The Eucharist, Sola Scriptura and Tradition - White vs Akin

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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In studio with me today, two special guests, friends, people that I admire and respect, and two men that I trust will give you, as a listening audience, a greater perspective on the issues which not only unite

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Catholics and Protestants, but the issues on which we separate.

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The purpose for this broadcast is to create not heat, but light.

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I am quite frankly disturbed by the fact that too often in this debate, people set up straw men and knock them down instead of dealing with the real issues, and that serves to repel as opposed to reach, and our goal is to reach people, because we know that every one of us one day will stand in the greatest size with people from every tongue and tribe and nation.

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We will give an answer, and therefore we must do what we do in a way that glorifies the

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Lord Jesus Christ. First of all, I would like to introduce my friend James Aiken of Catholic Answers.

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He is someone that is an extremely thoughtful Christian, someone that I certainly love as an individual.

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He is the author of an upcoming book, What Catholics Believe and Why. He's an apologist for Catholic Answers.

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He's a contributing editor to This Rock magazine, and his religious autobiography was recently published in the collection

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Surprised by Truth, edited by Patrick Madrid and available from Catholic Answers.

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James Aiken, it's a delight to have you with us today. I'm delighted to be here. We also have another

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James in studio today, someone that is familiar to all the listeners of the Bible Answer Man broadcast. He was in studio for three separate shows in which we dealt with the issue of King James Version -only controversy, and before I even introduce you further,

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James, you did a marvelous job, and I want to express to you my appreciation on behalf of our listening audience.

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We've gotten a lot of wonderfully positive comments about the program. I think it did a lot of good. I am sure that it did, and you are, of course, the founder of Alpha and Omega Ministries.

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You have written various books, including a book on this whole issue of Roman Catholicism which is called

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The Fatal Flaw, but now you are doing a more comprehensive work for Bethany on that subject as well.

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They're out next year. These are two thoughtful men, folks, and I am certain that as a result of this program we are going to have, as I said, light as opposed to heat.

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A couple of things that I want to deal with at the very start. Obviously I want our listening audience to have an opportunity to ask you questions directly, but I think perhaps the primary issue that we need to begin this broadcast with is the issue of sola scriptura, or the

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Bible alone as our only standard for testing what is claimed as a revelation from God, as opposed to the

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Roman Catholic claim that both the Bible and the authoritative traditions of the

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Church ought to be the standards by which revelation is tested. James Aiken, why don't you give your understanding in sort of a capsule form of this issue and why it's important.

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Well, one of the things a person needs to know when one is deciding what to do with one's life is, of course, what

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God wants from a person, and the only way we can know that is by looking at God's Word. God's Word is the only infallible source of information we have on earth about what

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God wants of us, what God wants to give us, what God wants to save us from, and it is the only thing that we must model our lives after in that sense.

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It is the only thing we can put our ultimate confidence in. However, one of the differences between Protestants and Catholics is

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Protestants believe that the Word of God has been passed on to us in only one form, namely in the

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Bible. At least that's the way the issue is commonly phrased. Catholics believe that the Word of God to us has been passed on in two forms, in the

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Bible, the books that were written by the prophets and the apostles, and in sacred tradition, which is those teachings which are also passed down to us from the prophets and the apostles.

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Just as one has to distinguish the apostolic books of Scripture from non -apostolic writings, from things that are merely writings of men and were not written under the inspiration of God, one also has to distinguish between traditions that come to us from the apostles and things that are merely the traditions of men that are not written, not taught under God's inspiration.

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And so, just as we have to separate canonical from non -canonical scriptures on the one hand, we also have to separate canonical from non -canonical traditions on the other hand.

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And once we have, once we, you know, in going through the evidence and so forth, listening to the

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Church's voice in deciding that issue, we are then able to come to a proper understanding of everything

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God wants us to know, not simply limiting ourselves to one mode that His Word has been passed down to us, but embracing both of them, at least that's the

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Catholic viewpoint. James White, your particular understanding of this issue from a

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Protestant perspective? It is indeed the foundational issue in my opinion, and unfortunately it is a difficult issue to address for a number of reasons.

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First of all, there's a number of different understandings amongst Roman Catholics in regards to what tradition refers to.

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Many Roman Catholics today, especially in the United States, would like to limit tradition to merely the interpretive ability of the

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Church. Others more traditional would assert that there is actually a body of oral tradition that is passed down separately, that contains revelation from God that is not found in the

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Bible. Others would say no, at least in some semblance it's all found in the Bible, and so it's a very difficult issue,

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I'm afraid. A lot of people do not really know what the argument is actually all about.

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I like to go back to the Lord Jesus Christ in Matthew chapter 15. In Matthew chapter 15,

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He encountered individuals who believed that their religious tradition had sacred traditions from God.

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They believed that these sacred traditions had been passed down, that they were divine in origin, and they were authoritative.

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When the Lord Jesus encountered these individuals, the scribes and the Pharisees, and they used these traditions to accuse

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Him of wrongdoing, I think we need to follow His example of what He did. We all know what happened in Matthew chapter 15 when the tradition of the elders was thrown up in the face of the

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Lord Jesus. How did He respond? He said, Jesus replied, this is verse 3 of chapter 15, And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition?

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For God said, Honor your father and mother, and anyone who curses his father and mother must be put to death. But you say that if a man says to his father and mother whatever help he might otherwise have received from me as a gift of God, he is not to honor his father and mother with it.

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Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your traditions. You hypocrites, Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you, etc.,

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etc. Now remember, these individuals thought that the tradition they were using was divine in origin.

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They had used their best efforts, shall we say, to determine whether this extra -scriptural tradition was, in fact, from God or not.

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The point is, the Lord Jesus Christ subserviated all traditions, whether claimed to be divine or human, to the ultimate authority of Scripture.

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And the question then comes down, are the Roman Catholic traditions subserviated to Scripture?

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And does the Roman Catholic system, as it is set up with the teaching magisterium, have the ability to honestly apply

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Matthew Chapter 15? And I would submit that that is not what takes place. And I would submit that when we look at the doctrines that have been defined on the basis of tradition, doctrines such as the

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Immaculate Conception or the Bodily Assumption of Mary or Papal Infallibility, we see that Matthew Chapter 15 cannot be functionally applied.

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The Protestant position is that the Scriptures, being God -breathed, are the ultimate authority for the man of God.

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That they are able to thoroughly equip the man of God for every good work. That does not mean that we don't believe that the

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Church has a role in teaching. It does not mean that we throw the Holy Spirit out the door. It does not mean the

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Church cannot grow in its understanding of what the Scriptures teach. What it does mean is that there is no authority higher than Scripture.

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It should be noted that you have written that Athanasius fought a sometimes lonely battle in defense of the deity of the

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Lord Jesus Christ. When he did, he stood against the full weight of the Church of Rome. At that particular point in time, he refuted his enemies, not by reference to oral tradition, but by a logical, insightful exegesis of Scripture.

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And I use Athanasius because of the simple fact that he was dealing with really what was at the time the fundamental defining aspect of what

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Christianity was to be. Were we going to have the truly divine Savior?

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Or were we going to have a Savior that was very much like the religions of the world? And Athanasius, in his defense of the faith,

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I think is a glowing example of the very same type of apologetics that we see going on today when a

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Jehovah's Witness calls in to this radio program. The very same type of passages are going to be cited.

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The very same passages are going to be cited. You don't find him saying, well, Mr. Arius, or followers of Arius, you are in error because the

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Church of Rome says this, the teaching magisterium says this, we have these extra -biblical traditions that say this.

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No, you find him exegesing these things from the Scripture and presenting that as the final authority that these individuals will or will not bow to.

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That's the issue for him. James, your comments. By the way, I'm going to, just so I don't confuse everybody here, we have a

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James White and a James Aiken, so I may refer to you as Mr. Aiken, not because I don't personally care for you, but, or Mr.

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White, just so that the listening audience knows who I'm talking to. Again, Mr. Aiken, who represents Catholic Answers, your comments.

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Okay, well, I'd have to say a number of things. Just in regard to the Scripture text that Mr.

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White referred to, Matthew 15, and you cited verse 3 and so forth, that,

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I'm afraid, I'm afraid you engaged in a little bit of exegesis there. If you continue reading in that passage and you get down to verse 9, you find

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Jesus giving a quotation from the book of Isaiah and applying it to his pharisaical opponents, and it says that,

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In vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men. And so the problem here was not simply that they were using traditions.

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Jesus did not here condemn all traditions. All he condemned were traditions of men. Mr. White, in fact, talked about the tradition of the elders.

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Well, the tradition of the elders was wrong. And so merely the fact that Jesus said, in this case, that this tradition is wrong, the traditions of the elders are wrong, their teaching is doctrine of the precepts of men, that doesn't mean all traditions are wrong.

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This comes out even more clearly in the Mark in parallel to this in Mark chapter 7, verse 8, where Jesus says bluntly,

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You leave the commandment of God and hold fast to the tradition of men. So the problem is tradition of men, not all traditions, and we can easily show that by referencing it to, for example, the

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Apostle Paul's writings. If you look, for example, at 2 Thessalonians chapter 2, verse 15,

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Paul says, So then, brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by letter.

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So Paul here is exhorting people to hold on to traditions, and in fact, if you read a little bit further into chapter 3, he in fact commands us to stay away from those who don't live by the traditions he imparted.

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And so the problem is not all traditions. That's something, you know, I'm afraid I have to say that Protestants insert into the

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Methaean text. The problem is traditions of men versus traditions of the Apostles.

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If it's a tradition that came to us from the Apostles, if it's something that the Apostles taught, then it is binding on us.

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It has the authority of the Apostles behind it, regardless of whether it's written or not. The mode in which we receive the tradition is irrelevant.

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If we receive the tradition in writing and scripture, that's fine. If we receive it orally, that's fine, too. The key thing is, does it have apostolic authority behind it?

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So Jesus certainly was not condemning all traditions, or he couldn't have commissioned his Apostles to then go out and pass on tradition.

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Now, in regard to Athanasius, again, there's a bit of a flaw in the argument to say

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Athanasius reasoned from scripture in dealing with the Arians, therefore that means

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Sola Scriptura is true, or that Athanasius taught Sola Scriptura is true. In fact, he didn't. If you look in his writings elsewhere, he has a very healthy respect for tradition.

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I have to say that I'm afraid Mr. White is out of sync with some early church scholars, such as the great

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Protestant early church historian J. N. D. Kelly, when he talks about how we don't find in the early

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Christian writers appeals to traditions when combating heretics. In fact, in Dr.

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Kelly's book, which I have right here, Early Christian Doctrines, he makes precisely the point that in the early conflicts with heretics, it was tradition that was appealed to primarily because the heretics used the same scriptures by and large.

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And so they would both just put their own interpretation on it, just like a JW does today, the Arians did in the 4th century, the

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Gnostics did in the 2nd century, and the appeal was, well, wait a minute. I mean, we are living in a church whose leaders have come down to us from the apostles, and they have passed on these teachings from the apostles, and that tells us what the correct interpretation of the scripture is.

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If you're teaching some novel interpretation of the scripture that no one's ever heard before in church history, then it's not in accordance with the apostolic tradition, and so you must be wrong, because the apostles did not only give us their teachings and writings, they also gave them to us orally, and the two have to sync up.

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Okay, I want to give James White an opportunity to respond to that. Unfortunately, we're coming up to a station break, so as soon as we come back from the break,

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James White will be responding to that, and then what I'd like to do is kind of conclude the remarks on this particular issue and give callers an opportunity to ask you questions.

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In subsequent shows, we're going to be dealing with such substantive issues as justification as well, because that obviously is one of the real important issues for us to settle right here on the

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Bible Instrument Broadcast. We're going to be back in just a few moments. Stay tuned. And welcome back to the Bible Instrument Broadcast. I'm your host,

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Hank Hanegraaff, President of the Christian Research Institute, in studio today with James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries, and James Aiken of Catholic Answers.

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We're talking about the issue right now of sola scriptura, or the Bible alone, versus the

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Bible in tradition. Before you respond to James Aiken, James White, the

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Council of Trent in 1565, November 13th, actually, 1565, said that all faithful Catholics must agree, quote,

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I shall never accept nor interpret Holy Scripture otherwise than in accordance with the unanimous consent of the

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Fathers. Consent of the Fathers. Consent of the Fathers. Excuse me. Yes, the consent of the Fathers. What did I say? Consent.

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Oh, I'm sorry. Consent of the Fathers. Yeah. Well, and that, of course, brings us into a whole other area that I can barely even touch upon, and that is the fact that Rome does claim, in Vatican II and in other places, that the office of interpreting

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Scripture, the role of interpreting Scripture, has been entrusted solely to the teaching magisterium of the Church. And when

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Trent said that similar words earlier on, while Calvin was still alive, his response was basically, well, the war is over, because in reality, there is no longer any basis upon which we can have any meaningful dialogue based upon Scripture.

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Because if you say that the only one who has the right to interpret Scripture is Rome, then how can we have any biblical discussion on any of these issues?

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For example, if we turn to Matthew chapter 16, Rome tells us what this means, and that is the end of the discussion as far as that goes.

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How can we have any further discussion of it all? And so I would say that on this issue of authority, and maybe we'll have to let you respond to that and then let me respond to other things, but on this issue of authority,

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I think we do develop a very circular situation, and that is that while Roman Catholic apologists such as the folks at Catholic Answers, Mr.

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Aiken here, may present to us biblical arguments on the basis of the exegesis of the passage of Scripture, in reality, there are passages of Scripture where Rome has said, this is it.

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There can be no other opportunities, there can be no other interpretations than this interpretation. And how can we...

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There are about eight of those passages. A very small number, which in and of itself is rather intriguing to me too, but the point is those passages have been infallibly defined.

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Rome says, we have the final authority to interpret these passages, and there can really be no discussion beyond that point.

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And I would say that illustrates a situation where you have an authority that has been placed above Scripture, especially when you talk about the unanimous consent of the

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Fathers. Look at Matthew Chapter 16. There's no more glowing passage than that, where you can demonstrate that the majority of the early

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Church Fathers did not take the position that has now been infallibly defined by Rome. No, that's clearly inaccurate. I mean, the early

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Church Fathers were strongly of the opinion that Peter was the rock that Christ was referring to there. There is no way you can say that a majority of the

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Fathers didn't teach that. Well, not only have most Church historians said that, but most Roman Catholic Church historians would say that the interpretation infallibly defined by Rome is not the interpretation of the majority of the early

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Fathers. You've read Launora. You've read these people who have tallied these things up, and I don't know when you want to cut off the point.

