Answering Questions about Scriptural Sufficiency and Sola Scriptura

from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line. The Apostle Peter commanded

Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.

Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.

This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll free across the

United States. It's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is

James White. Good morning, welcome to The Dividing Line, the 1st of March, 2005, here in Phoenix, Arizona, 57 degrees this morning, heading for a high in the mid -70s someplace.

It's going to be a gorgeous one. It finally stopped raining, and for us anyways, it's been pretty rough, you know, all that rain coming down.

Everything's green. What? What? Green? This is Arizona.

It's a desert out here. No, everything is green, which means it'll all turn brown by the 3rd week of May, and then it'll burn by the 4th week of June.

That's what... That's not actually all that hot here, it's just all the fire that keeps things quite toasty.

877 -753 -3341. I was a little surprised when

I mentioned the upcoming debate on the blog between myself and Robert Wilkin, one of the leading anti -lordship advocates, one of the leading people saying that faith and repentance live on different continents, and that while repentance is a good thing, it is not necessarily connected with faith.

In fact, I heard him in a debate with Daryl Bach say that he...

Daryl Bach said what I said, and that is, while we must distinguish between justification and sanctification, we dare not separate them, and he very openly said,

I'd gladly separate them. And so, Dr. Wilkin represents the position that we are frequently misrepresented as holding by Roman Catholics and others.

It is an unbalanced position, and we will be debating in Oklahoma City on April 22nd.

I was a little surprised how many people went, wow, that's exciting, that's great. And what that means is you aren't checking the calendar page.

Now, I... Okay, I put my hands up in admission that you may not bother with the calendar page because for a long time, the calendar page was actually a history page.

In fact, there was a time where really the calendar page was more of an ancient history page, and it was telling people what we had done about two years ago, but I've repented of my ways, and generally these days, it's pretty close to being right where it needs to be.

I mean, we've got everything up through the Great Debate, up through June 9th is currently on the calendar page.

So it's right there, it's in the bar on the left side of the website.

You see calendar there, and that will help you out, okay? So in case that's not the...

And see, I'm the one that updates that, so I just sort of assume everybody knows what's going on, which obviously is not the case at all.

I just clicked on it here. And the next thing coming up is next week, March 9th and 10th.

That is Wednesday and Thursday, if I am recalling correctly. And Southern Baptist Founders Conference Midwest, St.

Louis, as I recall, on the sufficiency of scripture. So those of you in the

St. Louis area will be preaching on those subjects at the Founders Conference, Midwest Founders Conference, over that direction.

Then, barely a week later, I head for London, England, and the current itinerary in England and Scotland is linked there on the calendar page.

I got an email today, and I'm thinking about this. Roger, who is my

English host, he writes... Now, Roger normally listens to The Dividing Line, even though it's like an eight -hour difference.

And Roger doesn't write like an Englishman. He writes like an

American, okay? And we seem to communicate very well.

I'm not sure when I get there what that's going to mean. But he writes to me and says,

James, are you still interested in doing a Dividing Line from here, assuming you will still be awake and able to talk at 2300 hours on Thursday night?

I have no idea what you need, so if you want to explore the possibility, tell me what would be required this end.

Wow. Now, it's a shorter flight over than it is back. It's from Phoenix to going the way

I'm going, it's a 12 -hour flight over, and it's a 14 -hour flight back, and jet stream, of course.

And after a 12 -hour flight, now add minimum two hours on this end,

I always get to the airport early, and especially when you're traveling internationally, you have to.

So add two hours to that, so that's 14. And then however long it takes to get from landing to,

I guess, Roger's house afterwards. And I die, die, die.

The question is, will I be able to find sufficient sleep aids to get enough, yeah, the

Dividing Line with jet lag. But at least I could do it to my

British accent. You know, the only problem with doing it on Thursday, right when

I land, when I get there, is I don't see anything. What am I supposed to talk about?

Well, I flew over water and then land, and I haven't seen anything.

So we will definitely think about that. I don't know, maybe later on.

The problem is I'm not sure where we're going to be later on, like on Tuesday morning, which would be

Tuesday afternoon or something. Whatever time it is in England now, I would think that would be a little bit better because I've spoken a few times, maybe had a chance to see something that I could tell you about, something like that.

I don't know. We'll find out. So that's coming up March 17th to the 24th. Then for those of you up in the

Toledo area, Metropolitan Toledo, I'll never forget the first time I went there, oh man, what a nightmare.

The Ambush in Toledo, that was the title of the article that I wrote for our newsletter.

We had a newsletter once. It was called, guess what? The Dividing Line. That's right.

We're really, and in fact, that's always what the program's been called too, for how many years.

We started this when, 1980, boy, you start getting, 87, really?

