Jason Stellman's Slide into Romanism

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Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is the Dividing Line.

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The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.

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Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.

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This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll free across the

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United States. It's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is

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James White. If I took those things and kind of teased out the logical ramifications, it rendered imputation of alien righteousness unnecessary.

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That if Jesus founded a church, an actual visible church, you know, with a

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P .O. box, you know, so to speak, one you could find it, you could say, there it is, not there but there. And if that church, first of all, if he did that, he never would have instituted

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Sola Scriptura as the only infallible way of guiding that church because he wasn't an idiot.

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In the face of what is just so biblically obvious and historically compelling and philosophically necessary, it's almost a no -brainer.

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Now there you were listening to the voice of Jason Stellman, a former

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PCA minister and now having swum the Tiber River, a member of the

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Roman Catholic Communion in a podcast from the Call to Confusion website,

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I do that quite purposefully, I believe that Call to Communion is calling people to confusion.

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The reason I say that is they're not talking about communion with God and communion of the saints, they're talking about communion only under the leadership of the

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Roman sea. So that's a different type of communion and you get that communion only by engaging in confusion in regards to the authority of the

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Word of God. But be that as it may, that is a podcast that was just recently posted from Call to Communion and we are going to be talking about Jason Stellman's claims in regards to his conversion to Roman Catholicism from the

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Reformed faith, and joining me on the program today to engage in this conversation, and my sincere thanks once again to him for taking the time out because it is a lot of time to do that, is the great

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Turretin fan. Are you with me, sir? I am with you, but I am not great, but thank you for having me on.

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Well, that is a matter of opinion as the host of the program. I get to say whatever I want to say.

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So anyway, now you've been dealing with the Call to Communion folks for quite some time.

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I was looking at your blog and looking at, which is turretinfan .blogspot

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.com. It's been, what, at least, I'm looking at one here from 2009, so it's been a number of years that you've been at least responding to Brian Cross, is that correct?

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Yes, that's right, and he's, I would, for lack of a better term, sort of the ringleader there of the group.

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There's other influential people within the group there, but he is one of the leaders. Most definitely, yeah.

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I don't think I responded much to his writing when he had only his solo blog, but after he started the

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Call to Communion blog, which I think is taken from the name of one of Benedict XVI's books, but after he started this blog,

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I paid a little bit more attention to what he was writing and started responding in 2009. Okay, all right, so this is a group that you're rather familiar with, and they are certainly central to Jason Stellman's conversion.

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In fact, he himself says that this all started with a 2008 article by Brian Cross that we'll get into in a moment.

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Let me let Brian Cross himself introduce, give

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Jason's brief bio here for folks who are not familiar with him, because when he first contacted me early this year,

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I was not familiar with him. So many other people will not be either, but let's give them this information here.

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Our guest today is Jason Stellman. Jason was born and raised in Orange County, California, and served as a missionary with Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa in Uganda in the early 90s, and then six years in Hungary.

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After that, he went to Westminster Seminary, California, where he received an MDiv in 2004. Upon graduation, he was ordained by the

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Pacific Northwest Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church in America and called to plant Exile Presbyterian Church in the

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Seattle area, where he served as pastor from 2004 until resigning in the spring of 2012.

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He is the author of Dual Citizens, Worship and Life Between the Already and the

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Not Yet, and The Destiny of the Species, which is forthcoming from Wipf and Stock Publications.

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So there is the bio that was provided as part of the podcast itself, and that gives you at least some of the background.

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Let me give my background in this situation, because as we will note as we get into the podcast,

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I am mentioned because I met with Jason Stellman in May of this year.

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I believe it was the 22nd, 23rd. It was a Wednesday. I think it was the 23rd of May. I know

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I was speaking that evening at our church, and we met for, if I recall correctly, an hour and 48 minutes, so almost two hours in my office.

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He had contacted me, I believe it was in March, and had said he wanted to get together.

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He was being given the opportunity to do this by his session, and that he was struggling with the claims of Roman Catholicism.

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I neglected, I was going to do this, and I got distracted recording a video on a completely different subject, unfortunately.

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When I wrote back to him, I specifically raised the issues of authority with him and Sola Scriptura.

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One of the things that I said to him in my first email was that if we're going to have a discussion,

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I want to make sure that both sides are represented, both positions are on the table.

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In other words, I'm not going to, if we're going to talk about Sola Scriptura, then we're going to need to deal with Rome's claims of authority as well.

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Far too often in the past, Sola Scriptura has been the doormat, and Rome's actual claims to infallibility and all the related elements of that don't get discussed, or they get discussed on a very cursory level.

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Both sides have to put their cards on the table to utilize that kind of language, and I said that from the start.

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I mean, that was in my first response. Once he told me he was dealing with issues regarding Catholicism, wanted to talk about that, that was in my first response.

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Now, I emphasize that because in this podcast, he's going to offer a mild criticism that all

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I want to do is poke holes in Roman Catholicism. Well, I told him from the beginning, we're going to apply the same standards to both sides, and Rome can't handle that, and I don't think the

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Call to Communion guys can handle that either, and I will get into that as time allows.

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But we did speak for almost two hours. I did not schmooze with Jason.

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It was not possible for me to go out to dinner or anything else. I was speaking that evening at the church.

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I didn't do anything other than meet with him and answer his questions, and in that time period with him,

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I did present a positive defense of Sola Scriptura, which does not come out in this interview, but we'll talk about it when we get there.

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I pointed him to the vast difference between church tradition and that which is Theanostas.

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I challenged him on numerous issues, and Jason would not engage in a defense of Roman Catholicism, even though he will say, in response to questions from Brian Cross, that, well, when you've got the truth, no one can come up with a good argument against it.

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He wouldn't put any arguments forward. The primary argument, well, it wasn't even an argument, it was a question.

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How did someone, after the Apostle John died, how could someone identify the true church at that time?

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And he was, it was frustrating for me, because clearly, and to this day, he doesn't get the idea that Rome has no answer to that.

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At least it would have satisfied him. There was no successor in Rome.

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There was no pope. To say that there was a functioning papacy at the end of the first century is just pure historical wish fulfillment.

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And so, when you present arguments that the position that you are now seeking to adopt cannot answer, there's something else going on.

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There's something else happening here. And I will tell everyone, and I think

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I've mentioned this, but I'll be straightforward. I did not pull any punches with Jason.

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It was not an acerbic conversation, but I directly said to him that he was flirting with apostasy.

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I told him that the Gospel of Rome cannot save, that he was talking about abandoning the only true hope of salvation.

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I told him I cannot begin to understand how anyone who has ever confessed that they truly stand before a holy

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God, clothed in the seamless robe of the spotless righteousness of Jesus Christ, could ever trade that away for the treadmill of indulgences and everything else in Roman Catholicism.

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I don't understand it, and I never will. And I sort of preached to him, and I even asked him at one point, because he told me he met with Mike Horton and J.

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Ligon Duncan and all these people. And I asked him, has anyone been as passionate as I have in warning you about these issues?

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And he said, no. So I was the last person he talked to. That was May 23rd, and exactly four months later, he was received into the

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Roman Catholic Church. Now, I provided him debates, and I also challenged him to read a document called

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Indulgentiarum Doctrina. I don't get the feeling that he did. I don't get the feeling that he listened to the debates.

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I don't get the feeling that he read the document. Maybe he did. I don't know. Certainly didn't have any impact on him, that's for sure. But since the conversation has now become public, then we are going to respond to it.

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And I think in the process, we'll help you, the listener, to think through a number of issues.

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And I think it is absolutely necessary that we engage these folks in this kind of a dialogue.

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Before we get to the arrow and painting target story here,

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Tarzan Fan, was there anything you wanted to add from your interactions? Have you had interaction with Stelman himself?

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Well, yes, I've had some interaction. Some of it was sort of in public, on the blog, some of it privately by email.

