September 15, 2017 Show with Tony Costa on “Did The Reformers Invent a New Gospel?”

Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron so one man sharpens another.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

Now here's our host, Chris Arnton. What an appropriate song that is to introduce my guest,

Dr. Tony Costa, professor of apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary, who is my guest once again on Iron Sharpens Iron radio.

It's so great to have him back on the program. We're going to be discussing a very important subject today because of the fact that we have

Reformation Day approaching. Today we are discussing, did the Reformers invent a new gospel?

And we're also going to be talking about a conference that Dr. Costa will be speaking at on Long Island and also a morning worship service at a

Reformed Baptist Church out there. But it is my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron, Dr.

Tony Costa. It's a pleasure to be back, Chris, and I always look forward to your show.

I don't know if you noticed, that was Areva Durchy Roma playing in the background by Dean Martin. And I remember the first time

I did that, I had, I was working for WMCA radio in Rutherford, New Jersey, and it was one of those occasions where I was filling in for our talk show host,

Andy Anderson, and I was interviewing Richard Bennett. Are you familiar with Richard Bennett? Yeah, former

Roman Catholic priest who became a born -again believer and is now a Reformed Baptist. And by the way, our listeners should know that you should be keeping

Richard in your prayers as he continues to battle health issues, a lot of it because of his age and so on.

But I can remember, even though Richard is very bold about the gospel, he's very bold about the differences between Roman Catholicism and Evangelical Christianity or Biblical Christianity, he still has a very genteel personality, a very quiet personality.

And I can remember after the show was over, when he finally had an opportunity to say something to me off the air about the music, he was like, oh brother,

I didn't want to say about that, oh brother, I couldn't believe you did that. Being from Ireland, our listeners, if they didn't pick up my fake

Irish accent there. Well, before we go into the heart,

I'm sorry brother? I was just saying, it's the luck of the Irish.

And you did say, you did say Arrivederci Roma quite a while ago, being a former

Roman Catholic who converted to Biblical Christianity. But before we go into our topic at hand, why don't you give us a summarized version of your testimony?

I know that you're from a Portuguese family, or at least a family of Portuguese ethnicity, and you were a

Roman Catholic. Tell us something about your testimony. Yes, I was born in Toronto, Canada to a

Portuguese family. My parents and my grandparents were very religious

Roman Catholics. We went to Mass every Sunday, we prayed the Rosary, I prayed the

Rosary twice a day, and we also had members of our family who were priests.

We had an uncle and a cousin who is still currently alive and is still officiating as a priest.

And so we were heavily immersed in Roman Catholicism and everything Roman Catholic.

But as a young boy, and growing into my early teens, I was very dedicated to the

Church, and attended Mass every Sunday, and went to Confession, made sure that I crossed my

T's, dotted my I's, as far as piety is concerned. But there was a lingering a lingering a lingering desire in my heart to know the

Lord personally. I knew about the Lord, I heard about the Lord Jesus, but I did not know him personally. And so at the age of 15, two of my cousins, who had previously come to faith in Christ, shared their testimony with me and challenged me to read the

Bible for myself, and asked the Lord to open my heart. And at first I was going to read the

Bible to try to prove them wrong, because they had also left the Roman Catholic Church. I tried to show them that they were in error, and so when

I took up the challenge and read the Bible for myself, what I found was I was in error, and that I needed Christ for salvation.

And then after that happened, obviously, you were drawn into the Reformed faith.

Yes, after that happened, I attended a Bible -believing local church, and was baptized.

And at a young age, I was very zealous for my faith. I was very keen on evangelism, and I would take some of my high school friends, and we would take our

Friday nights to go and preach the gospel in various parts of Toronto. And then later on,

I was called into the Ministry of Apologetics. I saw that there was a need, a desire to equip believers with the defense of their faith, and so the

Lord led me into higher education, where I completed a bachelor's and master's degree at the

University of Toronto in physical studies, religion, philosophy, and comparative world religion.

And then after that, I went into my doctoral studies in the Netherlands, and obtained a

PhD in New Testament and theology. And so one of the reasons why the

Lord led me into higher education wasn't... it's not because you need a degree to be an apologist, but I've always had a passion for students in academia, young students who go into university and college.

And so with these credentials, these credentials serve as an open door for me to go into those areas and share the gospel with students in an academic setting.

Well, we are... those of us who know you are rejoicing that God has given the

Church at large such a precious gift in you, brother, because you certainly have blessed quite a number of people with your gifts, and you are one of these rare individuals that, although you are very gifted and quite a brilliant man, a fountain of knowledge, you are still a very deeply humble brother in Christ, and those combinations are rare.

And you know that a person has to really know what they're talking about, has to be on their toes, and be really a veritable fountain of knowledge, as I was saying.

If Dr. James R. White has you on standby to take his place at a debate because of the fact that he's feeling under the weather and is worried that he might not be able to participate as he did with you back in January at the last

G3 conference when he was debating the President of Catholic Answers. Yes, indeed, and also

I also echo what you just said about Dr. James White. He is perhaps one of the most humble apologists that I know today in the

United States, and he is also a very consistent individual. He is someone who is consistent in his methodology, and that is also a rarity in our day to find people who are consistent in the application of the

Gospel and in the methodology that they use in defending the Gospel. And so I do thank

God for Dr. James White. I think he's a great, great gift to the Church. By the way,

I didn't do my normal opening today, did I? Well, I'm gonna do it just for the sake of continuity.

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet

Earth who are listening via live streaming. This is Chris Ornsen, your host of Iron Trip and Zion Radio, wishing you all a happy Friday on this 15th day of September 2017.

Now I feel better. That's the first time I think I ever forgot to do that.

Are we ever going to hear the rest of the song? Well, perhaps when we come back, probably not the rest of the song, but...

We've got to hear that beginning a few more times before this is over. Yeah, when we come back from the station and the line breaks, perhaps.

That's what threw me off. I did something out of the ordinary. But I was,

I don't know if you were aware of this, Dr. Costa, but I was just recently contacted by Justin Brierley at the unbelievable radio program in the

UK, and he invited me to participate in an interview giving my testimony, a special Reformation Day program where he wanted both sides to be involved in this program.

He had me give my testimony and he had a British attorney, James Bogle, who is a former

Protestant who converted to Roman Catholicism. He gave his testimony as well. What I did not know, because I was never told beforehand, that this was going to be a debate as well, and I have never participated personally as an actual debater in a formal sense, in a live public sense.

And even though this is conversational style, this is not really like a debate that you have, like the ones you and Dr.

White have participated in, where they're of great length, they are rigidly timed, they're moderated in a strict sense.

This was not anything like that. It was a conversational debate. But, and I really enjoyed myself,

I really enjoyed both Justin Brierley, who I am pretty certain is an evangelical

Protestant, and I even enjoyed James Bogle. He was a very nice individual, but without giving the impression that I am insulting him, because that's not my intention, but he was basically giving all of the rote

Catholic answers, pardon the pun, to the issues of Protestantism.

Things that if it were a lengthier debate, rigidly timed, and where I was actually notified that it would be a debate,

I would have been able to easily document that his claims were false.

But one of the things that he said, during the debate, is that if Martin Luther's gospel was true, then

Christianity would have been ushered into the world for the very first time in the 16th century, because nobody, other than perhaps a few tiny exceptions here and there, that are insignificant, too insignificant to really discuss at great length.

The gospel of Martin Luther did not exist prior to his arrival, and prior to his, after the nailing of the 95

Theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, when he eventually did become an actual

Bible -believing Christian. I believe it was during the time he was translating Erasmus' Greek Bible into German, I think that's when it occurred, perhaps you could correct me if I'm wrong, but this is a really absurd claim, isn't it, that Martin Luther invented this novel concept that no one ever believed before the 16th century?