We started on KXEG. We started on KXEG, but you see, that sounds late to me.

I think it was before then. We started on KXEG amidst Kenneth Hagen and Kenneth Copeland commercials. Oh yeah.

Oh yeah. That was, and we enjoyed mocking those commercials when they came on too. It was fun. I'm sure they never heard about it, but who knew where we were at that time.

Anyways, that late, because I remember at one point going down to the studio at KXEG on my brand new

Suzuki GS750L, and that was early on in my married life. Yeah, it was, and they all of a sudden had the -

That would have been before you ever met me. I think so. Yeah, I think it was even earlier.

I don't think you had a program until probably a year after I knew you. I don't know, man.

I don't know. That doesn't, that's not sounding quite right, but anyways, it was a long time ago, and it was called, well, you know, actually now

I think about it, what I was going down to there was the Concerned Christians radio program. I was doing their thing, yeah, so anyways, we've been on KXEG and KHEP and then

KPXQ and da -dee -dee -dee -da -da -da -da -da.

So we've been doing it for a long time. Anyway, I remember when I went to Toledo, Ohio in 1991 to debate

Art Sippo at the university there. What a disastrous time that was.

I mean, you know, I get there real late and everything's closed, and I'm driving around this outer loop trying to find this hotel, and oh, it was just horrible, and we had just lost the vast majority of our ministry funding, and I was paying for all this stuff out of my own pocket, and it was just, and of course, the debate itself was a joke because of the behavior of my opponent, and oh, it was, oh, and on the way in,

I'm on one of these little puddle jumpers in the middle of the worst thunderstorm I have ever flown through, and there's a 16 -year -old kid sitting next to me, ralphing his guts out, and oh, man, honestly, that was the worst trip experience

I have ever had in my entire life. No two ways about it. It was an omen of things to come.

Well, sorry about all that about Toledo. I'm going back there again. Flying into Detroit.

I'm not sure how I'm getting from Detroit to Toledo yet, but anyway, April 1st to the 3rd, the heart of the gospel. A bunch of good folks there.

I'll get to see Steve Camp and the boys again, and there is a link there if you want to go take a look at what we're going to be doing.

I was there, I forget how many years ago it was now, at least two years, maybe a little more, maybe three,

I don't know, but anyways, good, very, very good conference they had there.

Some neat folks. I'm looking at the thing right here, trying to blow it up a little bit here, and Phil Johnson is going to be there, and Don Kistler is going to be there, and Don Whitney, and of course,

Campy is going to be there, so that means we're going to have some good music to sing along with, and I remember

I had him sing Living and Lay Out of Sea for me when I was preaching last time. And then

April 22nd, the Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield Memorial Lecture Series 2005 Debate on Regeneration Against Dr.

Bob Wilkin, Minder's School of Business, Oklahoma State University, and there is a link there if you want to look at that.

And then the next big thing is the trip to Italy, and I have not spoken with anyone about doing

The Defining Line from Italy, and I do not have an Italian accent that I can really use, so that sounded more like someone from a horror movie.

Anyways, I'll be flying into Milan, and the nice thing is

I like Italian food, so I'm not going to starve there. I figure I'm going to be doing good in England, because I asked, uh, watching everybody, that was

Dracula, yeah, the Transylvanian accent, yeah,

I'm sorry, anyway, I'm not even going to try that again. I have been thoroughly humiliated.

Next month, Dr. Oakley is going to Bavaria, yes, that's really good, anyway, I'm not going to try that again.

I asked Colin Smith what I should expect in England, and he said, well, the

English are mainly meat and potatoes, people, and so are you, so you should do just fine. And I probably will.

And then, of course, I love spaghetti, and I just like Italian food, so everything will be cool.

If I ever end up in Singapore, that's when I'm dead. It's all over with.

I will be on a fasting diet for that particular period of time. Anyways, that's in May, and then

June 9th, the Great Debate 2005, which, for those of you who have been watching the blog, has resulted in all sorts of interesting commentary from odd interesting people.

I just love, we have a Minnesotan, and he's truly a Minnesotan, because he has a Minnesotan sense of humor, which means he doesn't have one, named

Gary, and he just asked in channel, when's the show starting? Thank you,

Gary. I would just love to hear a Gary program. Can you imagine a

Gary program? He normally speaks in monosyllabic stuff anyways, and it's always in third person, so Gary says hi,

Gary says welcome, Gary says what should we talk about today? That would be lots of fun.

