June 1, 2005

Roman Catholic Claims About Salvation and the Eucharist

Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line. The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.

Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602, or toll free across the United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341.

And now with today's topic, here is James White.

And welcome to The Dividing Line on a special Wednesday program. It is a Wednesday program, of course, because we didn't do it on Tuesday. I have my chloroceptic over here. I didn't get my glass of water I requested, but I'll get one eventually, I think.

And we've got the Flonase going. That's a good thing. That's good stuff, I got to admit. That's good stuff. And I had never tried that before, but we got introduced to Flonase. And antibiotics that I won't mention the names of.

I don't know why. They seem to be working. And so hopefully we get on the plane. The one nice thing is when I get on the plane Friday to fly back east to start ten days there, it doesn't matter who I sit next to.

I will be so packed out on antibiotics that it just really won't make any difference, because I can look at whoever is sitting next to me, if they cough and sneeze, and I can just laugh and say, ha, you can't hurt me.

And that's how it's going to go. So anyway, but hopefully the folks back east won't mind too much that I may be looking at trying to sleep a little bit more than I normally would. But anyway, we need to make sure that we are in one piece for the debate coming up a week from tomorrow on Long Island, Huntington Townhouse.

Details at ailmen .org slash calendar dot html. And that will be on the subject of can non-Christians enter into heaven? An odd subject. An odd subject indeed in light of things that the Roman Catholic Church has said in the past.

One of my favorites are papal encyclicals or sources of Roman Catholic dogma. The papal syllabus of errors lists as some of the errors, this is back in the middle 1800s, a little bit toward the later 1800s, but man may in the observance of any religion would ever find the way of eternal salvation and arrive at eternal salvation.

That's an error. That's something that is wrong. Good hope at least is to be entertained of the eternal salvation of all those who are not at all in the true church of Christ. And once again, that is an error.

Good hope? You're not supposed to have good hope. Good hope is not to be entertained of the eternal salvation of all those. I guess that's the key there as well. It's all, you know. Protestantism is nothing more than another form of the same true Christian religion in which form it is given to please God equally as in the Catholic Church.

Well, equally. Well, it's not quite as good. But you know, you got all the stuff from back in many, many centuries ago concerning the concept of Jews, schismatics, and heretics not inheriting the kingdom of heaven.

But my how things change. And so now we have the resources of the Catholic Catechism in the documents of Vatican II. And if you haven't been keeping up with this, just so you're aware, the debate will be focused upon two of the sections of the Catholic Catechism, which, by the way, is specifically with one, is that two sentences?

With two sentences exception, is directly from the documents of Vatican II. So it's not like this is new. It's not like it's something that has not been heard of before. Section 841, the Church's relationship with the Muslims, the plan of salvation, also includes those who acknowledge the Creator in the first place amongst whom are the Muslims.

These profess to hold the faith of Abraham and together with us they adore the one merciful God, mankind's judge on the last day. And so in some way, the plan of salvation, whatever that means, that's one of the things that I think is very illustrative about the arguments that Roman Catholic apologists use against Sola Scriptura, is they want us to believe.

In fact, if you've not seen it, the debate that I did with Mitch Pacwa in 1999 on the subject of Sola Scriptura, you might want to take a look at it. At the end, I dragged this big silver box out, book box out, book bag.

It's metal, so I don't know if it's a book bag. But anyway, book container, and I pulled out all these documents of Vatican II and the Catholic Catechism and the documents cited in the Catholic Catechism and the Code of Canon Law and I stacked all these things up and I said, what we're being told is that this, pointing to the stack of stuff, gives us greater clarity on the nature of the gospel than Romans 5 .1, than the basic gospel message of John or Galatians.

And in reality, everybody knows that's not the case. Everybody knows that Catholic theologians read this. One person wrote to me and said, well you need to understand there in section 841 when it says, these profess to hold the faith of Abraham, that's just saying they claim to, not that they really do.

But the very next portion of the sentence says, and together with us they adore the one merciful God. I can't even begin to understand how you cannot read that to mean that Muslims worship and adore God.

That Allah, the Allah of Islam, is the same God as Roman Catholics worship. And if you really believe that, you've got some major league problems. I asked in Channel last night, why in the world would Rome continue to anathematize Arius, and yet say this, isn't Arius a whole lot closer than Islam?

I mean, things have changed. And as things change, you get these problems in trying to hold things together and explain the concept of how in the world you can make all this stuff work. Section 1260, 841 and 1260 are the two primary sections we're going to be looking at in the debate.

