Sola Scriptura Examined and Defended, Episode Two

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We continued our series on sola scriptura today, looking at what sola scriptura is and is not. Touched on the issues raised by charismatic claims of “thus says the Lord” a bit as well. We really believe this is an important series, and hope our listeners will find it foundationally edifying.

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Greetings, welcome to The Dividing Line on a Thursday afternoon from what
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I've been told, I should sound awesome today. Rich says he was having some, and everybody was tweeting me and stuff and DL disappeared and we can't listen to it and it was,
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I don't know what was going on. I'm beyond me, but I leave that to others to figure that stuff out.
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I just sit here and talk and others take care of that kind of stuff. So evidently that's all fixed up now too.
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I'm not going to be getting, we're all fine here now. How are you? Yeah, how are you?
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Yes, well, I saw, I did a very, very long inside.
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Well, yeah, it's the big wide shot with all the stuff in it, but yeah, it's there.
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Anyway, I did a long, long, long inside ride yesterday and so I caught up on one movie
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I hadn't seen, which was Captain America Civil War.
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That's what it was. And there was, well, there are a couple. I didn't really get to watch it.
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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,
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I couldn't, any low dialogue was just to me. So it was sort of like when
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I frequently would watch movies. I remember they used to show movies on planes and I didn't want to rent the headset or something like that.
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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 kid
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Spider -Man showed up. I hope I'm not ruining this for folks. And then there's this big battle scene amongst all the
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Avengers. They're fighting each other. And the kids talk about, remember that really old movie,
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The Empire Strikes Back? And all the other guys go, who is this kid? And Iron Man says, well,
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I didn't carbon date him. But he's on the young side. And it's like, yeah, the really old movie.
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It's like, thanks. Appreciate that kid offensive. I think he got kicked really hard after that or something.
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I don't know. But anyway, I have no idea what that, how, how I got to, oh, it was a Star Wars thing.
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You and I were making, you were using a Star Wars reference. And that means you were quoting from an even older movie.
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A really, really, really old movie. So anyway, I didn't mean to start this way because we've got a lot to cover.
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We are talking about Sola Scriptura. And 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 program or whatever.
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Last, a week ago tomorrow, Friday, on Catholic Answers Live, Carlo Broussard was on and he was giving what
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I would consider to be a extremely standard attack upon the doctrine of Sola Scriptura.
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The program was technically called, Were the Apostles Bible Only Christians? We immediately pointed out that given the apostles receiving revelation, no, they weren't.
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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?
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And we were arguing that it is that which is Theanustas. If it is Theanustas, it is
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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.
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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?
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And so we started looking, we listened to what was said on Catholic Answers Live about 2
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Timothy 3 .16. There's one other issue that we'll get to later when we listen to the actual clips from the program.
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There's one other section we'll get to on 2 Timothy 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 while I was sitting here earlier today.
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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.
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And again, we have done one, two, three, at least four moderated public debates specifically on solo scriptura.
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The first one with MattaTix, we only have that in audio, and that was
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August of 1990. And then a better version of that, the year after we did the
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Marian doctrines thing on Long Island. So we've done that with MattaTix twice.
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Patrick Madrid in 93, and Mitch Pacwa in 99.
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So man, it's been 17 years now. And all I can say is the arguments have not changed.
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And as I showed you all those books, no, the arguments haven't changed. But one side seems to be significantly more familiar with the arguments of the other than vice versa.
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At least that's been my experience. Rome's arguments don't seem to advance much.
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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 bad.
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If you're not going to mention the movie, at least let us know if you liked it. Which movie?
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I'm not sure what they're asking about it. Well, it's a
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CGI fest, like all Avengers movies and Captain America movies are.
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There were lots of funny little things in it and all, but whatever. Not going to make my top 10 or anything like that.
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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
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I found rather humorous. But hey, we are in our second half century, so I guess that's how that works.
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Anyway, let's get back to the presentation. Let's talk about what
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Sola Scriptura is not, because unfortunately, as I said, one of the primary errors that is made by believing
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Christians who are trying to do what's right and trying to defend the sufficiency of Scripture very frequently, allow themselves to get in a situation where they are defending things they shouldn't be defending because of the misstatements of the other side.
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So, what Sola Scriptura is not, it is not a denial that God's Word has at times been in oral form during those times of inscripturation.
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It is not a denial of the Holy Spirit in leading and guiding the church. So, two very common arguments that are utilized by Roman Catholics and others.
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We're primarily dealing with Romanism here, but Eastern Orthodox will very frequently borrow the same arguments that Rome does with some emendation.
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Spin doesn't sound right. Because of the concept of authority, and at least real practicing
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Orthodoxy, there'll sort of be a different flavor,
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I guess would be one way of putting it, to some of the argument. 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.
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It's almost identical. But I see a huge difference between people who were raised in Eastern Orthodoxy and those who've converted to it.
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I see a difference there. Of course, I see a huge difference between someone who actually practices it and someone who's just born into it, as far as nominalism goes, but that's another issue.
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The argument will be, well, for example, just the very title of this particular program from Catholic Answers was, were the
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Apostles Bible -only Christians? Well, that's a misrepresentation of what Sola Scriptura is all about in the first place.
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And if you try to defend the idea that the Apostles were Bible -only
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Christians, well, if by that they believed that Scripture was more important than tradition, that's very true.
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But they themselves were receiving divine revelation. They were speaking the
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Word of God. And the only record we have of that, all we have of that today, is what is in Scripture.
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But they were living in a unique period of time when revelation is taking place.
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And so if you try to go, oh, no, no, no. If you try to make a distinction between tradition and Scripture, while the
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Word of God is being spoken, without looking at each of the passages, we're going to look at 1 Thessalonians 2, whatever.
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We're going to 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.
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And there's another in 2 Timothy that's pretty important, too.
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We'll get to those as we work through the material. But there are times when that term is used of tradition, is used of divine revelation.
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When Paul says, for example, I have passed on to you what I also received, he's using the language of tradition there.
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And so what happens very often, especially amongst fundamentalists, is they will hear that word tradition and they will take a universally negative view of it.
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You can't do that. You have to look at each utilization of the term to see what it's referring to.
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That's death for the Roman Catholic position, though, because they'll use these positive references to tradition, but they'll never contextualize them.
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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.
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And that specifically is the idea that what they have defined on the basis of tradition had been delivered and preached by the apostles.
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And that's why it's very difficult for us to get Roman Catholics to debate this subject.
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Because when you ask, well, what have they based upon tradition specifically?
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The last three dogmas, and again, differentiation between doctrine and dogma, dogmas de fide, must be believed as definitional of the faith.
