Scott Alt

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Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line.
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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.
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Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.
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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
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United States. It's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is
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James White. And good afternoon. Welcome to The Dividing Line on a Thursday afternoon, a beautiful Thursday afternoon here in the
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Valley of the Sun. We shipped all of that wonderful cold frigid air back to you folks where it belongs in the
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East. So, if you're shoveling out from underneath stuff right now, that's what we had for four days.
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It's a slow -moving system. And so you all will,
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I'm really hoping that it settles right over Washington, D .C. for the inauguration.
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Hey, global warming here, yeah, it's great because we haven't had a cold snap like that since 1988, which, amazingly,
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I was thinking about 1988, ah, it doesn't sound like that long ago. Then I realized that was 25 years ago. And I realized my daughter will be 24 in a couple days, and it's like, oh, man,
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I am over 50, yikes. But 1988 was the last time we had that long a time below freezing, 25 years ago, a quarter of a century.
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But anyways, welcome to the program here. We are going to be looking at an article that,
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I don't even know how I, I do not, my apologies to the author, a
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Roman Catholic by the name of Scott Ault, I don't subscribe to his blog,
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I'm not familiar with him. But someone, either on Twitter or in the channel,
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I don't even remember how now, referred me to a blog article that he posted on the 15th of January, and it's questions for a
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Reformed Apologist, and since there's a nice big picture of me in the blog article, and reference is made to myself and to TurretinFan, and to John Begay as well, then
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I thought, well, let's examine this. It is always important to be dealing with attacks upon Sola Scriptura.
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I will, before we bring TurretinFan on, who is going to be joining with me in just a moment, point out that I do find it somewhat odd that the end of the blog article says, answers to these questions will certainly help me greatly in my ongoing look at the issues of Sola Scriptura, the canon of Scripture, and ecclesiology.
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The reason I find that odd and strange is that earlier in the post, you have the assertion that Sola Scriptura is a false doctrine.
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So if you already have the assertion on Mr. Alt's part that Sola Scriptura is a false doctrine, then what do you mean that you are looking at these issues?
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You've already made up your mind on the issues. This isn't some unbiased examination.
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I think it's important to go there. But anyways, I am joined now by the redoubtable, the anonymous, and yet the frequently cited
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TurretinFan. Hello, TurretinFan. How are you, sir? Fine, thanks. How are you? I'm doing just fine.
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I'm looking at this article here, and I'll have to admit, I am looking at the, right now just the thing caught my eye was the picture of the 38 volume set from now
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Hendrickson, but originally had the darker covers on them, which is what I have anyways in my library, the
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Erdmann's 38 volume set, and was just having, as soon as I saw it, the first thing that crossed my mind was, is this guy going to do the same thing that Jason Stellman did and pretty much limit the early church fathers to that one primarily
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Protestant 19th, 20th century translation?
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And that is sort of what happened. And I just sort of chuckle at that. But that was something you also noted in a blog article that, have you posted it yet or will it be posting or what?
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Well, I was going to try to simul post it with this, but then I realized if we do that, there's a chance that someone will go rush off to the blog during the live show.
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And rather than do that, after the show is done, I'll go ahead and post it with any corrections that we need to make during the, based on our discussion today.
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Are you insinuating that our audience might have a, oh, shiny object, a problem going on?
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It's possible. It happens to the best of us. Unfortunately, that is the reality of the modern human mind.
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Oh, there's something to go read. OK, I'll go with that. And then they end up reading something on Facebook and then they're watching YouTube by the time they get done.
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We're done. And they haven't listened to a word we had to say. So anyways, questions for a Reformed apologist.
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Started off with a quotation that left me confused at first. I didn't really have any question about who had said it.
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The quotation is given, the novelty of biblical revelation consists in the fact that God becomes known to us through the dialogue which he desires to have with us.
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And then the question is asked, does the author believe in sola scriptura? What do you think?
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For after all, he describes the Bible as novel, that is to say it is unique, it is different from anything else. Further, the author describes the
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Bible as the means by which God becomes known to us. He refers to it as God's dialogue with us. He points, no other source of knowledge or dialogue with God.
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And this becomes an example of how you can misunderstand someone, read something into their words.
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But I'll have to be honest with you, I would not have ever read into those words a belief in sola scriptura in the first place.
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Would you have found anything along those lines? Of course, these are the words of Pope Benedict XVI or Cardinal Ratzinger, however you want to refer to him.
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I found it a strange quotation to begin with. Yeah, I thought it was an odd choice.
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There's other things he's said that actually sound, if you take them out of the context, more like an endorsement of sola scriptura.
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At one point, he says that if you go to the Vatican website, you can find a place where he's quoted as saying that the word of scripture is not an inert deposit within the church, but the supreme rule of faith and power of life.
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And the supreme rule of faith, that sounds quite a lot like sola scriptura. But of course, if you start applying context, you look around and dig into more detail.
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He says that about tradition as well, that scripture and tradition together are the supreme rule of faith.
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That prevents him from being, strictly speaking, a sola scriptura advocate, of course, doesn't prevent him from being inconsistent.
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You'll see it. He affirms that Christ is the one head of the church, but then he claims to be the pope.
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He claims an earthly headship over the church, and he doesn't claim the church has two heads. So there's this inconsistency, and we shouldn't necessarily assume just because someone says one thing in one place that they necessarily are consistent.
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But so in other words, Mr. Ault has highlighted a potential problem of sometimes the fathers were inconsistent as well.
