Alpha and Omega Ministries presents the Dividing Line radio broadcast. The Apostle Peter commanded all Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give this answer with gentleness and reverence. Your host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha and Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, you can call now by dialing 602-274-1360. That's 602-274-1360. Or if you're out of the Metro Phoenix dialing area, it's 1-888-550-1360. That's 1-888-550-1360. And now with today's topic, here's James White. And good afternoon and welcome to The Dividing Line. My name is James White, live in studio here in Phoenix for the first time in a very, very long time, actually. I think it was the first weekend in October, if I recall correctly, the last time that we were together. It has been a long time, and I don't know right now exactly who all is listening. But today we do have open phones. If you would like to make a comment, if you'd like to ask a question about some of the topics that we have addressed in the past, maybe some issues that have come up even over the past few programs that I didn't hear. But I'm thankful for folks like Benedias and others who have been kind enough to fill in and to provide us with information and with good teaching. Discussions, I know we talked about Jehovah's Witnesses last week. I found that interesting because I spent 45 minutes with two Jehovah's Witnesses in my driveway yesterday morning. Just happened to come out and be walking up to my house as they did, and had a very nice conversation with them, but as is very common in talking with Jehovah's Witnesses, They didn't leave with anything in their hands. They only left with the things that I had talked to them about, unfortunately. But that's how it works, and as long as I show them some things in the Bible, that's the important part. But we've been gone. We had a lot of things take place while we were in Florida and doing other things. Okay. Okay, so I've just been told we weren't on the air at the beginning of the program. I love technical stuff. Anyways, we have open phones today. 602-274-1360. 1-888-550-1360. I've never learned how to do that radio thing. They're radio people. Someone can talk them the earphones. They can keep talking. I cannot do that. It's not possible It's not I don't think it's physically or mentally possible so as soon as someone starts talking to me in the headphones I sit there and go I Sort of like that so I am NOT the professional radio person on that level. I just can't handle that and 602-274-1360 is the local number, 1-888-550-1360 if you're outside the Phoenix dialing area. Questions concerning church history, Roman Catholicism, Jehovah's Witnesses, whatever it might be, but a lot of people have questions about what we were doing while we were in Florida. One of the main things that we were doing while we were in Florida is we had a debate with Robert Syngenis on the subject of papal infallibility. and the reason that a lot of folks are really really interested in that is because of what took place in july when we had a debate with tim staples on the subject of papal infallibility in fullerton california so i guess this was the coast to coast papal fallibility tour we had had one debate in uh... in uh... long island i'm so long island in uh... l a basically fullerton And then we went all the way across. I'm not sure you could get too much farther away. I guess if you went north you could. All the way across to Clearwater, Florida. And had a debate with Robert St. Genes. And we don't have the tapes yet. I'm sorry. They haven't arrived yet. They should be arriving fairly soon. The debate with Mr. St. Genes was both audio and videotaped. And I am, well, then again, so was the Tim Staples debate. It was videotaped, but they have now suffered the fate of the Nixon tapes, I do believe. There are these big gaps, I'm sure, in the videotape. But anyways, the Syngenesis debate was videotaped, and since the church it was held at, has a regular television ministry. This is the first time we've really done it that way. The neat thing is that it was a three-camera shoot. Now, if you've looked at any of the debates in the past, you know, for example, the ones on Long Island is normally one camera. And this poor guy on the camera, you know, he'll zoom out, and then he'll sort of slowly pan the audience and go back, and he'll zoom in, and that's about all you can do when you only have one camera. You can't do a whole lot more than that. But when you have three cameras, you can do a lot. And they had three cameras going on the debate, so the debate itself was very different than any of the debates we've done before. We wanted the debate with Mistress and Janice to contrast tremendously with what took place with Mr. Staples. If you have not heard our discussion of what happened during the Tim Staples debate, let me just briefly mention that it was a war. It was sort of sad in many ways, the way that the predominantly Catholic audience responded and acted. as well as my opponent, for that matter, and it was quite an intense affair. We wanted the debate with Mr. St. Genes to be much clearer than the debate with Mr. Staples was, so I designed, working with Mr. St. Genes, a format very different than what we have used for most of the debates in the past. And we broke it up into different rounds. And even though Mistress and Janice was defending papal infallibility, which would generally mean in most debates, that would mean that he would go first, and then I would respond in each one of the segments, we changed that for the sake of the clarity of the topic. So that in the first round, we talked about biblical evidence. He did go first, and then I responded. But in the second and third rounds, and the second round was the longest, in the second and third rounds, and each round would have an opening statement, it would have brief rebuttals, it would have cross-examination and closing statements. A lot of cross-examination, a lot of direct interaction between the two debaters, because we've had a lot of people say, hey, that's missing in a lot of the debates. The cross-examination is not long enough. It's not full enough. And I've come to realize that that is the meat of the debate, is the cross-examination. That's where the rubber meets the road, in essence. And