Since Christ died for all, and since all men are in fact called to one and the same destiny, which is divine. And let me stop there. And doesn't that sound possibly, maybe, like it really doesn't allow for the Augustinian interpretation?

I mean, again, you just find so much wiggle room and so much contradiction within these things, it's difficult to understand. Which is divine. We must hold that the Holy Spirit offers to all the possibility of being made partakers in a way known to God, of the paschal mystery.

So, Rome has certainly said that you must have access to the sacraments to be saved. And so now if we want to start expanding the horizons of who is saved, then we have to come up with these ways known only to God of participating in the paschal mystery, and so on and so forth.

And then here, that's a quote again from, I think it was Gaudium et Spes, but it's also referencing Lumen Gentium 16. Then you have the two sentences that are the commentary of the Catholic Catechism, which is, Every man who is ignorant of the gospel of Christ and of his church, but seeks the truth and does the will of God in accordance with his understanding of it, can be saved.

It may be supposed that such persons would have desired baptism explicitly, if they had known of its necessity. Now, again, there's just so many things, and we have 25-minute opening statements, so I'll get to as many of them as I can next week, but how ignorant do you have to be of the gospel of Christ and his church?

Total ignorance? Partial ignorance? We don't know. Who is it that seeks the truth and does the will of God in accordance with his understanding? What kind of anthropology does that assume? That men actually seek truth?

That they don't run from divine truth? I thought John said something about men flee from the light because their deeds are evil. Well, that's just some men. That's not all men. On what basis can it be supposed that such a person would have desired baptism?

Don't these folks believe in libertarian free will? I mean, there's just so much stuff here. So, there's all sorts of stuff. I did want to read one other thing, and lines are filling up amazingly. I wanted to read another section from Nostra Aetate, Section 3.

Good grief. On a car phone? Well, what is a car phone? Isn't that a mobile phone in a car? Isn't that what we all have? I'll get there in a second. The church regards with esteem also the Muslims. It's spelled differently here.

They adore the one God, living and subsisting in himself, merciful and all-powerful, the creator of heaven and earth, who has spoken to men. Now, wait a minute. Time out. Excuse me, Mr. person writing Latin stuff here.

The Muslims think that he has spoken to men in the Koran. Yeah, that book that the Pope kissed. What about you? Do you think the Koran is the word of God? Why don't you just be upfront about these things?

You can't possibly believe that in light of what it teaches. They take pains to submit wholeheartedly to even his inscrutable decrees, just as Abraham, with whom the faith of Islam takes pleasure in linking itself, submitted to God.

I don't understand the submitted to God part, but anyway, that's probably just a Latin translation issue. Though they do not acknowledge Jesus as God, they revere him as a prophet. Well, that's nice. Even the Jehovah's Witnesses do better than that.

They also honor Mary, his virgin mother. At times, they even call on her with devotion. I'm not sure what that's supposed to mean. I wouldn't want to tell a Muslim that he was praying to Mary. That would be a bad thing.

That would generally cause much consternation and difficulty. In addition, they await the day of judgment when God will render their hearts to all those, render their desserts, I'm sorry, to all those who have been raised up from the dead.

Finally, they value the moral life and worship God, especially through prayer, almsgiving, and fasting. Well, couldn't that be said of almost any religion? I mean, talking about the nice things about it doesn't deal with whether it's true worship, does it?

Later on, that same document you have, Besides, as the Church has always held and holds now, Christ underwent his passion and death freely, because the sins of men and out of infinite love, in order that all may reach salvation.

It is, therefore, the burden of the Church's preaching to proclaim the cross of Christ as the sign of God's all-embracing love and as the fountain from which every grace flows. Well, do you want to know why you need to have sound theology?

Do you want to know why you should consider the issue of the atonement and what the atonement accomplishes? There you go. There you go. You have bad theology of the atonement, resulting in, what does in order that all may reach salvation mean?

Does that mean that all will have the opportunity? That all are savable? What does that mean? I mean, I can certainly hear a Roman Catholic universalist grabbing hold of that and going, See? There it is.

And there are such things. In fact, I'd say a large portion of the priests and bishops in the Catholic Church today would hold to at least a blatant form of inclusivism, if not universalism itself. It's going to be a very, very, very interesting discussion because it will all come down to what we believe about the gospel and God's purposes in the gospel.

