230611 AdultSundaySchool TheRomanCatholicControversy Part8

Roman Catholicism as a Cult and a Divergence from Historic Christianity

Proxenism, you have many sets of different proxen groups. So those are just means like basically like a subdivision. So you have that kind of a tree, you have the branches, you have the smaller branches, would be like a subdivision, then a set.

And then you have a cult, which is a diversion from one of these things. And this is something almost new entirely that usually has, that makes pretty absurd claims, exclusive claims, and has a one major figurehead as its leader.

Now I will say that Roman Catholicism fits the criteria of a cult, not just of a religion, it's both. But it's one religion and it happens to be a cult. The reason why is because it itself is a divergence from historic Orthodox Christianity, okay?

It is a divergence, okay? It is a branching off of the original features of the apostles. It is also a cult because it has centralized head in the pope. And the claims that they make are also outrageous in that the pope is God on earth.

The pope is, you know, he's the speaker of Christ, he speaks for Christ. All these things that they claim about Christ, that are about the pope, they're centralized in this one office. So I think they meet all the criteria of a cult also while being a Roman religion.

Does that make sense? And so, cults are usually a derogatory term. You don't want to be called a cult. If someone says you're a cult, it's usually a bad thing, it's a derogatory thing. But that doesn't change the fact that, you know, what happens is what happens, what emerges is what emerges.

You gotta call things what they are. Jehovah's Witnesses are a cult. Mormonism is a cult. Catholicism is a cult. Anything that has centralized power and divergence from Orthodox this sort of Christian teaching, in my opinion, would be a cult.

So, what would make us not a cult here in our church? Good question.

You don't have like a single person who makes all the decisions?

Correct, correct, that's part of it, yeah.

What about like, I mean, what about the elders and like the pastors and stuff? Like, how would you explain that? How would you explain the difference to someone who's like a non-believer, for example?

Someone who, on the surface level, all three of these branches would seem synonymous.

Church Government, Scripture, and the Limits of Authority

So, the Bible doesn't reject the notions of leaders, right? So, Hebrews 13, 17 says obey your leaders. Scripture, obviously, it's in certain offices, right? But I would say whatever goes beyond the Scriptures, right?

The discussion today is sort of relevant, important, because when we talk about soul scripture versus sacred tradition, anything that diverges from the Christian teaching of the Scriptures would be, you know, would be dangerous.

So, for instance, is there any Scripture that we can look to that clearly defines the office of the Pope? No. How about the office of a cardinal? No. How about the office of a archbishop? No, these are not things that you're gonna find clearly defined in Scripture.

You know what offices are defined in Scripture? Deacon and elder, there's only two. So, we find, we follow the biblical model, and that would be the difference, is that we follow the biblical model. Another difference as to why we wouldn't be a cult and why we would, the difference between, like, leadership in the Protestant reformed church versus something in a hierarchical system like the Roman Catholicism would be that we have a congregational form of government in the church.

Roman Catholicism does not have a congregational form of government, which means that power is vested in the individual members as well, right? So, collectively, we have authority when we come in the name of Jesus.

That's so important, and that's one, that's actually a important Baptist distinction, and what makes, I think, Baptists one of the more closer denominations and movements to the first-century Christians is because of our view of church government and how we view the priesthood of the believer.

Does that make sense?

And also, can't the pope, and, you know, as it being different from the pastor, can't the pope make decisions for the whole church? Like, you know, but the pastor is still under the, you know, under the government, I mean, under the church.

Yeah, that's right. He can't just go and make rules out of a woman only, so. That's right, that's right. Yes? The distinction reminded me of the difference between a president and a dictator. There's, like, this right-wing power figurehead, but in one, there's more checks and balances.

That's right, that's right, yeah. So there's, within the complex 1 ,600 to 1 ,700-year history of Roman Catholicism, you have a lot of popes who just were tyrants, who were evil, and we Roman Catholics wouldn't even agree.

