Robert Sungenis on TurretinFan's Response to Christopher Ferrara

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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. Well, I've got to tell you, when your only argument is we're right because we say we are right, then

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I would say you have lost the argument completely. And that seems to be where our

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Roman Catholic friends are stuck these days. I was directed to an article that Robert Zagenas has posted on his website where he comments on Turretin fans' documentation of the errors in the material presented by Christopher Ferrara in our debate on the

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Immaculate Conception just a few weeks ago. And I think what is far more instructive is

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Dr. Zagenas' response to this documentation and the further demonstration that sola ecclesia is all

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Rome has. Believe us because we tell you to believe us. That's it. We're not going to be giving you history, we're not going to be giving you scripture.

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Believe us because we have the authority to tell you what to believe. That's what it is. Listen to these responses.

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And the thing I appreciate is that on Zagenas' website, I believe the entirety of Turretin fans' article is posted.

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So for those who have ears to hear, all the information will be right there. And that's a good thing.

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But you will note, let's read some of this. In response to Turretin fans' statement, as Dr.

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White demonstrated during the debate, the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception did not always exist, was not a doctrine that was received from the early patristic period, and is not rightly to be considered to be a revealed doctrine, just as it was not considered a revealed doctrine in Aquinas' time, to which

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Zagenas responds, first of all, Dr. White didn't exist in the early patristic period, nor was he in the apostolic period, so he cannot make a dogmatic claim that the doctrine of the

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Immaculate Conception did not exist during those periods. Folks, think about what that means. Unless you lived back then, you can't say that a doctrine did not exist.

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The Mormons could say that all of their doctrines existed back then, given Zagenas' argumentation.

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The Jehovah's Witnesses could say it. Any cult group could say, oh, people have always believed what we believed.

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And unless you live back there, you can't know. Now, logically and rationally, what would be required for you to demonstrate that a doctrine was believed?

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Evidence. You have to have evidence. But you see, Rome has no evidence. And so Rome has to go the opposite direction, and in the process, open up the door to absolutely anything.

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He continues on, the best he can do is make a conjecture that, since the

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Immaculate Conception does not have as much patristic evidence as some other doctrines, then its pedigree is not as rich as theirs.

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That's not a conjecture. That's a fact. And it's a fact that there is no patristic evidence, period, end of discussion.

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It's not that it has slightly weaker evidence. It's that it has none. It's just, you have to think in the tightest of circles to produce this kind of material.

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It is amazing to me. And it goes on. Secondly, the early patristic period is not a criterion for how doctrine is established.

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At times, early fathers believed things were quite different from the latter fathers. For example, whether the millennium of Apocalypse 20 was literal or figurative, many of the early fathers were premillennial, the latter were mostly amillennial.

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It is the whole patristic period that must be taken into account when determining whether there is evidence for a doctrine in the patristic period.

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Third, one cannot set an arbitrary endpoint for the patristic period. Dr. White claims the patristic period ended with Augustine, but there exists no hard and fast rule for that determination.

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To which I simply ask, has Rome infallibly defined the patristic period? I mean, it's pretty obvious what period we're talking about here.

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And Augustine is the doorway into medieval theology. This isn't really a matter of argumentation.

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My point has been clear. The early church did not understand this. Now, if you want to turn the early church into the first 800 years or something, then the very fact you have to do so demonstrates that you believe things that the earliest period did not believe, and you have to go much farther down the line, almost a millennium down the line, to start coming up with this kind of stuff.

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Some hold that the patristic period ended somewhere in the mid or late 7th century. As for the patristic evidence of ematic conception, listen to this, and this is very similar to what

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Roberts and Jenis said in our debate on the bodily assumption. Remember, the most amazing line in the bodily assumption debate was, all we've got to prove is that somebody was talking about it.

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All we've got to prove is that somebody was talking about it. Now they may have been talking about it and saying it was a heresy, but as long as somebody was talking about it, that's good enough for us, which of course would be good enough to prove anything.

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The Gnostics were talking back then, therefore any of their silliness could eventually be said to be apostolic tradition or something like this.

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It is truly amazing. As for the patristic evidence of the ematic conception, all that the Catholic Church needs is one witness to show that the concept or doctrine existed during that time period.

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That's not a hard task. Well, actually it is, but one witness, that's all you need.

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Now over and over again, folks, I've said this, but after this series of debates, after the ematic conception debate and the bodily assumption debate, the next time some

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Roman Catholic apologist, next time Tim Staples or Patrick Madrid or Jimmy Akin or any of these guys starts trotting over towards 2

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Thessalonians 2 .15, I'm going to start laughing. It's going to be hard for me not to laugh, because how can you possibly cite that text and say that has anything to do with Rome's modern view of tradition?

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It has nothing to do with it whatsoever. Because if all you've got is one witness, well, there is one guy who said something that we can interpret in such a way that maybe we can read into his words what we have dogmatically defined 1 ,950 years later.

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Think about that, folks. That's the infallible church. It is amazing to me.

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Then we have Dr. White's favorite father, Athanasius. Well, I'm not sure that he is, but I've quoted him a number of times. He certainly is not a good witness for Romanism.

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That's for sure. Dr. White's favorite father, Athanasius, gives a strong indication he believed

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Mary to be without sin. He writes, he took it, his body, from a pure and unstained virgin who had not known man on the incarnation of the word ape.

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Of course, Dr. White will argue that pure and unstained does not teach specifically that Mary was conceived without original sin, and he would be correct.

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But, we don't need to have it explicitly stated in order to conclude that Athanasius believed Mary to be without sin.

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And once we see that Athanasius regarded Mary as without sin, then we only need to use our reason to work backward to Mary's conception to see the dogma of the

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Immaculate Conception. Folks, do you hear this? I think this is still on his website.

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Maybe somebody in channel can verify this for me. But think about what you just heard.

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This is not exegesis of patristic sources. This is not seriously asking the question, did this early father hold this belief or that belief?

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No, no, no, no, no. This is desperation reading.

