Resources on Eschatology Then Matt Walsh, Rome, and Mary as Mediatrix

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First portion of the program was on eschatology (gasp!) and some resources that you might find useful on the topic. Then we moved over to Roman Catholicism in reference to Matt Walsh, the move to have Mary named Co-Redemptrix in a dogmatic fashion, and the narrowing of the cultural landscape that will force believers and Roman Catholics closer and closer together. Hope it is helpful and challenging!

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00:33
And greetings, welcome to The Dividing Line on a Thursday, well, morning. I don't have any monitor of anything, so I'm not sure if we're operating or not, but here we go.
00:44
Anyways, hopefully getting recorded. Ah! There we go. What's that? Hmm. Ah, there's a camera. Okay.
00:50
Um, let's see. I did move the, uh, oh yeah, you don't get to see it quite as well now.
00:58
Oh. Yeah. Yeah, well, uh, yeah, but you see all the other stuff too, which, yeah, we can go back to that one.
01:08
Thank you very much. Um, that's much better. Um, wanted to start off, uh, the program today with a little bit of information.
01:18
Um, look, I understand in light of the last program that, uh, when it comes to eschatology, there's a lot of, um, emotion, a lot of tradition, and a lot of ignorance.
01:40
And I, I don't know what it is about that specific subject, but it sure does create a lot of, uh, a lot of heat without a whole lot of light, uh, in, in my opinion.
01:56
That's why it's sort of a, uh, mantra around here. We don't do eschatology, but the problem with that's twofold.
02:06
First of all, um, eschatology is a wider term than, um, just the theories regarding the timing and the relationship between, uh, the coming of Christ, resurrection, uh, the concept of a millennium, what's the nature of the millennium, all the rest of that kind of stuff.
02:31
Eschatology proper is last things, and hence is primarily focused upon, uh, such issues as final judgment, resurrection, um, the nature of the eternal state, um, heaven and hell, basically.
02:53
That's eschatology proper. And then the rest of this stuff, I wish there was a different term to use for it, to be honest with you, then that would be a little bit more specific.
03:05
But, uh, most of us are raised, if you're raised in the church, it's fairly natural to have a default eschatology.
03:20
And if you're raised in a church where you didn't have almost any interaction outside of your particular group, which, uh, is common, uh, in, in many situations, um, then you can just sort of assume that everyone has the same eschatology.
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And once you run into somebody that doesn't, then you automatically think that they're weird, maybe not even a
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Christian, and, uh, you, you get ready to put up your dukes and have a, have it out.
03:59
And on the last program, I mentioned the King James Only guys and how they said that I'm preparing the world for the mark of the beast.
04:11
Well, there's a whole, there's a whole world of beliefs behind that.
04:18
Um, specifically when I mentioned the, uh, uh, lawnmower, just sitting there running in the front yard, unless you have been in the basement of an independent fundamentalist
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Baptist church, uh, at 11 45 PM on a
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New Year's night watching a thief in the night, um, then that doesn't make much sense to you.
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But if you have, it still gives you chills, really does. And so I understand that if that's all you you've ever experienced, that you haven't read anything else or that you don't know other people that have different views, um, then someone going, yeah,
05:16
I just don't buy that anymore. Um, that, that can, that can make,
05:21
I had people writing to me, why don't you believe in the rapture and, and stuff like that.
05:28
And, and I'm like, have you, have you looked at this issue down through church history?
05:33
You know, there've been different, there've been different perspectives down through church history. And, um, dispensationalism is a, is a modern perspective, very modern, 1800s.
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And you had historic premillennialism. You've got amillennialism, you've got postmillennialism.
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Man, the early church is a mixture of everything. Uh, there's, there was millennialism all the way back there. But what did that necessarily mean?
06:00
Um, and it can be uncomfortable to discover that there are other perspectives other than the one that you have held.
06:10
For a long time after, uh, and for me, and I've told this story before, what happened for me was, uh,
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I was raised with one particular view and went to Bible college and heard other views. And the thing that first impacted me was being challenged.
06:30
It seems that the exegetical methodology you're using to substantiate position is not the same exegetical methodology you use to substantiate other key issues, which
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I was already dealing with at that time, specifically, um, dealing with Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, so defending the deity of Christ, resurrection.
06:51
It seems like the, the method of interpretation you're using is, is different.
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And they were right. Uh, it, it was different because I had just sort of, you know, accepted a particular set, had never seen it, you know,
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I'd never seen a five views book or whatever else it might be. And so for a long time,
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I jokingly said, I'm a pan -millennialist. It'll all pan out in the end. Part of that was just simply due to the fact that I'll just be honest with you when, when this issue comes up.
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And when I look at the size of books, I just, I just can't bring myself to invest the time and effort.
