August 5, 2025 Show with Jason Wallace on “The Not-So-Great Tradition”

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August 6, 2025

August 5, 2025 Jason Wallace,pastor of Christ Presbyterian Churchof Magna, Utah (OPC), & documen-tarian, who will address: “The NOT-SO-GREAT TRADITION:The INCONSISTENCY of THOSECLAIMING to AFFIRM the REFOR-MATION WHO ARE PAVING a PATHto ROME” Subscribe: Listen:

00:03: Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer
00:10: George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend
00:16: Jim Thorpe. It's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,
00:23: Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.
00:31: Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.
00:38: Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.
00:50: It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.
00:57: And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,
01:10: Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth, who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.
01:21: This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this fifth day of August 2025, and I am thrilled to announce that our tribute that we conducted last
01:36: Friday with Phil Johnson, executive director for the late John MacArthur's media ministry,
01:44: Grace to You, and Dr. Doug McMasters, pastor of New Hyde Park Baptist Church on Long Island, who is the former director of pastoral communications with pastoral correspondents with Grace to You.
02:02: And my co -host on Friday was my very, very dear friend,
02:09: Pastor Jim Capo, the former pastor of Massapequa Church of God on Long Island, who was at one time a frequent co -host with me on the old
02:18: Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, broadcasting at WNYG, 1440
02:23: AM in Babylon, Long Island. I just wanted to tell you the wonderful news that the recording of that tribute to the late
02:32: John MacArthur, in loving memory of a champion for truth in the 20th and 21st centuries, that is now uploaded to the
02:41: Iron Sharpens Iron Radio website, ironsharpensironradio .com. And many thanks to my webmaster,
02:48: Eric Nielsen, who did a miraculous job fixing the recording because Phil Johnson was having an audio problem where he kept dropping off the air every 30 seconds.
03:01: And amazingly, Eric was able to repair the audio, and it just sounds wonderful.
03:07: You'd never know there was a problem. After this live program, of course, you can listen to that wonderful tribute to the late
03:17: John MacArthur on ironsharpensironradio .com. But today, I'm so excited to have a returning guest,
03:25: Jason Wallace, who, if you've listened to Iron Sharpens Iron regularly, that name should not be unfamiliar to you.
03:34: He is pastor of Christ Presbyterian Church and Orthodox Presbyterian Congregation in Magna, Utah, and he is a documentarian.
03:44: We are going to be addressing the controversial theme, the not -so -great tradition, the inconsistency of those claiming to affirm the
03:56: Reformation who are paving a path to Rome. And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio to warn our listeners about a very theologically dangerous trend amongst
04:11: Reformed Christians. Pastor Jason Wallace. Chris, always a privilege to be with you.
04:18: Before we go into the topic at hand, let our listeners know more about Christ Presbyterian Church in Magna, Utah.
04:30: We started from scratch back in May of 1998. The Lord's blessed.
04:36: We actually, our building is an old Mormon ward. Wow, I didn't know that. Oh, yeah, yeah.
04:43: It's actually one of the oldest church buildings in the valley.
04:49: The story goes that Brigham Young actually came out for the dedication of the original building on the site the year he died.
04:57: Oh, the irony. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. They sold it to the steel workers in 61 and they sold it and it went through a number of hands.
05:11: And it was a United Church of Christ building before we got it.
05:18: They bought it for their Samoan congregation. And so we have a sister congregation in Clearfield, Utah, Berean Presbyterian, and we have a mission work in Provo, Utah.
05:34: Well, if anybody wants more details on Christ Presbyterian Church in Magna, Utah, you can go to GospelUtah .org,
05:43: GospelUtah .org, and the name Utah is fully spelled out,
05:50: U -T -A -H, GospelUtah .org. Well, this has become, this subject matter has become a disturbing trend for some of us who are
06:02: Reformed theologically, both from Reformed Baptist backgrounds like myself and from Presbyterian backgrounds like you.
06:13: There are, it seems as if only a minority of Reformed folks are speaking up against this trend that we are discussing.
06:25: But if you could, please open up by telling us what the great tradition is and why you believe with all your heart that it is a not -so -great tradition.
06:40: I mean, the great tradition has been championed in various corners for a very long time.
06:47: I started hearing about it a few years ago within particularly Reformed Baptist circles.
06:54: There were some Presbyterians as well. But it was being championed as something to trump, especially advocates of presuppositional apologetics.
07:10: Thomas Aquinas was being championed as one of the greatest theologians ever.
07:17: And I had questions about why people would be going after Aquinas.
07:25: Aquinas was a brilliant man, but he had a very different understanding of the gospel than Protestants would have.
07:39: And people became fixated on things such as it was not enough to say that God is without body parts or passions.
07:47: They had to articulate the simplicity of God in the language of Aquinas, not just the
07:53: So I was hearing rumblings about all this. About a year ago,
08:00: I heard Matthew Barrett do a podcast. Can you tell us who
08:05: Matthew Barrett is first? Yeah. Matthew Barrett was the head of the doctoral program at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, SBC institution.
08:19: And he was doing a podcast July of last year where he identified
08:25: John of Damascus as one of his top two favorite theologians.
08:36: And, you know, I had to pause. John of Damascus has come up a lot. In our documentaries, we've been dealing a lot with Eastern Orthodoxy over the last couple of years.
08:48: And John of Damascus was denounced as a heretic by the
08:55: Council of Hieria in the 8th century. 33 years later, the second council of Nicaea declared him a saint and used his argumentation for the history of icon veneration to anathematize anyone who refused to venerate an icon.
09:20: And for someone who is Protestant, especially
09:26: Baptist, to be championing John of Damascus as this wonderful, wonderful theologian is concerning.
09:35: John of Damascus is arguably the first person in the East that you can point to who explicitly says the spirit did not proceed from the sun.
09:48: There's all kinds of arguments the East makes in terms of Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Natsanza, Basil, the
09:59: Cappadocian Fathers, in terms of some of their articulation of the procession. But it's with John of Damascus that you have an explicit denial.
10:12: And that becomes the basis of the East anathematizing anyone who says that the spirit proceeds from the sun.
10:21: Well, that anathematizes the whole Western Church. But it also anathematizes
10:26: Augustine and Athanasius and a host of Jerome, a host of others.
10:34: One of the things that has concerned me is that the great tradition comes off as a fantasy.
10:45: Who defines this great tradition? The historic church is messy.
10:51: John of Damascus is condemned by one council that declares itself the
10:57: Seventh Ecumenical Council and then is declared a saint by a later council.
11:05: That council is overturned by another council that's then overturned by another council.
11:15: And I'm afraid that many people who don't seem to have a solid knowledge of just how messy church history can be have gotten swept up in this idea that there's this monolithic great tradition that trumps good exegesis.
11:38: And it's become the trump card for denouncing not just presuppositional apologetics, but a host of more traditional
11:54: Reformed Baptists. But Dr.
