Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line. The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence. Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602-973-4602 or toll-free across the United States, it's 1-877-753-3341. And now with today's topic, here is James White. And good afternoon, welcome to The Dividing Line. Someone slipped me a URL right as we go into it, and it's like, uh, not much I can do about that now. I've been trying to get onto DesiringGod.org. I cannot get on it. It doesn't matter if I take www off, if I just type it out, click on it. will not come up for all fours everywhere else get in but uh... somehow uh... quest has blocked john piper to ask me how the world area they did that but uh... somehow they have uh... blocked john piper from uh... from the entire i p uh... you that are routers gone nuts and blazes completely lost and i suppose that's possibility But it's frustrating to know it's there, and everybody else can bring it up, and you're just sitting there going, boop, boop, boop, boop, and nothing works. Nothing comes up. 404 is all the way through us. Everybody starts throwing URLs at you. They're all the same thing. So you're going, excuse me, but that doesn't come up for me. So why are you listing all these things at this place that I can't get to? And I've told you I can't get to. Little frustrated. Anyhow, lots of stuff to look at. It's also frustrating to see all sorts of other things here. I'm going to start off by shocking you all. You may have heard Pope's speech stirs Muslim anger. Muslim religious leaders have accused Pope Benedict XVI of quoting anti-Islamic remarks during a speech at a German university this week. Questioning the concept of holy war, he quoted a 14th century Christian emperor who said Muhammad had brought the world only evil and inhuman things. A senior Pakistani Islamic scholar, Javed Ahmed Ghamdi, said jihad was not about spreading Islam with a sword. Well, yeah, that's sweet. Turkey's top religious official asked for an apology for the hostile words. Every day in Arabic, these people are just calling for our children's heads on pikes. And if the Pope quotes from someone from the 14th century, Oh, you can't say anything hostile about us, we want an apology. You just have to sit here and go, what? In Indian-administered Kashmir, police seized copies of newspapers which reported the Pope's comments to prevent any tension. A Vatican spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi, said he did not believe the Pope's comments were meant as a harsh criticism of Islam. Well, here's what he actually said. In his speech at Regensburg University, the German-born pontiff explored the historical and philosophical differences between Islam and Christianity, and the relationship between violence and faith. Stressing that they were not his own words, he quoted Emperor Manuel II Palaiologos, of Byzantine, the Orthodox, should be Byzantium, shouldn't it? Well, this is a news story, we'd expect. The Orthodox Christian Empire, which had its capital in what is now the Turkish city of Istanbul. The Emperor's words, and here's what he said. The Emperor's words were, he said, show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached. Okay, that's what he said. Benedict said, I quote, twice, to stress the words were not his, and added that violence was incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. And so, basically, you know, when the Pope is just quoting somebody from the 14th century, When did he lose the right to do that? This is an incredible example of not only hypersensitivity but not allowing someone to speak in context and the Pope did nothing wrong to quote this guy and it is just amazing the massive double standard that exists I don't see these same people calling for the Pope to apologize, calling upon all these Imams who every single day promote the most absurd calls for violence against Christianity. It's just absurd. And why aren't we hearing people telling these people to just, you know, jump off a cliff someplace? You know, get consistent. Let's have a standard here that means something. What's with all this hypocrisy? Good grief. I mean, if I wanted to ask the Pope about something, I would, along these lines, I would ask him how he, you know, deals with what the Universal Catholic Catechism says about Muslims worshipping and adoring the same God we do. That's what I would like to do. which actually provides an interesting transition segue as they say when you are a professional broadcast person which is like what Rush Limbaugh is but I can use segue too because I have a picture of myself as a professional broadcast person in 1980 or 81 at a real genuine radio station where I was playing records. Those vinyl things, which my daughter thought was pronounced vinyl because she had never heard of anything like that. Anyway, segue, segue directly into some more lunacy. Oh, and by the way, We have two lines that are used, but we need to leave a line open because if you look at the blog, the most important one today is we need to leave a line open here for Mickey to call in. Because Mickey, as she said, was when she was young and stupid and didn't have a proper religious education, she used to listen to me and read my books and articles. But then she got all smart and mature and properly edumacated. So now she knows I'm dumb, yes? We have the VIP line set aside just for her. Just for her? Okay. So, Mickey, if you want to call in today and explain the stuff about how much you were laughing and just demonstrate, since you're mature and edumacated and stuff, if you'd like to demonstrate from those articles that I gave you, those would be good examples. of how full of errors they are, misrepresentations and egregious misrepresentations, things like that. I'm here and you feel free to get in touch with us and we'll chat about that. So that line is open and as soon as Mickey calls, Rich will let me know. And we'll go straight to Mickey so we can get, what was the term that was used here? Her jaw was aching. Tears in her eyes, jaws aching, like reading The Watchtower. I always laugh hysterically reading The Watchtower too. That's something that happens all the time. But I'd like to see the acerbic ranting blowhardness. And scriptural cluelessness, that was a good one. That was good. But the main phrase is uproariously entertaining. I'm glad that I've provided a service today there from that. So leave a line open for Mickey to call in and we're just waiting for her to do so. But anyway, over on the Envoy forums, well I tell you, the Sophists have taken over. I'm wondering when an Orthodox Roman Catholic