07:37
I mean, I, I read a lot of books within one particular perspective, uh, many years ago, uh, when
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I still held that perspective, but I just, uh, I just,
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I can't invest the time. It's not an area of my passion at all. That's why, you know, we have people in our church that hold to all three of the major perspectives and, and probably some people that would still have a lot of elements of dispensationalism in there, even though that would not really fit with a, uh, overall framework of the
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London Baptist confession. But, and I don't care. There are certain things you need to affirm, eschatologically speaking,
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God's going to wrap it all up the way he wants to wrap it all up. Christ is going to return. He's king. There's going to be a day of judgment.
08:28
All those things are absolutely necessary. But, uh, especially when it comes to eschatology, there are things that are assumed and often very rarely proven when it comes to these things.
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And so I have, uh, post -millennial friends and I have historic pre -millennial friends, and we do not sit around and, and argue the issues.
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Am I saying it's not important? No, um, it does impact things.
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There's, there's no question about the fact that it impacts things, that there is a relationship.
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It's not just some area that's off there and you can just ignore it and not worry about it. And no, it is, it is relevant.
09:16
There's no two ways about it. Well, people ask, well, and how'd you adopt?
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Well, what position do you hold then? I am an amillennialist. And people say, well, are you an optimistic amillennialist or a pessimistic amillennialist?
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So it depends what I have for breakfast, I guess. Um, but if, if I had to, if I had to choose between those two,
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I'd say I'm a pessimistic amillennialist. Um, and that generally is, is in regards to the idea of, uh, the idea of the growth of the kingdom.
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Well, I think God's kingdom has grown worldwide, but I think it will always be persecuted.
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And I believe it will always, uh, men will always be deceiving and, uh, and being deceived.
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And that if you want to live godly in Christ Jesus, you will always experience persecution. I just,
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I don't see the evidence that it's God's intention during the existence of the church on earth for the church to become, um, the majority voice in culture.
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Certainly historically, anytime that anyone thought that was happening, it was actually the opposite of what was happening, um, to be honest with you.
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But anyway, well, how'd you get there? Uh, you, you were raised dispensational premillennial.
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Yep. Um, uh, pre -tribulation rapture too, in case you're wondering, because there's all, if, if you want to see people fight, um, if you want to see a knockdown drag out, it's not about, uh, post pre, it's between the pre -trib, mid -trib and post -tribbers.
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They'll go at each other. Like, I don't know what, um, it's, uh, it's, it's, it's pretty amazing. Anyway, um, people will say, well, what moved you from being pan -millennial, uh, to being on millennium?
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Because pan -millennial isn't really a position. I mean, some of you really like it, but it's not really a, it's, it's, it's an agnostic thing.
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Um, you know, I don't know. So it'll all pan out in the end. So I won't, you know, um,
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I'm still hoping these lectures will someday, uh, appear in, uh, you know, where they, where they somehow will, will appear in print or, or what, because I don't have them anywhere.
11:40
Um, but what I would like to see is the, the set of lectures that I heard from, um, on the subject of this age and the age to come.
12:00
They were from Trinity Ministerial Academy. Dr. Nichols was the one that delivered them. And it was listening to him work through Jesus's own eschatology.
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You know, Jesus taught a lot about this subject. And in Jesus's teaching, you have this age and the age to come.
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That's all you've got. You don't have any transitionary periods. You don't have any periods in between.
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You don't have any evolution. This age, here's what happens in this age. The age to come, here's what's there.
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So if you start with that as your framework, there's not a whole lot of room for all the speculative stuff that has been crammed into various eschatological theories.
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Amillennialism is the simplest. It's the, it's the cleanest. Uh, I don't think any system has answers for everything.
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Um, but of the three, I believe that it has the least, it has the most consistent exegesis and least unanswered questions, or at least the less, least forced answered questions.
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And given that some of Dr. Nichols' stuff is appearing in print right now,
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I'm still hopeful that that might, that might take place. It might happen. Um, very similar.
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I actually grabbed some, I had to, the funny thing is I had to go looking. Uh, and I didn't even find all of them, but they were all, at least the ones
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I found were in one spot anyways. And I even forgotten where they were because again, this is just not my, it's not my area.
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But someone on Twitter asked yesterday. And so I looked up and I found the end times made simple by Samuel Waldron.
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How could everyone be so wrong about biblical prophecy? And, uh, basically, and I, I, I guess
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I, uh, read on, uh,
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Amazon. Basically what he's saying is what I just got done explaining in regards to, um, those lectures.
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Jesus's eschatology was this age and the age to come.
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If anybody's teaching you something more than that, then they're missing the basic paradigm. And that's pretty much what
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Sam Waldron's saying. And most of my Reformed Baptist, uh, brethren are amillennialists.
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They're, they're posties amongst us. There's a few odd, uh, uh, historic premillers, but basically the
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Reformed Baptist default position, uh, is amillennial. And so there you've got
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Sam Waldron's book, highly recommend it. Another recent book. Yeah, I know there's a sequel to it.