Yes, it's very, it's untrue, because one thing that we knew about, we know about Luther and Calvin as well, was that both of them were

Augustinian monks, they were part of the Augustinian order, and they were very familiar with Augustine's theology and teaching, and as a matter of fact, it was

Augustine who emphasized the gospel of grace, particularly against the Pelagians, and the

Pelagians of course said that we participate with God, we add, we work alongside of God to bring about our salvation, and that of course is what

Augustine opposed when the Pelagians were teaching this doctrine. So Augustine argued for God's grace, for the gospel of grace, he also argued through predestination, he believed that God predestined some to salvation and some to damnation, he believed that the masses were damned, or as Augustine put it, the massa dominata, that the masses were damned.

These were purely Augustinian doctrines centuries before, at least 1 ,100 years before Martin Luther.

So the claim is very untrue. If you read Augustine, Augustine was saying the same thing, and in fact in one of his commentaries,

I believe Augustine in his commentary on Romans 4, he even uses the phrase, think alone.

So it's untrue to say that Luther was the progenitor of this concept of the gospel of grace.

Yes, isn't one of the reasons that the the Reformers were so successful in spreading the word about the

Reformation, about the the gospel of the Bible that had been obscured and buried under centuries of sacramentalism and idolatry, and the truly labeled,

I should say, inventions of men, which the Church of Rome is a master at, that one of the reasons they had such great success is that they not only appealed to Scripture as their primary proof of their beliefs, and of course sola scriptura is one of the watchwords of the

Reformation, but they also were appealing to the Church Fathers, to the patristic evidence that what they were talking about, what they were teaching and preaching and proclaiming and writing about, was not a novelty, it had precedent, it had historic precedent in the

Church for centuries. Am I right? Absolutely, absolutely, and so Luther and the other

Reformers were very well aware of the Church Fathers and their writings, and so Luther and the other

Reformers would refer back to Athanasius, they would refer back to John Chrysostom, they'd refer back to Augustine, to Basil the

Great, so to say that these guys just came along and just innovated some new concepts is totally untrue.

All you have to do is read the works of Luther, for example, to see the copious references he makes to the

Church Fathers, and so they were very well aware of the concept of sola scriptura.

Athanasius speaks about how in these alone, that is, the Scriptures, do we find the fountains of salvation.

A very clear statement on sola scriptura, and so the

Reformers were not inventors, the Reformers were rediscoverers. They were rediscovering and bringing back, at fontes they said, back to the fountains, back to the source, they were rediscovering the the gospel, the nugget that was so encrusted and covered with human traditions and human commandments and sacramentalism and ecclesiology, they had to tear away at the onion to get to the fault at the middle, and that was the golden nugget of the gospel.

Well, I think that although some of us, some of our listeners,

I should say, might think when I ask very basic questions that it's really, you know, wasting time or something to have you define something that is fairly commonly known, but it's an issue that is so twisted and is so often denied, even if unconsciously, and there are so many there are so many masquerades of the gospel that I think it is a good point in our discussion right near the beginning here to define what is the biblical gospel.

Precisely, and the biblical gospel has been in the Bible for centuries.

I mean, since the Bible was written, we know what the gospel is. So the real question is, why didn't the

Roman Catholic Church focus on that, or for that matter, we also have to take into consideration the Eastern Orthodox Church as well.

So, the Orthodox Church of Byzantium also is very similar to the

Roman Catholic Church in that it also believes in sacred tradition as being equal to Scripture, and it also denies sola scriptura, just like Rome does.

So I think it's important we also place the Orthodox Church into this category as well, because they're very similar in this respect.

But 1 Corinthians 15, 1 to 4, is very clear on what the gospel is. It talks about the gospel upon which you have taken your stand, the gospel by which you are saved, and Paul says, by this gospel you are saved unless you believe in vain, and then he proceeds to define what that gospel is.

The gospel is that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, and that he was raised again the third day according to the

Scriptures. So Paul defines the gospel for us, that it is the death, burial, and the resurrection of the

Lord Jesus Christ that guarantees our salvation. And so that passage has been there for two millennia, and the

Reformers were the ones who basically said, let's get back to the source, let's get back to the fountains, and when they did that, what they found was that what

Rome had been doing, and what Constantinople had been doing in Byzantium, is they had simply covered the gospel with all these other layers of church tradition and sacramentalism and so forth.

Yes, and a lot of people today, a ecumenically minded, that would include people like Rick Warren, and just a whole host of people that believe that there are differences, or should

I say they recognize the obvious fact that there are differences between the

Protestant Reformers and the Church of Rome, and obviously including, when I say the

Protestant Reformers, the heirs of the Reformation, those who truly have carried forward through the centuries the biblical gospel that the

Reformers uncovered. They will say that, yeah, there are differences, but they are really not that, they are not that catastrophic, they are not that huge, enormous, or serious that they should be categorized as salvific differences.

And they, like for instance, Norman Geisler, very famous, very highly respected evangelical theologian, philosopher, used to be a frequent guest in the

John Ankerberg program, perhaps still is, I'm not sure, but author of many books.

In fact, at one time, used to have very pleasant communication with our mutual friend

Dr. James R. White of Alpha and Omega Ministries, even endorsed his book, Dr. White's book,

The King James Only Controversy. But then when the issue of Calvinism really started to be more in the forefront, the doctrines of the scripture in regarding to total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, and perseverance of the saints, then

Dr. Geisler started to be more public about his disdain for these things, and he even went so far to basically, to basically soften the edges of the lines of demarcation between truly historic and biblical

Reformation theology and Roman Catholic theology, by saying that the

Church of Rome is not a false church with some truths, it is a true church that happens to have some false teachings.

Where do you stand on Dr. Geisler's claim? I would take the opposite, that it is a false church with some true teachings.

I would take the exact opposite of Dr. Geisler, and I think I would be in good company with the

Reformers, who would side with me on that, especially when all the Protestant confessions, all the way from the

Heidelberg Confession catechism, that is, 39 Articles of Faith, of the

Church of England, the Westminster Confession, even the Wesleyan Confessions, all of them identified the papacy as Antichrist.

And so I hardly would think the Reformers would say that the Roman Church is a true church with some false teachings. I think they would say that it's a false church with some true teachings.

And I think the problem with Dr. Geisler is, if you know anything about his seminary, the

Southern Evangelical Seminary, I believe it's called, over 20 of his students left

Evangelicalism and swam the Tiber and became Roman Catholics.

In fact, they wrote a book, I think it's entitled 21 or 22 Protestants, or something along those lines, that converted.

So when you have this type of teaching coming out of a seminary that says the Roman Church is a true church with some false teachings, well, what this does is, it's no surprise that many of the seminary students were enamored by Rome, were enamored by its trappings, and became

Roman Catholics. So I think that's very telling, when you really consider this.

And I think that we do a disservice when we say things like that, because really, the dividing line here, if I can borrow

Dr. Weiss, the name of his program, the dividing line here is the

Gospel of Grace. And all we have to do is read the Epistles of Paul to the

Galatians. If we read Galatians through, we will see very quickly that the Gospel of Grace is a gospel that you cannot add anything to it.

And so, in the context of Galatians, Paul is addressing the Judaizers who want to add circumcision and the

Law of Moses to the gospel. Paul says that is another gospel. A gospel that adds anything to the finished work of Christ is no gospel at all.

And so there is the dividing line. It's not whether we agree with the Trinity, the deity Christ, the

Incarnation, the virgin birth, the bodily resurrection Christ. We are agreed on those, as we are with the

Orthodox. The question is, what is the gospel? The gospel is central.

