Welcome back to
the "Liberty Insider."
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My name is Lincoln Steed,
editor of Liberty Magazine
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and to reintroduce
my guest, Dr. Ed Cook.
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And before the break, you and
I were really getting into it
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and coming at it
from different angles
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talking about Vatican II,
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this second ecumenical council
of the Roman Catholic Church
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which claims to
apply to all Christendom.
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But Vatican II was
different in many ways
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from some of the others
and certainly the most recent,
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it reconfigured the
Roman Catholic Church
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and how it related
to religious liberty.
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There were other
things discussed,
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that central document, what
was it "Dignitatis Humanae."
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Yes. The dignity of man.
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And they really
expressed it in a way
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that's now
thoroughly agreeable to anybody
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that's working
with religious liberty.
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Correct. Before the
Roman Catholic Church's
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"error has no rights."
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Now, everybody can believe,
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we will defend everyone's right.
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I think that,
for one to understand
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a little bit more of the--
I guess, again their viewpoint
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in their rational
way of understanding it,
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the way they led up
to the document is that--
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its correct that
prior to Vatican II
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it was the concept of
"error had no rights."
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During the
discussion of Vatican II,
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and since that time
they say that's true,
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but the human
person does have rights
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and so in the era of
civil rights that has been,
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you know, advocated strongly
especially here in America
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during the 1960's,
the civil rights movement.
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The Catholic Church associated
and identified some with that
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and wanted to use a
language that could meet
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the understanding of
the masses basically.
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And so doing that,
the church says, yes,
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we will ground the
right to religious freedom
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from the civil perspective
and in the understanding
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of the dignity
of the human person.
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So you don't
think there necessarily
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was a deep-seated
philosophical shift,
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it was an
expression of convenience.
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I look at the
document itself basically,
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like I would explain it,
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you've got so
many different branches
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that tie into the
concept of religious freedom.
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And what the church
simply did instead of focusing
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on the pure theological
religious perspective.
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They're shifting now and looking
at the political dimension,
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the aspect of civil rights.
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So in essence it's not so much
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that the church is denying
the aspect of the theological,
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but they're simple emphasizing
the political and the civil.
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Yeah, I see
with the way you say.
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Yeah, and we couldn't expect
the Catholic Church anymore
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than the
Seventh-day Adventist Church,
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to say that it's no
longer holds the truth.
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Yes. You're right, so
they've reserved that.
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And as you were
getting into that,
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I was going to and I
will now pop you the question.
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A recent document out of Iran
called "Unicity of Salvation,"
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I think is rather jarring
in comparison to Vatican II.
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Correct. And
based on the response,
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basically,
"Unicity of Salvation,"
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it argues in that document
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that the Catholic Church is
the sole depository of truth.
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Individuals seeking
the way of salvation
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need to learn of
Catholicism and embrace it.
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And the reaction
of the Protestant body
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at the time that it was
announced was very strong.
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Yes. Okay.
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Yeah, and
basically, they felt that
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after 30 some odd
years from Vatican II,
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what Protestants
thought was progress.
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They said, with
this one document,
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it looks like
we're now retrograding,
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going back to even
prior to Vatican II.
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So it's exactly
what you were saying,
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that even though
with "Dignitatis Humanae"
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they express the
rights of the individual.
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They were reserving their church
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and their beliefs as
the only valid truth.
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Correct. And so
they're re-expressing it,
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but it was shocking I know
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and it was quite blunt in
the way it expressed itself.
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It says, the separated
churches, Protestant churches
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are only churches at
all sin the views of Rome
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as they share
the common Eucharist.
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Correct.
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And those that don't are not
churches in their definition.
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That's
interesting to say the least.
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I think they're looking at
the-- some of those documents
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like "Unitatis Redintegratio"
basically is the aspect
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of re-establishing
and how do we identify
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these that are non-Catholic.
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What's that Latin name,
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because I'm not even
familiar with that word?
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Yeah, it is that in
essence it's talking
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about the unity of
the idea of non-Catholics,
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in other words, how can
we unify the Christian body?
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What was the second word
term? Redintegratio basically--
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What's the literal
meaning of that word?
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The literal meaning is something
that basically is identifying
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or looking at the
aspect of how to re-establish
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the aspect of unity
and re-establishment--
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Sounded like denigrate was
hidden in there. No. No, no.
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I used to be an English major
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and I know the Latin roots
pop up in English all the time.
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No, it's not referring to that,
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its how to unify
those that are non-Catholic,
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bring them back in essence,
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how to have a
unified Christian body
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is what is this arguing for.
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Now, you know, we all
want a unified Christian body.
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I would hate to get the
idea across in this program
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in discussing another church,
the Roman Catholic Church
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that we sort of knocking
it down and saying that,
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you know, their
claims to create uniformity
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in Christendom are wrong.
