July 1, 2003

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The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.
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Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.
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This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll free across the
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United States. It's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is
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James White. Well good morning and welcome to The Dividing Line. My name is
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James White. We are live here on a Tuesday morning. I didn't think I was going to be here, but things worked out where I was able to, well, try to get some, you know, that stuff you got to do with bureaucrats done and unfortunately didn't get it done.
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But hey, I'm here anyways and you may or may not like that, you may or may not appreciate that.
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But then again, if you're listening, you've done so voluntarily to begin with, therefore you probably,
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I guess, are happy that we are here live today. For some reason, some of you like to have it live and not like it to be memorex.
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So we are here at 877 -753 -3341, 877 -753 -3341.
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No, we have not taken the time to look at the keypad to find out if we could spell anything with that. I imagine you probably could come up with something and it might be easy to remember.
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3 -3 -4, well, see, one messes everything up because it doesn't have any letters, so that messes the whole thing up right off.
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Or we could just, I guess you have one at the end, it means you're number one or something. I don't know. We'll have to glockenspiel, spells glockenspiel.
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Oh, okay. All right. Well anyway, sort of Open Phones Day, I have one thing to discuss because, like I said,
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I didn't think I was going to be here. And we'll take your phone calls if you'd like to participate in the program today at 877 -753 -3341.
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I got an email, well, I get lots of emails. I mentioned the email last week. We invited, was it a week ago today,
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I think it was a week ago today, we invited a gentleman to join us who says I'm a liar and that he could refute
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Calvinism but it would be too simple to do so, it's too simplistic and all that kind of stuff. And we, you know, and so that email has, email back and forth escalated to the point where it got really silly and started sounding very
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Ruckman -esque because you, very frequently,
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I have this happen all the time, when King James Only advocates get frustrated and angry, they start calling me
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Jimmy. Don't call me that, I don't like it, it's disrespectful and so since they know that, then they start calling you
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Jimmy or Buddy or something like that and that happened and it's like, well, I sort of expected that type of thing to happen.
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But I got an email and I don't exactly know what, exactly what prompted it or anything like that, but I got an email and someone was basically saying, why won't you deal with individuals such as these?
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And he cited a refutation of Lee Strobel's The Case for Christ.
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Well, I'm one of the few people on the planet that hasn't bothered to read it. I haven't bothered to read it because it comes from an apologetic perspective that I would not embrace to begin with.
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It is purely evidential in its orientation, it is based upon an
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Arminian understanding of the Gospel and the presentation of the Gospel and when it comes to dealing with issues like that,
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I think you must deal with the issue of worldviews and presuppositions and as such,
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I'm like, well, why should I read it because I'm really not, that's not my thing and so, why should
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I review something like that when it's really, I would probably have to join with it in refuting certain elements of that particular perspective.
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Why should I do that? But then another one was mentioned and I had a vague recollection somewhere in the back of my mind of having heard about this book and it probably, intriguingly enough, was from listening to Lee Strobel on the
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Bible Answer Man broadcast at one point because I guess in one of his books, he talks about Charles Templeton and so this email said, why don't you review something like,
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Farewell to God, My Reasons for Rejecting the Christian Faith by Charles Templeton and that sounded, you know, that struck a nerve in the sense that well, you know, this would be somewhat more representational of your standard argumentation that people would be encountering on the bus, on the train, on the plane, wherever it might be and so we jumped online and I have it sitting here and it was interesting in reading the reviews on the website where I ordered it from, even the reviewers who were friendly toward it said, now, be aware of the fact that Templeton does not interact with any of the apologetic responses that have already been offered to most of his arguments and that immediately made me go, great, that's good, but I think it may be useful to review some of these issues just in the sense of asking the question, here was an individual who was very active in religious things, very active in religious activities, went to seminary for many years, what happened, what is the process here, what can we learn from it and given some of the things
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I've already read in looking through this book, I think maybe we might be able to come up with some interesting insights because of that.
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However, we do have one call that has come in and I would invite your other calls too, it's not like I have an entire thesis to develop in regards to Templeton's book, just want to look at a few elements of it, so definitely want to invite your participation at 877 -753 -3341.
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So, let's go ahead and take our first phone call and talk to Harry back in a state that I lived in for six years.
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I moved out just in time to avoid glowing from Three Mile Island and lived in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, right outside of Harrisburg, so let's talk to Harry.
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Harry, who is not in Harrisburg, but Harry in Pennsylvania. Hello, Harry. Hi, how are you,
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James? Doing pretty good. Oh, good. Well, I have a question. I've been listening to a few of your debates with Father Pacwa and James Madrid, I think it was, and I'm...
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Patrick Madrid? Patrick Madrid, that's right, and I am presently engaging in a debate with a man that's read all the
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Owen stuff and the Calvin stuff and Luther stuff and he's a converted Roman Catholic and he's a pretty bright guy, he's a surgeon and so...
