Church History Proves the Necessity of Sola Scriptura

Okay, so welcome to The Dividing Line. My name is James White and yeah, so Wes Huff posted the picture that we took last night when

I took him back to his hotel. He had contacted me, oh, when was it? I don't know, a number of days ago and said, hey, he's going to be in town, he's going to be doing some recording, and could we find a time we could get together?

And so I swung by and picked him up at his hotel after he recorded,

I think, about three sessions or something like that. He's doing three today and then two the next day and then flying home,

I think. Anyway, he's doing stuff on scriptural reliability and, you know, we talk about a lot of the same things, we really do, but he's just doing a whole lot more international traveling than I ever did, but certainly do.

I don't do it anymore. So anyways, we ate Mexican and ate chips and salsa and talked about visiting all sorts of different manuscripts.

In fact, in fact, he then gave me one of his facsimiles and I'm gonna be putting it in the background here,

I told him I would. So here is what he gave me, it's a facsimile of P1.

And now my understanding from what he told me is not only is he, this is in Pennsylvania, but he spent time with the manuscript and that this is his actual writing, that he actually copied this onto papyrus.

I don't know how you do that exactly, but these cases are really, really nice.

And, you know, we talked about, you know, that you've got some nomena sacra up here, I can't, I could have pulled up P1 if I had time to, and we could have looked at it together and stuff like that.

But I really wanted to thank Wes Hough for that. And I'm gonna find a better place than just right here, but I'll put it back here for now.

We'll have to figure out, because there's a P52 one right there. And so, yeah, we had a great time and the food was good.

We got back to the hotel and evidently the guy that greets people there at the hotel has taken some classes at Phoenix Seminary.

And so he recognized Wes when he saw him, and I guess he recognized me too when I got out of the truck.

And so they snapped those pictures and now they're all over X. And so just real quickly in regards to those pictures,

A, stop contacting me and asking for Wes Hough's contact information, okay?

I'm not gonna give you his contact information. He's traveling more than he wants to.

He's a dad. He's got little kids. He's an elder in the church.

He's got PhD work to be working on. And so give the guy a break.

I'm not giving you his phone number or email or anything like that. And he has mine, and he's not gonna be giving you mine either.

So that's how that works. Secondly, two things about the picture.

One, that no one's noticed. We're standing in front that beautiful truck of ours.

That's the ministry truck. And if you look at that picture, it dwarfs both of us.

It's taller than both of us. That gives you an idea. When I first started driving a truck that big, that tall, those things they put over at the car wash thing, maximum height.

I mean, I clear it by this much. It's just like right over the top.

If I put too much air in the tires, I'd probably hit it. It's a beast. And we're standing in front of that because I was just dropping them off.

And he said, hey, that guy we've talked. Let's get some pictures. And so that's where it came from.

And then the other thing is all the people out there that are going, you've got a sleeve tattoo.

I'm like, yeah, you know when I got that? 10 years ago. And people are like, 10 years ago?

I was like, yeah, I got my first ink in 2004. That's 22 years ago.

And you can see it right now. I'm looking up the screen. Yeah, that's an entire sleeve.

It goes all the way up. So I was wearing a t -shirt last night, and everybody's like,

I've never seen that. And I'm like, okay, must not watch the

DL. He must listen to it or something. I don't know. But yeah, I mean, when

Wes saw it, he's like, man, you must have gotten that fairly recently.

And I said, nah, this one was 10 years ago. And the reason that people say that is because they look fresh.

I take care of them, since they're fully colored. If you expose them to sunlight a whole lot, that's bad news.

So either I do wear long sleeve shirts, or as right now,

I have do -it -yourself sunscreen on them, because I live in Arizona.

And we sort of skipped all of winter this year. We just sort of went from sort of mid -fall to mid -spring and straight into summer.