12:01: Barrett announced, I think it was last week, announced that he is now no longer
12:09: Southern Baptist, but has converted to Anglicanism. And that basically means he's not a
12:16: Baptist of any kind anymore. Well, he's right. He's clearly abandoned
12:23: Credo Baptism, you know, baptism of those who've made a professional faith for Paedo -Baptism.
12:31: Now, even though you're a Paedo -Baptist, you're not pumping your fist in the air over this. Y 'all can have him back.
12:46: Brother, I have labored side by side with a mutual friend of ours,
12:55: Dr. James White, for going on 27 years.
13:02: And we have picked at each other every opportunity we've ever had about our differences on baptism.
13:08: But both of us are coming at it from—we read our history differently.
13:15: We read the Scriptures differently on that subject. But our ultimate standard is
13:21: God's Word. I've seen a lot of young men become
13:28: Paedo -Baptists for reasons that scare me to death. Because it's not because they are seeing the
13:41: Paedo -Baptist arguments in Scripture so much as they've become frustrated with their
13:51: Baptist church. And so they're following what they believe is a great tradition.
13:58: And, you know, James and I would disagree on the historic evidence, clearly.
14:06: But we would pretty much both agree that after the 4th century, until you get to the 16th century, you don't have a lot of Paedo -Baptists, or what we just call
14:21: Baptists. Yeah, people make arguments for various groups and this and that and the other.
14:28: But when somebody embraces
14:34: Paedo -Baptism because they like it, it resonates with them.
14:40: That scares me. I want them to see it from Scripture. And I think the fact that James and I are both arguing from the basis of Scripture, even though we disagree, we have confidence in one another that we've been able to maintain that relationship.
15:03: But I've just seen too many guys that they get frustrated with some of the problems within the
15:12: Baptist church, which some of them are legitimate frustrations. They find that they have those same frustrations elsewhere if they stick around long enough.
15:21: But they're looking for greener pastures.
15:28: And so this has an appeal of antiquity. But at the same time that they're embracing
15:34: Paedo -Baptism, they also all of a sudden decide that they really like the smells and bells of Rome in the
15:43: East. And they're like, this is the ancient faith. And it's like, no, no, it's not.
15:48: It's the medieval faith. This isn't the early church.
15:57: And I'm not just talking about a fantasy of some very simplistic understanding of the early church.
16:09: We're putting out a video at Warg Willing in the next couple of weeks called The Patristic Roots of the
16:14: Reformed Faith. When we stand against the veneration of icons, you need to understand,
16:23: Rome in the East called down God's curse on us. If you refuse to venerate an icon, this isn't simply them saying you really ought to allow us to do it.
16:35: They're saying, if you don't join us with this, you are under the curse of God. And that is what anathema means for all the games they play about.
16:43: And I can back it up. The Council of Iasi or Iasi is the
16:49: Romanians prefer we say it called for Protestants to be unforgiven in this life and in the next.
17:02: And so, you know, they can't simply say, well, that just means separation. No, they're calling down the curse of God.
17:08: They want us to be under his curse in this life and in the next. And the Eastern Orthodox seem to me more upfront about that than the
17:17: Roman Catholics. Am I correct? Yes, and they vary as well.
17:22: I mean, there's a whole Eastern Orthodoxy at whatever you want to make it. You can become an
17:29: Orthobro and think that Putin is the savior of Western civilization. You can become a
17:37: David Bentley Hart and sit around and sneer at everybody and champion universalism.
17:45: You can you can go Greek Orthodox and have
17:51: Archbishop Elpidiphoros say that judging people for whom they love, which he's talking about homosexuals, is not
18:01: Orthodox, that it's Western Puritanism. You know, he he said this in the context of baptizing the child of a homosexual couple.
18:15: Rome tends to sugarcoat everything a lot more these days. You know, their apologists don't.
18:22: Yeah, you get anybody that can create a YouTube channel can become an apologist for Rome.
18:29: But. Rome as an institution is very clearly moved towards universalistic understanding.
18:40: You know, Carl Rauner's Anonymous Christianity won out at Vatican II.
18:49: And so you've got you had Pope Francis telling this child that their father was going to baptize their father didn't stop the son from being baptized, even though he was an atheist.
19:03: Yes. Yeah. I mean, he was an atheist, but. You've got the pope kissing the crown.
19:11: It's. It's very much a universalistic, you know, we are the world kind of thing these days, which historically it wasn't, but that's what it has morphed into.
19:23: And to to put the seal on that, they just announced last week, Pope Leo has declared
19:31: John Henry Newman, a doctor of the church, you know, right up there with Irenaeus, Athanasius, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, John of Damascus and these others.
19:47: And we're going to be dealing a lot with John Henry Newman in the upcoming video. Former Anglican.
19:56: Yes. And, you know, like John of Damascus, he trumps everything with mysticism.
20:05: He in his book own.
20:14: Some of the stories of the saints, I'm trying to look here.
20:19: Got it. While you're looking, I'm going to announce our email address. If anybody would like to join us with a question for Pastor Jason Wallace about why the great tradition is not so great.
20:34: Our email address is Chris Arnzen at Gmail dot com. Chris Arnzen at Gmail dot com.
20:40: As always, give us your first name, at least your city and state and country of residence.
20:47: And Pastor Jason was in the middle of talking about John Henry Newman, who was an
20:56: Anglican convert to Roman Catholicism in the 19th century.
21:04: And if you want to pick up where you left off there. Yeah, basically,
21:10: Newman. Is proof that there is no great tradition. Because.
21:18: He said that this is from his book, an essay on development doctrine, he said,
21:25: St. Dionysius is accused by St. Basil of having sown the first seeds of Arianism. St.
21:30: Hippolytus speaks as if he were ignorant of our Lord's eternal sonship. St. Methodius speaks incorrectly, at least upon the incarnation.
21:38: St. Cyprian is not treated theology at all, such as the incompleteness of the extant teaching of these true saints.
21:45: And in their day, faithful witnesses of the eternal son. You know, essentially, the old arguments of Rome that they stood on sacred scripture, sacred tradition and the magisterium.
22:00: The the when you when you strip away all the fluff and get down to the heart of what
22:07: Newman saying is, you trump all that with whatever the Pope says. That's how you have certainty.
22:14: You ignore you ignore the scriptures. You ignore tradition. I mean, you make some appeals here and there to dress them up, but it doesn't matter if if scripture contradicts the
22:24: Pope, the Pope's right. If tradition contradicts the Pope, the Pope's right. If previous
22:29: Pope contradicts the Pope, it's just like Mormonism. A living prophet is more vital to the church than a dead prophet.
22:36: And so. This this idea of a great tradition. Yes, there are things that were clear.
22:46: In the history of the church, but you can find just about any modern heresy.
22:53: In the early church, you can find just about any error. In terms of.
23:02: You know, claims of ongoing revelation, things like this, you can find that in the early church, depends on how you define the church.
23:11: Are there things about which the church did speak clearly? Like the deity of Christ?
23:18: Yes. But the problem is people pretend that Nicaea. Had this special aura that it spoke infallibly.