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The last three dogmas defined by Roman Catholicism in reverse order would be the bodily assumption of Mary, papal infallibility, and the
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Immaculate Conception. Clearly, without question, utterly non -apostolic teachings.
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No apostle, there's zero evidence anywhere that any apostle ever taught anything about these subjects.
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No question about this at all. In fact, the historical fact that Rome's history is littered with forgeries.
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The Donation of Constantine, the Pseudo -Isidorean Decretals, littered with forgeries.
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What were they always about? I should have cued it up, I hadn't thought about it until just now. It was almost one of the last
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Roman Catholic debates I did. It may have been the last Roman Catholic debate, with the Roman Catholic attorney on Long Island.
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He tried to defend one of the Marian dogmas with a quotation from Augustine.
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And as soon as I heard it, red alarm bells went off. Because I've read a lot about what
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Augustine's doctrine of Mary was from Roman Catholic sources. Never heard anything like this before, and I questioned it.
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Doesn't sound... Well, after the debate, you look it up, forgery.
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It's not from Augustine. Comes from years and years and years and years after Augustine. Centuries.
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This kind of stuff, huge history of it within Roman Catholicism.
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Well, why? Because the doctrines that Rome has taught on the basis of this tradition were not taught by the apostles.
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If you're going to use these texts and say, hold the traditions that you were taught by word of mouth.
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That's where it's all, it's right there. The apostles taught this to the Thessalonians. Well, prove it. Prove it.
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I do need to find... Maybe while I'm playing the clip... No, what you...
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Because we've posted this on YouTube. Find me, someone pop into the channel the
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URL to the I'll take just one, Jerry, debate moment.
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When we were talking about the bodily assumption of Mary. Good illustration.
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Maybe I can grab that and play that for you. That would be fun. Okay, so back to the point.
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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.
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It was preached. And yet it was the word of God and authoritative in the lives of the people who heard it.
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No question about it. The question is, are we in a period of Revelation?
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Rome agrees thus we are not. Now, if you're a charismatic, you're not really a part of this conversation.
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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.
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And many of them have created a firewall here where you'll say these things need to be tested by Scripture.
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But when someone is saying thus sayeth the Lord, exactly how do you test that? It's almost created a deuterocanonical revelatory status.
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And when I see someone like Cindy Jacobs saying thus sayeth the
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Lord and then going... and just babbling. Don't call it tongues, come on.
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That's not communicating nothing. It's just repeated vowel sounds. When I see stuff like that, how do you test that?
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And I really would wonder how a charismatic who accepts the idea of someone saying thus sayeth the
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Lord and it can really be the Lord speaking. How do you differentiate that from Paul saying thus sayeth the
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Lord? Especially if you accept the idea that there is some type of functioning of apostles.
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I think someone like that would have a really hard time dealing with a solid, consistent
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Roman Catholic apologist. I really do. I'm going to say this.
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I'm going to say it straightforward. I'm not going to apologize in the non -classical use of apology for this.
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The only consistent and hence the strongest position in responding to Rome is the
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Reformed position. Period. There is no question of this. On Sola Scriptura, Justification, and especially the
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Mass. Sadly, almost no one has thought of that. But my first book, which is on Kindle on Amazon .com.
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I don't have, and that's weird. I don't have a paperback copy of it in here.
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But what? A paperback copy? Not in here you don't.
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You're not in here, so it's irrelevant. That's really okay. I was going to tell folks.
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The first book that I had published called The Fatal Flaw. It's been
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OP as far as not in physical print for a long, long time. But its central focus was right in this area.
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There was a really strong focus upon the reality that the strongest argument against the
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Roman Catholic doctrine of the Mass as being enunciated today and as it's been massaged and formed to be expressed in the most
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Biblical language possible. The strongest argument against that is from the
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Reformed perspective. And in fact, if you believe in a non -salvific general atonement that only makes men savable,
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I don't know how you argue. Really, the only way you can argue against the
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Roman Catholic concept of transubstantiation, Eucharistic sacrifice, etc.,
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etc., is to argue against the miracle of transubstantiation on philosophical grounds.
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But you've already collapsed on the key issue.
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And the key issue is we have one sacrifice, never to be repeated, that perfects those for whom it's made.
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When you agree with Rome that the result of the sacrifice does not perfect, well,
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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.
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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
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Sola Scriptura is not, it also forces us to recognize that just because someone is not a
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Roman Catholic doesn't mean that they're not on the Roman Catholic side of the historical issues that define the
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Reformation. And when it comes to the issues of the charismata and the charismatic movement, and especially when people start saying, thus saith the
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Lord, seems to me to be a fundamental collapse in being able to provide a meaningful response.
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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.
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And what movement is most susceptible to ecumenism? Look at Copeland and all his word -faithers.
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When Pope Francis sends an i -video message to them all, they're just fumbling all over themselves.
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Because they have no meaningful connection to church history anyways.
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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,
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Sola Scriptura, and there you go. Yeah, you're watching the same thing too?
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Yeah. Yeah, you're right, Jake. I can see it now. Muslim by choice,
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Dr. Lee, 1689, speaks in tongues. No, it's not.
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Oh, yeah, sorry, I hadn't seen that one. I was trying to avoid really going into it.
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I have a clip, and I played it on the ship. I have a clip of Cindy Jacobs just being...
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It's bad. It's really, really bad. Why did you all do this to me?
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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.
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Throwing me off my game here. Documents, presentations, where is my
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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.
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Solution, SCS, no, it's not that. You did see it, right?
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I'm not... You saw it, 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 what
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I made the original for. Here we go. We'll see if this is it. It looks like it.
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Huh. I opened up and it's got all the same colors and everything, and guess what?
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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.
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While I'm looking for this, this is a good opportunity for me to cover for myself.
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While looking for this, my daughter just texted me...
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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.
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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
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Sheologians, which is going to get her in lots of trouble, I'm sure. I hope she has thick skin, that's all
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I can say. But the first episode just dropped, so she wanted me to make sure that I mentioned that for some strange reason.
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I have no earthly idea why she would want to do that. I just rolled right by that.
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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.
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Okay, thank you for that one. That's good. Well, I'm going to see what this one has, and if it doesn't have it, we're out of luck.
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Well, there's some pretty stuff I put in there. Looks terrible, but you know what?
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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.
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I'll do one last thing. I'm sorry about this, folks. I'll do one last thing. Let me see if it happens to be hiding in Dropbox someplace.
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That's always a possibility. You never know, because I think that may have been where I found it before.
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There's all sorts of interesting things hiding in Dropbox, actually. Little treasures from the past that have been forgotten over time.
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Notes and documents. Oh, there's a bunch of Erden Cantor stuff. But nope, nope.
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It must be over there. Well, there's a super cool clip. You're just going to have to believe me now.