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Let me back you up just a second, he's a converted Roman Catholic? Yeah, converted from what he calls
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Protestantism. Okay, so he has converted to Catholicism. Yeah, to Catholicism. And so anyway, we're going to sit down and sort of debate this thing.
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I didn't realize how in -depth a lot of this stuff was, and I thank God for all the stuff that you've written.
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I'm reading Sola Scriptura, the book you co -authored, and the letters and some of your debates, and I guess one of the questions that I had...
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Harry, let me ask you really quickly. Have you seen the article on our website entitled
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Dialogue on Sola Scriptura? It's on the Roman Catholic page?
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Yeah. Okay, alright. I've read it two or three times now. Okay, I just want to make sure... It helps me to answer your question if I know what you've had a chance to look at.
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Oh, okay, good. Well, one of my questions is, and this was one of the things that were brought up as far as when was the canon completed for Roman Catholicism, and I had always thought it was the
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Council of Trent, 1546, was when they finally formulated the apocryphal books and putting them in.
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They had said, though, that there were other councils, and in your letter you said that they were provincial councils, and I guess my question is, what is a provincial council?
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Is that some kind of a sub -council to a Vatican council, and why would that not be binding?
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Or if I did mention, well, they were only provincial, what would I actually be saying? Okay, let me give you a little background so that everyone listening can sort of follow along.
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The question has to do, when did Rome dogmatically, and see, it's important to recognize the difference between talking about something that has been dogmatically defined, that is, de fide, by faith, it is the highest level of certainty and doctrinal authority within the
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Roman Catholic system is if it has been dogmatically defined by the church. Now, it's important to remember, a pope can teach something as doctrine, or the church can even teach something as doctrine, though some would say only for a limited period of time, without it being dogmatically required to believe that.
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For example, popes have taught for quite some time that Mary is co -redemptrix, co -mediatrix with Christ, but that has not been dogmatically defined.
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And so there's a difference between those two terms. And so what we're talking about is, when did
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Rome dogmatically define the canon? And the reason this comes up in discussions on Sola Scriptura is, many
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Roman Catholics will argue that without that dogmatic certainty concerning the nature of the canon, you cannot have any scripture at all.
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If you do not absolutely have that certainty that comes from dogma that this is the canon, the canon of scripture, then scripture cannot function whatsoever, and that of course subjects scripture then to the higher authority of the church, and results in the denial of Sola Scriptura, etc.
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etc. So, the assertion that I have made, that was mentioned just a few moments ago, is certainly recognized by the
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Catholic Encyclopedia and by most Roman Catholics themselves, that the first dogmatic definition of the canon of the scriptures the
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Roman Catholic Church uses today, came in April of 1546. Now, there were previous councils, specifically what we normally hear is that of Carthage and Hippo at the end of the 4th century.
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Now, Carthage and Hippo had the Old Testament canon that the
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Council of Trent used, with one exception, and this is what a lot of folks are not aware of, there is one difference.
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They actually defined a book differently back then than they do today, and the people at Trent, I just don't think were aware of that particular fact, and as a result there is actually a difference there that most
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Roman Catholics are completely unfamiliar with, and this is discussed rather fully by Bill Webster in Volume 2 of the
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Holy Scripture series, the three volume set that is available at ALMN .org. But the difference between a provincial council and an ecumenical council, and ecumenical meaning worldwide, which of course after a certain number of centuries is somewhat of a misnomer in the sense that especially after the division between East and West, Rome continued to talk about having ecumenical councils, but in reality they didn't have ecumenical councils, because there was a division in the church, but since they said the
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East had left the church, then it didn't really matter any longer. And so those councils in Carthage and Hippo were called provincial because they only had a province -wide or a limited scope as to the authority that they exercised.
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In fact, Carthage and Hippo were pretty much under the control of Augustine, and most people who've studied up on the history of canon discussions know that Augustine and Jerome had a tremendous amount of disagreement between themselves on the issue of the extent of the canon, especially specifically the apocryphal books.
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In fact, I discussed this, I'm not sure if you're aware of this, back in March here on the dividing line, we were going to have a
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Roman Catholic join us and do a debate on the apocryphal, but he wasn't able to make it, and so I just did an entire program on nothing but the issue of the canon and the apocryphal, and I went through various early church fathers that believe this, that, and the other thing, and so you might find that to be somewhat...
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Do you know which one that would be specifically? I think I'd have to get onto straightgate .com
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and look at the listing there, but I think it was either the 13th or the 20th of March, and I'm going off the top of my head there,
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I don't even have my... Well, there's my palm pilot. I think it was a Thursday evening, and so let me go back here,
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March... Yeah, look at that, the 13th or the 20th of March, and I discussed the issue of the apocrypha, and if you just listen to the first few minutes of the real audio file, you'll hear me talking about, well, we're supposed to have had a debate tonight, but it didn't work out, etc.,
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etc., and that'll let you know you've got the right one. And so there's a lot of information on that particular subject that we presented there, but those provincial councils, then, one of the problems that immediately comes up in that particular situation is that later, clear church leaders, for example,
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Gregory, the Bishop of Rome, who was Bishop of Rome 100 years later, rejected the apocryphal books as being canon.