That's the issue. And that will be what we will be discussing. A number of people already know that the number is 877 -753 -3341. 877 -753 -3341. I don't know. I guess when they say that they're on a mobile phone.

You know, I use my mobile phone as well. I don't even have a phone anymore. But we'll go ahead and throw Peter up to the front of the line and say hi to Peter. Hi, Peter. Hello. How are you? Good. How are you?

Not so good, but we're trying. All right. Well, my question was, I'm from a Roman Catholic background, and my mother tried to get me to try to embrace the faith and come back to the faith. She wants to have our deacon come over, and he wants to talk to me about the Eucharist, about I think it's the sixth chapter of John, chapter 55, where they talk about the seed on the flesh.

He was giving me some more about the Greek word, literally gnaw, ask, and so on and so on. So I'm just trying to get some information on exactly where they're coming from and what would be some good things to help me prepare for a conversation with them.

Well, Peter, what kind of a church are you in now?

Well, right now I attend an ED3 church in Colorado. Oh, okay.

All righty. Well, first thing I would always say is make sure that your elders are aware of the situation so they can be of assistance and pray for you. Secondly, it sounds like the presentation they are going to want to make to you is very much along the lines of the presentation made by Robert St. Genes in our debate on the Mass just a few years ago.

He especially likes to try to argue that the Greek term trogo can only mean literally to eat food. It can never be used metaphorically. And so there is a discussion of that in that debate. If you'd sort of like to hear what's going to be heading your direction, it's available in MP3 if you know how to listen to MP3s.

So that's a really fast way of getting you information very, very quickly, as well as responses to that. But most importantly, I would say, depending on when this meeting is going to take place, is the issue of actually looking at what John 6 is all about and recognizing that to jump to the last three quarters of the chapter and to miss what Jesus said before that, which defines his context and defines his terminology and defines his meaning, is to engage in classical eisegesis, reading into the text a meaning that it did not originally have.

And that's something that can be done on a very, very quick basis in a fashion that would allow you to communicate it to this individual. But that information would be found in the Roman Catholic controversy.

I think there's material on that subject, if I recall correctly, at AOMN .org in the Roman Catholicism section. It's really a matter of allowing the text to speak for itself and letting Jesus define what it is he's talking about.

The whole point of turning this into a physical activity is the exact opposite of what Jesus is trying to say. These men were seeking food. They were seeking for him to redo the miracle he did the day before, the loaves and the fishes.

And Jesus is saying, no, you don't understand. You're only seeking me for physical reasons. You have a spiritual need. I am the only source of spiritual food. You need to feast upon me. And when he presses that upon them, they turn around and walk away.

That's not what they're looking for. They're looking for miracles. They're looking for the show. And it's interesting that Rome ends up making the exact same error that the Jews were making in not seeing the connection that Jesus himself made.

But you'll notice that earlier in John 6, 35, Jesus first uses the food terminology of coming and believing on him. He says the one coming to him will never hunger. The one believing on him will never thirst.

Well, if hungering and thirsting, if we're supposed to be absurd literalists here and not allow Jesus to define his terms, then you can assuage hunger and thirst by coming and believing. That doesn't fit their paradigm, and that's why they don't start there.

They don't start back at that and allow Jesus to define things. And they certainly don't walk through John 6, 35 and following and allow Jesus to explain the sovereignty of God and salvation and everything else that's found there either.

So I was sitting here thinking, you know, I just spoke about this, and then I realized that's not going to do any good because I was speaking at a conference and it was being translated into Italian. So unless you listen to Italian, that's not going to do you much good.

And he also brought up the one word that's very familiar with the Eucharist. He says the purpose of the priest is to serve the Eucharist and so on and so on. But he says that's where they draw their doctrine of transubstantiation from too.

Well, certainly John 6 is key to modern Rome's doctrine of transubstantiation, but you need to realize that's not even a term that appeared in the first thousand years of the Church. They read that terminology back into the concept of the real presence of Christ, which was a spiritual presence of Christ.

And there's a lot that goes into this, but there's no reference to a priest in John 6. And in fact, there's no reference to a Christian priesthood outside of the priesthood of all believers, male and female, anywhere in the New Testament.

We did a debate on that just a couple of years ago as well that you might find interesting on the MP3 site. So I'm not sure what that reference would be as far as the priest goes. Maybe that would be more like 1 Corinthians 11.

