The Marian Doctrines Pt 2 (White vs Matatics)

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We're now going to debate the issue of bodily assumption, and we're going to start out with a 10 -minute opening from Mr.

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Maddenhouse. I'm going to take one of my 10 minutes to make an announcement. I'm sorry, we didn't have the flyer to get the moderator so that it wouldn't come out of my time.

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It didn't come out of Mr. White's, but I will be back in this area. I said I'd be in Portland, Oregon this weekend at a conference, but in terms of something close, at the

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Mont Vale Ramada Inn on Sunday, August 25th, from 12 till 8, there will be a conference on evolution.

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There will be a brilliant microbiologist from Lehigh University, Dr.

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Michael Bee, and Dr. William Mera, a well -known philosopher from the

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University, Dr. Alice von Hildebrand, and myself will be speaking on the philosophical, scientific, and the biblical evidence against evolution at Sunday, August 25th, from noon till 8 p .m.

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There's a dinner included as well with that, and that's Mont Vale Ramada Inn. So you can get more details about that maybe from this gentleman here afterwards.

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I'd also like to give very quickly my address so that it gets on the tape.

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If you would like a free catalog of our various audio and video tapes, we have a few copies here, but we're going to run out.

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You can write to us at Biblical Foundation's Post Office Box 721 -245,

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Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, 73172, or you can call us at 405 -373 -4134, or fax us at 405 -373 -4135.

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We have a lot of material for you. In fact, I have a 90 -minute tape on the

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Biblical Foundations of Marian Beliefs in which I have a little more time to develop these in a little less hurried pace than we have here getting through all four of them in the very quick 10 -minute directions back and forth.

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This third doctrine that I want to look at now that the Catholic Church proclaims as part of the

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Good News, the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, is that Jesus Christ, our

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Lord and Savior, did for his mother at the end of her life upon earth what he will one day do for the entire

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Church, which is also, as I said, on a grander scale this spouse of the

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Lord. You need to keep in mind the parallel between Mary and the Church.

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In fact, the Second Vatican Council's Dogmatic Constitution on the Church has a marvelous way in its closing sections of connecting the doctrine of Mary to the doctrine of the

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Church, showing the similarity, showing that she is part of the Church. She is the first part.

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She is the first Christian, a Christian before Christ. So she's a prototype and a preview of what the

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Church as a whole will experience. Please keep that in mind, folks. When people say, when

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Mr. Whitey announces that certain claims made about Mary are scandalous or offensive or contrary to Scripture, nothing is said of Mary that will one day not be true of the

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Church itself. We will enjoy in heaven, those that make it there by the grace of God, the same sinlessness that Mary possessed from the moment of her conception.

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We will also be like that, we will be that virgin espoused to God.

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St. Paul uses that language in 2 Corinthians 11, too, and he says, I espouse you to Christ as a virgin.

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I don't want you to be seduced by the cunning of the devil. In 2 Corinthians 11, we clearly have in mind this affection seen in Genesis chapter 3, contrasting once again the

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Church with me. He wants the Church to maintain its innocence, its virginity, spiritually speaking. And we also know from the statements of St.

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Paul in 1 Thessalonians chapter 4 and 1 Corinthians chapter 15 that when our

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Lord returns in power and glory, that he will catch his bride up off of the earth in a phenomenon that has been popularized by the term rapture.

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Many people might say, well, as a Catholic, you know, I don't believe in the rapture. The term is not important.

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In fact, the word rapture actually comes from a Latin verb. Since I'm a traditional Catholic, I don't have any prejudice against Latin.

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It comes from the verb rapere, meaning to snatch or to seize or to take up. And if you look at 1

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Thessalonians 4 verses 13 through 17 and then 1 Corinthians 15, 22 and following, you will see the very clear doctrine that when our

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Lord returns, he will catch the Church up off of the earth and he will glorify her.

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He will transform her mortality into immortality so that she can enjoy the perpetual presence of God and, in fact, sit at his right hand, sit in his seat, in his throne.

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He says, to the one who overcomes, I will grant a seat with me in my throne as my father has granted me to sit in his throne.

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I'm quoting our Lord's words there in the Apocalypse, chapter 3. So all of these things were experienced by Mary at the end of her life.

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And that's what we deal with in the second half of the evening. Her assumption, her bodily being taken up off of the earth at the end of her life and then her coronation as queen.

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You might say, those are outrageous claims. And in a sense, they are. Mary is the only person that has experienced that yet.

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But she does it to show us what we will all experience on the grander scale. Now you say, is there any indication in Scripture that she would be appropriately given this type of privilege?

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Yes, there is. In the Old Testament, we have several interesting examples, scriptural examples now, of rather unusual deaths, of unusual departures from this earth of unusually righteous people.

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So the genre of unusual deaths of unusually righteous people is already established in the

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Old Testament. We see it in the case of Enoch, who walked with God. And then he was gone, for God took him in Genesis chapter 5, verse 23.

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And we read in Hebrews 11, 5, another commentary on it, that by faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death.

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And he was not found, because God had taken him. And before he was taken, he was attested as having pleased

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God. End of quote. We read something similar about Moses, one of the two great leaders of the law and the prophets,

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Moses embodying the law and Elias, or Elias embodying the prophets, that Moses' departure from this earth was also somewhat mysterious.

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That God himself buried him, we read in Deuteronomy 34, verse 6. There's something rather unusual about the disposition of Moses' body.

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And we read in the New Testament, in Jude chapter 9, that as a result, a dispute arose over the archangel

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Michael and the devil over the disposition of the body of Moses. But I think the most interesting example of this unusual death of an unusually righteous person is the prophet

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Elijah. At the end of his life, this great prophet is taken up into heaven in a spectacularly dramatic fashion, as God honors his prophet who had honored him throughout his life.

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Now, Elias was not a perfect prophet. He quailed before the prayer of Jezebel, and he fled into the wilderness.

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God had to restore him to fellowship, and in fact, he lost his prophetic mantle to Elisha, his successor.

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But what's interesting is that Elias, or Elijah, I'll stick with the more familiar

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Protestant form of the name. Elijah is the spiritual father of his successor

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Elias, or Elisha. Excuse me. Elijah is the father of Elisha.

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Elisha asks to remember, let me have a double portion of the spirit that you have. That's his request as Elijah's about to depart.

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He didn't mean, I want twice as much as you. He meant, of all the prophets who follow you, there was a guild of prophets. We can see there in the books of Kings.

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I want to be your spiritual firstborn son. The firstborn son in Mosaic law gets the double portion, you see.

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If we were under Hebrew law, then I would divide my inheritance among my seven kids, not in seven parts, but in eight.

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And my son Daniel, 12, would get two eights, or a fourth. There were reasons for that, legally and economically, that they were going to detain us now.

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The point is simply this. And in fact, he says to Elijah, my father, my father. The cherries and sugar horse are there when he leaves.

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So Elijah is the father, spiritually speaking, of Elisha. Elisha, New Testament scholars admit, is a type, the clearest type, in his miracle underwriting powers of our

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Lord Jesus Christ in the New Testament. And our Lord does miracles such as multiplying bread and miracles involving water and raising the dead that are only done by Elisha.

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So Elisha is a type of Christ. Elisha is the son of Elijah. Christ, we know, is the son of Mary.

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So we're led by a kind of geometric reasoning to at least wonder whether there might be any sort of parallel, since we draw the three sides of the parallelogram, whether Elijah, in any sense, is a type of Our Lady.

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We see that she is, in many ways, in Scripture. That, in fact, her speaking in these last days is going to be able to warn people to turn back to God.

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She comes in the spirit and power of Elijah as John the Baptizer came before the first coming of Our Lord to make people ready, to get them ready.

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Now, if that's the case, then Mary would also be honored in the special way she left the earth.

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She did not ascend. Christ alone ascended by his own divine power. But she was taken up off the earth as Elijah was.

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If God could do it for Elijah, sinful prophet that he was and perfect that he was, why not for the

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Blessed Mother herself? And the fact is that it's a universal tradition in the early church that there is no place on earth where Mary's body is remained.

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It's amazing that there is no city on earth, no Christian center, in which there's a tradition that St.

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Paul died here, St. Peter, their relics. The relics of Mary would have been more enthusiastically sought after than the relics we know.

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But there's a deafening silence on this issue. The testimony is constant that there is no place where Mary's earthly remains exist upon earth.

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And therefore, this early feast grew up of the body assumption.

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It was finally defined by Pope Pius XII in our day in 1950. I would argue, therefore, that there is biblical indications that it would be appropriate that one would do this, both in the

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Old Testament type and in the fact that scripturally, she foreshadows the rapture of the church at the end of time.

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And there's nothing in scripture that shows that she died in a very particular place. Okay, and with this,

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I'll close the way. Thank you very much. There is, of course, nothing in scripture that indicates that almost anyone ever mentioned that scripture died in a very particular place, and that we do not assume that any of them were possibly assumed.

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We have here a doctrine that, as Luther God says, direct and express scriptural proofs are not to be had.

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And many Roman Catholic theologians admit this doctrine is from tradition. It is from tradition only.

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And to find elements of it in scripture simply doesn't work. In fact, finding it in the tradition of the church doesn't work either, because this is not a doctrine that was believed by anyone and set forth as a dogma by anyone for at least 1 ,000 years, to any significant degree.

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Yes, starting about the middle 7th century is when people started talking about it, and I'll tell you where they got it from in just a moment.

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But I want you to keep one thing in mind, my friends. We are not here this evening to debate possibilities.

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We are not here this evening to debate, well, it's possible that maybe this word means this, and maybe if you see this type over here, and maybe if you take this analogy over here and put it all together, you have one doctrine.

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Then maybe it's a part of that doctrine. It's possible to maybe see in this person a picture of this person, and maybe when you put it all together, you have this.

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Rome says that up to this point, now the next point isn't going to be the case, but up to this point, this isn't speculation, this isn't something you can disagree on, this is doctrine binding upon the conscience of the

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Christian person. And my friends, when you say that something is binding upon someone with the power of the anathema of the church behind it, you cannot simply present to us mere possibilities.

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You cannot present to us, well, it's possible to see it this way, it's possible to see it that way. If all Mr. Madison gives you tonight, and I submit that's all he has to give you tonight, is, well, it's possible to see this, or it's possible to see that.

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Let me give you an example. It is possible that the Arizona Cardinals will win their first football game this year, in the

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NFL, the first game they're going to play. Not highly likely, but it's possible. In fact, if you guys would like another football team here, we would be very glad to give you ours.

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It's possible they might win the first game. It is possible they might win the second game. In fact, it's possible they might win the third game.

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But when you go to the point of saying they're going to win all three games in a row, it gets less likely and less likely and less likely the farther you go down the line.

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Speculative arguments have that nature. If you start speculating about the Immaculate Conception, and you speculate about the professional virginity, and then base that and speculate about the bodily assumption, by the time you get to the end of your argument, you're just talking about pure speculation.

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And yet, Rome binds this upon the conscience of men with the anathema of God. I submit to you, that cannot be done.

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Mr. Matic says, keep in mind the parallel of Mary and the Church. Well, you have to keep that in mind.

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You know why? Because you'll never see any of this argumentation unless you've already accepted that parallel. May I ask you, or Mr.

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Matic, where does the Bible present this parallel? Where do the New Testament writers present it?

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In fact, if the New Testament writers have this in their mind, why is it that Mary disappears after a brief appearance in Acts?

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Oh, doesn't she appear in Revelation chapter 12? Well, even the early Church interpreted that differently, and Roman Catholic scholars disagree about that.

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But let's put that one aside. Where's Mary? When Paul writes in the Churches about the function of the Church, and the nature of the

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Church, and Ephesians, where's Mary? She's nowhere to be found. Why? Because she's not parallel to the

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Church. Hold Mr. Matic to the point of proving. Mr.

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Matic says, My only authority is the word of God alone, quote unquote. The word isn't parallel to Mary.

