The Marian Doctrines Pt 2 (White vs Matatics)

Bodily Assumption as a Marian Dogma

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

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

There will be a brilliant microbiologist from Dr. Michael B., and Dr. William Vera, a well-known philosopher at the Florida 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.

There's a dinner included as well with that, and that's Montvale Ramada Inn. So you can get more details about that maybe from this gentleman here. I'd like to give very quickly my address so that it gets on the tape.

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. You can write to us at Biblical Foundations Post Office Box 721 -245, Oklahoma City, OK 73172, or you can call us at 405 -373 -4134, or fax us at 405 -373 -4135.

We have a lot of material for you. In fact, I have a 90-minute tape on the 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 in the very quick 10-minute directions back and forth.

This third doctrine that I want to look at now that the Catholic Church proclaims as part of the Good News, the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, is that Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior did for his mother at the end of her life upon Earth what he will one day do for the entire Church, which is also, as I said, on a grander scale, this spouse of the Lord.

You need to keep in mind the parallel between Mary and the Church. In fact, as I can imagine, 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 Church, showing the similarity, showing that she is part of the Church.

She is the first part. She's the first Christian, a Christian before Christ. She's a prototype and a preview of what the Church as a whole will experience. Please keep that in mind, folks. When people say, whether it's for White or anyone else, 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 Church itself.

Those that make it there with the grace of God, the same sinlessness that Mary possessed from the moment of her conception will also be like that, we will be that virgin espoused to God. St. Paul uses that language in 2 Corinthians 11, too, and he says, I espouse you to Christ as a virgin.

I don't want you to be seduced by the cunning of the devil. In 2 Corinthians 11, he has in mind the seduction scene in Genesis 3, contrasting once again the Church with me. He wants the Church to maintain its innocence, its virginity, spiritually speaking.

And we also know from the statements of St. Paul in 1 Thessalonians chapter 4 and 1 Corinthians chapter 15 that when our 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.

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

It comes from the verb rapere, meaning to snatch or to seize or to take up. And if you look at 1 Thessalonians 4, verses 13 through 17, and then 1 Corinthians 15, 22 and following, you will see the very clear doctrine that when our Lord returns, he will catch the Church up off of the earth and he will glorify her.

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. 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.

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, and that's what we deal with in this 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. You might say, those are outrageous claims. And in a sense, they are. Mary is the only person that has experienced that yet.

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? 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. So the genre of unusual deaths of unusually righteous people is already established in the 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 5, verse 23. 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, and he was not found because God had taken him.

And before he was taken, he was attested as having pleased God, end of quote. We read something similar about Moses, one of the two great leaders, Moses embodying the law and Elias, or Elias embodying the prophets, that Moses' departure from this earth was also somewhat mysterious, that God himself buried him, we read in Deuteronomy 34, verse 6.

There's something rather unusual about the disposition of Moses' body, and we read in the New Testament, in Jude chapter 9, that as a result of this, Peter rose over the Archangel 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 extra-dimensional person is the prophet Elijah. 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.

The prophet, he quailed before the pharaoh Jezebel, and he fled in the wilderness, and God had to restore him to fellowship, and in fact he lost his prophetic mantle to Elisha, his successor. But what's interesting is that Elias, or Elijah, I'll stick with the more familiar Protestant form of the name, Elijah is the spiritual father of his successor Elias, or Elisha.

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

The firstborn son. The firstborn son in Mosaic law gets the double portion. If we were under Hebrew law, then I would divide my inheritance among my seven kids, not in seven parts, but in eight. And my son Daniel, twelve, would get two eighties, or a fourth.

There were reasons for that, legally and economically, that there would be to detain us now. The point is simply this. And in fact he says to Elijah, my father, my father, the cherries from the horse from there when he leaves.

So Elijah is the father, spiritually speaking, of Elisha. Elisha, New Testament scholars admit, is a type, the clearest type, in his miracle underworking powers, of our 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. So Elisha is a type of Christ. Elisha is the son of Elijah. Christ, we know, is the son of Mary.