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This is, well, you know, it's pretty obvious that we're reading something in here, but he doesn't have to explicitly state it.

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We can just assume that he did. And once we've assumed that he did, then we can just use our logic and reason to go back to the

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Immaculate Conception, even though we have not found the slightest bit of evidence. Can you imagine what we could do with Roberts and Genesis' own books if we interpreted them this way?

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We could come up with anything, folks. This is an absolute attack and abuse on language, let alone history.

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I am absolutely left stuttering at this kind of circularity.

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It is hard for me to even begin to know how to respond to this.

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I mean, the Mormon abuse of the early fathers isn't this bad. I mean, they at least try to pretend that they're actually going for what the guy originally intended.

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But listen to this again. Of course, Dr. White will argue that pure and unstained does not teach specifically that Mary was conceived without original sin, and he would be correct, because that is correct.

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I mean, the most you can get out of that statement is that Athanasius believed that since she was a virgin, it says, pure and unstained virgin who had not known man.

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I mean, if words have meaning, the only thing you can say is that this is talking about the virgin birth.

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That's it. You can't go beyond that. Not without abusing the writer.

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But then he says, but we don't need to have it explicitly stated in order to conclude that Athanasius believed

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Mary to be without sin. Why? Because we don't care what Athanasius originally believed.

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We have Rome to tell us what is true, and then we can just take whatever Rome tells us and cram it into anything in church history.

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That's what we have here. And once we see that Athanasius regarded Mary as without sin, which we haven't seen, we've just assumed it, then we only need to use our reason to work backward to Mary's conception and see the dogma of the

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Immaculate Conception. Folks, the Heaven's Gate cult could have used the

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Euler Church in the exact same way. Because there's no rules here. Words have no meaning anymore, history is irrelevant, grammar, syntax.

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We might as well just sit here and pretend speaking in tongues. And we'd be communicating.

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You want to do that, Rich? And we'd be communicating with just as much clarity and meaning. This isn't truthfulness.

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This is just absolutely amazing. And it goes on to say, to even begin to refute this.

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How do you refute? That's not argumentation. You can't refute non -argumentation.

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You can't refute wishful thinking. To even begin to refute this, Dr. White would have to show that it would be impossible for Athanasius to have believed that Mary was conceived without original sin.

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This is so irrational that I really wonder if Bob wrote this, because does my audience see this?

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Do you see this type of argumentation that is now being said here?

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To refute this, you have to prove the impossibility of something.

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I haven't given you an ounce of evidence. I'm the one making the positive claim. But to refute me, you must prove that it's impossible.

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Oh my, I don't even know how to say it.

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And then the reality of the ultimate authority here comes out. A formal task indeed, considering that he already accepted that she was sinless.

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Moreover, there are many other fathers who made similar remarks about Mary. The Church, guided by the Holy Spirit to discern and evaluate these various statements, then makes its judgment on their value.

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The Church was the only body who was given the authority to make and declare doctrine, and Scripture says that such authority would be with her until the end of time, as also would be the guidance of the

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Holy Spirit, John 14, 16. And here's sola ecclesia, folks, right here. In order to refute this,

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Dr. White would have to prove that the Catholic Church of 1854 was not the Church of Jesus Christ. There you go.

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Sola ecclesia. Believe it because we say it, not because we have an ounce of evidence.

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But simply because we say it. Argument from authority. That's all it is.

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That's all it is. I was absolutely amazed.

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Later on, when the issue of Pseudo -Augustine, the fact that Ferrara quoted Aquinas who was quoting

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Pseudo -Augustine, he was quoting a work that Augustine didn't write. Aquinas had a real problem with this because he didn't engage in critical scholarship because there wasn't any critical scholarship yet.

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That was still a couple hundred years down the road. He lived in a day of anachronism where they thought, they honestly believed that things had never changed, that things had always been the way they are now.

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And so he gullibly quoted from all sorts of fraudulent documents to create many important elements of his theology, especially in regards to papacy.

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He did the same thing in regards to the subject of bodily assumption. Augustine did not write on the bodily assumption. Roman Catholic scholars recognize this.

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But notice what St. Genesis says. First, we need to realize that the author is given the title

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Pseudo -Augustine because scholars are not certain that it came from Augustine. No, they know it didn't come from Augustine. Not that it didn't come from Augustine.

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Second, just because it may have come from Pseudo -Augustine does not make the statement about either the assumption or the immaculate conception fallacious.

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It will take far more than a document not written by Augustine to undermine either of those two well -attested doctrines from the late patristic and early middle ages.

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The circularity of this reasoning is shocking.

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It's absolutely shocking. But it shows sola ecclesia to the nth degree.

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First of all, the only reason I pointed this out was because Ferrara brought it up and it had nothing to do with our debate because it had to do with bodily assumption, not the immaculate conception.

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But what it does illustrate is the tendency on part of Roman Catholics to use bogus documents.

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And why do they have to use bogus documents? Because they believe bogus doctrines. You use bogus documents to support bogus doctrines.

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When you're trying to cram things into the early church that just weren't there, that just wasn't on the plate, it just wasn't in the consciousness of the early church, then you've got to come up with bogus documents.

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And that's what they've done over and over and over again. Now, modern Roman Catholic historians recognize this.

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All of the collections that Aquinas used, for example, in promoting the papacy, we know the fake statements that he relied upon and they've been acknowledged.

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But the entire edifices built upon those fraudulent documents and that argumentation still stand.

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It's an amazing thing. It is an amazing thing. I'm just taken aback.

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I really, really am taken aback by that kind of argumentation. Dr. Genesis contacted me, wants to do a debate on whether the

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Catholic Church is a true church in light of its use of bogus documents, the donation of Constantine, the pseudo -Isidorian decretals, this type of stuff.

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Sounds like a fascinating debate, but I am concerned in light of this document, what use there would be to argue it.

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Because when you're arguing with somebody who says, look, my starting place is what the Pope tells me. Don't ask me for facts.

