Pints With Aquinas - Jimmy Akin DESTROYS James White | Last Call Ep. 32

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Starting point is 00:00:24 Download the Jerry app or head to jerry.a.ai slash wire. What if a few minutes with God could change the direction of your entire day? With pray.com, you can begin each morning with powerful daily prayers, inspiring Bible stories, and messages created to strengthen your faith. Whether you need peace, encouragement, or a fresh start, pray.com helps you make prayer part of your everyday life. Download the pray.com app today. The reason not to become a Roman Catholic is the gospel. One thing I would say is based on that clip, James White doesn't know what the gospel is. His particular understanding of justification by faith, which involves the idea that it can never be lost.

Starting point is 00:01:15 That is not the gospel. Destroyed. Jimmy Aiken. Matt Fred. Thank you for coming on to my show. It is my pleasure. Today we're going to check out James White. You've heard of him.

Starting point is 00:01:37 Maybe debated him a few times. Not striking a bell, but I'll do the best I can. Well, today I want to show you four different TikToks or shorts of him and have you respond to them. Oh, okay. So let's just jump into it. Here's the first one. If you do not have in the sacrifice of Christ a finished work that accomplishes what Father, son and spirit intended in eternity past, then you cannot have any certainty as to the results.

Starting point is 00:02:03 You cannot have any certainty as to the righteousness that is imputed availing before the father because you don't have the intercessory work because that's not a finished work either. Rome, in its worship, has Jesus upon a cross everywhere. And yet what his word says he accomplished on that cross is not proclaimed from the pulpit of the Roman Catholic Church because they don't have a finished work. by turning it into something that is represented, not a new sacrifice, but an unbloody representation of the one's sacrifice that does not perfect anyone for whom it is made. Okay. Could you pause a second? Because he's, now, whoever edited this,

Starting point is 00:02:43 they've thrown together a bunch of different things. And there's not a consistent through line on it in terms of what he just said, it doesn't make a lot of grammatical sense. But there is a common underlying element that it's going to be more obvious to a Calvinist listener than to someone from another perspective. Because James White is a, he's a Calvinistic Baptist, or reformed Baptist, as it's commonly said, and he's doing something that a lot of Calvinists do. Now, in the Calvinist view, God determines everything, every thing, every single. single thing that happens in world history, God makes a choice for where every molecule moves in space. And so if any event happens on a Calvinist view, it's because God chose that. And this generates

Starting point is 00:03:45 problems for most Christians. Most Christians are not Calvinists. They will say there needs to be a role for free will where God doesn't pick the choices that you make. And if he does pick him, your will's not generally free. Now, Calvinists try to defend the idea that, okay, you can have free will and this strong divine determinism. And what commonly happens with apologists like James White is they will point out that Catholics have a different point of view and gloss over the fact that all other Protestants have a different point of view. As well. So they're selectively picking on Catholics here because Catholics, from a Reformation

Starting point is 00:04:33 perspective, they're the bad guys. But Lutherans and Methodists and Baptists who aren't Calvinists and non-denominationals and Pentecostals, well, they're all our brother Protestants. So we don't want to talk smack about them. It's just those battle Catholics that are preserve in a role for free will. So they'll say the way they present it. Now, in other contexts, they will note that other Protestants also have a role for free will. But what frequently will happen is they will selectively ignore that when they're interacting with Catholics and make it sound like these Catholics deny the complete plan.

Starting point is 00:05:20 of God and the sufficiency of God's plan because they want to claim that when Jesus redeemed the world on the cross, he didn't really redeem the world. He just redeemed those people that God has chosen to save. And God chose them for nothing they did on their own. He just picked them basically randomly. They don't like the word random, but basically God randomly chose certain people that he's going to save, and then he would ensure, because he overrides any free will they might have, he will ensure that they do respond to his offer of salvation. And they'll say that if you deny any element of this, that you are denying the teaching of Scripture and that you are implying that God's work is insufficient, and it didn't really do what he intended. His intention on their view,

Starting point is 00:06:18 was not to make salvation possible for everybody, but that he would specifically save certain randomly chosen people. They don't like that way of saying it, but that's essentially what it is. And what James White is doing here is he is implying that Catholics teach a false gospel because they reject a Calvinistic understanding of what Jesus did on the cross.

