[FULL DEBATE] Dr. James White vs Voice of Reason

I'm one of the elders here at Breath Reform Baptist Church, and we want to welcome you on behalf of Breath Reform Baptist Church. Uh, thank you all for coming, uh, to this conference. Uh, we look forward to the events that are going to be taking place today, and we're so happy, uh, that you guys will, uh, be involved in and what's going on.

Uh, the event topic is, uh, "Why Is God Important?" Again, a little, little heavy gain on that. The topic is, "Why Is God Important?" And that's an important question, I think. And I think it's a question that, uh, the skeptic and even the believer, the Christian, can answer or should answer. Uh, it's an important question that we should wrestle and establish the importance, uh, for God. And what we wanted to put forward with this event is a way to not only evangelize and, uh, introduce those who might not understand the importance of God to the importance of God, but also to encourage the believer in, in helping the believer understand, uh, the, the, the importance and the value of understanding our great God.

Um, as we go through, uh, this, the day's events, uh, what you are participating in currently is the first block of today's conference, which we will have a debate. As you can see, we're set up and ready to go for that. Uh, the debate will go until 12:30, at which point we will take a break. Uh, the lunch break, as we're calling it, will give you an opportunity to leave, go grab some lunch in the area. There's plenty of places around here for you to grab a bite, and there should be plenty of time because we won't come back until 2:00 p.m. And when we come back at 2:00 p.m., uh, you're going to hear a series of talks on, uh, various aspects of the, uh, of, of the importance of God. And then, uh, Dr. White will join us at the end of that session, the end of that block, uh, to, uh, let us know why God is important here and now for today's society.

Um, I want to first, uh, give a, a thank you to all of our Breath Reform Baptist Church volunteers, uh, who are, who are helping around with the event. If you see anybody with a badge that says "Volunteer," uh, you can ask them any questions about our church, uh, how to get involved, how to plug in, any activities, or anything like that. We'll be happy to answer any questions that you have. Uh, if you have any questions about the facilities, where to go, um, if you want to know where to go for lunch, we can hopefully help you out with those types of questions. But thank you to our volunteers, and we're happy to, to help you in any way.

I also want to give a thank you to, uh, The Inferno Men for co-sponsoring this event. Uh, they provided the refreshments that you guys had as you walked in, and, uh, they also provided the opportunity for Alex to come out for this debate as well. So, I'm sure most of you guys are here for this debate, this greatly anticipated debate that was put together, uh, rather quickly, uh, but nevertheless, uh, here we are. Uh, it relates to the overall topic of the conference of why God is important, uh, because we think it's important to discuss the important aspects of God. One of those important aspects is His Word. One of those important aspects is the authority for the church. And so, we wanted to discuss that under the umbrella of "Why Is God Important?" uh, for this debate. And, uh, the debate topic and all that stuff will be, uh, introduced to you by Mike when I call him, call him up here in just a moment.

Um, I mentioned some difficulties getting this debate going. Uh, there, there was several other opponents that we were trying to get out to, uh, debate Dr. White. We already had an agreement to have him come out and, and, uh, do an event for us. But lo and behold, we have Alex, who, uh, I mean, he's, he's stepped up to the plate. He, he was very, very easy to work with, and, uh, you know, he made it happen. And I, I know he's grateful to be here. We're grateful for you being here as well. And then, of course, uh, Dr. White, um, you know, there's a whole story behind the way that we connected and stuff. I'd love to explain that to you all, so please catch me during the lunch or something like that. And it's, it's a great story for the way we connected. But, uh, on behalf of myself and, and our church, and I'm sure most of the folks here, uh, everybody here, I would hope, uh, thank you for being here, Dr. White, and, uh, gracing us with your presence.

So, um, I want to pray for the event and, uh, get us going. Our heavenly Father, uh, we are so grateful for who You are and what You've done. We worship You, God, because You are the most important thing. You are important, God. You are the one that establishes value in order to enable importance in anything. So, we worship You now. We lift You up. We adore You for who You are, for the grace that You provide for each and every one of us. We thank You for Your Son, Jesus Christ, uh, who died on the cross for the sins of those who would put their faith and trust in You. We thank You for the hope of eternal life that is grounded, uh, in the resurrection. And we just ask, God, that You would, uh, allow this, this debate and this conference as a whole, uh, to establish clarity, uh, to answer questions that we might have, Lord. We pray that, uh, this conference would be edifying to You, that it would bring You glory in every way. Father, we, uh, pray over this debate portion, and, uh, we just pray the same thing, that You would, um, allow these men to, to speak clearly, uh, that You would allow them to, uh, give their, their ideas and, uh, and their arguments in a, in a defined way, Lord, that helps us to understand their position and ultimately helps us bring us closer to You. Um, we thank You for the audience who are here and ask that, that they would come with a, a willing heart, an open heart, and a, just a spirit of wanting to, to learn and understand. We see why You're important. We know why You're important, Lord. That's why we're here. We ask that You would just make that ever more so clear for us.

And then I would ask you guys, uh, to, uh, pray with me, uh, the way that Jesus instructed us to pray: Our Father in Heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come, Your will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as we have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from Evil. We thank You, Lord, for Your grace. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

Ladies and gentlemen, I want to introduce to you now our moderator, uh, for this debate. His name is Mike Dill, and if you come forward now, welcome.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Uh, welcome to today's debate on the topic of Sola Scriptura. Uh, I'm Mike Dill, and I'll be your moderator for this debate. I'm excited to do this because I have a Protestant dad and a Catholic mom, and I was raised going to a small Baptist Church for Sunday school every, every Sunday morning at 10:00 a.m., and we'd open the Word of God and we'd fall in love with Jesus, Jesus. And then, as the Protestants went upstairs at 11:00 for their worship, uh, my family, we would go across the street for Catholic Mass on the other side of the street, uh, at 11:30. And so, uh, if you want to hear how that, uh, saga has turned out in my life, you can find me later. But, but you can psychoanalyze why I might be interested in a debate like this, and, uh, why it's so good to be here among Christian brothers and sisters.

So, we'd like to extend our heartfelt thanks to our sponsors, of course, Breath Reform Baptist Church for hosting, and all the volunteers, and The Inferno Men for making this event possible. Uh, and thank you for both of our debaters who have both taken road trips from out of state to be here. Uh, long miles in the car. Thank you, gentlemen.

This morning's resolution is: "The Bible teaches Catholic authority, not Sola Scriptura." For clarity, the definitions have been stipulated, and they are in your program if you want to look at those. Uh, this topic is significant because it affects, uh, what we believe and how we follow Jesus in fundamental matters of faith and doctrine. Uh, so the purpose of this debate, uh, is to promote truth and unity. We don't want to sacrifice, uh, either of those in the wrong order. We want the world to know that Jesus is Lord. Uh, so by doing our best to embody these divine attributes, all parties will avoid what Paul wrote about to Timothy in 2 Timothy 2:23, when he said, "Avoid foolish, ignorant controversies, because you know that they breed quarrels." The environment will also require humility, which is defined as a willingness to learn by making an honest appraisal of what needs to be renewed within our own hearts, minds, and churches. I invite you to come with that attitude, and you'll see it there in Psalm 25:9 and Proverbs 15:33. And so, while we might not achieve perfect unity today, uh, if we have clarity on the truth and the humility to change our minds, uh, we can have hope for the unity that Jesus prayed for in John 17.

Our debate, our debate will follow this structure, which is also found in an insert, uh, in your program. Each speaker will give a seven-minute opening statement, starting with the affirmative, who is Alex today, and moving to the negation, which is Dr. White. And then, well, those opening statements will be followed, uh, directly by our first round of rebuttal, seven minutes each, starting with Dr. White. And this will be followed immediately by a second round of rebuttal, again, seven minutes each, and again with Dr. White going first. Following that, we'll have a 15-minute break around 11:15 a.m. And please be sure that you have submitted your questions before the break so that our teams can consider and pick from your questions. In fact, they are monitoring that right now. So, if you already know a question you want to ask, you're welcome to get it in there.

Following that break, when we return, each debater will control 10 minutes of cross-examination time, where they are able to ask questions directly of their opponent. And gentlemen, I ask that we're cordial and respectful of each other, uh, so that I don't have to get involved moderating that. Alex will go first, followed by Dr. White. And then after cross-examination, um, I will read out four audience-provided questions back and forth to each debater. And if time permits, uh, and if we can select one, I'll ask one question for both, uh, debaters to answer. And these answers will be limited to three minutes each. Last, we will conclude with five-minute closing statements, first from the affirmative, Alex, and the last word goes to Dr. White. The debate will conclude promptly by 12:30 p.m. Uh, and after the debate, of course, we'll break for lunch, and you're welcome to stay in and chat here if you'd like.

For the audience, this is our role, uh, as respectful listeners during the debate. If you hear a point you like, please write notes, but don't be applauding or hollering in agreement. Uh, we want the arguments to speak for themselves. Uh, we will welcome our speakers with applause at the beginning, and then please hold all your applause or comments till the very end, uh, and there'll be time to thank both speakers, and I'll prompt us for that. Uh, our, our speakers have agreed to respect each other, and your respectful listening will add to the positive atmosphere we have this morning.

To submit questions for our speakers, uh, use the QR code in your program. Uh, we'll select questions from these submissions during our Q&A session, so again, make sure you've submitted them before the break. Um, at this time, please ensure all your mobile devices are silenced. There'll be a few sounds that you'll hear, uh, for the, for the debate. Uh, when time is coming low, when there's just 30 seconds remaining, Bennett's going to help me. You're going to hear two wooden claps, just like that. And when time is up, you'll hear a bell ring. There you go. And so, uh, our speakers will be aware of when their time is up. So, if there's, uh, yeah.

So at this point, it's my pleasure to introduce our speakers. Uh, first to speak in the affirmative, I'm going to read both bios right now. Uh, we're going to welcome them both with applause, and then we'll get on with our debate. Uh, our first speaker is Alex. Alex is a lifelong Catholic who has always been passionate about sharing the faith. He quickly became known as a teenage prodigy in his local community after becoming a catechist and apologist at age 16, teaching not only other teenagers but even adults in parochial faith formation. In 2023, Alex applied his knowledge and skills to the world of social media and is now popularly known as "The Voice of Reason." He quickly amassed a large following on TikTok and Instagram @voiceofreason_clips and on YouTube at Voice of Reason. Today's debate will be only his third ever public debate and his first one in person.

Our second speaker is Dr. James R. White. Dr. White is a Christian apologist, author, and theologian. He is the director of Alpha and Omega Ministries, a Christian apologetics organization based in Phoenix, Arizona, and is the pastor of, uh, Apologia Church, home of the End Abortion Now Ministry. Dr. White has authored more than 24 books, including "The Roman Catholic Controversy," "The Scripture Alone," and "Scripture Alone." He is a professor and accomplished debater and has engaged in public debates with leading proponents of various worldviews. Dr. White has also hosted "The Dividing Line," a webcast dedicated to theological discussions. Today's debate will be his 190th public debate. James has been married to Kelly for 42 years and is a grandfather with five living children with five living grandchildren.

And unless I botch the name, how do we pronounce your church name, Dr. White? Apologia. I was on point. Not how it should be pronounced, but they did that before I got all right. My wife said, "Apologia is what it should be," and that's a running joke between me and everybody there. So, I, I eventually gave up. You got the record straight from the horse's mouth. So, here we are.

So, um, let's welcome our two debaters at this time. So, we're excited for the debate to begin. Uh, Alex, the floor is yours for your opening statement.

Thank you, everybody, for being here this morning. Yes, I am only here because five other guys said no, so, but that's okay. I'm so happy to be here today. We are here to discuss what the Bible has to say about just what exactly is the ultimate authority for every Christian believer, for the church as a whole. This answer is actually a simple one, and it's one that both sides of this debate wholeheartedly agree on. All of us here today, whether Catholic or Protestant, believe that God is the ultimate infallible authority. We all believe that God fully revealed Himself in Jesus Christ, and that this fullness of revelation was given to God's people who preserved it to the present day. We also agree that any other infallible authorities outside of God can only have such authority if it comes from God Himself. We also agree that infallible authorities cannot contradict each other or contradict God. So, what do we disagree about? We disagree about how many other infallible authorities God gave us. We disagree on how God's revelation was contained and who can definitively interpret it. The Sola Scriptura position is that God's revelation is contained only in the writings of the people who received the revelation. The Catholic position is that it is contained in what these people wrote, and also in what they preached. Sola Scriptura says that there is no need for a human infallible interpreter. Catholicism says that God's Church is the infallible interpreter. So, the Catholic side says Scripture, Tradition, and the Church, and the Protestant side says Scripture alone. Thank God we have common ground so we can solve this issue. Since we all agree about the authority of Scripture, we can turn to it and see what it has to say about this matter. Upon examining the Scriptures closely and honestly, we can come to the conclusion that the Bible cannot be the only infallible authority because the Bible clearly teaches that there are indeed other infallible authorities outside of it. The Scripture comes from the Apostles. The word Apostle means one who was sent with the authority of the one who sent him. This is why Jesus Himself says to His Apostles in Luke 10:16, "Whoever hears you hears Me, and whoever rejects you rejects Me." We can't know or obey Jesus without obeying His Apostles. So, we read the writings so that we can know how to obey them. But when we read their writings, which all have God's authority behind them, we discover something remarkably unsettling. There are at least 10 problems that we run into if we go by the Bible alone.