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And there is a biased... They're misreading the way the early Fathers approached that passage, and I could debate that at further length, but at this time we don't have time.

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We'd be glad to do so. What do we do about this whole issue? There seems to be, in my estimation, a lot of revisionism going on, at least by one side or the other.

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And I won't put myself on one side or the other, but just to say that it... How do we resolve that issue from either one of your perspectives?

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I think we're doing it. I think we're doing it in the sense that I just did a four -and -a -half -hour debate at Boston College on the papacy.

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I did a six -hour debate during the papal visit in Denver. I'm, and obviously

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Catholic Answers agrees with me on this, I'm one of those really backwards people that isn't into all the political correct stuff, in the sense that I think...

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Neither are we. Well, that's the point. I think that there is a real need for public, open, moderated, scholarly debates on these issues to get the facts out.

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And it's real easy for one side or the other, if there's not a counterbalance there, to make everything look like everything supports them.

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But when you put people with an even amount of time face -to -face, unfortunately sometimes it draws a lot of folks, and sometimes it doesn't.

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But I think that's one of the best ways to handle it. I agree. The solution to the problem of the two sides distorting the history in their favor can only be solved by the other side having its chance to respond.

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For example, Fox's Book of Martyrs is a classic illustration of that. Fox's Book of Martyrs is a grossly distorted historical work, which even

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Protestant scholars will admit is very ahistorical, but there hasn't been a Catholic response to that in recent years.

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In fact, as one of my future writing projects, I want to write a... Not an equivalent.

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I don't want to have the same level of invective, but I want to write a balance piece called

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The Protestant Inquisition about the persecution of Catholics by Protestants. But is that really going to help?

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And the reason I'm doing that is not to say Protestants are bad, or that Protestants... Because you once were one.

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Exactly. It's not to say Protestants are bad, or Protestants are tyrannical, cruel servants of the devil, and similar things that John Fox said about Catholics.

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But just to balance a playing field and say, look, there were errors on both sides, and they're approximately equal, and it's really not going to do any good to keep dredging that stuff up.

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It doesn't get us to the truth of the theological system to say, well, gee, have people not lived the way they should have?

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If you had used that standard in the Old Testament and looked at the Jews and said, are these people living like they should, and used that as a test for the true religion, you would have missed the true religion.

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And so I would say that let's just level the playing field and move on from that. I would only comment that I think the relevance of the

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Inquisition in those situations has to do with Rome's claim to infallibility on doctrinal matters, not to the issue of impeccability.

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But should I take a second or two to just address those three issues before we totally lose the conversation?

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In terms of equal time, I have several things I'd like to respond to that he said. Obviously, I think both of you know that my desire is to be fair with both of you on the

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Bible Instrument broadcast, because I think that you're both thoughtful, reasonable, and also two guys that have really done their homework.

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And so I want to treat both of you as fairly as possible, and if there's any inequity, we'll try to make it up whenever we can. Go ahead,

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James. Well, back to the issue of Sola Scriptura, just a few things, and I'll be very, very brief.

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First of all, I didn't feel that James Aiken's response to what I had said dealt with what

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I had said. I wasn't talking about all traditions. I was saying that Jesus, when he addressed the issue of traditions, and he addressed individuals who made the claim that their traditions were divine, subjected them to the authority of Scripture.

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And that's what we need to do with anyone who claims that their traditions have a divine origin or source.

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The issue is, even when, from his own people's perspective, these were divine traditions, he subjected them to the authority of Scripture and demonstrated, no, they are not.

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Therefore, when someone presents to me on the authority of tradition, the concept of the infallibility of the

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Pope, I am going to subject that tradition to Scriptural scrutiny. That was my application of Matthew 15.

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I'm going to try to be brief. Second Thessalonians 2 .15, I believe, is badly misused by Roman Catholic apologists at this point.

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First of all, I wasn't trying to say that the New Testament does not use the term tradition. I would assert that in Second Thessalonians 2 .15,

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the term tradition that is used there, in its context, if we would exegete the passage in its context, is not referring to some extra biblical revelation of doctrines that may not even be known for 1 ,800 years.

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But in that context, it is referring to the Gospel itself, if you look at the context itself.

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And in regards to Athanasius, Mr. Aitken said, well, Mr. White is saying we don't find appeals to traditions.

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That's why I asked for the chapter. I've written a chapter in a book on the

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Sola Scriptura that will be coming out in February from Sola Deo Gloria. One of the main things I focus in upon is, when people like Irenaeus use the term tradition, what do they mean?

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Do they define what the term tradition is? I am in no way, shape, or form in conflict with J.

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N. D. Kelly. The fact of the matter is, the tradition to which he appeals to is not an extra biblical tradition of some other revelation.

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When you look at what he defined the tradition to be, it is firmly and solely based upon Scripture itself.

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It is the concept of the fact there is one God, and you and I both know, if the Scriptures teach anything with clarity, it's the fact there's only one true

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God. And so, my problem there is, I was not saying that you will not find appeals.

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What I was saying is, you will not find appeals to tradition as it is interpreted today by Rome. Big difference between the two things.

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James Akin. Okay, well, there's more on my plate than I can respond to at the moment, but just to nail down a couple things.

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One of the things about 2 Corinthians 2 .15 is Paul doesn't limit it to just traditions concerning the

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Gospels. He says, So, you can't say this is just traditions on a certain topic.

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Anything that Paul has taught the Thessalonians in person or by writing is up for grabs in terms of that verse.

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That is part of the all traditions he refers to. Now, as Mr. White is using an assumption which, when he deals with the term tradition, he is assuming that the term tradition means something that has been passed down from the

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Apostles that is not written in Scripture, okay? Some extra -biblical revelation. And he can't simply, facilely make that assumption because one of the open issues in Catholic theology right now is a debate over whether Scripture is materially sufficient.

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The position of material sufficiency claims that all theology, all the material you need to use for theology is either contained or implied in Scripture.

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And the difference between that and the Sola Scriptura position is that it says that even though Scripture is materially sufficient, it has all the material you need, it contains or implies it all, it's not formally sufficient.

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The material isn't in the form you need to do theology in all cases. And so you need to use tradition as an interpretive grid to help you understand which passages gain primacy.

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Does Jesus saying, before Abraham was I am, gain primacy? Or does Jesus saying, why callest thou me good, there is none good but God gain primacy?

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Which passage do you use as the foundation of your interpretation? Which do you then harmonize with it?

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That's the role tradition plays for you in the material sufficiency view. So when Mr. White says that Catholics have to come up with some extra -biblical revelation in order to validate their view of tradition, he's simply wrong.

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Because some Catholics say there are no extra -biblical traditions in that sense. There are no extra -biblical revelations that have been passed down and everything is either contained or implied in the

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Bible. Now I wanted to touch just for a minute on the passage you read from the Council of Trent. This is often misunderstood in Protestant circles.

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The teaching of that passage is not that we can't interpret the Bible for ourselves. We can and we must.

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That's why God gave us intellects. This was something that Thomas Aquinas, with his big emphasis on natural law and the divine gift of the human intellect that separates us from animals and so forth, the rational soul that separates us from the sensitive souls that animals have, is something that requires us to read and study

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God's Word. What Trent is saying is that when the fathers unanimously interpret a passage one way, that's when you can't go against it.

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So if you have a case where every church father has said, this is what this passage means, that's when you can't go against them.

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But if there's disagreement among the fathers, if there's not a unanimous consent, then you can go against it.

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Just to give an example of a passage where there is unanimous agreement among the fathers, I would point to John 3 .5. Every single early church father there is, from the second century on, said that when

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Jesus said, you must be born of water and spirit, he was talking about baptism.

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Water baptism. A unitary baptism involving both water and the spirit.

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Every single church father from the second century on said that. That is something that I have searched diligently, trying to find references to early church fathers who didn't say that, and I can't, there aren't any.

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Every single one I've checked says that, and that is a tradition that was accepted by all Christians up until the time of the

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Reformation, at least all mainstream ones. You had Augustine saying that. You had Aquinas saying that.

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You had John Wycliffe saying that. You had Martin Luther himself saying that.

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The first person to really deny that, as far as mainstream theologians would go, would be John Calvin.

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Everyone before him said that that is talking about baptism. And so that would be a passage where a

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Catholic would say, well no, the fathers are unanimous on this. I can't go against this. A couple things, just really quickly.

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Okay, and it's going to be 30 seconds. 30 seconds. I'm going to wrap up and then we're going to come back, the last segment of this broadcast, we're going to take calls.

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But I want to give both of you an opportunity just to summarize the importance of the issue that we're dealing with.

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Go ahead. Just 30 seconds. Well, the issue that he brought up in regards to the open question in Roman Catholic theology right now,

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I would just invite anyone to read the Council of Trent in the fourth session. Read the background of what they were talking about.

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It's an issue called partly, partly, some in tradition, some in scripture. And just be warned of one thing.

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Many of the modern Roman Catholic theologians who are affirming material sufficiency, their view of scripture is far removed from what a conservative

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Protestant's view of scripture would be. And in fact, they are farther away from us in many of their views of what revelation is than the conservative

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Roman Catholic would be. And we're coming up to a station break. We're going to be back in just a few moments with more of the Bible Instrument in Broadcast.

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Don't touch that dial. And welcome back to the

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Bible Instrument in Broadcast. I'm your host, Hank Hanegraaff, President of the Christian Research Institute. I'm involved right now in a very special conversation with James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries representing the

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Protestant perspective, and James Aiken of Catholic Answers representing the

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Roman Catholic perspective. And I do, before we go on, want to commend both you guys for the fact that you are able to communicate with one another in a respectful manner.

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You are modeling what ought to be happening in this very essential debate.

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The differences between you, we can't minimize. They are profound. And yet, you are great examples of how we ought to treat one another in this kind of debate.

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I am kind of interested, James Aiken, in your perspective on some of the literature that comes out from Protestant publishers, like even a book that just came out by Dave Hunt.

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How do you react to that kind of literature? Well, concerning Dave Hunt's book, I'd have to say it's a joke.

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I mean, the man's scholarship is appalling. In fact, I learned an interesting term from William F.

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Buckley that I think aptly describes the kind of writing Dave Hunt does. The term is sciolist, S -C -I -O -L -I -S -T, and a sciolist is a person who has the affectations of scholarship without the substance.

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And people have the idea that if you just have a lot of footnotes to your book, it makes you a scholar. But the problem is, if you're footnoting idiots, then it doesn't make your book scholarly.

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And Dave Hunt's book, I thought, was just a joke in terms of scholarship. There was one, just to name one example in it.

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He made the claim at one point that Pope John XXII, back in the 1300s, had dogmatically defined that Jesus and the apostles were wealthy men, and thus you had the pope teaching the health and wealth gospel and so forth.

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And I said, that's nuts. And so I reached across my bed and grabbed my book of official papal statements, and I looked up the encyclical he referenced, and what

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John XXII actually said was that Jesus and the apostles possessed some property at least in common.

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So he was dealing with a controversy in his day where there was a group of radical spiritualists who were going around saying that the epitome of spirituality was not owning any property at all, not even communal property.

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No private property, no communal property, no property. And therefore, since that's the epitome of spirituality,

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Jesus and the apostles must have not had any property even in common. Well, Scripture says they did. I mean,

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Peter had a boat, he had nets, they had houses, they had a common money purse that Judas stole from.

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They clearly had property, at least communally. And so the pope, what he actually said was that Jesus and the apostles did have some property at least in common,

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Scripture repeatedly says so. And Mr. Hunt either didn't read the source very closely, or more likely just read an account of it in a secondary source, didn't check the original source, and he garbled it into the idea that the pope was teaching that they were wealthy and that he was teaching the health and wealth gospel.

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Your perspective, James White, on some of the literature that has been written by Protestants, which may be less than helpful.

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Well, first of all, it's on both sides. I would look at a book like The Catholic Controversies as being similar from the other direction sometimes utterly irresponsible in its representation of Protestant beliefs.

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But my concern is, and this is going to reiterate something that I said when we were on the

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King James Only issue, my concern is that a lot of really bad argumentation, people who are not careful about citations, are not careful about accuracy, are not careful about backgrounds, are not careful about logic, that's the type of book that's going to sell and it's going to have the largest impact, sadly, in our nation today.

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That may be a very pessimistic assertion on my part, but it just seems to me that for most people...

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See, this is why we need the Index of Forbidden Books. Well, I think

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I've written a few that you'd want on there, too, so probably, exactly. But the problem is,

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I think that a lot of Protestants today, I think one of the reasons, and James is sitting far enough away from me that he can't smack me upside the head for saying this, but I believe that one of the reasons that Catholic Answers has been able to get as large as it has and have the impact that it has is that the vast majority of Protestants no longer know why they're

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Protestants. And sadly, a large number who have converted from Roman Catholicism did so for reasons that were not biblically sound or, you know, this priest,

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I didn't like him, he was a meanie, so on and so forth. I think we have a real problem amongst Protestant churches.

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We don't know why we were Protestants in the first place, and the simple fact of the matter is, issues like Sola Scriptura or Sola Fide, justification by faith, don't sell books.

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They're not at the top of the priority list, and most people would not list them as being definitional of what it is to be a

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Protestant in the first place. They'd be way down the totem pole if anyone knew what they were there for in the first place. That's a concern. I think you would agree,

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James Akin, with that statement, unfortunately. Trash sells. Yeah, yeah. There's no two ways about it.

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Can you summarize very quickly the importance of the issue of Sola Scriptura as well as tradition as opposed to Sola Scriptura?

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Well, I guess that's a contradiction. The Bible and tradition as opposed to Sola Scriptura. Can you summarize the importance of that issue in just a minute or so,

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James Akin, then we're going to go to some phone calls. Sure, no problem. One of the problems that you have when you have cults come along, whenever a cult starts, they always take one or two or a small set of verses and absolutize them.

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They will say, these verses have to be taken in this sense, they have to be, and all other verses pertaining to this subject have to be warped to this understanding.