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So if Hippo and Carthage were meant to be binding upon the entire church, here you have one of the greatest bishops of Rome in that time period who seemingly is not aware of this fact.
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Obviously, that indicates that they were not, those councils were not looked upon as having that kind of binding authority in the time period in which they existed.
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You have to anachronistically read that authority back into them. Now, there was a council, and I don't have this stuff in front of me, so I may have mentioned it at some point.
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There were later ecumenical councils that cited earlier non -ecumenical councils, and some might argue, well, see, if you cite that, then that turns it into something that is binding, and this is a number of hundreds of years down the road.
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But the whole discussion needs to go back to, if there had been a dogmatic binding definition of the canon prior to April of 1546, then what was the
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Council of Trent doing? Why were they so concerned about this? And why is it that, for example, you have in the two really good examples of this, and again,
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I read these toward the end of the program, but let me just mention them quickly. Two good examples of this is, after the writing of the 97
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Theses by Luther, 95 Theses, 97, Windows 98,
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Windows 2000, we've got too many numbers going on here. After, literally, the functional beginning of the
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Reformation, you still have individuals highly placed in the Roman Catholic Church who do not accept the apocryphal books as being
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Scripture. In fact, I would argue that from the medieval period forward, the more scholarly individuals did not accept them, and the less scholarly did.
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And you have, for example, Cardinal Cajetan, who interviewed Luther just a few years later in his introduction to the
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Old Testament, very clearly talking about using Jerome's canon and the correction of Augustine, and so on and so forth.
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And then what I found really interesting is that, for those who are interested in textual critical issues, one of the, yeah, we're adding some apocryphal theses to the 95, now it's up to 97, and the two have to do with Reformed Baptists, by the way, and it's just a little joke there.
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You have, Erasmus is the first one to publish, to print and to publish, a
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Greek New Testament. He was not the first to print a Greek New Testament. Cardinal Jimenez had already produced what's called the
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Completentian Polyglot. And that particular work, in its introduction, it was a tremendous work of scholarship, very finely made, but in its introduction, which was addressed to the
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Pope, you have the discussion of the canon and the rejection of the deuterocanonical books.
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And what was this man's name? This is Cardinal Jimenez, X -I -M -E -N -E -S, and this would be in...
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I'm sorry? X -I -M -E -N -E -S, Jimenez. Jimenez, okay. And that's called the
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Completentian Polyglot. I'll let you spell that one for yourself. The Completentian Polyglot.
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And it was actually the first published text of the Greek New Testament, not the first...
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I'm sorry, first printed, not the first published. Because back then, before you could publish something, you had to get papal approval.
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And it was sort of like, you know, today I was having to try to deal with the motor vehicle department. It's a long process, you know?
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And it was an even longer process back then. So there was division?
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You would say some, maybe not major division, but there was some diversity of opinion as far as what the actual canon was until it was dogmatically defined in 1546.
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Yes, there were... John Costin has listed 52 major ecclesiastical writers up until the time of the
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Reformation who rejected the Apocryphal Books as being canon scripture. There's no question about this. Where do you get this information,
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James? I mean, this is tremendous stuff. Well, it's generally available.
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For example, like I said, Bill Webster has a very full discussion of this in Volume 2 of the
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Holy Scripture set. But if you're going to be dialoguing with an individual who is well -read in Roman Catholic apologetics materials,
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I could not more strongly recommend to you adding to your library the entire three -volume set of Holy Scripture by David King and Bill Webster.
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Because most people have noticed that when we have debates, lots of it comes right back down to the issue of authority.
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And there is no question about that. And so that is such a fundamental issue in apologetics to Roman Catholics that you really have to avail yourself of that.
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Now, that information is also available in other sources, but not as easily...
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In other words, those sources aren't specifically apologetic. They're just discussing the historical stuff. And so you sort of have to dig to find it.
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And a lot of those books are not exactly what you pick up at your local Christian bookstore. They're more scholarly that you pick up at a library or something along those lines, works that deal with the issue of the canon, the history of the medieval period, biblical interpretation of the medieval period, etc.,
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etc. So the information is definitely out there. It's just a matter of...
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I mean, if you really want to get into the historical stuff, there is a book by Roger Beckwith, which one of the folks in our channel, who is in channel right now,
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E. Nielsen, has actually paid to have reprinted once, and I heard he was possibly looking at doing it again, called
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The Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church by Roger Beckwith. It was from 1985. Very scholarly work.
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That's sometimes what you have to do to track down really good stuff. But it is out there.
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And once you've got the information, then you keep it. I just want to ask one more quick question, and you don't have to answer it if it's inappropriate.
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Do you believe some of these guys are indeed born of God's Spirit? What do you mean by some of these guys?
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Some of these guys on the Roman side, the scholars that you're debating that seem to at least speak the language of, well, we're saved by grace, and then the works we're actually doing is grace energized.
