Sola Scriptura Examined and Defended, Episode Two

Greetings, welcome to The Dividing Line on a Thursday afternoon from what I've been told, I should sound awesome today. Rich says he was having some, and everybody was tweeting me and stuff and the DL disappeared and we can't listen to it and it was, I don't know what was going on.

I'm beyond me, but I leave that to others to figure that stuff out. I just sit here and talk and others take care of that kind of stuff. So evidently that's all fixed up now too. I'm not going to be getting, we're all fine here now.

How are you? Yeah, how are you? Yes, well, I saw, I did a very, very long inside. Well, yeah, it's the big wide shot with all the stuff in it, but yeah, it's there. Anyway, I did a long, long, long inside ride yesterday and so I caught up on one movie I hadn't seen, which was Captain America Civil War, that's what it was.

And there was, well, there were a couple. I didn't really get to watch it. Well, I watched it, but I couldn't hear most of it because for some reason, even at full volume between the fan and the train, I couldn't, any low dialogue was just to me.

So it was sort of like when I frequently would watch movies on, I remember they used to show movies on planes and I didn't want to rent the headset or something like that. You just sort of see it, but you don't get to hear it, but it's amazing how much you can sort of follow without actually hearing it.

But anyway, there was the, the, the kids Spider-Man showed up. I hope I'm not ruining this for folks, but, and then there's this big battle scene amongst all the Avengers. And the kids talk about, remember that really old movie, uh, the empire strikes back and all the other guys go, who is this kid?

And Iron Man says, well, I didn't carbon date him, but he's on the young side and it's like, yeah, the really old movie is like, thanks. Appreciate that, uh, kid offensive. I think he got kicked really hard after that or something.

I don't know. But anyway, I have no idea what that, how, how I got to, oh, it was a star Wars thing. You and I were make you're, you're, you're using a star Wars reference. And that means you were quoting from an even older movie, a really, really, really old movie.

Uh, so anyway, I didn't mean to start this way. Cause we've got a lot to cover. We are talking about Sola Scriptura. And, uh, just for those of you who maybe because somebody messed up or something, you didn't get to see the last program or listen to the last part or whatever.

Um, last a week ago, tomorrow, uh, Friday, uh, on Catholic answers live, Carlo Broussard was on and he was giving what I would consider to be a extremely standard, um, attack upon the doctrine of Sola Scriptura.

The, the program was technically called, uh, were the apostles Bible only Christians. And we immediately pointed out that given the apostles receiving revelation, no, they weren't, but that's not the issue.

The issue, because they agree with us on this, since there is no revelation today, the question is what is the sole infallible rule of faith of the church today? And we were arguing that it is that which is Theanustos.

If it is Theanustos, it is God speaking. And therefore the body of Christ as the bride of Christ wants to hear the voice of Christ does not want to insert herself as the ultimate authority. She wants to listen to what Christ would say to her.

And so the issue is not in the days of the apostles. This is a canard, but in our day, what is the ultimate source of authority? And so, uh, we started looking, we listened to what, uh, was said on Catholic Answers Live about Second Timothy 3 .16.

There's one other issue that we'll get to later when we listen to, and that is the issue of canon. When we listen to the actual clips from the program, uh, there's one other section we'll get to on Second Timothy, uh, later on.

But I then was working my way through a presentation, figured out how to actually make it work without messing around with it, uh, while I was sitting here earlier today. And so I want to sort of finish that material up.

I have a little clip that I want to play from the debate with Mitch Pacwa. And again, I, we have done, oh, one, two, three, at least four moderated public debates specifically on solo scriptura. The first one with MattaTix, we only have that in audio, and that was August of 1990.

And then a better version of that, the year after we did the Marian doctrines, uh, thing, uh, on Long Island. So we've done that with MattaTix twice. Uh, Patrick Madrid, uh, in 93, and Mitch Pacwa in 99.

So man, it's been 17 years now. And all I can say is the arguments have not changed. And as I showed you all those books, no, the arguments haven't changed. Uh, but one side seems to be significantly more familiar with the arguments of the other than vice versa.