Starting point is 00:06:43 And they gloss over, and he is, or whoever edited this video, is here glossing over the fact that, well, all other Protestants also reject the Calvinistic understanding of what Jesus was doing on the cross. He didn't die on the cross just to save certain randomly chosen people. He chose to make salvation possible for the entire human race and that it is up to us to respond by God's grace to that offer. He also is doing something very interesting. He refers in this to Christ's intercessory ministry.

Starting point is 00:07:28 What he criticizes is that the Catholic Mass, for example, plays an ongoing role in our salvation. And he infers from the fact that it plays an ongoing role that it is implying that what Christ did on the cross is insufficient. So that's his way of beating up on Catholics here by saying, well, see, they're denying the sufficiency of what Christ did on the cross. What he is ignoring, though, is Christ, except he mentions it, I think, to try to neutralize this, because what he's ignoring is the role that Christ's intercessory ministry plays. Because scripture is really clear that Christ is in heaven interceding for us now. And if he's interceding for us now in connection with our salvation, then the mere fact something is ongoing, like Christ's intercessory ministry, does not imply anything was insufficient about what Christ did on the cross. It was God's will to take what Christ did on the cross and then apply it to us in a way that involves ongoing activity. he's acknowledging in principle that can happen with Christ's intercession. He's just denying that that can happen with the mass.

Starting point is 00:08:49 And so he's selectively, he's being selective with the evidence. If you can say, well, Jesus's ongoing intercessory ministry is ongoing, and that doesn't imply anything bad about what he did on the cross, then the fact that we apply Christ's work on the cross to us through the mass, on an ongoing basis. Doesn't imply anything bad about what he did on the cross either. God's plan incorporates ongoing aspects, and you can't just pick and choose and say,

Starting point is 00:09:25 oh, well, any ongoing aspect is bad when you yourself acknowledge that there are ongoing aspects that are part of God's plan to how the cross is applied to us. Do you want to play the rest of this or go to Soliscriptura? Yeah, let's play the rest of it. He's got something interesting here. Why is it that I can ask a Roman Catholic priest, Peter Stravinskas, who is the blessed man of Romans 4? And he's like, well, I hope to be. And that's the best they can do.

Starting point is 00:09:50 That's the issue. That's the issue right there. That's the issue. Because there is no finished work. That was it. Okay. So what he does in that second part is he does something that's unique to him as James White. Now, he's referring to Romans chapter 4. And in Romans chapter four, St. Paul is having a longer discourse, and one of the elements in St. Paul's longer discourse is he appeals back to a passage from the Psalms, which are traditionally attributed to King David. And he notes that there is a Psalm where David or the Psalmist, whoever you believe it was, proclaims blessedness on

Starting point is 00:10:37 he whose lawless deeds are forgiven, whose sins are covered. And he says how blessed this person is. And lots of Calvinists talk about this passage in Romans 4. And there's no bad reason for that. That's a perfectly good thing to do. It's part of scripture. It should be commented upon. And Calvinists do that. What James White uniquely does is try to turn this passage into a gotcha moment. And the way he does that is by posing a question, who is the Blessed Man from Romans 4? And this is a uniquely James White question. This is not typically used by Calvinists. It's used by White.

Starting point is 00:11:23 It's used by James White fanboys and people like that. But this is not a typical question Calvinists asks. And as a result of it not being a typical question, it can be used as a gotcha. because no one has ever thought about it as a question before, and so no one has a prepared answer. It's like another similar one that's more broadly used that people may recognize is if I go to a typical person who is not a member of my evangelical tribe

Starting point is 00:11:54 and say, if you died tonight, would you know that you would wake up in heaven and, you know, or if I, if you died tonight, would you know, for a fact that you would go to heaven because you've accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior. And they have this complex question that normal people have not asked themselves before. And so they're guaranteed, unless they're a member of my theological tribe, to stumble with the answer. And that's what James White is doing here. Who is the Blessed Man of Romans 4? Well, most people will have no idea. And so it's just a gotcha question. But if you read Romans 4, it's obvious. The blessed man in Romans 4 is anybody whose lawless deeds are forgiven or whose sins are