That would be wonderful. Anyway, it is the debate against Bill Rutland that has gotten certain people really, really up in arms, including sending out all sorts of emails about how this is a silly debate between two unregenerate men, and the reason

I'm unregenerate, it's easy why Bill Rutland is from their perspective, but from my perspective, it's real easy as well, because I don't automatically condemn every

Arminian to being an unregenerate enemy of God, and therefore,

I am not regenerate, and hence, if something absolutely precludes you from being regenerate, that means it is central and definitional of the gospel, and so some of you have been following that particular discussion on the blog, and the fact there are some people who don't think there's any room for growth and grace and the knowledge of the

Lord Jesus Christ, including the subject of the extent, meaning, so on and so forth of the atonement, as if these certain people had that all figured out themselves.

I can assure you that they do not, so that's what's on the calendar right now, and of course, then you add to that, very shortly thereafter the debate, we have the cruise and conference, and you may recall that on Thursday afternoon,

Michael Fallon joined us, unwillingly, but he joined us anyways, and he pointed out to us the fact that we have some real -time pressures on this cruise that we did not have before.

The reason is, it is, it's Alaska, that's all there is to it, Alaska is Alaska, Alaska is extremely popular,

Alaska is gorgeous, everybody wants to go to Alaska, and our ship is sold out, our availability is the last availability on the ship, and the cruise line wants it, basically, and hence, we're under pressure, and in the past, we've been able to try to stretch things out, and do accommodation, and that kind of stuff, not going to work this time.

If you are the procrastinator, you're the one who's going to lose out on this one, and there's nothing we can do about it, it's not like we control this, okay?

Even though we have some pretty decent groups that go on these trips, the fact of the matter is that there are lots of folks that are a whole lot bigger than us, and this particular route that we're taking is just extremely popular, so if you want to be on that cruise, if you want to hear the debate on the cruise, if you want to be there with Steve Camp and all the stuff that we do on the ship, then you got to do it now, you got to hit that link and you got to get it taken care of, you got to let us know, time is running out very, very, very, very quickly,

I think absolute drop -dead date on that is two weeks from today, so don't put it beyond, don't even do it now, don't even say, oh, wait till the 14th, no, don't do that, simply can't guarantee anything given the popularity of this particular trip, so you need to get that stuff taken care of, and don't forget about the conference, some of you are going,

I can't go to Alaska, and I understand that, believe me, I was not a cruiser until Michael Fallon started arranging these things, and if it wasn't a part of my teaching what

I'm doing, I probably couldn't either, and therefore, I fully understand that, but there's also going to be a really neat conference, and just because you don't get to hear the discussion on the ship doesn't mean you're not going to hear a full debate and an excellent conference, and so please make sure to hit the pretty picture, in fact,

I was just noticing, I hadn't noticed that Mike had changed the picture, there's a picture of us on the last cruise, you can see me somewhere, there's

Mike, there I am, and I think I had just beaten

Mechadise into a pulp, and I think he's laying on the ground down there. He needs to get some pictures of whales.

He needs to, Mike or Mechadise? Well, we need to get some pictures of whales up there,

I mean, I'll bet you see a lot of whales up there. I told you I'm in the picture. Now here

I'm trying to be serious, I would think that one would see a lot of wildlife on this cruise.

I told you, I see the people in the picture who were a part of the wildlife as well, yes.

I'm going to be bringing my ten year old, and I'm hoping that it's going to be an educational experience for him, not only just observing the beautiful scenery, but being able to see something that he couldn't see anywhere else, or around here either, you know, the kind of whales you only see in Alaska, not in Phoenix.

Yes, yes, well, believe me, in the first cruise I took up there, I saw whales, and they were very pretty, but you've got to spend a little time out on the deck to catch them.

I think we plan to. Yes. Oh yeah, well, I think what he's going to find just incredible are the glaciers, because that's what blew me away.

The first time I saw, it wasn't Mendenhall, it was, oh, which one is that, we're going to visit it again, and it was one of my favorites.

It was absolutely, positively humongous, and the sound that those things make is just absolutely positively beyond any way of describing it.

You just can't, I just don't know how to describe it.

You just really cannot explain to folks exactly what is involved there. So it's, let's see,

I'm not, Glacier Bay was, Catch Canyon, no, there was a specific one, and I thought we were seeing it, and I just don't see it on the website here at the moment.

But anyway, that's what I think he's going to find absolutely fascinating, is because it's just incredible.

So anyhow, 877 -753 -3341, we have one caller on line, so let's, actually, you know,

I didn't pull my, I didn't quite get all of my stuff. I've got so much stuff in my desk these days,

I've got some stuff I'm trying to get taken care of here, so we're just pulling this thing out here.

Looks like one line is ringing, actually, now two lines are ringing, I think. I'm going to hit the one that's blinking slowly, and hope that this works.

Hi, Caesar, how are you? Hello, Caesar. Yeah, hello. How are you, sir? I'm fine, how are you?