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We've been presented with an alleged parallel in the Old Testament to Elisha. You see, since Elisha asks for a double portion of the

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Spirit from Elijah, that makes a relationship of father -child there, and since Elisha's like Jesus, that makes

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Elijah like Mary, and since Elijah's taken up to heaven the fiery chariot, Mary must be too. My friends, that type of argumentation can be used to prove anything you want it to be used to prove.

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My Mormon friends use it to prove Joseph Smith prophesied in the Bible. Exact same type of argument, and I asked

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Mr. Matic to show me one person in the first 1 ,000 years of the Church who made the same application.

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He talks about the universal tradition of the Church. The universal tradition, he used the term, universal tradition.

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Don't know where Mary's ever married, yet Roman Catholic Mariologist Giovanni Maitre, the

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Virgin Mary of the Roman Catholic Marian Doctrine, says she partied humbly and modestly as she had lived it and not remember the place where Mary, even if the traditions were in the mid -fifth century, gave her a sepulchre near Jerusalem like Arabic Yosemite.

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Why is it that, quote unquote, tradition, which precedes the first appearance of the bodily assumption in the historical documents by over two centuries, what

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Mr. Matic would call it, why? Because it's not a matter of what history or the Bible says, it's what the overriding authority of the

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Roman Catholic Church says that determines the interpretation of history, and the Bible itself, and the very word of the

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Bible. Where did this belief come from? Can you find anyone in the first century who believed it? No. Second?

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No. Third? No. Fourth? No. Fifth? No. Sixth? No. Middle of the seventh century toward the end of that time, you encounter this belief.

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Ludwig Ott says, the idea of the bodily assumption of Mary is first expressed in certain transitive narratives of the fifth and sixth centuries.

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Even though these are apocryphal, they bear witness to the faith of the generation in which they are written, despite their legendary clothing.

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Well, what is the good Dr. Ott saying? Roman Catholic historian and Mariologist Juniper Carroll has said, the first expressed witness in the

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West to a genuine assumption comes to us in an apocryphal gospel, the Translatus Beati Mariae of Pseudo -Volito.

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What's that? It is a document that was put on what we would call today the index, called heretical and placed under the anathema by Pope Galatius I, who, according to records, is the first pope that we know who was called

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Vicar of Christ. He said it was heretical. His decree was affirmed by Pope Ormistus.

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Karl Rahner, in commenting on these sources, says, at best, it can only be considered as evidence of theological speculation about Mary, which has been given the form of an ostensible historical account.

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He says that there is nothing of any historical value in such apocryphal works. It was unbelieved by the leading fathers of the

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Christian church for 1 ,000 years. And even when it began to enter into the tradition, it was rejected by most, until Nuns Scotus finally helped push things along, and others.

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I may be wrong about him. I'll give you the magical conception. It took forever. Now, in opposition to this, in the

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East, at least since the 6th century, and in Rome, at any rate, since the end of the 7th, the church celebrated the Feast of the

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Dormition of Mary. And yet, as this doctrine became more popular, the name of the feast was changed to the

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Feast of the Assumption of Mary. Odd in this, we have no biblical evidence.

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Mr. Maddox presents to us types and shadows. In fact, he even presents, in some of his talks,

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Caleb. Caleb as being a picture of Mary, because he crosses the River Jordan.

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The River Jordan represents death, and he is grieved with the sorrow of unbelief of his people. And he follows the

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Lord's will, and this makes him a parallel to Mary. In fact, he even comes up with Mary's age, which he's assumed at 85 years of age.

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My friends, anything can be proven by this type of argumentation.

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I can find a parallel to John, the beloved disciple, and all sorts of things in the Old Testament you can find.

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The Psalms would be a rich place to find parallels to anything you want to find. This isn't biblical exegesis.

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It's biblical eisegesis, reading in the text that which was never a part of the thinking of the original authors, and in this case, the earliest

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Christians all along. It is a doctrine that plainly parallels the person of Jesus Christ in an unbiblical and unscriptural manner.

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See the parallels as they build up. The act of conception, potential affinity, now the bodily assumption,

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Jesus assumed, soon resurrected into heaven. Mary's bodily assumed into heaven to do what? To sit as queen of heaven and receive the next section.

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Is this what the scriptures teach about Mary's goal? That's it. Again, my only authority is the word of God alone.

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My friends, if your only authority is the word of God alone, you will never, ever believe that Mary's bodily assumed into heaven, because there's nothing in the

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Bible that even begins to suggest it. So I suggest to you that it is not a true statement to say my only authority is the word of God alone.

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My only authority is the word of God alone as interpreted by your own Catholic Church, which claims the ability to do so through the power of apostolic succession.

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That's what we need to understand to our mind. So we have a doctrine that comes to us from anathematized, apocryphal gospels and has not become binding until this century.

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Is that binding upon a Christian? Friends, no, it's not. Only that which is found in the inspired scriptures is binding upon the conscience of the

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Christian. Thank you. Okay, now we will have Mr. Matics questioning first.

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Mr. White, your closing statement now was only that which is found in scripture is binding on the conscience.

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Of course, that ignores what I quoted from scripture itself. 2nd Thessalonians 2 .14, we have to believe everything that the apostles taught, whether it was written or oral.

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Actually, 2nd Thessalonians 2 .15 in the passage says that we are to hold to the traditions that were delivered to us in two ways.

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You didn't answer my question. You did ask a question. You said I ignored something I'm pointing out to you.

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I'm not ignoring anything at all. That was an assertion. My question, based on that assertion, is do you understand, first of all, that the

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Catholic Church claims that Mary is a student in heaven based on a historical fact, not upon speculations about possibility?

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Do you understand? I'm not asking you to agree. I know that you don't. But do you understand that the Catholic Church claims that the assumption of Mary in heaven was a verified, witnessed, historical fact like the ascension of Jesus in heaven?

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Do you understand that? OK. Then isn't it a little bit misleading to the audience? I would suggest that it is, to argue that I'm simply giving you possibilities based on typology and speculations.

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The same authority that we have for believing in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, the same authority we have for believing in his ascension, is the authority we have for believing in the assumption of Mary.

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Is that a question or an assertion? I'm asking you. Isn't it, in fact, the

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Catholic claim that it's the same authority? I realize you reject that. I reject that, and that is the

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Catholic claim. All right. I'm simply saying you're misrepresenting it by saying that it's only after, you know, centuries and centuries that all of a sudden they do that.

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Now you're misrepresenting me because I didn't say that. I said that your arguments for the bodily assumption, not the

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Catholic understanding of it, according to the dogmatic teachings of the Church, but that your arguments for this are based upon possibilities and probabilities.

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But do you not understand the difference, Mr. White, between showing the appropriateness of something by spiritual or scriptural analogies and the basis on which we know it?

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Do you understand what the Catholic teaching says? The reason we know that Mary was ascended to heaven is because it was a witnessed fact.

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It was a historical fact. It's space -time history, like the resurrection of Jesus Christ and like his ascension.

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I would say there are many Roman Catholic scholars who would not say that, Mr. Matics, because it is quite obvious that the ascension of Jesus Christ is witnessed to by eyewitnesses whose records we have.

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And the bodily assumption of Mary, we have absolutely positively known documentable historical evidence for a minimum of 600 years.

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So are you saying that the actual proclamation of the Church says that there is the same historical document?

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I didn't say that. Don't put words in my mouth. I didn't say the same. I said that when you do get references in the early

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Church Proverbs of the Ascension of Mary, that they, in the passage referred to, they speak of the apostles gathering about and witnessing the taking of her body into heaven.

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I'm sorry. I only have three minutes. I'm sorry.

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That's all right. There's two more. Two more minutes. All right. You just asked me a question about the early

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Church Proverbs. What early Church Proverbs did you say? I need to answer the question. You said they gathered. They said they gathered around.

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Who? An early Church Proverbs said that. St. John of Amnesty, for example, when you quote it. What's it say?

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In his homily. I'm simply saying when he preaches a homily on the dormition of Mary, who would be referred to as the

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Immaculate One, by the way, he refers to the scene of the apostles gathering.

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He describes it as a historical event, not as something that he infers from spiritual parallels or typologies.

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I said what I wanted to say, and thank you. Mr. White, will you also agree to the audience that the disagreements as to whether Mary actually died and then was taken into heaven, whether she fell asleep or whether she immediately translated from an earthly to a homily state, all of those are not bound up in the dogma.

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The dogma itself makes no statement about how her life ended. It's simply that at the end of her life, whether she died or not, her body was taken from her.

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Absolutely. Will you agree to that? I made no comment to the contrary. OK. Well, you didn't, but you do something that you enjoy doing, and that is by saying there was all this dispute about whether she fell asleep and so the name of the priest was changed in the

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Dormition of the Sonnet. That's irrelevant to the dogma because the dogma does not require us to believe that Mary died, that she fell asleep, or that she simply entered heaven in her life.

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That's not part of the dogma. So it's a lot of smoke screen. No. I will repeat the charge. It's smoke screen.

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The obvious fact for the person who wants to analyze the historical background of this, rather than just accepting it by the

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Ipsodixon of the Roman Church, is, is there historical evidence contrary to the doctrine?

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And the feast, the Dormition of Mary, and the fact that it had to be changed to the Assuntio of Mary over time is a historical fact that needs to be dealt with and indicates to me as a historian that that particular feast would not have existed had this been an apostolic doctrine that people understood a tradition that was being passed down.

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No. The Dormition is a perfectly valid concept. That's what I'm saying.

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I realize what you're saying, but I'm pointing out that you're assuming that this was the doctrine. I'm pointing out that people believed that Mary died and they didn't have to say that she was a sinner.

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Your turn. Mr. Matrix, what's the date on John Danzig? You were just reading that?

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Let's see. From about 8645 to 8749 is roughly the lifespan.

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OK, so the middle of the eighth century. So what I had said in regards to the transitive literature, are you familiar with the claim by numerous

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Mariologists and scholars, Roman Catholic scholars in fact, including Hobbes? Do you agree, let me put it this way, that the idea of the body of Southern America is first expressed in certain transitive narratives of the fifth, sixth century?

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Would you agree with that statement? Of the extant literature that we have, yes. But I'm sure you're prejudiced against literature that has some gap with the events that progress.

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OK. We have a lot of Augustine's writings, right? Yes, we do. Did he say a lot about Mary? Here and there in his writings, yes.

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Did he ever say anything about it? Not to my knowledge. Ambrose was a real big fan of Mary's devotion, wasn't he?

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Not especially among the church fathers of his age. He did say a lot about Mary, though, didn't he? Not out of the ordinary interest of the contemporaries.

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Did he say anything about the doctrine? I'm not aware that he did. Did anyone in the second century say anything about the doctrine?

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Well, again, that's a big question. In the extant literature, did anyone say anything about the doctrine?

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We don't have an explicit testament in the early second century.

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Yes, you're right. Third century? That's really bad history. I'm asking questions, Mr. Matzak. Fourth century?

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No. Not to my knowledge. Did these individuals during this great time and you're familiar with the 38 volume set of the early church fathers published later?

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I haven't. OK. So what? And in all of that set of writings, are there not numerous commentaries on the

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Gospels by people like Augustine and John Chrysostom? You understand,

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Mr. White, that the Gospels, the commentary on the Gospels, I'm not going to mention this because the Gospels don't record their assumption precisely because they were written prior to the fact that it practically happened.

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So do they comment on any of the passages that you use, including Caleb, Elijah? In fact, do you know of anyone who has made identification of Elijah with Mary in the first 1 ,000 years of the trade?

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It's irrelevant. OK. Well, when we talk about the solar system, wouldn't it not be fair then to say that the universal tradition of the church stands solidly against the position that you now define as being the position of the church?

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No, I wouldn't say that at all. So you can't show me this doctrine in the greatest clauses of the church for six or seven centuries.

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And yet, they discuss these things. They discuss Mary. They discuss all sorts of other aspects of Mary. You may reference them like Jerome.

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Jerome, did he mention any of it? Mr. White, you bring your Protestant prejudice in favor of written documentation.

