April 20, 2021 Show with Dr. William Webster & Rev. David T. King on “No Infallible Interpreter for Rome’s Infallible Interpreter”

Live from the historic parsonage of the 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,

Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have a view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions, and now here's your host,

Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday. On this 20th day of April 2021, and I am so thrilled to have two of my dearest friends on the program today, so excited that I can't even speak.

And I'm not using hyperbole or exaggeration. These two dear men and dear friends and dear brothers are those kinds of friends who would be among the very first you call when something tragic happens in your life or when something incredibly joyful happens.

And I'm speaking of my dear friends, Dr. William Webster and Rev. David T. King.

Dr. William Webster is pastor of Grace Bible Church in Battleground, Washington.

He's an author with Banner of Truth and other publishers. He is a conference speaker and founder of Christian Resources.

It's my honor and privilege, first of all, to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Bill Webster. Hi, Chris, thank you.

And also joining us, our mutually very dear longtime friend,

Rev. David T. King, who is an ordained minister having served in the

Presbyterian Church in America and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. He's a co -author with Dr.

William Webster of the three -volume work, Holy Scripture, the Ground and Pillar of Our Faith.

And he currently is the assistant to the pastor at Christ Church of Katy, Texas, which is a congregation in the

Presbyterian Church in America. Today both Bill and David will be addressing

Rome's Dilemma, No Infallible Interpreter for their own alleged infallible interpreter.

Why Rome's claims to being impervious to the dangers of private interpretation are false, hypocritical, and unattainable.

And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to the program as well, David T.

King. Thanks, Chris. It's good to be here. Thanks for having us. And Bill, why don't you start with a little brief description of Grace Bible Church of Battleground, Washington.

Well, we are an evangelical congregation. We subscribe to the 1689

London Baptist Confession of Faith. It's a Reformed confession, very committed to the authority of Scripture, the proclamation of the

Gospel as it is revealed in the Word of God, and to, at least from my perspective, my own heart, is that people become grounded in the truth of the

Gospel and that they understand how to walk in a very real, practical, experiential way with the living

Christ in obedience to His Word. So that is our commitment and that is what we are basically striving to live out here in Battleground.

And if anybody either lives near Battleground, Washington, plans to visit there, or has family, friends, and loved ones near or in Battleground, Washington, and you'd like to find out more about Grace Bible Church, go to gracebiblebattleground .org.

And now, tell us something about Christian Resources. Christian Resources is a website.

It comes out of my desire for men to understand the necessity for the

Reformation, to understand biblical truth, to understand the authority of the

Word of God. It contains a great deal of historical research that I've done with respect to church history, patristics, coming out of my own experience as a

Roman Catholic, being converted, now a committed evangelical, because of the authority of Scripture, the teaching of Scripture, and because of the facts of history.

So the website is devoted with that ultimate end to help men understand why historically the

Reformation was so necessary and important, what it represents, and even in that regard why it is, in our own day, seemingly a need for another

Reformation in the evangelical church if we understand the principles related to the

Reformation of the 16th century and why it was important. Wow, that surprises me, that last statement.

I thought that the evangelical church at large was just fine and dandy, exactly the way it is. Not hardly.

Obviously you know me long enough to know that I was just being sarcastic. And David, please tell us something about Christ Church of Katy, Texas.

Yes, we're a PCA congregation, and we're in Katy, Texas, which is about 30 miles west of Houston, and our church adheres to the

Westminster Standards. We have a high view of Holy Scripture, and particularly so the preaching of the

Gospel, and the reason why we insist on the

Bible being our only infallible rule of faith and practice is because it reveals the

Gospel, a Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, where people are invited into a relationship with Christ of love, faith, and obedience, and that's what it calls us to.

We live in a day when the Gospel is sorely neglected, it's not being proclaimed as it is in Holy Scripture.

It's a passion for the Gospel that more than anything else,

I suppose, more than any one thing that really moved both Bill and myself to come together and to write these books that we have in support of the

Reformation principle of Sola Scriptura. And if anybody wants to find out more about Christ Church of Katy, Texas, go to cckpca .org.

And I believe I forgot to announce the website for Christian Resources, the ministry of our other guest

Bill Webster, christiantruth .com, christiantruth .com,

and there's a phenomenal bookstore available to you on that website as well.

Let me return to you for a moment, David. What is it about Roman Catholicism that drew you to really do very deep research into Rome's claims, into Rome's actual history, their actual belief system and dogma as set forth in the

Council of Trent and other councils? And what is it that compelled you to really do more in -depth investigation and research into this one area, and of course when

I say one area, I mean one church. There's many, many facets of Roman Catholicism. But what drove you to study this so deeply and become basically an apologist defending

Reformation principles, teaching the Roman Catholic faith and teachings and doctrines? Right.

Well, when I was in high school, I certainly had some friends who were members of the

Roman Communion, and I suppose that my interest in the Roman Communion began with my relationship with these people that I knew that were members of it.

But also following seminary, both Bill and I were participants on an old web board.

I forget what you'd even call it now. But we were interacting with Roman apologists, and I began to see more and more as we interacted with them that I really wanted to give myself to the study of the early church.

I really wanted to hone in my understanding of what

Scripture taught about the nature of its own authority, coming to understand how it is that the

Bible only sets forth itself as infallible. Scripture alone is still

Neustaus, God -breathed, and it was really my interactions on that board that drew my interest.

And it's amazing how much when you read the early church, you find that after having listened to so many

Roman apologists, that you were really misled in so many ways about their own views regarding Scripture and tradition.

