Reformation Conference Debate: Dr James White Mr. Tom Riello

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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.
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It is the 645 time to start our debate. Let's open with a word of prayer.
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Our great God and Heavenly Father, we ask that tonight that you'd be blessed by a good theological debate.
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And we ask that the light of your word would shine. We ask that we would bask in the truth that Jesus is
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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,
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Father, this is all your plan. And so we ask that you would bless this time, bless Tom Riello, bless
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Dr. James White, as we debate, give us precise thinking, give us the call and the sense to honor your name.
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And we ask that you'd be glorified as this debate continues. Bless us and keep us.
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We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, welcome to Christ Presbyterian Church.
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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
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Reformed faith throughout Mobile. And this year we're hosting a debate on a historic topic.
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This topic has been debated amongst Protestants and Catholics for 500 years. To my right,
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I'd like to introduce you to Dr. James White. Dr. White is the director of Alpha and Omega Ministries.
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He is professor of church history and apologetics at Grace Bible Theological Seminary. And he has taught
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Greek, Hebrew, systematic theology, textual criticism, and church history, and various topics in the fields of apologetics for numerous other schools.
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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.
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Nearing in, right? It's either somewhere between 193 and 195. Somewhere in between.
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I'm not sure we're precise enough there. Dr. White has engaged in that many.
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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.
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To my left, your right, is Mr. Tom Riello. Tom is a native New Yorker.
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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.
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Tom spent three years in the professional ministry, including as a pastor in New York. In 2005,
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Tom came back to the Catholic Church. And in 2006, he came to work for the Archdiocese of Mobile in Montgomery, Alabama.
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He is the chair of theology at Montgomery Catholic Preparatory School, as well as adult faith formation director at Holy Spirit Parish.
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He's also a weekly guest on Archangel Radio here in Mobile. And Tom resides in Montgomery with his wife,
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Christine. They have six children, two of whom are police officers with the Mobile Police Department.
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And five grandchildren. Excellent. And I am Joshua Sparkman. I'm going to be the moderator of tonight's debate.
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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.
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Yet the triune God in the inerrant scriptures commands his church to reason from the revelation of the
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Bible, Isaiah 118, to be filled with biblical knowledge, Colossians 1 .9,
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and to correct others in gentleness. That is, to engage in civil discourse.
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So without further ado, I'm going to introduce the format for our debate. You should have a slip that you all have.
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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
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Catholic liturgy. And Tom is going to be taking the affirmative stance, and James is going to be taking the negation.
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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.
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We're going to see two rounds of rebuttals from each debater, totaling 20 minutes.
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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.
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You need to send me emails as to what you would like to ask. I will only choose those topics that are germane to our conversation tonight.
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You might have plenty of questions to ask each person. I will not be asking every conceivable question.
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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.
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There is a suggested donation to cover our costs, and you can text emails.
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You can see it at the top of your card as well. There are gift bags for everybody in the
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Northex, and there are bathrooms both at the front of the church and downstairs.
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And if you have any kids that are in need of a cry room or a playground, we have both.
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Cry rooms at the back of the sanctuary, playgrounds out back. Now that we have established where we are and what we're doing,
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Tom, the floor is yours. Thank you,
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Pastor. I first want to thank everyone here in attendance for your time and consideration of such an important and,
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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.
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I also want to thank your pastor, Joshua Sparkman, for extending to me this invitation, which
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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.
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Let me say at the outset, I am not the debater that Dr. White is, and if we are scoring at home,
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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.
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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.
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Blows may have been thrown on occasion. We are Italian, after all, from New York. But I am no stranger to Reformed theology.
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I grew up Catholic, the youngest of six. I left the church of my youth and immediately became interested in the theology of the
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Reformers and their modern heirs, like Michael Horton, R .C.
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Sproul, God rest his soul, and James Montgomery Boyce. God rest his soul as well.
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To name just a few of the luminaries of Reformed thought. I attended Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte, North Carolina.
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I was taught by Dr. Bob Cara, Dr. Michael Kruger, if you know those names, and was ordained in the
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New York Presbytery of the PCA. Almost 20 years ago, I came back into the church of my baptism and have been in Montgomery teaching at Montgomery Catholic Preparatory School for the past 19 years.
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That being said, allow me to get right into the substance of our conversation this evening. Tonight's debate topic is simply this.
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Be it resolved, the true worship of God is nothing less than the self -offering of Jesus Christ, which is only offered in the
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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.
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That being said, let me present to you the Catholic teaching on the holy sacrifice of the mass.
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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
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Father by the Holy Spirit. Allow me to give a definition from Pope Pius XII, who in his encyclical,
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Mediator Dei, writes these words. The sacred liturgy is consequently the public worship which our
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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
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Heavenly Father. It is, in short, the worship rendered by the mystical body of Christ in the entirety of its head and members.
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As Catholics, and I also add our Eastern Orthodox friends to this, we believe that in the
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Catholic liturgy, our Lord Jesus Christ is not only worshipped, but that he is the one that indeed leads our worship.
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We believe that in the liturgy handed down by our Lord and his apostles, we enter into what our
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Lord Jesus Christ is doing perpetually now in his heavenly ascension, that he is presenting before the
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Father his once -for -all sacrifice on Calvary. Now, we believe this based off of what the
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Bible teaches and what the Catholic magisterium has taught for 2 ,000 years. What is the biblical and historical basis for this belief?
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Well, there are two Old Testament feasts that I will mention, the Passover and the Day of Atonement.
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I will spend most of my time discussing the Day of Atonement and its connection to the work of Christ and the
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Catholic Mass, but let me first briefly mention the Passover. In the institution of the
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Passover, which we learn about in Exodus 12, we discover in Exodus 13 that when the Israelites were to enter the
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Promised Land, the land flowing with milk and honey, they were to see themselves as having been personally present in the event of the
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Exodus. The long -awaited hope of Israel was a new covenant and a new
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Exodus, which would require a new Passover. In fact, the new
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Exodus will take place when the great king comes, the promised son of David, the Messiah. Thus, when
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Messiah comes, the new Exodus will be inaugurated. We Christians believe that the
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Messiah has come into the world in the man, Jesus of Nazareth, the babe born in Bethlehem, and the crucified and risen
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Lord. Since we believe that Jesus is the Messiah, then we also believe that the new
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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?
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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.
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You would expect a new law. Thus, Jesus ascends the mountain to speak forth his law of the kingdom, the
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Sermon on the Mount. And you would also expect a new Passover. Thus, Jesus, in celebrating the
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Last Supper within the context of the Passover, provides the Passover with what the catechism of the
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Catholic Church calls its definitive meaning. Jesus is the
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Lamb of God who anticipates his sacrificial death on the cross with the celebration of the Last Supper.
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Just like the Passover of the Old Covenant, the New Testament Passover of Christ was instituted the night before the great event of liberation.
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Just like the Passover of the Old Covenant made present the liberating event of the
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Exodus, so, too, the Passover of the New Covenant makes present the liberating event of Calvary.
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In fact, it is well established among Jewish scholarship and piety that the
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Tanakh of the Mishnah further states, in each and every generation, a person must view himself as though he personally left
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Egypt, as it is stated, and you shall tell your son on that day, saying, it is because of this which the
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Lord did for me when I came forth out of Egypt. In every generation, each person must say, this which the
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Lord did for me and not this which the Lord did for my forefathers. Now, while I fully concede that the modern
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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.
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The celebration of the New Testament Passover liturgy makes Christians contemporary with Calvary.
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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
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Hebrews. When we gather together as the body of Christ, we are mystically united to our head,
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Jesus Christ, as I quoted Pope Pius XII. Notice that the first thing said is that our
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Redeemer, Jesus Christ, who is the head of the church, offers to the Father worship.
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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
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God and fully man. So our Lord, who is equal to the
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Father in power and glory, and in the words of the Nicene Creed, consubstantial with the Father, indeed leads our worship.
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He does so in his sacred humanity, in his incarnation, but taking upon himself our human nature,
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Jesus Christ, fully God and fully man, offers to the Father perfect and unblemished worship on our behalf.
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We rightly worship our Lord in the Mass, but Jesus is not only worshiped in the Mass, our
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Lord Jesus actually leads our worship in the Mass. The writer to the letter of the
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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
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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,
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Hebrews 8 .1 .3. And just what does this priest, Jesus, have to offer the Father?
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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.
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What does our blessed Lord bring with him to heaven? His very own body and blood, and he presents it to the
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Father. Now allow me to set the backdrop of what the letter to the Hebrews is getting at.
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The backdrop of this image is, as I mentioned already, the Old Testament feast, the Day of Atonement.
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The Day of Atonement was the day when Israel would offer to God the supreme worship of its liturgical year.
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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
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Day of Atonement. This day was unique in the true sense of the word, because it was quite literally on this one day, in 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
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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
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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
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Day of Atonement liturgy. 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.
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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.
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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Lord, that the cloud of the incense may cover the mercy seat, which is upon the testimony lest he die.
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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.
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Then he shall kill the goat of the sin offering, which is for the people, and bring its blood also within the veil.
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And again, he repeats what he just did. And you can find, for further reading,
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Failure to do so would have rendered the sacrifice insufficient, incomplete. Thus the blood had to enter into the holy of holies.
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And what does the holy of holies represent? Well, we are told in the letter to the Hebrews, heaven itself.
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Now how does this prefigure what our blessed Lord did? Our Lord offered himself to the
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Father on the cross at Calvary. As Isaiah the prophet tells us, heaven is my throne and earth is my footstool.
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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.
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He offered it on earth, if you will, the holy place. But he doesn't keep his sacrifice there.
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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.
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After the high priest on the day of atonement presented the blood of the sacrifice and the Holy of Holies, he had to leave.
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And in order for him to go back in, he had to do the whole thing all over again, repeatedly, without end.
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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
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Lord. For our Lord does not leave when he enters into the true Holy of Holies, heaven itself.
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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,
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Jesus Christ is before the throne of his heavenly Father and your heavenly
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Father, and he's presenting not the blood of bulls and goats, but his very own blood.
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Now, what does this mean? It means simply this, that the once -for -all sacrifice of our
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Lord is simply not over. It has not ended. Now, to be sure, our
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Lord's sacrifice of himself on Calvary is done. It has been completed.
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We can say that this aspect of Jesus' work is finished. He died once, and he cannot die again.
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Jesus does not die in the Mass. He cannot die. Such a thought is blasphemy.
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But tragically, many of our non -Catholic friends believe this about us. Here's one such example from a caller to the
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Catholic Answers radio show. I actually was a Catholic. I grew up a Catholic. I became seriously a
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Catholic. When I became an adult, however, I'm now non -denominational. I'm an evangelical. And just so you know,
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I left the Catholic Church primarily because, you know, I believe that Jesus only died once for our sins.
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And you know, with the Eucharist, of course, he dies every time you have communion. That is not Catholic theology.
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And anybody who tells you otherwise is being dishonest or just doesn't know.
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But that is not Catholic theology. Let me be clear. When we talk about the sacrifice of the
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Mass, what we are talking about is this. Our Lord's once -for -all sacrifice is perpetually presented before the
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Father. Right now, as I've already said, even as we speak here in Mobile, Alabama, our
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Lord is presenting the blood of his once -for -all sacrifice. One of my favorite stories in Scripture is from the
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Book of Revelation, Chapter 5. And many of you probably know that story.
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You know, John is weeping. He has a vision of heaven. He's given a vision of the heavenly liturgy.
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I would recommend a great book by Dr. Scott Hahn called The Lamb's Supper, which explores this wonderful theme that the
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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.
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Well, in Revelation 5, John begins to weep because no one is found worthy to open the scroll.
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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.
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And behold, he looks, and there's the lion of the tribe of Judah.
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That's the one who's been found worthy. And then when you just expect
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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.
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A lamb standing as though slain. That is the one who has been found worthy to open the scrolls.
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And so we have an image there of what we believe as Catholics is happening in many ways in the
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Catholic Mass. When we gather at Mass to participate in the holy sacrifice of the
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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.
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Thus, the church here on earth is united with the church in heaven, and we mystically participate and are made present to what our
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Lord is doing even now in heaven, presenting his very body and blood before the
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Father in heaven. Our Lord is right now offering to the
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Father his supreme act of worship. He's offering it to the Father by the Holy Spirit.