is going to stand up and tell the Sophists to go take a leap. Because I would imagine most of the plain old Roman Catholics that are even reading this stuff have no idea. It has now become the fashionable thing. that if you disagree with someone, what you do, it doesn't matter what the subject is, is you attack them as an Aryan or a Nestorian. Now, don't worry about providing a logical foundation for this, because what you can do is if you disagree with them on anything, you can create this torturously circular pattern of argumentation that proves that if you think like your opponent that you're going to end up denying the hypostatic union or something like that. You know, so it would sort of work like this. We have a gentleman in our chat channel. His nick is crew bear. You've seen him on the blog a few times. He gives us stuff and we blog it and things like that. The crew bear is a really neat guy and he's like an engineer and he's really smart and all that stuff, but all of us have our problems. All of us have our skeletons in the closet. All of us have issues. And Kru Bear's issue is that he is a Cowboys fan, okay? Now, most of us immediately go, oh, poor man, can he get counseling, you know, anything along those lines because it's just, you know, it just... is so difficult for him probably to live through all of that. But somebody has to be a Cowboys fan and so he, in God's providence, has been given that strange and odd desire and that genetic disposition. Anyway, it would sort of be like me and Crew Bear arguing, because I was born in Minneapolis, and so I'm a Vikings fan. Wasn't it the Vikings that beat the Redskins, Rich, on Monday night? Why are you putting your headphones on, Rich? Rich, why are you doing that? Any given Sunday, baby, any given Sunday. Even the Vikings can win a game. Okay, so anyway, if I were to argue... Hey, what's this switch do? It leaves you doing the program, which I don't think you want to do. Anyway, if I were to argue with Kruber, okay, about the Vikings and the cowboys, okay, it would sort of be like Kruber starting to argue that Cowboys, by their nature, are more American than Vikings are, because Vikings have never really truly been American at all. In fact, they damaged America, and Cowboys helped to unite the nation, while Vikings would divide the nation. So, since that's a parallel to the union of the two natures, that to be a Vikings fan is actually to be an historian and an Aryan. Now, you can come up with anything. I mean, you can come up with the stupidest arguments on the planet to accuse somebody else of a theological position that they actually do not hold at all. And that's pretty much the level of what you're seeing on the envoy forums right now, are people running around. And if you believe in Sola Scriptura, you're an Aryan. That's Aryan. And if you don't bow down before images, then you're an historian. Y'all heard it here when Jonathan Prejean called in and he's just mouthing Perry Robinson, too So it's a it's an amazing thing to watch and of course guess who? Prejean ends up quoting today at Envoy, but Paul Owen It's just like, let's throw all these soffits into one barrel and just mix it up a little bit and see what comes pouring out. It's an amazing thing to observe, this kind of stuff. Anyhow, I'm hoping it's a crew bear. And there's Kruber, he just woke up and he's probably just been listening to this whole thing and wondering what I was going to do to him. So he's the one who digs up all of our Anglican heresy, which actually is not that difficult to do. I mean, let's face it, there's a wide variety of sources that you can pull that kind of stuff out of. Anyhow, 877-753-3341, we still have that one line open for Mickey. And so, Mickey, we're waiting for you, because our audience wishes to be hilariously entertained. And we're just waiting for you. But until then, let's start with... Let's go over to California. Arturo. Hi, Arturo. Hey, Dr. White. How are you doing? Doing good. I want to talk to you a little bit about Roman Catholicism, like I told you I would like to call you about. Yes, sir. And, well, there's a few things. You brought up Envoy. Well, first of all, I'd like to correct you and say there is no skeleton in my closet. No, I'm just kidding. Well, you're a Cowboys fan, are you? No. Okay, well then that's a good start right there. As a rolling Catholic, I'm sick and tired of the Catholics bashing you all the time. Just as a matter of fact, last week I was looking at Catholic Ancestors Forum and the same stuff comes up about you're afraid of Robert St. Janis, red herrings and all that stuff. And I actually got on there and said, well, if you actually knew the real reason why Dr. White no longer will debate St. Janis, you would understand that he's not afraid of him or he Well, let me just mention something for those who are not aware of that, because it's been about two years since I last addressed the subject, but Robert St. Genes and I have debated five times, that's not including written materials. And so, to my knowledge, there is no Protestant apologist that has debated Robert St. Genes face-to-face in public more often than I have. And if you include radio and written stuff, it's probably close to a dozen times. So the whole idea is absurd. What they're referring to as a fact is basically we just don't have anything more to do with him. And that is because of his personal behavior. The fact that there was a time when we wrote an article together calling for respectful behavior and apologetics. However, as soon as a young man, who as I recall at the time was about 18 years of age, contacted St. Genes in his ministry and claimed to have inside information about David King and the Holy Scripture three-volume series and things like that, he jumped on it. and published this material that was so absurd. I mean, it was clearly drawn from someone who knew our chat channel, knew the people in our chat channel and was totally made up. And I'm sorry, but he absolutely destroyed his credibility at that point. And the fact of the matter is, I don't have the URL in front of me right now. I'd have to VPN, not VPN, but desktop into my other unit to pull this out. But I was sent a URL this week. where a large number, including Art Sippo, a large number of people who've been associated with Robert St. Genes in the past, have put together a website about Robert St. Genes and the Jews, because he's into this anti-Jewish conspiracy theory stuff, he's running around pushing geocentrism, and I've had more than one Catholic apologist in private conversation, commend me for not having anything more to do with Robert St. Genes because