Doing good. Hi. I'm just calling to ask about the book that you had written recently,

Soul of Scripture. You mean Scripture Alone? Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Sorry about that. That's okay. Just making sure we're talking, because I contributed to a book called

Soul of Scriptura from Soledale Gloria Publishers, so it's always good. I've gotten into some real problems in the past, assuming that someone was asking about book

X, and they're actually asking about book Y, and sometimes your responses can end up being downright hilarious, especially when you've written books like The Same Sex Controversy or something like that.

You know, it can really end up causing a major problem. Oh, okay. Yeah. Oh, I didn't.

I meant Scripture Alone. Okay. I was just wondering, I don't know if you had seen your review on Barnes &

Noble. I don't know if you check that often. I, A, do not read any reviews unless someone actually asks me to.

I do. I recently read Art Sippo's attack on Amazon, but no,

I've never looked at Barnes & Noble, no. Oh, okay. Well, the only thing was, it wasn't a review from someone like Art Sippo, I guess, but there's usually a review from some journal, and there's this one review that says from the

Critics Library Journal. You mentioned a point I've actually been thinking about for a while,

I wasn't really sure how to respond. I was hoping if you could. It says about your book, it says, he argues for biblical inspiration based solely on textual self -claims, and he says, for example, arguing from the

Greek text of the New Testament, he holds that the Bible is inspired because the Bible says its text is breathed out by God.

So, like, my question would be, like, how do you respond to someone when they ask, like, how do you prove the Bible to be the

Word of God? Now, I'm actually pulling it up here to see what, from the publisher, synopsis, from the

Critics Library Journal, yeah, it says, much of what he's arguing contrasts the authority of the biblical text to that of human teachers, it is significant, it does not explain how this breathing out by God of the text differs from God's breathing into such humans as Adam or the

Apostles. That's untrue. I very, very clearly, and I would,

I ought to write a response to this, I very clearly differentiated the concept of Scripture being theanoustos, that is,

God -breathed, with that from that, no, it says, breathing into such humans as Adam or the

Apostles. Uh -oh, we got a problem here, just a second, boom.

There we go, uh, anyway, sorry about that, um, the, there is absolutely nothing in the text whatsoever, uh, that explains inspiration as a breathing into something, and I explained that, uh, the idea of God breathing into Adam, the

Apostles were not inspired, that's, that's common sloppy theological language, nowhere does the

Scripture use the term theanoustos or inspiration of the Apostles, the Apostles speak forth from God, but it is the

Scriptures that are theanoustos, it is the Scriptures that are themselves, um, uh,

God -breathed, and it's, it's very disappointing that someone would, um, that Christopher Brennan, uh, missed uh, that, uh, that very important difference, now, there's a difference between recognizing what it is that, uh, the

Scriptures are, and how it is that we know which Scriptures are, or the whole body, how we know that that is the

Word of God, it's too different, the problem is people normally lump all that stuff together, and they lump the issue of inspiration in with the canon, and while they are clearly related to one another, and one flows into the other one, the, the, the confusion for most people comes in not properly differentiating various aspects, now, have you, have you read the book?

Uh, yeah, I've read it a couple times. Okay, um, as you read the book, and as you, uh, think about what's, what's, what's being said, one of the problems

I had, and I always have, and in fact I'm, I'm chatting with someone right now in another context about the same issue, so many people come to this with what

I would call a, and this is going to sound bad, but I don't mean it this way, but they, they come to this, this subject of the authority of Scripture, and the nature of Scripture, and how we know things with so much baggage that I, I, I've almost come to the conclusion that the only way you could ever break through all this is if someone were to be, uh, subject to solid teaching within the context of their church on a regular basis, and what

I mean by that is, I don't know that I, in a short, brief period of time, can undo all of the false assumptions that a large portion of folks, and it's, and it's evangelicalism's fault, it's the way we've approached this, it's the way we, we normally talk about this, that has resulted in this, we've, we've talked about the canon as if it's something that's human, we've talked about the canon as if it is something that is dependent upon the decisions of a council, or something like that, most of us have never even thought of the canon from a biblical perspective, most people wouldn't even, when you go, what do you mean from a biblical, it came after the

Bible, so you can't have a biblical perspective on the canon, well I say you can, you can because the fact that God says he's given us his word for a purpose, and if he's given us his word for a purpose, then he would have the very same purpose in leading us to have an accurate knowledge of what it is, that part is very, very rarely addressed, and if you've read the, the chapter on the canon, that's something

I tried to emphasize, but even then, be, even then, because especially of postmodernism, and, and various unbiblical theories of knowledge, people still struggle because we don't view ourselves as creatures, when it comes to the issue of, of epistemology, the theory of knowledge, how we know what we know, when it comes to that, there is a, and it, like I said,