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Don't ask me to think logically. Don't ask me to think rationally. I'm simply, if the church tells me to believe it,

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I believe it. And if the church tells me, folks back there, believe it, I'm going to believe it. And I'm not going to give you anything more than that.

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What is accomplished there? What is accomplished by debating someone who simply says, let's use another illustration.

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I've encountered Mormons like this who say, I don't care what you show me.

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I don't care what facts you show me. I don't care what prophecies of Joseph Smith you show me. I don't care what archaeology says about the

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Book of Mormon. I have a testimony of the Holy Ghost, that the living prophet right now,

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Monson, right? Yeah, Monson. That he's the true prophet, and that Joseph Smith is the true prophet, and the

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Book of Mormon is the word of God. And that's all there is to it. Well, why do a debate with someone like that?

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Because they're not functioning on a rational basis anyways. Facts are irrelevant to them.

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Logic, truth, truth is irrelevant to them. It's their emotions, their feelings, their commitments.

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That's it. And what's there to debate? I don't know.

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There isn't anything to debate. So we'll see. The thought that's been running through my mind is,

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Michael Brown and I are going to do those Calvinism debates. I want to try to arrange something.

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Whatever you just hit has introduced into my headsets. I want to arrange a debate at the same time that I'm in Atlanta for those debates with Sir Anthony Buzzard.

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And then my thought would be to maybe go north from Atlanta up to New York and do another of the

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Great Debate series. And maybe Bob Stegness and I can debate that. But my concern, again, is how many times can you debate the circularity of Roman Catholicism?

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Believe what we say because we tell you to believe it. That's not an argument. That's not a debatable proposition.

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If Rome wants to say, yes, our beliefs actually did exist back then, and we will give you meaningful evidence to back up our claims, that's totally different than saying, well,

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Athanasius said this. And yeah, when he originally said it, it didn't mean what we've made it mean later. But you just have to believe that we can read those things into his words.

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That's not serious scholarship. It really isn't. I'm sorry. It's just not. And I think most people recognize that.

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Now, from that, we continue on. And Chris, we'll try to get to you as soon as we can.

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But very dangerous dividing line today.

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I have to be very careful, especially since I'm already rather amped up reading that stuff because it just amazes me.

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But I decided a few weeks ago, I didn't know when I'd get around to doing it. I decided a few weeks ago that I just had to address this because it is so illustrative of not only the convert syndrome.

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And the convert syndrome, we see it in so many different religions.

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When someone leaves Protestant evangelicalism of some sort and joins fill in the blank, doesn't matter which one it is.

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And then you start listening to this convert. Immediately, you start going, wow, this guy is all of a sudden sounding very different.

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Now, you'd expect there'd be some differences. Sure. I mean, it changes perspective. But when that convert starts talking about what they had believed, let me relate a conversation that took place many, many moons ago in a building no longer exists, our old offices over on 16th

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Street. And I was on the phone with Jerry Matitix.

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Yes, Jerry Matitix, who is no longer an Orthodox Roman Catholic. Though I, again, would love to hear some of the big, wouldn't you love to hear a

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Scott Hahn, Jerry Matitix debate? Wouldn't that be, man, I'll tell you, I'd buy plane tickets. They arrange that when

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I'm on my way. But this was back when Jerry was still with Catholic Answers.

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And yes, I know that Carl Keating and Jimmy Akin and the guys over there, Tim Staples, would like everyone to forget that Jerry Matitix was once the darling of Catholic Answers.

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But he was. And we still have the old Disrock magazines that prove that he was. So anyway,

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I was on the phone with Jerry Matitix and I was asking Jerry about our first debate because Jerry misbehaved in our first debate.

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He didn't even mention the subject of the debate until 14 minutes into his 20 minute opening statement. And it was one of those pseudo moderation jobs by Patrick Madrid.

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There's twice that he, quote unquote, moderated one of our debates where he didn't really do any moderation at all and let the

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Roman Catholic just behave in inane ways. The other was in Toledo with Art Sippo.

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But anyway, I was, you know, one of the things that came up, I said, Jerry, you call yourself a, you said you were an anti -Catholic.

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What books did you write on Roman Catholicism? Well, James, I didn't need to write any books.

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But so you didn't write any books on Catholicism? No. How about some tracks? Did you write some tracks on Roman Catholicism?

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I've written lots of tracks on Roman Catholicism. We've passed out thousands of them. We passed. Rich and I stood along the pilgrimage route in Cherry Creek State Park up in Denver during a papal visit 1993, 17 stinking years ago, passing out tracks that I had written on Roman Catholicism.

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I mean, if I became Roman Catholic, it would be easy for me to document that I had been opposed to Roman Catholicism.

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You know what I mean? We've got the books. We've got the debate. We've got the tracks. We've got lots of audio, video.

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You know, it'd be easy for me to document these things, right? Okay. Any tracks,

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Jerry? No, no, no tracks. Articles? No, no articles. Sermons? Well, I preached lots of sermons against Rome.

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You mean you mentioned Roman Catholicism in sermons you preached? Well, yes. Oh, okay. Do any debates?

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No, I didn't do any debates. So the point is, Jerry, that you were a believing

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Protestant. Not a, quote unquote, anti -Catholic. Now remember, anti -Catholic, of course, is a buzz term.

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It's meant to stop thought, not create thought. It's meant to create divisions and walls.

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And it's just, you know, every time I hear somebody calling me an anti -Catholic or an anti -Mormon or an anti -Muslim or whatever,

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I realize this is a very rude, inconsiderate and self -centered person. Because I am a

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Reformed Baptist apologist. That's what I am. And I recognize that other people who defend their faith,

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I call Muslims Muslim apologists. I don't call them anti -Christian apologists. I don't call Roman Catholics anti -Protestant apologists.

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I mean, for many of them, that might not be a bad description. But I recognize that, and I think any fair -minded person recognizes, that I make a positive case for my faith.