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For example, you have the JWs picking out verses that sound, at least if you take them out of context, like Jesus might be denying his divinity, and therefore they warp all of the verses in the

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New Testament that affirm his divinity. Similarly, you have the Mormons taking verses like in John, for example, you are all gods and so forth, and they absolutize that and then warp all of the numerous citations of the fact that there's only one

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God in Scripture. What tradition does for you, if you're listening to the apostolic tradition, remember

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I'm not talking traditions of men, but if you're looking at the teachings that have come down to us from the apostles, it tells you which verses are primary and which verses have to be harmonized with them, and so it enables you to obtain a doctrinal balance and get at the true sense of Scripture in that way.

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That is what tradition does for you, that's its primary function. Now it may or may not have some additional revelation outside it that's not mentioned in the

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Bible, but its primary function is to tell us the meaning of the Bible. That is what it does. It's a mirror for Scripture that gives us a different perspective on the same teachings.

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James White, summarize your perspective on this issue. I'll try to keep it very, very short. I would submit to you that Matthew 16, 18 and the papacy,

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Luke 1, 28 and the huge edifice of doctrinal beliefs that have been hung upon that passage in Roman Catholicism is an excellent example of what happens when you have one passage and everything else has to be twisted to it.

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So I would say again, it's real nice to be able to say, well we have an ultimate authority that's going to give you that doctrinal balance.

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The simple fact of the matter is, Roman Catholicism over its history has demonstrated that doesn't work for them either.

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That doesn't work for them. It still results in the twisting of Scriptures. You're just simply moving the ultimate question of authority back one step.

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It doesn't really answer the question. A couple of other issues that I want to clarify before we go to our callers.

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Number one, I'm going to stay in studio with both these gentlemen for an hour once we go off the air.

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So if you want to ask questions, you can do that off air as well.

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We're going to play that on a subsequent later date right here on the

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Bible Answer Man broadcast. We'll air it nationwide so your questions will be heard. You can call the

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U .S. or Canada toll free 800 -821 -4490. We're also going to be dealing with the issue of justification in an off air hour.

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That again will be broadcast as well. For those of you who have not picked up the book by Norman L.

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Geisler and Ralph McKenzie on Roman Catholics and Evangelicals, Agreements and Differences, I would highly recommend that you do that.

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You can of course do that by writing to Christian Research Institute Box 500 San Juan Capistrano, California, zip code 92693, the telephone number 714 -855 -9926, or if you're ordering using

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Visa MasterCard or DiscoverCard, the number 800 -443 -9797.

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I want to go to Vincent in Fresno, listening on KCIV. Vincent, you're on the air. Hi, Hank. Hi.

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Are your kids in the studio with you today? No, they're not. James White brought a couple of kids with him. They're not even in here either.

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They're just making faces at us through the glass. Go ahead with your question. Anyway, my question deals with the

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Apocrypha. And I don't think anyone's going to agree with my opinion, but it seems to me that where you have instances such as Matthew 12, where I'm talking about the

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Apocrypha, where you are in rebuking the Pharisees, Jesus makes what seems to be a direct reference to Ecclesiasticus 27 .7,

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almost a word -for -word quote. You've got him submitting to a festival that's established in the Book of the

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Maccabees. You have a magnificent prophecy of Jesus Christ in Wisdom, Chapter 2. Does the

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Eastern Orthodox Church maybe have the most balanced view of considering these books deuterocanonical, since there are obviously some problems in these books?

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So it just seems that they don't seem to come up with a standard of fully full Scripture, but it seems like it doesn't seem correct to throw them out at the same time.

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That is true that the Eastern Orthodox Church considers them deuterocanonical, but on the sense of being on a lower footing.

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Well, I think the caller may be a little confused about the meaning of the term deuterocanonical.

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It doesn't exclude them from the canon. It's a second canon, literally. Or secondarily included in the canon.

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They are not as primary as some of the other books. I mean, there's obvious differences in the primacy of different books of Scripture.

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I mean, Matthew is more important than 3rd John. Genesis is more important than Esther, you know, and so forth. And they are not the most important books of Scripture.

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But according to both the Eastern Orthodox and according to Roman Catholics, they belong there, and that was the position of the early church.

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In fact... But isn't there a distinction there, James Aiken, that... Sure, in terms of emphasis. But the

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Eastern churches also honor them as Scripture in the fullest sense. I mean, they are the inspired word of God, just like the proto -canonical books are.

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In fact, I was joking with your secretary. I was looking around your bookstore out in the front office, and you had in the bookstore a set of the complete

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Bible on cassette, and I told her, well, I was looking at all the neat books you have here, but you've got a little bit of false advertising right here because it doesn't include the seven deuterocanonicals.

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Well, the problem I have, of course, is I don't believe those books are scriptural, and I would just point out that in the early church, it seems to me that as I've studied this issue, the more an early church father knew of the

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Old Testament and the Jewish people, the less likely he was to accept the apocryphal books as Scripture.

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Look at Jerome. Look at Origen. Both knew Hebrew. Some of the very few early fathers who knew the

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Hebrew language, neither one of them accepted the deuterocanonical books, the apocrypha, as fully scriptural.

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No, I'm sorry. Jerome, for example, in one of his letters, is adamant in defending the deuterocanonical portions of Daniel, and he specifies the reason why he defends them.

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He says, I don't care what the Jews today say. The Jews have lost their place as far as being able to recognize

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Revelation, and I will go with the church's judgment. What does it matter to me if modern -day

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Jews are saying that the deuterocanonical portions of Daniel don't belong there? Similarly, Origen, and this is a point that Kelly makes,

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Origen regarded the deuterocanonicals as Scripture. In fact, I have quotations from him to that effect, but because they are not accepted by Jews, he recommended against using them in debate.

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That's the same thing I would do as a Catholic. I mean, Protestants mostly don't accept them, and so I don't cite the deuterocanonicals, at least not usually, when

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I'm debating a Protestant, and that was exactly Origen's position, and Kelly makes this point in his book, Early Christian Doctrines.

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I'd simply refer anyone to Beckwith, not to the Beckwith that we know, but another Beckwith work on the

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Old Testament canon of the New Testament church, for a full and in -depth and scholarly examination of this issue.

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Jerry Matitix and I debated this issue at Boston College, if they'd like to hear a debate on the issue. It would be,

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I think, counterproductive in the time we have left to be throwing apocryphal quotations at one another, but the simple fact of the matter is,

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I don't believe the New Testament writers, the apostles themselves, treated these books of Scripture, and I think that we have an example here.

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Why should we believe that the Council of Trent, which I think James would agree is the first ecumenical council, well, he's saying no, but most

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Roman Catholic, even the Roman Catholic Encyclopedia, I believe. The first ecumenical council to deal with the issue of the canon was the

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Council of Florence in 1442. Not the issue of the canon. I didn't say the issue of the canon. I meant specifically citing all those books as...

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Well, that's dealing with the issue of what belongs in the canon, and the Council of Florence included those, but they've been included far earlier than that in 382 at the

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Council of Rome. Vincent, I hope we've helped you. I'm going to have to put a comment at the conversation because the clock is running out on us.

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Again, we are going to have James White and James Aiken in studio tomorrow, right here on the

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Bible Answer Man broadcast. We're going to be dealing with the issue of justification. We have in the studio with me today,

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James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries, and James Aiken of Catholic Answers. These are two scholars, two people who have taken the time to study the issues.

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James Aiken comes at this from a Roman Catholic perspective, James White from a Protestant perspective. Although their differences are profound and significant, they're able to communicate in a model manner.

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They are interested in bringing you light, not heat. And today, of course, we're going to deal with a subject that has created a tremendous amount of heat for many, many years, and that is the issue of justification.

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Obviously, this is not some tangential issue. This is an issue which I know both you gentlemen would agree is foundational to the historic

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Christian faith. We're talking about the issue of justification. Is justification by God's grace alone, through faith alone, through the

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Lord Jesus Christ alone, or is justification defined in another manner?

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And to set that in perspective, perhaps James Aiken of Catholic Answers can give us his perspective on what the official

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Roman Catholic position is with regards to justification. James Aiken, again, welcome. Thank you very much.

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I'm glad to be here. With respect to the three solas you just put out, sola gratia, by grace alone, sola fide, by faith alone, and sola

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Christo, by Christ alone, the Catholic Church has absolutely no problem with the concept of justification by grace alone.

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In fact, that is its infallible teaching. We cannot do anything of our own strength.

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We have no ability to please God apart from God's grace. Everything in salvation from beginning to end must be attributed to God's grace and God's grace alone.

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The concept of justification by Christ alone, that is, again, also true. It is Christ whose death on the cross, according to the

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Council of Trent, is the meritorious cause of our salvation. It is Christ who did this.

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We are not able to do anything apart from Christ's grace. Now, with His grace, we can do some stuff. But apart from Christ's death on the cross, we have absolutely no ability to do anything whatsoever with respect to coming to God and asking for salvation.

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We can't even ask the question of God, how can I be saved, much less embrace

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God's salvation without the inspiration of the Holy Spirit working in our lives because of what

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Christ Jesus did on the cross for us. With regard to the third sola you mentioned, sola fide, by faith alone, whether a

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Catholic will accept that is going to depend on what you mean by the term faith. The term faith is used in different senses in the

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Bible. For example, in Galatians 5, 6, you have Paul saying, Paul talking about that nothing avails in Christ except faith working through love, or an alternate translation, faith made effective by love.

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He's talking here about a kind of faith that is formed by love or informed by love, to use the standard

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Catholic theological terminology. However, in Romans 14, you find

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Paul using the word faith in a different sense, same Greek word, but he's using it to refer to mere intellectual belief, you know, just intellectually believing something.

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That's also the kind of faith that James is talking about in James 2, where he says even the demons have faith in that sense.

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They do intellectually believe that there is one God, but it doesn't save them, it doesn't stop them from trembling at the prospect of God's wrath.

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So here, just looking at those three passages, we see two different concepts of faith.

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One concept of faith, including the idea of love. Another, so it's a faith that produces acts of love.

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The other concept, the term faith, is just used to denote intellectual assent. Now, historically, in Christian history, the term faith was used in the second sense, the

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Romans 14, James 2 sense. Most of the time, it was used to refer to intellectual assent. So when the reformers burst on the scene and started saying justification by faith alone, what the ordinary average person understood by that was justification by intellectual assent alone.

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In other words, antinomianism. And that's what the Catholic Church condemned. If you read Canon 9 from Trent's Decree on Justification, it says that if anyone says by faith alone, that we're justified by faith alone, meaning that you don't need anything else in order to obtain the grace of justification besides just intellectual faith, then that person is to be excommunicated.

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That's what the term anathema means, incidentally, in canon law documents. But notice, it doesn't eliminate the concept of faith alone entirely.

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It only eliminates one erroneous interpretation of it. If you have a broader interpretation of faith that includes love, faith working by charity, faith working by love, then a

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Catholic doesn't have a problem with that. Catholics, to use the

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Latin terminology, will distinguish between fides formata caritate, or faith formed by love, and fides fide informis, or faith not formed by charity, not formed by love.

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If by justification sola fide, you mean fide informis, then

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Catholics, or fide informis, then Catholics reject it absolutely. So do Protestants, incidentally. But if you mean justification sola fides fide formata, or justification by formed faith, faith formed by love, then

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Catholics have no problem with it. Catholics absolutely believe in justification by faith alone in that sense.

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James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries, obviously representing the Protestant position.

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How would you respond to what James Aiken just said? And would you say that the Catholic view, as you would articulate it, is within the pale of orthodoxy or outside the pale of orthodoxy?

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Well, the problem I have is what was just said. While certainly Mr. Aiken would be able to defend his position,

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I'm sure quite well, I don't think that it gives the whole picture. And I think that we've got a problem here in that we may be focusing so narrowly that we miss the fact that, first of all, in Roman Catholic theology, justification and sanctification are basically the same thing.

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And in Protestant theology, we say that justification and sanctification are linked in such a way that they cannot possibly ever be separated, but they must be distinguished from one another.

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And Rome says much more about justification than just what we have just talked about.

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And I would assert the other things that she says about justification would cause me to make the statement that sola gratia, if what

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Rome means by that is what we find in her theology concerning how one merits eternal life by works done in the state of grace, if we define that in light of the doctrine of indulgences and the treasury of merit, things that Rome itself teaches in regard to these issues, we're not speaking the same language.

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That gratia is not the same thing between the two of us at that point. We need to be very careful that we don't use terminology, and I'm not saying that James is attempting to do so, but that we don't use terminology in such a way as to be confusing.

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I have said many, many times, the issue has never, ever been, is grace necessary?

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That was not the issue for the reformers. The issue has never been, is grace necessary? The issue has always been, is grace sufficient outside of the addition of human works or human merit?

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And that is something that the Catholic Church absolutely affirms. It is, because humans cannot do anything with supernatural value.

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Humans cannot make an act of love without God giving us the ability to do that as a special act of grace, not something we're doing of our nature.

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According to Catholic theology, every single time you supernaturally love someone, every single time you do something that pleases

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God, God had to give you the grace on that occasion to enable you to do it.

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It's not like you had the ability in your human nature and so forth and you could do it. You could never do it. You could never do it based on your human nature.

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And it's not like God gives you sort of a package at the beginning of salvation that then sees you through the rest of your life.

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That was the position of the semi -Pelagians, which the Catholic Church condemned. God has to give you the grace to do every single good act you do at the time you do it.

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You cannot do it of your own. But let's notice that what Rome teaches in regards to justification is, first of all, that Jesus Christ merited the grace by which we are justified.

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That, and I'm quoting from Ludwig Ott's Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, in talking about the uncertainty of the state of grace, he says that it lies in this, that without a special revelation, no one can with certainty of faith know whether or not he has fulfilled all the conditions which are necessary for the achieving of justification.

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He goes on to say that the grace by which we are justified may be lost and is lost by every grievous sin.

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And he then says that, De fide, one must believe that a just man merits for himself, through each good work, an increase of sanctifying grace, eternal life, if he dies in a state of grace, and an increase of heavenly glory.

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We must also remember that, according to Roman Catholic theology, there is something known as the treasury of merit. The treasury of merit is made up of the excess merits of Christ.

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And what else? It is made up of the excess merits of Mary and the saints.