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They're both in the Alvin May Amazon bookstore now. Uh, A Case for Amillennialism, Understanding the
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End Times, Kim Riddlebarger. This one, uh, I remember this just recently. Ha!
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Okay. You know, you're getting older when just recently was 14 years ago.
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I thought this was fairly recent. Um, hey, it's more recent than most of my books. So, A Case for Amillennialism, Kim Riddlebarger, 2003.
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Uh, it's an IDP imprint. Amillennialism Today. I love today.
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And today was, uh, 1966. But, um, uh, you've got
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William E. Cox's. That has just got to be the most boring cover I think I've ever, ever seen. Uh, well, there are actually a lot of them.
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And then sort of a classic, Ray Summers, Worthy as a Lamb is, uh, is, is another.
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So, there, there are just a few books, uh, that I just, they're all in the same spot in my library.
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And hadn't been moved in a long time. But, um, so we grabbed them and, um, there you go.
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Uh, if you want to take a look at them, look, there's all sorts of books presenting post millennialism.
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Don't judge. The most important thing to do, uh, is do not judge any eschatological system based upon your viewing of the modern world situation.
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Um, when you've got people who are, for example, uh, selling videos and books and stuff like that based on, you know, the current headlines, uh,
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Hal Lindsey, sorry, but hey, I remember, I don't know why this is so clear in my memory, but I know,
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I remember exactly what the little inside auditorium looked like at my high school, Independence High School, 75th
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Avenue in Maryland here in Phoenix. Um, I was in the first four -year graduating class from Independence High School.
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And so it was real brand new and it was really neat. And that's the same room where we had the, uh, trial of Lee Harvey Oswald.
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I was the lead prosecuting attorney. I've still got some pictures of that.
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Man, I wish, I really wish we had kept, it disappeared somehow, but we had the videotape of the trial of Lee Harvey Oswald.
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And man, I wish I still had that. That was, uh, really, really, really cool. Um, someone just posted the cover of Dangerous Airwaves on Twitter and said, here's an example of a non -boring cover.
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Yes. And that artwork was done by Chris Arnzen, by the way, just, uh, thought you all would want to know that.
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And he's the one that came up with the, uh, the title too. So he wanted me to write that book. And so I did.
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And Pulpit Crimes, for that matter, uh, did that too. Um, anyway, uh, what was
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I saying? Oh, yes. Um, I remember that room that, uh, uh, you know, it had fold down seats.
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It was really nice back then. They probably had to have redone it three or four times since then, because kids destroy things.
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But, well, we tried to burn the school down 13, 14 days after it opened. That was, that was a bummer.
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Uh, no, seriously, we had a fire and some sophomore started fire amongst, uh, desks, boxes of desks.
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And it was, uh, that was the first time I ever went running out of a burning building. Uh, so anyway, um, it was a beautiful school.
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And I remember sitting there as one of those tests your senior year where, you know, California standardized achievement test.
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I don't remember what it was, but, um, we, I would always get done very early.
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Um, I don't know when I was a kid, I developed this bad habit of trying to get everything done fast rather than checking my work and stuff like that.
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Um, but I was done long before everybody else was. And you're allowed to take out a book and start reading.
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I have the clearest image of me sitting in that room reading the late great planet earth.
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Um, and, uh, you know,
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I, I get it. I get, I get the attraction. You want, you want the Bible to be something it really isn't.
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A lot of us forget that the Bible has been read by Christians in many different cultures at many different times.
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And, you know, one of the things that really was important to me was coming to realize you need to interpret the book of revelation as having meaning to the people to whom it was written.
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If its primary meaning is for people way down the road who would have no clue what this was all about, sort of missing something.
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And, um, so just, just a few things to keep in mind.
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It, it, it's, it's sad that this is such an area of, um,
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I don't know, uh, unnecessary division. Um, it, it, it is something we need to talk about.
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It does have meaning and impact, but we need to be able to have our discussions about it.
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And, um, so I just, eschatology just scares me. Uh, it really does.
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And, uh, because it, it gets people so angry with one another and, uh, there's, there's all sorts of things that divide us.
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That's not, that's not one, that's not an area that we need to be really focusing on. Speaking of divided.
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So there's some books you might want to look at. They're, uh, they're in the, uh, bookstore, AOMN .org,
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go there. Well, it may not even be in print anymore.
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Yeah. Rich is saying that, so the Worthy as a Lamb one? That's not available. Okay. Amillennialism Today?
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Oh, Worthy as a Lamb is? Oh, okay. Yeah. That's, well, Amillennialism Today is a
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PNR one. Maybe they figured that was Amillennialism decades ago.
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So it's just changed it. Um, yes. So, so someone from down South is saying, uh, he's the guy who was, you know,
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I had somebody, this fellow on Twitter was going, see, it's all eschatology. It's all eschatology.
