Have you ever thought about how your bank uses your savings? What if I told you there's a fully regulated Christian bank that aligns your money with your faith? When you open a Kingdom Bank savings account, you help to provide vital mortgages for churches, Christian ministries, and gospel workers who might struggle to secure one elsewhere. Whether saving for yourself or on behalf of your church, your savings will support Christian ministries across the UK. And when you're ready to take your money out, you get it back with interest. If your spending and giving reflect your faith, shouldn't your savings as well? Open a savings account with Kingdom Bank today and put your money where your heart is. Visit kingdom.bankslash speaklife. Kingdom Bank is a member of the FSCS and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulation Authority.
SPEAKER_02Pope Francis recently visited Singapore for an interreligious dialogue called Together in Unity and Hope. And he said some things that have ruffled some feathers, let's say, both among Christians outside the Roman Catholic tradition, but also voices within the Roman Catholic Church as well have been concerned. Lots to get into.
SPEAKER_00There's only one God in each of us as a language, so to speak, in order to uh arrive at God. There are different paths.
SPEAKER_04When Jesus says you don't get the Father except through me, that is not a bigoted fundamentalism, that is a statement of fact. No one is even thinking to offer what Jesus audaciously just grants for free. Jesus is the cavalry coming over the hill. And if you deny him, there is no other cavalry coming to save you. This is unique, this is unparalleled, this is unprecedented, and it's exclusive. But it's exclusive not because it's narrow, it's exclusive because Jesus is so extraordinary. And then in the second half of the video, I want to explain why this is an example of why I am not Roman Catholic myself, but I am Catholic. I put it to you that being Roman Catholic makes you less Catholic, less universal, and less correctable. People can err. The Pope can err. Let us therefore have a higher standard of authority than the Pope. A scripture that can correct the Church. Hi, I'm Glenn from Speak Life. We like to see all things through the lens of Jesus. Is the Pope a Catholic? That used to be a humorous tautology like do bookies like idiots? And does a one-legged duck swim in circles? Or is Die Hard a Christmas movie? It's the sort of question that demands an affirmative answer. And yet, the question is the Pope a Catholic is being seriously asked by very serious Catholics, like these guys.
SPEAKER_03Well, Francis is an agent of destruction in that, and innumerable souls are going to be damned because of his influence. This insane, completely evil statement. You're not even a babe in Christ, you're just not in Christ.
SPEAKER_04He is a force for destruction, he is a speaker of evil, he is not even a babe in Christ, he is not even in Christ. This is what some Catholics are saying about the Pope. Now, what did he say in order to cause such critique and confusion and alarm? The Pope was at a gathering in Singapore. It was called Together in Unity and Hope, Interreligious Youth with Pope Francis, who was speaking off the cuff in Italian, and this is what he said.
SPEAKER_00Because every religion is a way to arrive at God.
SPEAKER_04A way to arrive at God. Not just a way towards God, not just a groping in the mist towards God, it is a way to arrive at God.
SPEAKER_00Sort of a comparison, an example would be they're sort of like different languages in order to arrive at God.
SPEAKER_04Again, in order to arrive at God. But they just use different languages, different ways in order to arrive at God, different languages in order to arrive at God.
SPEAKER_01But God is God for all.
SPEAKER_00And if God is God for all, then we're all sons and daughters of God.