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I make a positive case for the Trinity. I make a positive case for the Gospel. I make a positive case for the

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Bible. And I've debated such a wide variety of critics that any honest -hearted person will admit that I should simply be identified as a

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Reformed Baptist apologist, a Christian apologist in general. But specifically, if you want to go for the denominational moniker,

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I would be a Reformed Baptist apologist. I mean, that's just basic common sense, right? Okay.

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So when I hear people use the anti -this, anti -that, then I know they're really not interested in truth.

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They're selling something. They're snake oil salesman -type people. And you hear this all the time on Catholic Answers and things like that.

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So this kind of language all of a sudden starts popping up in these converts.

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And these converts start puffing up their past and perverting their past and making claims about their past that just aren't true.

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And eventually, you can't even meaningfully recognize what past they came from, especially if you happen to know the people and know what they were like.

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Well, a couple of weeks ago, it was, let's see, today is, I believe, the 21st.

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So this would be one, two, three weeks ago tomorrow. I believe it was

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Wednesday, September 1st. I was putting new rims on my bike.

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And so I was taking them into the bike shop because they've got tools to do this and it takes a lot less time to put these new tires on.

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And so on and so forth to put new rims on my bike. And I got up there and I realized as I handed them to the guy that I had forgotten the tubes at home.

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Duh. I gave him the tires and the liners and the rims, but the tubes, and they didn't have any of the thorn -resistant tubes, which we need out here in Arizona.

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So I had them back at home. So I was only two miles back from the house. So I drive back to the house. I get the tubes. I get back in the car.

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It's right around 11 o 'clock, as I recall. And I'm driving out of my neighborhood and I'm scanning through the radio stations.

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And I decided to pop over to the Roman Catholic one. Every once in a while, I pop over, see if I can catch John Martignone or Catholic Answers Live or something like that.

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See what's on. You know, just listen in for a moment. And there is a program on.

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And the host is a person I'm quite familiar with by name of Marcus Grodi.

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Now Marcus Grodi, I believe, is a former Presbyterian minister. Of some denomination,

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I would assume of probably PCUSA. And he's talking about converts to Catholicism and how they'll read the

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Bible and there's things that bother them, but they'll just put it up on the shelf and ignore it. But then it'll always come back.

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And see, he's part of this coming home network stuff. And all of a sudden,

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I realize I go, I have a sneaking hunch. I know who the guest today is.

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And I had, as I'm driving along, I'm just shaking my head. This is a program called Deep in Scripture.

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And the guest is Patti Bonds. Now, most people know in the audience that Patti Bonds is my physical sister.

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I say physical sister because I have many, many spiritual sisters who help support this ministry and are very encouraging and with whom

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I have a very close spiritual relationship as you're supposed to have in the body of Christ. Patti Bonds converted back in 2000 to Roman Catholicism.

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And most of you have maybe seen—we played, what was it, last year sometime? When did we go through the entirety of that Veneration of Saints and Angels debate with Patrick Madrid?

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It was sometime last year, I think, maybe. And you remember the audience questioner and how many times people have thrown that my direction, as if it had some type of meaning.

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Because Patti Bonds had separated herself from our family long before this had happened.

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And to my knowledge, never darkened the door of the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. Herself admitted that she could not listen to our debates.

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And so the relevance of her conversion is highly questionable for anybody, to be perfectly honest with you.

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But the big thing was, how on earth are you going to put someone who,

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I believe, attended Moody Bible Institute for one year on a program called

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Deep in Scripture? I was taken aback, obviously, but I was even more taken aback by the things

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I heard. And I want to respond to some of the things that were said, because once again, the assertion was made, not only was the term anti -Catholic used, which is just bogus, it's just dishonest.

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But then the term hyper -Calvinist was used. Now, I can guarantee you something. If you were to contact

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Mrs. Bonds today and ask her to give you a historical definition of hyper -Calvinism, she would not have a clue how to do so.

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She wouldn't have any knowledge about the issues regarding the duty of unbelievers to believe, seeking for signs of regeneration.

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She doesn't know anything about that, just doesn't know. But what bothered me the most about listening to this was the man sitting there, prompting her and never saying a word of correction.

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The man claims to be a former Presbyterian minister. Now, I do not understand how any person,

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I don't care what you convert to, can sit there on a national radio program and hear someone lying, maybe out of abject ignorance, but lying about the very beliefs you say you once held and you don't say a word of correction.

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How do you do that? How do you do that? I don't understand. I believe

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Marcus Grodi is guilty of gross dishonesty and reprehensible abuse of Patty Bonds to continue his own thing.

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So I'm going to play a section. I'm going to start and stop it. And we're going to find out what it's like to go deep in Scripture, from the

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Roman Catholic perspective. And what we'll discover is, to go deep in Scripture is just simply to repeat what

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Rome tells you to believe, not to go deep in Scripture. You'll hear, we're going to look at Matthew 16. You'll hear nothing meaningful about this text.

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You'll hear nothing about the fact that Doso is in the future, voice is a promise to give to Peter in the future.

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You'll hear nothing of that. And here is someone who has now been in the Roman Catholic Church for 10 years, Patty Bonds, longer for Marcus Grodi.

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And you will not hear any meaningful interaction with scholarly

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Protestant refutation of the position. You just won't hear it, because they don't do it.

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They don't want to even acknowledge that it's out there. That's what's sad. But here's from the

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September 1st, deep in Scripture, starting off with Marcus Grodi.

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It's always a particular sign of God's miraculous mercy to me, in my mind.

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Because he certainly plucked you out of what seemed like one of the most anti -Catholic environments, out of which

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I've known any convert come. It's a long way from Geneva to Rome. And for the audience, that means hyper -Calvinism, which is...

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Now, I immediately stop. No, it doesn't. And so we're faced with one of two possibilities.

32:59

Either Marcus Grodi's entire conversion story is bogus, and he was the most ignorant

33:05

Presbyterian minister that ever lived, or he's being dishonest.

33:11

One of the two. Because I would think, you know, when I was at Fuller Seminary, one of the main professors

33:20

I had was a PCUSA minister. And he talked a number of times about the things that were required for licensure at that time, the

33:28

PCUSA. And at that time, you still had to read the Institutes of the Christian Religion.