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But that just pushes, that just kicks the can down the road a little bit farther. He needs to now go into these fathers, if he thinks that we, and I say we, but people like Webster and King, who have done a lot of detailed work on this, if he wants to accuse them of having done that, well, then he needs to go and dig into their works and find out where they say things like what
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Benedict XVI would say in terms of. Which is what I found rather odd, is that if I were to do something, in fact, one of the things
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I've, I haven't just haven't gotten around to it, haven't had time to, but one of the tabs in my dividing line materials is a 2005 article by Tim Chalies on Pope Benedict XVI on Sola Scriptura, and it was from his book,
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Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith, the Church's Communion, which I obtained the book so as to make sure to have the full context.
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And I was going to do some interaction with some of the things that Ratzinger has said on this particular subject, but it would never cross my mind to assert that on the basis of a statement such as the one cited, that Ratzinger believed in Sola Scriptura.
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But what's interesting is one of the primary citations found later on in this blog article from Athanasius, from his,
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Against the Heathen is the translation, Contra Gentis, in Latin, but Against the
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Heathen is, I think, how the, I'm looking at the Erdman's set here, renders it.
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Anyways, an extensive discussion of that text appears in a book that I contributed to way back in, what was this, 1995, titled
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Sola Scriptura, the Proposition of the Bible. On page 49, I begin my discussion of that, and in going through Athanasius, I provided a number of pages, and then there were numerous pages of notes on that particular discussion, including numerous references to the
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Greek original language, etc., etc. He doesn't provide any of that. He just references someone else, someone else's citation of this particular text,
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Dr. Mitzi, and goes on from there. So I found it odd because if you actually, you know, the issue is going in depth into these patristic sources and into what these early church fathers said.
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And all of this goes back to the fact that it struck me in just sort of approaching this blog article from an overall perspective, that there's
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Mr. Ault, even though he claims to be a convert, and I don't know his story, again, I wasn't really familiar with him, has a fundamentally flawed view of the subject of Sola Scriptura once again.
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And I think this comes out in the way that the questions are asked. So before we dive into each of the citations that he gives, let's just tell folks what the questions are and do our best to try to get to them.
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And I guess sort of by dealing with the citations that appear, we sort of answer the question.
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But here are the questions. There are three questions that are asked. It says, so with all that said, I have three basic questions for Dr.
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White, or Territory Fan, or John Begay, or any other Reformed apologist who would like to answer. First, who is the first person to articulate a defense of Sola Scriptura by speaking of it as a normative condition of the
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Church? Who first defines Sola Scriptura in these terms? And I believe he's using the term normative condition there from something that I said in the debate, or I simply pointed out that when we're talking about Sola Scriptura, we can only talk about it in any meaningful fashion when the
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Church exists and possesses God -breathed revelation and there's not other
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God -breathed revelation being given. In other words, it's not during a period of inscripturation, which Roman Catholics and Protestants agree we are not in a period of inscripturation.
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There aren't any apostles walking the earth that are receiving direct revelation from God. That's something you can argue with the
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Mormons about and so on and so forth. But that was the context of the comments to Jerry Matitix back in 96, 97, whatever it was.
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Second, who is the first person to articulate the doctrine of Sola Scriptura itself? And I'm not talking about church fathers who use the Bible to prove a theological point or who speak highly of the scriptures.
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I'm talking about a church father or anyone who credibly and demonstrably speaks of the scriptures in terms of exclusivity as a rule of soul, rule of faith.
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One might want to look at my previous article here for a fuller discussion of what I mean by exclusivity. And third, if Sola Scriptura is not to be found in the
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Bible and is not to be found in the church fathers, then how, outside of an appeal to tradition or normative conditions, is it to be defended and how is that not self -contradictory?
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So there are the statements. And it just struck me that, especially in that second question, we have a real good example of the primary approach of Roman Catholic apologists, which is to assume what they have yet to prove.
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That is, they want us to prove the non -existence of something rather than their undertaking to prove the existence of something.
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And every time I bring this up, they're saying, oh, you're just trying to dodge the burden of proof and all the rest of this stuff. And yet they're the ones making the claim.
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Our side, our guy is infallible. We have this stuff that you have to have to really be a true
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Christian. But we're not going to prove it. You've got to prove it doesn't exist, which just amazes me.
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But there's nothing new about it. That was the problem when I first started listening to Roman Catholic apologists back with Karl Keating and Patrick Madrid and Scott Hahn and Gerry Matitix at the end of the 80s.
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And it seems to continue to be the issue, even with the call to communion folks and everything else today, is we get to be the default position and you get to try to deny our positive claims.
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We don't have to prove them. And that just struck me as a rather important thing to note right off the top as we dive into that.
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If you want to comment on that or just want to dive into some of the first citations he gives. The other thing
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I would just add to that is that we are consistent on this point. We use this approach of saying the scriptures are the word of God.
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And if you want to assert that the Roman Catholic magisterium is also the word of God in some form or some shape, it's on you to prove that.
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It's on us to kind of find in the Bible where it says the Roman Catholic pope is not thus and such.
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The same way we don't have to find in the Bible that Joseph Smith is not a true prophet or that Muhammad is not a true prophet.
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When Muhammad shows up, he wants to assert he's a true prophet. It's on him and his followers to show that.
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We don't have to find in the Bible someplace that says Muhammad is not a true prophet. And the same thing applies as well to Rome's teachings.