So yeah, you get a lot of sun out here. So anyway, yeah, the picture is running around. And then

I just happened to notice that Jay Dyer commented on the picture. Evidently, he doesn't speak

English anymore, because I can guess that some of the ghetto talk that he, it was just a single line, but I can guess what some of it is.

And it's vile. Does he even pretend to be a Christian anymore?

I don't know why he would. The way he talks, the comments on what he said,

I'm just like, who are these people? They literally behave like 13 -year -old guys that live in the basement playing video games.

I mean, that's the vibe. Just pure immaturity. And of course, when

I raised the possibility of debating Nicaea 2, that's how he responded then.

I mean, does he even bother to pretend to be a Christian now? I'm not sure. He literally works with Alex Jones.

He's on his show. And it's like, okay, pretty wild.

Anyway, so what's this? Yeah, that's someone commenting on exactly that.

Just popped up my screen. Now, a couple other things.

Just in passing, I have a couple of bookmarks. You don't even have to look for them anymore.

Every single day, you will see a news article, story about someone who has been arrested, brought up on charges, not two times, not five times, 12, 15, 20, 40 times.

And they're out on the street walking around. And finally, they walk up behind somebody, smash them in the head with a hammer.

They're dead. They push them in front of a train. People are dying at the hands of people who have been arrested literally dozens of times.

And people ask, how can this be? And the answer is, corrupt judges are a judgment upon any people.

And the corruption of the judiciary in the United States goes back many decades because you cannot teach law from a worldview that has no basis for law.

You cannot honor a system, a judicial system that was based upon a recognition of the existence of God's law, the

Mosaic Code, which was cited numerous times in the early period of our nation by the

Supreme Court and other courts because it was recognized to be authoritative.

You cannot see a system like that transition into secularism without the judicial system just simply coming unhinged, just coming apart.

And the enemies of this nation and this culture have infiltrated and destroyed pretty much every law school.

In fact, I forget when it was. It was, what, 10 years ago now that the basically last

Christian law school in Canada, the judiciary basically said, yeah, if you go to that school, you're not going to have a real law degree because you have to have a particular secular perspective to practice law in the nation of Canada and Australia.

And they want that here in the United States too. And it'll happen eventually unless something changes.

And so the law schools have been completely denigrated and secularized.

And so the people practicing law cannot even begin to respect the foundations of the system that they're ostensibly sworn to uphold and defend.

And so that's why we see what we're seeing. And I'm going to be, I'm going to make a lot of people unhappy here.

This is not a 100 % unanimous thing. But one thing

I see real regularly is that the judges that kick these guys back out on the street to kill and murder and maim and rape are by and large women.

They are by and large women who have been put in a place they should never be in.

Because the law requires you to make application of its truth without emotionalism.

Now, are there utterly compromised dudes as well? Of course there are.

But, you know, Judge Judy was about the last good one. It just, when you combine the worldview with the secularism, with the emotionalism, we are being hunted in our own communities by people who have been arrested over and over again.

I saw a video of a guy, a big black guy, came up behind this 80 -some -odd -year -old white guy in a store, looked like a

Walmart or something, just hauled off and beat the snot out of him. They had not even met.

The simple fact of the matter is, the pastor of the church in Houston, where I've debated a number of times, has wanted me to debate the issue of capital punishment.

It's not that I'm opposed to doing so, it's just that I need to have the time to properly develop stuff. But the reality truly is that a nation that cannot recognize capital crimes will create capital crimes all through its society.

If you cannot recognize that there are people who cannot walk the streets amongst you, and if you cannot recognize, and this is another big massive issue and I could get into it today, since when did slavery become a punishment?

It's what we're all used to. You throw them in jail, right? Where'd that come from?

And that's literally what you're doing. When you put somebody into a cage for 20 years, you are enslaving them.

So we have slavery, just a specific kind of slavery, as punishment.

We don't execute almost anyone anymore. And so there's no fear of it.

These people running around doing these gang beatings and things like that, they don't fear the law.

