Book Recommendation: The Roman Catholic Controversy

Welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist. This is a daily conversation about scripture, culture, and media from a reformed perspective. Get your Bible and coffee ready and prepare to engage today's topic.

Here's your host, Pastor Keith Foskey.

And welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist. My name is Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist. Today is October the 2nd, 2020. And if you're following along in our daily Bible reading today, you're going to be reading Hebrews chapter 3.

Now what's our daily Bible reading? That is something we are doing at Sovereign Grace Family Church this year. We are reading through the New Testament, one chapter a day, every weekday. And if you'd like to get a copy of that daily Bible reading list, you can do so by going to our website, sgfcjacks .org.

That is Sovereign Grace Family Church of Jacksonville. And if you do not have a church home and you live in the Jacksonville area and you are looking for a church, we would love to have you come and visit us this coming Lord's Day.

We have Sunday school at 930 a .m. We have worship at 1030 a .m. And this weekend, we have another event if you are interested in joining us. Saturday morning at 8 a .m. we have our men's and women's breakfast.

We gather together for a breakfast with men and women, and then we divide up. The men go into one area, the women go into another area, and we have a time of Bible study and encouragement. And if you are a person who would be interested in that, we would love to have you.

Please send me a message though and let me know that you're coming. And that way we will know to expect you and be able to ensure that we have food ample prepared for everybody who's going to participate.

A Friday Book Recommendation on Roman Catholicism

On to the program today, we are going to be doing another book, looking at another book. It's Friday, it's book day on Coffee with a Calvinist. Every Friday we look at a book and normally I call these book reviews, but today is going to be less of a review and more of just an outright recommendation.

Now, normally I recommend the books I review, but this is a little bit different because it's been a few years since I've read this book, and yet at the same time it was so helpful to me when I did read it.

And I think that it's very important in regard to what is happening this week and a subject that I talked about earlier this week. And the book that I'm recommending to you today is called The Roman Catholic Controversy by Dr. James White.

Now, many of you are familiar with Dr. White. If you listen to my series that I did on how I became a Calvinist, that was a few months.

Ago.

You probably remember that it was partially due to studying some of the works of Dr. James White that was helpful in confirming what I was seeing in the scriptures was correct. And Dr. White has, I know, has been influential in so many people's becoming Reformed in their theology and certainly he was that for me.

And so Dr. White is a very important man. I would consider him to be someone that not only has been a teacher from afar, but I would consider him to be a friend now. He and I have had the opportunity on several occasions to spend time together and he's visited our church and spoken here.

And just this last August, I had the opportunity to visit his church and to go and hear him preach. And it was a lovely experience. He is one of the elders at Apologia Church in Arizona. And it was a wonderful opportunity to fellowship with them, to hear him, to get to meet his.

Wife.

And it was just a tremendous blessing. So I'm very thankful for Dr. White and I'm very partial to Dr. White. So I make no, I make no apologies for that. He has been influential on me in many ways between him and Dr. R .C. Sproul.

I would say those two men have probably done more to form in me an understanding of how to preach. I would say Dr. Sproul in how to preach theologically and Dr. White on how to teach apologetically and so I just can't say enough good things about Dr. White and I'm very thankful for.

Him.

But the reason why I bring up the Roman Catholic controversy this week and why I think it would be a good book for you to pick up and read is because earlier in the week we talked about Amy Coney Barrett, the new Supreme Court justice who is, has been nominated by Donald Trump and who hopefully, if the Lord wills it, will become the newest Supreme Court justice in the United States.

And the reason why I'm recommending the Roman Catholic controversy is there is an important distinction that needs to be made about Amy Coney Barrett. She is, she would identify as a Roman Catholic, but she also, she identifies, and I talked about this on Tuesday's program, she identifies with a group called the People of Praise that is an ecumenical group that includes not only Roman Catholics but also people of other faiths including, or other denominations if you will, Methodists, Episcopalians, Presbyterians.