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We apply the same principle in an evenhanded way to all comers.
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And we have this conclusion of scripture alone because we've eliminated all the other options.
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We don't believe that Jesus has already come and he's walking around the earth teaching people. If he were, we would give his teachings divine authority as they deserve.
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And he is just as divine as the Holy Spirit. And so his words and teachings are of equal authority to the scripture.
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But Rome's teachings are not of equal authority to the scripture. Muhammad's teachings are not of equal authority to the scripture.
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Joseph Smith's not of equal authority to the scripture. But it's because we have what we have and that there's not some, we're not trying to prove a negative or although we can to a certain extent prove that negative.
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And I guess we've kind of run into that as we go through. Yeah. And I think people need to understand, you know, the
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Roman Catholic tries to get around that by saying, well, you know, the Bible speaks positively of tradition and then making the huge leap to the identification of the tradition that they claim as being the same tradition that is referred to in scripture.
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But that's why and this is I can always tell when when someone really does know that this is a ruse on their part.
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When I go to the dogmas that have been defined by Rome on the basis of tradition, they cry foul.
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Well, we should be we shouldn't be you just always are focused upon these Marian dogmas. Look, it would seem to me that you look at the teachings
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Roman Catholic Church over the past couple hundred years and you want to do something that's somewhat contemporary and somewhat up to date.
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What has Rome shown the greatest willingness to define on the basis of tradition?
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It has been the Marian dogmas and, of course, the power of the papacy. So you have 1854, you have the Immaculate Conception, 1870, infallibility of the pope and 1950, the bodily assumption of Mary.
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So let's look at them and let's test them and let's see what this tradition is.
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And and it becomes self -evident at that point without question. And I can honestly say,
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I can honestly say that every debate where this has come up, we won the debate.
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It's not even close. I mean, I would direct anyone to the debate that I did with Roberts and Jennis on this subject.
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It is not even close that the the historical material and the biblical material is firmly against any kind of Roman Catholic victory in that particular debate, which is why it's next to impossible to get any of these folks to debate those subjects.
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That's, you know, I mentioned Roberts and Jennis, but at least he was willing. The vast majority of Roman Catholic apologists are smart enough to realize and I'm not that's not meant to be a slap at Bob's and Jennis, but they they recognize that's a no win position.
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There isn't any way that they can they can possibly win that one. And so they're going to try to avoid it.
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And so you look at that that that argumentation and it just simply doesn't work. So let's let's dive into it, because we're already 20 minutes into the program and that's just how it goes.
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Paragraph two. Yes, paragraph two. So that's a good introduction. He quotes
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Hippolytus as saying, there is, brethren, one God, the knowledge of whom we gain from the holy scriptures and from no other source.
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That's the form of the quotation he provides. And we can we can find the context and so forth.
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But his characterization is that this this is all he's saying is that our sole source of the knowledge of God is from scripture.
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And he thinks that Benedict XVI would be OK with that with that doctrine. Yeah, I doubt that he
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I doubt that he would actually. I'm not OK with that statement because my
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Bible says otherwise in the sense that that's not even solo scriptura, which again raises the issue of Mr.
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Ault's understanding of what solo scriptura actually is, because my Bible says that that a man who's never cracked the bindings of a
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Bible knows that God exists and is suppressing that knowledge, that there is a revelation of God's existence in general revelation and that that makes man culpable for certain things, etc.,
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etc., which is which is fascinating. But he does try to parallel that citation with what
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Benedict said, and I don't see a parallel there at all personally, but be that as it as it may.
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Did you want to expand on that citation or? Yeah, well, very briefly, if you if you go into the we don't have time to read through the whole context here.
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I will post it afterwards. But if you go into the context, he's responding to heresies of a particular heretic and he's not making that claim on its face seems too broad.
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It seems to exclude the light of nature, conscience and so forth. But in context, what he's really saying is that his heretical opponent can't have some other source aside from scripture for his theology.
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There isn't any other. There's no other place to go, no legitimate place to go besides the scriptures to get your theology.
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And therefore, he's challenging this heretic on the grounds of what does scripture teach?
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He's using scripture as the standard, and he's saying that the heretic fails the standard because his teachings don't line up with scripture and they don't come from scripture.
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And and ultimately, they do contradict scripture. But that isn't his whole point. His point is actually broader than that.
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It's that they you have they have to come from your teachings have to come from this source, the source of scriptures.
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Exactly, exactly right. And then then we have the picture of the 38 volumes that and I will read this because I seem to be reading very quickly today.
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Anyways, I'm not sure why, but that's all right. The difficulty when encounters of passages like these, often used by reformed apologists and other
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Protestants to to prop up the false doctrine of Sola Scriptura, there's the citation I was referring to earlier, is that they are so seemingly convincing.
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They speak so highly of the scripture one struggles with how to respond. Part of the trouble is the fact that unless you've memorized and have an encyclopedic knowledge of all 38 volumes of the
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Fathers, there is no way you could know off the top of your head the context of quotation or whether your Protestant interlocutor is playing fast and loose with accuracy.
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I have an example of this below in a quotation from St. Athanasius. The best you can do is say, oh, I don't know.
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I'll have to look that up. But then you come off as uneducated and bumbling. Dr. James White is no stranger to using this tactic in debate.