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And he hasn't talked about that, and I'm happy not to talk about any private correspondence.

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But in public areas, I had been criticizing him back in 2009 for taking positions that were too sympathetic to Rome's position.

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And so I was very sad to hear the news that he was leaving his charge and that he was considering Rome on that level, and then continued to be saddened when

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I heard that he actually did join the communion of Rome. But it wasn't a shock and surprise to me, as I guess it was to some people who just hadn't seen his online interactions.

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Right. OK. All right. OK, so there's the background. Now, he says that this journey is a two -stage journey, beginning in 2008 with an article that he sent to Michael Horton and to other people at Westminster Seminary in California.

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It was an article that I believe Brian Cross had written, where in essence, he says there is no difference between sola scriptura and solo scriptura.

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And I suppose it would be good if we defined our terms at this point. Solo scriptura, the concept of, in essence, me and my

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Bible underneath the tree in the woods, the scripture is absolutely alone as a source of authority versus solo scriptura, the scriptures as the sole infallible rule of faith of the church.

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But there are subordinate authorities. There is the teaching authority in the church.

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There are elders. There is much that we can learn from preceding generations.

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But all of that is subject to the ultimate authority of the scripture itself. And in fact, its worth is to be derived from its fidelity to what is actually theanustas.

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None of those subordinate authorities are theanustas. They are not God -breathed.

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And I believe, if I recall correctly, Thurton Fan, that one of the articles

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I was looking at on your blog, you really went into that in a discussion of subordinate authorities and issues along those lines.

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And I guess the illustration that was used by Brian Cross was firing an arrow, hitting a wall, and then going over and painting the target around the arrow.

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The idea being that no one can really know whether you believe in sola or solo.

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It's all still just up to you. That you have engaged in private interpretation and you have come to this conclusion and you're not really under any particular authority because you're the final authority in all these things anyways.

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Is that how you would categorize the article that he was referring to?

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Yes, I assume that it's the same sola versus solo argument and article that eventually appeared on the

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Call to Communion site. And I've actually had several rounds of back and forth with both

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Brian Cross and I believe Tim Troutman, another one of their contributors, at least in the comment boxes there.

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And the arguments that they're making do have this fundamental problem that they're essentially saying that sola and solo scriptura are both the same because neither of them treats the church as an ultimate authority.

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And on that level, they are the same. But who cares? That's not the only difference and that's not the difference that makes the two positions meaningfully different.

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It's kind of a game at best to say, well, they're exactly the same on this one detail.

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Neither of them makes the church the ultimate authority. Well, there are a lot of systems that deny solo scriptura, but they can do so in many, many, many, many different ways.

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So one similarity does not make identity in any way. Yes, and the whole idea of, well, my target,

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I didn't go and paint that target and you did. You went and painted your target around your arrow.

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You know, that's. A very cute caricature of the position, but of course, we are not appealing to the authority that we're a very good painters around the arrow, we're not appealing to our own authority, we are appealing to a higher authority, to the authority of scripture.

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And they may say, well, our church has a higher authority than you, but it just pushes the debate back a level.

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Right. And you don't get out of the debate simply by saying that I'm not appealing to the scriptures,

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I'm appealing to a book, to the church, and therefore I trump you. Right.

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It is interesting to me, especially because these these gentlemen are not part of the magisterium themselves.

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And it's interesting that that when you see their interpretation of these things, it's different than other people's in the

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Roman Catholic Church Communion's interpretation. And it really makes you wonder, well, who gave you the authority to come up with these illustrations?

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There's there's always there's always this inconsistency when when I hear these folks saying, well, you know, we need to exegete these texts.

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Why? You have an infallible authority. But your embracing of that claim of infallibility is no more certain than the process that took you to that.

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And we're going to, I think, hear that a lot in the words of Jason Stallman. He has not escaped that in any way, shape or form.

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But I still don't think, because he then raises the issue of the Tukokwe fallacy, saying, well, you all did the same thing.

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And that's true. They do do the same thing. But he also makes it sound as if, and I'm going to be playing other stuff, but this is just a long section and we're going to we're going to be listening to a lot of the podcast.

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But I want to get into these things. If I may insert a brief comment.

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Sure, please. There is such a fallacy called the Tukokwe fallacy. In other words, you might say, well, you know, if you confront someone and say you committed adultery and they turn around and say, well, you committed adultery also.

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Right. And and it would be fallacious to say, well, then adultery is fine because you both did it. It's not right if one person does it.

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It's not right if the other person does it. Right. And the fact that there's some recusal doesn't get you out of here.

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But that's actually not what we're we're getting at here. This is presented in a debate context as a what we would call a disadvantage to a plan.

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You know, the plan is Sola Scriptura and it supposedly has this disadvantage. And that's why people should should not adopt it.

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Well, if your your counter plan of Romanism has the same disadvantage, your disadvantage lacks uniqueness.

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It's it's not a real disadvantage. And it's it may be a reason to adopt some third system.

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But it's not a reason to decide the debate between Romanism and Reformed theology.

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So calling it a fallacy, labeling it as a fallacy is again, it's a rhetorical ploy, but it's not it's not an accurate assessment of the situation.

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And I think it also we need to recognize that there is a really an essential undercutting of the ability of Scripture to speak for the spirit in a really assertion of the inability of the spirit to apply

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God's word. All of this is part and parcel of why I call this the call to confusion, folks, because they undercut the the not only perspicuity, but I would say the authority of the

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Word of God with this kind of of argumentation. And that was one of the things that I raised to Jason directly was the the absolute uniqueness of the character of Scripture as being

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Theanistos and the fact that that Rome, in essence, arrogantly takes that authority unto herself.

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We certainly could argue functionally in her interpretive role, but certainly historically in defining such things as the bodily assumption, immaculate conception as being as being part of the of what

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God has revealed to us, in essence, making the written scriptures the servant of the church.

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And that, you know, the more modern Roman position tries to use less direct language, but facts are facts.

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That's that, you know, there are conservative Catholics right out there and open in how they say that kind of thing.

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But there really is, I think, a fundamental issue here in regards to whether you really believe in the authority of Scripture and you believe that God has given it to us for a purpose or whether it's just a book that results in a tremendous amount of confusion and you should never read on your own.

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You should only read it with the inspired and infallible commentary that Rome has provided to us right next to it, which, of course, doesn't exist, but allegedly she can produce.

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So that's that's what you have there. Anything else in that section other than just pointing out that, you know,

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Jason Stellman did come to Rome on the basis of his his own judgment?

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And that's kind of the funny thing is, once we get farther into the interview, that's basically what he's going to say.

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If you listen, I don't know if he can hear himself saying this, but as I'm listening to it, he's going, well, you know,

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I just figured that if Christ established a church, it would look like this.

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How is that not private? Private judgment, private interpretation. How is that not painting the target?

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I don't I don't I don't get it. I really don't understand that. Now, just briefly, because this this took up eight minutes of the interview,

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Jason Stellman was chosen by the Presbyterian Church or whatever portion of the

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Presbyterian Church was involved in the prosecution of Peter Lightheart as the prosecutor.

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And people have raised the question as to whether Lightheart should be retried, because clearly during this time,

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Jason was already entertaining perspectives and positions favorable to Rome, et cetera, et cetera.

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And so they discussed that. I guess the one thing that I would ask you, given that it's rather obvious from your blog that you're quite familiar with the

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Westminster Confession of Faith, the Westminster Standards, as you listened to that discussion, what struck you as to his arguments in regards to, no,

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I don't think there needs to be a retrying or anything. I think I did a good job.

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And what the Westminster Standards say is what the Westminster Standards say. And whether I was questioning them or not doesn't matter as to what they say.

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What did that prompt you to think? Well, it stood in stark contrast to the way he seems to treat

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Scripture, as though it could mean a bunch of different things depending on how you look at it and which framework or set of paradigms you apply to it.

