Sola Ecclesia Preached by Robert Sungenis, and a Response to Robert Morey, et al.

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00:34

And greetings, welcome to The Dividing Line. We have an important program for you today. Lots of stuff to get to.

00:40

I'm wearing my unpopular the movie t -shirt today. And if you haven't gotten your unpopular the movie cards to give out to people and leave in magazines and with your tip, and please do tip, if you just put that without a tip, bad move.

00:59

Not good. Anyway, if you haven't gotten those cards, you can get them at the website.

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There's a little link there that you can get those and so on and so forth. So excited about that. But I want to start off by reviewing or talking about an extremely important debate on Roman Catholicism that took place in the month of January.

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And all of you are thinking, ah, you're finally going to get to your review of the debate with Trent Horn.

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Actually, that's not the debate I was talking about. Instead, I am talking about the debate that took place on Friday the 13th, of course, when

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Chris Arnzen, that was the one thing we were missing. We did not have a Chris Arnzen introduction.

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He was there, but we should have had it because that's the comedy element of all the debates because he got up and wished everybody a happy Friday the 13th and all that kind of stuff.

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And if you've never seen a Chris Arnzen debate introduction, it's scary, but it's normally scary funny as well.

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So I'm referring to the debate that took place five days earlier on the 13th, because ours was on the 18th, in Pennsylvania between Dr.

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Robert Syngenis and Dr. Tony Costa. And it was on the subject of the

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Immaculate Conception of Mary. Now, that's a subject that I've debated with Roman Catholic attorney

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Christopher Ferrara. And so now both are available on YouTube.

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But I wanted to address what came out in that debate because I think it's extremely important.

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And I think two really extremely important things came out in those two debates. The debate

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I had with Trent Horn illustrated to perfection the consistent synergism of Roman Catholicism and non -reformed non -Catholicism.

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Because Trent didn't rely on a lot of specifically Roman Catholic documents or argumentation.

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He pretty much argued like a Wesleyan would, like a traditionalist

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Southern Baptist would. And so you could see very clearly the connection between the two. What came out in Dr.

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Costa's debate with Dr. Syngenis was, in my opinion, one of the clearest examples, similar to the debate that I did with Robert Syngenis on the bodily assumption, because he has to go the same direction, one of the clearest examples of sola ecclesia that I've ever seen.

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So since sola scriptura is so important, I asked Tony, he only has a small amount of time to join us today, but I asked

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Tony to join us on the air today, and he has done so. Dr.

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Costa, thank you very much for getting on the phone. Sorry about all the changes and scheduling and all the rest of that stuff, and I appreciate you giving us some time today.

04:16

Not a problem. It's always, always a pleasure to be with you, James. Always a pleasure. Okay, here's my first big question for you.

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Was that bow tie a real one or a clip -on? That was a real bow tie.

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Yes! Yes! Oh! Yes, indeed. My heart, my heart is,

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I just saw the cardiologist too, so my heart is warmed. It is, it is... It is strangely warm to use

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Wesley's words. That is great! Congratulations for joining us in, you know, me and you and Al Mohler, and it's great.

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In fact, it's interesting, I preached at Apologia Church yesterday, and I'm just going to go ahead and call it what they call it for now.

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Anyway, one guy from the church wore a bow tie, and he was crushed that I didn't wear a bow tie.

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But then there was this other guy in the back in a three -piece suit with a bow tie, and as I was leaving, he caught me, he was a

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Mormon. He was a Mormon. Yeah, and so be careful of Mormons wearing bow ties, that's all

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I can say. So, you pretty much knew what you were going to be running into, didn't you? Yes, I did.

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Yes, I did. I knew that it was going to be basically an argument on Sola Ecclesia and the whole Second Thessalonians 2 .16

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about the traditions, the old tradition that was delivered, and so forth.

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So I knew the angle that Robert was going to take. Now, when I listened to his opening statement, yeah,

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I was, you know, I knew where he was going to be going, but it was in the rebuttal that he really started making the strongest appeals to the idea that, look, you don't need to have an explicit, and of course we'd say even implicit, statement from Scripture for the

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Immaculate Conception to be true. But then as he was pressed on the issue of, well, look, as you pointed out, it's not a part of the early

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Church either, and you were primarily quoting from people like Ott and others, who obviously are not liberal

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Roman Catholics or something like that, these are Roman Catholic scholars. You pointed out that this was not a part of the faith of the early

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Church, and shockingly, his response was, who cares? I mean,

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I think it's a direct quote. Who cares? Yes. He also said that whenever I brought up the authority of Scripture alone, because the

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Immaculate Conception did not mention Scripture, he basically said, who cares, and so what? That was his most common refrain.

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Yeah, who cares, and so what? Yeah, so what is a Syngenian phrase.

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I hope Bob doesn't mind, but after listening to this, I've decided that we need to refer to him as the curmudgeon of Roman Catholic apologists, because he's the lovable curmudgeon, but he does tend to be quite curmudgeonly.

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And he was curmudgeonly that evening, probably because he didn't feel well, but he's been curmudgeonly in debates with me when he felt just fine, so it seems to be just sort of a thing.

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But yeah, so what? And it's like, I think he thinks so what is actually an argument, but it wasn't an argument.

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You had laid out what sola ecclesia is, and no matter how hard the

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Roman Catholic tries, they can't get out of proving that sola ecclesia does represent where they're coming from.

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Absolutely, absolutely. And I mentioned that over and over throughout the debate, and so that was basically the underpinning that he was operating under.

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There's no doubt about it. At the end of the day, it's because of the Church that we know what the canon is, it's because of the

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Church that we know about the place of Mary, and it's because of the

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Church that we can have the sacraments where grace can be conveyed and so forth. So even though he denied it, at the end of the day, it was very clear that his sole authority was his sola ecclesia.

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Well, basically, let's put both of our debates together.

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He admitted there's really nothing in Scripture that substantiates either of the last two dogmas that have been defined by Rome.

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I wonder if that's why he's not on EWTN anymore, because if you pick up Tim Staple's books, he does try to argue from, obviously, from our perspective, wildly eisegetic texts.

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You know, trying to read into Ciccara to Mene, or something like that, just huge tomes of Roman theology.

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But they do try, anyways, to insert something into those texts that would give it some semblance of at least being apostolic.

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But what was fascinating to me, and this is why I wanted to have you on, I hope people will track it down.

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It's on YouTube. Just put in Robert St. James, Tony Costa, it'll come up. Basically, what he did was he admitted that the actual dogma, and he did this with me as well on Bodily Assumption, the actual dogma was not known in its dogmatic form in the early

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Church. I haven't gotten all the way through it yet, because it's really long. But I'd be interested.

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He tried to list a number of early Church fathers, and tried to say that they believed part of the doctrine, or the seed of the doctrine, or anything like that.

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Did he ever explain why people like Ott and others went ahead and said the first person to really believe this was a monk named

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Edmer? No, he didn't. If you remember, James, there was a point there where he just rambled off a whole bunch of names, and of course he didn't provide the context.

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That's why I said that we should look at the context of what these writers are saying, and I don't believe they say any such thing, because Ott has openly admitted that none of them believe this.

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So he tried to argue Ignatius' argument, and the whole argument between Mary being the

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New Eve, etc., and she's being contrasted with the Eve in the Garden. But the contrast there is not between being

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Immaculate and not being Immaculate. The contrast is between one of the women disobeyed and the other woman obeyed.

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But at one point, James, this is what really took me for a loop, and you can hear the gasps in the audience.

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He basically said that if it wasn't for Mary, none of us would have a Savior, because if Mary said no to God, we'd basically be in trouble.

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We'd have no Atonement, no Salvation. So it really shows you, again, that—and at one point, actually,

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I even said that Pelagius outdid Augustine. Pelagius was willing to concede that not only was

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Mary Immaculate -conceived, all humans are Immaculate -conceived, because they're all born without the stain of original sin, which he denied.

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But I found that his arguments were really vacuous, really. Well, they're vacuous if you understand church history.

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But to the person who wants to believe what Rome is saying, I would call them desperation arguments at that point.

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But certainly not compelling, because he went through some of the early church fathers that you mentioned that specifically did mention

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Mary's sinning. For example, impatience on her part, doubt on her part.

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No one in the early church accused Mary of gross sin, because Scripture doesn't accuse Mary of gross sin, either.

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Of course, the idea—Mary herself says, God, my Savior—the idea that she had a preemptive application of the merits of Christ's death in her mind when she said that is just absolutely beyond any kind of level of belief, but that's what you have to believe if Rome tells you to.

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But what was fascinating to me is he tried to catch you, because you quoted those early fathers, and you then—he took those names, and then he tried to catch you by saying that very same

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Catholic encyclopedia says that they do not comprise a tradition in the early church.

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And I'm not sure if you caught that, but that's what he said. That was right before he gave that long list of alleged early church fathers that, as he said, believed in the

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Immaculate Conception. He never quoted one of them, and I don't think he ever could quote one of them, because what they were talking about was exalted phrases about Mary that has nothing to do with the idea of her being protected from the stain of original sin by a preemptive application of the merits of Christ.

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You can read those things in if you want to, but that's how Rome deals with these things. But here's the really important thing.

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What he's saying is, well, those fathers—and they were big names.