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The first quotation, St. Benedict's, is a case in point with Benedict XVI. You know, you're not dealing with someone who supports
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Sola Scriptura. But let's assume that the quotation really did come from a church father, unless you had a working knowledge of the context of the passage and of the entirety of the work itself, you'd be hard pressed to demonstrate how it does not support the doctrine of Sola Scriptura.
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Well, once again, I would challenge Mr. Ault to examine what I've written on this subject when
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I do go into the context of the original languages, using Minj and other sources such as both
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Patrilogia Latina and Patrilogia Greca, and go from there. It seems like he is somewhat backhandingly accusing me of abusing the father's, but he then does not demonstrate that, even though I have cited the same passage he did just in more depth itself.
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But is there just a problem over on the other side of Rome, outside of the
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Tiber? I mean, you and I know of a whole lot more than the Erdman set. There's entire sets of material outside of Erdman's.
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But these guys, these converts especially, just seem to know about the 38 volumes. Isn't that a little bit weird? Yeah, I guess it's weird in one sense.
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I guess it's to be expected that there is kind of a shallowness to the approach that we're seeing, and it's actually illustrated in the way he characterizes it, as though the only way you can respond to people is by what you happen to already know.
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You can't hear them say it, ask for the citation, then go and look at it, see if what they're saying is true.
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And if it is, believe it. And if it's not, don't believe it. But for some reason, the only way is you have to memorize the whole set in order to deal in patristics.
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And I don't know of anybody who's seriously interested in studying what the fathers have to say, who thinks you have to have it all memorized.
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It's nice to actually have good working knowledge of these guys, and to say that doesn't sound like something
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Athanasius would say, because you've read enough of his works. But to have it memorized, it's not a realistic standard.
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Well, I think part of the context there, though, is in a debate, you are limited in the amount of time you have.
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You can't say, OK, we have a 20 minute timeout while I go online and read this. That would be nice to do debates that way, but that's not how they work.
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But the fact of the matter is, it does strike me that a lot of these guys, even though they're converts, have never read
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Whittaker or Salmon or Good or any of these classic works from the past, even
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Lutheran works like Chemnitz, even though it's hard to find the references in Chemnitz. But it's like they haven't even read these works.
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So as to be familiar with the sources and the materials that they probably are going to be running up against,
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I mean, especially the Athanasian quote, that's one of the best known of all of the citations.
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I've been writing about Athanasius since the 90s. I see a picture of Mr. Ault. He doesn't look like he's 147 years old, but I think his conversion has been since that time.
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So I find it somewhat odd that there would be this concern about quoting these materials, because it's not like we haven't.
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We're not the first generation to be dealing with these things. I mean, I'll sadly say that for most
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Protestants today, they've never even given it a second thought. But then again, the vast majority of Roman Catholics haven't either.
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So that's a little bit strange. But anyways, then he gets into this concept of exclusivity.
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No other source. And he wants us to, and we've already mentioned this,
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I'll mention it again, he wants us to prove the non -existence of another inspired source, rather than demonstrating that the traditions that he has are theanustos, and therefore of equal validity and authority, that his view of tradition is actually taught in Scripture, whatever else it might be.
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And certainly, we've looked at every possible text over the years that could be used.
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You know, Paul's exhortation to the Thessalonians about holding to the tradition, whether by word of mouth or by letter.
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And we've taken these texts apart, and they recognize, I think Roman Catholics recognize,
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Roman Catholic apologists, anyways, recognize, they simply cannot substantiate the idea that their tradition is actually apostolic in origin.
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And I think if you actually read more modern stuff, especially since the definition of the
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Immaculate Conception and Bodily Assumption of Mary, Roman Catholic theologians themselves recognize that there needs to be a different way of looking at tradition.
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It needs to be a living thing, sort of like how people are dealing with the Constitution these days, to get around what
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Rome has actually done in defining these things as dogmas. So you have to redefine what tradition means and remove it from the realm of ancient history to substantiate these things in any way, shape, or form.
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So I think that's important. I imagine you're looking at the same material
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I am. Was there something you wanted to add there? No, no, let's continue on. Let's get to Basil then.
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And the hearers taught in the scriptures ought to test what is said by teachers and accept that which agrees to the scriptures, but reject that which is foreign.
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Obviously, a text that is cited very regularly and one that I think is vitally important, especially in light of the context of the times in which it was written.
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You've got some material on that. Go ahead. Yeah, so his first comment there was that this isn't from that 38 volume set, which is true, that that set isn't complete and it's far from complete.
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And one nice thing about the set is it mentions the work, lets you know that it's one of Basil's ascetic works.
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And there are translations of it out there. At least one translation is easily available.
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And that particular translation actually does provide you with some context, which he wanted.
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I guess the bad news for him is that this context is, first of all, there's a general preface to this book of morals, the moralia is the name of the book that he provides.
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But in English, we would just say the morals. Basil provided a preface that described what he's trying to do.
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And in that preface, you see what he's trying to do is provide you with, here's how you should live your life.
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And in proof of the fact that you should live your life this way, I'm going to provide you with, of course, scripture.
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He's not going to provide human tradition or anything like that, just scripture. And he would like to provide
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Old and New Testament scripture for every single thing. But isn't one scripture enough? And he doesn't have a lot of time, so sometimes he's only going to provide one or two scriptures or only from one testament or something like that.
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So Rule 72 is the one that he's quoting from here. Rule 72 says, concerning the hearers, that those hearers who are instructed in the scriptures should examine what is said by the teachers, receiving what is in conformity with the scriptures and rejecting what is opposed to them.