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It's energized by God. Well, people ask me to make specific comments on specific individuals, and obviously
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I see a vast difference between a former Protestant, especially a former well -read, trained
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Protestant over against an ignorant Protestant, and a person who has always been within the
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Roman Catholic system. I do not believe that the Roman Gospel can save, and I'm certain that the
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Judaizers spoke about grace and faith and talked good talk as well, but the
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Apostle Paul said that they were perverting the Gospel and that they did not have eternal life.
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And so when I hear these folks talking about grace,
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I always hear, as you pointed out, then eventually when you start saying, okay, if that's what you really believe, then let's talk about indulgences.
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Let's talk about purgatory. Let's talk about the sacrifice of Christ in the mass. And all the way down the line, they'll say, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
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And it ends up completely redefining what grace was meant to, biblically, what it's to mean.
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So I simply look at that kind of a situation, and I go, well,
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I don't believe that those individuals have heard the Gospel, and therefore, as far as I can tell by just simply examining the system that they embrace, it's not the
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Gospel. Now, have they heard the Gospel someplace or believing something other than what they're professing?
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I don't know. That's a heart issue. That is something that I simply cannot address in that way, but I can just simply look at the message and the teaching itself and go, that's not the
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Gospel. It doesn't bring eternal life. Okay. All right? Thank you. I'm sorry if that was a... Oh, no, not at all. Just because as I'm sitting with these guys and wrestling with it, they seem to have eternal life, and it's a tough thing.
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I know no man knows the heart of a man, but the spirit of man is in him. And I was just wondering...
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Well, you know, one thing that helps with that, because I know exactly what you're talking about. I know exactly what you're referring to, and I understand the desire to hope for the best in someone.
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I truly, truly do. However, at the same time, I've dialogued with people from so many different backgrounds and so many different beliefs.
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That has helped me some. In other words, after a while, when you sit down and you have dinner with a
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Mormon, and this individual is very moral. They never use foul language.
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You have much in common as to your dislike of the degradation of our society and all the rest of that stuff.
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And they speak of Christ, and they speak of self -sacrifice, and all the rest of this stuff.
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And yet, you also know in your mind, this person believes that God was once a man who lived on another planet and progressed the status of godhood, and Jesus is the spirit brother of Lucifer.
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And this person really believes that they themselves can become a god. Then it helps you to go, Wow, I can be very easily misled by outward appearances.
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I need to have an unchanging standard of truth. And that unchanging standard of truth is what defines for me what the gospel is.
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And so once you've done that with the Mormons and the Jehovah's Witnesses and some Muslims and some Roman Catholics, you start getting an idea that, you know, if there's not an objective standard and revelation here,
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I'm in big, big trouble. Because there's no way of knowing just by looking at someone from the outside.
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Sure. Well, thank you. Thank you very much. I just wanted to say I deeply appreciate your ministry and your
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MP3s. I've got a little MP3 player. I listen to the debates all the time. Sometimes you guys are talking about some lofty stuff, and I'm grasping.
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But the second or third time around, I'm beginning to get it. Well, great. Excellent. It's certainly been a great help. Well, thank you very much.
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It's very encouraging. Thank you very much. God bless. Bye -bye. 877 -753 -3341.
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Appreciate getting phone calls like that. If you appreciate the MP3 list, you should appreciate the man behind the scenes who makes it all happen, and especially when
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I see him hopping servers like someone's shooting at his feet, you know, just bing, bing, bing, bing, and I'm just like, okay.
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It's funny. But we do very much appreciate those kind words of encouragement.
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We need to hear them every once in a while, I must admit, because sometimes you do wonder if you've fallen off the edge of the planet or something along those lines, and it's good to hear that kind of thing.
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So 877 -753 -3341. I don't know if anyone has noticed this, but the whole time that I have been talking and the whole time
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I have been speaking with folks and answering Harry's thing, I kicked out how many people?
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About six? There goes number seven. At least number seven.
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We have a bunch of lamers trying to get into our channel, and I think they're using this backdoor stuff, whatever it is.
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And without skipping a beat, I have found a way to set things up that it's a click, click, gone.
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So we have been defending the channel at the very same time.
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Now, I did get a note, and I should acknowledge this. I got a note. Someone was complaining that I'm too easily distracted by the people in the channel.
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And if you're not listening and you're not in the channel, then that somehow bothers you. Well, I'm sorry, but that's how we get a lot of the interaction that we get, and you should visit anyways.
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And that's just the way that this... I also say, ah, too much, which I know is true.
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But you ought to try that. You ought to try doing a webcast where all you're looking at is a computer screen and you don't even have a window someplace.
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It's a little more tricky than you might think it is. So that's just sort of the way things are, and I'm sorry if that doesn't fit your particular perspective, but that's the way things are.
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I do the best that I can do in trying to address the issue.
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What's a lamer? Oh, that's true. Some folks might not know what a lamer is. These are folks that are coming in, and they're trying to spread viruses by IRC, and they try to flood the channel, and, you know, there goes another one.