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And I'm like, huh? Um, your eschatology should flow from preceding presuppositions.
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Not from, uh, its own, its own self. Anyway, speaking of divisions and separations, uh, pretty excited.
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Well, excited and daunted. Um, you know, the debate coming up the 21st,
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I'm home for about three weeks. And then
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I'm going on the longest time -wise, uh, trip
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I've ever taken. Uh, overseas, uh, three weeks.
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That's a week longer than my expiration date. We used to say, funny, it used to be 10 days, 10 days of expiration date.
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Now we're talking 21. Um, no,
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I've got come close, but I've never, never not done one this long. I've come close.
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Um, but the trip to, um, Wittenberg and Czech Republic.
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And no, I don't know where I am in the Czech Republic. Uh, it's wherever the EBTC, uh,
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TMAI, uh, school is. You can go to EBTC and find out. And I, will
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I be doing anything public while I'm there? I don't know. Uh, I haven't been told. In fact, I'm not even sure what the topic of class is yet.
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So, um, and then Ukraine. I wanted to, um,
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I wanted to arrange something in London on my way to Wittenberg. That's what's made the trip fairly long.
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So it's my fault. I'm the, I'm the dumb one that does these things. I've got to find some way while I'm over there to keep working out and working out hard.
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Or this summer is going to be really ugly, uh, when it comes to trying to climb Mount Evans. But, um, then as it may,
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I've mentioned to you that we had a, uh, really excellent discussion on the unbelievable, uh, radio program with Justin Brierley between myself and Peter D.
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Williams on the subject of the Reformation, which may not air until closer to October.
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But, uh, Peter and I have been on once before and, uh, unlike Peter Stravinskis, who didn't think it was relevant to read anything that I have ever written.
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I have a feeling Peter D. Williams has, has read a lot of what I've written. And so we have a really fast paced, uh,
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Rock 'em Sock 'em conversation. Uh, he's, he's a really bright guy and very articulate.
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You know, he's British, so he sounds a lot smarter than he actually is. I love that.
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And, you know, it's sort of like the N .T. Wright thing, you know, as long as you say it with a British accent, you, you sound so much more, more erudite.
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Anyway, uh, we had a great conversation and said afterwards, you know, we really need to, need to do some debates.
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And he specifically said we need to debate the Marian dogmas. I'm like, let's do it. So I wrote to him and he just got back to me right before the program.
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And tentatively, I can't absolutely nail this down right now, but it looks like it's, it's pretty rock solid.
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Uh, Monday night, May 15th. Uh, I will still be very jet lagged, but I'll do my best.
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Uh, Monday night, May 15th in London, uh,
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Peter D. Williams and I, Marian dogmas, a public debate. And the neat thing, what
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I'm really hoping, uh, from, from Peter D. Williams is
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I really hope that, that Peter and I can have the kind of dialogues that I've had with Mitch Pacqua, where I'm not having to be constantly dodging, um, verbal barbs, um, the type of things that I've always had to deal with.
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Jerry Matitix, for example. Um, Mitch and I's conversations have always been really good.
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And what I like about Peter D. Williams is he's a historic Orthodox Roman Catholic. He's not one of these wishy -washy, well, maybe this, maybe that, who knows, blah, blah type things.
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He's not a fenite or anything, but he's, he's Orthodox and he knows his faith and he knows that we are not proclaiming the same message.
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That's, that's the important thing. It's, it's hard for me to have conversations with Roman Catholics today that think we're all, eh, you know, uh, you know,
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I'm sort of like Pope Francis. Who am I to judge? You know, uh, it's, it's hard to have meaningful dialogue or, or debate for that matter, uh, with someone like that.
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So I'm really looking forward to it. And I guess it's best to do it at the beginning. Uh, uh, at least
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I can almost guarantee I'll be healthy. Uh, well, I guess I can't really guarantee that at all, but, uh, at least better than the chances, you know, if we did it on my way home the last day, you know, you're, you're beat up and your, your, your mind's not working very well anymore.
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So Monday night, May 15th. Um, so looking at this year, man, uh, the
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INC debate that is going to be wild, is going to be, well, wild, hopefully only in the speed and, um, fervor of the exchange.
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It better not be wild as far as the participation of the audience is concerned. Um, that's the only thing that could ruin it.
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So please pray for that. But, um, that's 21st, less than a month later.
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That's basically, basically three weeks later. Uh, we have, uh, the debate in, uh, in London and, uh, wow.
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That's just starting to kick things off. It's going to be, going to be an incredible, uh, time period there.
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So, uh, pray for those things. Now, in light of that, uh, it was really interesting. Um, yesterday afternoon,
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I started to see some, uh, uh, posts, uh, in Twitter regarding Matt Walsh.
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Well, no, no, no, no. Back that up. Um, what
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I saw was Cy Ten Bruggenkate post on Twitter a statement from Matt Walsh.