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I mean, what were some of them? Do you remember off the top of your head? Basil, Basil the

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Great. Okay, let's look at Basil. And Chrysostom. Right, Chrysostom. Let's look at Basil and Chrysostom.

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They do not constitute a tradition. Now, wait a minute.

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How many times have I seen Roman Catholic apologists appealing to either one of those writers—because their writings are voluminous—either one of those writers in defense of Roman Catholic tradition?

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Absolutely. And so here you have the idea that, well,

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Rome defines what is and what is not Scripture. Rome defines the interpretation of Scripture. Here, Rome defines what is and is not tradition, even within the writings of the same early church father, and then what that tradition means.

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If that's not sola ecclesia, I can't even begin to conceive what could be. Absolutely.

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And there was one point where I challenged them on the Dominicans versus the Franciscans, and how the

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Franciscans had their own Marian apparition to Catherine of Siena, and the

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Franciscans had the appearance of a Marian apparition to St.

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Bridget. St. Bridget is told that Mary is immaculately conceived. St. Catherine of Siena is told that she was conceived,

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I think, three hours after her conception. She was sanctified? Yes, yes, that's right.

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She was sanctified about three hours after being conceived. Uh -huh. And so what I pointed out is here you have two

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Marian apparitions that both contradict each other. Right. And then he went on to say, well, Rome does not,

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Rome only accepts certain Marian apparitions. But I know that the apparitions to Mediorgy, I believe,

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I may be wrong, but I think Robert is on record in saying that he thinks that those apparitions are demonic.

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Oh. I wouldn't be surprised. That's what he shared with me. Oh, okay. I wouldn't be surprised by that,

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I'll be honest with you. You know, I think it's one of the reasons that, you know, Bob's sort of on his own.

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He used to be, you know, with the mainline guys, and he was on EWTN, all the rest of that stuff, and was a part of that.

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And then, primarily because of some stuff, well, obviously the geocentrism stuff isn't overly popular amongst them, but some other issues regarding the modern

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Roman Catholic view of Israel and some of the issues that that raises.

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He's sort of off on the side there a bit. But that wouldn't surprise me if he takes that view.

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And certainly, when he and I debated papal infallibility, he took a very different tack in defending it than Tim Staples did only a few months earlier, including making the statement that there were many

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Roman Catholic bishops, popes, who were not Christians. Right.

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And so it's like, okay, that's not probably going to get you too many invitations on EWTN.

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You've got to sort of toe the line, I think, at that point. So yeah, he may have some very interesting views on that as well.

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But it just struck me, as I was listening to him, what it illustrated was there's no data that you can draw from to argue against definitions of the

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Roman See, because from his perspective, fundamentally, that's the ultimate authority. That's God speaking.

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I mean, he was treating a statement, which, as you pointed out, is historically fallacious.

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I mean, it's just on its face, historically fallacious to say this has always been the faith of the Church. It obviously plainly has not.

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And yet, that statement, because of its authority, is his. That's God speaking.

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That's it. That's the end. And anything you bring up, so what? Big deal.

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Why bother? You know, just dismissed it out of hand. It doesn't matter to him that seven popes denied the

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Immaculate Conception. His whole point was prior to December 8, 1854, that was okay.

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After December 8, 1854, you would be considered a heretic and outside the fellowship of the

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Church. So it's just incredible. And that's why I made the comparison with Mormonism, that it's somewhat similar to until Joseph Smith came along and received the revelation from the angel

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Moroni, Christianity was in the dumps, and then it was restored through Joseph Smith.

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And so he seems to be implying that there's ongoing revelation, much like what the Mormons argue.

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Well, you know, I've talked with some former Roman Catholic seminarians and people like that, and in the back rooms, they will utilize terminology like revelation, because they know that once you get into the modern, the three modern definitions, specifically the two

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Marian definitions and then the definition of papal infallibility, no one can seriously make an argument that these are apostolic.

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And yet, and this is the other thing, and I want to point this out to people, I don't know how much time you had to get to this in your comments, but he actually had the gall to quote 2

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Thessalonians 2 .15. And I'm like, I've lost track how many times

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I've corrected him on this, but he did it again. And I want to read it to folks. For Roman Catholic apologists, they say, see, we don't need to find it in the letter from us, it's in the word of mouth tradition, the oral tradition.

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And yet, he then turns around and dismisses the early centuries, well, the first millennium, basically, of the very teaching and preaching of the

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Church, and says, that doesn't matter. But wait a minute, how can a pope, how can those seven popes not have been aware of the apostolic tradition that becomes the foundation of the definition in 1854?

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Aren't they the very vessels through which it's supposed to be transmitted? Exactly. But he can't see that?

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Or is he just hoping that people aren't going to catch that? I think it's the latter, James. And he also brought up, it was almost a deja vu moment, because he brought up the whole

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Acts 15, which I think he also did with you on the bodily assumption. And he kept trying to hammer away that Peter was the supreme pontiff, and he made the final decision.

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In our cross -examination, I kept saying, but Robert, look at the text. James is the one who gives the final judgment.

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He's the one who says, I judge. He uses the Greek word krino. And moreover, I said, what you have here is, you really have a plurality of elders.

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You do not have this supreme pontiff who has the final say. It is a plurality of elders, and it's

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James who delivers the final judgment and the letter to be sent to the Gentiles. So he really misappropriated

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Acts 15. Well, I think you'll remember in the cross -examination in Albuquerque on bodily assumption, the same thing came up because he had to use the exact same argument.

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And I have to admit, it does make you sit back and go, all right, how many times has

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Bob St. Genes been challenged on the fact that he just simply glibly states that Peter made this decision when it's been pointed out to him more than once that that's not the case, that James is the one that uses krino.

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He's the one that is in charge of that council. And yet, it just keeps getting repeated over and over and over again.

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Same thing with 2 Thessalonians 2 .15, the point of that text, for him to say that that's relevant to the transmission of the text, or the transmission of the concept of immaculate conception from the apostles, and then turn around and say, yeah, but I can't give you any one for a thousand years that makes the same arguments that I make.

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Because he made the argument, it was quite interesting, he made the argument in his opening statement that in essence, without the immaculate conception, you have no

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Savior. That's right. Okay, can you show me anyone in the early church, anyone who could even make a slight claim to possession of apostolic tradition that argued as you do?

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And there's not one! How can someone recognize that, and yet continue to make those kinds of arguments?

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It truly makes you go, how does this work? I don't get it. Yeah, and also with the 2

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Thessalonians 2 .15, he kind of laughed it off when I said that the verbs were in the past tense, that this is what was delivered, and my whole point was to say that Paul is not saying, look, there's two streams here, there's oral tradition and there's sacred scripture, and this is going to be a constant in the church.

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My whole point in showing that it's passive means that what has been said has been delivered in written form, and that's the revelation that we have.

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What the apostles said orally, and what they wrote, was consistent. They were inspired by God, and therefore, what they said orally was the gospel message, and then they wrote it down.

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And so that was my whole point in pointing out the passive, just to show that this is a done deal, it's finished, it's done, it's written.

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And we have the whole counsel of God. Someone in Twitter, because I didn't follow up on this, but you had mentioned, and he definitely made this statement in his opening, that if Mary had said no, then we'd have no

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Savior. This idea of God's purposes being completely under the control of mankind, certainly consistent with synergistic, man -centered types of theology.

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They're definitely out there. But as you pointed out, well, why wasn't it just Mary?

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Why not Mary's father, or Mary's mother, or go all the way back to Moses? This just results in a complete overthrow of the idea of any kind of sovereignty on God's part.

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Yeah, when I brought up Romans 9 and the potter and the clay, and I said how Robert and Genesis would have us believe that the potter's subject to the clay and the demands of the clay,

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I pointed out how this would be considered just an absolute blasphemy when you think about it, that the potter's subject to the clay, and he simply said, oh, that's just a silly

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Calvinist interpretation. Well, you know, he claims to have been a silly

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Calvinist at some point, but he's been a little bit of everything at some point. That's the problem.

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Well, thank you very much for taking some time. I really felt, as I listened to the statements, and by the way, your opening statement,

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I just felt covered everything that needed to be said. It was inarguable, and the only way around it is to try to distract the audience from the reality that modern

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Roman Catholicism requires you to believe, de fide, by faith, a dogma that was unknown to the apostles of Jesus Christ, unknown to the generations after them, unknown to the centuries after them, contradicted by the teachings of those centuries after them, and did not actually arise in its modern form until a

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British monk named Edmer came up with it. And I personally think identifying Edmer is one of the best arguments against him, because I don't want to believe anything that was invented by someone named

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Edmer. I just, I have a personal problem with that. Yeah, somehow I always think of Monty Python when

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I think of a British monk coming up with, yeah. It's Edmer! I think Edmer's here! The knights to go

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Edmer! The knights to go Edmer! Yeah, that's what we need to do, the knights to go Edmer. That's the new version of it.

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So anyway, I'm getting rebuked from behind the window for going the knights to go

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Edmer. So thank you very much for putting up with my sudden request. I just want everybody to know about the debate.

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I thought it was a great presentation on your part, and patience as well. See, bow ties help with patience.

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People don't know that. But bow ties help you with patience. That's why I need to be living in one these days, actually.