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I don't think that Lightheart would take the position that he can just look at the

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Westminster Standards however he wants. And I can't imagine that he would ever argue that position.

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And he actually, I think, came out around the same time that that Stillman announced his transition.

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He came out with some article about why he would never be a Roman Catholic. Yes, that's right.

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So I have some issues with Lightheart and I don't approve of the federal vision.

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And I've written a little bit about why I don't. But it does seem to me that it's very hard to imagine him as a zealous advocate against the errors of the federal vision if he thinks that on certain points, the federal vision is right in their interpretation of Scripture and whether or not they're in accordance with the standards.

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In other words, maybe Stillman has been convinced that the standards are wrong and the

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Scriptures are right, and therefore the standards should be abandoned. But he's just going to prosecute the trial based on the standards regardless.

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And that's a bizarre approach to take. And it's kind of hard to imagine he's giving it his all and really trying in that situation.

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But, you know, I guess he says he was and I can't read his heart. I can't. It seems hard to believe, but, you know.

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But it seems so contradictory to think that, well, we can know to the point where we can prosecute someone what the

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Westminster Standards say, but we can't know what Paul meant in Romans 5 .1. Yeah, right. It's like the

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Scripture stutter. Exactly. It's an amazing, amazing double standard.

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Well, let's listen to a few minutes. This is the next section where a discussion of covenantal monism and the new perspective comes up.

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And so let's let's dive into this. I haven't meant to just skip over the first portion, but if we're ever going to get this done, because once we get into the section on solo scripture and stuff like that, we're obviously going to be slowing down a lot and getting into more of the material.

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But here is the section on covenantal monism and a new perspective. You mentioned just now,

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NT Wright, in respect of the question concerning Gentile membership within the New Covenant Church.

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Now, I'm going to stop just for a moment and I'm going to pick up the speed just a little bit, just simply so that we can get through it a little bit faster.

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I want I always want to announce that so no one accuses me of trying to make people sound like Mickey Mouse or something like that.

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I'm just going to pick up the speed of the playback so that we can get through this a little bit faster.

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Peter remarks that Gentiles should not be saddled with standards that the old covenant Jews themselves couldn't bear.

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And in previous times, you viewed this remark as evidence against covenantal monism, the new perspective on Paul and so forth, since satisfying mere boundary marker conditions does not seem overly burdensome.

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How do you now understand this remark of St. Peter? Yeah, Acts 15, the

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Council of Jerusalem, you know, I think I think

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I think that there's more to what Peter is saying than simply circumcision.

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Now, let me just stop just for a moment. What struck me as odd here is why ask a new convert?

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Why not just go to the inspired interpretation of these texts? Well, because there isn't one.

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It just amazes me as so many people talk about, oh, the certainty and the unity we can get from the magisterial authority and you poor

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Protestants, all you're stuck with is sola scriptura. Why don't you all tell us what it means? Where is the inspired commentary?

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You've got this infallible leader. Robert St. Genesis assured us that if Rome wanted to determine every single textual variant, if Rome wanted to interpret every single text, they could do that.

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You think you haven't had enough time yet? I it just it just strikes me as so odd that if Rome had the insights and had the authority, she pretends she does.

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That's so much this conversation would be moot, it would be irrelevant, but I digress.

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That that was the the issue that brought the council together there in Acts. There were certain

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Christians, certain believers among the among the Jews were saying, unless you unless you receive circumcision, you cannot be a full member of the church.

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And so they came together to discuss it. And what I was saying, you know, in the thing that you're you're you're quoting,

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I was kind of getting at the idea that, you know, how hard is it to be circumcised? I mean, how hard is it to still be circumcised?

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If you were a Jewish person circumcised on the eighth day and now you're 30 years old, like how burdensome can that be?

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You're just, you know, continuing. In the fall of. Oh, I didn't mean to do that.

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I apologize. You click at the wrong place. Then simply circumcision, like how burdensome can that be?

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You're back to where you were, continuing to be what you are. And how hard is it not to eat pork chops, you know?

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But then I think that there I think that that issue of circumcision and dietary restrictions, it's it's sort of an abbreviation for a whole lot more.

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And what helped me understand this a bit better was reading Scott Hahn's doctoral dissertation that was published,

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I think, by Yale. It's called Kinship by Covenant. And he he goes into some detail about the fact that there's this pattern in salvation history with respect to Israel in the

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Old Testament, according to which Israel sins and God heaps laws on them.

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And then Israel sins again and God heaps more laws on them as kind of penances.

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Let me just stop right there. Do you have any idea what he's talking about? Well, I'm.

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I have looked at Hahn's treatise, but I can't it's the actual treatise, not the book that was published based on it, but the.

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The that particular aspect of the treatise was not what I was looking at at the time and I certainly don't recall that it sounds to me like he's adopting one of these source theory views where the the text of Deuteronomy reflects amalgamation of bits of law that came down over the centuries and eventually got compiled sometime around the time of Ezra, as opposed to being actually mosaic.

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Wow. So silly me was sitting here trying to go. When did God ever pile more laws upon Israel because of her sin as a form of penance?

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I I've just tried to think of any example of this. So I guess if you have some complex source critical theory,

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I guess I could see how you could theorize something like that.

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But as the text stands, I'm unaware of any situation where Israel sins and then

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God gives them new laws as penances for having broken the old ones.

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And I couldn't think that I had to go somewhere outside of the text because there are cases where like the only two

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I can think of are one of them was that the man who was found gathering sticks on the Sabbath and they put him in basically in jail until they knew what to do with him.

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And then God announced what should be done with him. And there was another another case like that where they found someone doing something that seemed to be wrong, but they didn't have a law directly addressed it.

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But these are not those were civil laws. Those weren't ceremonial. Yeah, I I was just trying as a penance and and to hear that from someone who's talking about their conversion to Rome and Rome's use the term penance.

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I'm just like, wow, I have no earthly idea where that's coming from. And so the

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I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I just thought that circumcision itself is hard could hardly be viewed that way.

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It's a sign of the faith that Abraham received. And it was viewed as a blessing, a sign of blessing, not a curse.

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It wasn't a penance on Abraham. He must be circumcised. Of course, exactly. And so the by the time you get to the book of Acts, the

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Mosaic system wasn't the much simpler system that you would have expected in the book of Exodus, for example.

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It wasn't as much a filial and familial arrangement, but it was much more a suzerainty arrangement, a master slave relationship.

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That's what Israel's relationship to God had devolved into because of the fact that they would sin and God would add more restrictions and then they would sin again and he would add more to sort of burden them, you know, by way of of penance.

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And so I think that, you know, what Peter's saying there when he says that we were not nor our fathers able to bear this yoke,

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I think he's referring to a lot more than just circumcision and a lot more than just refraining from eating certain foods.

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But it's the entire book of the law, as the book of Deuteronomy had come to be called, the entire

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Levitical and Deuteronomic system of of sacrifices and offerings and annual pilgrimages and everything else that came with it.

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But certainly, I think Peter had that in mind. He may have had more in mind as well, but I think he had at least that much in mind when he made that remark.

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Now, again, I'm just left going, why not just go to the infallible authority here?

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Or why hasn't the infallible authority interpreted Acts chapter 15? I mean, this isn't how Robert St. Genes handled

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Acts chapter 15, the debate I did with him in Santa Fe. Why is he any more or less of an authority than Jason Stelman?

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He's been a Roman Catholic a lot longer than Jason Stelman has. I don't understand that. But one thing we didn't cover was he mischaracterized the issue in Acts chapter 15.

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He said this was merely a matter of church membership, but it was not church membership in Acts chapter 15.

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In fact, the only person who would say what Acts 15 was about was church membership was

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N .T. Wright and the new perspective, which he said he didn't have any love for.