Yes, it is quite amazing the claims that they make. And as you know, having been someone myself raised in the

Roman Catholic Church, and having been an altar boy and educated in a Roman Catholic parochial grammar school for eight years, and having come to salvation in Christ and the true gospel in the 1980s when

I was in my mid -20s, it was surely an eye -opener. I believe I learned more about Roman Catholicism after becoming a

Reformed Baptist than I knew as a Roman Catholic. But having been a part of live public moderated debates that I have arranged and orchestrated for the last nearly 30 years,

I have seen quite and heard quite a number of outlandish claims by Roman Catholic apologists that some of which are mind -boggling.

Today we are going to be addressing, let me repeat our theme, Rome's Dilemma, No Infallible Interpreter for Their Own Alleged Infallible Interpreter.

Why Rome's Claims to Being Impervious to the Dangers of Private Interpretation are False, Hypocritical, and Unattainable.

And Bill Webster, this seems to be the key reason that I hear

Roman Catholics claim to have a far superior religion than that of anyone else who claims to be a

Christian. That is that they have an infallible interpreter, they have an infallible magisterium, and when you do not have that, you are basically left to your own devices and Roman Catholics will very frequently, routinely make a caricature of the

Reformation principle of Sola Scriptura, and they will make a caricature of we who are heirs of the

Reformation, those of us who are evangelicals, Protestants, Calvinists, etc.,

they will make a caricature of us as basically being our own popes, each person being their own pope, where we are sitting alone with our

Bibles and privately interpreting the Scriptures, and that is what leads to the many divisions in Protestantism, the many denominations, and, as one

Roman Catholic apologist put it, or more than one, but one who coined the phrase, that Sola Scriptura is a blueprint to anarchy.

Now, as the theme of our show suggests, Bill, they really, it's really, to a degree it's laughable that they would be pointing the fingers at Protestants, saying that we are perpetuating a blueprint for anarchy, and they claim that this infallible magisterium that they possess, so -called, is keeping them free from the multitudes of divisions and splits and sects and so on, because of private interpretation, and yet, all my life, being a

Catholic and a Protestant, I have seen the Roman Catholic Church being represented by a very wide spectrum of theological, philosophical, doctrinal, practical, and worldview issues that even far outrange, far surpass in the breadth and width of difference that you would find in conservative evangelical churches.

If you could pick up where I left off there. Oh, you're doing great, man.

Well, you know, you have this interesting claim that the

Church of Rome, and in particular the Bishop of Rome, when he teaches ex cathedra, is infallible.

Back in the 16th century, with the Council of Trent, which is the official

Roman Catholic answer to the Protestant Reformation, one of the basic principles that is enunciated by Trent is the authority of the

Church, which they believe has been given by Christ, through Peter, to the

Roman Church itself and its institution, its magisterium, that it alone has the authority to interpret

Scripture, and that the whole reason why we have a problem with the Reformation is because you have men in their arrogance and their pride who have rebelled against God's authority of the

Church and His rough division in the Church. So you look at the claim, and Vatican I, in 1870 -1871, reconfirmed this teaching of Trent.

The Vatican I is also the council which decreed the dogma of papal infallibility.

And so the Church declares itself to be the ultimate authority over the lives of believers and over even the

Word of God. So the issue between Rome and those who follow the authority of Scripture and so Scripture, it's an issue of authority.

That is the ultimate issue involved in this whole debate. What is the ultimate authority over our lives?

Is it an institution, or is it the Word of God? And so you've got sola scriptura versus sola ecclesia.

And those within Roman Catholicism who were raised as I was in Roman Catholicism, you're taught, in order to be a true

Christian, in order to be saved, it's not enough simply to have the Word of God. You have to fully embrace all of the dogmas that are taught by the

Roman Catholic Church. You have to be in the Church. The Church is your salvation.

They don't deny Scripture. Scripture is part of the authority structure. It's just that Scripture is not the ultimate authority, and Scripture is not sufficient.

It is not materially sufficient because Rome teaches that there is handed down from the

Apostles an oral teaching that was never inscripturated, which they still possess as the fullness of Revelation.

Secondly, that you need an infallible interpreter to understand the

Word of God because it is so ambiguous. It is so difficult to understand. And the sure road to falling prey to heresy and to damnation is to follow your own proclivity, your own inclination to interpret

Scripture. But when you look at the claim, you have to ask the question, is it true?

And the Council of Trent and Vatican I say there is a way to know because they claim that if you look at the history of the

Church, you will find a continuity between the Roman Catholic Church today and what it taught in the

Patristic era during the era of the Church Fathers.

So it is a principle called unanimous consent that it is unlawful to interpret

Scripture in any way contrary to the unanimous consent of the Fathers.

So you can ask a simple question. If that is a test, and that is a test that is given us by Vatican I and the

Council of Trent, you can say, well we can test this claim. We can test the claim whether the bishops of Rome are infallible.

And there you come to the issue of having to face the reality that there is a discontinuity between the claims that Rome makes and the actual reality that you're presented with in the history of the

Church. And the great danger of just blindly following an authority is that if that authority has embraced false teaching, and that you can go back in the history of the

Lord's dealings with humanity, you start with Judaism and you look at Jesus' ministry to the

Jewish people, what he was dealing with, with the Jews and their leadership, was almost an entire nation that had become apostate.

And what he said was, you are following to the people, you are following blind guides.

And these are the people of God. And what you see here is the danger of not critically evaluating, by the

Word of God, the teachings of men or institutions. In the

Word of God, Jesus challenged the leadership of Judaism with the written

Word of God. Have you not read what God said? And he was constantly dealing with false teaching.

Paul is preaching as an apostle, and in Acts 17 it says the

Bereans checked out what he said to make sure it was compatible with the written

Word of God. That is what we must do with all teaching.

We are challenged by the Lord Jesus, we're challenged by the Word of God itself, not to be deceived.