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So anyway, well, thank you, brother. You're a great brother -in -law, a great servant -in -law.

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We appreciate your service to the Church, and stay faithful up there in Canada.

26:38

Yes. Thank you, Dr. White, and thank you for all your work for the Kingdom and for the cause of the Gospel. You're very valuable.

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All right. Thank you, sir. God bless you. God bless you. Bye -bye now. All right,

26:49

Dr. Tony Costa, thank you for joining us today. It's a good debate. And what we're going to do now, are we good until 1230?

27:02

Would jumbo work? Somewhere around there. I'm getting congrats.

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Thanks to everyone for congratulating me on my Super Bowl win. I took the overnight flight back from Houston.

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That last run, I'm a little sore, but I got across the goal line.

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In fact, I saw one thing on Facebook that said something along the lines of, if every time you heard the name

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James White last night, you were thinking about this guy, you might be reformed. They had my picture on it, so I thought that was pretty good.

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And then I got someone telling me that most of my Atlanta fans are about to stop following me.

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It's like, what did I do? It's not my fault there's someone named James White on the

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New England Patriots. What can I say? Anyhow, what I'd like to do now is

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I'd like to play at least a portion of Robert St.

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Genesis' rebuttal period. Because the rebuttal is where the gloves come off.

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That's where you start seeing the attempt of both sides to interact with the arguments of the other.

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The openings, yeah, they're important. They're supposed to lay the foundations, give the factual citations, that kind of stuff.

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But it's really in the rebuttals that you start seeing what the tack is going to be, especially by the person defending a position, as to how they're going to do it.

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And there were just some things that Bob St. Genesis said here that were just amazing to me.

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They really were. So let's listen to at least some of this. We'll go for a while, and then there's other stuff

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I need to get to today. So let's, I think I'm plugged in here, yep. Okay, let's go.

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Uh -oh, wait a minute, wait a minute. All right, what happened here? You know, it did it again.

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What is this? Why is it sound?

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Oh, this is an HDMI monitor. And the system wants to default to playing the sound to HDMI.

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And now we have it to the right one. And sorry about that.

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I guess I'm going to have to check that. I'm just not used to that happening. Let's try it again. There, it's at full volume, headphones.

29:51

Hopefully we are about to hear. Okay, let's get right to it. Tony opened up with a syllogism.

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All humans are sinners. Mary was human, therefore Mary was a sinner.

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Well, the problem with the syllogism is its premise is wrong. The premise is all humans are sinners.

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Obviously, if Christ was human and he wasn't a sinner, then he doesn't fit the syllogism.

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So the syllogism is illogical, it's a fallacy. The proper syllogism, you don't need to turn me down.

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The proper syllogism is that all the sons and daughters of Adam are sinners.

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And that's why you have this thing called the, oh yeah, virgin birth. You have the specific statement of scripture that Jesus is sinless.

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But again, as Tony and I were just discussing, you don't need that for St. Genes. To believe that Mary was sinless.

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As long as Rome teaches it, there you go. Tony's final comment, and I want to start with that, was that no one believed in the

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Immaculate Conception. Well, I'm going to go through a bunch of fathers here and a bunch of councils, but I think it's important to understand that what the truth is, is that these fathers did not hold to the complete doctrine of the

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Immaculate Conception. Now, let's think about that for a moment. They did not hold to the complete, in other words, they didn't hold to the essence of it.

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The essence, and I talked about this in Sunday School yesterday morning. I asked folks, what is the

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Immaculate Conception? A lot of people think the Immaculate Conception has something to do with Jesus. It has nothing to do with Jesus at all. Not when you're talking about Roman Catholicism.

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Immaculate Conception is the idea that Mary, in the instance of her conception, was protected from the stain of original sin by a preemptive application of the merits of Christ.

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That's the Immaculate Conception. That Mary not only does not sin in her life, that came first.

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And I can guarantee you, I can guarantee you that every church father he's going to refer to is only talking about that.

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The idea that eventually did develop. It wasn't a part of the early centuries. All the way through Christistom, you have a recognition that Mary was a sinner.

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Not some gross sinner, she wasn't prowling the streets or something, but that she was not perfect.

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That she was a fallen daughter of Adam. Look, in Luke chapter 2, when Mary says,

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God my Savior, what does that mean? Do you really think that when she said, God my

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Savior, she had a dogma that wouldn't be defined until 1854 in her mind?

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I mean, that's just stretching credulity to its breaking point. So, clearly, this whole subject, this whole issue, needs to be focused upon the idea of that preemptive application that protects her from the stain of original sin.

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That's what the Immaculate Conception is. All these other things, that's not the Immaculate Conception. So this would be sort of like saying, well, you know, these early church fathers, they were

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Trinitarian, but they didn't really believe in the Holy Spirit of God.

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But they had the germ of it, the seed of it. Really? You're not a

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Trinitarian if you don't believe in the deity of the Spirit. So, I'm sorry, there are honest

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Roman Catholic historians, but Roman Catholic historians generally don't do apologetics.

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I think Roman Catholic historians need to be honest here and say, look, and by the way, by the way, you got to give

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Bobs and Jenna's props, because we've tried to get other people to debate these issues.

34:25

We've tried to get other people to debate the concept of the authority of the

34:37

Roman Church to infallibly teach sola ecclesia. No, we don't believe in sola ecclesia. Yes, you do. We've just proven it.

34:43

But they won't do it. We can't get them to defend these dogmas. They want to just attack sola scriptura, deal with other issues.

34:52

So, at least give Bob props. He's willing to go out there and defend the indefensible.

34:58

But the only way you can defend the indefensible is in an indefensible fashion, as we see, by saying, well, it is what it is because Rome says so.

35:08

Period. End of discussion. That's all I can say.

35:13

I did, by the way, give a brief overview of Mariology, the four dogmas that have been defined.

35:22

Perpetual Rigidity, Mary as Theotokos, God -bearer, Mother of God, Immaculate Conception, Bodily Assumption, and then just briefly mention the fifth

35:32

Marian dogma, which hasn't been defined yet, but millions of Roman Catholics have turned in petitions to Rome asking that it be defined,

35:40

Mary as co -redemptrix and co -mediatrix with Christ, which has been taught by popes for 120, 130 years, somewhere around there.

35:50

So, I did that in the Sunday School lesson at PRBC yesterday morning, so it's number 25 in the

35:56

Church History series, if you want to sort of catch up with that and go from there.

36:01

So, back to Bob's notes. ...proclaimed in 1854. By this time in 1854, the doctrine had been kicked around by a lot of theologians, a lot of saints, a lot of councils...

36:18

Wait a minute, had been kicked around. So, is that how Revelation comes?

36:24

Is that what the dogma, the statement actually said? We've been kicking this around a while, and we've decided it's...

36:34

No, it says this is... we're defining this as revealed truth.

36:41

Kicking something around a thousand years after Christ is... Do you mean you got Revelation a thousand years after Christ?

36:48

See what happens when you deny sola scriptura? Now you're ending up with Revelation that comes long after the days of Christ.

36:59

Pretty dangerous stuff. ...and finally came to the definition that was given to us in 1854, which was the complete understanding of the

37:10

Immaculate Conception. Prior to that, there were seeds of belief, there were people who...

37:19

Seeds of belief. Seeds of belief. In other words, that's how you get around...

37:25

Yeah, nobody in the early church actually believed this, said it was necessary for Jesus to be

37:31

Savior. Never talked about Mary being protected from original sin. But you see, they had high views of Mary, and that's a seed.

37:42

And if you've ever read stuff, Newman's Development Hypothesis, this is all about.

37:48

You got the acorn to the tree. And so, if you can find anything...

37:56

And sometimes people will look at the truckload of theology that Rome crams into.

38:08

Cacarita mene. Blessed are you. Cacarita mene. Hail to you, full of grace.

38:15

Full of grace. Cacarita mene. Well, that must mean this and this. It's an angelic greeting.

38:23

And yet, they have to find something. They got to find something, and they'll treat the early church fathers in the exact same way.

38:32

They'll treat the early patristic sources. And that's why I've said for many years now...

38:38

Well, actually, I can now start saying for decades now. I have been saying that we, and I'm referring to Reformed Christians, we can let the early church fathers be, oh, the early church fathers?

38:53

That'd be good. We can let them have the ignorances that were theirs and the insights that were theirs.

38:59

We can learn from them, both good and bad. We can learn what not to do. We can learn what to do.

39:06

But we can let them be them. I don't have to turn them into Reformed Baptists because they weren't Reformed Baptists. And I don't need them to be

39:12

Reformed Baptists. But the Roman Catholic needs them to be Roman Catholics. Because these dogmas always say, the constant faith of the church from the earliest centuries.

39:23

And it's just not true. It's just not true. I mean, it's factually a false statement.

39:32

And that's why you have so much Roman Catholic liberalism in scholarship.

39:40

Because a Roman Catholic historian looks at a document, like that which defined the

39:46

Immaculate Conception or the Bodily Assumption, either one, in Ephebelus Deus, and I think the other one was Munesifintimus or something like that,

39:54

Deus, something along those lines. Don't have it in front of me. They look at these statements that are made, and they realize, they know, that's just not true.

40:06

It just, historically, it's indefensible.

40:12

So how much faith can you put in a dogma that's defined on the basis of completely untrue statements?