SPEAKER_04Now the impossibility of Pope Francis holding the position that he seems to hold is demonstrated in that very sentence. As he says that God is the one God of all, he's assuming a kind of monotheism that is not shared by a lot of the faiths that are represented there at the summit. And then he says we are all children of this one God. Well, at that stage, he's lost all the Muslims on that stage who do not think that anybody is a child of God. God is not a father, that he might have children. The Muslim is a slave of Allah and submits to Allah, but is not a child of Allah. And so in one statement, he's actually demonstrating that there are contradictory claims between the religions of the world, and at most one can be correct. Now he's assuming here that his faith is correct, and I think he should assume that the Christian faith is correct. I think definitely the Pope should assume that Christianity is true, but he's just made a very dogmatic claim about who God is, and then he follows it up with this. So here he's mocking the representative of a religion who would say, you know, my God is better than your God. He's mocking that sensibility, and yet just a sentence ago, his first half of the sentence alienated all the polytheists, and the second half of the sentence alienated the the Muslim monotheists. And yet what he wants to do is he wants to say, Oh, we can't go around saying one religion is better than another religion, all the while he is assuming his religion is actually king. There is only one God, and the proper relationship to God is to be a child of the Father rather than a slave of Allah, uh, or rather than be dissolved into the great one in Buddhism or whatever it is, right? Um, he is assuming a quite Christian view of things, but then at the same time, what he doesn't want to come across as is saying, my religion is better than your religion. And he'll flip-flop between those two different sensibilities in the next couple of sentences. Two solo diolin.
SPEAKER_00There's only one God in each of us as a language, so to speak, in order to uh arrive at God.
SPEAKER_04There's only one God, he says. Well, what about polytheists? Okay, and and what about the venerable polytheistic traditions down through the world, or the non-theistic religions of the world? Um so so which is it, Pope Francis? Um is there only one truth and it's the Christian truth, or can we never claim that any one religion um should be privileged over any other in these kinds of dialogues?
SPEAKER_00There are different paths.
SPEAKER_04They're different paths, and they all arrive at God. He used that language of arriving at God. Now, as Trent Horn has pointed out on his channel, uh the Pope's advisors have cleaned up the language for him, and they they briefly corrected the transcript uh online, and I think they then reverted back to what the translator said, uh, which is what Pope Francis said. But uh the Pope's advisors um basically wanted to tidy up the Pope's language. And so the Vatican released this transcript in which the Pope is meant to have said, religions are seen as paths trying to reach God. Now remember, what he actually said was uh religions are paths that arrive at God, right? And then later on, there is only one God, and religions are like languages that try to express ways to approach God. Um, that's not actually what Pope Francis said. He said they are languages that approach God. And this is what Christians have been reacting against, both Catholic and Protestant. Uh we all want to correct the Pope on this because I think the Bible is clear on this issue. John 14, 6, Jesus said, I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. Or Acts chapter 4 of salvation is found in no one else, before there is no other name under heaven given to people by which we must be saved. Or Ephesians chapter 2, which talks about before the gospel came to the Ephesians, they were without hope and without God in the world. There is an exclusivity to Christ such that without Christ you don't have a Father, you don't have salvation, and you don't have hope. Now, what I want to do in this video is show you why Pope Francis is wrong, and then in the second half of the video, I want to explain why this is an example of why I am not Roman Catholic myself, because I think both that the Pope said this and the content of what he said are the sorts of reasons why I remain Protestant and remain unconvinced by Rome. So because I think that will be interesting to a smaller section of our audience, I'm gonna put that second. What I'm gonna say first is to address uh Pope Francis and to be shoulder to shoulder uh with other evangelists and apologists like Trent Horne and say why I think the Pope was wrong, but also why I think it is so good to talk about the exclusivity of Jesus. There is good news here, it's not just about the narrowness of Jesus, it's about the goodness of the gospel that makes us say what Pope Francis said was wrong. So, what I want to do is first press into um the kind of paths up a mountain kind of analogy that the Pope is