Dr. White Returns with Initial Impressions on Debate with Sungenis on Papal Infallibi

Alpha and Omega Ministries presents the Dividing Line radio broadcast. The Apostle Peter commanded all Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give this answer with gentleness and reverence.

Your host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha and Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, you can call now by dialing 602 -274 -1360, that's 602 -274 -1360.

Or if you're out of the Metro Phoenix dialing area, it's 1 -888 -550 -1360, that's 1 -888 -550 -1360. And now, with today's topic, here's James White.

And good afternoon and welcome to The Dividing Line, my name is James White, live in studio here in Phoenix for the first time in a very, very long time, actually. I think it was the first weekend in October, if I recall correctly, the last time that we were together.

It has been a long time and I don't know right now exactly who all is listening, but today we do have open phones. If you would like to make a comment, if you'd like to ask a question about some of the topics that we have addressed in the past, maybe some issues that have come up even over the past few programs that I didn't hear, but I'm thankful for folks like Benedias and others who have been kind enough to fill in and to provide us with information and with good teaching.

Discussions, I know we talked about Jehovah's Witnesses last week, I found that interesting because I spent 45 minutes with two Jehovah's Witnesses in my driveway yesterday morning. Just happened to come out and be walking up to my house as they did and had a very nice conversation with them, but as is very common in talking with Jehovah's Witnesses, they didn't leave with anything in their hands.

They only left with the things that I had talked to them about, unfortunately. But that's how it works and as long as I show them some things in the Bible, that's the important part. But we've been gone.

We had a lot of things take place while we were in Florida and doing other things. Okay. Okay, so I've just been told we weren't on the air at the beginning of the program. I love technical stuff. Anyways, we have open phones today.

602 -274 -1360. 1 -888 -550 -1360. I've never learned how to do that radio thing. There are radio people. Someone can talk to them in the earphones and they can keep talking. I cannot do that. It's not possible.

I don't think it's physically or mentally possible. So as soon as someone starts talking to me in headphones, I sit there and go, sort of like that. So I am not the professional radio person on that level.

I just can't handle that. 602 -274 -1360 is the local number. 1 -888 -550 -1360 if you're outside the Phoenix dialing area. Questions concerning church history, Roman Catholicism, Jehovah's Witnesses, whatever it might be.

A lot of people have questions about what we were doing while we were in Florida. One of the main things that we were doing while we were in Florida is we had a debate with Robert Syngenis on the subject of papal infallibility.

And the reason that a lot of folks are really, really interested in that is because of what took place in July when we had a debate with Tim Staples on the subject of papal infallibility in Fullerton, California.

So I guess this was the coast-to-coast papal fallibility tour. We had one debate in Long Island, in L .A., basically, Fullerton. And then we went all the way across. I'm not sure you could get too much farther away.

I guess if you went north you could. All the way across to Clearwater, Florida and had a debate with Robert Syngenis. We don't have the tapes yet. I'm sorry. They haven't arrived yet. They should be arriving fairly soon.

The debate with Mr. Syngenis was both audio and videotaped. Well, then again, so was the Tim Staples debate. It was videotaped, but they have now suffered the fate of the Nixon tapes, I do believe. There are these big gaps, I'm sure, in the videotape.

But anyways, the Syngenis debate was videotaped, and since the church it was held at has a regular television ministry, this is the first time we've really done it that way, the neat thing is that it was a three-camera shoot.

Now, if you've looked at any of the debates in the past, you know, for example, the ones on Long Island is normally one camera. And this poor guy on the camera, he'll zoom out, and then he'll sort of slowly pan the audience and go back, and he'll zoom in, and that's about all you can do when you only have one camera.

You can't do a whole lot more than that. But when you have three cameras, you can do a lot. And they had three cameras going on the debate, so the debate itself was very different than any of the debates we've done before.