40:22

It's understandable why they end up being skeptical about all of it, including the

40:29

Trinity or the Deity of Christ, the Resurrection. It all gets thrown into the hopper somewhere. It's understandable why that happens.

40:37

Ideas of what the Immaculate Conception was, how it could be applied to marriage.

40:44

See, TurretinFan provided Munifis... This is one of the hardest

40:50

Latin words in the world. Munificentissimus. It sounds like something that would appear in Harry Potter and would make something disappear when you said it, but that's what it was.

41:04

It means munificent, referring to God.

41:09

But anyway, there you go with Latin. Thank you, TurretinFan. I challenge anyone to say it three times in a row, fast, while standing on your head.

41:19

In Christ, and all kinds of ideas like that. They were formulating the understanding of it.

41:26

They had the seeds of the belief. Now here's going to become the part that really makes me angry.

41:32

I'll admit, this makes me angry. What they will do is they will parallel these human traditions, these developments that were not a part of the apostolic message at all.

41:56

And they will parallel this with divine truths like the Trinity. The damage done to Christian apologetics, especially to, for example,

42:11

Muslims, is tremendous. They don't care because they have to defend the ultimate authority of Roman teaching because they are submitted to it.

42:23

But it makes me angry. It really does. People say, what gets you angry?

42:32

Well, this is one of the things that gets me angry. When someone will parallel a deep biblical revelation.

42:43

I mean, you can't begin to understand the gospel without the Trinity. It is the very matrix in which the

42:52

New Testament is written. You can't understand how the

42:57

New Testament expresses itself if you do not understand the view of God that lies behind it.

43:06

To parallel that and the many plain references to the deity of Christ with something that the apostles never even dreamed of is deeply offensive to me.

43:22

Deeply offensive to me. I'll never forget when Jerry Mattox stood in front of that crowd at the

43:31

Coral House in Baldwin in late 19, well, mid -1990s and said to those people, you have the same epistemological warrant for believing in the resurrection of Jesus Christ as you have for believing the bodily assumption of Mary.

43:56

When you think of what that means, what he was saying is you need to believe in the bodily assumption because the church tells you.

44:08

And the reason to believe in the resurrection is because the church tells you.

44:16

Paralleling divine truths with fantasies may be how the

44:24

Roman Catholic apologist has to do it, but it is deeply disrespectful to God's truth and will be answered for someday.

44:30

You will answer for it someday. There's no question about it. In their hearts, but no one really understood because it's a very complicated issue.

44:41

Why is it a very complicated issue? What do you mean no one understood? The way you explained it,

44:46

Bob, was understandable. You said without this, there's no Savior. If you're right, nobody preached that for a thousand years.

44:55

Just looked over it? Just forgot to mention it? But then somehow, 1 ,850 years after the birth of Christ, now we need to know it, and if you deny it, you're anathema.

45:11

That's what happens when you deny Sola Scriptura. No one really had the correct answer to that question.

45:19

Obviously, since Scripture didn't give us any information on it. That's for sure. And by the way, Scripture gives us a lot of information about Jesus Christ, but we all get confused about that too, don't we?

45:31

Because we don't have one interpretation. We have thousands of denominations that give us each a different answer.

45:38

And what do we do when they give us a different answer? Well, first of all, are you seriously saying there's a thousand different views of Jesus in current teaching?

45:47

I mean, you either believe in the deity of Christ, or you believe in some form of subordinationism, or some form of modalism.

45:55

Right? And what do we do with those folks? Well, we debate them and demonstrate that. I mean, have you seen some of the debates we've done?

46:04

Maybe Michael Brown and I versus the subordinationists, Anthony Buzzard and Joseph Goode.

46:12

Seen that? I've had people come up to me and say they felt sorry for the other side. It was so lopsided.

46:20

Seen some of the oneness debates? So, we go to Scripture.

46:26

We don't have to go, Well, the Pope says... But we can go to Scripture because we've got plenty of ground to cover.

46:35

You got zip when it comes to your Marian dogmas. Nothing. Nothing. This is all just, again, whistling as you're walking by the graveyard.

46:47

Even contained in the Bible. Can we imagine what it's like when the Bible doesn't really cover a subject?

46:53

And now we're going to try to understand. Yeah, when the Bible doesn't cover a subject, what are we supposed to do then? Well, maybe not make it definitional of the

47:00

Gospel? Maybe? That might be a good idea. Because that's what Rome's done. Oh, I know,

47:06

I know. The vast majority of Roman Catholics that you interact with, you've never heard them say,

47:13

Oh, the Immaculate Conception is so central to the Gospel. But, have you looked at their piety?

47:19

Have you looked at their artwork? The Immaculate Heart of Mary? Immaculate Heart Radio?

47:26

Sort of connected to Immaculate Conception. You don't get an Immaculate Heart if you don't have an Immaculate Conception. Right? They're all connected together.

47:36

It is there. I realize the vast majority of Roman Catholic academics, for example, do not live and teach in light of these things.

47:45

There's a lot of skepticism in a lot of modern Roman Catholicism. But it's there. It's been defined as a central aspect of the

47:52

Gospel by Rome's authority. And, hey, at least Bobs and Janice accepts that authority.

47:59

The arguments for so doing are not very good. What that doctrine really means. Tony said that Christ had no sin.

48:11

And he used this to say that, well, the Bible is replete with information that Christ had no sin, and says nothing about Mary not having sin.

48:22

Yes, the Bible says that Christ had no sin, but that doesn't prove anything. That doesn't prove that Mary had no sin.

48:29

Well, and, you know, the Bible doesn't say that Bobs and Janice has no sin, either. So let's just go for the

48:35

Immaculate Conception and Perfection of Bobs and Janice, right? Does the

48:42

Bible say that Christ had two wills? Can he quote me a scripture passage that says that?

48:49

Now, Tony did get up and he talked about Incarnation. He talked about the fact that Jesus described as the

48:56

God -Man. Some of you remember that this seems to be one of,

49:02

I think one of the reasons that Bob likes to go here is because, let's be honest, most

49:08

Protestants are like, Two what? Two wills?

49:14

What? And the funny thing was, Tony pointed out that it's a two -edged sword because of Honorius, the

49:21

Bishop of Rome, who was a monothelite. He believed Christ only had one will and was anathematized by his successors for 400 years.

49:31

For 400 years, before you could take the seat of the Bishop of Rome, you had to anathematize a previous occupant of that seat named

49:39

Honorius as a heretic. Again, they had never thought about this infallibility of the

49:45

Pope thing, so it was sort of like, eh, whatever. But that's a little embarrassing now, once you have that idea of the infallibility of the

49:55

Pope. But the reason he likes to go for this is because most of us don't know anything about monothelitism, duothelitism, and William Lane Craig's a monothelite, and so it's sort of like, we don't really think too much about it.

50:15

And so it's a valuable tool for him, but of course, if he's debating me or Tony, both of us have done extensive work in Christology, Trinitarian theology, church history, and so we're like, wouldn't have crucified the

50:30

Lord of Glory, two natures, Word became flesh, there's a number of places in Scripture that you have the two brought together, but do you have a specific formula?

50:43

No. So, if you take Biblical data and harmonize it, that somehow becomes a foundation for taking no data at all, and not harmonizing with anything, but just, poof, out of thin air, coming up with things that we now call dogmas.

51:05

No, there's no parallel. No parallel whatsoever. Someone in Channel said that I'm being snarky, and I just want you to know that when

51:16

I'm wearing this shirt, I can't be snarky, by definition. And I make up the definitions, so there you go.

51:23

Yet I believe Tony believes that Christ had two wills, because our councils taught that. You'll not find a passage of Scripture that teaches that.

51:35

Tony said that the Catholic Encyclopedia says Mary's Immaculate Conception is not in the first century.

51:43

So what? There. There you go. That's what we were talking about. So what?

51:50

Nothing to see here. Move along. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

51:55

All that kind of stuff comes to mind. So what? So what? These pauses,

52:06

I'm not sure if he was just about to pass out, or just what. I mean, there's long, long pauses there.

52:12

And I'm a little concerned about them. Tony must first prove that the

52:18

Bible is the only authority that we go by. The burden of proof is on him.

52:25

If he wants to maintain... Look, there was a meeting. There was a meeting somewhere at some point in time, back in the 1990s, where all the

52:40

Roman Catholic apologists got together, and they decided together, look, when things aren't going real well, switch to Sola Scriptura.

52:49

Attack Sola Scriptura, bring up the canon, and they all signed a pledge that said, that's what we'll do.

52:58

Because you know what? I've done a lot of debates with Roman Catholic apologists.

53:03

I've heard it, listened to others doing it. It happens over and over and over again.

53:11

That because the Immaculate Conception is not mentioned in the Bible in the first century when it was written, will show us where the

53:17

Bible says that it's the only authority. And if you can win that debate, then you win this debate also.

53:23

Did you catch that? So if you win the Sola Scriptura debate, you win this debate also.

53:28

He's exactly right. If Scripture is the only example of theanustos revelation,

53:35

God -breathed revelation in the possession of the Church, then what he just said is, forget about the

53:40

Immaculate Conception, forget about the bodily assumption, it's all over. He's exactly right. He's exactly right.

