Sola Scriptura Debate Closing Statement

I have a few resources here. It doesn't explode. I'd like to present, I guess sort of in a debate, it's sort of like a court of law, a few items placed into evidence. The Code of Canon Law, the documents of Vatican II, the Universal Catholic Catechism, the Companion to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, a compendium of text referred to in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and just for the fun of it, the Dogmatic Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent.

The Weight of Catholic Authorities Compared With Romans 5:1

That's a big stack of books. That's a lot of reading, and that just scratches the surface. We read much in there of what the gospel is, and we read about the treasury of merit, and we read about purgatory, and we read about condine and congruent merit, and we read about sodus passio, and we read about all these things.

Are we truly to believe that that clarifies Paul's simple statement in Romans 5 .1, therefore having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Do I need that? The early Christians didn't.

If the early Christians did not need all of this, if they managed to live their lives, defend the faith, become martyrs, without all of this that allegedly clarifies the gospel, but I believe actually ends up perverting the gospel, why do I need it today?

How could a Roman Catholic determine the difference between a perversion of the gospel over time, and simply an alleged clarification on the basis of a tradition that Rome can't show us until she defines a dogma?

I didn't ask the question, but I'd like to ask the question, could we have an infallible list of all the traditions that exist outside Scripture? I don't think one exists. And if we had asked someone in say 1840, for an infallible list of dogmas that one must believe to be in harmony with the church, it wouldn't have included a dogma that now you must believe to be in harmony with the church.

That suggests to me, my friends, that something has changed. The gospel itself has changed, because without Sola Scriptura, without those firm boundaries, well, you don't have any certainty. You know, one of the early writers put it this way, in regard to the divine and holy mysteries of the faith, not the least part may be handed on without the holy scriptures.

Do not be led astray by winning words and clever arguments, even to me who tell you these things, do not give ready belief, unless you receive from the holy scriptures the proof of the things which I announce, the salvation in which we believe is not proved from clever reasoning, but from the holy scriptures.

Scripture as the Boundary for the Gospel and Doctrine

That's why we have come here this evening. Sola Scriptura is not something you just have debates about because you can get a lot of folks to come out and you can get some fireworks going. Sola Scriptura is the fundamental authority issue and all the differences that exist between Father Pacwa and myself on what the gospel is come back to what our ultimate authority is.

The differences in our hermeneutics, the differences in our method of exegesis goes back to the fact that I believe that my faith and my doctrine must be derived solely and only from that which is God breathed.

And I do not believe that you can take the words of the apostles and exegeting them in their context and with any level of fairness come to the dogmas that have been bound upon the consciences of men by Rome regarding such things going backward into history as the bodily assumption, the immaculate conception, papal infallibility, the issues of purgatory, the treasury of merit, and then that gets right to justification itself.

How is it that a man is justified? I believe somewhere out in the back, we have tapes of a even longer debate that Father Pacwa and I did on that very subject almost a decade ago now. And we both looked a lot better back then.

That's what separates us. It's the fundamental issue of authority. And it results in what could rightly be described as a tragic difference in regards to what the gospel itself is. But you see, in our society, it would be a whole lot easier for me if I just sort of hooked up with the ecumenical movement.

It would be a lot easier for me in my ministry if I wasn't one of those hard-nosed people. If I compromised, if I said, well, you know, it really doesn't matter. Let's, you know, you've got your view.

I've got my view. Let's not worry about it. I, out of love for God and love for his word,.

Cannot do that.

I cannot do that. And I am forced to that by the fact that I will not bow in allegiance to anything that is not the anustos, that does not come from God speaking. Does that mean I don't have a church?

No.

The authority of the proclamation of the church comes from her fidelity to the very words of Christ. The authority of the proclamation of the Christian people can only be derived from her fidelity to the scriptures.

That's true apostolic succession. True apostolic succession is not claiming some genealogical lineage. True apostolic succession is preaching what the apostles preached. And the simple fact of the matter is that what we are told by Roman Catholicism today was an apostolic tradition is contradictory to what the apostles themselves preached in scripture.

I can see scripture. I know scripture goes back to the apostles. I do not know, and neither does anyone else know that these alleged apostolic traditions that have no purview in the early church actually go back to the apostles.

That is an assumption and a very dangerous one. There are many today who have embraced Roman Catholicism because they heard arguments against sola scriptura and they couldn't answer them. And they say, see, I needed certainty about the canon, and so I've embraced Roman Catholicism.

You didn't get certainty. You see, the decision that you made was a fallible decision. And you can't get any more certainty out of that than what you used when you first embraced it. It's a bit of a shell game.

Something promised, but when you actually end up picking it up, you don't find anything there. And that's why it's so important. This evening, you have chosen the best thing. You could have gone and seen films and movies.

You could have entertained yourself. You could have maybe earned some more money. There's a lot of things you could have done.

You came here.

Gratitude for the Audience and Final Appeal

In our society, you are to be commended because our society thinks that all of us, whatever side you're on, are probably pretty nutty for having spent an entire evening listening to Father Pacwa and I up here discussing this subject.

Some of you I know have traveled from a long distance, and I thank you for coming. But I truly hope and pray that you will consider well what has been said and consider well the impact concerning what the nature of the gospel is and the great difference that exists between the two sides.

I would like to thank Father Pacwa for coming and being here. I would like to thank him for being the gentleman that I knew he would be in our dialogue and our discussion. We can disagree in an agreeable fashion.

We can disagree and say, you are wrong. The difference between us is that when we disagree, we both admit that it results in a fundamental separation of the directions that we are going.