You know, there was a Roman Jesuit priest who said that there are probably many, like Dante's Inferno actually depicts popes somehow, that there are popes somehow, and a Jesuit priest, I forget his name, Mitchell, Mitchell, I forget what I think his name is, he even says that, yeah, during the debate with James White, that there are probably popes that are not right now, because they're clearly bad.

And so, I mean, how you can have that as your figurehead and not, how you can have an apostate figurehead and not be an apostate church is beyond me, so.

Sacred Tradition, Church History, and the Offices of Bishop and Elder

So how do they, they say, would they justify the scripture? Say that again? Would they justify, would they?

See, well, this is where sacred tradition comes in. They'll say, okay, there's no explicit, you know, they'll make references to, you know, Matthew 16, to say that Peter was the first pope, right? But beyond that, it may be a verse in Acts where Peter is one of the figures, he's one of the heads of the church, and they come together as a council.

But beyond that, there's no scripture that they can point to to say, okay, here's the pope. Neither can they do so for the archbishop, because this is not in the scriptures. But this is where sacred tradition comes in.

The sacred tradition says, well, even though it's not included in the Bible in scripture, what we see is that early in church history, these offices began to arise. And early on, actually, in Christian history, what you see is that there are, there are a, in the Bible, there are what could be interpreted as three offices.

I mentioned two, deacon and what? Elder. Now, there are those who would argue that there's a third office, and it's bishop. The Greek word overseer. So we see that distinction made in 2 Timothy 3, where Paul talks about the officer, whoever seeks the office of an overseer is seeking the noble office or noble task.

And so it's different, they would say, there are people who would say that bishop is different from an elder. I would say that these two are the same offices, just different words for the same office.

But what's interesting, and what may contradict my view, is that very early on in church history, within the first century, so not even the second century, within the first hundred years of the church, there was a clear distinction between deacon, elder, and bishop, okay?

And that might be almost detrimental to my view. I don't think it is, and I'll explain a little bit later why. But on the surface, it may look like, well, the testimony of the early church would say otherwise.

This is the beginning of the seeds of sacred tradition, where sacred tradition says, we don't just look at the Bible, we have to look at history, the traditions of the early church, and how they developed.

But you have to understand that the early church was still fallible, it was still in its infancy, and we see that early on, even in the times of the apostles. The apostles warned us that ravenous wolves would come in to mislead the flock, and to lead a stray crowd of people.

And that this is a thing that was already at work while the apostles were there. And so, even more, more crammed worship would get after the apostles would leave the scene. But I would say, again, so there are three, there's possibly three offices, and bishop being the third one.

So one could argue that. Now, the early church, there were about seven bishops that were seen as essentially making this, making the decisions for the church. So you have the Bishop of Rome, who was seen as one of the more important ones, and that, they say, Peter was the first Bishop of Rome.

And then you have the Bishop of Antioch, you have the Bishop of Jerusalem, you have the bishops of all these major cities where you have these Christian churches. And they were seen as more powerful, and then as the church began to grow, you get more and more, and then, ultimately, you have a whole council of bishops that meet in Nicaea, in 325, on the Constantine, and have a lot of crazy rumors, and the Conscription Theory is running out.

It's actually, you know, very simple, but they've got a discussion to happen in Nicaea, which is from the person who worked with Jesus, and which books should go in the Bible, things like that. It's all nonsense.

But you have, again, in the early church, this witness, and that's what really Catholics are saying that they're taking into account, that Protestants aren't. They say, Catholics, Catholics would say, hey, we're taking into account, not just the Bible, but the early traditions of the early church.

And so, that's pretty compelling. Now, other groups that would make the same claim would be the Orphanage Church. The Eastern Orphanage Church, or any kind of Orphanage Church would say that they too are part of the historic church because they're taking into account the early witness of the church.

So, is there a problem with that? Are we missing out on something as Protestants when we don't take into account the early witness of the church? Is that a fair criticism, or are we missing something?