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And what that means is that there are certain people who die with more merit than they need to merit eternal life.

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And that excess merit is then made available to the power of the church, to those who would draw upon this treasury of merit.

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And I think we all need to step back immediately and recognize that in light of that, and not getting into all the objections

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I would have to all that entire concept, we immediately see that in Roman Catholic theology you have this concept of a person being made good in God's sight, in justification, and so that the good works that that person does in that state of grace are meritorious before God and are worthy of receiving the reward of eternal life, merited, and that a person can actually do more than what would be required.

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Well, I have to ask, what level would be required to merit eternal life? Would it not be the perfection that is only ours in Jesus Christ?

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So the whole idea, that's why I said earlier, I think we need to be very careful. If we only read what

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Trent said about justification, we are not getting everything that the Roman Catholic Church teaches about justification. And I'm afraid sometimes that is what ends up happening.

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We need to look at all of this and recognize that Rome continues, and Mr. Aiken has written an article about this very subject and has said in the article

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I have here on the floor next to me, the concept of indulgences, the treasury of merit, these are de fide doctrines of the

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Church. You as a Catholic do not have the freedom to disbelieve these things. Now, I'm sure he would say there are probably a lot of Roman Catholics in the

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United States. They're sitting there going, you know, this guy had landed from Mars. We don't believe that. But the simple fact of the matter is it is the teaching of the

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Church, and I think those things must be brought in to any situation where we in the

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United States right now have a lot of people running around saying, we agree. We all agree on sola gratia.

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And I say, wait a minute, before we jump that ship and say, yes, we agree on sola gratia, I need to look at some of the things you're saying about what grace is, merit, so on and so forth, which unfortunately are frequently not brought into the conversation.

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Yeah, before I give James Aiken a chance to respond to that, let me just once again ask the question to you.

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I need a really short answer. When I say does the Roman Catholic position on justification put them outside the pale of orthodoxy from your perspective,

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I'm really kind of prompting you to say something that you've said to me off -air a number of times, whereby you say that is but a spot on the spectrum, or a speck on the spectrum, and that it is not just that point, it is the continuum of Roman Catholic doctrine that you believe puts...

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Part of that continuum is on the other side of orthodoxy. I would say that the document that I've referenced,

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Indulgentiarum Doctrina, the Apostolic Constitution, the Revision of Indulgences, anyone can go out, pick this document up.

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It's in the paperback edition of Vatican II. Read it for themselves. It's right there. This isn't from the 13th century.

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This is from the 1960s, okay? This is not exactly old stuff. I would submit that by any standard that I can derive from the

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New Testament, that that falls outside the pale of biblical orthodoxy. And in saying that, and I know that you would agree with this,

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James Aiken, he is not judging you. This is not about James White judging James Aiken or James White judging

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Catholics. It is about us taking these doctrines and judging them in light of Scripture.

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Yeah, no, I recognize that James is not making a personal attack on me there. I can see that we have less than three minutes left to the break, and Mr.

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White introduced quite a number of concepts in his last speech, and I hope you're going to give us an hour to talk about each one.

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You know, I tell you, both of you... Barring that, I'll need some time after the break in order to adequately deal with it.

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Regarding the concept of merit, now there is something that many Protestants don't understand about the concept of merit.

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The concept of merit, as it is taught by the Catholic Church, does not mean earning, okay?

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There is a big difference between earning something and meriting it. So you are saying you are going to define the treasury of merit in a different way than James White did.

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Exactly. The way the term is used in Catholic theology, there are three forms of merit.

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There is strict merit, condign merit, and congruent merit. Strict merit is the highest. That one does earn things, okay?

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But only Christ can do it. Humans cannot possibly merit anything in the strict sense.

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This is made over and over in numerous... This point is made over and over in numerous Catholic documents. It's in Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma that Mr.

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White just quoted from. It's in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which I have right here. Humans cannot merit anything in the strict sense.

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We can only merit things in an analogous sense. And what that means is this. When God gives us his grace to do acts which are pleasing to him, which the

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New Testament clearly affirms that we can please God. I mean Paul is regularly exhorting us to do things that please

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God and so forth. When God gives us his grace to do things that please

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God, God may have promised to reward that act with a reward in heaven or on earth or whatever, or he may not have promised.

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If God has not promised to reward the act but it pleases God, that's called congruent merit.

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The lowest form of merit is merit only in an improper sense. If God has promised that he will reward the act that pleases him, which his own grace has given us the ability to do, then it's condign merit.

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Okay, now those are some big fancy terms, but the bottom line is God's promise is the basis for all claim that we would have on any gift of his.

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We have no claim on any of his gifts our own, even when we've done acts that pleased him because it was his grace that gave us the ability to do those acts.

01:00:00

So any merit we have, any condign merit we have, which is what the Council of Trent talks about and so forth, is based purely on God's promise.

01:00:09

He gave us the grace to do an act that pleases him and then he promised to reward it. This is a point, incidentally

01:00:15

I can see we're running out of time, I'll make the point after the break. Okay, great, and we're coming back in just a few moments with more of the

01:00:21

Bible Answer Man broadcast. Don't touch that dial. Cults, is there an effective way of sharing

01:00:31

Christ with cultists? What are some do's and don'ts on witnessing to the cults? The CRI Perspective in a moment.

01:00:41

CRI Perspective is presented by the Christian Research Institute. The purpose of these broadcasts is to provide scripturally -based, well -researched answers to questions and concepts that challenge

01:00:51

Biblical Christianity. And now for today's perspective, here's CRI President Hank Hanegraaff.

01:00:57

In dealing with cult members, we need to be aware that there's no canned approach to witnessing which applies to any and all circumstances.

01:01:04

We must also realize that witnessing to cultists demands commitment and, of course, dedication. You see, first, we must develop our knowledge and understanding of Biblical doctrine.

01:01:13

Second, we need to learn how to communicate our personal testimony clearly and effectively. And thirdly, we must become very familiar with the cult or cults confronting us.

01:01:23

We should never see witnessing as a chance to show off our intellectual acumen or, for that matter, our

01:01:29

Biblical knowledge. Rather, we should view it as an opportunity to lead someone to faith in Christ through the power of the

01:01:35

Holy Spirit. And there is nothing as exciting as that. Thus, our approach should be

01:01:40

Christ -centered. We can point to the cult's internal inconsistencies with the Bible, but the discussion has to culminate in determining who

01:01:48

Christ really is and what must be done to be saved. And remember, defining terms is extremely important as well because the cultist has an unbiblical concept of both

01:01:57

Christ and of salvation. But most importantly, before every single encounter, we need to spend adequate time in prayer.

01:02:05

And remember, during the encounter, just be yourself. Sincerity is important. Believe me, your attitude will clearly reflect on your actions.

01:02:13

Also, while we should clearly reject the false teachings of the cult, we need to be gracious towards the people who are caught in their web of deceit.

01:02:22

Get them to think about their beliefs and try to discover their individual needs. Be prepared to diffuse hostile reactions and attempts to change the topic of discussion, both of which, by the way, show that you're touching delicate areas of their lives.

01:02:35

Be sure to respond firmly, but sensitively, pointing out that your comments are aimed not at a person, but at the organization or teaching which enslaves them.

01:02:44

Patience, commitment, and reliance on the Holy Spirit are crucial for reaching cultists effectively.

01:02:50

Well, let's all strive to remain faithful to our calling. And remember, the real question is, are you willing to do for the truth what most cultists will do for a lie?

01:03:00

On Witnessing to the Cults, that's the CRI Perspective. I'm Hank Henegraaff. A free transcript of today's commentary is available through the

01:03:09

Christian Research Institute International. If you'd like more information on the defense of the Christian faith, how to solve alleged

01:03:14

Bible difficulties, or how to witness to members of non -Christian cults, write the Christian Research Institute, Box 500,

01:03:22

San Juan, Capistrano, California, 92693. And welcome back to the

01:03:40

Bible Answer Man broadcast. I'm your host, Hank Henegraaff, president of the Christian Research Institute. I'm in studio today with James White of Alpha Omega Ministries.

01:03:48

He's representing the Protestant position as we deal with the whole issue of Roman Catholicism. We have

01:03:53

James Aiken of Catholic Answers, who is representing the Roman Catholic position. And I might add very well,

01:04:00

I appreciate once again that both of you gentlemen are dealing with a very, very significant issue that you have profound disagreements on, and yet you are doing it in a manner that I think is a credit to both of you as men who name the name of Christ, and you're both to be commended.

01:04:23

I know that there is a lot of heat that is often direct result of this kind of discussion, but you are in fact helping us to see some light as well, understanding the profound differences.

01:04:38

And again, want to commend both of you guys. Want to go back so you can finish your comments,

01:04:44

James Aiken, on the treasury of merit, and then of course give James White an opportunity to respond.

01:04:51

James White Well, just a couple points. One of them is the point

01:04:56

I was trying to get across was the whole concept of merit, what it is. In the second century, when the

01:05:02

Bible was being translated into other languages, when the New Testament was being translated into other languages for the first time, there was a question about what terms do you pick to translate certain terms.

01:05:13

The Greek term for reward was one that was translated into Latin using the

01:05:18

Latin term meritum. Meritum is simply a term in Latin meaning reward.

01:05:23

Okay, so when Catholics are talking about the doctrine of merits, what we're talking about is the doctrine of rewards. We're not talking about the doctrine of earning anything.

01:05:30

Meritum in Latin has very different associations than what the term merit does to modern Protestant audiences.

01:05:37

It's simply another, it's simply the Catholic way of talking about the doctrine of rewards. Now, in fact,

01:05:43

I was reading a document put out recently by a group of German Lutherans and Catholics where they were discussing the origin of the term merit, and they made the point that the term merit was picked precisely over another

01:05:55

Latin term because it did not have the strict legalistic earning connotations that the other term did.

01:06:01

So the very fact that the term merit was introduced was to emphasize that this is not strict earning that's going on here.

01:06:07

What happens, as I said before the broadcast, before the break, is that God, by his grace, gives us the ability to do things that please him, acts of love, and he promises to reward some of those.

01:06:20

And when that happens, it's what Catholics call condign merit. The problem deals with saying, with statements like, you know, is eternal life a reward and so forth in this sense?

01:06:32

Well, God has given us the ability to have faith, to have faith formed with charity, a faith that produces good works rather than a faith that is barren, you know, a living faith rather than a dead one.

01:06:43

And he has promised to reward that. And so by that definition, eternal life is a reward. And this is something, this is a point that many

01:06:52

Protestants are willing to agree to once they think about it. In fact, I have right here a copy of the

01:06:57

Lutheran Book of Concord, which is the standard Lutheran confessional book. And it states right here on page 162 in the

01:07:06

Apology for the Augsburg Confession that we are not putting forward an empty quibble about the term reward.

01:07:12

We grant that eternal life is a reward because it is something that is owed, not because of our merits, but because of the promise.

01:07:21

Okay? So not in the sense that we've earned it, which is the way that the Apology here is using the term merit, but because of the promise that God has given if we have faith formed by charity, which is something he himself gives us, then he will reward that by giving us eternal life.

01:07:36

And this is not a problem. If we want to be biblical, the phrase eternal life is always described as a gift given on the basis of faith in Jesus Christ.

01:07:47

And I think the issue, really, as we get back to justification and really focus in upon it, the

01:07:53

Protestant looks at a passage like Romans 5 .1. Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our

01:08:02

Lord Jesus Christ. In the Roman Catholic system, I've already read from Lidley Wattery, he says this is a situation, this justification can be lost by the commission of mortal sins.

01:08:13

This is a situation where you can't have certainty because you don't know if you've fulfilled all the requirements for obtaining justification.

01:08:19

do you claim to have infallible certainty about whether you're saved right now? Do you know infallibly?

01:08:25

The thing I'm infallible about is the fact that my justification is not based upon my fulfilling requirements, but based upon the fact that the

01:08:32

Lord Jesus Christ fulfilled my requirements in my behalf, and he is my perfect substitute.

01:08:38

There's a requirement of faith in Jesus Christ, isn't there? And that faith in Jesus Christ is a gift from God, as Paul said in numerous places, and that's why he can say in 1

01:08:45

Corinthians 1, verse 30, when he talks about Jesus Christ, it is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God, that is our righteousness, holiness, and redemption.

01:08:56

Therefore, as it is written, let him who boasts, boast in the Lord. The centrality of Christ, Solus Christus.

01:09:03

He is my righteousness. When I stand before God, I do not stand clothed in the righteousness of myself and others.

01:09:09

I don't stand clothed in the righteousness that is given to me in any way, shape, or form on the basis of what anyone else has done.

01:09:18

And you, James, you are preaching to the choir. No, I'm not preaching to the choir. I'm sorry. No, the only merit that humans have, the only righteousness that humans have, is what comes from Jesus Christ.

01:09:29

Now, you were pointing out that, let me finish my point, you were pointing out that faith is not something that, you were saying that faith does not count as a requirement because it is faith that is given to us by God.

01:09:43

Exactly. Well, if that is the case, then faith formed by charity, which is what I've been talking about, faith that includes, faith that produces acts of love and so forth, faith that produces good works, that is a gift of God.

01:09:56

Living faith. Living faith is a gift of God and therefore, when Catholics talk about the requirements for salvation, they are talking about requirements that God gives us the stuff to fulfill.

01:10:06

It is simply intellectual belief, trust in God, and love. Those are the requirements and those three virtues, faith, hope, and charity, are what is required of us in order to be saved.

01:10:20

If you have those three virtues, you go to heaven. You may have to be scrubbed down a little bit first, but you go to heaven. Let me finish my point.

01:10:28

Now, if those three are what I, those three virtues are what are included in living faith, and so if you can say that that does not violate the idea of things being required for salvation because God gives us living faith, then

01:10:42

I can say exactly the same thing, just using different words. I hope everyone will recognize that when I am talking about living faith,

01:10:48

Mr. Aiken is now putting into that same category the entire penitential system of the Roman Catholic Church, the sacrificial offering of the

01:10:56

Mass, the concept of sadduce, posse, and purgatory. When you say you are going to have an hour for each of these, when you say you stand before God, when you say you stand before God, clothed only in the merit of Christ, let me ask you something.