33:34

You still had to know what Calvin taught. And so it is very hard for me to believe that someone who is actually an ordained

33:43

Presbyterian minister could just so glibly confuse

33:48

Reformed theology and hyper -Calvinism. I understand why Arminians do that.

33:55

I understand their ignorance. But this guy claims he was something else. Did you want to... May I interject here?

34:01

Well, you actually have control of the soundboard, so... Yes, but I like to cooperate on these things. Yes, okay.

34:07

Synergistic. But as someone who attended the same church...

34:13

That's right. You went to the same church that my assistant... For many, many years that she attended for those same many, many years...

34:18

Northwest Community Church. Northwest Community Church, 43rd Avenue and Bell Road, Phoenix, Arizona. That's right. Okay. We sat under the same pastor.

34:27

That pastor was a professed Amoraldian. Jay Letty. Jay Letty. He was a four -point

34:33

Calvinist. Number one, I don't think that there's any genuine hyper -Calvinist that would sit under a

34:39

Calvinist, number one. And number two... Let alone an Amoraldian. They would never sit under an Amoraldian.

34:44

That's right. And so the entire focal point, and there's more that's going to come up here

34:53

I'm sure going to play that's going to be real interesting in how that church is represented. I remind you, and I've said this on air before,

35:00

I witnessed her third baptism. I was there. Which we need to explain.

35:06

That's the third time in her life she was baptized. Third baptism was also a term used during the Radcliffe Reformation to kill people.

35:13

The Reformation was a really bad thing. You're drowning. Didn't want to go there. But so the transformations were ongoing there, and that is the church that she converted out of into Roman Catholicism.

35:28

Which never excommunicated her for so doing, unfortunately. Yes. Yeah. Should have, but didn't.

35:34

That was one of the major mistakes that was made there. There should have been a church discipline, but there wasn't.

35:42

Anyhow, there actually is a later part, and I'm not sure we're gonna get to it because we want to get to Chris. He's been very patient for a long period of time.

35:49

But I do want to play this. There's a later part that also touches on this.

35:57

Maybe we'll play it in another program, but let's just... That's the other side of the universe from Catholicism.

36:03

Even Methodists are closer to the Catholic Church. That's for sure. Than the Hyper -Calvinists.

36:09

Notice Hyper -Calvinists said second time by alleged former... Anyway.

36:16

What gets me is... And you've got family members that to this day are closed door anti -Catholics, right?

36:27

Closed door anti -Catholics. Let's not mention the fact that you have family members who have studied more about Roman Catholicism than 99 % of Roman Catholics ever do in their lives, and that I, Marcus Grodi, would never debate because I couldn't defend myself adequately in a debate against those family members.

36:47

But let's just not talk about that, right? And very much so. And you would have never believed back then that it would be through the reading of Scripture that your heart would be open to the

37:01

Catholic Church. Is that true? Not at all. Not at all. The only crack in the door was actually this first selection.

37:10

Now, the first selection, he had already read five verses that she wanted to go over. The first selection is the Petrine passage in Matthew chapter 16, verses 18 and 19.

37:19

Because this is the one thing I never actually bought 100 % from a

37:24

Protestant perspective. This first passage in Matthew 16.

37:30

Now, that's interesting. That's interesting. There she's saying now, as the convert, 10 years down the road,

37:36

I never really bought the Protestant understanding of this text. Really? For those of you who are asking, well, you must have had extensive conversations with Mrs.

37:46

Bonds before conversion. No, of course not. My experience is that converts, once they decide to convert, or even before they decide to convert, once they even start pondering the possibility of conversion,

37:58

I am the last person on the planet that they talk to. I found out about this when

38:04

I was down in Florida, and there was no contact whatsoever.

38:10

Now, there was an anonymous email. And in God's gracious providence,

38:18

I got that anonymous email while I was teaching at Golden Gate. And for anyone who wants to read it,

38:29

I have posted that anonymous email and my entire response to it on our website many years ago.

38:37

Because I don't have time to respond to everything that comes to me. But in God's providence, when

38:43

I got that email, I sat down and I wrote a lengthy response to it.

38:50

And I said in that email the exact same things that I would say to Mrs. Bonds today.

38:56

And I didn't even know it was her. I found out later it was her. And ironically, I was so touched by the email itself that I forwarded my response to my wife and said, hon, here's a really good example of a

39:12

Protestant that is playing with fire. And here's how I responded. That's very unusual for me to do.

39:20

And it turned out that that was Patti Bonds. Let me read it again, then we'll let you jump into it. It's a familiar passage.

39:27

I think I'm reading the Revised Standard Version here. And Jesus says, And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock

39:33

I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

39:45

Now, let's see if in this deep in Scripture discussion, there is any discussion whatsoever of the first word of verse 19.

39:59

If you ever hear anybody talking about this text that does not explain why the first word of verse 19 is what it is, then you're listening to someone who is not going deep in anything other than error.

40:16

Because the first word of verse 19 in Greek is doso. Doso soi tas kleidas teis basilaias ton urnon.

40:27

I will give to you, singular, I will give to you the keys of the kingdom of heaven.

40:35

But doso is future. It is not present tense. Peter receives nothing in this text other than revelation about who

40:42

Jesus is. He does not receive the keys in this text. That has to be explained in light of the fact the early church, likewise, believed that all the apostles received not just the authority of binding and loosing, but the keys.

41:00

That has to be explained. Any kind of meaningful conversation will mention that.

41:07

And of course, the fact that I'm saying this demonstrates it's not even going to be acknowledged in what follows.

41:12

I'm quite certain that almost every anti -Catholic preacher.

41:20

Anti -Catholic preacher. May I just register my gross offense at this bigotry?

41:27

That's what it is. It's Roman Catholic bigotry. It's offensive

41:32

Roman Catholic bigotry to make your communion the definer of all things.

41:40

And so if someone doesn't agree with your communion, well, they're just anti -Catholic. They have nothing positive to say. They're just anti -Catholic.