Witness of the church. We just put it more in the Scripture. That's right.

The Early Church Fathers Under the Authority of Scripture

That's, I can answer that better myself. No, it's, we do take into account. You see, so, a lot of Catholics would claim that we don't take into account the traditions or the witness of the early church.

I would say that's obvious, that's not true. As a matter of fact, we probably do a better job at that than the Catholics do. When you look at what's called the pre-Nazi fathers, you know, pre-Nazi fathers are the church fathers that were before Constantine, before 325, okay?

So, the pre-Nazi fathers all preached justification by faith. Okay, all of them, universally. This was Christian Orthodoxy in the first 300 years. You have Rome in there, and Rome that says that anyone who teaches that you're justified by worship alone should be anathema, should be cut off.

Well, who's taking into account the witness of the early church? Catholics or Protestants? Protestants, okay? We are taking into account the early witness of the church. Don't, it was subordinate. It has to be subordinate to Scripture, all right?

So, we don't put, we don't elevate church district to the same place of Scripture, okay? We look at it, and we also know that these men were imperfect. You know, some of my favorite theologians, you know, John of Edwards, for instance, one of my favorite preachers of theologians, I don't agree with everything he said.

There are things that he said that I would say are completely wrong, okay? Post-Millennialism would be one of them, okay? And some eschatological things that I think he was way off on. Does that mean John of Edwards should be thrown out completely?

No, no. We take what we find from the church history, and we bring it, we yield it to the authority of Scripture. So, not everyone's gonna have a perfect teaching. You know, Tertullian, anyone ever heard of a church father called Tertullian?

Tertullian is one of the most important church fathers. He's the one who originally coined an important word. Do you know what word that was? What word did Tertullian coin? Or make famous, or make known?

The Trinity, or Trinitas in Latin. And he coined that term, he was the first theologian to use that term, Trinity, in reference to the nature of a bunch of God. Tertullian also taught some crazy stuff.

Tertullian was way off on a lot of theological things. This doesn't mean we throw him off into the dustbin of history. It just means that we have to, again, we look at these church fathers through the lens of Scripture, so there's some, these things have to be supported through Scripture, okay?

Make sense? All right. So, in early this chapter, in chapter seven, the social scripture versus the sacred tradition, what is the sympathy that James White makes in the first opening pages? What's the apology that he makes?

What does he mean by apology?

Who's he apologizing to? I don't think he meant it as an apology. I think, I remember reading he said, more in context of like an explanation, or I forgot what word he used, defense, yeah. That's right.

Defending Sola Scriptura from Scripture

So the word apology, the Greek word apologia, not just the name of the church in Arizona, but the Greek word, which means to make a defense. It's a legal term, and so, you know, lawyers in the old days would make an apology.

And an apology would be a defense of their client, a defense of an argument, and so he's making an apology a defense, and he begins by kind of giving an example of this guy who goes from Presbyterian to a McCatholic, and what was missing in that discussion, in that guy's conversion was that he felt like he went to, after speaking to a McCatholic, he couldn't defend Sola Scriptura from Scripture, so then he goes and he, you know, he researches and he gets convinced by Roman Catholicism in the church to become a McCatholic because he felt like there was no good apology, no good apology, no good defense for Sola Scriptura.

What is your apology for Sola Scriptura? What is your defense? There are two scriptures primarily that this gentleman went to, and he found these things of interest. It is usually the two main scriptures that most Protestants go to, in order to defend Sola Scriptura.

You know what the scriptures are?

What were the verses of it? What the Roman Catholic would say, or what's that?

Well, Christianly, Protestant, what two verses would Protestants normally go to in order to defend Sola Scriptura? Yes. One is 2 Timothy, verse 10. Yeah. Which says, all scriptures are inspired by God, beneficial to teaching and improving, sending men astray, disciplining for exorcism, and men of God making holy conflicts in all places.