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So does Keturah. Excuse me, let me finish. You're bringing it to the life of the early church. One thing you're forgetting,

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Mr. White, that life is not something found in books. And simply because we don't have books and we only have a fraction of the books that were written at that time, doesn't mean that the church didn't believe things, celebrate them.

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You've got to look at things like liturgy, Mr. White. You've got to look at things like feast days. You've got to look at things like when you're piloting a ship.

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You have the assumption that Mary is asking the questions, right? Yes. So they're there. So Opp was wrong that the first expression did not mean the transitive narrative.

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No, you didn't quote him correctly. He said the idea that Opp, the assumption that Mary is first expressed in certain transitive narratives of the fifth and sixth centuries, even though these were apocryphal, they bear witness to the faith of generations, they bear witness by their lives.

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Why is he referring to the writings? I'm saying that certain truths are celebrated by the church in many ways other than outside of written documentation.

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How do you know they were being celebrated outside of written documentation? By the tradition of the way the church celebrates, the way it carries out its liturgic sacraments.

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The liturgic sacraments. Jennifer Carroll is a noted author on this. And he says, in these conditions, we shall not ask patristic thought, as some theologians still do today in one form or another, to transmit to us with respect to the assumption a truth received as such in the beginning and faithfully communicated in subsequent ages, such an attitude would not fit the facts.

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Is he wrong? You're right. Well, I don't have to agree with what every

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Catholic scholar, especially those in view of the spirit of rationalism, might say today. In other words, they might take more skeptical views than a more believing

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Catholic would. So the view of historical evidence, even though you haven't presented any historical evidence, if you have a believing view of historical evidence, you'll see it even though you can't present it to us.

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No, I'm not saying that. I'm saying you can present scriptural prototypes. You can present the fact that the church enjoyed this and celebrated this.

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And church history books would tell you that. And you don't have to have learning treaties and so on for it to be true.

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That's my simple point. OK. We'll have a closing by Mr.

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Benedict. Three minutes. I would very simply dispute

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Mr. White's contention. I'm sorry I'm looking this way because my worthy opponents are over here. And I feel like I've been ignoring the people on this side of the room.

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I would dispute Mr. White's contention that this type of argumentation can be used to prove anything. I would like to see if you can give us some examples of it.

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The fact is that Protestants themselves, in their commentaries, in their writings, say on the tabernacle, engage in typologies and analogies all the time.

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That's a common approach. And in fact, for someone who reads the Church Fathers, as diligently as Mr. White claims to do, he should be aware of the fact that this is the very stuff and substance of biblical exegesis.

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This is how the early church understood scripture. They drew inferences.

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They saw allusions. They drew parallels. And Mr. White seems to have a problem with parallels.

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He says that the Assumption of Mary is this offensive parallel to the Assumption of Jesus. First of all,

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I ask him if he understood that there's an absolutely called -in distinction between the

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Assumption of Jesus under his own power and the Assumption of Mary. Why does that threaten the unique divine power of Jesus?

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And say the Assumption of Elijah in the Old Testament does not. If you can accept the one, why can't you accept the other when

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Mary is far more worthy of it? Even Protestants would submit that Mary was a model disciple of Jesus, even if they wouldn't go so far as to admit her immaculate conception of sinlessness.

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If God could honor an imperfect servant under the Old Covenant, then how much more could he honor, even by Protestant standards, a more acceptable servant under the

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New? Secondly, this idea of parallels bothers Mr. White with, oh my gosh, she's the

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Queen of Heaven, the parallel between Mary and the Church. But the fact is that this union between Jesus and Mary is taught in the

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New Testament, as Mr. White would have to admit, between Christ and the Church. The Church is called his body.

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What more intimate union, what more intimate image to describe union could be conceived? The Church is described as his spouse.

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Jesus is King of kings and Lord of lords. Therefore, the Church is his queen. We sit on his throne,

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Jesus said. Do you not know that we will judge angels, St. Paul says of the Corinthians, in 1

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Corinthians 6. So to see Mary's exaltation at the end of her life, to see that she's given a queenly departure from this earth and a queenly coronation, as we'll see in the next segment, is not to predicate anything about Mary.

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It is not to predicate the Church. And if Mr. White has a problem with this concept, that Jesus has to be in a vacuum by himself for his glory to remain intact, then he has a problem with the

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New Testament itself. It's just, once again, either or dichotomy. It's got to be Jesus only, and no place for anything around because it's going to somehow jeopardize the glory of Jesus or detract from it, rather than seeing the biblical concept that it reflects and refracts the glory of Jesus.

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The genius of an artist is reflected in his masterpieces rather than diminished thereby.

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Thank you. Mr. Mantix has pointed out that the method of allegorical interpretation has a great tradition in the early

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Baptist. He's exactly right. There's no question about that at all. In fact, the farther and farther they became separated from the

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Old Testament backgrounds of the Old Testament, the less accurate the interpretation of the Old Testament became. Many Roman Catholic scholars recognize that today.

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In fact, it's interesting to look at some of these statements of the Vatican over this past century, saying that you need to go back to the original meanings of the text and examine those original meanings for your support.

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But the point is, since those statements of origin onward were extremely allegorical, what does it tell you that they never came up with the allegories of Jerry?

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I mean, that was their bread and butter, but they didn't come up with them. Because they didn't believe the doctrines that Jerry does. They didn't believe like he did.

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In fact, if I've got a problem with allegory, it's interesting. When Protestants argue that the

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Church of Rome has identified the Book of Revelation, and in a very negative way, how do

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Roman Catholic apologists normally respond? Oh, that's just allegorical interpretation. That doesn't really have any validity.

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You can't have your cake and eat it at the same time. Mr. Matzik has said, for example, this term tradition.

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He said that the tradition is constant, that God, because she was sinless, preserved her with a body, a beautiful body and face, the figure of a young woman.

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Like he was talking about Caleb. She was kept young because she never sinned. My friends, go to the original documents.

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When I talk about a historical source, check me out. When I talk about tradition, check me out.

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Do the same thing for both of us. I am confident that if you do that, the debate will go very well for me on this evening.

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Miller examples writing about the arguments used to support the Bible Assumption said, the Protestant confused scripture is the only secure anchor for theology.

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Catholic mereology, having cut loose from this anchor, is hopelessly adrift upon a sea of splendid but dubious Roman logic.

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And they quote Victor Vespasian, who said, the non -Catholic student of mereology who tries to follow its shaky premises and strained conclusions finds himself in a kind of theological

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Alice in Wonderland, in which things, despite their seeming logic, become curiouser and curiouser.

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We have started from slim biblical evidence. We've gone to no biblical evidence.

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And yet you have just heard, in this section of the debate, the assertion made that the very same basis upon which we know that Jesus Christ rose from the dead is the basis upon which we know the bodily assumption.

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That scares me to death. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is a historical fact that we can go back to and demonstrate.

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We do not have to depend upon Gnostic, un -Christian sources from the middle of the 6th or 7th century for the resurrection of Jesus Christ and to parallel it is

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Nihilism. Thank you. All right. All right, all right. All right. Be careful now.

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OK, now we'll have the final segment of the debate on the coronation, mediation, and Mr.

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White will open it. It is most unfortunate that it falls to me to both present as well as rebut

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Roman Catholic concepts regarding Mary as mediatrix, co -redemptrix of Christ, and queen of heaven. It is unfortunate because while I have heard

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Mr. Benedict speak about such things, it is quite clear that there are many Roman Catholics who not hold these ideas, either as having binding and doctrinal authority or as being reflective of the real teaching of the

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Church. I'll begin with the words of Karl Keating in his book Catholicism and Fundamentalism. Mary is a mediatrix of all graces because of her intercession for us in heaven.

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What this means is that no grace accrues to us without her intercession. We are not to suppose that we are obliged to ask for all graces through her, that her intercession is intrinsically necessary for the application of graces.

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Instead, through God's will, grace is not conferred on anyone without Mary's cooperation. True, scriptural proofs for this are lacking.

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Theologians refer to a mystical interpretation of John 19 .26, woman behold thy son, son behold thy mother.

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An interpretation sees John as the representative of the human race, Mary thus becoming the spiritual mother. They know the doctrine is reasonable because it is fitting.

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This is a little consolation to fundamentalists, of course, who see little fitting about it, and who put little stock in speculative theology and even less in mystical theology.

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As a practical matter, this kind of doctrine is one of the last accepted by someone approaching the Church, particularly someone coming to the

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Church from Fundamentalism, and is accepted ultimately on the authority of the Church rather than on the authority of clear scriptural references.

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End quote. And to the final words written by Mr. Keating, I can only say amen. Unless one is accepted the ultimate and final authority of Roman hierarchy, one will never find a reason to believe that Mary is queen of heaven, a mediatrix, or no grace accrues to men outside of her.

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Such beliefs are not only absent from the scripture in the early history of the Church, but are opposed to scripture and the teachings of the early

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Christians. There is little to be said for biblical arguments here. We have gone so far from anything that can logically or legitimately be called biblical exegesis that in most instances, it is better to just let the

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Roman Catholic apologists try to point to verses and let them stand as their own reputation. In fact, if such ideas as the queen mother in the

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Old Testament are brought forward this evening, these would serve as a good example of how far someone has to reach to find anything whatsoever that can be applied to what is obviously a non -scriptural and an ahistorical human tradition.

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But since my earlier quote mentioned one passage, John chapter 19, verses 25 and 27, I will simply allow

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Michael O 'Carroll, writing the theological encyclopedia of the Blessed Virgin Mary, to comment, quote, the fathers of the

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Church and early Christian writers did not so interpret the words of the dying Christ. Development of the idea of Mary's spiritual motherhood was slow and did not enter the consciousness of the

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Church until medieval times. During those early centuries, the sacred text did not immediately convey the notion.

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Lengthy reflection was needed to reach it, end quote. The idea that Mary is queen in heaven, a dispenser of grace and help, a prayer -answering mediatress, is the final capstone in the

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Roman Catholic attempt to present a parallel person mirroring the unique functions of Jesus Christ.

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Oh, yes, Rome is quick to deny such a thing, but the very fact that she has to make such strong statements that she's not compromising the unique dignity of Christ only shows how obvious it is that her doctrines lead inexorably to that end.

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It has often been said that there is only one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. And sadly, it is just as often pointed out by Roman Catholic apologists that just because there is only one mediator in the full sense does not mean that you can't have supported mediators in a lesser sense.

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The problem with such a position is twofold. First, it ignores the simple fact that in many, many places today,

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Mary has eclipsed Christ as the mediator. Such is obvious to anyone reading modern

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Marian literature. Listen to the words of Alphonsus Lucurius. He quotes Saint Bernard. Quote, the saint says,

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Christ is a faithful and powerful mediator between God and men. But in him, men fear the majesty of God.

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A mediator, then, was needed with the mediator himself. Nor could a more fitting one be found than Mary.

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End quote. Rather than the confident approach to the throne of grace promised in Christ Jesus, such tidings presents

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Christ as a stern judge to be feared, and hence not a fitting and merciful mediator. Much of this goes to the defects of Rome's doctrine of justification, salvation, and atonement.

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But for our purposes this evening, it is obvious that Mary's role as a mediator does not, in practice, remain subordinate to Christ.

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But most importantly, the position presented by Roman apologists ignores the point Paul is making.

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There is only one mediator between God and men because there is only one God -man. Jesus Christ is uniquely qualified to be the mediator.

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As God has all power, can hear all prayer, and can be worshipped, which is what prayer involves in the first place.

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As man, he laid down his perfect life, and hence has a basis published to intercede for his people, that being his all -sufficient, finished, and completed sacrifice.

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Hence, he is the only mediator, and no one else is suited to do what he alone can do. Mary is not a mediatrix of graces for many reasons.

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Grace comes from the Father and the Son, freely, sovereignly. It is a divine act to give divine grace. Mary is not divine.

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Mary cannot hear your prayers. She is not a condition, and she has no different standing before God than any other redeemed person this day.

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Philip Schaaf, the church historian, writing long before the great advances in Marian dogma that embarked this century, saw the situation plainly, and he spoke bluntly to be prepared.

