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Closing
Remarks
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Gerry Matatics
I want to thank Mr. White again for coming this evening and
all of you and I want to spend the fullest of my time answering
these things and making the same sort of appeal to you that he
has, although from a very different perspective. Mr. White keeps
saying that I'm alleging and failing to substantially demonstrate
the existence of this second source. I, in fact, am not required
by the debate to allege or to prove that there is a second or a
third or a fourth source alongside Scripture. The burden of proof
in any debate, and I will come back to this point in my closing
remarks, is upon the person who takes the affirmative. A
proposition is put out there that the Bible is the only
infallible rule of faith in practice. Now if someone really
believes that he has to get that belief, that statement, that
proposition from the Bible itself.
My point at the beginning of the debate, my point for the last
six years and my point at the end of this debate is that there
has still been shown you when Mr. White agrees that the Word of
God was both written and oral in the times of the prophets and
equally inspired in both modes and equally binding upon the
consciences in both modes in the days of the Psalmist as well. He
quoted you Psalm 119:89 as an example of this great veneration
for the written Word of God. I spent the time going through the
Psalms. Psalms says nothing about the Scriptures. It says the
Word of God. Your commands, your laws. And the Protestant does
here, what he does everywhere the Bible talks about the Word he
reads into it his conclusion. That's arguing in a circle. You're
saying I'm going to prove that the Word of God for us should only
be the Scriptures and every time the Bible talks about the Word
of God you say, "He just means the Scriptures." That
doesn't prove anything. That's like a dog chasing its tail. You
can't have your conclusion implicit in your opening assertion.
The Psalmist talks about the Word of God. The prophets talked
about the Word of God. Jesus proclaimed the Word of God. The
Apostles preached the Word of God. This was oral and it was
written. Mr. White, as a student of Scripture, has to recognize
and admit that. This Word of God was passed on in both a written
and an oral fashion.
After the original Apostle had penned, for example the letter
to the Romans, whoever copied it and distributed it was not
inspired, but they were still passing on. Notice that Mr. White
held up his Bible and said, "This is theopneustos. This is
God-breathed." What was he talking about? Did God breathe
that copy right there? No. God breathed the original. But Mr.
White believes, and in a sense he's absolutely correct, that we
still have access to that inspired original through a reliably
transmitted version which has come down to the present day. It is
absolutely unjust for him to allow himself this liberty to say,
"I have an inspired Scripture through this transmission
process which brings it down to the present day" and then
turn around and absolutely unfairly and consistently say to
Catholics, "If you can't claim that your transmission of the
traditions are themselves inspired today then there is no
inspired tradition." "Where," as he said
repeatedly, "is this mysterious, inspired tradition,
Gerry?" It's not mysterious. It's in all the verses I read
to you. I Corinthians 11:2, II Thessalonians 2:15 and II
Thessalonians 3:6.
There is a tradition which is inspired. It is passed on down
in a reliable form so that the inspired oral tradition still
comes to you today. There is nothing in this book which tells you
that that process would cease. And the burden of proof was and
remains on Mr. White or any Protestant to say that, whereas
people in Paul's day were required, when they went home from
church to do what Paul had told him, even if he did not write it
down, and to teach it to their children and to say well, you
teach it to your children. This is the inspired Word of God. This
comes to us from an inspired Apostle. It's got to be passed on
down, whether its by word of mouth or whether its in letter as II
Thessalonians 2:15 says.
Mr. White admits the most damning, the most damaging, the most
crippling to his own case, admission tonight that "I cannot
give you a verse which says that the transmission or
authoritative tradition of God would cease at some point. I can't
give that to you." And if you can't give it to us then there
is no basis upon which the Reformers can rise up, or Mr. White
can rise up, or I, as a Protestant minister before I became a
Catholic, could rise up and condemn the transmission of an orally
passed on, inspired Word of God which comes to us, which is
inspired because it comes from the inspired Christ and the
inspired Apostles.