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Another great passage in the Bible that is often overlooked, especially as it relates to the
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Trinity, is Hebrews 9 .14. Hebrews 9 .14 is such a wonderful, wonderful verse because it talks about how the
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Son of God offered to the Father his sacrifice through the eternal spirit. And you know, if you've ever been to a
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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.
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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
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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
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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.
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This supreme act of worship of our Lord to the Father becomes my supreme act of worship to the
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Father, by my union with our head, Jesus Christ. You know,
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I'm speaking to a PCA crowd and a PCA church, and if you know anything about the theology of the
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Reformers and the Presbyterian Church, and most especially the OPC and the PCA and the
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RPCNA and so on, you know that union with Christ and covenantal theology are at the heart of Reformed theology.
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Let me just say that union with Christ and covenantal theology has a home in the
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Catholic Church. In fact, as a friend of mine once commented, the
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Catholic Church is union with Christ and covenantal theology on steroids.
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And I really think that's true. This is why when we come to Mass, as I said,
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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
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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
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Christ, head and members. In fact, Augustine goes so far to say that by virtue of our baptism, we are
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Christ. It's incredible. You would think, how could the great Augustine say such a thing?
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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.
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And so we offer to the Father, in the person of the priest, our sacrifice of our lives, as St.
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Paul tells us in Romans 12. And so my sacrifice, my tears, my joys, my sorrows, my worries.
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I mentioned my wife, who is here tonight. We have two sons that are mobile police officers.
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We are proud of them, but we don't like their job. We love what they do.
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We're glad they do it. Someone has to. They love doing it. But, man, does my wife sometimes cry.
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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,
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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.
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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
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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
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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,
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Almighty Father, forever and ever. Amen. Everything that we do in the
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Catholic Mass and in the liturgy is Christocentric. There's not a thing that is not
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Christocentric. Everything that we do in the Mass is offered to the Father, in the
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Son, and by the Holy Spirit. And that is at the heart of Catholic worship.
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Thank you for your time. Dr. White, your opening statement, please.
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Well, good evening. It's good to be here right near a battleship I saw today. That was pretty cool.
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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
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New Yorker. When we did a series of debates called The Great Debates on Long Island.
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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.
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We did a number of debates together. But it was there on Long Island. And those
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New Yorkers, they're an interesting breed of Catholic. They truly are. We'll see if that comes out this evening.
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Our thesis statement, the true worship of God is nothing less than the self -offering of Christ, which is only offered in the
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Catholic liturgy. And the problem I have right now is that the key elements of the
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Roman Catholic teaching concerning the Mass that were focused upon by the
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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.
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I appreciate the words of John O 'Brien in his popular work, The Faith of Millions.
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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.
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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.
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I don't know that he would say that the only way of worship is found in the
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Catholic liturgy. The only true worship of God is found in the Catholic liturgy. In fact,
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I don't know that any Roman Catholic after Vatican II could literally say that, because Section 841 of the
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Catholic Catechism specifically states that we adore the same
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God as Muslims do. It uses the term adoramus, which is the same term that is used in the
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Latin version of the Catechism every time it talks about adoring the Trinity, saying that Muslims adore
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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
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God. So I'm not really certain, to be honest with you, where the current
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Pope would come down on that particular issue, which in and of itself raises all sorts of questions, because fundamentally
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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
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Roman Catholic Church. And so 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
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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?
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Does it get to be reinterpreted? That's one of the big questions we have to wrestle with this evening.
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So again, John O 'Brien said these words, when the priest announces the tremendous words of consecration, he reaches up into the heavens, brings
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Christ down from his throne, and places him upon our altar to be offered up again as the victim for the sins of man.
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It is a power greater than the saints and angels, greater than that of Seraphim and Cherubim.
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Indeed, it is greater even than the power of the Virgin Mary. While the Blessed Virgin was the human agency by which
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Christ became incarnate a single time, 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.
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The priest speaks, and lo, Christ, the eternal and omnipotent
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God, bows his head in humble obedience to the priest's command. Of what sublime dignity is the office of the
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Christian priest, who is thus privileged to act as the ambassador and the vicegerent of Christ on earth?
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He continues the essential ministry of Christ. He teaches the faithful with the authority of Christ.
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He pardons the penitent sinner with the power of Christ. He offers up again the same sacrifice of adoration, same term
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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
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Christus, Latin for another Christ, for the priest is and should be another
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Christ. So, here is O 'Brien's statement, and here's what we need to understand.
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Within historic Roman Catholic theology, again I say this because of the state of flux that we seem to be in in the
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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.
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It forgives sins. Now, if that is the case, then what we need to understand is that in historic
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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.
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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.
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Now, I know in these days, wow, you know, back in the olden days, I debated
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Roman Catholics who actually believed in purgatory. These days, it's sort of hard to find.
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There are a lot of Roman Catholics who say, well, it's just, 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, don't have to worry about all that, we've sort of cleaned all that kind of stuff up.
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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 sin still upon your soul, and you therefore have to go to purgatory to be cleansed before you can enter into the presence of God.
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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.
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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
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New Testament reveals that there is no such thing as a sacerdotal priest.
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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.
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There are no qualifications for a priest in the New Testament. Ever found that strange? There are qualifications for elders and deacons.
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There are no qualifications for priests, because there is no office of priest in the
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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.
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So this is a complete development over time. Some would say it's an evolution, and some would say it's a mutation.
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The Bible should be able to tell us which one of those two things is true. Now, I appreciated the fact that there was much discussion of the book of Hebrews, because I do want to focus our attention upon that as best
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I can in the brief time that we have. There's much that could be said about the historical development of this belief over time.
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I would, just briefly, I just want to say one thing in Roman Catholicism today, and for hundreds of years now, when the host has been consecrated and transubstantiated into the body, soul, blood, and divinity of the
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Lord Jesus Christ, it is worshipped, and it is carried in procession. We don't see so much of that around here, but you might see it once in a while.
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But it is carried in procession, especially in Roman Catholic countries, and you find it in the church, and that's why you genuflect and bow when you enter in the physical presence of God, and all the rest of this kind of stuff.
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And I just want to point something out to you. It didn't happen in the early church. There were no processions.
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They didn't carry a pix or a saboreum or a monstrance around. They would take the elements to the sick.
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They would do that, but they were then not kept in some special box or anything like that, and in fact, that stuff did not develop.
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And this is not disputable. The Catholic Encyclopedia admits the same thing. This type of stuff only begins to develop after the term transubstantiation starts being used, after the turn of the millennium.
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Millennium. Why would that be if they actually believed that the consecrated host is actually the body, soul, blood, and divinity of the
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Lord Jesus Christ? That is a question that also needs to be addressed. But what is the primary reason that we're here this evening?
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I mean, there's a lot going on in the world right now. There's something coming up in less than two weeks. What is it again? I forget what it is.
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Something that everybody's talking about. And here we are talking theology. Why?
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Because what we talk about tonight will still be eternally relevant 30 years after everyone who's running for president right now is dead.
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That's why. That's why. And that's why we need to keep talking about it. Let's talk about what the book of Hebrews says, because this is the issue.
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This is the issue. Here's my thesis statement to you. Let me make this very clear to you.
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By proclaiming the mass as a propitiatory sacrifice that does not perfect,
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Rome is substantially denying the biblical teaching on the perfection of the sacrifice of Christ.
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By making it something that is repetitive, that you can go to over and over again, the whole point of the book of Hebrews is that the repetitive sacrifices of the old covenant are a reminder of sin.
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If you have to keep going back to the same sacrifice again and again, it is a reminder of the fact that whatever you're going to is pointing to something else.
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It has not dealt with your sin issue. And the whole point of Hebrews is there's nothing to go back to.
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There was great pressure being put upon the early Jewish Christians to go back to the worship in the temple.
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And that book, which I believe was a sermon preached by Paul and then written down in Greek by Luke, there's a theory for you.
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You can't disprove it, can you? It's a great theory, but I can't prove it and you can't dispute it.
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It is Luke's vocabulary. It's Luke's syntax. It's Luke's style. It's his grammar and everything, but it's
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Paul's theology. So I think it fits really well. Be that as it may, the whole point of the book is an encouragement to Jewish Christians.
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There's nothing to go back to. Oh, you can look at the temple because I think it was written before AD 70.
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You can look at the temple and it looks so beautiful and all the rest of that stuff. But it was pointing away from itself to a greater fulfillment.
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All the sacrifices, all the priesthood was pointing to the Melchizedek priesthood held only by Jesus, not by anybody else.
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Anyone who claims to hold the Melchizedek priesthood is committing blasphemy. It's pointing to his finished work.
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So press on. Be faithful. Look at all the faithful in Hebrews chapter 11. That's what the book is about.
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So how does the argument made? Well, consider a few texts with me. We only have a few minutes. Hebrews chapter 7, verses 24 through 25.
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These words are so important. But Jesus, on the other hand, in comparison to the old priests, because he continues forever, holds his priesthood aparabaton, permanently, without successor.
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He doesn't pass it on to anybody else. Nobody shares in it. Therefore, he is able to do what?
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To make us savable? He is able to make it possible for you to save yourself by what you do?
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No. He is able to save completely, panteles, forever, those who draw near to God through him.
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A specific people, I'm not sure if the current pope believes that, but a specific people, why?
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Why is he able to save? Since he always lives to make intercession for them.
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The high priest, you heard, Leviticus 16. The high priest, when he offered the sacrifice, what does he do?
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He goes into the holy place. There's no place to sit down in the holy place.
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Ever check that out? No place to sit there. He only went in on that one day.
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And he sprinkled the blood upon the mercy seat. And then he had to back out of there.
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Because he was not carrying his own blood. He was carrying the blood of that animal sacrifice. And when he went in there and he sprinkled that blood, he knew if he lived to the next year, he was going to be back there a year from now.
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And the next year. And the next year. And he could see, still on the mercy seat, the dried blood from all the years before.
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And what did it say? This is not the end. This is pointing to something else.
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But he had to take the offering and he had to intercede in the holy place.
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But you see, Jesus, since he lives forever, he enters in and what does he do?
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He sits down. At the right hand of the Father. And how is he presented in the book of Revelation?
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Remember the picture? The Lamb. Standing as if slain.
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You see, the marks of the sacrifice still upon him.
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And yet he's standing. Because he's alive. He's been slain and he's alive forevermore.
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That is not a new offering of a sacrifice. That is a presentation of a finished work.
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And it's once for all. And the writer of the Hebrews says it over and over again. He either uses hapox or ephapox.
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Once for all. One time. Never to be repeated. The repetition of the old covenant sacrifices pointed to the fact that they were temporary.
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The finishedness of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ points to its permanence and its perfection.
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That's what scripture will go on to say to us. But when Christ appeared as a high priest, Hebrews 9, verse 11, as a high priest of the good things to come, he entered through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation, and not through the blood of goats and cows, but through his own blood, he entered the holy place once for all.
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He's not rendered upon altars by some priesthood that doesn't exist in any apostolic concept whatsoever.
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He enters once for all having obtained, not grace that you can then get through the sacraments of the church, but having obtained eternal redemption.
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For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer is sprinkling those who have been defiled, sanctified for the cleansing of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered himself without blemish to God, and yes, that is a
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Trinitarian passage, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God. For this reason, he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that since a death has taken place, the redemption of the transgressions that are committed under the first covenant, those who have been called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance.
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Key to all of this is the biblical teaching of an elect people of God who are united with Christ in his death.
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His death is our death, his burial our burial, his resurrection our resurrection. It is a specific and personal atonement on our behalf, and it perfects.
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The writer goes on in verse 24, For Christ did not enter a holy place made with hands, mere copy of the true one, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us in our place.
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And didn't Hebrews 7 .25 say that's why he's able to save perfectly? Not able to make salvation possible, but to actually save.
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Presence of God for us, nor was that he would offer himself often as the high priest enters the holy place year by year with blood that is not his own.
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Otherwise, he would have needed to suffer often since the foundation of the world. But now once, once at the consummation of the ages, he has been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.
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Contrast that with the idea that you will have to go to purgatory for the temporal punishments of your sins, even though you approach the cross 10 ,000 times in your life.
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Is that what the book of Hebrews is talking about? The writer of the Hebrews knows nothing of purgatory. He knows nothing of any of this type of thing.
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This is human tradition that was added long afterwards. But now once at the consummation of the ages, he has been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.
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And in as much as it is a point for men to die once, and after this comes a judgment, so also Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, his people, he will appear a second time for salvation without reference to sin to those who eagerly await him.