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After the middle of the fourth century, Mary did, the church, overstep the wholesome biblical limit and transform the mother of the

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Lord into a mother of God, the humble handmaid of the Lord into a queen of heaven, a highly favored into a dispenser of favors, the blessed among women into an intercessor above all women, nay, we may almost say, the redeemed daughter of Paul of Adam, who is nowhere in holy scriptures exempt from the universal sinfulness, into a sinlessly holy co -redeemer.

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Thus, the veneration of Mary gradually degenerated into the worship of Mary, and this took so deep hold upon the popular religious life of the

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Middle Age, that in spite of all scholastic distinctions between Latria, Dulia, and Hypergulia, Mariolatry practically prevailed over the worship of Christ.

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Roman devotions scarily uttered Peter and Oster without an Ave Maria, and turned even more frequently and naturally to the compassionate, tender -hearted mother for her intercessions than to the eternal son of God, thinking that in this indirect way, the desire to give is more sure to be obtained.

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To this day, the worship of Mary is one of the principal points of separation between Greco -Roman Catholicism and evangelical

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Protestantism. It is one of the strongest expressions of the fundamental Romish error of unduly exalting the human factors or instruments of redemption, and obstructing or rendering needless the immediate access of believers to Christ by thrusting in subordinate mediators.

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Nor can we but agree with nearly all unbiased historians regarding the worship of Mary as an echo of ancient hedonism.

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It brings plain into mind the worship of Ceres, of Isis, and of other ancient mothers of the gods, as the worship of saints and angels recalls the hero worship of Greece and Rome.

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How much stronger would Shaft speak today? It was only a few years later that Pope Leo XIII said in an encyclical, quote, with equal truth, may it also be affirmed that by the will of God, Mary is the intermediary through whom is distributed unto us this immense treasure of mercies gathered by God for mercy and truth were created by Jesus Christ.

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Thus, as no man goeth to the Father but by the Son, so no man goeth to Christ but by his mother, end quote.

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Pope Pius X, a few years later, added, having called Mary the supreme minister of the distribution of graces, quote,

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Jesus sitteth on the right hand of the majesty on high. Mary sitteth at the right hand of her son, a refuge so secure and a help so trusting as to all dangers that we have nothing to fear or to despair of under her guidance, her patronage, her protection, end quote.

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And John Paul II, in his recent encyclical, Veritatis Splendor, said Mary is the mother of mercy because it is to her that Jesus entrusts his church and all humanity, end quote.

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It is no wonder then that when I picked up that little pamphlet from the hospital chapel that the motto on the back was not no true child of God is ever lost or no true believer in Jesus Christ is ever lost but instead no true child of Mary is ever lost.

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Indeed, my opponent this evening when speaking to a group of Roman Catholics and teaching on this topic said, quote, have you accepted

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Jesus as your personal savior? Yes. Have you accepted Mary as your personal mother? A Catholic appeal to the conscience could very well say that because if Jesus is your savior, he's also your brother, the

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Bible says. And therefore, his mother becomes your mother. And you have an obligation to honor your mother and your father in heaven to adopt her as your spiritual mother into your heart and into your home, end quote.

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God takes his worship seriously. Ask Joseph, the man who profaned the ark by putting his hand on it and touching it,

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God struck him dead. Ask the two sons of Aaron who died before the Lord. Ask Ananias and Sapphira. God is a consuming fire.

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In the same way, the worship of Jesus Christ cannot be mixed with the worship or veneration of anyone or anything else. In fact, idolatry, the giving of the honor due to God alone to anyone else is the essence of paganism.

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It is hardly surprising to me that an unbiased examination of the historical documents reveals that in most cases, indeed,

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American doctrines first show up not in Christian writings but in Gnostic pagan writings and then make their way over time into Roman theology and eventually find themselves being read back into the scriptural text where they do not belong.

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Jesus Christ is not a co -renewal with anyone. He will not give his glory to another. It is not possible to call

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Mary Queen and Beatrix and call Jesus Christ Lord in the biblical sense. The contradiction is too great.

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At the end of the book of Jude, we read, now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to make you stand in the presence of his glory, blameless with great joy, to the only

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God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ, our Lord, be glory and majesty before all time, now and forever.

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Amen. Such praise flows from the heart of the Christian toward God and God alone. The redeemed heart is jealous of the glory of God and hence must reject as utterly false any suggestion that any creature, including the blessed mother of the

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Lord, is exalted to the position of queen of heaven, as suggested by Roman Catholicism today.

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Thank you. Certainly strong words from Mr.

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White, but in the midst of the strong words, so many logical fallacies, I hardly know where to begin. Mr. White began by saying, unless one has already accepted the authority of the

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Catholic Church to teach God's infallible truth, that one would never come to his conclusions.

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But the fact is, folks, that I am here as an example of the untruthfulness of what

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Mr. White just said. Because I was an anti -Catholic Protestant who studied these various doctrines and came to see the biblical basis of them and therefore became a

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Catholic. I was not born and raised a Catholic. I came to conclusion that the church which taught these things must be correct after coming to the conclusion that these doctrines themselves are rooted in sacred scripture.

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So Mr. White's contention falls flat on its face as it does in the case of many, many other converts of the

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Catholic faith from the ranks of evangelical Protestants who simply said, I'm willing to follow the scripture wherever it leads.

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And it led me to that one holy Catholic household church that Christ founded. He said the example of Mary, or the analogy between Mary and the

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Queen Mothers of the Old Testament, is just an example of how far you have to reach when you depart from the standard of sola scriptura.

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But the fact is that we only have Mr. White to say so, once again, that this is a far reach.

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But who says it's a far reach? Let's stop and consider the biblical evidence. We know that Solomon was a

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Davidic king, the king of the covenant of God's people, the one who sat on the throne of David.

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We know that his mother Bathsheba was a queen. We know that Jesus Christ is the one who said of himself, behold, a greater than Solomon is here.

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He is the Davidic king par excellence. He came proclaiming a kingdom, a democracy, Mr. White. And I think some of your concerns flow out of your, perhaps,

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American blinders that we have all been handicapped by not living in a monarchic society where some of these, the ways that a monarchy works, which is what the church is, it's the kingdom of God.

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Jesus is not our elected official. And a king in God's covenant has a queen mother.

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She's the first lady of the land, not his wife. Unfortunately, some have had more than one. But the mother of the king has this special status in the society.

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We see that taught, not speculated, Mr. White, not woven out of thin air, but taught by the

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Bible itself in 1 Kings chapter 2, 3 Kings chapter 2, if you're using the two -way readings, where Bathsheba enters the throne room of Solomon.

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He rises up, bows down, commanded to the throne to be placed at his right hand.

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The very phrase that Mr. White found so offensive, it's published in the Bible, not in Catholic textbooks.

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And he said, whatever you want from me, I will give you. Now, Mr. White is going to remind us that, yes, she did eventually achieve her intercession.

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She was a sinner. Solomon was a sinner. And the situation had many other imperfections worked into it.

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But if our Lord could say to himself, behold, a greater than Solomon is here, if sinful Solomon would so honor his mother, how much more would the spotless

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Son of God, the spotless Son of David, honor the queen mother of the new covenant kingdom, the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven.

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We have an obligation to follow in the footsteps of Jesus. He's our Lord. We don't need to call him

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Lord, Lord, because we know the good things that he does. And one of the things he does is honor his mother in a greater way than Solomon or the spotless

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Son of God. Solomon commands the throne to be placed at his right hand. How much more would Jesus Christ himself? And again, far from being a biblical concept, that is exactly the destiny of the whole church, to sit at Christ's right hand.

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If Mr. White wants to deny that, he's going to have to deny the entire teaching of the book of Revelation and the

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Apocalypse of St. John. Now, he goes on to say that he has problems with this teaching because it develops so slowly over time.

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But the same argument could be lodged and is lodged by Jehovah's Witnesses at the

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Doctrine of the Trinity. There is no statement in scripture that there are three persons and one God. There's no statement that Jesus is one divine person with two natures.

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Those things took time for the church to come up with a proper formulation. The truth was there.

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Jesus knew it. His mother knew it. The apostles knew it. But exactly how to express this to avoid, on the one hand, the errors of polytheism, and on the other hand, a kind of modalism where the three persons were really just different modes or states of the career of one person, that took time.

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Granted, those things were hammered out earlier than the various Sumerian doctrines we're discussing tonight.

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But I'd be the first to agree with every Catholic apologist that, obviously, the Doctrine of the Trinity is more central to our faith than the doctrines concerning Mary.

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After all, we're talking about God in the first instance and not a creature of God, albeit the highest creature that God has made and endowed with his grace.

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So, of course, these would take later time. And if Mr. White's going to say, look, folks, if you can't get any clear testimony on this until three, four, five, six, seven centuries after the facts and then mentioning it so, to be absolutely just and consistent in his theory, we would have to say, you do not have to believe that Jesus Christ is one person with two natures, because that actually wasn't put in the formula with just those words until 431 of the

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Council of Ephesus or 451 of the Council of Chalcedon. So I think there's some terrific injustice here. If Mr.

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White accepted the principle in reference to Jesus, then certainly in the case of Mary, who's less important, less central than Jesus, although very much a part of his plan of salvation, we would expect that there would be a greater lapse of time before these things would become clear.

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Mr. White also engaged in a false dichotomy between this idea of this

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God who is free and merciful and loving, and we have instant access to his presence, with the idea that he claims

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Roman Catholicism fosters of this just judge, this stern God, who is going to make us look about for some sort of maternal intercessor to kind of soften his heart.

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But the fact is the Bible itself shows us that the mercy of God is, by God's own plan, activated by intercessors.

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In the Old Testament, we have the example of God being ready to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. And he encourages

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Abraham to intercede. Now, if Abraham hadn't stopped at 10, then he surely ought, as the author says, evangelizing people to have gotten 10 believers, then perhaps the city would have been spared in God's plan.

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Of course, that didn't happen. And when he stopped with the assurance that if there's 10 righteous people, he'll spare the city, he discovered that there weren't 10 righteous people.

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But Abraham's intercession was part of God's plan. God was going to destroy the Israelites for worshipping the golden calf.

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And Moses interceded. And God said, because you've interceded, I will relent. Now, I hope

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Mr. White isn't going to fall into the liberal trap of saying, well, that's the old God in the Old Testament. He was harsh and stern.

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But in the New Testament, we have a God of love. It's the same God, Mr. White. He is a God of justice and a

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God of mercy. Throughout the two Testaments, there's no change in God. I'm the Lord, I change not, he said in Malachi chapter 3, verse 6.

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So God is simultaneously consuming fire. Use the words yourself.

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And that is a New Testament verse. In the New Testament, we see our Lord himself in the Apocalypse, showing himself to be a wrathful judge.

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He says to the churches, if they don't shave up, they'll come and fight against him with the sword of his mouth. And yet he asks

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Christians to intercede on behalf of one another. John's is in 1 John chapter 5, verse 6.

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If you see a brother sinning, intercede for him so God can spare his life. If you don't, God may strike that person down.

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Is that Roman Catholic theology, Mr. White? Well, you wouldn't say so. But unfortunately, it's there in the

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Bible. I would say, yes, it is Roman Catholic theology. Because what the Catholic Church teaches is simply what the Bible teaches here.

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The Bible clearly teaches that although God is a God of love and mercy, he does at times take punitive measures against his or her children.

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And he, on his own divine appointment, asks us to intercede for each other so that he might relent and show his mercy and indulgence.

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In fact, the very passage which says there is one mediator between God and man, 1 Timothy 2, verse 5, if you would look at the context, is smack dab in the middle of a passage commanding

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Christians to pray for one another. Look at verse 1. First of all, St. Paul says, I exhort you to pray and intercede for one another for kings and all those in authority.

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Certainly, Paul doesn't think that the intercession of Christians for other Christians jeopardizes the unique mediation of Jesus Christ.

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He is the only unique mediator because he is alone God and man in one person. And no

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Catholic prayer book, no Catholic traction will find that any Catholic, prosper though Mr. White, will ever say that Mary is defined and human in one person.