he doesn't represent orthodox Roman Catholic thinking any longer. So, to invest that kind of, yeah there it is, stgenesandthejews.com, it just appeared in Channel for those that are interested in that. To even invest, and people have to remember something, we're the ones that put out the effort to put these debates together. We're the ones that ship video cameras and all the rest of the stuff and that there's a lot of work and funding that goes into doing that kind of stuff. And so for us to put that kind of effort out, we've got to believe that the person we're debating, that the debate over time is going to have continued usage. And who knows where Robertson Genesis is going next. I mean, five years ago, no one would have seen this coming. But now, look at both he and Meditex. Now, don't get me wrong, that's why I'd like to see Tim Staple step up and Jimmy Akin step up and Carl Keating step up and Scott Hahn step up, because they're the ones that are still in the mainstream and they're the ones going around speaking in parishes and they're the ones with the radio programs and all the rest of that stuff. They're the ones on EWTN. It's not my fault that everybody who debates me, you know, not everybody, but a large portion of the Roman Catholics who debate me, when you put together Matatex and Syngenis, that's 17 or 18 of our debates. It's not my fault they've gone wacky. I mean, you know, Matitix is a set of vacancies now, and all the rest of this kind of stuff. So, that's not my fault. When I first debated Jerry Matitix, his picture was smack dab in the inside cover of the Catholic Answers magazine, This Rock. They don't want people to remember that, but that's what it was. So, I'd love to have some of these folks step up. We've tried to get Tim Staples. to do the Marian Dogmas. He's just put out a multi-CD set on it. I think there's a book as well. He's been speaking about all over the place. I would think that subject would be one that he's very well prepared on right now, but we can't get him to do it. So, you know... It amazed me with Tim because, like you said, he just put out this big old Marian CD. He has another new one called Sword of the Spirit, I believe it's called, and he also did one on the papacy, and yet when you debated him on the papacy, it was a, let's say, a sad showing for the Catholic side. It was an interesting night. About three or four times, trying to see where Tim scored some points, and it was difficult to give him any because of the facts. I think he just spoke for himself. Well on that subject they did, and to be honest with you, if someone asked me if they wanted to listen to a debate on the papacy, I'd direct them toward the one with Matta-Tix, the two-night one from 93, or the one with Mitch Pacwa, or even St. Janice on infallibility for that matter, even though if you listen to that one, St. Janice and Staples contradicted each other on how they even defended the concept of infallibility at that point in time. So we keep trying, we honestly do try to get the people who are the ones that are out there making the claims, they're the ones who have the speaking experience and things like that. We've been criticized when we would debate people who maybe don't have as much speaking experience because well now you're picking on someone here who can get flustered and blah blah. What are we supposed to do? We want to have these subjects addressed. And if it comes to issues, you know, that's why we've enjoyed debating Mitch Pacwa. But I'm not sure that Mitch would do, or if he'd even have time to, but Mitch would do any of the Merriam-Douglas, because I think he realizes this is sort of a third or fourth order concept. You have to accept all this other stuff first before you get here, in essence. And so, I don't know, but we'll see. Well, talking about debating small people, that reminds us of Shane Coombs. Yes. I'm not sure of the last name. I would assume it's Coombs. We'll listen to this, or you might be listening right now, but he's called in a few times. Right. And, of course, he accuses you of false history and all this other stuff. Cheap debating tricks. And then he calls in, but yet he has yet to say where. I haven't heard any responses either. I asked him last time and the last thing I got right as we were running out of time from Shane was, well if I debated you I would make your arguments look silly. Which I found a little bit, I don't know, I found that a little bit cheeky given that he admits that, you know, in essence what he's saying is he could do a whole lot better than anyone else has been able to do. And that always makes me wonder just exactly, especially when you're still in, you've got a two at the front of your name, front of your age, I mean, it just sort of makes me a little bit worried. Of course, then again, I was debating when I had a two in front of my name too, but I'm hoping that I didn't have quite the same attitude that I've seen from some other folks. But now, Arturo, for you, you were raised in the church? Yes, I was born and raised Catholic. Born and raised in it, now. And you know, I remember, I wrote it down actually, when one of the debates you said that you don't debate for people that have already made up their mind. You know, if they're Catholic, they're just going to hear the Catholic side. If they're Protestant, they're just going to hear your side. You're debating for people, like for me, who are open and willing to listen to both sides of the issues. That's a small group, unfortunately, in the audience. Let's face it. And listen to what each speaker has to say. And I have to admit, when I first started getting into debates and listening to you debate Catholics, I was one of those people that just shut you off and only listened to what the Catholic had to say, because I always said, no, Dr. White is wrong. This guy doesn't know Catholicism. He doesn't know what he's talking about. And when I went back now and I said, well, you know what? I need to be open. And when I talk to Protestants, they believe that the Holy Spirit is working within me now. that your points are, wow, they're really strong, your arguments, and so it's kind of scary right now where the Holy Spirit might be leading me here, too. Well, Arturo, just a couple things. Just in passing about what you just said, I will never forget a convert to Catholicism who attended the Staples debate that you just mentioned, where you couldn't hear much in the way of positive points made by Mr. Staples, but What he would do is he would come into the room while Tim was speaking and then as soon as I got up he would leave the room. And he had the temerity to actually say