Yeah, and in fact, from all we know, I know that I keep repeating this a lot on this program, but I think it's an important factor because of the rise of ecumenism amongst professedly conservative

Christians. Ecumenism used to be the backyard exclusively of liberals, and now many conservative or professedly conservative

Christians and denominations have extended the olive branch to Roman Eastern Orthodoxy because of the moral issues that are confronting us in society, and they think that we would have strength in numbers by including them as our brothers in Christ, thinking that those issues are more serious than the gospel itself.

But the Judaizers, for all we know, they believed in many of the areas of the

Apostles' Creed. You know, they believed in the necessity of having faith in Jesus Christ and repenting and so forth, from what we know, because Paul doesn't criticize the

Judaizers for anything other than their insistence upon requiring circumcision for salvation.

That was the only thing that we know of that he was furious about, so much so that he declared an anathema or a curse upon the

Judaizers. Now, would you agree that it is likely, since Paul is silent on all other issues, that just like we have things in common with Rome and the

Eastern Church, that the Judaizers likely also had that same commonality other than the issue that actually nullified completely their gospel, and that was circumcision?

Absolutely, there's no doubt about it. Paul never called out the

Judaizers for denying the deity of Christ or the virgin birth or the bodily resurrection of Christ or any of these things.

The one thing that he's concerned about is that thing he calls another gospel in Galatians 1, 6, 9, and it's that other gospel that Paul says is anathema.

It is the gospel that brings damnation, the curse of God.

Anathema means to be under the divine curse of God, and so there's actually no doubt that throughout the

New Testament itself, there is no evidence to the contrary that any of the Judaizers, whether in the book of Acts or in the letters of Paul, ever denied the cardinal doctrines of the

Christian faith. Where they did transgress was in adding to the gospel, and so Paul, as you could see in Galatians, and Galatians incidentally was the epistle that Martin Luther called, he said that he was wedded to that epistle, that that was his wedded epistle.

He said it was like his wife, it was so dear to him, and that's because in that epistle, Paul makes it very clear that the gospel of grace is a gospel that is based on the finished work of Christ, and that if we add anything to it, whether it's circumcision, whether it's baptism, whether it's confirmation, whether it's indulgences, whatever it may be, whatever we add to the gospel is anathema.

And we're going to our first break right now, if you'd like to join us with a question of your own for Dr. Tony Costa on the theme we are discussing,

Did the Reformers Invent a New Gospel? Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

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Let Todd and Patty know that you heard about them on Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio. Welcome back.

This is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned us in, our guest today is Dr. Tony Costa of Toronto Baptist Seminary.

We are discussing, Did the Reformers Invent a New Gospel? And if you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is

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And Dr. Tony Costa, we have a listener. In fact, he was in attendance at the debate you participated in in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, with my friend

Robert St. Genes, the Roman Catholic apologist, on the theme, Mary, Sinner Saved by Grace or Sinless Queen of Heaven, which is basically on the immaculate conception and perpetual sinlessness of Mary, the

Roman Catholic dogma on those things. And he, Pastor George Jensen of the

Enola First Church of God in Enola, Pennsylvania, this was quite a critical and an important event that he attended that you were involved in, because of the fact it erased completely all doubts that he had that the truth claims of Roman Catholicism had any credibility.

It completely erased that question in his mind, and he knew and now knows still that those are false claims in regard to the gospel, in regard to the history of these teachings, and so on.

And so he is very indebted to you and your participation in that debate, and I am as well.

I am very delighted with the way that the debate was handled.

And in spite of my friendship with Robert St. Genes, I obviously believe that he has a false gospel, and he knows that.

He believes I have a false gospel. So I am glad that truth clearly triumphs in that debate.

But Pastor George Jensen of the Enola First Church of God in Enola, Pennsylvania, says, in his book,

Lustitia Dei, and forgive me for butchering the Latin. When I was an altar boy, it was after Vatican II, and we didn't have

Latin mass anymore. But Alistair McGrath states, for the first 350 years of the

Church, her teaching on justification was inchoate and ill -defined, and he also states, furthermore, the few occasions upon which a specific discussion of justification can be found generally involved no interpretation of the matter other than a mere paraphrase of a

Pauline statement. Justification was simply not a theological issue in the pre -Augustinian tradition.

Is Alistair McGrath correct in what he is saying? If so, does this mean, as some argue, that the

Reformers' interpretation of the gospel is as equally valid as the Roman Catholic interpretation?

I assume what he means by that, equally wrong. And so,

I know that this is not what McGrath is saying, but there are others using McGrath's words to claim that we cannot be certain of what the true gospel is.

If you could comment on that. Yes, it's ironic. Dr. Alistair McGrath is actually here in Toronto today.

He's actually doing a debate with Michael Shermer on the existence of God. Wow, that's some coincidence, or provenance.

Yes, indeed. I would not wholly agree with what

Dr. McGrath says there. I think that if you look at writings like the

Epistle of Diogenitus, as some of them pronounce it, if you read his epistle, if you read

Augustine, I think it's very clear that the idea of the gospel and grace and justification are there.

Now, they were not as amplified, obviously. They were not as amplified in the first 300 years of the

Church, because the first 300 years of the Church, she was busy about defending the truths of the nature of God, the nature of the

Son, for example, of the Nicene Council, the person of the Holy Spirit. They were defending themselves against heretics that had just come from every direction.

So the first 200 years of the Church, the Church is busy about defining her beliefs by putting out creeds and so forth.

It's a critical time in Church history. So the doctrine of justification by faith was not a doctrine that was under attack.

What was under attack was the person of Christ. Was he God the

Son, eternally with the Father? Or, as Arius taught, he was the first creation of God.

Did he have two wills, or only one will? Was Mary truly the

Theotokos? Was she the God -bearer, or was she only the bearer of the man Jesus Christ?

And so that is what was weighing the Church at that time, were these cardinal beliefs about the person of God and of Jesus Christ.

That's why the Apostles' Creed does not talk about salvific issues in regarding justification.

Correct. Correct, because the Apostles' Creed is about, I believe in God the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth, and in his

Son, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit. It's a summary of what Christians believed about theology, about Christology, and it ends with soteriology.

But you'll notice that all of those creeds that come out during that time period, they're all about theology.

They're not dealing with soteriology, the doctrine of salvation. So those were not the pressing matters at the time.

But once you get to the Middle Ages, and let's not forget there were Reformers prior to Luther, like Johann Tosch in Bohemia, and we had

John Wycliffe in England, and William Tyndale as well. So there were other Reformers who were also, not as much as Luther was, but they were also talking about this free gift of salvation in Jesus Christ.

The reason why it became the, as Luther called it, it was the doorknob, if you will, or the joint upon which everything hangs or moves, he said it's the doctrine of justification by faith, because at the time of the

Reformation, the Roman Catholic Church had emphasized indulgences and purgatory and prayers for the dead and so forth.

And so in response to that, Luther and the other Reformers felt that it was time to bring justification by faith into the light and to put it on center stage.

Well, thank you, Pastor George. Keep listening to Iron Trip and Zion Radio and keep spreading the word about the program among your congregation there in Enola, Pennsylvania and beyond.

And I look forward to you co -hosting the program once again. So let's keep in touch.

Thank you very much for the excellent question. We have Joe in Slovenia who says,

What a great topic. Just today, while doing some research for dialogue in our church on topics concerning Roman Catholicism and true

Christianity, I discovered the Council of Orange in 529. I'm shocked that I had been basically ignorant of this very important council until now.

Particularly, I discovered comparisons of the canons of the Council of Orange and the

Council of Trent. Have I been terribly negligent? Or are such comparisons of Orange and Trent fairly rare?

If so, why? The comparisons are fascinating and give irrefutable evidence that Roman Catholicism is not consistent with historic

Orthodox Christianity. How do Roman Catholics explain away the diametrically opposed views of these two councils on the errors of Pelagianism?

