parchments and the sermons had to be preserved.

And your former caller said there was no printing press, and they started gathering them together.

And it was a few hundred years before they were able to print out some Bibles, and they certainly were not plentiful, and everybody didn't have one or probably couldn't have afforded one.

So it was many, many, many hundreds of years before there were really a lot of Bibles, and everything was word of mouth and individual parchments that the

Catholic Church had to sort through. Now you notice again here, nice little ladies calling in, but not a real critical presentation here.

You don't have any seeming understanding of the centrality of Scripture in the writing of the New Testament itself.

Many Catholics want to sort of push off the idea that anyone even knew what the Bible was for hundreds of years, that everything was all confusion and personal opinion, and it was all based on this oral tradition, as if that oral tradition of that time had anything to do with Rome's traditions today, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

And Jesus never wrote a book. Well, that's wonderful. Through his Holy Spirit, he wrote 66 of them.

Hello! I thought we were Trinitarians here somewhere. And organize and decide how the Bible would be put together.

And, of course, the assumption that the ancient church back then was the Roman church. I was talking with somebody up in Toronto about this, and I pointed out, you know, this is a challenge that was thrown out many, many times.

Ask a Roman Catholic apologist, name me someone at the Council of Nicaea who believed what you believe about salvation, what you believe about the canon, what you believe about Mary, what you believe about the

Bishop of Rome. Name me someone at the Council of Nicaea in 325 who believed all the things you believe on those issues, who believed in purgatory, believed in indulgences, believed in papal infallibility, believed in the body assumption of Mary, believed in these things.

Show me someone who believed that. Well, they can't. And that's where you get all the development stuff. Well, the acorn in the tree and all the rest of that stuff.

And yet they want to sit there and say, but that was our church. We've just sort of grown and developed and blossomed and all that neat, wonderful, fun stuff.

And I say, you know, it's interesting. If I walked into a church today where the people didn't believe this, this, this, this, and this,

I wouldn't call it a Roman Catholic church, but you insist upon calling that the Roman Catholic church. It's an odd double standard that doesn't really work overly well.

And that's a fact. You can't deny it. Well, we can't actually. That's a good observation.

Oh, I love John L. Stoddard's book. I've worn it out in just a few years. I need another one. I love it.

Good choice. Bye. Thank you. Bye -bye. Bye, Betty. Well, can't argue with that, Dave, I guess, huh?

No. I agree with her, so I don't have to argue. Hey, they could add to me, too, but it just sort of sounds fine.

So do we save? Let's go ahead and take our break, and let's come back to this, because I want to get this last caller in.

This last caller was a lot of fun. So let's go ahead and take our break and return to Dave Armstrong on Catholic Answers Live.

We'll be right back. At the heart of the controversy between Roman Catholic and Reformation theology is the nature of justification itself.

It is a debate not merely about how or when or by what means a person is justified, but about the very meaning of justification and the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Once a debate reserved for Roman Catholics and the Reformers, the doctrine of justification is now being challenged from within the walls of Reformed evangelicalism itself.

Join Alpha and Omega Ministries as we embark on our first national conference and confront this very issue,

Justification, the Heart of the Gospel, with pastor and co -author of Holy Scripture, the ground and pillar of our faith,

David King, the president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Founders Conference, Tom Askell, New Testament Research Ministries founder and author of Evangelical Answers, Eric Svensson, the founder of the

Spurgeon Archive and executive director of Grace TU, Philip Johnson, nationally renowned

Reformed Christian artist, Steve Camp, and the founder of Alpha and Omega Ministries and author, Dr.

James White. Join us at the Los Angeles, California, LAX Sheraton Ballroom on November 6, 2004, beginning at 845 a .m.

Seating is limited, so order your tickets now at aomin .org. That's www .aomin .org.

Answering those who claim that only the King James Version is the Word of God, James White, in his book,

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.org. Convictions once held and died for among Bible -believing Protestants are now being reconsidered with the advent of the recent

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Join us in Los Angeles, California, on November 5, 2004, for a full three hours of moderated debate between Dr.

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Why isn't this telling me how many files I have in here? Where is it?

Oh. Well, it's supposed to tell me how many files I have in there, isn't it? At least it used to tell me that.

Isn't that what it's supposed to? I can't see. I don't know how many thousands of sound files we have in here, but there's a lot of stuff we could do with them if, in point of fact,

I could... Oh, what's that? You know, I can't preview something because you'll all hear it, and that would really...

