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

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Alpha and Omega Ministries presents the Dividing Line radio broadcast. The Apostle Peter commanded all

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

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Your host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha and Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.

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If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, you can call now by dialing 602 -274 -1360.

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That's 602 -274 -1360. Or if you're out of the Metro Phoenix dialing area, it's 1 -888 -550 -1360.

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That's 1 -888 -550 -1360. And now, with today's topic, here's

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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.

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I think it was the first weekend in October, if I recall correctly, the last time that we were together.

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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.

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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.

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I know we talked about Jehovah's Witnesses last week. I found that interesting because I spent 45 minutes with two

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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.

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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

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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 and...

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Okay. So I've just been told we weren't on the air at the beginning of the program. I love technical stuff.

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Anyways, we have open phones today. 602 -274 -1360 1 -888 -550 -1360

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I've never learned how to do that radio thing. There are radio people. Someone can talk them into earphones and they can keep talking.

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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,

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I sit there and go sort of like that. So I am not the professional radio person on that level.

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I just can't handle that. 602 -274 -1360 is the local number. 1 -888 -550 -1360 if you're outside the

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Phoenix dialing area. Questions concerning church history, Roman Catholicism, Jehovah's Witnesses, whatever it might be.

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A lot of people have questions about what we were doing while we were in Florida.

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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.

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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.

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So I guess this was the coast -to -coast papal fallibility tour. We had one debate in Long Island, in L .A.,

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basically, Fullerton. And then we went all the way across. I'm not sure you could get too much farther away.

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I guess if you went north you could. All the way across to Clearwater, Florida and had a debate with Robert Syngenis.

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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.

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Syngenis was both audio and videotaped. Well, then again, so was the

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Tim Staples debate. It was videotaped, but they have now suffered the fate of the

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Nixon tapes, I do believe. There are these big gaps, I'm sure, in the videotape. But anyways, the

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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.

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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.

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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.

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You can't do a whole lot more than that. But when you have three cameras, you can do a lot.

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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.

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We wanted the debate with Mr. Syngenis to contrast tremendously with what took place with Mr.

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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

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Catholic audience responded and acted, as well as my opponent, for that matter.

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It was quite an intense affair. We wanted the debate with Mr.

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Syngenis to be much clearer than the debate with Mr. Staples was. So I designed, working with Mr.

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Syngenis, a format very different than what we have used for most of the debates in the past.

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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

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I would respond in each one of the segments, we changed that for the sake of the clarity of the topic.

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So that in the first round, we talked about biblical evidence, he did go first, and then

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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And in fact, I told him many weeks before the debate, the second round will be on the subject of Pope Honorius.

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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

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Bishop of Rome, was condemned as a heretic by the 6th, 7th, and 8th Ecumenical Councils.

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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

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I do a closing, and then he closes after me. Now, if you're familiar with debates, you know that I think

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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.

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And then in the third round, likewise, I said, I'm going to focus upon Pope Zosimus and the situation with the

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North Africans as my second example. And so I went first, he went second. He knew where I was going to be going.

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Both of us could be prepared. And the main thing was, the audience in listening to these debates doesn't get lost.

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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

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Ecumenical Councils, and knowing where they are in history, and what the issues were, and what monothelitism is, or anything like that.

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And so if you don't focus the discussion, it's very easy to lose folks.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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I don't know if we have anyone outside the Phoenix dialing area that can hear us right now. We don't.

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So, folks here locally, please feel free to dial in at 602 - 274 -1360.

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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.

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But as I was saying in regards to the debate, one of the things I'm thinking about doing,

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I haven't made it absolutely certain yet, I am thinking about offering the two debates, the

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Staples debate and the St. Janice debate together in one package and advertising it as, get three debates for the price of two.

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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.

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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

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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

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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.

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He was not condemned for teaching heresy as the Bishop of Rome. Well that's very interesting because Mr.