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 a parallelogram, whether Elijah, in any sense, is a type of Our Lady.

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. 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.

If that's the case, then Mary would also be honored in the special way she left the earth. She did not ascend. Christ alone ascended by his own divine power. But she was taken up off the earth, as Elijah was.

If God could do it for Elijah, sinful prophet that he was, imperfect that he was, why not for the 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 remains.

It's amazing that there is no city on earth, no Christian center, in which there's a tradition that St. Paul died here, or St. Peter, there are relics. The relics of Mary would have been more enthusiastically sought after than the relics we know.

But there's a deafening silence on this issue. The testimony is constant that there is no place where Mary's earthly remains, and therefore this early feast grew up of the body assumption that was finally defined by Pope Pius XII in our day in 19...

There's biblical indications that it would be appropriate that one would do this, both in the Old Testament type and in the fact that scripturally she foreshadows the rapture of the church at the end of time, and there's nothing in scripture that shows that she died and was buried in a particular place.

The Lack of Direct Scriptural Proof for the Assumption

Thank you very much. There is, of course, nothing in scripture that indicates that almost anyone ever mentioned that scripture died and was buried in a particular place, and that we do not assume that any of them were fondly assumed.

We have here a doctrine that, as Luther God says, direct and express scriptural proofs are not to be had. And many Roman Catholic theologians admit this doctrine is from tradition, 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 a thousand years, to any significant degree.

Yes, starting about the middle 7th century, some people started talking about it, and we'll tell you where they got it from in just a moment. But I want you to keep one thing in mind, my friends. We are not here this evening to debate possibilities.

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 that makes the 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.

Rome says that up to this point, now the next point, this 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 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. 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. Manatee gives you tonight, and I submit that's all he has given you tonight, is, well, it's possible to see this, or it's possible to see that. Let me give you an example. It is possible that the Arizona Cardinals will win their first football game this year, 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. 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, 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.

Speculative arguments have that nature. If you start speculating about the Immaculate Conception, and you speculate about the perpetual 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, and yet Rome binds this upon the conscience of men with the anathema of God.

Mr. Matics says, keep in mind the parallel of Mary. Well, you have to keep that in mind. You know why? Because you'll never see any of this argumentation unless you've already accepted that parallel and said, may I ask you?

He's got this in their mind. Why is it that Mary disappears after a brief appearance in Acts? Oh, doesn't she appear in Revelation chapter 12? Well, even the early church interpreted that differently, and Roman Catholic scholars disagree about that, but let's put that one aside.

Where's Mary? When Paul writes to the churches about the function of the church, and the nature of the church, and Ephesians, where's Mary? She's nowhere to be found. She's not parallel to the church.

Mr. Matics to the point of proving. Mr. Matics says, my only authority is the word of God alone, quote unquote. We've been presented with an alleged spirit from Elijah. That makes a relationship of father-child there, and since Elijah's like Jesus, that makes Elijah like Mary, and since Elijah's taken up to heaven the fiery chariot, Mary must be too.

That type of argumentation can be used to prove anything you want to be used to prove. Use it to prove Joseph Smith prophesied in the Bible. Exact same type of argument, and I asked Mr. Matics, show me one person in the first 1 ,000 years of the church who made the same application.

He talks about the universal tradition of the church. The universal tradition said, he used the term, universal tradition. Don't know where Mary is. Never married. Yet, half the Maryan doctrine says, she departed like humbly and modestly as she had lived it, and none remembered the place where Mary, even if the traditions were in the mid-fifth century, gave her a sepulchre near Jerusalem like Arabic Yosemite.

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 Mr. Matics will follow. Why? Because it's not a matter of what history or the Bible says.

It's what the overriding authority of the Roman Catholic Church says. That determines the interpretation of history. And the Bible itself. And the very words of the Bible. Where did this belief come from?