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So there is no threat to the uniqueness of Jesus Christ. And the very passage that I alluded to in the

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Second Vatican Council document makes that crystal clear. It quotes 1 Timothy 2, verse 5. It shows why the mediation of Mary or any

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Christian on behalf of other Christians does not violate this special intercession of Jesus Christ.

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He said it again in another logical leap of, I don't know what to call it. Oh, Mary can't hear all your prayers.

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She's not omniscient. She doesn't need to be, folks. That's a logical non sequitur. The number of prayers, however many they offer up, are finite.

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She does not need to be infinite. Can we be able to happen to hear what's said by people on Earth? Of course.

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Luke 15 .10, our Lord himself says that there is joy in heaven among the angels over one sinner who repents.

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They're not often this soundproof blue room, as Mr. White seems to think, utterly unaware of what's going on here on Earth.

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We pray for each other. We love each other on Earth. And when we go to heaven, we're a graduate to a higher level of awareness and charity, not a lesser one.

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The communion is intensified with God and with our fellow believers. It is not diminished. And on that basis, we can rest with assurance on the confidence, the biblical principle, that Mary indeed is not only close to God, but close to all of us.

59:06

She is indeed the mother of all the living, the spiritual living, as Eve was of the old covenant.

59:12

We are the seed of the woman. So the statement that we're children of Mary is not in conflict with the fact that we're children of God.

59:18

She is the one, by Christ's own appointment, who has this maternal relationship through each of Christ's disciples, because, as he said in John 19, accept her as your mother.

59:29

Thank you. Thank you for doing this. OK, now we'll have a presentation. Mr. Matics, you say this.

59:37

My exediction, again, is far -reached. I hope everyone will look at the passage of 1 Kings about Solomon and Bathsheba.

59:43

Does anyone in the New Testament make the application that you do of this passage to Mary? Mr. White, that question is a yes or no question.

59:51

Does anyone in the New Testament do what? Make the application. Of all the passages we did in the New Testament about Solomon and Bathsheba?

59:57

Yes. No, but so what? Is there anyone in the pre -Nicene period in the Christian Church who makes the application that you make?

01:00:04

I really don't know, Mr. White, because it's not, it's not, it doesn't affect the validity of the analogy.

01:00:09

Thank you very much. Now, in that passage, it is said that Solomon says to bring a throne.

01:00:15

Could you tell me why it wasn't there, if this position was a position she held on? Mr. White, you accused

01:00:20

Catholics of engaging in speculation. I'm not going to follow you into that same forbidden path. Could you just answer the question? You're asking me to speculate.

01:00:27

I want you to follow me. OK, fair, all right, that's fine. Why should I? You've already said speculation is bad, so I want to follow your example and avoid it.

01:00:33

So there wasn't a throne for the queen mother there normally, was there? Well, I don't know. Maybe it was kept in a special, you know, antechamber and brought in when she entered the king's presence.

01:00:43

You pointed out that Solomon, that Bathsheba did not actually get what she desired. Is that not a parallel also indicating that Mary would fail to get what she requested of Jesus?

01:00:52

Obviously, Old Testament types of Jesus fall short because they have simply been being so attached to Mary.

01:00:58

So when there are exceptions to the type, it just doesn't matter. No, Protestants have said that too.

01:01:04

Joshua was a sinner. If he's a type of Jesus, he would agree with that, wouldn't you? As in, Jesus is a sinner.

01:01:09

Now, Mr. Manateex, you made a parallel trinity again. You admitted, well, the trinity is much more central, and that's why it came about early, right?

01:01:19

Of course. The definition. Mr. Manateex, what is the earliest church father you know that you can go to to see the doctrine outside of the

01:01:27

New Testament? The doctrine or the word? The doctrine. The same type of doctrine that you've been trying to find in various of the early fathers.

01:01:36

Not still in the words you say, but believe. Couldn't you go to Clement Brown?

01:01:42

Obviously, you have something up your sleeve. Would you agree with me that it is a fair statement that the earliest patristic writing we have, say, let's take

01:01:54

Clement. First, you first have the doctrine of the second century. OK. The letter of Clement to the

01:02:00

Corinthians, let's use Ignatius. Would you not agree with me that both of these documents, especially

01:02:05

Ignatius, are filled with trinitarian passages and references to Peter and Christ? They're just rehashes of what you have in Scripture.

01:02:11

You have references to the grace of God, the thought of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of the Holy Ghost. And you always use Christ God, right?

01:02:17

Of course. The Bible does too. OK. So the point is that the doctrine of the

01:02:22

Trinity, you can find people functioning on that basis in the earliest patristic references.

01:02:28

Now, may I ask you if you will find anyone functioning on the basis of Mary as Queen of Heaven, Mediatrix of all graces, and that all grace accrues to men by God's will to Mary alone, in any writing, post -Nicene, through...

01:02:44

How far do you want to go? What's the earliest you can find? It's irrelevant. Because it's later.

01:02:49

OK. In other words, you can't answer the question. I can answer it. OK, it's irrelevant. No, I said it's going to occur at a later time.

01:02:58

You're going to have clear articulations of Mary's union with Jesus later than you have clear articulations of the Trinity.

01:03:03

You said it was a terrific injustice of me to point out how long it took for this doctrine to be asserted and made dogma, of course, within the century.

01:03:14

And you can parallel this with the Council of Chalcedon, which in 451 defined the two natures of Christ.

01:03:21

If the amount of time indicates importance to the Church, would it not follow that a doctrine that is defined 1 ,500 years after the nature of Christ means that it's rather unimportant?

01:03:34

No, it would mean that it's rather unimportant, maybe relatively less important than other agenda that we're headed with. And yet, can a person be in full union with the

01:03:44

Catholic Church, in your opinion, and reject the idea that Mary was bodily assumed death?

01:03:51

Mr. White, my opinion is irrelevant. Yes, it is. You don't have to answer that question. The Catholic Church teaches that you have to believe that and every fact about Mary.

01:04:01

Is it a fact of revelation? Of course it is. Well, it's a fact of revelation that no one knows with absolute certainty until 1 ,950 years after the doctrine.

01:04:12

No, that's not true. The people who witnessed it, certainly with absolute certainty.

01:04:17

But you don't have any evidence they existed, do you? Of course I do. Where? In the fact that there was a tradition passed on down.

01:04:25

You say there was a tradition passed on down. You can't show us where it is. You admit there was a tradition passed on down, Mr. White. You simply think the tradition is not founded in fact.

01:04:33

But you admit there's a tradition. No, I don't. You don't? That was a question.

01:04:38

Now it's your turn, so I guess you don't believe me. 1 ,950 is 1 ,950. Is that what you're saying? No, I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is that there was no ancient tradition that has any type of meaningful historical basis to it, that there were eyewitnesses.

01:04:51

You paralleled it with the resurrection of Jesus Christ, Jerry. Let's ask ourselves the question. The resurrection of Jesus Christ, who were the eyewitnesses?

01:05:00

Did they write? Did they preach? Do we have evidence of this outside of the New Testament? The answer to all of these is yes.

01:05:07

Now we ask the question about this alleged tradition of eyewitnesses and the assumption. Did they write? No. Did they preach?

01:05:13

No. Does anyone outside of the Christian church, or even in the Christian church, ever make reference to this in the first half millennium?

01:05:19

No. There is no parallel. No. Show it to me. Well, that was his turn to ask you a question.

01:05:25

Did you get that question? Well, that was, that was, I was answering his question. All right.

01:05:30

Mr. White, you said that we can go back and demonstrate. You said there's a fundamental difference here, because we can go back and we can demonstrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

01:05:40

How, Mr. White, how can you demonstrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ? Well, the same way the

01:05:45

Christian people have been doing it for a very long time, and that is you can point to the eyewitnesses who wrote, who preached, who died for their faith.

01:05:53

They left us a text that is the greatest and most accurate text of any ancient document that exists in all the world, and the very fact they went out and changed the world, and that this is even recorded for us in secular materials.

01:06:05

I'm not making any point. I'm pointing out to you that the basis upon which we know the resurrection is not the authority of the modern

01:06:12

Roman Catholic Church. You have the authority. Now, see, you're putting that clarification in there. It's not the modern Roman Catholic Church.

01:06:18

Yes, yes. You believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ on the authority of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Is that not correct?

01:06:23

And Paul, and, uh... And the Apostles. How do you know that Matthew wrote that gospel?

01:06:31

Well, first of all, this is a very interesting statement, because it goes to the issue of sola scriptura, the issue of the canon, and it is interesting to me that this question continues being asked over and over again when...

01:06:45

You're going to have to go on and ask me until I get it. I'll go here and ask you. Because, first of all, whether Mark or whether Matthew wrote

01:06:51

Matthew, and as you know, the Gospel of Matthew does not say that, right, is not relevant to the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and you know that.

01:06:58

But the fact is, the only medium that you have... The point I'm trying to make, Mr. Weicker, for the audience's sake, is that the only way you know you have documents coming from my witnesses is that church fathers said, this comes from an

01:07:14

Apostle, this comes from an apostolic associate, Mark comes from Peter's associate and secretary,

01:07:20

Luke is written by Paul's companion, John is written by the Apostle John, and that same basis in which you...

01:07:26

Don't misunderstand my question, folks. I accept Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John as every believing Catholic as a valid testimony to the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

01:07:34

I'm not trying to associate that skepticism to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. I'm simply trying to say, if you believe in that resurrection, by the very same principles, you have to believe in the other things the

01:07:43

Apostles taught. Is that a question? Yes. My response is, they didn't teach the doctrine you're trying to parallel.

01:07:49

You have no evidence with any historical evidence. You are assuming the existence of historical evidence, and I keep asking you misdemeanors.

01:07:57

If you say that the Apostles taught this, are you saying that the Apostles taught this? Yes, I am. Then show me some evidence.

01:08:04

The passage that you cited to me in Second Thessalonians says that we are to hold to a tradition that was taught to us by word, mouth, or by letter.

01:08:12

That passage says that those traditions had already been taught to all the Thessalonians. This wasn't any secret thing.

01:08:19

Where is the evidence, Mr. Medetich? There isn't any evidence. Your own scholars have it.

01:08:25

you don't have the original documents that the Apostles wrote. You have a tradition that the documents you hold in your hand that you hold in your testament are faithfully transcribed and transmitted copies of the original autographs.

01:08:39

Yes, you do. No, sir, that is not untrue. All you have is the testimony of the

01:08:44

Church that the documents you have now do indeed come from the Apostles. You mean we don't have the documents themselves?

01:08:51

You don't have the documents they wrote. You have copies. The legitimacy of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, sir, is not based upon someone who lived two or three hundred years later.

01:08:59

It's based upon the fact that you've been given a patrimony. You've been given something that says this comes from the

01:09:05

Apostles. Now, if you're going to... You're arguing in circles.

01:09:11

You don't know if they're scriptures if the people who tell you they're scriptures are untrustworthy.

01:09:16

Now, those same people also give traditions saying the Apostles taught special things about marriage.

01:09:22

If you impeach those witnesses and say, those religious scholars don't know what the heck they're talking about, you have no way of knowing that they're giving you a

01:09:30

Bible you can trust. Athanasius gave me... Be fair! Athanasius gave me the same canon of New Testament I have.

01:09:36

Show me one place where you're taught about Assumption of Marriage or Queen of Coronation. One. I don't have to... How about in the councils?

01:09:42

Hippo, Carthage. I don't want... Mr. White. You're making the assertion that they taught these same things and I'm undercutting my own self.

01:09:49

They didn't teach me the same things. I don't have to demonstrate that every single church father taught every single thing.

01:09:55

How about just one of them? There's one. Anybody that wants can pick up any edition, even by a

01:10:07

Protestant like J. M. D. Kelly, Mr. White. You can get published by Oxford University Press, the early

01:10:13

Christian fathers, later Christian fathers, and you will find testimony by the early Christian fathers, the same ones who testify to the apostolic origins and authorship of these books.