And the patristic principle historically in the Church is that the written

Word of God is the ultimate authority over the Church, and that every single

Christian who is truly devoted to Christ has the

Spirit of God as one who will quicken the truth to them and give them the ability to understand the necessary truths of salvation and how to live the

Christian life. This claim to never err cannot be supported by Scripture, it cannot be supported by the written or by the history of the

Church. Now you just mentioned the patristic error, that is the very reason, the support of the patristic error for sola scriptura, before the

Reformation, centuries before the Reformation even occurred, that it was the catalyst behind the three volume 900 page monumental work that you co -authored with our guest today,

David King, Holy Scripture the Ground and Pillar of our Faith, is it not? It is, in fact the title is taken from a statement by Irenaeus, where he says that the

Scriptures were, where the apostles he said preached orally the Gospel, but then at a later time by the will of God they handed down their apostolic teaching in the

Scriptures, which became the Ground and Pillar of our Faith. So that the unanimous consent of the

Fathers, the Church Fathers in the patristic age, starting from the post -apostolic days going all the way up through about the 6th century, is sola scriptura, and that is affirmed by Roman Catholic authors.

The universal belief of the Church in the patristic age was that the written

Word of God was the ultimate authority for the Church. It was the foundation for all their theologizing and for their teaching.

And the Reformation is simply bringing the Church back in that principle of sola scriptura to a patristic principle.

It's historical. It is not ahistorical. The claims that Rome make about sola scriptura are utterly false.

And that's part of what we sought to demonstrate in the volumes that we have written.

First of all, that sola scriptura is biblical. Scripture alone is inspired by God, not tradition.

Secondly, that historically the principle of sola scriptura can be supported by the unanimous consent of the

Fathers. And we have to go to our first break. When we return, David, I'd like you to define what

Rome says it means by papal infallibility.

Obviously, there are many errors made both among Roman Catholics themselves, especially those who are your average laymen.

I did not understand what that meant until I became a Protestant. And of course, you may have many

Protestants who misunderstand. We don't want to be guilty of the same slander and caricaturing that is frequent amongst

Roman Catholic apologists. So we'll have you actually clear up what Rome is actually saying when they claim to believe in papal infallibility.

And if anybody else would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. Please give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA, and only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. Don't go away.

We'll be right back with Bill Webster and David King with more of Rome's Dilemma, No Infallible Interpreter for Their Own Alleged Infallible Interpreter, after these messages from our sponsors.

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Our guests today are authors William Webster and David T.

King, and we are discussing Rome's Dilemma, No Infallible Interpreter for Their Own Alleged Infallible Interpreter, Why Rome's Claims to Being Impervious to the

Dangers of Private Interpretation are False, Hypocritical, and Unattainable. And before the break,

David, you may recall that I asked you to give Rome's definition of papal infallibility, because there are lots of misunderstandings about what that means.

I'm sure there are many Catholics and Protestants who both think that means the Pope can never sin, that the

Pope never speaks falsely, never makes errors when he speaks, but the more learned

Catholic, the more trained apologist, will be quick to point out that is not what Rome believes.

In fact, I think it's been comically ironic that many

Catholic apologists have said, oh, part of the beauty of the

Roman Catholic Church is that in spite of the many wicked and evil and horrible popes that have existed throughout history,

God has still preserved his one true church, and that the magisterium and the popes have never infallibly and dogmatically declared something that was false.

So that seems to be how they get around that reality that their history is littered with popes that were false teachers and horrible, grotesque human beings.

But anyway, if you could, give us Rome's definition of papal infallibility. Sure, and it's very good that we're careful that we don't misrepresent what members of the

Roman Communion actually teach, but when it comes to papal infallibility, they teach that papal infallibility is only exercised when the

Pope himself is speaking, as they call it, ex cathedra, speaking ex cathedra, or from the chair, when he has defined officially a doctrine to be embraced and believed by the whole

Church. It's not when, necessarily when he is addressing folks in the sermon, but it's only when he is officially giving the defined doctrine to be embraced as de fide, of the faith, for the entire

Church. So, and of course, most of your Roman apologists will tell you that it's rarely been exercised.

I think people like some of their apologists, I think I recall Stravinskis, Peter Stravinskis, talks about it only being exercised a few times.

And it's interesting that when the Pope does define the dogma, it's only the dogma that he defines, and not necessarily any supporting verses that they may use to support the dogma.

It's only the dogma itself that's declared to be infallible. In other words, the verses that are used to support the defining of a particular dogma are not themselves infallibly interpreted.

They can be used, and some have even said that it could be that a certain verse used to support a particular dogma could later be proven not to support that dogma.

So it's only the dogma itself, and not any supporting matters used to define the dogma.

Only the dogma is infallible. But the Pope himself, when he speaks ex cathedra, he must be speaking from the chair and giving an official teaching for the entirety of the

Church. Now Bill, one of the reasons, I'm sure you would agree, why it is nonsensical and hypocritical for Catholics to accuse

Protestants of basically perpetuating anarchy in the

Church because of our refusal to bow the knee to the papacy and our refusal to believe in papal infallibility and to strictly be guided by the

Reformation principle of sola scriptura, that the Scripture alone is our infallible authority over the

Church. It is ridiculous that they make this claim that we are the architects of chaos when it is palpably provable that even if you want to grant them the papal infallibility dogma, if you want to grant them, which we are not going to do, but even if you did grant them that this is a genuine gift to the

Roman Catholic Church by God, they hardly ever use it. Am I right? I mean, how has this prevented all kinds, myriads of insane and heretical things that even conservative

Catholics are abhorred by? I mean, it's interesting how you hardly ever hear most of the conservative

Catholic apologists that you and I know, that all three of us know very well, you hardly ever hear them bringing up Pope Francis these days.