Can you find anyone in the first century who believed it? No. Second? No. Third? No. Fourth? No. Fifth? No. Sixth? No. Seventh century, toward the end of that time, you encountered this belief. A little bit offset is the idea that the bodily assumption of Mary is first expressed in certain transitive narratives of the fifth and sixth centuries.

Even though these are apocryphal, they bear witness to the faith of the generation of which they are written, despite their legendary clothing. Well, what is the good doctor out saying? Roman Catholic historian and Mariologist, Juniper Carroll, has said, the first expressed witness in the West to a genuine assumption comes to us in an apocryphal gospel, the transitive Mary of Pseudo-Molito, put on what we would call, placed under the anathema by Pope Galatius I, who, according to records, was the first pope that we know of, who was called Vicar of Christ.

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

He says that there is nothing of any historical value in such apocryphal words. It was unbelieved that the Christian church for a thousand years, and even when it began to enter into the tradition, it was rejected by most, until Duns Scotus helped push things along, and others.

The church celebrated the Feast of the Dormition of Mary. The doctrine became more popular. The name of the feast was changed to the Feast of the Assumption of Mary. In fact, he even presents, in some of his talks, Caleb.

Caleb is being a picture of Mary because he crosses the River Jordan. The River Jordan represents death, and he is grieved with the sorrow and unbelief of his people, and he follows the Lord's will, and this makes him a son-in-law of Mary's age, and so he's assumed at 85 years of age.

A disciple and all sorts of things in the Old Testament you can find. The Psalms would be a rich place to find parallels to anything you want to find. Jesus was reading in the text that which was never a part of the thinking of the original authors, and in this case, the earliest Christians see the parallels of virginity.

Now the bodily assumption, Jesus is 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. Because there's nothing in the Bible to even begin to suggest that.

So I suggest to you that it is not a true statement to say my only authority is the Word of God alone. The Word of God alone as interpreted by your own Catholic Church, which claims the ability to do so.

That's what we need to understand. So we have a doctrine that comes to us from anathematized, apocryphal Gospels, and does not become the inspiring scriptures. Mr. Matics? My closing statement now is that only that which is found in Scripture is binding on the conscience, of course, that ignores what I quoted from Scripture itself, 2 Thessalonians 2 .14, in which we believe everything that the apostles taught, whether it was written or oral.

Actually, that's 2 Thessalonians 2 .15, and the passage says that we are to hold to the traditions that were delivered to us in two ways. You didn't answer my question. You did ask a question. You said I ignored something, and I'm pointing out to you I'm not ignoring anything at all, Mr. Matics.

That was an assertion. My question, based on that assertion, is do you understand, first of all, that the Catholic Church claims that Mary is a student in heaven based on a historical fact, not upon speculations about possibility?

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?

Do you understand that? Okay. Then is 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. 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 the assumption of Mary.

Is that a question or an assertion? I'm asking you, isn't it, in fact, the Catholic claim that it's the same authority? I realize you reject that. Yes, I reject that, and that is the 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.

It may be Mary. Now, you're misrepresenting me because I didn't say that. I said that your arguments for the bodily assumption, not the Catholic understanding of it, according to the dogmatic teachings of the Church, but that your arguments for this are based upon possibilities and probabilities.

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? Do you understand what the Catholic teaches, that the reason we know that Mary was ascended to heaven is because it's a historical fact.

It's space-time history, like the resurrection of Jesus Christ and like his ascension. I would say there are many Roman Catholic scholars who would not say that, Mr. Mattis, because it is quite obvious that the ascension of Jesus Christ is witnessed to by eyewitnesses whose records we have.

And the bodily assumption of Mary, we have absolutely, positively known documentable historical evidence for a minimum of 600 years. So are you saying that the actual proclamation of the Church says that there is the same historical document?

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 Church Proverbs to 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.

I'm sorry. That's all right. There's two more. There's two more. All right. You just asked me a question about the early Church Proverbs. What early Church Proverbs did you say? I need to answer the question.