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Time is almost up, but I hurry to Hebrews 10. For the law, since it has only a shadow of the good things to come and not the very form of things, can never by the same sacrifice, which is what they offer continually year by year, repetition, make perfect those who draw near.
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Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered because the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have had consciousness of sins.
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But in those sacrifices, in a repetitive sacrifice, what is there? There is an anamnesis, a reminder of sins year by year.
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For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. But then verses 10 through 14, by this will, by this testament, we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ, how often?
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Once for all. And every priest stands daily ministering and offering time after time the same sacrifices.
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He's talking about the old priests. He's not saying, and this is going to continue on. Time after time, the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins, but he having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time.
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There is no need in the Christian faith for another propitiatory sacrifice. There's one. It took place on the cross of Calvary.
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Having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, sat down. He is not called down from heaven by a priest and made present upon an altar.
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He sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time onward until his enemies be made a footstool for his feet.
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Psalm 110, for by one offering. He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.
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This is the work of the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ. When we participate in the
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Lord's Supper, we are not being given an anamnesis of sin.
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We are not going to a priest and seeking absolution. When we partake in the
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Lord's Supper, the term anamnesis means remembrance. And what did Jesus say?
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Do this as an anamnesis, a remembrance of what? Of me, not your sin.
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Of me, the one who has completed all of these things.
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That is the message of the New Testament. That is the message of the apostles.
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And so we need to understand the full -orbed doctrine and how it has developed over time within Roman Catholicism and the function it has in the sacramental system of Roman Catholicism, including issues like indulgences and grace and the priesthood and confession and all these things that the apostles of the
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Lord Jesus Christ never even dreamed of and developed over time. And what's been the result?
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The result, sadly, so many people. We see them all the time.
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You see it online all the time, people bowing before statues of Mary and seeking her intercession and going to the
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Mass over and over again and having Masses said for people who've died so that grace would be given to them.
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All these things. And the simple message in the New Testament is
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Romans 5 .1, Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our
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Lord Jesus Christ. The addition of things to the gospel very often is fundamentally a denial of that gospel.
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So the thesis says this worship of God only offered in the Catholic liturgy.
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I say to you, the Bible teaches very differently. Thank you very much.
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Thank you, Dr. White. Mr. Riello, your first rebuttal.
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There's a lot there, but I just want to say at the outset what's great about this, and Father Rizzo can vouch for this,
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Archbishop Brody comes to my classrooms a lot. I've had lunch with him many times. I can assure you that Archbishop Brody would affirm that the
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Catholic and the Orthodox liturgy, because the Catholic Church acknowledges that the Orthodox liturgy is valid.
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In fact, we believe many of the same things on the issue. We might use some different words.
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But he said in my classroom once that the Mass, why you have to be at Mass is because the Catholic Mass offers the supreme worship.
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Now, in saying that... Mr. Riello, can I stop you for a second? Can you get the microphone a little closer to your...
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Sure. Not everyone can hear you. Okay, perfect. Come a little closer, please. All right. There we go. You got it?
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I'm normally told to lower my voice. My wife's here. She can vouch.
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Anyway, that's good. Okay, so the supreme worship is what we offer in the
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Catholic Mass. I think that we still affirm that as a
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Catholic Church. We teach that, that the Catholic liturgy is the worship handed on by God.
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We don't shy away from that. Now, that does not mean that you, a Christ Presbyterian, or our separated brethren, don't have vestiges of ecclesial life.
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You do. You read the Word of God. You hear it preached. Those are good things. We celebrate those things.
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But we hold that we are the fullness of the faith. The Catholic faith is the fullness of the faith.
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I don't back away from that. I'm not afraid of that. As to processions, I totally embrace that.
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Bring them on. We just did one in June for the Eucharistic procession down here in Mobile.
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The host was traveling through and eventually would go to Indianapolis at the Congress, the
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Eucharistic Congress. We had 500, 600 people. In fact, one of the speakers that was there at that event,
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Jay Williams, was there. He gave the talks at the beautiful Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception.
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Father Brazell does copious Eucharistic processions down at St. Mary's. I would invite you to go if you ever see one.
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They are quite beautiful indeed. I plead guilty.
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We love processions in the Catholic Church. I want to get one going in downtown Montgomery. That would be a great way in the capital of dreams.
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But that is what we call ourselves. The thing that I would say to Dr. White is, in the Catholic Church, we talk about adjornamento and we talked about ressourcement at Vatican II.
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Adjornamento just means to update the faith, make it contemporary. Ressourcement is kind of this idea of going back to the source, going back to the source and update it.
01:00:08
There is a development of Catholic faith. As to the words that he said about the priest not being known, he did concede that Cyprian, which is still early, it's 200
01:00:19
AD, Ignatius of Antioch does talk about a threefold office.
01:00:25
I know there is some debate about Ignatius of Antioch. I get all that.
01:00:31
But like he said about Luke authorship, were you there? You and I, 2 ,000 years later, are going to say
01:00:37
Ignatius is pseudo -Ignatius? Really? Isn't that what Robert Funk and the Jesus Seminar people do with that?
01:00:45
Threefold office. Bishop, priest, and deacon. He says it. He says it in seven letters. I would encourage you to read it. But here's something that I want to say as to transubstantiation.
01:00:56
One of the principles of Catholic theology is a dogma doesn't typically get defined until it begins to get denied.
01:01:03
It's typically when we do it. Now, it's not in every case. There have been some one -offs in different situations.
01:01:09
But by and large, the church is going along, believing things, teaching things, understanding things.
01:01:14
If there's no real problem about it, they're just not going to define it.
01:01:21
Until, of course, around the 1100s, and you had some debates. I won't get into that.
01:01:27
Fourth Lateran Council. He's right. He's right. That's when that word came. The Eastern Orthodox hate that word.
01:01:33
They don't like that word. I'm okay with it. That's fine. As my great friend, Father Crucci, says, you don't like the word transubstantiation?
01:01:40
That's fine. Come up with another word. Here's what I know. I know that if you read Eastern Orthodox catechisms, if you read
01:01:46
Eastern Catholic theology, and you read Roman Catholic theology, we believe that that's not just bread. I'm going to tell you that's not a novel development.
01:01:53
My dear friend, our dear friend, Father Frank Sofie, who just passed from this world, wrote a book recently about Martyrs of the
01:01:59
Eucharist. There's a young man, 12 years old, in the third century, 250 AD. His name was Tarsus. He was sent to the prisons, as he acknowledged, from the deacons to go bring the
01:02:08
Eucharist. A bunch of boys went to go grab him because he was a friend of theirs, but they saw that he was carrying something.
01:02:17
What was he carrying? What was he carrying? He was like, no, no, no. They said, no, no, give it to us, give it to us.
01:02:23
They weren't our Christians. It was during a time of episodic persecution. Tarsus is a 12 -year -old boy.
01:02:29
They said, please, just give us this thing. He wouldn't do it, and they beat him to death. I don't think
01:02:35
Tarsus has died for a symbol. Thank you, Mr. Riello.
01:02:41
Dr. White, you have five minutes for your rebuttal. I did not hear any reference to where Ignatius allegedly said this.
01:02:54
I did hear something about pseudo -Ignatius, so maybe that's in one of those pseudo -Ignatian references. But the fact of the matter is,
01:03:01
I would recommend to everyone, if you're interested on the issue of the priesthood, to see the debate that I did with Father Mitchell Pacwa on that subject.
01:03:08
The reality is, once again, in the apostolic writings, there are two offices. It's elder, bishop, and then presbyter, which eventually developed into priest, is not the term priest at all.
01:03:22
It's a perfectly good Greek term for priest, and it's not used. That is a concept that is not found in the
01:03:29
New Testament writings. This takes us back to sola scriptura, what is the ultimate judge of these things.
01:03:34
And I'll just point out to you that you've already heard how many times we have priests, archbishops, popes being quoted, but not so much scripture.
01:03:44
And that's because you can't explicate these things if you're not actually dealing, you can't do it from the text of the
01:03:52
New Testament itself. It was said in Tom's opening that the Catholic magisterium has taught this for 2 ,000 years.
01:03:59
That's simply not true. That is simply not true. Anyone who knows early church writings or all the way through the medieval period knows all the debates that took place,
01:04:10
Radtramnus, Radbertus, Gottschalk, and that's even in the late period before the turn of the millennium, the debates that they had, the fact that Augustine, for example, taught that Jesus' physical body is in heaven, that's where it's going to stay until he returns, that he who believes has eaten and drunk, and so on and so forth.
01:04:30
But the important thing, I think, for you to hear is what was just said. Well, you know, things aren't really discussed until they start becoming denied.
01:04:39
That's how you read into history what's not in history to begin with.
01:04:45
The modern Roman Catholic Church has followed Newman and the development hypothesis because Newman recognized that so much of what modern
01:04:53
Roman Catholicism teaches was not either apostolic or even present in the early church.
01:04:59
The concept of the papacy as it's held today is clearly evolutionary in character.
01:05:05
There's all sorts of evidence that the early church did not have any concept of that whatsoever.
01:05:11
There weren't cardinals and all the rest of these types of things in the early church. In fact, I've said over and over again, show me anyone at the
01:05:18
Council of Nicaea in 325 that believed that the modern Roman Catholic must believe dogmatically, and they can't.
01:05:25
The Marian dogmas, they developed over time. This concept of the mass as a perpetuatory sacrifice develops over time.
01:05:33
You can talk about real presence, spiritually, and you can make a real strong case there, but that's a completely different thing than the materialistic idea of the changing of the substance based upon Aristotelian philosophy categories that most of those people had no knowledge of in the first place.
01:05:53
That type of stuff is not apostolic. It's not New Testament.
01:05:58
And so we go back to, you know, he made reference to the priest acting and his holy priesthood, these things.
01:06:03
These are all things that are not found in the apostolic record. And so therefore, when they are read back into the interpretation of the book of Hebrews, you are going to end up perverting the message that was written in the book of Hebrews to its original audience.
01:06:21
And the problem is the Council of Trent said that this is what, this teaching that they were putting forth in the 13th session of the
01:06:31
Council of Trent on the sacrifice of the mass, they said, this is what has been taught by everyone in the faith.
01:06:40
And so dogmatically, the Roman Catholic cannot treat church history fairly because they're told by Rome what to see in church history.
01:06:49
When your ultimate authority says, we've always believed this, and you find all sorts of stuff in history that says, no, they didn't, you have to subsume what you find in history to the authority of the church.
01:07:03
That's why when I would debate, when I first started debating Gerry Matytix, I would quote some early church father in opposition to what he just quoted.
01:07:11
He's like, yeah, well, he's, that's not apostolic tradition. Again, we have sola scriptura, scripture is the sole infallible rule of faith, versus sola ecclesia, the church as the sole infallible rule of faith, which gets to determine what is and what is not tradition and what is and what is not scripture.
01:07:29
And there's no way around that, but here's the problem. Once you go there, now you're stuck with Francis.
01:07:36
Because he's now your ultimate authority. And what are you gonna do with that when it's clear he doesn't really believe what you are actually saying?
01:07:44
There's the issue. Thank you, Dr. White. Mr. Riello, you have five more minutes for a rebuttal.
01:07:54
This is fun, but these five -minute rebuttals, they're short. Maybe one day,
01:07:59
I could go to Arizona, we could have some coffee. But here's the deal. No, they're not short. When you're talking, it seems like a long time.
01:08:09
Well, going back to this idea about Augustine, that comment that he made about Augustine, tractate,
01:08:17
I think, 68. I'm not 100 % off, my brain is getting as I get older. But that his physical body, the church is absent of his physical body.
01:08:25
This might shock you to realize that Pope Benedict XVI and his wonderful books,
01:08:31
Biblical Liturgy, plus other books that he wrote on the Eucharist, Call to Communion, so on, it's treasure trove of books.
01:08:38
We don't have a problem with that for our doctrine. Because we believe in what's called the substantial presence of Jesus.
01:08:45
That's the whole Lutheran and Calvin debate. Luther and Calvin, as you all know, had a huge debate, the
01:08:51
Lutherans and the Calvinists, of the mode of the presence of Christ in the Eucharist. And Nestorianism and monosophitism was being thrown back and forth during that.
01:08:59
That's not really a Catholic problem because of our conception of the doctrine of what we would say transubstantiation or the fact that how could
01:09:07
Christ's body be present. So we don't have a problem with the fact that Jesus's physical body is in heaven.