to someone who knew him before he converted that Staples had won the debate when they had watched him doing this. refusing to hear anything I had to say, leaving when I was speaking, but only listening when Tim Staples was speaking. And we can look at that and go, oh my goodness. And I would hope, I think most people know me well enough, that if I knew of a Protestant, if I knew of a former Catholic who converted from Catholicism, who behaved the same way, I hope that I would have the temerity of saying to him or to her, Don't go up to a Roman Catholic saying that I won that debate when you didn't listen to what the other person said. That's just improper, but that's not the kind of thing that unfortunately I experience in going reverse. But to you, if you've seen the Roman Catholic controversy, you know that the fundamental message that I seek to communicate to other people. And the primary thing I want to get to, even though we sometimes have to discuss whether Augustine said Roma locuta est, causa finita est or not, sometimes we have to deal with some rather arcane and difficult subjects if they happen to arise. the whole reason to do so is to have the opportunity of speaking, as Paul put it in Acts chapter 20, about testifying solemnly the gospel of God's grace. And to me, issues concerning the sacrifice of Christ and issues concerning God's purpose in creation and his self-glorifying act of redeeming a people in Christ and what it means to be in Christ and how a person can know that they're in Christ. The relationship of all this to Roman Catholic beliefs like purgatory or confession or the nature of grace and justification, those are the real eternal issues from my perspective. If we have to deal with authority issues to get there, fine. But as you know, for me, the issue is how can a person have true peace with God? And I don't believe that when a person believes that they could be at war with God before they go to bed this evening, that that is the kind of peace that Jesus Christ brings, that union with Christ brings, that justification and understanding the grounds of that brings. I hope that despite all of the other things we've had to discuss in the various debates, that that message has gotten through to you and that that's the important thing that we would want to communicate to you. Amen. Well, Dr. Watt, I appreciate your time and I appreciate you on the channel last night. proving yourself that it was you I was talking to. I've done that about two or three times before simply because sometimes people don't think that I would be in a chat channel especially at about 10.30 at night. What in the world are you doing? They don't realize that I multitask and that in fact right now people who are in channel get to read the upcoming book as it's posted paragraph by paragraph in essence. I enjoy doing that and it's a fairly effective means of making sure folks realize, yep, that's actually him in the chat channel. And so, well, we'll continue our correspondence and thanks for listening to the program. Okay. All right, God bless. What I did last night, and I didn't tell you this about Rich, is sometimes when people come and channel, they just don't believe it's me. There's just no way. You'd be too busy. You know, you wouldn't be there. Well, I have a blog. And so I used his nick and just put up a quick article that said, hi, that Nick, welcome to the channel or something like that and say, go hit the blog. And then when they see it, they go, whoa, wait a minute. Then I just make it disappear. And so it's a nice way of proving identity there. Unless, of course, someone hacks the blog, and then we got problems. But that was fun. Anyhow, all right. Let's right through that time where you've got like 30 seconds before the break. So let's not worry about it. Let's go ahead and take some of these calls here. And let's talk with Richard. Hi, Richard. Hello. How are you, sir? I'm doing fine. Good. What can we do for you? On the subject of Roman Catholicism, you would agree that they are in a apostate church, or would you disagree with that? Yeah, I believe that the Roman Catholic Communion as a whole, because of her dogmatic beliefs on the subject of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the nature of worship, and her, in essence, infallible rulership over the Word of God, is in such a condition as to be deemed an apostate communion. This has been the viewpoint of Reformed people for a long, long time. There are many today who call themselves Reformed, would no longer say that, but I think they're being rather untrue to their history at that point, and I think if you define the church based upon the possession and proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ, then I would argue that Rome's presentation of the gospel goes far beyond anything that the Judaizers in Galatia could have ever dreamed of stating. And so if I am going to be under the authority of the New Testament, under the authority of the Word of God, then I I have to identify those things. There are truths that we hold in common, but then again there are moral truths that I and Mormons hold in common. There are theological truths I hold in common with Muslims. Monotheism is one of those, but that doesn't really have anything to do with defining whether a church is actually in possession of the gospel of Jesus Christ. So yes, I would say that it's an apostate organization. Now, could you identify the time in history which this took place? Excellent question. Excellent question. That's something a lot of people ask about and I don't get to address it as often as I probably would like to. I try to warn people against a common Protestant presentation, shall we say, where you'll find a list of dates, for example, in a tract where at this point Rome invented this and at this point Rome invented that. That's a naive view of church history. Well, I'm sure you run into it. I'm not thinking of any particular track, but I've seen a lot of tracks like that. I don't have any one in mind, but what we need to remember is that that's not how church history works. People don't wake up one day believing X and they went to bed the night before believing Y. It just doesn't work that way and we have to remember that until relatively modern time periods, communication was very slow and theological change would be very slow. We live in a time period where because of the Internet and printing and the way of communication and travel, which we can do so much faster now than could be done before, because of all of that things change so much faster now than they have in history. And so what that means is you could have in the