At least that's been my experience. Uh, Rome's arguments, um, don't seem to advance much. Uh, it's sort of like, well, this works for a sufficient number of people for us, so we're not going to worry about any inconsistencies and stuff like that, which is, which is bad.

Um, if you're not going to mention the movie, at least let us know if you liked it. Which movie? I'm not sure what they're, what they're asking about it. Well, I saw, well, you know, it was, you know, it's a CGI fest, like all Avengers movies and Captain America movies are, you know, uh, that was sort of, there were lots of funny little things in it, you know, but whatever.

Uh, not going to make my top 10 or anything like that, but, and then the movies I was talking about, of course, are Empire Strikes Back and Star Wars, but those are the really, really, really, really old movies, which is what I found rather humorous.

But hey, you know, uh, we are in our second, second half century. Uh, so, uh, I guess that's how that works. Anyway, let's get back to, uh, the presentation. Let's talk about what Sola Scriptura is not, because unfortunately, as I said, one of the primary errors that is made by, uh, believing Christians, uh, who are trying to do what's right and trying to, uh, defend the sufficiency of scripture very frequently, uh, allow themselves to get in a situation where they are defending things they shouldn't be defending, um, because of the misstatements of the other side.

Uh, what Sola Scriptura is not, it is not a denial, uh, that God's word has at times been in oral form during those times of inscripturation. It is not a denial of the role of the Holy Spirit in leading and guiding the church.

So two very common arguments that are utilized by Roman Catholics and others, you know, we're, we're primarily dealing with Romanism here, but Eastern Orthodox will very frequently borrow the same arguments that Rome does with, with some amendation.

And I don't want to, spin sounds like, spin doesn't sound right. It, because of the concept of authority and at least real practicing Orthodoxy, there'll, there'll sort of be a, a different flavor, I guess would be one way of putting it to some of the argument, uh, here in America, especially converts to Eastern Orthodoxy.

You'll hardly even be able to tell the difference between them and Roman Catholics when they argue against Sola Scriptura, it's almost identical. Uh, but I see a, I see a huge difference between, uh, people who were raised in Eastern Orthodoxy and those who've converted to it.

Um, I, I see, I see a difference, uh, there. And of course I see a huge difference between someone who actually practices it and someone who's just born into it as far as, you know, nominalism goes, but that's another issue.

Um, the, the argument will be, well, for example, just the very title of this particular program from Catholic Answers was, were the apostles Bible only Christians? Well, that's a misrepresentation of what Sola Scriptura is all about in the first place.

And, and if you try to defend the idea that the apostles were Bible only Christians, well, if, if by that they believed that Scripture was more important than tradition, that's very true, but they themselves were receiving divine revelation.

They were speaking the word of God and the only record we have of that, all we have of that today is what is in Scripture. Um, but they were living in a unique period of time when revelation is taking place.

And so if you try to go, oh, no, no, no. If you try to make a distinction between tradition and Scripture, while the word of God is being spoken without looking at each of the passages, we're going to look at 2 Thessalonians 2, whatever.

We're gonna be looking at the uses of tradition, both 1 and 2 Thessalonians. There's actually three texts there where tradition is utilized and is very important to illustrating this very point. Uh, and there's, there's another in Timothy, 2 Timothy that's pretty important too.

Uh, we'll, we'll get to those as we, as we work through the material, but, um, there are times when that term is used of, tradition is used of divine revelation. When Paul says, for example, I have passed on to you what I also received, he's using the language of tradition there.

And so what happens very often, especially amongst fundamentalists is, uh, they will hear that word tradition and they will take a universally negative view of it. You can't do that. You have to look at each utilization of the term to see what it's referring to.

That's death for the Roman Catholic position though, because they'll use these positive references to tradition, but they'll never contextualize them. Because if they do, you'll discover very, very quickly that they are attempting to read into that use of tradition, something that it could never, ever bear.

And that specifically is the idea that what they have defined on the basis of tradition had been delivered and preached by the apostles. And that's why, that's why it's very difficult for us to get Roman Catholics to debate this subject, because when you ask, well, what have they, what have they based upon tradition specifically?