They're not going to be, even if they're thrown in jail, they're not going to be in there very long. They're going to be let out for good behavior.

They know that. So there is no fear of the law. And Hollywood has taught us that we have become truly enlightened and mature because we no longer do the terrible things we used to do, which was like hang people.

Now, can that be abused? Of course. Look at what

China has done. I mean, sure, any repressive regime. But I'm talking about a lawful government that seeks to honor life.

You do not honor life by letting murderers walk amongst us to murder again. You honor life by executing the murderer.

Ah, I thought you were pro -life. Yeah, if you're pro -life, that's what you believe. That's what you believe. The Roman Catholic Church is completely wrong on this topic.

The Pope is completely wrong on this topic. The fact that Francis changed the

Universal Catholic Catechism to say that capital punishment has always been sinful shows he has no idea what the

Bible teaches. Francis was a liberation theologian, socialist.

So is Leo. Oh, he's an American. Doesn't matter. He is a liberation theologian, socialist.

He is a leftist. If he had two wings, if he was an airplane, he'd have two left wings.

Okay? And that is coming out in his moral teaching, and you cannot escape it.

You cannot deny that reality. That's the fact. Okay? Anyway, I see this stuff.

I see these stories. We see them every single day. And when you think about it, you just realize a society that will not execute murderers is a society that hates itself.

It's a self -loathing society. That's where we are. Um, okay, so I saw a really,

Tim Kaufman, now we don't agree on everything, but Tim Kaufman does a lot of really good stuff. And he responded to Brie Solstad on the subject of prayers to Mary.

And this is really useful. It's a well done little article that he posted that has a lot of good references in it, if you want to look it up.

He's at WH Pub on X, if you want to look him up. And the reason

I'm referencing it, I'm not going to go through this right now, but I want to transition into what

I want to do the rest of the program. Um, we do a lot of church history around here.

And it always makes me laugh when Roman Catholics quote the

Newman stuff, you know, to be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant. That is just such hogwash.

Such, from a man who absolutely sold his soul after Vatican I to embrace papal infallibility.

And to a man who literally, John Henry Cardinal Newman's development hypothesis, read

George Salmon's rebuttal of it. It's still sort of in print in certain places, you can still track it down.

Um, as Salmon said back then, this is a complete abandonment of the field of historical battle.

This is Rome saying, you're right, we've been lying all along, but it's okay for us to lie because it's development.

And that's true. And that's what Newman had to do. He had, he knew that papal infallibility was not what was believed near the church.

Was not apostolic, but it's like the acorn and the seed and it grows into the big tree.

You know, you can excuse anything with that. And that's exactly what

Rome has done. In fact, I can guarantee you, if John Henry Cardinal Newman could somehow be raised from the dead to see what happened at Vatican II, in light of his own theory, he would crawl back into the grave and cover himself up.

Because he would be that mortified. And mortified is a good word there. Anyway, so when you hear people, oh, church history, we're the only ones that do church history, you can,

I can guarantee you, any Roman Catholic saying we're the only ones to do church history is a Roman Catholic who doesn't know anything about church history.

Whose knowledge of the early fathers is the Jurgenset level.

And the Jurgenset is this, it's a quote book, a florilegia. Quotations from various early sources hand -picked to present a particular perspective.

Nothing new about that. That's been around a long time. We'll actually be talking about one of those in just a moment. So, for example,

Tim Coffin mentions that as soon as you mentioned a Roman Catholic, well, where's the evidence that the early church was praying to Mary the way that you pray?

Well, you have the sub tuum presidium. Let me quote him here. The sub tuum presidium is offered as evidence from the 3rd century.

But even Roman apologist Trent Horn acknowledges that he only recently became aware that there is a dating issue, placing it possibly as late as the 6th or 7th century.

Now, I would like to see where Trent Horn said this, because I don't know how you can know anything about the sub tuum presidium and how many people do.

Okay, but people who are particularly concerned about the early church and its views of Mary has to have heard of the sub tuum presidium.