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Those claims are
fine, they're biblical.
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It's just that, how do
you attain that uniformity.
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You can't attain
it on false claims
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or doctrine that's
unacceptable to someone
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who thinks that they see
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otherwise in the Bible, right?
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Yes. And for
example, let me just
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give a little explanation
on that point so that,
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you know, we can
understand that obviously
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from the Catholic perspective
like I referred to earlier,
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the idea of a desire for
a unified Christian body,
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one can find that
in John Chapter 17,
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Christ prayer before
you know, He was betrayed--
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Whole prayer was about unity.
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Unity among them as God
in Christ are unified as one.
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Okay, from a
Protestant perspective,
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we would say,
well, what goes back
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to the roots of the break
between Protestants and Rome?
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And when we look at scripture,
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we understand that
Christ is the truth, John 14:6.
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Jesus said, "I am the
way, the truth, and the life.
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No man comes to the
Father except through me."
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In John 17:17 Jesus said,
"That God's word is truth."
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So when we understand
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that truth is found in
Christ and in the word of God.
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We've got to go back and
say, does that truth harmonize
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with what any
other not just Catholic,
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but any other
Christian body is claiming?
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If it does, we could say, yes,
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we can unite together
in fellowship as brethren.
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We're united on the
common platform of truth.
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But if there are divergences
from what scripture teaches,
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we've got to maintain
our allegiance to God.
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Absolutely. But we don't
have to have an unchristian,
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uncharitable
relationship with those people
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and that's what some people
don't understand. Correct.
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And going back to what
I said in another program,
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I guess it was,
in a meeting recently
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with Roman Catholics
at Catholic University
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discussing religious liberty.
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They're fellow Christians
concerned about upholding
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the right to proclaim the
Lord and they speak of Jesus.
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I take them at their word.
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We have huge
doctrinal differences
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but they're fellow human beings
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and we all want the same thing.
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Perhaps, we've
got understandings
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that leads us the
wrong way to accomplish that,
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but we need to be charitable
to fellow human beings.
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You talk about the Reformation
and something just hit me.
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Sometimes, I think when we
talk about the reformation,
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we actually,
inadvertently muddy the issue,
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because much of
the reformation where--
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you know, implies the
reforming of Christian doctrine,
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but much of it was
going a separate way
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on very particular things,
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some of which were
not transcended truth.
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What I would rather
define the difference,
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it's not necessarily
just at the reformation,
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but to go back and to find
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at what points did
Roman Catholic Church
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which for better or worse,
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was shepherding
through the main body
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of believers
through the centuries.
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At what point, did
that mainstream thinking
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of how the church
operated and what it was about?
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Did it skew from
what the Bible laid out?
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What the apostles and the
record of Jesus' ministry?
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And it's very easy to show
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that through the
centuries, it went wrong.
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It went wrong even
before Rome entered the scene.
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Well, it was
about the second century
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they were starting to allegorize
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the very plain
words of scripture
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and Jesus' predictions of
His second coming and so on.
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And I think I should
remember the teachers,
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but they were a few that
rose up in Christendom saying
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well, that's all sort of
a-- just a spiritual picture.
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It says this-- Origin, origin.
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Yeah, origin. But, you know--
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it's just inside your mind.
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It doesn't mean
anything about the real world.
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So Christianity was
skewing off over the centuries.
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Roman Catholicism I
think formalized some of that
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and the
reformation fixed some of it,
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but its not as simple,
it's just separating from Rome,
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what Luther did because
he differed with the Pope.
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We know that
Lutheranism still carries
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many of the same forms
and ceremonies of Romanism
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which would make it
more easy to rejoin.
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You know, I think
that one of the factors,
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that one has to understand
that historical overview
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that you've given is that,
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there have been when one
studies Christian history,
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there are times when you
had voices that were divergent,
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they were in the minority.
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You know, at many times
there was just one individual,
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a group of individuals,
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but during that historical
time period individuals
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that were questioning
the status quo of the day.
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For example, back
in the early 1300's,
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you had John of Paris,
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that began to conceptualize
of a modern secular state,
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where you didn't
have a dominant religion
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that was guiding and
controlling civil power.
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Which is quite a leap,
00:10:01.56\00:10:02.93
because they hadn't seen
anything quite like that.
00:10:02.96\00:10:04.33
Correct. In the
1400s, you had John Wycliffe
00:10:04.36\00:10:07.59
that began to advocate
going back to scripture--
00:10:07.62\00:10:09.30
The "Morning Star of
the Reformation." Yes.
00:10:09.33\00:10:11.56
And then leading up
into the early 1500s,
00:10:11.59\00:10:13.74
you had individuals like Luther
00:10:13.77\00:10:15.41
going back to
study the scriptures.