Well, the answer lies in the papacy and the authority of the

Church. And the way the Roman Catholic Church explains this away, and as you know, modern

Roman Catholicism may be properly termed semi -Pelagianism. They wouldn't come out as full -out oblong

Pelagians, but they are definitely semi -Pelagians. Even though they deny that.

They do deny that because they say that provenient grace nullifies that charge against them.

Right, right. But there's the concept of, of course, participating with God through the sacraments and working alongside of God.

But the way they explain the disparity between Trent and Orange is by saying that God leads the

Church through history and God gives new light. That God, there's development of doctrine.

It's what Cardinal Newman referred to as the acorn and the oak tree.

That you begin with an acorn in the Bible and then it progressively grows into an oak tree.

And his whole argument is that the Roman Catholic Church throughout history has shed new light on various issues and so forth.

It's very similar to what you hear Jehovah's Witnesses talk about when they talk about how the light is getting brighter and brighter, or the

Mormon Church claims that their living prophet received new revelation from God, particularly the revelation that the priesthood was now available to the blacks when it was forbidden beforehand.

So it's a very similar argument that God is guiding the Church and that God sees fit to enlighten.

If you compare the Second Vatican Council, for instance, you compare it with some of the early councils where the early councils condemned the

Jews and condemned Islam. Well, the Vatican too basically embraces both of them and embraces

Islam as a people who worship the same God that Christians worship. So the Roman Catholic Church is like the chameleon.

It changes its color to suit the time, to suit the environment. But we clearly see, as our brother has seen, that there is contradiction here.

There's clear contradiction here and obfuscation. Now, one of the things about Vatican II, this is what

I have heard for quite a while from my more conservative -slash -traditionalist

Roman Catholic friends. They will remind me when I bring up things like the modern

Catholic catechisms' acceptance of Muslims, non -Christian

Jews, and others as adoring the one true

God along with Christians. They will say, well, I disagree with that just as much as you do, and that's not dogma.

Not everything in the Catholic catechism is dogma. There is much that is just as the charge against Luther was that these were novel ideas and inventions of a disgruntled reformer.

They will say that that's the same thing going on here with the more liberal Catholics at Vatican II, and ever since then, the progressively growing more liberal

Catholics, that these are novel ideas. They are not forever binding on the

Church like dogma that was declared a trent, for instance. The Catholic Church, aren't they really just talking out of both sides of their mouths?

Because on the one hand, they have never renounced Trent, and never can because of the

House of Cards on papal infallibility collapsing if they were to renounce it as false.

And at the same time, while they maintain Trent as dogma and valid, they say things out of the other side of their mouth that really contradict

Trent. Am I right on this? Yes, you're absolutely right.

But the catechism is simply quoting the Second Vatican Council. The Second Vatican Council said that we worship the same

God alongside with the Muslims, and it also speaks highly of non -monotheists like Buddhists and Hindus and so forth.

So the catechism of the Catholic Church is simply quoting Vatican II. And so if Vatican I is binding, which is the

Vatican that endorsed papal infallibility, then why wouldn't Vatican II be equally as binding?

So what I would do is basically point to the fact that the catechism is simply quoting

Vatican II. Right, well they will claim, the more traditionalist Catholic will claim, that Vatican II is not, not that everything in Vatican II is not binding, but they will claim that the novel ideas that were absent before Vatican II are not dogma.

That's at least what I hear from my concern. Reverend Buzz Taylor? I'm kind of with Joe here,

Joe from Slovenia, because I'm just asking myself a question. How did

I get along this long and not hear of the Council of Orange? Could you tell me a little bit more about that? In fact, why don't you pick that up when we return from our midway break,

Dr. Costa. I don't know if you heard Reverend Buzz Taylor. He wants you to give us more details about the Council of Orange.

I think that Anita Bryant was present at that council, wasn't she? But anyway, we're going to be taking more of your questions as well.

If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Don't go away. God willing, we'll be right back with Dr. Tony Costa and our theme,

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Or visit LindbrookBaptist .org. That's LindbrookBaptist .org. Hi, I'm Buzz Taylor, a frequent co -host with Chris Arnson on Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio.

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on Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio. Well, welcome back. We are once again discussing

Did the Reformers Invent a New Gospel? with our guest Dr. Tony Costa, professor of apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary.

If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

But before I return to our discussion, I have some important announcements to make in regard to events coming up, one of which, or actually two of which, include the participation of our guest,

Dr. Tony Costa of Toronto Baptist Seminary. The first is the Word of Truth Church and Long Island Spurgeon Fellowship present the

Gospel of the Reformation, a 500th anniversary celebration. And Dr.

Costa will be joined by Pastor Caleb Bunch, Pastor Bruce Bennett, and Pastor Chris Pandolfi.

If you would like to attend this conference, go to wotchurch .com.

That's W -O -T, which stands for wordoftruth .com. W -O -T, church .com.

Or call the Word of Truth Church in Farmingville, Long Island, New York at 631 -806 -0614.

631 -806 -0614. I forgot to mention the dates on that.

The dates are Friday, September 29th, and Saturday, September 30th. So we hope that you can attend.

And then the very next day, the first Sunday of October at 11 a .m.,

Dr. Costa will be speaking at Hope Reformed Baptist Church of Long Island in Medford, Long Island, New York.

That website is hopereformedli .net. hopereformedli, standing for longisland .net.

I intend to be there, manning an Iron Sharpens Iron radio booth at both of those events.

So I hope to see you both at the Word of Truth Church in Farmingville, Long Island, and at the Hope Reformed Baptist Church of Medford, New York, September 29th through October 1st.

Then we have, coming up in November, from the 17th through the 18th, another event where,

God willing, I will be manning an Iron Sharpens Iron exhibitor's booth. It's an event orchestrated by the

Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. It's the Quaker Town Conference on Reformed Theology, held at the

Grace Bible Fellowship Church in Quaker Town, Pennsylvania. And the theme is, For Still Our Ancient Foe, a reference to Satan in that classic

Reformation hymn by Martin Luther in Mighty Fortress. Speakers include Kent Hughes, Peter Jones, Tom Nettles, Dennis Cahill, and Scott Oliphant.

And I hope that you join me there where I will have, God willing, an Iron Sharpens Iron exhibitor's booth.

The website to register is alliancenet .org, alliancenet .org.

Click on events, and then click on Quaker Town Conference on Reformed Theology. Then coming up in January, from the 17th through the 20th, the

G3 Conference returns to Atlanta, Georgia. The G3 standing for Grace, Gospel, and Glory.

The theme this coming January is Knowing God, a Biblical Understanding of Discipleship. On the 17th of January, it will be exclusively a

Spanish -speaking edition of the conference. From the 18th through the 20th, it will be an

English -speaking edition of the conference. And the speakers include Stephen Lawson, Bode Baucom, Phil Johnson, Keith Getty, H .B.

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If you'd like to register, go to g3conference .com, g3conference .com.

Please, if you contact any of these organizations, parachurch ministries or churches, please make sure that you let them know that you heard about these events on Iron Trip and Zion Radio.

And now it comes time for me to rattle my tin cup again, something that I never am comfortable doing, but my advertisers have urged me for quite a long time to make public appeals daily for donations and new advertisers to keep

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click on events, I'm sorry, click on support, and you will have an address where you can mail a check for any amount made payable to Iron Trip and Zion Radio.

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Keep in mind that the word compatible with my theology does not mean identical.

You don't have to be a five -point Calvinist to advertise on Iron Trip and Zion Radio, but you cannot be promoting something that is in direct opposition to what

I believe. And now we are returning to our discussion.