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And basically Cy was saying, for all of you conservative Protestants who just post everything from Matt Walsh because he's a social conservative, um, you might want to keep this in mind.
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And it was a standard Orthodox from a
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Roman Catholic perspective statement where Walsh was saying, why should you be worried about, uh, my asking
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Mary or the saints to pray for me? It's no different than if I asked you to pray for me. And it has been many, many years since we did the, um, debate with, uh,
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Patrick Madrid. What year was that, Matt? That was 2000, early two thousands.
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Yeah. Early two thousands. We did the debate with Patrick Madrid on veneration of saints and angels.
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And I forget why it was about 2010, maybe, uh,
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I think it's because of some stuff that had been said on Catholic Answers Live, if I recall correctly, we did a three or four program series here on the
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Dividing Line. This was before we were videotaping, at least I think it was before we were videotaping.
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Yeah, it was. Uh, where I went through that debate portion by portion, going more in depth into various aspects of the subject of the veneration of saints and angels.
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In fact, other than the Jimmy Akin Bible Answer Man program, I think that's about the only other debate we've ever done that, where we went back and revisited it and went through it and stuff like that.
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And I forget what prompted it now. Algo would remember, but I don't think Algo's in channel right now. So he'd remember exactly what it was and exactly what
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I said and everything else, which is scary. Anyway, if you are familiar with Roman Catholic theology regarding the veneration of saints and angels, then you know that Matt Walsh was just, that's the standard type of argumentation.
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That's what you're going to get from Catholic Answers. That's what you can get from all of them. When we're praying to Mary, we're not doing anything different than what we are doing when we ask each other to pray for each other.
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It's all the fellowship of the saints. This is the body of Christ and their intercession is no different.
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Well, that's just not the case. The nature of that interaction, the idea of contacting the dead, what that requires of them, what that says of their relationship in eternity, their relationship to God, their relationship here on the earth.
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And when you look at what Rome is actually teaching, when they are given the capacity to actually grant grace, then we're not talking about just asking somebody else to pray for us.
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And certainly when you start reading through, and I'm not going to do it today, but we've done it before.
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When you start reading through the statements of Roman Catholic saints and what do they spiritual writers, the doctors of the church,
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Louis de Montfort and people like that, what they're literally saying about Mary's role is that she is the neck that turns
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God's head of grace and all grace accrues through her. And the idea of the intercession of the saints and what that means, that when you go into Roman Catholic church and you see these elderly women bowing down before statues and lighting candles and rocking back and forth and saying the rosary, that's not like you asking someone else to pray for you.
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And the idea, they came up, part of this came up, it was interesting, because right around the same time, someone linked me to the
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NC Register, National Catholic Register. And let's see, what's the date on this?
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January 31st this year, under the Vatican section, a new title for the Blessed Mother Theological Commission requests papal acknowledgement of Mary as co -redemptrix.
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Elizabeth Defner is the writer. Mary, the Immaculate Virgin of Nazareth, through her free and feminine yes, consented the conception of the divine word in her womb by the power of the
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Holy Spirit and thus mediated the one mediator, 1 Timothy 2 .5 to the world, bringing salvation to the human race.
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So begins the role of Mary in redemption, a document of the Theological Commission of the International Marian Association, the
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IMA, requesting that Pope Francis publicly acknowledge and honor
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Mary, the mother of Jesus, as the co -redemptrix with Jesus, the Redeemer. Now, those of you who know my books know there's nothing new here.
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This is the subject that I wrote a book on, I think it was 98. Mary, another Redeemer, there was big push going on at that time.
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John Paul II was coming up on the Millennium, and John Paul II, very, very dedicated to Mary, and there was a lot of speculation that he might define the fifth
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Marian dogma, the fourth having been defined only in 1950, and the third in 1854.
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So, that's funny, I look over on the page and there's Mitch Pacwa smiling at me from The Proverbs Explained by Mitch Pacwa.
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Well, he has a new book, The Proverbs Explained. He does read 12 languages, so smart guy.
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Anyway, so it goes on to say, this isn't the first time the title has been used to describe
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Mary, St. John Paul II, referred to her as co -redemptrix more than once, nor is it the first time a request has been made for a papal statement on Marian co -redemption.
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Actually, millions of petitions have been sent to the Vatican requesting the definition of the fifth
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Marian dogma. If you're asking, well, why hasn't it been defined then? If popes have taught it as doctrine, then why not define it as dogma?
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Primarily because there is a tremendous concern about disruption and destruction of ecumenical progress between Rome and especially
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Eastern Orthodoxy. Because the Orthodox have not embraced the bodily assumption or something like that as a dogma.
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And so, what review? June of 2008 was what? Okay, so June of 2008 was when we, for some reason, don't remember why,
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I'm sure it's explained at the beginning, reviewed the debate with Patrick Madrid. Yeah, I see it.