They probably feel like they want to crawl under a rock every time his name is mentioned because he is so far to the left of mainstream conservative

Catholic apologetics. But isn't this, Bill, nonsensical that they would dare say that we are the architects of chaos just because we don't adhere to papal infallibility?

Well, if you think about the claim that's made, you know, here is the unifying principle of the

Church. We come to the ultimate authority of the Roman Catholic Church and we all embrace this ultimate authority and we're going to have unity.

You have, if you read, for example, Robertson's Genesis book that he edited on not by Scripture alone, this claim is made all throughout the book that look at all the disunity in the

Protestant Church and look at the beautiful unity we have in the Roman Catholic Church. And I would submit to you that the greatest example, historically, of the promotion of disunity in the

Church at large is the Roman Catholic Church. It has the authority structure of Scripture tradition in the

Church. And he says that's where the Protestants of Oregon, Rome, they rejected this authority structure.

We are the infallible Church and because you've rejected it we have disunity and yet the greatest disunity historically in the

Church is between the East and the West. And they are still disunified over the whole issue of the authority of Scripture and what it teaches.

Is the Bishop of Rome the ruler, the ultimate emperor, if you will, under Christ?

The vicar of Christ on earth is the Bishop of Rome. He's infallible when he teaches. He is the basis of unity.

That is not biblical. You will not find a word of that in the

Word of God. Secondly, it is not, you cannot support it historically.

I'll just give you one example. In the 7th century, in the 6th

Ecumenical Council, a Bishop of Rome was officially condemned as a heretic,

Pope Honorius, by an infallible council, as a heretic.

For promoting, it says, being an instrument, if you read the words of the council itself, the council says that the

Bishop of Rome was an instrument in the hand of Satan to disseminate for the entire

Church heretical doctrines that subverted, which subverted faith.

The Bishop of Rome at the time, Leo II, affirmed that condemnation.

But that's just one historical instance of truth.

Historically, the Church has never believed until, and I mean, the

Eastern Church today, along with the Protestant Church, utterly denies this teaching.

It is Rome itself that has embraced it, declares it to be a revelation of God.

It is not a revelation of God. It is contrary to the Word of God. And it is interesting, it is a dogma proclaimed to be necessary for salvation.

This was never a teaching of the early Church with the rule of faith. The unanimous consent of the

Fathers is utterly opposed to this teaching. So Rome, in its own declaration of unanimous consent, its own declaration at Vatican I, that this has always been the teaching of the

Church from the very beginning, there is no development of doctrine here, according to Vatican I.

That's erased. They are proclaiming that the interpretation given to Matthew 16,

Luke 22, and John 21, by Vatican I, the

Roman Magisterium, that this has been embraced by the Church from the very beginning.

That is patently false. This historical example just proves the illegitimacy of the claim itself.

And it has never, you know, the infallible issue, there is no infallible interpretation of Scripture that's ever been given.

You have a handful of verses, Matthew 16, 18, surely is one of them,

Luke 22, 32, based on infallibility. Even Roman Catholic historians and theologians affirm the fact there are very, very few verses that have ever been officially defined infallibly as being an infallible understanding of the interpretation of Scripture.

It doesn't exist. It's just a claim that is made. And anytime a

Roman Catholic tries to interpret Scripture, they're using private interpretation, because they do not know that that is absolutely true.

They do not know that that's an infallible interpretation, because only the

Magisterium can do that, and it has never done so. You cannot find an official commentary that is infallible on the

Word of God. It does not exist. Now, have you ever heard a

Roman Catholic apologist attempt to explain why that is, that there have not been officially declared ex cathedra interpretations of verses of the

Scripture, when they have this great benefit that they think only they solely possess, of having this infallible interpreter, and yet he never uses this gift?

So, what is their explanation behind that? It's mysterious to me.

I mean, Patrick Madrid, in his book, I forget the name of the book at the moment,

Pope Fiction, he makes the claim, okay, we have infallibility, but it's never exercised.

Well, hardly ever. You can look at certain papal declarations where they say we define, it is absolutely necessary for salvation, for example,

Boniface VIII in 1302, it is necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the

Bishop of Rome. Alright, well, the New Catholic Encyclopedia says that is an ex cathedra statement.

If you look at the teaching on the Assumption of Mary, and you look at the papal declaration, that's an infallible declaration.

But the Scriptures are rarely even used, oftentimes, to defend the declaration of the dogma.

All they're doing is giving you a dogma. And so they're not defining the ultimate issues of Scripture at all.

Why this is? They have this supposed ability to, in an authoritative way given by Christ, to define truth for men.

You could eliminate all of the doctrinal controversies that ever existed in the history of the

Church by the Bishop of Rome simply declaring ex cathedra, this is what the truth is.

It's never been done. And we're going to go to our midway break right now. Please be patient with us folks.

It's the longer than normal break in the show because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1 FM in Lake City, Florida, requires of us a longer break in the middle of the show because the

FCC requires of them to localize Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and all of their other programming geographically to Lake City, Florida.

And they do so by airing their own public service announcements and other local announcements and things. And while they do that, simultaneously we are airing our globally heard commercials.

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Hopefully, often, that will mean patronizing them, purchasing their products, using their services, visiting their churches, supporting their parachurch organizations.

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We require them to remain on the air. So please respond to our advertisers as often as you can.

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King, as we continue our discussion, Rome's Dilemma, No Infallible Interpreter for Their Own Alleged Infallible Interpreter.

Don't go away. God willing, we'll be right back after these messages. Transcripts provided by Transcription Outsourcing, LLC.