41:45

That's bigotry. Okay, just want to throw that out there. Make sure people hear how many times, how many times already has the term anti -Catholic preachers.

41:58

It has this knee -jerk answers to this. Oh, sure. And I've heard them all. Knee -jerk reactions.

42:03

Not in -depth exegesis. Let's ignore the fact that it's

42:11

Protestants that write the vast majority of meaningful Bible -based commentaries on these texts. It's just knee -jerk reactions.

42:19

And none of them really made sense to me. I had a wonderful Bible teacher slash pastor when

42:27

I started to study, and I remember him going through this section not too long before my study began. And thinking, you know, that just doesn't, it doesn't make sense.

42:37

Jesus was the perfect teacher, and when he used wordplay, he used it perfectly.

42:44

I agree, which is why we actually have to look at what is written under the direction of the

42:52

Holy Spirit, and not just read back into these texts things that we're told to see by the

42:59

Roman Catholic Church centuries later. He didn't make some weak, barely connected word picture.

43:07

He used excellent teaching techniques. He did, which is why he said,

43:14

Kai epitaute te petra, and upon this rock. Why, if you're using direct address of Peter, because it says,

43:23

Sui Petras, you are Petras. Why then use taute? If I say to you, you are rich, and upon, what's the next word

43:33

I'm going to use? You, you're going to stay in second address, second person. You're going to be direct address.

43:40

But taute, upon this Petra, is different. It's not

43:46

Petras Petra. I recognize, meaningful Protestant apologetics have not based an argument upon the distinction of Petras and Petra for a long time.

43:55

There's a lot of people still repeat that, but meaningful people that actually read on the subject haven't done that for a long, long time.

44:04

But for a long, long time, we have been emphasizing the fact that it says, and upon epitaute, upon this te

44:13

Petra, I will build my church. What's that? What's taute referring back to?

44:20

Will that even be discussed? Well, of course not. And, but I had never considered the fact that Jesus wasn't speaking in Greek.

44:29

He wasn't speaking in English when he actually said these words. So, I still didn't quite understand what it was he was working with, but I knew that, that Rock and Peter supposedly meant something similar, and that I just didn't buy the weak connections that I was hearing as explanations.

44:49

Yeah, they, in fact, I want to point out to the audience, I don't know if those of you that are at home and you've got a Bible in front of you, but I quoted these from the

44:58

Revised Standard Version today because this is probably the most commonly accepted

45:04

Bible and translation amongst English speakers, though still a huge percent still are with the

45:11

King James and then the Catholics. Eh? Eh? There's someone that's massively disconnected with modern evangelicalism.

45:22

The RSV is a small percentage only in the quote -unquote mainline denominations, which are dying on the vine.

45:31

And in any church that's growing, the RSV is a very, very small percentage.

45:37

NRSV maybe just a little bit more. We're talking ESV, NASB, New King James, you know,

45:44

NIV are the big ones. Don't even get mentioned. Don't even get mentioned. Total disconnect. We Catholics have our own translations, but the reason

45:52

I pointed this out is you mentioned the Greek behind Peter, Petros, or the

45:58

Greek behind rock, Petra, and especially anti -Catholics would always make a distinction. Anti -Catholics.

46:04

How many times is that now? I mean, it's like a drumbeat. Distinction between those two, the one masculine, one feminine translation of this word.

46:13

And what, I don't know if you ever noticed this, Patty, but you know in study of the New Testament that there are all kinds of Greek words that have layers of meaning.

46:29

And throughout the entire Testament, you could easily have one, if not a dozen verses on every page with a footnote to the

46:38

Greek behind you telling you that this particular Greek word has unique meanings. You could do that in every page of the

46:45

New Testament. But if you look in your Bibles, you will see that it's not done very often at all.

46:51

They don't do that except in Matthew 16. In the footnotes of Matthew 16, it says

46:58

Greek Petros, Greek Petra. Why? And to me, that just is, it's just a clear indication that for a long, long, long time, the mostly

47:12

Protestant committees that put these Bibles together, these translations, assumed that that was the silver bullet answer to this verse.

47:23

Well, Jesus isn't that sloppy. I mean, he meant to say what he said. And one thing that helped me was

47:29

I've spent probably three decades now studying the Spanish language. And so I'm very familiar with nouns that are masculine or feminine.

47:39

And so when I read the explanation of why Peter is translated one way in the

47:46

Greek and rock is different in the Greek, it made perfect sense. It's the same word.

47:51

It's just that one's masculine, one's feminine. And you wouldn't look at Peter, this stinky fisherman, and apply a feminine word to him.

48:00

Just like I wouldn't call you Patrick. Exactly. You've got the feminine version of that.

48:07

Patty. So when I finally read the Catholic take on this, it just clicked.

48:15

It's like Jesus was speaking Arabic. And in Arabic, he said, you are rock.

48:20

And on this rock, I will build my church. It's the very same word in Arabic. It was only in the translating that it had to look different.

48:29

And those that were reading the Greek back then understood why it was different and that it wasn't really different.

48:36

It's just a different version or a different form of the same noun. Now, what you're going to hear here is a very gentle correction on the part of the host of the program.

48:51

Because, of course, Jesus wasn't speaking Arabic. And we don't know what the

48:59

Aramaic original would have been if there was an Aramaic original. In fact, the version of the

49:05

Gospel of Matthew that even from the Roman Catholic perspective was canonized by the Roman Catholic Church is in Greek. So all the

49:13

Aramaic stuff is pure speculation. And we discussed this in the debate with Gerry Mantix back in 1993 and demonstrated that that's a bogus argument.

49:24

But be that as it may, yeah, Arabic. Well, I'm glad I'm learning Arabic. So now

49:31

I can read this in the original Arabic. But, of course, our earliest Arabic translations are from around 892.

49:38

For those of you that have not heard this argument before, Jesus spoke Aramaic, which was a more common version of Hebrew.