53:46

And that's why you have to hold to Sola Scriptura. And that's why the fact is that Scriptures are the only example of God -breathed revelation in the possession of the

53:56

Church. And that's why we must reject Rome's innovations because they, in essence, have to be revelation.

54:06

They have to be revelatory. Just the only way it is. Tony says that Mary holds no central role in salvation.

54:19

Let me ask you this. If Mary had said no to being the mother of Jesus, would we have salvation?

54:27

There you go. If at her Annunciation the angel said, you shall bear the child of God, and she said no, we would have no salvation.

54:36

Is that a central role in salvation? Does our salvation not pivot on what

54:43

Mary's answer was going to be? Okay, Synergists, I hope you're hearing that. This is the logical outcome of your exaltation of the will of man over the decree of God.

54:53

There it is. Hope you hear it. You may reject it, but it is the logical continuation of your own thought at that point.

55:01

I see a micro... You are actually going to wander out from behind given all the fire headed in your direction?

55:07

I just find it interesting that as he says, you shall, well, what if she said no?

55:14

What part of you shall? Is he not understanding? No, you don't understand.

55:21

Just like Trent Horne said, the will of the father for the son is that the son lose none of those given to him.

55:27

But that will is just a wish. That's what the father hopes and wants, but well, that'll never happen.

55:38

The studio audience is very, very quiet. Very, very...

55:47

I'm hoping you can see the reflection because with the beard and stuff, it's a little scary. I've even said some things that made me laugh and it's just sort of like...

56:00

Wait a minute. I can get him. Ready? Dude, you need to understand.

56:06

It's just the vibe of the thing. Is that good? Is that good? The vibe of the thing?

56:12

You understand that? You got it. I'm trying to get an

56:18

Australian to laugh and that was my best shot because I saw the movie. And how many people here in the

56:23

United States have seen that movie? Not many. It's a very famous Australian movie that you've not seen.

56:31

Yes, well, yes, he did. Anyway, just a little bit more here.

56:38

Granted, she has not the central role that Christ has. That's a given. We never said that she was on par with Christ.

56:46

All we said that was to produce Christ, Mary has to be sinless. Because if she isn't sinless, she's going to produce a sinful savior.

56:57

Which gets rid of virgin birth as being relevant. That's the issue that Tony has to deal with. Not whether this father or that father or this pope or that pope talked about the

57:07

Immaculate Conception. We already know what they said. And we already know what they finally dogmatized in 1854.

57:14

No, they didn't. They didn't believe in it. You're assuming a continuity here that we're saying is broken.

57:23

If you can have popes who taught that Mary sinned and then a pope later saying she didn't sin and I'm going to dogmatize that, that means they weren't aware of this apostolic tradition that you claim you have.

57:35

That's the point. And only by just simply going, yeah, but as long as Rome says it, the facts don't matter.

57:42

What St. Genesis' rebuttal is saying is Bible doesn't matter, tradition doesn't matter, church history doesn't matter, it's since 1854, period.

57:52

End of discussion. What Tony has to deal with is why do we have an Immaculate Conception?

57:58

He needs to answer the question of how is Christ going to be our sinless Savior if Mary herself is sinful?

58:07

And that's called the virgin birth because it is the fallen sons and daughters of who?

58:14

Adam, not Eve. That's the whole point of Romans 5. It's the relationship to Adam through the

58:20

Father. So the virgin birth means, thought that was pretty obvious, but hey.

58:28

That's what he needs to answer. Tony talked about the incident where Jesus says, who is my mother?

58:37

Who are my brothers? Well this has nothing to do with whether Mary was immaculately conceived or not.

58:45

That is a special context in which Jesus is trying to teach the people that he has no favoritism for human relations, and that his chief interest is bringing people into the kingdom.

58:58

This in no way demotes Mary. Mary would accept this, and she did many times to allow

59:06

Jesus to do his ministry. He says the church fathers don't speak of the

59:11

Immaculate Conception. Well I already told you that they don't speak of it in the same exact way that the

59:18

Pope did in 1854, but they certainly do talk about it. We do have the germ of the idea in many of the early fathers.

59:26

For example, with Augustine, he says now, with the exception of the Holy Virgin Mary in regard to whom, out of respect for the

59:33

Lord, I do not propose to have a single question raised on the subject of sin.

59:38

Now, what he's talking about is in her life, not in the conception. So he's saying, well, hey, you know, what he's admitting is this is a development over time.

59:49

But to say that's a germ, it took from Augustine to Edmer 800 more years?

59:58

That is a slow -growing plant, okay? That's really slow.

01:00:04

Really, really slow. Dealing with Ambrose, which is one of the fathers that Tony mentioned, he says in his commentary on the

01:00:19

Psalms, a virgin not only undefiled, but a virgin whom grace had made inviolate, free of every stain of sin, unquote.

01:00:32

I could go on and on. No, no, no, no, you could not go on and on.

01:00:38

When you hear someone saying, I could go on and on, sometimes, yes, it's because they've got a lot more material they could do.

01:00:44

Sometimes it's just a cover for actually none of these quotes are relevant to the point.

01:00:49

And that's the case in this situation. He says, Irenaeus says

01:00:55

Mary sinned. He says St. Basil in Chrysostom and Cyril had problems with Mary possibly sinning.

01:01:05

Well, the same Catholic encyclopedia that he quoted from says that these fathers do not constitute a tradition for the

01:01:12

Church. That's where I wanted to get to. And then he's going to give off this long list. They don't constitute a tradition for the

01:01:20

Church. Oh. So what does? Whatever Rome says. So when

01:01:27

Irenaeus talks about successors at Rome, that's the tradition of the

01:01:34

Church. But when he talks about sin in Mary's life, that's not the tradition of the Church.

01:01:39

Here is what I've said over and over again about sola ecclesia. Here it is in glowing form.

01:01:47

Because this alleged tradition that you have in the early

01:01:53

Church, all it is is a massive amount of literature, a lot of which doesn't even exist in English, by the way.

01:02:02

And Rome's just picking and choosing what it wants. It's not like, well, here's the tradition we need to listen.

01:02:08

No, no, no, no, no. Rome says we're going to find this dogma and so we're going to find this here, this here, this here, put it together.

01:02:14

And everything that's opposed to that doesn't matter. I remember the first time when

01:02:20

I debated gerrymatitics on the Marian dogmas. Every time

01:02:26

I'd quote somebody, well, he's not really an early Church father or his words are not taken as defining tradition.

01:02:36

And it's like, so you get to quote any Church father you want and that's binding. But when I quote an early

01:02:41

Church father, maybe the same guy as you got done quoting, that's not tradition. Why? Because of sola ecclesia.

01:02:49

There you go. That's just all the fact there is. The man with all the quotes has appeared in Channel.

01:03:02

Has a quote from Augustine for the fun of it. For every man is a liar and no one but God alone is without sin.

01:03:07

And it is therefore an observed and settled fact that I have no idea how that's happening.

01:03:15

I wonder how that's happening. I don't even know what program that is. Interesting.

01:03:23

Did that come through to your side? I don't know how that worked.

01:03:33

Because that's the computer but my phone's ringing but I don't know why I don't know why the computer would be doing something with the phone.

01:03:43

Anyway, let me finish that quotation and move on to other things. It is therefore an observed and settled fact that no man born of a man and a woman that is by means of their bodily union is seen to be free from sin.

01:03:59

There you go. That is a treatise on the grace of Christ based on Original Sin, Book 2,

01:04:06

Chapter 47. He also said, "...let not this man then throw any hindrance in the way of its salvation upon human nature by setting up a bad defense of its merits, because we are all born into sin and are delivered therefrom by the only one who was born without sin."

01:04:21

Only one who was born without sin. That's Augustine on marriage and concupiscence,

01:04:28

Book 2, Chapter 24, if you want to look some of those up.

01:04:34

So, anyway, there you go. That was a Facebook phone call. It sounds like a

01:04:39

Facebook phone call. No, it was an actual regular phone call. And I have no earthy idea how it...

01:04:46

It's Google Voice. You have it tied to your computer and your phone. It happens to me all the time. But I have never heard that before.

01:04:54

I do have Chrome Up. I bet you that's what it was. I have

01:04:59

Chrome Up, and I bet you it's a Google thing. It's probably a

01:05:04

Google thing. It's probably a Google thing. Anyway, alright. We can bring that down anyways, and you can turn the volume off on it and all the rest of that kind of fun stuff anyhow.

01:05:19

Hopefully that was useful to you and helpful to you.

01:05:25

A discussion of, again, Sola Scriptura illustrated, the importance of it illustrated in the debate that Tony Acosta had with Robert Syngenis.

01:05:34

We will eventually get to the Trenthorne stuff as soon as I have an opportunity to catch up with watching...

01:05:43

I haven't even had a chance to listen to my debate yet, let alone watch it and try to grab quotations and all that kind of stuff.

01:05:52

We will get to it because, again, my primary purpose in wanting to review that is the issue of synergism and how the argumentation is absolutely consistent with non -Roman

01:06:12

Catholic synergists. Really what that says about... I can see why there are people who are not only excited about the celebration of the

01:06:27

Reformation this year because there are just a lot of people who are not Roman Catholics but they are only non -Roman

01:06:35

Catholics because their traditions are different when it comes to primary issues, especially when it comes to the primary issue of grace, sola gratia.