We wanted the debate with Mr. Syngenis to contrast tremendously with what took place with Mr. Staples. If you have not heard our discussion of what happened during the Tim Staples debate, let me just briefly mention that it was a war, it was sort of sad in many ways, the way that the predominantly Catholic audience responded and acted, as well as my opponent, for that matter.

And it was quite an intense affair. We wanted the debate with Mr. Syngenis to be much clearer than the debate with Mr. Staples was. So I designed, working with Mr. Syngenis, a format very different than what we have used for most of the debates in the past.

And we broke it up into different rounds. And even though Mr. Syngenis was defending papal infallibility, which would generally mean, in most debates, that would mean that he would go first and then I would respond in each one of the segments, we changed that for the sake of the clarity of the topic.

So that in the first round we talked about biblical evidence, he did go first and then I responded. But in the second and third rounds, and the second round was the longest, in the second and third rounds, and each round would have an opening statement, it would have brief rebuttals, it would have cross-examination and closing statements.

A lot of cross-examination, a lot of direct interaction between the two debaters, because we've had a lot of people say, hey, that's missing in a lot of the debates. The cross-examination is not long enough, it's not full enough.

And I've come to realize that that is the meat of the debate, is the cross-examination. That's where the rubber meets the road, in essence. And so in the second and third rounds of the debate with Mistress and Janice, I went first.

And in fact, I told him many weeks before the debate, the second round will be on the subject of Pope Honorius. So I told him exactly what the subject would be. I would be presenting a case against papal infallibility based upon the fact that Honorius, the Bishop of Rome, was condemned as a heretic by the 6th, 7th, and 8th Ecumenical Councils.

And so he knew that ahead of time. He goes second, so in other words, I present the case, then he responds to it, and then we have a cross-examination, and then I do a closing, and then he closes after me.

Now, if you're familiar with debates, you know that I think I'm the first person to offer to the Roman Catholics in the debates this kind of a format, where I actually undertook to go first, even though he's defending a thesis.

And then in the third round, likewise, I said, I'm going to focus upon Pope Zosimus and the situation with the North Africans as my second example. And so I went first, he went second, he knew where I was going to be going, both of us could be prepared, and the main thing was, the audience in listening to these debates doesn't get lost.

They're hearing exactly what the issue is, we're not going from one pope to another pope to another pope. Most folks listening to a debate like this have not heard of Honorius or Zosimus, or the 6th, 7th, and 8th ecumenical councils, and knowing where they are in history, and what the issues were, and what monothelitism is, or anything like that.

And so if you don't focus the discussion, it's very easy to lose folks. And so what we did is we focused people in, we focused the subjects in, and then after those three rounds, then we each had a brief closing statement on the subject of the debate specifically, and then we each had closing statements in a more general fashion in regards to the importance of this subject.

For him, obviously, it was the importance of having an infallible authority. For me, it was the importance of holding to the sufficiency of Scripture, and that's how it worked. Now having a three camera shoot, I've been told, I haven't seen these yet, but the people who were at the church who were watching the debate via the television screens, they themselves said that especially during the cross-examination, having three cameras, where you can have one that's wide out, one on each person, will make the videotapes when we get them very, very useful, probably the best produced video material that we've had so far.

So, I expect, I really do hope to have those tapes in hand by a week from today, hopefully a week from Friday, and then we can start making them available. We will announce their availability on the website.

Now, right now, the main article on the website, and let me just mention again, open phones today, if you've got a comment, question, 602 -274 -1360, 1 -888 -550 -1360. I don't know if we have anyone outside the Phoenix dialing area that can hear us right now.

We don't. So, folks here locally, please feel free to dial in at 602 274 -1360, and with your questions or comments, questions about the debate with Mistress and Janice, whatever else it might be, we'll be glad to help you out with those things.

But as I was saying in regards to the debate, one of the things I'm thinking about doing, I haven't made it absolutely certain yet, I am thinking about offering the two debates, the Staples debate and the St. Janice debate together in one package and advertising it as, get three debates for the price of two.