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And those who persist in teaching such doctrines should be strictly avoided. So the way it was expressed in terms of foreign in the original quotation kind of left it open about whether that just means outside of scripture or contrary to scripture.
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But the problem with his analysis is he's kind of ignoring this rule requires these hearers.
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And if you look in the overall context of who the morals are written to, they're written to ordinary
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Christians. So they're not written to councils of bishops or something like that.
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So this is not just for ecumenical councils or Roman bishops, but for ordinary Christians that they are supposed to judge teachers by scripture, which is possible if we have that authority to do so, to judge scripture and to judge teachers by scripture.
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But if we don't have that interpretive authority, then his comments don't make much sense.
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And he even cites in support of his position, despise not prophecies, prove all things, hold fast that which is good from all appearance of evil, refrain yourselves.
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And then he goes after this. That's one of several verses he quotes. And then he says that they who possess little knowledge of the scriptures should recognize the distinctive mark of the saints by the fruits of the spirit, receiving those who bear this mark and avoiding those who do not.
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So he's even making allowance for Christians who have less knowledge of scripture.
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So people who know what the scriptures teach should examine teachers by scripture. Those who don't know much about scripture should at least examine them by their fruits.
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Are they living holy lives? But again, you know, you apply that standard of the fruits of the spirit to Roman bishops in the in the late medieval period.
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This is one of the arguments that the reformers ended up using was look at how wicked the
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Borgias and and other and other Italian. Families who possessed the papacy for a time, how wicked they were now, you know,
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John Paul II, Benedict XVI, he seemed like kindly older gentlemen. But not all
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Roman bishops have had such, you know, good press. And even even these ones are there.
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Benedict XVI's tainted by a number of different scandals, including this, you know, the cover ups that he's been engaged in and so forth.
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And the point isn't so much that therefore all his theology is wrong. But if you're going to follow what Basil's teaching here about how you judge teachers.
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You don't arrive at a Roman Catholic position because you can't you can't judge the papacy based on whether or not they have the fruits of the spirit, according to, you know, modern
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Roman Catholic dogma. You're not allowed to interpret the scripture any way contrary to the way that Rome interprets it.
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Therefore, you can never arrive at a contrary view of the scriptures. And therefore, you could never use this to judge the teachers, at least not any of the supposedly infallible teachers.
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I would think it would be relevant for Mr. Ault to likewise recognize that in light of his own assertion that you need to look at what else someone has said.
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I pointed out a citation from Basil in his letter to Eustathius where he said their complaint is that their custom does not accept this and that scripture does not agree.
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What is my reply? I do not consider it fair that the custom which obtains among them should be regarded as a law and rule of orthodoxy.
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If custom is to be taken and proof of what is right, then it is certainly competent for me to put forward on my side the custom which obtains here.
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If they reject this, we are clearly not bound to follow them. Therefore, let God -inspired scripture decide between us, and on whichever side be found doctrines in harmony with the word of God, in favor of that side will be cast the vote of truth.
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And interestingly enough, that is in the context of—you can also look at other texts.
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This is in—again, and this he can look up himself, if he wants, in the very set that he cites in series 2, volume 8, page 229.
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You can also look up pages 137 to 141, where in his defense of the Trinity and his reliance upon God -inspired scripture, not oral tradition, will be found there as well.
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So in other words, it's not just one citation. It's, for example, we get down to Athanasius.
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I didn't just give that one citation of Athanasius. I gave many citations of Athanasius that say the same things, and it would seem that would be the first thing that you would be doing is going, well, if I don't have the context here, did he say anything similar to this where I do have context?
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And when you do, you do find things where he has that very context in mind and in his teachings.
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You're listening to The Dividing Line. Turton Fan and I are discussing an article from the
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LogosandMuse .com website, Questions for a Reformed Apologist, and we are examining the assertions regards to the early
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Church. I realize this is a little bit different than what you might have tuned in, expecting a discussion of whatever the most current promotion of homosexuality was or anything else along those lines.
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But this is really a topic that we've been dealing with for many years. It's vitally important, and it has to do with the authority of Scripture and the doctrine of what is called solo scriptura, that Scripture is the sole infallible rule of faith of the
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Church. It is the only example of theanoustos revelation in possession of the Church. And in obedience to Jesus' teaching in Matthew chapter 15, we are taught that we are to test any tradition, even traditions where men claim it comes from God outside of Scripture, as the
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Corban rule was claimed to be from God outside of Scripture, have come from Moses directly, according to tractate of both of the
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Mishnah, that we are to test these things by what is found in Scripture that is the highest authority, that is the only way to allow
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God truly to speak. This is something denied by Roman Catholicism. And Mr. Alt, the author of the article we're looking at, is by his own confession here,
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I am a first -time blogger and Protestant to atheist to Protestant to Catholic convert.
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So that's an interesting path that he has followed there. So then we go from Basil to, he mentions,
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I guess, these are citations from Dr. Mitzi's Just for Catholics website. And I apologize that I did not go and look at the list and see how in -depth it was or anything else along those lines, since the question was asked of me.
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And I know the depth to which I have attempted to go in publishing and writing on these things in the past, and certainly in the debates that we've done on the subject.
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Was there anything else you wanted to add on Basil before we go to Athanasius? No, no, let's continue on. Yeah, so Athanasius, he has the quotation.
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Here is Dr. Mitzi's very selective quotation of Athanasius against the heathen.