01:10:23

You will hear them talking, saying things about Mary, Mr. White rejects.

01:10:29

That is my point. Are you saying that they're teaching the queenly coronation of Mary the

01:10:36

Bodhisattva? Not in the detail that's taught today. Of course not. Anyone thinks Academia of Christ in the way that it was defined centuries after them.

01:10:45

That is untrue. They did teach the Academia of Christ in very plain lessons. Okay, now we'll have our closing verse by Mr.

01:10:54

White. And we have audience questions after this. This could be interesting.

01:11:02

My friends, we've been here a long time and we've argued a lot of things. I'm not going to give you three minutes.

01:11:11

I'm not going to give you any statements written out or anything else at this point. I just want to invite you to think.

01:11:18

To begin, I ask you to examine the arguments placed before you. Do they assume things not in evidence?

01:11:24

Are they certain? Are they based upon authority claims such as the authority claims made by the

01:11:31

Catholic Church? I ask you to examine the biblical argumentation. Does it partake of the original meanings of the words?

01:11:39

Or does it read meanings into words that were never a part of what the original authors said? I ask you to examine all these things.

01:11:47

And I honestly believe that if you will do so, outside of the heat of battle, maybe tomorrow in your opportunity to review some of these things, that the truth will be evident to you.

01:11:58

I simply want to close by pointing out that what we are talking about in regards to Mary being the

01:12:06

Queen of Heaven, the dispenser of graces, simply is the capstone of what

01:12:11

I've said from the beginning. The Roman Catholic doctrine of Mary parallels Jesus Christ.

01:12:17

And this romanticist keeps saying, oh, that's because she's a picture of the Church, but he doesn't show us in the contestant that she is a picture of the Church. That is a hermeneutic that he must assume before he can come up with anything at all.

01:12:29

But even then, it does not follow. Jesus Christ is a sole mediator between God and men because the term mesentate that is used there does not have anything to do with, well, just pray for somebody.

01:12:40

I don't want you to get into that when you couldn't. Jesus Christ is a sole mediator between God and men because grace by its very nature is divine, and Jesus Christ as the divine

01:12:50

God -man gives us grace. And my friends, if any of you can read that prayer that I read, if any of you here this evening fear the name of Jesus, if any of you fear that you have to pray to Mary to protect you from your sins, the devils, and Jesus, I want to introduce you to a

01:13:10

Jesus that you do not have to fear, whose blood was shed for your sins, whose grace is sufficient for you without anyone coming between you and him.

01:13:19

The fact is, because the sufficiency of his word, the writer of Hebrews says, we can come with boldness before the throne of grace for immediate, immediate grace that our

01:13:32

Lord Jesus gives to us. All the arguments aside, all the history aside, this is an important discussion.

01:13:40

It has to do with how we're saved. It has to do with the authority by which we know the gospel itself. So whatever you do, do not let the time you walk out of this door be the last time you think about this issue.

01:13:53

Look up the references. Do the homework. I challenge you to do it in God's name. Final closing by Mr.

01:14:05

Benjamin. I'm going to ignore Mr. White's cheap shot at the beginning of this evening about being uncomfortable in a

01:14:13

Catholic dialogue about being this close, in this close proximity to wood and fire because the fact is that of course both

01:14:19

Catholics and Protestants put each other to death at a time and an age when people thought the truth was absolute.

01:14:27

I hope that behind Mr. White's jive is not some sort of doubt that when

01:14:34

God spoke about the strong mission being taken against people in the area of the

01:14:39

Bible that God himself was somehow unjust. But the fact is that gets us nowhere.

01:14:45

The point is who can, as he said, present the truth. We have made several statements tonight that I would like to reiterate.

01:14:54

First of all, I would like to deny that the arguments I've made are circular. Mr. White has said that all evening long but he's not given us a single example of a circular argument.

01:15:03

Again, it's another Itzhak Dixon and his part. If you want to shove an argument circularly, you've got to show that the person presupposes what they said out of the proof and he hasn't done that once.

01:15:12

I would argue that by his own standard, Mr. White fails because he has read things into certain passages and said, come on, are we supposed to believe that Luke believed what the

01:15:22

Catholic Church said or that Mary believed about herself, what the Catholic Church said about her? Clearly not.

01:15:28

That, folks, is a circular argument. There's no proof. Mr. White can't show us an x -ray of what St. Luke was thinking or what the

01:15:34

Blessed Mother was thinking. Secondly, he said you should avoid anyone who reads meanings into words.

01:15:40

Again, Mr. White said, for example, in Matthew 1 .25 throughout the evening that clearly the verse means that Joseph had a state of declarations only, he said, for his words, quote, only until Jesus was born.

01:15:54

Now, the word only isn't there in the verse. Look it up yourself. As we say that Joseph obtained revelations only until he was born, that reminds me of Luther adding the word only to all the references to salvation justification by faith.

01:16:07

We believe justification by faith, but not by faith only or by faith alone. It's an un - biblical concept. James 6 .24

01:16:13

says so. We're just by faith alone and not by faith alone. It's a heresy. Mr.

01:16:18

White also said that the Roman Catholic doctrine parallels Jesus Christ. And again, I do feel that there's this either -or dichotomy.

01:16:25

Calvinism is rife with this fear that the Church can somehow share in the glory of Christ.

01:16:31

Not in the sense in which God permits it, but in the sense in which God generously shares His grace with us.

01:16:37

The union of the Church with Christ, a union so intimate that it's described as being a union of body with head, of life with husband, is a biblical concept.

01:16:47

The fact that the Church will share Christ's authority, share Christ's glory, not by virtue of our own powers or merits, but simply by the gift of God's grace, is a biblical concept.

01:16:57

So if Mary, again, shares those things, there's nothing contrary to Scripture in that at all. Mr. White has accused

01:17:05

Mary of being a sinner, having other children, dying, and by implication she was about to seem to be in a grave, and yet he hasn't given evidence for this anyway, either in Scripture or in history.

01:17:17

I say innocent until proven guilty, since Mr. White is not in any biblical verses proving these things. Mr. White eludes it by his own standards.

01:17:25

He cannot prove the concertions that he has made

01:18:11

He cannot prove the concerns that he has made

01:18:25

Mary. He cannot prove the concerns with Mary.

01:18:37

He cannot prove the concerns with Mary.

01:18:51

He cannot prove the unless She did not have a title, the princess name, as the church subjugated to her.

01:19:14

And also, as you recall, in the ancient Babylonian religion, her title, the mother of the temple, the eugenic mother, was queen of heaven.

01:19:21

And as you know, Babylonian was a system set up in direct proposition to everything God stands for, set up by Nimrod.

01:19:28

Let me answer that first question. The mere fact that a title is found in a pagan religion doesn't mean that it's not also biblical or consonant with the biblical religion.

01:19:38

I mean, in the Old Testament, God was referred to as Lord. The Canaanite term used here would be

01:19:44

Baha 'l. But it was Baha 'l worship by the Phoenicians. But the fact that the Phoenicians or pagans referred their deity as Lord does not mean that it would be blasphemous for Abraham to refer to his true

01:19:56

God as Lord. So the fact that Babylonians referred to Ishtar as queen of heaven doesn't disprove, or could not be a real thing.

01:20:03

But you yourself admitted that the church is the queen of heaven. So your argument would attack not only Roman Catholicism, but Protestantism, even, for saying that the church is queen.

01:20:11

But the fact that the church is queen is clear from the fact that she's the spouse of Christ, who is the king of kings and lord of lords.

01:20:18

There was another part to your question, the first part, that I, uh. Oh, can there not be two queens, then?

01:20:24

Oh, yeah. OK. Again, it's either or dichotomy. Mary is part of the church, you see.

01:20:30

So if the church is the queen, the spouse of Christ, the king, then Mary, as a disciple, as a saved one, is going to be legitimately recipient of the title as well.

01:20:44

Thank you. I understand your explanation. I was a Roman Catholic at 43. OK, I'm starting to come back. All right.

01:20:49

The best is to write down and don't respond. We can't go on through the law. Two quick points.

01:20:55

I think that there is great wisdom in the apostles' not to go beyond what is written. And when you go beyond what

01:21:02

God has revealed in God's written scripture, you end up in all sorts of areas of speculation that end up leading to all sorts of difficulties, which is what we have here.

01:21:10

Secondly, in regards to the relationship of the Marian doctrines, as Philip Schaaf said, I'll just remind you of it.

01:21:16

During the medieval period, most historians do recognize that there was a tremendous amount of impact of these false religions upon the development of Mariology.

01:21:24

All you've got to do is go down to Brazil to see a lot of the same type of thing happening today in popular religions.

01:21:32

That's all I have to say. Next. A second question. When a woman told you that, I'm sorry, you didn't let me finish the phrase.

01:21:38

We can't do that on time, because we'll be late. We've got 50 people behind us.

01:21:45

Very quickly. Thank you. When a woman asked Jesus, Blessed is the woman that bore you, Jesus replied, rather, blessed are those who believe the word of God.

01:21:54

At the same or higher level of standing it is even than his mother. If there ever was a place for Jesus to institute or establish veneration on his mother, this would have been it.

01:22:03

But the word he used to return the woman was not one of contradiction, that she isn't blessed, but rather a gentle correction.

01:22:10

He did not want that woman to leave that area thinking that what she said was correct. He told her, blessed rather are the believers.

01:22:19

OK. I'll comment on that in a minute. I think it's a fundamental misreading of the passage. Any idea that Christ, the best of sons, was trying to publicly belittle his mother is absurd and not blasphemous.

01:22:30

Jesus is showing he's taking people's elevated thinking from a physical to a spiritual level.

01:22:36

He doesn't say, Mary's not blessed. Again, we read into the passage what we want to find there. He says, yea, rather.

01:22:43

He says, I'll show you a higher blessing, those who hear the word of God and do it. That applied to Mary as well.

01:22:48

Jesus's point is that a mere physical union with me is not the highest possible union.

01:22:54

That it would be greater to hear the word of God and do it. That establishes a true supernatural family.

01:22:59

But Mary had both. She had an intimate physical union with Jesus. In fact, I didn't have the time to develop the fragment.

01:23:06

Remember, our lady had the closest biological intimacy with Christ. Her womb actually was the tabernacle in which

01:23:12

God presided for nine months. And to argue that God, who would not come down upon an ark or dwell in an ark that was anything less than perfect and had to be golden, would have inhabited the womb of us.

01:23:26

A sinful woman for nine months, a sinful womb, is to misunderstand all the scriptures are teaching us in the

01:23:34

Old Testament. But Jesus's point is that, yes, but there's a higher and greater blessing.

01:23:39

And Mary has that too. So she still outstrips us. She has the physical plus the spiritual union. Unless you want to deny that Mary was a believer.

01:23:45

I don't think any Protestant should want to deny that. Again, he would really be without evidence for that. Very quickly, I want you to hear what was just said.

01:23:53

Jerry admits that it is a higher blessing to do the word of God and to believe in the word of God.

01:24:00

But Mary has that blessing as well, he says. And yet, I just ask you to think, is that all

01:24:05

Rome is really saying about Mary? Or is she not in a singularly unique position that is much higher than any blessing that's put upon a person who simply obeys the scripture?

01:24:15

We are not queens of heaven, obviously. And so there is obviously a higher blessing for all the world to respect.

01:24:20

It just doesn't apply. Next question. Thank you very much. Mr. White, can you do me a favor?

01:24:26

I think that, is it possible that you can poll the Catholics here and ask them, because you continue to dislike about Catholics worshiping

01:24:37

Mary. Can you ask all the Catholics here, as we exit, do you worship Mary?

01:24:42

And take a tally of yeses and nos. And I would guarantee probably that it won't happen before they know.

01:24:49

So continue to perpetuate that lie. It's very unfair. Why do you continue to do that, someone so scholarly and so articulate as yourself?

01:24:58

I'm not too smart, but it doesn't go over my head. Perhaps you didn't listen closely.

01:25:05

I listened very closely. I read Philip Schaap. Philip Schaap used the term worship.