It is everywhere. Throw that at Google, or at the search bar in X, or Grok, or Claude, or whatever, and you'll just see it everywhere.

Now, you won't see a whole lot of real scholarly stuff on it, but you will see

Roman Catholics saying, look at this from the 3rd century, look at how exalted its language of Mary is, and all the rest of this stuff.

And the reality is that there is tremendous dispute about its dating, and many people do put it as late as the 6th or 7th century, which is long after the flourishing and explosion of Marian devotion, not only in the monastic movement, which is where much of this stuff came from.

Monasticism, theologically, has been a disaster for the

Christian tradition. What monks get dedicated to, they are willing to give their lives for.

One of the things that's going to come out when we talk about 2nd Council of Nicaea, for the debate, the influence that the monks had politically in the

Byzantine Empire was massive. You didn't cross the monks, and the monks were iconophiles.

They loved their icons. And so, when they show up in force, do you want to have to believe something is dogma because the monks decided that's what you need to believe is dogma?

Well, most Protestants don't, but evidently, the Eastern Orthodox do. So many factors that people just are completely ignorant of when it comes to 2nd

Council of Nicaea. So, the Septuam Presidium, as a prayer to Mary, if it is 6th century, is long after Council of Chalcedon, the development of the

Theotokos language, referring to her as the

Mother of God, God -bearer, all that kind of stuff. So, it's no big deal. They try to use it as, see, this is very early, this high, high exalted stuff, and it's anachronistic.

You see that stuff developing in the 4th century, not in the 2nd century.

And when you see how the various dogmas are built upon each other, you can't just jump up here someplace and go, oh, they're all from the start.

And Rome doesn't have to do that anymore. That's why, when Roman Catholics try to smuggle stuff into early church history, they don't really need to do so anymore because of Numen.

Numen admitted it wasn't there. Numen admitted the early church didn't function on the basis of the papacy.

So, when you find evidence that, you know, the earliest you can, the really earliest you can find any sound evidence of a monarchical episcopate, one bishop in Rome, 140, 150

AD, big deal. It's development. Just slap some Numen on it, and it's good.

No problems. It just developed over time. Eastern Orthodoxy does not have that luxury.

They don't have a Numen yet. Now, maybe they'll borrow Rome's Numen, but they'd really have to cease being

Eastern Orthodoxy if they did that. So, they do approach things differently, and the result is some major, major anachronisms.

Major, major anachronisms in Eastern Orthodox theology, which we'll be getting into as I have an article due next month that I only have in fragments all over my hard drive right now.

So, that's something I've really got to start hammering on very, very quickly. I may be working on that on the road, in fact, in the little trip to Eastern Western Texas and Las Cruces.

Anyway, so, all this church history, I want to give you an example in the 35 minutes we have left.

I want to give you an example of how entire dogmas can be deeply influenced by the abuse of a valid citation, ignoring its context, original meaning, or through the creation of forgeries.

You need to understand that there is a long history of the use of forged sources in Christian history.

There's been a lot of it. The donation of Constantine, where Constantine allegedly gives the papal lands to the papacy.

There are all sorts of forgeries in regards to Constantine's later life, who actually baptized him.

He was baptized by an Arian bishop. At the end of his life. Because, you know, you look at his sons, they were semi -Arians.

All sorts of fun stuff like that. Again, forgeries created to try to hide stuff like that.

The pseudo -Isidorian decretals. I don't remember what the exact percentage is.

It's a huge percentage of every citation Thomas Aquinas utilized to substantiate the papacy was actually a forgery.

People that recited never said those things. It's a long history.

It's a long history. I would actually argue that if you sweep all the forgeries away from the creation of the papacy, it's left standing in midair without a foundation.

There's nothing left there. It would just crumble. But that's where it does.

It just stands there. Most people never even think to look underneath.

There's nothing there. What am I talking about here? I'm talking about this book.