And the reason I say that is if you've taken a look at the main article on our webpage, it has to do a little bit with the issue of papal infallibility. I address an article that appeared recently in the, well actually it's the current edition of This Rock magazine, the publication of Catholic Answers, what used to be anyways the largest Catholic apologetics organization in the United States, I would assume in the world, I don't know, but This Rock magazine has been being put out for over a decade now and they had an article by Stephen O 'Reilly in which he attempts to defend Honorius and the whole defense that he offers is pretty much the same defense that Tim Staples offered in the debate at Fullerton and that is that Honorius was only condemned for a failure to teach.

He was not condemned for teaching heresy as the Bishop of Rome. Well that's very interesting because Mr. St. Genes adopted a defense of Honorius that completely refutes the defense used by Tim Staples and Catholic Answers.

And so when I say get three debates for the price of two, what I mean is you get my debate against Tim Staples and you get my debate against Robert St. Genes and the neat thing is you get a third debate between Robert St. Genes and Tim Staples only for the price of two.

I think that's a neat way of doing it because if in point of fact the defense used by Catholic Answers and Tim Staples is true, then the defense offered by Mr. St. Genes is completely invalid. That is Mr. St. Genes admitted that Honorius taught heresy on the subject of monothelitism.

His defense was that the letters that Honorius wrote to Sergius in which he said we confess only one, we confess one will in our Lord Jesus Christ, which is the very use of the term monothelitism in the sense of one will, that that was not an ex cathedra teaching.

And since it was not an ex cathedra teaching then it does not violate the teaching of papal infallibility as defined by Vatican I. So he admitted yes Honorius was heretical on this and in fact and this is what will I think make these debate tapes very interesting in the future is the fact that during the cross examination in the second round when I was asking Mr. St. Genes questions I asked him was Honorius a heretic and then I asked him are you saying that it is possible for the bishop of Rome the vicar of Christ on earth to be an unbeliever and he said yes and you could hear the entire audience gasp I'm not sure if it was the Protestants gasping or the Catholics gasping or if it was an ecumenical gasp I'm not really sure which it was but the entire audience was like you've got to be kidding oh wow it's incredible.

So he admits that it is possible for the bishop of Rome to be an unbeliever in this debate. Now if Mr. St. Genes is right and Honorius was condemned for his heresy it just wasn't an ex cathedra statement then Staples and Catholic answers are wrong in saying that his letters were actually orthodox and that the only thing he was actually condemned for was for his failure to teach the truth not for his having promulgated monothelitism and an error.

And so it is interesting to note that the infallible interpreter has never given an infallible interpretation of this issue. Not only do you have very few infallible interpretations of biblical passages in fact some would argue you don't have any others would say you have five six seven something like that.

But even then many would say well you know you have to hold what Rome has said about this particular passage but it might have a polyvalent meaning. So maybe there's more than one possible interpretation.

You just have to make sure you hold the one given to you by Rome but you might hold others as well that kind of a thing. So not only do you have very little infallible interpretation of the Bible but you don't have any infallible interpretation of the history of the infallible interpreter.

And so you have Roman Catholic apologists adopting actually contradictory ways of attempting to defend Honorius against the charge of papal fallibility and so that in and of itself I think for anyone who has begun to adopt the Roman Catholic attack upon solo scriptura they need to think about the fact that in reality they don't have a real answer for their own system when it comes to its alleged infallible authority.

I think this and Janice debate will also be extremely valuable as a tremendous contrast in behaviors that is those who attended the debate in Fullerton who are familiar with the background issues the fact that the audience was simply nasty the audience was loud obnoxious and my opponent was similar behavior similar fashion that the contrast between that and the debate with mistress and Janice.

Well one of the funny things is we had a little problem you know like we're having little problems today where we you know things happen. We still have a little problem today there guys in the control room we do we were told we were going to have this little problem where we know that's that's.