01:11:08

If you undergo sadduce, posse, and purgatory, could you please show me any reference in ought or any place else where sadduce, posse, is related to the merits of Christ?

01:11:16

Yeah, absolutely. Well, unfortunately, I don't have my copy of ought on me. Let me explain the concept.

01:11:21

Let me explain. I'm not going to take time to page through a book. The concept of sadduce, posse, is that once we are dead, we cannot do anything to merit.

01:11:33

Our time of gaining rewards is ended. It is appointed to man once to die and then the judgment.

01:11:38

Any purification that goes on after that is going to have to be passive on our part. Purgatory is simply the final stage of our sanctification.

01:11:47

Just like sanctification in this life involves suffering, purgatory involves some suffering. Incidentally, it may not take any time.

01:11:53

It may be instantaneous. It may have existential rather than temporal duration. We don't know how time works in the afterlife.

01:11:59

But purgatory is simply the final rush of our sanctification. Just like in this life, it is

01:12:05

Jesus' death on the cross that provides our sanctification. It is Jesus' death on the cross that provides the final push of sanctification in purgatory where we are scrubbed down before we go into the throne room of heaven.

01:12:16

It is all because of Jesus Christ. Just like Jesus Christ purges us in part through suffering in this life,

01:12:23

Jesus Christ, by his death on the cross, purges us in part through suffering at the end of life.

01:12:29

There is no difference there. Purgatory is simply the final step of our sanctification and any suffering that is entailed in that is something that Christ himself applies to us by virtue of the merit of his death on the cross.

01:12:47

My major substantiation for purgatory is the fact that none of us are going to be sinning in heaven and most of us are still sinning at the end of this life and therefore between death and glory there has to be a purification.

01:13:01

Those are two biblical planks that are spelled out over and over again in scripture. No sin in heaven but sin in this life.

01:13:07

Therefore, you've got to, since our sanctification in this life isn't complete at death, it has to be completed between death and glory.

01:13:14

Whether that takes time or not is a matter the Catholic Church doesn't address, but it is something that has to happen before you're glorified.

01:13:21

Sin and glorification are incompatible. This is a very strategic issue.

01:13:26

James White, your comment. Well, again, there are so many things there. When we say the

01:13:32

Catholic Church has never addressed this issue, the Catholic Church, as anyone knows in history, allowed for ages and ages indulgences to be sold, for example, for about 200 years.

01:13:43

Well, and the concept. Incidentally, we haven't been able to for the last 400 years. I'm going to get this one out, and I'm going to keep talking until he lets me finish a word in Edgewise here.

01:13:51

Go ahead. But the simple fact of the matter is, you could go to Rome, and you could do this and that and the other thing and have all sorts of times attached to those, and anyone who wants to go back and look at what people believed about purgatory at the time of the

01:14:01

Reformation, for example, would know that they would sit back with awestruck looks at the idea that today, well, we don't really know if there's time involved or not.

01:14:09

The point is, however, Trent said that you can be justified and die impure.

01:14:16

Again, all the other verbiage aside, what does that tell you about justification in Roman Catholic theology?

01:14:21

What does it mean when the Protestant says, we are justified? What does it mean to be justified?

01:14:27

It means not only that our sins are not imputed to us, but it also means that the righteousness of Jesus Christ is imputed to us.

01:14:36

Now, again, we go back to this issue that, well, Rome says that there is a certain level of meritorious works that one does.

01:14:43

You can have excess meritorious works that go into the treasury of merit. You have this concept of justification being something you can lose by the commission of mortal sins.

01:14:53

Something can be increased by doing these things. The most important thing at this point is, I again have to try to go back to the point

01:14:59

I was trying to make earlier. That is, the real difference between us, I believe, is that when we talk about having peace with God, I asked a

01:15:09

Roman Catholic scholar, a gentleman, this issue once. I asked him this question. I said, what is the greatest commandment?

01:15:17

Did not Jesus say to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength? He agreed, yes, that's the greatest commandment.

01:15:23

I said, it would seem logical to me that breaking the greatest commandment would be a mortal sin.

01:15:31

Interestingly enough, some Roman Catholics say, oh no, that's not a mortal sin, that's just a venial sin. But logically, it would seem to me that would be a mortal sin.

01:15:39

Paul said in Romans 5 .1 that if you have been justified by faith in Jesus Christ, you have peace. That Greek term,

01:15:45

Irenae, is the New Testament representation of that Old Testament word that we all know, shalom.

01:15:53

Peace in the Old Testament is not simply a cessation of hostilities. Peace in the

01:15:59

Old Testament has so much of a positive concept to it. We would not say that the Middle East right now has peace because people have guns in the streets and they're just getting ready to shoot each other.

01:16:10

The peace that we have in Jesus Christ is a whole and full peace. I would submit to anyone that a relationship that could end by the commission of a mortal sin, even not loving

01:16:22

God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, cannot be biblically described as shalom or Irenae, a relationship that could end at any moment.

01:16:33

And I know Roman Catholics, and maybe James will say, oh, I wish they understood things better. But I know

01:16:38

Roman Catholics who honestly feel that their relationship with God is dependent upon what they are doing.

01:16:46

Do you know any Protestants that would hold that motion? Definitely, and I'm a burr under their saddle too. I preach the freeness of God's grace to anyone

01:16:54

Protestant or Catholic. Anyone who does not recognize that their standing before God is solely based upon the merit of another, and that is

01:17:02

Jesus Christ, has missed the boat. And I would submit to you that sadispatio and purgatory is not the application of the merits of Jesus Christ.

01:17:12

That's not what it says. And we're going to be coming back shortly with your questions so that you can address them directly to James Akin of Catholic Answers or to James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries right after the break.

01:17:31

And welcome back to the Bible Answer Man broadcast. I'm your host, Hank Hanegraaff, president of the Christian Research Institute, in studio with two very fine gentlemen,

01:17:38

James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries, James Akin of Catholic Answers. Again, dealing with some very, what could be, inflammatory issues that they feel passionately about.

01:17:49

I want to once again go on record to commend them. They have moved me in their ability to be able to love one another in the discussion, even though they profoundly disagree with one another.

01:17:59

I do want to give you, James Akin, a chance to respond to what James White said before the break. You can say that after the break. Oh, thank you very much.

01:18:05

James used an argument about the greatest commandment, if we break the greatest commandment and not a mortal sin. Well, if you read the

01:18:11

Catechism of the Catholic Church or numerous other Catholic documents, there are three conditions that have to be fulfilled for mortal sins.

01:18:16

First one is grave matter. Second one is adequate knowledge. Third one is full consent.

01:18:21

Now it's true that if you deliberately put something above God and say, I deliberately love this thing more than God, that is a mortal sin and you will go to hell.

01:18:32

But most people don't do that deliberately. I mean, if you did it, you would lose your status as a saved person.

01:18:38

I mean, Jesus says, if you love anybody more than me, you cannot be my disciple. That is a mortal sin.

01:18:44

If you love anything more than Jesus Christ, you are in a state of mortal sin and you're going to go to hell.

01:18:51

But in terms of our everyday experience, we don't have to have maximal mental effort going into loving

01:19:00

Jesus Christ every second. We don't have to spend all of our mental energy doing that every single moment of the day. He didn't intend that.

01:19:06

You can tell by reading the second great commandment, love your neighbor as yourself. Now if we loved God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength in the sense of actively spending all of our energy that way, then we couldn't fulfill the second commandment.

01:19:19

We couldn't love our neighbor as ourself because we would be giving all of our mental energy to loving God. So the love that Jesus is talking about is not a love that is expressed in terms of maximal output of mental energy.

01:19:31

It's a love that is, if I'm called upon to make a choice between God and something else, then

01:19:39

I will choose God. You know, if the issue is put straightly, you know, God says, I must do this.

01:19:45

And I say, no, I'm going to do this instead deliberately. You know, not out of weakness, not confusedly, not without sufficient reflection as a reflex.

01:19:53

But if I say, yeah, I know God solemnly requires me to do this and I'm just going to spit in his face and do something else, that is a mortal sin.

01:20:02

But it is not a kind of love where you have to have every single erg of mental energy going into loving

01:20:08

God every single second of the day. That's clearly not what Jesus intended as both the Bible and Christian experience attest.

01:20:14

Now with regard to Mr. White's argument about having peace, well, first of all, Mr. White is enough of a textual critic that he knows that Romans 5 does not in most manuscripts say since we are justified, we have peace.

01:20:26

In most manuscripts, it says, since we are justified, let us have peace. And the reason that most

01:20:32

Protestant translations by we have peace is for purely doctrinal reasons. The manuscript evidence goes the other way with regard.

01:20:40

But let's suppose it did say, let us have peace. OK. I mean, let's suppose it did say we have peace just because two countries are at peace and don't have nuclear missiles or any other kind of missile or any guns on each other's border does not mean that peace is unbreakable.

01:20:54

The United States right now has peace with Canada, but don't think that that peace is unbreakable.

01:21:00

I mean, the U .S. could one day go to war with Canada and Canada could one day go to war with the U .S.

01:21:05

If one side attacks the other, the peace is broken. But we genuinely, I don't think anyone would doubt, have genuine peace with Canada right now.

01:21:11

The same way God and man can have genuine peace, but then man can screw it up. And this is a point that is made even by the

01:21:17

Lutherans in the solid declaration of the formula of Concord. They say, therefore, we must begin by earnestly criticizing and rejecting the false

01:21:26

Epicurean delusion, which some dream up, that it is impossible to lose faith and the gift of righteousness and salvation once it has been received through any sin, even want even a wanton and deliberate one or through wicked works.

01:21:39

We should often with all diligence and earnestness repeat and impress upon Christians who have been justified by faith, these true immutable and divine threats and earnest punishments and admonitions, such as, do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God, and so forth, and give several other examples.

01:21:57

The Lutherans recognize this. Mr. White would embrace Lutherans as his brothers, even though they say that your peace with God can be broken.

01:22:04

So he can't deny me the same recognition on that point. Okay, let me interject one thing quickly, and that is

01:22:10

I want to talk to everybody right now who's hanging on the phone lines. I am going to stay in with your permission,

01:22:16

James White and James Akin, for an extra hour. We're going to get to every one of you, so don't give up on us.

01:22:22

The issue right here is we've got two extremely reasonable, thoughtful men in studio, and I'm trying to allow them to speak, have this opportunity uninterrupted, but I am going to get to every one of your calls, so hopefully,

01:22:38

God, I'm going to do it if it's the last thing I do. Let me let James White respond.

01:22:44

Ten seconds. Okay. Jesus Christ loved God the Father and loved his neighbor perfectly.

01:22:49

I have his righteousness. The peace that I have with God is based upon my being in Christ, and the peace that the

01:22:57

Son has with the Father cannot be broken. I want to go to our callers, Brian Seattle -Washington, listening on KGNW.

01:23:04

Brian, welcome. Hi. Good afternoon, gentlemen. Thanks for your patience. Well, thank you for the show today. I'd love to hear more of this.

01:23:10

I've got one question for you, and if you have time, possibly a second. First of all,

01:23:16

I'd like to have Mr. Aitken explain the subject of the development of doctrines in the

01:23:21

Catholic Church, and then on a question that Hankie wrote a couple weeks ago, I'm curious how he would answer the question explaining how the

01:23:30

Old Testament prohibition against drinking blood is resolved in Catholic theology. James?

01:23:35

Okay. Well, on the first point, the development of doctrine, it's clear to Christians of every persuasion that doctrine does develop over time.

01:23:43

We see that in the Bible. Later in the Bible, some things are clearer than they were earlier in the Bible.

01:23:49

The same process of progressively gaining a deeper understanding of God's revelation is something that all

01:23:55

Orthodox Christians, all Protestants, all Greek Orthodox acknowledge. For example,

01:24:03

I just give a case in point, J. Vernon McGee, may I say J. Vernon McGee recognized this point.

01:24:10

I was listening to him once through the Bible, and he was talking about how in the early church, at the early councils, the doctrines concerning the

01:24:21

Trinity were hammered out. And then after that, the doctrines concerning the union of Christ's human and divine natures were hammered out.

01:24:28

And then in his view, at the time of the Reformation, the doctrine concerning justification was hammered out.

01:24:34

And then in his view today, the doctrine of eschatology was being hammered out. And so even J. Vernon McGee, who by any one stretch of the term would be considered a fundamentalist and would embrace the term himself, would recognize that there is a development of doctrine that goes on, whereby we learn, we recognize more of the implications of the revelation we've already been given.

01:24:55

Now with respect to Collar's second question about, would you like a chance to respond to that, James? Just a very, very brief, before you do the second question,

01:25:02

I think the important thing to recognize in development of doctrine is what are the parameters that guide it.

01:25:09

I would submit that without sola scriptura, there are no real valid, observable, delimiting factors that can guide it, and I would say that's dangerous.

01:25:18

I'll try to keep that real brief. That's fine. Incidentally, a book that people might want to read on that is

01:25:24

Cardinal Newman's essay on the development of Christian doctrine, which is a book he wrote as an

01:25:29

Anglican and in the process of investigating how Christian doctrine developed, it convinced him to become a Catholic. Can I show

01:25:35

George Sandoz as well as the Church as a response to that? Sure. No, that's fine.

01:25:41

The reason I mention that is he lays out like seven criteria for how to tell if it's a legitimate doctrine.

01:25:47

I know exactly why you said that. What you're saying between the lines is that if you examine the facts closely enough, you're going to end up going from being a

01:25:56

Protestant to a Catholic. But anyway, the second part of that. That goes without saying. Well, Newman said to go deep into history to see if you're a Protestant.

01:26:01

Yeah, exactly. But with regard to the second question about the Old Testament injunction against eating blood,

01:26:08

I would say four or five things. First thing is any biblical commandment, I can spit these out quick, don't worry, any biblical commandment which comes later modifies a prior biblical commandment, thus when

01:26:22

Moses said don't eat pork and then Jesus declares all foods clean, that modifies the previous commandment.

01:26:28

So if the Old Testament says don't drink blood and Jesus says do, that modifies the previous commandment.

01:26:34

That of itself is sufficient to settle the question. The second point I would make is that the injunction against eating blood was part of the

01:26:41

Old Testament ceremonial law and is therefore passed away with the death of Christ. Third point I would make is that the thing that is talked about there is eating, ingesting, metabolizing blood.

