Reformation Conference Debate: Dr James White Mr. Tom Riello

Opening Prayer and Debate Introduction

Christ Presbyterian Church is a local congregation of the Presbyterian Church in America. Visit us for morning or evening worship in Mobile, Alabama, or on the web at cpcmobile .com.

It is the 645 time to start our debate. Let's open with a word of prayer. Our great God and Heavenly Father, we ask that tonight that you'd be blessed by a good theological debate. And we ask that the light of your word would shine.

We ask that we would bask in the truth, that Jesus is Lord, that he lived and died for our sins. Lord, that you sent your Holy Spirit to awaken us by your resurrection power, and that, Father, this is all your plan.

And so we ask that you would bless this time, bless Tom Riello, bless Dr. James White, as we debate, give us precise thinking, give us the call and the sense to honor your name. And we ask that you'd be glorified as this debate continues.

Bless us and keep us. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, welcome to Christ Presbyterian Church. This is session number two of our Reformation Conference. The purpose of Reformation Mobile Conference is to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ and the Reformed faith throughout Mobile.

And this year we're hosting a debate on a historic topic. This topic has been debated amongst Protestants and Catholics for 500 years. To my right, I'd like to introduce you to Dr. James White. Dr. White is the Director of Alpha and Omega Ministries.

He is Professor of Church History and Apologetics at Grace Bible Theological Seminary, and he has taught Greek, Hebrew, systematic theology and textual criticism in church history and various topics in the fields of apologetics for numerous other schools.

He is author and contributor to more than 20 books and is an accomplished debater. In fact, this debate will be nearing in on 200. Nearing in, right?

It's either somewhere between 193 and 195.

Somewhere in between. I'm not sure we're precise enough there. Dr. White has engaged in that many. He is also pastor and elder of Apologia Church in Arizona. He's been married since 1982 and has two children and five living grandchildren.

To my left, your right, is Mr. Tom Riello. Tom is a native New Yorker. He grew up Catholic and left the church in the early 90s. During this time, he earned a degree in theology and a master's in divinity from Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Tom spent three years in the professional ministry, including as a pastor in New York. In 2005, Tom came back to the Catholic Church, and in 2006, he came to work for the Archdiocese of Mobile in Montgomery, Alabama.

He is the chair of theology at Montgomery Catholic Preparatory School, as well as adult faith formation director at Holy Spirit Parish. He's also a weekly guest on Archangel Radio here in Mobile. Tom resides in Montgomery with his wife, Christine.

They have six children, two of whom are police officers with the Mobile Police Department, and five grandchildren. Excellent. And I am Joshua Sparkman. I'm going to be the moderator of tonight's debate.

I'm the pastor of Christ Presbyterian Church. And we live in a day and age where logic, civil discourse, and theological substance are at a low ebb. Yet the triune God in the inerrant scriptures commands His church to reason from the revelation of the Bible, Isaiah 118, to be filled with biblical knowledge, Colossians 1 .9, and to correct others in gentleness, that is, to engage in civil discourse.

So without further ado, I'm going to introduce the format for our debate. You should have a slip that you all have. Our main thesis tonight is that it is resolved that the true worship of God is nothing less than the self-offering of Christ, which is offered only in the Catholic liturgy.

And Tom is going to be taking the affirmative stance, and James is going to be taking the negation. He's going to be taking the no of that. We're going to hear opening statements for 25 minutes apiece.

We're going to see rebuttals. We're going to see two rounds of rebuttals from each debater, totaling 20 minutes. There will be a time of cross-examination between the two of them, and then there will be a Q &A.

That Q &A is going to be the substance of that Q &A. You need to send me e-mails as to what you would like to ask. I will only choose those topics that are germane to our conversation tonight. You might have plenty of questions to ask each person.

I will not be asking every conceivable question. We have 25 minutes, and we need to keep it to the topic tonight. And then there will be closing statements at five minutes apiece. There is a suggested donation to cover our costs, and you can text e-mails.