That's good. That's wonderful great to have open phones when. Well anyways we had a little problem during the debate and that is we there was some miscommunication somewhere along the line concerning how the debate was going to be moderated.

The pastor the church and said well we'll do the moderation. A problem was that he introduced us and and then turned us and said we all introduce yourselves and sat down and there was there was no announcement of what we're going to be doing next to nothing and so in essence we self-moderated the debate.

I eventually decided I need to explain to folks what we're doing. So I got mistress and Janice's permission and I said well okay this is how we're going to finish this round and then this and here's the time limits and I just explained this stuff and we self-moderated our own debate and it worked fine.

It worked absolutely fine. Mistress and Janice never attacked me personally. I never attacked him personally. We didn't go over time. We ran this debate the way that it should be run and this is the second time now that Robertson Janice and I have done a debate where the moderator could have been in a comatose state it would have been just fine because we have some of you are aware of the fact that he and I wrote a joint statement together in which we talked about how debates should be handled and we've stuck with it.

We stuck with it on the justification debate on Long Island and we stuck with it on the papal infallibility debate in Clearwater and I can pretty much guarantee you that on December 4th in San Diego we'd like to be talking to you folks in San Diego but we'll just we'll hand sign this over to the folks in San Diego.

That's on December 4th in San Diego we are going to be debating the subject of solo scriptura not with Robertson Janice but with Mitchell Pacwa. Now some of you are familiar with the fact that we have debated Mitchell Pacwa in the past.

We did two debates in January of 91 where we debated the subjects of the mass and justification by faith and then we debated the papacy just as 98. I think it was 1998. I think it was 1998 we debated the papacy on Long Island and each of the debates that we have done with Mitchell Pacwa have been amongst the best debates that we have to offer.

Mitch does not get into the the personal attacks. He's not into attacking me as an individual. He's not into using cheap debating tricks. He's not into misrepresenting the Roman Catholic position. He sticks with the conservative dogmatic position of the Roman Catholic Church.

That's what he represents. That's what he presents. And as such the debates that we do are focused upon a subject not upon individuals. And so I'm looking forward to the debate December 4th in San Diego on the subject of Sola Scriptura.

I unfortunately neglected to bring the information with me but then again no one in San Diego can hear this anyways. But we're going to be archiving it so I will try to get that information. I'm not sure if Rich has it with him today or not.

I heard him cutting a commercial for it so I know it's around somewhere you can always call our ministry offices and bug Rich and he can tell you where and when and what time and so on and so forth but it'll be a Monday night.

I know that's unusual but Dr. Pacwa teaches at the University of Dallas and he teaches on weekends that's when his graduate classes are held and so he's not available for like a Friday or a Saturday like we normally have our debates.

Instead it needs to be on a Monday evening and we will be debating Sola Scriptura. He and I have not debated Sola Scriptura and unfortunately the vast majority of debates well all the debates that I've done thus far on the subject of Sola Scriptura were with individuals who didn't do what Dr. Pacwa does.

That is they didn't stick just to the subject. They didn't avoid using cheap debating tricks and therefore that will make this a rather unusual debate in that I really trust it's going to be the first time that we've debated Sola Scriptura since the very first debate we did in August I believe it was of 1990 in Long Beach against Jerry Matitix allegedly on Sola Scriptura and it was on almost anything but that subject since we started this since we did our first public moderated debate that was more than two dozen debates ago with Roman Catholics.

Anyways in August 1990 this is the first time we've done Sola Scriptura and it'll really stick to the subject. I should give Jerry some credit. The last time that he and I debated Sola Scriptura in Long Island was I think the best that we had done on that and there was the least amount of the what I call cheap debating tricks.

But still I think this will probably be the best and I'm very much looking forward to it. I hope it'll be very useful to folks. 602 -274 -1360 if you're outside the Phoenix dialing area 1 -888 -550 -1360 is the phone number.