Did the Reformers invent a new gospel? And before we went to the break, the Reverend Buzz Taylor had a question about a further explanation on the

Council of Orange. Well, I would sure understand the answer to Joe's question a whole lot better if I understood what the

Council of Orange was. And of course, my joke about Anita Bryant went over Buzz's head and perhaps even

Tony's head because he's from Canada, but at least here in the United States, back in the 70s, perhaps even part of the 80s, there were frequent television commercials for orange juice by former beauty queen

Anita Bryant who was synonymous with orange juice for quite a while.

Then she was synonymous for publicly opposing the gay rights activists' demand that they have equal rights to have school teachers, homosexual school teachers, at Christian private schools.

And sadly, she was quite vilified and I don't think a significant number of Christians really rose up to the occasion of defending her like they should have, even though there may have been some of that.

I don't think it was adequate. But anyway, Dr. Costa, if you could give us a brief summary of the

Council of Orange. Yes. The Council of Orange was a response to a form of Pelagianism, which was the heresy in the time of Augustine that promulgated by Pelagius, a

British monk, who basically taught that we were born basically good without original sin and that God helps us along the way.

We participate with God in obtaining salvation. And of course, Augustine responded to Pelagius and condemned his views because they were a denial of God's absolute grace that enables us to believe and to have faith.

So what ends up happening is that Pelagianism, after about the year 431, it was actually condemned at two councils.

The Council of Carthage condemned Pelagianism in 418, and that would have been under the auspices of Augustine.

And then it was also condemned at the Council of Ephesus in 431, a very important council that also talked about the incarnation of Christ.

And after 431, there still persisted a moderate form of Pelagianism, which tried to say that man's faith was an act of free will that was unassisted by God's grace.

And so in July 529, the Council of Orange came together, and there were 14 bishops in attendance at that council.

And what they did was they affirmed the position of Augustine against Pelagianism.

But the council, while quoting Augustine, the council was in itself semi -Augustinian.

What do I mean by that? Well, Augustine believed that predestination went both ways. Augustine affirmed what we would call double predestination, that God not only predestines

His elect, He predestines those who are damned. Thomas Aquinas did as well, didn't he? Thomas Aquinas did as well, didn't he?

Yes, yes, that's correct. And so the Council of Orange went halfway.

They stood with Augustine on the necessity of grace that enables us to have faith in God and to believe.

However, it denied the doctrine of double predestination and actually anathematized those who would hold to it.

So, basically, that was the position of the Council of Orange.

It was a repudiation of Pelagianism and its moderate forms.

And it ratified Augustine's position that God's grace is absolutely necessary for salvation and this, again, goes to show that the position of classical

Protestantism, the position of the Reformation, is simply an affirmation of the

Council of Orange in that it points out the Council of Orange makes it very clear that grace is a gift from God and it is grace that enables us to believe and have faith.

And, therefore, here's another example where we see items or elements in this

Council that were later brought and expanded by the Reformers. So, basically, in short, the

Council of Orange was a repudiation of Pelagianism, the idea that man can somehow assist or cooperate in his salvation.

Where is Orange? Reverend Buzz Taylor asked where is

Orange. It's in California. No, I'm kidding. Well, I knew there was one in New Jersey.

Yes, yes. The Synod was part of what was called the

Ostrogothic Kingdom and it was in the western hemisphere of the

Christian Church. Now, I'm not sure if you want to know the exact country where it came from.

It comes from the region of Italy. One of the things that came up during the debate that I had or conversation with James Bogle, the

Roman Catholic attorney in the United... eternity? The Roman Catholic attorney,

I guess I'm thinking about eternity, on the Unbelievable Program, is he basically was saying, it wasn't basically, he was saying clearly that the

Roman Catholic Church gave us the Bible. Therefore, I have no right or no

Protestant, neither the Reformers nor anybody living today that agrees with them has the right to question the

Roman Catholic Church on their doctrine because they gave us the Bible.

If you could respond to that kind of a thing, that kind of an argument. Yeah, that's...

that is an old, old, old argument that they use. And of course, the

Orthodox would disagree with them. The Orthodox would say, no, wait a minute. We antedate you. We gave you guys the

Bible. And on and on it goes. And so, what

I would ask my Roman Catholic friend is, well, who gave the people of Israel the

Bible? Was it the Roman Catholic Church that gave the people of Israel the Torah, and that gave them the prophets and so forth?

Well, no, of course not. There was no church in the Old Testament in the sense of an organization called the

Roman Catholic Church. So this is the old argument that the church, what came first, the church or the canon, they would say the church came first, and the church gave us the canon and defined the canon.

But that's not how it worked. Roger Beckwith has written an excellent book on this question of how the

Old Testament, I think it's called the Old Testament and the New Testament. And Dr. Beckwith gives an amazing summary in how the people of God throughout history heard the

Word of God through the Scriptures and they came to understand the authority of those

Scriptures. There was no external office or chair that indicated this to them or told them what was

Scripture and what was not. And so the idea that the church is responsible for giving us the

Bible is, I think, put in the cart in front of the horse. It's very clear that the people of God knew the voice of the shepherd, they recognized the voice of the shepherd, and they recognized what was his voice but what was not his voice.

So the claim that Rome makes is certainly unfounded.

Now, if you were to make the argument, I even brought this up the other day on the program, if you wanted to give some kind of benefit to the doubt, to that claim in the physical sense that God used monks and monasteries who were scribes to carefully copy the texts of the

Bible and pass them down through the centuries and so on, one might say that the

Lord, in His sovereignty, used the Catholic Church and even the

Roman Catholic Church in preserving the text of the Bible. But, as you brought up earlier, we received, the

Church received, the Old Testament canon, the Hebrew Scriptures from the Jews, and that did not give them a pedigree worthy of considering them to be the arbiters of true religion because they denied

Christ and cried out for His crucifixion in the majority. So, there you have an evidence that just because God used a people to preserve

His Word does not mean that those very people are in any way some kind of elite group with the truth.

And you also have the Jews, through their Talmudic writings, adding to that word that they were used of God to preserve.

Am I making sense there? Yes. No, that's precisely right. And, of course, the

Jews were the guardians of the Old Testament Scriptures in Romans 3, verse 4.

Paul says, well, what advantage does the Jew have? And he says, much in every way for unto them were given the

Oracle of God. And so, that was Jerome's logic. Jerome, who wrote the Vulgate Reason, that if we want to know what the

Old Testament actually looks like, well, we've got to go to those who were the guardians of the Old Testament and those were the

Jews. And so, God sovereignly used these people to preserve

His Word. And let's not forget the Dead Sea Scrolls as well from Qumran, which were written by what some scholars think were the

Athenians. We're not 100 % sure, but let's just, for the sake of argument, call them the Athenians.

The Athenians also were responsible for copying every book of the Old Testament, with the exception of Esther and Nehemiah.

So, God uses various channels. God uses means to achieve His purposes.

And, absolutely, God could have used monks in Constantinople, in the

Byzantium kingdom, where they produced thousands of what we call majority -text manuscripts.

And in these texts of Scripture, we have, for us, the transmission of the Word of God.

Yeah, and ironically, when the Church of Rome, and this is our main topic, did the

Reformers invent the New Gospel, their claim that we are the new kids in the block in the 16th century, with things either never before believed, or very rarely before believed.

You have the canon of the Hebrew Scriptures. The Jews, whose

Bible that originally was, would say to the Church of Rome, wait a minute, you're adding the

Apocrypha, or what the Roman Catholics call the Deuterocanonical books, you're adding them to our canon?

We've never believed that those were a part of our canon. Isn't that a novel thing that the

Church of Rome defined as dogma in the 16th century, that the

Apocryphal or Deuterocanonical books must be added, or included, I should say, must be included in a

Bible to make it an authentic edition of the Scriptures? Well, of course.

