Staples White debate on Purgatory

[Catholicdeacon]

Anybody heard the debate today? How was it?

Viva Cristo Rey!!

Catholic Deacon

[catholic1seeks]

Where can it be found?

[catholic1seeks]

i didnt know this was going to happen: staples will be debating white at 5:00 central time here:

http://www.aomin.org/articles/webcast.html

[catholic1seeks]

Did it anyone else listen to it?

[Pete Holter]

Here it is!

Tim Staples vs. James White - 1 Corinthians 3:10-15 and the Doctrine of Purgatory

You'll want to allow a minute for the download. Thanks to Alpha & Omega Ministries for hosting this.

In Christ,
Pete

[MarcoPolo]

I didn't think apologists were giving White any more attention. He's proven to be a polemics driver rather than a serious apologist.

[kotek]

Originally Posted by Catholicdeacon

Anybody heard the debate today? How was it?

Viva Cristo Rey!!

Catholic Deacon

I listened to the debate and it wasn't pretty for Tim Staples, Dr. White cleaned his clock and handed his head to him on a platter.

The irony is that Dr. White clearly and accurately exegeted the text in question and his exegesis of the text was pretty much the same conclusion and exegesis that most if not all Roman Catholic Biblical scholars come to as well.

[MarcoPolo]

Originally Posted by kotek

his exegesis of the text was pretty much the same conclusion and exegesis that most if not all Roman Catholic Biblical scholars come to as well.

I haven't listened to the debate yet, but based on the subject matter----you are claiming most Catholic Biblical scholars deny Purgatory in which passages?

[Mickey]

Originally Posted by kotek

I listened to the debate and it wasn't pretty for Tim Staples, Dr. White cleaned his clock and handed his head to him on a platter.

Sounds like you are a tad biased.

PS--Mr White does not hold an actual PHD.

[MarcoPolo]

This debate is centered on 1 Cor 3:15, which I personally don't like because that alone is not a complete picture for why Purgatory is completely Biblical, but anyway...

I listened to most of White's opening statement (that is until he went on his "Catholic apologists" and the Catholic Church are hypocrites rant toward the end, which is par for the course for this polemicist). But here's a part I'd like to address. White states:

Now the opposite of the reception of reward is to suffer loss. The Greek term that Paul uses is zhmiwyhsetai (my note, I think he completely mispronounced this) is translated by the vast majority of recognized translations as "suffer loss" and there is a reason for this. Despite the fact that you can render the term as "punish" it's normative meaning, especially in the New Testament is to experiencing the opposite of gain, that is, loss.

He insists that the passage makes no allusion to a person being purified, but rather that a person just won't get some reward. He talks very fast and often speaks incoherently (like when earlier he tried to identify the "verb" in 3:13 for "the fire" which isn't a verb) and it makes him hard to follow. I would posit that he was reading his statements.

Anyway, White goes on to deny that purification is a sense in this text because of this word zhmiwyhsetai, which in Phi 3:8, and the same paraphrase from Lk 9:25, Mt 16:26, Mk 8:26 seems to mean the deprivation of a reward. However, in 2 Cor 7:9 it clearly refers to damage, and Strong's dictionary defines the word as "to affect with damage, do damage to....to sustain damage, to receive injury, suffer loss." What White has the most trouble grasping is the nature of fire. Is a person inflicted with fire simply being deprived of a reward? It's almost too stupid to translate the passage that way, but White does. He also at this point in the debate at least doesn't seem to get the refining purifying nature of the metaphor of the concept of smelting. Smelting is where gold or silver is burnt up and the other impure substances are destroyed. In other words, the gold and silver are purified, which is exactly what Purgatory is. This concept of smelting is even seen in the Old Testament in Zechariah 13:9 which reads: "I will refine them like silver and test them like gold." The concept is refinement, which Paul uses as his metaphor. White completely denies refinement has anything to do with 1 Cor 3. His selective rules for translating a particular Greek word has blinded him to the larger context of the entire metaphor, which is the purification of gold and silver, and that the person himself goes through the fire.

I am partly impressed by the complex gymnastics White chooses to do to come up with an anti-purification understanding of 1 Cor 3, but at the end of the day, it just shows how hard he is trying to look for an anti-Catholic interpretation in the text.

And life goes on....

[DaMooksta]

this is terrible!! I always use this text to show the biblical references of purgatory and Staples was just destroyed by a baptist on this verse...


whats next?? scott hahn is going to get refuted on Matt 16:13-18 which is our biblical foundation on the Papacy..

sigh..now what?

[Randy Carson]

Originally Posted by DaMooksta

this is terrible!! I always use this text to show the biblical references of purgatory and Staples was just destroyed by a baptist on this verse...


whats next?? scott hahn is going to get refuted on Matt 16:13-18 which is our biblical foundation on the Papacy..

sigh..now what?

Now, you need to take a deep breath or two.

Debates are not usually about the strength of the arguments but about the strength of the debaters.

I haven't listened to the debate yet, but White is a professional, and Staples has never impressed me in this regard. He's a really nice guy with a great conversion story who delivers prepared talks well. However, I'm not convinced that Tim is in the same league with Sungenis, Matatics or Madrid - all of whom have destroyed White one on one.