I don't think it's something I can deal with in a brief period of time, not because it's so complex, but because it's, it's something that we are so used to doing that it's become a habit of thought, and that is, we struggle with the radical nature of the

Christian worldview. I mean, let's face it, if you're a Christian, you believe that not only is there a personal triune

God, who has created for a purpose this entire huge universe, and the purpose that's being worked out there is the creation of a people in Christ Jesus, who are zealous for good deeds, a peculiar people for his own possession, not only that, but that creator entered into his own creation, and he is said to be one, the one in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

That's radical. That is so different than the way the world around us speaks and thinks, that when we start talking about such issues as what is a, what is an ultimate authority, what, if God speaks, we put his speech on the very same level as our speech, and we think we can judge

God's speech on the level that we would judge a man's speech. And because of all of that, you get three or four or five major unbiblical problems coming together, and no matter how clearly you go, no, wait a minute, when

God speaks, if God were to just all of a sudden appear in the heavens so that everyone on earth could see him, and were to, in some supernatural fashion, speak to us, and you heard it in English, and Spanish people would hear it in Spanish, and German people would hear it in German, but he speaks to us, what would be the basis for believing what

God is saying? You see, from a worldly perspective, man sits around going, well,

I guess the fact that there's miracles associated with it, and I guess the fact that we all can see this at the same time, that might be a sound basis.

But you know, there is a theory that was floated in Alien vs. Predator, that the predators used to come here and built the pyramids, so maybe it's just an alien super race, and maybe

God doesn't exist, but there are alien super races. See, once you get to that point, you're always judging these things on the basis of making them human words and judging them on a human standard, and I put myself in the position of judging that.

The problem is, if God is God, and God speaks, there is no higher authority to which

God can appeal so as to guarantee the truthfulness of what he's saying.

When you and I walked into a court of law, we put our hand, well, maybe in some places, at least in Texas anymore,

I guess you still can, you probably can't do this in California, but when you put your hand on that Bible, and you are swearing to tell the truth, you are calling a higher authority than yourself as witness that what you're saying is true.

And so you're recognizing, I am not the ultimate authority, I will call a higher authority. Or if, in the same situation, a court of law where we're talking about truth, one side brings in an expert, well then the other side wants to trump that by bringing in a better expert, or a better known expert, maybe the teacher of the other expert, to contradict what he said.

There's always this idea of appealing to a higher source to establish the truthfulness of what you're saying.

Alright, then here's the question then. How does God do that? Well, by nature, if God is the creator, there is no higher standard than what he says.

He can't say, I swear by the creation. Well, the creation isn't as great as God, that's lesser than God.

He made it. He can't swear by anything but himself because he, by nature, is the ultimate authority.

And so when we talk about establishing the truthfulness of God's word, that's something we have to keep in mind because if it really is what it is, then what are we asking?

What is the standard of truthfulness? What are we asking

God to do? Are we asking him to swear by something greater than himself? We can't do that.

What kind of external appeal could God's word make to prove it's true?

And if it can make that appeal, then is it truly God's word? If God's speaking is going to be the ultimate authority, it is the final authority in all things, then if it can appeal to an external source, it is no longer the final authority in all things.

That external source becomes the final authority in all things. It's one of the main problems of the Roman Catholic concept of tradition. You don't have a final place to put your ultimate authority.

An ultimate authority, by nature, has to be sufficient in and of itself. Its own nature has to be sufficient to explain why it's authoritative and why it can stand on its own.

Okay, go ahead. I was just wondering if that's the case, then

I've read the case for Christ, case for faith, case for creator, and it just goes through all the different kind of scientific arguments, historic arguments, to try to verify that the

Bible is true. Would that be a biblical way of presenting the

Bible as the word of God? It would be biblical for Christians, but in my opinion, you're going the wrong direction.

You see, those books, I think, have a lot of impact upon believers and confirming in their faith, and a person whose life the

Holy Spirit is working, who is revealing Christ, that person, that can be utilized to aid them and assist them, and so on and so forth.

But, really what you're touching upon here is the fundamental difference between what has historically been called evidential apologetics and presuppositional apologetics.

And that is, when you present, well, what's one of your favorite arguments from one of those books concerning what makes the word of God different than the

Quran or something else? What do you think was particularly well -argued in one of those books, just sort of pops into your mind?

I think, like, the historical reliability, all the manuscripts, the details and comparison with any other ancient works.

Now, I would agree with that 100%. I mean, I don't know if you follow my blog or not, but I've been talking about Codex Sinaiticus and the attacks of Muslims upon the transmission of the text of Scripture and all the rest of it.