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St. Genes adopted a defense of Honorius that completely refutes the defense used by Tim Staples and Catholic Answers.

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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.

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Genes and the neat thing is you get a third debate between Robert St. Genes and Tim Staples only for the price of two.

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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.

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St. Genes is completely invalid. That is Mr. St. Genes admitted that Honorius taught heresy on the subject of monothelitism.

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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

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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.

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And since it was not an ex cathedra teaching then it does not violate the teaching of papal infallibility as defined by Vatican I.

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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

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I was asking Mr. St. Genes questions I asked him was

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Honorius a heretic? And then I asked him are you saying that it is possible for the

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Bishop of Rome, the Vicar of Christ on earth to be an unbeliever? And he said yes.

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And you could hear the entire audience gasp I'm not sure if it was the Protestants gasping or the

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Catholics gasping or if it was an ecumenical gasp I'm not really sure which it was but the entire audience was like you gotta be kidding oh wow it's incredible.

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So he admits that it is possible for the Bishop of Rome to be an unbeliever in this debate.

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Now if Mr. St. Genes is right and Honorius was condemned for his heresy it just wasn't an ex cathedra statement then

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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.

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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 5, 6, 7 something like that but even then many would say well you know you have to hold what

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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.

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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

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Roman Catholic apologists adopting actually contradictory ways of attempting to defend

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Honorius against the charge of papal fallibility and so that in and of itself I think for anyone who has begun to adopt the

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Roman Catholic attack upon sola 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.

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I think the Syngenous 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 behaved in a similar fashion that the contrast between that and the debate with Mr.

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Syngenous one of the funny things is we had a little problem like we're having little problems today things happen we still have a little problem today there guys in the control room?

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We do. We were told we weren't going to have this little problem weren't we? 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 there was some miscommunication somewhere along the line concerning how the debate was going to be moderated the pastor of the church said well we'll do the moderation the problem was he introduced us and then turned to us and said well you all introduced yourselves and sat down and there was no announcement of what we were going to be doing next nothing and so in essence we self -moderated the debate

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I eventually decided I need to explain to folks what we're doing so I got Mr. Syngenous' permission and I said well okay this is how we're going to finish this round 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

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Mr. Syngenous 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 Robert Syngenous and I have done a debate where the moderator could have been in a comatose state and 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 hand sign this over to the folks in San Diego that on December 4th in San Diego we are going to be debating the subject of solo scriptura not with Robert Syngenous but with Mitchell Pacwa some of you are familiar with the fact that we have debated

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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 it was 98

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I think it was 1998 yeah 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

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Mitch does not get into 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

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Roman Catholic position he sticks with the conservative dogmatic position of the

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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

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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

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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

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Rich he can tell you where and when and what time and so on and so forth but it will be a

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Monday night I know that's unusual but Dr. Pacwa teaches at the

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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

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Friday or a Saturday like we normally have our debates instead it needs to be on a Monday evening and we will be debating

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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

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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 this could be the first time that we've debated

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Sola Scriptura since the very first debate we did in August I believe it was of 1990 in Long Beach against Jerry Matatix 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

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Sola Scriptura and it will really stick to the subject I should give Jerry some credit the last time that he and I debated

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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

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I call cheap debating tricks but still I think this will probably be the best and I'm very much looking forward to it

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I hope that it will be very useful to folks 602 -274 -1360 if you're outside the

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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

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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

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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.