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Bing, boom, goodbye. And they're really easy to recognize because they never spell their names out, which is why
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I know they're not listening to me right now. They never spell their names out. It's just a bunch of random letters.
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And so as soon as they come in, my cursor is sitting right where their name comes up into the screen, and then if they right -click, slide it up, bing, they're gone.
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So, yeah, they're attempting to overload the server and crash it and stuff like that. So Starlink IRC is under attack at the moment by some lamers over in Eastern Europe someplace,
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I guess is where they are. I don't know. A bunch of numeric IPs are coming up. We almost banned all of Canada this morning.
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Sorry about that, Canada. So we're fighting off the pagans.
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And anyways, we're going to go ahead and take our break while I just nailed one.
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NVR, DBBKKW. That's really good. That's really stealthy. We'll be right back right after this. More than any time in the past,
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Roman Catholics and evangelicals are working together. They are standing shoulder to shoulder against social evils.
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They are joining across denominational boundaries in renewal movements. And many evangelicals are finding the history, tradition, and grandeur of the
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Roman Catholic Church appealing. This newfound rapport has caused many evangelical leaders and lay people to question the age -old disagreements that have divided
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Protestants and Catholics. Aren't we all saying the same thing in a different language? James White's book,
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The Roman Catholic Controversy, is an absorbing look at current views of tradition in scripture, the papacy, the mass, purgatorian indulgences, and Marian doctrine.
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James White points out the crucial differences that remain regarding the Christian life and the heart of the gospel itself that cannot be ignored.
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Order your copy of The Roman Catholic Controversy by going to our website at aomin .org.
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This portion of the dividing line has been made possible by the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.
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The Apostle Paul spoke of the importance of solemnly testifying of the gospel of the grace of God. The proclamation of God's truth is the most important element of his worship in his church.
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The elders and people of the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church invite you to worship with them this coming Lord's Day.
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The morning Bible study begins at 9 .30 a .m. and the worship service is at 10 .45.
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Evening services are at 6 .30 p .m. on Sunday and the Wednesday night prayer meeting is at 7.
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The Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church is located at 3805 North 12th Street in Phoenix.
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You can call for further information at 602 -26 -GRACE. If you're unable to attend, you can still participate with your computer and real audio at prbc .org
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where the ministry extends around the world through the archives of sermons and Bible study lessons available 24 hours a day.
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Millions of petitioners from around the world are imploring Pope John Paul II to recognize the Virgin Mary as co -redeemer with Christ, elevating the topic of Roman Catholic views of Mary to national headlines and widespread discussion.
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In his book, Mary, Another Redeemer, James White sidesteps hostile rhetoric and cites directly from Roman Catholic sources to explore this volatile topic.
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He traces how Mary of the Bible, esteemed mother of the Lord, obedient servant and chosen vessel of God, has become the immaculately conceived, bodily assumed queen of heaven, viewed as co -mediator with Christ and now recognized as co -redeemer by many in the
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Roman Catholic Church. Mary, Another Redeemer is fresh insight into the woman the
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Bible calls blessed among women and an invitation to single -minded devotion to God's truth.
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You can order your copy of James White's book, Mary, Another Redeemer, at aomin .org.
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What is Dr. Norman Geisler warning the Christian community about in his book, Chosen but Free, A New Cult, Secularism, False Prophecy Scenarios?
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No, Dr. Geisler is sounding the alarm about a system of beliefs commonly called Calvinism. He insists that this belief system is theologically inconsistent, philosophically insufficient, and morally repugnant.
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In his book, The Potter's Freedom, James White replies to Dr. Geisler, but The Potter's Freedom is much more than just a reply.
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It is a defense of the very principles upon which the Protestant Reformation was founded. Indeed, it is a defense of the very gospel itself.
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In a style that both scholars and laymen alike can appreciate, James White masterfully counters the evidence against so -called extreme
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Calvinism, defines what the Reformed faith actually is, and concludes that the gospel preached by the
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Reformers is the very one taught in the pages of Scripture. The Potter's Freedom, a defense of the
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Reformation and a rebuttal to Norman Geisler's Chosen but Free. You'll find it in the Reformed Theology section of our bookstore at aomen .org.
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I love when I hear this sound from the other side of the wall.
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Whoa! What happened? Go! We simply take webcasting to another level here.
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It wasn't supposed to do that. Well, you know,
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Windows 98 at times just does its own thing. You know what I mean? That's just how it works.
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877 -753 -3341. 877 -753 -3341.
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Stop that! Quit sending me funny things in the channel. That's not fair. So, while we are waiting for the flood of phone calls to come in,
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I don't see anything in the magical little window from the other side of the room that tells me that anyone has taken my invitation to call in.
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Nothing. That's sort of how it works. I had mentioned at the beginning of the program
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I had obtained... Who published this? McClelland and Stewart, the Canadian publishers.
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Ah, well, there you go. That tells you something right there. Charles Templeton's book,
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Farewell to God. And it was interesting reading what's called a personal word.
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And it was a description of Mr. Templeton's, I guess what we would have to describe as religious experience.