The last three dogmas, and again, differentiation between doctrine and dogma, dogmas de fide, must be believed as definitional of the faith. Last three dogmas defined by Roman Catholicism in reverse order would be the bodily assumption of Mary, papal infallibility, and the Immaculate Conception.

Clearly, without question, utterly non-apostolic teachings. No apostle, there's zero evidence anywhere that any apostle ever taught anything about these subjects. No question about this at all. In fact, the very, the historical fact that Rome's history is littered with forgeries.

The Donation of Constantine, the Pseudo-Isidorean Decretals, littered with forgeries. What were they always about? I should have queued it up, I hadn't thought about it until just now. It was almost one of the last Roman Catholic debates I did.

It may have been the last Roman Catholic debate, with the Roman Catholic attorney on Long Island. He tried to defend one of the Marian dogmas with a quotation from Augustine. And as soon as I heard it, red alarm bells went off.

Because I've read a lot about what Augustine's doctrine of Mary was from Roman Catholic sources. Never heard anything like this before, and I questioned it. Doesn't sound... Well, after the debate, you look it up, forgery.

It's not from Augustine. Comes from years and years and years and years after Augustine. Centuries. This kind of stuff, huge history of it within Roman Catholicism. Well, why? Because the doctrines that Rome has taught on the basis of this tradition were not taught by the apostles.

If you're going to use these texts and say, hold the traditions that you were taught by word of mouth. That's where it's all, it's right there. The apostles taught this to the Thessalonians. Well, prove it.

Prove it. I do need to find, maybe while I'm playing the clip. We've posted this on YouTube. Find me, someone pop into the channel the URL to the, I'll take just one, Jerry, debate moment. When we were talking about the bodily assumption of Mary.

Good illustration. Maybe I can grab that and play that for you. That would be fun. Okay. So back to the, back to the point. We are not denying. And as a Christian, you better not deny. That there were times in history during revelation.

When the word of God existed orally, it was preached. And yet it was the word of God. And authoritative in the lives of the people who heard it. No question about it. The question is, are we in a period of revelation?

Rome agrees thus we are not. Now, if you're a charismatic, you're not really a part of this conversation. Now, obviously, thankfully, our thoughtful studying charismatic friends, realize this is an area that they really need to think about.

And need to be careful about. And many of them have created a firewall here. Where you'll say, these things need to be tested by scripture. But when someone is saying, thus sayeth the Lord, exactly how do you test that?

It's almost created a deuterocanonical revelatory status. And when I see someone like Cindy Jacobs saying, thus sayeth the Lord. And then going... And just babbling. Don't call it tongues, come on. That's not communicating nothing.

It's just repeated vowel sounds. When I see stuff like that, how do you test that? And I really would wonder. How a charismatic who accepts the idea of someone saying, thus sayeth the Lord. And it can really be the Lord speaking.

How do you differentiate that from Paul saying, thus sayeth the Lord? Especially if you accept the idea that there is some type of functioning of apostles. I think someone like that would have a really hard time dealing with a solid, consistent Roman Catholic apologist.

I really do. I'm going to say this. I'm going to say it straightforward. I'm not going to apologize in the non-classical use of apology for this. The only consistent and hence the strongest position in responding to Rome is the Reformed position.

Period. There is no question of this on Sola Scriptura, Justification, and especially the Mass. Sadly, almost no one has thought of that. But my first book, which is on Kindle on Amazon .com. I don't have, and that's weird.

I don't have a paperback copy of it in here. But what? A paperback copy? Not in here, you don't. You're not in here, so that's irrelevant. That's really okay. I was going to tell folks. The first book that I had published called The Fatal Flaw.

It's been OP as far as not in physical print for a long, long time. But its central focus was right in this area. There was a really strong focus upon the reality that the strongest argument against the Roman Catholic doctrine, the Mass, as it's being enunciated today and as it's been massaged and formed to be expressed in the most biblical language possible.

The strongest argument against that is from the Reformed perspective. In fact, if you believe in a non-salvific general atonement, that only makes men savable. I don't know how you argue. I guess, really, the only way you can argue against the Roman Catholic concept of transubstantiation, Eucharistic sacrifice, etc. is to argue against the miracle of transubstantiation on philosophical grounds.