Starting point is 00:12:40 covered. So any forgiven person is that blessed man. Yeah, duh, big deal. Read Romans 4, verses 7. Read verse 8 if you want. The answer is right there in the text. This doesn't allow, though, James to load in all of his theology into those verses. But the verses answer the question, it's anybody who's forgiven. So I want to tell you about Catholicmatch.com, because I know that there's a lot of single people out there or people who are dating and they want to get married, they're not sure what step to take next. I once heard somebody say, it was Father Bob Bedard. He said since discernment became fashionable, no one's made a decision since. Well, we have to make a decision. Discerning's good, but we have to make a decision. Catholic match makes it easy to meet

Starting point is 00:13:29 faithful Catholics who are looking for the same thing, a marriage rooted in Christ. You can start your journey at Catholicmatch.com or download the app. It's free to get started. Seriously, every time I talk about Catholic Match on my show, I usually see one or two comments from people who say, not being paid to say this, actually met my spouse on Catholic Match. So if you feel cool to get married, I'd seriously encourage you to check it out. Catholicmatch.com or download the app today. It's free to get started.

Starting point is 00:13:57 We sometimes talk about freedom in an unhelpful way, right? We think of freedom and we think, well, that just means being able to do whatever I want, whenever I want. But the fact is, you can have everything available to you and then you still realize that certain things have far more control over your life than you would like them to. Things like distractions, right? Being addicted to distractions or your phone or food or work or comfort. This is really what Exodus 90 is about. And I want to be clear about this because some people misunderstand what Exodus is. It's not Catholic CrossFit. It's not proving how tough you are because you took a cold shower. The cold showers, fasting exercise, giving things up. All of these are means. They're not the

Starting point is 00:14:36 point. The point is an encounter with the love of God the Father and discovering more deeply what it means to be a beloved son of his. And you don't do it alone. Exodus 90 is designed as a shared adventure with a local fraternity of four to six men who are walking through it together. The book of Exodus is ultimately a story about being led out of slavery and into freedom, and all of us have our own pharaohs and idols that hold us back from becoming the men, husbands, fathers that Christ is calling us to be. So I want to tell you about Holy Speech with Father Gregory Pine, which is going to begin October 1st on the Exodus 90 app.

Starting point is 00:15:13 Maybe a freer way of living really is possible. Download the Exodus 90 app to start your 14-day free trial or visit Exodus 90.com slash Matt To learn more, that's Exodus 90.com slash Matt. All right, we're going to take a look at what James White has to say about Solar Scriptura. If we cannot point to anything else that is the specific revelation of God outside of Scripture, then clearly Sol of Scriptura is the default position of anyone in submission to that very revelation. So do we find Jesus or the Apostles directing us to any other ultimate source of authority?

Starting point is 00:15:51 Jesus concluded many of his arguments with a citation of a biblical text, but he never concluded his arguments by reference to Jewish traditions or any other alleged source of authority. Are we wiser than the incarnate Lord? This is why we believe Scripture is the sole infallible rule of faith of the church. All right. Now, I know you've done entire debates with him. There's probably a lot to say to that. There's a lot to say to that.

Starting point is 00:16:16 So maybe this is unfair, but what might a quick response to that be? Well, you'll notice what White says is that Jesus ended many of his interactions with people by quoting Scripture. But you know what he didn't say is he ends all of them that way because he doesn't. What he said is if we can't point to something that Jesus cited other than Scripture, then we must assume Solis Scriptura. But did Jesus ever point to anything other than Scripture, like maybe his own word? You have heard, but I say. Jesus did point to things that were not part of Jewish tradition. They were new Christian traditions that Jesus himself established, and they were authoritative

Starting point is 00:17:08 for the early Christian community. So what this shows us is that the early Christians were expected not only to honor Scripture as authoritative, but to honor Christ's own teachings as authoritative, even though they weren't in Scripture. And thus, we can show that Jesus expected us to use something other than Sol of Scriptura as our paradigm. The, in fact, apostolic paradigm in Scripture is scripture and apostolic tradition and the teaching authority of the church. You can show that the apostles used all three of those, and Jesus endorsed them. So I would ask White's own question, are we wiser than Jesus? Now, this debate that you did with him, I remember I was walking around

Starting point is 00:17:56 Romania, just happened to be there, listening to this debate. And I was shocked at how well you did, not because you're not an eminent debate, but because... I'm glad you have shocked you. Yeah, James White's a smart guy. He's good at debates. He's done about a million of them. Were you happy with how that went? Yeah, I was happy with it. I'm glad you didn't ask me to who won, because I never answer that question. I leave that to people. But if you asked me, was I happy with how it went? Yes, I was happy with how it went. We'll maybe put a link to that in the show notes so people can watch it. Here's the next one. This is, he says, the reason not to become Roman Catholic. And to Candace and to anyone else, the reason not to become a Roman Catholic is the gospel.