You can see it at the top of your card as well. There are gift bags for everybody in the Narthex, and there are bathrooms both at the front of the church and downstairs. And if you have any kids that are in need of a cry room or a playground, we have both.

Cry rooms at the back of the sanctuary, playgrounds out back. Now that we have established where we are and what we're doing, Tom, the floor is yours.

Tom Riello’s Opening: The Mass as the True Worship of God

Thank you, Pastor. I first want to thank everyone here in attendance for your time and consideration of such an important and, I might dare say, essential topic that gets to the heart of the true worship of God to which all men and women, young and old, are called.

I also want to thank your pastor, Joshua Sparkman, for extending to me this invitation, which I count as an honor and privilege. And I also want to thank Dr. James White, who is no stranger to the debate stage, for his willingness to engage in the most important discussions that we could have as human beings made in the image of God.

Let me say at the outset, I am not the debater that Dr. White is, and if we are scoring at home, I'm quite sure that he will win on style points. Let me add, briefly, that I come to you tonight no stranger to Reformed theology.

While I grew up Catholic, in fact I have a brother who is a Catholic priest with the Archdiocese of New York, you should have seen the family fights. Blows may have been thrown on occasion. We are Italian, after all, from New York.

But I am no stranger to Reformed theology. I grew up Catholic, the youngest of six. I left the church of my youth and immediately became interested in the theology of the Reformers and their modern heirs, like Michael Horton, R .C. Sproul, God rest his soul, and James Montgomery Boyce.

God rest his soul as well. To name just a few of the luminaries of Reformed thought. I attended Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte, North Carolina. I was taught by Dr. Bob Cara, Dr. Michael Kruger, if you know those names, and was ordained in the New York Presbytery of the PCA.

Almost 20 years ago, I came back into the church of my baptism and have been teaching at Montgomery Catholic Preparatory School for the past 19 years. That being said, allow me to get right into the substance of our conversation this evening.

Tonight's debate topic is simply this. Be it resolved, the true worship of God is nothing less than the self-offering of Jesus Christ, which is only offered in the Catholic liturgy. That simple sentence is quite a lot to unpack.

My efforts to do so tonight will certainly not exhaust all that could be said. That being said, let me present to you the Catholic teaching on the holy sacrifice of the Mass and why we believe that the Mass is nothing less than the true worship of God, which is the self-offering of Jesus Christ to the Father by the Holy Spirit.

Allow me to give a definition from Pope Pius XII, who in his encyclical, Mediator Dei, writes these words. The sacred liturgy is consequently the public worship, which our Redeemer as head of the church renders to the Father, as well as the worship which the community of the faithful renders to its founder and through him to the Heavenly Father.

It is, in short, the worship rendered by the mystical body of Christ in the entirety of its head and members. As Catholics, and I also add our Eastern Orthodox friends to this, we believe that in the Catholic liturgy, our Lord Jesus Christ is not only worshiped, but that he is the one that indeed leads our worship.

We believe that in the liturgy handed down by our Lord and his apostles, we enter into what our Lord Jesus Christ is doing perpetually now in his heavenly ascension, that he is presenting before the Father his once-for-all sacrifice on Calvary.

Now, we believe this based off of what the Bible teaches and what the Catholic magisterium has taught for 2 ,000 years. What is the biblical and historical basis for this belief? Well, there are two Old Testament feasts that I will mention, the Passover and the Day of Atonement.

I will spend most of my time discussing the Day of Atonement and its connection to the work of Christ and the Catholic Mass, but let me first briefly mention the Passover. In the institution of the Passover, which we learn about in Exodus 12, we discover in Exodus 13 that when the Israelites were to enter the Promised Land, the land flowing with milk and honey, they were to see themselves as having been personally present in the event of the Exodus.

The long-awaited hope of Israel was a new covenant and a new Exodus, which would require a new Passover. In fact, the new Exodus will take place when the great king comes, the promised son of David, the Messiah.