23:32: The problem with that is that 10 years later, Constantine called another council that denounced
23:41: Athanasius, the defender of Nicene Orthodoxy, and declared Arius. Orthodox.
23:49: Now, Arius was dead by this point. Then his son, Constantius II, calls the
23:56: Council of Sirmium a number of years after that. And Sirmium explicitly denounces the
24:05: Nicene Creed and declares that the father is greater than the son, not just in his incarnation, not just economic trinity, but in his being.
24:19: Now. I think a proper understanding of this is that the Westminster Confession says councils can and do err.
24:30: They're made up of fallible, sinful men. Some are more faithful than others. Some are.
24:36: Some are completely apostate, but there's a reason that Jerome in the fourth century said the whole world groaned.
24:50: To discover itself, Arian. Arianism was the great tradition.
24:58: For decades in the fourth century. Athanasius had to defy.
25:05: Councils, creeds and the pope in standing for the historic faith.
25:14: Now, I see Northodoxy. No, no, you continue. Anyway, what
25:20: I was going to tell you, I apologize. I'm jumping around here a bit, but John Henry Newman's been declared a doctor of the church.
25:29: This is what he says about the crazy stories. That were made up in the
25:36: Middle Ages about saints, he said. And by the way, I just want to let our listeners know that if you have seen debates with Roman Catholics and evangelical
25:47: Protestants. You have likely heard. Catholic apologists quoting
25:55: John Henry Newman. With the most false statement that has been most repeated in the history of apologetics by Catholics to be steeped in history is to cease to be
26:13: Protestant. If anything. That has taught me that that is a lie is the more deep
26:22: I grow in the knowledge of church history. From folks like Dr.
26:29: James R. White and men like you. I just keep becoming more and more convinced as an ex -Catholic.
26:38: That I made the right decision back in the mid 1980s when
26:44: I. Formally left the Roman Catholic Church, but anyway,
26:50: I'm sorry. I just wanted to let all those no problem actually. That statement to be deep in history is to cease to be a
26:58: Protestant is actually the opening line of our new video. I mean, we start we start with that.
27:05: But then we have. Then we show that he also said that the
27:12: Council of Trent's doctrine of justification was in some sense new also. Because the replication of errors can't proceed there near arising.
27:21: But he also Newman admitted. We have no proof that Athanasius himself had any special devotion to the
27:31: Blessed Virgin, but he laid the foundations on which that devotion was to rest. So here you've got a fourth century doctor of the church.
27:41: The father of Orthodoxy and he has no special devotion to the
27:49: Virgin Mary. But for him, that's not a problem because he's abandoned this idea that you can can demonstrate that what
28:00: Rome is doing is actually historic. What he's what he's done is he's introduced the doctrine of development.
28:08: And so the only tradition that really matters for Newman. Is that Christ established a church and it defines itself.
28:20: That's what it boils down to. But in terms of his, you know, this guy not being deep in history, in terms of these crazy stories,
28:33: I remember when we did the Eastern Orthodox one, the failure of Eastern Orthodoxy.
28:39: You had a story of a monk who supposedly lived for an entire year on a single date.
28:46: Well, then later you had another monk who was claimed to have lived a whole year on a half of a date.
28:52: And then another monk on a third of a date, and then yet another monk on one sixth of a date.
29:00: Not a day total. But in terms of some of the crazy stuff, you know, like St Dionysius being beheaded and picking up his head and walking down the road preaching a sermon, he said, there is no room for the exercise of reason.
29:18: We are in the region of faith. We must believe and act where we cannot discriminate.
29:25: We must be content to take the history as sacred on the whole and leave the verification of particulars as unnecessary for devotion and for criticism impossible.
29:39: This is a guy that basically his whole argumentation boils down to the only way you will ever have certainty is to shut up and do what you're told by the
29:51: Pope. Because he saw the scriptures as confusing.
29:59: He saw the fathers as confusing. And therefore, if you're going to have certainty, you got to have one person tell you.
30:08: And that's the Pope. And it is contrary to what previous Popes said. It's a small price for certainty.
30:18: He wrote in 1848 about the house of the
30:28: Virgin Mary was supposedly magically transported by angels from Nazareth to Dalmatia and then to Loreto in Italy.
30:42: And it's a shrine there. Pope Francis visited there a few years ago. And was championing that this is the house of the
30:51: Virgin Mary. Now, who is the one that started that fable? You first hear about it,
30:59: I want to say. About 200 years later, the 14th century is when you start hearing these stories.
31:07: But I want to say. I'm pulling this off the top of my head, so I may be a little bit off, but I want to say that it was in the 12th century.
31:17: It was when the Saracen troops were in the
31:23: Muslims were taking back some of the some of that area.
31:33: Angels magically transported this house, supposedly first to Dalmatia, but then to Loreto.
31:41: And, you know, you start hearing about a couple of years later, like this, this is a house that angels brought here 200 years ago.
31:48: And you think about how divorced people are today from what happened 200 years ago. People believed it.
31:56: John Henry Newman said, if you ask me why I believe it is because everyone believes it in Rome.
32:01: Wow. Cautious as they are and skeptical about some other things.
32:09: I believe it then as I believe that there is a new planet called Neptune or the core form destroys the sense of pain.
32:20: This is Newman is a loon. And I'm not even getting into his personal life and his.
32:31: And his relationship with others. There's all kinds of things that are said about such things, but just just as a theologian.
32:45: He is he is what he does is he sets up straw men scripture. He describes scripture.
32:52: Let's see. In fact, why don't you pick up where you left off there on what Newman says of scripture when we come back from our first commercial break.
33:02: And if anybody would if anybody would like to join us, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail dot com. Give us your first name at least city and state and country of residence.
33:10: Don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages. James White here of Alpha Omega Ministries announcing that this
33:27: September I'm heading out to Pennsylvania to speak at two events that my longtime friend
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33:38: I'm speaking to men in ministry leadership at Chris's Iron Sharpens Iron radio free pastors luncheon at Church of the
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33:57: Bible is the authentic and inerrant word of God. I hope you can join Chris and me for both events for more details on the free pastors luncheon visit
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36:50: I'm Simon O'Mahony pastor of Trinity Reformed Baptist Church in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
36:56: Originally from Cork, Ireland. The Lord and his sovereign providence has called me to shepherd this new and growing congregation here in Cumberland County at TRBC.
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39:36: We are now back with Pastor Jason Wallace of Christ Presbyterian Church, an
39:42: Orthodox Presbyterian congregation in Magna, Utah, and we are discussing the not -so -great tradition.
39:50: This conversation was basically spawned by the recent conversion of Southern Baptist theologian
40:02: Matthew Barrett to Anglicanism, and he is one of the growing number of professedly
40:11: Reformed Christians who boast of upholding what has become known as the
40:17: Great Tradition. And if you have a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.
40:24: Give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence. But right before the break, you were looking up a quote by the
40:32: Anglican convert to Roman Catholicism in the 19th century, Cardinal John Henry Newman, about Scripture.