01:09:13
We believe that, I think, right, Father? I think we believe that. But yes, that he's substantially present.
01:09:19
So right now, our Savior's right down the road. That light's on. I'm gonna go in there and I'm gonna genuflect. And I'm gonna spend time in there.
01:09:25
And I would say Jesus is substantially present in that room right now at our Savior Catholic Church in a way that he's not here right now.
01:09:32
But he's here right now. He's here right now, I don't deny that. But he's substantially present. That'll take us far afield.
01:09:38
But anyway, the thing that I would say in reference to Hebrews, his presentation, to talking about the scripture, that you heard a lot of papal stuff.
01:09:51
I didn't quote, except for Pius XII, I didn't quote a lot of papal stuff. I quote Mediator Dei. I quoted
01:09:58
Exodus 12, Exodus 13, Leviticus 16. You all heard it. And I read a lot of Hebrews and I read
01:10:03
Revelation 5. So that's scripture. Now, I'm not just throwing a bunch of just, the magisterium says.
01:10:08
Now, I don't have a problem with saying the magisterium says. I love our magisterium. And I love Pope Francis.
01:10:14
And Father prays for Pope Francis in every canon at every mass. You know, every pope is different and has their own charisms.
01:10:21
John Paul II was different from Benedict XVI, was different from Pope Francis. And I'm sure the next pope is gonna be different from Pope Francis and so on and so forth.
01:10:29
As Ed Peters, a canon lawyer, says, popes come and go. They come and go. We've had good ones, bad ones, not so good ones, whatever.
01:10:37
They come and go. My faith does not rest, live or die, with who the pope is. I'm fine with that. You know, we have the faith.
01:10:44
Archbishop Brody's our bishop. I know I'm in communion with Rome. I don't worry about things that are above my pay grade.
01:10:50
The thing that I would say is, again, going back to, I mentioned Tarsus's. You have to say, if this child is gonna bring the
01:11:00
Lord's Supper to a prison and his friends, and these were kids that he knew.
01:11:05
It wasn't like just martyrs, you know, people who were persecuting him out of nowhere that he didn't know.
01:11:11
They said, hey, Tarsus's, come on over here, come on over here. And he's like, I can't, I can't. And they're like, you're acting weird.
01:11:17
And they saw that he had a box where the host was, okay, that had been placed.
01:11:26
And all they wanted to do was wanted to see what was in it and have at it. And if that, let me just ask you an honest question.
01:11:32
If that was just a piece of bread and he really thought that, why wouldn't he just give it to him? Why wouldn't he just give it to him?
01:11:37
Why would he die for a piece of bread? I don't think anybody, I certainly wouldn't die for a piece of bread. I set up for mass all the time at my school.
01:11:44
And every now and then, an unconsecrated host will fall on the floor. And I'll, you know, I might just pop it in my mouth or something like that.
01:11:52
You know, that's because it's just, it's not all that impressive bread. I'm Italian. I'll like a nice ciabatta bread or something like that.
01:11:59
It's not all that impressive, right? But now all of a sudden, when father says those words of consecration,
01:12:04
I will die for what looks like bread. I will die for it. I literally will. I will die for that bread.
01:12:10
I will die for it. I, no apologies there. And so, again, I don't know how, now, again, fully concede that the word transubstantiation is not found.
01:12:21
Okay, fine in the third century. Well, that's okay. But the concept, I don't think it's even debatable to say that they did not have a high
01:12:30
Eucharistic theology of the Eucharist. And, you know, again, just touching base about some of these things,
01:12:37
I would encourage you to think about aggiornamento, ressourcement, the development of the faith, yes, the
01:12:44
Council of Nicaea, you know, dogma defined and whatnot. When was the first Council of Nicaea? 325
01:12:49
AD. Did they not think that the person of Jesus Christ was important to discuss? The world had become
01:12:55
Aryan, so they had a council to meet. So, there you go. Thank you, Mr. Riello. Dr.
01:13:01
White, you have another five minutes for rebuttal. Well, I didn't get to tell this story.
01:13:07
And since we're telling cool stories from church history, I will take my five minutes to do so. Philip Schaff gives us an interesting example of the types of Eucharistic adoration that only began to develop in the second millennium.
01:13:21
They don't exist in the first millennium. And here's an example. Another case related by Etienne of Bourbon is of a farmer who, wanting to be rich, followed the advice of a friend and placed the host in one of his beehives.
01:13:34
The bees, with great reverence, made a miniature church containing an altar on which they placed the sacred morsel.
01:13:40
All the bees in the neighborhood were attracted and sang beautiful melodies. The rustic went out, expecting to find the hive was overflowing with honey, but, to his amazement, found them all empty except the one in which the host had been deposited.
01:13:54
The bees attacked him fiercely. He repaired to the priest, who, after consulting with the bishop, went in procession to the hive and found the miniature church with the altar and carried it back to the village church while the bees, singing songs, flew away.
01:14:07
This is the kind of story that began developing, and Schaff gives a number of examples of it, but only after the transition from a spiritual understanding of the presence of Christ to a material one so that the church then had to come up with rules.
01:14:29
For example, if the wine was spilled upon the ground, if it was upon rock or pavement, the priest had to get down and lick it up, which was one of the reasons that they stopped giving the cup to the laity, was because of the possibility of that happening, and that only then reversed later on.
01:14:49
This demonstrates that this is a development that took place over time.
01:14:55
It is not apostolic. When you look at Augustine, Augustine is not leading processions with consecrated hosts through the streets and calling people to worship
01:15:08
God in that form. And I say to you, that is a fundamental denial of the
01:15:17
New Testament teaching about who Christ is, where Christ is, what
01:15:22
Christ has done, and how we have relationship with him. Jesus is seated in the presence of the
01:15:30
Father. The Father and the Son have sent the Spirit into the world to gather the church, to gather his elect together.
01:15:39
He is building his kingdom, and he is not under the command of someone who thinks they are a priest to be rendered upon an altar in an unbloody, non -perfecting sacrifice.
01:15:53
You cannot get that from reading the New Testament. You cannot get that from the apostolic teaching.
01:15:59
And I simply say to you, what does that mean? What it means is that you've gone beyond what is written.
01:16:08
What it means is you've accepted the traditions of men, and you should listen to what Jesus said. When Jesus encountered the traditions of men being taught by the people who sat in Moses' seat, by the people who had authority in the synagogue, what did he say to do?
01:16:23
Test by the scriptures. Test what they teach by the scriptures.
01:16:31
And of course, many people in the early church said the same thing. Athanasius, I'll just use, we want some more stories?
01:16:38
Athanasius, the great bishop of Alexandria, he wasn't a bishop at the Council of Nicaea. He was a deacon at the time, but he became bishop shortly thereafter.
01:16:47
When he defended the deity of Christ, he said the scriptures are sufficient for the preaching of the truth.
01:16:56
And when the church in council with more bishops in attendance than were at Nicaea, at Ariminum, condemned him, did he submit?
01:17:05
No, he didn't. He was kicked out of his church five times for refusing to submit to the gathered church and all the bishops.
01:17:16
And why did he do that? Because the scriptures taught him that Jesus was truly God. And you and I continue to believe that today because he didn't give in.
01:17:26
Because he didn't submit. And that is because he believed in the sufficiency of scripture.
01:17:33
I believe in the sufficiency of scripture. I believe it's sufficient to tell us what the sacrifice of Christ accomplished.
01:17:39
I believe it's sufficient to tell us what the offices of the church are supposed to be. And those offices do not include popes.
01:17:47
They do not include archbishops. And they do not include sacramental, sacerdotal priests.
01:17:54
So we stick with what the scriptures say. That's why we can look at the book of Hebrews and go, once for all, perfected.
01:18:01
Finished work. Peace with God. Thank you, Dr. White. At this time,
01:18:10
Mr. Riello is allowed 20 minutes to cross -examine. Go ahead.
01:18:30
So, this is providential being that you just finished up, Dr. White, with Athanasius and the sufficiency of scripture.
01:18:39
Would you accept Mary as the Ark of the Covenant? No. Okay. Can I read a quote?
01:18:47
O noble virgin, truly you are greater than any other greatness. For who is your equal in greatness,
01:18:53
O dwelling place of God the Word? To whom among all creatures shall I compare you, O virgin?
01:18:59
You are greater than them all, O Ark of the Covenant, clothed with purity instead of gold.
01:19:05
You are the ark in which is found the golden vessel, containing the true manna, that is, the flesh in which the divinity resides.
01:19:13
Yes, I hold Athanasius to the same standard Athanasius taught me to hold him to. And you're familiar with that quote?
01:19:19
No, of course. I teach church history. I'm quite familiar. Okay, so we pick and choose. Is that what you're doing there, picking and choosing
01:19:25
Pick and choose? Can I answer your question? Hold on. Let me ask you a question. Why would
01:19:30
Athanasius affirm that Mary is the Ark of the Covenant? That's my question. Okay. You asked two questions. You said you're picking and choosing.
01:19:37
Yes, I will take any statement that Athanasius makes by his own commitment and compare that to the scriptures.
01:19:46
Why would Athanasius say what he said? Because he was deeply influenced by the Desert Fathers who began developing early
01:19:52
Mariolatry and Marian dogma, not dogma, but they certainly didn't believe what you believe about Mary.
01:19:59
But I hold him accountable in the same way that he taught me to hold him accountable on those issues and I recognize where that came from in his own experience.
01:20:08
Okay, you catch that he said that Mary's stuff was like really late? Did you hear what he just said?
01:20:14
Is that a question? That's the buried lead. You're supposed to be asking me questions. Buried lead. Would you acknowledge that at least vestiges of Mariology were found in the 200s with the
01:20:24
Desert Fathers? You haven't read my books, I guess. Yes, of course they are. Of course they are. Now dogmas such as the bodily assumption, immaculate conception, utterly unknown because they had not developed at that time.
01:20:34
No one had even heard of them at that time. They're not apostolic. But Mariology begins to develop from Gnostic sources such as the pro -evangelium
01:20:44
James in the 2nd century. Yes. Okay, so and this debate is not about Mary so I want to get back on topic but you just mentioned the
01:20:52
Athanasians and sufficiency of Scripture and he's calling Mary the Ark of the Covenant. By the way, afterwards if you want to get into conversation about that I'd be glad to share that with you.
01:21:01
Propitiation. You said earlier in your opening about the propitiation that as Catholics that maybe modern
01:21:09
Catholics maybe somebody like myself or a father that we kind of back off of that a little bit maybe we're a little you know, that propitiation is a later
01:21:18
I said that about purgatory. Well, but the propitiation is this later teaching and whatnot. Let me ask you a question. No, no, sir.
01:21:23
I'm sorry. I can't answer a question based on something I didn't say. I said that there has been changes in regards to purgatory.
01:21:29
That propitiation wasn't taught in the early church. Didn't you say that? No. That the propitiatory sacrifice of the
01:21:34
Mass was not taught in the early church. Yes, right. Because that's an entire set of dogmas. Is propitiation one and done?
01:21:42
By that I mean is that this is Christ still propitiating the Father? Two things.
01:21:51
Christ is an eternal person and therefore His appearance before the
01:21:57
Father has both temporal and eternal aspects. And I think we agree on that. And so the sacrifice takes place in time and yet its effects are actually applied even to those who had faith in Yahweh prior to the sacrifice of Christ, the
01:22:18
Old Testament saints. But the argument of Hebrews is that the work is finished, the
01:22:25
Son is seated at the right hand of the Father and now the work of the Son is intercession not sacrifice.
01:22:36
Okay. So would you say is He still propitiating the
01:22:41
Father? Well again, propitiation is turning away wrath. And so the finishedness of the sacrifice turns away the
01:22:49
Father's wrath which because that is then applied to people who did not exist at the time of the cross you can see some kind of applicatory thing in time because we have to experience it.
01:23:02
But the fact of the matter is all the elect were united with Christ in His death and in His resurrection.
01:23:07
We experience that in time in the eternal realm that is a fixed reality that's why
01:23:14
Ephesians 2 says we're already seated in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. So would you say that Christ's blood is perpetually being distilled before the
01:23:21
Father right now as we speak? Perpetually being what? Distilled before the Father. I have no idea what distilled means but the
01:23:29
Is He perpetually presenting you'll hear in a second perpetually presenting His blood before the
01:23:35
Father right now as we speak in Mobile, Alabama? Is He doing that? The Lamb stands before the
01:23:41
Father as if slain. So the sacrifice and the shedding of the blood is an established reality in the presence of the
01:23:48
Father and since we're united with Him then we experience what that sacrifice can provide.