I'm not sure. Okay. All right? Well, I appreciate your time. So take a look at the MP3 site, and depending on what kind of time frame you've got, there are excellent works available on the subject for reading, but that takes time.

And that's the best way to do it, of course. The fast thing, you can come up with quick answers, but to have long-term conclusions takes a little work.

All right? Yeah, and just a quick question. Since I'm here in Utah, I'll just kind of bring this one out of the blue since I'm here. Do you think the Mormon Church is in any way whatsoever maybe making a move towards a more Christian view or teachings in their gospel, or no?

Well, what's going on is that the Mormon Church, especially under the leadership of the current prophet, who worked for 34 years in public relations, is seeking to mainstream. It's seeking to utilize terminology and to gain access to Christian fellowship without allegedly sacrificing its unique doctrines in the process.

And what you see, for example, in Roger Millett at BYU, is a willingness to be much less clear and open about particular doctrines, especially the idea that God was once a man who lived on another planet, in comparison to previous generations of Mormons.

But I don't see any evidence that that means that the Mormon Church as a whole is quote-unquote moving toward a more Christian perspective. I mean, as long as you remain a polytheist, as long as you continue to believe that there is more than one true God, I don't think there is a way of moving toward that.

It would require Mormonism to jettison the claim that Joseph Smith was a prophet of the Restoration and what he taught and what was taught by the first 160 years of Mormon leaders to adopt anything even remotely like the Gospel or anything remotely like Christian Orthodoxy.

And so I don't think that the Church is quite ready to do that. And it is interesting, very, very interesting to follow the developments at BYU and the impact on the Church as a whole and things like that.

But at the same time, that's not changing the teachings of the general authorities and things like that. So it's definitely a religion under a tremendous amount of stress. It's under a tremendous amount of stress because of the fact that it basically was designed by history to be a religion of the inner Mountain West.

It struggles when it has to be exposed to the entirety of the human culture all around the world. And the result of that is a fascinating line of development. Where it's going to end up, nobody knows, but it would require a complete redefinition of Mormonism for it to be anything close to Orthodox Christianity.

Do you think it's part of a PR campaign?

Oh, I don't have any doubt about that. When you listen to Hinckley on Larry King Live saying, you know, Larry King asked, well, don't you believe that God was once a man? Well, you know, Larry, we don't know a lot about that.

And then at the very next conference, I was at the very next conference after that happened, and I heard with my own ears, I heard him saying inside the conference, he said, and as to rumors that I don't know what we believe about the Godhead, don't worry, I know what we believe.

And then there's this ha ha ha ha ha all across the conference floor. So, yeah, there's a little less honesty than needs to be going on. And, you know, there's Mormons who recognize that. There are Mormons who are very upset about what's going on as far as that's concerned as well.

So, all righty? All right. I appreciate your time, sir. Thank you. God bless. You too. Bye-bye. All right. Bye-bye. I'm not even reaching out for the cough button right now. I've got too many buttons to play with here anyways.

Baptism, Church Membership, and the Call to Consistency

Let me see here. Let's go to line three and Aaron. Hi, Aaron. Hi, Dr. White. How are you? I'm doing fine.

I hope that you get to feeling better soon. I hope so, too. I wanted to tell you, first of all, as kind of a little introduction to my question, I am a youth minister in an Episcopal church. Wow. I reformed about two years ago, I think.

And ever since then, life has been nothing but a giant theological mess.

Isn't that the way to describe the Episcopal church as a whole right now? Yeah. As a giant theological mess? I mean, did you see the statement from Canterbury two weeks ago on Mary?

Well, you know, it's hard to defend someone that you disagree with so vehemently. I know.

And believe me, I was giving one of our Episcopalian Channel members who is actually from England, but he's down in Australia right now. I was giving him a wonderfully horrid time last night about that.

But I know there are many, especially conservative Anglicans and Episcopalians, who are quite upset about things. And I'm not trying to pick on you, but it is amazing what's going on. Yeah, it is.

My question has a little bit something to do with that as well. I was baptized in the Roman Catholic Church as an infant. And I think I have you to thank for a great many things. First of all, when I reformed, I started having to rethink all of these things.

Because, well, when you're an Episcopalian and you become a Calvinist, you can no longer think about baptism the way you used to. And the more that I've examined these things, the more that I've had to get rid of these things.

I think the last straw was when I listened to your debate with Dr. Strimple, and it was a tag-team debate.