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He describes his activities. He describes his popularity.
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He describes the media coverage of what he did. His advancement in the cause, shall we say.
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Part and parcel of the description is how very early on there was a series of doubts in his mind.
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How for a large portion of the years in which he was a public figure, preaching and teaching, that he, in essence, doubted the reality of the
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Christian faith. That he had these doubts before he went to seminary and that they continued with him.
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And eventually he simply had to, in fact, after debating, as he reported it, the head of the debating club at a university, in a sort of personal debate, not a real big public debate, but in a personal debate, coming to the conclusion he could no longer believe any of this, even though he himself was told that he had won the debate.
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He was told by the individual that he had won and that caused him a problem because of the fact that it, in essence, made him feel that he may be leading people astray.
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And so he left the faith, left the ministry, went into such things as writing and journalism and things like that in Canada.
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What I found fascinating is, even though it is self -evident that at times he is able to enunciate the proper answers quite well.
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He's able to define the doctrine of the Trinity, for example, correctly. In defining the doctrine of the
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Trinity correctly, he then lodges a complaint or an allegation of contradiction against it that is irrelevant if he has understood what he was defining in the previous sentence, in essence.
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And that really, to me, feeds into what I read in the introduction to the book.
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And that is, I read nothing about anything that would be relevant to true conversion.
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Outward activity in the sense of youth rallies and busyness is not evidence of salvation.
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It is not evidence of conversion. In all that he writes concerning, you know, he talks about how he would pray or he would preach or he'd be involved, he'd be doing, doing, doing, doing.
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But the things that I see in Scripture in regards to the putting to death the deeds of the flesh, the passionate love of Christ that is born in the heart of the redeemed individual that recognizes the depth of his own sin, recognizes what repentance truly is, recognizes what justification is,
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I see none of that. Now, maybe that's because there's been so much time that it passed away, but that doesn't make any sense to me.
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In the sense that maybe, well, he just doesn't want to talk about those things. No, that doesn't make any sense to me at all.
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I see no evidence whatsoever that this man understood any of those things.
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In fact, I would assume that he would simply say, well, look, it's nothing more than, you know, the terminology that Christians use to try to cover over their doubts and their fears and their questions and things like that.
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I see nothing in his description of his ministry that I could not see, for example, in the description of a person's life who grew up in the
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LDS church and is now an LDS leader. They will talk about the same type of prayers.
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They will talk about the same type of activity, the missionary work, the self -sacrifice that is involved in growing, in his case, growing small churches into larger churches and things like that.
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There's no difference there. Outward activity does not necessarily come from a changed inward person.
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And so when someone looks at something like this, what he says will definitely resonate with the very person who, like him, has a false faith, has a said faith,
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I claim to believe it, rather than a faith that is flowing from a changed heart, a changed mind.
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There's no question about that in what I'm seeing in this book. And that would then explain why the answers that have been provided to these objections in so many works, and even though when he went to seminary, he wouldn't exactly be going to a super conservative seminary, but back in the 40s and 50s it would still be more conservative than it is now, these answers were already available.
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They were already something that he could have grasped onto if it was just simply a matter of having honest questions as to how to answer particular objections to the faith.
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But as I read through the first beginnings of his apologetic against Christianity, I'm simply shocked at the simplicity, the simplistic nature, the surface -level nature of the argumentation that is being presented.
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I mean, to him, the fact that there are thousands of gods in men's religions means that the
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Christians are absolutely audacious to think theirs is the only true god. In fact, let me see here.
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Yeah, right here. Christians are a small, this is page 27, Christians are a small minority in the world, approximately four of every five people on the face of the earth believe in gods other than the
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Christian god. The more than five billion people who live on earth revere or worship more than 300 gods.
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If one includes the animist or tribal religions, that number rises to more than 3 ,000. Are we to believe that only
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Christians are right? Well, let's just stop for a moment, just on a logical basis here.
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How is that an argument? How is it an argument? I mean, at one point in time, the vast majority of people, even
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Christians, believed the earth was flat. And only a small minority of people believed that it wasn't.
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So, is that an argument? It's not a logical argument, if it is one. Christians need to remember that their beliefs came to them from the
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Jews. They inherited their concept of God from Israel and expanded it to include the worship of Jesus of Nazareth as God, a practice most
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Jews regard as blasphemy. Well, we could discuss the Old Testament prophecies there if we needed to. In New Testament times, the
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Jews were a relatively small group of Semitic people living mostly in a forbidding land at the eastern end of the
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Mediterranean. It was their belief that their God was the only true God and that the gods worshipped by their neighbors were all false.
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That's called monotheism. Christians, having superimposed on Judaism the Christian faith, have the temerity to insist that there is only one
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God, theirs, and that the gods of every other people on earth are spurious. Well, of course, what's underneath that kind of reasoning?
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Well, that God could not reveal his truth, and that's already been stated. He's already stated that as an agnostic, he does not believe that we have sufficient evidence to know about God's existence.