The law of Sola Scriptura is, I think, alluded to in the second page of the chapter. Second page of the chapter? No, that would be a defense for the Roman Catholic view. But the other scripture would be Matthew 15, right?

Where, Matthew 5, 17, or Matthew 15, where Jesus condemns the Pharisees, the making of the word of God by the producers of men, right? And so it would say, a Protestant would normally take those two verses.

Okay, when Jesus here condemns tradition, by condemning the Pharisees and their tradition, and he depended on scripture, they would elevate scripture as the final authority. Therefore, we have a pretty sound argument for Sola Scriptura.

How would the Roman Catholics break down that argument,.

But it didn't say, it doesn't isolate Sola Scriptura. It doesn't say only scripture.

Right. It says all scripture, not only scripture, right? And so, okay, that's a kind of a good argument, on the onset. And how do they rebuke our understanding of Matthew 15?

Rebuke the Pharisees, yes? But there might be a difference between the tradition of men and what they call holy tradition. Jesus rebukes the traditions of men, and that doesn't mean that there's not a real tradition.

Correct. Now, I would actually say that the Roman Catholics would stretch on, actually, correct. I'd say, when you look at those individual verses, I'd say they're probably getting better than most Protestants would, in a certain sense.

Because in Matthew 15, Jesus isn't condemning all tradition, obviously. He is clearly, in the context, condemning the traditions of these Pharisees, and how they took God's law, specifically concerning the Sabbath, and then they blew it up, and they put all these regulations on top of it, making it impossible for any person to actually be able to observe it, right?

So, they made God's order go away by their tradition, by having so much regulations that no one could even keep it anymore. And so, that's the context of Matthew 15. So, there are different properties of Jesus in the text.

In terms of the relationship in 2 Timothy 3, that's a difficult text, as well, because Paul is clearly writing to Timothy, and the community of the scripture doesn't get complete. So, when he's speaking about Paul's scripture, he's actually, like when we're pointing to the Old Testament, that he is to the completion of the New Testament, because the New Testament was not yet completed.

And so, when he talks about Paul's scripture, actually, if you look at the verse prior to that, saying the scriptures were given to us for our instruction, clearly, we're talking about the Old Testament, right?

And so, does that, then, negate the authority of the New Testament witness, in relation to it being authoritative for all the things that Paul mentioned? I would say no. I wouldn't think that that would be the conclusion, if you draw from that.

But the context clearly shows that, it's like the reference to the Old Testament text of scripture, okay? So, the Roman Catholics, then, actually have a pretty good argument to review, because they're a couple of us, in relation to those verses.

Why is it, though, then, that we hold to a video of sola scriptura, and not a comprehensive video of scripture and sacred tradition? So, why do we hold to it, too? Why do we still hold to sola scriptura, though those two verses, on the onset, seem to be convincing, while sola scriptura are actually not?

What stronger defense can we make? That it's fallible. No, what? That man is fallible. That man is fallible, correct. And so, that's a good argument against tradition. How do you even define tradition?

Sacred? When they say sacred tradition, how do you even define that? Have you ever seen it? That's an important distinction, because every Catholic church does have a pretty well-defined view of what sacred tradition is.

And it's not just, oh, some church fathers said this a long time ago. They usually try to say, okay, well, here's the overwhelming data, here's your overall consensus, and here's how we interpret that consensus, all right?

And that's how they usually try to form certain traditions, usually through a consensus of history, but also through, mostly through councils and creeds, and ecumenical units from the parishes or from the Pope.

So, you have something you want to contribute, Ruth?

I guess, what I heard from my dad in Portland is that there's, like, scripture doesn't refer to, like, scripture refers to itself as inspired, but it doesn't refer to any other source of, any other authority that's on that same level of current inspiration.

Correct. Now, here's a poor text.

It is a text that is often never mentioned, and I don't know why. 1 Corinthians chapter four, to the church, and he makes a really stunning statement here that Protestants never use, really should be using it as a reference to this conversation.