But you've already collapsed on the key issue. And the key issue is we have one sacrifice, never to be repeated, that perfects those for whom it's made. When you agree with Rome that the result of the sacrifice does not perfect, well, I'll leave it to you to figure out how you're going to really answer those questions.

Boy, we jumped the track there. Not really. We didn't really jump the track. I'm just simply saying, when you look at something like this and we're looking at what Sola Scriptura is not, it also forces us to recognize that just because someone is not a Roman Catholic doesn't mean that they're not on the Roman Catholic side of the historical issues that define the Reformation.

And when it comes to the issues of the charismata and the charismatic movement, and especially when people start saying, thus saith the Lord, seems to me to be a fundamental collapse in being able to provide a meaningful response.

And I'll be honest with you, when I think of people who are giving any kind of strong response to Roman Catholicism, none of them are charismatics. And what movement is most susceptible to ecumenism? Look at Copeland and all his word-faithers when Pope Francis sends an i-video message to them all.

They're just fumbling all over themselves. Because they have no meaningful connection to church history anyways. They really could care less about where the Reformation came out of, and in many ways are far more of one spirit with Rome than they are with us when it comes to issues of the gospel, Sola Scriptura, and there you go.

So, yeah, you're watching the same thing too? Yeah. Yeah, you're right, Jake. I can see it now. Muslim by choice. Doctrinally 1689. Speaks in tongues. No, it's not. Oh, yeah, so I hadn't seen that one.

I was trying to avoid really going into it. I have a clip. And I played it on the ship. I have a clip of Cindy Jacobs just being... It's bad. It's really, really bad. All right, you know, why did you all do this to me?

I don't understand this. I'm sitting here, I'm trying to go through Sola Scriptura, I'm trying to be a good guy, and you all do this type of thing to me, throwing me off my game here. Documents, presentations, where is my sufficiency of Scripture one?

You know, it should be up toward the top because I played it on the ship, and it should be under the recent ones, but for some reason, when you're looking for something and trying to talk all at the same time, it doesn't work that well.

Solution, SCS, no, it's not that. You did see it, right? You suffered through it. And it was weird because I know it's something that I inserted long after I made the original because I remember when I made the original four.

Here we go. We'll see if this is it. It looks like it. I opened up, and it's got all the same colors and everything, and guess what? Video's not in there. Well, it was really interesting, and now it's going to bother me very much that I can't find this.

While I'm looking for this, this is a good opportunity for me to cover for myself. While looking for this, my daughter just texted me, well, actually, boy, when you do Facebook and Twitter within five seconds of each other, that's probably meaning you're trying to get hold of somebody fairly certainly, and I made comment of the fact that I had listened to her new webcast.

I got early access for some strange reason. Some people complained about that, which I found very strange, but I had listened to the new Sheologians, which is going to get her in lots of trouble, I'm sure.

I hope she has thick skin, that's all I can say. But the first episode just dropped, so she wanted me to make sure that I mentioned that for some strange reason. I have no earthly idea why she would want to do that.

I just rolled right by that. I'm going to look for about ten more seconds here, and if it doesn't come up, I'm just going to have to say, well, this is what happened in it. Okay, thank you for that one.

That's good. I'm going to see what this one has, and if it doesn't have it, we're out of luck. Oh, there's some pretty stuff I put in there. Looks terrible, but, huh. Oh, you know what? This is a different computer.

So I'll bet you dollars, donuts, the version over there is different than the version here, which is a bit of a bummer, because there you go. I'll do one last thing. Sorry about this, folks. I'll do one last thing.

Let me see if it happens to be hiding in Dropbox someplace. That's always a possibility. You never know. Because I think that may have been where I found it before. There's all sorts of interesting things hiding in Dropbox, actually.

Little treasures from the past that have been forgotten over time. Notes and documents. Oh, there's a bunch of Erd and Kanter stuff. But nope, nope. It must be over there. Well, there's a super cool clip.

You're just going to have to believe me now. Sorry. Of Cindy Jacobs. And I didn't even remember her name. I don't keep track of this stuff. Cindy Jacobs doing this Thus Sayeth the Lord stuff. Now, it's funny.