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In other words, what's the primary assumption here? God has not spoken. God has not revealed anything concerning himself.
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The Apostle Paul stated bluntly in a letter he wrote to the Christian community at Ephesus, there is no other name under heaven given among men by which you may be saved, for there is salvation no other.
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Now, you may notice that someone just totally blew that one out of the water. That's actually from Acts, and not from Paul's writing to the
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Ephesians. But anyway, then after this miscitation, we have such insufferable presumption.
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And consider the implications. Paul is asserting that anyone in the world who does not worship his
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God is damned forever. But let common sense rule for a moment. Is it reasonable to believe that if the creator of all the earth and the father of all mankind wanted to reveal himself and his will to the men and women of the world, he would do so only to a tiny group of Mediterranean people leaving the remainder of the world in ignorance?
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Now, again, should not such a well -trained individual by his own claim know the answer to that question?
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Should not, and if he does know the answer to that question, could it not then be argued far more effectively than making this kind of a presentation?
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I mean, this sounds like he's talking to himself, not to any of us who understand what these issues are and have thought through these issues.
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It makes one wonder why such an individual writes what they write. And if it isn't simply to salve a conscience, and indeed to encourage others in unbelief, rather than to actually make a serious challenge.
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877 -753 -3341 is the phone number that Mike in New Jersey has called.
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So let's go ahead and speak with him concerning Mormonism and the text of scripture.
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How are you, sir? I'm doing well. How are you? Doing all right. All right. I was surfing around on the web just now.
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I'm sorry. Yeah. You're in channel, I'm guessing, right? I've been busily kicking lamers out right and left.
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Okay. I've posted the URL in there. Uh -huh. It was just recently posted on the
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FAIR site. And if you scroll down into... Well, on the scroll bar, it's the middle of the article, but it's actually towards the end of it, just because of the massive footnoting that these guys do.
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Which is almost all references to themselves. Yeah. The body of the article is essentially just quoting 2nd century citations that show a possibility of corruption, and then he just assumes
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Mormonism is true from there. But there's a quote, anyway, under the heading Manuscript Evidence, which says that some modern individuals, like the 2nd century
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Trifo, deny the change in scripture by making statements like we have today, over 25 ,000 handwritten manuscripts in the
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New Testament alone, and over 5 ,000 of these are written in Greek, the original language of the New Testament, which is a quote from you.
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Uh -huh. He goes on to quote Ankerberg and Weldon, and then says, with all due respect, due to these three individuals who appear to have four mail -order doctorates between them,
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I would like to suggest that it is they who are in ignorance of the history of the canon. Wow! So, uh...
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Very interesting. Well, you know, it's interesting. That statement, of course, is made not only in my works, but also in the works of F .F.
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Bruce and others. John Gee has written to me before. He is an Egyptologist.
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That's his area of specialty. I'm not sure what he's doing in an area that isn't his specialty at all. I don't know that he's ever written anything that's been used as a textbook in this area, nor do
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I know that he's ever taught in this area either, but be that as it may, he seems to be confusing, on a very basic level, the difference between a manuscript and the issues relevant to manuscripts and the issue of the canon.
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That's very common amongst your average missionaries in the field who are 19 or 20 years old, but I would think that John Gee, who has written to me in the past, he's been very, how would
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I put it, art -sippo -ish. He's a very disagreeable individual, very arrogant and condescending, as you can see even in this kind of context.
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Maybe I need to send him the two books that I wrote in my doctoral work, that might have something to do with demonstrating mail order about that.
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But I'm glad you found this. I'll take time to take a look at it, and maybe we'll do a program on it.
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He points out, the supposed assemblage of 5 ,000 Greek biblical manuscripts includes the entire
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Bible. No, that would be the New Testament, not including the Septuagint manuscripts. Septuagint manuscripts form a different tradition.
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And most of these manuscripts are late cursive manuscripts. Well, that's quite true. If we consider only those
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New Testament, we have about 341 unsealed manuscripts, which are generally earlier than the cursive manuscripts.
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Well, again, basic level stuff there, yeah. Of these, about 10 % date before the time of Constantine, and only one dates to the second century.
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Well, you can argue that case in regards to P66, P75, P52, some of the
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Qumran stuff, things like that. He mentions P52. It's about the size of a postage stamp.
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Actually, it's much larger than a postage stamp. But yes, it's written on both sides, and it's identifiable as coming from John chapter 18, and so on and so forth.
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He mentions a little bit about Thayde's discussion there. 99 .7 % of Greek unsealed
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New Testament manuscripts come after the time period when accusations of textual corruption are rampant. That shows a gross ignorance of the means of the passing on of the manuscript tradition, as if somehow you could make massive changes in this already massively existing body of manuscripts and not leave evidence of it.
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Again, this is so consistent with the
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LDS scholars at Farms whose specialty is not in this area, and yet they will act as if it is, and throw stuff like this out, and Mormons will believe it because, well, it's
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John Dee. He's a doctor. He must be right. If we include the cursive manuscripts as well, the percentage of second century manuscripts will become even smaller.