40:43: Yeah, he said, It has a structure so unsystematic and various, and a style so figurative and indirect, that no one would presume at first sight to say what is in it and what is not.
40:58: So basically, yeah. By the way, his take was… Go ahead, go ahead. I'm sorry.
41:04: No, no, continue. Essentially, his take was that Scripture is confusing.
41:10: He said the 39 Articles are so loosely worded, so incomplete in statement, so ambiguous in their meaning, as to need an authoritative interpretation.
41:24: The 39 Articles being the Reformed standard of historic
41:29: Anglicanism, which Reformed Baptists and Presbyterians agree with in their majority.
41:39: Right, and I'm afraid I may have gotten off on a tangent and lost some people, but the gist of it is that the great tradition has become this byword, a shibboleth among a lot of Reformed folk.
41:57: Even Roman myths, there's no great tradition. Whenever they call John Henry Newman a doctor of the church, this is what they're endorsing, that they can't back up.
42:09: You'll have people make claims. There are people who will go back and try to argue that when
42:18: Irenaeus calls Mary the new Eve, that this is pointing towards her being a co -mediator with Jesus.
42:28: Clearly, that's not what Irenaeus believed. John Henry Newman admitted that.
42:34: Anyone who carefully goes through, there are some things the church was clear about, that the
42:43: Holy Spirit did lead people into truth. The Nicene Creed is faithful, but we don't hold to everything that the
42:53: Council of Nicaea held. I say that for Protestants.
43:01: We especially don't agree with the Second Council of Nicaea four and a half centuries later.
43:09: That council anathematized anyone who will not bow down and offer veneration to an idol, to a representation of Christ or the saints.
43:29: When Matthew Barrett was gushing about how wonderful John of Damascus was, he's the theologian who's behind Second Nicaea.
43:50: He makes all kinds of mystical arguments, but he also appeals to this supposed history that shows that the veneration of icons goes back to the apostles themselves.
44:06: One of the claims was that Luke made the first icon of Mary. The simple reality is that those claims do not hold up to scrutiny, and Newman recognized that.
44:21: I'm assuming Matthew Barrett does not publicly agree on those issues.
44:27: I'm assuming that. Well, yeah, I've heard nothing. The discussion of John of Damascus seemed to equivocate a lot.
44:38: I don't know what his specific position is. I know that when he posted his announcement that he posted numerous pictures showing representations of Christ, which, you know, one of the points
44:54: I try to make is this is not the great tradition. It's not even the Anglican tradition.
45:00: Yes, many Anglican churches have embraced having images of Christ and venerating them, but that's contrary to the 39
45:13: Articles. And people have had some
45:18: Anglicans get upset with me because I pointed that out. And they're like, we have other standards as well.
45:25: I was like, I never said you did. But the 39 Articles were clear that this was something.
45:35: I'm looking for the exact quote. And the 39 Articles were drafted by Thomas Cranmer, who was a thoroughly
45:43: Reformed Christian who didn't even believe, from the interviews
45:49: I've done with Cranmer historians and scholars, he didn't even believe his friend
45:57: King Henry VIII was saved until on King Henry VIII's deathbed.
46:05: He asked Henry, if you believe in justification by faith alone, please squeeze my hand.
46:12: And Henry squeezed his hand, giving him, Cranmer, more comfort that he had become saved before entering eternity.
46:21: And so he was a very strong Calvinist. And of course, he also denounced, out of fear of the threat of death, he denounced his
46:37: Protestant faith, but then he later renounced his renunciation of Protestantism and was burned at the stake.
46:49: And plunged his hand into the flame that signed his initial recantation of Protestantism.
47:02: He wanted that hand to be burned first. Yeah, the 39
47:08: Articles say about the adoration of images, calls it a fond thing, vainly invented and grounded upon no warranty of Scripture, but rather repugnant to the
47:18: Word of God. The great theme of what
47:25: I'm trying to communicate to folks now is that this whole idea of a great tradition is a farce.
47:34: It's a wax nose that basically gives historic camouflage to mysticism.
47:44: The Second Council of Nicaea in the 8th century anathematized the faith of the
47:51: First Council of Nicaea in the 4th century. There's no evidence that anyone at that First Council of Nicaea venerated images.
48:04: You wouldn't know that to listen to the discussion on John of Damascus that Barrett did.
48:10: It would seem much more, you know, well, you know, Luther felt this way, and Calvin felt this way, and these people felt this way, and, you know, we recognize that, you know, we can make these images without worshiping them, and that, you know,
48:32: John of Damascus made this great differentiation between Latria and Julia, and, you know, we're only giving
48:41: Latria the highest worship to God, but we're giving Julia those distinctions do not hold up to scrutiny.
48:50: And by the way, I wanted to make it clear also to our listeners that you and I are not in any way trying to broad brush and condemn all of Anglicanism because there not only have been heroes of the faith that you and I love to read from centuries past who were
49:12: Anglicans, one of the most recent from history, the 19th century
49:18: Bishop J .C. Ryle, but even today there are thoroughly
49:25: Protestant and Reformed Anglicans who would join us in our warning, well, sounding the alarm to warn people against the growing
49:41: Anglo -Catholic movement that is barely distinguishable from Rome.
49:50: Big time. I mean, Calvin Robinson got a big following during COVID. I mean, this is a guy who devotion to Mary is at the center of his
50:01: Anglicanism. Yes, and he's not even an Anglican anymore. He's an old Catholic. Yeah, he's bounced around so many different ways.
50:11: One of the concerns, I mean, I'm a
50:17: Presbyterian. Presbyterianism has morphed a bit over time to include more old
50:29: Anglican elements. You know, the early
50:36: Presbyterians would make a point to preach on anything other than the Incarnation around Christmastime.
50:44: No, we don't observe a church calendar, but I preach on the Incarnation at Christmastime.
50:52: We have collect from the Book of Common Prayer in our bulletin each week as a silent prayer in preparation for worship.
51:03: We recite the Nicene Creed every week. We sing the Goria Patria. We read the law.
51:11: We have a very traditional service, and we're thrilled that ours is the historic faith, that we are the true
51:20: Catholics. We're the ones that can recite the Nicene Creed without anathematizing what those men believed.
51:32: This isn't just my opinion. You know, they try to, in a lot of these areas, they'll try to muddy the waters.
51:39: There is a clear consensus on some things, like the deity of Christ. Yes, that was confused and required fights during the time of Arianism, as I said.
51:54: But Arianism has more claim to historicity and Catholicity than the veneration of images.
52:06: And this isn't just my opinion. The arguably
52:12: Rome's top scholar of councils, if not just the
52:19: Fathers overall, said, this is Father Richard Price in his book on the
52:27: Second Council of Nicaea, he said the iconoclasts claim that reverence towards images did not go back to the
52:37: Golden Age of the Fathers, which he identifies as 325 to 451, so from First Nicaea to Chalcedon.
52:45: Still less to the apostles would be judged by impartial historians today, to be simply correct.