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And for those of you who have the Erdmann set, this is all the way on page four of the
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Athanasius volume. Quote, the holy and inspired scriptures are fully sufficient for the proclamation of the truth.
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Then he says, well, that sure sounds like soul scripture, doesn't it? Dr. Mitzi leaves out this very important word, which precedes the quotation, although.
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Actually, it's for although in the translation that I have. And then he gives that.
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For although the sacred and inspired scriptures are sufficient to declare the truth, dash, while there are other works of our blessed teachers compiled for this purpose, if he meet with which a man will gain some knowledge of the interpretation of the scriptures and be able to learn what he wishes to know, still, as we have not at present in our hands the compositions of our teachers, we must communicate in writing to you what we learn from them, the faith namely of Christ the
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Savior, lest any should hold cheap the doctrine taught among us or think faith in Christ unreasonable.
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And so he doesn't seem to get the point that Athanasius is presenting here.
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And that is right at the beginning of this work, he is giving an apology and a reason for why he's going to be addressing the things he's addressing.
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And he starts off with the assertion, well, the scriptures are, the sacred and inspired scriptures are sufficient to declare the truth.
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But there are false teachers out there. There are people that have more or less knowledge. There are people who twist the scriptures, et cetera, et cetera.
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And he seemingly comes to the conclusion that even though Athanasius says the scriptures are sufficient, that they actually aren't sufficient.
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As if the idea of needing to teach, rebuke, exhort in godliness with all authority,
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I'm just quoting various phrases from the pastoral epistles here, as if that's not somehow opposed to the doctrine of sola scriptura.
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It almost makes me think that his concept of what sola scriptura is would require, it's something like this.
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We believe that all you need is the Bible and you really don't need anything else at all. And so there's, why are you listening to the dividing line?
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I mean, it's not, why didn't you just go listen to an audio book of scripture instead? That isn't what we believe.
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And if he thought that's what sola scriptura means, then he has a misunderstanding about what sola scriptura is.
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That's not what any of the reformers held. There are some people out there who really do take that position, should never have any human teachers.
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But that isn't, that is not sola scriptura, that's a distortion because scripture itself teaches the value of human fallible teachers.
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You and I are, you know, providing some comments and hopefully some valuable instructions for people.
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We're fallible. Scriptures are infallible, but there's still a use for what we have to say, and there's still use for ministers and churches teaching, and there's still uses for commentaries on scripture and so forth.
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So it seems like he doesn't completely understand. And as you pointed out, it's the way he interprets this makes it sound like he thinks
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Athanasius is saying, because scripture is not sufficient, therefore I need to write this book. But that's the opposite.
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He's saying, although it is sufficient, this is still useful. And that's very clearly his intention.
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And I just, I am taken aback by a number of things. First, let me make some general comments about Athanasius as a whole, and then
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I want to make sure, remind me lest I become distracted, which is easy for me to do.
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I'm over 50 now, so I have an excuse for everything. But you see how white my beard is here?
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You can't turn it, I was actually talking to Jamie over there. But my beard is just really, really white these days.
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Anyway, what was I talking about? Oh yes, Moses and the bulrushes. Oh yeah, Athanasius, it just really, really, really bothers me when he is turned into a
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Roman Catholic, because it just, it takes such a massive discontextualizing, is that historical reality of Athanasius' life.
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I mean, of all the other Church Fathers, I've read the most of Athanasius. I've read this entire volume here, and I've translated sections, and partly because of the connection that I have to him in my love of the
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Trinity and defense of the deity of Christ against Arians and modern versions of the Arians. And so that was really where my first connection was, and then that sort of goes together with dealing with Roman Catholicism as well.
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And so here you've got a guy, I know how he defended the deity of Christ. He did not defend the deity of Christ like Roman Catholics do.
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He defended the deity of Christ like I do. He went to the Scriptures, he argued the Scriptures, he argued the original meanings of the
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Scriptures, he went to the same texts that I go to, he pointed out the same things in regards to Jesus being the creator and all the rest of these things, and he argued like I did.
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He did not say, believe this because the Bishop of Rome says it, or believe this because even the
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Council of Nicaea said it. He recognized that the Council of Nicaea, which he believed to represent
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God's truth and that it represented the—he even uses the term tradition. Of course, when he defines tradition, it's all sub -biblical.
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It's not something that exists outside of Scripture. He never says, well, the reason you should believe in the doctrine of Trinity is because it was revealed by the
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Apostles and passed down outside of Scripture. That's never something that he says. There is no foundation whatsoever in Athanasius.
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When he talks about the skapos, the scope of tradition, things like that, it's always sub -biblical.
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I've gone through this stuff for years and years and years. And then to see what he did, the fact that this man stood against councils that were bigger than Nicaea, that had more bishops at them than Nicaea did, that condemned him five times, he's tossed out of his sea because he will not bow to the ecclesiastical authority of the day, that isn't what a
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Roman Catholic does, okay? It's just not. And so you have someone here that if you really engage him and you really allow him to be him and to present as he is, he is a glowing example that the early church, represented by him, and of course we all look to him as a great champion of faith because Athanasius contra mundum,
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Athanasius against the world. Why was it him against the world? Because everybody else collapsed, for crying out loud, including the
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Bishop of Rome. He was the one who stood strong. He did so on the basis of Scripture. He did so because he believed
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Scripture was sufficient for the preaching of the truth. And I go, amen, that's where I stand.