so, in the second and third rounds of the debate with Mistress and Janice, I went first, and in fact I told him many weeks before the debate, the second round will be on the subject of Pope Honorius. So I told him exactly what the subject would be. I would be presenting a case against papal infallibility based upon the fact that Honorius the Bishop of Rome was condemned as a heretic by the 6th, 7th, and 8th ecumenical councils. And so he knew that ahead of time. He goes second, so in other words, I present the case, then he responds to it, and then we have a cross-examination, and then I do a closing, and then he closes after me. now if you're familiar with debates you know that i think i'm the first person to offer to the roman catholics uh... in that the debates this kind of a format where i actually undertook to go first even though he's defending a thesis and then in the third round uh... likewise i said i'm going to focus upon pope's also miss and uh... the situation with the north africans as my second example and so i went first he went second he knew where i was gonna be going both of us could be prepared and the main thing was the audience in listening to these debates doesn't get lost They're hearing exactly what the issue is. We're not going from one pope to another pope to another pope. Most folks listening to a debate like this have not heard of Honorius or Zosimus or the 6th, 7th, and 8th ecumenical councils and knowing where they are in history and what the issues were and what monothelitism is or anything like that. And so if you don't focus the discussion, it's very easy to lose folks. And so what we did is we focused people in, we focused the subjects in, and then after those three rounds, then we each had a brief closing statement on the subject of the debate specifically, and then we each had closing statements in a more general fashion in regards to the importance of this subject. For him, obviously, it was the importance of having an infallible authority, For me, it was the importance of holding to the sufficiency of Scripture, and that's how it worked. Now, having a three-camera shoot, I've been told, I haven't seen these yet, but the people who were at the church who were watching the debate via the television screens, they themselves said that especially during the cross-examination, having three cameras, where you can have one that's wide out, one on each person, will make the videotapes when we get them, Very, very useful. Probably the best produced video material that we've had so far. So, I expect, I really do hope to have those tapes in hand by a week from today, hopefully a week from Friday, and then we can start making them available. We will announce their availability. on the website. Now, right now, the main article on the website, and let me just mention again, open phones today, if you've got a comment, question, 602-274-1360, 1-888-550-1360. I don't know if we have anyone outside the Phoenix dialing area that can hear us right now. We don't, so... Folks here locally, please feel free to dial in at 602-274-1360, and with your questions or comments, questions about the debate with Mistress and Janice, whatever else it might be, we'll be glad to help you out with those things. But as I was saying in regards to the debate, one of the things I'm thinking about doing, I haven't made it absolutely certain yet, I am thinking about offering the two debates, the Staples debate and the Syngenis debate, together in one package and advertising it as, get three debates for the price of two. And the reason I say that is if you've taken a look at the main article on our webpage, The main article on our webpage has to do a little bit with the issue of papal infallibility. I address an article that appeared recently in the, well actually it's the current edition of This Rock magazine, the publication of Catholic Answers, what used to be anyways the largest Catholic apologetics organization in the United States, I would assume in the world, I don't know. But this Rock magazine's been being put out for over a decade now. And they had an article by Stephen O'Reilly in which he attempts to defend Honorius. And the whole defense that he offers is pretty much the same defense that Tim Staples offered in the debate at Fullerton. And that is that Honorius was only condemned for a failure to teach. He was not condemned for teaching heresy as the Bishop of Rome. Well that's very interesting because Mistress Ingenis adopted a defense of Honorius that completely refutes the defense used by Tim Staples in Catholic Answers. and so when i say get three debates for the price of two what i mean is uh... you get uh... my debate against him staples and you get my debate against robertson jenis and the neat thing is you get a third debate between robertson jenis and tim staples only for the price of two i think that's a a neat way of doing it because if in point of fact uh... the defense used by catholic answers and tim staples is true then the defense offered by Mistress Ingenis is completely invalid. That is, Mistress Ingenis admitted that Honorius taught heresy on the subject of monothelitism. His defense was that the letters that Honorius wrote to Sergius, in which he said, we confess one will in our Lord Jesus Christ, which is the very use of the term monothelitism in the sense of one will, that that was not an ex cathedra teaching. And since it was not an ex cathedra teaching, then it does not violate the teaching of papal infallibility as defined by Vatican I. So he admitted, yes, Honorius was heretical on this, and in fact, and this is what will, I think, make these debate tapes very interesting in the future, is the fact that during the cross-examination, in the second round, when I was asking Mistress Ingenis questions, I asked him, was Honorius a heretic? And then I asked him, are you saying that it is possible for the bishop of rome the vicar of christ on earth to be an unbeliever and he said yes and you could hear the entire audience gasp i'm not sure if it was the protestants gasping or the catholics gasping or if it was an ecumenical gasp uh... i'm not really sure which which it was but the entire audience was like you've got to be kidding oh wow it's it's incredible so uh... he had he admits that it is possible for the Bishop of Rome to be an unbeliever