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Always tell them that you heard about them from Chris Arnzen and Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Before we return to our guest today,

William Webster and David T. King, as we continue our discussion on Rome's Dilemma, No Infallible Interpreter for Their Own Alleged Infallible Interpreter, we just have a couple of important announcements to make.

You've been hearing the G3 conference ads every day, promoting the conference where I will be manning an exhibitor's booth once again for the fourth year in a row, promoting

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Well, you've been hearing in some of the ads, when they list different speakers among the 20, over 20 that will be present, you've been hearing

Votie Baucom's name mentioned. Now that is to be heard with a question mark after it, because Votie Baucom has suffered a serious health setback not long ago, which required quadruple bypass surgery.

So he is recovering now and everything seems to be going well, according to my last update that I received.

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Please pray that that does not occur. And also pray that the Church of Jesus Christ doesn't have to suffer a great loss by losing him at this young age either.

He has been such a blessing to the body of Christ. So please pray for Votie Baucom. Also, continue to pray for my oldest brother,

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William Webster and David T. King on Rome's Dilemma, No Infallible Interpreter for Their Own Alleged Infallible Interpreter.

And, brothers, did we close a point when we went to the break, or is there something left hanging that we need to finish?

When we were talking about Rome's Alleged Infallible Interpreter of Holy Scripture, I'm thinking of,

Chris, a comment from John O 'Brien, who wrote an apologetic work on behalf of Rome titled

The Faith of Millions. It's undergone many additions. I've got a copy of J .B.

Thurston's revised edition. And he makes the forthright comment, he says,

The plain fact is that an infallible Bible without an infallible living interpreter is futile.

And yet when you press them to give us some interpretations that are infallible interpretations of Holy Scripture, they can offer none.

I have yet to have a single Roman apologist give me an official, a verse of Scripture that has been officially infallibly defined by Rome.

It just simply doesn't exist. And even though we can look at passages like Matthew 16 and John 21 that are claimed by Roman apologists to be germane to the whole dogma of papal primacy, nonetheless they'll say only the dogma itself is infallible and that any of the reasons cited in the course of the claim may end up being incorrect.

Even Matthew 16 and John 21, they claim, have not been defined infallibly.

It's just a merry -go -round. You go round and round. And that's what makes it a double standard.

They claim that an infallible interpreter is needed. And yet when you ask for the infallible interpreter, it's nonexistent.

And even when, and Bill, perhaps you could chime in here, when we have encyclicals and other things from popes, routinely you hear in the media, on the internet, you see and hear

Roman Catholics disagreeing about what any given pope actually meant by what he said or wrote.

In other words, there is no infallible interpreter for what this alleged infallible interpreter said or wrote about anything.

And therefore it is a scam, it is a bait -and -switch, it is hypocritical for the

Church of Rome to say that we are the architects of theological and doctrinal anarchy in the

Church, when they cannot have everyone in a monolithic lockstep union with one another because they all disagree about what even their pope says or writes.

Does that make sense to you, Bill? It is true. I mean, I talk to Roman Catholics who will tell me straight up, this is the dogma, but I don't believe it.

I don't believe that. Or another teaching, what about this pope's teaching?

I don't believe that. You have bishops of Rome, they can share their personal opinion about things.

You see this going on with Pope Francis right now. He'll be quoted by a journalist, and this has gone on a number of times with him.

He's close to a particular journalist in Rome, and that journalist will, from time to time, disclose something that he has said to him personally, and the news media goes berserk, and things are stated about what he said and apparently what he believes, but that is not speaking ex cathedra.

He has not, in his official capacity, declared in an official way, this is what is dogma.

And so you get this confusion going on, but in the final analysis, you take the handful of dogmas that have been decreed by Rome, the

Immaculate Conception, papal rule, the

Assumption of Mary, those are pretty clear. You don't have to scratch your head about what's being said.

However, what you find is in those declarations of the

Bishop of Rome for the Assumption of Mary, for example, declaring where there is no scripture to support it, nothing historically to support it, this is a dogma revealed by God.

And this is necessary for salvation. That's pretty clear, you can understand the

Assumption of Mary, what the teaching is. However, there were two Bishops of Rome in the 5th and the 6th centuries who condemned the teaching of the

Assumption in their official capacity as a

Bishop of Rome. It was gnostic in origin. It did not originate with the

Church. It originated with heresy. It is now declared by a Bishop of Rome that it is dogma, de fide, necessary to be believed if you're going to be saved, it's part of saving faith.

That was never taught in the early Church. It was condemned when it was first introduced by Gnosticism.

But now we have this infallible declaration. How could it be infallible when you have this contradiction?

When you have Vatican I declaring an interpretation of the

Rock of Matthew 16, you are Peter on this rock, I will build my church, and it gives you a

Roman Catholic view of that that is completely contrary to the unanimous consent of the

Church Fathers who never interpreted that verse that way. They never interpreted

Luke 22, 32 of papal infallibility that way. This is patently contradictory.

It cannot be infallible on the one hand when it contradicts the very principle that it shows is illegitimate.

To interpret scripture in any way contradictory to the unanimous consent of the

Fathers is unlawful. Therefore, it is not infallible.

It's proven itself to be in error. So, yeah,

I mean, what does this mean? How do I know this is infallibly...

You know, from a Roman Catholic perspective, what is infallible? What is not infallible?

You've got a handful of dogmas that are decreed by the bishops of Rome that are considered infallible.

It's not hard to see what they mean. But they're contradicted by the facts of history and scripture.

Proving they are not infallible. We have an anonymous listener who says,

I am remaining anonymous because I have many Roman Catholics in my family and I don't want to unnecessarily upset them, but I do tell them the truth when we are together about their aberrations and about their denial of the true gospel.