49:44

And in that, the word is kepha or sepha. Later, Paul refers to him as cephas. That's exactly what

49:50

Patty's talking about. And he frequently called him that because that's what he was. And he emphasizes that rock.

49:58

And that name comes up quite often. The other thing I noticed in here was that it's my church, not churches.

50:10

And, you know, as a Protestant, I remember my daughter. Now, listen to this. I almost, and I'm sorry,

50:17

I was going to do this because I know this road. And I've ridden this road many times.

50:24

I know where Patty Bonds lived at this time. And I was going to drive down this road and just count for myself how many churches there are, either on Union Hills or Bell Road.

50:40

There are a few, not a huge number, but there are a few.

50:45

But I was going to count and just find out how many of them actually have a meaningful doctrine of Sola Scriptura to them.

50:51

But I may still do that. It's not difficult to do. I come back from that direction more than once.

50:57

We were driving down Union Hills Road on the way to church one Sunday, and Union Hills is like Church Alley.

51:04

You know, just one after another after another. And I remember my daughter asking me, you know,

51:10

Mommy, why do we know we're going to the right church? And I said, well, we go to the one that most closely follows the

51:18

Bible as we understand it. Now, I would like to point something out. Let's say we put together a whole list of churches.

51:29

Let's say we went from Thunderbird to Beardsley, from 7th

51:35

Street to 43rd Avenue. Take all the churches in that entire block.

51:40

There'd be a few churches in that large amount of area. OK? Find out how many of them believe, proclaim, and practice

51:53

Sola Scriptura and compare what they teach with one another in comparison to all the churches that believe you have to have some external authority outside of the

52:01

Bible. And you will find the ones that teach Sola Scriptura significantly more united in what they teach than the others.

52:09

All the liberal churches which have abandoned Sola Scriptura, you'll find everything under the sun. Homosexuality and everything there.

52:17

And find the Roman Catholic parishes in that area and find out how many of them have liberal priests and compare them with the ones that have conservative priests, and you will still find more unity amongst the

52:30

Sola Scriptura -teaching churches than you will between those two parishes. I guarantee. Guarantee it.

52:36

And even as the words were coming out of my mouth, I was thinking, that's a real shaky argument.

52:42

If you're driving down Church Row. And so anyway, I mean, to us as Protestants, it is churches.

52:51

And especially from— No. No, it's not. We have one church that is manifest in local bodies, and that wonderful passage in 1

52:59

Timothy 3 .15 is talking about the local churches. And the more people are driven to obey and honor the

53:08

Word of God, the closer in unity they walk with one another. From where I came from, we emphasize that because we're very elitist and we like—

53:18

Now listen to this. Listen to this, folks. Now Rich is ready for this one. So here you have the main reason

53:27

I did this. Mrs. Bonds, on her blog, has already made numerous statements that demonstrate that her understanding of theology was exceptionally lacking prior to her conversion and remains that way.

53:44

And here you have, I think, one of the clearest examples of this. The fact she will call herself a hyper -Calvinist when she was going to a church that wasn't even fully

53:51

Calvinistic. Is clear evidence of this. And what you're going to hear now,

53:57

I think, is clear evidence of it as well. To keep all those others out there, and they're very different, and most of them aren't even saved, as far as we're concerned.

54:06

And let me clear that to the audience. I am sorry you're having to translate so much. No, no, no, no, no, no.

54:12

That's not the point. It's just I know the fuller story, you know, your background, and we can't give the whole thing to everybody, you know, in one swell foop here.

54:21

But the main issue is that you come from a background that wasn't only anti -Catholic.

54:27

It was just about anti -everybody else, right? Absolutely. All the other Protestants were probably not saved either.

54:34

Very elitist. Extremely elitist. I remember saying to a friend of mine, we're probably one of a thousand people in the nation that are truly saved.

54:42

There you go. One of a thousand people in the world that are truly saved.

54:48

Now, I have absolutely no earthly idea what she's talking about there.

54:55

But again, this is a woman who never came to my church, never listened to my debates.

55:01

Yes, sir? There is no question in my mind, again, having gone to that same church, that if the elders of that church had learned, if there's any truth to this whatsoever.

55:18

Frankly, I think it just sounds good and that's what she's spinning here. But the yarn that she's spinning, had the elders of that church learned that she believed that, okay, they would have corrected her.

55:34

And if she didn't submit to that, you know what? They would have excommunicated her for that. They would have kicked her for that.

55:40

Yeah, it would have sounded amazing. Some other place. This is not the place for you because we do not believe that way.

55:46

And what, we went there six, seven, eight years? I was there?

55:52

No way. No way. And I was a member of that church. I preached in that church.

56:00

And Barry, you were there too. So, all right. All right, so there you go. There's more we could play, but poor

56:07

Chris has been sitting on the phone for a long time. We'll go late if we need to answer longer, but let's shift gears here and talk with Chris.

56:17

Hi, Chris. Negative, sir. Second time caller. Thank you for taking my call. Well, I will translate that and accept that.

56:26

Thank you, sir. I have been witnessing lately to my childhood best friend who recently married a non -Trinitarian

56:33

Messianic Jew. Oh, really? A Messianic Jew. And he is now in that cage stage.

56:39

He, she, and their friends, and they are being very virulent and militaristic in trying to witness their faith against me, somebody who they know is pretty sound in my faith, being a teacher of Reformed theology.

56:52

And so, I've been throwing out verses back and forth to them, engaging them in dialogue.

56:58

It's almost to the point where I'm casting pearls before swine. But— Well, let me ask you a question.

57:03

Let me ask you a question. You're aware of the debate that took place Tuesday night? I am, yes.

57:09

And I have not heard any of it, though. Well, nor could you yet, because it hasn't aired yet. It'll air, hopefully, the first weekend in November on the

57:19

Jewish Voice broadcast. But you will undoubtedly want to get hold of it, because I know they're going to be making it available.

57:26

Because I'm wondering, have they been influenced by Joseph Good? I have not heard the name.

57:33

I really don't know where they get this from. They seem to have a kind of a, as Alistair Begg would call it, theological dog's breakfast.