working with here, show why it doesn't work, and then I want to press into those three scriptures that I mentioned and talk about how they are good news. And it's not just that John 14 and Acts 4 and Ephesians 2 um exclude the other religions, it's that they outshine anything that human religion has ever offered to the world. What is offered in Jesus and in Jesus alone is sufficient for the whole world and is a light that the whole world should flock to. So, first of all, this mountain illustration, and it's this this idea that the different religions are basically like bold, intrepid explorers that are making their way up a mountain to the top. Um, and at the top, it is considered that there is agreement on the summit, and perhaps the summit is represented by enlightenment, perhaps the summit is represented by peace or salvation or God. But which God? Because look, here are the major religions in the world, and I've grouped them together into four little buckets uh just for ease of analysis. You've got Christianity, which has the most number of people, then there's Islam there, karmic religions, I've bundled together there uh Hinduism and Buddhism, and then unaffiliated those who do not believe that there is any kind of God. Add up these four broad categories of religious views, and that represents about seven-eighths of the world's population. Now, if we think that world religions are basically like a mountain and we're all heading up to the top of the mountain, well let's just ask, you know, what is at the top of the mountain? Who is God for these four different world views? Uh for Christianity, God is a father loving his son in the joy of the Holy Spirit, the doctrine of the Trinity. If you go across to Islam, the answer is Allah. He is alone, he has no son, and he is not a father, and there is none like unto him. Islam is absolutely anti-Trinitarian, not just non-Trinitarian, but anti-Trinitarian. Say not three, uh, is right there at the heart of the Quran. When we come to the karmic religions, you could see Hinduism as perhaps a polytheistic religion. That might be the most common way to describe it. But then there is a Brahmin kind of a there is a one above it all, but there are also non-theistic strands to Hinduism, uh, in which God only exists in the mantra. And and so for for karmic understandings of who is God and who is at the top of the mountain, um, perhaps there are many gods, perhaps there is one, perhaps there is none. And then obviously for the unaffiliated, let's say the atheists and others like them, uh, then yeah, no, there is no God at the top of the mountain. So is it true that we are all headed up the same mountain to the one summit? That seems patently nonsense. And when you think about the different religions that the Pope describes in his video, and the kind of people that are gathered together at that summit, um they had very many different views about what is at the top of the mountain. And when you think about Confucianism or the majority of Buddhist sects, then like the idea of God is absolutely not essential to religion, the way that a very large number of people on planet Earth consider religion. And then when we think about the way to get to the top of the mountain, or the way to enjoy God or salvation or nirvana or enlightenment or whatever it is, the way to get to the top, um, that is a radically different understanding depending on which religion you're talking about. In Christianity, we are all about salvation. We don't think actually that climbing a mountain is a very good picture of the spiritual life. We think a great picture of the spiritual life is God descending down into the valley of the shadow of death to be with us, to be for us, to enter into our hell in order to lift us up to his heaven. Actually, Christianity is a rescue religion, all about the one who came down into the gutter for us. It's not really about spiritual climbers being very intrepid as explorers and making our way up to heaven. In fact, that's kind of a heresy in Christianity. So we are all about salvation. When you come across to Islam, um, Islam doesn't really have a doctrine of salvation. The closest equivalent to the word salvation within the Quran and within Islamic theology is the word success. The successful Muslim will get paradise and the losers will get the fire, right? They will get hell. But to be respectful to a Muslim about how they think they get the afterlife, um it's probably not respectful to their way of thinking. To to think in terms of, so how do you get saved? Um because it's not really a rescue religion, okay? It's about submission to Allah and you succeed, or you're a loser, right? Though th those are those are the two options rather than you are a loser who gets saved, which is the Christian thing. Then you come through to karmic religions, like how do you get nirvana? How do you get enlightenment? How do you get oneness with the divine or with the cosmos? Well, it's karma, right? What goes around comes around. If you put evil out there into the world, evil will come back. If you