early history of the church through the medieval period You could have very different viewpoints existing not too far from one another and not even be aware of those things because of a lack of communication. You can't just simply look at church history and go, well, on such and such a date, everybody in the Western world came to believe this. It just didn't work that way. Even when a belief could come to a point where you might start identifying it as being at least the majority viewpoint of leaders, you would still have people in far-flung portions of the former Roman Empire or what we would call all the way from Palestine to the United Kingdom today. You'd have people holding very different views in different places and so it is the process whereby the official Roman communion came to the place where she is today is a long, long process. And even when in Rome statements would be made, it does not necessarily follow that the understanding that Rome had at that time would necessarily be that of people in other places. Just look at Augustine and his conflicts with the various bishops of Rome over various issues, or Cyprian likewise, and the parsing of statements took place both in politics and religion two thousand years ago the same way that it does today unfortunately and you can see lots of evidence of this in the writings of the early church in the medieval period and so on so forth so I think you need to look at big major doctrinal definitions and say here is a a a mile marker here is a a place where you can see a major movement away from apostolic truth But even then you need to be careful in recognizing that just as today there are people, I remember debating, I don't think we even have the tape of this available, we should, but I debated a former Protestant who became Roman Catholic up in Salt Lake City. He was an RCIA instructor up there. It was the first debate we did up in Salt Lake City. And this guy was so ecumenical that he started talking about Saint Martin Luther and he said that the Reformation won because Rome has adopted everything that the reformers wanted and just all this stuff. I mean stuff that would make any conservative Roman Catholic just pull his hair out. And so you can have strong statements in Roman Catholic dogmatic works today that are still parsed and interpreted in odd ways by certain individual Roman Catholics as well. So that happened in church history too. So I look at two primary events as to the dividing line in regards to the Roman Catholic Communion. where Rome made absolute statements that are fundamentally opposed to Scripture. So I could see arguments for either of these two dates being sort of the dividing line as far as what Rome has separated itself from the Gospel. The first would be the fourth ladder in counsel. and its definition in the 13th century of the doctrine of transubstantiation. You could make that argument, I think Wycliffe did, Huss did, the Lawlords, the people that followed after him. And one of the reasons they would do so is because they lived before the second one that I think a larger group of people would certainly look at and that would be the Council of Trent itself. Where knowing, see the difference between the two is the Fourth Lateran Council, you don't have a reformation going on. But the council trend is the counter-reformational council. They know, whether they know well or whether they know perfectly is another issue, but they at least have encountered Reformation truth, biblical truth, the proclamation of the centrality of the gospel and things like that, and they react against it. And so I could look at both of those two dates and understand arguments for both of those as dogmatically defining something that is just completely incompatible with the Gospel itself, either the Fourth Lateran Council or the Council of Trent. But again, even to this day, are there Roman Catholics who are a part of the Roman Catholic Communion who do not believe what either the Council of Trent or the First Vatican Council or Second Vatican Council or the Fourth Lateran Council. Are there Roman Catholics today whose only knowledge of who Jesus Christ is is a simple knowledge about who Christ is and what he was and what he did and they have a simple faith in Christ and as a result they're Christians? Yes. But both of us would hopefully recognize that as a result of that, they're not actually Roman Catholics. They may be going to a Roman Catholic Church, but even from Rome's perspective, they are separated from the Catholic communion because they reject these things that dogmatically define, de fide, the nature of the Roman Catholic faith, including the Marian dogmas and the nature of transubstantiation, all the rest of that kind of stuff that goes into that. I think one of the problems with a lot of those little tracks, they attempt to address what is a more complex and intricate discussion in too brief a period of time, and as a result, either inadvertently or purposefully end up communicating something that probably isn't all that helpful in the long run. Yeah, I have this like nebulous view of, I guess, history from these sources I've been given. trying to counter... what comes to mind is the scripture that says that the gates of hell will not prevail over the church. Basically, I take that to mean that there will still be doctrinal purity within even the small community. Well, let me just mention something. I think the best way to understand what Jesus said there is actually, we tend to think of it defensively, but it probably is saying that the gates of hell will not be able to stop the advance of the church, that the church is God's creation and that there's nothing that men can do to stop the fact that Jesus Christ said he would build his church and he continues to do so. And he does so in his own way, in his own time, including building it in places where his saints are murdered and imprisoned and persecuted as a result, especially in Islamic nations today. So, I don't think that would necessarily be the issue there. I think that the promise for the continuation of the Church is found in places like Ephesians chapter 3, where God the Father would receive glory through the Church throughout all ages, world without end. So I think that's where I would look at that point. Many Roman Catholics will misuse Matthew chapter 16 in regards to its statement and say, see we are the church that was there at the beginning and therefore we can never apostatize. That is the primary fallacy that we saw repeated over and over again last year when the Pope died, was that people were given free reign to constantly claim, well we are the church that