Why criticize in particular a debate between George Farmer, Candace Owens’ (Farmer’s?) husband, and Allie Beth Stuckey? On the other hand, why not find better representatives for a debate between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism? I say, George and Allie bring a teaching moment in this controversy. They deal with the issues on more a popular level, something the Daily Wire might appreciate.
Overall Part Two and a Little More Sola Scriptura
I decided this morning to write on part two of the debate because Stuckey’s inadequacy at unmasking false doctrine espoused by George for his Roman Catholicism. By George! Trigger alert. Women should not debate men, but Allie’s unwillingness to fight, to do necessary warfare, hurt the cause. I’m glad for her feminine instinct not to push in an authoritative way over a man. It explains a poor job with a commendable reason.
Overall, Allie Stuckey in the end parked on the two verses: Ephesians 2:8-9. This rescued her contribution with this brief, rare reference to scripture. Someone believing sola scriptura, however, should have reeled off incessant verses, pounding with the hammer of God’s Word. From watching her, one might think her positions don’t have much biblical support. Yet, they do. She just didn’t or couldn’t recall verses to use with Farmer. I saw Owens growing more Roman Catholic by the moment.
Owens started part two of the debate by informing that she got over sola scriptura easily because she couldn’t find it in the Bible. This might relieve her husband and their future relationship. Stuckey then compared the biblical support for sola scriptura to that of the Trinity, that it’s not explicit. This is utterly false. Scripture is explicit that the Bible is the only infallible authority or the ultimate authority for faith and practice. When Stuckey loses on this point, she really does lose the debate, because all the extra-scriptural writing comes into play for Farmer. He then uses this source material for the rest of his defense of Roman Catholic doctrine.
Mary, Mother of God?
Danger with Historical Theology
On the first subject after ending the sola scriptura conversation, Farmer shows the danger of perversion in one’s use of historical theology. He is crafty. He asks Stuckey if she believes Mary is the mother of God? It’s a tricky question. I’m sure the wheels were turning in her head: “Is Jesus God? Yes. Is Mary Jesus’ mother? Yes. So is Mary God’s mother?” It seems like, Yes, might be the right answer. It is a gotcha question.
Farmer said that the Protestants do not reject the Council of Ephesus. Why would Stuckey then do that if she is Protestant? The Council of Ephesus concluded Mary the mother of God. Yes, Reformers have supported the language, “mother of God.” That does not then mean that they receive Catholic teaching on Mary. They go as far as the reception of the hypostatic union of the Divine and human natures in Jesus, the view rejected by Nestorius. The Council then excommunicated Nestorius for heresy.
Excommunication?
As an aside, what gives a council authority to excommunicate someone? Jesus taught that an individual assembly only practiced church discipline, removing someone from that church (Matthew 18:15-17). The council of Ephesus isn’t a church. It was an unbiblical institution with no authority, not following the teaching of Jesus in church discipline.
Nestorianism and Two Natures?
Mr. Farmer teaches error when he says that Christ was one nature. Furthermore, he said, “You don’t want to split the natures of Christ.” Stuckey sat and nodded, yes, to this error. The error of Nestorius was that of “two persons,” that Christ was two persons sharing one body (prosopon), not two natures (hypostasis). Christ had two natures: divine and human. This is not Nestorianism. Christ was one Person with two natures. The hypostatic union is the mysterious joining of two natures in one Person.
Jesus was a Divine Person. When He died on the cross, He was not a finite Person but an infinite One Who could pay for infinite sins for all eternity. He needed to be God to die for all of mankind. By calling Mary the mother of Jesus, they thought they would be undermining the true incarnational teaching of Jesus, so they called her the “mother of God.”
Mother of God Ideas
“Mother of God” emphasized the divinity of Jesus, but it did nothing to extrapolate a divine nature to Mary, an immaculate conception of her, or veneration of her. Even if Reformers and some Protestants today agree with “mother of God” terminology in refutation of Nestorianism, they reject the pendulum swing away from scripture by Roman Catholicism about Mary.
A good book that traces the source of the Catholic version of Mary teaching is The Two Babylons by Alexander Hislop. Much Roman Catholic teaching is neo-Platonic and proto-Babylonian. Worship of Mary takes a trajectory from Venus and Astarte, goddesses of Babylonianism.
John Owen and Scripture
The post-Reformation reformed John Owen, no relation to Candace Owens, did not approve of the terminology, “mother of God.” He wished the Council of Ephesus had “forborne it.” He spoke of the miraculous creation of the body of Christ by the Holy Spirit, which was a “fit habitation for His holy soul.” Owen called the Holy Spirit the “active, efficient cause” and Mary the “passive, material cause.” The “material cause” aspect of Jesus’ physical body traces to verses such as Galatians 4:4, “made of a woman,” and “made of the seed of David according to the flesh” (Romans 1:3).
Mary calls Jesus, “God my Savior” (Luke 1:46), and described herself as “the servant of the Lord” (Luke 1:38). This contradicts “mother of God.” True Baptists and New Testament Christianity reject both Catholic and Protestant teaching. Baptists may quote church councils for their history of doctrine, but they reject the notion of church councils. Pope Pius IX took mother of God to a further corrupt extreme when he called Mary sinless in his Ineffabilis Deus in 1854.