This is Three Treatises on the Divine Images by John of Damascus. Now, John lives under Muslim rule.

Islam has broken out of Arabia. The century of Muslim expansion, 632 -732,

Battle of Tours, Charles Martel, all that stuff that we used to teach in school and now nobody knows about.

John is faithfully seeking to minister under Islamic domination.

He writes Three Treatises on the Divine Images. And that work, fundamentally, this work is absolutely foundational to the conclusions of the

Seventh Ecumenical Council. And briefly, just to refresh your church history, the

Second Nicene Council, the Seventh Ecumenical Council, meets in 787.

That's a long time after the first one. Long time. And it's the last united church ecumenical council because Rome accepts it as ecumenical,

Eastern Orthodoxy accepts it as ecumenical. The funny thing is they interpret it very differently.

They make application of it very differently. In fact,

I told, and I'll just say a Roman Catholic apologist, I won't use his name, but a well -known one, I told a

Roman Catholic apologist recently about my upcoming debate with Craig Trillio and I gave him the thesis.

Veneration of icons as defined by the Seventh Ecumenical Council is apostolic. And he said,

I'd never defend that. This is a Catholic apologist, active, very active

Roman Catholic apologist. He said, I'd never defend that. And I knew exactly what he was saying. I didn't have to ask him to expand on that.

Because Rome has already said, because you can prove errors in the councils, in their argumentation, you know, the

Pope misciting the protevangelium, Genesis chapter 3, that kind of stuff.

Rome has already admitted the arguments used to arrive at a dogmatic statement can be fallible, but the statement will still be dogmatic.

It'll be infallible. So the arguments that the council uses to get to the conclusion can be bogus, but the conclusion will always be infallible.

So, I'm sorry? Why try with the arguments?

Because back then, you had to make the argument because it was in dispute. Now that it becomes established dogma, it's no longer in dispute, so you don't have to worry about it anymore.

So, as long as you have the development hypothesis, you don't have to worry about this stuff.

You can say that icon veneration developed over time, and the council was just wrong to say it was apostolic.

Eastern Orthodoxy doesn't have that. They're sort of stuck with, yeah, the apostles actually did it.

Thomas Aquinas believed, and I read this in the other studio. We gotta get back in there again sometime.

I read this in the other studio. Aquinas believed there's this mythological story, and it's not really from the early church, but it becomes accepted widely.

There's this mythological story that Luke painted an icon of, it was

Jesus, I think. Might have been Mary, but I think it was Jesus. Anyway, and Thomas Aquinas believed that, used it as part of his argumentation.

Aquinas was pre -critical in his use of sources, big time.

Big, big, big time. So, anyway, anyway, anyway, anyway. Let me give you a citation from a very important early church father,

Basil the Great. And, you know, this is the period of the great

Cappadocian fathers, and post -Nicene Orthodoxy, and Trinitarian development, and all sorts of stuff like that.

And he wrote a work on the Holy Spirit. And here is that work on the

Holy Spirit. Now, there is something fascinating here.

Here is the volume from the 38 volume, we used to call it the

Erdman set, now it's Hendrickson. This is that set that looks so good. You know, it's got the red, and the green, and then the blue.

It looks so good as a background, you know. I remember when I got, I know exactly when I got my

Erdman set, the dates written right inside. James White, January 1987.

Wow, we're coming up on 40 years next year for this.

The pages are getting a little on the yellow side. They're in pretty good shape, pretty good shape. What? So, we met 40 years ago in January of this year.

Why didn't you tell me this? We could have, we could have gone to McDonald's together, you know.

That would have, since you have a degree from Hamburger U, that would have been quite fitting.

So that was, so you were wearing your maroon members -only jacket in January of 1986.

Why do you remember the date? Oh, okay.

Oh, okay. Yeah, Rich the Tingle had lots of problems back then.

Yes, okay. Yeah, so you're wearing your maroon members -only jacket, and you were brought up to meet me after a class by a certain fellow.