Again, I haven't listened yet, but if Staples lost, I have to say it doesn't surprise me...I had a bad feeling when I saw the announcement.

[catholic1seeks]

Originally Posted by DaMooksta

whats next?? scott hahn is going to get refuted on Matt 16:13-18 which is our biblical foundation on the Papacy..

sigh..now what?

Is White really going to debate Scott Hahn?
If so, when?


Also, I don't think Staples did that bad. The whole debate was on that ONE verse... and one of my favorite parts of the debate was when Staples asked White if he could provide a historical reference as to when the doctrine of purgatory was changed. All he gave was some rant on indulgences (which, when he brought it up, had to do with a certain practice); he couldn't provide anything as to when the doctrine was changed or invented....

And if purgatory is not true or was not believed by the early Christians, we should expect to find objections to the belief, but we do not.

[Hubriss]

As an outsider (non-christian) and someone who has spoken with Staples before on matters of religion, here are some of my impressions.

I had the passage they were talking about up the whole time trying to follow them. I gotta say, apologists know their bible. They can refer to passages to each other and the other guy would say "Oh yeah, when Jesus said this, this and this."

About the debate. First, White was the moderator of the debate, which he was in, so he had the most talking time and the clearest voice since it was on his show that he hosts, so there it might be said that he had a slight personal advantage. Though I can say that White did very well self-moderating. It might have seemed to his advantage that Staples was incompetent or something when White had to interrupt him for going over time and basically force him to stop talking, but Staples responded somewhat well to those occurrences. White did speak quite fast sometimes, but not incoherently. He also didn't handle it well when people asked questions which he thought he covered in his opening statement.

Staples by the end of it resorted some to attacks on White's person instead of focusing on the actual issue more, which isn't surprising to me.

Now, the issues... I'll try to remember the debate as best as I can. To me it seemed like much of it came down to what "suffer loss" actually means.

I guess I'll pick on MarcoPolo and his giant gymnast paragraph above. "Suffer loss" if correctly translated (know nothing about that) clearly means what it says: they will lose something, and it will be a negative loss because losing it will cause them to suffer. You don't suffer the loss of a sickness or impediment or something negative. The only time you suffer when you lose something is when you lose something good that you wanted. It does not necessarily mean the person is losing out on the reward, but there does not seem to be anything left that they could lose, since the context would be the Day of the Lord (the apocalypse) and all worldly things would not matter.

This passage is clearly referring to peoples' works and how they build up each person's metaphorical temple spirit which God dwells. To me at least, it clearly does not refer to any kind of purifying, or references to destroying the negative qualities of a person's temple. It has nothing to do with any smelting metaphor because he says you can build on a temple with "gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw." You don't smelt costly stones, wood, hay or straw. It follows the building metaphor, yet there is a mixing also of worldly perception. You do not build with gold or silver normally, yet they are precious earthly metals that shine. So the reason that all these materials are listed seems to be a metaphor for the perception or showing of good works of people by people. Like when Jesus said that the poor woman who gave two coins gave far more than any rich man who gave more because she gave proportionately more of what she had. The metaphorical materials used to build refer to the peoples' value of the works, and not God's.

(Breaking into paragraphs) The "fire" will reveal the buildings/works for what they actually are. This seems to imply that works that have the appearance of gold or straw may actually have the same quality. The "fire" is just a scrutiny of the works which "shows them for what they are" and does not refer to any punishment inflicted on the actual person's soul which purgatory is supposedly supposed to do. This is highlighted in line 15 where it says that if a person's house does not withstand the scrutiny, he will still be saved (from hell I'm guessing), yet he will be as one escaping through the flames. The words "escaping" and "through" imply that the fire does not actually harm or punish the person, nor purify.

To me it seemed like Staples had to do a lot of gymnastics to pull references from other passages in which words might have contextually meant one thing, and tried to use that contextual meaning in the context in this passage, while refusing to think of or ignoring the separate context that this passage has by itself. White pointed this out a couple of times and I would have to agree with him, in terms of interpreting it from a faithful Christian perspective. To conclude the existence of an extra "state of being" as Staples said purgatory was, you'd have to do a lot of... fancy footwork.

It was funny at the end. White reminded Staples that he could invite him to debate on Catholic Answers, which Staples will probably NEVER do because it will appear to legitimize White, and there are likely lots of protestants who'd like to be on a Catholic radio show. Plus there is an advantage in terms of target audience for debating in your opponent's realm. If you lose, not many on your side hear you, yet if you're able, you can impress some on your opponent's.

[jericho777]

Originally Posted by Randy Carson

Now, you need to take a deep breath or two.

Debates are not usually about the strength of the arguments but about the strength of the debaters.

I haven't listened to the debate yet, but White is a professional, and Staples has never impressed me in this regard. He's a really nice guy with a great conversion story who delivers prepared talks well. However, I'm not convinced that Tim is in the same league with Sungenis, Matatics or Madrid - all of whom have destroyed White one on one.

Again, I haven't listened yet, but if Staples lost, I have to say it doesn't surprise me...I had a bad feeling when I saw the announcement.

Very true that's why I'm not a fan of debates. You are throwing Mr Staples under the bus with his lack of ability. However if you felt your guy won I think your tone might be a little different.