Number one: The Bible calls 18 different men Apostles, and even alludes to there being more Apostles than just those, than just those 18. But of those 18, we only have writings from six of them. Now, we can reason our way around this. We might say that all of the Apostles received the same message from Jesus, so even if we don't have the writings of most of the Apostles, we still have the fullness of revelation in the writings that we do have from Apostles. But this hypothesis actually doesn't hold up when it runs into the other nine problems.

Number two: When we read the writings we do have from Apostles, we see that there are important teachings that one Apostle wrote down that are not found in any of the writings of the other Apostles. For example, in the writings of Matthew and John, we find many of the, the important teachings, miracles, and events of the life of Jesus Christ that are never mentioned at all by Paul, Peter, James, or Jude. And we have many important teachings from Paul that are not found in the writings of any of the other Apostles. What this means is that the totality of the content within the deposit of faith was not completely recorded by any one single Apostle. So, even with all the writings of the six Apostles put together, how do we know if there weren't other important teachings from the other Apostles that weren't recorded in the writings that we do have?

And this dilemma is only made worse when we run into the third problem, which is: From the Bible alone, we know that there are writings from Apostles that are missing. In 1 Corinthians 5:9, Paul makes reference to a prior letter he had written to the Corinthians. And in Colossians 4:16, he instructs the Colossians to read an epistle that he had written to the Laodiceans. We do not have either of these writings. When we consider the previous problem I outlined, how do we know that there weren't any important teachings that were unique to those missing letters?

And that leads us to the fourth problem, which is that the Bible alone doesn't give us the entire canon of Scripture. In order for Sola Scriptura to be true, we need to have the Scriptura first. But there is nothing in the Scriptures that gives us the list of writings that belong in the Bible. What this means is that we must rely on a source outside of Scripture that can identify the canon for us. But if there are no infallible authorities outside of Scripture, that means that it's possible that we could be missing books or have extra books, or both. Would God allow His people to find themselves in such an epistemological dilemma?

Number five: The Bible often makes reference to important teachings in an elusive way, with coded language and without telling us the plain meaning of what is being referenced. For example, Mark 13:14 says, "When you see the desolating sacrilege set up where it ought not to be, let those in Judea flee to the mountains." The text doesn't tell us what this is referring to, but the author here actually inserts a parenthetical comment in this verse, which is, "Let the reader understand." So, Mark does not tell us what this means, but he expects the reader to understand it. In 2 Thessalonians 2, St. Paul talks about the man of lawlessness, and in verse 5, he even asks the Thessalonians if they remember what he had told them about this man when he was with them in person. In verse 6, he mentions that they know what is restraining this man, but he doesn't mention what he's referring to in these verses. Revelation 13:18, John mentions the famous number of the beast, 666, but he does not tell us what or who this is referring to. In fact, John says in that verse that in order to know what this means, one needs two things: wisdom and understanding. There's that word again, understanding, which actually leads us to our next dilemma.

Number six: The Scriptures can be twisted, misunderstood, and misinterpreted. 2 Peter 3 says that the Scriptures can be hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction. In Acts 8, we read about the Ethiopian eunuch reading the prophet Isaiah, and Philip the Apostle asking him if he understood what he was reading. The Ethiopian eunuch responded by saying, "How can I unless someone guides me?" Then Philip guides him. So, how do we know that we are not personally guilty of twisting the Scriptures due to our own false understanding? Can we judge ourselves to have more understanding than the Ethiopian eunuch? Do we not need someone to guide us?

This actually leads to the seventh problem: Scripture actually forbids private definitive interpretation. In 2 Peter 1:20, this actually makes sense when we consider that Jeremiah 17:9 says, "The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately corrupt," and Proverbs 3:5 tells us that we should not lean on our own understanding. Can any one of us honestly say that we have the right interpretation of all the Scriptures all the time, in light of what the Scriptures say about our own personal fallibility?

Number eight: The six Apostles who did leave us writings tell us in those writings that they didn't even record all of their teachings. John tells us in his Gospel account that there are many things about Jesus that he didn't write down. The writings of Peter, James, and Jude are so short that there is no way that was all they ever taught in their long careers as Apostles, and none of them mention almost anything at all from the Gospel accounts or from the writings of Paul. Acts 20:35 even gives us a verbatim quote from Jesus that isn't even found in the Gospel accounts. The very short book of Third John ends like this: "I had much to write to you, but I would not rather write with pen and ink. I hope to see you soon, and we will talk together face to face." So, how do we know that we have all of revelation in the Scriptures, since not everything is recorded in them?

Number nine: God's people never held to Sola Scriptura, even during the times of Jesus and the Apostles. The New Testament makes multiple references to ancient Jewish beliefs that are not found in the Old Testament. 1 Corinthians 10:4 mentions a supernatural rock that followed Moses and the Israelites as they wandered in the wilderness. That belief is nowhere in the Old Testament, but it is in Rabbinic tradition. 2 Timothy 3:8 mentions Jannes and Jambres opposing Moses, but those two names are nowhere in the Old Testament. Jude 9 mentions the Archangel Michael contending with the devil over the body of Moses. That belief is nowhere in the Old Testament, but it is in the Book of Enoch. John 10 mentions Jesus observing the Feast of Dedication, also known as Hanukkah, but that's not in the Old Testament, at least not in the Protestant Old Testament. It is in the Catholic Old Testament book of First Maccabees. In Matthew 23, Jesus Himself affirms the "seat of Moses" as an authentic teaching authority. This authority is found nowhere in the Old Testament, but it is in Rabbinic tradition, which tells us that, uh, those who sat in the seat had the authority to teach and interpret the Scriptures in a way that was binding for the Jews. John 11 mentions that the high priest at the time, Caiaphas, was able to prophesy precisely because of the office of the high priesthood, which is a clear example of a teaching authority that is infallible outside of the Hebrew Scriptures. Also, the New Testament gives us at least four formal verbatim quotations from the Old Testament scriptures that are nowhere to be found. Those, these quotes are given in Matthew 2:23, John 7:38, Ephesians 5:14, and James 4:5. None of these quotes can be found in the Old Testament.

Our problems are about to get worse. The 10th, the 10th issue: The Bible tells us that we're supposed to follow the teachings of the Apostles that were not written down. St. Paul said in 2 Thessalonians 2:15 that we must hold fast to the traditions of the Apostles taught either by letter or by word of mouth. He even commends the Corinthians for observing the traditions he gave them, but he doesn't tell us in his writings what those traditions are. And this is in his first letter to the Corinthians, meaning he had already taught them and gave them these traditions before he wrote what we consider to be First Corinthians.

What does all of this mean? Does this mean the Bible isn't enough? Is it insufficient? Of course not. The Bible tells us that it is sufficient, and indeed, the Catholic Church agrees. But how can it be sufficient when we consider all of these problems? Scripture gives us the answer by attesting to something outside of the Scriptures that has the answers: the Church. This is where we discover the wisdom of God. Ephesians 3:10 says, "The wisdom of God is made known through the Church." Matthew 16 tells us that Jesus established a Church, which makes the Church a divine institution. It's visible because of its many members and because of its visible head, the Apostle Peter, who Jesus declared to be the rock the Church is built upon. He also puts Peter in charge of the other Apostles in Luke 22, and even, and even over the entire flock of Christ in John 21. We also read in the Gospels and in Acts that Peter speaks for and represents all of the, uh, Church, which is why Ephesians 2:20 says that the Church is founded upon all of the Apostles and prophets. We see that this Church was given authority by Christ because in Matthew 16:18, it says of the Church, "What you bind on Earth will be bound in Heaven; what you loose on Earth will be loosed in Heaven." So, Church pronouncements have heavenly ratification. The binding part of this authority includes doctrine. The Church can bind her subjects to belief in doctrines, and Heaven ratifies this. This would be, this would necessarily mean that the Church must be infallible when it comes to its binding teachings, because we know that Heaven would not ratify anything that would be an error. But we can come to this conclusion not just through necessary implication, but because Jesus Himself tells us in John 14:16 that the Holy Spirit would lead the Church into all truth. And we know the Holy Spirit would not allow the Church to bind itself to any falsehoods. This is why the Church is called the Pillar of Truth in First Timothy 3:15. The Church is just as essential as the Scriptures themselves, which is why Hebrews 13:17 commands us to obey our leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over our souls.

But how do we know which leaders to submit to? And does any person with the Bible qualify as a leader who has the authentic authority to carry out the functions of the Church, such as disciplining the Church's subjects, the way Matthew 18 outlines? The Bible gives us the answer in this, as to this, as well. In Acts 1, we see that the Apostle Judas was replaced by Matthias after the Apostles laid their hands on him so that he could take Judas's office. The Greek word for office here is "episcopa," which is translated in many Bibles as "episcopate" or "bishop." That's why the Bible calls many, uh, other men Apostles, because it uses the broader meaning of the term to refer to the successors of Christ's Apostles as well. These Bishops were Barnabas, Silas, Apollos, and Timothy. And these men received Apostolic Authority through the laying on of hands to not only teach, but to also to ordain other men to ministry through the laying on of their hands. This is all outlined in Paul's Epistles to Timothy and Titus, which make clear that this line of Apostolic succession will always continue. There is no indication whatsoever in Scripture that this Apostolic succession will end. And that's how we can know today which leaders to follow and obey. We follow and obey those leaders who are ordained through the laying on of hands in the unbroken chain that goes back to the Apostles and who are united to the visible head, who is Peter. These are the ministers of the Catholic Church. Apostolic succession also fixes the 10 problems with Sola Scriptura. Not only do we have the writings of some of the Apostles, but we have the successors of all of the Apostles, and it is these successors whose job it is to teach and interpret the Apostolic deposit of faith, as well as to bind and loose the subjects of the Church to their pronouncements. Paul says to Timothy in 2 Timothy 2:2, "What you have heard from me before me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also." This instruction tells us everything we need to know. The teachings of the Apostles were primarily taught orally. They were heard by many witnesses and they were entrusted to men that they ordained, who in turn passed it down to other men that they ordained. Paul didn't say to his successors that they would have secret, hidden, esoteric teachings that no one had ever heard of, or even verbatim quotes from him or Jesus or any of the other Apostles. He says that their teachings were public and heard by many witnesses. And indeed, the teachings of the Catholic Church are these publicly proclaimed teachings that can be found in the writings and public proclamations of the successors of the Apostles from the very beginning of the Church's life. But these teachings are not what this debate is about today. This debate is not about Purgatory, Indulgences, the Marian dogmas, or any particular teachings of the Catholic Church. This debate is about whether or not the Catholic Church even has a God-given infallible authority to pronounce binding doctrines in the first place. This debate is about if Sola Scriptura is true. If Sola Scriptura is true, then it must be found in the Scriptura. Now, let me be clear, we are not demanding that the exact words of the definition need to be formally or even explicitly in the Scripture. We just need something, anything, that would even imply Sola Scriptura to be true. For example, if the Bible said something like, "All of divine revelation is fully contained in the written Scriptures," or "All authorities on Earth are subject to the Scriptures," or "Only the teachings of Scripture are irreformable," then Sola Scriptura would be true. But the Bible doesn't say any of these things, or anything else that would carry that necessary implication. We can look for it on every page of the Bible, but it is nowhere to be found, meaning that Sola Scriptura fails its own test and is therefore a false doctrine. The Catholic Church, however, is exactly what the Scriptures themselves direct us to as the infallible authority that preserves and definitively interprets the Apostolic deposit of faith. Thank you all very much for your attention.