You said they gathered. They said they gathered around. Who in the early Church Proverbs said that? St. John Damascene, for example, when you quote him. What's his name? In his homily. I'm simply saying when he preaches a homily on the Dormition of Mary, who would be referred to as the Immaculate One, by the way, he refers to the scene of the Apostles gathering.

He describes it as a historical event, not as something that he infers from spiritual parallel or typologies. I simply want to do a meditation. Thank you. Mr. White, will you also agree to the audience that when Ben was taken into heaven, whether she fell asleep or whether she immediately translated from an earthly to heavenly state, all of those are not bound up in the dogma.

The dogma itself makes a statement about how her life ended, simply that at the end of her life, whether she died or not, her body was taken up into heaven. Will you agree to that? I made no comment to the contrary.

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 from the 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 at the end of her life. 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. The obvious fact of the person who wants to analyze the historical background of this rather than just accepting it by the ipso dixit of the Roman Church is, is there historical evidence contrary to the doctrine?

And the feast, the Dormition of Mary, and the fact that it had to be changed to the Assumptio 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.

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

Right. Your turn. Mr. Matrix, what's the date on John Nancy? Can you just read that? Let's see. From about 8645 to 8749 is roughly the lifespan. 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 Mariologists and scholars, Roman Catholic scholars, in fact?

You can put it this way. That the idea of the body of the Assumption of Mary is first expressed in certain transitive narratives of the fifth, sixth century. 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 immediate events of Congress. OK. We have a lot of Augustine's writings, right? Yes, we do. Did he say a lot about Mary? Did he ever say anything about Mary?

Not to my knowledge. How about Ambrose? Ambrose was a real big fan of Mary's devotion, wasn't he? 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.

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? Well, again, that's a big question. In the extant literature, did anyone have an explicit testimony in the early second century?

Yes, you're right. Third century? That's really bad, Mr. White. I'm asking questions, Mr. Matheson. Fourth century? No. Not to my knowledge. Did these individuals during this great time, and are you familiar with the 38-volume set of the early church fathers' published letters?

Not that I have it. OK. So do I. And in all of that set of writings, are there not numerous commentaries on the Gospels by people like Augustine and John Chrysostom? You understand, Mr. White, that the Gospels, the commentary on the Gospels, I'm not going to mention this because the Gospels don't record our assumption that precisely because they were written prior to the fact that, prior to the fact.

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 that indication of Elijah with Mary in its irrelevance? OK. Well, when we talk about...

You don't have the sole authority to say that. Would 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?

No, I wouldn't say that at all. So you can't show me, in the greatest clauses of the church for six or seven centuries, and yet, they discuss these things, they discuss Mary, they discuss all sorts of other aspects of Mary.

You may reference them like Jerome. Jerome, did he mention anyone? Mr. White, you bring your Protestant prejudice in favor of written documentation. So in Scriptura... Excuse me, let me finish. You're bringing it to the life of the early church.

One thing you're forgetting, 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.

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... Were there any? OK. How about... You have the assumption... OK.

I'm asking the questions, right? Yes. OK. So they're there. So I was wrong that the first expression is not in the transliteration. No, you didn't quote him correctly. He said... No. The assumption of Mary is first expressed in certain transverse narratives of the fifth and sixth centuries.

Even though these are apocryphal, they bear witness to the faith of generations, they bear witness by their letters... I'm referring to the writings. I'm saying that certain truths are celebrated by the church in many ways other than...

And how do you know that outside of written documentation? 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 liturgical 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.

Is he wrong? You're right. Especially those in view of the spirit of rationalism might say today. They might normally take a more skeptical view of certain historical evidence than a more believing 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.

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, and church history books would tell you that. And you don't have to have learned treatises on it for it to be true.

That's my simple point. Okay, we'll have a closing by this... 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.

I would dispute Mr. White's contention that this type of argumentation can be used to prove anything. I would like to see him give us some examples of it. The fact is that Protestants themselves, in their commentaries, in their writings, say on the tabernacle, engage in typologies and analogies all the time.

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.