in this debate. Now, if Mistress Ingenis is right and Honorius was condemned for his heresy, it just wasn't an ex cathedra statement, then Staples and Catholic Answers are wrong in saying that his letters were actually orthodox and that the only thing he was actually condemned for was for his failure to teach the truth, not for his having promulgated monothelitism and an error. And so it is interesting to note that the infallible interpreter has never given an infallible interpretation of this issue. Not only do you have very few infallible interpretations of biblical passages, in fact, some would argue you don't have any. Others would say you have five, six, seven, something like that. But even then, many would say, well, you know, you have to hold what Rome has said about this particular passage. But it might have a polyvalent meaning. So maybe there's more than one possible interpretation. You just have to make sure you hold the one given to you by Rome, but you might hold others as well. that kind of a thing. So not only do you have very little infallible interpretation of the Bible, but you don't have any infallible interpretation of the history of the infallible interpreter. And so you have Roman Catholic apologists adopting actually contradictory ways of attempting to defend Honorius against the charge of papal fallibility. And so that in and of itself, I think for anyone who has begun to adopt the Roman Catholic attack upon Sola Scriptura, they need to think about the fact that in reality they don't have a real answer for their own system when it comes to its alleged infallible authority. I think the Syngenis debate will also be extremely valuable as a tremendous contrast in behaviors. That is, those who attended the debate in Fullerton, who are familiar with the background issues, the fact that the audience was simply nasty, the audience was loud, obnoxious, and my opponent was similar, behaved in a similar fashion, that the contrast between that and the debate with Mistress and Janice, well, one of the funny things is we had a little problem, you know, like we're having little problems today, you know, things happen. We still have a little problem today there guys in the control room? We do. We were told we weren't going to have this little problem, weren't we? Ah, that's good, that's wonderful. Great to have open phones when, well anyways. We had a little problem during the debate and that is, there was some miscommunication somewhere along the line concerning how the debate was going to be moderated. The pastor of the church had said, well we'll do the moderation. A problem was that he introduced us and then turned to us and said, well you all introduced yourselves and sat down. And there was no announcement of what we were going to be doing next, nothing. And so in essence, we self-moderated the debate. I eventually decided I need to explain to folks what we're doing, so I got Mistress and Janice's permission and I said, well, okay, this is how we're going to finish this round, and then this, and here's the time limits, and I just explained this stuff, and we self-moderated our own debate. and it worked fine it worked absolutely fine mistress and jenis never attacked me personally never attacked him personally we didn't go over time uh... but we ran this debate the way that it should be run and this is the second time now the robertson jenis and i have done a debate where the moderator could have been a comatose state it would've been just fine uh... because we have uh... some of you are aware of the fact that uh... he and i wrote a joint statement together in which we talked about how debates should be handled and uh... we've stuck with it we stuck with it on the justification debate on long island and we stuck with it on the uh... papal infallibility debate in clearwater And I can pretty much guarantee you that on December 4th in San Diego, we'd like to be talking to you folks in San Diego, but we'll just hand sign this over to the folks in San Diego, that on December 4th in San Diego, we are going to be debating the subject of Sola Scriptura, not with Robertson Jennis, but with Mitchell Paquin. Some of you are familiar with the fact that we have debated Mitchell Pacwa in the past, we did two debates in January of 91, where we debated the subjects of the mass and justification by faith, and then we debated the papacy, just, it was 98, I think it was, 1998, yeah, I think it was 1998 we debated the papacy on Long Island, and each of the debates that we have done with Mitchell Pacwa have been amongst the best debates that we have to offer. Mitch does not get into the personal attacks. He's not into attacking me as an individual. He's not into using cheap debating tricks. He's not into misrepresenting the Roman Catholic position. He sticks with the conservative, dogmatic position of the Roman Catholic Church. That's what he represents, that's what he presents. And as such, the debates that we do are focused upon a subject, not upon individuals. And so I'm looking forward to the debate December 4th in San Diego on the subject of Sola Scriptura. I unfortunately neglected to bring the information with me, but then again, no one in San Diego can hear this anyways. But we're going to be archiving it, so I will try to get that information. I'm not sure if Rich has it with him today or not. I heard him cutting a commercial for it, so I know it's around somewhere. You can always call our ministry offices and bug Rich and he can tell you where and when and what time and so on and so forth. But it'll be a Monday night. I know that's unusual. But Dr. Pacwa teaches at the University of Dallas and he teaches on weekends. That's when his graduate classes are held and so he's not available for like a Friday or a Saturday like we normally have our debates. Instead it needs to be on a Monday evening and we will be debating Sola Scriptura. He and I have not debated Sola Scriptura and Unfortunately, the vast majority of debates, well, all the debates that I've done thus far on the subject of Sola Scriptura were with individuals who didn't do what Dr. Pacwa does, that is, they didn't stick just to the subject, they didn't avoid using cheap debating tricks, and therefore that will make this a rather unusual debate in that I really trust this could be the first time that we've debated Sola Scriptura since the very first debate we did in August, I believe it was, of 1990. in long beach against jerry matics allegedly on solo scriptura and it was on almost anything but that subject since we started this uh... since we did our first uh... public moderate debate that was more than two dozen debates ago uh... with roman catholics anyways uh... in august nineteen ninety this is the first time we've done so scriptura and it'll really stick to the subject note and i've should give jerry some credit the last time that he and i debated Solo Scriptura in Long Island was, I think, the best that we had done on that, and there was the least amount of the, what I call, cheap debating tricks, but still, I think this will probably be the best, and I'm very much looking forward to it. I hope that it'll be very useful to folks. 