[Music] [Applause]

Well, good morning. It is, uh, can you hear me pretty well? Okay. All right. Just want to make sure you can hear me well, uh, because my voice is not nearly as booming and, uh, liable to be sued by Sylvester Stallone as, uh, as Alex is. Is so, uh, I just want to want you to know I am not going to be standing up here talking about what can be unburdened by what has been. The fact that all of you didn't laugh there means some of you are not keeping up with current events, so we, we need to work on that.

It is good to be here this morning, and I appreciate Alex being here. I'm not sure we went through five people before you are not, but, um, uh, I'm very thankful that you have made the trip from Albuquerque and that we're going to have this conversation. At the same time, I have to say, you can say this debate isn't about all of these dogmas. The problem is that the thesis, the debate talks about Catholic teaching authority, and we have to be able to identify what Rome has specifically identified on the basis of her own authority, and whether those are Apostolic beliefs. And so, I want to point out that what we're dealing with here is very much a presuppositional situation. Now, I am a presuppositionalist. What does that mean? When I do apologetics, I recognize that there are certain presuppositions that have to be dealt with to be able to engage an atheist, for example, and their use of logic and reason and things like that. We have to have a certain starting place, and since we live in God's world, uh, then we have to utilize the standards that He has revealed for us in our reasoning and argumentation. And we all start someplace. The problem is, having listened, for example, to a previous debate that that Alex did, he has his presuppositions, I have mine. We need to lay them out clearly and to be able to understand how they are impacting the reasoning that we are using on this subject. And so, so I could just immediately jump into the 10 problems, but I'll, I'll wait at least toward the end of my presentation and into the rebuttal period for to be able to do that. I want to make sure everyone, my big goal today is that when you leave this room, you will have a clear understanding of what Sola Scriptura is, even though that's not the specific, uh, issue. It says, "not Sola." Well, I'll define that for you, but you'll be able to understand what Alex's position is, because I would argue that in many of these areas, I don't think Alex represents the current Pope. I think he may have represented the previous Pope more than the current Pope, and there's part of the problem is that the current Pope is fundamentally different in his teachings, and the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the old Inquisition, is even more different in his beliefs and in his definitions than, well, for example, the, the Pope that was on the throne of Rome when I started dealing with Roman Catholicism many, many years ago. The first debate I did in August of 1990 with Jerry Mates on the subject of Sola Scriptura. We're going to have a different conversation. Why? Because Rome has changed since then. The beliefs have changed. I didn't bring it with me, but I have the big one-volume Jerome Bible Commentary that just came out fairly, just within the past, what, about two years or so? That, that big huge one, and with a foreword by Pope Francis. The perspectives represented by everyone Pope Francis has put on the Papal Biblical Commission, sort of an important job, you know, the perspectives represented by those scholars are not the perspectives of the Catholic apologist that I debated in 1990. Things have changed. In fact, I remember very, very clearly, Catholic Answers used to challenge everybody, "How do you know Matthew wrote Matthew?" I submit to you that every single person on the Papal Biblical Commission today would say, "We don't know Matthew wrote Matthew." In fact, we don't know who wrote almost anything in the New Testament. Well, that's changed. How did that change? What's going on here? How is it that there are many Roman Catholics today that are saying, "We are in a crisis. We are in a crisis. The current Pope is purposely seeking to fundamentally change the Church, fundamentally determine who his successor is going to be." And with Fiducia Supplicans being less than a year old, and only being a few years since the Pope changed the teaching in the Universal Catholic Catechism on capital punishment, I submit to you, I submit to you that Pope Francis and Cardinal Fern, if they had held the positions that they teach today as the leaders of the Roman Catholic Church in the year 1600, without repenting, they would have been burned at the stake by the Inquisition in 1600. Now, if that's true, and I think there are a lot of Roman Catholics that agree with me on that, if that's true, how do you have something called Apostolic Tradition? How are you guarding a, a supposedly Apostolic deposit of faith if you have the ability to have these changes taking place? I suggest to you that the real crisis that we see today within Roman Catholicism, the only way to solve that crisis is to embrace Sola Scriptura, because Scripture is the only infallible revelation.

In 1990, I debated a wonderful man by the name of Mitchell Pacwa. Most of you know Father Mitch, uh, the sole conservative Jesuit on the planet, and, uh, we debated in San Diego. Guess what? Sola Scriptura. Yes, I've debated it many, many times. And I asked Mitch during the cross-examination, "Can you give us a single word that Jesus ever spoke that has been infallibly defined by the Roman Catholic Church that's not found in Scripture?" And he said, "No." I said, "Can you give me a single word that any Apostle ever spoke that has been infallibly defined by the Roman Catholic Church?" And he said, "No." At the end of that debate, I walked up to the podium and I, I laid out the Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent and Vatican I and Vatican II and the commentaries and the Code of Canon Law and all the rest of that stuff, and I said, "What we're being told tonight is that this stack of books makes it easier to understand Romans 5:1, therefore having been justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." I say to you, these books do not clarify Romans 5:1, they muddy Romans 5:1. God has given us His Word with sufficient clarity to know what it says.

And so, what am I claiming? I am claiming that Scripture is ontologically unique. It is theopneustos. It is God-breathed. There is nothing else that is God-breathed. The Roman Catholic Church is not God-breathed. Peter was not God-breathed as an individual. In fact, you read Peter's short epistles, and what does he do? He quotes from the Old Testament over and over again, just like all the Apostles did. The Scriptures are unique because they're God speaking. When Jesus refuted the Sadducees, He said, "Have you not read what God spoke to you saying," and then He quotes from words that had been written 1400 years earlier, and He held the men of His day accountable for what had been written 1400 years earlier as if God had spoken it directly to them.

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Now, how did they know that with Scripture? There were no infallible councils. In fact, the Jewish people rejected the Apocryphal books that 1500 years after the crucifixion of Christ were dogmatically added to the canon by the Council of Trent, a 1546, first dogmatic definition of the canon of Scripture. So, how could they have even known? If you require an infallible council to know what Scripture is, you don't need an infallible council to know what Scripture is. Jesus said to those men, "God spoke to you in what He wrote, and you need to believe that." That's why Peter, and that was this reference that was brought up by, uh, by Alex, was when Peter said, "No scripture of any, the, I guess translation is using private interpretation." This is talking about the prophet. He says, "Scripture does not come from any prophet's desire to just, I'm going to sit down and write Scripture today." No, instead, "men spoke from God as they were being carried along by the Holy Spirit." That's Peter's view of Scripture. Men spoke from God as they're being carried along by the Holy Spirit. That does not happen in Rome today. That did not happen when Fiducia Supplicans was promulgated. That does not happen when the Pope says, "Homosexuality, who am I to judge?" Well, Scripture judged a long time ago, and I can guarantee it's not happening in the synod and collegiality when you have a bunch of people in there lecturing the bishops on how they need to be inclusive.

How did Rome get to where it's gotten? Because it doesn't have Sola Scriptura. Once you believe in the infallibility of the Pope, you have the Church in monologue with herself. There's no, there's no longer any objective way of correcting the Church because she's claimed her own infallibility. You want to know what Apostolic Tradition is? My friends, there it is. Every bit of it. Everything the, the Holy Spirit wants us to have is right there. This happens to be a Greek New Testament, so I could grab the nice big black Bible right there, and we have everything. All of Scripture has been given to us in these books. This is sufficient for us. This defines the offices of the Church. There are two of them: elders, which are also presbyters, overseers, it's all the same office according to Apostle Paul, and deacons. And we're given the qualifications of those offices. Where are the qualifications of the Pope? What are the qualifications of cardinals? What's the qualifications of the multitude of offices that have been introduced into Roman Catholicism? We don't have anything from God on that. You have to go to the Church on that.

So, what we have today is Sola Scriptura versus Sola Ecclesia. The Scriptures as a sole infallible rule of faith versus the Church as a sole infallible rule of faith. The problem is what we see today, and I could sit here and I could have gotten up here and I could have fired off, I could have read from Von Döllinger and run through all of the stuff about Honorius and Liberius and, and all of the problems in the history of the Roman Catholic Church. But you see, this is a presuppositional argument because then Alex is going to come up and he's going to interpret that information in light of the pre-commitment he already has to the infallibility of the Pope and the, the infallible authority of the Roman Catholic Church, the idea of Apostolic succession, Apostolic Tradition, the deposit of faith, etc., etc. But that's why we have to look at this presupposition. We have to look at where we are starting. And the fact of the matter is, we only have one thing that we agree literally comes from God, and that has the imprimatur, shall we say, of the Lord Jesus Himself. Because when you boil it right down, this is an issue of what was Jesus's view? Jesus did not make Peter a Pope. No one in the early Church believed that. That developed much later. There are far better interpretations of Matthew 16, Luke 22, and, and, and John, and, and all the other passages we may end up looking at, and that we have looked at in debates that I've done with Mitch Pacwa and things like that on the papacy. The fact of the matter is, Jesus's view of Scripture is very clear. It is God speaking to us. It has a unique authority. And therefore, when we look at Rome's claims, when Rome tells us, "You must believe that Mary was bodily assumed into Heaven as a part of the Gospel," when I can debate Roman Catholic apologists like Jerry Mates, and he will literally stand in front of an audience and say, "We have just as much warrant to believe in the bodily assumption of Mary as we have to believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ." I say that claim must be examined in the light of Scripture. And Rome says, "You can't. You just simply have to believe."

Could we bring your time? Okay. All right. That was a pretty good trick there, I must say. All right. We continue on. So, when Rome makes these claims, when Rome defines dogmas as part of the Christian faith, we have the right to compare what Rome says to what the Apostles taught. And Rome says, "No, you can't do that. You can't even know what the Apostles taught outside of our authority." That's what the issue is. It's presuppositional. It's presuppositional.

Now, let's look at some of the, uh, claims that were made, because there were 10 of them, and the rebuttal time is never nearly as long as what you need. So, many Apostles, but we only have a certain amount. Right. Yeah, there are lots of prophets in the Old Testament. We don't have all their writings either. That didn't change Jesus's view of the Old Testament as being final and authoritative in all of His citations. Number two, the

Apostles do not address all topics, nor did they need to. Nor did the Lord Jesus Christ have to address all topics in everything that he said. God is going to give us what he wants us to have. The New Testament does not give us an exhaustive account of every word Jesus ever said. That is not an argument against sola scriptura, because sola scriptura is not claiming that we have everything that Jesus said, or that we need everything that Jesus said.

Third, we do not have all Apostolic writings. He quotes, for example, Colossians 4:16, "the Epistle of Laodicea." That was probably Ephesians. Ephesians was a circular letter being distributed, but it doesn't matter. Paul probably wrote down a grocery list a few times. We don't need that. Just because an apostle wrote it does not mean that God intends it to exist within the canon of scripture.

The Bible does not provide a canon, nor does it need to. Again, Jesus held men accountable to the Old Testament canon without any infallible councils that had met, without any angels coming down. And the reality is that the only difference we have on the canon in regard to the Apocrypha, and go listen to the various debates we've done on this subject if you want to, but the issue there, there, basically, let's put it this way: the more early writers knew about the Old Testament and the Hebrew language, the less likely they were to agree with Rome. You have popes that rejected the apocryphal books, Melito of Sardis, Origen, Jerome did not believe in those. He did translate them because he was told to. He did not believe their canon scripture because he knew the Jews had never accepted them along those lines either.