put good out there into the world, good will come back. That's nothing like salvation either. Um for the unaffiliated, for for atheists, um, what what is the way that is uh prescribed? Well, there is there is no way. So then are we headed in roughly the same direction? No, it's not that at all. It's not like there's one mountain and we're all different paths going to the same destination. It's like there's a mountain over there, a mountain over there, a mountain over there. Okay, which mountain is reality? Where do we live? Right? That that's far more what it's like. So we thought about God, we thought about the way to God. And and then what is hope? At the end of all things, what are we looking forward to? Well, Christianity says we're looking to the resurrection of the dead. We're looking to physical embodied feasting joy forever. That just as Jesus did not rot in that Jerusalem tomb and then escape into an ethereal kind of spiritual dimension, but rather rose up bodily to leave the tomb empty, so that the future of Jesus is a physical embodied feasting joy. So the Christian's hope is physical embodied feasting joy. This body raised up, this world raised up. Resurrection is the Christian hope. Um, in Islam, the hope is paradise, which is a non-earthly kind of future. Um, so we won't be on earth and Allah won't be in paradise, right? The the Christian hope is resurrection and seeing face to face our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Um paradise is not inhabited by Allah. Allah transcends not only the earth, he also transcends paradise. That's a very different understanding of what the afterlife is. In the karmic religions, uh nirvana is it's the word for being blown out, like a candle being snuffed out. Um, and there's lots of different imagery for it. Perhaps we're like a drop of water being dissolved into the ocean of being, and our ego will be will be dissolved into the great one. And detachment is the goal both in this life and forevermore. Um again, that's a very different vision. Very different vision from Christianity or Islam. And of course, uh, if you're an atheist, what is the future? There's death. You know, it's it's a very equal opportunities kind of uh hope. Everybody gets death, it's free, and it's forever. Um so from that point of view, um, it's free for all, but it's also nothing like the hope that exists in all these other religions. So Pope Francis wants to talk about different ways that arrive at God. And what's fascinating is that's just not the way that other religions actually think about things. It's an incredibly Christianized way to see all world religions. Okay, so if he wants to own that Christianity is the truth, then he also must own the fact that we are talking in exclusive terms. And the Christian view is the correct view of reality. In one breath, Pope Francis says there is one God, and the goal is to be his child, right? Which is an incredibly Christian thing to say. Um, in the next breath, he wants to say, Oh, let's not assume that our religion is right. No, but you already have assumed that your religion is right, Pope Francis. You've already done that. Um you need to own that and say this is reality, and we invite everybody to come to this different thing that Jesus is offering. And that's the deceptive thing about the paths up a mountain kind of analogy. It sounds really humble because you're saying, oh, no, no one path has a priority over any other path, and let's not let's not argue about my God's better than your God, right? It's it sounds humble. But to assume that there is a single mountain and you know you have a bird's eye view of the whole terrain, to assume that is not humble at all. To to assume that is to say that you know. Because, like, how do you know that every path leads up to the summit of the mountain? How do you know it doesn't go off a cliff somewhere? You'd have to have a God's eye perspective in order to know that every path leads up the mountain. So actually, it can sound really humble to say all paths lead up to God. It is the most confident statement of all to say, I know how spiritual reality operates. I've got a God's eye view on all those things. But if you're already going to say that, then you need to have the confidence to say this is a Christian view of the world, in which it's Jesus Christ at the top. But as soon as you've said that this is Jesus' world, then you really need to own the exclusivity of that. You really do. And I urge you to own the exclusivity of that truth, not as a narrow thing, but as a grand thing, a glorious thing. Because if this is Jesus' world, then we have an incredible God, an incredible way, and an incredible hope. Think of John 14 6, this exclusive statement that Jesus makes. Jesus answered, I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. Now that is literally true. No one is even offering a father except Jesus Christ. Right? Go to Islam. Allah is not a father and he has no son. Jesus is not the Son of God within Islam. He is a slave of Allah. Allah has no children. There are 99 names of Allah, and