Yeah. Oh, okay.

All right. Round two. Okay, all right.

Well, I remember that night. I remember what room we were, I remember what the room looked like, which way we were facing, and that you were scary.

Because admit it, you came out of a pretty wild -eyed, charismatic background, and you still looked like a wild -eyed charismatic.

So yeah, there you go. Yeah, so 40 years ago. Okay, there you go.

How did we get onto that? I don't know. I'm just simply saying, it's so weird to me, because I remember how excited

I was to get this. It's so weird to me that I have all of this on my screen now.

You don't need this. It's still wonderful to have, but I have it all on the screen now.

In fact, I have it in accordance. My Bible program has it. That's the thing. All right.

Basil writes a book on the Holy Spirit, and in chapter 18, section 45.

So Basil, on the Spirit, 1845. This is one of the most important patristic citations in all the

Corpus. Okay, let's read it. I'm just going to read section 45, which is not short, but not long either.

So let's read it. For we do not count by way of addition, gradually making increase from unity to multitude, and saying one, two, and three, nor yet first, second, and third.

For I, God, am the first, and I am the last. And hitherto we have never, even at the present time, heard of a second

God. This is the part that the Mormons skip over. Worshiping as we do

God of God, we both confess the distinction of the persons, and at the same time abide by the monarchy.

We do not fritter away the theology in a divided plurality, because one form, so to say, united in the invariableness of the

Godhead, is beheld in God the Father, and in God the only begotten.

For the Son is in the Father, and the Father in the Son, since such as is the latter, such is the former, and such as is the former, such is the latter.

And herein is the unity. So according to the distinction of persons, both are one and one, and according to the community of nature, one.

How then, if one and one, are there not two gods? Because we speak of a king, and of the king's image, and not of two kings.

The majesty is not cloven in two, nor the glory divided. The sovereignty and authority over us is one, and so the doxology ascribed by us is not plural, but one.

Because the honor, and here it is, right here, this half sentence, you'll see why.

Because the honor paid to the image passes on to the prototype, right here, this quotation, right there.

Because the honor paid to the image passes on to the prototype. Now let me finish the quote.

We need it in context, and then I'll explain why this is so important. Now, what in the one case, the image is by reason of imitation, that in the other case, the

Son is by nature, and as in the works of art, the likeness is dependent on the form, so in the case, or the divine and uncompounded nature, the union consists in the communion of the

Godhead. One, moreover, is the Holy Spirit, and we speak of Him singly, conjoined as He is to the one

Father through the one Son, and through Himself completing the adorable and blessed Trinity. Of Him, the intimate relationship to the

Father and the Son is sufficiently declared by the fact of His not being ranked in the plurality of the creation, but being spoken of singly, for He is not one of many, but one, for as there is one

Father and one Son, so there is one Holy Ghost. He is consequently as far removed from created nature as reason requires the singular to be removed from compound and plural bodies, and He is in such wise united to the

Father and to the Son as unit has affinity with unit. Now, what is this all about?

There's a lot of language there that we normally don't hear. What is this all about? He's talking about the unity of the

Godhead, and He is talking about consubstantiality, to use a

Nicene term, homoousius, of one substance, and He is talking about how we distinguish, at first,

Father and Son without coming up with two gods. This is something that, you know, you have to talk to Mormons about regularly, and Jehovah's Witnesses about, and Muslims about, and it was being discussed long, long ago.

So, notice, so that according to the distinction of persons, both are one and one, and according to the community of nature, one, how then, if one and one, are there not two gods?

So what's the topic? Yeah, you don't need me up there.

Get rid of it. I can't read this, think, and worry about this screen.

How then, if one and one, are there not two gods?

Because we speak of a, and here's His answer, because we speak of a king, and of the king's image, and not of two kings.

The majesty is not clothed in two, nor the glory divided. The sovereignty and authority over us is one, and so the doxology ascribed by us is not plural, but one.