And to say, "Well, but we can tell you what the canon is, and we defined it April 8th, 1546." Man, let me tell you something. The greatest threat against the early church was Gnosticism. And man, could they have used an infallible canon against Gnostics? Rome gave them nothing. Nothing. So with that, that's just the beginning of the responses that can be given to the claims of authority that Rome makes. But remember, keep in mind, this is a presuppositional discussion. We'll Alex give you the foundations of these claims. That's what we've got to deal with for the next period of time together. Thank you very much for your attention. You just always wanted to ring a bell, haven't you, Dr. White? You can stay up there because you'll have the first time of... Well, hold on just a second. There, you don't, you don't talk and then immediately start talking again. So Alex, would you keep up writing all those notes? I tried. I tried. I was having a hard time with you too. So just... Okay, let me reset my clock here. What, uh, how much time we got? Seven minutes. All right. Okay. So we continue on with where we just were. We were told that the Bible uses coded language. A reference was made to Mark, which actually comes from prophetic language, same thing in the Book of Revelation. But here's, here's the issue. Okay, where does Rome infallibly define any of those texts? Where I have asked my Roman Catholic apologist friends over and over again, you complain that we need to have an infallible interpreter. Where is the infallible commentary on the Bible? Is it the Jerome Bible Commentary? And you'll all go, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no," because I have that, and it's leftist liberal tripe that would not, that would have caused their authors to have been burned by the Inquisition in the year 1600. So what has been infallibly interpreted? I've been told, well, there's like seven verses. But even then, the seven verses that have been infallibly interpreted are interpreted in such a way they say, "But it could have other meanings. We're just saying that this is one meaning." You have to believe, after 2,000 years, if you think it really is the role of the Roman Church to provide infallible interpretation, where's the entire set of commentaries? It doesn't exist, and it can't exist because there is no quote unquote Apostolic tradition that has been passed down from the apostles through the episcopate that gives you the interpretation. So you can say, "Well, there's tough things to interpret in the Bible." There's a whole lot of tough things to interpret in everything Francis says. You're not getting anywhere here. You're just increasing the confusion. And without infallible interpretations, this is not an argument. The scriptures can be twisted. Peter said, you know, "There's some stuff that Paul wrote untaught and unlearned men can twist their own destruction." What does that mean? That means that taught and stable men can handle it correctly, right? So if untaught and unstable can twist it, then taught and stable men can handle it correctly. Which is why Paul said to Timothy, "Those men that you've observed who've heard my teachings in public, entrust these things to them." Not to priests, aren't any New Testament priests in that sense, not to popes, not to cardinals, to them. They're the elders in the local churches. That's how the Holy Spirit set these things up. As I mentioned, 2 Peter 1:20 is not about private interpretation. It is about a prophet simply deciding to write scripture. And in contrast to that, it is men spoke from God as they are carried along by the Holy Spirit. It's not in any way a prohibition or a saying to the people of God, "You can't go to the word of God to hear what God himself has said."

We are told that they didn't record everything. Sola scriptura does not say that the Bible is an exhaustive revelation of everything Jesus ever said. We are not told what color the apostles' eyes were. We don't know what the apostolic menus were. There's all sorts of things like that, and that has nothing to do with sola scriptura. Sola scriptura is that the scriptures are the sole infallible rule of faith, which means God gets to determine what goes in the scriptures. And if he doesn't want to tell us those things, guess what? He doesn't have to tell us those things, and he hasn't. But I just have to point out, in passing, Rome doesn't tell us those things either. Rome doesn't answer any of those questions. And in fact, the modern Roman Church is moving farther and farther away from being able to answer those questions. I mean, let's remember, Pope Sixtus V gave us an infallible Vulgate. It only lasted for like a year and a half before it was shown to be filled with errors. But he said in an Apostolic Constitution, "This is the final authority." At least he thought there was a final written authority. I don't think Pope Francis believes that. So we're going in the wrong direction here, at least for these arguments to have any type of meaning. He said, "God's people did not hold sola scriptura." Well, if you mean during periods of inscripturation, of course not. You have to have a scriptura to have sola scriptura. And so if you're saying, "Well, when the prophet Isaiah was alive, no one said you can't do that because of sola scriptura," that's not, that's not our claim. We all believe that there are no more apostles. At least I hope we do. Any Mormons here? Anyway, that leads to real problems. So we don't have any apostles to be giving scripture or anything like that. So the question is, what has been given to the church today after the last apostle died? What did they have? And we are not saying that the church had no authority at all. That's not the question. The church's authority is always underneath what is God-breathed. When I stand before the people of Apologia Church and I proclaim the gospel and I say to them, "If you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, your sins have been forgiven, you've been adopted into the family of God, you have eternal life," I say that with the authority of God through the scripture, not because I'm an ordained pastor in a church. We can talk about there's an unbroken chain. Believe you me, anyone who reads history knows there is no unbroken chain, not unless you're just going to close your eyes to the pornocracy and the Babylonian captivity of the church and all the rest of that. There is no unbroken chain. The only meaningful unbroken chain you need to worry about today to the apostles is, do you teach and preach what the apostles taught? And we only know that from what's right here. That's the only way to know. That's the only way to know.

Mention the seat of Moses, yes, he did. Jesus didn't overthrow the synagogue worship, but that did not mean that he was saying that the synagogue had some kind of infallible authority interpretation of scripture. He says, "Don't do what they do." He corrected them on that very, very issue. The high priest did not have infallible authority just because God used the high priest that had been put there by the Romans to prophesy against his will. He didn't know what he was saying in that sense. Does not mean that that high priest had infallible authority. And finally, next time I get the opportunity to speak, I want to have you open your Bibles. We'll look at 2 Thessalonians 2:15 because I was wondering when I came here, is Alex going to go that direction? And I'm glad he did. I just didn't know beforehand, and so I couldn't make it a part of the presentation. But we're going to spend some time walking through 2 Thessalonians 2:15, making sure we understand exactly what is said there. I think I got through all 10 of them. Thank you for your time. Let's see if you can talk that fast. Oh man, let's see if I can talk that fast. Challenge accepted.

Number one, he said Pope Francis and that the things that he has taught are fundamentally, fundamentally different from what the Catholic Church has taught over the last 2,000 years. I challenge Dr. White to provide one magisterial statement from Pope Francis on matters of faith and/or morals that has ever contradicted any other magisterial statement of the Catholic Church. He can't do it.

Number two, Papal Biblical Commission. And what they believe about who was the author of Matthew. The Papal Biblical Commission is not the Magisterium. They have no magisterial authority. So whatever they say is not binding on any Catholic whatsoever.

Number three, *Fiducia Supplicans* on capital punishment. I challenge Dr. White to quote something from *Fiducia Supplicans* that actually contradicts anything the Catholic Church has taught in the last 2,000 years. He can't do it because it's not there. Capital punishment, a lot of people get this wrong. People think that Pope Francis changed the church's teaching about the morality of capital punishment. He did not change the church's teaching about the morality of capital punishment. What Pope Francis did is that he said that capital punishment should not be used. He said it is inadmissible, not that it is all of a sudden immoral. And you know who else had that same position? St. Augustine. St. Augustine said that capital punishment was moral in principle, but that it should not be used so that people who are convicted that they have time to repent, find Jesus Christ, and die in grace.

The next thing, sola scriptura can fix the problems in the church. Well, I think we all are aware that that's not true. Something that I found very interesting is that just across the street of this Reformed Baptist Church, there's another Reformed Church, a Presbyterian Church. I don't think they're in communion, and I think that they actually have different beliefs. For example, I understand that this church, and I might be wrong, doesn't believe in infant baptism. But the church across the street, another Reformed Church, they do believe in infant baptism. But if they both go by sola scriptura, why would they have come to different conclusions? So, no, sola scriptura doesn't fix any issues. It actually creates more issues and thousands of more denominations.

He also said, "Did the church ever define a single word of Jesus or the apostles?" Well, I mentioned that in my opening statement. The Catholic Church has never said that it has to define any words of Jesus or the apostles in the same way that Dr. White has said that the Bible doesn't have to record what the apostles had for lunch or breakfast or their laundry list or anything like that. So, why is Dr. White using different weights and different measures for two different things? That doesn't work. It is inconsistent. And as I believe a wise man once said, inconsistency is the sign of a failed argument.

And then he also said, "A stack of books to clarify the scriptures." Well, Dr. White has written many books. There are about 24 books that he's written. I could collect all of those books, stack them up, and I can say, "Dr. White, are you telling me that I need all of these books to be able to understand what the scriptures say?" So why is his stack of books different from the stack of books that the Catholic Church has produced over 2,000 years?

And then he says, "Scripture is unique." Guess what? The Catholic Church actually agrees with that. Scripture is unique. This is not about the ontology of scripture. This is about the epistemology of scripture. How do we know that scripture is indeed scripture?

And he also said, "You were talking really fast, and my handwriting got really sloppy." Let me see. He said, "Oh, when Pope Francis gave that famous line in an airplane when he said, 'Who am I to judge?'" Well, I would ask Dr. White, if airplane interviews that the Pope does, or interviews that he does on CNN, on 60 Minutes, if those are magisterial teachings of the church. They're not. And when Pope Francis said that, "Who am I to judge?" he was actually referring to one specific person. It was a priest that he was asked about, a priest who was living celibate, obviously, and he wasn't engaging in any sexual activity. And he said, "Who am I to judge if someone that has the inclination to same-sex activity is not falling into that inclination and not behaving on it, who am I to judge if they're actually trying to follow God?" That was all he said, and it's not magisterial.

Also, so he also said things about... Let me read this really quick. So he said that Jesus held the Jews of the day to the scriptures, but that doesn't prove sola scriptura, especially when you consider how Jesus also held them to other authorities outside of scripture. I already mentioned the "seat of Moses," and Dr. White has one interpretation of the "seat of Moses," but the Jews at the time, in rabbinic tradition, had a different interpretation of the "seat of Moses," was that whoever sat in that seat had the authority to interpret infallibly and bind the Jews to those beliefs.

And then, how did the ancient Jews know what the scriptures were? Well, not all of them did, and we know this from the Bible and from Jesus himself. The Bible tells us that the Sadducees rejected the belief of the resurrection of the body. But how could they reject such a belief if it's clearly and explicitly taught in the Book of Daniel? Well, we get our answer to this in Matthew 22, which is where we read about the Sadducees challenging Jesus on this belief. How does Jesus reply to them? He did not say to them, "Have you not read the Prophet Daniel?" No, what he did tell them was, "You do not know the scriptures." He then proceeds to quote the Hebrew scriptures to them, but he doesn't quote from Daniel. Instead, he quotes from the Law of Moses, from which he draws out a necessary logical implication of the resurrection of the dead. But why would Jesus just quote from... why would Jesus not just quote the explicit passage from Daniel? Well, ancient Church historians tell us that the Sadducees only accepted the Law of Moses and no other writings. That explains why Jesus responded by telling them that they didn't know the scriptures and why he didn't quote from Daniel, because the Sadducees didn't accept that book of scripture. And this also disproves the idea that the Jews in Jesus' day had one defined canon of scripture, which we know is just not true.

And then also, oh, Theodosius. How you know, can't leave that one out. How much time do I got? So Dr. White demands... Actually, I'm going to save that for later. I think I got something else. I'm going to save that for later. Not enough time for that one. Oh, one of my favorites. Trent defined the canon of scripture. Dr. White claims that the Catholic Church didn't infallibly teach the canon of scripture until the Council of Trent in the 16th century. This is false. The canon of scripture had already been infallibly taught by the ordinary and universal Magisterium as early as the 4th century. What Dr. White is referring to is that the Council of Trent is the first time that the canon of scripture was defined by the extraordinary universal Magisterium and had anathemas attached to it against anyone who would reject the canon. Also, the Council of Trent isn't even the first time that an ecumenical council lists the canon. The entire canon was listed at the Council of Florence in 1431, over 100 years before the Council of Trent. And Dr. White also said a whole bunch of other things. The qualifications of popes and cardinals. Popes and cardinals are bishops, so their qualifications are in scripture too. I think that's all I got for now. Woo! Thank you. We're going to have to do it at double speed, Dr. White. Just press the option on your... Could we, could we wipe off the podium here? Yeah, the blood, sweat, and tears. [Laughter] Right.

Before you, before you start that timer, Alex, I'm enjoying this and I really, really appreciate you. Thank you so much. This is one of the biggest honors of my life. I've been watching this man for almost 10 years, and the fact that I'm on stage with him, I'm going to cry. This is, uh, I'm very spoiled. So thank you guys so much. Yeah, I started doing this before he was born. So before he was born, like, and I'm, and I'm enjoying it, but we both have back problems. So at least we're, we both talked about it. All right. Hope you don't mind, I'm going to slow down a little bit. Turn in your Bibles, please. Second Thessalonians 2:15. Second Thessalonians 2:15: "Therefore, brethren, stand firm and hold fast to the traditions which you were taught in two ways: dialogu, by spoken word, or de epistolas, through an epistle, the written form." What is Paul doing here? Is he saying that there is an unwritten body of tradition? Because at the Council of Trent, this was a big argument. There is even a draft version of the final statement on the issue of scripture that said that scripture is given to us partly in the written and partly in the oral, but that wasn't the one that was finally used. And that argument has continued today. Is that what Paul is saying? No. This is Second Thessalonians. So the epistolas, through epistle, was First Thessalonians. What then was dialogu? The preaching that Paul had given to them when he was with them. So he's, what's he talking about here? What does it say? It's about the gospel. Look at verses 13 and 14, and then followed up afterwards. What he's saying is, "Hold to what we have delivered to you, both when we are with you in preaching and what I have sent to you." Hold firm, hold fast to that. There is nothing in this text that even hints at the idea of Apostolic tradition that was going to be allegedly passed down through the episcopate for 2,000 years. If that's the position that Alex is taking, then he would have to be able to provide evidence that the very dogmas that have been defined by Rome on the basis of alleged Apostolic tradition can be traced back to the church at Thessalonica, and they can't do it. That's the, what's Reed Newman? Reed Newman's responses to Von Döllinger. I know this is historical stuff, and that's why I didn't want to get into it necessarily today because let us talking this fast. If you've not read these things, but take the time and recognize that a fundamental shift took place when John Henry Cardinal Newman presented the development hypothesis. It was an abandonment of the field of battle in history. Read, read George Salmon's book, *The Infallibility of the Church*. Excellent discussion of these things. But the point is, it was basically saying, "We don't have to find these things." Newman said, "We, the early church didn't function on the basis of an infallible papacy, but it developed over time, and it's good that it developed over time." That's the argument, and that's really what Rome is left with today. So if the claim is going to be this text actually presents a body of Apostolic tradition, then you're going to need to show me somebody in the first century, the second century, the third century, the fourth century, that actually believed in the things that Rome has defined on the basis of Apostolic tradition. And the easiest way to do that, you're going to have to do that based upon, you're going to have to prove the Immaculate Conception, bodily assumption, and the infallibility of the Pope. And you're not going to be able to do that. That's why Newman did what he did. He had to do what he did. It's just simply not there.