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And yet when he looks at Acts chapter 15, he defines it in a new perspective way, conflating justification and church membership as the same thing.

35:57

Did you want to comment on that? Yes, it did seem bizarre to me.

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It seemed bizarre as well, because if you look at other commentators within his own communion, they openly acknowledge it.

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I just, as an example, grabbed the Padox Catholic Bible commentary, which is a 19th century commentary.

36:21

And I've read verse one. It says, many who had been converted from Judaism held that none, not even converted from paganism, could be saved unless they were circumcised and observed the other ceremonies of the law of Moses.

36:36

So it's not like if you're in the Roman communion, you start thinking automatically this is about membership.

36:42

It's something that, you know, Stalman personally holds to, but it isn't what the text is about.

36:48

And it's strange that he has this idea that it is what the text is about. And it was really puzzling to me that it had ever occurred to him that this was merely about the right of circumcision itself or about the right of circumcision and specifically the issue of work.

37:06

It was the whole ceremonial law and this huge ceremonial law full of many different cleanliness laws, having to wash yourself at certain times.

37:18

If you happen to touch a dead body, you have to do this. You can't eat not just pork, but you have to be careful not to eat things that are not just things that are offered to idols, but they have to be, we could call it just kosher in general.

37:35

The food has to be kosher. Peter had in the vision, you remember, he had never eaten anything unclean, but it clearly was a matter of effort and something he spent time focusing and concentrating on.

37:50

But there's lots of other things like this woman. If you remember in the Gospels, there's a woman who had an issue of blood, and that's how the

37:57

King James describes it. And she touches Jesus' garment and is instantly healed. But remember, if she had just touched his garment and not been healed,

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Jesus would have been rendered ceremonially unclean by virtue of the fact that she had this particular condition.

38:14

And if the woman was a relative of yours and you were around her all the time, you'd be frequently washing yourself to address this ceremonial lack of cleanliness.

38:27

And it wasn't, you know, he calls it penance, but Scripture doesn't call it that.

38:33

So it's a very bizarre set of comments from him. Yeah. And I really wasn't certain where that was going, to be perfectly honest with you.

38:43

I wasn't sure why the question was asked. But anyway, we will continue on from there.

38:51

And I'm actually going to do something unusual. I'm going to see if if Rich can can fire up a brief break, because I have a section of the interview here and I don't have any notes on it.

39:04

So I'm not sure if it was something that I wanted to play or not play. And rather than just simply skip through it and go, eh, not, while live,

39:13

I think it would be better just to take a quick break. Let me cue this stuff up and we'll be we'll be right back with Turret and Fan in our response to Jason Stump.

39:32

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40:42

And welcome back to the dividing line. My name is James White. I now know why I didn't have any notes there, because it was a brief discussion of fulfilling the law through love.

40:53

And that's going to sort of come up a little bit later on. And it is the background, at least to the next section.

40:59

Which I think is very important. One of the quotes that I played at the beginning comes from this particular section.

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And let's let's listen in. You know, the two what they call the duplex beneficium in reform circles, the double benefit of of of the gospels, justification and sanctification.

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You know, you've got this forensic declaration from the courtroom of heaven over the sinner once for all.

41:27

You know, declaring him righteous based on the imputation of an alien righteousness, the righteousness of Christ. And that's justification.

41:35

And then you've got sanctification, the progressive growth in grace and growth in holiness that happens throughout our lives.

41:42

That's, you know, that's always imperfect, but but nevertheless necessary. But I started, especially after having been introduced to Catholic paradigm, started realizing that those two those two things are really strange bedfellows.

41:56

They're they don't fit together all that well. I think if you really understand the the latter, if you really understand the sanctification and if I took the things

42:07

I was saying when I was at Westminster about the new covenant and the Holy Spirit and all that, if I if I if I took those things and kind of teased out the logical ramifications, it rendered imputation of alien righteousness unnecessary.

42:25

Now, the phrase alien righteousness comes up many, many times in this particular particular interview, and it certainly is one of the major issues that separates us.

42:41

The Roman Catholic does not have an alien righteousness. He has a he has infused grace.

42:47

He becomes objectively pleasing to God. And this is why you have purgatory. And I I didn't

42:54

I forgot to ask myself, listen to this thing about three and a half times.

43:00

I don't think purgatory came up. Certainly there was certainly no defense of it or discussion of it.

43:07

And by the way, one of the things I wanted to mention in passing, I want to mention earlier was one of the things

43:14

I said to Jason Stelman in my office. I looked him in the eye and I said, if you go Rome, I challenge you to go all the way.

43:23

And that means the whole the whole thing, if you're going to follow Roman Catholicism, then believe all of it.

43:31

And defend all of it and debate me on Marian dogmas. And he just laughed.

43:36

And I think it's probably the response I'd get today to be laughter, because I really doubt he's going to do that.

43:43

But I forgot to mention that from our our conversation. But it strikes me that a minister in the

43:54

PCA could say, if you believe, and he's about to say these very words,

43:59

I'll play it here in a second. But if you believe Romans eight, one through four, then you do not need the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ.

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Now, of course, by the time Paul got to Romans eight, he had already written

44:16

Romans four and he had already presented the imputation of Christ's righteousness as the very foundation of one's peace with God in Romans five one.

44:27

And he's then going to repeat. In Romans, chapter eight, later on the chapter, the centrality of the sovereignty of God and and the calling and all these things in the golden chain.

44:42

And then he's going to present the forensic concept right there, right there at the end of the chapter. Who is there that can condemn you have

44:49

Christ Jesus? You have you have the father who is declared as just of Christ. Jesus is risen from the dead. Who can be the accuser in the law court to bring a charge against God's elect?

44:59

And there's nobody. It's right there. And I would think that any reformed minister who has preached these passages and and taught these truths.

45:12

Would understand how Romans eight, one through four can be true and yet absolutely demands that God has provided a perfect standing of peace with him for those things to be true.

45:29

And so it is it is it will I pray to God it will always be shocking to me for me to hear someone who claimed to once profess the faith

45:43

I profess making these statements. And and if if I ever get to the point where that does not break my heart, if I ever get to the point where that does not make me passionate, then

45:53

I need to get a different job. I need to be doing something else. I need to go into I .T. work. When this just becomes stuff.

46:04

It just becomes things you argue about. Well, then there's just no reason doing what

46:10

I'm doing right now. So he did you want to comment on that? Or do you want me to go on to the next where he explains that?

46:16

Because Brian Cross immediately asks asks him to expand upon that. So you want to hear the expansion first?

46:22

Yes, let's let's continue that down there. There's there's still groundwork to be laid. Oh, yes, there's much there's much here.

46:29

How so? Explain that if you would. Because if under the

46:35

New Covenant, God does what the law could not do. And I'm just kind of summarizing

46:41

Romans eight, one through four. If God does in Christ what the law could not do because the law could only empower, but not or could only command, but not empower.

46:52

But God does this ironic kind of run around, you know, this ironic circumventing of Moses altogether to accomplish what the law intended all along, namely, bringing about love of God and neighbor, which fulfills the law.

47:07

If God can do that in Christ by the Spirit, to the point that the righteous requirement of the law is fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the

47:16

Spirit, then why do you need imputation of alien righteousness? If God can accomplish that by the

47:24

Spirit under the New Covenant, then what's what's the need for this this forensic declaration of pardon based upon the imputation of someone else's righteousness?

47:37

If Romans eight, one through four is true. So there's the Romans eight, one through four section. I I'm just left stuttering that one can talk about the

47:47

New Covenant without understanding of what Hebrews lays out as the very essence of the perfection of the

47:58

New Covenant and one's participation in the very death of Christ and one's being made perfect by that.