01:26:54

That is not what happens when we drink from the chalice at the Mass. We don't physically come in contact with Christ's blood.

01:27:01

It's hidden under the accidents or the appearances of the wine and therefore we don't metabolize and ingest

01:27:08

Christ the way we metabolize and ingest regular food. He simply comes into us in an intimate form of spiritual union but we don't consume him in the sense of metabolizing him.

01:27:20

Fourth point is the reason that we are told in the Old Testament not to drink blood is that the blood has the life of the body in it which is something science confirms.

01:27:30

You can live without brain function but you can't live without blood flow. But however there is one person whose life it's okay to have in us and therefore one person whose blood it's okay to drink.

01:27:42

Fifth and final point, if Jesus' holiness would prevent him from commanding us to do anything intrinsically wrong and this is something even symbolically.

01:27:55

Jesus could not for example command us to ritually symbolically sodomize each other as part of a worship service.

01:28:03

Sodomy is intrinsically evil and therefore he couldn't by his holiness command us to do it. So therefore if he does command us to even on the

01:28:10

Protestant view symbolically drink his blood, drinking blood cannot be intrinsically wrong or his holiness would not allow him to tell us to do it even symbolically.

01:28:20

James, write your response. Very very quickly, I don't think that the citation of that commandment in the

01:28:26

Old Testament is a good or valid argument against the Roman Catholic concept of the mass.

01:28:32

I think we need to deal with the mass on the basis of what it says about the atonement, the intention of the atonement, the effect of the atonement, and direct exegesis of the relevant passages.

01:28:41

I don't think bringing up that passage is really relevant to that issue. Let's go to Tim in California listening on KWVE, Tim welcome.

01:28:48

Hi guys, my question would be to JW first of all,

01:28:53

I would like to know if you'd be interested in a debate with Tim Staples from St.

01:28:59

Joseph's Radio. What's your question today? Okay, my question is kind of a statement. In Romans chapter 4, a lot of our

01:29:08

Protestant brothers will say that Abraham, Romans chapter 4 verse 3, was justified there.

01:29:15

Would JW agree with that? James White, yeah, no relationship to the

01:29:21

JWs, go ahead James White. I am cursed with bad initials, there's no two ways about it. Actually, I thought about that earlier before.

01:29:29

Go ahead with your answer, we only have a couple of minutes. Yes, how's that for a short answer?

01:29:34

Well, okay, great. Hank turned away and was ready to go do something else, and he only said one word. No, Genesis 5, it's actually a quote.

01:29:42

Why don't you let me make the point for you, okay, I know exactly what you're about to say. The point that the caller is trying to show is that justification in biblical terminology is not a once -for -all event.

01:29:54

We are made completely righteous when we first come to God, but we can then grow in righteousness, not in the purity of our righteousness, but in the quantity of it.

01:30:03

Righteousness in Catholic theology is not a one -dimensional thing. First when we're initially justified, we're given completely pure righteousness from Christ.

01:30:11

Then as we do act that please God, our righteousness, so to speak, grows. That's the second stage of justification, or progressive justification.

01:30:18

In Acts 15, we're told that Abraham was justified, but we're also told that Abraham had faith which gains a good report with God when he left to go to the promised land in Hebrews 11.

01:30:32

It refers to that. That happened back in Genesis 12. So Abraham had to be justified in Genesis 12 in one sense, and then justified in another sense in Genesis 15.

01:30:41

The argument seems to be with Paul and not with the Protestant position, because if you simply read through Romans chapter 4, where Paul is specifically addressing how a man can have peace with God and be right before God, Paul's theology is very, very straightforward.

01:30:53

He hangs it on Genesis 15, 6, and it's amazing to me that people would bring up other arguments that are basically against Paul, not against what

01:31:00

I'm saying. And with that, we're going to have to conclude this particular edition of the Bible Answer Man broadcast.

01:31:35

James White of Alpha Omega Ministries, an author, a very clear communicator, a thinker, a friend, someone that I admire, delighted to have you in studio with us today.

01:31:46

And James Aiken of Catholic Answers, all the same sentiments. I admire you, I appreciate you,

01:31:53

I appreciate your thoughtfulness, and am just delighted to be able to give you a platform on the

01:31:58

Bible Answer Man broadcast. I'm very glad to be here. And of course, we are dealing with issues that are extremely hot in terms of the debate value, and oftentimes produce heat, not light.

01:32:17

You guys are going a long ways to enlightening people as to the Roman Catholic position versus the

01:32:23

Protestant position, and this is something that obviously has to do with substantial issues.

01:32:31

People's salvation hangs in the balance, as it were, depending on how you view these very substantive issues.

01:32:40

Of course, we can't get past the fact, James White, that there was a Reformation that took place, and that Reformation dealt with such incredibly important issues as the issue of justification, which we dealt with on Friday's edition of the

01:32:53

Bible Answer Man broadcast. And how we view that Reformation, I think, is extremely important.

01:32:59

Obviously, from a Roman Catholic perspective, it would be a rending or a tearing of the Church, at least that's how it's been expressed to me by many

01:33:06

Roman Catholic individuals. I think James might view it in that way. I would see it as a revivification, a enlightening, a throwing off of many of the medieval practices and thoughts that had encrusted the

01:33:24

Church. And I think it's important that, again, modern -day

01:33:30

Protestants be called to be thinking people. I think modern -day Protestants need to be called to reassess why they claim to be what they are, reassess what the issues are, because I would be really surprised if James would disagree with me on this.

01:33:46

The issues haven't changed. The issues are still the same today as they were then, and how many

01:33:51

Roman Catholics and Protestants together would look at you and me like we just landed from Mars if we said that, because they'd say, hey, you know,

01:33:58

Vatican II changed all that, didn't it? Yeah, no, Mr. White is absolutely correct. The issues that separate

01:34:05

Protestants and Catholics today are the same as they were then. Further dialogue has indicated that we're not as far apart on some things as we thought in the 16th century, but the issues are still the same.

01:34:18

What do these teachings mean? What are the true teachings of Christ, the true teachings of the

01:34:23

Apostles? And that's something that hasn't changed, and Vatican II did not water down Catholic doctrine, it simply rephrased it in a 20th -century mode, and I have enormous appreciation for Vatican II, and enormous appreciation for the

01:34:39

Council of Trent. They're speaking two slightly different languages because of the four centuries' gulf between them, but they are teaching the same doctrine.

01:34:48

And with that, we're going to go to our callers, only because I have promised our callers I'd give them a chance to speak directly to both you guys, and we're going to do that.

01:34:57

True to my word, Steve, and Surrey, British Columbia, listening on KLYN, welcome to the broadcast. Hi, thank you very much.

01:35:03

I have a question for James Aiken. You are, as far as I know, you are

01:35:09

Roman Catholic, right? I am now, I didn't used to be. Never did, eh? Okay. Could you tell me, just to make sure, what, do you pray and worship

01:35:17

Mary, or do you pray and worship to God? I pray and worship God, and God alone do

01:35:25

I worship, however, the idea of praying, the term just means to ask, in fact, if you listen to British English, where this term has persisted a little more, you'll hear contractions like prithee, you know, prithee, shut the door, prithee, bring me the book, and so forth, that's a contraction for I pray thee, or I ask you.

01:35:45

And I do ask departed Christians to pray for me, just like I ask Christians here on earth to pray for me.

01:35:51

If a living saint can pray for me, you know, a departed saint can pray for me just as well, in fact, even better, because they're in God's presence, and they don't have the distractions of mind and body that the people down here do.

01:36:03

In fact, James says in the Bible, in James chapter 5, that the prayer of a righteous man availeth much, and our brothers and sisters in heaven are far more righteous than our brothers and sisters down here, so their prayers should be even more effective.

01:36:15

Your response, James White? Well, I don't believe that we can define the biblical concept of prayer on the basis of the

01:36:22

English contraction of the term. I would submit to you that prayer, in the New Testament sense, is an act of worship, and as such is limited to God.

01:36:30

I do not believe that you will find in the New Testament examples of Christians praying to the departed dead, praying to Mary, and I would submit that sense prayer is an act of worship.

01:36:44

Roman Catholicism, and I hope everyone, and I hope Steve hears me, I hope that many of my

01:36:51

Protestant brothers out there will hear this, Roman Catholics deny worshiping

01:36:56

Mary. And if you're going to walk up to a Roman Catholic and say, why do you worship Mary, be prepared to either get a whole bunch of stuff quoted to you or something,

01:37:07

Roman Catholics deny worshiping Mary. Roman Catholicism has a distinction in its theology between the worship that is given to God, Latria, and the veneration that is given to the saints, or the veneration given to Mary, which is known as Hyperdulia.

01:37:27

I think it's important, as we have said throughout the programs, Hank, that we recognize what each person's position is and not misrepresent it.

01:37:36

Having said that, and recognizing what Rome's position on Latria and Dulia is, and they make this distinction,

01:37:43

I do not believe the distinction is a biblical one, and it can stand up linguistically or historically. So I would say that the concept of venerating

01:37:53

Mary and the saints is non -biblical. It is anti -biblical, and in fact is prohibited by Scripture.

01:38:00

But I do so recognizing that Rome is very direct in stating, we do not worship

01:38:07

Mary. And if we're going to argue the case properly, I think we need to argue it recognizing what

01:38:13

Rome actually says about her own position at that point. Okay, well, I'm heartened to hear

01:38:19

Mr. White make that point that Rome does distinguish between the kind of worship we give

01:38:26

God and the kind of honor we give the saints. I think the distinction is biblical, though. We are told in the

01:38:33

Ten Commandments to worship God only, but we're also told to honor our father and mother, and we are to give a form of honor to other human beings, and that includes our departed brothers and sisters in Christ.

01:38:47

In fact, if you read Hebrews chapter 11, you have a New Testament example of what's called hagiography, or writing about the saints, writing in praise of the saints.

01:38:56

And that's something that I think is thoroughly biblical. Now, one thing that Protestants often say is that even though Catholics make this distinction between worship and veneration, that in practice it doesn't work, that in practice

01:39:10

Catholics end up worshiping Mary in their heart or whatever. To that, I would have to say that unless you've done it, you're not really qualified to judge what's going on in another person's heart, and in fact, you're not really qualified to judge what's happening in another person's heart in general.

01:39:29

And I can tell you from my own internal, existential, phenomenal, phenomenological experience that there is a difference in my mind when

01:39:38

I honor Mary. In fact, I said the rosary on the way up the highway here. There is a big difference between the kind of honor

01:39:45

I give to Mary when I say, Hail Mary, and the kind of honor I give to God when I say, and our Father, for a

01:39:50

Lord's prayer. James, when you go down to Guadalupe, and when you go down to anywhere in Mexico, wouldn't you agree that there is a tremendous truth in my statement that for a large number of Roman Catholics, people who claim to be

01:40:04

Roman Catholics, maybe I can express it that way, Mary and the saints have a much larger role in their life than Jesus Christ ever has?

01:40:13

Not for a large number, no. If you go to an ignorant peasant in Guatemala and say,

01:40:21

Who is more important, Jesus or Mary? They're going to give you the answer, Jesus. Now, maybe they have some funny practices.

01:40:27

Maybe they have some excessive devotion and so forth. And you can find some

01:40:34

Catholics who are confused about it. I'm not going to deny that. There are Catholics who are confused about it, just like there are

01:40:39

Protestants who are confused on the other side about not giving any honor to men and having this cult of self -abnegation where you have to constantly drive yourself into the ground with talking about what a worm you are and failing to recognize the dignity that God has given you by creating you and then redeeming you.

01:40:59

So there are excesses. There are excesses on both sides, and I'm not going to deny that. But if you ask the average

01:41:05

Catholic, most Catholics are going to say, Well, yeah, Jesus is more important than Mary. Well, I'm not sure in the sense of just more important.

01:41:13

How about more merciful, more involved in my life? The Cult of the Virgin, the book that certainly

01:41:19

Hank is very familiar with, I think does an excellent job in providing numerous citations that document the fact that even leaders in the

01:41:26

Roman Catholic Church, I think, have gone way overboard. My point being that I do not believe that the distinction between Latria and Duria is either functionally maintainable, you say in your life you maintain it, but biblically the terms themselves go back to the one

01:41:41

Hebrew term, Ahav. Sure, and I have no problem with that. And the term Ahav is also applied to the respect that is given to other humans in the

01:41:49

Old Testament. It's not only applied to the respect that's given to God in the Old Testament. The problem is the context is religious in context of religious worship.

01:41:59

And if you're going to tell me the lighting, lighting candles in front of the Madonna is not religious in context,

01:42:05

I'm going to have a real problem with that. But in the context, religious worship, the Old Testament law is plain. And that is that you are to worship and serve the

01:42:14

Lord, your God and him only. And I see nothing in the New Testament that says you are to using the same terms, worship and serve

01:42:21

Mary or the saint. And I really would submit to you, James, that the use of honoring father and mother in the sense of obeying them, in the sense of honoring that, but it is not in the

01:42:32

Hebrew, but it is not in the religious context that we have going on with Mary and with the saints and the elevation of Mary to the point in Roman Catholic theology.

01:42:42

I've got I've got quotes here. We can start, but I'm not going to do that. Popes who have talked about how we need an intercessor between us and Jesus.

01:42:50

That kind of that kind of religious context is the context

01:42:55

I think caused the problem for you. Well, let me give you an example of honoring another human being in a religious context.

01:43:03

If you read the Pentateuch, it talks about how God tells Moses to make special garments, vestments for Aaron, the priest, to give him glory and honor.

01:43:13

And that is giving special honor to another human being in a religious context.

01:43:18

You honor the high priest more than you honor other human beings. You, I'm sure, have more devotion to St.

01:43:25

Paul than you do St. Judas, this non -St. Judas Iscariot. Okay. I mean, you respect Paul more than you respect

01:43:31

Judas, and that's in a religious context. You respect him for what he did under God's grace.

01:43:36

It's difficult for me to see how there can be any connection, however, to what we all know is the

01:43:42

Old Testament prohibition against idolatry. We all know what idolatry is. The arguments that you're using could be used to defend almost any act of idolatry.

01:43:51

Could they not be? No, because in an act of idolatry, you are attributing divinity to someone, and Catholics don't attribute divinity to Mary and the saints.