Now, think about, for a second, something that Alex said. "I'm only going to deal with magisterial statements. Give me one magisterial statement." You need to understand how is Francis changing the church? It's not by saying, "We are going to become inclusive." I mean, read what the Bishops, the Synod of Synodality said as they came out of the last sessions. He said they're having people lecture us on the goodness of inclusivity on homosexuality. Now, they are not going to come out with some kind of statement that says homosexuality is good. That's not how the movement has worked. It's done one little bit, one little step at a time. And he said those, those papal, the Papal Biblical Commission is not authoritative. The Papal Biblical Commission is going to be the touchstone as to what the material is being taught to the next generation of priests is going to be. That's exactly how you change the church, and most effectively, that's exactly how you do it. And Protestants hold a much higher view of scripture than anyone on the Papal Biblical Commission. What does that mean? Think about it. Yes, you can change the church, but if you want to do it without causing immediate schism, you do it slowly and carefully. And that's what Francis is doing. And I am, as a Pro... You may go, "You're a Protestant." Do you have any idea how many Roman Catholics agree with me on this and have said so openly? They say they've been red-pilled. Yeah, there are a lot of them doing that. I guess there's a Presbyterian Church along the way. Any, anybody from the Presbyterian Church along the way? Because you see, the Presbyterians are, unless they're liberal Presbyterians, would agree with everything said so far. And I'm going to be doing a debate. I've got two more debates to do on this trip. How would you like to have two more debates to do in the next 10 days? Oh, would have mercy. See, so I'm debating an open theist next week, and he has no idea how that's going to go because his God doesn't either. But anyway, sorry. He's a nice guy too. So, but three days, four days after that, I'm debating a Presbyterian on the nature of the New Covenant. Now, does this prove Alex's point? No, it doesn't. You know why? Because you know what the essence of that debate's going to be? He and I are going to be digging into the Greek New Testament, primarily in the Book of Hebrews. And we both believe that what is in here should be enough to cause either one of us to agree with what the other one is saying. Now, in this life, does that mean that there's going to be perfect agreement? You know what? No. You know why? Because we live in a sinful world, and we live in a world where people have traditions that they will place over the scriptures. But he and I are not going to be going to outside authorities. We're going to be going to what the word of God says. And that's how it should be. And that's how I wish Alex and I could be with each other. But our divisions are bigger, as yet. I pray someday that they will end. Thank you very much. [Applause]

Slow down, take a breath. I love it here. Please have me back as many times as you'd like. I love this. All right, so let's see. Time is already going. Dr. White said, he brought up, oh, Honorius and Liberius, really quick. The same council that condemned Honorius as being a heretic, the Second Council, Third Council of Constantinople, is the exact same council that teaches papal infallibility. So they condemn Pope Honorius for having a private personal belief that was heretical, but he never taught that in his Magisterium, which is what we're debating here. And Pope Liberius, he was the one that signed the heretic. He signed the heretical Arian document in the 4th century. Well, Pope Liberius was kidnapped by the Roman Emperor, taken somewhere else, he was punished, and he was tortured. He was under arrest, and he was forced to sign that document while he was under torture. And saying that the nations of Alexandria actually defend Pope Liberius for this and say, "What he signed, you guys can ignore that because that's not magisterial because he signed it under duress." And then Dr. White says that no one believed in the early church, no one believed that Peter was the Pope. Well, I have a list right here of 16 different sources and different Church Fathers from the Patristic age that all say that Peter was indeed the Pope. And then he also says that the apostles didn't need to address all topics. Well, he's correct. They didn't need to address all topics. They only needed to address the topics that they wanted us to know that we are bound to know, and they addressed that in their writings and also in what they preached and what they handed down to the men that succeeded them. Oh, he also brings up the issue with the Epistle of Laodicea. And Dr. White says that, "Oh, the Epistle of Laodicea, that's probably just Ephesians." What does the Bible say? It doesn't say that. If Dr. White wants to hold to that, he has to go outside of the scriptures to be able to know that the Epistle to the Laodiceans was just the Epistle to the Ephesians under a different name. The Bible doesn't say that. Also, oh, he also gave a list of a bunch of people in the early church who rejected the seven deuterocanonical. That's actually not true because every single list, every single name on the list that he gave, you can actually find quotes from every single one of them, including Pope Gregory, including St. Jerome, including all of the people that he listed, that actually cite and quote the deuterocanonical writings and they cite and quote them as scripture, as God's word. So that's not true. He also says, oh, that Gnosticism. He said that Gnosticism was one of the early heresies in the church, and that Rome gave them nothing to combat Gnosticism. Nothing. The apostles themselves were combating Gnosticism. We see in the Epistles of John that they were combating Gnosticism. Are the apostles nothing? What about the successors of the apostles? Again, 2 Timothy 2:2. Paul tells Timothy, "What you've heard from me preached publicly, that you're going to take and you're going to teach it yourself, and you're going to hand it down to trustworthy men that will also be able to teach it to others." So, no, the church didn't give us nothing. The church gave us apostles, prophets, teachers, evangelists, and all of the different ministries that St. Paul outlines in his epistles in 1 Corinthians. And then, oh, the pornocracy and the Babylonian captivity of the church, that that right there does away with the unbroken chain. That's actually not true because the unbroken chain of bishops and of popes are going all the way back to the apostles has always been intact, even during the pornocracy, which is when we had naughty popes. And just in case you guys didn't know, don't be scandalized by this. We've had a few naughty popes in history. I've actually counted all of them. It's about nine. Okay? We've had 266 popes, 267 if you count the other guy, but only nine of them were naughty. Okay? I think that's a pretty good track record. Only nine naughty popes. But guess what? Those nine naughty popes, not a single one of those nine naughty popes ever, ever promulgated any authoritative magisterial teaching that contradicted any of the previous teachings of the Magisterium or any of the teachings of scripture. As a matter of fact, there was one or two of those really naughty popes that actually, it's kind of weird, they wrote like really, really, really beautiful theology that has also influenced Protestantism as well. Yeah, naughty popes were able to do that because they're not the ones who are in charge. It is the Holy Spirit that leads whoever the Pope is, and the church as a whole universally. Also, when Dr. White brings up how Jesus, when talking about the seat of Moses in Matthew 23, he says, "Do not what they do." Well, yeah, that doesn't touch on what we're talking about today. What we're talking about today is what do the people who are in authority, what do they teach? It's not about what they do, because we're all sinners. What do... Yeah, if we have bad bishops, bad priests, bad popes, bad cardinals, am I supposed to be surprised by that? No, because we're all sinners. But what is it that they are teaching that they are binding me to believe? That is what has always remained intact. And I would challenge anybody to provide just one instance of something flipping, something changing. It does not happen. But we do have multiple instances of actual teachings, official teachings of different Protestant denominations actually flipping and contradicting previous teachings. The high priest was not infallible. Well, again, that has to do with his actions and what he did. The high priest played a role in putting Jesus to death, but that is an action that has nothing to do with the actual teaching that he gave in John 11, where he says, "Jesus Christ," he doesn't name him, but he says, "One is going to die for the sins of many." That is what we call a magisterial teaching, and it doesn't matter what he did after that. It's what he taught in a definitive way. Oh, and he says that I would have to provide evidence about the Thessalonians believing these Catholic dogmas. Well, here's the beautiful thing. We actually can provide that evidence. We can, because the Church of Thessalonica has successors, the bishops, successors of the apostles that exist, you know, to this day. You can actually still go to the Apostolic Church in Thessalonica. You know, there's the Catholic, there's the Orthodox, you know, obviously. But every single one of those churches, guess what they believe? They believe what the Catholic Church teaches dogmatically. They believe all of those things. They indeed do. You can go to those churches, and they believe all of the things that Dr. James White would reject. How much time do I have? Oh, Cardinal Newman and doctrinal development. A lot of people, he brings this up as if Cardinal Newman invented doctrinal development. No, doctrinal development was explicitly taught by St. Vincent of Lérins in the 5th century. He was the one that talked about doctrinal development. It was not invented by Cardinal Newman in the 19th century. And Cardinal Newman did not say that the papacy was an invention or a later development that has no basis in the early church. Oh, liberal Presbyterians. If they accept sola scriptura, why are they liberal? Because they know that's all I got. If they're liberal, they... [Applause]