Open phones today wherever you might be including way out in the middle of nowhere. We invite you to participate in the program today. It is my understanding that we're now welcoming hopefully the internet audience.

If there is anyone in our worldwide chat room to let folks know that we are now on the internet and available for phone calls please let them know in our chat room as well because we'd like to get folks involved.

In fact I was told anyways that we were going to be having one question concerning some issues in regards to the background of the can of scripture and things like that. I've brought some information along on that but if you'd like to ask any questions about the debates that we've done the upcoming debates that we're going to be doing I'm not sure if I mentioned this and if I did I need to sort of retract it but we had arranged and we thought we had it pretty well written written down and confirmed.

We had arranged for the debate on Long Island to be in the spring with Dr. Peter Kreeft of Boston College. Many of you know who Dr. Kreeft is. Dr. Kreeft teaches philosophy. He's written a number of books and he is a convert to Roman Catholicism and he had agreed to defend the doctrine of purgatory.

The subject for the debate on Long Island in May is purgatory. The problem is he thought that it would be fairly easy for him to rearrange one commitment that he had and it turned out to be impossible.

And as we kept looking at dates and looking at dates the only direction that he could go was earlier and earlier all the way into April and I am not available to go to Long Island in April at all because of my teaching schedule and things like that and so unfortunately we're not going to be able to have Dr. Kreeft.

We had had another positive response from another Roman Catholic apologist who then turned around and said no and so we've had two bailouts in essence so far and we're going to continue working on lining that up.

That's one of the subjects that really needs to be addressed. I think purgatory is a subject that will help us to apply what we've been saying for a long long time on the subject of the gospel the teachings of Roman Catholicism and how they definitely impact the presentation of the gospel the meaning of the gospel and how the teaching of Rome in regards to grace differs so fundamentally from what evangelicals should be meaning by grace.

And sadly I think the fact that many evangelicals today can basically buy into these things and at least not object so strenuously shows the cheapening of grace within what calls itself evangelicalism anyways.

And that in and of itself I think is a shame. But that's a subject we're going to be addressing purgatory I don't know yet because we don't know who the opponent is going to be exactly how we're going to fit that into.

If we're going to try to fit in indulgences I personally would love to find a well-read convinced believing Roman Catholic who would defend the concept of indulgences in and of itself you'll find Catholic answers envoy magazine writing articles in defense of it but they won't come out and defend it.

They won't come out and respond directly to criticism of it. I would love to be able to get some folks do that. Some of you may be saying hey didn't you once say that Tim Staples was going to be your opponent purgatory.

Well he was. But once his organization made promises to us said to us that they would provide certain things specifically the videotape of the debate and then in essence told us take a flying leap and they won't do it.

If you can't trust somebody then you can't work with them and so there's no way that we would expose the audience to that kind of a situation. And so he's been disinvited from that that type of an encounter because you you've just got to have some level of credibility in the sense of being able to trust someone's word say hey we'll provide you with this tape.

Then you provide him with the tape. Whether you lost the debate or not isn't the issue. And we can say with with tremendous honesty that everyone who has engaged us on our grounds that is when we were the ones who arranged it for example the Long Island debates the past five of those the situation just a few weeks ago in Clearwater where we read a Baptist church in every one of those situations those tapes have been provided to the opponent.

Just as we said there are videotapes right now out there that exist of my debates with Mitch Pacqua from back in 1991 January of 1991. No one's ever seen them. The only way we could get them is if we paid for them.

And we have from the beginning said look this is a debate we are we will make the resources available to both sides evenly to do with as they please in marketing them and that's because we're not afraid of having people hear what we have to say of hearing the outcome of these encounters.

And so we'd love to find someone who would do indulgences in a formal debate setting but I don't know right now whether that's going to be a part of the purgatory debate sort of hard to totally separate it out.