has existed for 2,000 years. I'm sorry, but that is an irrational statement. I mean, you may want to make the statement and repeat it over and over again, but if we can go back in history, if we go back to, and this is the example I repeatedly use, and no one seems to want to give a response to this, but if we go back to the Council of Nicaea, and we look at the bishops who gathered at the Council of Nicaea in 8325, and we ask them, were these Roman Catholics? First of all, they would never have understood that term. That term was not in use and it is, in a sense, an oxymoron because katahalos, from which we get Catholic, means, according to the whole, it's universal. And so to limit that universal nature by a specific location is somewhat of an odd way of doing this. But that just wasn't terminology they would use. They used katahalos, they used Catholic, but they did not use Roman Catholic in that sense. And secondly, if you just ask the question, what did these men believe? What did they believe concerning the Bishop of Rome? Did they believe what is dogmatically defined by Rome as necessary to believe about the Bishop of Rome? The answer is clearly, no, they did not. There is no question about this whatsoever. Did they believe about Mary? What the Roman Catholic Church believes about Mary? No, certainly not. That some of these dogmas that are now dogmas of the Catholic Church were not even known at the time. They ask a Roman Catholic who claims, you know, we were talking about Mickey that I talked about on my blog today. Well, if Mickey read the early church fathers, then I would like to have Mickey call in and show us which of the bishops at the Council of Nicaea believed in the bodily assumption of Mary. It is unknown at the time. It's just not there. They can't even begin to do these things. And we start talking about purgatory. And we start talking about transubstantiation, we're talking about stuff that developed way down the road. And so if we looked at these men, and if we looked at someone today, and they don't believe in the bishop of Rome is infallible, they don't believe in the Marian dogmas, they don't believe in purgatory, they don't believe in transubstantiation, and we say, is that a Roman Catholic today? You'd go, well of course not! And yet these are the people who supposedly are the Roman Catholics of the ancient world, and that begins to expose the development idea in their minds and once you expose that then you can start dealing with the presuppositions underlying these claims that Rome makes in regards to being the church that existed back then and it just doesn't hold up to examination. Which may be why it's so difficult to get these folks who keep claiming that it does to actually come out and debate in a meaningful fashion and be challenged on that level because in that context they just can't substantiate their own claims. Okay, so you're saying that the idea of Roman Catholicism changes over time, but could you define a certain place where it can definitely say that Yeah, like I said, I think there's two places you could really argue that and that would be the Fourth Lateran Council 1215 and the Council of Trent which begins in 1546 and ends in 1564. In both of those you have a dogmatic definition. of a doctrine that is just simply completely incompatible with the gospel of Christ. And so I would look at those and say I can make arguments for either one of them as being a dividing line that Rome has crossed at that point. That's not to say. that there are not reprehensible doctrines that are codified by Rome before that. But it is to say that at least as we're looking at this very broad spectrum movement and remember again, someone like Gottschalk can be beaten mercilessly in the 9th century and thrown into a cell because he repeats what Augustine said about predestination election only 500 years earlier. Would that have happened in every locality? No. Would it have happened in Augustine's day? No. And so you see there's lots of, it's a lot more complex than we want to allow it to be. We want nice clean black and white dates where everybody signed on the bloodline and said, we anathematize evangelical Christianity. Well, it didn't work that way. History is rarely that nice and clean. And so, while it's a whole lot easier for people to represent it as if it is, and let's face it, the people to the extremes on both the Protestant and Catholic side represent it that way. The Catholics represent as if there's this clear progression and connection and apostolic succession and all the rest of this stuff. And they read modern Roman Catholicism back into the early fathers as if they would have had any idea what in the world they were babbling about. And at the same time the jack chicks of the world do the same thing in reverse. They read their modern evangelical theology back into the early church fathers and again they would have no idea what they were talking about. And they play fast and loose the facts of history and they simplify stuff too much. And I disagree with both of them. And the problem is, I can disagree with both of them. I can respect early church writers with whom I disagreed on a number of different issues. Because my foundation does not require me to invest in fallibility or any type of religious authorities in these particular individuals. The Roman Catholic doesn't have that luxury. He has a number of dogmas that have been enforced upon him, and they say that the unanimous opinion of the early church is X, Y, and Z. Well, when you demonstrate the unanimous position of the church wasn't X, Y, and Z, then Rome's infallible dogmatic authority collapses. And so that's why you see the outrageous abuse of these writings on the part of Catholic apologists, and that's why the vast majority of your Catholic historians are not apologists, and vice versa, because the two just don't go hand in hand. Okay, now I just have a final question. Sure. Sort of general, but I've been told that there's only three types of theologies, Roman Catholic, Lutheran, and the Reformed or Calvinistic. Would you agree with that? I could only wish. No, I mean, that leaves the Eastern Orthodox folks out, and they wouldn't really appreciate that. And the fact of the matter is, they've been around for a long time. And I don't know how you would, you know, that leaves Arminianism out, and there's a broad spectrum of the Holiness movement, Wesleyanism. I mean, that's just, again, that's just really simplifying stuff way, way, way too much. And today, I don't know that you could define on any one of those three exactly what that is. There's such a broad spectrum in Lutheran