All right, ladies and gentlemen, we have arrived at your favorite time, the break. Actually, no, I think we've been enjoying all of this. Let's give one more round before you'll have 15 minutes, and this time I want to turn the clock around so you know when to be back in your seats so we can start the next cross-examination. The debater gets to control the time and ask the questions, but of course, allow a response. But if he wants to change questions and direct the conversation, he can do that. And then the same difference is given by each. So, without further ado, I think I think I will put this up. So, well, now I'm going to keep facing this towards you gentlemen so you can see your time, and I'll do the same. 30-second clap towards the end. And here we go. After this, we'll have audience Q&A. So with that, Alex, the floor is yours to ask questions. Before we start, my microphone is on, right? Everyone can hear me? Yes. Okay. All right. I can sort of hear you. Yes, you can sort of hear me. Very good, very good. Give me one second. I need you to identify what is in that one. No, never mind. It's zero sugar Gatorade. This is, I was being factious. Watermelon Splash. Okay. And I will, if you guys want me to, I will take a drug test. I know I'm talking really fast, but that's how I really talk. Like, you can ask some of the people here, my patrons, that they do Zoom calls with me. I really talk like that. All right. Okay. So, Dr. White, you do agree that the Bible does tell us that the apostles did leave successors to oversee and lead the church, correct? I wouldn't use the term successors. They established two offices in the church: bishop, overseer, elder, they're all the same office according to the Apostle Paul, and deacons. So, "successor" sounds like further apostles, and I don't believe that they're further apostles. They established, and in fact, the scripture says in Acts, "to strengthen the churches, they appointed elders in the churches." And you do agree that many of these bishops, elders, are also called apostles in the New Testament as well, such as Timothy, Silas, Titus? There is a lot of discussion as to exactly how the term apostle is used in the New Testament, and the differentiation between an apostle who is a witness of the resurrection of Jesus Christ and someone who is sent as a messenger, say, to Gentile churches. There is a difference in the terminology that is used. Okay. And Dr. White, it is your position that sola scriptura came into play after the death of the last apostle? Well, I would say that it was, the default should have been the default and would have helped if it had been the default during the intertestamental period, because much of the problems that developed within intertestamental Judaism were because they used non-inspired sources. But yes, scriptura must exist, and because of its nature, once it comes into existence, it is the ultimate authority. So, Dr. White, would your position be then that after the death of the last apostle, that the early church, the immediate Christians, used scripture, held sola scriptura in the sense of recognizing the ultimate authority? Obviously, there's a whole period of time, for example, Justin Martyr doesn't even seem to have Paul's Epistles. So, just as there was a period of development in the canon in the intertestamental period, it's about 200 years before Christ, before the books we have in the Old Testament, not the deuterocanonicals, were laid up in the temple and considered holy. There's about the same time period before the Muratorian fragment, about 187, where there are people in the early church that did not have the entire canon. Right. So, what in what century would you say, Dr. White, that the church was able to recognize the entirety of the canon? Well, certainly Athanasius gives us his 39th Festal Letter in 367, which gives us pretty much, with small variations, primarily due to Greek manuscripts, so it's pretty much the same time period you have in the intertestamental church, where you have, and the Gnostic conflicts and the Arian conflicts help to give clarification to these things, because you had to know what sources you were going to be drawing from to answer these questions. So, does that mean that sola scriptura didn't come into play until around the time of Athanasius? Well, when you say "come into play," again, there is a time period that we don't, we live in a day where when something happens across the world, we find out about it instantly. I don't know about the rest of you, but what happened last night in Paris is something I didn't want to find out about instantly. But I did. Did you see that, by the way? I heard it, I didn't see it, but I heard about it. That is disgusting. Don't even go there. It's disgusting. You should team up and just go take care of them. Well, yeah, okay. My point, my point is, it took time for scriptural books to be copied and distributed, and especially during the Roman suppression, and especially the major period between 303 and 313, where thousands of manuscripts were destroyed. It took time for these books to be distributed and for the community to become familiar with them. It was a process that goes much slower in the ancient world than it does today. Okay, so can you point to any particular, maybe Church Father, around the time when the church had recognized the entirety of the canon, that would have believed sola scriptura? Oh, sure. I mean, Athanasius, in his writings against the Arians, says the scriptures are sufficient for the establishment of the truth. And his arguments against the Arians, he didn't particularly like the term *homoousios*. He was stuck with it because that's what had been used at the council. But anyone who has seriously, and I've dealt with Unitarians, Jehovah's Witnesses, people like that for decades, and reading Athanasius's responses against the Arians is just wonderful. And when he uses the term "Apostolic tradition," it's always sub-biblical, in other words, it is a belief derived from scriptures, not a belief derived from an oral tradition outside of scriptures, which I'm not sure if that's what you were meaning in 2 Thessalonians 2:15 or not. We'll have to clarify that later. So, Dr. White, your position, you would say that Athanasius held sola scriptura? There is a quote from him where he says, "Had they," and he is referring to, this is from *Contra Arianos* 3, where he says, "Had they dealt with the thoughts of the, had they dwelt on these thoughts and recognized the ecclesiastical scope as an anchor for the faith, they would not have made shipwreck of the faith." So he's referring to the church. So St. Athanasius was saying that the church is an anchor for the faith. Could you say that the church, according to Athanasius, would be a definitive rule of faith? He didn't use "definitive rule of faith." He said it's an anchor of the faith, which all of us believe. I believe that the scripture. In fact, when the scripture says, "The scripture is the pillar and foundation of the truth," I believe that. The problem is when Paul wrote that, he was talking about the local church, he wasn't talking about Rome. And when Athanasius defends the deity of Christ against the condemnations of multiple councils, even, and you were right, Liberius was under pressure, there's no question about that, but so was Athanasius, and Athanasius did not give in. And so the point is, the principles that Athanasius used to defend the deity of Christ and was eventually victorious in are the principles that I believe, and that is that scripture is the final authority. He did not submit himself to council after council after council, and many of those councils had more bishops in them than Nicaea had. And you are aware that St. Athanasius himself makes a defense for Pope Liberius in his writings? Yes. Okay. And so when dealing with the Arians, St. Athanasius also said this: "Let the Arians tell us from what teacher or from what tradition they derive those notions concerning the Savior." So Athanasius here is asking them to say, "What teacher did you learn this from?" He doesn't tell them to appeal to the scriptures, because, as you know, Dr. White, the Arians were appealing to the scriptures to try and prove Arianism. Have you read *Contra Arianos*? All of it? The vast majority of it, yes. Okay. I would just suggest everybody, because Athanasius is a favorite of mine, read Athanasius's response against the Arians and ask yourself a question: What is his fundamental source of argumentation, and what is the ultimate authority? And the ultimate authority is all of scripture. Yes, he will say they are going against what earlier people taught, and in many instances, that was true. But that doesn't change the fact that the foundation of the deity of Christ, he finds in the God-inspired scriptures. Well, let's go ahead and move on, Dr. White. Just because we have very little time, does scripture tell us what or who the number of the beast is referring to in Revelation 13:18? In fact, not only does it not give us every, does not give us an interpretation of every symbol in the Book of Revelation, the earliest reading of that passage in Revelation 13 isn't 666. Do you know what it is? It's 616. In the right. Absolutely. Yeah, that's exactly right. And I think that's the Hebrew and the Greek versions of Nero. Okay. So, Dr. White, did, are we able to know what this verse refers to using scripture alone? Well, as far as God would have us to, because what does scripture say? Why was Revelation written the way it was? It was written, it was written so that you had to understand its deep, very deep rooting in the Old Testament scriptures, and that this is judgment that is being spoken of in the Book of Revelation. So yes, I would say so. If you're saying, "Can you figure out every question that could ever be asked?" I say no, and Rome hasn't answered those questions either. So you would agree that the, the Bible doesn't tell us that 666 or 616 refers to Nero Caesar? Not in those words. I'd say that that is a very historically rooted and grounded interpretation that I know people disagree with. And if, hey, please don't start throwing copies of Left Behind at me. So, Dr. White, so this, this understanding and interpretation, you have to go outside of the scriptures to know what it is, correct? No, I'm not saying that there is some revelation outside of scripture that tells me. I am looking at what the scripture is saying, and I'm reading it in its historical context, and I recognize when I open the Book of Revelation, quote after quote after quote after quote coming from the Old Testament. And so I'm looking at context. And if you're saying, "Well, but you have to know what Nero's name is or something like that," that's not a violation of sola scriptura in any way, shape, or form, because Nero's name is a part, not a part of the canon of scripture. Can we come to objective moral truth from scripture alone? Yes. Does scripture alone allow for morality to change? Does scripture alone allow morality, allow for morality to change? No. I really wish that we would go back to God's law today. If sola scriptura protects against immorality and relativism, why did virtually all Protestant churches go from rejecting artificial contraception as immoral to accepting it in 1930? Can I go ahead and give my full response here? Sure. Okay, thank you. The best answer to that particular question is not to limit it just to artificial conception, but it is to recognize that the vast majority of Protestant churches that, for example, are now affirming gay marriage and things like that, abandoned sola scriptura long, long ago. And in fact, the vast majority of Protestant churches do not believe in sola scriptura. Okay. Oh, okay. All right, Alex. I said that I believe this is a presuppositional argument. Would you agree with me that you are committed to Rome's claim of ultimate epistemological authority? Yes, Dr. White. I agree that this is a presuppositional argument, and in my opening statement, I actually outlined that by saying that the presupposition is God himself, that God...

Is the ultimate infallible Authority? And that any other authorities outside of God that we have would come from him. And that includes scripture, tradition, and the church that he, that he established. But would you recognize that Rome's epistemological and ecclesiastical claims of authority exist on a different level than the epistemological authority of scripture being God-breathed?

Yes, Dr. White, because that is what the Catholic Church teaches. If you read *Dei Verbum* or one of the documents from Vatican II, it says that the church is not above scripture. That the church is subservient to scripture, which is why 1 Timothy 3:15 says the church is the pillar of the truth. The church can't be above scripture because pillars have to be under whatever it is that they hold up.

That's true. But my focus is upon, is it not? Do you, do you, do you see a difference between my claim that scripture, because it is God-breathed, is sufficient, and your claim that scripture teaches the papacy and the magisterium and therefore is authoritative? Isn't there a fundamental difference in where that claim's coming from?

No, Dr. White, there isn't a fundamental difference because scripture actually teaches that the church itself is also God-breathed. In Acts chapter 2, as you know, Dr. White, uh, in Acts chapter 2, we read about Pentecost, which is when the, the Holy Spirit, the *ruach* in Hebrew, which literally means breath, the Breath of God, fell down upon the entire church. And the entire church was God-breathed. Also, the apostles themselves were uniquely God-breathed. In John 20, when Jesus, who is God-breathed, on them. So, uh, scripture attests to other things outside of scripture as being God-breathed.

Well, *theopneustos* is a *hapax legomenon*, right? Correct. Yeah, it's only used one time. So you are making a connection between someone being indwelt by the Spirit and they are *theopneustos*. Uh, yes, Dr. White, that's what the Sacrament of Confirmation or Chrismation is. Everyone who receives that sacrament is *theopneustos*.

I didn't get a chance to go over this during my rebuttals, but, um, Dr. White, if you would demand that the Catholic side of this debate, uh, provide, like, any examples of something outside of scripture that the scriptures call *theopneustos*.

Well, remember what I said in my opening statement about demanding exact words. This, this insistence about, uh, demanding for *theopneustos* to be, uh, shown to refer to something else, that's like when Muslims say that we have to show them where Jesus said, "I am God, worship me," in those exact words. So you are correct, Dr. White, that that exact term, that exact Greek term *theopneustos*, isn't applied to anything else. But what it means, uh, God-breathed or God breathing, is applied in the scriptures to the church, to the apostles specifically, even to Adam in Genesis. God breathed life into Adam. So Adam was God-breathed. And yes, Dr. White, every single person who receives the sacrament of, uh, confirmation or chrismation is God-breathed. That's what that sacrament is.

Has Rome defined that dogmatically, uh, in regards to the meaning of 2 Timothy 3:16 about the definition, dogmatically about what, what *theopneustos* means and that simply being indwelt by the Spirit means you are *theopneustos*? Because I've never heard that before.

Well, Dr. White, Dr. White, the church has defined authoritatively that when you receive the sacraments, you are receiving the Holy Spirit. And, and the church has actually never, um, felt the need to define the way that the term *theopneustos* is used in 2 Timothy 3. And I would also like to point out that none of the Church Fathers ever interpreted that word in 2 Timothy 3 to mean that the scriptures are the only thing that we have as a rule of faith. Not a single Church Father ever said that.

Well, uh, so, well, we could get into that if you wanted to. So I'm just really, really, uh, confused here because it sounds like you're saying that scripture is no different in its epistemological authority than a baptized, um, Catholic who's received the Holy Spirit, because you're saying they're *theopneustos* in the same way scripture is.

Well, actually, Dr. White, that's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that everyone who receives a sacrament is God-breathed. But the point that I'm making is that being God-breathed, that alone doesn't make you an infallible authority. Because again, the early Church Fathers used that Greek word *theopneustos*, used it to apply to other things outside of scriptures, such as like sermons, homilies, um, good works, good deeds. All of those things the Church Fathers called *theopneustos*. So the interpretation of that word, it doesn't mean what many Protestants try to make it mean, to mean that the scripture is the only thing that is, uh, an infallible rule of faith.

Okay, so, and I'm, I'm pushing on this because this is, to me, what the real.

Absolutely, absolutely. Um, you've read Warfield's work on *theopneustos*?

Uh, yes, I have.

How many different languages is it written in? Warfield's work on *theopneustos*? Yeah, I don't know how many. I only speak a few languages, Dr. White. I don't know how many it was written in.

But, well, it, okay, okay. All right. Um, you just said, you just made your interpretation of 2 Timothy 3:16 based upon Church Fathers that you didn't identify.

I, I haven't read here, Dr. White. I can show them to you.

Okay, but, but the point is, are you saying that every interpretation of a scripture from a patristic source is authoritative?

I'm sorry, can you repeat that?

That every defense. So, so I mean, I can point to all sorts of interpretations in the early Church Fathers that Rome would reject today.

Oh, I love this question. Ask the question so I can answer it. So, yeah. So, so it, it sounded to me like you were saying, well, there were certain early Church Fathers that I haven't identified that interpreted the term *theopneustos* a certain way. Where is the infallible interpretation of 2 Timothy 3:16 that would tell us that the reason that Timothy is able to do every good work asked of the man of God is because, well, is because scripture is *theopneustos*? So why, why would Paul even say that, since Timothy is indwelt by the Holy Spirit, so he's *theopneustos* too? What's, what's the big deal?

Yeah, and, and Paul actually does say that. He says that everyone who, uh, receives the Holy Spirit, when you receive the Holy Spirit, you are *theopneustos*. Acts 2 says so. Let me explain.

Talk. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. You, you've got to show me. You know that term doesn't exist there. So what do you mean that every believer is *theopneustos*? Where has Rome dogmatically defined that *theopneustos* simply means indwelt by the Holy Spirit? Or is this just your opinion?

No, this is actually what the church teaches. Again, Dr. White, I've pointed out with the church teaches that every, the sacraments that you receive, you are receiving the Holy Spirit in the sacraments. And the Spirit, meaning *ruach* in Hebrew, God's breath, when you receive the sacraments, you receive God's breath, the Holy Spirit. So you are God-breathed. God, God has breathed upon you. But now, let me actually answer your question about the interpretation. Your interpretation. What this has to do with is the ordinary and universal magisterium. If your question is about what interpretations can we find in the early church that maybe don't fit with what the Cath.