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And so if you want to see someone back then that on that subject, I'm not saying I agree with Athanasius about every single thing he ever said.
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But on the vast majority of the things that he said, especially when it comes to the Trinity and the deed of Christ, things like that, you have him going to Scripture and not to some type of tradition that exists outside of Scripture as if Scripture is insufficient.
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So it's just right there in front of you. And so for someone to try to turn him into something he was not just drives me crazy.
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But then we have this assertion. He says, the first is that not every Christian will have ready access to the
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Scriptures. That was particularly true in his time. It wasn't until the invention of the printing press that the Scriptures could even begin to be available to the average individual.
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And even then it would take centuries more before the average individual could afford a copy of his own. You know why that bothers me?
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Is that it strikes directly against the reality that the early church suffered for its love of the
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Scriptures and the fact that Christians demanded the right to possess the
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Scriptures. That's why the Romans went after the Scriptures. And that's why from 250 to 313, the evidence is that the
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Roman Empire destroyed thousands, thousands of manuscripts of the
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New Testament in Egypt alone. This came up in my preparation for my debate with Bart Ehrman the very day that I debated
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Ehrman, I was looking at an article that I had run across in my research, fascinating article, that documented the examination.
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Some papyri had been found in Egypt. And this was the records from Rome of the basically the sacking of this
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Christian church and what they had taken from the church. And it included the documentation of the destruction of numerous manuscripts of the
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Christian Scriptures. Now, we don't know what they contained, whether Old Testament, New Testament, etc, etc. But conservatively taking that and then looking at how many churches had experienced the same thing just in Egypt, you have thousands of manuscripts that were destroyed just in that time frame.
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Well, what in the world were they doing making all these manuscripts if all you needed was the one at the church? There was a love of the
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Scriptures. And when you read Athanasius, he expects his readers and his opponents to be able to check out what he says from Scripture.
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And so it is a, from my perspective, highly questionable, highly challengeable assertions that are made along those lines at that particular point.
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Yeah, the only thing I'd add to that is, I'll post a link to it, but Athanasius' letter to Marcellinus about the
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Psalms, it just shows, it gives the line to the idea that, first of all, that people didn't have copies of the
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Scriptures or that people didn't study them, but also to the idea that Athanasius had anything less than the highest regard for Scripture and really held it in a unique position.
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He viewed the Psalms as a mini Bible. So if you could only have one book on a desert island,
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I think that's the one he would pick based on that letter. But maybe it makes sense, since we're getting short on time, to continue on.
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Yeah, he said, indeed, it might even be said, though this is a topic large enough to merit a blog entry of its own, that Sola Scriptura is the bias of a print culture.
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How about the bias of a manuscript culture? Because there certainly was one at that time, and I'm not sure, in light of the thousands of manuscripts being destroyed, that that follows in any way, shape, or form.
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Looking at what we have left, and looking at we have about 10 minutes, what do you feel you want to focus on the most?
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Well, before we get to giving some frank answers to those three questions, directly answering them, he quotes someone named
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Dr. David Anders, who he found at this Call to Communion website. And it was just shocking to me that I hadn't seen this.
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I do try to read as much of what they post as I can. But he says, the reformers had no defense for Sola Scriptura.
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They merely asserted it. And then they had a few arguments here and there. But they basically were things like, well, we should listen to the voice of God and not men, truisms that don't amount to real argument that prove nothing.
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So I mean, these kinds of assertions are just either they're made out of ignorance, but he's claiming he attaches the doctorate to the guy's name.
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I don't know what his doctorate's in. But it might be something totally irrelevant. But he's making these claims that make it sound like he's surveyed what the reformers had to say and found no arguments.
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But there are lots of arguments, and they go well beyond this sort of very general comment.
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And Calvin Hatham Whitaker's work, which was, I want to say, written in the 1500s, maybe the early 1600s at the latest, is a classic even today.
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It's still in print. I don't know if it's ever been out of print. But you can buy a freshly printed copy off of Amazon.
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I think you can even buy one through the AMN store. Yes, you can. So yeah,
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I feel like... Yeah, anyone who's read the Institutes well knows that this is just simply a...
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to say the reformers had no defense of souls, which are they merely asserted, is just either shows a massive amount of ignorance on the part of the person saying it, or it's dishonest.
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Those are the only two options that I can see for such an assertion. It's just it's utterly ridiculous.
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So I guess this kind of leap, I guess, all that said, we get into this first question.
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I guess maybe I should give you a first answer on this one. Who was the first person to articulate the defense of Sola Scriptura by speaking of it as a normative condition of the
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Church? Who first defined Sola Scriptura in these terms? Of course, I've never asserted that anyone would define it in those terms, because as far as I can tell, no one was arguing against the unique category of Scripture as being
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Theanustos and for some kind of tradition being Theanustos. And therefore, no one would have had to be even pointing out that for Sola Scriptura to be true, you have to have a
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Scriptura by which you can sola, which makes... I mean, talk about truisms.
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That is a truism. And so that's what I was pointing out at the beginning was the question demonstrates a misunderstanding on the part of the questioner.
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If someone were to stand up at one of my debates and ask that question, I would respond by saying, well, you're making a number of false assertions that are at the foundation of your question to begin with, and that is you're assuming something that you haven't yet proven the existence of.
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You're trying to force us to prove a universal negative rather than you doing what you need to do in proving the existence of the positive.