I'm not claiming that in every little verse that refers to
tradition, nor does the Catholic Church claim, that in II
Thessalonians 2:15 that that simply required Paul taught them all
about the Immaculate Conception. That is a charicature of the
Catholic position. The position is simply that Paul taught things
that he did not write down. And he states so repeatedly in his
letters. So does John. So do many passages in the New Testament.
We're not claiming that any one of those instances that the whole
Catholic faith was necessarily taught to that particular group of
individuals. But when you piece all of this together, when you
piece all that Paul taught in Ephesus, in Thessalonica and here
and there together, just as Mr. White, as a Protestant, pieces
together the letter of Paul to the Romans and another letter
written to the Colossians and another letter written here, then
you've got the full written Word of God. No one's claiming the
people in Thessalonica got all of God's written Word. Not
initially. It took time for this collection as it takes time,
progressively in the Church history, to collect all that the
Apostles taught to the early Church. But this process is ongoing,
as it was in the case of the Bible.
The analogy with Matthew 15 still does not wash, because what
the Pharisees were doing was taking a clear teaching of the
written Word of God, the commandment to honor your father and
your mother, which these people may not have had this in a
written form, they had had it proclaimed to them in the
synagogue, you see. Not every person had their own copy of the
Bible back then. And they were saying, "You don't have to do
that." A comparison would be the pope today getting up and
saying, "Despite what the Ten Commandments say you can
commit adultery," or "You can commit fornication,"
or "You can violate a clear teaching of the Word of
God." There is no such command. And you can make a case from
Scripture for the Immaculate Conception, for Papal Infallibility
and if you seem skeptical about that then I invite you to come
tomorrow and put me in the hot seat. You come up tomorrow with
your laundry list of Catholic teachings that you consider
absolutely unsupportable by Scripture and ask me to provide the
Scriptures and I will do so during tomorrow's seminar. Bring your
friends, bring your Protestant pastor, if you're a Protestant,
bring your Bibles and put it to the test.
Is it is a character to say that the Psalmist knew the Word of
God before there was a man on the throne in Rome? Of course not.
Jesus wasn't around either, or the Apostles--authorities Mr.
White would grant. That's a previous point in history. But even
in the days of the Psalmist there were prophets. There were
people who had a teaching office in the church and the New
Testament does not cancel out the Old but gives it that teaching
office in Jesus and in the Apostles and in their successors.
It was not my job tonight to provide a complete demonstration
of apostolic succession or oral tradition but simply to find
fault with the Protestant principle of sola scriptura. I find
fault with it on one ground alone. It's not taught in the Bible.
And if it's not taught in the Bible then according to the
Protestants' own standard it cannot be accepted or taught by
Protestants and other Protestants be forced to believe it.
According to Church Fathers here or there that might say that
Jesus was 50 years old or might sound like he's saying sola
scriptura doesn't prove anything. The catechism teaches that
every Church father was an infallible individual. According to
Bishop Milner here, quoting a liberal Catholic scholar, Joseph Martos, whom I told, when James White asked me on the phone a few
days ago earlier this week, this man is liberal. He is not a
Catholic in any sense of the word. To quote him as saying in his
book, Doris, the Sacred that "Hey, the Immaculate Conception
is something that just pops up out of nowhere," or whatever
statements you would make attacking classical Catholicism is not,
to my way of thinking, fair argumentation. Quote authoritative,
magisterial statements of the Catholic Church. Quote the Council
of Trent and show how this is subversive of their own position,
rather than quoting some liberal Catholic who's going to agree
with a Protestant that these things have no binding force upon
the consciences of Catholics today--people that want to tear
apart and dismantle the Catholic faith. To defend sola scriptura
is, in a sense, impossible he says. And I would say in every
important sense it is impossible. I don't need to demonstrate
that there is another infallible rule. I simply need to show that
the Bible itself does not claim that it is the only one. The Word
of God is the only one but there is nothing in Scripture which
equates the phrase, "Word of God" with Scripture alone
and that is what the issue is all about. I encourage you to pray
and to think over this. We cannot have two ultimate authorities,
he says. Well, the same can be said about Matthew versus Mark.
Does one dominate over the other? No, they both work together. So
does Scripture and tradition because they both come from God.
Thank you very much.
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