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Sorry. Of Cindy Jacobs.
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And I didn't even remember her name. I don't keep track of this stuff. Cindy Jacobs doing this
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Thus Sayeth the Lord stuff. Now, it's funny. Enough years have passed. Everything she was saying was baloney. It didn't happen.
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But Thus Sayeth the Lord this, and Thus Sayeth the Lord that. Then she breaks out into tongues.
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Look, I'll be honest with you. What I did wasn't much different than what she did.
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It was just a bunch of vowel sounds repeated. It communicated nothing.
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It was not the Holy Spirit doing that. I don't have any question saying that.
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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.
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There are issues that we need to consider, I think, when we talk about what
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Sola Scriptura is not. And there are people who are not Roman Catholics who will not be able to consistently defend this belief.
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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
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Church. Many people have defined Sola Scriptura as the functional banishing of the
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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
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Word of God profitable in our lives. We fully recognize that the
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Scriptures are supernatural in their character. It doesn't mean they just floated down out of heaven on a cloud.
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There is history, there's text, there's all those things. But there's an 18 -inch trip from here to here.
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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.
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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
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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
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Him or something like that. The assumption is that revelation could never be something that is complete and perfect in and of itself.
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This violates the very teaching of Scripture because, clearly, the Tanakh, the
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Old Testament, was a completed revelation prior to the ministry of Jesus.
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Even the Israelites themselves had recognized that the bath coal, the voice of God, had ceased amongst them for about 400 years.
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And so, we are not saying that the
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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.
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We're not saying that. What we are saying is that God has given us
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His revelation. He has given it to us so that the church can function the way
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He's designed the church to function as His witness in the world, the body of Christ, proclaiming the gospel of Christ.
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And the faith that is theirs is a once -for -all delivered faith.
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Now, that doesn't mean that it doesn't have to become the faith of each generation individually.
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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.
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And so, the Spirit's role in giving the Scripture is one thing. And then the
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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.
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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
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Spirit today in enlightenment and guidance and so on and so forth. There's no reason to do that.
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The issue is, what is theanustos? And is the Spirit of God continuing to give theanustos revelation in the debate between at least
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Reformed believers and Roman Catholicism? That's actually not an argument, at least not formally.
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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.
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There is the, let's see, copy URL. Let me see if this is going to work here.
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If I drop this into... Oh, you need to take that down?
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Thank you very much. All right.
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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.
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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.
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Yeah, let's do that for a second. Huh? Yeah, because I'm seeing it on the whole screen, aren't
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I? Don't you love the definition from the late 1990s in comparison to today?
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We don't exactly do 4K anymore, 4K back then. Okay, here's an illustration.
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Sound quality isn't all that good. You know, this was a while back, 20 years ago.
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But we are debating the Marian dogmas. And I am simply pointing out to Jerry Matatix that these are doctrines and dogmas that were unknown in the early church.
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And he's doing his best to try to sort of cover up that reality.
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So I think this is part of the cross -ex. The moderator wasn't sure what to do.
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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.
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But here is an illustration of what we are talking about from my debate with Jerry Matatix on the
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Marian dogmas. So long ago that I had hair. Yes, so long ago that I had hair.
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This is from the Baldwin carriage house.
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I forget what it was. Yeah, it got converted into something else.
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But it was a nice location. But this was the very first of the great debates. And let's listen in.
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Who makes the application that you make? I really don't know, Mr. White, because it doesn't affect the validity of the analogy.
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Thank you very much. Now, in that passage, it is said that Solomon says to bring a throne.
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Could you tell me why it wasn't there if this position was a position that she held on? Mr. White, you accused
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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.
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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?
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I don't know. Maybe it was kept in a special antechamber and brought in when she was at the king's presence.
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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?
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Obviously, Old Testament types of Jesus fall short because they have simply been being so attached to Mary.
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So when there are exceptions to the type, it just doesn't happen. Oh, that's—Protestants have said that, too.
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Joshua was a sinner. If he's a type of Jesus, he would agree with that, wouldn't you? Has it made Jesus a sinner?
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Now, Mr. Matanatix, you made a parallel trend again. You admitted, well, the
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Trinity is much more central, and that's why it came about early, right? Of course. The definition.
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Mr. Matanatix, what is the earliest church father you know that you can go to to see the doctrine of the
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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 fathers.
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Not still the words you say, but the belief. Couldn't you go to Clement?
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Obviously, you have something up your sleeve. Would you agree with me that it is a fair statement that the earliest, the tristic writing we have, say, let's take
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Clement. You first have the doctrine of the Trinity in the 2nd century. The letter of the
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Corinthians, the letters are filled with references to Christ God. The Bible does say that.
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That the doctrine of the Trinity is a reference. It's not a reference to men. It's a reference to Mary alone.
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You're going to have clear articulations of Mary's union with Jesus later than you have clear articulations of the
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Trinity. I agree with that. You said it was a terrific injustice of me to point out how long it took for this doctrine to be asserted.
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And made dogma, of course, within the century. And you can parallel this with the
39:51
Council of Chalcedon, which in 451 defined that two natures of Christ. If the amount of time indicates the importance to the church,
40:01
Would it not follow that a doctrine that is defined 1 ,500 years after the nature of Christ means that it's rather unimportant?
40:09
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
40:20
Catholic Church, in your opinion, and reject the idea that Mary was bodily assumed in death?
40:26
Mr. White, my opinion is irrelevant. Yes or no? You know, the answer to that question, the Catholic Church teaches that you have to believe that in every fact about Mary.
40:37
Is it a fact of revelation? Of course it is. So it's a fact of revelation that no one knows with absolute certainty until 1 ,950 years after we know.
40:47
No, that's not true. The people who witnessed it certainly knew with absolute certainty.
40:53
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.
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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 that the tradition is not founded in fact, but you admit there's a tradition.
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No, I don't. You don't? That was a question. Now it's your turn, so I guess you don't believe me.
41:15
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.
41:27
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?
41:36
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.
41:43
Now we ask the question about this alleged tradition of eyewitnesses and the assumption. Did they write? No. Did they preach?
41:48
No. Does anyone outside of the Christian church or even in the Christian church ever make reference to this in the first half millennium?
41:54
No. There is no parallel. No. Show it to me. Well, that was his turn to ask you a question.
42:00
Did you get that question? Well, that was, that was, I was answering his question. Alright. Mr. White, you said that we can go back and demonstrate.
42:10
You said there's a fundamental difference here. We can go back and we can demonstrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ. How, Mr.
42:17
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.
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They left us a text that is the greatest and most accurate text of any ancient document that exists in all the world.
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And the very fact that they went out and changed the world and that this is even recorded for us in secular materials.