01:06:48

They're really on Rome's side at that point and that's something that needs to be thought of if you're there.

01:06:57

Okay, 24 minutes left, that's about right to be able to shift gears. As some of you know,

01:07:07

I was going to say most, that's just really not true, as those who maybe spend too much time on Facebook know because it's a very small number of people in a very small context and I have to try to keep that in mind.

01:07:26

I mentioned to you at the end of last year that I was fully expecting some tremendous opposition to the work of this ministry, to my work in the

01:07:40

New Year. I honestly did not have any idea of the level of invective vitriol and just irrationality, dishonesty that was going to be a part of it but I guess

01:07:59

I should have sort of assumed that. I try to think the best of people so I was hoping the best, especially for a couple of individuals but there you go.

01:08:10

Over the past couple of days, once again, more material appearing.

01:08:17

We have folks from AHA trolling us at every turn.

01:08:24

Even last night when people were jokingly talking about how often they were hearing about me during the

01:08:29

Super Bowl because of James White who plays for the

01:08:36

New England Patriots who I guess had a really good game. Someone even trolled a humorous statement that someone made there to post a video that some

01:08:52

AHA guys have put together. This particular controversy goes back to G3 and then now a man who has a lengthy history of simply being a pot shot artist.

01:09:12

This man has stood on the sidelines and thrown daggers at my back basically since 2009.

01:09:21

A man by the name of Joel McDermott has jumped into the fray as well. I guess he's written a bunch of stuff

01:09:30

I guess it has to do with the AHA stuff. I'll be perfectly honest with you, I have just a matter of weeks before I go to South Africa where I will be engaging in debates on multiple subjects.

01:09:45

I will be teaching for an entire week at a university in South Africa on apologetics and issues like that pretty much all day.

01:09:56

It's the same type of intensive class that I do when I teach over in Kiev, which

01:10:02

I'll be doing in May or early June, one of the two. I need to verify those things pretty quick.

01:10:07

By the way, we still need your assistance in helping with all that travel and stuff like that. I consider those opportunities to be gifts of God, and therefore

01:10:23

I think they're far more important than my taking time to be responding to every little thing that is thrown my direction by people like Joel McDermott.

01:10:36

I consider the radicals in AHA, I realize that there are still people involved who are solid sound

01:10:45

Christians, but I just ask you to go back and watch the video that I responded to from about,

01:10:52

I don't know, a year ago, six months ago, I forget when it was, and to be honest with you, I don't even remember the guy's name, but one of the leaders in AHA praying imprecatory prayers against me.

01:11:03

I didn't even know who he was. Just realize that there's not really a lot of balance amongst many of these folks.

01:11:15

I can think of one AHA guy that's just completely lost his balance. I once knew him, and now he's just off in La La Land and has lost connection with the church and everything else, this church repent movement and all the rest of that kind of stuff.

01:11:31

So they were trolling some of the comments and things like that. But then,

01:11:38

I think it was last evening, I saw some comments made by Dr.

01:11:45

Robert Morey. Now, when I discovered live on the air the source of the nuke the

01:11:56

Kaaba argument, the idea that you could, that it's an appropriate thing to have on the table the destruction of the

01:12:08

Kaaba as a means of dealing with Islam, which, by the way, if any

01:12:14

Western power ever did that, would be the single most unifying thing that's ever brought all Muslims together that could ever be done.

01:12:20

And from a Christian perspective, it's just simply unthinkable. Just absurd on its face.

01:12:27

When, live on the air, sitting in this room, it wasn't as nice back then, but sitting in this room,

01:12:35

I found out that Robert Morey was the source of that statement.

01:12:41

There was a moment where I truly hesitated to continue to pursue the issue at all.

01:12:48

To my shame. Why do I say that? Because if I wanted to spend a good deal of time today about what

01:13:00

I know about Robert Morey, it would take a while. It goes back a long ways.

01:13:09

Crown publications and things like that. All the way back in the late 1980s. And the first thought that crossed my mind was, you don't want this spitting war.

01:13:21

Because that's exactly what it would be. A spitting war. But I couldn't do that.

01:13:27

It was brought out. The quotation was there. Then it sort of went away. And then, for some reason, back in November or so,

01:13:39

Morey popped back up. He had been really underground for quite some time.

01:13:47

And as I've explained, before I did my first debate with Shabir Ali, some friends of mine, and I can bring them,

01:13:55

I can have them as witness. Some friends of mine invited

01:14:01

Morey to come to the debate. And he said, oh no, I need to go. James just uses all my arguments anyway. Well, I never debated any of them.

01:14:07

I debated Hamza Abdel -Malik, but not on the subject of Islam. And I had not read Morey's books.

01:14:13

I had them, but I had heard him give his Moon God presentation at an apologetics conference in Philadelphia in,

01:14:23

I think it was 1993. I think it was 1993 because I included a trip to my old hometown in Camp Hill in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania where I lived for six years as a part of that trip.

01:14:37

And I think that was 1993. Anyway, I can be forgiven if it was a year or two off one way or the other.

01:14:45

But I did hear his presentation and I didn't have anything really to compare it to.

01:14:52

But there's just always been a attitude issue with Dr.

01:15:00

Morey for me. I've just never felt that he has the proper attitude in doing

01:15:06

Christian apologetics. But I had never made a case for this.

01:15:12

I had not attacked him. I just had decided that it wasn't something that I wanted.

01:15:20

He wasn't someone that I wanted to rely upon. Because of many things. I just didn't follow after that.

01:15:30

Well, Dr. Morey has decided to start saying things about me. And again,

01:15:36

I'm going to try to keep this brief. I am not going to get into a war with the man because like I said there's lots of stuff

01:15:44

I could bring up. Lots of things we could go back to in past history that is not going to be edifying for anybody.

01:15:52

I did also criticize him. By the way, other than the Kaba thing I did criticize him for his behavior in his debates with Shabir Ali and Jamal Badawi.

01:16:02

And I stand by those criticisms. I do not believe that he acted in a way that adorned the gospel of Jesus Christ.

01:16:11

I think one of the main reasons I have never been able to engage Badawi is because of the bad taste left in his mouth by his encounters with Robert Morey.

01:16:22

And it would be really nice if someone would communicate to him that I'm not like that. But anyway, he has begun to make statements.

01:16:34

And the first one this was I believe yesterday Robert Morey, he is saying

01:16:40

Muslims and Christianites I'm just reading it worship the same

01:16:47

God. Muhammad didn't send a child bride. Islam is peaceful. He is compromising with Islam.

01:16:55

Now, it's very plain that Bob Morey's primary source of information is

01:17:00

Sam Shamoon. And I believe that the reason that Sam Shamoon is behaving the way that he is people just can't understand how a matter of months ago he was saying very kind things about me and now

01:17:13

I'm just a terrible, horrible person I'm not the one that's changed. I believe

01:17:20

Sam Shamoon is attempting to prove his worthiness to his former mentor Robert Morey.

01:17:26

That's my theory. And when you look at the incredible things that Sam Shamoon is saying it's sort of a filtered and twisted version that ends up coming out in what

01:17:42

Robert Morey is saying. So I think that's where the source is coming from. It certainly can't go the other direction. So he is saying

01:17:50

Muslims and Christians worship the same God. Now, on a factual level anyone can go to the web, they can pick up my book,

01:18:04

Whatever Christian Needs to Know About the Qanon they can go to the web remember there was a big about a year ago, a little over a year ago big discussion in culture about whether Muslims and Christians worship the same

01:18:21

God. I put multiple videos out on the subject and anyone who wants to be honest balanced, fair knows that what

01:18:34

I have said is the Qanon says that we worship the same God. The Muslim claim is that the

01:18:42

God that revealed himself to Abraham Isaac and Jacob is Allah. So there is an identity between Yahweh and Allah.

01:18:53

That's the Muslim claim and so when we're talking simply about history, we need to recognize that's what the

01:19:00

Muslims believe and so we are all talking about that one God. But, and this is where once you get into the mindset of a

01:19:11

Robert Maury or a Sam Shamoon you only see on a page what you want to see on a page.

01:19:17

Now Sam Shamoon knows better. Sam knows Sam didn't have any problem with the things I was saying see, it's almost like he's definitely afraid that Robert Maury will realize that Sam and I really were friendly when

01:19:29

I was saying all the things that Sam now is just attacking me right and left for. But, Sam knows in his heart of hearts, you know this

01:19:38

Sam, you know this that there is a second part of what

01:19:45

I have said on this subject and that is that in light of the fact that the author of the

01:19:52

Qanon does not understand the doctrine of the Trinity, does not understand what

01:19:58

Christians believe. Hence, never provides a meaningful apologetic or argument against it. Which by the way is a major argument against the divinity of the

01:20:08

Qanon and therefore the entirety of the Islamic faith. Since in modern

01:20:16

Sunni orthodoxy Tawhid demands a

01:20:26

Unitarian monotheism and cannot even allow for a

01:20:33

Trinitarian monotheism then no knowledgeable Christian in dialogue with a knowledgeable Muslim could ever say that the object of our worship is the same.