01:23:54
Okay yeah because Calvin says in his Hebrews commentary and I don't mean to be disrespectful to the great
01:23:59
Calvin but Calvin will say with the right hand and then immediately take away with the left but here's a good example where he actually advocates unintentionally
01:24:07
Catholic theology. The blood of Christ which is subject to no corruption but flows ever as a pure stream is sufficient for us even to the end of the world.
01:24:15
It is no wonder that beast slain and sacrificed had no power to quicken as they were dead but Christ who arose from the dead to bestow life on us communicates
01:24:23
His own life to us. It is a perpetual consecration of the way because the blood of Christ is always in a manner distilling before the presence of the
01:24:34
Father in order to irrigate heaven and earth. God invites to daily reconciliation those who abide in Christ they are daily washed by the blood of Christ their sins are daily expiated by this perpetual sacrifice.
01:24:50
Was there a question in there somewhere? What's bewildering to me and there will be I'll just, you know This is where you're supposed to be asking questions not making presentations.
01:24:57
I wanted to quote Calvin there because you were uncomfortable answering that question the perpetual the perpetualness of the sacrifice.
01:25:05
I'm not uncomfortable answering any of your questions I just want you to define your terms. And Calvin I am and Calvin and Calvin says the blood of Christ is perpetually distilling before the
01:25:12
Father that's Catholic theology. I believe that right now I even said that in my opening statement that the blood of Christ is perpetually being distilled before the
01:25:21
Father and that what happens in the Catholic Mass right what happens in the Catholic Mass as Brent Petrie points out so beautifully is that there's this intersection so that on the altar the sacrifice is being presented and so it's a propitiatory sacrifice right because would you not agree that the
01:25:39
Catholic Church teaches that it's the one and the same sacrifice? It is taught that it's the one and the same sacrifice since the sacrifice of Christ in the
01:25:46
New Testament perfects those for whom it is made that is the fundamental error of Roman Catholicism and that is exactly what
01:25:52
Calvin said in his antidote to the Council of Trent and if you would read all that he says for example in the
01:25:58
Institutes of Christian Religion you would know that he would assert that the perfection of that work cannot be represented in a propitiatory fashion that does not actually perfect those for whom it is made and he would deny that there are sacerdotal priests that have the capacity of working the miracle of transubstantiation and all the other things that are associated with it that's why
01:26:17
I asked what do you mean by these terms because it's one thing to use these terms and assume a certain definition that developed over many many literally almost 1500 years but it's another thing to do so in a fashion that makes it work with the
01:26:32
New Testament what terms you just threw them out there what terms priesthood propitiation in the heavenly realms all these things you have to understand what is being asserted to be able to answer meaningfully the question that is being asked well if a question ends up being asked
01:26:49
I'm not getting many of those I'm getting a lot of presentation okay you said earlier in your presentation that the in Hebrews 7 you said that Christ is the only high priest yes and he does not give it to anyone or if I remember or share it with anyone did you say that Hebrews chapter 7 verse 24 the specific term that is used in the original language is ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah right now,
01:27:50
Josh. That's fair, right? But that's a good one. That's the Muhammad Ali. He's the debater.
01:27:58
So here's the thing. Are you saying that Christ does not share his priesthood? Because doesn't 1
01:28:05
Peter chapter 5 say that we're all priests? And how are we exercising a priesthood if Christ doesn't share his priesthood?
01:28:12
That's pretty easy. Is James White exercising his own priesthood? Can I answer your question now? Can I answer your question? Yeah, it seems like you're answering.
01:28:17
He's the only Melchizedek priest. I'm not a Melchizedek priest. A Melchizedek priest has no father and mother, no genealogy. He is able to save the uttermost, those who draw nigh on God by him.
01:28:25
Therefore, I'm not a Melchizedek priest. The priesthood we have is a royal priesthood, the fulfillment of Old Testament prophetic discussion of what the church would become.
01:28:33
But it has nothing to do with a sacerdotal priest. You will not find a sacerdotal priest in the New Testament.
01:28:39
I challenge you to do so. I think Paul, in the letter to the church at Rome, suggests his ministry in priestly terms.
01:28:47
But again, I don't want to take up my time again about this stuff. This goes too fast,
01:28:52
Josh. You make a big deal about the idea about the mass.
01:28:59
You can go to 10 ,000 masses, and it doesn't perfect you. May I ask a question?
01:29:06
Can we gather from that reasoning, since the gospel is preached, that the gospel is not able to make anyone perfect?
01:29:16
Would you say that? Of course not. Why not? Is everybody going to be saved? Is everybody going to be saved?
01:29:24
Yeah. What does that have to do with what we're talking about? What you surely see, right?
01:29:29
OK, so you say that the mass. No, I don't. You say that the mass is pointless in many ways, almost superfluous, because it can't save anybody.
01:29:39
It doesn't perfect anybody. I didn't say that. Does it perfect anybody? You said the mass is not able to perfect.
01:29:46
A person coming to the mass comes with a certain intention.
01:29:53
The simple preaching the gospel to the whole world is not even slightly a parallel to that.
01:29:59
So I do not understand why you were trying to make that kind of a parallel. You did say. You're coming to what you are saying is the representation of the singular sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
01:30:11
And you are believing it is propitiatory and will bring forgiveness of sin and grace to your soul.
01:30:17
Yes? You have said. You don't ask me the questions. You have said. You have said in 2017, after you debated
01:30:23
Trent Horne, you said tonight that the mass perfects no one. I heard that.
01:30:29
You said it. The mass perfects no one. My question to you is this, all right? Does, by that reasoning, apparently the gospel, in many ways, does not perfect anyone?
01:30:43
The gospel. Why not? The gospel, when the Spirit of God raises an elect person to spiritual life, the gospel is the means by which that takes place.
01:30:52
The Spirit of God raises a person to spiritual life, applies the merits of Jesus Christ to them. They are justified by faith.
01:30:59
They are made. They receive the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ. And they are the ones.
01:31:05
They are the ones described in Hebrews 10, 14 as those who have been perfected. So yes, the gospel perfects.
01:31:12
You're good at answering long -winded. So here's the deal. You will be an honorary New Yorker. So here's the deal. So here's the deal.
01:31:19
Let me ask you a question. So everyone who's had the gospel preached to them has accepted it and believed it. I didn't say anything even close to that.
01:31:26
I know you didn't. But you said that I could go to 50 ,000 masses and not be saved.
01:31:31
Sir, there is. So by your reasoning, hold on. The categorical error that you've got in your mind here. No, no, no, no.
01:31:37
By your reasoning, the gospel gets preached. And clearly, everybody that hears the gospel preached should be saved.
01:31:46
No, sir, that's absurd. Why not? Well, why then should everybody who goes to the Catholic mass wind up being saved?
01:31:52
I failed to see the connection. Yeah, that's because I didn't make the connection. And I think most people in the audience can see it.
01:31:58
I don't see any reason to keep beating. I would suspect, considering most are probably PCA. But that being said, you say that you're implying by that, it would seem, that the mass is just insufficient, that it can't save.
01:32:12
I am saying what Ron says. And that is, how many times have you gone to mass? Exactly.
01:32:20
Are you perfected? There you go. Countless times. And guess what? Guess what? The mass, of course, can perfect me.
01:32:29
I don't know where you would think that the mass wouldn't perfect me. I don't know where you ever got that idea.
01:32:35
You get something in your head, and then it becomes Catholic teaching for you. I got that idea from the fact.
01:32:41
So objectively speaking. I'm going to try to make a question out of it, because that's what it's supposed to be. The fact of the matter is, in Roman Catholicism, you can go to a mass 10 ,000 times in your life and end up in purgatory.
01:32:56
So you were not perfected. And you can go to mass 10 ,000 times in your life to commit a mortal sin before you die and go to hell.
01:33:03
Therefore, you were not perfected. That's the whole point. The point is, does the sacrifice of Christ, according to Hebrews 10, 14, perfect those who are sanctified, or does it not?
01:33:14
Does it result in the imputation of Christ's righteousness, or does it not? Rome says it doesn't.
01:33:19
I say that it does, and that's why the mass is not the sacrifice of Christ. Just that simple. I'm sure you will ask me during that time maybe about the perfection of it.
01:33:28
But there's the objective and the subjective appropriation of things. You make a lot about this idea, again, just what your answer was about Hebrews.
01:33:38
Hebrews is the book that gives us this redemption that can never be lost.
01:33:43
Allow me, please, Hebrews 6, therefore, let us leave the elementary doctrines of Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God with instruction about ablutions, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment.
01:34:01
And this we will do if God permits, for it is impossible to restore again to repentance those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have become partakers of the
01:34:12
Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, if they then commit apostasy since they crucify the
01:34:19
Son of God on their own account and hold them up to contempt. Were those people believers? Continuing on, but we are convinced about you, beloved, of things that are better and that belong to salvation, though we are speaking this way.
01:34:32
For God is not unrighteous, so as to forget your work and the love which you have shown toward his name in having ministered and continue to minister to the saints.
01:34:38
So the same author understands the text very differently than you do, because he talks about being convinced of better things and things that, what, belong to salvation, though we are speaking in this way.
01:34:52
And so I would recommend to you interpreting the book of Hebrews in such a way that you do not make the writer of the
01:34:57
Hebrews contradict himself. So what is the purpose of the warning there? Is it just play acting?
01:35:04
Like, what's the purpose of the warning? Anyone who preaches the gospel in the church knows that you do not know the hearts of everyone in that audience.
01:35:12
And so you warn everyone. You are hearing God's truth. Do not treat it lightly.
01:35:18
Do not take it lightly. Do not become apathetic. And again, this was a exhortation to Jewish Christians who are under great pressure to go back.
01:35:27
And he's saying, if you go back, there is tremendous judgment that you will face.
01:35:32
There is only one way to continue forward, and that is in faith in Jesus Christ. I don't know who in this room are the recipients of grace.
01:35:40
And so I would have the exact same warnings, severe warnings, as well as the acceptance of the perfection of the work of Christ.
01:35:46
That's the only way to understand Hebrews without turning into a mishmash of self -contradiction. In reference to talking about this idea of being perfected, you mentioned about, are you implying what is the point of going to the mass?
01:36:04
What is the point of going to the mass? If it can't perfect you, is that what you're suggesting? I'm very sorry that I have not been able to communicate to you my entire point in this debate.
01:36:15
The point that I'm making is that the biblical teaching of the apostles of Jesus Christ as to the effect and purpose of the atonement and the atoning work of Christ is different than what the
01:36:27
Roman Catholic Church now teaches today as to the effect and impact of the sacrifice of the mass.
01:36:34
Therefore, it cannot be the same sacrifice. Let me ask you this. This is a thought that I've been throwing out there with some of my friends in terms of talking about this.
01:36:44
Because I've been familiar with some of your stuff over the years and whatnot. And one of the things that I would say is this.
01:36:52
This is kind of a thought that I would say is very important to your whole argumentation. Would you say so much of what you're saying tonight rests and falls with the doctrine of limited atonement?
01:37:03
Of the tulip, that the L would be the big thing. Would you say the limited atonement?
01:37:10
Limited atonement is based upon what comes before it. And that is the sovereignty of God, the deadness of man and sin.
01:37:16
And it is the natural result of putting together the perfection of the work of Christ together with the doctrine of election.
01:37:24
So limited atonement is based upon the harmony of the Father, the Son, the Spirit, and bringing about their own self -glorification in the salvation of a specific people.
01:37:34
So actually, it flows from. It's not what gives rise to.
01:37:39
It's what flows from. Well, you do know self -proclaimed Calvinists like MacArthur don't hold to limited atonement.
01:37:45
No, he does. Yeah, he does. Excuse me, did you hear me say that? Yeah, no. He does.
01:37:52
You are wrong, he does. Well, I heard him speak at Moody Bible Institute in 1995 and it was one of the issues that came up.
01:37:59
Okay, 1995 was how long ago? Okay, well, thankfully I've been away for a little while from that world.
01:38:05
But here's the thing. Here's the thing that I wanna touch on as far as the limited atonement aspect of things.