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Peter Kreeft of Boston College many of you know who Dr. Kreeft is

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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 the had and it turned out to be impossible and as we kept looking at dates and looking at dates the only direction he could go was earlier and earlier all the way into April and I am not available to go to a

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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

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Dr. Kreeft we 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

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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

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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

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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

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I personally would love to find a well -read convinced believing

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Roman Catholic who would defend the concept of indulgences in and of itself you'll find

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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 and respond directly to criticism of it

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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 on 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've just got to have some level of credibility in the sense of being able to trust someone's word if they say hey we'll provide you with this tape then you provide them with the tape whether you lost the bait 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

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Long Island debates the past five of those the situation just a few weeks ago in Clearwater where we read a

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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 Pacquiao from back in 1991

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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

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I mean they're so directly related to one another but we'll see how it works out it's it's hard to say that's a tough subject to for people to defend certainly

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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

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Bible does support this and 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 602 -274 -1360 1 -888 -550 -1360 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 break and then we'll come back with your phone calls right after this on The Dividing Line and welcome back to 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 oh no

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Warren's pointing it rich this is fun this is Adam and Eve there you go Adam and 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 1 -888 -550 -1360 and let's let's start clearing the phone lines here we have fun on this hi

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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

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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

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

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I mean anyway I think he heard that a couple of questions one he shot over to you

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I'm sure you're aware that I'm the one that sent you the email about him yes uh -huh okay yes

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I read one of the things that I talked about with Tim off the air were about the the soul of the

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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

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Bible Answer Man it was James Akin back in 1995 right you guys were talking about the

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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

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I heard James Akin say is that no he didn't want to use them in regards to the

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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

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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 let's cover that one first that's one of the drawbacks of the encounters that I've had and I think the

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Akin 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

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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

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New Catholic Encyclopedia it specifically says St. Jerome distinguished between canonical books and ecclesiastical books the

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Apocrypha the latter he judged were circulated by the church as good spiritual reading but were not recognized as authoritative scripture and this comes directly from Jerome's own words specifically in you can look this up in FF Bruce's work he says 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

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Christian bookstore sitting on the corner in the early 5th century in Palestine and so there were

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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

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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

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Westminster Dictionary of Church History says though continuing to use them for edification a position revived by Renaissance writers who were fascinated by Jerome as saint and 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

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Cardinal Cayetan who you may recall was the one who initially interviewed

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Martin Luther after Luther became famous for the posting of Cardinal Cayetan, this is right around the time of the

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Reformation Cardinal Cayetan wrote specifically for the words as well as of counsels and of doctors are to be reduced to the correction of Jerome okay so this is taking place right at the time of the

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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

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

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Apocrypha that's something that I'm curious about because I've heard you make a number of statements both from the

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Bible Answer Man and so on and so forth about that certain things are actually admitted or actually recognized in the

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Catholic Encyclopedia for example you said that in the Catholic Encyclopedia it states that there was no dogmatic proclamation of the

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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

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Protestant, don't think I'm challenging you or anything I was just going to give the specific page numbers and the quote, it says the

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Council of Trent definitively settled the matter of the Old Testament canon this had not been done previously 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

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New Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 2, page 390 Volume 3, page 29 and one thing to keep in mind there are two

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Catholic Encyclopedias actually I don't know how many, half a dozen Catholic Encyclopedias, the

37:31

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,

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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

37:58

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

38:03

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 was in a heretical work in the 6th century or something like that The Transitus Beati Maria literature, and actually my gut feeling would be that I was citing ought though I think the

38:26

New Catholic 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

38:35

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?

38:44

Do they consider these, you know, 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?

38:50

Well generally, when Catholic scholarship gores the Catholic apologist's favorite response they just simply dismiss the scholarship as being liberal

39:00

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

39:14

Catholic Like Tim Staples Tim is not a learned man in the sense that he doesn't teach anywhere to my knowledge

39:22

His sole area of study is in this one area and in fact that's something

39:29

I would say about many of the opponents that I've faced in the past is that since all they do is apologetics they don't teach anything else, they don't have to deal with anything else then they can become very, very narrow in their comments and their comments can become very much skewed

39:44

One thing that I've said that I've been thankful for about Alpha and Omega Ministries from the beginning is that the

39:49

Lord immediately caused us to move out from just dealing with one subject and if we get unbalanced in dealing with a subject in regards to, for example,