Absolutely. And they did that for various reasons. One of the reasons was they were citing 2 Maccabees 12 to justify prayers for the dead, and they wanted to endorse that text as Scripture, so that they could use it as authority against Luther and the other

Reformers. But, we should also bear in mind that the Orthodox Church, their

Old Testament canon is also very different than the Roman Catholic Church, and the question should be, why didn't the

Roman Church follow the Orthodox Church? Because the Orthodox Church claims to have a pedigree to being a more ancient church than the

Church of Rome. So, in their Old Testament, they have additional books, like the 3rd Book of Maccabees, the 4th

Book of Maccabees, they even have the 151st Psalm. So, they add a psalm to the

Book of Psalms, the 151st Psalm. And then, if you look at the

Ethiopian Orthodox canon of the Old Testament, it even gets more messier. They've got the Book of Enoch, the

Book of Jubilees, included in their Old Testament. So, again, I think

Jerome had it right. Jerome reasoned that, that's why Jerome rejected the Apocrypha.

He was forced to add it into the Vulgate by the Pope. Damascus, I believe it was. But, Jerome's reasoning was, look, if the

Jews are the guardians of the Old Testament, then I'm going to go to the Jews and find out what their Old Testament has.

And, for reasons like that, if you notice, Chris, scholars in the Church who understood

Hebrew, like Jerome, and people like Athanasius, Athanasius also rejected the Apocrypha, and Pope Gregory the

Great also rejected it. The reason why is because these people knew the languages, and they understood that in the

Hebrew Bible, that the Apocryphal Books are not there. They're not found in the

Hebrew Bible. And one of the reasons this is important is because, going back to the

Gospel, did the Reformers invent a new Gospel? The concept of Purgatory, the

Sacrament of Penance, and the Prayers for the Dead radically affects the

Gospel. It nullifies the true Gospel. It is no Gospel at all if you include that kind of a doctrine.

And the only place that I'm aware that the Roman Catholic scholar will refer in regard to Prayer for the

Dead, that aspect of Purgatory, is from the Apocryphal or Deuterocanonical Books.

Am I right on that? Correct, absolutely. And also, almsgiving, they will go to the

Book of Tobit to show that almsgiving brings forgiveness of sins. So, if you could summarize, because it's such an important issue, going back to the statement

I repeated earlier from the Roman Catholic attorney, James Bogle, from the

United Kingdom, who said that the Church of Rome gave us the

Bible because they hammered out through councils what books should be included and what books should be discarded.

How do you compare that explanation for how we receive the Scriptures from the difference between a declaration of what we have as a

Church received from God as His canon and a council deciding what is in and what is not in the canon?

What's the difference between those two things? Well, part of the problem here is that we don't have any councils in the first 300 years of the

Church's history that define the canon for us. And the reason for that is because the canon was not an issue of dispute at the time.

And it's interesting that when he said that the Roman Catholic Church hammered out the details of what's in and out, you have to understand that the

Roman Catholics always maintained that the Roman Catholic Church was the Church throughout the centuries.

And they are sadly mistaken about that because there was no Roman Catholic Church in Nicaea. There was the

Bishop of Rome, yes. But there was no such thing as the Roman Catholic Church with the Supreme Pontiff calling the shots because the

Roman Bishop was not even present at the Council of Nicaea. And so we do have

Athanasius' 39th Easter Festival letter where Athanasius enumerates for us the books of the

Bible, both Old and New Testaments. And what we find is we don't find a declaration in the

Council, not at least until the Council of Trent. That's the first time the Roman Catholic Church officially, by way of the

Council, declared what was Scripture and what was not. And so if we can throw it back at them, they say, well, it took you guys 1 ,500 years to come up with this novel concept, but why did it take the

Roman Catholic Church over 1 ,500 years to declare what was Scripture and what was not Scripture? So the game goes both ways.

But the people of God have always understood the Scriptures. They have heard the Scriptures. The Old Testament saints did not need a church council or a synagogue council to decide for them.

They understood that the Word of God was given in these Scriptures. These Scriptures were laid up in the

Temple in Jerusalem. That is, the Scriptures, the Hebrew Scriptures were laid up in the

Temple. They make their hands unclean because they're so pure. They make their hands unclean. And those books that were stored up in the

Temple are the very same books that you and I have in our Old Testament today, the 39 books of the

Old Testament. Now, Athanasius had in writing what he believed the canon to be.

What was the canon that he described in his writings compared to both a

Protestant canon and a Roman Catholic canon? I don't have the exact quote or list in front of me, but it's pretty much the same, the same list that we have today but he does affirm the 27 books of the

New Testament. Okay, so he doesn't get involved in anything in regard to the dispute of the

Old Testament canon in regard to the Deuterocanonical or Apocryphal?

No, he affirmed the canon of the Old Testament found in the

Hebrew Bible and he rejected the Apocryphal Scripture. Okay, we have a questioner.

Let's see, we have Ronald in Eastern Suffolk County who says, this is a question for Chris.

Uh -oh. You mentioned earlier that Thomas Aquinas believed in double predestination.

Is that the same understanding of double predestination that Calvin would later have? I don't think so.

I apologize if I was trying to make a claim that they had an identical understanding of double predestination but I am not a scholar which is why

I interview brilliant people rather than serve as a guest myself or as a solo act here on Iron Sharpens Iron.

But I don't know how familiar you are with Thomas Aquinas but do you know of a difference that he had with Calvin on double predestination or even predestination in general?

Are you asking me, Chris? Yeah, because obviously I can't answer the question as to how they differed.

Thomas Aquinas's... I can't answer it either. Thomas Aquinas's understanding of double predestination and Calvin's.

Do you have a knowledge of Thomas Aquinas and his understanding of that? Um... I think

Thomas Aquinas refuted the idea of double predestination as well, if I'm not mistaken.

Oh, he refuted it. I thought that he... Okay, for some reason I thought that Thomas Aquinas believed in double predestination or had a different version of it or something like that.

Yeah, um... I may be mistaken. I'm not a Thomistic scholar. Um... But it's something that I would have to probably check up.

Okay. But one thing I also want to make it clear. When we have these conversations about patristic evidence in regard to the truths of the

Bible that the Protestants claimed during the

Reformation, the Protestants claimed that the doctrines that they were teaching in opposition to Rome were present in the patristic era.

We're not saying that the church fathers were identical or nearly exactly the same as Protestants, but we were also saying they're not exactly the same as Roman Catholics.

The difference is they claim unanimity with the church fathers and we do not.

Am I right on that? Yes. Yes, absolutely. The church fathers, of course, we have to bear in mind.

The church fathers were fallible men as well. Some of them were heavily influenced by Greek philosophy and other forms of thought.

And I think it's also important for us to realize that the church fathers, when they wrote, they clearly distinguished their writings from that of the apostles.

They recognized that their writings were not inspired as those of the apostles. So there are some things that the church fathers say that we may not agree with and there are some things that they say that are in line with Scripture and those we would agree with.

So we're only in unanimity with them when they speak in accordance with Scripture.

We're going to our final break right now. And if you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, before we run out of time, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail dot com.

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Welcome back. This is the concluding 25 minutes of our program with Dr. Tony Costa, the professor of apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary, who is going to be speaking at the

Word of Truth Church in Farmingville, Long Island, at their Gospel of the Reformation celebration of the 500th anniversary of the

Protestant Reformation. And this is going to be held on Friday, September 29th, and Saturday, September 30th, at the

Word of Truth Church in Farmingville, Long Island. For more details, go to wotchurch .com,

wotchurch .com. That stands for wordoftruthchurch .com, wotchurch .com. Or call

Word of Truth Church in Farmingville, Long Island at 631 -806 -0614.

631 -806 -0614. And Dr. Costa will also be speaking at the

Sunday morning worship service at 11 a .m. at Hope Reformed Baptist Church of Medford, Long Island, New York.