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I'm not making any point. I'm pointing out to you that we, the basis upon which we know the resurrection is not the authority of the modern
42:47
Roman Catholic Church. You have the authority. You're putting a quiddification there. It's not the modern Roman Catholic Church.
42:54
You believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ on the authority of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Is that not correct?
42:59
And Paul, and the rest of the people in Rochester. How do you know that Matthew wrote that gospel?
43:06
Well, first of all, this is a very interesting statement because it goes to the issue of sola scriptura, the issue of the canon.
43:14
And it is interesting to me that this question continues being asked over and over again when
43:20
I go over. I'm going to have Mark ask me until I go here and answer it. Because first of all, whether Mark or whether Matthew wrote
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Matthew, and as you know, the Gospel of Matthew does not say that, right, is not relevant to the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
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And you know that. But the fact is, the only medium that you have, the point I'm trying to make, Mr. Weingart, for the audience's sake, is that the only way you know you have documents coming from my witnesses is that you have documents coming from me.
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Is that church fathers said, this comes from an apostle, this comes from an apostolic associate,
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Mark comes from Peter's associate secretary, Luke is written by Paul's companion, John is written by the
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Apostle John, and that same basis in which you, don't misunderstand my question, folks.
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I accept Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John as every believing Catholic as a valid testimony to the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
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I'm not trying to sow seeds of skepticism in 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.
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Is that a question? Yes. My response is, they didn't teach the doctrine you're trying to parallel, you haven't provided me with any historical evidence.
44:28
You are assuming the existence of historical evidence, and I keep asking you, Mr. Meditate, if you say that the apostles taught this, are you saying that the apostles taught this?
44:37
Yes, I am. Then show me some evidence. The passage that you cited to me in 2 Thessalonians.
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It says that we are to hold to a 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
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Thessalonians. This wasn't any secret thing. Where is the evidence, Mr. Meditate? There isn't any evidence.
44:58
Your own scholars have it. Mr. White, you don't have the original documents 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.
45:15
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.
45:24
You mean we don't have the documents themselves? You don't have the documents they wrote. You have copies.
45:30
The validity of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John's search is not based upon someone who lived two or three hundred years later. It's based upon the fact that you've been given a patrimony.
45:39
You've been given something that you're entitled to. You've been given something that says this comes from the apostles. Now, you're arguing in circles.
45:47
You don't know if they're scriptures if the people who tell you they're scriptures are untrustworthy.
45:52
Now, those same people also give traditions saying the apostles taught special things about Mary.
45:58
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.
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Affinatious, gay people. Affinatious, gay people. You're making the assertion that they taught these same things and I'm undercutting myself.
46:25
They didn't teach me the same things. I don't have to demonstrate that every single church father taught every single thing.
46:30
How about just one of them? Okay, there you go.
46:41
How about just one of them? And you can tell the audience was seeing the same thing.
46:51
You keep saying they taught these things and then I say, show me, show me, show me. Well, and you can't because they didn't.
46:59
That definitely makes one of my all -time favorite clips right there.
47:07
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 and so I'm going to get it all set up here for,
47:32
I couldn't do it while that was playing or that would have completely messed everything else up.
47:38
But here's the clip that I was desperately searching for.
47:47
And for some reason it's only in that presentation on that machine and not this machine. We'll figure out why that happened later on.
47:55
But here's Cindy Jacobs in one of the most hideous leather jackets I've ever seen.
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Sorry, just woo! Hopefully what we're looking at here is not the hideous leather jacket, but this claim of revelation and stuff like that, this does not flow from the
48:16
Reformation. I'm not sure where exactly it comes from, but let's go ahead since we've been talking about it all this time, let's listen to it.
48:30
And the Lord says, am I not raising up a new mayor, a new anointing to go into these places?
48:37
For I have a Davidic governmental anointing that I am getting ready to bring, says
48:43
God. And the Lord says, I'm going to start targeting elections. And the
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Lord would say, they will see if they resist who I am, that I'm going to move them out and I'm going to move my people in, says the
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Lord. Let's give a shout out to the Lord. Come on! Amen.
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Thank you. Thank you, Emmanuel. You may be seated. Now, there's much more to it that I'm not going to waste our time on, but two things.
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Thus saith the Lord. Thus saith the Lord. Thus saith the Lord. To my charismatic friends, you need to have a consistent, usable standard by which to judge that kind of stuff.
49:50
Now, I don't know what mayoral election she was talking about or anything else, but it's a couple of years old and things have been going downhill.
50:00
And we could fill hours and hours and hours with clips from TBN of false prophecies about what's going to be going on.
50:09
And just in this last election, people praying over Ted Cruz and saying Ted Cruz could be the next president of the
50:15
United States and blah, blah, blah, blah, and all the rest of this kind of stuff. And it's just like, you know, this thus saith the
50:21
Lord thing is supposed to be some standards to that. But then what she was just doing there, there was one section of it that if that's tongues,
50:35
I used to speak in tongues all the time in Little League. Hey, bada, bada, bada, swing!
50:43
In fact, I got in trouble. I was such a talker in Little League that I got in trouble with an ump once.
50:50
He almost threw me out of the game because I made a batter cry. Okay, we were what?
50:57
Seven, eight, something like that, you know? But yeah, I'm sorry.
51:03
That's not a language. Say what you will. After blabbering false prophecies, that's not the spirit that's been making up for it with repetitive, hey, baby, baby, la, la, la, la, la, bada, bada, swing stuff.
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Call it what you want. Don't blame the Holy Spirit for that. That can't go there.
51:27
Nope, nope, nope, nope. Okay, so that was a major thank you.
51:33
Yes, Kofie says, Cindy Jacobs has awful tongues game. My apologies. See, mine was,
51:41
I think, probably better than hers was, actually. So yeah, give me some credit there.
51:47
Here I ran all the way over to my office. Well, it's not exactly a far direction to go, but just to find that, just for Kofie.
51:56
So he should feel good about that. Okay, so what are we saying? Sorry about that. It is not a denial of the role of the
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Holy Spirit in leading, guiding the church. So do not think that Sola Scriptura is that.
52:10
Didn't have an interpreter for your Little League tongues? No, and I'd never even heard about it. Didn't realize that was a necessity.
52:16
And obviously it wasn't speaking in tongue. Next, Sola Scriptura, what? Oh. Well, I wish this thing was a little more intuitive.
52:30
I guess it's W2052. I didn't realize it was that. Okay, and I have a gray bar on my screen.
52:42
You've got a screen that's over on my screen, just so you know that. Next, it is not an assertion the
52:48
Bible contains all knowledge. I don't think I have it in here. Yeah, it's in the office.