Right, it was Gary Johnson and Dr. Strimple, yeah. Yeah.

And I kind of came away from that just really reeling from the whole experience. And I've been hoping to get a chance to ask you this question now, because it's really bugging me.

So now you're going to get all my Presbyterian friends upset with me too, right? One can only hope.

Anyway, my point is, when I listened to the debate, and also in all of my study that I've been doing and discussions with other people, I became convinced of the Credo Baptist view. I'm 26. I was baptized as an infant.

I've been working in youth ministry for eight years. Wow. That's a long time for youth ministry.

Yeah, well, yeah, it is. I mean, when I say that, what I'm saying is, at least like in Southern Baptist churches, youth ministry is sort of like purgatory before you get a real job. So that's what I meant by that.

I mean, if it's an avocation, if it's a calling, that's a different thing.

Right. Well, you know, and for a lot of my friends it has been a calling, and for others it's a stepping stone to seminary. Yes. At this point, for me, I'm really looking toward seminary at some point, but it's going to be a huge jump because, you know, you and I both well know that Credo Baptist with a Zwinglian Eucharist theology is not going to get into an Episcopal seminary.

Why not? I mean, we're open to everything else. Well, you know, you would think.

You would think, yeah. For a church that prides itself on its diversity.

Yeah, well, diversity only goes one direction. Exactly.

But anyway, so here's the question. My wife and I are very perplexed and disturbed by the revelation to us when we looked into each other's eyes and we thought, we've never been baptized. And for me, as someone who is working in order to be publicly baptized as an adult, it would mean that I would basically have to either announce my resignation or expect my, you know, termination.

Yeah. I was reading where the Ethiopian is in an act when he says, what is preventing me from being baptized? And my first inclination is to say, oh, look at that. I have to get baptized immediately. My second thought is, there is something keeping me from being baptized.

Is it something valid or not? Yeah. I've discussed this with a lot of friends, and no one has really been able to give me any sort of guidance, and I was hoping you might be able to.

Well, it's a first for me as far as the situation you're in. That's for certain. But, you know, my first thought is I really, really appreciate the spirit with which you are approaching this. In the vast majority of situations, when you're talking with someone who is struggling with a decision concerning baptism, it's over their willingness to be obedient to Christ, and that's not your point at this point.

The issue, honestly, that I would say that I think is prior even to that is, are you, you know, how can you stay where you are and plan for the future? In other words, you're at that, you're obvious at that point in time.

You're looking at seminary. You're looking at continuation of ministry. Where is that ministry going to be? What's God's calling on my life? And it strikes me that listening to what you're saying, you need to have a level of consistency between your faith and where you're ministering.

I mean, that was one of the reasons that I had to leave the very large evangelical church that I was in and ended up at the very small Reformed Baptist church that I'm at right now was the inconsistency that existed between what I was teaching and not what was being taught from the pulpit all the time, but what would be taught from the pulpit about half the time.

The other half was okay. It was just the inconsistency. I could not handle that. I could not grow in that situation. I could not grow in grace. It just wasn't possible. Really, when I think of your public testimony in baptism, the question would be where would you go to be baptized?

And I see baptism as not only a public profession of faith, but a lot of folks see baptism as being done at the hands of the church and as being part of my association with this is where the Lord has placed me to serve.

These are the people that I'm going to be serving with, at least in that initial baptism. Obviously, I don't mean that every time you move to a different town or something, but where would you go? I mean, what do you want that context to be?

What do you want that situation to be? And it would seem that you'd want to do that in the context of the community that you are going to be using the gifts God has given you in. And so it strikes me that the first issue really in reality would be, Lord, I want to be obedient in this.

I've come to understand it this way. This is what I desire, but I also recognize that that involves making a long-term commitment in regards to what my future is going to be. Where am I going to go? If seminary is something that you are intent upon doing, where am I going to go?

Who am I going to talk to? What are my directions here? And the question I would just basically ask you is, do you feel that you can stay where you are and minister with consistency, knowing that eventually when you're 57 or something, they want you to be doing something other than the youth thing and playing some of the games you all play as sort of tough at 57 anyways.

So there's going to be some movement there eventually, and could you handle the politics of the Episcopalian Church? I mean, I was a hospital chaplain for a while, and that was one of the reasons I had to stop doing that was the politics involved in having to let the Satanists in and stuff like that.

I just couldn't handle it. So those are just some of the first thoughts across my fevered mind today is it seems to me that the first issue is the church issue and whether you believe that you can continue, you can plan your future with your wife and your family in that context where you are right now or not.