Thus, when Messiah comes, the new Exodus will be inaugurated. We Christians believe that the Messiah has come into the world in the man, Jesus of Nazareth, the babe born in Bethlehem and the crucified and risen Lord.

Since we believe that Jesus is the Messiah, then we also believe that the new Exodus has arrived. If the new Exodus has arrived and if you believe in Jesus, it has, then what would be some of the marks of its arrival?

You would expect the regathering of the 12 tribes of Israel. And of course, we see that in the choosing of not a random number, but the 12 apostles. You would expect a new law. Thus, Jesus ascends the mountain to speak forth his law of the kingdom, the Sermon on the Mount.

And you would also expect a new Passover. Thus, Jesus in celebrating the Last Supper within the context of the Passover provides the Passover with what the catechism of the Catholic Church calls its definitive meaning.

Jesus is the Lamb of God who anticipates his sacrificial death on the cross with the celebration of the Last Supper. Just like the Passover of the Old Covenant, the New Testament Passover of Christ, was instituted the night before the great event of liberation.

Just like the Passover of the Old Covenant made present the liberating event of the Exodus, so too the Passover of the New Covenant makes present the liberating event of Calvary. In fact, it is well established among Jewish scholarship and piety that the Tanakh of the Mishnah further states, in each and every generation a person must view himself as though he personally left Egypt, as it is stated, and you shall tell your son on that day, saying, it is because of this which the Lord did for me when I came forth out of Egypt.

In every generation each person must say, this which the Lord did for me, and not this which the Lord did for my forefathers. Now while I fully concede that the modern Passover Haggadah may not be the exact same one that was celebrated in the Old Testament, I think we could agree that that understanding is a legitimate interpretation of Exodus 13.

The celebration of the New Testament Passover liturgy makes Christians contemporary with Calvary. Now, I want to turn my attention mostly to the Day of Atonement. As it is found in Leviticus 16, and I also want to draw our attention to the letter to the Hebrews.

When we gather together as the body of Christ, we are mystically united to our head, Jesus Christ, as I quoted Pope Pius XII. Notice that the first thing said is that our Redeemer, Jesus Christ, who is the head of the church, offers to the Father worship.

You know, I would dare say that not a lot of us as Christians think of Jesus as worshiping the Father, but he does, because he's fully God and fully man. So our Lord, who is equal to the Father in power and glory, and in the words of the Nicene Creed, consubstantial with the Father, indeed leads our worship.

He does so in his sacred humanity, in his incarnation, but taking upon himself our human nature, Jesus Christ, fully God and fully man, offers to the Father perfect and unblemished worship on our behalf.

We rightly worship our Lord in the Mass, but Jesus is not only worshiped in the Mass, our Lord Jesus actually leads our worship in the Mass. The writer to the letter of the Hebrews says of our Lord, now the point in what we are saying is this.

We have such a high priest, one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the majesty in heaven, a minister in the sanctuary, and the true tent, which is set up not by man, but by the Lord. For every high priest is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices, hence it is necessary for this priest also to have something to offer.

Hebrews 8 .1 .3. And just what does this priest, Jesus, have to offer the Father? The writer goes on a bit later to add, when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent, not made with hands, that is, not of this creation, he entered once for all into the holy place, taking not the blood of bulls and goats, but his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.

What does our blessed Lord bring with him to heaven? His very own body and blood, and he presents it to the Father. Now allow me to set the backdrop of what the letter to the Hebrews is getting at. The backdrop of this image is, as I mentioned already, the Old Testament feast, the Day of Atonement.

The Day of Atonement was the day when Israel would offer to God the supreme worship of its liturgical year. It was the day, if you will, when Israel received from the Lord his mercy and forgiveness. That is to say, it was, as the feast says, the Day of Atonement.

This day was unique in the true sense of the word because it was quite literally on this one day and this one day alone when the high priest, representing himself and his fellow priests, as well as representing the body of the people of Israel, would be able to enter the Holy of Holies.