52:56
My other office. Well, this isn't my office. But if you go back to the early
53:04
Catholic Answers materials, Disrock Magazine, Catholicism and Fundamentalism, Carl Keating's book, what you will frequently hear is the argument that, well, you know,
53:19
John tells us, somehow the screen just got a lot bigger than it's supposed to be.
53:26
John tells us that there are many things that Jesus did that are not contained in the
53:33
Scriptures. And this is somehow supposed to be an argument against Sola Scriptura. Well, it's not an argument against Sola Scriptura, unless you assume that Sola Scriptura means that all knowledge and everything is found in Scripture.
53:52
If it's going to be that big, we might as well take it down, because it's cutting me out. Which sort of looks like I'm this talking head, hung out there in the middle of nowhere.
54:03
There we go! That looks much better. Hence, you could argue that because, and I've tried to use the same illustrations, try to anyways, since we don't know what the apostolic menu was for every lunch and dinner, don't know what color
54:21
Matthew's eyes were, don't know what color Robe Peter wore, it wasn't purple, that kind of stuff, that somehow that denies
54:32
Sola Scriptura. And I've actually heard people trying to defend Sola Scriptura allowing that definition.
54:39
That's not what the doctrine is. It is not an assertion that the
54:45
Bible contains all knowledge. It is not an assertion that we can learn nothing from the generations of gone before.
54:51
It is not a claim that we have to go back and reinvent the wheel with each new generation. And again, been on this subject for a long, long time.
55:04
I remember going for bike rides, because remember, I rode from 93 to 98, and then
55:11
I got off the bike and became a weightlifter and got all big and stuff like that, and then got back on the bike in 2005. Back in the mid -90s, it was a big thing when
55:23
I switched over to listening to CDs on a Walkman. And most of the stuff, when
55:31
I was listening to the young Tim Staples and Patrick Madrid and Jerry Madetich and Scott Hahn and Carl Keating and all these guys, those were on, you know,
55:44
I think now about my little teeny tiny iPod that I wear with Bluetooth bone conduction headphones.
55:54
And the Walkman cassette player that was yay big and yay thick, and listening to the constant refrain of attacks upon Sola Scriptura.
56:11
And it was always, if you believe in Sola Scriptura, then it's you and your
56:16
Bible out under the trees. And that's all you can have.
56:23
There can be no church authority. There can be no learning from preceding generations. You're reinventing the wheel every single generation.
56:28
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's ridiculous. It's untrue. It's simply a misrepresentation.
56:38
Now, are there people that misrepresent it outside the Roman Catholic Church? Yeah. Are there imbalanced people who do not read what the scriptures say?
56:48
They do not. Hey, when the street screechers showed up in Salt Lake City the first time, one of the first things
57:01
I said to them when we could actually try to talk with them was, how are you fulfilling the command in Hebrews chapter 13 to be in subjection to those who have the rulership over you?
57:14
I was asking who their elders were. And they couldn't answer that question.
57:23
And obviously, if you go to the Bible and you listen to what the Bible says, there is such a thing as a church.
57:31
And that church has authority, and that church engages in discipline. That's why we've got some problems with some rather radical folks today running around out there attacking local churches and denying the authority of local churches and ignoring the biblical form of local churches in a misguided zealotry.
57:55
Does that somehow mean soul scripture is not true? The abuse of divine truth is not an argument against divine truth.
58:03
Name any divine truth, and there's been someone at some time that has perverted it, denied it, taken it and run with it in an imbalanced fashion.
58:13
That doesn't affect the truthfulness of what's been revealed in scripture. Men will do things.
58:20
I cannot tell you how many times I've had people say, well, you know, that election thing, I've seen hyper -Calvinists, and so we've got to avoid the doctrine of election because they're hyper -Calvinists.
58:32
Have you ever thought through what that means? One of the arguments that Unitarians use against doctrine of the
58:39
Trinity is it causes Muslims to stumble, so we should stop believing in the Trinity, right? I mean, the thinking that some people have is frightening at times.
58:53
So just because there are people who do reinvent the wheel with each generation, who are utterly disconnected, well, they think they can be utterly disconnected with church history.
59:06
Nobody ever is. You may not be able to put Athanasius in the right century, but you've been influenced by him, whether you know it or not.
59:17
Whether you know it or not. That's one of the key things to understand, is we are all deeply influenced by those things.
59:25
That's one of the reasons I love teaching church history. We're all influenced by church history. It's just better to know exactly how and why than to be ignorant of it, because if you're ignorant of it, then you can't have any meaningful filters on.
59:39
You can't go, oh, I know where that came from. You're left wondering.
59:45
But if you understand church history, have some familiarity, then you can see these things.
59:51
So it is not a claim that we have to go back and reinvent the wheel. It's not just you and your Bible alone under a tree.
01:00:01
There are also a lot of common misunderstandings about the doctrine that we should dismiss immediately.
01:00:07
For example, the single worst argument against sola scriptura goes something like this. Sola scriptura is the blueprint for anarchy.
01:00:14
Look at what has happened. There are 39 ,000 proselytization sola scriptura is an utter failure. I call this one of the worst arguments against sola scriptura for two reasons.
01:00:28
First of all, it completely misunderstands the purpose of scripture and the very context of scripture in the early church, and it's likewise such a hilariously hypocritical argument for a
01:00:43
Roman Catholic to use. And he's not the only one that has used it, but Patrick Madrid pretty much made that language well known.
01:00:54
He used it for a long, long time. Sola scriptura, the blueprint for anarchy, they want to try to promote, and the number keeps growing.
01:01:07
And I'm not going to get into all the controversy. Well, there really isn't any controversy over the fact that Roman Catholics have.
01:01:15
You can go back. We've done entire dividing lines on this subject. Just do a search, either on Sermon Audio or our blog, for denominations, and it'll pull up blog articles and dividing lines.
01:01:31
We've gone through what the sources were that they use. Originally, 20 -some -odd thousand.
01:01:37
And once you find out what they mean by denomination, then you realize that this is a grossly inflated number.
01:01:45
The same source says there's hundreds of Roman Catholic churches, which, of course, they'd never accept. There's only one
01:01:51
Holy Mother Church. So we've gone through all that stuff.
01:01:58
The number keeps getting bigger and bigger. And the reason it keeps getting bigger and bigger is to try to make this point that if you believe in Sola Scriptura, it leads to anarchy.
01:02:07
It leads to all these different views. And for many Roman Catholics, hey, Sola Scriptura is why you have Mormonism and Jehovah's Witnesses, even though neither one of them practice
01:02:15
Sola Scriptura. So how you can blame Sola Scriptura for people who don't practice
01:02:20
Sola Scriptura is pretty difficult to understand. But it even took me a long time. It took someone else to point out that when
01:02:29
Rome tries to compare herself with Protestant denominations on the subject of Sola Scriptura, it's apples and oranges.