This is how the early church understood scripture. They drew inferences. They saw allusions. They drew parallels. And Mr. White seems to have a problem with parallels. He says that the Assumption of Mary is this offensive parallel to the Assumption of Jesus.

First of all, I ask him if he understood that there's an absolutely called-in distinction between the Assumption of Jesus under his own power and the Assumption of Mary. Why does that threaten the unique divine power of Jesus?

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

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 New? Father Mr. White said, oh my gosh, she's the 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 New Testament. And as Mr. White would have to admit, between Christ and the church, the church is called its body.

What more intimate union, what more intimate image to describe the union could be conceived? The church is described as his spouse. Jesus is king of kings and lord of lords. Therefore, the church is his queen.

We sit on his throne, Jesus said. Do you not know that we will judge angels, St. Paul says of the Corinthians, in 1 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 that is not predicated in 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 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.

It's just the genius of an artist is reflected in his masterpieces, rather than diminished thereby. Mr. Matzakes has pointed out that the method of allegorical interpretation has a great tradition in the early Bible.

He's exactly right. There's no question about that at all. In fact, the farther and farther they became separated from the Old Testament backgrounds of the Old Testament, the less accurate the interpretation of the Old Testament became.

Many Roman Catholic scholars recognize that today. 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.

But the point is, since those statements of origin onward were extremely allegorical, what does it tell you? They never came up with the allegories of Jerry. I mean, that was their bread and butter, but they didn't come up with them.

Why? Because they didn't believe the documents that Jerry does. They didn't believe like he did. In fact, if I've got a problem with allegory, it's interesting. When Protestants argue that the Church of Rome has identified the Book of Revelation in a very negative way, how do Roman Catholic apologists normally respond?

Oh, that's just allegorical interpretation. That doesn't really have any validity. Your case, at the same time. Mr. Matzik has said, for example, this term tradition. He says the tradition is constant, that God, because she was sinless, preserved her with a body, a beautiful body, and faced the figure of a young woman when he was talking about Caleb.

She was kept young because she never sinned. My friends, go to the original documents. Check me out. When I talk about tradition, check me out. 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.

People fretting about the arguments used to forth about the assumption said, the Protestant who views scripture as the only secure anchor for theology. Catholic mereology, having cut loose from this anchor, is hopelessly adrift upon a sea of splendid but dubious Roman logic.

And they quote Victor Exposin, who said, the non-Catholic student of mereology who tries to follow the shaky premises and strained conclusions finds himself in a kind of theological Alice in Wonderland, in which things, despite their seeming logic, become curiouser and curiouser.

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

That scares me to death. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is a historical fact that we can go back to and demonstrate we do not have to depend upon Gnostic, unchristian sources from the middle of the 6th or 7th century for the resurrection of Jesus Christ and to parallel that.

Mary as Mediatrix, Co-Redemptrix, and Queen of Heaven

Right. The final segment of the debate, mediation. It's unfortunate that it falls to me to both resent as well as rebut Roman Catholic concepts regarding Mary as mediatrix, co-redemptrix of Christ, and queen of heaven.

It is unfortunate because while I have heard Mr. Panetik speak about such things, it is quite clear there are many Roman Catholics who not hold to these ideas, either as having binding and doctrinal authority or as being reflective of the real teachings of church.

I'll begin with the words of Karl Keating in his book Catholicism and Fundamentalism. Mary is the mediatrix of all graces because of her intercession for us in heaven. 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. Instead, through God's will, grace is not conferred on anyone without Mary's cooperation.

True, scriptural proofs for this are lacking. Theologians refer to a mystical interpretation of John 19 .26, woman behold thy son, son behold thy mother. 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. 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.

As a practical matter, this kind of doctrine is one of the last accepted by someone approaching the church, particularly someone coming to the church from fundamentalism, and is accepted ultimately on the authority of the church rather than on the authority of clear scriptural references.

End quote. And the final words written by Mr. Keating, I can only say amen. Unless one's accepted the ultimate and final authority of the 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.