But my question to both of you is, when you hear a Catholic very vehemently and steadfastly and unwavering truths that they believe are contained in the scripture and in the tradition of their church that must be believed, when you hear them discussing things like baptismal regeneration and a host of other issues that they say must be believed, doesn't it just make all of this null and void when they say that Muslims can go to heaven because they adore the same one true

God as we do, even as stated in their own catechism, and they believe that Jews can go to heaven without Christ, and Buddhists and Hindus and even atheists?

And this is mind -boggling to me that they would go to such great lengths to defend certain doctrines when it seems to be a moot point if people who are not even professing

Christian, let alone Catholic, can enter into heaven anyway. So I guess both of you can respond to that, and we'll start with David since Bill was speaking last.

Sure. So it's very interesting that when you interact with a

Roman Catholic, they will, and particularly one that is knowledgeable, he will give you a precise breakdown of the ontological relationship of the persons of the

Trinity to one another. And when it comes to Christology, he will emphasize the results of Chalcedon and that Christ is one person in two natures, and that it's really necessary to believe this.

And yet, he'll turn right around and insist that Muslims are worshipping one and the same

God, even as he is taking you to task, and perhaps in the midst of it has accused you of being something of a

Nestorian when it comes to the doctrine of Christ. It's amazing to me.

You almost break out in laughter because they're so precise when it comes to Christological issues as defined by the early

Church Council and the Trinity, and yet they'll turn right around and say that Muslims worship the same

God. That's my initial thought. And even Pope Francis comforted that young boy in public that his atheist father would be in heaven because even though he was an atheist,

I believe the Pope had said that he still made sure that the young boy went to receive communion or something like that.

And that in and of itself gave the Pope absolute assurance that that man was in heaven, even though he was an atheist.

Bill, do you have anything to add? Well, just this point that the

Roman Catholic Church teaches a doctrine of invincible ignorance.

And what that basically states is if you are ignorant of what the Roman Catholic Church teaches, then

God's going to look at the sincerity of your heart so that if a man is a

Muslim and he's sincerely following his own religion, his own convictions, and he does not really, really truly understand the truth claims of the

Bible and Christianity or of Roman Catholicism, which the two are separate,

I'm not equating that, but of the Church of Rome in particular, then

God will accept that sincerity because he's invincibly ignorant. However, if you do understand the claims of the

Roman Catholic Church and you set yourself against them, you have no appeal there to ignorance.

You will not be saved. You will be condemned. And that's where the anathemas entered the picture with the

Roman Catholic Church at the Council of Trent at Vatican I with the papal dogmas where they anathematized those who disagree with the teaching.

And there's a lot of them. The Council of Trent in answering the

Reformation has a whole host of anathemas that it issues against the teaching that it believes is subverting what the true faith is.

And so they're anathematizing anyone who would disagree with the teaching of papal infallibility, of the rule of Rome, the

Assumption of Mary, the Immaculate Conception of Mary, Purgatory, their teaching of the

Canon, the whole issue of the sacramental system, their perversion of the

Gospel. All of this is anathematized so that those who stand for truth are under the anathema of Rome.

And if you know the truth and you do not submit to Rome, then there's no hope for you unless you repent and come into submission.

But this whole thing of, if you're sincere, then

God is going to accept your sincerity. There's what you call wider mercy. Well, that is antithetical to the teaching of the

Word of God where Peter himself, in preaching, declared there is salvation in no one else.

There is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.

The Gospel is the power of God to salvation. And that message is to be proclaimed throughout the earth to all men, all cultures, all religions.

There is only one means of salvation given by God, and that is the person of the

Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. And Anonymous, guess what?

You have won compliments of our friends at Banner of Truth. You have won a free copy of The Church of Rome at the

Bar of History by our guest William Webster. And if you give me, via email, your full name, it will not be disclosed over the air, obviously, since you remain anonymous, and your full address, we will get you a copy of this book thanks to our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service who will be the ones that actually ship it out to you.

CVBBS .com are our friends who always ship out our winners, their free books,

Bibles, and other things that our listeners win by sending in questions. And if you are a first -time questioner, you'll also get a free

New American Standard Bible. But thank you, Banner of Truth, for supplying us with a limited copy of The Church of Rome at the

Bar of History. And tell me, Bill, something about this wonderful book.

This book means so much to me. It is one, and I'm not exaggerating, it's one of my very favorite books of all time, especially since I am a former

Roman Catholic. And I don't even know if I ever told you, I may have told you this, but when my

Roman Catholic mother was dying, and I was seeking to persuade her to leave the damning teachings of Roman Catholicism, I had to pick up this book again and read it again to reassure myself that the

Church of Rome is indeed a false church. I had to make sure while my mother was dying, about to leave this planet, that I wasn't doing the wrong thing by trying to drag her out of there.

And sure enough, your book certainly, overwhelmingly persuaded me that the

Church of Rome is indeed a false church. So tell us something about this book,

The Church of Rome at the Bar of History, in summary form, Bill. Well, when I first got involved thinking about the whole

Roman Catholic issue, obviously I was raised in Roman Catholicism, I attended a Benedictine monastery in high school.

I walked away from not just Roman Catholicism, I walked away from Christianity. When I was 24 years old,

I was converted. I had a transforming experience of the grace of God in Jesus Christ through the real gospel.

And as a result, I began to investigate my background, my tradition, looking at the

Church. And I first of all approached it from the perspective of the

Word of God. What does it teach about the Word of God? What are the teachings of Roman Catholicism?

What is the gospel that it teaches? And I was shocked when I really got into the fundamental teachings of Rome and how they contradict the written

Word of God with respect to the gospel. It is a man -centered, legalistic, semi -Pelagian view of salvation.

And it is utterly contrary to what the Word of God teaches. And I began to...