So, in reference to the Apostles' ministries, he says in verse six, I have applied all these things to myself and Apostles when we were brethren and brothers, that you may learn by us not to go beyond what is written, that none of you may be puffed up in favor of one against another.

And the whole context here is Paul talking about Apostolic ministry, talking about the ministry of the church. He's warning us specifically, don't go beyond the things that are written, okay? Why? Because it's so easy to do so, and we see that even in the infancy of the early church, after the time of the apostles.

And again, all these weird things start to pop up, all these new offices, all these new things, and it's because the desire, the impulse to go beyond what is written, and extrapolate things from scripture, which Peter says were concerning Paul.

Paul wrote a lot of things that were difficult to understand and discern. And so it's really easy to take those very difficult things and then expound on it in a way that's unbiblical. So Paul's clearly saying, don't go beyond the things that are written, okay?

Sam, and what is he referring to here?

He's actually referring to the Apostolic letters, okay? He's clearly referencing the letters that are coming from him and the other apostles, because he's talking about instructions for the church. He's saying, listen, if we follow the same instruction that we are giving you guys, we're following too.

And so we're telling you not to go beyond the things that are written. This is 1 Corinthians chapter four, verse six. So that's a pretty important text, because again, Paul is giving clear instruction to the church.

He's saying, we're following this pattern too. This is the Apostolic pattern, which is to not go beyond the things that are written. I've never heard a prophet compellingly use the scripture, but I don't know why.

But this should be one of the go-to verses in popular Catholics in regard to scripture and sacred tradition. So clearly, Paul is making an argument for not only the inspiration of scripture in relation to the New Testament text, to the writings, but also the sufficiency of the New Testament text.

The Sufficiency and Infallibility of Scripture

So the last week, we talked a little bit about this, that in order to have a robust view of the infallibility of scripture, we also have to have a robust view of the sufficiency of scripture, right? That not only is scripture true, not only is scripture infallible, meaning that it's perfect and inherent, but also that it is sufficient, because you can't have something be perfect and not sufficient, right?

It doesn't make sense, it's a contradiction. So if we're gonna say scripture is infallible, which the Roman Catholic would probably agree with that statement. Scripture is infallible, scripture is inherent, but if that's the case, then it also, by virtue of it, should be sufficient.

If it isn't, then it isn't infallible, okay? Does that make sense? So even just on the issue of infallibility, the issue of inerrancy, you have to bring to the conversation of sufficiency. So if the scripture is sufficient, or if it isn't sufficient, then it falls, other downfalls begin to fall as well, all right?

And it becomes a self-refuting argument, essentially, or a circular argument. So any thoughts or questions on this so far? What's that?

When I was reading the chapter, there was none of the, going back to the original, what are the verses the authors used in defining Zola's scripture? I actually just looked at the one about this confession of faith, the whole section on chapter one of the holy scriptures, and unfortunately, they don't include the scriptures either, but they must be there.

And of course, then I looked at the notes for chapter seven, and it says that he had, that Ham could have done that too, that looked at all the scriptures that were quoted by the original authors.

You know, in the Roman Conference, we have one good verse, really, to maybe show that tradition can be, that there could possibly be something that would be called sacred tradition, which is when Paul says, do not neglect the traditions that were given to you, right?

And so, we know that Paul handed down traditions to young Timothy, and so those are the things that we would build on as sacred traditions in that, so it's not incompatible with scripture. There's the scripture and your sacred tradition, and what it comes down to is really that the Roman Catholic Church would use themselves as the safeguard of scripture, right?

They're the ones who have protected scripture, and nurtured scripture, and they're the ones who can interpret scripture, because they were the church to be given the scriptures, and they believe that they are the church of Jesus Christ, and so therefore, it is not just the scriptures, but it's their traditions surrounding them, and then also reverting them.