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So, there's a lot of resistance in the curia, the magisterium, against the definition of this as a dogma because it's already a doctrine, you can already teach it, but you can't define it as a part of the faith, which is an odd thing from my perspective.
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But anyway, goes on to say, but this may be the ideal time for such a papal statement, says
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Robert Festigi, a professor of systematic theology at Detroit's Sacred Heart Major Seminary and a member of IMA's Theological Commission.
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Now, why did I emphasize Robert Festigi's name? Because Robert Festigi was one of the first Roman Catholics I debated.
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We did, forgotten how many, fairly short televised debates in a,
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I remember this TV studio to this day. In fact, I remember, this isn't on any of the descriptions or any of the recordings, but I remember very, very clearly pointing him to some
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Roman Catholic writers that were contradicting what he was saying during the break. And what was it?
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He muttered something along the lines of, well, that's the problem we have since the Inquisition was outlawed or something like that.
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It's like, oh, okay, all right. There you go. I really think a papal statement on Marian co -redemption would be opportune during the centenary of the
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Fatima apparitions, Festigi told the Register. That's a big thing right now, is the
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Fatima apparitions. Now, again, that's a whole nother area. And I focus upon the dogmatic teachings primarily.
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But you got to understand how many Roman Catholics really, really, really, really, really believe in apparitions and all sorts of stuff like that.
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And it ends up going off the rails all the time. In fact, the document itself describes the
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Marian apparitions at Fatima as, quote, a powerful manifestation of Our Lady's co -redemption in action, end quote.
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How did the idea of Mary as co -redemptrix first come about? The teaching of Marian cooperation with Christ and the role of redemption is there in sacred scripture, explains
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Festigi. We need to see it through the eyes of faith. And he added, Catholic teachings about Mary have not shied away from her active role in redemption of mankind.
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Lumen Gentium, for instance, states that Mary, quote, devoted herself totally as a handmaid of the Lord to the person and work of her son, under him and with him by the grace of Almighty God, serving the mystery of redemption.
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Rightly, therefore, the Holy Father's see her as used by God, not merely in a passive way, but as freely cooperating in the work of human salvation through faith and obedience, end quote.
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If Vatican II's Constitution and the Church touched on Mary's role in the general work of redemption, why request a papal statement now, quote, because there is a lot of confusion today, said
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Festigi. Many Catholics think Vatican II wanted to downplay Mary's role in the redemption of mankind.
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In fact, even at Vatican II, there was a movement to request the definition of the Blessed Mother as co -redemptrix, but it was not the intention of the
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Council to give a complete teaching on Mariology. That opened the door for another movement in the next century, about a decade ago, five cardinals petitioned
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Pope Benedict XVI to proclaim Mary the spiritual mother of all humanity, the co -redemptrix of Jesus' redeemer, mediatrix of all graces with Jesus, the one mediator, and advocate with Jesus Christ on behalf of the human race.
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That's all in quotation. Though the Pope did not make the requested statement, he did refer to Mary as mediatrix of all graces in a letter in the last year of his pontificate.
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This new request is worded in such a way that Festigi said it is up to the Holy Spirit. Catch that?
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Up to the Holy Spirit. Let's be honest. Um, you make this dogma and you don't believe revelation has ceased.
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Clearly, this is a revelatory concept. There is no way you can stretch biblical teaching to say, oh, yeah, that's, no.
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It's up to the Holy Spirit how Pope Francis might interpret it. He might make a formal statement or clarify how the
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Church understands Mary's role as cooperator in the work of redemption. But will the request be successful this time?
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Will Pope Francis make a statement on Mary as co -redemptrix? These things are often difficult to predict, said Festigi, pointing out that Pope Francis has a deep devotion to the
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Blessed Mother and that he also sometimes states things that are, quote, a little bit daring, end quote.
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Yeah. The Blessed Mother has a quantity of appellations and titles, and to Catholics today, they are familiar, comforting, and the farthest thing from controversy.
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Who, for instance, would argue against calling Mary Theotokos, God -bearer? Well, a lot of people would.
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But centuries ago, this title was a point of contention with some Christians arguing that Mary was the mother of the human Christ, as though his deity could be separated from his humanity.
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Yes, the initial argument, Nestorius, Clement of Alexandria, was about the nature of Jesus at his birth.
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It wasn't about Mary. The shifting of the focus from Jesus to the nature of Mary is unorthodox, biblically speaking.
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So, Theotokos has a perfectly orthodox meaning, as long as we're talking about Jesus. It falls off the rails, becomes unbiblical, when you change it to a discussion of the nature of Mary.
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Perhaps future Catholics will also look back on arguments about the title co -redemptrix with bemusement. But in this moment, said
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Fastigi, those of us who see the term as acceptable sometimes receive such strong reactions. First of all, they're not used to the term.
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Second, they misunderstand the term, as if somehow Christ couldn't redeem us on his own. But that's nonsense, he added.