01:25:12

I am not. Excuse me. I asked you to ask the Catholics here. We should have a debate.

01:25:18

Just let him answer. I'm going to answer the question for you now. I recognize the differentiation between lottery of duly and hyper -duly in Roman Catholic theology.

01:25:26

I reject it. It has no biblical basis. In fact, it is contradicted by the use of the term ahab in Hebrew. And the

01:25:32

Greek terms are translated in the Septuagint. There is no New Testament basis for differentiating between lottery of and duly.

01:25:39

Hence, I would say to you that veneration or hyper -veneration is the same as worship. But I recognize, and in my writings, and Mr.

01:25:47

Maddix will have to verify this, very carefully distinguish between the two and accurately represent their own

01:25:52

Catholic position that you claim you do not worship Mary, but that you venerate Mary. The only terms

01:25:58

I used of worship in my statement was when I was reading Philip Schaap, who himself said that the distinctions between lottery of duly and hyper -duly do not work.

01:26:06

What do you personally believe of Catholics, Mr. White? Do we worship Mary? I believe that the distinction between lottery and duly is endless.

01:26:15

Yes or no? And yes, it means worship. Yes. So I'm representing all the Catholics here. We do not worship

01:26:20

Mary. So let's put an end to the lie. We believe that Mary only speaks to God. When you hear prayer, prayer is an act of worship to God.

01:26:30

If you pray to Mary, you are worshiping her. Because we know she's in heaven.

01:26:42

We say, Mary, pray for us. We do not pray to Mary. Why would you believe someone who does not pray to Mary?

01:26:51

I do that. I know what I do. Please don't tell me what I don't do. I was a lot shorter than the woman before me.

01:27:02

You just don't like the question. The very fact that a Catholic says, pray for us, who have recourse to thee, proves that he or she understands that Mary is not

01:27:12

God. If he asks her to pray for us, that he's a being, if there's a higher being than Mary.

01:27:18

Obviously, there is some unfortunate confusion on this issue. But I don't think it exists, frankly, in the minds of Catholics.

01:27:24

I think it's a bugaboo that Protestant apologists have concocted. I don't claim that all

01:27:30

Catholics' prayer life and spiritual life is as completely precise as it should be.

01:27:38

We don't claim that. But the teaching of the Catholic Church, in word and deed, has never been that Mary is

01:27:45

God. There is an infinite gulf between any creature, however exalted, and the creator. God alone is omniscient.

01:27:51

God alone is omnipotent. God alone is eternal. And Mary is a creature. And there's a clear indication of that.

01:27:58

By the way, the word worship is used in the King James Bible in 1 Chronicles 29 .20. And they bowed themselves and worshipped

01:28:03

God. And then the king, who is an example of worship, used an attenuating sentence. In other words, it means to recognize the worth of someone.

01:28:11

And it depends on the type of being you're acknowledging. God is in a class by himself. So when we acknowledge his worth, we are not doing anything even remotely resembling what we do when we recognize the worth that God has given

01:28:24

Mary. OK, one question and no debating. Go ahead. I recently spoke to another

01:28:31

Protestant who said that Catholics are wrong when they kneel to Mary to pray or to the saints.

01:28:39

I think that's the way this person put it. And I said, no, we do, yes, we do kneel when we pray to Mary or to the saints or to God because it's an appropriate attitude and posture for us because we are below the saints, we're below Mary, we're below God in our station and our position in this world because we haven't achieved same as we have arrived to that position in heaven.

01:29:07

So therefore, the attitude of kneeling and praying is appropriate. In times before, people would kneel when they approached a king or a queen in olden days.

01:29:19

And so this is... What's the question? Well, I'm just making the point that it's a wrong and wrongest thing for Protestants to think that it's wrong for people to pray when they kneel and that in Protestant churches, as a matter of fact, they don't even kneel.

01:29:38

There are no kneelers. So if they mention Christ's name and they don't kneel, they're breaking the law of God.

01:29:45

They're supposed to say every knee should bend and every head should bow at the mention of Jesus.

01:29:50

I've never seen a Protestant church where there are no kneelers. All right. Next. Thank you.

01:29:59

There were questions. Any questions? I think there was one that made me see a comment on there, and that was, first of all, the lady does talk about praying to Mary in the previous...

01:30:10

I don't pray to Mary, and so I think it's a problem. My statement was made, we're lower than saints.

01:30:17

My friends, if you are redeemed in the blood of Jesus Christ, you are as much a saint as any other person.

01:30:29

The idea that there is excess merit that is gained by doing works in the state of grace is unbiblical, and it denies the perfection, the righteousness of Christ, and so you're not below any saint.

01:30:48

Let me just... I would badly disagree.

01:30:54

There is no place in the Bible to support that kind of radical egalitarian idea that we're all on the same level of grace or merit.

01:31:01

I know that's a common idea in our New World Order. It's not a biblical one. The Bible shows degrees of glory.

01:31:07

It shows degrees of punishment in hell. God gives talents, some ten, some five, and some two.

01:31:14

And all the statements about the effective prayers of a righteous man accomplishing much would be completely meaningless if we were all equally righteous in every sense of the word.

01:31:23

The Bible says to follow after holiness, for that which knows the Lord. In terms of kneeling, I agree that there are societies which have required people to kneel, to be knighted, to kneel in various situations to indicate a superior.

01:31:35

Men kneel before their wives when they propose to them. That is not an act of worship, although I certainly acknowledge my wife's a higher order of being than I am, but that wouldn't take much.

01:31:44

But kneeling is not, per se, some offensive or dishonoring to God posture. Please, from now on, just ask the question.

01:31:52

Let's see if somebody can actually ask the question. I'd like to thank you both very much for the gift that God has bestowed on you to enlighten us.

01:32:11

I only wish that this energy that you share with us could unite us and make us true followers of Christ if we call ourselves

01:32:21

Christians. The question

01:32:29

I'd like to ask you both to pray for me, and also, there's one other question that's been bothering me about Scripture, because I'm not a scholar by any means, and that is, and that is, where in the

01:32:57

Bible does it say, Sola Scriptura, alone?

01:33:05

I thank you. Since not everyone believes it there, and Mr.

01:33:12

Maddox doesn't, first of all, I'd like to simply state, and I'm not making this something that he has to do, but I think it's pretty obvious tonight that Sola Scriptura is at the bottom of our disagreements.

01:33:25

And I would like to invite Mr. Maddox, should the kind folks who have beaten themselves to death putting this one together want to do it again sometime in the near future,

01:33:36

I'd invite Mr. Maddox to come back and debate on Sola Scriptura, and I'd like to see if he'd be the first one who would positively defend the positive claims of Rome in regards to the infallibility of the teaching magisterium in Rome.

01:33:50

I would be more than happy to engage in a full debate on that subject before you, because I think it's vitally important.

01:33:56

And I think, if you ask Mr. Maddox, do you make our Omaha debate available through your catalogs?

01:34:02

Absolutely, yes. Both of us make available through our ministries, how long was it, two and a half?

01:34:08

Three hours. A two and a half, three hour debate that he and I did on a very cold November night in November of 1992 on this very issue.

01:34:18

And so I would direct you to that. Where does the Bible teach him? The Bible teaches

01:34:24

Sola Scriptura. You need to understand Sola Scriptura. It's a positive claim that the Bible is the sole and valid rule of faith of the

01:34:31

Church, and it's a negative claim that there is no other than the valid rule of faith of the Church. I believe it teaches it in passages such as Matthew 15, 1 through 9, where all traditions are subjected to the higher authority of Scripture, and 2

01:34:43

Timothy 3, verses 16 to 17, where Manshah is equipped to do all good works by the

01:34:49

Scriptures. I cannot defend those two statements in 30 seconds. I do so very thoroughly in the book, in the debate against Mr.

01:34:57

Matics, and I'm glad to do so again in your presence. By the way, whoever has the pad going around, name of his residence, bring it up.

01:35:20

Oh, there's a book right here, if I hold that up, it's called Sola Scriptura. And finally,

01:35:26

I'm sure Jerry has probably lamented this, but I think Jerry will admit this is the first book book that's come out in many, many years on the subject of Sola Scriptura and addresses the issues of our world today.

01:35:40

I would be happy to accept Mr. Weiss's invitation to come and debate here on Sola Scriptura.

01:35:46

We have debated before, and frankly, I'm skeptical as to whether we're going to achieve or accomplish anything new.

01:35:52

I think with all due respect and in our own humility that I've done an adequate job in that debate and many other debates showing that the phrase

01:36:01

Sola Scriptura does not occur in the Bible, but the concept does not either. The word of God is the supreme authority, yes, but the word of God comes in a primarily oral fashion throughout the

01:36:10

Old Testament. It's binding on people, whether it's written down or not. Jesus' preaching was binding, even if it wasn't written.

01:36:18

The Apostle's preaching was binding, and most of it was oral and not verbal. And St. Paul says, to hold fast all the traditions, whether they are oral or written.

01:36:25

So the concept of Sola Scriptura is not there. Mr. White read something into Matthew 15.

01:36:31

It doesn't say all traditions are accountable to Scripture. It says the traditions of men are in subjection to the word of God.

01:36:38

But he reads into the phrase word of God the presupposition word of God is always a written thing of the

01:36:44

Scripture. But I would be happy to debate him again on that if God could bring any good on that whatsoever.

01:36:49

And I would agree with him that it is basically at the root of this. I think the root error of Protestantism is this unscriptural notion of Sola Scriptura.

01:36:57

It's nowhere taught in Scripture. Once you begin to question that, then the whole edifice of Protestantism becomes collapsing.

01:37:04

We appear to be missing the pad that went around with people's names and addresses. So anybody who wants to be on the mailing list, at the end of the night, you can leave your name and address up here.

01:37:13

Now I want to please, just unlike Van Rather, who doesn't know the difference between an opinion and fact, let's get people to know the difference between a statement of the question and a question that they will.

01:37:24

Thank you. Thank you to the debaters and especially to Dara Bar, our patient moderator. My question is principally for Mr.

01:37:31

White. How can we defend, first of all, a Babylon connection?

01:37:38

You are very slow to point out the historical Babylon connection of the Catholic religion. My question for you is, the reason for that is that you are vulnerable for lack of Sola Scriptura on the seventh -day

01:37:51

Sabbath, which is the fourth commandment, which you do not observe, on the Babylonian feast days, which you observe as the

01:37:57

Catholics have taught you, on the suppression of the sacred divine name of Yahweh, the Tetragrammon, and also on the three -person doctrine which you've inherited from the

01:38:05

Catholics. Do not all of these make you a flagrant violator also of your concept of Sola Scriptura?

01:38:13

No. I mean, there were fourteen different things that were presented there that obviously you have your own agenda, and I'm not going to debate you on them, but the answer is, the reason that I don't feel for Babylonian connections is because I don't think they're strong.

01:38:28

I don't think that they're valid, and there's no reason to pursue them. All they do is create all sorts of emotional heat and very little light, and therefore

01:38:36

I think that the Iberian doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church fail on the biblical and historical evidence without having to appeal to anything else.

01:38:43

That's all there is to it. You do mention about fourteen things. I'll wait my time in the interest of having another question.

01:38:50

Next question, as in question. Please make this short so we can get everybody.

01:38:57

I don't want to stay here all night, but I don't know if the Toral House is tight enough when they do it. Maybe put

01:39:09

Denny's or somewhere. We can go all night. I'd be happy to go with you if you want to stay. It's dead, Jerry. Well, I've got to get to the

01:39:14

Westchester Bureau by 6 a .m. Okay, I'm going to go ahead and make this short then for you.

01:39:20

Mr. Matitix, I have a question regarding the relationship of the supposed oral tradition of the

01:39:27

Word of God in the Roman Catholic Church and its relationship to the written Word of God which we Protestants affirm.

01:39:33

My question is this. Can there be a tradition in the Church that is accepted to be the

01:39:39

Word of God and is therefore binding upon the consciences of Roman Catholics that has no reference whatsoever in the

01:39:46

Holy Scriptures? If there has to be a reference, why is this necessary?