Enough years have passed. Everything she was saying was baloney. It didn't happen. But Thus Sayeth the Lord this, and Thus Sayeth the Lord that. Then she breaks out into tongues. Look, I'll be honest with you.

What I did wasn't much different than what she did. It was just a bunch of vowel sounds repeated. It communicated nothing. It was not the Holy Spirit doing that. I don't have any question saying that.

Anyway, I'll look for it. I'll try to, before the next program, see if I can track that down on my other computer and pull it over so we can have it. But there are issues that we need to consider, I think, when we talk about what Sola Scriptura is not.

And there are people who are not Roman Catholics who will not be able to consistently defend this belief. There's just no question about it. Secondly, it is not a denial of the role of the Holy Spirit in leading and guiding the Church.

Many people have defined Sola Scriptura as the functional banishing of the Holy Spirit. And that's not what we're saying. When I lead the pastoral prayers at PRBC, we almost every single time pray that God, by His Spirit, would gather with us to make the preaching and teaching of the Word of God profitable in our lives.

We fully recognize that the Scriptures are supernatural in their character. It doesn't mean they just floated down out of heaven on a cloud. There is history, there's text, there's all those things. But there's an 18-inch trip from here to here.

It can be up here, but it's not down here. And if it's just down here and not up here, that's just as bad. And so we don't have to fear the Holy Spirit, but we also have to recognize that, unfortunately, the viewpoint that many people have of the Holy Spirit is that unless the Spirit is doing the same thing that He did in the past, that is, in granting revelation, then somehow we're muting Him or something like that.

The assumption is that revelation could never be something that is complete and perfect in and of itself. This violates the very teaching of Scripture because, clearly, the Tanakh, the Old Testament, was a completed revelation prior to the ministry of Jesus.

Even the Israelites themselves had recognized that the bath coal, the voice of God, had ceased amongst them for about 400 years. And so we are not saying that the Holy Spirit does not function to enlighten our minds, to drive us to Scripture, to increase our faith in Scripture, to give us understanding, any of those things.

We're not saying that. What we are saying is that God has given us His revelation. He has given it to us so that the church can function the way He's designed the church to function, as His witness in the world, the body of Christ, proclaiming the gospel of Christ.

And the faith that is theirs is a once-for-all delivered faith. Now, that doesn't mean that it doesn't have to become the faith of each generation individually, but the point is it doesn't have to keep being given over and over again.

It doesn't have to be added to constantly. And so the Spirit's role in giving the Scripture is one thing, and then the Spirit's role in testifying of that Scripture and increasing our faith in that Scripture and enlightening our minds to that Scripture, that's something else.

And so I have seen some people, again, tend to be a little bit on the fundamentalist side, who, in responding to Rome, tend to minimize the role of the Spirit today in enlightenment and guidance and so on and so forth.

There's no reason to do that. The issue is, what is Theanustos? And is the Spirit of God continuing to give Theanustos revelation in the debate between at least Reformed believers and Roman Catholicism?

That's actually not an argument, at least not formally. I would say functionally it is, but that's an issue we already addressed. It's only people outside that realm that have to answer those particular questions.

There is the, let's see, copy URL. Let me see if this is going to work here. If I drop this into... Oh, you need to take that down. Thank you very much. All right. How long? Oh, this is 10 minutes long.

Drat. Well, it's really, really, really interesting to watch, but I wasn't going to spend 10 minutes on it. Though you know what it would do? I probably would have just enough time to find that Cindy Jacobs clip in my office and get it transferred via Dropbox.

Yeah, let's do that for a second. Huh? Yeah, because I'm seeing it on the whole screen, aren't I? Don't you love the definition from the late 1990s in comparison to today? We don't exactly do 4K anymore, 4K back then.

Okay, here's an illustration. Sound quality isn't all that good. You know, this was a while back, 20 years ago, but we are debating the Marian dogmas. And I am simply pointing out to Jerry Matitix that these are doctrines and dogmas that were unknown in the early church.

And he's doing his best to try to sort of cover up that reality. So I think this is part of the cross-ex. The moderator wasn't sure what to do, and he's a Jewish guy, so he doesn't really care one way or the other about this, which is, I guess, why he was chosen to do the moderation.