I agree completely with that statement. However, an appeal to history is,

A, always subject to new findings or things like that, but B, is it history that makes the

Bible the word of God? The Bible is the word of God when it was first written, before it had any historical background or the first manuscript had been copied, correct?

So, it can't be history itself that demonstrates the Bible's word of God. Now, the fact that the

Bible's word of God is consistent with its historical validity, with its historical transmission, it's consistent with its prophecies, it's consistent with the fact that it is internally consistent with itself in the presentation of redemption, the resurrection, etc.,

etc. All of that stuff is all true. But, if we ground the authority of the word upon those secondary sources, then the authority of the word can have no more authority than those secondary sources have.

And that's where I struggle with evidentialists because, in essence, what they're trying to do is they're trying to step onto an allegedly neutral ground and bring someone to seeing the true

God. A, I don't believe there is such a thing as neutral ground.

Any fact that is a fact is a fact because God made it that way. Any scientific truth, historical truth, philosophical truth, anything about the truth about the manuscript, all those things are that way because God made them that way.

And I would argue you can't know that they are facts without the Christian God in the first place. That's the first problem

I have with evidentialism is its entire epistemology. But, secondly, that person standing across from me on this allegedly neutral ground, first of all,

I can't be neutral. There is no neutral ground because my God made everything. And he can't be neutral either because of what?

Because he is the slave of sin. He is suppressing the knowledge of God.

He is a creature. He is a cup that the potter has made.

And on the bottom of that cup, it says, made by God. But he's doing everything he can to cover that up.

And he will take any factual information that I give to him and he will twist it and he will suppress it and he will fit it into his worldview all with the purpose of hiding the fact that he knows the true

God is there and he refuses to acknowledge that true God. He can do that in a religious way. He can do that in a secular way.

It does not matter. The fact of the matter is that's what he's going to do. And so he and I can stand on allegedly neutral ground all we want, but we're actually just floating in midair.

He's not on neutral ground. I'm not on neutral ground. The connection that I have with that person is the fact that both of us are made in the image of God.

That's the connection. The connection is not I'm not going to give up my worldview and say there's such thing as a neutral ground and stand there and try to argue with him.

My argument is going to be you are suppressing the knowledge of God. You are not acting in accordance with the fact that you've been made in his image.

You can't live consistently as a creature of God while you are not acknowledging the one true

God. That is the apologetic connection as far as I see. So when those books do what they do, the problem is once you get them into the faith, now you've got to go back and you have got to basically say, you know what, in my arguments with you to get you into the faith,

I wasn't being quite honest with you because I really wasn't arguing in a way that is consistent with God.

I really wasn't arguing in a way that is consistent with what I'm now going to teach you you need to believe.

And I don't think that's how you should do it. I don't think that Christians should use an apologetic methodology that will end up causing us to have to apologize and say we weren't being quite honest with you.

We need to be up front right from the beginning trusting that once again it's the spirit of God that is going to bring about conversion in that person's life.

It's not anything but that. I think it's really a matter of just trusting the gospel.

So getting back to your original question, we've been going quite some time now and we've got another caller, but getting back to your original question, it is a two -fold thing.

And yeah, we're going to go ahead and take a break once we're done here. It's a two -fold thing. We can utilize all that argumentation that you were talking about if we place it within the proper context and if we make sure that people understand that we are not attempting to say that these things are the foundation upon which the

Bible stands, but that our knowledge of everything is based upon what God has said. Even Adam and Eve were dependent upon God's revelation.

They were dependent upon God speaking to them and letting them know what his law was and what they should and should not do, what their purpose was, so on and so forth.

This idea of man running around as if he is the final authority in all things, that's the thing that we really need to avoid.

Okay? All right. Hey, thanks for calling, Cesar. God bless. All right, bye -bye. All right, we're going to take our break real late here, but we need to do it anyways and be back with Alan and his call right after this.

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And that's of course my fault. But hey, you know what, that's one of the wonderful things about the fact that we are not on a network someplace, we don't have hard breaks, all the rest of that stuff that other people have to go through, we can just simply do what we want to do when we want to do it in the way we wish to do so.

That's how it works. I have been watching and channel by the way. And first of all, congratulations to Tex Presby, birth of a third child, little girl on Friday, I believe it was, as it scrolled by.

And we are thankful for Tex and his Jonathan Edwards and Friends website.

And glad that he's now, and his family is outnumbered by the girls.

We were just having a discussion of what that means. But anyway, and then we have Gary, the

Minnesotan that I mentioned earlier. Everybody's trying to get him to call. But that'd be a lot of pressure on poor

Gary now. I mean, come on. I've talked about his wonderful Minnesotan sense of humor, and how dry it is, and how cold it is.