6.02. 274-1360 if you're outside the Phoenix dialing area. 1-888-550-1360 is the phone number. Open phones today, wherever you might be, including way out in the middle of nowhere. We invite you to participate in the program today. It is my understanding that we're now welcoming, hopefully, the internet audience. If there is anyone in our worldwide chat room to let folks know that we are now on the internet and available for phone calls, please let them know in our chat room as well, because we'd like to get folks involved. In fact, I was told anyways that we were going to be having one question concerning some issues in regards to the background of the can of scripture and things like that. I've brought some information along on that. But if you'd like to ask any questions about the debates that we've done, the upcoming debates that we're going to be doing, I'm not sure if I mentioned this, and if I did I need to sort of retract it, but we had arranged, and we thought we had it pretty well written down and confirmed, we had arranged for the debate on Long Island, to be in the spring with Dr. Peter Kreeft of Boston College. Many of you know who Dr. Kreeft is. Dr. Kreeft teaches philosophy. He's written a number of books. And he is a convert to Roman Catholicism, and he had agreed to defend the doctrine of purgatory. The subject for the debate on Long Island in May is purgatory. The problem is, he thought that it would be fairly easy for him to rearrange one commitment that he had, and it turned out to be impossible. And as we kept looking at dates and looking at dates, the only direction that he could go was earlier and earlier, all the way into April, and I am not available to go to Long Island in April at all because of my teaching schedule and things like that. And so, unfortunately, we're not going to be able to have Dr. Kreeft. We had had another positive response from another Roman Catholic apologist. uh... who then turned around and said no and uh... so we've had to uh... to bailouts in essence uh... so far and we're going to continue working on lining that up uh... that's one of the subjects that really needs to be addressed i think purgatory is uh... is a subject that will help us to apply what we've been saying for a long long time on the subject of the gospel uh... the teachings of roman catholicism and how they definitely impact the presentation of the gospel, the meaning of the gospel, and how the teaching of Rome in regards to grace differs so fundamentally from what evangelicals should be meaning by grace, And sadly, I think the fact that many evangelicals today can basically buy into these things and at least not object so strenuously shows the cheapening of grace within what calls itself evangelicalism anyways. And that in and of itself I think is a shame. But that's the subject we're going to be addressing. Purgatory, I don't know yet because we don't know who the opponent's going to be, exactly how we're going to fit that into, if we're going to try to fit in indulgences. I personally would love to find a well-read, convinced, believing Roman Catholic who would defend the concept of indulgences in and of itself. You'll find Catholic Answers, Envoy Magazine, writing articles in defense of it, but they won't come out and defend it. They won't come out and respond directly to criticism of it. I would love to be able to get some folks to do that. Some of you may be saying, hey, didn't you once say that Tim Staples was going to be your opponent on Purgatory? Well, he was. But once his organization made promises to us, said to us that they would provide certain things, specifically the videotape of the debate, and then, in essence, told us to take a flying leap, and they won't do it, if you can't trust somebody, then you can't work with them. And so there's no way that we would expose the audience to that kind of a situation. And so he's been disinvited from that type of an encounter because you've just got to have some level of credibility in the sense of being able to trust someone's word. If they say, hey, we'll provide you with this tape, then you provide them with the tape. Whether you lost the debate or not isn't the issue. And we can say with tremendous honesty that everyone who has engaged us on our grounds, that is, when we were the ones who arranged it, for example, the Long Island debates, the past five of those, the situation just a few weeks ago in Clearwater where we were at a Baptist church. In every one of those situations, those tapes have been provided. to the opponent, just as we said. There are videotapes right now out there that exist of my debates with Mitch Pacquiao from back in 1991, January of 1991. No one's ever seen them. The only way we could get them is if we paid for them. and uh... we have from the beginning said look this is a debate weird we will make the resources available to both sides evenly to do with as they please in marketing them and that's because we're not afraid of uh... having people hear what we have to say uh... of hearing the outcome of these encounters and so we'd love to find someone who would do indulgences in a formal debate setting uh... but i i don't know right now where that's going to be a part of the purgatory debates are hard to totally separated out. I mean, they're so directly related to one another. But we'll see how it works out. It's hard to say. That's a tough subject for people to defend, certainly. I mean, from the Roman Catholic perspective, if you don't hold to the ultimate authority of the Church, then there's no reason to believe in these things. But some of these apologists will say, well, the Bible does support this, and so they'll come out and attempt to defend it. It's just difficult to find the folks and get them together on the right schedule and so on and so forth. 