01:38:17
It's kind of the way that you could go back here with Hebrew six and kind of just dismiss it, right? I didn't dismiss anything.
01:38:22
Because you could say if somebody falls away, you could say that they were really never saved, right?
01:38:28
Is that what you, because I was a reform minister myself and that's how we would always answer. We are convinced of things that are better and that belong to salvation, though we are speaking in this way.
01:38:39
That's the writer's own words. You didn't explain them, I just read them. I don't think you're taking his words seriously.
01:38:48
I mean, there you go. You didn't, you didn't, you didn't, you didn't. I'm not gonna go, oh, Dr. White, all of a sudden you got it right.
01:38:54
I'm convinced. Because the Lutheran church, who would also believe in some overlap with you as a reformed, they believe that a genuine believer could apostatize.
01:39:04
Which I, you know, and they actually teach that. But I would argue, I think the limited atonement thing is kind of what gets you caught up in the pretzel on these things, which most in here in this crowd would accept, but not all of us would.
01:39:16
Is that a question, is that a question? So if you do, you embrace limited atonement, right?
01:39:21
So let me ask you, 1 John 2, 2 Peter 3, and 1 Timothy 2 all seem to deny it.
01:39:27
How do you answer? An entire chapter refuting all of that in my book, The Potter's Freedom. You should have read it before we got here.
01:39:34
Oh, so that, okay. So we're all supposed to go and read your works, and I'll make you some money, I guess, that way? If you're going to ask me questions like that, that I have addressed many, many times before, and I had requested from you information where I could study your perspectives, then yes.
01:39:48
And I sent you, I sent you stuff, and you have the books. All right, gentlemen, we have ended
01:39:53
Mr. Riello's cross. Dr. White, it is now your time for a cross -examination. Okay, all right.
01:40:03
So let's, let me ask you, how many times do you think you have gone to Mass?
01:40:11
That's good, man. I'm going to need some help on this one. All right, let's see. I really want to give you a real number.
01:40:18
I'm asking for an approximation, sir. I want to give a real number, I really do. I'm going to say,
01:40:24
I try to go to daily Mass, so I would say that I, I would say in 20 years back in the church,
01:40:30
I'd say probably gone about 6 ,000 Masses, I'd say. Is that, that's possible. Plus, when
01:40:36
I was a little tyke, eh, let's say 10 ,000 Masses. Okay, 10 ,000 times, and you believe that you were approaching the sacrifice of Christ?
01:40:45
Absolutely. Okay. If you die tonight, do you claim to be a saint?
01:40:54
As St. Paul would say, I don't judge myself. I don't, I don't judge myself. I have confidence that I will be with the
01:41:03
Lord. Do you believe you would go to purgatory? I do not know if I would go to purgatory. I have confidence that I will be with the
01:41:10
Lord. So do you believe you have any temporal punishments of sin upon your soul? Oh, I'm sure
01:41:16
I do, I am sure I do. Well, if you're sure you do, then how could you not go to purgatory? Well, I mean, I don't know, only
01:41:22
God knows. Only God can judge, only God can judge my soul. Only God can judge, I don't judge myself.
01:41:28
Let's get theoretical then, and so let's say, let's say. St. Paul says,
01:41:33
I don't judge myself. I don't know, you want me to judge myself? Hey, when I go to confession, I accuse myself of my sins.
01:41:40
I don't have a problem with that. I'm not gonna do it in front of all you folks. Okay, if you have temporal punishments for sin upon your soul, have you been perfected?
01:41:52
I'm being perfected. Have you been perfected? Salvation, as you know, being saved, right, right?
01:41:59
The idea of I have been saved, being saved, will be saved. You know that threefold aspect of it.
01:42:05
Do you, do you believe, I'm in the process. Do you believe when you go to purgatory, you will undergo what
01:42:10
Roman Catholic writers have described as sada spacio? I do believe that if I, me, myself, or whoever winds up in purgatory, that we can talk about this, and I know you kind of talked about how the instantaneous aspect of it.
01:42:25
I would argue that all of us believe in purgatory. I would argue that you believe in purgatory, Dr. White.
01:42:30
Will you undergo sada spacio in purgatory? If I go to purgatory, yes,
01:42:38
I will be, I will be being purified. I will be being made a perfect lover of God, because unless I'm a perfect lover of God, I cannot, why are you getting frustrated?
01:42:48
I cannot, I cannot see God. Because you were saying that I was the one that would give long answers, and you won't stop talking.
01:42:57
So could you just, could you define sada spacio for everyone, please? Okay, so he is referring to satisfying the dead.
01:43:08
That's what he's referring to. Is that fair, is that? Sada spacio is the suffering of atonement. Right, right, so this dead, so I'm gonna have to suffer.
01:43:16
I would argue that the pains of purgatory, we don't know for sure what they are. St. Catherine of Genoa has talked about them.
01:43:23
You have had other saints talk about them. Even C .S. Lewis, he believes in purgatory.
01:43:30
But Lewis, Lewis. Will you undergo sada spacio, and what does that involve?
01:43:36
What are the merits of Christ applied to you in sada spacio, yes or no?
01:43:44
I would say that yes, absolutely, Christ's merits become my merits, and as I am growing subjectively, appropriating the benefits of Christ, I'm being purified.
01:43:55
In purgatory. In purgatory, I'm being purified. Yes, I'm being purged of the vestiges of the sins that remain.
01:44:02
Okay, how is your suffering, how is that mean, how is that the application of Christ's merits?
01:44:10
You're the one suffering, right? Is Christ suffering in your place? Christ and I are suffering together.
01:44:16
Christ is suffering for your sins in purgatory. The temporal punishments of your sins.
01:44:21
All right, let me quote my friend, allow me, let me quote my friend who's a PCA minister. Since this is being videoed,
01:44:28
I will not mention his name. He was a member of the Presbytery that I was. I will say this very clearly.
01:44:35
To those of you who are Christ Presbyterian, if any of you were writing this text, or Dr. Michael Kruger, and I'm gonna say this publicly, if Dr.
01:44:42
James White was writing this text, he never would have written what I'm about to read. Never in a million years,
01:44:47
Dr. White. So, Colossians chapter one. Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh
01:44:57
I complete what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is the church.
01:45:05
Was Paul in purgatory when he wrote those words? Would you, would you say that Christ's, was
01:45:14
Paul in purgatory when he wrote those words, yes or no? Would you say Christ's suffering was lacking?
01:45:19
Sir, sir, could you please follow the rules of debate? That's when you get aggravated, you start calling people, sir. Could you please follow the rules of debate and answer my question?
01:45:27
Was Paul in purgatory when he wrote those words? You asked me a question before, when I had my cross -examination. So, here's the deal.
01:45:33
You know the answer, we all know the answer. He was not in purgatory. Okay. He was writing the Church of Colossi, and so I'm gonna say to you.
01:45:40
Can you show me, sir, this is my time. Please stop. I'm answering you. No, you're not. The suffering of Paul was united to the suffering of Christ.
01:45:49
Okay, can you show me dogmatic teaching from magisterial sources that say satis passio involves the application of the merits of Jesus Christ?
01:46:00
Okay, here is what is bewildering to me. Originally, the possibility was talking about purgatory and indulgences.
01:46:08
That's where you wanna bring it. I had had a resolution on the holy sacrifice of the mass.
01:46:14
You clearly don't seem interested in asking me those questions. Sir, I am making - You wanna take this in a way that is going -
01:46:21
Sir, I don't believe that I'm getting anywhere at this point in time. Correct. I will not get answers to questions, so I believe we should conclude the cross -examination and finish up.
01:46:32
But what's the point of asking the questions about purgatory? Can I answer that question?
01:46:38
Yes, please. Yes, sir. Because I am asking you, you are saying that the mass perfects.
01:46:43
The only way to ask a Roman Catholic as to what perfection means is what the application involves.
01:46:49
And if you have to undergo satis passio, if you have to receive indulgences to get time out of purgatory, to be perfected, to enter into the presence of Christ, that means we are not talking about the same sacrifice of Christ.
01:47:02
That's the issue, sir. So in 1 Corinthians chapter three, St. Paul talks about the fact that those who will be saved through fire.
01:47:13
Allow me to read 1 Corinthians chapter three. Sir, I am not asking you to give a defense of purgatory.
01:47:19
I am asking you to simply reason with me as to what the result of your going to mass is.
01:47:27
I am being perfected through going to mass. You don't like that answer. But you are not receiving a complete remission of all the punishments of your sins.
01:47:42
And in fact, do you not believe, do you believe in indulgences? Of course I do. Okay, do you believe that there is a treasury of merit that is made up of the excess merits of Christ, Mary, and the saints?
01:47:57
I believe, as Mother Teresa said, that when I support the work of the missionaries of charity, that while she's going to the poorest of the poor,
01:48:06
I'm sharing in that work, that that redounds to me. I absolutely, I have no problem saying that. So there is excess merit of people who end up in the presence of God, and therefore, the righteousness they have before God is the righteousness of Christ, Mary, the saints, and their own sufferings, right?
01:48:26
Say that again? When you stand in the presence of God, what righteousness will you be standing in?
01:48:35
The righteousness of Christ, as the little flower says in the catechism quoted, that the righteousness of Christ will be my righteousness, and it becomes mine, and I share in that righteousness.
01:48:47
What about the merits of Mary? If you receive indulgences, is that not a part of your righteousness?
01:48:52
Every aspect of what I said in my opening statement from Pius XII was that the supreme worship that all of us have to render to God, that everything
01:49:02
I have to do, how I have to do through Jesus Christ, and so Christ becomes mine, and I become his, that is
01:49:09
Catholic theology. I know you don't want it to be Catholic theology, and Josh, I'm a little disappointed in you because you're saying that I'm not answering the question.
01:49:17
He said, I'm not answering the question. This debate was specifically about the mass. He hasn't even addressed anything that I said from Leviticus 16, and the day of atonement, and so obviously you have no answer to that.
01:49:30
That's what I conclude from that. You don't have an answer from that. Because if the Catholic mass is true, then everything flows out of purgatory, just like with Leviticus.
01:49:38
Mr. Riello, I'm gonna stop for a second here. I'm gonna stop. The nature of what
01:49:44
Dr. White is asking has to do with the perfection of the self -offering of Christ. As it relates to purgatory, and as it relates to these other things, there's a question as to whether or not the perfection of his offering is indeed being held to.
01:49:58
Therefore, I do think it's in bounds. And therefore, I do think you should answer his questions. I have.
01:50:04
I have no problem with the doctrine of purgatory and that I'm being perfected in purgatory. Okay, when we, all right,
01:50:10
I will seek to continue on. When we look at what the book of Hebrews says, and it tells us in chapter seven, verse 25, when it says he is able to save to the uttermost because he intercedes for them, what does, in light of Roman Catholic teaching on priesthoods, in light of Roman Catholic teaching on the denial of the imputed righteousness of Christ and the repetitive nature of the mass, how can you understand the phrase able to save forever because he lives, he lives to intercede for them?
01:50:57
What is that intercession? Is that intercession what the mass is? Absolutely. He's interceding for me right now.
01:51:04
Right now, he's interceding for me. Is he interceding for all human beings? Every single one. So he's interceding for every single human being that has ever lived?
01:51:16
Every single human, he intercedes for all people for all time. But can
01:51:21
I, I let you answer longer than you let me answer. That's because I'm asking questions and if you follow the rules of debate, you will answer the questions that are being asked and not obfuscate.
01:51:34
Verse 25 says that he is able to save completely because he always lives to make intercession huper altone.
01:51:45
You just said he is interceding for all people. So are you a universalist? Well, there are people who can reject the gospel of Jesus Christ.
01:51:55
There are people that can reject it. See, this is what I said before. Everything rises and falls for your hermeneutic.
01:52:02
Your hermeneutic is that of limited atonement. That is everything. Oh, it totally is. Okay. Absolutely. Is your
01:52:08
Bible open to Hebrews 7 .25? All right, let's go to Hebrews 7 .25. Okay, open your Bible to Hebrews 7 .25
01:52:14
and he is able, dunatai, sudzine, to save eista panteles, completely or forever, a certain group.
01:52:31
Do you believe all people come through him to God? Anybody who is saved only comes through Jesus Christ.
01:52:39
Anybody who is saved can only be saved through Jesus Christ and through his church. Do you believe all people come to God through Jesus Christ?
01:52:47
Well, no, anybody who comes to God comes through Jesus Christ, but nobody that I know of believes that all people will be saved.