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After all, God could have chosen another way to redeem the human race, but he chose to associate Mary in redemption as the mother of the
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Redeemer. The funny thing is, you have to ask the question from their perspective. Could Mary have derailed this?
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And I actually saw a Catholic Answers video on this. I didn't download it and watch it.
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But, you know, when you think this through, it really makes you ask the question, so how come none of the apostles ever thought this was important enough to talk about it?
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How come none of the early church fathers? I mean, the farther down the road we get, and the more utterly ahistorical, unbiblical, farthest from the minds of any of the apostles you can possibly get, you get with this stuff.
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Just how far can you go before it just becomes so patently obvious that the whole claim that what you're holding to is based on scripture and tradition is used car salesman jargon.
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That's all it is. It has no meaning. There's no reason to trust it. Anyway, additionally, there's papal precedent for the title
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Pope Pius XI used the title Mary co -redemptrix, Pope Pius X approved a prayer with an indulgence attached to it, referring to Mary as co -redemptrix of the human race.
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And Pope John the Paul II used the title repeatedly. A statement on this title would actually help. You can tell where he's going from.
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Would actually help ecumenism, said Festigi, for the separated brethren to see how we understand
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Mary's spiritual motherhood. So he knows that the primary reason that this has not been defined is because it doesn't help the ecumenical movement at all.
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So he's trying to cover that over. That's what Cardinal Telesfor Toppo believes too, a member of IMA's theological commission.
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He's one of the five cardinals who petitioned Pope Benedict for the fifth Marian dogma a decade ago in an interview with Zenit at that time.
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He explained that this title could actually facilitate interreligious dialogue. He said, Mary's cooperation with God's plan helps all
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Christians and even non -Christians to understand our own required cooperation with Jesus and with his grace for our salvation.
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You want synergism? There's synergism. There's synergism with a capital
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SIN right at the beginning. Well, that happened to fit rather well with what was going on with the
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Matt Walsh stuff. Because I sent... Evidently, Matt Walsh does not want to talk to me.
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On Twitter, I responded to, I don't know, five or six of his comments on related subjects from his feed and he's never responded to me once.
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So, evidently, he wants to stay far, far away from me.
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But it does, again, point us to the real issue that we all need to be thinking through and thinking through very carefully.
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The decision of the Seventh Circuit, that Title VII...
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Was it Title VII? Or was it IX? The decision that just came down...
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It's a Roman numeral. Anyway, that adds sexual confusion to civil rights.
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That's what it is. That's the only way you can describe it. Is that sexual perversion, confusion, rebellion is now a civil right.
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It's just further illustration of how the judicial branch of our government has been thoroughly corrupted.
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The Constitution envisioned judges who would operate upon a worldview that was commensurate with the worldview that produced the
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Constitution itself. And so, now that that is no longer the case, now that the judiciary is thoroughly controlling by people of the worldview that is fundamentally in opposition to the worldview that even makes the
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Constitution coherent. It's one of the reasons I just go, I don't know what can be done.
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The Constitution cannot function in this context. So, I'm not shocked at all at this kind of moral perversity being called good, good being called evil.
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The stuff going on down in Australia, the rings that people are wearing for marriage equality, which of course we all know is just simply the destruction of marriage, not marriage equality at all.
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These are all just empty words. And even uttering these words in this context here could get this video banned and all of our videos removed overnight.
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Could very easily. The totalitarians don't care about being just or right or they don't want debate.
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They're totalitarians. Bow or we rid ourselves of you. We will silence you.
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That's their mindset. As that is taking place in Western culture, that means that people like Matt Walsh and myself find ourselves allied on many issues.
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And I've been saying for a long, long time, as that cultural space becomes tighter and tighter and smaller and smaller, we can't avoid each other.
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And we are going to be forced to think through the relationship that exists between Roman Catholics and whatever you want to call me.
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I'm not sure that evangelical even has any meaning anymore to be prognostic. And I really am concerned that many on my side of that divide reject
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Roman Catholicism for all the wrong reasons. They're not thought through reasons. They're not solid reasons.
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They're not reasons that actually can survive examination or even maybe even the right ones.
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Just simply taste predilection is not a good reason.
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It's not going to survive with what's coming our direction. And so I've mentioned more than once the fact that I'll listen to these folks.
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I'll read a Matt Walsh blog. I'll listen to Patrick Madrid on EWTN. And I'm tracking and we're all responding to the same thing.
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And we are bemoaning the same degradation of our society and of morals and ethics and everything else.
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And I'll be tracking with them. And then all of a sudden, off they go to some apparition, some saint, some something.
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Or if it's not just a sudden left -hand turn off into Loonyville, it'll be something a little more subtle, but will still catch my attention very strongly.
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If you've read Van Til on the issue of natural law and things like that, then you know the antipathy that exists in regards to the primacy of Scripture, the noetic effects of sin, all these types of things.