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And what I'm simply stating is for a early church father to assert that Scripture alone is
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Theanustos and that Scripture alone, therefore, is the source to which we go for God's speaking would fulfill the categories that I'm speaking of, because we're talking about a post -apostolic period.
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We're not talking about a period of time. And I suppose you might want that early church father to recognize that there's no longer revelation going on, but that's pretty easy, too.
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So yeah, go ahead. If someone put a gun to my head and said, okay, so which father? I would probably go with Irenaeus.
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He died around 202. He said, since therefore the tradition from the apostles does exist in the church, don't get excited because it's not oral tradition he's talking about.
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And he is permanent among us. Let us revert to the scriptural proof furnished by those apostles who did write the gospel in which they recorded the doctrine regarding God, pointing out that our
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Lord Jesus Christ is the truth and that no lie is in him. So there's a great example of someone saying, yes, we got a tradition from the apostles.
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It's permanent. It's in Scripture. It's inscripturated. Let's go and check what it says.
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So he's recognizing what the actual condition of the church is, which
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I don't—I'm sure you may be able to find lots of other examples. It's just one early one. Oh, that's very early.
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And I think, again, this wasn't a major issue as far as I can tell.
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No one was making the assertions that Rome makes, and therefore the primary issues at time were persecution, the false teachers in regards to the deity of Christ, etc.,
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etc. And so— I might want to correct you a little bit on that. Sure, go ahead. You've forgotten,
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I think, that there were people who Irenaeus was arguing with— Oh, sure. —who didn't agree with him about this.
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They thought they had tradition from the apostles outside of Scripture. That's true, the Gnostics and things like that.
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But I was referring more to people who were—well, I suppose the Gnostics called themselves Christians as well, even though they identified the
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Old Testament God as a false god. But I'm thinking more in the context of Rome's claims along these lines were yet far in the future.
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Rome's own claims were yet to come, but the Gnostics' claims are very similar. Oh, yeah, they are. In fact, Tertullian specifically makes reference to their claims to having secret knowledge that's passed down outside of Scripture.
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And he cites, as I recall, 2 Timothy 2 .2, if I recall correctly, or 2 .22, in contradiction to them,
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I think it's 2 .2, where Paul says to Timothy, pass on those things which I've taught you in public as a repudiation of their utilization of that kind of alleged secret knowledge and things like that.
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So yes, I would agree completely with that. Second question?
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The second question was, so which—he wants to know a church father or anyone who demonstrably speaks of the
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Scripture in terms of exclusivity as a sole rule of faith? And when he refers us back to an earlier article, my own answer on this one would be going right back to Irenaeus and pointing out that he calls the
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Scriptures the ground and pillar of our faith. I'm not sure how much more exclusivity you want to find, especially when he's debating with Gnostics who deny that the
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Scriptures are authoritative and sufficient and so forth. But if he doesn't—if he was looking for those words that actually exclude origins,
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Principius is a good example where he explains that those who love the truth derive the knowledge which incites men to a good and happy life from no other source than from the very words and teaching of Christ.
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And by the words of Christ, we do not mean those only which he spoke when he became man and tabernacled in the flesh.
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For before that time, Christ, the word of God, was in Moses and the prophets. But without the word of God, how could they have been able to prophesy of God?
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And it's not our purpose to confine the present treatise within the limits of all attainable brevity. It would not be difficult to show in proof of this statement out of the holy
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Scriptures how Moses or the prophets both spoke and performed all that they did through being filled with the
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Spirit of Christ. I don't want to belabor the point, but the point here is quite clearly origin saying the one place, the sole source, no other source.
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The sole source is Scripture for those who want to derive the knowledge of what man's chief end.
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All right. Excellent. And finally, third, if sola scriptura is not to be found in the Bible, well, do we really have to go there?
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Because we don't agree with the conditions of the third question at all.
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Right, yeah, we don't. Because we we we teach that it is found in the Bible. Even John's own gospel says that if you read, read that and believe it, you can have eternal life.
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So John, even John itself is sufficient and all of the Scripture is more than sufficient. It's able to thoroughly furnish the man of God to every good work that goes far beyond the minimal claims of sola scriptura.
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It's it's much higher. I think we've discussed that before. I don't want to belabor that point. It is also found in the church fathers in numerous places.
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Webster and King have an excellent series, but they're not the first to bring these points out.
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Certainly not. No, no. Whitaker, Good, Salmon. These are all works that, in fact, we're going to be carrying.
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Bill Webster has now republished Denny's article on papalism, not article, book, big, huge book on papalism in response to Satus Cognitum.
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And I think that's an excellent work. I've had it in photocopy form for quite some time, but Bill Webster has now published it and we are going to be.
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I'm not sure if it's in our Web store yet or not, but it will be because I have my first copy of it that is available.
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So you can look that up as well. Torrented fan. Once again, I thank you very, very much for joining us today here on the dividing line and taking the time as you as you did to go through this so very thoroughly.
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And I look forward to the next time we can have you on the program. Thanks very much. All right.
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Thanks a lot. God bless. And thanks for listening to the dividing line. As far as I know, next week we will be on our regular schedule,
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I think. I hope. But obviously the best way, the fastest way, honestly, is to follow me on Twitter or follow us on Facebook, because I almost always post that material to Twitter.
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And I also use a little button to post it to Facebook as well. And sometimes once I've done that,
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I think I've done it and I forget to put it on the blog. So I apologize for that. Be that as it may. Thanks for listening to the dividing line.
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We'll see you again next week. God bless. Be careful.
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