Roman Catholic Apologists and Scripture

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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Over the past couple of months,

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I hit upon a very useful idea. I put up an Amazon wish list that let people know, especially people who are more project oriented, some of the items that I could use in my research and study.

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And people have been tremendously generous in providing those. One of the books that I put up is a new book by Patrick Madrid, a relatively new book anyways.

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I think, let's see what the copyright is on. Well, there's supposed to be a copyright page here someplace.

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There we go. Looks like 2008. And yes, it's got a re -script in the front here.

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So that's good. So 2008, and it's called 150

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Bible Verses Every Catholic Should Know. One of the reasons I wanted to get it is that over the years,

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I have been amazed, quite honestly, at the way that Roman Catholic apologists treat the

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Bible. That's one thing to debate sola scriptura, but it seems that that produces an attitude amongst at least the popular

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Catholic apologists. I'm talking about Carl Keating, Jimmy Akin, of course we all remember

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Jerry Matitix, and Patrick Madrid, who Jerry Matitix used to be on the staff with those gentlemen of Catholic Answers.

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That in essence, the text of scripture no longer becomes the focus for them.

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There is a fundamental difference in the way that reformed, especially reformed, non -Catholic apologists deal with the text of scripture, and the way that Roman Catholic apologists deal with the text of scripture.

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I've always been surprised at how surface level the books put out by Catholic Answers and people like them really are, especially when it comes to exegesis.

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You would think that if you're trying to reach folks like us, and maybe that's where I'm missing the boat, but if you're trying to reach folks like us, that you would recognize that you're going to have to put forward some serious exegetical argumentation, and not on just one text, but on a variety of texts.

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Now I realize that some Catholic apologists have attempted to develop some very complex arguments at one point or another, but the fact of the matter is, the vast majority of the stuff that they publish, that they're selling at their seminars, is simply incredibly surface level.

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You look at Catholicism and Fundamentalism by Carl Keating, not only is it tremendously out of date, but there's really no exegesis.

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Jimmy Akin's books, again, just very traditionally driven comments on scripture.

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You don't have the kind of in -depth discussion of the text, its context, its background, its language, that you find on, shall we say, the other side of the

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Tiber River. Now, don't get me wrong, I realize, of course, that there are Catholic scholars who go very in -depth on these things.

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The vast majority are extremely liberal, and as a result, the kind of exegesis you get there is unbelieving exegesis.

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It's modernistic. It doesn't take the Bible as the word of God at all. That's the vast majority of Roman Catholic scholarship.

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There is a divide, a huge divide, between Roman Catholic scholarship and Roman Catholic apologetics, at least the popular

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Roman Catholic apologists, for this very reason. Most of the

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Roman Catholic academy doesn't believe as dogma any longer the things that Roman Catholic apologists say that they really do, they must, to be true

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Christians. So, anyway, I got this book, and I started looking through it, and I was...it's

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hard to even explain. Basically what you have is you have a scripture quotation, and then you'll have one, two, maybe three paragraphs, almost as if these were like an

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Our Daily Bread Roman Catholic version, except shorter. I've looked through, you know, here's

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Revelation chapter 12, two short paragraphs. James chapter two, less than a page.

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And what is amazing is there is...you can tell that Patrick is aware of what some of these verses are controversial, but does he provide any exegesis?

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Does he provide anything of any substance on almost any of these?

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Is there any meaningful exegesis provided? Not a shred. Not even a scripture index to look up text you want to look for.

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It's very short. I just wonder, what's the use of this?

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Why did someone spend the kind of money to even buy something like this?

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And I can say, as an author, I certainly put a lot of effort into what

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I put out, and this...I could put something together like this, honestly.

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This is 168 pages. A lot of that is just a citation of the text of Scripture.

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So you take the text of Scripture out, might be 110 pages, possibly?

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Two or three paragraphs per verse? I could do this in two and a half days.

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Easily. Maybe less, if I wasn't interrupted by emails or something. There's just nothing to it.

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And that's what I've found with Patrick's earlier books. They're extremely surface level.

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Who is his audience? You know, I try when I write my books to have at least an audience that...you

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know, I want to edify believers. I want to help prepare them to evangelize and to defend the faith.

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But when I write on Mormonism, for example, I want the book to be readable by a Mormon, to have some communication, some level of representation there for the

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Mormon or for the Roman Catholic or the Jehovah's Witness, whatever it might be.

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I try to put much more onto the page than merely surface level devotional thoughts, in essence.

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But that's not what I get from Roman Catholic apologists. Some try to sort of pretend to do things like that.

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Steve Ray does that, but you can tell that he goes as deep as he can possibly go and couldn't go any deeper than that if he tried.

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And so there is a huge difference. There's a vast difference. I would invite anyone to pick up this book by Patrick Madrid and compare the biblical argumentation with the text that I cite in the

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Roman Catholic controversy. Look at The God Who Justifies. Compare his comments on James 2 with what

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I wrote in The God Who Justifies or The Potter's Freedom or any of these works. You know, you might say, well, these are...I

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wanted to get to 150 verses, okay, and about 150 pages. Isn't there anyone on that side of the fence amongst these...that

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has the ear of the people? I mean, these are the people that are on the television programs. They're on EWTN. They're on the radio.

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Isn't there anybody over there that gets serious, listens to the other side and responds to it?

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Or is it all just, ah, we don't have to worry about those folks. We're the Church of Rome, you see.

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Seems to be the case. It is truly amazing to observe this kind of a phenomenon.

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But I think anyone who would fairly pick up these books and compare the two sides would see that this is true.

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Does that say something? It certainly does to me. It certainly illustrates the difference between a person who takes

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Sola Scriptura seriously. And I think it also illustrates this.

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Once you attack Sola Scriptura, you can pretend that you have the highest view of Scripture if you want to.

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The reality is, your true view of Scripture is going to be deeply impacted by your denial of its sufficiency.

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You may say you don't do this, but it requires you to subject the

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Scriptures to a higher authority. And as a result, it just doesn't seem that the popular Catholic apologists are able to handle the text of Scripture with any depth whatsoever.