theology, there's such a broad spectrum in Roman theology today. Are we talking about the conservatives, the liberals, the traditionalists, what? And certainly Reformed, good grief. Shuler claims to be a reformed denomination who can make heads or tails out of what he believes to so no I I think that'd be far too simplistic a statement I mean you can make those divisions and there may be you know in Western Christianity in 1565 you might be able to make a statement like that but even that ignores the Anabaptists so yeah that's a little bit too too narrow there I would say I forgot to add that the rest are just deviations and subtractions. I got this from the church historian. Do you know Singer? Peter Singer? Peter Singer? You sure? Maybe this is a different Peter Singer because I know of an ethicist. I was going to say Peter Singer is an ethicist who is absolutely as evil as Adolf Hitler. I was hoping that wasn't who you were talking about. People come up with their little ways of describing things. You know, if you want to say there's these three, and then chart all the deviations off of that, the fact of the matter is you're going to have so many deviations that I don't know that you're ever going to be able to trace it back to those three. At the very least, I would say you have to deal with Eastern Orthodoxy in there, and that doesn't include it. So that would cause a problem. All righty, sir? Okay. Thank you very much for calling. All right. God bless. Bye-bye. All righty, we had pretty much full bank out, but still plenty of room for Mickey to call in. I'm sure Mickey's just getting the names of all those bishops at Nicaea. Let's give Mickey some credit here, because her jaw may still be hurting so much from the laughter. And it's hard to talk when your jaw is in pain. I mean, come on, let's face it. Let's try to be as fair as we can here. Let's go up and talk to Adam. Hi, Adam. Hi, Dr. White. What's the weather like in Wisconsin these days? Oh, beautiful. Except for the last couple of days, we had a really rainy and windy and cold couple of days. Oh, cold. But today? Send it down to us, man. We could use a little bit. Today, actually, it was nice. It was mid-70s. Ah, it sounds good. It's 96 right here right now. And you know what? Hey, as long as there's not three digits in it, I can't complain too much. But anyway, what can we do for you? I wanted to tell you I really appreciated your program on Tuesday. My grandmother is thinking of converting to Eastern Orthodoxy and dialoguing with Sky Man from your channel about it, and it's really, really encouraging to hear people saying and thinking many of the same things that I'm thinking right now. And I had a question, actually a couple of questions. I actually went to one of their Bible studies, just to make sure it was Eastern Orthodox, and one of the arguments the guy used is that Protestantism is so split and divided. I think he said something like 4,000 denominations at the turn of the 20th century, or something like that. And he said that Protestantism can't be trusted, because there's so many divisions in it, and there's so many... And then he moved on to say that The reason that they venerate images is because of the Incarnation, and because of the fact that if Christ was incarnate and He was physical, you should be able to depict Him with an image. And I was wondering if you could address both of those things. Sure. The first argument is very, very common and it's always ironic. It doesn't matter who's using it because if you're using it as an Eastern Orthodox person, you are in essence having to ignore the reality of the fact. that there are deep divisions amongst the Orthodox churches. And they may deny this fact, but anyone who has done any looking into the subject knows that Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, there's just as many divisions, they just don't do it in an official sense. and there is a tremendous amount of dislike and distrust between those various organizations. But leaving that aside, the hypocrisy of making the argument aside, it's just as hypocritical for Roman Catholics to make the same type of argument because of the vast majority or the vast number of differences that exist between their various and sundry branches and things like that and their practices. The argument itself is rather inane. I pointed out in debating Tim Staples in Fullerton back in 1996 that the misuse of a sufficient source is not an argument against that source. And just because there are people who call themselves Protestants, who do not practice Sola Scriptura, that does not follow that Sola Scriptura is untrue. And notice, I'm addressing here the principle of Sola Scriptura. I do not invest any authority or any religious power in what is called Protestantism in any way, shape or form. In fact, I'm fairly well known for taking lots of shots, hopefully biblically based and God honoring shots, at those who call themselves Protestants who do not live up to their own standards in regards to the use of the scriptures. So that's I think what needs to be understood is it shouldn't be we can't trust Protestantism. I don't trust Protestantism. What I do trust is that God has given us his word and that the only example we have of God-breathed revelation in our possession today are the Holy Scriptures which God said he would preserve for us and in which we would find the very voice of God. And so that's what I stand behind, and that's what I am seeking to address and seeking to say is the proper foundation, not any concept of Protestantism over against Eastern Orthodoxy as a whole. The second issue, interestingly enough, raises pretty much the same subject I was mentioning at the beginning of the program, and that is these individuals who say that, well, veneration of statues, or in this case, within Eastern Orthodoxy, because you have the rule, you know what the rule is to determine whether something is an icon or a statue, right? No, I haven't got that deep into it. Here's the rule as it developed. Remember, this is back in the days when there wasn't a whole lot of technology involved. If you could pinch the nose, it's a statute. So you can have relief in an icon, you can have some texture in an icon, but you can't pinch its nose. If you can pinch its nose, then it's a statue and it's no longer an icon, and you cannot give worship to it from the Eastern Orthodox perspective. Again, all this goes back to the assertion that is being made that, look, the foundation of the veneration of physical images, whether it's an icon or a statue, is somehow related to the issue of the incarnation and the fact that since Jesus Christ took on