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And so all of a sudden they'll start, and many evangelicals do the same thing because they're compromised at this point, but they'll start going off into these other areas.
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And it's really troubling because here we are, we both see what the problem is, but we can't say that Rome has a gospel -based solution because it doesn't.
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It doesn't have the gospel. I mean, like listening to Roman Catholics discussing atheism, there was this one time, man,
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I wish I looked for it, couldn't get it. There was this program on the radio
51:43
I was listening to, and this guy was dealing with atheism, and man, I wanted to play it for you because it was so illustrative of exactly how you cannot begin to deal with atheism at all.
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So man -centered. But hey, your apologetic methodology flows from your theology.
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And hey, it's one of my arguments that if the Roman Catholic and the Protestant can both use the same apologetic methodology, that might tell you that the
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Protestant's compromised. Because we don't have the same solution, so the arguments shouldn't be identical.
52:23
Anyway, more and more people are going to be recognizing this fundamental issue of, as we're pushed closer to closer, we have to talk with one another, have to understand one another, and we're either going to redefine our faiths down to a minimized definition and say the things we disagree on just don't matter.
52:52
And that's what people are already doing. In fact, it's hard to say what the percentages are, but I'll be perfectly honest with you.
53:05
Almost, again, percentages are going to be really tough here. A large, large proportion of those who are not
53:11
Roman Catholic amongst believing non -Roman
53:20
Catholics. So when I say Protestantism, that includes all the liberals that don't care about any of this stuff because they don't believe anything anymore, so they're not really relevant to the discussion.
53:29
But amongst people who really believe, the vast majority who are not Roman Catholics are not
53:34
Roman Catholics out of prejudice, not out of meaningful study of the issues.
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They don't know what the issues are. They might say, well, Catholics believe in work salvation. Well, that's a nice way to get yourself beat up.
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And I don't mean physically, but apologetically.
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They'll take your part because you really don't know what you're talking about. They have their answers. Very few people
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I know of today are non -Roman Catholics out of an understanding of what the Reformation was and an understanding of what the gospel is.
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And that means there's going to be a real collapse,
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I think, in regards to these issues as that pressure upon us to compromise, that pressure to fit into that smaller cultural space becomes greater and greater.
54:31
And already, I can see just watching what goes on on Twitter and Facebook, I can see a lot of people who would agree that they don't like what's happening.
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But, you know, let's not really deal with Matt Walsh's false gospel.
54:58
We don't want to use that terminology. And I've mentioned back in the 80s when
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I was involved with Operation Rescue, what was very clearly communicated to me was you're basically expected to let that slide.
55:16
We all need to work together for the greater good. We're not going to talk about that kind of thing.
55:26
And the pressure for that is getting greater and greater and greater and greater. And if you don't have a foundation, you're going to collapse.
55:34
You're going to give into it. And so all these people on Twitter go,
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I see a debate coming and stuff like that. No, you don't. I don't see Matt Walsh.
55:49
I could be wrong. I just don't see it as his thing. He's a social commentator.
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Peter Williams is a social commentator, too. So I could be wrong. Maybe he has confidence that is directly relevant to this.
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I don't know. But it's possible.
56:14
I don't know. I don't know. That's interesting. There's an article in the
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CRI Journal that was just sent to me. How to Approach Apparent Contradictions in the Gospel, a response to Michael Licona by Craig Blomberg.
56:30
Yeah, I understood that Blomberg at ETS criticized his
56:35
Mark stuff. So it would be interesting to see what he has to say. We'll have to have to take a look at that and see what is said.
56:43
That would be very nice if that were the case. That was a complete. That's what happens when you have a computer in front of you, and you get distracted right in the middle of things.
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So anyway, I wanted to address that because you're going to see it coming up over and over and over again.
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And you've got to be ahead of the curve. You've got to be thinking these things through before you're the one being asked, well, why aren't you cooperating?
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Why won't you work with this person or that person? Why won't you attend these meetings where this priest is going to be speaking and so on and so forth?
57:24
You've got to know why. I mean, when someone calls themselves an alter
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Christus, another Christ, that's relevant. When someone believes that by sacerdotal power, they have the ability to render
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Christ present upon the altar, that's relevant. It's relevant. You can't ignore these things.
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So this is the year to be thinking about them. This is the year to be doing those things. So mark on your calendars if you're in London, May 15th, we'll obviously need to put together banner ads and stuff like that really quick to let you know about the details and all the rest of that stuff.
58:05
But they're in London on the Marian dogmas. Do I have any time for this?
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No, not really. So your prayers be appreciated. I mean, right now, what's the real problem is it's so many different topics.
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If it was all on P45, it would be great. None of it is. So, wow.
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But timing is, it's 2017. It's time to do it while we still have the time to do it,
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I guess. So thanks for listening to the program today. Lord willing, we will see you next week here on The Dividing Line.