Because you said that there are interpretations that the Catholic Church would reject. That is an easy question to answer. The infallible teachings of the, uh, Catholic Church are those teachings that were held in common by all of the successors of the Apostles. So if we find one or two bishops here, or a couple of bishops there, that had a position that was unique only to them, and it's not universal across the entire church, then that unique position is not an infallible, uh, interpretation or an infallible teaching of the church.

And who gets to determine that?

Uh, the, the church.

Exactly, exactly. So the church gets to determine what, in the early church, yeah, is infallible and what is it?

Well, actually, Dr. White, what the, what the church does get to do is actually just look at the history and look what are the universal teachings that were held by the, uh, Church Fathers. And that those universal teachings, those are, uh, the infallible teachings. And if we have a couple of teachings here and there that are unique, then those can be discarded.

Then why did, then why did Newman have to do what he did prior to Vatican I?

Well, what was it that Newman did, Dr. White?

Well, he recognized the ancient church had not functioned on the basis of the definition that was to be offered. So he had to, and his development hypothesis is not Vincent of Lérins' development hypothesis at all. But why would he have to do that if, in fact, it was the universal belief all along? Why, why did he have to come up with the idea that, yeah, okay, they didn't function this way, but there's development over time? It's like an acorn in the tree and all the rest of it. Why do you have to do that if, if what you're saying is true?

Why did it, what is it that you're referring to, Dr. White?

What's, what teaching specifically?

Specifically, he recognized that the, the, the primitive church did not function on the foundation of a papacy.

Oh, well, I don't think, uh, I don't think that Cardinal Newman actually ever, uh, said that. But we actually have the evidence from the primitive church that actually, I have it right here, Dr. White, that actually shows that before the Council of Nicaea, the, uh, church did indeed believe the Roman Catholic papacy as defined today.

Yes. Wow. Okay.

[Music]

Absolutely. All right, we're gonna move. Where did you get that? Then we're gonna move on to, uh, I've had people bring all sorts of. But never a, never a fight bell before. How long have you been willing to do this? Huh? All right, so we're gonna move on to the Q&A. Come on, you can, you can join in. It's the fight. Oh, we've had this. Uh, if you ever want to come out to Third Space Coffee about, uh, every other month, we have something called John 17 Fight Club. We actually have a Protestant, Catholic, or sometimes, uh, Catholic, uh, atheist debate. And you bring that, and it's fighting for unity. Yeah. And so we bring a, a, a fight bell. So thanks for joining in the fun. Yes, definitely. Thanks. I didn't want to take your time with questions. So you guys each have three minutes to answer these questions that are from the audience. And I'll make a point if you don't, if you're done with your question, we can save that time and hopefully get to a fifth question, uh, that both of you will answer both ways. Okay, on that were submitted. These were submitted through the app. And I'm going to give you the first question to you, Alex. You'll have three minutes. And if you want to yield any of that time, it may save us, uh, to be able to have time to answer. So the one that's addressed to is the only one that addresses it. Yeah. So you'll have three minutes and then you'll have three minutes. If, if I yield my time to Dr. White, would you permit him to? Or if not, I'm sorry, trying to catch on time. So we have a question that both of you can answer. So there'll be four unique questions to each. We have time, we'll get that fifth question in. Here we go. Problem. All right, so your question. How would you approach, Alex, how would you approach if a situation if the Pope made an infallible declaration that you felt clearly contradicted the Bible, such as if one day they approve gay marriage? Which authority is higher? Your clear understanding of the Bible or the Pope's statement?

If the, uh, Pope or the, uh, universal magisterium of the church ever came out and said that gay marriage was moral, then Catholicism is false. So it's very easy to falsify it. That's all the Pope would ever have to do. Would say, we allow gay marriage now. We'll have gay marriages, gay weddings at our churches. And if the Catholic Church ever did that, Catholicism is false. So look out for that for anybody here that wants to prove Catholicism false. That's all you have to look out for. But it hasn't happened in 2,000 years and it will never happen. Um, because I believe in trends. And if you go 2,000 years without messing that up, it's probably, you know, not going to happen. Um, so, yeah, that would be a way to falsify, uh, the Catholic Church. But we don't have to worry about that 'cause that would not happen because it hasn't happened. Um, what more could I say? I think that's all I got.

Okay. All right. Uh, Dr. White, the next question is for you. And forgive me as I fiddle with this. All right. So the next question. If *sola scriptura* is true, what did the early Church use or do for the first few hundred years before the New Testament was assembled?

Couple things. I've taught development of Patristic theology at, uh, Old Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary years ago. And one of the things that we noted as we worked through Ignatius and Clement in the original languages, uh, was the prevalence of the citation of the Old Testament scriptures. And I think it sort of throws a few modern people off because we don't spend nearly as much time as we should, uh, in those scriptures. But, uh, just as the citation of the Old Testament scriptures was the final authority when Jesus would say, "It is written, it is written. Have you not read?" That was his view. It's ultimate authority. The early church had that. And then as the apostolic witness, the written apostolic writ, the Gospels, very early on, very early on. I, I can't think of a single early writing we have, whether it's the Epistle, uh, to Diognetus, Clement, the Didache, they all are quoting from the Gospels. So the Gospels, very, very early on, are functioning in a fully authoritative fashion. Um, but especially, we can understand why this would be. If, if Paul writes, um, to the church at Thessalonica, it's going to take time for a church hundreds or even a thousand miles away to eventually obtain that writing. And so, for example, it's not till the year 200 that we have manuscript P46, which contains all of Paul's major Epistles. And by the way, it also contains Hebrews, just for the fun of it, to to know that. Um, but, but it didn't have the minor Epistles in it. And so, yet, because you didn't have the internet, you didn't have printing presses, uh, you didn't have super highways, uh, it takes time for written documents, especially because possessing them is illegal and could get you thrown to the lions, uh, to be transmitted around the Roman Empire. And so there's a period of time when there are certain people who are writing, like Justin Martyr, that don't have the Pauline canon. How would your theology be impacted if you didn't have Romans? Think about it. That's one of the reasons I say when you read the early Church Fathers, you have to interpret them for who they were, when they were, and what they knew. Um, and I would say, unfortunately, Rome, because it has now dogmatically said that its beliefs, especially on the papacy, are the constant and universal faith of the church, the Roman Catholic interpreter of these people has to find in those writings the things that Rome has told them to find. And I think that really, really causes some major, major problems. So they have their elders, their bishops, who have been taught. That's not some external revelation. They have the scriptures. And as more and more of the apostolic, um, witness becomes available, they have that as well. I told you I never go over.

All right, Alex. The next question is for you. In the 4th Century, during the Arian resurgence, did the church ever make any binding teachings that were in error or contradictory to the scriptures?

No. And let's say we didn't have the scriptures, because that's something that Dr. White had mentioned just now. What if we, how would your theology look like if we don't have, if we don't have Romans? Right. Well, St. Irenaeus actually said this. St. Irenaeus in the 2nd century, he said, um, it's right here. I just had it. One second. Oh, said, "What if the apostles had not in fact left writings to us? Would it not be necessary to follow the order of tradition which was handed down to those to whom they entrusted the churches?" This isn't his work against heresy. So Irenaeus said that even if we don't have the scriptures, that's fine because we have their successors, and they are the ones that are in charge of protecting the deposit of faith. And, uh, we know that we can trust that they will because the Holy Spirit leads the church. So, to tie it back to that question, uh, in the 4th century, no, the Catholic Church never defined any belief and any dogma that would contradict the scriptures. If they're referring to Liberius, it's because he said the Arian controversy. That's the only thing that I could think of. Liberius did sign a document that, and here's the thing, that document that he signed, it can actually be interpreted in an orthodox way. But even then, it doesn't matter because he signed it under arrest while he was being tortured. So it's not, uh, binding on anybody because the Pope has to be able to make these decisions, uh, of his own free will, not because someone is forcing him to do it. Because the whole Holy Spirit, uh, protects the, the, the Pope, the church, the magisterium from, uh, teaching error. The Holy Spirit doesn't protect the Roman Emperor from kidnapping a Pope and, you know, torturing him and forcing him to sign some document. So.

All right. Dr. White, the next question is for you. Um, you're complete.

Yeah, I'm done. Thank you.

All right. Uh, how can Christians claim doctrines such as the Trinity as essential and necessary rather than just best guesses that can be disputed without an infallible interpreter?

One of my favorite questions. In fact, one of the things that has offended me the most, I'll be honest with you, and I don't want to sour the kind relationship we have here. One of the things that has offended me the most over the years since my first debate with Gerry Matatics in 1990 is when Roman Catholics say, "You couldn't know the Trinity if you didn't have the church." Fact of the matter is, in regards to what was just said, there were numerous councils had more bishops at them than the Council of Nicaea that condemned *homoousios* during the Arian resurgence after the Council of Nicaea. How could you, if you lived at the time of the Council of Sirmium, how could you have known which one was right? Because the bishop of Rome isn't going to be able to tell you. And Athanasius is arguing from scripture. The New Testament is a Trinitarian document. If you apply any kind of meaningful exegetical rigor and consistency to it, it teaches the doctrine of Trinity. It's the only way to even understand how the New Testament writers can speak about. And it makes perfect sense. The doctrine of the Trinity was revealed in history between the last words of Malachi and the first words of Matthew. In other words, the fundamental proof of the doctrine of the Trinity is the Incarnation of Jesus Christ and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit that happened in history. And that means every writer of the New Testament is a functional Trinitarian. That's why they can speak the way they speak. I believe in the doctrine of Trinity. I have defended it in mosques in South Africa against Unitarians, against Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons at the University of Utah. And I have never had to apply and appeal to any authority outside of this book, accurately interpreted. And the reality is, I can be more certain in the interpretation of Colossians 2:9, *theos* for in him all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form, than anything the Pope has ever said about the same subject. You don't have an infallible interpretation of Colossians 2:9 from Rome. I can give you a consistent interpretation that takes all of this into account. And I believe, say this is the only God-breathed thing. And I, being a Spirit-indwelt Christian, am not God-breathed. God-breathed is the, so is where something comes from. When I, when I speak like this, I can feel my breath in my hand. That's what God-breathed means. The scriptures are absolutely unique. And when you apply meaningful exegetical standards and honor this as the whole, then you get the doctrine of the Trinity with clarity. I don't have to go, it's because somebody over here said it. It is somebody over there said it, especially when they end up contradicting each other.

All right, good news. We do have time for the last question here that's going to go to both. It is still, why is it doing that? Forgive me. All right. Okay, there you. So we'll have three minutes each. And the question that both debaters get to ask. I'm going to ask at Alex first, then you'll have time as well. Start with the young guy. The old guy might fall asleep. But is, does the very existence of the canon of scripture suggest extra-biblical authority? Does the New Testament authenticate itself?

Uh, the answer would be no. The New Testament does not authenticate itself, um, because again, the New Testament doesn't give us a list of the writings that belong in the New Testament. So, for example, we know that the writings of the Apostles, uh, that they are inspired because the apostles themselves are inspired. They're God-breathed. And anything that they teach publicly to the universal church is going to be infallible because that's the charism that they have. Well, we also have other writings in the New Testament that don't come from Apostles, like the Gospel of Mark, the Gospel of Luke, the, um, the Book of Acts, you know, the Epistle to the Hebrews as well. Um, and I know that, uh, there are writings that the, that the of the Apostles where they quote, you know, Mark and Luke. But I don't, as far as I know, and Dr. White may know more than me, I don't believe that there's any writings from Apostles that ever quote the Book of Hebrews. So if we believe Hebrews, and Dr. White brought it up earlier, that Hebrews is in P150, in the 6th, P46, thank you, in P46, um, so we believe that it's part of, of the canon. But the apostles never wrote anything to say, "This book belongs in the Bible." Then for us to hold this Hebrews to be part of the canon, that means that we'd have to look to something outside of the writings of the Apostles to tell us that Hebrews, um, is part of the canon. So the canon doesn't authenticate itself. And then also, on top of it, um, you also have certain scholars that will say that, um, the, uh, author to the, of the three Epistles of John wasn't the Apostle John, that it was John the Elder, that it was a different John. I called that it was the Apostle John. But even if that were to be true, and it was a different John, then that leads to even more problems. You say, okay, how, why would this random John, John the Elder, why does he have the authority to be able to, uh, to, to write scripture? Why did Mark and Luke have the authority to write scripture when they themselves weren't Apostles either? And the reason that they, Mark and Luke, were able to write scripture is because the Apostles, who are inspired, told us, were able to tell us that these guys, yeah, their writings are inspired scripture as well. And, um, for the *sola scriptura* case, you can actually, you're good when it comes to Mark and Luke, but not with the Book of Hebrews. Because again, as I mentioned, I don't think that Hebrews is mentioned, and I could be wrong. I don't think Hebrews is quoted anywhere else in the, and I'm sure Dr. White will correct me. I don't think Hebrews is quoted anywhere in the writings of the actual Apostles, um, because we know that Hebrews wasn't written by one of the Apostles. And, um, what was the question again? Does the very existence of the canon of scripture suggest extra-biblical authority? Does the New Testament authenticate itself?