not one of them is father. And the best you can be is a servant of Allah, never a child of Allah. Jesus is offering here what Islam does not offer. Okay? It is simply true that no one comes to the Father except through Jesus. You cannot get to a father through Islam. You don't get to a father through the karmic religions, okay? You don't get to the father through the karmic religion. They're not even trying to offer you that. And you're certainly not coming to the father through atheism, okay? When Jesus says you don't get the father except through me, that is not a bigoted fundamentalism, that is a statement of fact. No one is even thinking to offer what Jesus audaciously just grants for free. That's good news, right? Jesus offers you a a distinctive and exclusive path to a God that nobody else is even trying to offer you. A God of love, a God who is a father, loving his son in the joy of the Holy Spirit. And look, if you want to do more about this, please do 321. You can go to 321course.com right now. You can pause the video, go to three two onecourse.com right now, start an account, and you will see Jesus' vision for life. And the first thing you're introduced to is his vision for God. His vision for God is God is a father, he is the Son. And he will fill you with his spirit. God is a loving union of three: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. That's where 321 begins and everything flows out of love. Why don't you go to 321Course.com and do the course for yourself? It's life according to Jesus. It's a unique vision, it is an unparalleled vision, it is an unimprovable vision of God, the world, and you. Go to 321cour.com and you'll see. Have you ever thought about how your bank uses your savings? What if I told you there's a fully regulated Christian bank that aligns your money with your faith? When you open a Kingdom Bank savings account, you help to provide vital mortgages for churches, Christian ministries, and gospel workers who might struggle to secure one elsewhere. Whether saving for yourself or on behalf of your church, your savings will support Christian ministries across the UK. And when you're ready to take your money out, you get it back with interest. If your spending and giving reflect your faith, shouldn't your savings as well? Open a savings account with Kingdom Bank today and put your money where your heart is. Visit Kingdom.bankslash speaklife. Kingdom Bank is a member of the FSCS and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulation Authority. Jesus reveals a very different kind of a God. He also reveals a very different way to get what the religions of the world are offering. Acts chapter 4, verse 10. That's the second verse that I've mentioned. There is Peter and he's preaching in Jerusalem. He says, Know this, you and all the people of Israel, it is by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, but whom God raised from the dead, that this man stands before you healed. Jesus is the stone you builders rejected, which has become the cornerstone. Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved. Here is a unique offer. Jesus is offering to save you. Now think about it. Allah is not offering to save you. He is commanding you to submit to him, he is not offering to save you. The karmic religions are not offering to save you. If you put good out into the world, good will come back to you. If you put bad out into the world, you do not get salvation. You get judged by your evil deeds. And there's something fitting about that. And certainly the Bible talks in terms of as a man sows, so shall he reap. And certainly, in the realm of the flesh and in the realm of this world, absolutely there is a cause and effect that goes on. I think the Buddha was right when he said, you will not so much be judged for your anger, you will be judged by your anger. Have you ever felt that? That the bad we do in life is a kind of punishment all its own. And in the realm of the flesh and in the realm of the world, absolutely, there is this karmic quality to thing. The law, right? God has a law, and if you break it, it breaks you. Okay, there is this karmic quality to life in Adam. But if you do 3-2-1, you'll learn that there is a second Adam, Jesus, who comes and takes what is coming to us. He takes our bad karma, right? And rises up again to give us his good karma, as it were, to give us the grace of heaven, to save us, to give us better than what we deserve. With Jesus, you get better than what you deserve. You don't get that with Islam. You get what you deserve in Islam, you get what you deserve in the karmic religions. No one's offering to save you. Jesus is the cavalry coming over the hill. And if you deny him, there is no other cavalry coming to save you, right? In atheism, again, you don't get more than you deserve. Okay? You you just you get what you deserve in this life, and then everybody gets death, right? And there is no salvation. So it's it's just true. Again, when Peter says there is no salvation apart from Jesus, it's not a bigoted fundamentalism, it's a statement