48:07

And here you have some idea being presented that that, well, we fulfill the law by loving one another, loving

48:15

God. And that's how we fulfill the law, as if we could do that apart from what God has done in Christ, not just in in opening up a way to send the

48:23

Spirit. But in providing us with that, that direct access into the very holy place, which requires us to be clothed in that perfect righteousness, that's how that's how we have access into that place where then the

48:38

Spirit can cause us to love and we can love God and we can love our fellow man. But that's the result of what

48:43

Christ does. And it's an objective reality what Christ does. It just I don't know, it it it absolutely amazes me.

48:50

Did you did you want to jump in there? Do you want me to keep? How am I going to know where you want me to stop?

48:56

I will I will interrupt you. I'll boldly step in there. You will boldly say stop right there, because in this program,

49:03

Audio Notetaker, it's really easy for me to back up just a little bit and restart something. So I will

49:08

I will let it roll until you say, let's talk about it. So here we go. And then you start thinking about, you know, different passages in both

49:17

Testaments that refer to people as as righteous. You know, I remember, you know, tossing and turning, thinking about Zechariah and Elizabeth, the parents of John the

49:27

Baptist. OK, let's stop it right there for just a second. OK. And you remember that he's talking about the new covenant.

49:36

Now, I don't know whether he's whether what he means by new covenant, because he's not reformed anymore.

49:43

He has the influence of N .T. Wright up to whatever extent that exists.

49:49

And this use of covenants in Roman Catholic theology doesn't exactly line up with N .T.

49:57

Wright either. But no matter whose system, except for the reformed system, you know, the way that I guess the way that Presbyterians would look at it, the parents of John the

50:10

Baptist are not new covenant people. They're Old Testament people.

50:16

Now, I believe they're saved by grace. And so in that sense, they're part of the new covenant. And I don't know if that's what he's trying to get here.

50:23

But if he's trying to draw a distinction between the Old Testament and the New Testament, then why is he picking an

50:29

Old Testament example? But let's continue. OK. Because it says in Luke that they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the

50:38

Lord blamelessly. And I just remember thinking, OK, does this mean sinless?

50:45

Well, no, it can't mean sinless because no one is sinless. So it can't mean that they were sinless.

50:50

OK, let's talk again. Yes, sir. So this isn't Roman Catholic theology he's telling.

50:56

I mean, he's talking about his journey. I understand. But the position he's using to arrive at his journey is inconsistent with the place he ends up.

51:04

Because Roman Catholic theology doesn't say that people can't be sinless. And he is the mother of Jesus as an example of a sinless person.

51:15

So again, I mean, it's nice that he has these relics and artifacts of Reformed theology there.

51:22

And that when he was looking at this text, he realized that can't be what it means. And he's right.

51:28

That's not what it means. But then, you know, where is he coming from now?

51:33

What paradigm, to use the terms he likes to use, what paradigm is he using to look at this text? But I guess now we should continue on.

51:39

We'll hear a little more. But not only that, but I mean, I've had other people use this description as a means of getting around.

51:47

In Romans 4, you have direct didactic teaching as to the nature of salvation and how a person stands right before God.

51:55

And you run off to a description of the moral quality, the fact that the John the

52:00

Baptist parents come from good stock and you overthrow the direct teaching based upon a description.

52:07

This is something I have seen Rome doing over and over again. You would think it would be something that Jason Stellman would have recognized, but he continues on.

52:16

But somehow God's able to refer to them as righteous. Well, if they had died with that description of them being true, would they go to heaven?

52:27

Well, the answer has to be yes, of course. What good is it to say that they're righteous and blameless, walking in all the commandments of the

52:34

Lord continually if they're also damned? And so I guess we should stop there.

52:41

He seems to assume that there's only there's only these two options of and that the he just ignores what

52:51

I think just about every reformed commentator would say that this is talking about relative righteousness.

52:57

This is among the people of Israel in their day. These are exceptionally righteous people.

53:05

They live exceptionally holy lives. But for him to then say, well, the only possible use that righteousness can have is to save a person from going to hell.

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And if their righteousness is not enough, then why even mention it? Well, he has to look to the context and find out why in the context is he mentioning it?

53:26

And the answer to that is that we're setting up the family condition of John the

53:34

Baptist. Look who he comes from. He comes from not from some group of anti -Jehovah or anti -Yahweh rebels.

53:45

He comes from exceptionally righteous people. He comes from an important priest. And in his family, he's from a holy family, but only in relative terms.

53:59

And this is really just setting up the background of John the Baptist and showing what where he comes from and how he was raised.

54:07

And it's not about justification. No, it's not. And even on, you know, he's going to say this a couple of times.

54:16

He doesn't mention purgatory, as you said. He's going to say, you know, that what good is this righteousness if it doesn't guarantee you entrance into heaven?

54:24

But if the person has any sins and those sins are not taken care of through penance or indulgences or which are sort of, you know, in a sense, a form of penance,

54:36

I guess. But through these penances, if you don't take care of it in this life, you are not getting into heaven until it's taken care of.

54:42

So actually, in Roman theology, sinless perfection is required to get into heaven.

54:48

So, you know, it's a very strange set of arguments in favor of Roman theology, which aren't consistent with Roman theology.

54:57

Yeah, that certainly struck me. And we'll go ahead and talk about now is that over and over again, he kept talking about, well, you know, these reformed people, you have to have this perfection and so on and so forth.

55:06

And I'm like, there's just no way he read indulgentiarum doctrina.

55:12

There's no way he followed up on our visit, because that's what I wanted him to see. That's what

55:17

I wanted him to hear was a post -Vatican II apostolic constitution with its description of indulgences and our participation in the body of Christ in bringing about the salvation of other people.

55:32

And the fact that what is this based on? Well, it's based on the thesaurus meritorium and all the rest of this stuff that is just so far from anything.

55:43

In fact, one of the things I said to him in email before we even met was he said, in fact,

55:48

I keep forgetting to finish the story. When I had written back to him, he had said, well, actually,

55:54

I didn't want to talk to you about sola scriptura. I want to talk to you about about salvation, because I'm seeing things.

56:00

It seems to me that there's a whole lot in New Testament that's much more consistent with the

56:06

Roman Catholic concept than with the reformed concept. And I remember writing back to him.

56:12

I said, well, you mean you mean apart from. Sacramental priests and an unfinished sacrifice and indulgences and purgatory and the treasury of merit and all these other things that that were completely unknown to the apostles.

56:28

And the funny thing is, when he got here, he didn't talk about sola fide. He went back to sola scriptura.

56:34

Um, so I would love to have addressed these texts with him, but he didn't want to address that those issues.

56:41

He had gone back to the issue of authority at that point. Now, I don't know if some of the conversations he had had addressed it.

56:47

I don't know. But to say, well, we don't have this idea of perfection means he doesn't understand purgatory.

56:56

He doesn't understand the necessity of sacramental forgiveness and the treasury of merit and the concept of indulgences and all these other things.

57:04

And yet, as we'll see at the end of the interview, he's already teaching in his parish. Which leaves me stuttering.

57:15

And it's also strange because he should be familiar with the Old Testament use of this kind of relative righteousness.

57:23

Remember, David, you talk about a good king, and it's like Asa is an example of a good king.

57:29

It says, Asa did that which was right in the eyes of the Lord, as did David, his father. And even talking about David, it says,

57:36

I'm trying to recall the exact words, but it's something to the effect of he did everything that was right in the eyes of God, except for that little thing with the wife of Uriah.

57:48

Yeah, here's the here's it. Because David did that which was right in the eyes of the

57:55

Lord and turned not aside from anything that he commanded him all the days of his life, save only in the matter of Uriah the

58:01

Hittite. Right. So this little there's this one thing, this little murder thing, murder and adultery.

58:09

And aside from that, he was an excellent guy and he's a model.

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And we both know that that wasn't his only sin. Right. He also counted the people against God and brought this plague down on the people of Israel.