01:02:38
Why? It's real simple. When you look at the people who actually know what
01:02:47
Sola Scriptura is and seek to actually practice Sola Scriptura, well, how many groups is that?
01:02:58
Well, I'm just going to have to be honest and say I'm not going to include the charismatic groups in this, because unless you're a charismatic who will admit
01:03:09
Cindy Jacobs is a loon and Copeland and Hinn and all these people are just out there in la -la land, and most charismatics are loathe to do that.
01:03:25
There are just a few. I'm not sure how you actually seek to practice
01:03:33
Sola Scriptura when you don't have a doctrine that specifically states that there is no divine revelation taking place today.
01:03:45
So, leaving them aside, you now have to leave aside all the liberal denominations because they don't believe in a scriptura in the first place.
01:03:53
If you don't believe that God has spoken, you don't believe in inspiration, they're out.
01:03:59
So, you're only left with a fairly narrow stream of conservative,
01:04:08
Bible -believing Christians, whether they be Baptist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, and when you look at them, what do they agree on?
01:04:21
Trinity? Deity of Christ? Person of the Holy Spirit? Miracles?
01:04:28
God as Creator? Incarnation? Death, birth, and resurrection of Jesus Christ?
01:04:37
Virgin birth, should have put that there first, sorry, virgin birth, death, birth, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, second coming of Christ?
01:04:44
Absolute centrality and necessity of Jesus Christ for salvation? Justification?
01:04:50
Yeah, pretty much. I mean, with some slight variations, some arguments there. So, you've got
01:04:56
Trinity, Scripture, Gospel, Cross, you've got agreement.
01:05:08
Now, what Rome wants you to do is say, ah, but we have much more agreement amongst us Roman Catholics. You're missing the point.
01:05:16
What you need to do is you need to compare those groups that say it's Scripture plus our authority, because that's what
01:05:25
Rome says. And that's what Jehovah's Witnesses say, and that's what the Mormons say, and that's what dozens of other groups say that have their own authorities outside of Scripture itself.
01:05:41
And now when you ask, what do these groups have in common? The answer is absolutely positively nothing at all.
01:05:49
They don't agree on God, Trinity, Scripture, Inspiration, Life of Christ, Cross, Gospel, nothing.
01:05:57
They have no agreement at all. So, the groups that practice Sola Scriptura, and when you look at the source from which the big number comes from, they include as positive denominations
01:06:13
African Gnostics, and Jehovah's Witnesses, and Mormons, and all the rest of it. People who would go
01:06:20
Sola what? Never even heard of it. When you actually pare it down to the people who actually practice
01:06:27
Sola Scriptura, the people who believe that are far more united than the people who reject it.
01:06:36
Rarely does Rome ever even think about making that comparison. Ever. Ever.
01:06:42
And so, I make the assertion the misuse of a sufficient source is not a valid argument against that source.
01:06:51
The misuse of a sufficient source is not a valid argument against that source. And for years,
01:06:58
I developed this so long ago, that this was a valid illustration back then.
01:07:04
Doesn't work so much anymore, but when you would buy a piece of computer equipment, like,
01:07:11
I remember when we got our first laser printer. Do you remember what our first laser printer cost?
01:07:18
$3 ,000. Remember that thing? I mean, yeah.
01:07:25
Well, it came with a user manual. A wire -bound user manual that was at least that thick.
01:07:33
I mean, it had to have been 250 -300 pages long. It was huge. And back then, when you bought a computer, you bought a printer, it came with this...
01:07:42
There wasn't anything called PDF yet. Lasermaster. Remember that baby?
01:07:48
That was not a bad unit. But what most people do not know, what most people...
01:07:54
Oh yeah, its own drivers, stuff like that. Anybody have this book? It's the first edition of the
01:08:01
King James Only Controversy. Every page of that printed on that Lasermaster.
01:08:10
Lasermaster 1000. 1000 DPI. Every single page. Because I've mentioned it before, but in 1994, there was so much original language stuff in this, that...
01:08:24
And I didn't get paid for it either. I didn't get paid for it. I typeset that book.
01:08:32
Ventura Publisher, I think. I think it was Ventura Publisher. I typeset the whole book. I had to make all the corrections myself, page things, all the charts, graphs, everything.
01:08:42
I had to do it myself and printed it on that Lasermaster and then took that stack of paper and shipped it off to Bethany House and that's what they stripped up and used for the masters of that book.
01:08:54
Second edition. Thankfully, I didn't have to do that. We had
01:09:00
Unicode by then and all sorts of stuff like that and everything changed. Anyway!
01:09:08
The illustration that I would use back in the day was the printer manual.
01:09:15
And I would say, look, you can get a printer manual with your new printer and it can be absolutely sufficient as a source for all information about a printer.
01:09:28
Everything you need to know is in there. It's accurate. It's correct. But how many of us, honestly, ever read the printer manual?
01:09:42
Especially guys. Right? I don't need that.
01:09:49
Even today. There's a link to the documentation. Here's the PDF. How many people download it?
01:09:55
How many people, when you agree to the big long things you have to agree to install software, upgrade your
01:10:03
OS, how many of you actually read it? There are three people in the world that do. And they're still reading stuff from about 2015 right now.
01:10:13
Trying to catch up. We don't read it. Or, what happens is, two things might happen.
01:10:22
I've got a new printer. It looks a lot like my old one. So I'm going to assume it works along the same lines.
01:10:29
And you know what? Most of the time you can muddle along. But sometimes you can't.
01:10:37
And so you might start looking at the printer manual because you're having a problem and A.
01:10:44
You've not read all of it. So you're functioning on minimal information. Is that the printer manual's fault?
01:10:51
That you've not read it? How many people have actually read the entire
01:10:57
Bible? A lot of people have. How many people have actually read it in their original languages?
01:11:03
It's a little different. So we have ignorance of a sufficient source.
01:11:10
Haven't read all of it. We may end up calling up the company because we can't find the answer to our question and it's answered completely in the chapter we didn't read.
01:11:19
Or B. We come along and we import the traditions we have from our last printer.
01:11:26
Assuming it's going to work along the same lines and we end up creating some real problems.
01:11:33
Or maybe even because of what we understood about the last printer. When we read the sufficiently clear information about the new printer we're interpreting it in the wrong context because of our tradition from the last printer.
01:11:50
So the manual itself may be perfectly clear.
01:11:59
Have everything we need? Where does the problem lie? In the user.
01:12:04
You've heard it before. You know, the ID10T error? ID10T error?
01:12:10
You've not heard the ID10T error? Error exists between user and keyboard? Spell out
01:12:16
ID10T you'll get it. The problem's with the interpreter not with what's being interpreted.