That's a bummer. Oh, well, I was going to have something fun to play there. But we will continue on. Welcome back. According to Rush Limbaugh, just simply talking to yourself on the air is a good thing.

So reading from the how -to book, Rush Limbaugh, let's continue on listening to Dave Armstrong on Catholic Uncertainty.

Well, you know what? I have a feeling from our next call here that not everybody who's listening to us today is in complete concert with everything that we're saying.

You think? It wasn't necessarily that day we were listening, but since then, here comes the fun call.

Here we go. I think line two, Malcolm in Washington State has some thoughts to add to the program. Malcolm, welcome.

We're happy that you joined us today. Good. My questions are in relation to church and tradition.

I think you're misrepresenting the Protestant view. They don't ignore tradition, but at the same time, they analyze it in relationship to Scripture and use

Scripture as a judgment over it. So the first question is how you see that as different and irrelevant when the fact is traditions have changed over the years, even within the

Catholic Church. Well, I made the point that you said

I was misrepresenting, but I wanted to make sure to make the point that Protestants aren't totally against tradition.

So I did say that. But that's what you've been agreeing with as callers have called in, that they just totally ignore the early traditions of the

Church and they don't. You know, I think I made that comment, too.

The last caller, I was agreeing with the fact that it was mostly oral in the beginning.

The emphasis wasn't on writing. That's simply historical fact. You didn't even have the first mention of all the books in the

New Testament in one place is by St. Athanasius in I think the year was 367.

So you're talking about 330 years after Jesus died and no one even had a complete

New Testament. Right, and they had them distributed around Asia and the like. And you were under persecution.

It was pretty hard to get everything together in one place. In fact, it was difficult to have a council in one place because of the persecutions they were under.

Oh, I agree with that. But it doesn't rule out the historical fact that it was primarily an oral tradition.

Was it primarily oral tradition, Dave, that became Scripture, which would be the only logical conclusion to what was just being said?

You see the difference here? You don't actually answer the question. The caller is right, and the problem is as a follower of Newman, you can't actually affirm that the tradition which he eventually developed is anything more than the acorn stage at this point anyways.

His point is you've got to be able to demonstrate that this tradition contains something other than what is actually found in the

Scriptures, and that's not going to happen any time on this program anyways. And you can't ignore all the indications in the

Bible of church authority, tradition. Now you say that traditions change. Church authority.

There you go again. We've already discussed this. It's either you and your Bible in the woods or church authority, the

Pope infallibility. How about the New Testament teaching of church authority? That would be a good thing to sort of throw into the mix there, but it doesn't get in there, which in a live debate

I would make sure that happened, but you can't really do that. Well, I'll give you one, because the teaching of the apostles is in Scripture as well as orally.

Yeah. And when the church overthrows something that is taught in Scripture, for instance, as an example, when you establish as a tradition that priests should be unmarried, whereas Paul specifically allows for them to be married, then you've overthrown the clear teaching of the apostles for a tradition.

Well, we allow them to be married in Rome, right? Even to the east. Catholic Church. Pardon? Celibacy is based on explicit teaching from Paul that the single person can give undistracted attention to the

Lord. But that's for all men. You're taking that out of context. It specifically says all men.

It doesn't say just the priests. It doesn't say just the presbyters or the deacons. It says all men.

So if you're going to apply that as it's applied in context, then you have to apply it to all men and say all men should be unmarried.

I don't think that follows, but I think we're running out of time. Now, I'm looking at my waveform here, okay, for those of you who aren't really into computers.

That's the graphic representation of the sound file. And we are at 45 .45,

and it goes to 50 .42. So there is almost five minutes left in this program, okay?

Almost five minutes left. And so here this guy has just demonstrated without question that he has taken it out of context, that it is an improper application, and that specifically in regards to the leaders of the

Church, Paul did not hold the position of celibacy. And what do we get as soon as it, now it's, here's

Dave's chance. Here's his chance to demonstrate his self -proclaimed exegetical expertise and so on and so forth.

And what happens? In context. And you have to apply it to all men and say all men should be unmarried.

I don't think that follows, but I think we're running out of time. Well, we are getting short on time,

Malcolm. And that's not necessarily the topic that we were dealing with. And in steps the moderator to help the guest out, who's basically, if he had been in studio, would have his hands around his neck and his tongue sticking out going, help, help.