602-274-1360, 1-888-550-1360. Open phones. We have many phone lines open. One is currently in use. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We're going to take a break, and then we'll come back with your phone calls right after this on The Dividing Line. And welcome back to Dividing Line. It's okay, the ringing only lasts for about six hours. That is the warmest bumper music ever designed by man. And... Yes, yes, yes, Rich. I see you pointing at Warren there and wanting everyone to say... Oh, Warren's pointing at Rich. This is fun. This is Adam and Eve. There you go. Adam and Eve. He did it! No, he did it. That doesn't... That wouldn't work out right. Anyways, we are... We have open phones today, and I apologize to those of you who aren't listening right now, but we have open phones at 602-274-1360, 1-888-550-1360, and let's start clearing the phone lines here. We have fun on this. Hi, Johnny, how you doing? How you doing, James? Nice talking to you again. It's good to talk to you. What's up? All right. I have a couple of questions. I've been talking to Rich on the phone off and on, and uh... That's not a good thing to do, you know. I mean, that can really mess your theology up big, big time, you know what I mean? Yeah, I'll let them know about that. Anyway, can I ask Rich a couple of questions? One, he shot over to you. I'm sure you're aware that I'm the one that sent you the email about him. Uh, yes, uh-huh. Yes, I read your email. One of the things that I talked about with Tim off the air all were about the uh... the photos of the uh... reformations and so on and so forth but first uh... i wanted to ask you very quickly something that i've heard a couple of roman catholics they to you are one from a bible answer man who was james aiken back in nineteen ninety five right you guys are talking about the duro canonicals apocrypha and you said that you're wrong and i spoke to hank about this but he couldn't give me a reply uh... but uh... he said that Jerome explicitly rejected them as canonical Scripture-inspired writings. And what I heard James Aiken say is that, no, he didn't want to use them in regards to the Jews, but that he did consider them edifying, and he did consider them canonical. And in a debate that you had against Mitch Pacwa, uh... you said that your own did not accept them and we can and if you actually that the footnote in his translation of the book it's been the did not consider them canonical and mitch parker responded to you in the question and answer period saying no he did accept them after the council's had made their decision. That was the first question. The second question... Well, let's cover that one first. That's one of the drawbacks of the encounters that I've had, and I think the Aiken encounter was the most obvious of that. I think if you go back and listen to the amount of time that is given to each individual, because we're basically bending over backwards to try to be fair, generally my opponent gets a whole lot more time than I do. I'd say it's about a 60-40 split, maybe 55-45 if I'm really lucky and I'm long-winded. And I remember that just briefly, and I was a little bit surprised that he made the statement that he did, especially because if you pick up the New Catholic Encyclopedia, it specifically says St. Jerome distinguished between canonical books and ecclesiastical books, the Apocrypha. the latter he judged were circulated by the church as good spiritual reading but were not recognized as authoritative scripture and this is this comes directly from uh... jerome's own words uh... specifically in uh... you can look this up in uh... FF Bruce's work on the canon of scripture. He says therefore as the church indeed reads Judith Tobit and the books of the Maccabees but does not receive them among the canonical books So let it also read these two volumes for the edification of the people but not for establishing the authority of ecclesiastical dogmas and so anyone who is familiar with Jerome's view knows that he looked at these books as being spiritually edifying that is remember you didn't have a Christian bookstore sitting on the corner in the early 5th century in Palestine. And so there were Christian books that were distributed and most people looked at the apocryphal books as edifying in the sense that they told stories about people who were faithful to God or whatever it might be. But Jerome makes the clear distinction between accepting them as canon scripture, upon which dogma can be defined, and being edifying and something that people can read. In fact, it is Jerome's view that was taken by most of the Reformers, who likewise saw these books not as canon scripture, but instead as edifying works that could be read by individuals. The Westminster Dictionary of Church History says, in loyalty to the Hebrew text, Jerome came to reject the dogmatic authority of the books preserved only in the Septuagint, the deuterocanonical, or apocryphal books, though continuing to use them for edification, a position revived by Renaissance writers who were fascinated by Jerome as a Satan scholar and adopted by Lutherans and Anglicans. And the last quote that I brought for you that I think you'll find to be very interesting, is Cardinal Cayetan, who you may recall was the one who initially interviewed Martin Luther after Luther became famous for posting the 95 Theses. Cardinal Cayetan, so this is right around the time of the Reformation. Cardinal Cayetan wrote specifically, Here we close our commentaries on the historical books of the Old Testament. For the rest, that is, Judith, Tobit, and the books of Maccabees, are counted by St. Jerome out of the canonical books and are placed among the Apocrypha, along with Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus, as is plain in the Prologus Galliatus. Nor be thou disturbed like a raw scholar if thou shouldest find anywhere either in the sacred councils of the sacred doctors these books reckon canonical. For the words as well as of councils and of doctors are to be