01:43:59

In fact, just recently I was speaking at a parish in New Mexico, and someone raised the issue of religious statuary, and doesn't that violate the injunction against idols?

01:44:11

And I said, no, it doesn't. They raised the golden calf incident where Aaron made the golden calf and said, this is your

01:44:17

God, oh Israel, worship it. And there happened to be some statues of the Holy Family right next to me, and I gestured to them, now has your priest ever told you, these are your gods, oh

01:44:27

Catholics, worship them? And there was a resounding no from the congregation. And then

01:44:33

I pointed out that in the Old Testament, in fact I was just writing about this earlier this week, there are numerous examples of religious statuary that God himself commanded.

01:44:41

You had the cherubim on the Ark of the Covenant. You had the cherubim that God commanded to be worked into the panels of the tabernacle.

01:44:47

You had the cherubim that were all over the walls of Ezekiel's visionary temple. You had the cherubim in Solomon's temple.

01:44:54

You had pictures of supernatural celestial beings in a religious context, the tabernacle, the temple,

01:45:01

Ezekiel's visionary temple. You had these all over the place, and God himself endorsed it and commanded it.

01:45:07

And what I then said was okay to the audience, if it is okay for them in the

01:45:13

Old Testament and in the New Testament and in Ezekiel's vision to have pictures of angels in their churches, then it is okay for us, and at this point

01:45:21

I pointed to a statue of Michael the Archangel at the back of the sanctuary. It is okay for us to have pictures of angels and statues of angels today.

01:45:31

And of course God destroyed Israel for what they then did with their images, and that was that they transferred to those images those things that God reserves to himself, and I would simply close by asserting that a worship and service in the religious context is reserved by God to himself.

01:45:49

And we're going to have to leave it at that. We've got a lot of callers hanging on the line. We're going to get to them as quickly as possible before we go to station break.

01:45:56

Let me mention once again Roman Catholics and Evangelicals, Agreements and Differences by Norman L. Geisler and Ralph McKenzie, available through the

01:46:04

Christian Research Institute, along with the articles that appear in the Christian Research Journal, as radio operator number 336.

01:46:11

When you call or write the Christian Research Institute, in closing, a donation of $25 or more to our ongoing work, not only here in the

01:46:20

United States but internationally as well, our address, the Christian Research Institute, Box 500,

01:46:26

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01:46:32

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01:46:47

If you just tuned in our interview today with James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries, he's done an excellent book on the whole

01:46:54

King James Version only controversy right now and as we speak, or shortly after we speak, he's going to be working on a, continuing to work on a brand new book coming out with Bethany House on the actual issue of Roman Catholicism.

01:47:09

James Aiken also writing a book on what Catholics believe and why. He, of course, is with Catholic Answers, both very, very fine individuals and I think are bringing a lot of light to the subject of Roman Catholicism and the

01:47:24

Protestant Church differences as well as agreements. We'll be back in a moment with more. Please stay tuned. And welcome back to the

01:47:30

Bible Answer Man broadcast. I'm your host, Hank Henegraaff, President of the Christian Research Institute. In studio today with James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries and James Aiken of Catholic Answers.

01:47:40

We're answering your questions on the whole debate with regard to the differences between Roman Catholics and Evangelicals, agreements as well as disagreements.

01:47:48

York calls, so I want to go to Vincent, San Diego, California, listening to KPRZ. Welcome to the broadcast.

01:47:54

Thank you, Hank. Excellent program. Both of these gentlemen are very heavy hitters. And with the emphasis on gentlemen.

01:48:03

This question would be directed to Mr. White and or Mr. Aiken, possibly

01:48:09

Mr. White. Since most people until recently could neither read nor write, and mechanical printing didn't come into being until the 15th century, and Christ never wrote anything, nor did he command his apostles to write anything.

01:48:27

Isn't Sola Scriptura illogical? And one other comment, if you would comment on this, rather, one other.

01:48:35

Why are of the 350 quotations used by Christ and the apostles from the

01:48:41

Old Testament, why are 300 of them from the Septuagint or the long

01:48:47

Greek canon, which is used by the Catholic Church, which was rejected by the early, that is after Christ died,

01:48:57

Jews of that era and the reformers in the 16th century? By the way, great, great question.

01:49:04

Well articulated, James White. Well, first of all, in regards to the idea of people not being able to read so on and so forth, first of all, that's not necessarily a true statement historically.

01:49:15

There may have been periods during the Dark Ages where literacy was very low, but certainly at the time of Christ, you have

01:49:21

Peter writing, and you have a much different situation there. But my main problem with the question is that I think it begs the issue.

01:49:29

You don't have a command to a number of the Old Testament prophets to write. That doesn't mean that what they wrote was not necessarily what

01:49:36

God wanted to have them write. The Old Testament, that argument will be just as valid against the purpose and the function of the

01:49:45

Old Testament as it would be against the Bible as a whole. And again, we go to what the Lord Jesus Christ himself did in regards to holding men responsible for what

01:49:54

God said to them. We need to remember, especially when talking about things like divorce, what did the

01:49:59

Lord Jesus do when he was in conflict with the scribes and the Pharisees and the Sadducees? He said, have you not read what

01:50:07

God said to you? Now, we've got to back up and listen to what the

01:50:14

Lord Jesus is saying there. And I believe that the Lord Jesus' example needs to be our example.

01:50:20

And he held those men responsible for what God had revealed in the scriptures that they had at that time.

01:50:29

Now, in regards to the Septuagint, yes, the vast majority of Old Testament citations are from the

01:50:35

Septuagint. The problem, and again, I refer people to Beckwith's fine work, the Old Testament canon, the

01:50:40

New Testament church, the problem is the assumption that the Septuagint from which they were citing had this, what he calls, long

01:50:49

Greek canon. The Septuagints that we have, the earliest Septuagints that we have, are all

01:50:55

Christian in origin. And it is very questionable, very, very questionable. And it's really old scholarship to just automatically assume what's known as the

01:51:04

Alexandrian canon over against what's known as the Palestinian canon. And Beckwith's work,

01:51:10

I think, documents that very, very clearly. I'd suggest that Vincent, if he hasn't had a chance to look at that,

01:51:15

I believe it's published by Erdmann, the Old Testament canon, the New Testament church, I think does an excellent job in dismantling that assumption and demonstrates that that's exactly what it is, an assumption, not actually a fact.

01:51:26

Okay, to respond to both of those things, I think the caller's point was a little more subtle concerning Jesus' not giving the apostles a command to write.

01:51:37

If I understand what the caller was saying, the caller was saying, well, look, I mean, if writing were the primary means of teaching doctrine, then

01:51:46

Jesus would have put his emphasis on that when he talked to the apostles. He would have said, go out and write. Instead, he said, go out and preach.

01:51:53

And so the oral transmission of the gospel is what's going to be primary if you look in terms of what

01:51:59

Jesus puts his emphasis on. In the same way, when you have Paul in 2

01:52:04

Timothy getting ready to die, 2 Timothy is, of course, his swan song, he tells Timothy that what you need to do is take everything you've heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, so this is oral preaching, stuff you've heard from me in front of other people, and pass it on to devout men, to trustworthy men, who will then be able to pass it on to others.

01:52:23

So he's telling Timothy not to go out and get all my writings and put them together in a single volume. In fact, the institution of the

01:52:30

Codex didn't even become common, that's the modern form of a book with a bound spine, didn't even become common until the 2nd century.

01:52:36

In their day, everything was a scroll. So whenever you see the word book in the Bible, it means scroll. But he didn't put his emphasis on collecting writings and so forth as the primary means of transmitting doctrine to future generations.

01:52:50

He put his emphasis on what has been orally heard by Timothy, and in this fact, sets up apostolic succession.

01:52:57

He says, you've heard from me, my generation, now it's your generation that has it, you pass it on to a third generation so they can teach others.

01:53:04

So he names the first four generations, or doesn't name them, but refers to the first four generations of apostolic succession in communicating the oral teaching of the apostles after the apostles are gone, because he's about to die, of course.

01:53:18

Now in response... I think it's really important though, James, are you saying that's different than what I was saying? I hope no one understands this to be saying that to believe in Sola Scriptura is to say the apostles didn't preach.

01:53:31

The issue is that what they preached and what they wrote are the same thing, and that there is not anything in what they preached that is not in what they wrote that is necessary for our salvation.

01:53:41

Do you recognize how important that is? Yes, I recognize that's what you believe, but the fact is that the claim that everything they preached got written down is in fact an unwritten tradition.

01:53:51

It never says in the Bible anywhere that all the teachings of the apostles would get written down, and so if you judge that very idea that everything had to get written down, if you judge that idea by Scripture alone, it refutes itself.

01:54:06

But the positive claim you're making, James, is that there are things that they preached that didn't get written down. I didn't say that.

01:54:12

No, I didn't say that. You're putting words in my mouth. Now let me just move on to the issue of the Septuagint. The caller was correct that the vast majority of citations of the

01:54:23

Old Testament in the New Testament are from the Septuagint, and that's recognized by all scholars, Protestants, and Catholics.

01:54:29

However, Mr., well, anyone who's really a scholar, of course that's poisoning the well. No, no, I'm just simply saying the last time

01:54:36

I was on with Hank, we had a caller call in who denied the existence of the Septuagint. I'm not sure if you're aware of King James.

01:54:42

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't believe it existed. Well, anyway, I do have to say that with all due regard to Mr.

01:54:47

Beckwith, or Dr. Beckwith, and I'm sure he's a wonderful guy, but in terms of, I have his book,

01:54:53

I've read his book, and in terms of the scholarship in it, it is, not only did I find it problematic, but it has been resoundingly rejected by the vast majority of New Testament and Old Testament scholars.

01:55:04

There is no real doubt of the fact that the Deuteros were in the Septuagint translation earlier than the

01:55:11

Christian manuscripts we have. For example, in the 2nd century, you have origin writing that if you were to cut out the

01:55:19

Deuterocanonicals, you would have to amputate the versions of Scripture that have been used in the churches ever since the beginning.

01:55:24

So here in the 2nd century, which is earlier than the manuscripts we have in the Septuagint, we have clear testimony in other sources that those books were in there.

01:55:32

There is simply no doubt about that. On the issue of the Palestinian versus Alexandrian canon, the

01:55:37

Alexandrian canon being, of course, the one the Septuagint had, I have to make a point that I have not heard made significantly enough in Protestant discussions of this issue, but the fact is that there is no such thing as the

01:55:51

Palestinian canon. In fact, in Palestine, there were three separate canons that were being used in the time of Jesus.

01:55:58

There was the Pharisaical canon, which included what is in the Protestant Bible. There was the

01:56:03

Sadducee and Samaritan canon, which included only the first five books, the books of Moses, and then there was the

01:56:10

Qumran canon, which included other books, but we are not even really sure what they were, at least at this point of scholarship.

01:56:16

So there were at least three canons in Palestine, plus the Alexandrian canon, because, of course, since the apostles were from Palestine and writing in Palestine, and Jesus was quoting the

01:56:25

Septuagint and so forth, that canon was around in Palestine too. So there were four canons floating around in Palestine in the 1st century, and the idea that you can just square off Alexandrian canon not used by the

01:56:37

Jews of Palestine versus Palestinian canon used by the Jews and so forth in Palestine is just false.

01:56:43

There were four canons, and it's up for grabs, at least you have to do the investigation to find out which one did the apostles use.

01:56:52

And in regard to that, I think there are clear references to the Deuterocanonicals in the apostles' writings that surpass some of the references to certain

01:57:01

Old Testament books. I would strongly disagree with that and point out that when the New Testament writers cite

01:57:08

Scripture, and they use the recognized terminology, gegreptai, it has been written, that type of a formulary, they never cite the

01:57:19

Apocrypha in that form, and it is not enough to say that they were familiar with those books, which they certainly were, to say that they viewed them as canonical.

01:57:27

Okay, I would agree that it's not, but I would agree that they don't use the formula it is written in regard to the

01:57:33

Deuterocanonicals, but they don't use the formula it is written with respect to one -third of the

01:57:38

Old Testament. But those books were included in any of the canons that would have been functional for them.

01:57:45

They were not Sadducees. That would have been functional for them. Well, I'm sorry,

01:57:53

I was straight for a point. No, the Deuterocanonicals are not just, they don't just display a knowledge of them, they display a use of them.

01:58:02

I can see Hank, though, we're going to have to wrap this particular question up only because I have promised on my word that I would get to every caller we could.

01:58:11

Gene in Ohio, listening on WRFD. Gene, welcome. Good, I guess it's afternoon there yet.

01:58:16

How are you doing? My good friends, my fellow believers, how are you? I have a question,

01:58:22

I guess. Something was said by one of the gems, James.

01:58:29

It was either by James or by James. It could have been James the

01:58:34

Apostle. But anyway, this was said sometime when it was about interpretation of Scripture, and I'd like to reiterate that again because I have a passage in mind and also on tradition.

01:58:47

Which passage? It would be 2 Peter 1, 20. Okay, so the passage that says, Above all you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophets on interpretation.

01:58:56

True. Okay. Your comments, either one. Well, I think you just read from the

01:59:01

NIV, which may cause James some problem. I agree wholeheartedly with that translation and have addressed that.

01:59:09

And if you take that translation, there isn't really any issue to be used here because the translation, for example, the

01:59:16

King James Version is normally used by Roman Catholics to deny what they term private interpretation, that is, interpretation outside of, normally it's been used to me, the realm of the teaching magisterium.

01:59:27

But since that goes more toward James, I will do as you have said we should do and play the gentleman and allow him to address that issue.

01:59:36

Okay, with respect to that passage, yeah, I immediately picked up on the fact you read the NIV, and the

01:59:41

NIV contains what I frankly have to regard as a gross distortion of the Greek text.

01:59:47

That's my translation as well, by the way. And with all due deference to you, you have a gross distortion of the

01:59:54

Greek text. But what the passage actually says to give a literal translation without splicing in the word prophet and without splicing in came about, what the text says is that no prophecy of scripture is of private interpretation.

02:00:11

And I think the context clearly shows that that is what is meant here because otherwise the verse in question simply becomes a restatement of the following verse, which is meant to be a conclusion rather than a premise.