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Roman Catholicism then we end up exposing ourselves to the Mormon who would say ah, so you're saying this over there or the

40:05

Jehovah's Witness over here, whatever it is we have to remain balanced, that's why you don't hear us using a lot of the arguments that you find others using because we have to be consistent in what we're saying on a wide number of fronts so when they're contradicting these things they would not say that the

40:23

Catholic Encyclopedia is infallible but they never even bother to try to disprove what the Catholic Encyclopedia is saying, they just simply dismiss it and the reason that I cite it is to say hey, this isn't a

40:34

Protestant saying this, this isn't a Protestant source pointing this out, this is your own people saying this and if you've got a problem with it then maybe you might want to try to refute what they're saying rather than just simply mocking what they're saying.

40:45

Right, because it is interesting because I got a copy of a three volume set by William Jurgens, you said it was a

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Roman Catholic quote book and you're debating it very magically Yeah, The Faith of the Early Fathers and one of the things

40:58

I pointed out to Tim off the air after the show was over, was that in William Jurgens' book

41:04

I was kind of shocked that you didn't bring this up because when I found it, when you talked about Cyprian when you debated geromantics, that William Jurgens admits that when he said no one sets themselves up as a bishop or bishops that it's impossible to believe that he didn't have

41:19

Stephen in mind and also that if you would have asked Cyprian back then if he considered the bishop of Rome to have jurisdiction over the entire church that he probably would have said,

41:30

I didn't mean that and that that's what they mean by an implicit doctrine and he just simply dismissed

41:36

Jurgens by saying well, I'm surprised that he would say that he's wrong about that so I was kind of surprised about that this is a

41:45

Roman Catholic quote book, I'm assuming that they go by it and here's a very important piece of information Yeah, well what

41:51

I mean by that is that it's a quote book in the sense that it is not a full rendition of the fathers it sometimes cuts off in the middle of something or doesn't include a section of a paragraph that would fundamentally change it's very biased in what it chooses to include and what it doesn't choose to include and so sadly, most of the

42:10

Roman Catholic apologists that I've had encounters with that was the depth of their knowledge of church history was they were just pulling out of something like Jurgens rather than actually dealing with the early church fathers in a broader context, that's what

42:22

I meant by a Roman Catholic quote book believe it or not, Johnny, we now have full phone lines so what was your second question?

42:27

Okay, my second question was, do you have any statements or do you know of any statements from the church fathers, because Tim told me that you don't hear any of the church fathers speaking the way

42:38

Protestants do, talking about the Solas and things like that not just Sola Scriptura, but do we have any of them talking about Sola Fide or Sola Gratia or anything

42:47

Yes, in fact I just finished a section in a book that will be coming out,

42:53

Lord willing in the spring from Bethany House Publishers called The God Who Justifies, that specifically addresses this issue for Sola Fide, I would address you to the first few actually about the first 40 pages of Alistair McGrath's book

43:08

Justitia Dei, which specifically points out and documents the fact that the doctrine of justification especially as pronounced by Paul was not something that the early church fathers addressed it simply was not a subject that they were that they ever get into, they never discuss the meaning of the word as it was derived from the

43:28

Septuagint or the Hebrew language or anything like that, and so as such to attempt to quote them outside of the few quotes that we have provided, from for example section 32 of Clement's letter to the

43:41

Corinthians chapter 9 of Matheites' letter to Dionysius, both of those clearly present

43:48

Sola Fide in their context but to try to find in the broader context of the early church fathers a discussion of a subject that they were not discussing is pretty difficult to do.