01:52:55
Okay, so when it says, seeing he always lives to make intercession, hupere auton.
01:53:04
You just said that intercession is the mass. And yet, hupere auton, in their place, is a specific people.
01:53:12
I will go one step further and I will say the gospel is the mass. Okay, but once again, once again, once again, the intercession is in the infinitival form.
01:53:25
Hupere auton, who is he interceding for? He's interceding for his people who have accepted him, who believe in him, he is interceding for.
01:53:37
And I would also say that he applies, as you even said, and we all kind of agree, at a point in time, he applies that intercession to those who've been baptized, been brought into the family of faith, right?
01:53:49
You even said before, temporal and eternal. And when we are touching on things that are a little bit beyond us,
01:53:54
I think we'd all agree. Okay, so. You want to mention the purgatory thing and you want to wrestle me on that. So which answer.
01:53:59
We're outside of time. So which answer are we to accept? When you said he intercedes for every human being or now the answer you gave that he intercedes for those who draw near to God through him?
01:54:13
Because you gave us two different answers and they're contradictory. He intercedes, again, this is the limited atonement thing that's coming in over here.
01:54:21
I'm reading Hebrews. And I read Hebrews six and you just dismissed the fact that, you know, well.
01:54:26
Could you answer my question, please? A real believer can't commit apostasy. Could you answer my question, please? A real believer can't commit apostasy.
01:54:33
And so I'm gonna answer it this way and say that Jesus, of course, intercedes for me. That was my whole opening statement.
01:54:39
I don't know what's unclear about that. Now, you want to include in that, you want me to say that everybody's being interceded for?
01:54:47
Well, only God knows who he's interceding for. But here's what I believe that right now.
01:54:53
But you said two minutes ago. I know that he's a lamb standing as though slain. And I believe that the mass is the means by which
01:54:59
Jesus Christ intercedes for us. The mass is that means. Do you at least recognize that the intercessory work of Christ of Hebrews 7 .25
01:55:09
results in the salvation of everyone for whom he intercedes?
01:55:16
Well, people can reject Jesus Christ, James. Do you accept that Hebrews 7 .25? People can reject
01:55:21
Jesus Christ. So you don't believe Hebrews 7 .25? Do you believe once saved, always saved? Do you believe?
01:55:27
Perseverance of the saint. I'm done, I'm done, I'm done. I'm finished, Mr. Moderator. Okay, good.
01:55:33
The debate just concluded, in my opinion. That brings us to a
01:55:38
Q &A. That is a 25 -minute session, and we will begin.
01:55:46
25 minutes to eternity. The first question is for Tom.
01:55:58
Within Roman Catholic theology, is it right to speak of a single historic consummation of Christ's sacrifice, at which time it is or was made efficacious?
01:56:11
Are there many such historic time points, or is the consummation ahistorical?
01:56:20
Oh, question, is this, are we gonna do this? I should have asked this before you started speaking.
01:56:26
Sometimes you just have the person it's addressed to answer. Yes. And then sometimes the other person gets to comment.
01:56:33
Correct. What's the time differentiation? I am. How are we gonna do that? Yeah, thank you. What I would like to hear is as concise an answer, as can be afforded, followed by a response from the other person.
01:56:47
All right, so I will reread the question. Could I suggest that we do a time limitation?
01:56:55
Yes. So say one minute for the person who's asked the question and 30 seconds for the person to make some brief comment on that.
01:57:07
You said one minute? That's seen. Is that agreeable to you, Tom? Yeah, that's fine. Okay. Okay, thank you.
01:57:14
All right, Mr. Riello. Within Roman Catholic theology, is it right to speak of a singular historic consummation of Christ's sacrifice at which time it is or was made efficacious?
01:57:33
Are there many such historic time points or is the consummation ahistorical? Well, the mass itself is only, only effective because of the once for all sacrifice of Christ.
01:57:46
And so the catechism is very clear that it's one of the same sacrifice, the only difference being the manner of offering. So that when
01:57:52
I go to mass with Father Rizal, Father Rizal is offering the very same sacrifice that Jesus Christ offered.
01:57:59
And what we believe and what I said was that that sacrifice is not over because it's being presented into the
01:58:05
Holy of Holies right now as we speak. And so what is happening, and Brent Petrie does a great job, he's a brilliant Catholic scholar, of explaining how
01:58:13
Father, through his ministry, is able to call down the Holy Spirit upon the elements and make present that once for all sacrifice that is taking place in heaven right now at Saint Mary's Catholic Church when he's the pastor over there or right down the road at our
01:58:28
Savior at that altar. So it is, you know, touching on eternal things in time.
01:58:35
But yes, that sacrifice is made present on that altar in time. Dr. White. I think that was pretty much just directed to him so we'll move on to the next one.
01:58:43
Okay. Dr. White.
01:58:49
You characterize the Catholic claim in terms of having to go back again and again to the sacrifice of Christ, setting it against the letter to the
01:59:00
Hebrews that clearly states that the sacrifice need not be repeated. How would you respond to a
01:59:05
Catholic who does not feel that I must repeat that sacrifice but rather that I want to be unified with that one sacrifice but I exist in time in this life and the mass provides access to me to participate in that one timeless offering of Christ?
01:59:22
Well, once again, and one of the things I was just trying to get to in the cross -examination but obviously failed is the issue here is if you approach a propitiatory sacrifice and Rome says the mass is a propitiatory sacrifice but you are not perfected by it then you have not been truly propitiated.
01:59:44
And so there's discussion of the perfection of your intentions and all the rest of that kind of stuff that comes along with it.
01:59:50
That is not the writer of the Hebrews argument. That assertion on the part of the writer of the
01:59:57
Hebrews is that that sacrifice that is given perfects those for whom it is made and therefore brings them peace with God and that's why it does not need to be approached over and over again.
02:00:10
If you want to approach that, you do so in remembrance at the
02:00:16
Lord's Supper and that's what we do, well, in my church every week. Tom, would you like to answer that as well?
02:00:23
Could you just repeat it? Sure. You care to, well, it's actually specifically for James. Okay. So maybe
02:00:29
I should go on. Mr. Riello, would you say that Pope Francis' words with regard to world religions echoes the words of St.
02:00:37
Justin Martyr, second century, referring to the Logos Spermatikos, which is to say that the seed of the word that he claimed was present in even the pagan religions of the
02:00:50
Greeks, that is the same Justin Martyr who describes in surprising detail the very liturgy celebrated in the
02:00:55
Catholic Church to this day. Yeah, you know, I think one of the things that, you know, with the
02:01:02
Pope, I think one of the struggles and George Weigel, who's a papal author, talks about this.
02:01:08
The Pope is more than just a religious figure, right, wrong, or indifferent, he's a world figure and sometimes you could say things that maybe they're not as clear, you know,
02:01:20
Dr. White would seem to say, but I think that is a fair point.
02:01:25
Bishop Barron has written a book called, you know, The Seminal Nature of the Word and how, you know, the early church would talk about the righteous pagans, you know, the
02:01:34
Greek philosophers. And so there is an element of that within Catholicism, we call it enculturation, in which we go to cultures and we take what we can and we build on it and we try to bring the faith into the context of the people, right?
02:01:51
Even in the evangelical world, you all do, you know, Mission to the World will do the same thing in terms of cultural appropriation and things like that where you can.
02:01:59
So I do think a generous reading of Francis is probably toward that end. All right. Justin Martyr wore the philosopher's pallium his entire life, he did not have a completed canon and therefore he had a number of interesting theological conclusions.
02:02:14
I believe Pope Francis is minimally an inclusivist, he's probably a universalist. And I say this and I've never had anyone give me a meaningful contradiction.
02:02:22
I believe if Pope Francis taught the things he teaches today in the year 1600 in the city of Rome, he would have been burned by the
02:02:29
Roman Catholic Church. Dr. Wine, you stated that the
02:02:34
New Testament doesn't describe priests and doesn't describe priests and only says that Jesus is the high priest.
02:02:41
Then you stated that we are all believers, that all believers are priests. Where is that in the scriptures?
02:02:48
Well, Peter describes the holy priesthood and that of course is the description that is given of the people of God in eschatological context, but there is no office of a priest in the church.
02:03:03
We are all, because we are indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God, a part of the believer's priesthood.
02:03:11
But that is not what Rome is talking about when it talks about a sacerdotal priesthood and a priest whose soul has a mark placed upon it in his ordination, whereby he can work the miracle of transubstantiation.
02:03:22
That's a completely different context and I know that some Roman Catholic writers do try to draw from the
02:03:29
Melchizedek priesthood issues in the book of Hebrews, but Jesus holds that priesthood operabaton without successor because he is the one who fulfills it.
02:03:40
So that is a completely different context. There is no office of priest in the New Testament church.
02:03:46
Mr. Riello, would you like to respond? Yeah, I would say that going back to what I was mentioning before about Ignatius, I think you find if you read the seven letters of Ignatius, he's very much about a three -fold ministry, bishop, priest, and deacon, so that I would argue that the
02:04:00
Catholic priesthood is not a novel invention, that it's from the very earliest times in the church, and that we, as members of the body of Christ, by virtue of my baptism,
02:04:09
I'm a priest in the Catholic church. I am a priest. I exercise a priesthood. My wife's a priest. My friend
02:04:14
Kay is a priest. We are all priests. But then Father Verzel would be in the person of Christ the head.
02:04:21
And so that's what we believe. Thank you. Dr. Riello, or Tom, Mr.
02:04:29
Riello, can you directly address James Point in his opening statement regarding the Pope's recent comment that all religions are paths to God, and I will use an analogy that they are like different languages that express the divine.
02:04:42
Can you further elaborate on that? Going back to what was asked before about Justin, I think there is a generous attempt on the part of the
02:04:51
Pope to see in the world where can we find common ground, and that Francis, in his first address as Pope, made it very clear that the church must proclaim
02:05:05
Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And he said any time that the church forgets to proclaim Jesus Christ and Him crucified, she becomes just another
02:05:12
NGO. And so when I read Francis, I read him in totality of what he says.
02:05:19
And he is very Christocentric, and his latest encyclical is all about the sacred heart. And so while there might be verbiage that I personally maybe would not prefer, at the end of the day,
02:05:31
I think as Archbishop Brody would say, he is the Pope, and he is articulating and teaching not just a little group of people in Mobile, Alabama, or Montgomery, Alabama, but the world.
02:05:42
And so he's got a worldwide group, and so he has to keep that in mind. Dr. White. Thankfully, a very large number of Roman Catholics are being quote -unquote red -pilled.
02:05:51
They recognize very, very clearly that no bishop prior to Vatican II, no pontiff, no
02:05:59
Bishop of Rome prior to Vatican II, would even recognize most of the things that Francis is attempting to do in the
02:06:04
Synod of Synodality. His support of Father Martin, and the
02:06:11
LGBTQ movement within the Roman Catholic Church. The recent, you know, the document from a year ago that just sent shockwaves everywhere.
02:06:19
People are coming to recognize that if he does define tradition, there's no way you have any idea what tradition's gonna be in the future.
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Dr. White, you objected to the claim that the Catholic Mass as sacrifice has been around for 2 ,000 years based on the term transubstantiation not existing before 1 ,000, or around 1 ,000.
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How do you reconcile this with the Trinity? I think the idea is the articulation of the doctrine of the
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Trinity developing several hundred years after Jesus' death, and the easy acceptance of the doctrine despite not being explicitly mentioned in the
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Bible. Wrote a book called The Forgotten Trinity that demonstrates you cannot even begin to understand the message in the New Testament without recognizing that the writers of the
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New Testament were functional Trinitarians. The Trinity is a deep doctrine of revelation from Old Testament through New Testament, and the contrast between the breadth of that witness and the absolute absence of any witness to transubstantiation, the
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Mass, priesthood, and everything else in the New Testament is astonishing. And so I would say to anyone who would ask that question, you don't seem to understand that the doctrine of the
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Trinity is utilizing language to describe the whole breadth of the revelation of Scripture, whereas what you have now in regards to the
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Mass is a de -evolution over time that fundamentally undercuts the
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New Testament message of the finished work of Jesus Christ. Tom, if the purpose of the
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Mass is purification and the purpose of purgatory is purification, what is the necessity of both in application?