I mean they're so directly related to one another but we'll see how it works out. It's hard to say that's a tough subject to for people to defend. Certainly I mean from the Roman Catholic perspective if you don't hold to the ultimate authority of the church then there's no reason to believe in these things.

But some of these apologists will say well the Bible does support this. So they'll come out and attempt to defend it. It's just difficult to find the folks and get them together on the right schedule and so on and so forth.

Open phones. We have many phone lines open one is currently in use. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We're going to take a a break and then we'll come back with your phone calls right after this on the dividing line.

It's okay. The ringing only lasts for about six hours. That is the warmest bumper music ever designed by man. And yes yes yes rich I see you pointing it at Warren there and wanting everyone to say Warren's pointing it rich.

This is fun. This is Adam and Eve. There you go. Adam Eve. He did it. No he did it. That doesn't. That wouldn't work out right. Anyways we are. We have open phones today and I apologize to those of you who aren't listening right now.

But we have open phones at 602 274 -1360 -1888 550 -1360. And let's let's start clearing the phone lines here we have fun on this. Hi Johnny. How you doing.

How you doing James. Nice talking to you again. It's good to talk to you. What's up. All right. I have a couple of questions. I've been talking to rich on the phone off and on and that's not a good thing to do you know.

I mean that can really that can. Mess up mess your theology up big big time you know what I mean.

Yeah I'll let them know about that anyway. I think he heard that a couple of questions one he shot over to you. I'm sure you're aware that. I'm the one that sent you the email about him. Yes.

Okay yes I read one of the things that I talked about with Tim off the air.

We're about the soul of the Reformation and so on and so forth. But first I wanted to ask you very quickly something that I've heard a couple of Roman Catholics say to you once on the Bible Answer. Man it was James Aiken back in 1995.

Right. You guys were talking about the Deuterocanonicals Apocrypha. Right. And you said that Jerome and I spoke to Hank about this but he couldn't give me a reply. But he said that Jerome explicitly rejected them as canonical scripture inspired writing.

And what I heard James Aiken say is that no he didn't want to use them in regards to the Jews but that he did consider them edifying and he did consider them canonical. And in a debate that you had against Mitch Pacwa you said that Jerome did not accept them in the canon and that he had actually left a footnote in his translation of the Vulgate saying that he did not consider them canonical.

And Mitch Pacwa responded to you in the question and answer period saying no he did accept them after the councils had made their decision. That was the first question. The second question.

Well let's cover that one first. That's one of the drawbacks of the encounters that I've had and I think the Aiken encounter was the most obvious of that. I think if you go back and listen to the amount of time that is given to each individual because we're basically bending over backwards to try to be fair generally my opponent gets a lot more time than I do.

I'd say it's about a 60 -40 split maybe 55 -45 if I'm really lucky and I'm long winded. And I remember that just briefly and I was a little bit surprised that he made the statement that he did especially because if you pick up the New Catholic Encyclopedia it specifically says St. Jerome distinguished between canonical books and ecclesiastical books.

The Apocrypha the latter he judged were circulated by the church as good spiritual reading but were not recognized as authoritative scripture and this is this comes directly from Jerome's own words specifically in you can look this up in F .F. Bruce's work on the canon of scripture he says therefore as the church indeed reads Judith, Tobit and the books of the Maccabees but does not receive them among the canonical books so let it also read these two volumes for the edification of the people but not for establishing the authority of ecclesiastical dogmas and so anyone who is familiar with Jerome's view knows that he looked at these books as being spiritually edifying that is remember you didn't have a Berean Christian bookstore sitting on the corner in the early 5th century in Palestine and so there were Christian books that were distributed and most people looked at the Apocryphal books as edifying in the sense that they told stories about people who were faithful to God or whatever it might be but Jerome makes the clear distinction between accepting them as canon scripture upon which dogma can be defined and being edifying and something that people can read in fact it is Jerome's view that was taken by most of the reformers who likewise saw these books not as canon scripture but instead as edifying works that could be read by individuals.