I wrote a book on that. I wrote a book on Scripture and the Gospel of Rome, and the official teachings of salvation of Rome.

And a friend of mine handed me the book by Karl Keating, Fundamentalism and...

Catholicism and Fundamentalism. And I read this book and it became very apparent to me that if you're going to adequately be able to share the gospel with Roman Catholics who were just bound up in a terrible deception, that you have to deal with history.

And so that led me. It was a catalyst for embarking on years of research into the development of Roman Catholicism and the historical evolution of the

Church evolving from the Catholic Church to the Roman Catholic Church. And how, over time, it came to embrace teachings that were contrary historically to what the

Catholic Church in the Patristic Age taught. And so that was the motivation.

It was to try to understand why it is not true to the claims that it makes.

It is not true biblically. It's not true historically. So I basically trace Roman Catholic tradition, what it teaches today, from its roots and show how it evolved over time, but how that evolution is actually a devolution.

It is a departure from Scripture. It is a departure from the history of the early Church, so that what it is today is an aberration.

It is not true historically. It's not true biblically. They basically, the Church of Rome, did the same thing that the

Pharisees did, did they not? They reached a point where they invented their own laws, their own dogmas, and they were redefining things and inventing things that were never to be found in the

Scriptures, just as the Pharisees did. Is that a fair comparison? I think it's a great comparison because what you find is you look at the history of Judaism and you ask the question, well, what happened to Judaism when

Jesus is on the scene and he says, you're blind guides of the blind to the religious leaders, that means the entire nation has gone down a path of embracing false teaching.

And he constantly dealt with them in their false interpretations of Scripture, their false tradition.

And basically, if you look at the different isms that Christ dealt with, traditionalism, asceticism, antinomianism, legalism, sacramentalism, they're precisely the same things that happened with the evolution of Roman Catholicism into being

Roman until finally you reach the point at the Reformation in the 16th century where God says, enough!

That church was so utterly corrupt morally, corrupt theologically, corrupt ecclesiologically in its authority structure that God did what he did with Christ and you look at this in raising up the

Lord Jesus to preach truth against error. He raised up the Reformers to preach the authority of Scripture, the truth of the

Gospel and the authority of the Word of God to counter the different isms that were equivalent to what happened in Judaism.

Asceticism, traditionalism, legalism, sacramentalism, antinomianism, which was so predominant to bring the church back to a fundamental commitment to the

Gospel, the authority of Scripture, and to a walk of holiness for a holy

God. We have John in Bangor, Maine who asks,

I see a great parallel between the Roman Catholic Church and the Judaizers, but I am often baffled that men who are profound and very deep in their intellect and very biblically solid on many, if not most, areas of Scripture, but at the same time they embrace, as our brothers and sisters,

Roman Catholics, even those Catholics that are true to the dogmas of Trent, and it just makes me ill,

I have to say, what is your opinion about these great men who we would even call our brothers, but who also include

Roman Catholics in the family of God? Why don't we start with David this time and then we'll go to Bill.

Well, the reality of Holy Scripture is that Jesus said that in the last day many will say,

Lord, Lord, many will have professed knowledge with me, and Jesus says, in that day

I'll declare to you that I never knew you. And it goes to show that it's not only one's understanding and profession, but we're talking about a heart union with the

Lord Jesus Christ. It must be a relationship. There are many evangelical pastors who have converted to Romanism.

I think that some of them for various reasons, for maybe an appreciation for the aesthetics of the

Roman communion, for the attractiveness of the claim that here is a church that has endured for all these centuries, and yet they're willing to swallow a camel or straining at a gnat in many respects.

And they accept so many things without legitimate investigation. I remember that one person

I know that confronted his priest that was trying to seduce him to convert to the

Roman communion. He says, well, I'm having trouble with this particular document. The priest tells him, well, don't worry about that.

We'll clear that up later. Just go ahead and unite with our communion.

It just goes to show that one's allegiance is not to Christ. One's allegiance must be to Christ alone.

You must look to Christ. He is the only Savior. Our trust is, we're never commanded in Scripture to trust in a church or to trust in a magisterium or to trust in a pope.

Our trust is in Christ, and that's where our faith should be.

It's in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is our magister. He is the one who commands us, and we're to follow what

He commands us to do, not what men. And that's why the whole matter of sola scriptura is so important is because it is

God speaking. It is God breathed. It is God's Word that we're to adhere to, not the

Word of men. And so all these other things that people may find attractive about the

Roman communion, the ultimate issue is where do you, what is your allegiance to Christ?

Where do you stand in relationship to the person of the Lord Jesus Christ? That's the ultimate issue because that's the heart of the gospel.

Christ is the gospel. And when you begin to ask members of the

Roman communion to tell you what the gospel is, it's like they're all over the map.

You cannot discover it. The simplicity of the gospel in Scripture is it's identified clearly.

Jesus Christ is the gospel. We're to embrace Him and to follow Him in a life of obedience.

And Bill, you have anything to add before we go to the final break? Well, just the fact that so much in the issues of Rome and evangelicals have to do with ignorance.

The Roman Catholic apologists are able to appeal to certain people in the evangelical community based on ignorance.

Evangelicals don't have a clue about the history that the Reformation represented in terms of going back in time to a patristic understanding that was true to the

Scriptures. And secondly, most evangelicals had no clue about what

Rome, the Roman Catholic Church, officially teaches about salvation.

The problem is we use the same terms. You know, the Roman Catholic Church will talk about Scripture.

It will talk about tradition, traditions, and the Word of God. It talks about justification, sanctification, glorification.

You know, all of these terms that are used. But the problem is they redefine them. They do not define them biblically.