But that's because he's in Minnesota. And I can say this because I was born in Minnesota, I was born in the environs of Minneapolis in December, where I assure you, it was cold.

It was very, very cold. So we can say and I would just feel sorry for Gary calling in.

Because, you know, well, is my sound up?

Because we do have one clip of Gary. One time we did manage to get a brief recording of Gary at a channel gathering.

And this is all we managed to get. So with that in mind, let's go to and talk with Alan in Atlanta.

Hi, Alan. Hey, Dr. White. How are you doing today? Doing good. That's good. I'm taking an extended lunch break here so I could call into the

ZL. My question is about Sola Scriptura. Aren't you going to be losing a lot of money doing that?

No, I've already hit my quota for the day. There you go, man. Our people are hard workers.

It's not like the rest of the people out there. No, they only take two and a half hour lunch. There you go.

Three hours. There you go. Well, I came into the channel last night screaming for help. Oh, yes.

I saw that. I ignored it as much as I could. Yeah, well, you did allude to Hebrews 10, 14, but I was talking with a former friend of mine.

A former friend of yours? He apostatized to Roman Catholicism a year ago.

And he was like a missionary in Macedonia, and he was the second person to share the gospel with me at age 16.

And he has bought into the whole thing, all the Marian dogmas, everything, purgatory, hook, line, and sinker.

He's gone. Once you abandon Sola Scriptura, you have no place else to go. You have to buy all that stuff.

I sort of fumbled on Sola Scriptura. I talked with him for an hour, and we started at baptism when we went all the way to theodicy.

He fell out of his chair when I told him I thought God ordained the fall. The place where I fumbled was on Sola Scriptura, and I wanted to ask you about that.

Basically, he was saying, we were talking about Scripture, and he said, well, how do you know?

And I hate when Roman Catholics do this. It's like they want to discredit Scripture almost to protect their church.

Oh, yes. That's exactly what they do. I can't stand it. But he said, how do you know that the

Scripture is the Word of God? How do you know you have the right amount of books? And how do you know that?

I mean, where do you get Sola Scriptura? What about tradition and all this? And I immediately went to something

I learned from you, actually, to Jesus quoting the Old Testament to the Pharisees and holding them accountable for reading and properly interpreting the

Old Testament. And he sort of bypassed that, and he said, well, the thing that he was saying that kind of lost it, he said, well, where do you get

Sola Scriptura from besides the Bible? And I said, well, you don't believe it's in the

Bible. And he said, you're right, I don't. He said, where else? And I thought he was going straight to saying that's a tradition of the

Reformers. I didn't even answer that. I jumped straight to Augustine talking about if a bishop should ever err.

They're held accountable to the Word of God. So I went there, and he sort of trapped me. He said, see, you're appealing to Augustine as an authority now, an external authority for Sola Scriptura.

And I said, no, no, I'm trying to show you, because I thought where you were going was that you were trying to say that Sola Scriptura was a tradition of the 1600s.

I was trying to make a case that it was long before then, that there were people who believed in Sola Scriptura.

But I guess, how do you get around, he's calling it a tradition. And therefore, he's going to say, well, you believe just like I do.

Well, yeah, this is, you know, it's the standard situation in which you're dealing with someone who, you're touching upon issues of ultimate authority, and you're dealing with an individual, you have to make sure that any objections that are raised to Sola Scriptura are likewise raised to Sola Ecclesia.

Now, he may not want to admit what he believes, but the fact of the matter is, his ultimate authority is the

Church of Rome. And so, if he's going to say, how do you know the Scripture is the Word of God?

Then you have to, at the same time, hold him accountable for how he knows the Church of Rome is the only church, the infallible church, the church of Christ on earth, the mother of all churches, etc.,

etc. And every argument that he is going to present is going to be an argument that is so far below anything we can offer for Scripture, it's not even funny.

So, what's happening? I've pictured this in my mind. I remember talking with a

Catholic apologist, a sort of lay apologist, once on the phone for quite some time in my front room.

I remember pacing around my front room as I'm talking to this person, and I remember cornering this person by saying, look, you're standing there saying, how do you know?

When in point of fact, all you've done is you've used your foot while distracting me by looking over here to sort of wipe out the line, and you've taken a step back and drawn a new line.

You don't have what you are demanding of me. You say, well, I know what the canon is.

I know what Scripture is because Rome tells me. That's not an answer. Because that person is asking you, how do you know ultimate truths?

He's claiming to know an ultimate truth by an intermediate means. That doesn't explain why he chose that particular intermediate means to answer the question for him.

He's not dealing, a person who's holding the sole Ecclesia, who will not put that exact same belief on the exact same standards and examine it that way, is just simply not functioning in an honest fashion.