01:39:52

If there doesn't have to be a reference rooted in the Word of God, why should Catholics be troubled about any official teaching of the

01:39:59

Roman Catholic Church that's not rooted in Scripture? Excellent question. First of all, understand that the preaching of Jesus to the

01:40:07

Apostles, truths connect to other truths. It's like a big, you know, tinker toy system or like a fabric, a tapestry.

01:40:15

So you expect, even in the Bible, you can see that the teaching on salvation has correlations or connections with the teaching of the

01:40:23

Church and the teaching of eschatology and the teaching of baptism. Even though we can make logical distinctions, you would expect that what you learn about baptism is consonant with what you learn about discipleship or the

01:40:34

Eucharist or what have you. Do you see what I'm saying? The Catholic would look for that same sort of consistency and connectivity in the

01:40:42

Word of God, as Catholics understand it, as being both written and oral. So even though not every

01:40:48

Catholic teaching, such as the Magdalene Conception, has to have full -blown explicit formula in Scripture, there should at least be echoes or reverberations of what was being taught orally that wasn't written down.

01:41:02

There would be things in Scripture that would, you know, resonate with that. And there would be nothing, certainly in Scripture, that would conflict with that.

01:41:11

In other words, there could be no teaching that was taught orally by the Apostle Paul that would contradict something he wrote down that would make sense because it's all coming from the same mouth.

01:41:21

But the last thing I want to say is this. You have to understand that even if we were all

01:41:27

Protestants here, and there were no such thing as Catholics, we would disagree on what certain passages of Scripture mean.

01:41:35

And St. Peter warns us in 2 Peter 3 .16 that there are some things in Scripture, not everything, but some things that are hard to understand.

01:41:43

So please factor into your equation the fact that Protestants who only restrict themselves to a body of materials, they all agree on the parameters of it.

01:41:51

They say, we only follow the Bible. Even they disagree on things like the rapture, women as ordained ministers, in the baptisms, speaking in tongues, how often we should have the

01:42:00

Eucharist, or whether we should have it, and all those types of things. And so if Scripture alone would solve the dispute and have us all walk out of here hand in hand, then it would have done that 500 years ago, and it hasn't.

01:42:13

So in addition to Scripture, which is an infallible authority, it is God's inspired, infallible, inherent written word, in addition to tradition, you still need that entity which the

01:42:24

Bible itself points to, the pillar and foundation of the truth, verse 7 through 15, the

01:42:30

Church of God. The Church can tell us whether we're interpreting Scripture erroneously or traditionally or not.

01:42:37

This very fact that we've had a debate tonight proves that, folks. If you needed an authoritative church that Jesus could say, let him hear the church when

01:42:44

I do 1818, then we never would have been here to debate. It's not a question of Jerry's opinions versus James White's opinions.

01:42:50

We could back that back and forth all night. The very fact that we're here disputing so vigorously proves that Mr.

01:42:55

White and I need an umpire, a supreme court, that can call the shots. Interestingly enough, if only half of you could sit over here in Bainbury on a number of decisions, demonstrating, demonstrating, demonstrating that the argument that Scripture is not very about theological unity and somehow proving sola scriptura is wrong also works in demonstrating that you can find a huge variety of beliefs amongst

01:43:19

Roman Catholics. Does that mean that the church is also insufficient? Let's be consistent.

01:43:25

My turn, my turn, my turn, Jerry. You've got about three minutes there. One very, very simple statement.

01:43:32

When you discuss sola scriptura, never, ever forget that the choice you have to make is between the

01:43:38

God -breathed Scriptures as the sole and valid rule of faith or the church as the sole and valid rule of faith.

01:43:44

Sola scriptura versus sola ecclesia. Because the church defines the canon, the church defines the interpretation of Scripture, the church defines what is and what is not tradition, the church defines what tradition does and does not say.

01:43:57

It's not a three -legged stool, it's a one -legged stool. The choice is between sola scriptura and sola ecclesia.

01:44:03

That is the choice that has to be made and that's what we need to convince. Question. My question is for Mr.

01:44:10

Weiss. On the subject of Mary conceived without sin, how is it possible for God to choose anything other than a pure vessel for the nine months of conception for His Son, our

01:44:31

Lord Jesus Christ? The overshadow of the Holy Spirit was born enough to sanctify any vessel in which the child

01:44:37

Jesus would be born. There is nothing, it is really, to my perspective, the agnostic concept of there has to be somehow this mystical separation.

01:44:47

And the simple fact of the matter is you can make the same argument in regards to the Lord Jesus surrounding

01:44:52

Himself for three years with apostles who were filled with doubt, filled with wrong ideas, filled with sin, and yet He associated

01:45:01

Himself with those individuals and brought them to redemption. You may disagree with that if you want, sir, but that's your point.

01:45:07

I get a chance to comment. I think there's a world of difference Mr. White. Obviously Jesus came to save sinners.

01:45:13

He was a friend of drunkards and immoral people and so forth.

01:45:18

But the gentleman's question was really about all the pedagogy that God undertook in the

01:45:26

Old Testament to say that that ark had to be just so. It had to be according to His exact specifications and ten times in Acts 40 we read it exactly as God commanded.

01:45:36

And when it's all done according to God's precise measurements and prescriptions, then God comes down in the glory cloud and entwelves it.

01:45:45

And the point is somehow lost I guess on Protestants that if God demanded that much exactitude in an

01:45:56

Old Testament type that as Hebrews 10 says the law was only a shadow of the fullness of the Christ then how much more would

01:46:02

God demand that the womb which literally physically housed Jesus, no comparison is demanded to people who lived with them or where would it stop?

01:46:11

That womb had to also be a holy sanctified womb. Next question.

01:46:17

Yes. Dr. White, it seems to me that a large majority of your argument for the illegitimacy of church doctrine is based on the lack of writings by the church you mentioned in particular between the centuries of the first and seventh very early.

01:46:33

Do you think you could tell me what's the percentage of documents that have survived that period of time?

01:46:44

Well of course to answer that question I have to know what all the documents were and then know how many of them have gotten lost and of course

01:46:53

I can't. It is a fact that church fathers do refer to other treatises that are now lost. We have only fragments for example of the writings of John who was a direct disciple of the apostle

01:47:04

John and it would be nice to have the whole thing. We have only fragments of the commentaries of the apologist on Daniel, the prophet

01:47:14

Daniel and other things. So we know things got lost for the rest of time. We know even that God in his inscrutable wisdom chose to allow even some of the writings of the apostles to get lost because Paul in what we call 1

01:47:26

Corinthians refers to a previous peninsula. My point is not that point. It is not a question of the percentage that survived.

01:47:33

My point is that the protestant approaches this whole question with a preconceived notion that only written down stuff is really good and reliable.

01:47:42

And I'm saying that's a protestant cultural prejudice that the Bible itself does not support.

01:47:48

For thousands of years what God taught Adam and Eve and Abel and Seth and Noah was faithfully transmitted long before the first mention of writings in the book of Exodus.

01:48:02

And God nowhere operates with the presupposition that orally transmitted truth is bound to go awry.

01:48:08

And I'm sick of all the analogies to the party game of whispering to the next guy's ear and so forth. Yes, in a human situation by the time it hits the tempers the lion can be all garbled.

01:48:17

But that can be true of human writings too. God superintended the process where it was written or oral to preserve the truth.

01:48:24

That's my point. Before you address the question,

01:48:31

I'd just like to answer it. I just wanted to comment that there were, considering the persecution that Christians went through during that period of time, it can only be assumed that there wasn't really that much written.

01:48:44

There's a huge body of literature, 38 volumes just of a select library of documents up until that period of time that Mr.

01:48:55

Manatee makes reference to. It is fascinating to me, what we're being asked to believe is that these doctrines are apostolic in origin and when we ask the question to show us we're told we don't need to.

01:49:04

But when we talk about other doctrines, oh, we're very quick to point to the early church and so therefore it must not be true.

01:49:14

There is a huge double standard going on here. The simple fact of the matter is if you take the time to look at Ott, look at Roman Catholic historians, look at any work that deals with the history of the church, there is plenty of documentary evidence to allow us to reconstruct the theology of these individuals.

01:49:33

Many of them wrote, I mean Origen wrote thousands of volumes and we have a large portion of that.

01:49:41

The simple fact of the matter is and I continue to point this out is that Mr. Medetic says these doctrines were delivered by the apostles.

01:49:49

Where do you have evidence of it? You have to assume that it was only transmitted without ever stumbling into the life of the church, the liturgy of the church, the writings of the church until long after the events took place and those of us who don't automatically accept the authority claims of the church can't be so much skeptical about it.

01:50:08

Next question. We only have time for five more minutes.

01:50:15

Okay, Mr. Medetic, you have said that Mary was without sin and now she's up in heaven and she's interceding for us?

01:50:23

Well, then that makes her supernatural. Why didn't Jesus, from her.

01:50:40

He told people to learn from him, and he never sent anybody to her for that.

01:50:47

And on the line of interceding in the Old Testament, the other intercessors, when they were interceding on the parts of other people, were not praying to themselves as the intercessor.

01:50:59

They were praying to God for those people. So they were not interceding in the same way that Mary is supposed to be interceding for us, because Mary was up in heaven.

01:51:09

So that does not parallel the same interceding. And the other thing is that when

01:51:17

Lucifer was up in heaven, God didn't want anybody near his level.

01:51:25

God is a jealous God, and God wants worship to him alone.

01:51:30

He doesn't want anything nearby him, and nothing is compared to him. So why would he send, why would he make

01:51:37

Lucifer leave heaven? Because he wanted to be like God. And everyone, and we are worshiping, those who pray to Mary are worshiping

01:51:48

Mary, because they are giving her honor and glory, when all the honor and glory is to go to God and God alone.

01:51:56

Where's the answer to these questions? Okay, they really weren't questions, they were statements, but let me respond to them.

01:52:02

First of all, if you're willing to believe what the Bible teaches, and you really are, then read very carefully the references to the scenes in heaven that were shown in the last book of the

01:52:15

New Testament, the book of Revelation and the Apocalypse of St. John. There we see beings surrounding the throne of God, who are involved in perpetual worship of God.

01:52:26

They are also aware of what's going on on earth, and they ask God to intercede and they rejoice when God pours out his judgments.

01:52:33

And we read that the 24 elders pulled up bowls of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.

01:52:39

Now I don't care how you interpret the word saints, you can say it refers to the people already completely sanctified in heaven.

01:52:46

Or you can say no, like Mr. White might want to say, I don't know what words he's got, but he might say no, saints refers to the prayers of God's people on earth.

01:52:54

You and I are saints. The fact is you're still shown, however you cut it, you can't escape the fact that the

01:53:00

Bible shows you beings in heaven holding up something that is mediating the prayers, let's say of the people on earth, to God.

01:53:09

They have a part to play in that. But the fact that they're directing everything to God shows that God is still central.

01:53:16

They're not directing it simply to themselves and saying we don't need God. The same is true of whether they're the oldest intercessors like Moses and Elias on earth,

01:53:25

Elias is praying and heaven is being shut, or once these people are brought to heaven, they're going to go on loving their fellow

01:53:31

Israelites. You're going to go on praying. You and I are going to go on. So the point is that there is no conflict between the uniqueness of God.

01:53:40

There is a requirement that we pray for one another. That requirement doesn't stop when we die. There was a first part to your question.

01:53:47

How do we know that? Is there something that says in the Bible that we're going to be angels? I just told you in the book of Revelation. How do we know it's not angels?

01:53:54

How do we know it's not angels? Well, if it's angels, then all the more it's saints, because the Bible says that saints will have a higher status than angels.

01:54:02

Can I just ask one more question really quick? If it says there's one intercessor between God and man, where is there somewhere that says that Mary is an intercessor between God and man?

01:54:16

There's no scripture there. I think we're not going to be able to answer all these questions. I'd be happy to talk to you after.

01:54:22

Yeah, you can follow these two along. Thank you all for coming.