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There's other significant sins that he did. So that was the biggest thing.

58:29

And the whole idea is not that he was sinlessly perfect or even that his righteousness was somehow good enough.

58:35

But actually, the lesson here is that it's a relative righteousness, you know, compared to a lot of other kings compared to Saul.

58:43

David was great. And David stands head and shoulders above almost all of his descendants on the throne until we come to Jesus, who actually literally is perfect.

58:52

Yeah, you compare any king of Israel to Manasseh or something, and it's going to look pretty good.

58:59

But it's a relative issue. And it's so obvious. And yet, why do you turn something? Well, and I can only remind everybody of what he said, biblically obvious.

59:10

To become a Roman Catholic is biblically obvious. It's biblically obvious to believe in a papacy, biblically obvious to believe in the bodily assumption, immaculate conception.

59:18

But it's also biblically obvious to not believe in the imputed righteousness of Christ. You know, who is that?

59:25

I'm pretty certain I would be very surprised if I did not ask

59:31

Jason who the blessed man of Romans 4 was. That would be very unusual for me if I managed to get through an hour and 48 minutes without asking someone, are you the blessed man?

59:41

Because that's certainly something I would ask. And that's something I would ask him today. But let's press on with where we were right there.

59:46

And so if they were in that condition, if God could say that about them and it was true enough about them that they were actually saved, then as a reformed person,

59:55

I would have to say that this righteousness that they enjoy is a result of the imputation of Christ's righteousness and not a result of their own righteousness.

01:00:03

But then you look at the actual words of the text and you think, well, gosh, Luke sure did a good job of robbing

01:00:11

God of glory then because he had a perfect opportunity to say Zechariah and Elizabeth were righteous before the

01:00:16

Lord because of the because of their proleptic participation in the righteousness of Christ, which is imputed to them by faith alone.

01:00:23

Now, I I marked that section because I was like, come on, are you seriously suggesting

01:00:32

I mean, this this this starts level. This starts becoming sarcastic. Are you seriously suggesting that in a description of John's parents?

01:00:44

In a pre New Covenant context, as you have pointed out, that that's what you would that that's what a

01:00:52

Calvinist, a reformed person would expect him to have said. I mean, really, that that just strikes me, you know, and he goes on to later, say, for example, when the issue of the church fathers comes out,

01:01:06

I was bored in ancient churches. Those guys are a bunch of idiots. And and and I'm just more into systematics and an exegesis.

01:01:16

Really? Not when you're talking like this. That I that just struck me as as amazing.

01:01:24

Do you want me to continue or do you want to comment on that? Yeah, I mean, there's two basic category areas. One of them we already addressed. This is not talking about justification.

01:01:31

That's not the context. He's not robbing God of God's glory because he's not claiming they're justified by their works.

01:01:37

That's something that stillman imposed on it. The other category is this is a gospel. The point of this is to give a simple, understandable message of who

01:01:45

Christ is, what he came to do so that people will trust in Christ, believe on him for salvation.

01:01:52

That's and we see that explicitly stated as the purpose in John's gospel. But the other gospels are in the same category of gospels and have the same purpose.

01:02:02

The purpose is not to explain the detailed nuances of theology in the way that an epistle like one of Paul's epistles gets into, you know, dividing the nuances and explaining those things in theological terms and not in historical narrative terms.

01:02:20

So the idea that this would be expected, the only thing that would really be expected here from a Calvinist preacher is a comment on justification to clear that issue up for people who who have a misunderstanding about it.

01:02:33

But that's because we would give a theological discussion and discourse. And we know that people make us have a certain misunderstanding.

01:02:41

So we try to correct it. Right. But you don't expect you don't really expect those kinds of things written before the heresy arrives.

01:02:49

Right. Exactly. But instead of saying that he explicitly attributes their righteousness to their own walking in God's commands.

01:02:59

And of course, anyone would have to say reformed or Catholic that that it's only by the spirit that that could be true.

01:03:04

That, you know, it's not their own righteousness from the law or their own righteousness that they sort of mustered up from themselves.

01:03:10

But this was clearly spirit rot. And so if all that's true, then where's imputation?

01:03:17

Where is this forensic declaration of acquittal from the courtroom of heaven? And that just brings it back to the bigger question of, is that really what

01:03:26

God requires? And the irony, we have the direct language of the courtroom of heaven in Romans chapter eight.

01:03:35

But you overthrow that based upon this kind of reading, which, by the way,

01:03:40

I'm not aware of any infallible statement from the Church of Rome that that's a proper reading of the text.

01:03:48

Not that Rome saying it would make it true. But for the person who submits himself to the pope, where has the pope said this is the infallible interpretation of this text?

01:03:58

I just sort of throw that out there for anybody who would like to answer that. It's an axiom in reformed soteriology that God demands absolute perfection and that no one can be saved unless he is absolutely, spotlessly, blamelessly perfect.

01:04:16

And since none of us can, that's the major premise, minor premise, since none of us can attain that, it must be given to us from someone else who could, namely

01:04:24

Jesus. But, you know, you look at verses like that, like Zechariah and Elizabeth and loads of others, and you just think, gosh, these just don't fit well with that paradigm.

01:04:36

If I were Luke and if I were writing a gospel and if I had that paradigm that I just described, the need for perfection and therefore the need for imputation,

01:04:46

I just wouldn't have said that about these guys. You know, I just would never have described them that way.

01:04:53

It's just not the kind of thing someone with a confessional reform paradigm would ever think to say.

01:04:59

So you saw that as... Okay, now, when I heard this, aside from what we've already pointed out, when

01:05:07

I heard this, I just almost rode off the road because I could not help but think of the many, many texts that Roman Catholics have to just read away.

01:05:21

I mean, how about Mary's talking about her sin in the sense of calling

01:05:31

God her savior? Well, obviously, if Luke was a Roman Catholic, he wouldn't have put it that way.

01:05:38

What about get behind me, Satan? Or Peter did not know what he was saying.

01:05:44

Or Peter had to be withstood to the face by the

01:05:50

Apostle Paul in Galatians chapter two. Well, obviously, all those writers, if they had been

01:05:56

Roman Catholic, if they had understood, they would never have put it that way.

01:06:01

That is such an easy game to get into. And believe me, with the audacious claims of Rome, I can give you a whole lot more than Jason Stellman can even start to come up with in regards to that kind of thing.

01:06:17

I mean, to hear someone saying, well, I just tell a reformed person, reformed theology is wrong because they never would have said it that way.

01:06:28

It just left me going, really? And you embrace Rome after that?

01:06:33

You embrace a system that teaches a sacramental priesthood with the ability to transubstantiate the elements of the supper into a partially propitiatory sacrifice with purgatory and indulgences and immaculate conception and bodily assumption?

01:06:53

And you will embrace that? But I don't think a reformed person would have said that about John's parents.

01:07:00

I just see such a massive contradiction there that I was like, really?

01:07:06

Am I listening to this? Am I really hearing this? Did you want to comment on that, or do we press on? Hello, Tarzan fan.

01:07:14

Press on. It works better if my mic's not muted. Yeah, it does. OK. Yeah. As I mentioned before,

01:07:23

Roman theology does require perfection in order to get into heaven. It does. Yeah, that's the other thing. I was like, wait a minute.

01:07:30

Have you not seen the people bowing in front of the statues and lighting candles?

01:07:37

Why are they doing that if your objection here has any merit? Why are they buying indulgences?

01:07:44

Why does St. Peter's have gold all over the place? It's because they recognize that there is an absolute standard of perfection and that they have temporal punishments on their souls and that therefore is this place called purgatory.

01:07:57

And they're saying there's satis passio and all the rest of that stuff. Why are people running around wearing the brown scapular?