And so there's this huge issue of ignorance. And because we use similar terms, people can be deceived into thinking that, well,

I affirm the Trinity. I affirm grace. I affirm justification. The problem is we don't mean the same things by the terms that we are using.

And that's where Pelagius and Augustine had an issue. Pelagius was a heretic, but Pelagius taught grace.

He did not deny grace. They both used the term. The problem is

Pelagius redefined the term so that it was no longer biblical. And so Augustine rightly challenged him on his concept of grace.

What is biblical grace? It is not what you were saying it is. And the same thing holds for Rome.

I think it's, you know, when John brought up the issue of Galatians 1. Galatians defines a major issue.

You have men who are Judaizers who Paul is opposing. These Judaizers did not deny

Christ. They professed Him, but by the way they define salvation in the gospel, they undermine the truth of the gospel in the name of Christ.

And that's what Rome does. And quite honestly, it's what a lot of evangelicals do in this day in which we're living.

The great deficiency in our day is for a lack of proper understanding of what the full gospel is.

But that's the ultimate issue, as David just said. The ultimate issue is salvation. It is the gospel, which is defined for us by the authority of the

Word of God. I must understand that because the gospel is the power of God to salvation.

And the only salvation there is is in Christ alone, by grace alone, where we repudiate all sense of merit and legalism.

It is not by works, but it always results in a changed life of works.

In fact, we have to go to our final break right now. Don't go away everybody. We'll be right back right after these final messages.

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Welcome back, and we have CJ from Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York who wants to say can you both point out some of these teachings that Rome claims existed all the way back to the apostles that were inventions just as they claim that Luther is the one that invented his own gospel and other things in the 16th century.

Bill, could you point out some of the things that you actually bring up in the Church of Rome at the

Bar of History which is the book that we've been giving away. Okay, he's asking the question what are some of the teachings

Rome promotes that are not historically there or is he saying that...

The ones that Rome claims were, I think he's saying that what are the teachings that Rome claims existed all the way back to Jesus and the apostles.

Oh, okay. Yeah, if you read Vatican I, it's real simple. They make the claim there when they interpret the scriptures,

Matthew 16 for papal primacy, John 21 for papal shepherding, having the ultimate authority for teaching, and then

Luke 22 for papal infallibility. Vatican I states this has always been what's been believed.

This interpretation we're giving is what has always been interpreted. This is how the fathers interpret these statements.

That's blatantly false. They never interpreted the scriptures in compliance with the way

Vatican I teaches it. They did not teach papal primacy. They did not teach papal infallibility.

I'll give you an example. Augustine said Christ did not build his church on a man but on Peter's confession.

And there he is interpreting the rock. He quotes Matthew 16 You are

Peter on this rock of Bilmah church. He said that Christ didn't build his church on Peter.

What he's referring to by the rock here is Peter's confession. And that was in a general sense the overall view of the church fathers throughout the patricic age in one form or another.

No church father taught papal rule. No church father taught papal infallibility.

That is unknown. You can look at the teaching of the Assumption. The Assumption is non -existent in the early church.

The Immaculate Conception non -existent. And yet, these are now dogma. The principle of unanimous consent.

Well, it is there in certain respects with respect to a few dogmas or doctrines.

It's there in principle and sola scriptura. It's there in the unanimous consent of how they interpret

Matthew 16. But the church alone then contradicts the very thing that it says.

It is holding to by giving us these teachings that are contrary to Scripture.

The claim that there is somehow a continuity between Roman Catholicism and the early church fathers is a spurious claim.

And the Eastern Orthodox will gladly stand up and say, you're right about that.

In these certain areas where we disagree, that is a spurious claim. David, how about some of the other core teachings of Roman Catholicism that they believe existed even back to Christ, such as transubstantiation and even the sacrament of penance?

Yes, they'll argue that all the way back to the time of Christ such teachings can be traced, but it's very difficult when you read the fathers to find them applying the principles that Rome uses.

These modern day accretions cannot be traced back to any apostolic tradition, and their apologists know this very well.

When you ask them to document it, they cannot do so. Okay, we have

Susan Margaret in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, who says that I have heard some of the most respected and honored evangelical apologists say that the

Church of Rome is a true church with some flaws, and I have heard others say that the

Church of Rome is a false church that teaches some truths. What would you both have to say about that?

Well, I would just say that if you look at the official teachings of Roman Catholicism, that it's gospel.

The gospel that Paul is condemning of the Judaizers is in principle the same gospel that Rome teaches.

And Paul states it's under anathema. So what men say really is not the issue.

The issue is the Word of God. What is the gospel? Because if you pervert the gospel, you're under anathema.

That's a divine anathema. That is not men's anathema. And Rome has perverted the gospel.

When you in the Council of Trent officially condemn the teaching of the imputed righteousness of Christ for justification, that is a subversion of the biblical gospel clearly taught in Romans chapter 4.

Indeed. Yeah, Norman Geisler used to repeat that sentiment. And Hank Anagraft did, and look what happened to Hank.

He converted to Eastern Orthodoxy. Well, I want to make sure our listeners have your contact information.

First of all, and by the way, everybody who sent in a question today gets a free copy of Church of Rome at the

Bar of History, the book published by Banner of Truth that we have been discussing.

We thank Banner of Truth for providing us with these copies. We thank CVBBS .com,

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, for shipping the copies out. But if you want to get in touch with Bill Webster at Grace Bible Church in Battleground Washington, go to gracebiblebattleground .org

gracebiblebattleground .org If you want to go to the

Christian Resources website, that website is christiantruth .com

christiantruth .com and if you want to visit the website of the church where David King serves as the assistant to the pastor,

Christ Church in Katy, Texas, go to cckpca .org cckpca .org

cckpca .org cckpca .org cckpca .org