01:20:49

We do not worship the same God. The statement found in the universal

01:20:54

Catholic catechism of the Catholic Church is in error when it says we adore I think it's

01:21:00

Adoramus in the Latin the same God. No we do not because Christian worship as clearly defined in the

01:21:09

New Testament, as clearly seen in the book of Revelation for example as clearly seen in the Carmen Christi Christian worship of necessity defines the object of our worship as including

01:21:22

Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit which is precluded by any meaningful understanding of Tawhid in Islamic theology.

01:21:34

Now any honest person knows that that is what

01:21:40

I have said and said for a long period of time. It's in print it's on video, it's in debate, it's in lectures there isn't any question about it.

01:21:49

There's none. So why is Robert Moore saying he is saying Muslims and Christians worship the same

01:21:56

God? What's the motivation? What's the origin?

01:22:03

It's not from truth, it's not from research it's not attempting to promote the

01:22:10

Christian faith. You don't promote the Christian faith with falsehoods. Secondly, Muhammad didn't send a child bride.

01:22:18

I don't know what that means. His material is filled with it's almost incoherent.

01:22:26

It's filled with typographical errors. It doesn't even bother to take the time to make sure that it communicates something.

01:22:33

But Sam Shamoon has posted material where once again, one of the arguments that I have made.

01:22:43

Again, my consistency over time is coming back at me here. Even back in the days when my focus was primarily upon Mormonism.

01:22:54

I can't call Rich as a witness because Rich has now been proven to be an abject liar by AHA.

01:23:01

So I can't go there either. He would tell you, though you can't believe him anymore that you've never in any of the conversations

01:23:12

I've ever had with a Mormon on sidewalks. You've never heard me say to a

01:23:18

Mormon, Joe Smith. I always say Joseph Smith. You may have never even noticed it.

01:23:25

But you see, to me... I don't think I've ever said it because you've taught us respect.

01:23:32

Now, is it respect for Joseph Smith or respect for the Mormon? It's respect for the Mormon, not Joseph Smith. You've also taught us things like not hanging their underwear on signs.

01:23:44

That's real obvious. But did you notice about three minutes ago

01:23:49

I said the author of the Quran. I didn't say Muhammad. And people always ask me, why do you say that?

01:23:57

Well, this is one of the major, major differences. And from the perspective of Robert Maury, Sam Shamoon and others, this is compromise on my part.

01:24:07

I want you to understand what this compromise is. I do not want to put any unnecessary emotional block in front of the presentation of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

01:24:21

Even if it might make me feel better. Or might make my people more excited.

01:24:29

So when I'm talking to a Mormon, I'm not going to talk about Joe Smith because they're going to take that as a sign of disrespect not only toward Joseph Smith.

01:24:40

I don't have respect for Joseph Smith as an individual. I believe that Joseph Smith is a false prophet.

01:24:46

I believe that Joseph Smith sought to enrich himself through many schemes and introduced the whole subject of polygamy because he wanted to get in bed with a lot of women.

01:24:57

I don't have respect for Joseph Smith as a religious leader. But in conversation with a

01:25:04

Mormon, I don't need to bring that up. What I feel about Joseph Smith is irrelevant.

01:25:11

I have higher values to be pursuing. Which is keeping myself out of the way of a supernatural message called the gospel that I want to see used to bring about the salvation of the person

01:25:25

I'm speaking to. And so I'm just not going to give in to the temptation to make myself feel better or to make myself look better in front of other people by engaging that kind of disrespectful behavior.

01:25:41

So when I talk about Muhammad, I'm going to talk about the author of the

01:25:49

Quran because there are questions. There are meaningful questions about the origin of the

01:25:55

Quran, the collation of the Quran, the redaction of the

01:26:01

Quran. Could other people have been involved at later times? What was Uthman? There's all sorts of questions.

01:26:08

So why immediately raise barriers by identifying...

01:26:15

Even identifying Muhammad as the author of the Quran is offensive because the author of the

01:26:21

Quran theologically from the Islamic perspective is not

01:26:27

Muhammad. He's just the passive channel through which it comes. The author of the

01:26:33

Quran is Allah. And so when I point out that the author of the Quran did not understand something that is the least offensive way

01:26:43

I can say this book is in error. Think about it. I want them to think about it.

01:26:52

There are many people that consider that abject compromise. To have in your mind the salvation of the person to whom you're speaking.

01:27:04

And that's sad. That's sad. So when it comes to the issue of Aisha what

01:27:13

I have said in the past is this is a practical argumentative point.

01:27:20

I have many well I used to say friends. They're proving that they weren't.

01:27:25

Many acquaintances. People that I have met. People that I've worked with in the past that are now proving that they are not my friends at all.

01:27:32

But I know many people who will begin their presentation by identifying

01:27:39

Muhammad as a pedophile. I've never done that. I will never do that for one simple reason.

01:27:46

I actually want my words to be heard by the people I'm talking to. And if you want to close their minds and get into a fist fight immediately then go for it.

01:27:57

And there are people like you out there. I'm sorry you ever thought I was one of you.

01:28:03

I never was because you never heard me do that. What I have said is that when you look at the

01:28:11

Quran now see I'm reasoning. And reasoning takes multiple sentences and paragraphs.

01:28:18

And reasoning only takes place when emotion is not ruling the day.

01:28:28

I'm trying to reason with you. And when we look at the

01:28:35

Quran the Quran shows absolutely no embarrassment.

01:28:43

As far as I can tell the Hadith shows absolutely no embarrassment in regards to Muhammad and Aisha.

01:28:52

And in fact, now this could simply be due to the fact that Aisha becomes such an important person in Islamic history specifically during the period of time of the beginning of the collation and the writing down of Hadith.

01:29:10

There's some historical possibilities there. But the reality is that I think it is a significantly less emotionally charged and yet weightier issue to address the fact that the

01:29:33

Quran shows tremendous embarrassment about Zaynab bint

01:29:39

Josh, not Aisha. So in other words, when you address the issue of Zaynab Wow!

01:29:48

Allah felt it was necessary to reveal an entire portion of a surah in the

01:29:55

Quran to excuse Muhammad's marrying of the divorced wife of his adopted son.

01:30:04

And in the process destroyed the beautiful institution of adoption in Islam. I think that is a weighty argument.

01:30:16

It doesn't immediately bring the emotional barriers and might actually be used to cause a person to sit back and to think about the prophethood of Muhammad.

01:30:30

In other words, it's sort of like when, and again, here's this consistency thing I've often said when training people to deal with Jehovah's Witnesses Don't go to John 1 .1!

01:30:42

It's not that there's something wrong with John 1 .1! It's just that every Jehovah's Witness can answer

01:30:48

John 1 .1 in a comatose state. They don't need to think. They've heard it over and over and over again.

01:30:54

Go somewhere they're not expecting. Colossians 2 .9, for example, or even better, the demonstration of Jesus being identified as Jehovah in Hebrews chapter 1 or in John chapter 12 verse 41, etc.

01:31:06

40 and 41. That kind of stuff. Go to places that are going to cause the person you're referring to to actually think.

01:31:15

That's all I'm doing here. I have severe, severe concerns about what has happened as a result of Muhammad's marriage to Aisha.

01:31:31

When people take Muhammad as the perfect man, as the paradigm of virtue, this has resulted in certain

01:31:42

Muslim cultures, but not all. In certain Muslim cultures, and the very fact that I would dare to recognize that there's differences between the expressions of Islam.

01:31:53

That's the other area of abject compromise. How dare you do that? They're all the same. Can't do it.

01:31:59

Sorry. Because the facts are different. But in certain Muslim cultures, that has led to horrific abuses of child brides.

01:32:09

There's no question about that. None whatsoever. But the fact that that's true, does that mean that I have to start every conversation with a

01:32:22

Muslim on Muhammad with that accusation? Why?

01:32:29

Well, it sure gets them angry. Well, if that's what you want, congratulations. That's not what

01:32:34

I'm looking for. You and I have different reasons for what we do. You and I have different reasons.

01:32:41

So, two of the statements so far from Robert Morey have been found to be, shall we say, somewhat less than truthful.

01:32:54

Next, Islam is peaceful. Well, anybody who's actually listened to what

01:33:03

I am actually saying, see, it's real easy to misrepresent someone who tries to be fair with another group.

01:33:13

Especially when there are all sorts of different perspectives in that other group. So, if you say, these individuals over here are peaceful.

01:33:23

Like, I can't imagine that anyone would argue that Ahmadi Muslims are not peaceful. But Sunni Muslims don't think they're

01:33:30

Muslims. But I know the Ahmadi are there, and so if I say Ahmadi Muslims are peaceful, isn't that requiring you to recognize that there are different expressions of Islam?

01:33:43

And because I recognize that someone like Yasser Khadi has put his life on the line to stand against ISIS, that makes me the compromiser, because I recognize.

01:33:55

In fact, I even saw someone, and he knows who he is, identifying

01:34:02

Yasser Khadi as a jihadi. I'm sorry, if you call him a jihadi, you're deceived.

01:34:09

You can't deal with the reality in front of you. Your mind is warped.

01:34:16

And that's a shame. You should stop and consider, why is my mind warped? The statement,

01:34:24

Islam is peaceful, assumes that there is a singular, monolithic Islam. For how many years have

01:34:30

I been pointing out that there is no singular, monolithic Islam?

01:34:37

For years. Are there peaceful Muslims? Yes, there are! They're there!