When I heard that one, and what I had done is I had posted the link in the channel after I started listening to it.

So a number of people in the channel were listening just a few minutes behind me. So I heard this stuff, you know,

I heard it before anybody else did, and then I got to watch while there was this, everybody else started running into it.

And they all said the same thing. It's not, I think we're running out of time. It's, I think we're running out of time?

It's a very old thing. It was priestly celibacy. I think we have done shows on that here on Catholic Answers Live.

And we have a tape available, in fact, by Father Ray Ryland, who, interestingly enough, is a married

Catholic priest, ordained through the pastoral provision program. And he is a strong advocate, not only for priestly celibacy, but he shows historically that the idea of priestly celibacy, indeed, goes back to the time of the apostles, even those who followed

Jesus Christ. Now let's just stop there. What was the guy's point? You know, that's what

I like to run into. What is the guy's point? The guy's point was, Rome is not in a position to actually correct her own errant definition of tradition because of her view of tradition, because of her own infallibility.

That's why she can't correct it. She can't respond to biblical correction.

And that's something we've said many, many times. Rome's view results in the concept of a monologue, instead of a dialogue, where you have the

Word of God still clearly seen as the Word of God.

Once you subserviate the Word of God to the infallible authority of the

Church, there's no longer a dialogue. The Word can no longer correct the Church. And of course, if you think the

Church is infallible anyways, why would she need correction? But we see that the

Church does need correction. It needs correction from the Word of God. But Rome has, by her enforced, allegedly infallible traditions, ended the very mechanism that God has designed to correct the

Church. And I have said many, many times that that's a dangerous thing.

So you want to go with that? Is that what you're saying? Okay, I'm going to stop right there for a moment, because according to the man on the other side of the wall here, we have a call, a live call, which most calls are live, from Baghdad, Iraq, and Steve.

Hi, Steve. Hey, how you doing? Steve, are you in Baghdad? Yes, I am.

Wow. Hi. Hey, how you doing? I didn't think

I was going to get on. I thought I was just going to get your front office or something, but this is even better. Now, Steve, does your last name start with a

D? Yes, it does. We talked before. I'm a friend of Eddie's. That's exactly right. I just opened up my prayer list.

I want you to know that on one of my web stickies, my stickies on my screen, I have my prayer list, and the first item on my prayer list says,

Steve Decker, safety and a steady hand. I appreciate that.

I can assure you that on at least three occasions, your prayers beyond the shadow of a doubt clearly helped.

Well, bro, you need to drop me an e -mail, man, if you can get to an Internet cafe or something.

I've been waiting to hear from you, and I want to hear from you. I definitely will. I can get it from you once I get offline or whatever is best for you.

Make sure to get that. Rich, make sure he gets my direct e -mail so he can get ahold of me. So, Steve, talk to us.

Okay, here's my question. Obviously, your debate with Drake Stafford, it was very interesting to me because, obviously,

Mr. Stafford is saying things that a normal Jehovah's Witness would not. He is saying that he's okay with calling

Jesus Yahweh. That's obviously not a Watchtower position. There's many dynamics to Mr.

Stafford's assault on the deity of Jesus Christ. Why is,

I guess, I don't know. I'm kind of confused. Why has not the Watchtower called him out on this? Why has the Watchtower not held his feet to the fire on the charges that he makes?

Because it's almost like he is, I believe they call him the new Jehovah's Witnesses, or it's almost like he's a rogue

JW, and it would seem that he's coming pretty close to getting disfellowshipped. So how can he call himself a

Jehovah's Witness and yet say, well, I believe that Jesus is Yahweh, but not ontologically?

I mean, he walks such a fine line. Do you know what I'm saying? Believe me, not only do

I know what you're saying, but in 1998 I presented a paper at the Evangelical Theological Society, the only time

I've ever been there, on his book, and one of the issues I brought up was that how the society responds to Greg Stafford is going to really demonstrate how they're going to be interacting with the advent of the

Internet and cable television and all of this information input into Jehovah's Witnesses that before they were able to control primarily, but now the simple fact of the matter is they can't.

And I spoke with Greg about this. We talked for quite some time after the debate, because I very honestly said to him,

I said, you know, we'll be thinking about you, because I know doing this kind of thing probably is going to cause you some problems.

And he was very frank about the reality that he does expect, that eventually there has to be action taken, but at the same time, to my knowledge as of this day, there has not been official action taken.