01:12:25
So the misuse of a sufficient source is not a valid argument against that source.
01:12:31
But most obviously I go on to say, Soluscriptura does not claim that there will be a unanimity of opinion.
01:12:38
We need to bring up the screen please. We obviously lost someone in the audience we won't mention who.
01:12:46
But most obviously Soluscriptura does not claim that there will be a unanimity of opinion. There were errors and heresies in the days of the apostles.
01:12:55
Just as it would have been ridiculous to say that the apostles were insufficient leaders in the church just because errors and heresies crept in during their ministries.
01:13:04
And because men were willing to twist what the apostles taught and wrote to their own destruction as the scriptures themselves say.
01:13:11
So it is without merit to say that since men misused the scriptures today, those scriptures are insufficient as the infallible rule of faith.
01:13:19
Such an assertion assumes that the rule of faith is supposed to do away with the sinfulness and rebellion of man.
01:13:26
The errors men make due to traditions and prejudices and make men incapable of error.
01:13:34
Well, that's not what the purpose of the rule of faith is. And that's the assumption lying behind the argument that well,
01:13:44
Soluscriptura can't be true because it has led to all these divisions.
01:13:49
That's not what's led to the divisions. The divisions have been due to sin and tradition and ignorance and love of money and love of power.
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There's all sorts of reasons. Don't lay at the door of the precious gift that God has given us through his
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Holy Spirit and preserved for us his Holy Word. That's not where the divisions come from.
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And it's a sad thing when modern Roman Catholics in defense of an utterly unbiblical system attack the scriptures for the divisions that mankind's sin is actually responsible for.
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That's definitely a problem. Now, let's go ahead and consider one of the key texts, and that text is 2
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Thessalonians chapter 2. And before we put that up, let me play for you.
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This wasn't one of the... Again, the program with Carla Broussard was when you're taking lots of calls, you sort of do a little presentation, get things started, get the calls started, and then very often the callers end up driving it, and frequently what happens is you never even get back to your first subject if the callers really aren't focused or whatever.
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But later on in the program, this is 33 minutes in to the program, a caller called and raised the issue of what the
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Bible itself teaches about tradition. So let's listen to what was said. I'll make sure
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I'm on the... Again, just for clarity, I am playing this just a little bit faster than it was recorded, but not much.
01:15:48
Great question, Jay. So I'll take a shot at it. One text that I think clearly supports the equal value, the same authority, you might say, between Scripture and tradition.
01:16:00
A couple of texts. Now, let me just stop there. I'm going to replay it so that we're all on the same boat.
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But did you... The equal value. Now later on in the same program, he's going to say ontologically
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Scripture and tradition are not the same thing, but there is an ontological difference. How can they be equal?
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When you say equal value, when one is God speaking and one is not, how can they be equal?
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I would argue they cannot be equal and that one will predominate over the other, fundamentally.
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And that in Rome's situation, when it comes to the key issues of unique Roman dogma, tradition very much predominates over Scripture.
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I think that's obvious. I just want to make sure you heard that. Great question, Jay. So I'll take a shot at it.
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One text that I think clearly supports the equal value, the same authority, you might say, between Scripture and tradition.
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A couple of texts in particular. 2 Thessalonians 2 verse 15. I don't know if you've ever read this, Jay, but St.
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Paul writes to the Thessalonians and says, So then, brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions, the
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Greek word there, paradosis, which literally means to be handed down. Stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by letter.
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So St. Paul here is giving equal status to the paradosis, a sacred
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Christian body of truth that's being handed down to the Thessalonians in two ways.
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Word of mouth, that's what we as Catholics simply refer to as sacred tradition. The apostolic preaching, the transmission of God's revelation in unwritten form, and by letter, that is,
01:17:55
Scripture. And the second verse I would encourage you to check out is 2 Thessalonians Okay, we'll get to that one later on.
01:18:06
But there you have the argumentation. And how do you respond to that?
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Like I said, one of the first questions I was ever asked was about this very thing.
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And I gave you a very brief discussion of this in the last program, but now I want to actually take the opportunity to look at it and make sure that everyone's on the same page here.
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Let's take a look at the text. So then, brethren, stand firm and hold.
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If I'm recalling correctly, I don't have the both of my screens are used up when I do this, so if it's not on screen,
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I can't see it. Stand firm, hold fast to the traditions, it is plural, and he is exactly right, paradosis, paradosis here in the plural form, that which is handed down.
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So, you've got tradition here. Which you were taught, not what you will be taught.
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This is referring back, it's past tense. The Thessalonians had been taught these traditions, and they had been taught those traditions in two ways.
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So, there's one body of truth that was delivered to the
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Thessalonians in two ways. Whether by word of mouth or by letter from us.
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Now, let's just deal with the text in its context.
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How would when you were sitting in the congregation, in Thessalonica, on the first Lord's Day morning, when this letter arrives from Paul, and it's read in your midst, what would you have understood this to mean?
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And, what would you have identified as the body of tradition?
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Because these are imperatives. So, you're a believing
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Christian, you are desirous of obeying this apostolic command.
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How are you going to do it? Well, the only way to do it, because it's saying, stand firm.
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Stikite. Kratite. Hold on. Hold firm. Hold firm.
01:21:04
Well, I've got to possess something to hold firm to it. Right? I've got to know what
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I'm standing fast in. So, what these traditions were, it's assumed that the people to whom
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Paul is writing know what he's referring to. But they're going to understand, oh,
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Paul's talking about this. Delivered in two ways.
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Now, I could again go back and go to the next year's debate on Long Island with Gerry Matotix and show you his argument where he says, you
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Protestants, you don't believe this text. You're not obeying it.
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We Catholics, we are obeying both elements of it. We're holding to the word of mouth part, the oral part, that's called oral tradition.
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You reject that, you only hold to written tradition. Is that what the
01:22:12
Thessalonians would have understood? Now, what you need to understand is what
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Rome is trying to smuggle into this text. Because the oral tradition, the oral tradition, that has to be expanded out to cover everything.
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Everything that Rome has thought up over the years, developed over the years, that had nothing to do with the
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Apostles. What do I mean? Everything about the papacy, pretty much everything about Mary, perpetual virginity, immaculate conception, bodily assumption, certainly everything about co -mediatrix, coagitrix, all the rest of that kind of stuff.
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Sacramental priesthood, purgatory, indulgences, pretty much the entire sacramental system.
01:23:24
Because, see, the fact of the matter is if that's the oral tradition and you're trying to use this as your basis, then the
01:23:33
Thessalonians had already been taught all these things. Now look, I realize, people like John Henry Cardinal Newman, they all recognized you can't use it this way.
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As they came up with the acorn and the tree analogy.