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How relevant is that? It isn't relevant at all to anyone who works seriously in the field. But further consider that only ten complete words in the
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New Testament are attested in manuscript form during the time of textual corruption, and not a single one is attested before that time.
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That just simply isn't the case. Not only does that beg the question of whether P52 is the only particular manuscript that we have that is available to us as far as that goes, which
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I do not believe is the case, but beyond that it does not even begin to explain the consistency of the papyri manuscripts that are available, such as P66, P75, P52, that date from around the year 200.
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If you have all this massive corruption going on at this particular point in time, which he seemingly is alleging, then you could not possibly have the consistency of manuscripts from a broad range of places all of a sudden coming into existence in the year 200.
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It just doesn't make any sense whatsoever. But further consider that if we assemble all the manuscripts from the 2nd and 3rd centuries, and just note those chapters where even a part of a verse is attested, we find that entire books are missing, including 1st, 2nd
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Timothy, 1st, 2nd Peter, 2nd, 3rd John Jude. That, again, is completely untrue. We have
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P66, which is from, not P66, P...
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I'd have to open up my Greek New Testament, specific one for the Pauline Corpus, which would include those particular works in 1st, 2nd
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Timothy, 1st, 2nd Peter, and Jude are in P52, which is 225 at the latest.
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So, I don't know where he's getting his information, but he's not doing a real good job of dealing with it.
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And obviously, to anyone who studies this particular field, this is just a very amateurish attack on the validity of Scripture.
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So, I'm glad you ran across this. It would be something well worth taking a look at and demonstrating to be in error, and maybe even taking the time to...
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Oh, that's interesting. He's not even citing from the Roman Catholic controversy.
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That's letters to a Mormon elder. He's not even dealing with the
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King James Only controversy. And he's probably never even looked at it. I would imagine that these folks never do.
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So, I have to address that particular issue. I think I'll add it here to the favorites column, and we'll take a look at possibly demonstrating something more about Mormon scholarship as it seeks to undermine the authority of Scripture at a future point.
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So, thanks for pointing that out. All right. Thank you. Okay, man. Thanks. Bye. All right. Yeah, you know that you're not exactly doing too well when you have to include cheap little ad hominem shots like that in the midst of your discussion, and you're not even citing your opponent's most central work on the subject because you've never taken the time to even look at it.
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Well, that's what I'm pretty accustomed to from the folks from FARMS. That's their modus operandi, and nothing too new about that.
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So, hopefully get a chance to take a look at that. It's sad because the only people who are really impacted by that kind of writing are the people who want to continue to believe a lie, or the people who have started to hear the truth and someone wants to keep them from hearing the truth.
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That's the kind of person who is impacted by that kind of rhetoric on the part of John Gee.
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And, you know, if you took it out of the context of finding it on a
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LDS website, you probably would not be able to tell the difference between the argumentation and the unfair argumentation, the removal of the issue of textual variation from the context in which it should be placed historically in a fair scholarly way, and what you'd find upon atheistic websites.
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You probably would not even be able to find a difference. And, of course, if you even begin to attempt to apply even a slightly similar standard to the text of the
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LDS scriptures, like the Book of Abraham, the Book of Mormon, the double standard is absolutely positively amazing.
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It truly is. So, we'll have to take a look at that because not only folks who deal with Mormons, but folks who deal with our anti -Christian society, the attacks upon the validity of scriptures, these things are so common that it would be a good idea to take time to take a look at it and to address it in the not -too -distant future, either in written form, in the form of a web article, or on the program, or both.
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You can put it all together. Written form is sort of accessible on a longer term, a little easier to search for on search engines and things like that.
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The spoken form can be more communicative, especially in an area such as textual criticism where it's faced that a lot of folks sort of read it and it's like, oh, what are you talking about?
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You know, a lot of folks are intimidated at the task of trying to work through a lengthy article.
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And, of course, it's much easier, especially in this area, to make false accusations concerning the issue of the transmission of the text of the
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Bible. It's easier to make the accusations than it is to correct it. In other words, you can make the accusation in two sentences, and it might take two paragraphs to place that information within the proper context.
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And so it's child's play, if you don't care about truth, to make the accusations.
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It's something completely different to do so in an honest fashion and provide a response and things like that.
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So that's something we'll have to look forward to attempting to do in the not too distant future. Didn't have a lot of commentary there on Templeton other than just simply to point out it is a sad thing to see, but it did not surprise me once I read his own story of what his life had been like.
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Yeah, you know, when you don't have a changed heart being active in Christian stuff eventually turns sour.
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It really does. That's why it's the long term that demonstrates the work of the spirit and the heart, not the short run, not the flashy preacher, but the steady saint.
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That's where it's really found. Hey, thanks for listening today. We will see you Thursday evening, 5 o 'clock
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Pacific Daylight Time, Mountain Standard Time, here on The Dividing Line. God bless. That's A -O -M -I -N dot
01:00:08
O -R -G where you'll find a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates and tracks. Join us again next