reduced to the correction of Jerome. Okay, so this is taking place right at the time of the Reformation. This is a cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church of the day. So they weren't always accepted then? No, certainly not. In fact, the New Catholic Encyclopedia confirms that Pope Gregory the Great did not accept a canonical status for the Apocrypha either. That's something that I'm curious about, because I've heard you make a number of statements, both from the Bible Answer Man and so on and so forth, about uh... that uh... certain things were are actually admitted or uh... actually recognized in the catholic encyclopedia for example you said that and the catholic encyclopedia uh... the there was no for a dogmatic proclamation of the apocryphal until the council of trend and you also find that i can give you a quote if you'd like to know if that's about what the thing i'm a part of the book become a challenging your no i i i just and i was just to give the uh... the specific page numbers and the quote uh... it says the situation remained unclear in the ensuing centuries according to catholic doctrine the proximate criterion of the biblical can is the infallible decision of the church This decision was not given until rather late in the history of the Church at the Council of Trent. The Council of Trent definitively settled the matter of the Old Testament canon. This had not been done previously. That this had not been done previously is apparent from the uncertainty that persisted up to the time of Trent. And that's in the New Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 2, page 390, volume 3, page 29. And one thing to keep in mind, there are two Catholic encyclopedias, actually there's, I don't know how many, half a dozen Catholic encyclopedias. The New Catholic Encyclopedia and the Old Catholic Encyclopedia, generally the ones that I'm talking about, These multi-multi-volume, they take up half your room versions, and then they've created some, we might call, chopped down versions that generally have another subtitle you can use to try to identify them. But those are the specific references that I was making reference to. Volume 2, page 390, volume 3, page 29. I tried to get a hold of... I didn't know that there were so many volumes. I got one from Catholic Answers. I haven't received it yet. But the reason why I was asking you about that is because I heard, Tim Staples, you said also that the bodily assumption of Mary in the Catholic encyclopedia, it states that... It was not the first time it ever appears in any church writings. It was in a heretical work in the 6th century or something like that. The transitive Beati Maria literature. And actually, my gut feeling would be that I was citing Ott. Though I think the Catholic Encyclopedia might say that, but I know that Ludwig Ott specifically makes reference to that. Those references will be found in my book, Mary, Another Redeemer. But when I hear that the Roman Catholics in essence, contradict what you're saying? Are they denying that these things are infallible? Do they consider these, you know, something that you can say, this is the way it is, like the Catholic catechism? Or is it, well, this is so-and-so's opinion? Well, generally, when Catholic scholarship gores the Catholic apologist's favorite response, they just simply dismiss the scholarship as being liberal. That has been my experience, generally, is that when they run up against their own scholars, because they're using an invalid defense, that they're either ignorant of that scholarship and therefore they give a knee-jerk reaction that says, oh, well, he must not be a real Catholic, Like Tim Staples. Well, like Tim Staples. As Tim is not a learned man, in the sense that he doesn't teach anywhere, to my knowledge. His sole area of study is in this one area. And in fact, that's something I would say about many of the opponents that I've faced in the past, is that since all they do is apologetics, they don't teach anything else. They don't have to deal with anything else. then they can become very, very narrow in their comments and their comments can become very much skewed. One thing that I've said that I've been thankful for about Alpha and Omega Ministries from the beginning is that the Lord immediately caused us to move out from just dealing with one subject. And if we get unbalanced in dealing with a subject in regards to, for example, Roman Catholicism, then we end up exposing ourselves to the Mormon, who would say, ah, so you're saying this over there, or the Jehovah's Witness over here, whatever it is. We have to remain balanced. That's why you don't hear us using a lot of the arguments that you find others using, because we have to be consistent in what we're saying on a wide number of fronts. And so when they're contradicting these things, well, they would not say that the Catholic encyclopedia is infallible. But they never even bother to try to disprove what the Catholic encyclopedia is saying. They just simply dismiss it. And the reason that I cite it is to say, hey, this isn't a Protestant saying this. This isn't a Protestant source pointing this out. This is your own people saying this. And if you've got a problem with it, then maybe you might want to try to refute what they're saying rather than just simply mocking what they're saying. right here because it is interesting because i i got a copy of all of these three volumes that by william jordan's that it was a roman catholic uh... quote book in the other hand i think that they were nearly fathers right yeah and the people you're involved and one of the things that went out to him off the air after the show is over was that in william jordan's book i was kind of shocked that you did bring it up because when i found it to to when you talk about every and when you're debated your magic that william jordan admit that uh... when he had no one to put the pope of the bishop of bishops that it's impossible to believe that he didn't have steven in mind and also that if you would have had to bring back then uh... if he considered the bishop of rome to have uh... jurisdiction over the entire church that he probably would have said i didn't mean that and that that's what they mean by implicit doctrine and he just simply uh... dismissed uh... jurgens by saying well uh... i i