And there's a lot of groups that are interfaith, there's a, or maybe we call ecumenical, there's a lot of groups where different denominations would get together. I mean one might even say that a Ligonier Conference is an example of that because at a Ligonier Conference you're liable to have Presbyterians, Baptists, and you'll see someone like Dr. John MacArthur who is, who is Baptistic but certainly is not part of the Baptist church.

I don't think that Grace Community is a Baptist church even though they would be Baptist by.

Faith.

I don't think they're part of the Baptist conventions that I know of. So what I'm saying is if you look at the Ligonier Conference you might say well that's ecumenical but it's not in the sense that all of those men at a Ligonier Conference would agree on.

The gospel.

They would all agree on what the gospel is. However, when you open the door to Roman Catholicism you're opening up the door to the question of whether or not Rome has the gospel. And I would argue that Rome does not have the gospel anymore.

Now I say anymore because I do believe that there was a time in history where Rome was a true church. But through several different things and because of several different things, corruption, false doctrine, and false teaching began to be allowed within the church, proliferated throughout the church, and supported by the church.

And because of that, when someone asks me now is a Roman Catholic a Christian, or excuse me rather let me rephrase that, if they say does Rome have the gospel, I would say no.

Not anymore.

I believe that that's the reason why the Reformation was necessary because Rome had abandoned the.

Gospel.

They had replaced the gospel of justification by grace through faith alone, salvation by grace through faith alone. They had replaced that gospel message with a false gospel that relied upon the church as the administer of God's grace and the one who ultimately had the ability to distribute that grace through the sacraments, particularly the sacrament of the table, which the Roman Catholic Church believes is a representation of the once for all sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

They believe that you come to the table to receive again the benefits of Christ's sacrifice. And I'm really simplifying this, but ultimately that's the major problem with Rome as it stands today is that there is an understanding of not just, and a lot of people take issue with Rome they say oh they believe that Jesus's body and blood is in the bread and the cup.

Well a lot of Christians have believed that. The idea of real presence is not the issue. The issue is transubstantiation, which is the doctrine held by Rome, is that the body and blood are being offered again as a sacrifice.

The table where the Lord's Supper is presented becomes an altar and it becomes a place for a propitiatory sacrifice to be done again. And as Dr. White has pointed out many times in his teaching, that the problem is you could have a person who could have mass, which is what they refer to as the participation in the table, because that's the high point of worship for the Roman Catholic, is that receiving of that representation of the sacrifice.

And as Dr. White has pointed out, somebody could have mass thousands of times and still die impure because it doesn't provide a once for all sacrifice for sin. It does not provide a perfect atonement, a perfect propitiatory sacrifice.

And so that is the issue at hand. The gospel does not exist in a system like that. The gospel does not exist in that system. Now, that is not to say that Roman Catholics don't believe some things that are true.

They believe firmly in the virgin birth. They believe firmly in the deity of Christ. They believe firmly in the doctrine of the Trinity. There are so many things that Roman Catholics do get right that we cannot write off that everything that they believe is wrong simply because they're Roman Catholics.

But the thing that we cannot afford to get wrong is the gospel. And it is very clear that Rome does not have the gospel in that regard. And so does that mean that every Roman Catholic is not saved? That that is a that's a broader conversation, because I do believe that there are some Roman Catholics who are saved, but I believe that they are saved in spite of the teachings of Rome, not because of the teachings of Rome.

I believe they are they are saved because they have they have placed their trust in the finished work of Christ. And that is that is ultimately what we mean. We say somebody is is say they are trusting in the completed, finished work of Jesus Christ.

But and they've been regenerated because you don't place trust in Jesus Christ without that regeneration. But they are still confused about the the particulars of the gospel. And I think that that's because the Roman Catholic Church does not teach a clear and true message regarding the gospel.

So so having said all of that, if this interests you, if this topic is one that you think is important and I have to tell you, I believe it is. And I go back now to the Amy Coney Bryant or Barrett situation.

The reason why I think this is such an issue right now is I think people see her and they say, well, she's a Christian just like me. Well, she's not a Christian just like everyone else. If she is a practicing Roman Catholic, then she has major issues on the gospel.