So the doxology, the giving of glory, when you give the glory to the

Son, then this rebounds to the

Father. This is like Philippians chapter 2. Every name confesses that Jesus Christ is

Lord to the glory of God the Father. And then you have this phrase, because the honor paid to the image, this would be the

Son as the image of the Father, passes on to the prototype, that is to the

Father. Now, what in the one case, the image is by reason of imitation.

So this is talking about, he used the example of the king and the king's image. And he says, now what in the one case, the image is by reason of imitation.

So the king's image, like on a coin, is just an imitation of the king. That in the other case, the

Son is by nature. So the Son's nature is such that He is the exact express image of the

Father, Hebrews chapter 1. And therefore, the honor paid to the image passes on to the prototype is in reference to the

Trinity. It's in reference to the fact that the Father and the Son are consubstantial.

They have one nature, one being. And as in works of art, the likeness is dependent on the form.

So in the case of the divine and uncompounded nature, the union consists in the communion of the

Godhead. Then he goes on from there to say, and now this is how this relates to the

Holy Spirit. So you might go, what? I've never heard this.

You have. You have heard this phrase. So you can either take this down or put the little one back up or whatever.

You have heard this phrase because the honor paid to the image passes on to the prototype.

John of Damascus took that phrase and used it over and over again in this work.

And what does this work do? This is the seminal work defending iconography, the veneration of icons.

When Jehovah's Witnesses distinguish between proskunesis, proskuneo, the

Greek term to bow down or to worship, depending on the context. In the

New Testament, there is proskuneo given by one man to another, by an inferior soldier to a superior soldier.

So when a Roman soldier bowed down to the centurion, that's proskunesis, that's proskuneo.

But then you have, that's a form of veneration.

But then you have latria, allegedly the highest form of worship.

Latrio, the verbal form. And what John does is he makes a distinction.

Unfortunately, he doesn't go back and he's using the

Greek septuagint. He's writing in Greek, not in Latin.

But he doesn't go back. Where'd I put it? Where'd I?

Oh, there it is. A few two things. What's weird is he doesn't go back to this.

He doesn't go back to the Greek septuagint. Why? If he went here and then asked the key question, where did these terms come from in here?

Where did they come from? What Hebrew terms are being translated here?

When you do that, as they did in the Reformation, you discover that the distinction between latria, proskunesis, duluo, in Latin it comes in as latria and dulia.

You can give dulia to created things. You give hyperdulia to Mary.

But you give latruo only to God. So see my debate with Patrick Madrid on this subject from New York long, long ago.

This is the distinction that has been dogmatically defined and used within Roman Catholicism.

That dulia and latria, two different things, proskunesis can be one of the other depending on the context.

John of Damascus is the origin and source for this. And Jehovah's Witnesses use it.

That's how they get relative worship of Jesus. Jesus can be worshiped, but he's being worshiped in a relative sense. They're actually pulling this.

That wasn't John's intention, by the way. But they utilize that. If you allow the whole

Bible to be the Bible, so if you do what this here does, this is my old, man that is old, man look at that, look at that edging we did so long ago.

Oh goodness. I wonder what year this was. I don't think I wrote it down. No, I didn't.

This is actually a UBS 3rd edition Greek New Testament. And it's bound together with a small print

Biblia Hebraica Stucartensia. You see how that binding is held up.

That's not bad. Anyways, if he had gone here, where you have the

Hebrew, and recognize that this is the translation of the

Hebrew, but the Hebrew takes precedent, and so you have to interpret the translation in light of the original, because there was no

Greek language when Moses gave us the law. So the woohoos who are trying to make this, you know, they're trying to say that we made a mistake when we went with the

Hebrew canons type stuff. They don't realize the damage that they're doing in their foolish anti -Judaism.

They don't get it. They don't deal with these subjects. They're not out there debating these folks.

They're just writing their little books and getting their clicks. Don't listen to them.