i i'm not sure but i'm surprised that he would say that you know he's uh... he's wrong about that So I was kind of surprised about that. This is a Roman Catholic quote book. I'm assuming that they go by it and here's a very important piece of information. Yeah, well what I mean by that is that it's a quote book in the sense that it is not a full rendition of the Fathers. It sometimes cuts off in the middle of something or doesn't include a section of a paragraph that would fundamentally change. It's very biased in what it chooses to include and what it doesn't choose to include. And so, sadly, most of the Roman Catholic apologists that I've had encounters with That was the depth of their knowledge of church history, was they were just pulling out of something like jergens, rather than actually dealing with the early church fathers in a broader context. That's what I meant by a Roman Catholic quote book. Believe it or not, Johnny, we now have full phone lines, so what was your second question? Okay, my second question was, do you have any statements, or do you know of any statements from the church fathers? Because Tim's told me that you don't hear any of the church fathers speaking the way protestants do, talking about the solas and things like that. Not just sola scriptura, but do we have any of them talking about sola fide or sola grata or anything? Not the words, just the concepts. Yes, in fact I just finished a section in a book that will be coming out, Lord willing, in the spring from Bethany House Publishers called The God Who Justifies that specifically addresses this issue. For Sola Fide, I would address you to the first few, actually about the first 40 pages. of Alistair McGrath's book, Justitia Dei, which specifically points out and documents the fact that the doctrine of justification, especially as pronounced by Paul, was not something that the early church fathers addressed. It simply was not a subject that they ever get into, they never discuss the meaning of the word as it was derived from the Septuagint or the Hebrew language or anything like that. And so, as such, to attempt to quote them outside of the few quotes that we have provided, from, for example, section 32 of Clement's letter to the Corinthians, chapter 9 of Mathetase's letter to Diognetius, both of those clearly present sola fide in their context. But to try to find, in the broader context of the early Church Fathers, a discussion of a subject that they were not discussing is pretty difficult to do. As to the issue of Sola Scriptura, I am very much looking forward, Johnny, to seeing Mr. Staples, and Mr. Madrid, and Mr. Ray, and all the others, attempt to respond to the book that will be coming out, Lord willing, next month, I think it will probably be more like January, but the book that will be coming out, and I don't think everyone knows this is happening now, it's been discussed in a number of different venues, But Bill Webster and David King have, quite honestly, written a nuclear bomb. I have seen major sections of it in the sense of as it has been being written, and I can tell you now that the work that is coming out on Sola Scriptura from Bill Webster and David King will be the most thorough, complete defense of Sola Scriptura biblically and historically that has been produced since the Reformation, bar none. And I can guarantee you that the instant that it is available, we will know it, and it will be the first thing you see on the main page at www.aomin.org. So, the best way to know exactly when that work is going to be available, right now it's sitting with small print at 900 pages in length. Wow. It is absolutely, I would love to see Mr. Staples attempt to even begin to respond to the massive amount of information that this work contains, including material that has not appeared in the English language before. I don't think I'm telling anything I shouldn't say to mention that last night I was working on a little section trying to figure out the syntax of something that hadn't been translated before from the Greek language. And so, I just want folks to be excited about the fact that even though this is going to be a very large work, that I want people, I want to challenge the people who listen to The Dividing Line to be prepared to get hold of this work as soon as it comes out. I don't care how long it is, you need to have it, you need to get it for your pastor, and you need to set aside the time to read it for yourself. It's going to take discipline, because it's not short, it's not soundbite theology, but this is the area that Rome is attacking, and this is the most significant work to come out on the subject since the Reformation, and so I want to get people excited about it now. What's the name of the book, by the way? I'm not sure of the subtitle, but it's just simply Sola Scriptura, and there will be a subtitle, I believe, that comes from that. I could be wrong, believe me. It will replace The Potter's Freedom on the main page as soon as that comes out, so just keep an eye on the website and you'll be able to see when it comes around. Alright, thank you. God bless you. Okay, thanks a lot, Johnny, for calling today. 602-274-1360, and we need to go to Michael up in Ogden, New York. Hey, Mike. How are you doing today? Doing pretty good. Enjoying today's program. You know, just a quick comment. I can't wait for that new book to come out. I'm reserving space for it now. It sounds like it's going to be an excellent book, and I just can't wait to read it. But my question today is, I've done some studying on the Apocrypha, and there are many, countless Church Fathers who reject the Apocrypha as being inspired by God, and they reject it as Scripture. And my question is, approximately how many Church Fathers between, oh, after the death of Christ, and the start of the New Testament Church, up until the time of Jerome accept the Apocrypha, uh... including the north african father that that week number such as a gusty in another Well, that's a very interesting question. Basically, as you look at the testimony of the early church, the early church fathers that knew the most about the history of the Old Testament, that knew the most about the Old Testament itself, about what the Jews believed, the whole nine yards, those are the ones who would reject the apocryphal books of scripture, the ones