And if she's part of the people of praise, then she also has issues on how she understands the concept of truth in regard to the gospel, because the whole idea of the people of praise is these these divisions shouldn't matter.

But as I said on Tuesday's program, as I explained, the divisions do matter and truth matters. And there's a reason why we have to stand for truth and not just give in and say, well, let's all just join hands and sing Kumbaya.

We can't just all get along in that regard. So having said that, I now want to recommend the book, The Roman Catholic Controversy by Dr. James White. If you read The Roman Catholic Controversy, it will explain to you not only the things that I've talked about regarding the perpetuatory sacrifice of the mass, but he goes much further and much deeper into the history of how these changes took place.

And he talks about other particular doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church that are also, I would say, not only unbiblical, but heinous. And that is things such as the the view of the priests as an alter Christus or another Christ, that the priest, when he performs the the mass, is actually performing the sacrifice of Christ again on the behalf of the person receiving it.

And therefore, he has the power, as one said, to reach up into heaven and pull Christ down and lay him on the table and make him a sacrifice again for sins. And and he explains this in the book very well.

And so that's one of the things is the role of the priest, but also the Marian teachings, the views of Mary as a perpetual virgin, as herself being sinless. And again, if you've never heard Dr. White teach on this, he has many, many debates that he has done.

He has debated the subject of the papacy. He's debated the subject of justification. He's debated the subject even of purgatory, one of the one of the more obscure teachings of Roman Catholic theology.

And all of those debates are available for you to listen to as well. So in one way, I'm recommending the book. In other way, I'm recommending all of his work on this subject. If you want to know more about Roman Catholic theology from someone who has studied and has taught on this subject and has debated it with the very best that the other side has to offer, then I can recommend to you no one better than Dr. James R. White on the Roman Catholic controversy.

And I and as I said, I think that this is important because when we think of. Our Supreme Court, I had a friend send me something today that I thought was very interesting. It was a chart and he said he's not sure about the source on this, but it's it looks accurate to me.

So I just want to mention it. Basically, what he what what the chart shows is a a shift in the the the the decades of where a lot of the previous Supreme Court justices would have been on the side of the Protestants.

And now there seems to be a shift to the side of Rome. And so within the Supreme Court, a larger people are or a larger group within the Supreme Court would be Roman Catholic than has been in the past.

And I'll make an interesting point about this. I got to thinking about this. Regarding the subject of Roman Catholic faith, and if if you were alive and some of some of you may have been alive to remember John F. Kennedy, John F. Kennedy was a Roman Catholic and John F. Kennedy as a Roman Catholic, that was a big deal to a lot of people because.

There was. A question. Of whether or not the president was going to kneel before the pope. Whether the president was going to kiss the ring of the pope. And so we have seen a major shift in our leadership.

And I've just pulled up the chart. It took me a second to pull it up while I was talking about it. Right now, according to this chart, it is a majority Roman Catholic on the Supreme Court. The minority, well, according to this chart, there's no Protestants.

I'm not sure if that's correct, but it says Jewish, Roman Catholic and no Protestant. And the majority on the on the Supreme Court being Roman Catholic. So that it's just an interesting shift in history is all.

And I think there's a lot of people out there who just believe Roman Catholics are Christians. They're no different than Methodists or Baptists. They're no different than Presbyterians or Episcopalians.

But there is a difference. And the differences still matter. The Reformation still matters. And if you don't understand the differences and don't understand why they matter, I would recommend to you the Roman Catholic Controversy by Dr. James White.

I want to thank you again for listening today to Coffee with a Calvinist. This has been my recommendation of the Roman Catholic Controversy by Dr. James White. My name is Keith Foskey and I have been your Calvinist.

May God bless you.

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As you go about your day, remember this. Jesus Christ came to save sinners. All who come to him in repentance and faith will find him to be a perfect savior. He is the way, the truth and the life. And no one comes to the Father except through him.

May God be with you.