flesh, that that means that it is appropriate to give worship to physical things. And if you heard a Roman Catholic call up a couple of weeks ago, He was trying to make this argument, and so I asked him a simple question that he stumbled all over himself to answer, and that in and of itself should indicate to anybody that he shouldn't be trusted. And as I said, is the incarnation unique? Was the incarnation of Jesus Christ unique? And you heard, uh... It shouldn't be difficult. The word became flesh. Now, you would have to demonstrate that that unique event wherein the Word became flesh, is somehow taken by the apostles, presented to us as being a normative thing that means that while we can worship Jesus Christ as the God-man, that since he took on flesh, that now means that the created order can likewise be utilized in such a sense as to receive true and proper worship as well. And I would simply say there is no logical connection between the unique God-man and the fact that he is the God-man and that in worshiping him there is worship being given to his one person which includes the human nature, but that human nature is not then communicated to a statue. It is not communicated to an icon. It is not communicated in such a way that you can then give worship, whether you want to make the Latria-Dulia distinction, whatever, to the created order based upon the unique fact of the incarnation. That is sophistry. It is irrational. It makes no sense. You can repeat it all you want, but that's not going to make it make sense to anybody. And so that's where that argument, quite honestly, simply falls apart, is that it doesn't prove what it's meant to prove. It still leaves us dealing with the fact that the Word of God says X, Y, and Z. The Word of God told the people of God, this is how God is to be worshipped. Now when he reveals himself in Jesus Christ as the God-man, that he's identifying himself as the one who was worshipped by the cherub and the seraphim in Isaiah chapter 6. There's no change in who we are worshipping in that sense. And there is nothing in the incarnation, nothing in the prophecies of the coming of Christ, nothing in the fulfillment found in the New Testament, where those guidelines as to what worship is are somehow to be changed to where now what was once idolatry is no longer idolatry. We can now start making these images as long as they're images of people who have been greatly influenced by the Holy Spirit of God. Well, Moses was greatly influenced by the Holy Spirit of God, but that doesn't mean that it would have been proper to make an image of Moses and bow down before him. These folks almost have to become hyper-dispensationalists and say the Holy Spirit wasn't actively involved in people's lives back in the Old Testament. That's not the case. Look at David. Look at Abraham. Look at Moses. The Holy Spirit was. These people were holy people. They were saints. But there is no way anybody was making an image of them and bowing down to them, or they and their image would end up under a pile of rocks. And there's nothing in the Incarnation that has changed that. The Apostles never interpreted the unique event of the Incarnation as providing a ground for that kind of a thing. And that's why when you dig and dig and dig, all these folks, even though they try to make it sound like they're making a biblical argument, in reality if you dig and press far enough, They will eventually have to throw out the normative function of Scripture in defining the terms and the nature of worship itself. They will have to deny Sola Scriptura. Some of them do it in their first sentence, some of them wait a while to get around to it, but eventually it will always come back to that one issue. Always does. Yeah, and that's really what he attacked really heavily. I mean, he even quoted Calvin as saying, I think it was Augustine said X, but I feel, and he really attacked that I feel statement of Calvin. And so we can't have any certainty if we're just relying on feelings. Well, that's ridiculous. I mean, you could go back in church history and read and throw out Augustine, throw out all the Western writers, go with John and go with Chrysostom and the people that the Eastern Orthodox love to, Maximus and so on and so forth. Go with those folks if you want to. You're going to find them saying they feel. You're not going to find some unanimity of viewpoint at every point in Eastern Orthodox writings. If you want to parse them, you're going to come up with the exact same level of contradiction. That's a double standard. any sense to me at all. All righty? All right. Well, thanks for your time and it's very helpful. Well, I appreciate the fact that all the calls today have sort of gone along pretty much the same lines and helped us to have a good informative program for everybody today. So, thank you for your call. All right. Thank you. God bless. Bye-bye. Bye. Excellent. Three excellent calls and excellent opportunity to almost bookend the program there. by discussing pretty much the same material that we started off with. We left a line open and we never heard from Mickey. And I was looking forward, personally, to some of that uproarious entertainment because I just missed it in reading my articles on Roman Catholicism. But we missed it, but we left the phones open. We were even discussing the same topic But who knows? Maybe Mickey just didn't get my email, hasn't gotten it yet. Who knows? Maybe Tuesday Mickey can point out all the uproariously funny things on our website about Roman Catholicism and maybe respond to some of the things we said today. That would be pretty interesting. Who knows? Hey, thanks for listening to The Dividing Line today. Hope it's been edifying to you. Lord willing, we'll see you next Tuesday on The Dividing Line. God bless. Let the crossroads, let this moment slip away. We must contend for the faith our fathers fought for. We need a new reformation day. It's the sound of the times. The truth is being trampled in and doing their job. Won't you lift up your voice? Are you tired of playing religion? It's time to make some noise. How long will it last? I stand up for the truth, but won't you live for the Lord? Cause we're pounding on, pounding on The Dividing Line has been brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries. If you'd like to contact us, call us at 602-973-4602, or write us at P.O. Box 37106, Phoenix, Arizona, 85069. You can also find us on the World Wide Web at aomin.org, that's A-O-M-I-N dot O-R-G, where you'll find a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates, and tracks. Join us again next Tuesday morning at 11 a.m. for The Dividing Line.