He does not attend the Kingdom Hall. Really? No, he does not attend the state meetings.

He just meets with his family. Because I had asked him, I had said, well, what would you do if that happened?

And he said, well, I'd just continue doing what I've been doing all along. And I said, so what happens at Kingdom Hall?

Well, I don't attend Kingdom Hall. And so you have a situation here where, let's make it very, very clear.

The governing body fully knows about what he's written and what's going on.

In fact, did you ever see the DVD that they put out of his interview that was included after the first debate he did in May of last year with Robert Bowman?

No, I did not see that. They added an interview with him at the end, and one of the things they mentioned in the interview was that the elders from the

Kingdom Hall had just knocked on his door before they had the interview because they knew it was going to be going on.

So they do well know what's going on, but he has supporters in the governing body.

He has supporters in Brooklyn and in the

Bethel headquarters. And I can't tell you why there has been almost a paralyzation of what would normally be a very swift move to control this, because for listeners, and I know

Steve knows this, but for most of our listeners, they may not understand why would the society be so concerned about it.

The reason they would be so concerned about it is you've got to remember, the society's theology changes over time.

They have to have control over the material that Watchtower devotees are reading so that they can, for example, right now, slowly phase out the 1914 prophecy and introduce new classes and get rid of all that stuff about the generation that saw the events of 1914, because let's face it, that's only ten years from now.

And the people that were alive in 1914 are getting just a tad bit on the elderly side. So they have to be able to control what

Jehovah's Witnesses read and hear on a theological level. And so they don't want people reading my books.

They don't want people reading Robert Bowman's books or anybody else's. And yet it's very, very clear that Greg Stafford does.

He has to. He quotes us in his own published works. And so he's clearly put himself in a position, especially in regards to blood transfusion issues and things like that, that most

Jehovah's Witnesses would have been gone a long time ago. But because he's published, because there is a network, and it's primarily an electronic network, it's not focused in any one locale.

It is much more focused around the United States and around the world He has supporters all over the place.

And as a result, they are being very careful. I think not so much as to the fact that they eventually will have to act, but what is the issue that they are going to act on?

Maybe they're delaying in the hopes that he will come up with something that is so far outside the parameters.

They don't want to do anything on blood issues. And his arguments, it's sort of like right now, he's sort of useful enough to keep around, but troublesome enough to be always watching.

And when he steps across that line, and what's that line going to be? Well, for anybody else, it would have been a long time ago. But because of his publications, because of his connections,

I'm not sure what it's going to be. Maybe they're hoping he's going to develop some other, really, something that most

Jehovah's Witnesses would find to be strongly disagreeable. Well, it would seem that his calling

Jesus Yahweh was stepping over the line. Well, but he always nuances that.

That's the new word today, is nuance. He always nuances that by referring to that in the sense of only representationally, not ontologically.

And most Jehovah's Witnesses, especially the ones who've encountered the arguments for the deity of Christ based upon his identification as Yahweh, probably go, wow, maybe

I'll use that the next time I'm at someone's doorway, or something along those lines. If he were to say something soteriologically, for example, if he were to embrace sola fide or something like that, then boom.

I think that at that point, you'd have a pretty quick action. But right now, that would be, that's my theory.

He didn't give me any indications as to what he thinks is going to finally trigger it.

I just simply very honestly said to him at the end of the debate, well, we'll be thinking about you.

Obviously we disagree very, very firmly. We believe in very different things. But I think there was, on his part,

I think there was a little bit of shock in the way that I talked to him.

Before the debate, we just chatted. I didn't sit there and stare at him and try to melt him down like I'm constantly said to be this terrible, mean, horrible man.

We just chatted about stuff. He discovered I have a real life, that I have a wife and kids.

And you'll appreciate this, that I go out shooting and stuff like that. In fact, there's some

AVI files, dude, you've got to see. But we'll wait until you get home on that. Anyway, all

I can say is 50 caliber Magnum, man, it rules. But anyhow, we'll move on from there.

And I think it shocked him that I just wasn't, I didn't go over there while we were waiting to start the debate and start debating with him.

I didn't go over there and start berating him. I didn't bring up some of the less than pleasant things we've exchanged in the past.

I just talked to him as a person. And when I left, when I was getting ready to leave, and I wasn't feeling good that night, and I don't know if you can tell if you've listened, my voice was terrible and I was coughing and all the rest of the stuff.

But we ended up talking for a long, long time. And after we talked, I stuck my hand out to say goodnight.