Don't give them oxygen. They don't need it. If the Hebrew became the standard, then you would realize that there are many places where proskuneo, proskunesis, means absolute, full -on worship of God.

The duluo and litruo are both used to translate single

Hebrew words, and we are told not to bow down to an image.

Not to not just not give it the highest form of veneration. No, you're not to bow down to it.

When John bowed down to the angel, the angel said, don't do that, proskuneo God, because he's in heaven for crying out loud.

That's the context. So proskuneo can be the highest form of worship if it's in the religious context.

So that's why you've got to go with solo scriptura and tota scriptura.

All of it, not just some of it. And so John blew it, but he was highly respected.

And here's the thing you've got to understand. Highly respected names in church history taught things that were untrue, that became defined as absolute truth for a long period of time.

For a long period of time. And here's where it gets really interesting. All right?

So Basil, on the spirit, 1845.

Okay? Not the date. Chapter 18, section 45 is the modern thing.

John picks it up. John of Damascus uses that quote that I gave you, because the honor paid to the image passes on to the prototype.

This is his primary argument, that when you honor the image, the icon, it goes through the icon to the prototype.

So when you have an icon of a saint and you're honoring the image, it goes through the image to the prototype, and that's what makes it acceptable.

It isn't prohibited by scripture. Because we're just honoring the saint that everyone has admitted is particularly godly, and maybe was a martyr, or whatever else.

But you're not. And see, the problem is, Origen, many centuries earlier, had responded to Celsus.

Now again, we don't have time to go through all this, but it's well worth maybe listening to my church history series.

We gotta pull that stuff down and make it available someplace. I think it's on YouTube. But we should have it under our control somewhere,

I think. Anyway, Celsus was a rabid anti -Christian critic in the early church, end of the 2nd century, beginning of the 3rd century.

And one of his criticisms of the Christians is that they had no images.

They had no images. And when you read

Origen's response, the pagans defended themselves against the

Christians by saying that when they went to their temples and venerated the statues in their temples, that they knew that wasn't the god they were worshiping, but that their worship to the image passed through to the prototype.

That was Celsus's, the pagans' argument against the Christians, and against the

Christians' argument against their images. That's how the pagans argued, and that's how

John of Damascus argued, to defend the veneration of icons. Okay?

So, there's some real irony there in the history of the church.

All of that takes us up to Nicaea II, the 7th

Ecumenical Council, the 2nd Nicene Council, 787, considered to be infallible by Rome and by Eastern Orthodoxy.

You're seeing now why we're doing the topic that we're doing in October. This council says that the veneration of icons is apostolic, that the apostles practiced it and did it.

Okay? Now, again, Rome interprets this council somewhat differently than Eastern Orthodoxy does on a practical level, but both of them accept it as ecumenical and a final authority.

Now, in the fourth session of the council, there is a florilegium, a collection of citations that are put together to make a point that are read into the council record.

Now, Roman Catholic historians and Orthodox historians will admit there are a number of citations that are read into the council records.

They're just simply bogus. There isn't a whole lot of critical capacity demonstrated in the grabbing of these citations.

All right? But that's not my point here. Here is the important part.

They come to Basel and they say,

St. Basil from the Discourse Against the Sabellians, Arius and the Onomians, which begins

Judaism as opposed to paganism and both to Christianity and continues further down. So, remember, they didn't have standardized names at this point in time, so you sort of had to try to identify what you were talking about.

But the word of truth has diluted the attacks upon it from both sides for where the origin is one and that which proceeds from it is one and where the archetype is one and the image is one, the principle of unity is not destroyed.

Therefore, the son being generated from the father and in his own nature representing the father is indistinguishable as his image and as his offspring preserves consubstantiality.

Neither does he who in the marketplace gazes at the imperial image giving the name of emperor to the one on the panel acknowledge two emperors, the image and the person whose image it is, nor if pointing to the one painted on the panel he were to say this is the emperor, does he deprive the archetype of the title of emperor.