57:42

It's more than just Arianism. It's perfectionism. It's theonomy, believing that the

57:47

Old Testament ritualistic laws, ceremonial laws are still valid today, and on and on it goes. Okay, further question.

57:54

The difference between Arianism and the position that was taken by Joseph Good and Sir Anthony Buzzard, they're

58:02

Unitarians, and both of them deny the preexistence of Jesus in any sense.

58:08

Arians do not deny the preexistence of Jesus. Do they deny the preexistence of Christ? Yes, they do.

58:15

Thank you very much for clarifying that. Okay, so they wouldn't be Arians, they would be Unitarians. Okay, thank you very much.

58:21

And so, I've been interacting with them on a lot of different verses, none of which they will reply to me until just now, actually.

58:29

They replied, and to my use of Colossians 119 and 2 -9, where it talks about, for in him the fullness of deity dwells bodily, talking about Christ being

58:40

God. And they replied to me with Ephesians chapter 3, verse 19, which uses the phrase,

58:49

And to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. And so they say that means either two things, that one, that any

58:57

Christian who has the Holy Spirit in him is God, and therefore I'm claiming to be God, or Jesus was not

59:03

God, but rather filled with the fullness of God because he had the Holy Spirit in him. And what would be the way that you would directly reply to that?

59:12

Well, a couple things. First of all, I don't know those would be texts I'd be using with someone who's coming from their perspective, because in the debate that we had, we emphasized the identity of Jesus, not only as the preexistent son of God, but likewise his identification as Yahweh.

59:32

Because if he's truly identified as Yahweh in a unique fashion, and if he has existed as the creator prior to the creation, then

59:40

Unitarianism is finished. I mean, that's all there is to it. And when dealing with someone on texts like this, we can see in Colossians 2 -9 that it says, for in him dwells all the fullness of deity, theatetos, not pleroma tu theu, which is what you have in Ephesians 3 -19, but you have theatetos that is used there, which as B .B.

01:00:03

Warfield defined it, that which makes God God, dwells in him in bodily form, that's post -resurrection. So the fullness of deity dwells in him in bodily form.

01:00:12

The mere term plerao would not in and of itself seal the deal, but what you need to realize is their interpretation of the texts in Colossians would cause

01:00:23

Paul's arguments against the Proto -Gnostics to boomerang against him. Do you have my book on the

01:00:28

Trinity? Yes, I do actually. Yes, God just providentially gave it to me a couple days ago.

01:00:34

Okay, you will see. I don't think that that has a scripture index in it, but the scripture index is on our website.

01:00:41

If you will look up those texts in Colossians, you will see that I address them within the context of what

01:00:46

Paul's argument actually was against the Proto -Gnostics in Colossians. That should give you the information you need there. But again, if they do not believe in the preexistence of Christ, the issue is to demonstrate his preexistence and the specific identification of Jesus as Yahweh in a way that no other creature could be identified as Yahweh, specifically in John chapter 12 and in Hebrews chapter 1.

01:01:13

So there's a whole chapter on Jesus as Yahweh, and those are the two that I focus on.

01:01:18

I go rather in -depth on them. That's the direction you have to go, because our Unitarian opponents did not have any meaningful responses to those either.

01:01:27

But another good direction to go is the worship of Christ and the fact that they have to come up with relative worship and things like that.

01:01:34

The last two avenues I have addressed with them, and they simply refuse to interact with it whatsoever. You can't force anything.

01:01:40

One that I just mentioned to you was just a nugget that I wanted to be able to respond to them.

01:01:45

And one other avenue, and this is my second very related question that I had for you, was my assertion that Jesus Christ is indeed infinite

01:01:53

God, therefore it would take, because we have an infinite sin debt against God, it would take an infinite propitiation for our sins to be restored, to have a complete atonement in the eyes of God.

01:02:05

Is that a valid argument to make with them? I've put it out there, they haven't the foggiest clue how to interpret it and what to respond to it.

01:02:14

It's like they're colorblind and I'm putting out something in full color.

01:02:21

They just do not understand it at all. Well, for me, I find the most effective apologetic arguments are those that are firmly biblically based, and what you've got there is an appropriate theological conclusion, but probably the reason they're not catching it is because it's based upon so many preceding foundational beliefs that they don't share with you that the force can be lost once you don't have the foundation there to make that argument.

01:02:51

What came up in our debate was that if Jesus is not the God -man, then numerous statements about union with him and his perpetuatory work and things like that, especially the

01:03:03

Hebrews, cannot be understood appropriately. But you're dealing there with a high -level conclusion, and the reason they're not seeing that is because it's based upon numerous steps below that that they may not share in common with you.

01:03:16

And so we have to be aware of the need to build up the argument from the ground up, especially when you're dealing with someone who's obviously under the influence of some kind of—probably a single teacher,

01:03:29

I have a feeling. You might want to find out a little bit more about where they're getting their specific teaching from, because sometimes there's a unique twist that if you don't really know about it, you can really spin your wheels forever.

01:03:44

So you might want to ask, you might just find out from—direct me to a website, a book, or something that would lay out what you believe and why you believe, and that's going to give you an idea of what their authority structure is.

01:04:00

Okay. Thank you so very much, sir. Okay, if you don't do that, the spinning wheels thing can get very tiring very, very quickly.

01:04:07

I appreciate your time, and thank you for going along. Thanks for holding on, Chris. Thank you. All right. Goodbye. Bye -bye. All right, thank you very much for listening to The Dividing Line today.

01:04:16

Lots of subjects covered, but hey, that's what The Dividing Line is all about.

01:04:22

It's unique. Continue to pray for us this Friday, this Friday evening. I think it's 8 o 'clock

01:04:28

Eastern. I'll mention this again on Thursday, but Friday evening I'll be doing a Skype debate on ABN with Abdullah Kunda on assurance of salvation in Christianity and the

01:04:37

Qur 'an. Pray for that. We'll see you Thursday. God bless. Bye -bye.