01:08:05

You know, you're just talking about someone here. I don't know. These converts. I've had

01:08:12

Roman Catholics say that it is a sign of the weakness of the

01:08:19

Church in Roman America that many of the people who are defending her were not born within her.

01:08:27

And many of them bring their Protestantism with them into Rome.

01:08:34

And how many have we seen that ended up leaving eventually as well, which is interesting. Yes, sir. The Tim Staples debate, the very first one at Plummer Auditorium.

01:08:43

I will never forget sitting in front of a

01:08:48

Roman Catholic. And as he's rattling on, the guy leans over to his wife and he says, he's still got too much

01:08:56

Protestant in him. That's that's that's fitting better into the

01:09:02

Catholic paradigm. How do you how did you see this fitting better into the Catholic paradigm? Well, because of the stuff

01:09:09

I was saying a minute ago about Romans eight, the Catholic paradigm and my understanding of Augustine is exactly in line with this.

01:09:19

Is that God by the Spirit pours out or infuses into us, our hearts, his own love.

01:09:29

And the love of God fulfills the law. Jesus said it explicitly. Paul said it explicitly.

01:09:37

And James said it explicitly. And Peter and John say it implicitly. It sounds to me, correct me if I'm wrong.

01:09:45

He's saying that when we do things prompted by the love of God, this fulfills

01:09:51

God's law in the sense of providing for peace with him. Or my understanding of that is, yes, it does fulfill

01:10:00

God's law. God's law is that we're to love God, love one another when when we are right with God and by his spirit, he causes us to love him and to love others.

01:10:07

Then we fulfill that law. But the only reason that can happen is because the forensic legal aspect has been dealt with by the perfect sacrifice of Christ.

01:10:16

Is that what he's saying? This is a big question. I have what he what he thinks the words he's using mean, because, of course, the sum of the

01:10:29

Ten Commandments, the moral law, the entire moral law is summed up in two loves, love the

01:10:35

Lord thy God and love thy neighbor as thyself. Those are. And in that sense, if you rightly love

01:10:42

God and your neighbor, you fulfilled the law. So that in one sense,

01:10:48

I hope that's not what he's trying to say, because then he hasn't distinguished his position in any way from the position that, you know, you typically see in Reformed theology that this is what's required of God, that you love

01:11:01

God and you love your neighbor. And any violation of the law of any aspect of the law is a violation of the whole law.

01:11:09

And therefore, in terms of being a violation of the law, all of them are are sin.

01:11:16

Every one of these things is sin. But I almost got the feeling that he has this different idea altogether, which is that if you have the virtue of love and you know, we don't we don't usually try to think of love as a thing.

01:11:32

But if you imagine some kind of little, you know, badge or something like that sewn onto your heart, which which is love and you have this thing in there, then you've that meets the requirement of the law that you have this badge.

01:11:47

And then the actual obedience to the law is just a byproduct of the fact that you have the love there.

01:11:54

But if that's what he's saying, again, I'm kind of curious where he thinks the theology of Rome actually teaches that that's what justifies people.

01:12:07

Yeah, that's that's what I'd like to like to know, too. It does say, I mean, the

01:12:12

Trent does say that the virtues of love, faith and hope are are infused into a person in in in baptism, and therefore they have these these virtues.

01:12:26

But I don't see I don't see them saying that what God requires is merely that the virtue is there.

01:12:34

I think that, you know, you could it's hard for me to understand what he's what he thinks that gets him beyond beyond the position he previously held.

01:12:46

So it just seems so obvious to me that what Paul is talking about, given that this is Romans eight and not

01:12:52

Romans five, he talked about what's in Romans three, four and five first, is that this this fulfillment of the law is in our living in Christ now.

01:13:04

But there had to there has to be a means by which propitiation takes place, et cetera, et cetera.

01:13:09

It certainly wasn't some limited propitiatory sacrifice of the mass or anything like that. But anyways, let's press on.

01:13:15

There's no question that they all agree on this point that the law of God is fulfilled by our spirit love of God and neighbor.

01:13:25

And that, to me, is how you make sense of the parents of John the Baptist being righteous and walking in all the commandments and statutes of the

01:13:34

Lord continually. They either have to be sinless and impeccable, but that is biblically impossible for them, or it has to be the result of imputation.

01:13:44

But that's not only not what Luke says, but Luke explicitly ascribes their righteousness to something else altogether.

01:13:51

And so the Catholic paradigm comes in and just says, you know, duh, like this is this is an exact illustration of the kind of thing we're talking about when we describe the spirit, the gospel and the role of the new covenant.

01:14:05

So this idea from, let's say, the Council of Trent's teaching about the infusion of sanctifying grace, of charity in the heart,

01:14:13

Romans 5, 5, that idea, explain these other passages that you're talking about, love, fulfilling the law and the superiority of the new covenant over the old covenant.

01:14:23

Yes, yes, that's. And to be fair, reformed theology believes in the infusion of of of grace.

01:14:33

They insist that it is discussed under the rubric of sanctification and ever justification because justification is it's extra notes.

01:14:42

It's outside of us. It comes from without. But it always issues forth in reformed circles.

01:14:50

It issues forth in internal internally wrought spiritual infusion of grace into us.

01:14:58

But but the point I'm making is that you have such you have so little in the

01:15:04

New Testament that that even can be used as your as your. OK, I want to I want everybody to hear this in case you've sort of been dozing or something like that.

01:15:15

Listen, listen to this next section. Now, remember, we're talking about someone who is now embraced

01:15:20

Rome's authority in teaching the Immaculate Conception, in teaching the bodily assumption of Mary, in teaching papal infallibility, in teaching indulgence as a teaching purgatory.

01:15:32

Now listen to what he says. You have such you have so little in the New Testament that that even can be used as your as your springboard to discuss imputation.

01:15:44

You've got, you know, Romans four and you've got Galatians two and three. But but really, you don't find a reform, an explicitly reformed articulation of imputation of alien righteousness anywhere, even in Paul, outside of Romans and Galatians.

01:16:02

And you don't find it in Peter, James, John, Jude or Jesus. And and the verses.

01:16:10

But I would have said if you'd pointed this out to me, you know, three years ago, four years ago, I would have said, but so what? How many times does

01:16:15

God have to tell you something before you believe it? It doesn't matter. Paul was the one who was chosen by God to give the most robust articulation of the gospel.

01:16:25

Now, let me stop just there for a moment. You got Romans, you got Galatians. But we've got all this other stuff.

01:16:33

And of course, I go, excuse me. It's all Theodosius. It's all inspired.

01:16:39

Romans and Galatians are specifically written to address what? The nature of the gospel, and especially in light of perversions and false teachings of the gospel.

01:16:53

That's really sort of important. I think that has to be kept in mind. But unfortunately, that that that doesn't come in mind.

01:17:02

We have this atomizing. Well, you know, you've got Paul and you know, there's there's one message.

01:17:08

There's there's one. You have to see the unity of the scriptures in these things.

01:17:13

And call to confusion breaks that that that unity up. And you can find this this this stuff implicitly elsewhere.

01:17:21

But in Paul, it's explicit. And, you know, that's that should be enough for us. But then the more I started looking at it, the more

01:17:27

I realized that, you know, there is another way to read those passages in Galatians two and three and Romans four.

01:17:35

Now, I was really excited this point because I want to know how you can read these passages.

01:17:43

In another way, and I would think that this this would be very helpful to me to understand what these texts are about, because I've followed the argument of Romans in it.

01:17:53

It seems the whole basis of our peace with God, therefore, having been justified by faith, not by anything else.

01:18:03

We have peace with God. It seems that this is the whole argument. And if you're really excited about hearing how they can be read, otherwise, you can sort of tell from my voice and I can find out, you know, sometimes

01:18:17

Protestants have this idea that that's well, you know, the Catholics concede Paul to us and we'll concede

01:18:23

Jesus to them, you know, or, you know, we just yes. Yes, I knew I was going to stop it there. Anyways, I was already reaching for it.