Starting point is 00:18:39 all this other stuff we've been talking about is important but it's the gospel Romans 5 1 says therefore haven't been justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ true peace true shalom not a ceasefire true wholeness of relationship because you see if you truly know Jesus Christ then you know that you have his righteousness imputed to you that is not a Roman Catholic teaching in fact Rome calls that a fiction and that's why you can't have true peace. That's why that relationship can be broken by the commission of a mortal sin. But according to Scripture, it's the righteousness of Christ that has been imputed to us. All right. So again, there's a lot to say there. But one thing I would say is based on that

Starting point is 00:19:32 clip, James White doesn't know what the gospel is. Because he said the reason not to be Catholic is because of the gospel. And he then went on to talk about not only justification by faith, which Catholics agree with, but his particular understanding of justification by faith, which involves the idea that it can never be lost. So what Calvinists call perseverance of the saints. Well, that is not the gospel. Perseverance of the saints is not the gospel. It is not even believed by most Protestants. Most Protestants believe it is possible to look at salvation. So obviously that's not what the gospel is. What the gospel is in scripture is the proclamation, if you study how the word gospel is used, it's the proclamation that God is inaugurating

Starting point is 00:20:22 his kingdom in this world and that it is through the arrival of his son and his son's death and resurrection that his kingdom is coming into this world. That's why it's called the gospel of the kingdom. What White is doing is infusing a much lower down subsidiary point with the entirety of the gospel. And thus he is, he fundamentally does not know what the gospel is. Also, the fact that it is possible to lose salvation does not mean we can't have real peace with God. Now, let's take the United States and Australia, which are very great allies. In fact, we're, Australia and America are in the same favored nations club. And we have peace. We have a good harmonious relationship with Australia,

Starting point is 00:21:13 wouldn't you say? Good news for Australia, yeah. Yeah, we also both have nukes. Now, if either Australia fired nukes on America or America fired nukes on Australia, would we then have a true peace between us? No. Okay. So we can have true peace now. We do. but it could be lost in the future if one of us made really disastrous choices. Same thing with husbands and wives. They may be married. They may have true peace, wonderful peace with each other, but that doesn't mean one of them couldn't one day commit adultery.

Starting point is 00:21:54 And in the same way, we can have true peace with God that we could shatter one day if we made disastrously bad choices. You wouldn't want to, but you could do it. And what this shows is James White not only doesn't know what the gospel is, he didn't know what true peace is either. And real quick, Roman Catholic. Where did this term come from? And what's your thoughts on that? It originated as an insult in Anglican circles because they wanted to say, well, we're not like other Protestants.

Starting point is 00:22:25 We're Catholic too. We're just not Roman Catholic. And so it led to, for a good bit of time, Anglicans using insult words like Romish or Romanist or papist. And it got so common that eventually some Catholics started using it too. But it is not the Catholic Church's official designation for itself. It started as an insult. And when it's used by people like James, in preference to the word Catholic, which is the Catholic Church's preferred. self-designation, then it retains the connotation of an insult.

Starting point is 00:23:04 I've heard a lot of people say, I need to read more. I'm going to read more. I'm definitely going to do it. But, you know, like we're all human. And sometimes the easier thing to do is just doomscroll or watch like one minute or two minutes from 17 different YouTube videos. And you start thinking, what am I doing with my life? Well, here's something you could do that's both entertaining, honestly, and edifying. Go check out what's going on at the St. Paul Center. They've got some amazing courses on Christ and Scripture. As a St. Paul Center member, you'll have access to over 50 episodes across seven different courses on Jesus, from each gospel to the parables and the historical reliability of the accounts.