And the Hope Reformed Baptist Church of Medford, Long Island's website is hopereformedli .net.

hopereformedli .net. You can also call them at 631 -696 -5711. 631 -696 -5711.

And Dr. Costa, what exactly are you going to be speaking on? I don't know if they've given you specific themes for your talks there, or if you are deciding what you're speaking on yourself, but do you know yet what the themes are specifically?

For the conference? Yes. Yes, it'll be on justification by faith and the formal cause of the

Reformation in regards to justification and the material cause of the

Reformation and so forth. I'll be speaking primarily on the doctrine of justification by faith.

Now going back to our theme, did the Reformers invent a new gospel? The primary thing that the

Reformers were seeking to prove, perhaps primarily from the book of Romans and the book of Galatians, is the fact that we are saved by grace through faith alone, and to add works as a meritorious agent or cause of that salvation in any way, even partially, any kind of addition to the complete and perfect work of Christ on Calvary is an abomination and a heresy.

These are scriptural ideas, and even if you were to wrongly disagree with the

Reformers on those ideas that they gleaned from scripture, these are still scriptural concepts.

Am I right? Yes, you're absolutely right, but the response of the

Roman Church is, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it, that the right and duty of interpreting the scriptures belongs to Mother Church alone, and so the average person does not have the right to declare what those texts say unless Mother Church declares what those texts say.

And so the Roman Catholic Church is the overriding interpreter of these scriptures, and that is why you'll notice many

Roman Catholics condemning the idea of what's called private interpretation, that private interpretation leads to the messiness that we see in Protestantism.

But of course, that is just a smokescreen. The fact of the matter is that the text in Romans and Galatians are clear.

You could follow them in Greek or any other language, and they're clear on the subject.

And so instead of refuting the Reformers on the grounds of what the scripture says, they refuted them on the grounds that they were opponents of Mother Church, that they were attacking the

Holy Father, and that they were opposing the Church of Christ on the earth. Yeah, well, speaking of novel, in fact

I brought this up during the debate or the discussion with James Bogle, the

Roman Catholic attorney that participated on the unbelievable broadcast with me, the unbelievable radio program in the

United Kingdom. I brought up the fact that if you were going to bring up novel concepts that were absent for centuries before the

Reformation, you're talking about things like the assumption of Mary and papal infallibility, which these two things came about in the 19th and 20th centuries as dogma.

I'm not saying that they were never believed by anybody, but they weren't declared as dogma until the 19th century, which would be the papal infallibility dogma,

I believe. And then in 1950, the dogma of the assumption of Mary was declared ex cathedra.

Am I right on those dates? Yes, you're correct, and we could also add that the

Magna Conception in 1854 by Pope Pius IX. So we've got the

Magna Conception, we have papal infallibility in 1870 with Vatican I, and then in August 15th, 1950,

Pope Pius XII declares the assumption of Mary as a dogma of the Church. So this idea that although there are teachings that would imply we are justified by faith alone in the

Bible, and that we cannot interpret it that way because Mother Church has not interpreted it that way, that concept of an infallible magisterium who are the sole arbiters of what the

Bible teaches, this is not something that you can trace back through the centuries, through the patristics, all the way back to the life of Christ.

No, absolutely not. Absolutely not. This idea is also held by the

Orthodox, Chris. The Orthodox will also claim that the average person in the

Church cannot fully understand the Scriptures. They need the Orthodox Church to teach them what those Scriptures mean.

But if you read the early Church Fathers on this subject, they don't tell us that the

Bible is something that should only be reserved for the leaders of the

Church, for the pastors and so forth, or the bishops. They never tell us that. In fact, in their writings they copiously quote from the

Bible indicating that they expected their readers to be conversant in those

Scriptures. And so the idea here that the

Fathers of the Church taught that you can't understand the Bible unless they interpret it for you is absolutely foreign to them.

This is a later development that we see arising in Rome. So basically, when the

Catholics will explain away their... when they explain away the absence of their dogmas, some of their dogmas, in the earlier centuries of the

Church, during the Patristic Age and so on, and of course I believe there is a debate or a dividing line even amongst

Roman Catholics about the development of doctrine. But for them to say that the

Reformers brought novel ideas into the discussion during the 16th century, ideas that were believed by a tiny handful of people, according to them, prior to the 16th century, they're really like the pot calling the kettle black in that area because, you know, if they have the development of doctrine understanding, where things sprang up in much later centuries, they really have no consistent and logical basis to make the claims against the

Reformers being novel that they do, do they? No, no. Not because the

Reformers, what the Roman Catholics called novel, the Reformers were backing it up with Scripture. The dogmas that the

Roman Catholic Church keeps talking about, the Assumption of Mary, the American Conception of Mary, there is no

Scriptural support for that. And in fact, they will even admit, I think

St. Janice admitted in the debate with me in Carlisle that it's not just Scripture, we also have

Sacred Tradition, and Sacred Tradition tells us these truths about Mary and so forth.

And so here's the irony. The Reformers backed up what they said with the Scriptures. The Roman Catholics don't back up the dogmas with the

Scriptures, they back it up with Sacred Tradition or the development of doctrine in the

Church. Now, isn't it interesting that there are Church Fathers that the Catholic Church, the

Roman Catholic Church, upholds as their heroes? There are many of them that were they to be born in the early part of the 16th century and be alive during the days of Trent, many of them would be executed, would they not?

Because many of the Fathers believed in things that were condemned at Trent. Yeah, well,

Augustine would probably be the first to go because Augustine did not believe in the

Immaculate Conception. He did believe that Mary was sanctified from the uterus going forward, but not at Conception.

At some point, he said she was sanctified, but not at Conception. And he would also be thrown out because Augustine's interpretation of Matthew 16, 18 about Peter being the rock,

Augustine's interpretation is not the modern -day Roman Catholic interpretation. Augustine said that the rock that Christ spoke about was the

Confession of Peter, that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. And so there's not just Augustine, but as you know, the 318 bishops of the

Council of Nicaea would also be condemned because none of them believed anything that the modern

Roman Catholics believed about Mary, for instance. Right, and it's interesting that really the only answer

I have heard from Roman Catholic apologists to this discussion regarding the Fathers that were they to be alive in the 16th century that would have been executed or condemned by Rome, the only answer is that since those things were not declared as dogma before Trent, those unique things that conflicted with Trent that many of the

Fathers believed, they were safe and they should not be considered heretical. But that's really just an absurd kind of circular reasoning, isn't it?

Well, yes. Well, when I debated Genesis, if you remember, I said, so Roman Catholics before 1854, they could deny the

Eumatician Conception and they would be fine. And he said, yes. But any Roman Catholics after December 8, 1854 that denied the

Eumatician Conception, they would be anathematized according to the papal bull.

He said, absolutely. And so anything from December 8, 1854 going forward, if you deny the

Eumatician Conception, then you are anathema, according to the Church. But here's another interesting point,

Chris, I'm not sure if you're familiar with this, but one of the greatest contentions between the Eastern Church and the Western Church, that is

Byzantium or Constantinople in Rome, was over the Nicene Creed. And in the 9th century, the

Western Church inserted a phrase into the Nicene Creed, where it speaks about the spirit proceeds from the

Father. The Western Church inserted what is called the Filioque. The Filioque means in Latin, of the

Son. And so if you look at the Nicene Creed, you'll notice, especially in Western Churches, it says that the spirit proceeds from the

Father and the Son. This was a huge point of contention, because the

Eastern Church rejects the addition of the word and the Son, because they believe the Spirit and the Son are of the

Father. They proceed from the Father, the Father sends the Son, and the Spirit is, the procession of the

Spirit comes from the Father alone, not the Son. This caused a huge rift, a fissure between the

East and the West. And what did they accuse the West of doing? They accused them of bringing in novelties.