01:18:31

We say that all the time, don't we? Turgeon fan, you know, it's a common in the chat channel.

01:18:36

Of course, everybody knows we just we have to constantly confess to one another how we're conceding Jesus. I don't know.

01:18:43

Did he ever say that when he was even in Calvary Chapel or before then?

01:18:49

Any time in his professing Christian life, do you ever say something like that? These books of the

01:18:56

Bible, those are our books. The other ones, those are for the people who disagree with us. It's so bizarre.

01:19:03

It is bizarre. Even on this, you know, he makes a big deal about it depends what you're starting axioms and assumptions are.

01:19:10

Well, you know, the idea that the law requires perfect perfection, that love to love

01:19:18

God is to obey his law and that the standard of righteousness is one that of perfect obedience to the law.

01:19:27

This is something that's actually developed plenty of other places besides Romans and Galatians.

01:19:34

Matthew has be therefore perfect, even as your father, which is in heaven, is perfect. James talks about what he says in Chapter three, or I guess it's in Chapter two.

01:19:47

Whoever will keep the whole law and yet offend in one point is guilty of all that.

01:19:53

That's if there's no kind of substantial compliance, which is another idea I had. Maybe what's what

01:19:59

Stelman thought that fulfilling the law just means like mainly pretty good.

01:20:04

No, that's exactly what James contradicts. You can't. Pretty good is not enough. And, you know,

01:20:10

Jesus raising the bar and saying you should be as perfect as God is. That's the standard, you know, that raises the bar and that sets the groundwork and it lays all the foundations, which then

01:20:23

Paul builds on. I forget which of the epistles talks about, you know, beginning with the certain aspects of the faith and building from there to more complex and more advanced topics and learning and growing in knowledge.

01:20:43

And the Gospels generally present things in a very simplified and straightforward way.

01:20:49

They're not getting into the theological nuances in most cases. Most cases, they're telling a historical narrative.

01:20:56

This is what happened. He went here and they're arranged for various purposes. But they're arranged historical narratives.

01:21:05

He went here. He did this miracle. He said these things to these people. And eventually the climax is, you know, he's crucified.

01:21:14

He dies. He's buried and he rises again. This is the and then he ascends into heaven.

01:21:21

And this is the important part that you can read it and everybody gets it.

01:21:27

Everybody knows this is what happens. So, you know, and it's not even just limited to the

01:21:33

New Testament. In the Old Testament, Abraham's told, walk before me and be thou perfect. It's the giving of the law from the very first book of the law has this standard of perfection.

01:21:45

So in the garden, there's only one law and Adam breaks the one law. Indeed, let's press on.

01:21:53

You know, people have asked, you know, so almost implying, you know, so since you've come to disbelieve what Paul said about imputation, how do you how do you reckon that with this?

01:22:00

And my response is always, no, you're you're begging the question by assuming that Paul means by what he said, what you understand.

01:22:08

But there are ways, very, very natural ways of reading those passages in Galatians and Romans in ways that don't demand at all imputation of alien righteousness.

01:22:21

I get this. Unfortunately, we will not be told what those ways are because he doesn't say and I've never encountered him.

01:22:31

I've you know, if you want to embrace certain destructive redaction theories or or, you know, impose something from the outside.

01:22:41

Great. Um, but how about allowing the context to speak for itself?

01:22:47

How about following Paul's argument? I, you know, met with a man.

01:22:53

He didn't even go go this direction. So I would love to have heard what these perfectly natural ways are. And if I did ask him if these if he is the blessed man and I think that I did.

01:23:04

Then that would have been the perfect time to say, oh, you don't you don't understand that he didn't he didn't do this all the time.

01:23:09

When people bring up Philippians three, where Paul says not having my own righteousness, which is economic from the law, but but having a righteousness that comes through faith in Christ.

01:23:20

And I think it's about every Protestant I've talked to about this, about that passage assumes that I don't believe that, that, you know, you're

01:23:28

Catholic now. So you believe that you have your own righteousness, which is from the law. But Paul is saying he doesn't have that one. He has one that comes as a gift through faith in Christ.

01:23:36

But of course, the response is no one, not Catholics, not anybody believes that our righteousness is a righteousness of my own, which comes from the law.

01:23:45

That's explicitly what the Catholic paradigm denies because of the superiority of the new covenant to the old. Our righteousness can be everything

01:23:52

Paul says it is in Philippians three and in Galatians and in Romans without imputation being necessary.

01:23:58

Now, I immediately. Sat there, I wished

01:24:04

I could have just yelled out, Jason, did you read Indulgentia Arm Doctrina?

01:24:11

Did you read Rome's discussion of the treasury of merit?

01:24:18

How is it that that the merit of saints, the merit of Mary is mixed with the merit of Christ and deposited to your account?

01:24:30

Is that not a form of imputation of some kind? How is it that you're this infallible church that you are now seeking to follow?

01:24:42

Can teach these things. It clearly has nothing to do, nothing to do with Pauline theology or any

01:24:52

New Testament theology. And yet the mindset of these converts is, but that doesn't matter.

01:25:02

That that's that's out there, the inconsistency. Absolutely amazing to me. There was something you wanted to comment on that.

01:25:11

No, no, let's let's move on. OK, we've only got just a couple of minutes left. Let me play just a few sections.

01:25:18

This is the next the next section of the interview. We'll get a start in this and then we're going to have to press on with this at some other point in the future.

01:25:27

Let's let's listen to a little bit more. You mentioned these objections.

01:25:33

What would be the most common objection or objections you've been receiving from reformed folks to the biblical case you've been making for the

01:25:40

Catholic way of understanding justification? Well, a lot of it comes down to paradigms.

01:25:47

And, you know, for some reason, some people are able to more easily than others step outside of one paradigm into another.

01:26:01

Now, on one level, it's impossible to to really see anything from anyone else's perspective because we're not anyone else but ourselves.

01:26:10

But you need to if two people are going to engage a Catholic and a Protestant in in a discussion by justification, at the very least, both of them need to be able to accurately sum up the other's position.

01:26:27

And and they both need to be aware of the way that paradigms are functioning in the way they argue.

01:26:34

And until you are, it's just a futile. It's just it's just hopeless. And what

01:26:40

I've what I've seen a lot. And by the way, he is correct.

01:26:46

We need to recognize our paradigms. No question about it. But there is a

01:26:52

Roman Catholic authoritarian paradigm here, and it has to be examined.

01:26:58

It has to be seen. It has to be put on the table. And so often these folks will not allow for that at all.

01:27:07

And do not do not recognize the complete authority that Rome claims and how it so completely.

01:27:20

I mean, he's going to he's not going to we're not going to get to it today. It's in the next section. But he's actually going to at one point accurately summarize the view of the church fathers that there they weren't monolithic, that there is a lot of different perspectives and then turn around and by the end of it, say they were all

01:27:37

Catholics in the sense of a Roman understanding of that term.

01:27:44

And I'm just I'm just left going, you can't see how your paradigm is controlling that.

01:27:49

I don't know. Anyways, we are out of time. Obviously, I will. The next time we can do this is when you can join me.

01:27:58

So we'll we'll leave that to you. We'll talk about it elsewhere. But thank you very much for the spending an hour and a half with us already.

01:28:06

And hopefully you'll be up for some more of it when the Lord wills. Sound good to you? Sounds good.

01:28:11

Thanks for having me on. Thank you very much for the hard work you do, brother. Always an encouragement to have you on. We will be doing a special dividing line tomorrow morning.

01:28:20

Well, morning, my time, 1 p .m. Eastern Standard Time. We need to finish up that Martin Licona debate.

01:28:27

So we're going to try to get that finished up and we'll see you then. God bless. It's time to make some noise.

01:29:13

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