who knew the least about it and were the most influenced by the belief that the Greek Septuagint was in essence inspired of God and was given to the church as a final version of the Old Testament would be the ones most likely to accept it because in the editions that were available to them at least some of the apocryphal books were included sometimes all and the interesting thing is you'll find individuals who will take a mixture because there was more question about some of the apocryphal books someone such as Athanasius would accept the additions to the canonical books, for example, to Jeremiah, that are a part of the Apocrypha, basically because he was not aware that they were additions, over against, they would accept those because they come from the Septuagint, over against others who would accept the freestanding books like the Maccabees or whatever it might be. So you've got, you've even got people in the middle who have some part of it and some part not of it. Really, as you're probably aware, the best book on this subject that is most in-depth, unfortunately, like so many good books, is not in print anymore, but the book by Beckwith, Roger Beckwith, entitled The Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church, is certainly the most in-depth discussion of this. I've read many absurds. It sounds like an interesting piece of literature and I really do need to get a copy of it. Yeah, you may have to do the interlibrary loan, go to Kinko's and drop the dimes in the photocopy routine to even get hold of it, sadly. But it is well worth having. He goes through it and provides a tremendous amount of information about the apocryphal books and their acceptance and rejection by individuals like Melito of Sardis and origins discussion of them and so on and so forth. It is just amazing to me to hear both Catholic and I heard on a local program here Orthodox apologists saying that up until the Reformation, everyone accepted all of the apocryphal books. It is amazing. It's just so easily disproven. That's why we do debates, because once you've got both sides there, you get to hear both sides, and statements like that get shot down in flames. So, anyways, Michael, thank you for holding on, and thank you for your comments about the apocrypha today. Thank you, and I would like to say that our listeners do need to study about the origin of the Apocrypha and how the early church accepted it because it was highly rejected. Oh yes, well people need to know about these things because we're talking about Sola Scriptura and Catholic apologists and others will use it to undercut the authority of the scripture by going after the issue of the canon. So having good information and being prepared to respond to it, that's the best thing we can do. Hey thanks Mike! Thank you. God bless, bye bye. We're going to be real quick here, let's talk to Luther! Hello Luther! all right how are how is the beer and pretzels uh... no i don't regret that that's a little joking about who knew luther knew he liked to discuss the ology over beer and pretzels but all i did know it that well you know i think that uh... yes sir the fact that the uh... the roman church burned a stake and copernicus copernicus was uh... i believe under house arrest for believing that uh... the world was a on the fringe of the universe, whereas the Catholics believed and stated it very firmly that the Earth was the center of the universe and everything rotated around it. Do they still believe that? No, they don't, and they would say that the Pope did not ex cathedra define that everything circles around the earth. Now, they have developed very, very intricate defenses of papal infallibility against this accusation. I don't think that they work. I would direct folks to George Salmon's work, The Infallibility of the Church, where he spends a number of pages on this and gives you, I think, the historical background. But do be prepared for the fact that Catholic apologists have come up with some interesting ways around the historical fact that the church stood against that type of information, and that the authority of the papacy was used to attempt to suppress it. Generally, in almost every situation, what you need to remember is that the Catholic apologist believes the Pope's infallible about anything he says, unless he's wrong. So if he's wrong, then he wasn't speaking infallibly, and if he can't be proven wrong, then it was infallible. So it's sort of a catch-22 situation there that really doesn't actually accomplish a whole lot, but that's basically the way it works, okay? Thank you very much. Thank you for calling in, sir. God bless. We'll get to our last caller real quick. Patty in Phoenix. Hello? Hi. Hi. Do you have time for this? Really? I think, according to my clock here, I've got about one minute, so... Okay, I'll condense. I'm basically wondering why I have such a drive to learn everything I can about apologetics, and pretty much everyone I know, Catholics and non-Catholics, they don't have that, and I'm wondering if it's like a spiritual gift thing, if it's just my personality, or why you have to learn it all when God be able to evangelize without a lot of training. How does that all tie in? Well, very, very quickly, the Scripture tells us that we are to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Scripture tells us that we're not to lay hands upon someone quickly. That means there is a process of growth, there is a process of study, and it's lifelong, in fact. So it's not just a matter of opening one's mouth. I think those passages are talking about the promise of the Spirit to be with us under persecution. But why do you have that interest? Well, the Lord lays that upon people's hearts. We have a love for the truth, and we want to defend that truth and do so to God's glory. So I think that's the main thing that we can deal with at that point. Hey, Patty, thank you very much. Sorry I went so long-winded on everybody else, but hey, needed to answer those questions. Thank you, those of you who called in. We really do appreciate it. We'll be back again next week here on The Dividing Line. 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.O-R-G, where you'll find a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates, and tracks. Join us again next Saturday afternoon at 2 p.m. for The Dividing Line.