This was the day when the high priest could enter behind the veil, the curtain that separated the holy place from the Holy of Holies, where the Ark of the Covenant was. Allow me to read from the Book of Leviticus, where we see the rubrics, if you will, for the Day of Atonement liturgy.

The Lord spoke to Moses after the death of the two sons of Aaron when they drew near before the Lord and died. And the Lord said to Moses, Tell Aaron, your brother, not to come at all times into the holy place within the veil before the mercy seat which is upon the ark, lest he die, for I will appear in the cloud upon the mercy seat.

But thus shall Aaron come into the holy place with a young bull for a sin offering and a ram for a burnt offering. He shall put on the holy linen coat and shall have the linen breeches on his body, be girded with the linen girdle and wear the linen turban.

These are the holy garments. He shall bathe his body in water and then put them on, and he shall take from the congregation of the people of Israel two male goats for a sin offering and one ram for a burnt offering.

And Aaron shall offer the bull as a sin offering for himself and shall make atonement for himself and for his house. Then he shall take the two goats and set before the Lord at the door of the tent of meeting.

This is where we get the scapegoat from, and so they cast a lot. So for the sake of time, I'll run ahead of that. So they send the scapegoat out into the wilderness. Moving down. Aaron shall present the bull as a sin offering for himself and shall make atonement for himself and for his house.

He shall kill the bull as a sin offering for himself, and he shall take the censer full of coals of fire from the altar before the Lord and two handfuls of sweet incense beaten small, and he shall bring it within the veil and put the incense on the fire before the Lord that the cloud of the incense may cover the mercy seat which is upon the testimony lest he die.

And then he shall take some of the blood of the bull and sprinkle it with his finger on the front of the mercy seat, and before the mercy seat, he shall sprinkle the blood with his finger seven times.

Then he shall kill the goat of the sin offering which is for the people and bring its blood also within the veil. And again, he repeats what he just did. And you can find, for further reading, Leviticus chapter 16, verses 1 through 19.

Now let's break this down. On the day of atonement, this is the picture that is painted. The high priest offers in the holy place, that is to say, in front of the veil, the sacrifice of the bull and the goat.

It is not in the holy place where the animal is slain. It is in that holy place, I shall say. Not in the holy of holies, but in the holy place. But to slay the animal was not enough. The high priest then had to go in behind the veil and enter into the holy of holies and bringing with him the blood of the sacrifice and place that blood in front of and on the mercy seat.

Failure to do so would have rendered the sacrifice insufficient, incomplete. Thus the blood had to enter into the holy of holies. And what does the holy of holies represent? Well, we are told in the letter to the Hebrews, heaven itself.

Now how does this prefigure what our blessed Lord did? Our Lord offered himself to the Father on the cross at Calvary. As Isaiah the prophet tells us, heaven is my throne and earth is my footstool. And so where does our Lord offer his sacrifice on Calvary?

Well, at about 2 .59 p .m. Jerusalem time, about 2 ,000 years ago, just outside the city gates. He offered it on earth, if you will, the holy place. But he doesn't keep his sacrifice there. What did he do?

Our Lord, who was slain on earth as the lamb, the holy victim, offered for our sins, then brought with him to heaven in his resurrection and his ascension, entering in behind the veil into heaven itself, not a copy of it, and bringing with himself.

He presents not the blood of bulls and goats, but his very own blood. After the high priest on the Day of Atonement presented the blood of the sacrifice and the Holy of Holies, he had to leave. And in order for him to go back in, he had to do the whole thing all over again,.

Repeatedly, without end.

And he had to wait another 364 days, and then he had to go, and then he had to wait. But that does not happen with our Lord. For our Lord does not leave when he enters into the true Holy of Holies, heaven itself.

He is there, and perpetually, and without interruption. Even now, as I speak here to you, members of Christ Presbyterian and guests, even now, right now, Jesus Christ is before the throne of his heavenly Father and your heavenly Father, and he's presenting not the blood of bulls and goats, but his very own blood.

Now, what does this mean? It means simply this, that the once-for-all sacrifice of our Lord is simply not over. It has not ended. Now, to be sure, our Lord's sacrifice of himself on Calvary is done.