And that's what you've got with the Roman Catholic apologists, is they are simply saying, look, my final authority is the church.

The church has told me all these things. And as soon as you go, well, how do you know the church is that? They abandon all of the objections to sola scriptura.

They abandon all the stuff about its nature and all that stuff. And they start giving you all these, not circular, but spiral historical arguments about, well, we know from historical documents that Jesus established a church.

And then we go over here, we get this, we get this, and we end up with Peter, and then you've got successors.

And it's just big, long, and liable to be refuted at almost any point argument. If we were to offer something like that for sola scriptura, they would go, you've got to be kidding me.

Your ultimate authority is based upon this lengthy, highly questionable series of historical propositions?

And I say, and now, interestingly enough, in regards to what I was saying to Caesar earlier, this is extremely important in regards to not only apologetics to atheists, but at least we're consistent here.

When I respond to a Roman Catholic, I likewise say, look, the ultimate authority lies in the nature of scripture as being theanustos.

It is God speaking. There is nothing else that is God speaking. And what you're asking me is, how do

I know God is God? And how do I know God has spoken? Well, who was the first one to raise that question is what

I'd like to know. I seem to recall, has God really said? Seems to have been the first part of the first temptation.

The idea that they somehow know this without starting with the scripture as theanustos requires that they believe the church is theanustos and hence is

God speaking. And of course, that's not anything that you can even begin to fit into the concept of the

New Testament itself, especially in light of the fact that Rome's form of the church is unknown in the

New Testament. And there's clearly places where the New Testament corrects the churches that go into error, the way that they're supposed to be in existence in Corinth, for example, or in the churches in Galatia, et cetera, et cetera.

So they're really not answering any of these questions. And that's what just drives me nuts when

I go travel and I turn on a radio and I find a local outlet for EWTN or Catholic Answers or something, and they are giving the same shallow, refuted 5 ,000 times since Scott Hahn first threw it out there, or Jerry Mattox first threw it out there, or Carl Keating included it in Catholicism and Fundamentalism arguments about sola scriptura that they were giving 15 or 20 years ago.

They don't listen to the other side. They don't feel any major need to update their position in light of criticism that has been offered to it.

And it's understandable. They really can't. They cannot, because sola ecclesia is a proper description of what they believe.

I mean, obviously, a bunch of people get all upset. No, no, no, we don't believe that.

That's misrepresenting us. But every time a Roman Catholic tries to get out of that, all

I have to do is ask basic questions, and they end up affirming exactly what

I said. Yeah, it all comes back to how do you know? Well, because Rome. Because Rome. That is their final authority.

And they can't go any farther than that. And they say, well, your final authority is you're just arguing in a circle.

When we're talking about an ultimate authority, there is a difference between arguing in a tight circle that is philosophically and epistemologically incoherent.

And there is the proper reality of recognizing I'm not arguing in a circle. We're talking about the foundation here.

We're talking about the ultimate authority. And you are asking me to irrationally demand of my ultimate authority that it appeal to a higher source to prove its truthfulness.

There is no higher source than that which is Theanustos. And only

Scripture is Theanustos. If they are going to say their traditions or their church are Theanustos, the burden lies upon them.

And that's why Roman Catholic apologists do not want to debate the issue on that ground.

They only want to be taking shots at Sola Scriptura. They do not want to live up to the requirements that would be theirs if they were to actually attempt to found their epistemology on the same bedrock that we've founded ours on.

They just won't do it. Yes, exactly. I asked this guy for a exhaustive list of all of the traditions, infallible and well traditions, infallible decrees made ex cathedra from the

Pope, as well as infallible councils. And he says he can do it. He says he's going to call me back with an exhaustive list of all of the, first of all, infallibly interpreted passages of Scripture and infallible decrees made ex cathedra and infallible councils.

And I don't think there is an exhaustive list anywhere. No, of course not. That's going to be his own personal opinion. You're going to be able to find numerous

Roman Catholic theologians and historians who are going to disagree with that. There is no infallible list of those things because Rome has not defined it, nor could

Rome define it. And if she defined it today, she would redefine it 20 years from now.

And in fact, from my perspective, the list got, from Rome's perspective, any kind of list like that got bigger and bigger and bigger until about 1900.

And now it's shrinking very, very, very, very quickly. That's what's going on now. Hey Alan, thanks for the call today.

We are out of time here on The Dividing Line. We will be back again on Thursday afternoon at four o 'clock

Mountain Standard Time, six o 'clock Eastern Standard Time, taking your phone calls, talking about what's going on, talking about apologetics.

Thanks for listening. God bless. We need to be brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries.

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