The Westminster Dictionary of Church History says in loyalty to the Hebrew text Jerome came to reject the dogmatic authority of the books preserved only in the Septuagint, the Deuterocanonical or Apocryphal books though continuing to use them for edification a position revived by Renaissance writers who were fascinated by Jerome as Satan scholar and adopted by Lutherans and Anglicans.

And the last quote that I brought for you that I think you'll find to be very interesting is Cardinal Cayetan who you may recall was the one who initially interviewed Martin Luther after Luther became famous for posting the 95 Theses.

Cardinal Cayetan, so this is right around the time of the Reformation. Cardinal Cayetan wrote specifically, here we close our commentaries on the historical books of the Old Testament. For the rest, that is Judith, Tobit and the books of Maccabees are counted by St. Jerome out of the canonical books and are placed among the Apocrypha along with Wisdom and Ecclesiastics as is plain in the Prologus Galiatis.

Nor be thou disturbed like a raw scholar if thou shouldest find anywhere either in the sacred councils of the sacred doctors these books reckon canonical. For the words as well as of councils and of doctors are to be reduced to the correction of Jerome.

Okay, so this is taking place right at the time of the Reformation. This is a cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church of the day.

So they weren't always accepted then? No, certainly not. In fact, the New.

Catholic Encyclopedia confirms that Pope Gregory the Great did not accept a canonical status for the.

Apocrypha either. That's something that I'm curious about because I've heard you make a number of statements both from the Bible Answer Man and so on and so forth about that certain things are actually admitted or actually recognized in the Catholic Encyclopedia.

For example, you said that in the Catholic Encyclopedia it states that there was no dogmatic proclamation of the Apocrypha until the Council of Trent. And you also said that I can give you that quote if you'd like to.

I'm a Protestant. I don't think I'm challenging you or anything.

No, I was just going to give the specific page numbers and the quote. It says, That this had not been done previously is apparent from the uncertainty that persisted up to the time of Trent. And that's in the New Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 2, page 390, Volume 3, page 29.

And one thing to keep in mind, there are two Catholic Encyclopedias, well actually there's I don't know how many, half dozen Catholic Encyclopedias, the New Catholic Encyclopedia and the Old Catholic Encyclopedia generally the ones that I'm talking about.

These are multi-volume, they take up half your room versions and then they've created some, we might call chopped down versions that generally have another subtitle you can use to try to identify them.

But those are the specific references that I was making reference to. Volume 2, page 390, Volume 3, page 29.

I tried to get a hold of, I didn't know that there were so many volumes. I got one from Catholic Answers. I haven't received it yet. But the reason why I was asking you about that is because I heard Tim Staples, you said also that the bodily assumption of Mary in the Catholic Encyclopedia, it states that it was not, the first time it ever appears in any Church writings, it was in a heretical work in the 6th century or something like that.

The transitive.

Beati Maria literature, and actually my gut feeling would be that I was citing Ott. Though I think the Catholic Encyclopedia might say that, but I know that Ludwig Ott specifically makes reference to that.

Those references would be found in my book, Mary Another Redeemer.

But when I hear that the Roman Catholics in essence contradict what you're saying, are they denying that these things are infallible? Do they consider these something that you can say, this is the way it is, like the Catholic Catechism?

Or is it, well, this is so-and-so's opinion?

Well, generally, when Catholic scholarship gores the Catholic apologist's favorite response, they just simply dismiss the scholarship as being liberal. That has been my experience generally, is that when they run up against their own scholars, because they're using an invalid defense, that they're either ignorant of that scholarship, and therefore they give a knee-jerk reaction that says, oh, well, he must not be a real Catholic, or, well, like Tim Staples says, Tim is not a learned man, in the sense that he doesn't teach anywhere, to my knowledge.