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If your answer is that Mass is to provide purification on the temporal plane and purgatory for the eternal plane, it would seem
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Mass is replacing the Holy Spirit in His work of sanctification, and purgatory is replacing the
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Son in His work of atonement. The Holy Spirit works through the Mass.
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I mean, without the Holy Spirit, the Mass doesn't take place. The epiclesis is essential for the
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Mass, the priest laying his hands on the gifts. I don't find them to be in conflict, just like J .I.
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Packer wrote a book years ago about evangelization. You all know, being predestinarian is PCA, you get hit with the charge, why evangelize?
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And Packer wrote a very good book. God ordains not only the ends, but He ordains the means. He said, go preach the
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Word. I would argue that God has ordained the Mass as the means by which He ordinarily saves people.
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Would also argue that my subjective appropriation of that is essential. You don't believe people are robots.
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You believe that you have to accept the Gospel. We could argue all day about what role your faith was driven from your own human experience or not, but it almost gets beside the point, it gets tedious.
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At the end of the day, I believe that if I die in a state of grace, and then there needs to be sins dealt with, they'll be dealt with, and I'll be purged.
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C .S. Lewis was an Anglican, he believed in purgatory. St. Catherine of Genoa talks about purgatory as a place in which our sins are purged because our pain is the suffering of love.
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That's what she said. Thank you. I affirm that. Dr. White, how can Paul say in 1
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Corinthians 10, 16 through 17, the cup of blessing that we bless is it not a participation in the blood of Christ if what is being offered is not the blood of Christ?
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Well, anyone who is familiar with the establishment of the
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Lord's Supper at the time of the Passover knows that everything on the table at the
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Passover had symbolic meaning. The bitter herbs, the suffering of the people of Israel, this was what the entire issue was.
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And so, this didn't come up astonishingly, and I had hoped that it would. The Council of Trent actually dogmatically declared that when
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Jesus said, do this in remembrance of me, he was ordaining the apostles as priests.
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If you wanna see how far you can twist the scriptures, there is a dogmatic demand that in those words, do this in remembrance of me,
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Jesus was actually ordaining the apostles as sacerdotal priests, an office never heard of again by any of his followers in the
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New Testament, but he was actually ordaining them as priests so that they could work the miracle of transubstantiation. This is what
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Sola Ecclesia brings you. It is a twisting of scripture. Can I get 30 seconds on that?
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Yes, yes, sir. Okay, if you refer - I wanted 30 seconds on the last one, too, but I think we stopped doing that.
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You wanna go, why don't you do the - I don't remember what the last one was, so let's go on. Why don't we go ahead with you? Why don't we go ahead,
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Tom? I'm from New York, I'm nice. So, 30 seconds, let me answer. 1 Corinthians 10, I think if you read it,
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I would encourage you to read it. Only makes sense within a concept of a sacrifice, because he's talking about the pagan sacrifices.
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And I think it's a fair connection to say that if he's talking about the pagan sacrifices, that in some sense he's talking about the
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Lord's Supper as a sacrifice. I would look into that if I was you. Dr.
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White, would you like to go back to the former question? No, I don't remember what it was. Okay, it had to do with the purpose of purgatory and purification.
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No, let's go on. Okay, and whether or not it's replacing the Holy Spirit. I believe this is for Tom.
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Oh yeah, okay, I can see. Tom, if the cross alone is insufficient for salvation, how would you account for the salvation of those who lived before Christ, who neither had the cross, nor access to the mass or sacraments?
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Wait, is the cross insufficient? If the cross alone is insufficient for salvation, that is, if Jesus dying on the cross for your sins does not necessarily lead one to being perfected in this space -time reality,
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I think is how I'm interpreting the question. See, I'm not conceding that. How would you account for the salvation of those, and in fact, actually,
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Dr. White brought up this question earlier. How would you account for the salvation of those who lived before Christ, who had neither the cross, nor access to the mass or sacraments?
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Well, everything is pointing forward, so we agree on that, right? We all agree on that, pointing forward, right?
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So every aspect, so Isaac being offered up, Genesis 22, right? All of that is pointing forward.
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Genesis 14, Melchizedek, the exodus, the sacrificial offerings in the temple, all of that's pointing forward, and their efficacy, as Aquinas says, we can call the
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Old Testament rites sacraments, provided that we understand that we don't mean what we mean by the church by sacraments.
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And so, but I don't agree with that premise that as a Catholic, I think the cross is insufficient. I leave it to you, my opening statement.
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Really? I believe the cross is insufficient? No, I don't buy it. I don't agree with the premise of the question.
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Dr. White, would you like to respond? Okay. One more for Tom. Can you further explain why you said that Jesus is more present at the
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Catholic church down the road than here at Christ Prez, and is the scripture that supports that?
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Well, I would, yeah, John 6, my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink.
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This is my body, this is my blood. What somebody had just mentioned about 1 Corinthians 10 and 11, when you look at what they talk about, when they talk about the bread and the wine, they certainly don't talk about it in just ordinary ways.
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And so, the Catholic theology is the fact that in the Eucharist, the bread and the wine obviously become substantially the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ.
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And so, God is here present everywhere, but he's present substantially in that tabernacle in a way that he's not here.
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And that is, now, of course, it's a great mystery, but you think about even the Lutheran and Calvinist debates over the presence of Christ in the supper, right?
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I mean, you're trying to explain things that are very hard to explain, but you all know the same situation.
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Dr. White. John chapter six, of course, has nothing to do with that, but Jesus himself had defined the categories when he said, if you come to him, you have eaten.
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If you believe in him, you have drunk. So, it's obviously spiritual things, not physical things. It is a complete twisting of John chapter six to make that type of application.
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And I'm just reminded of what Augustine said, that Jesus' physical body is in heaven. That's where it's gonna stay until the second coming.
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He didn't say, go down the road and see Jesus' physical body at the church. He said it was a spiritual presence, not a physical presence, very, very clear.
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Mr. Tamariello, it is now time for our closing arguments, and you have, if you could please come back up to the podium, and you have five minutes for your closing statement.
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So, one of the things that we heard tonight was that the doctrine of propitiation, as understood by the Catholic Church in the holy sacrifice of the mass, is something that is a later development.
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The great Augustine, allow me to reference him, in reference to his mother,
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Monica, when she was passing from this world, in his confessions, he tells the beautiful story about his mother, and she said to him,
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I do not care where you lay my body, only this one thing
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I ask, that you remember me at the altar. Now, we all know how significant
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Augustine is, the doctor of grace, even in Reformed thinking. In fact, every
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Christian tradition tries to claim, in many ways, Augustine as their own. But Augustine clearly believed and held dear this doctrine of propitiation, of the sacrifice of the mass.
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In fact, in his Reflections, Faith, Hope, and Charity, he writes, and it cannot be denied that the souls of the dead obtain relief through the piety of their living friends, when they have the sacrifice of the mediator offered for them, or when alms are given in the church on their behalf, but these things benefit those only who, during their lives, merited that these services should one day help them, for there is a matter of life neither so good as not to need such help after death, nor so bad that they cannot be of benefit.
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With all due respect, I saw some of you laughing when he was questioning me about purgatory.
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Let me tell you something, I wear it as a badge of honor that I could be named with Augustine, because I just read that quote, and that quote seems to affirm what he was grilling me on and stopped asking me questions at four minutes and 33 seconds, but I don't wanna get into that.
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That's not why I'm here, but I do wanna point that out. When therefore sacrifices, either of the altar or of alms, of any kind, are offered for all the baptized dead, they are thanked offerings for the very good.
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For those who were not very bad, they are propitiatory offerings, and though for the very bad they have no significance as help for the dead, they do bring a measure of consolation to the living, and those who actually receive such profit receive it in the form either of a complete remission of sin, or of at least a mere oration of their sentence.
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We can go on and on about Isidore of Seville, that the mass is a propitiatory sacrifice, because it is the one and same sacrifice of Calvary.
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It's not another sacrifice. Christ doesn't get killed in the Catholic mass. Christ is being offered right now before the
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Father, not dying, but presenting the blood of that sacrifice, just like behind the veil, the blood of the bull and the goat had to go, so too
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Christ had to enter into heaven and present the blood of his very own sacrifice, and he's presenting it even now, and by the ministry of the priest,
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I participate in that reality, and the mass is offered for the living and the dead, but you know, one of the things
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I wanna share with you is this, in the Eucharist, we believe that Jesus Christ is truly present, body, blood, soul, and divinity.
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Some years ago, I was invited in Montgomery to speak at a local church, and I did, and I went, and I looked around the room, and I said, you know, there are pictures of Jesus up and whatnot, and I said, you know, why did
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Jesus leave us to Lord's Supper? And some people said, oh, to remember him. I said, but you got pictures up there.
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You could remember him that way. You might have a cross, and you could be remembering him that way. I said, but what if, what if he really did leave himself behind, present under the form of bread and wine?
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What if he really did that? You know, in marriage, when I said yes to my wife, the gift was not the honeymoon or the money or the fact that materially we can have a good life together.
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The gift of marriage was the self. When I said yes to my wife, I gave her me, and she gave herself to me.
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We were the gift, the exchange. In the Eucharist, brothers and sisters, and I call you that, and I mean it.
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In the Eucharist, the Catholic faith holds this. I love you so much, says
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Jesus, that I give you all that I am, all that I have, body, blood, soul, and divinity for your nourishment.
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Now, you may reject that, but why would you want it not to be true?
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Think about it. Pray about it. I've got about 20 copies over here of what I have put together.
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Anybody wants them, I'll give them to you. Think about it. Read Bram Petrie. Read Scott Hahn.
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There's a lot of stuff out there for you to consider, a lot of stuff out there.
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I want you to pray about it. He loves you so much, he wants to give you all that he is, himself.
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Thank you, Mr. Riello. Dr. White? I do not want you to pray about it.
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I want you to go to the Word of God. My Mormon friends tell you to pray about it and get a testimony of the
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Book of Mormon. I don't want you to pray about emotional appeals. I want you to go to the
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Word of God. This debate ended when it was demonstrated, beyond all question, that my opponent could not deal with Hebrews 7 .25.
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He gave us multiple contradictory interpretations of what this text was saying.
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First, he said, Christ intercedes for everyone. And then he said, Christ intercedes for those who come unto
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God by him. And then he said, Christ can intercede for you and you still be lost because you choose to be lost.
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The text cannot fit in Roman Catholic theology because Roman Catholic theology does not believe the
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Bible. It uses the Bible, but does not limit itself.
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It denies Sola Scriptura and it denies Tota Scriptura. It's Sola Ecclesia. So I wanna remind you of what these words say because if you are here and you live with the recognition that you do not actually have true peace with God because you might commit a mortal sin.
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You might commit those sins that will leave temporal punishments upon your soul so when you die, you have to go through purgatory.
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I want you to understand that there is a better way. Hebrews 7 .25
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says, in contrast to the old priest, he, in contrast to them, is able to save, not make salvation possible.
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Jesus is the one saving. He is able to save forever, completely.
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That's Christ's capacity. That's Christ's ability. Not a church, not a sacramental system,
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Christ's ability. He is able to save completely a specific people.
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The ones drawing near to God through him. There is no inclusivity.
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There is no pluralism in the New Testament. There is one way of salvation in Jesus Christ and it's a specific people that Christ is able to save.
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And why is he able to save them? Because he always lives to make intercession huper altone for them.
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Specific group, specific action, and if Jesus Christ intercedes before the
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Father in your behalf, you will be saved forever.
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That's why in John 6, Jesus said, I have not come to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me.
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And what is the will of him who sent me? That of all that he has given me, I lose none of it, but raise it up on the last day.
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I am so thankful that I believe in a savior who can actually save.
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Not a savior who makes it possible for me to cooperate, for me to suffer, for me to undergo satisfacio, for me to crawl on my knees upstairs in Rome to earn indulgences.
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New Testament knows nothing of this. This is a perversion over time.
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Do you want a savior who is able to save perfectly because he always lives to intercede?
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Not for new perpetuatory sacrifices, but he lives, the
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Lamb standing as if slain, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit in perfect harmony with one another.
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The Son comes and does what the triune God has decreed would take place. He gives his perfect life.
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We are united to him by God's sovereign action so that his death becomes our death, his resurrection our resurrection.
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That is the only hope that mankind has. And the great tragedy of the division that exists between us is that Rome has no finished sacrifice, has no finished sacrifice.
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That's what tonight was supposed to be about. I hope you can get past all of the other stuff and hopefully heard it.