of absolute fact. And if you just do comparative religion, you'll see that, okay? We have a unique God that's revealed by Jesus, the Father, loving his son in the joy of the Spirit. There's a unique way of salvation in the Bible. There's salvation in Jesus. And again, it's a unique thing, it's an unparalleled thing, it's an unprecedented thing, it's an unimprovable thing that Jesus offers. And then there's a there's a unique hope that is in Jesus. Have a look at uh Ephesians chapter 2, verse 12. Remember that at that time, you Ephesians, you were separate from Christ, you were excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise without hope and without God in the world. You don't have Christ, you don't have God. And you don't have Christ, you don't have hope. Now, again, that could sound like a bigoted fundamentalism, and yet it's simply true. In Islam, there is no hope for this body and this world. Okay? My body dies, I go to paradise, an unearthly place, right? A non-earthly place. There is no hope for the world within Islam, the world goes to the flames, okay? And I I might be a successful Muslim who escapes to paradise, but there's no hope for the world in Islam. Within the karmic religions, again, we are to dissolve into the ocean of being like a drop of water in the sea. There is no hope for the world in the karmic religions. Within atheism, there is just death. There's our death, and then there's you know the heat death of the sun, heat death of the universe, there's just death, death, death. There is no hope apart from Jesus. It's not like the hope that Jesus offers. This is unique, this is unparalleled, this is unprecedented, um, and it's exclusive. But it's exclusive not because it's narrow, it's exclusive because Jesus is so extraordinary. And the good news is we actually live in Jesus' world. Okay? And this is the good news. This is this is the sort of thing that I wish Pope Francis had said at this summit of world religions, and there are plenty of Catholics who wish that Pope Francis had said something very different to the summit uh there in Singapore. But just as I finish, let me just reach out to those who might be Roman Catholic, um, because there are plenty of Roman Catholics who really want to correct the Pope on his bad theology, because it is bad theology. The sort of slip that Pope Francis made on that stage on the 13th of September is a good example of why I am not Roman Catholic, but I am Catholic, right? I am Reformed Catholic, I am ordained in the Church of England, I'm part of the Anglican Communion, it's the third largest grouping of churches in the world. There's the Roman Catholics, there's the Orthodox, and there's the Anglicans, and I'm part of that great Anglican tradition. We consider ourselves to be part of the Church Catholic. The word Catholic just means universal. And because I want to be part of the Church Universal, therefore I am not part of the Church that is simply the Roman Church. I actually think that Roman Catholic is more of a contradiction in terms, actually. I am Reformed Catholic and I hope to be always reforming as a kind of a universal Christian who can recognize Christians on the other side of the Tiber, the other side of the river dividing Rome. I recognize Christians in the Roman Catholic tradition. I recognize Christians in the Eastern Orthodox tradition. I also can look to the Protestant denominations, and I'm quite certain that there are people who could articulate an exquisitely phrased Protestant doctrine of salvation who are probably not themselves in Christ. Okay? I can affirm all these sorts of things, but I also want to say why, as a Protestant, when I look at the Pope saying this, it confirms me in a couple of Protestant sensibilities. And the two Protestant sensibilities that we've been talking about really for the last 500 years are the material cause of the Reformation and the formal cause of the of the Reformation. And the material cause of the Reformation is the matter of the thing. What are we wanting to to reform the church around? And it's the the gospel of Jesus doing everything, right? That's that's the matter of the Reformation. And the Latin phrase that sums up the Protestant position on the matter of how we are saved is we are saved solar fide, right? By faith alone. Um which is another way of saying Jesus came all the way down from the top of the mountain and we don't meet him halfway, we don't even raise ourselves an inch from the gutter. Jesus comes all the way down. Unlike all the other religions of the world that are karmic to some degree, we do not contribute, um, we don't even cooperate, okay? We are saved. We are saved by Jesus completely, and it is all of him and it is none of us, okay? That that is a conviction that I have from scripture and from reading church tradition as well, um, and of doing theology, the theology of some of the great theologians, okay. I I wrote 321 because I'm convinced that Irenaeus is right about Adam and Christ, I'm convinced that Athanasius is right about the Trinity, I'm convinced that Augustine