But here is an illustration of what we are talking about from my debate with Jerry Matitix on the Marian dogmas so long ago that I had hair. Yes, so long ago that I had hair. This is from the Baldwin Carriage House.

I forget what it was. Yeah, it got converted into something else. But it was a nice location. But this was the very first of the great debates. And let's listen in. It doesn't affect the validity of the analogy.

Thank you very much. Now, in that passage, it is said that Solomon says to bring a throne. Could you tell me why it wasn't there? If this position is a position that she held on? Mr. White, you accused Catholics of engaging in speculation.

I'm not going to follow you into that same verbatim. Could you just answer the question? You're asking me to speculate on why a throne isn't there. All right, that's fine. You've already said speculation is bad, so I want to follow your example and avoid it.

So there wasn't a throne for the queen mother there normally, was there? I don't know. Maybe it was kept in a special antechamber and brought in when she entered the king's presence. You pointed out that Bathsheba did not actually get what she desired.

Is that not a parallel also indicating that Mary would fail to get what she requested of Jesus? Obviously, Old Testament types of Jesus fall short because they have simply been being so attached to Mary.

So when there are exceptions to the type, it just doesn't matter? No, Protestants have said that too. Joshua was a sinner. He's a type of Jesus. You would agree with that, wouldn't you? Has it made Jesus a sinner?

Now, Mr. Mattox, you made a parallel trinity again. You admitted, well, the Trinity is much more central, and that's why it came about early, right? Of course. The definition. Mr. Mattox, what is the earliest church file that you know that you can go to to see the doctrine of the Trinity outside of the New Testament?

The doctrine or the word? The doctrine. The same type of doctrine that you've been trying to find in various of the early Bible. It's not necessarily the words you say, but the belief. Couldn't you go to Clement Brown?

Obviously, you have something up your sleeve. Would you agree with me that it is a fair statement that the earliest Etristic writing we have, Say, let's take Clement. You first have the doctrine of the Trinity in the 2nd century.

Okay. The letter of Clement to the Corinthians, the letters are filled with references.

If they're just references to Christ God, then the doctrine of the Trinity is a reference. It's not a reference to men. It's a reference to Mary alone.

Later time, you're going to have clear articulations of Mary's union with Jesus later than you have clear articulations of the Trinity. You said it was a terrific injustice of me to point out how long it took for this doctrine to be asserted and made dogma, of course, within the century.

And you can parallel this with the Council of Chalcedon, which in 451 defined that two natures of Christ. If the amount of time indicates the importance to the church, would it not follow that a doctrine that is defined 1 ,500 years after the nature of Christ means that it's rather unimportant?

No, it would mean that it's rather unimportant, maybe relatively less important than other agendas that were ahead of it. And yet, can a person be in full union with the Catholic Church, in your opinion, and reject the idea that Mary was bodily assumed in heaven?

Mr. White, my opinion is irrelevant. Yes or no? You don't answer that question. The Catholic Church teaches that you have to believe that and every fact about Mary. Is it a fact of revelation? Of course it is.

It's a fact of revelation that no one knows with absolute certainty until 1 ,950 years after we know. That's not true. The people who witnessed it certainly knew with absolute certainty. But you don't have any evidence that they existed, do you?

Of course I do. Where? In the fact that there was a tradition passed on down. You say there was a tradition passed on down, but you can't show us where it is. You admit there was a tradition passed on down, Mr. White.

You simply think the tradition is a not-founded fact, but you admit there's a tradition. No, I don't. That was a question. Now it's your turn, so I guess you don't believe me. Is that what you're saying?

No, I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is that there was no ancient tradition that has any type of meaningful historical basis to it, that there were eyewitnesses. You paralleled it with the resurrection of Jesus Christ, Jerry.

Let's ask ourselves the question. The resurrection of Jesus Christ, who were the eyewitnesses? Did they write? Did they preach? Do we have evidence of this outside of the New Testament? The answer to all of these is yes.

Now we ask the question about this alleged tradition of eyewitnesses and the assumption. Did they write? No. Did they preach? No. Does anyone outside of the Christian church or even in the Christian church ever make reference to this in the first half millennium?