Starting point is 00:23:52 It's actually a fantastic way to grow in your love of Christ, and as I say, it's beautifully filmed. No Christ, share Christ. Start your 30-day free trial today at St. Paul Center.com slash pints. Or you can become an annual member and they'll send you a free copy of the incredible, complete Ignatius Catholic Study Bible. All right, thanks. Let's take a look at the final one. The apocrypha, he says, is not in scripture. As to the apocrypha, the translators of the King James Version did not believe that the apocrypha was canonical.

Starting point is 00:24:26 It was placed between the Testaments, not in the Tanakh. It was not included in the text itself of what we would call the Old Testament. The Apocryphal works were never accepted by the Jewish people, which is a fascinating thing. I don't know why those who claim to be Israelites today would accept books that the ancient Israelites never accepted as Scripture. There was a clear differentiation between what the Jewish people laid up in the temple, for example, and the Apocryphal books. the apocryphal books were never laid up in the temple. Josephus did not see them as canonical. There's a very long tradition, even amongst the Christians, found in Jerome, in origin,

Starting point is 00:25:09 Melito Sardis, recognizing that the apocryphos were not canon scripture. Well, there you go. Wasn't laid up in the temple? Okay. Wasn't recognized by Jewish historians? A bunch of stuff here, but let's look at two points. First one is this laid up in the temple business. James White is relying on the views of one particular author named Beckwith, who wrote several decades ago, and that's a long time in scholarship. He was like writing back in the 1980s. And Beckwith, uniquely, among compared to other scholars, argued that the Jews had a registry of some kind in. the temple of all of the books that they considered scripture. And this is something that is just

Starting point is 00:25:59 broadly rejected by other scholars. What we know they had in the temple is a copy of the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible. But they didn't have a registry of everything that was considered scriptural by different Jews. In fact, the Sadducees, who were prominent at the temple, tended to have a very restricted view of the canon and limited it to just the five books of the Pentateuch. White is also more broadly relying on outdated scholarship that has been widely rejected that views the Jewish people as having a single consolidated candidate. He'll say things like, the Jews never considered this scripture. Nonsense.

Starting point is 00:26:45 there was no single Jewish view of what counted as scripture. There were at least five different canonical traditions. There was the Sadducee tradition, the Samaritan tradition, the Pharisee tradition, the Dead Sea Scrolls tradition, and the Septuagint tradition at a minimum. You can identify other traditions as well. They all incorporated different books, and most of them had fuzzy boundaries. So even if you were talking about, well, here's what the Pharisees believed to be scripture, there would still be disputes about this book, maybe not that book, like one book, that he mentions as apocryphal, is Syrac. And he says, Jews never considered Syrac. Well, okay, a bunch of Jews did. And even the Pharisees, from whom modern rabbinic Judaism descends,

Starting point is 00:27:41 various Pharisees considered Syrac to be Scripture. So White is simply relying on outdated scholarship here, either because it serves his narrative or because he's simply ignorant of the work that has been done in scholarship on this question. So the apocrypha, which we call the Duderocanonical, are these books that the Catholic Church added, or is this something that was removed much later? They were part of the, like I said, there were at least five canonical traditions in Jesus' time. One of them was the Septuagint tradition. And the so-called Deuter canonical or Apocryphal books are part of that tradition. Now, the tradition itself had fuzzy boundaries, but the Christian community inherited the septuagint tradition because the authors of the New Testament.

Starting point is 00:28:39 over and the other, the apostolic community in general, overwhelmingly used the Septuagint. 80 to 90% of the times the New Testament quotes the Old Testament. It's quoting from the Septuagint. And they never issued any warnings, not that we have on record, saying, hey, guys, you can use the Septuagint, but don't use these books. They're not scripture. So the Christian community inherited the Septuagint tradition that included these books. And even though there were individuals here or there who had questions about them, they were received by the majority of Christians until the rise of the Protestant movement in the 1500s, at which point they were removed from consideration as canonical by the Protestant community.

Starting point is 00:29:26 That's all the time we have, Jimmy Aiken. Thanks so much for... I know, I know. This is what we did, the long form before. Uh-huh. To get as much time in with you as possible. But thanks for being on the show. And we will link to all of your excellent resources below. My pleasure. Thank you.

Pints With Aquinas - Jimmy Akin DESTROYS James White | Last Call Ep. 32

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