is right about the Trinity and about union with Christ and all these all these sorts of things. So I think that the Bible and the tradition of the church say that we are saved. That the gospel is not about our cooperation with the work of God, but about our reception, simply receiving the free salvation of Christ. So the matter of the Reformation is a matter of solar fide. I I think we are at the bottom of the mountain and we need to get picked up and hoisted onto Christ's strong shoulders and carried home. We are like the lost sheep in Luke chapter 15, okay? We all like sheep have gone astray, each of us have turned to his own way, and it's not because we trotted our way home or even halfway home, okay? It is all the Savior. It is all the Good Shepherd who hoists us onto his shoulders and marches us home. It is Christ alone who saves us, and we receive his grace alone by faith alone, and that is how we're saved. So this clip by the Pope reminds me of why I'm a Protestant because of the material cause of the Reformation. But then there's the formal cause of the Reformation, and the formal cause is all about how are we going to decide what the most important matters are in church life? How are we going to decide that? Who is the final authority? And this brings us to the issue of the Latin phrase sola scriptura. So the reformers were saying the popes and the bishops, the magisterium, that teaching office of the church can err. It can go wrong. It is not infallible. But praise God, there is an infallible rule of faith. When it comes to a final authority in matters of faith and conduct, it is the Bible alone that should occupy that top spot, and everything else must submit to the infallible scriptures. The Pope is not infallible. Not even when he makes decrees ex cathedra. Now I know that on this stage in Singapore, he is not teaching ex cathedra, but he is teaching. And he is undermining the teaching of the church. And if he can err here, if he can make errors here, then what makes us think that he can't make errors or that other bishops can't make errors, or that the magisterium as a whole cannot make errors en masse? Now Trent Horn is a Catholic apologist uh who I respect a lot and I've learnt uh a lot from him and I've admired him as he's uh engaged with other atheists in debate and that sort of thing. He doesn't think this is any kind of argument for Protestantism.
SPEAKER_03Uh here's what he says. When it comes to non-Catholics, saying the Pope is confusing, therefore Catholicism is false, is a terrible argument because the Bible is far more confusing than the Pope. The Bible is far more confusing than the Pope.
SPEAKER_04That's not the sort of thing you'll find Protestants saying. Um we tend to think it's a clear word, certainly clear about matters of salvation. And I simply don't think it's true that the Bible is more confusing than what the Pope said on that stage. Um I've read those scriptures out to you. Um I think the Bible is a clearer word, a far clearer word about that central issue about Christ and salvation than the Pope was in Singapore. Don't you agree? Don't you agree that the Bible is a clearer word on these central matters of salvation than the Pope was there?
SPEAKER_03And if that's true, I think that's a point worth making and worth heeding. And unlike a living magisterium, the Bible cannot issue any clarifying statements about itself or what its authors meant.
SPEAKER_04It doesn't need to on this issue because it has been clear for 20 centuries. But this weekend we have not heard anything like that kind of clarity from the Pope. In fact, because he's the Pope, he has caused far more alarm and consternation than any Protestant making those same statements. There are plenty of Protestants who have gotten this question wrong about the exclusivity of Christ. Plenty of them. But because we have not elevated any of them to the place of Pope, that is a far less concerning issue than when the Pope makes these sorts of claims. It's just not true that investing the Pope with the highest level of authority in church matters actually clarifies things. Surely you can see that it's more destabilizing to pin your hopes on a pope when a pope can say things like this, surely. And Trent talks about using private judgment to discern things. He says Catholics do it, Protestants do it. Yeah, absolutely we do. And I would just ask my Roman Catholic friends to pay attention to what they're doing when they question the teaching of the Pope by the Scriptures. They're doing something very, very Protestant, okay? Protestants do not reject other kinds of authorities. It's just when it comes to a final authority, we want to put the Bible in first place. Sola scriptura does not mean that the Bible is the only source of knowledge about God. It doesn't even mean that the Bible is the only authority in matters of faith and conduct. But it does mean it is the only final authority in those matters. And as you make up private judgments on what the Pope has done, as a Roman Catholic, you'll find yourself turning to John 14. You'll