But the problem with that would be that in which you have anyone who is in church for a scripture is that immediately you're deported, but you're deported from the sufficiency of scripture itself, and I brought this up a little bit last week.

One of the arguments that's used in this chapter against social scriptura is doctrinal chaos. What do they mean by that?

I mean that there's so many of the Protestants, there's so many people that have gone off and made their own set because they couldn't, they disagreed about the interpretation, so if you look at how long the denomination, this is what happens when all you use is scripture.

So since the Reformation started, the whole, the world's prophecy was, listen, if you put the libel in the hands of every person, every person will have their own interpretation, and we're gonna lose the consistency of the faith.

To some regard, they were correct, because you do have a myriad of interpretations, you have a myriad of denominations, but the problem here isn't because we put the libel in everyone's hands. There's two problems that play here.

One is clearly spiritual, and one is academic. The spiritual one, in that course, is the scripture teaches that Satan is a god that's always behind the minds of all believers, and they meditate the Lord's life, the gospel of Christ.

Satan is a deceiver, and he still uses scripture as we see in the temptation of Christ. He uses scripture to twist the scripture to try to get his way, and so clearly, people are still following what the Bible prophesies will happen, false teachers, false teachings.

So it's no surprise that there's a myriad of teachings, false teachings, and the Bible prophesies such things. The second, though, is academic. There is a science of interpretation. What are the two terms used in the science of interpretation for scripture?

Hermeneutics and exegesis, right? So hermeneutics being kind of the study of scripture, or the really more well-defined hermeneutics is kind of like the rules for interpreting, rules for interpretation, okay?

And then you have exegesis, which means taking out the scripture. That might sound like that, but that's actually what you want to do. You want to take out, versus exegesis, which is to put in, right?

You want to draw the meaning out. You want to draw the context out. You want to draw all these things out so you can get to a proper understanding. And so any time it comes to differences in interpretation with the prophecies, and we're talking about two things, spiritual blindness and then also academic insufficiency.

People don't know the rules of engagement, right? So if anyone has, you know, I'm a proud gun owner, and even here in the common state of California, and there are times when I like to show off my guns, because I love my guns.

But any time I'm going to show off my gun to someone, especially who's never handled a gun before, I always have to give them the rules, right? Here's the rules of engagement. Here's how you handle this weapon.

You always treat it like it's loaded. You always look at it to make sure there's no blood inside. Even if there is no blood inside, you still treat it as if it's loaded. You don't point at anyone. You don't play with this.

There's rules surrounding this, because it's powerful, it's dangerous, and it can kill someone. But we're talking about the sword of the Lord of God, which is also dangerous, and it cuts between the binding between the soul and spirit, joint and marrow, and judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

So we're talking about the sword of God here. There are rules for properly engaging it. There's rules for properly understanding it, and that's the science of interpretation that we find in hermeneutics and exegesis.

So to me, to say that, well, we don't need to do proper exegesis and hermeneutics, because we have a tradition that we rely upon, is not a sufficient enough answer for me. And it's not enough answer for me to go then to Rome as the answer for the dilemma that we have as a process.

Because in this process, we do have a dilemma, and it's that we have way too many denominations, and it's that we have way too many interpretations. That is a dilemma. But the answer should not be Rome.

It should be the text. Rome is not the answer. The text is the answer. And so how do we get to the right understanding of the text? This is your exegesis and the hermeneutics, okay? It's not like following the blind traditions of Rome.

That would be a big throw coming through the door. I can see it through the door. It's awesome. Hey, Kyrie. Hey, what's up, brother? Yeah. You got 19 minutes left.

Hey, remember the last time? I told you to cross the line. I was trying to tell you. 19 minutes left. Would you argue that Sola Scriptura is an infallible exegesis of Scripture? Whoa, whoa, whoa, no.

So there is no infallible exegesis. Well, there is, actually. The Scripture talks about infallible exegesis. It is Christ. Christ is the one who exegetes the Father perfectly, right? He's the one who's in the bosom of the Father and he's exalting him, right?