Saints and Intercessory Prayer
Saints
Farmer uses the term “saints” in an unscriptural manner. In Ephesians 1:1, Paul writes to the “saints at Ephesus” and he defines “saints” there as “faithful in Christ Jesus,” literally “believing in Christ Jesus.” Anyone with saving faith in Christ Jesus is a saint. This is the famous Granville Sharp rule. “Holy” (adjective, “holy ones”) and “faithful” (adjective) are connected by one definite article (tois). That means “saints” and “believing” (faithful) are the same people. All those in Christ are saints, not some special caste of characters designated such by a state church.
Praying to Saints or Mary
Next, Farmer moves to praying to saints and Mary as a kind of intercessory prayer. These “saints’ and Mary have been given a kind of veneration below that for God, but veneration high enough that Christians should pray to them. I won’t deal with the scripture he adduces in the debate to support this. Scripture does not evince this.
Farmer’s argument is praying to saints equals intercessory prayer. Nowhere in the Bible do we see praying to dead people. The best argument might be the faithless, perverse intercession of King Saul in a seance with the witch of Endor. I’m glad he didn’t use that one though.
I’ve never heard Stuckey’s view of intercession. She spoke of intercession as interceding with a fellow believer for prayer. Intercessory prayer is another believer praying to God on our behalf, not for himself. The intercession is not the asking for prayer. I understand the intercession of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit in prayer. Scripture teaches both of those. On the other hand, the veneration of dead saints and Mary, I see this as blasphemous.
Stuckey does right to quote 1 Timothy 2:5, that Jesus is the one Mediator between God and man. Not only is scripture silent on the mediation of Mary and “saints,” but the Timothy verse repudiates it. Believers, true saints, can pray for one another, but there is no doctrine of earthly ones praying to heavenly ones for them in turn to pray for the earthly ones. I’m sure there is a long explanation for this false doctrine somewhere, but I’ve never read it. I don’t find Roman Catholics usually who can name their seven sacraments, let alone break down why they pray to saints. They stray from scripture a lot, because it isn’t their only authority.
Evangelicals and Modernity Versus Roman Catholics
Candace Owens takes the conversation to the differences between Catholics and evangelicals in their modernity and trendiness. This took off of a little riff by her husband, when he used timelessness as an argument for praying to saints. Owens does not like the direction of the style (what I would call aesthetics) of Protestant evangelicals.
I don’t think Stuckey does great in dealing with the loss of beauty in evangelicalism and why. She doesn’t seem to get it. In my next post, I will come back to this. For awhile, I’ve seen this as one legitimate allure of Roman Catholicism. With all the faults of Roman Catholicism, they emphasize the transcendence of God more than evangelicals. Evangelicals feel proud of their worldliness. The nature of Roman Catholicism keeps a serious nature in line with scriptural worship. Catholics do not worship in truth, a requirement, but they come closer very often in beauty than evangelicals. I know some people who went back to Catholicism for this exact reason.
More to Come
Couldn’t attempting to pray to dead people be considered necromancy? (Deuteronomy 18:11)
Dear Bro Brandenburg,
That is an interesting comment by John Owen. At the Council of Ephesus they were mainly making a Christological statement when they called Mary the mother of God, not a statement about worshipping Mary, although the phrase can lend itself to such idolatry and it is not one I would use myself unless I was talking about something related to early Christological controversy.
Where did Owen make the comments you cited? Thanks for the reference.
Perhaps the poor job that the Southern Baptist lady is doing is a good example of why one should not get into debating unless he is able to match or outmatch his opponent. People in my Sunday School class are right on evolution and Richard Dawkins is wrong on evolution, but I would not recommend that they do a livestream debate with him on that topic unless they get an advanced degree in biology first.
Very good analysis, and shows that even “conservative” politicans or media persons are often very clueless spiritually.
I do want to ask something on the mention of the book The Two Babylons by Hislop. I had previously used this book to teach the connection between Catholicism and pagan beliefs, but recently I’ve come across some substantial challenge to the veracity of the claims of this book.
One is by Ralph Woodrow, who also previously highly praised the book, but has since then criticized it.
Here is a link to his critique.
https://www.equip.org/PDF/DC187.pdf
I wonder if you have ever delved and looked into this.
Samuel Wesley (Charles’ son and a noted composer in his own right) said, “If the doctrine of the Catholic Church was as good as the music of the Catholic Church there would already be Heaven on Earth.”
The ‘Mother of God’ terminology used by the council of Ephesus is not right as it seems to imply that Mary is the spiritual mother of Jesus which the council did not intend to imply.. A better definition is ‘Mary the mother of Jesus according to the flesh’ as in Romans 1:3. In the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew 1, Jesus is shown to be descended physically from the line of Abraham. However Abraham is not the spiritual father of Jesus or the ‘Father of God’. Jesus is greater than Abraham spiritually and precedes him as the eternal God – ‘I Am’ (John 8:58). So there is a big difference between preceding someone physically and spiritually! The Roman Catholic exaltation and veneration of Mary is totally unscriptural. The devil would love to exalt any name above the name which is above every name – Jesus!