They accused them of tampering with the Creed. And then, of course, this would eventually lead to the

Great Schism in 1054. But what is interesting here is that the very thing that our

Roman Catholic friends are accusing the Reformers of doing is the very same thing the Eastern Church accused the

Roman Catholic Church of doing by adding to the Creed. And another thing that the reverse appears to be true, when the

Catholic Church claims that all salvific areas that were brought into the bait in the 16th century by the

Reformers, that these were novel ideas, not known among the Church Fathers, etc.

The reverse could be said about the Roman Catholic view of the Eucharist.

Even though Luther and Calvin disagreed on the Eucharist, isn't their understanding more in harmony with what we find amongst the

Church Fathers than what Church of Rome believes since Trent dogmatically in regard to transubstantiation?

I understand that there is a total absence of this understanding amongst the Fathers, especially in regard to worshipping the elements and so on.

They use the term presence, the real presence, but the Church of Rome, don't they inflate the meaning beyond reality in regard to how the

Church Fathers use the term real presence of Christ? Yes, absolutely.

What the Church Fathers meant by that was not that Christ is truly present in the Eucharist, that His body and blood are truly present.

But what they talked about is that Christ is truly and really present among His people when they gather together, whether it's to observe

Baptism, or whether it's to observe the Lord's Supper. In other words, the reference there is to the real presence of Christ in the midst of His people when they worship.

Where two or more are gathered in my name, He said, I am there. But what the Roman Catholic Church has done is they've taken the word real presence, and you're right, they've conflated it with the

Eucharist to mean that what real presence means is that the Eucharist is truly Jesus Christ after transubstantiation.

Now, probably one of the most repeated attacks or assaults against the

Reformers and against Protestantism in general, historic Protestantism, is against Sola Scriptura, because they will claim, the

Roman Catholics will claim, that the very thing that we say must be understood as our sole inerrant authority doesn't even contain a declaration, a

God -breathed declaration, that the Bible alone is our sole inerrant authority.

How do you respond to the Roman Catholic claim which is frequently made? Well, I think the answer is embedded in the claim itself, because the only thing that is called

God -breathed, they almost thought, is Scripture, in 2 Timothy 3 .16. If you remember in my debate with St.

Genesis, I asked them where the Church Fathers called their writing, they almost thought, they called their writing God -breathed, so that only that which is

Scripture is defined as God -breathed, and so if only the Scriptures are God -breathed, well then it logically follows that only the

Scriptures are God -breathed, and therefore are our basis of authority in all matters of life.

If you read 2 Timothy 3 .16 and 17, Paul makes it very clear that all Scripture is

God -breathed, it's given for, it's profitable for instruction, that it may fully furnish. So if the

Scriptures are able to fully furnish the man of God to every good work, well then, they are sufficient in and of themselves to accomplish that, and that necessarily would lead to holo scriptura.

But then our Roman Catholic friends are unaware of the fact that in all of this argumentation, they are admitting that they hold to a sola of their own, and the sola that they hold to is sola ecclesia, it's the

Church alone, the Church alone determines what is Scripture, the Church alone pronounces what is to be believed and not believed.

Yes, and in fact to highlight a couple of these very important words in 2 Timothy 3 .17,

that the man of God, this is referring to the Scriptures, all Scripture is God -breathed, or breathed out by God, so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

And so therefore, if that is true, and the Roman Catholic Church would believe along with us in the inerrancy of Scripture, then why isn't, if every good work, if we are equipped for every good work from the

Scriptures according to Paul, and his letter to Timothy, then therefore, praying to Mary, which according to Rome, is a good work, that should be in the

Scriptures, right? The worship of the elements of the Eucharist, that should be in there. All of the dogmas that the

Council of Trent anathematizes Protestants for not believing, they should all be in there, because they're supposed to be good works, right?

Right, exactly, exactly, but if you let the text speak for itself, as I was quoting from the

King James Version, fully furnished, but the word complete there means that there's nothing lacking.

And so, if the Scriptures are able to accomplish this, then why would we need anything else than the

Scriptures, if they are complete in and of themselves, to attain to this? Well, now I'd like you to just basically, in the next three minutes or so, summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners in regard to the question, did the

Reformers invent the New Gospel? I would say that in order for us to answer that question, we have to look at the sources that the

Reformers looked to, that they utilized. And the Reformers went to the

Scriptures, that font did, back to the sources, back to the fountains. And so what I would encourage our hearers to do is to do what they did.

Go to your New Testament, read particularly the Letter of Romans and Galatians, because those two epistles in particular highlight the

Gospel and God's saving purposes in the election of His people. And I think that you will appreciate and understand and see that what the

Reformers concluded is exactly what the Scriptures say, that the

Gospel is the Gospel of grace, the Gospel cannot be added to anything, that the

Gospel is rooted in the death, burial, resurrection of Christ, that Christ offered Himself up once for all, and we are sanctified forever through Him.

And so I would simply encourage our readers as we approach the 500th anniversary of the

Reformation to reconsider this, to understand how important the

Reformation was, that the Reformation was basically the movement that God used to turn the lights back on, to rediscover these precious gems that are embedded in the

Word of God, that were covered through centuries of layers of Church tradition and sacramentalism and so forth.

So I would encourage our hearers to appreciate what the Reformers have given us. They've given us the

Bible in our own language. Were it not for the Reformation, we would not be reading the Bible today in English, we would not be reading the

Bible today in Chinese, we would not be reading the Bible today in Arabic. It is because of this movement that we now have the

Word of God accessible in our hands, not in Latin, in the foreign language, but in our vernacular, and we have access to it.

We don't have to go to a priest to get a Bible. We have immediate access to the Word of God. And one of the models of the

Reformation that I really love is the model that says, after darkness, light. And I think that really sums up what happened at the

Reformation. After darkness, there came light. Amen. Well, I want to make sure that our listeners have all the important websites and contact information.

For instance, the Toronto Baptist Seminary website is tbs .edu, tbs for Toronto Baptist Seminary dot edu.

If you are interested in attending both events in New York where Dr.

Tony Costa will be speaking, the first of which is the Word of Truth Church in Farmingville, Long Island, go to wotchurch .com,

wotchurch .com, which stands for wordoftruthchurch .com. And the Hope Reformed Baptist Church in Medford, Long Island, New York, that website is hopereformedli .net,

hopereformedli .net. Those are the two places where Dr. Tony Costa will be speaking between September 29th and October 1st.

And God willing, I will be there with an Iron Sharpens Iron radio exhibitor's booth.

If you want to get some information on the writings of the

Church Fathers, on the writings or the heresies of the

Roman Catholic Church, and the book, or should

I say the three -volume set in particular that you really should get a hold of in regarding to how the patristic evidence is really strongly in favor of the reformers in regard to Sola Scriptura, one of the biggest areas of division between Catholics and Protestants.

Holy Scripture, the Ground and Pillar of Our Faith is a three -volume set that I strongly recommend by William Webster and David T.

King. Go to cvbbs .com, cv for Cumberland Valley, bbs for biblebookservice .com,

and order that three -volume set. You could also purchase The Roman Catholic Controversy by Dr.

James R. White at aomin .org or at cvbbs .com.

And Dr. Tony Costa, do you have anything to add to that as far as recommendation for reading? I only have one minute left on my calling card, so it's tonycosta .web

.com, or you can just search me on Google. So I may lose you, Chris, I only have one minute left. Okay, well

I want to thank you so much for being a part of our program today. I want to thank everybody who listened, especially those who wrote in questions.

And I thank the Rev. Buzz Taylor for being my co -host today. I hope you all have a safe and blessed weekend and Lord's Day.

And I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater Savior than you are a sinner.