find yourself turning to Acts chapter 4. Of course you will. You're doing something very apt, very appropriate, very Protestant. But that doesn't make you less Catholic. I put it to you that being Roman Catholic makes you less Catholic, less universal, and less correctable, less reformable. The heart of the formal cause of the Reformation is that we want the Church to be correctable, correctable by something outside itself, because we know how fallible human beings are. The Pope has demonstrated how fallible we are, even fallible when teaching on very clear matters of Scripture, even when being asked point blank about very clear matters of Scripture. Humans, even popes, can err. And the founding statement of faith for the Church of England, the 39th Articles, says this about the Church. It says, look, the visible church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men in which the pure word of God is preached and the sacraments be duly administered according to Christ's ordinance in all those things that of necessity are requisite to the same. It's a spiritual understanding on what the church is. What is the church? The church universal, wherever the word of God is preached and the sacraments are duly administered, there is Christ and his bride, right? That is a truly Catholic vision of the Church that doesn't narrow things down to institutions. The second paragraph says this as the Church of Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch have erred, so also the Church of Rome hath erred, not only in their living and manner of ceremonies, but also in matters of faith. That seems to me to be perfectly reasonable, and it seems to me to be the sort of thing that was demonstrated in Singapore on the 13th of September. The Church of Rome is not special as compared to the Church of Jerusalem, or Alexandria, or Antioch. People can err. The Pope can err. Let us therefore have a higher standard of authority than the Pope. Let us therefore have a scripture that can correct the church, not simply a church that can err and err and err and err and not be tethered by something beyond the church. Those are the two causes of the Reformation that have been spoken about for hundreds of years now. There's the material cause of the Reformation. We want to preserve the fact that it is Christ who saves and he does it all. He comes all the way down the mountain into the gutter, and it is he alone who lifts me back to heaven. It's not a work of cooperation, it's not a work of karma, it's not a work of my success. It's Christ alone, a gracious gift of God alone, received by faith alone. The material cause of the Reformation is that we, unlike in any other religion in the world, we are saved. We simply are saved and God does the saving. And then the formal principle of the Reformation, the formal cause of the Reformation is we need a correctable church because the church has erred and the church can err. And it's the word of God that gives rise to the church, not the church who gives rise to the word of God. Therefore, the word needs to be able to judge the church. And I put it to you that Trent Horn and many other Roman Catholics are opening up the scriptures. They're being good Bereans, as Acts 17 puts it. As they listened to what the Apostle Paul said, they had the scriptures open, trying to figure out if even the Apostle Paul, if what he said was true, they were honoring a principle that is true to all Christians. But it's a truth that gets suppressed when the magisterium or the teaching office of the church occupies first place with Scripture. We need a correctable church. Therefore, we need scripture to come first. So anyway, if you want to know why I am not Roman Catholic, and very often in comments, many Roman Catholic people want to say, Glenn, you seem like a reasonable guy. Why don't you come home to Rome? And my answer is basically to point to those two things that the material cause of the Reformation, I think, is true. I think God saves us and He does all the saving. And I want to have a correctable church, and therefore I believe in solar fidae and I believe in solar scriptura. Um, but I am shoulder to shoulder with all my Roman Catholic brothers and sisters as we proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ out there into the world. This is not a video to tell you why you should not be Roman Catholic, but this is a video where I talk about why I am not Roman Catholic. Why don't you tell me what you think in the comments? That's what the comments are for. I'd love to hear from you guys. Subscribe to the channel if you haven't already, and we'll catch you on the next one. Thanks so much.
SPEAKER_02Well, there we go. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Speak Life Podcast. And if you'd like to get in touch, feel free to email me at thomas at speaklife.org.uk. And we sometimes read out some of your emails on air. Do subscribe to the Speak Life Podcast on your podcatcher of choice. I believe that's the term these uh kids are using nowadays, and um we will be back soon. God bless. Goodbye.