So Jesus is the perfect revelation of God. He's the perfect exegesis of the Father. But outside of Christ, there's no perfect Jesus, right? And the Scripture tells us that that's gonna be the case in terms of how Christians are gonna understand things, which is why there's the call for unity.

There would be no such need for a call to unity unless there was gonna be the understanding that there's gonna be things that are gonna be confusing, things that are gonna be difficult to handle, difficult to understand.

Peter acknowledges the difficulty of understanding all sometimes in 2 Peter chapter three. And so there's always gonna be dilemmas and there's always gonna be misunderstandings. No one in this citadel is gonna have a perfect theology.

No one. And anyone who claims to have such a thing is likely a false teacher. I'm not even likely. I'm just gonna say they're a false teacher. No one has a perfect theology inside of them. But that's why the Scripture calls us to test all things in order to pass that which is good.

That's why the Scripture tells us to test the spirits from many false prophets who've gone to the world. We have to prove these things and it's through the exegetic hermeneutics of Scripture that we can test these things.

But it isn't sufficient just, again, to say that, well, we're not gonna do the exegesis. We're not gonna do the hermeneutics because we already have a perfect interpretation whether it be found in Rome, whether it be found in LNGY, whether it be found in Wachtower, whether it be in the prophet of Mormonism.

Every part, every one of these cults and groups maintain a central authority that perfectly interprets God's Word. And any time they do that, they're all magnified.

But don't we fall into that category as well? No. I mean, how is exegesis and hermeneutics different from the other traditions that other religions use?

That's a good question. The difference is the process. The process and how we get to the answers of what the meaning of Scripture is versus the process that we find in Rome, which is the Pope says so.

You have all these ecumenical councils that fill up, and it's not like the Popes asserted the same things or that Catholics have come up with certain theological things in the back. That wouldn't be a fair description of the process of Rome.

But the process normally isn't. Here is what the Scripture says. Let's follow that. It's usually taken into account, well, the Church Father in 685 said this. Pope Paul 11 to 74 thought this about that.

And then you take all these things and then you come up with what you think. I'll give you a perfect example, purgatory. Purgatory's nowhere in the Bible, friends, nowhere. It's not there. More than it developed.

It began to develop in the 6th century. We can see, because of this, we can see the evolution of a concept like purgatory. In the 6th century, there was a major plague. Babies were dying left and right.

Question about salvation began to arise. The Church began to debate this issue, and from there arose this concept based upon interpretation of the intermediate state, particularly of Luke 16, and also of a text of Scripture that's in the Apocrypha.

And then they said, well, here's this shadowy place that we don't really have a lot of data about, we don't have a lot of understanding about. Maybe this is a place that is reserved for people who are not completely righteous but not completely damned.

And this concept began to grow and grow and grow until it was firmly established in around the 13th to 15th century, and we have this concept of purgatory. So it took several hundred years for this doctrine to evolve.

And it wasn't because, let's look at what the Bible says and let's do what it says. It kind of arose out of necessity and hundreds of years of theological debate and back and forth. So it wasn't a clear cut, oh, here's a text of Scripture, here's what it teaches, let's do that.

Rather, it was more so through many other processes that these people came to these conclusions of something like purgatory. Now, the difference again with the prosody, or what should be different about the prosody, is that hermeneutics and exegesis is the intense study of Scripture itself.

Right, so what we do is we look at the text and we say, okay, here are the rules. Scripture interprets Scripture, okay? Scripture does not contradict Scripture. We also recognize that within Scripture, we have to take into account the historical narrative or different narrative types.

We have to take into account the audience, who was it written by, who was it written to. There are certain things that we have to do in order to properly understand our job. So it would be like us reading any book today.

Anyone have a favorite fictional book here? What's your favorite fictional book? Please, as long as it's not Twilight, which it should be all right. I haven't read many fictional books. Narnia, go with Narnia.