52:52: Chris, the idea that the early church venerated images, now there were
53:02: Gnostics who did that, but they were clearly outside the pale. This wasn't something about which there was debate within the church to speak of.
53:14: Yes, there were people who would dabble in these things. You have Eusebius, I believe it was, who finds a tapestry, a drape or something, that had an image, he said, he couldn't remember if it was
53:32: Christ or one of the saints on it. And he saw it, he ripped it out, tore it into pieces and said, use it for bandages for the poor.
53:43: Wow. We have to go to our midway break right now. But if anybody would like to join us, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.
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55:14: Every Christian who's serious about the Deformed Faith and the Westminster Standards should have and use the eight -volume commentary on the theology and ethics of the
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55:31: It is much more than an exposition of the Larger Catechism. It is a thoroughly researched work that utilizes biblical exegesis as well as historical and systematic theology.
55:42: Dr. Morecraft is Pastor of Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, and I urge everyone looking for a biblically faithful church in that area to visit that fine congregation.
55:54: For details on the eight -volume commentary, go to westminstercommentary .com westminstercommentary .com
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59:57: Again, I'm Pastor Anthony Invinio, and thanks for listening. I'm Sukeith Allen of Linbrook Baptist Church, a
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01:06:37: Welcome back. Before I return to my fascinating conversation with Pastor Jason Wallace of Christ Presbyterian Church, an
01:06:46: Orthodox Presbyterian congregation in Magna, Utah, on the theme, The Not -So -Great
01:06:52: Tradition. Before we return to that conversation, I have some important reminders. Folks, if you really love this show,
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01:09:31: and put I need a church in the subject line. That's chrisarnson at gmail .com, which is also the email address where you can send in a question to Pastor Jason Wallace of Christ Presbyterian Church of Magna, Utah.
01:09:46: chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence.
01:09:52: And we will get to our listeners who are waiting for their questions to be asked and answered on the air momentarily.
01:10:01: But first of all, you left off before the midway break with an account of Eusebius who discovered some kind of a tapestry that had images perhaps of Jesus, perhaps of Mary, and he had the tapestry torn up to be used as medical bandages.
01:10:25: Yeah, it wasn't. It wasn't Mary. Mary and devotion hadn't really blossomed yet.
01:10:37: You start seeing that more the end of the fourth century. You'll have the
01:10:44: East and Rome claim that there's a third century hymn to Mary. They're quoting the most generous dating that any scholar has ever put to it.
01:10:57: Other ones have updated that hymn to the eighth or ninth century. Just to give people some sense,
01:11:09: I realize I'm throwing a lot of stuff out there, but just to give you your bearings, a lot of the proponents of the great tradition pretend that other people have been ignoring that tradition.
01:11:24: And no, the question is, who interprets tradition? And the reality is, the
01:11:33: Reformed have been dealing with tradition for a very long time. John Calvin's French Confession of 1559 says,
01:11:40: We confess that which has been established by the ancient councils, and we detest all sects and heresies which were rejected by the holy doctors, such as St.
01:11:51: Hillary, St. Athanasius, St. Ambrose, and St. Cyril. The Reformed had disagreements with all those guys on some things, but we stand more with them than Rome or the
01:12:06: East do. Not just today, but in the Middle Ages as well.
01:12:11: This side of Second Nicaea, you're getting all kinds of medieval counterfeits that are the basis of the veneration of icons, the devotion to Mary, the hyper asceticism.
01:12:35: All this stuff is a development. John Henry Newman recognized that, and people in the 19th century knew their history better than 21st century
01:12:48: Americans apparently do. And so, to counter the historic arguments against Rome, he hated
01:12:57: Protestantism. His younger brother was one of the first devotees of John Nelson Darby, and that whole
01:13:09: Brethren movement, before ultimately becoming Unitarian, his other brother became an atheist. And Newman basically was reactionary, and he let his emotions lead him to have mysticism trump history and scripture.
01:13:32: History is fallible, but we give it weight. There is clear tradition.
01:13:44: R .C. Sproul famously said, if you come to a position that no one other than Herod takes hell before you, you're probably wrong.
01:13:54: I'm paraphrasing there. But people who don't know how messy that history is get swept into this.
01:14:07: We have the great tradition. Now, can you make sure that our listeners understand the elements of this great tradition that concern people like you and Dr.
01:14:20: James R. White and other Reformed men greatly who are warning about it.
01:14:28: They see it as just paving the way to Rome, either for the first time or back to Rome, for those who converted out of Rome at one point.
01:14:42: What are those most troubling aspects of this great tradition? Because the thing that has bothered me is
01:14:51: I've been a Reformed Baptist since the 80s, and none of this was ever brought up by my fellow
01:15:00: Reformed Baptists that I can recall that this is something that we should espouse to greatly admire and adopt as our own goal to reflect this great tradition.
01:15:18: It's only to my knowledge been a point of division amongst
01:15:25: Reformed Baptists for less than a decade. And those that have espoused this great tradition have become, and I'm not in a broad brush, but some have become very snobbish and elitist about it and have publicly condemned people who don't join them in this journey.
01:15:46: And they're acting as if they have believed this stuff as long as they've been Reformed Baptists, and they haven't.
01:15:52: And we're supposed to drop everything and just run alongside with them. But if you could, by the way, from your knowledge, am
01:16:00: I accurately describing things? Yeah, I think you're pretty close.
01:16:08: I tease James sometimes that, you know, we think more highly of him than a whole lot of Reformed Baptists do.
01:16:18: Today, that is. Yes. One of the troubling things,
01:16:27: I mean, at the heart of it all, is what is your standard of truth? And when
01:16:37: Baptists, you know, I mean, this is no insult to my Baptist brothers, but none of these guys that they're championing were
01:16:45: Baptists. And historically, Baptists didn't champion
01:16:52: Aquinas. And a whole lot of guys,
01:16:58: I have never met Matthew Barrett in my life, and I'm trying very hard. I want to safeguard his good name.
01:17:04: There have been people who have said they've assigned motives to him and things like that. I hope what
01:17:11: I've been saying is clear. I have deep concerns for his public statements and this whole movement of championing the great tradition.
01:17:26: When history becomes your overriding hermeneutic, it leads you to strange places.
01:17:34: I think the Reformed can honestly deal with the history better than anybody.
01:17:43: And this is why, with Newman and others, when they really start dealing with the history, they have to abandon it.
01:17:51: But that doesn't stop a whole lot of people. You know, he ends up coming up with an alternative, you know, the theory of development.
01:18:01: And the problem is this idea of the great tradition gets people to think that everything's been settled, everything's clear, everyone's on their side.
01:18:18: There are some issues within Reformed Baptist circles, like there are people championing a position
01:18:25: I don't want to get into, but eternal functional subordinationism. It's a problem.
01:18:32: But it's like burning your house down trying to kill roaches. This isn't the solution.
01:18:40: A whole bunch of people have articulated positions similar to what we're hearing from the proponents of the great tradition in years past.