Yeah, yeah, it doesn't authenticate itself. You need something outside of it to tell you what the New and Old Testaments consist of. Yeah. That's all.

Question repeated one time. You just did. So I'm good.

Okay. Okay. In answer to the question, I say no and yes. No, it does not indicate an external infallible authority anymore than the canon existing and being known amongst the Jews, uh, required an infallible authority. The Sadducees, whether they did or did not accept that, that's a disputable thing. Whether they did or did not restrict things doesn't really matter. We know what books have been laid up in the temple, uh, and they were not the apocryphal books. They were the books that we have in what's called the Protestant canon. Uh, the second part of the question, uh, is, uh, was, uh, does that, uh, does the New Testament authenticate itself? Yes, because it's *theopneustos*. And *theopneustos* does not mean you're indwelt by the Holy Spirit. Uh, it means it's God's actual speaking. Many years ago, I debated Gerry Matatics at Boston College on the subject of the apocryphal books. And we then did a radio program a few days later on WZ in Boston. Uh, during that radio interview, I asked Gerry Matatics a question. It eventually became known as the White Question. And I didn't name it that. The Roman Catholic apologists did. The White Question was this: How did a believing Jewish man know that Isaiah and 2 Chronicles was scripture 50 years before Christ? Now, I've heard all sorts of different answers. Had some people said they could only appeal to the Urim and Thummim, uh, and cast the sacred dice would be the only way that they could know. Uh, other people say, well, the Jewish magisterium. The problem is, the Jewish magisterium rejects the Roman Catholic canon from 1546. So that doesn't work. Uh, it's a very difficult question to answer because when we're talking about the canon, what we're talking about is not an object of revelation. It is an artifact of revelation. Let me explain that because most, most people don't even think about what this, this is about. The canon comes into existence the first moment that God inspires any writing, and he knows it perfectly. He knows it perfectly because it's an artifact. He knows in his mind, "I have inspired that book." And then as more and more books are written, he knows. Everybody on earth could be ignorant of it, but the canon still exists because God knows what he has inspired. God has inspired some books, but not all books. And therefore, a canon exists, and God knows it infallibly. The question is, does God have reason to make sure that we would know what is *theopneustos* and what is not? And would he guide his people to come to understand that? And how would he do so? If you follow the Old Testament paradigm, you can't accept the Roman Catholic claim that you need to have an infallible ecumenical council to come up with this kind of a, of a concept, because there was none. But Jesus still held men accountable. "Have you not read?" he said. "How could, why didn't anyone ever say, 'We didn't know that was scripture'?" They never did. They never did.

All right, that concludes our Q&A. It's a reflex action, I guess. I'm not sure it transitions us to the next stage, which is, uh, closing statements. Uh, first from Alex, followed by Dr. White. You have five minutes each, and I'll begin when you begin with your remarks.

Well, I have had such a blast being here with all of you today. I want to thank every single one of you for coming out today. Um, it, it, I would literally, like, five guys said no to this, and then that's the only reason I, I'm here. So I'm sorry, guys. You know, you could have had other people, but it was me instead. But, um, I'm just so happy and honored that you guys came out here. Thank you all, all, all everyone that has come up to, uh, to talk to me. I'm sure I'll talk to more of you guys, uh, after the debate. Um, but today's debate was about Catholic Authority and what the Bible has to say about Catholic Authority. And as I laid out in my case, I laid out all of these, you know, the, the, the 10 problems. There was actually an 11th one that I didn't put in there because I wasn't going to have time for it in the 17-minute time frame. There was another one. Um, maybe I could have thought of more, but I was only able to do 10. 10 is a nice round number, right? Um, so there are problems when you go just by the scripture alone, by the Bible alone. You run into all of these, all of these issues, especially when you realize that the scripture does attest to something outside of it that attests to the apostles, to the men that they ordained in ministry. And that in the, in the Bible, it says that those men that they ordained, that they have the authority to to, uh, teach and publicly proclaim what they themselves had publicly proclaimed. And, uh, in Paul's epistle to Timothy, it even says that it goes down to the second, third generation. And there's no indication that it, that it doesn't end. So we have a paradigm here, which is the apostolic Christian paradigm, that, you know, Catholics and Orthodox hold to, which is, you know, apostolic succession. And then we have the other paradigm, which is *sola scriptura*, which is what Protestants hold to, which is just scripture alone. But you can see serious problems with scripture alone. Dr. White, just a few moments ago, Dr. White held up the Bible and he said, "This is all I need." When I go to South Africa and I debate Muslims and mosques, and I debate Unitarians, and I debate Mormons, and, and by the way, Dr. White is the man. Dr. White debates. Dr. White debates every. Dr. White is the man. How brave do you have to be to go to a mosque, to a mosque, to defend the Christian faith? This is the man right here. Um, but he held up the scriptures and he said, "This is all I need to go to to prove these things." But then he said something else. He kind of caught himself and he said, "Oh, properly understood." That is the issue today. How do we know that the Bible that we all hold to? How do we know that we have the proper understanding of it? Because Dr. White just said he agrees that it has to be properly understood. How do we know that we have it properly understood? Well, the scripture tells us how we can know if it's properly understood. He gave us a church that God breathed upon in Acts chapter 2. And he gave us ministers in that church. By the way, 2, uh, Timothy 3:16 and 17 tells us about what scripture can do for the, uh, for the man of God. If you go to Ephesians 4, Ephesians 4:11-15 actually says the exact same thing about the ministries of the church. But go, go and read it on, you know, I'm not going to read it right now. But when you go and read it, it actually says way more about what the ministries of the church do for, uh, for individual Christians than even what Second Timothy 3 says about what scripture can do for, for the man of God. Um, so Dr. White, um, you know, he, he says that, you know, the canon is something that God knows. And we completely agree with Dr. White. God creates the canon. No church creates the canon. The Catholic Church did not create the canon. God created the canon. And God knows what the canon is. But the question here isn't how does God know what the canon is. We all agree that God knows what the canon is. The question is, how do we know what the canon is? Because I'm not God. He's not God. Nobody here is God. How do we know? Well, thank God that He gave us an inspired church that can tell us what belongs in the canon and what doesn't. Um, and I just want to say something really quick, too. I have never, I, like I said, I've been watching Dr. White for close to 10 years now. I don't think I have ever seen him, and maybe he has in, in debates that I've seen, I don't think I have ever seen him like reach over to shake his opponent's hand in the middle of a debate and hug him and embrace him the way he did to me. I just want to say right now that that means the world to me. Dr. White, thank you for, um, your charity and your kindness. And, uh, I'm like a kid in a candy store right now. I got to debate this man that I've looked up to for so long, Dr. James. This is Dr. James White. I got to debate this man. I got to debate him because five other guys said no, and I just kind of, I was like the last resort. But I got to debate this man right here. This is an honor. And I want Dr. White to know that I'm very honored to be here. And I want, uh, this beautiful church to know that I'm very honored to be a guest here. And I want all of you to know that I'm very honored that you came out to watch. Thank you, guys. And God bless.

Alex, let me tell you something. You're gonna make me cry. I think this is my seventh or eighth debate on *sola scriptura*, and I can honestly say that I think the people in this audience have heard more relevant and useful back and forth on the key issues in this debate than the ones before. So I thank you for being, okay, I really, really do. Um, I love this guy and I'm looking forward to future opportunities to do things with him, but I still got to correct him on a bunch of stuff. I hope you don't mind. Um, I think Alex was writing too fast. He misunderstood what I said when I was talking about what Rome did in regards to Gnosticism. What I had said at that point was that there was a massive need for an infallible canon in light of the Gnostics producing the Gospel of Peter and all the rest of this kind of stuff. Rome did not, during that Gnostic period, provide the thing that was needed until 1546. That's what I was saying. Then he took that and and went ran with it in a different direction. Notice he also quoted from Irenaeus. Problem is, look more closely. I've written an entire chapter, uh, in a book called *Sola Scriptura*, that deals with the early church. I have a whole entire section on Irenaeus. I defined what apostolic tradition for Irenaeus was, and it is sub-biblical. It is under scripture. It is basically the statement, "There's one God who created all things." That's apostolic tradition for Irenaeus. He did likewise elsewhere, say that the apostles had taught him that Jesus was more than 50 years old when he died. That was because of his recapitulation theory. That's the earliest reference to apostolic tradition in all the patristic writings, and nobody believes it today. Keep that in mind. Alex also talked, kept talking about an unbroken chain. Folks, that's the presupposition. There's the presupposition. Alex starts with a certain authoritative presupposition and he reads history in that light. I listened to his debate with Luigi on the Orthodox stuff, and again, over and over again, they're going to the same sources and they're interpreting them differently. Presupposition because of where they have started. That's the key issue to me that we need to be thinking about, and that I would like Alex to think about. Now, he just said, and this is very important, how I, I held up my my beautiful Jeffrey Rice rebind, my, all in 28th edition of the Greek New Testament, little advertisement on there. How do we know that we are properly understanding this? I said, in regards to the Trinity, how do we know that we're properly understanding this? With all due respect, please, Roman Catholics in the room, hear me. I've done numerous debates defending the Trinity. I remember one, I was, I was defending the Trinity in, in against a Muslim, and I had a whole little row of little Catholic ladies who came out to support me. Um, and when I asked them why, they said, "Because you're defending the faith, and you do it with clarity." Well, how could I do that? I could do that because the scriptures teach the doctrine of the Trinity. And when someone says, "How do you know you're properly understanding these things?" Well, I could argue that I could go back and I could look how various early Church Fathers did exegesis. I could do all that kind of stuff. But here's the issue, and this is what I've got to say to my Roman Catholic friends: Do you really believe that Francis and Cardinal Fernandez are going to show you how to accurately handle this? Don't sit there and go, "Well, they haven't made magisterial statements." What do they believe? What is liberation theology? Why are they putting the people into the ranks of the Cardinals and into the places of teaching that they're putting into those places that don't believe this is the word of God? They don't believe it's consistent with itself. They don't believe it was written by the people we believe it was written by. Why is that happening? And what will be the long-term effect? Alex, you said in front of this group, and I watched a bunch of people when you said it, you said, "If Rome ever approves of or practices homosexual marriage, it's a false church." And I said, "Save this tape because you're young enough. I won't see it because I don't think it's going to happen that fast." But it's moving in that direction. And believe you me, the United Methodists, who now believe all that stuff, didn't believe that at all 60 years ago. What's, what's the only bulwark that can stop that? What has caused all the conservative denominations to stand firm on that issue? *Sola scriptura*. *Sola scriptura*. Thank you for your attention this evening. Thank you, sir, for engaging with. Thank you, Dr. White. The honor was mine. Dr. White, thank you so much. This was such an honor for me. Dr. It was such an honor. Thank you for, thank you so much for everything. Thank you. Don't mess up your sunglasses. Oh, thank you. So, thank you so much. I was going to ask you to give one last round of applause to our debaters and our audience, and even our online audience. But it sounds like we've gotten that, uh, in a resounding way. I just want to conclude this by, uh, giving where you can learn more about all those who are involved in this. And please correct me if anything's wrong, but breathechurch.org is this local church that's hosting us. Thanks again to our hosts. Inferenced myself and Alex to be here, uh, to have this lively debate. Anom.org, A-N-O-M dot org, is Dr. White's website. And Alex's handle is Voice of Reason. You can find them on YouTube and Instagram. But let's not let that be the last word. Let's let the word of God be the last word. And if you'll just, um, if you'd like to turn with me to Ephesians, uh, we will end. This was not by Alex's prompting, but I just wanted to bring us to a close, and listen to God's word. Uh, Ephesians 4:1-15. I'm going to read from, and we'll just take this as our final prayer. Listen for the words unity, knowledge, truth, and love, and may this be our prayer. What Paul wrote to the Ephesians, and he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and to the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. The word of the Lord. Amen. Be to God. Thank you so much for coming, everyone.