01:34:43

Hello! Are there deep concerns that I have and have expressed over and over again with the fact that the

01:34:52

Islamic sources contain? I mean, I could run the other room right now, grab a book. $269,

01:35:00

I think, from Brill, as I recall. It is the entire collection of Muhammad's battles.

01:35:09

There is grave danger in the fact that Islam removes the truth about Jesus Christ, as our mediator with God, and substitutes, in its teachings, the man,

01:35:24

Muhammad. And because, and this has been a part of my presentations, again, for decades now, because Islam never had an

01:35:33

Acts 15, the political and religious are joined together in any true expression of Islam.

01:35:47

And that is causing tremendous difficulties, and it's very dangerous. And I don't believe that there is a consistent, unitary interpretation of the

01:36:00

Hadith that can defeat Islamic radicalism. Because I don't believe that that material is consistent with itself.

01:36:10

It is the result of a process of evolution over time. And it wasn't guided by any one group.

01:36:17

So there are contradictory strains within the Hadith. I don't know how anyone who's read them can argue this point, can argue against it.

01:36:26

It's a given. It's as plain as the nose on your proverbial face. This is what

01:36:33

I've been saying all along. This is what I've been saying all along. So he concludes, he is compromising with Islam.

01:36:41

Dr. Mori, you are in error. You have given false testimony concerning an individual who is an elder in the church.

01:36:53

You are wrong. You have now been corrected. Well, he didn't stop there.

01:36:59

He didn't stop there. He expanded later on. White says one thing to Christians and another thing to Muslims.

01:37:08

That is a lie. Document it. The Muslims know that's not true.

01:37:15

The Muslims that watch this program, and there are a number of them, know that what

01:37:21

I am here is what I am in private conversation with them. That is a lie.

01:37:28

This is the root problem. Those of us who debate Islam, who is that, Dr. Mori?

01:37:34

You and Sam Shamoon? Who else? Those of us who debate

01:37:40

Islam see White compromising. Then his ad hominem outburst of name -calling to Christian apologists is inexcusable.

01:37:50

Who are you talking about? Did you switch targets here to Sam Shamoon?

01:37:59

I'm not the one doing that. That's you guys. If you can't see that, this is projection on a level that I've almost never seen before in my life.

01:38:12

You've got one side living on Facebook. Sam Shamoon even grabbing

01:38:19

AHA stuff, anything now, including the kitchen sink, is worth throwing at me.

01:38:27

The level of incoherence and inconsistency on his part is shocking. But I'm the one engaging in ad hominem?

01:38:37

Okay. The Muslims use White's ad hominem videos on their sites to attack

01:38:43

Christians. I saw one, and they were quoting my statement that Sam Shamoon can be angry and foul -mouthed.

01:38:54

You know what they did? They've got hours of this. They could produce a dozen videos of this.

01:39:01

They just went to PalTalk and found easily done.

01:39:07

Much worse examples have been sent to me in the past. This was actually rather tame. But they just kept repeating,

01:39:14

Sam behaving like a big bully in a PalTalk chat room. That's never happened before.

01:39:21

Everybody that knows him and knows him on PalTalk knows that what I'm stating is a simple fact.

01:39:28

It's not ad hominem. Stating documented facts is not ad hominem.

01:39:35

Dr. Murray should know that. He should know what an ad hominem argument is. That's not ad hominem.

01:39:41

It's a stated fact. I'm not the first person to say to Sam Shamoon, Sam, you have an anger problem.

01:39:48

You have a temper problem. Everybody that knows him knows that it's true. Everybody that knows him. Now, I never sat around talking about it until he turned that anger upon me.

01:39:59

But now he's done that. It's a fact. I've said to him,

01:40:05

Sam, you need to deal with this. Sam, you need to pray about this. Sam, you need pastoral assistance with this.

01:40:13

What do I get back? Well, there you go. That is adding. It's supposed to be aiding and abetting.

01:40:21

It's adding and abetting the enemies of Christ. I don't care about his videos calling me stupid, ignorant, unchristian, etc.

01:40:28

What I said was that his argument about nuking the Kaaba is stupid, ignorant, and unchristian and I stand by that.

01:40:38

Notice he's taking what I said about what is obviously a ridiculous suggestion and saying, oh, he's attacked me.

01:40:48

Well, if you want to identify yourself with an argument like that, okay. I didn't do that.

01:40:55

I called for you to abandon it. You've done good work in certain areas in the past,

01:41:01

Dr. Mori. I hope that Dr. Mori would be able to recognize how imbalanced and absurd that argument about the

01:41:08

Kaaba really is. I really do. And then he starts to continue to repeat what he said.

01:41:16

Then he said, I have tried to talk to him in private to no avail. When? When? Can you provide?

01:41:25

When? When did you try to talk to him? You've not contacted me. What are you talking about? I don't even know what you're talking about.

01:41:37

What are you referring to? Do you know what he's referring to? No phone calls here. Maybe he's talking about those closed groups that he hangs out with and talking about you that you're not a part of.

01:41:49

I don't know, but he's never ever written in here, emailed in here, or called here.

01:41:54

Yeah, he says he responds publicly to any private disagreements. Here's the last thing

01:42:05

I'm going to say and we're going to close up. The people that support this ministry and support the work that we're doing are the people who fundamentally agree that we need to be focused upon the presentation of the gospel of Jesus Christ and that that presentation needs to be one that is soaked in mercy and grace and love and it needs to be consistent.

01:42:35

Trying to walk that line of not compromising and yet walking in the absolutely necessary realm of grace is not easy.

01:42:47

You are not looking at someone who claims to have done this perfectly. I'm learning.

01:42:54

There are times in the past when I have not been as gracious as I should have been.

01:43:01

There's no question about that and right now it seems that what

01:43:08

I'm being attacked for is daring to repent of that and trying to be one who does not put myself at the center.

01:43:19

I've never been one that... Look, there's been many times when there are arguments that occurred to my mind that would have been red meat for my followers but I didn't throw them out there because they would have been disrespectful and would have been a barrier.

01:43:35

But if there were times I didn't even see it then that's for the Lord to deal with me and I repent of those things.

01:43:44

The people who are going to believe the Robert Mories and Sam Shamoons of the world are going to be people who have not read my books, have not listened to the debates, who do not listen to this program regularly.

01:43:58

I've seen some of them trying to interact with Sam before they get booted and banned and blocked and everything else because they're just amazed.

01:44:05

Wait a minute! You're only taking a part of what he said and you're misrepresenting it. Boom! They're gone.

01:44:11

Because the people who listen to this program know that I'm simply being consistent.

01:44:20

And so when people start lying about me and Robert Mory is lying about me in public then the only people who are going to continue supporting us are the people who know enough to analyze even false arguments and go, that's not true.

01:44:36

That's not what he intended. That's not what he was doing. This is a gross misrepresentation.

01:44:43

I cannot worry myself about the people who go, you know, you're right. I used to listen to that guy but I'm not going to anymore.

01:44:50

Well, okay. Nothing I can do about that. Because the cost of trying to keep those people is the cost of being consistent with my desire ultimately to see the gospel go out amongst well, whatever group it might be.

01:45:13

But in this case we're talking about the Muslims. You know what the sad fact of the matter is, folks?

01:45:21

Most Muslims when they encounter a Bible -believing Christian expect to be treated disrespectfully not with love and mercy because that's what they've experienced.

01:45:40

If you're a Muslim watching this may I apologize for how many times

01:45:48

Christians have joined with a proclamation of the truth an attitude that fundamentally was inconsistent with someone who themselves admits

01:46:04

I'm a sinner I've only been saved by grace I am no better than you are

01:46:12

I am no smarter than you are. For anyone who has approached you with an attitude that showed no respect for you as an individual

01:46:27

I apologize and I hope you'll realize that there are many of us that want to have the opportunity of having spirited dialogue with you we don't believe the same things.

01:46:40

I want you to come to know the Jesus Christ I know and that's not the Jesus of the Quran the

01:46:46

Jesus of the Quran is fundamentally a different thing than the

01:46:52

Jesus of the Bible and I believe he is your maker and I believe he is your creator you cannot view him merely as a prophet

01:47:00

I want you to come to know him and I will seek to present him to you in such a way that is consistent with my profession that as his follower

01:47:16

I am absolutely dependent upon him, his mercy and his grace I am better than no one else and if the only people that are going to continue supporting our outreach to the

01:47:31

Muslims or to Roman Catholics or to Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses or anybody else are people who agree with that perspective if you're one of those folks that just wants to see theological swords drawn and theological blood flying no,

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God's truth must be spoken within the context of grace for it to be used to accomplish his purposes that's where we stand so when you see lies on Facebook and there are a lot of them out there right now

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I hope you will simply take the time to think very carefully about where we have stood and how long we've stood there this ministry has been around for coming up on 34 years some of the people attacking us haven't been alive for 34 years we have a long track record look at that not the most current out of context citation or maybe not even a citation by someone on Facebook Facebook's a great thing in some ways but in other ways not so much

01:48:51

I hope that's helpful and I hope the review of the debate was helpful

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I'm going to try to get to the Trenthorn thing as soon as I can we'll see, there's all sorts of other stuff that we haven't gotten to for weeks we'll see what happens on the next edition of the