43:58

As to the issue of Sola Scriptura I am very much looking forward, Johnny to seeing

44:03

Mr. Staples and Mr. Madrid and Mr. Ray and all the others attempt to respond to the book that will be coming out,

44:12

Lord willing, next month I think it will probably be more like January but the book that will be coming out, and I don't think everyone knows this is happening now it's been discussed in a number of different venues but Bill Webster and David King have quite honestly written a nuclear bomb

44:30

I have seen major sections of it in the sense of as it has been being written and I can tell you now that the work that is coming out on Sola Scriptura from Bill Webster and David King will be the most thorough, complete defense of Sola Scriptura biblically and historically that has been produced since the

44:52

Reformation bar none. And I can guarantee you that the instant that it is available we will know it and it will be the first thing you see on the main page at www .aomin

45:05

.org so the best way to know exactly when that work is going to be available right now it's sitting with small print at 900 pages in length it is absolutely

45:19

I would love to see Mr. Staples attempt to even begin to respond to the massive amount of information that this work contains including material that has not appeared in the

45:34

English language before. I don't think I'm telling anything I shouldn't say to mention that last night

45:40

I was working on a little section trying to figure out the syntax of something that hadn't been translated before from the

45:47

Greek language and so I just want folks to be excited about the fact that even though this is going to be a very large work that I want people,

45:57

I want to challenge the people who listen to The Dividing Line to be prepared to get hold of this work as soon as it comes out.

46:05

I don't care how long it is you need to have it, you need to get it for your pastor and you need to set aside the time to read it for yourself it's going to take discipline because it's not short it's not soundbite theology but this is the area that Rome is attacking and this is the most significant work to come out on this subject since the

46:24

Reformation and so I want to get people excited about it now. What's the name of the book by the way? I'm not sure of the subtitle but it's just simply

46:32

Sola Scriptura and there will be a subtitle I believe that comes from that. I could be wrong, believe me it will replace the

46:39

Potter's Freedom on the main page as soon as that comes out so just keep an eye on the website and you'll be able to see when it comes around.

46:46

Thank you, God bless you. 602 -274 -1360 and we need to go to Michael up in Ogden, New York.

46:56

Hey Mike. How are you doing today? Doing pretty good. Enjoying today's program just a quick comment,

47:02

I can't wait for that new book to come out, I'm reserving space for it now sounds like it's going to be an excellent book and I just can't wait to read it but my question today is

47:12

I've done some studying on the Apocrypha and there are many, countless

47:18

Church Fathers who reject the Apocrypha as being inspired by God and they reject it as Scripture and my question is approximately how many

47:29

Church Fathers between after the death of Christ and the start of the

47:35

New Testament Church up until the time of Jerome accept the Apocrypha including the

47:42

North African Fathers that we can number such as Augustine and others? Well that's a very interesting question basically as you look at the testimony of the early

47:51

Church the early Church Fathers that knew the most about the history of the

47:58

Old Testament, that knew the most about the Old Testament itself, about what the Jews believed the whole nine yards, those are the ones who would reject the

48:08

Apocryphal books of Scripture, the ones who knew the least about it and were the most influenced by the belief that the

48:14

Greek Septuagint was in essence inspired of God and was given to the

48:20

Church as a final version of the Old Testament would be the ones most likely to accept it because in the editions that were available to them at least some of the

48:31

Apocryphal books were included, sometimes all and the interesting thing is you'll find individuals who will take a mixture because there was more question about some of the

48:40

Apocryphal books, someone such as Athanasius would accept the additions to the canonical books for example to Jeremiah that are a part of the

48:51

Apocrypha basically because he was not aware that they were additions over against, they would accept those because they come from the

48:59

Septuagint over against others who would accept the freestanding books like the Maccabees or whatever it might be, so you've even got people in the middle who have some part of it and some part not of it really as you're probably aware the best book on this subject that is most in -depth unfortunately like so many good books it's not in print anymore but the book by Beckwith Roger Beckwith entitled

49:22

The Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church is certainly the most in -depth discussion of this.

49:29

I've read many excerpts, it sounds like an interesting piece of literature and I really do need to get a copy of it.