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It's given in the acorn, but over time it grows into this great tree, which has a lot of stuff in it that the acorn didn't, but it was just sort of there.
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It's implicitly there. And he's going to talk about the distinction between material and formal sufficiency.
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Well, we can believe that the Scriptures are materially sufficient, that all the stuff's there at least implicitly.
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No, it's not. No, it's not. You cannot honestly say that the
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Apostles believed the things that you, as a Roman Catholic, believe today. It's just not possible.
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And so, here's the problem. And this is what I've challenged
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Roman Catholics who dare to bring this up in debate. Can you demonstrate for us, please?
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Show us historically that the things you wish to bind upon us in the name of oral tradition had been taught past tense to the
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Thessalonians. Show us the historical pedigree, the line of transmission. Show us that these were the things that were believed by the
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Thessalonians. These were the things being taught by the Apostles. And honest
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Roman Catholic historians will admit to the development over time, the reality that vitally important things to Roman Catholicism today were utterly unknown in the first centuries of the
01:25:25
Church. Unknown. Not a part of the faith experience of any of those generations for hundreds of years.
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So the Thessalonians weren't taught those things. So, positively though, what is in view?
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Well, the entire Church at Thessalonica, not just the Bishops, but the entire
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Church at Thessalonica had already been taught these items. These are not then teachings that are limited to the
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Bishops, but are generally known truths that every person in the Church knew and believed.
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Hence, any claim that the oral component contains anything other than what is found in the written component and, please, make sure you catch this.
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This is central to the Roman claim. It's smuggled in. It's almost never
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Carlo didn't say it. He didn't take the time to explain this. I've never heard anybody that has.
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But you need to understand, this is part and parcel of what's being said. For the
01:26:39
Roman position to survive, the content of what was delivered orally must differ, but in range of content, must differ from that which was written, which would be 1
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Thessalonians. So, the idea is that the
01:27:06
Thessalonians were taught things that Paul didn't teach in 1
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Thessalonians in what he's writing now or, evidently, in any of the other letters he ever wrote or any of the other apostles ever wrote.
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So, you want tradition to fill in all the gaps on your teachings on Mary? It was delivered to the bishops, but it wasn't written down for hundreds and hundreds of years.
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It was passed on orally amongst the bishops. That's the idea. Can't document it.
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Wishful thinking. And it has nothing to do with what Paul is actually saying. Any claim that the oral component contains anything other than what is found in the written component requires the defender of such a position to prove from the writings of the early church itself that these things were generally known and believed by the
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Christian people, not just by some bishops who didn't ever bother to mention to anybody else.
01:28:03
We will see that when we look at the doctrines that have been infallibly and clearly defined by Rome on the basis of tradition that these doctrines are uniformly, utterly unknown in the early church.
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But all this involves a gross misreading of the text. Paul is in no way talking about some extra -scriptural revelation in this passage.
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Instead, when we read the passage in its own immediate context, we find he is talking about something much more easily defined.
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That is the fact that Paul taught the Thessalonians the gospel, both in person as well as by his first letter to the
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Thessalonians. Paul is not giving a command here to hold to oral traditions.
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He is giving us a command to hold to the gospel. He even uses the same stand firm and hold fast when he writes to the
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Corinthians. Stand firm and hold fast to what? The gospel. The gospel of Jesus Christ. Is that what they would have understood when they first read it?
01:29:03
Of course it is. Would they have been thinking about papal infallibility or bodily assumption of Mary?
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Of course not. What Roman Catholic apologists will do, as Carlo did, was to give this vague reading and then hope that you will read into the oral tradition what
01:29:25
Rome 2 ,000 years later wants you to insert into it.
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There is absolutely no basis to do that. None. None whatsoever. They get away with it.
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The vast majority of the folks calling that program, you even heard Carlo say, I'm not sure you've ever read this before.
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If you can talk to folks who haven't actually read it before, that helps you make your case a lot better.
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It's a lot easier that way. That's what 2 Thessalonians 2 is all about.
01:29:58
So, with that, we're going to wrap up this edition of The Dividing Line.
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When we come back, we will continue. There's much more to be said about Sola Scriptura.
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We're going to listen to more things. We're going to listen to the assertions from Catholic Answers Live.
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But we also need to look at what Jesus taught about tradition. I hope you don't mind, but we've been doing this for a long time.
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We've been doing this for decades. And there are some interesting stories. I can tell you stories about when
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Catholic Answers used to come out and do seminars here in the Phoenix area.
01:30:44
I went to two of them. I was a little bit of a disruptive presence there. Not because I disrupted anything, but just because they knew who
01:30:53
I was and they knew I was going to ask a question. Some of the things that were said were very, very interesting and are relevant to our topic.
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I'll try to remember to throw a few of those background issue things in to make it all the more interesting for you.
01:31:11
But once again, let me close with this. This is more of a classroom type thing than...
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Well, we do a lot of it. I've been thinking a lot about what the ministry might look like.
01:31:28
Did you already start the music? Oh, yeah, it's going to take a few minutes. I've been thinking a lot about what happens if the brown shirts called
01:31:43
YouTube Heroes start destroying our ability to communicate with folks.
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What's going to happen when the society starts saying, you cannot say these things, you cannot say these things, you cannot say anything negative?
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Will there even be a possibility to be able to continue to teach positively the fundamental foundations of the faith and trust that God, by His Spirit, will lead
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His people to make the proper applications? Will we be able to extend our salt and light role in that fashion?
01:32:34
I don't know. But I know that a people that are not firmly grounded in understanding sola scriptura, all the solas, but especially here, because remember something, there were two primary principles of the
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Reformation. One was called the material and one was called the formal. The material principle of the
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Reformation was sola fide, justification by faith. It was the preaching of that message that was the very heart.
01:33:11
People are saying, aren't you going to show a Pacwa clip? Not done yet. We're going to do more programs.
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The very heart of the message that was preached that brought the Reformation about the material principle of the
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Reformation was sola fide, faith alone. Over against the sacramental system and penances and indulgences and all the rest of that.
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But the formal principle which gave form to the
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Reformation sola scriptura. And so a people that are firmly grounded in sola scriptura, sola fide, understand these things.
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These are going to be the people that are going to stand firm. People who do not see the importance of these things are blown about by every wind of doctrine.
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And they will not stand against the culture. They will not stand when it's time to count the cost.
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No question about it at all. So we spend this time to emphasize these things because they are of basic and fundamental importance.
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They may not be the most exciting things. I'm sorry. But they are absolutely foundational to so much of what we do.
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So much of what we do. So I hope that you will continue to listen and consider the things that we are presenting in this series.
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Well, with that, I will allow you to restart the lovely music. And we will see you,
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Lord willing, on Tuesday of next week, continuing the series on sola scriptura.