No. There is no parallel. No, show it to me. Well, now it's his turn to ask you questions. Let me get that question in. Well, that was, that was, I was answering his questions. All right. Mr. White, you said that we can go back and demonstrate.

You said there's a fundamental difference here, because we can go back and we can demonstrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ. How, Mr. White? How can you demonstrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ?

Well, the same way the Christian people have been doing it for a very long time, and that is you can point to the eyewitnesses who wrote, who preached, who died for their faith. They left us a text that is the greatest and most accurate text of any ancient document that exists on the world.

And the very fact that they went out and changed the world and that this is even recorded for us in secular materials. I'm not making any point. I'm pointing out to you that the basis upon which we know the resurrection is not the authority of the modern Roman Catholic Church.

You have the authority. So you're putting a clarification here. It's not the modern Roman Catholic Church. Yes, yes. You believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ on the authority of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Is that not correct? And Paul and numerous others. Yes. How do you know that Matthew wrote that gospel? Well, first of all, this is a very interesting statement because it goes to the issue of sola scriptura, the issue of the canon.

And it is interesting to me that this question continues being asked over and over again. I'm not going to ask you until I hear the answer. Because, first of all, whether Mark or whether Matthew wrote Matthew, and as you know, the gospel of Matthew does not say that.

It is not relevant to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And you know that. The point I'm trying to make, Mr. Weicker, for the audience's sake, is that the only way you know you have documents coming from my witnesses is that church fathers said, This comes from an apostle.

This comes from an apostolic associate. Mark comes from Peter's associate secretary. Luke is written by Paul's companion. John is written by the apostle John. And that same basis in which you... Don't misunderstand my question, folks.

I accept Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John as every believing Catholic as a valid testimony to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. I'm not trying to associate that skepticism with the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

I'm simply trying to say, if you believe in that resurrection, by the very same principles, you have to believe in the other things the apostles taught. Is that a question? Yes. My response is, they didn't teach the doctrine you're trying to parallel.

You have a new variety with any historical evidence. You are assuming the existence of historical evidence, and I keep asking you, Mr. Medetich, if you say that the apostles taught this, are you saying that the apostles taught this?

Yes, I am. Then show me some evidence. The passage that you cited to me in 2 Thessalonians says that we are to hold to tradition that was taught to us by word, mouth, and by letter. That passage says that those traditions had already been taught to all the Thessalonians.

This wasn't any secret thing. Where is the evidence, Mr. Medetich? There isn't any evidence. Your own scholars have it. You don't have the original documents that the apostles wrote. You have a tradition that the documents you hold in your hand, that you hold in your testament, are faithfully transcribed and transmitted copies of the original autographs.

Yes, you do. No, sir, that is not untrue. All you have is the testimony of the church that the documents you have now do indeed come from the apostles. You mean we don't have the documents themselves?

You don't have the documents they wrote. The validity of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, sir, is not based upon someone who lived 200 or 300 years later. It's based upon the fact that you've been given a patrimony.

You've been given something that says this comes from the apostles. Now, if you're going to... You're arguing in circles. You don't know if they're scriptures if the people who tell you they're scriptures are untrustworthy.

Now, those same people also give tradition saying the apostles taught special things about marriage. If you impeach those witnesses and say, those church fighters don't know what the heck they're talking about, you have no way of knowing that they're giving you a Bible you can trust.

Athanasius gave me the same canon of New Testament I have. Show me one place where you're taught about assumption of marriage or communion or ordination. I don't have to. How about in the councils? Hippo, Carthage.

I don't want, Mr. White. You're making the assertion that they taught these same things, and I'm undercutting my own self. They didn't teach me. I don't have to demonstrate that every single church father taught every single thing.

How about just one of them? Okay, there you go. How about just one of them? And you can tell the audience was seeing the same thing. You keep saying they taught these things, and then I say, show me, show me, show me.

And you can't, because they didn't. That definitely makes one of my all-time favorite clips right there. No two ways about it. It's vitally important. Well, it also gave me enough time to find the clip and to transfer it via Dropbox over here.