It has been completed. We can say that this aspect of Jesus' work is finished. He died once, and he cannot die again. Jesus does not die in the Mass. He cannot die. Such a thought is blasphemy. But tragically, many of our non-Catholic friends believe this about us.

Here's one such example from a caller to the Catholic Answers radio show. I actually was a Catholic. I grew up a Catholic. I became seriously a Catholic when I became an adult. However, I'm now non-denominational.

I'm an evangelical, and just so you know, I left the Catholic Church, primarily because, you know, I believe that Jesus only died once for our sins, and, you know, with the Eucharist, of course, he dies every time you have communion.

That is not Catholic theology, and anybody who tells you otherwise is being dishonest or just doesn't know. But that is not Catholic theology.

Let me be clear.

When we talk about the sacrifice of the Mass, what we are talking about is this. Our Lord's once-for-all sacrifice is perpetually presented before the Father. Right now, as I've already said, even as we speak here in Mobile, Alabama, our Lord is presenting the blood of his once-for-all sacrifice.

One of my favorite stories in Scripture is from the book of Revelation, Chapter 5. And many of you probably know that story. You know, John is weeping. He has a vision of heaven. He's given a vision of the heavenly liturgy.

I would recommend a great book by Dr. Scott Hahn called The Lamb's Supper, which explores this wonderful theme that the book of Revelation is really not a book that unlocks the end times, pin the tail on the Antichrist, but rather it really is an unpacking of the liturgical reality of what's happening in heaven.

Well, in Revelation 5, John begins to weep because no one is found worthy to open the scroll. But the elders come to John, and they say, John, weep not. Weep not. One has been found worthy. One has been found worthy to open the scroll.

And behold, he looks, and there's the lion of the tribe of Judah. That's the one who's been found worthy. And then when you just expect John to see this roaring majestic lion who's going to open the scroll, he turns and he sees a lamb standing as though slain.

A lamb standing as though slain. That is the one who has been found worthy to open the scrolls. And so we have an image there of what we believe as Catholics is happening in many ways in the Catholic Mass.

When we gather at Mass to participate in the holy sacrifice of the Mass, heaven and earth meet. Through the words of the priest at Mass, when he says my sacrifice, he is referring to the truth that by his ordination to the holy priesthood, he is acting in the person of Christ the head.

Thus, the church here on earth is united with the church in heaven, and we mystically participate and are made present to what our Lord is doing even now in heaven, presenting his very body and blood before the Father in heaven.

Our Lord is right now offering to the Father his supreme act of worship. He's offering it to the Father by the Holy Spirit. Another great passage in the Bible that is often overlooked, especially as it relates to the Trinity, is Hebrews 9 .14.

Hebrews 9 .14 is such a wonderful, wonderful verse because it talks about how the Son of God offered to the Father his sacrifice through the eternal spirit. And you know, if you've ever been to a Catholic Mass, you know that before the words of institution, we have what's called the epiclesis, and that's just a fancy word meaning calling down upon.

And so you see the priest's hands come down upon the gifts, and he will bless the gifts and make them holy, and that's traditionally small t, the first ringing of the bells, to signify that the Holy Spirit is coming down upon these gifts.

And it is going to be through the Holy Spirit in many ways that Father is going to offer the holy sacrifice of the Mass in Jesus Christ to the Father. This is why at Mass for Catholics, we are invited to offer ourselves into that supreme worship of Jesus Christ.

This supreme act of worship of our Lord to the Father becomes my supreme act of worship to the Father by my union with our head, Jesus Christ. You know, I'm speaking to a PCA crowd and a PCA church, and if you know anything about the theology of the Reformers and the Presbyterian Church, and most especially the OPC and the PCA and the RPCNA and so on, you know that union with Christ and covenantal theology are at the heart of Reformed theology.

Let me just say that union with Christ and covenantal theology has a home in the Catholic Church. In fact, as a friend of mine once commented, the Catholic Church is union with Christ and covenantal theology on steroids.