00:10:15.44\00:10:17.22
He was influenced by
John Huss and others.
00:10:17.25\00:10:19.68
So there are individuals
00:10:19.71\00:10:21.88
that prior to the
reformation itself,
00:10:21.91\00:10:24.17
began to question
some of the status quo.
00:10:24.20\00:10:27.10
And the reformation
itself, if one can imagine
00:10:27.13\00:10:29.27
it might just be the
peak of the mountain top,
00:10:29.30\00:10:31.31
leading up to that point.
00:10:31.34\00:10:32.71
When it came out
and stood distinct
00:10:32.74\00:10:34.32
as there is
definite differences here
00:10:34.35\00:10:36.88
and leading to
two different paths.
00:10:36.91\00:10:38.28
Yes, so there were
currents of events,
00:10:38.31\00:10:40.30
and maybe the catalyst in
itself is not so important.
00:10:40.33\00:10:42.74
But it laid bare an
increasingly divergent
00:10:42.77\00:10:45.66
or developing viewpoint.
00:10:45.69\00:10:47.93
You know, it's very
interesting to study Vatican II.
00:10:47.96\00:10:51.14
We hope that the
good parts of it continue
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because its lead to
some good relationships
00:10:53.68\00:10:57.32
between
churches and particularly
00:10:57.35\00:10:58.72
with the Roman Catholic Church.
00:10:58.75\00:11:00.30
But where do you think its
going in the immediate future,
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Vatican II, is it secure?
00:11:02.56\00:11:05.40
Vatican II is something
that-- you know, as I see it,
00:11:05.43\00:11:08.05
it established the link between
00:11:08.08\00:11:10.56
the church and the modern world.
00:11:10.59\00:11:12.41
There are questions
within the Catholic Church
00:11:12.44\00:11:14.43
regarding the
direction of Vatican II,
00:11:14.46\00:11:16.08
is leading the church.
00:11:16.11\00:11:17.48
And those are things
that currently Pope Benedict
00:11:17.51\00:11:19.66
is trying to
resolve within the church
00:11:19.69\00:11:22.16
to provide more
unity in the church.
00:11:22.19\00:11:26.64
One of the most
moving films that I think,
00:11:26.67\00:11:28.57
I've ever seen was
"The Passion of the Christ"
00:11:28.60\00:11:31.09
by Mel Gibson, producer.
00:11:31.12\00:11:34.30
As we all know, that
became a very successful movie,
00:11:34.33\00:11:37.62
but there's something
troubling about that movie
00:11:37.65\00:11:39.43
because the Producer of it,
00:11:39.46\00:11:40.83
Mel Gibson a
committed Roman Catholic.
00:11:40.86\00:11:43.52
He and his
father and many others
00:11:43.55\00:11:45.26
we find out are adamantly
opposed to their churches
00:11:45.29\00:11:49.53
betrayal of its foundational
beliefs at Vatican II.
00:11:49.56\00:11:53.34
I think for many people before
00:11:53.37\00:11:54.78
that they didn't
really know of Vatican II.
00:11:54.81\00:11:56.83
This huge church
conference in the 1960's
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that among
other things developed
00:12:00.32\00:12:02.25
a definitive progressive
viewpoint on religious liberty,
00:12:02.28\00:12:06.94
so progressive that today,
00:12:06.97\00:12:08.37
I can hear a
cardinal only a few weeks ago,
00:12:08.40\00:12:11.14
talking about religious liberty
00:12:11.17\00:12:12.54
and the Catholic
commitment to this saying,
00:12:12.57\00:12:14.90
well, before Vatican II
00:12:14.93\00:12:16.30
we use to hold that
"error has no rights."
00:12:16.33\00:12:20.13
And it's a little
ironic that Mel Gibson,
00:12:20.16\00:12:22.16
apart from being
arrested and saying
00:12:22.19\00:12:23.92
drunken things
about other faiths,
00:12:23.95\00:12:26.88
that Mel Gibson
and those like him,
00:12:26.91\00:12:28.60
some with
influence, some with money
00:12:28.63\00:12:31.42
are adamantly determined
to turn their church back
00:12:31.45\00:12:34.81
to what we Protestants
know was a persecuting church
00:12:34.84\00:12:38.21
that had no understanding
of religious liberty
00:12:38.24\00:12:40.95
as the Bible advances it.
00:12:40.98\00:12:43.51
Presently, we're
under a good model
00:12:43.54\00:12:45.36
and a good relationship
with Roman Catholicism.
00:12:45.39\00:12:47.85
But we must pray
that Vatican II holds.
00:12:47.88\00:12:52.84
For "Liberty Insider"
this is Lincoln Steed.
00:12:52.87\00:12:55.72