02:00:23

But that's a whole technical issue we don't have time to discuss. But I do need to say that that was not a literal translation.

02:00:32

Idios, and that's the term used there, is not a term. It means self. Exactly. So to say private interpretation, you've got to understand idios has a whole range of meanings, and the

02:00:44

NIV translation has a very solid basis in the text itself. To call it a perversion,

02:00:51

I think, is to go, well, it's distortion. Let the caller interject. Gene, you had a comment?

02:00:59

They're reading the passage, but I don't know if they understand what it's really saying. You know, if I understood what one of them said earlier, is that they would interpret the scripture.

02:01:10

And that's not what it's saying because if you do that, it's a private interpretation. So how do we go about it?

02:01:16

Would you like a suggestion? Okay. Well, I think I know what the suggestion is going to be.

02:01:21

I suspect the caller is one of those who say we shouldn't interpret the Bible, we should just read the Bible.

02:01:27

Oh, no, no, no. Oh, well, that's good. Not read it, my dear friend. We must go into the scripture with an open mind, and I think that's one reason why we have so many divisions in the body of Christ.

02:01:40

I hardly agree with that. However... Don't we need an open mind when we open up God's word and allow

02:01:46

Him to speak to us? Absolutely we do. Then if we go in with preconceived ideas, then we're going to come up with whoever religion you want to establish.

02:01:55

Okay. I'd have to disagree with you on that point. I mean, we do need to have an open mind, but the idea that you can come to scripture with a blank mind is just nuts.

02:02:04

I mean, and this is in fact something that, if you read the very same epistle, if you read 2

02:02:09

Peter chapter 3, you will see Peter talking about how that our beloved brother

02:02:15

Paul wrote to you according to the wisdom given to him. Speaking of this, as he does in all his letters, this is on verse 16, there are some things in them hard to understand which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction as they do the other scriptures.

02:02:29

And with that, I've got a pause, a mid -section you can pick up as we come back after station break.

02:02:34

Again, we'll be right back with more of the Bible Answer Man broadcast. Stay tuned. Welcome back to the

02:02:39

Bible Answer Man broadcast. I'm your host, Hank Henegraaff, president of the Christian Research Institute. In studio today with James White.

02:02:46

He hails from Alpha Omega Ministry. He is an author. You recently wrote a book in the

02:02:51

King James Version only debate entitled... The King James Only Controversy.

02:02:57

And that is available through Bethany House, available through the Christian Research Institute. We had you on the air answering questions with regards to this controversy.

02:03:05

You did a tremendous job. We also have in studio James Aiken of Catholic Answers, a great guy.

02:03:12

Appreciate having you in studio. I appreciate the fact that you are a thoughtful scholar and also a gentleman.

02:03:19

A delight to have you with us. The feeling is mutual. And we are going to go right back to the telephone calls.

02:03:25

Take Adam in Redondo, California. Wait a second. We stopped mid -sentence before. Of course.

02:03:32

Okie doke. Just to tie it up real quick. If you look in the same exact epistle, 2 Peter chapter 3, around verse 16,

02:03:40

Peter says that the ignorant and the unstable twist the writings of Paul and the other scriptures to their own destruction.

02:03:48

Now, one thing that's missed in the English translation is the word for ignorant is not the

02:03:53

Greek word for ignorant. To be ignorant means to not know something. What the actual word is in Greek is the untaught.

02:04:03

Those are the unlearned. Those who have not learned. Not those who just don't know. But those who have not learned the correct way to approach the

02:04:11

Bible. Those who have not learned the teaching of the apostles through which you must read the Bible as an interpretive grid.

02:04:17

Those are the people who twist the scriptures to their own destruction. So right here we have an instance of Peter saying that you've got to come to scripture with a certain amount of learning.

02:04:26

And thus it is impossible to correctly read scripture with a completely blank slate.

02:04:32

And if you try, you're going to twist them to your own destruction. I would just simply say that yes, that is the exact term that is used.

02:04:39

Unlearned. But I would question the use of the phrase through the English apostles in how that might be applied in a

02:04:48

Roman Catholic context in light of what has been defined as the teachings of the apostles, which I would say is not the teachings of the apostles.

02:04:55

And with that I want to go back to the telephone lines and talk to Adam Redondo, California listening on KKLA. Adam, welcome.

02:05:01

Hello. How are you doing? Fine. How are you guys? Fine. You've been with us a long time, Adam. Yeah, I have.

02:05:09

My question was for Mr. White. In regards to the immediately preceding caller,

02:05:17

I was going to refer to the same text in 2 Peter 1, but my general question,

02:05:25

I was only going to use that as an illustration. My general question is if Mr. White earlier had made a criticism of difficulties that the

02:05:33

Catholic Church gets into or has gotten into in terms of interpretation, and where authority lies to do that, would you

02:05:41

I can't recall exactly how he formulated it, but I haven't heard him use the formulation he used before.

02:05:48

But in any case, he said the Catholic Church has had that problem, too. But the difficulty

02:05:54

I have with that would be if there's some indecision or doubt as to where the

02:06:00

Catholic Church gets its authority to interpret Scripture or what its attitude toward Scripture is, doesn't that become even worse for the

02:06:10

Protestant point of view? Because then who speaks for the

02:06:17

Protestants? And in fact, I'm not sure what a Protestant would be at that point, because if you ask different people what is

02:06:24

Protestantism or what Christianity is, you get different answers. And simply referring to the

02:06:30

Bible, because for instance, the disagreement over that particular text in Peter is a perfect example. Who's to decide what these things mean?

02:06:38

And how, other than just arbitrary, particularism. And I'm not sure what arbitrary particularism would be in that particular context, but you put your finger upon a very important issue that definitely separates

02:06:51

Protestants and Catholics. And when you ask the question, what is a Protestant, we have trouble defining ourselves because of the freedom that we insist a person must have before God and before the

02:07:04

Word of God to be obedient to the Word of God without submitting to any type of extra -biblical authority outside of the

02:07:11

Holy Spirit who indwells us. And so you're very perceptive in noting that as far as presenting what we would call a monolithic structure, the

02:07:24

Protestant is in a difficult state there because he cannot do anything more than to say this scripture that lies before me is

02:07:33

God breathed. It is God speaking. And I am captive to its authority and I am held responsible for reading it and I am held responsible for God speaking to me in that word.

02:07:48

Now the problem though that I have with that being an objection to Protestantism is that when we go back again to our example,

02:07:56

Jesus Christ, what did we have in his own day? In his own day, he held those to whom he was speaking accountable on the very same basis.

02:08:07

He did not say the scribes and Pharisees. Look guys, you need to all be on the same side and in the same group because I have established this one particular organization and I have entrusted the interpretation of my scripture to them and you should have listened to them.

02:08:24

They were the very ones who claimed that. Instead, he held them responsible directly to the scriptures.

02:08:32

There were no excuses that were valid. He said, have you not read what

02:08:37

God said to you? And so the ultimate authority remains God speaking.

02:08:45

And the question with Roman Catholicism, you might say, well, in fact I have a book here by Carl Keating who of course

02:08:52

James Aiken knows very well. He is my boss. That's right. So I figure you better agree with this one.

02:09:00

He says on page 127 of his book in regards to inspiration of the Bible, the Catholic believes in inspiration because the church tells him so.

02:09:08

That is putting it bluntly. And that same church has the authority to interpret the inspired text.

02:09:14

Well that is very convenient but my Mormon friends believe that the Book of Mormon is the word of God because the

02:09:19

Mormon church tells them so. And so you don't really end up with the certainty that you wish you had by embracing some authority outside of the

02:09:29

God - breathed scriptures. Well, okay, if I can just respond to a couple of things. We are going to have to keep the responses brief as possible because we have a couple of minutes.

02:09:38

I will try. In regard to Jesus holding the Pharisees and Sadducees accountable to scripture, he certainly did do that.

02:09:45

But he also held them accountable to oral teaching because he not only said, haven't you read?

02:09:52

He also said, you have heard but I say. And he would then introduce his own interpretation, his own understanding of things and his own new teachings and therefore he held them accountable not only to scripture but also to oral teaching, his own namely.

02:10:07

Furthermore, the idea that he didn't obligate the Pharisees and Sadducees to morally obligate them to join the church and listen to the teachings of the apostles

02:10:18

I think is nuts. I mean, he clearly did say, he clearly did intend for them, at least they have a moral obligation, to join the church and listen to the teachings of the apostles and thus he was binding them to the church.

02:10:31

They had a moral obligation to hear what God said to them which would lead them to join the church. They had an obligation to do both but I would just make the point again that everything

02:10:42

God said is not recorded in the Bible. God's word is all over the place.

02:10:48

There are numerous prophecies not recorded in scripture. But the word of Jesus never held those men responsible for something outside of the scriptures.

02:10:55

Oh, I'm sorry, he did. He held them such as his own teaching, you have heard but I say. Of course, he is giving revelation.

02:11:00

We have that. Where does he give us something that came from the time of Isaiah that is passed down orally? He actually gave them something from the time of Moses when he said that you have heard that it was said an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.

02:11:14

And he then passed down to them an interpretation of that text which had been passed down from That doesn't qualify for what

02:11:19

I was just asking. That is an oral tradition. You are asking me for separate revelation. Remember, I am not saying that tradition has to contain separate revelation.

02:11:29

I am saying that there is an authoritative interpretation outside of scripture. Okay, Adam, does that help?

02:11:35

Yeah, it's just that it seems to me again that the problem is simply redoubled from the

02:11:40

Protestant point of view. You are down again to either the particular church that some group of people decide on or the individual.

02:11:48

And if the Catholic church has an atmosphere... Well, let me say real quickly,

02:11:54

Adam, that the main things are the plain things and the plain things are the main things. When it comes to the essentials of the historic

02:11:59

Christian faith, they are crystal clear to anybody that wants to see them. They are communicated in a variety of different ways, all driving at the exact same point.

02:12:08

We are saved by the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ upon the cross. It's not what we can do.

02:12:14

It's what Jesus Christ has already done for us. I want to go to Rob Long Island, New York, listening on WMCA.

02:12:20

Rob, welcome. Hi. I appreciate CRI very much. I was wondering if I could make statements regarding the papacy and hear the guest responses.

02:12:27

Yes. It has to be very quickly. Okay. Something is often overlooked in the West. The Eastern churches come from the same historic origins, have many of the same beliefs, and claim apostolic succession and tradition.

02:12:36

So the main claim of the papacy, that is of the Roman Catholic Church as being the true church, is the papacy. Would they agree with that so far?

02:12:44

I don't understand the question. I agree that the key thing that distinguishes the

02:12:51

Eastern Orthodox from the Catholics is the issue of the papacy. Yes, that's the key issue. Okay.

02:12:57

Now, it's true that in the past they had control in the West before the Reformation. The East did recognize the papacy, but I would contend, if you go back further, that there was a time before they had control in the

02:13:06

West, and the East did not recognize the papacy because the Bishop of Rome was not making such claims. I believe this can be substantiated in the sources, the primary sources.

02:13:14

Okay. I agree a thousand percent. Well, I'd have to disagree a thousand percent, then, because if you look at what the early popes actually did, they clearly understood their prerogatives as a pope.

02:13:23

I mean, Clement of Rome, for example, dared to settle an issue in Corinth over in a completely separate church, over in Greece, telling them to reinstate their clergy that they had ejected.

02:13:34

Please read that passage and compare it. Okay. Let me give you another one.

02:13:40

an opportunity just to do the early church and the papacy. In the second century, you had Pope Victor who excommunicated all of Asia Minor.

02:13:47

And Irenaeus stood up and told him he had no idea what in the world he was doing. He did not view him as the vicar of Christ.

02:13:52

No, popes can be corrected. I mean, that's the reason St. Catherine of Siena is a doctor of the church because she taught the popes.

02:13:59

She corrected them. But he still had that authority and exercised it. He did not. He was an impetuous and rash man.

02:14:05

That does not mean that there was an established doctrine of papacy. And with that, I'm going to have to interrupt both of you and ask

02:14:11

James Aiken's first closing statement. By the way, I'd love to have you on the broadcast again.

02:14:17

You did a tremendous job. Closing statement, anything you want to say? I'd love to come back. I think that there is an enormous amount of misunderstanding of the

02:14:25

Catholic position out there. People tend to just repeat things they've heard from their pulpit or repeat things they've read in books put out by Dave Hunt or things like that.

02:14:35

And they tend not to read Catholic sources. And if they do, they tend to only scan them for passages that can be used to confirm their pre -formed opinions of Catholics.

02:14:46

They don't try to enter into the Catholic understanding of them. How do Catholics use this term? What do they mean when they say this?

02:14:53

Because Catholics and Protestants use some different language. We've been separated for 400 years and language changes.

02:14:58

In fact, some of the disputes at the time were based on language problems. So I would just say that because there's a lot of misunderstanding,

02:15:05

I would encourage people to go out and get the Catechism of the Catholic Church and read what Catholics have to say for themselves.

02:15:11

And if it doesn't clear up everything, at least it will clear up some. Okay. Thanks again for being in the studio. We appreciate you. James White, your closing remarks.

02:15:17

The issues are fundamental, foundational, and I think the main thing that concerns me in a lot of the movement in the

02:15:24

United States today is, look, we have a common evangelistic mission together. My problem is if you have a common evangelistic mission, you need to have a common evangel.

02:15:35

And I think one thing has been very clear. We don't have the same evangel. And again, a delight to have you in the studio.

02:15:41

I appreciate your work not only on this issue but other issues as well like the King James Version only debate. One thing is clear.

02:15:47

It is important for all of us to learn to scale the language barrier. It's not only the words we use but it's the meaning that is poured into those words.

02:15:54

One of the books that will help you do that, Roman Catholics and Evangelicals, Agreements and Disagreements, in fact, has an endorsement by James Aiken.

02:16:02

Yeah, I'm a little peeved at Baker for manipulating my endorsement, though. Oh, well, I didn't know that. Do you in general recommend the book?

02:16:10

Oh, it has a lot of good stuff in it. The qualifier I added that Baker clipped off the front of what

02:16:15

I said was that an informed Catholic won't be convinced by the arguments in Section 2 of their book, but it's still a good treatment.

02:16:21

And you go on to say this book offers a comprehensive, embellished discussion and should retire older. Sensationalistic books.