01:18:51: And some of us are old enough to remember these things. And it doesn't end well. Go back and look at Scott Hahn.
01:18:59: Go back and look at Jerry Madetix, Steve Wood, a whole litany of others,
01:19:04: Taylor Marshall, Roberts and Jenas. These guys, they used history to trump the plain meaning of Scripture and ultimately let their mysticism trump their history.
01:19:26: Yeah, because it's a falsified history. It's a falsified history. Yes, yes.
01:19:32: All these things that John of Damascus appeals to to support the supposed antiquity of the veneration of images, their counterfeits is things like Dionysius the
01:19:48: Areopagite. These are writings that were claimed to go back to Paul's convert in Acts 15.
01:19:57: Yet nobody ever heard of them before the sixth century. But they became beloved.
01:20:04: I mean, they're the basis of a whole lot of bad theology. Thomas Aquinas quoted
01:20:10: Dionysius the Areopagite more than any other church father other than I think
01:20:16: Augusta. He quoted him like 1300 times. He built his theology on a frog.
01:20:26: And Gregory Palamas in the East, his hesychasm is built on Dionysius the
01:20:35: Areopagite, but it's a fraud. And even Rome and the East will admit it's a fraud today.
01:20:43: But the traditions that came out of those frauds haven't been denied.
01:20:48: They can't deny those. When you actually go through real history and you evaluate things, what you find is, yes, history is messy.
01:21:03: And as far as a great tradition, the great tradition in the latter part of Constantine's reign and for the whole couple of decades under Constantius II, that great tradition was
01:21:17: Aryan. It wasn't so great, was it? It was heretical. The truly great tradition lived on through Athanasius.
01:21:27: Now that eventually becomes triumphant. But only when it's Athanasius, after decades of Athanasius against the world.
01:21:36: And Athanasius spending much of 18 years in exile, on and off, on again, off again.
01:21:46: History, tradition is important. But we need to weigh it carefully.
01:21:54: And I think people are being sold a bill of goods with this whole great tradition stuff, as if there's something that is clear and quantifiable and speaks with a definite voice in supporting them.
01:22:11: I can claim a clear voice in supporting the deity of Christ, but I have to recognize it wasn't unanimous.
01:22:20: My ultimate standard is scripture. You know, Augustine, in going up against Daenerys, I forget the guy's name.
01:22:31: But he says, I won't appeal to Nicaea against you.
01:22:40: I think he said, I could appeal to Nicaea against you, and you would appeal to Ariminum against me.
01:22:48: But let us go back to the scriptures themselves. That's the standard.
01:22:55: Tradition is messy. One of the statements that really concerned me about Matthew Barrett in particular is in his announcement,
01:23:07: I am leaving the SPC and becoming Anglican. He said, I had to ask myself, why did the church fathers believe the
01:23:15: New Testament naturally gave birth to bishops, of which we have elaborate records? Are we consistent to cherry pick, stealing away the doctrine of the creeds while rejecting the polity of the councils and the office of bishop so instrumental to implementing doctrinal accountability in the church?
01:23:38: That's a troublesome statement in itself. It's all the more troublesome when you recognize that he goes from being the head of the doctrinal program at a
01:23:48: Southern Baptist institution to, what, a week later becoming a professor in an
01:23:55: Anglican seminary in the same town? This is a very naive understanding of the role of bishops in the early church.
01:24:10: Are there people who claim that there is this great tradition that goes back to the apostles? Yes, they will appeal.
01:24:17: He doesn't elaborate here, but they'll often, almost always, they'll appeal to Ignatius of Antioch, who is martyred, generally claimed 107
01:24:27: AD. Now, here's a man who was discipled by the apostle Peter himself, and he has this really high view of the bishop, and nothing's to be done without the bishop.
01:24:38: The bishop, the bishop, the bishop is central to all these things. Well, here's the problem.
01:24:45: He's the only one of the apostolic fathers who says that. And they'll accuse
01:24:53: John Calvin of not wanting to hear the testimony of the early church when he stood against the writings of Ignatius in his day.
01:25:03: What they tend to leave out is, even Rome and the East don't tend to champion the letters of Ignatius that they were trying to champion in Calvin's day, because we weren't dealing with seven letters then.
01:25:19: We were dealing with as many as 17 letters, including a supposed letter to the
01:25:24: Virgin Mary from Ignatius. And you had obvious anachronisms in some of these letters.
01:25:35: You had Ignatius denouncing Gnostics before they flourished. And my personal favorite is they have him denouncing
01:25:43: Theodotus, who hadn't even been born when Ignatius died. You've got letters that clearly don't fit with anything else in the time immediately after the apostles.
01:26:00: In the scriptures, it's very clear that Presbyteros and Episcopos are interchangeable.
01:26:11: Presbyter, or elder, and bishop, they're the same thing. Acts 20,
01:26:17: Paul sends for the Ephesian elders, the Presbyteroi, and he says, to shepherd the flock over which
01:26:25: God has made you overseers, Episcopoi. In the scriptures, those offices, same thing.
01:26:36: You basically have elders and deacons. Letter to the
01:26:43: Philippians, you have bishops and deacons. You have a plurality of bishops, because it's the same as elders.
01:26:53: You see that same identification of elders and bishops in the
01:27:06: Didache, in Shepherd of Hermas, in First Clement.
01:27:12: You go through all the apostolic fathers, and it's very simple.
01:27:17: You have a plurality of bishops in the local church, and elder and bishop are the same.
01:27:28: Jumping ahead, this isn't something we're just imposing on the church fathers.
01:27:34: In the late fourth century, you have Jerome admitting that in the early church, presbyter and bishop were the same thing, and you had a plurality.
01:27:48: You have a plurality of bishops. What's used to trump that?
01:27:54: Ignatius. Well, these writings of Ignatius are clearly a mess.
01:28:01: They're writing about things before they happen, and Calvin dismissed them because they weren't like the writings of Dionysius.
01:28:12: They were obvious counterfeits. The East and Rome basically admit
01:28:18: Dionysius was a counterfeit. They don't want to admit that about Ignatius, but what happened is, after Calvin's dead in the 1640s, you have
01:28:30: Bishop Usher. One of the other problems was that you see this in the fourth century quotes from the writings of Ignatius, and the quotes don't match the versions that Rome and the
01:28:43: East were promoting at the time. In the 16th century, clearly they've been changed.
01:28:50: Well, in the 1640s, Bishop Usher finds a Latin manuscript that matches what
01:28:56: Eusebius had written, and then goes looking and finds a Greek manuscript to support it as well, and he announces, we found pure text, and it didn't have
01:29:10: Basileides and Theodotus and these other Gnostics being denounced before they were forestriken, before they were born.
01:29:17: And these are the seven letters that Rome promotes today, and this is supposed to be, this is the testimony of the man who was discipled by Peter, and it has dozens and dozens of references to the bishop that you find nowhere in the other apostolic fathers.
01:29:38: You also have Ignatius claiming to get, to receive direct divine revelations from God.
