|
Fourth of Four One-Minute Questions
-----------------------------------
James White Starts
White
Gerry, I like you, too. Earlier on you were saying something
about being good looking and I was pointing to you because I was
going to say, "Hey, we'll give you that one." I like
you, too, but I've got to ask you this question because of what
you just said in my previous question. You talked about the
infallibility of the Church, you talked about the oral tradition
so I've just got to ask you. The Second Lateran Council of 1215
said that it was right and proper to use physical force to
exterminate heresy and in fact even said that a Roman Catholic
ruler should be removed from his position and someone else put in
if he will not extirpate heresy. Vatican II, and you know what
I'm referring to, said that external force should not be used in
matters of religion. I believe that those two are completely in
contradiction. How can you say that the Church's statements are
infallible and are to be our guide when you have glaring
contradictions such as this within your own history?
Matatics
Well, first of all, I helped you with that question, as you
know from a conversation we had on the phone a few days ago.
White
If you have my publications you know I addressed this long
before we had that conversation.
Matatics
Secondly, this question, of course, has nothing to do with the
topic of the debate, so technically I wouldn't have to answer
because the debate is: Does the Bible teach sola Scriptura? Is
the Bible the only rule of faith in practice? However, I will
condescend to answer the question anyway. I will be glad to give
you my answer to it. I would make three points.
Number one, and this is off the top of my head, the teaching
of the Catholic is that the Catholic Church is infallible in
matters of faith and morals. And it does not claim that
infallibility extends to every policy statement made by a church.
There are disciplinary statements, as you know. There's a
distinction between dogma and discipline. If the Church says that
it would be good for us to obstain from flesh on Fridays, for
example, as a way of honoring the death of Christ on Friday,
those things can be changed. Whether or not, therefore, the
political policy that should be taken in a Catholic nation
towards the repression of a people by physical means is an
infallible dogma or not would seem to me quite unlikely. In other
words, I don't think that you could really use that to upset the
apple cart of doctrinal infallibility on the Church. That would
be my one point. We could certainly discuss that further and we
couldn't obviously do that within the time we have allotted to us
tonight.
The second thing I would say is let me say for the sake of the
argument that I grant you, you raised the statement of the Second
Lateran Council, Fourth Lateran Council, as a kind of
embarrassing thing, but you accept the Bible as the inspired Word
of God. And the Bible says that heretics and witches should be
burned at the stake. You have examples of Joshua putting the
whole Caananite population to death--men, women, little babies.
So don't please try to embarrass the Catholic Church unless
you're willing to take that double edged sword and embarrass
yourself by your admission that if, in fact, God is in control of
a particular culture and it is acknowledging His kingship then he
does not believe in this modern fiction that individual human
beings have the freedom to believe whatsoever they want and to
destroy the fabric of the culture that is committed to debate by
teaching whatever they want and disseminating it in a way to
bring about social upheaval and chaos. So even if I were disposed
to want to defend the Fourth Lateran Council and to say Vatican
II at this point is saying something that is so ambiguous it is
not clear how it can be reconciled with the former. It is not a
dogmatic statement--the Second Vatican Council statement--and it
could be corrected by a magisterial statement and I would
personally like to see that happen.
White
Well, first of all, you do not need to condescend to answer it
because it is smack dab in the middle of the conversation, the
topic. You are alleging an infallible, inspired authority outside
the Scripture in oral tradition. If you're going to claim that
it's infallible then you have got to allow the very few examples
of its even existence to be examined and when we examine them we
find them to be contradictory with one another. People do not say
to me, "Well, Vatican II, yeah, well, I know it said
that..." I mean that particular passage is quoted over and
over again by people who are touting Vatican II as being one of
the most important things that's ever happened in the Church and
I would encourage people to look at that.
But you talked about the embarrassing double-edged sword.
Let's remember what you're talking about. With Joshua, you're
talking about God commanding the people of Israel to wipe out a
sinful, horrid, idolatrous nation. In the Fourth Lateran Council,
the way that was used was for the Church to kill innocent,
Christian people who simply wanted to worship the Lord Jesus
Christ in the freedom of their own conscience, the Waldensians
and others, to destroy their villages, to burn them to death, to
torture them. There is no possible parallel between Joshua doing
what God commanded unless you're going to tell me that God
commanded the Roman Catholic Church to kill the Waldensians and
to wipe out the people in the Piedmont Valley.
Now you may say that. I know a lot of Roman Catholics today
that shake their heads in disgrace at what happened at that time
period. You may have to say, "Well, that's what God
commanded them to do," because to make the parallel stick,
that's what you're going to have to do. You're going to have to
say this is what God revealed and God desired the Church to go
out there and kill those people. There is nothing in the New
Testament that authorizes the Church to carry a sword. The Bride
of Christ carries no sword but the Word of God.
Matatics
Well, in my remaining 60 seconds I'd like to point out that at
time of history, unlike the more politically correct age in which
we live, both Protestants and Catholics interpreted these
Biblical precedents as giving them the right to attack and kill
people, who, in their opinion, were idolaters. The Reformers
themselves put many, many Catholics to death. Even their
fellow-Reformers did--Luther himself turns against the
Anabaptists and declares that they are gross heretics and should
be absolutely exterminated. You hear the same thing about the
Jews. And so my point is simply not that God directly inspired
the Fourth Lateran Council, I'm not claiming that. But I'm simply
saying there was a plausibility in saying that if, in fact,
Protestants are heretics, just as Protestants thought that
Catholics were heretics, and if, in fact, God gave permission in
the Old Testament for heretics who refused to abide by the law of
the land, they could worship privately and there was no civil
penalty for that. But if they proselytized, if they
propagandized, if they set out to spread their heresy then they
were punished by the state. The Old Testament shows the same
thing.
|