49:35

Yeah, you may have to do the interlibrary loan, go to Kinko's and drop the dimes in the photocopy routine to even get hold of it sadly, but it is well worth having he goes through it and provides a tremendous amount of information about the

49:49

Apocryphal books and their acceptance and rejection by individuals like Milito Sardis and Origen's discussion of them and so on and so forth it is just amazing to me to hear both

50:00

Catholic and I heard on a local program here Orthodox apologists saying that up until the

50:08

Reformation everyone accepted all of the Apocryphal books it is amazing, it's just so easily disproven that's why we do debates because once you've got both sides there you get to hear both sides and statements like that get shot down in flames so anyways,

50:26

Michael, thank you for holding on and thank you for your comments about the Apocrypha today Thank you, and I would like to say that our listeners do need to study about the origin of the

50:35

Apocrypha and how the early church accepted it because it was highly rejected Oh yes, well people need to know about these things because we're talking about Sola Scriptura and Catholic apologists and others will use it to undercut the authority of the scripture by going after the issue of the canon so having good information and being prepared to respond to it that's the best thing we can do.

50:55

Hey thanks Mike! God bless, bye bye. We're going to be real quick here let's talk to Luther!

51:02

Hello Luther! Hi! How is the beer and pretzels? Oh no, I don't drink beer and pretzels

51:09

That's a little joke, anybody who knew Luther knew he liked to discuss theology over beer and pretzels Well I didn't know him that well even though I'm named after him

51:18

The fact that the Roman church burned the stake and Copernicus was

51:26

I believe under house arrest for believing that the world was on the fringe of the universe whereas the

51:35

Catholics believed and stated it very firmly that the earth was the center of the universe and everything rotated around it do they still believe that?

51:46

No they don't and they would say that the Pope did not ex cathedra define that everything circles around the earth now they have developed very very intricate defenses of papal infallibility against this accusation

52:03

I don't think that they work I would direct folks to George Salmon's work The Infallibility of the

52:09

Church where he spends a number of pages on this and gives you I think the historical background but do be prepared for the fact that Catholic apologists have come up with some interesting ways around the historical fact that the church stood against that type of information and that the authority of the papacy was used to attempt to suppress it generally in almost every situation what you need to remember is that the

52:35

Catholic apologist believes that the Pope is infallible about anything he says unless he's wrong so if he's wrong then he wasn't speaking infallibly and if he can't be proven wrong then it was infallible so it's sort of a catch 22 situation there that really doesn't actually accomplish a whole lot but that's basically the way it works thank you for calling in sir we'll get to our last caller real quick Patty in Phoenix do you have time for this?

53:03

I think according to my clock here I've got about one minute I was basically wondering why

53:09

I have such a drive to learn everything I can about apologetics and pretty much everyone

53:14

I know Catholics and non -Catholics they don't have that and I'm wondering if it's like a spiritual gift thing if it's just my personality or why you have to learn it all when you should open your mouth and you should be able to evangelize without a lot of training how does that all tie in?

53:29

well very very quickly the scripture tells us that we are to grow in the grace and knowledge of the

53:34

Lord Jesus Christ and the scripture tells us that we're not to lay hands upon someone quickly that means there is a process of growth there is a process of study and it's lifelong in fact so it's not just a matter of opening one's mouth

53:47

I think those passages are talking about the promise of the spirit to be with us under persecution but why do you have that interest?

53:53

well the Lord lays that upon people's hearts we have a love for the truth and we want to defend that truth and do so to God's glory so I think that's the main thing that we can deal with at that point hey

54:04

Patty thank you very much sorry I went so long winded on everybody else but hey need to answer those questions thank you those of you who called in we really do appreciate it we'll be back again next week here on The Dividing Line The Dividing Line has been brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries if you'd like to contact us call us at 602 -973 -4602 or write us at P .O.

54:46

Box 37106 Phoenix Arizona 85069 you can also find us on the world wide web at aomin .org

54:54

that's A -O -M -I -N .O -R -G where you'll find a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates and tracks join us again next