And I really think that's true. This is why when we come to Mass, as I said, Father says, my sacrifice, and then he adds, and yours. And so I get to offer on the altar the sacrifice of my life. As he is offering the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, sacramentally representing Christ the head, I represent Christ the body.

And so present at every action, liturgical action of the church, as Augustine says, is the whole Christ, head and members. In fact, Augustine goes so far to say that by virtue of our baptism, we are Christ.

It's incredible. You would think, how could the great Augustine say such a thing? Because he pays attention to the scriptures and the tradition, which tells us that by the act of the liturgy, we are indeed being divinized.

And so we offer to the Father in the person of the priest, our sacrifice of our lives, as St. Paul tells us in Romans 12. And so my sacrifice, my tears, my joys, my sorrows, my worries. I mentioned my wife, who is here tonight.

We have two sons that are mobile police officers. We are proud of them, but we don't like their job. We love what they do. We're glad they do it. Someone has to. They love doing it. But man, does my wife sometimes cry.

And you know what's comforting? To know that at Mass, those tears, she can place them on the altar. Every now and then, we'll get a video that one of our sons, Anthony, who's too much of a daredevil, he'll send a video of, hey, I was in a chase today, and this is what happened.

The news, like, yeah, I'm glad we didn't know about it in real time. But there's something very comforting in the knowledge to know that when I attend Mass, I bring my burdens and I lay them on the altar.

And what's so beautiful about that is that then the priest, present as Christ the head, and the church, the body, the faithful, present as Corpus Christi, Christ the body, offers the whole thing back up to God.

So that, indeed, the my sacrifice of the priest and the your sacrifice of the faithful is offered through Christ, with Christ, and in Christ to the Father. As the words of the concluding doxology of the prayer say, through him, with him, and in him, all glory and honor is yours, almighty Father, forever and ever.

Amen.

Everything that we do in the Catholic Mass and in the liturgy is Christocentric. There's not a thing that is not Christocentric. Everything that we do in the Mass is offered to the Father, in the Son, and by the Holy Spirit.

And that is at the heart of Catholic worship. Thank you for your time.

Dr. James White’s Opening: The Finished Work of Christ and Hebrews

Dr. White, your opening statement, please.

Well, good evening. It's good to be here right near a battleship I saw today. That was pretty cool. Didn't know you had one of those. I would have been here earlier if I had known that. And it's good to be debating a New Yorker.

When we did a series of debates called the Great Debates on Long Island, we were in New York. We did about ten of those, as I recall. Jerry Matitix and Robert Syngenis and Gary Machuda and Mitch Pacwa, of course.

We did a number of debates together. But it was there on Long Island. And those New Yorkers, they're an interesting breed of Catholic. They truly are. We'll see if that comes out this evening. Our thesis statement, the true worship of God is nothing less than the self-offering of Christ, which is only offered in the Catholic liturgy.

And the problem I have right now is that the key elements of the Roman Catholic teaching concerning the Mass that were focused upon by the reformers and that need to be focused upon this evening were not made clear to you.

And I need to make sure that those are brought forward so that our conversation can be truly helpful. I appreciate the words of John O 'Brien in his popular work, The Faith of Millions. It is an older work, and that does sort of introduce us to one thing.

I'm not sure that Pope Francis would say the thesis statement that we are defending this evening. Given the statements that he has made, even just over the past few weeks, that all religions are like different types of languages leading us to God and things like that.

I don't know that he would say that the only way of worship is found in the Catholic liturgy. The only true worship of God is found in the Catholic liturgy. In fact, I don't know that any Roman Catholic after Vatican II could literally say that because Section 841 of the Catholic Catechism specifically states that we adore the same God as Muslims do.

It uses the term adoramus, which is the same term that is used in the Latin version of the Catechism every time it talks about adoring the Trinity, saying that Muslims adore God together with us. I've done many debates with Muslims around the world, and I can guarantee you we do not adore the same God.