That would seem to be the first thing, and then once the decision has been made there, then the associational issue of baptism, what that means in the community that it would be involved in, and so on and so forth, would sort of flow from the decisions made there.

Yes?

I think you've really hit the nail on the head, but I have one last question for you. Okay. If I'm going to do that, because I'm a lifelong Episcopalian, except for when I was a child and I was baptized in the Roman Catholic Church, it's easy to find an Episcopal church.

How do you find a Reformed church? Where are you located? I'm in Houston.

Well, probably the easiest way, there are about three or four, well, two or three different websites that have fairly extensive lists. Johnny Farisi has a very extensive list of Reformed Baptist churches, and a Reformed Baptist pastor in our chat channel just said, nice dodge of the bullet, Dr. O.

I'm not sure what I was dodging, but anyway, I think he was talking about the actual question itself, but anyway, that gets you started. I was actually thinking if you wanted, Rich could get your information or give you my, you've got reformedbaptist .com, founders .org, farisi .com, those are the websites that will tell you who's in the area.

Reformedreader .org will give you some more. And then I could get you in touch with some folks. I would love to have you possibly, oh, someone just told me that there is a listing in Houston on the Farisi website.

See, I was sort of dragging this out long enough for everybody to hit their web browsers and give me this information, so I sound really smart. But there is one there listed in Houston. I would love to invite you to talk to, and I'm sure he'd want to talk to you as well and share in your journey, Jim Renahan.

Dr. Jim Renahan is the director of the Institute of Reformed Baptist Studies at Westminster Seminary in Escondido, and he's going to be joining me in doing the onboard debate with Crossan and Borg on the resurrection issues.

And so he lives in that realm and would probably be able to give you some really, really, really practical advice. And he would also have the added advantage of being a Reformed Baptist who is teaching at a Presbyterian seminary.

So in other words, he knows the issues as far as that is concerned. So if you'd like, I'll put you on hold when we're done here, and then Rich can either give you my direct email or vice versa, he can get yours, and I can get you in touch with Jim and look at some of those websites and start working from that direction to try to get you the information to act on when you make that decision to do so.

All right, I appreciate it. Thank you so much, Dr. White. Oh, hey, thanks for calling, and God bless. You too. All righty, bye-bye. I'll put that on hold there if you can grab line three. And someone asking me in channel if I'm here.

Yes, I'm here, just a tad bit on the busy side. And that was neat. Boy, I tell you, it's nice to have encouragement once in a while. It really, really, really, really does. Yes, we need to take a break.

I need to take a break. My chloroceptic is calling me, and so we're going to take a break and be right back right after this.

The Limits of Universalism and Inclusivism

Nothing less to be blessed. Try to save your soul from death. It's all works righteousness, you know. Can I manufacture grace myself or not in some religious place by weeping hard on your face or saying prayers to some dead saints, you know.

Is the Bible true? Never before in history has the authority and inspiration of the Holy Scriptures been so viciously attacked by those outside the pale of orthodoxy and within the walls of traditional evangelicalism itself.

Join us August 27, 2005 at the Sea-Tac Marriott for an historic debate between evangelical Christian apologist Dr. James R. White and world-renowned Jesus Seminar co-founder and Bible skeptic Dr. John Dominic Crossan as they debate a topic which every Christian should be concerned about.

Is the Bible true? Seating and tickets are limited, so call today 877 -753 -3341 or visit AOMIN .org to reserve your seat today. That's 877 -753 -3341 to be a part of this historic event that will illuminate the fault lines of faith between conservative and liberal Christians alike.

More than any time in the past, Roman Catholics and evangelicals are working together. They are standing shoulder to shoulder against social evils. They are joining across denominational boundaries in renewal movements.

And many evangelicals are finding the history, tradition, and grandeur of the Roman Catholic Church appealing. This newfound rapport has caused many evangelical leaders and lay people to question the age-old disagreements that have divided Protestants and Catholics.

Aren't we all saying the same thing in a different language? James White's book, The Roman Catholic Controversy, is an absorbing look at current views of tradition in Scripture, the papacy, the mass, purgatorian indulgences, and Marian doctrine.

James White points out the crucial differences that remain regarding the Christian life and the heart of the gospel itself that cannot be ignored. Order your copy of The Roman Catholic Controversy by going to our website at aomin .org.