01:29:46: You know, he's got the gifts of an apostle. And so Protestants in the 1640s said, this is either a less obvious counterfeit or like the others, this still has a whole bunch of added stuff.
01:30:05: Well, in the 1830s, William Curitan is working, I think it's the
01:30:11: British Library, and they receive documents that have been brought back from the monastery of St.
01:30:19: Mary in Egypt. And lo and behold, he finds the writings of Ignatius.
01:30:26: And they're labeled his first, second and third epistle. And the third one concludes with here in the epistles of Ignatius.
01:30:37: So you don't have the seven letters. And these dozens and dozens of references to the bishop, they're not there.
01:30:45: The direct divine revelation isn't there. What you have is one distinction between bishop.
01:30:53: It calls the people to be subject to the deacons, elders and bishops.
01:31:02: And even that's a bit questionable in terms of whether there's a clear distinction there.
01:31:09: That's the only distinction. The seven letter recension is filled with everywhere.
01:31:16: It's talking about how important the bishop is. The people,
01:31:24: Rome accepts the seven letter recension was added to to get the 14 letter recension.
01:31:33: And this in the much longer versions that have some of these embarrassing details.
01:31:40: What's their answer to the even shorter version? They say this was an abridgment. Even though it's the earliest version, it's the earliest manuscript that's ever been found.
01:31:52: It's in Syria. Here's something that fits with all the other apostolic fathers.
01:32:00: And this whole thing about, you know, the bishops were in, you know, were in the early second century.
01:32:07: You know, we had a monarchy. You had a mono Episcopacy because, you know, clearly this is because they're doing supernatural things.
01:32:16: They're they're transforming the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, literally.
01:32:24: No. No, these are later accretions. These are things that if you look at the evidence, it's clear that just like with John of Damascus, you have medieval counterfeits.
01:32:42: I mean, Paul warned his readers about letters supposedly coming from him.
01:32:49: You had the Gnostics. When you read Irenaeus, the
01:32:54: Gnostics weren't simply coming up with stuff on their own. They were claiming that it was, you know, the
01:33:03: Gospel of Philip, you know, the the Acts of Paul and Thecla, which unfortunately a lot of people give weight to.
01:33:12: You have the Gospel of Judas and things like this. These are pseudepigraphical works.
01:33:20: They're counterfeits. They're written long after the after the time and they're attributed to other people.
01:33:29: Chris, you still there? Yes. OK, I just I realize
01:33:34: I had a little bit of a monologue there and I didn't hear anything. I'm like, I wonder if I'm fascinated. I lost you earlier.
01:33:40: I just I just wanted to make sure I didn't lose you there. This this statement from Matthew Barrett, I had to ask myself, why did the church fathers say why did the church fathers believe the
01:33:51: New Testament naturally gave birth to bishops, of which we have elaborate records? No, we don't.
01:33:59: No, we don't. This is this is this is what Rome teaches.
01:34:04: And it's a lie. It's a demonstrable lie. And so the fact that Matthew Barrett is now a paedobaptist gives me no joy because I'm scared to death of where this is going to lead.
01:34:16: Right. Because I know the story of Scott Hahn. I know the story of Jerry Manetis and Steve Wood and Robert St.
01:34:26: Genes. I know the story of Josiah Trenum. I know the stories of these guys. So those of our argue this way.
01:34:33: For those of our listeners who don't know those names, those are all Protestant converts to Roman Catholicism who became apologists.
01:34:43: Yeah. Or Eastern Orthodoxy with the last guy. OK. So. Anyway, it's one of the frustrating things for me is
01:35:00: I've watched young men that didn't know anything about the
01:35:08: Reformed faith kind of get swept up in the Young Restless and Reform movement.
01:35:15: And I've tried to share with them that you're not having to reinvent the faith.
01:35:21: We have a wonderful testimony of just how generations who've gone before us, who've wrestled with these same things.
01:35:30: And, you know, my father had an expression that it's paraphrase of the
01:35:37: Proverbs. He said, experience is a hard teacher, but a fool will have no other. If you can learn from others mistakes, it costs a whole lot less than if you make them on your own.
01:35:50: And so I tried to get a lot of young men to learn the lessons of the past, but learn to test everything from God's word.
01:36:04: That's the infallible standard. Well, a lot of these guys, they didn't want to hear the history. And now they're getting swept up in this what
01:36:13: I think is a very naive understanding of history. I don't question.
01:36:25: I'm sure that Matthew Barrett is a brilliant scholar. But when he's championing who the guy
01:36:35: I would argue is possibly one of the worst theologians of the first millennia,
01:36:41: John of Damascus. When he's saying that, you know, the church fathers believe the
01:36:48: New Testament naturally gave birth to bishops, not as he's understanding them.
01:36:56: It's like, haven't you, we've had these debates in the past and people didn't want to listen to them.
01:37:02: Now they've switched sides and they still don't want to hear the arguments. So it's.
01:37:11: I do have some listener questions that I wanted to read. Sure. We have.
01:37:21: Let's see. Winchester in Boulder City, Nevada.
01:37:27: Who said, am I correct in understanding that one of the most serious errors of Protestants who exalt the so -called great tradition is their elevation of creeds and confessions to such a high level that it eclipses sola scriptura and they cartoonishly slander those who they call biblicists.
01:37:55: I would not.
01:38:02: I would moderate the language, but in terms of the gist of it.
01:38:07: Yes, I think that there have been a lot of men who have been quick to dismiss others as biblicist.
01:38:18: Are there people who ignore the history of the church? Yes. But James White is not one of them.
01:38:31: James and I disagree very strongly on some of our readings of history.
01:38:39: But I don't think, you know, but I think he's honestly trying to deal with history and just trying to labeling him a biblicist
01:38:53: I think is a very unfair label. I actually think
01:38:59: I agree with James that it's a bad term for somebody who loves the scripture to use in a derogatory fashion.
01:39:09: Taking the very Bible and using it as an insult in a term like biblicist.
01:39:16: That's why he is actually now proudly calling himself a Reformed biblicist.
01:39:23: Yes, and I sympathize with where he's coming from in that. But James is not someone who thinks that he's reinventing the faith.
01:39:35: He's not someone who ignores how everyone has read the scriptures before.
01:39:42: This is a guy that even where I disagree with him, I think he is legitimately trying to deal with the historic understanding of those scriptures.
01:39:54: And these guys, you know, they throw labels around. And it's just dismissive.
01:40:00: And I see more respect from Mormons than I often see among Reformed Baptists towards one another.
01:40:15: I mean, you know, I've been ministering in Utah for over 27 years.
01:40:23: And, you know, my biggest problem is hardly ever the Mormons. I get a bit of hate from the I get a few people ranting here or there.
01:40:34: But the Mormons are nicer in their hatred than many professing Christians are in their love.
01:40:41: There was a guy on Facebook that responded to this announcement or not this announcement, the announcement of this show, but related things.
01:40:54: He said, I mean, I hate to repeat it, but he said that James White is an unserious and there was some other insulting thing and everyone should ignore him.