And instead of taking my hand, he hugged me. And I don't think a lot of people saw that.

But the simple fact of the matter is, I think we should be praying for Greg Stafford.

I think there is a tendency on the part of a lot of apologetics types to just automatically throw somebody into the category of Arius or somebody like that, and there's no hope there.

I believe that God has a lot of power. And he can change a lot of hearts and minds.

And there are certain people within the groups that I debate that are just so desperately dishonest that I see no evidence whatsoever.

But that is a decision that I want to be very slow to make, and I want to have a whole lot of evidence thrown at me before I make it.

And so I was just very honestly, just very open with him, just saying, hey, you know what?

I can see that it would be really tough for you to just basically meet with your family. That would not be a really enjoyable thing, and especially amongst

Jehovah's Witnesses. We know how close -knit those societies are. So anyway, that's what happened.

And so there's just some theories. Until the action is taken, that's exactly what they're going to be.

They're just theories. But that's the information I can give you. How would you rate him as a debater?

He seems he comes across like he's very Greek, grammatically trained and educated.

Is he throwing a front, or does he actually know what he's speaking? And how would you say he did against Robert Bowman?

Well, two things. Our debate, those are the only two debates that he's done.

And so, for example, I felt that he really missed the boat in the cross -examination period with me because he lost the audience.

He didn't realize that he really wasn't getting anywhere. So there were technical things that certainly I look back at my first two debates, and I would say that he did a whole lot better in his first two debates than I did in my first two debates, put it that way, as far as his demeanor.

And I was actually younger than he when I started doing my debates. But I felt that the debate with Robert Bowman was somewhat ships passing in the night because Rob's opening statement was a normal presentation of the deity of Christ, but it wasn't one that was directed to the rather unique way that Stafford defines the deity of Christ, and things like that.

And so Rob never really got a chance, after his opening statement, to represent his position in light of Stafford's different position.

And so that led to a lot of, I think, missed opportunities. My presentation was obviously directed directly at what

Greg Stafford believes, and that's the way it needs to be in a debate. I mean, you need to be reacting to or defending your position against the viewpoint of your opponent, not just a general group.

And so I had the advantage over Rob Bowman at that point in that obviously I had listened very carefully to the previous debate, and hence it had the ability to craft my presentation that way.

And so that really changed, I think, the dynamic of things at that particular point in time.

Cool. Hey, thanks a lot for your time, James. I appreciate it. Hey, well, I hope

I don't sound trite or quaint to say that everybody who's listening knows that, obviously, you're in the military, not anybody else in Baghdad right now.

And so I would encourage everyone to pray for Steve. And I know what you're doing over there.

I'm not going to mention it now, but I pray for your safety. And thank you very, very, very much, sir, for what you're doing.

I know that you've heard this before, but when I'm sitting in a restaurant and I see a military person come in,

I go over and I shake their hands and I say, thank you for your service, sir. And so if I could give you a cyber handshake right now and say thank you for your service and we do pray for you all and we support you all and thank you for what you're doing over there.

Thank you, and I'll give you a cyber hug back. And remember, focus on your front side there, Jim. Okay, thanks a lot, man.

God bless you. All right, I'll talk to you later. Okay, make sure to talk to Rich. Don't hang up there because I want to get you my email address.

Okay. Okay, thanks. God bless. Oh, wow, that was cool. That was great.

I had talked with Steve on the phone back in April, I believe it was, and he was just being deployed.

And I said, hey, get hold of me so that I can know you got there okay and I can keep in touch with you. And I put him on the prayer list and have been thinking about it ever since and haven't heard anything.

And so right in the middle of the program, who knows what time it is in Baghdad right now, to have him call right while we're on the program so that we can talk and everybody else can get to hear and benefit, that's really, really neat that it worked out that way.

So, hey, that's the joys of live webcasting. And did you all notice that my cell phone didn't go off?

I'm going to actually look here to see if anybody did call. Yep, there was one, but I turned it off so that it would not happen while – let's see, when did this come in?

Yep, I did – oh, it was right before the program started, actually. I turned it to silent.

So I'm slowly starting to learn because we are really, really, really professionals here. Well, anyways, the music was supposed to have started quite some time ago.

Oh, there it is. It's just now being brought up. And Steve's already singing, so we'll see you

Thursday evening, 7 p .m. Eastern Daylight Time. God bless. See you then. Brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries.

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