I'm not really certain, to be honest with you, where the current pope would come down on that particular issue, which in and of itself raises all sorts of questions. Fundamentally, Tom doesn't get to interpret Roman Catholicism, not the way it's set up today.

There is an ultimate authority there, and that ultimate authority is making fundamental changes in the tradition of the Roman Catholic Church. I raise that as an issue because the quote that I'm going to give you is from a number of years ago, and some might say, we don't believe that anymore, except Tom just said in his opening statement that this is what has been taught by the Magisterium for 2 ,000 years.

So which is it going to be? Is it what's been taught for 2 ,000 years, or does it get to be changed? Does it get to be reinterpreted? That's one of the big questions we have to wrestle with this evening.

So, again, John O 'Brien said these words when the priest announces the tremendous words of consecration. The priest brings Christ down from heaven and renders him present on our altar as the eternal victim for the sins of man, not once, but a thousand times.

The priest speaks, and lo, Christ, the eternal and omnipotent God, bows his head in humble obedience to the priest's command. Of what sublime dignity is the office of the Christian priest, who is thus privileged to act as the ambassador and the vicegerent of Christ on earth?

He continues the essential ministry of Christ. He teaches the faithful with the authority of Christ. He pardons the penitent sinner with the power of Christ. He offers up again the same sacrifice of adoration, same term I was just talking about, and atonement which Christ offered on Calvary.

No wonder that the name which spiritual writers are especially fond of applying to the priest is that of alter Christus, Latin for another Christ. For the priest is, and should be, another Christ. So, here is O 'Brien's statement, and here's what we need to understand.

Within historic Roman Catholic theology, again, I say this because of the state of flux that we seem to be in in the Vatican these days. In historic Roman Catholic theology, the sacrifice of the mass is a representation.

It's not another sacrificing of Christ. It is a representation of the one sacrifice of Christ, and it is called an unbloody sacrifice in the mass, and it is called a propitiatory sacrifice. It forgives sins.

Now, if that is the case, then what we need to understand is that in historic Roman Catholic theology, you can come to the mass a thousand times, two thousand times, ten thousand times in your life, and yet still die unperfected and impure.

If you die in the state of grace, as Rome understands it, then you go to a place called purgatory, and you undergo satis passio, the suffering of atonement. Now, I know in these days, wow, you know, back in the olden days, I debated Roman Catholics who actually believed in purgatory.

These days, it's sort of hard to find. There are a lot of Roman Catholics who say, well, it's done in an instant, and you don't have to worry about all that indulgence stuff and all the saints that saw popes in purgatory that had been there for 150 years.

They don't have to worry about all that. We've sort of cleaned all that kind of stuff up. Well, dogmatically, they haven't. But the point is, you can go to mass, and you can approach what ostensibly is the one sacrifice of Christ over and over and over again, and die in the state of grace, unperfected, with the temporal punishments of sins still upon your soul, and you, therefore, have to go to purgatory to be cleansed before you can enter into the presence of God.

Or, you may go to the sacrifice of the mass, the same sacrifice of the cross, we are told. All those times, commit a mortal sin at the end of your life, not be reconciled to the church, and go to hell, having come to the cross over and over and over and over again.

And please note, in both what I read and what was said in the previous statement, what was one of the key issues? The role of the sacerdotal priest. Being able to utilize the words of consecration. And I submit to you that any meaningful reading of the apostolic tradition that is the New Testament reveals that there is no such thing as a sacerdotal priest.

It developed long after the time of the apostles. By the time of Cyprian, you've definitely got it coming up in his writings. But it is not an apostolic office. There are no qualifications for a priest in the New Testament.

Ever found that strange? There are qualifications for elders and deacons. There are no qualifications for priests. Because there is no office of priest in the New Testament. There is one high priest, Jesus Christ.

We are all believer priests, but there is no role of a sacerdotal priest that has a mark upon his soul that allows him to work the miracle of transubstantiation, a term that will not be used for 1 ,100 years after the birth of Christ.