01:41:10: And I just quoted the answer to the larger catechism question about what are the duties of the ninth commandment. We're called to love one another.
01:41:23: And one of the lessons that we should learn out of history is to learn to appreciate people with whom we disagree.
01:41:30: I disagree with Athanasius on some things. That gives me pause. But I'm not looking for Athanasius to be divinely inspired.
01:41:44: I take comfort that he understood the
01:41:49: Old Testament canon the way I do, contrary to Rome and Eastern Orthodoxy. I take comfort that he understood the true presence of Christ in the
01:42:00: Lord's Supper like I do and not like Rome or the Eastern Orthodoxy.
01:42:05: If you can even get them to define what they believe on that. Eastern Orthodoxy embraced transubstantiation at the
01:42:14: Council of the
01:42:20: Churches I that I do and not like Rome or Orthodoxy.
01:42:53: I take comfort that he understood the true presence of Christ in Supper like I do and not like Rome or Orthodoxy.
01:43:13: I do and not like Rome or the Eastern Orthodoxy. whom?
01:43:28: By what standard do you define the great tradition? And we have to go to our final break, and you can pick up right where you left off there.
01:43:36: Our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com. If you want to submit a question, we're running out of time, so submit it quickly.
01:43:43: We'll be right back. This is
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01:51:19: mention Iron Sherpa and Zion Radio. And we're now back with Jason Wallace, and we do have a question from Noble in Melrose, Massachusetts.
01:51:31: And Noble says, For the life of me, I cannot understand why Reformed men are exalting
01:51:39: Thomas Aquinas, who had a false gospel, the same very false gospel that the
01:51:45: Council of Trent around 300 years later would make dogma, and the same council 300 years later that would anathematize the
01:51:56: Protestant gospel and those who believe it. Do you have any explanation for this? Yeah, I was just saying this to you before the show,
01:52:04: Jason, that it seems that either you have to say that the gospel is not necessary for salvation, the true gospel, or you are upholding heroes that you believe are in hell.
01:52:18: You can't get around that, can you? No. No, if Aquinas is in heaven, what does that mean for the
01:52:34: Protestant Reformation? Why would people go and be burned at the stake?
01:52:43: I mean, does truth matter? One of the things with the great tradition is,
01:52:58: Rome will insist…I mean, Rome and the East provide moving targets.
01:53:03: They'll claim theirs is the historic faith, and then you show them that not only does
01:53:09: Scripture contradict them, but so does the Church. Well, then they typically try to shift ground and say, well, you're one of 45 ,000 denominations.
01:53:19: They don't know who did that number or how it was calculated. They don't realize that Rome's counted 370 times on that list, and Eastern Orthodoxy's counted another 580 times,
01:53:31: I think it is. The Mormons are counted, I think, 160 -some -odd times, because it's one for every country in which a denomination's present.
01:53:43: It's not the historic faith. It's not the biblical faith. It's a medieval tradition that has grown up and evolved and continues to evolve.
01:53:55: Rome now blesses same -sex couples. That's not the historic faith of Rome.
01:54:05: But how do they justify it? Christ established a church, and that's the only tradition that really matters, and Newman gets to be a doctor.
01:54:18: No flip -flop from that to we're the historic faith again. For Protestants to embrace that is madness.
01:54:29: It's a cheap way out of debate. You hang a label on somebody.
01:54:34: You're just being a biblicist. How about actually engaging what the text says?
01:54:42: I've had the label Calvinist hung on me. It's a label I don't try to hang on myself, but do
01:54:49: I believe in the five points of Calvinism? Of course I do. Why do
01:54:55: I believe it? Because I think there was some special dispensation of the
01:55:01: Spirit on Council of Dort? No, because it's biblical. God has spoken.
01:55:08: That trumps everything. So much of what
01:55:13: I see in Mormonism is simply a repetition of what you see throughout church history, people claiming newer and better revelations, newer and better traditions.
01:55:25: You know, something's been dug out of a hillside somewhere. No, there is a history, and sometimes it's muddy, and sometimes it's messy, but God has spoken, and that's what we have to keep going back to.
01:55:42: Amen. Well, I want to make sure that you let our listeners know about any documentary projects that are in the works and where and how they can watch these documentaries.
01:55:58: Okay, well, all our stuff is on Ancient Paths TV. It's the channel on YouTube.
01:56:05: If you want an easy way to get to it by subject, we've got www .Atheism
01:56:11: .Video, LDS .Video, RomanCatholic .Video, Orthodox .Video, GayChristian .Video,
01:56:19: Koran .Video, that's K -O -R -A -N .Video, and I think we might have another one out there somewhere, but we've also done stuff on some of the
01:56:29: Adventism. We've done stuff on Alcoholics Anonymous, the historic and theological issues with that.
01:56:38: They were claiming they were getting new revelations. Yeah, we did a program on that documentary as well as some of the others that people can look up on IronTroopensIronRadio .com
01:56:51: and type in Jason Wallace, and those will all come up. Yeah, but you can get to our stuff through GospelUtah .org.
01:57:00: It's the church website. Is there a planned documentary on the very thing we were discussing today, the
01:57:06: Not -So -Great Christian? Yeah, Lord willing, Patristic Roots of the
01:57:11: Reformed Faith is coming out in a few weeks, and also working on a new video on the
01:57:21: John Taylor 1886 revelation dealing with Mormonism called
01:57:27: The True and Lying Church. Now, you as a member of the
01:57:33: Orthodox Presbyterian denomination has this great tradition—cancer—begin to gnaw away at your denomination in any way?
01:57:45: I hear bits and pieces. Other than our sister church, This Without a
01:57:50: Pastor, which I preach at every Sunday, I think we're nearly 500 miles from the closest church in our presbytery, so I don't hear a whole lot of what's going on elsewhere.
01:58:02: I know that others have been championing this, especially against Cornelius Ventile and presuppositional apologetics, but how widespread that is,
01:58:19: I don't know. Well, I am so glad that you helped to shed some further light on this issue, and I just hope that our
01:58:30: Lord has mercy on us Reformed folk and brings this trend to a halt, and brings those supporting and promoting this stuff to repentance.
01:58:47: I am a former Roman Catholic, as you know, and this kind of stuff troubles me greatly.
01:58:54: I mean, former Roman Catholics are either usually too soft on the heresies of Rome, largely due to sentimentalism and not wanting to offend spouses and parents and family members, and so on, but then you also have folks like me who remember how deceived we were by the
01:59:21: Catholic Church, and I just hate seeing Reformed churches swallowing this stuff and paving the way for people to return to it like a dog returns to its own vomit, and I know that some people will think
01:59:35: I'm harsh in that language. I don't believe I am. But thank you,
01:59:41: Jason, for always doing such a wonderful job on Iron Trap and Zion Radio, and once again, the website for Christ Presbyterian Church of Magna, Utah is gospelutah .org.
01:59:54: And I want to thank everybody who listened. I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater