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Faith in God and the Sufficiency of the Church
Pleasing God by Faith
In a now very familiar verse, James writes in James 2:19:
Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works.
Someone may say that he has faith, but what is the true measure of faith of what God said? It is doing what He said. When God says, this is how He wants something done, that’s how someone should do it and without exception. That is faith in God. And most of you probably already know that “without faith, it is impossible to please Him” (Hebrews 11:6).
Pleasing God is the purpose for mankind on earth (Revelation 4:11). Only from God’s Word do men know the standard or basis for pleasing Him. God will judge men based on what He says (John 12:48). The just shall live by faith (Romans 1:17) and faith comes by hearing the Word of God (Romans 10:17). Man lives by every Word that proceeds from the mouth of God (Matthew 4:4).
Since the Bible is the source book, the veritable handbook, for how to live and to please Him, that is what He wants men to follow carefully and diligently. Solomon says at the end of Ecclesiastes that keeping God’s commandments is the whole duty of man (Ecclesiastes 12:12-13). Those commandments are in the Bible.
God’s Judgment
In the end, God at the least will judge everyone at two judgment seats: (1) the Great White Throne Judgment (Revelation 20:11-15) and (2) the Bema Seat Judgment (2 Corinthians 5:10, Romans 14:10). The former is for unbelievers or the unsaved and the latter is for believers or the saved. Both judgments are very important and do relate to obeying God and in particular how to do what God wants men to do.
God will punish unbelievers for their sin. Their works fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). God will reward believers for their works, so the Bema Seat Judgment means the gaining or the loss of rewards. Both relate to pleasing God. Romans 8:8 says that the unbeliever cannot please God (Romans 8:8). The believer can please Him and God will reward Him when He does.
Living by faith means living a life regulated by what God said: doing what He says to do and not doing what He says not to do. This means not just doing what God said, but doing it how He said. Scripture is replete with examples of men failing to submit to how God wanted it done and God punishing them for it.
How God Wants His Work Done
How God wants done what He wants done gets short shrift today most often. God cares how what He wants gets done. Not doing it how He wants will effect what He wants. He rejects things done in the wrong way or manner. What to do and how to do it feed off each other.
In the age in which we live, God wants His work done in, through, and by the church. In the Old Testament, God used Israel. Also within Israel God regulated how He wanted His work done in, through, and by Israel.
The Church, the Only Acceptable Means of God’s Work Today
The New Testament reveals God’s work done only through the church in this period, the church age. According to the New Testament, the church is sufficient to accomplish God’s work. Living by faith and pleasing God requires accomplishing His work in the way God shows to do it. The New Testament teaches only the church for doing His work. Doing it another way than the church is an invention of men and God isn’t pleased when someone does God’s work a different way. It isn’t obeying God, so it isn’t living by faith.
People who won’t do God’s will His way are not pleasing Him. Perhaps people will not do it like God said because they’re not saved. Scripture shows this to be the case. On the other hand, saved people will lose rewards for not doing what God said how He said to do it.
It is not obeying God or loving God to do what He said a different way than what He said. The church is the only way. All of the God’s work can be done through the church. God does not approve of doing His work a different way than what He said. Because God’s Word is sufficient, the church is sufficient for all of God’s work.
Roman Catholicism Versus Protestantism: Candace Owens Show (part two)
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
Church Perpetuity, Sola Scriptura, and Roman Catholicism Versus Protestantism: Candace Owens Show
Many political conservatives and conservative Christians appreciate Candace Owens and Allie Beth Stuckey. Until one recent show, the subject of this post, I had never seen a whole Candace Owens program, just clips here and there. I had seen whole interviews by Allie Beth Stuckey on her podcast. She deals with some unique subject matter. Both are very popular, the former on Daily Wire and the latter with Blaze.
For a show episode included on youtube, Candace Owens invited her husband, George Farmer, a Roman Catholic, to debate Allie Beth Stuckey, a Protestant. I watched all of part one and thought it would be helpful and informative to provide an analysis of their interaction. Farmer grew up in England and attended Oxford. He tells this story in the episode. His dad converted to Christ from atheism, became an evangelical, and raised George this way.
Under the influence of a Roman Catholic scholar, George doubted the veracity of evangelicalism for Roman Catholicism. Before he married Owens, he became a Roman Catholic. Owens claims still to be a Protestant evangelical, leaning now Roman Catholic, attending Catholic church with her husband and children.
Allie Beth Stuckey grew up Southern Baptist, told the story that her family traces back Baptist in America for 300 years. She remains Southern Baptist, but now claims to be a Reformed Baptist. She considers herself a Protestant, Reformed, Baptist evangelical.
Perpetuity of Christ’s True Church
The Question
Farmer communicates his greatest conflict for staying Protestant and evangelical, a historical matter. To remain Protestant, he would say that Christianity was lost before 1500, essentially no one was converted or a true Christian when the Reformation began. In part one, Stuckey never addresses this seminal concern of Farmer. Farmer never explains this conflict. To start the debate, Candace Owens directed the debate by asking Stuckey what bothered her the most about Roman Catholicism, so they never doubled back to deal with the perpetuity of the church.
Before I move to what bothered Stuckey the most and Farmer’s answer to that concern, let me address perpetuity. I would like to know how Stuckey would answer Farmer’s perpetuity conundrum. I would join him in finding a problem with Protestantism or for Baptists, an English Separatist view. Is Protestantism a restorationist movement, like the Church of Christ, Latter Day Saints, Apostolics, and Charismatics assert?
The perpetuity question also becomes one of authority. How does the authority of God get passed to state church Protestants with their rejection of Roman Catholicism? If Roman Catholicism represents an apostate body, how do they call themselves Reformed or Protestant? Shouldn’t they make a clean break and repudiate Roman Catholicism as a true church?
The Answer
Protestants receive their authority from Roman Catholicism. They must see Roman Catholicism as a true church through which God passed His truth. By doing so, Protestants, including professing Baptist ones, also affirm a state church. I couldn’t be a Roman Catholic or a Protestant. Farmer exposes a major flaw in Protestantism. There is a better way, really a biblical, right way — the only way. Stuckey either doesn’t know it or doesn’t believe it.
The biblical, right way says true churches always existed since Christ, separate from the state church and known by different names. The true church is not a catholic church. It is a local, autonomous one. Those churches did exist and passed down the truth. They became known as Baptist churches. By not taking that position, professing Baptists and Protestants play right into Roman Catholic hands.
Baptist perpetuity is mainly a presuppositional position. Scripture teaches it. The gates of hell would not prevail against Christ’s ekklesia, His assemblies (Matthew 16:18). No one should expect a total apostasy until the saints of this age are off the scene, snatched up into the clouds to meet the Lord in the air (1 & 2 Thessalonians). Until then, only some depart from the faith (1 Timothy 4:1). True believers should just believe this happened. They did until modernism crept into the Southern Baptist Convention and invented a different view of history for Baptists.
Sola Scriptura
What Verse?
Stuckey says her biggest bother with Roman Catholicism is the pope and the authority issue. She asserts sola scriptura, the Bible as the only or final authority. How does Farmer answer her? He asks her for a verse or passage to prove sola scriptura. She can’t do it. She gives Farmer zero scriptural evidence.
I sat chagrined watching Stuckey’s non-scriptural support for her biggest bother. Ironic. Roman Catholicism doesn’t rely on scripture for its only authority and Stuckey has no scripture saying that’s wrong. She said she recognized the circular reasoning with providing scripture for sola scriptura. No way.
Farmer put Stuckey on the defensive and she tried to weave together some poor argument for sola scriptura from history. Was Stuckey right? Was there no answer to Farmer’s challenge?
Biblical Arguments for Sola Scriptura
What verse would you use? I thought of four arguments instantly. First, I thought 2 Timothy 3:16-17:
All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works.
Scripture (1) throughly furnished unto all good works and (2) is profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness. Every good work comes from scripture, no more or no less. It is sufficient, that is, profitable for all of what verses 16-17 mention. Doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness should come only from the Bible.
Second, nothing should be added to scripture. It is the faith once and for all delivered unto the saints (Jude 1:3). Revelation 22:18-19 commands to add nothing to God’s Word. Adding to scripture brings severe warnings of terrible judgment from God.
Three, only faith pleases God and faith comes only by the Word of God (Hebrews 11:6, Romans 10:17).
Four, man lives by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God (Matthew 4:4). The converse is true. Man will not live from something not the Word of God. That includes the pope, tradition, what someone might call the wisdom of men.
I don’t know why Stuckey could not give this as evidence to Farmer. She says she grew up in church and that the Bible is her authority, yet she couldn’t produce one scriptural argument about what bothered her the most about Roman Catholicism.
The Canon
As part of his argument against sola scriptura, Farmer used canonicity. He said the canon came from Roman Catholic Church authority in a late fourth century council. Stuckey sat there nodding, like she agreed. Conservative evangelicals are not today agreeing with that assessment of canonicity. I can say, however, that it was a typical Bible college and seminary presentation of canonicity thirty or forty years ago, maybe still today.
Farmer includes a separate church authority, making room to add the Pope and tradition as authorities with the Bible. He uses this view of canonicity, an unscriptural presentation of canonicity. Stuckey though sits and accepts this, by doing so encouraging viewers to turn Roman Catholic. Owens should have recruited a better representative for evangelicalism than Stuckey. She fails at her task, leaving viewers in greater confusion than when they started.
God used true churches, biblical assemblies after the model of His first church in Jerusalem and the early churches that one spawned, for recognition of the canon. They immediately recognized the true, authoritative New Testament books, even as seen in Peter’s endorsement of Paul’s epistles in 2 Peter 3:15-17. They hand copied those manuscripts and only those as a plain indication of their faith in them. Councils were not necessary. Today evangelicals often give too much credence to the Catholic councils as a perversion of biblical ecclesiology.
The Roman Catholic canon includes the apocrypha. When someone sits silent to these additional books, that helps undermine true scriptural sufficiency and authority. Accepting that Roman Catholic position of canonicity hurts sola scriptura.
Does Mysticism Mix With the Bible?
Mysticism pervades world history, and especially the history of the United States. What does mysticism do for a country or a person? Is it good? Is it all bad?When Jonathan Edwards described mysticism in the early 18th century, he didn’t use the word “mysticism.” The term mysticism was around, but perhaps not in the kind of common usage so that Edwards would use the term to apply to the “wildfire” and “carnal enthusiasm” he witnessed in the Great Awakening. Edwards also wrote the terms, “imprudences, irregularities,” and a “mixture of delusion.”When the United States got to the 19th century, it was a regular experience for men to say they heard directly from God, perhaps the greatest example of this Joseph Smith. The church history museum in Salt Lake City, Utah says concerning his “first vision”:
Joseph Smith’s First Vision stands today as the greatest event in world history since the birth, ministry, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. After centuries of darkness, the Lord opened the heavens to reveal His word and restore His Church through His chosen prophet.
The essence of Mysticism lies in this: when the influence of God upon the soul is sought and found solely in an inward experience of the individual; when certain excitements of the emotions are taken, with no further question, as evidence that the soul is possessed by God: when at the same time nothing external to the soul is consciously and clearly perceived and firmly grasped; when no thoughts that elevate the spiritual life are aroused by the positive contents of an idea that rules the soul,– then that is the piety of Mysticism.
In the human Jesus, we have met with a fact, the content of which is comparably richer than any feelings that arise within ourselves.
Mysticism is an assertion of a knowing that must not be tried by ordinary rules evidence the claiming authority for our own impressions.
Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels, intruding into those things which he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind, And not holding the Head, from which all the body by joints and bands having nourishment ministered, and knit together, increaseth with the increase of God.
And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.
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