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Are Miracles the Best Route to Faith? Even Rome Says NO. || SLP681 · The Speak Life Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: There was a leg, there was no leg, there was a leg again.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_01: You can't leg, no leg, leg.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: You're done.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_01: So figure out why you were wrong because you're sort of abstract reasoning.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: There are a lot of places that could have gone wrong.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's really hard.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: Lots of smart people have disagreed with you about that, and you've just seen that your worldview is wrong.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_02: God has manifestly vindicated the Catholic Church, so you should submit to Rome.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: What is faith?
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: How do you get it?
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: How do you nurture it?
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: And how do you share it?
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: Those questions are absolutely crucial if you are a Christian on the inside of faith, or if you're on the outside looking in and wondering if you too could have faith.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: And this question has been taken in a new direction by a small group of Catholic apologists.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I think this direction is no good for Catholics themselves or Protestants or for those on the outside looking in and wanting to have faith.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: Ethan Mews and Joe Schmidt and Camera Batuzi and others are taking people in a false direction that is not going to help them.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's not even going to help them be better Catholics.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to compare some of their teaching to what Ratzinger said, who was later Pope Benedict.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to compare what they say to an excellent contemporary Catholic scholar, and this is not the way.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: If you think miracles take you to Rome, not even Rome thinks that.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: And certainly Scripture doesn't think that.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not going to help you.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's not going to help you be a better Catholic or a Protestant or a Christian.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: And it's certainly not going to help the on-looking world to figure out what is faith, how do you get it, how do you nurture it, and how do you share it.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Glenn from Speak Life.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: We like to see all things through the lens of Jesus.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: Please give the channel a subscribe if you'd like to try on a pair of Jesus lenses, even if only for a little bit.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: What we're going to do is dive into one of Joe Schmidt's long videos that he made a couple of weeks ago to explain his conversion to Roman Catholicism.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: And in it, he's going to play some clips from Ethan Mews, who is on a bunch of different YouTube channels explaining his methodology, how he got to faith, and how he is inviting others to follow in his very particular pathway.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: We'll begin looking at Ethan Mews and Joe Schmidt telling us that the pathway they are recommending is a new departure in Catholic apologetics.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that should raise alarm bells.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: Let's watch.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's something that I think has actually been conspicuously lacking in Catholic apologetics for the past few years.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: Which is just that a lot of people are taking an approach to Catholic apologetics that doesn't start out with saying, What does the church and what does scripture teach about how I should go about doing this?
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: What are the right arguments to be making?
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: What is the approach I should be taking?
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: And so you need to start there.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: Just what does revelation say about how to approach going out and giving a rational defense of the faith?
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: And that starts with miracles and prophecies.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: That's the best place to start.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: That's the best rational foundation.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: And it's it's easy to see why.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's why God chooses to use them to as the basically external proofs of revelation, which is that they're just uniquely conducive to docility.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: They are uniquely conducive to docility.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: The Cambridge Dictionary definition of docility is the quality of being quiet, easy to manage, or willing to teach and influence.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, this is what we need.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: We need miracles to create docility in people.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: If that's the basis, right?
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: And this is this is something that um Saint Paul himself explains explicitly in 1 Corinthians, when he says, My message and preaching were not with wise and praise persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power, so that your faith may not rest on human wisdom, but on God's power.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: We will get to that.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: So what he's explicitly clarifying there is that when our faith is not based off of basically like discursive reasoning about the intrinsic plausibility of the theological propositions that are being asserted by the church, but is instead just the church claims to speak on behalf of God, the way God signs his signature to such claims is through performing miracles.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: We will get in to first Corinthians chapters one and two, because this is ripping it so far out of its context, Ethan Muse is actually saying the opposite of what St.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: Paul says.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: So God is clearly attesting that he wants me to submit to this institution.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: So, like, regardless of whether it makes sense to me, regardless if I can figure out the solution to all these objections, I can know that Catholicism is true for the same reason that if I was there during Christ's ministry and saw him walking on water and telling the paralytics to get up and walk and restoring sight to the blind and raising himself from the dead in a glorified body, if I saw all those things, I'd know he was who he said he was, even if I didn't know how to resolve all of the apparent contradictions between his doctrine and the Old Testament.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: So doctrinal confusion is resolved by an undeniable miracle, which brings me into a state of docility.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: And in this state of docility, I might not know how to resolve all my doctrinal dilemmas, but the miracle has happened.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: It must be vindicating something, and Ethan Mews says, it must be obvious what the miracle is vindicating.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: It must be vindicating a certain institution, a certain miracle worker, the doctrines that are surrounding this miracle in some way.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: And apparently that I can directly perceive from the miracle, and it will lead me to a state of docility where instead of doctrinal confusion, I can simply submit to whatever it is that the miracle is so obviously telling me to submit to.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: And remember that Ethan Mews has used 1 Corinthians chapters 1 and 2 in a way that I think is entirely upside down in terms of how Scripture is actually speaking.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and notice that he is bringing into conversation both the contemporary miracle claims and first century miracles in the Gospels.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: And he's saying, just as this happened in 1917 in Portugal, so it is like what Jesus does in Matthew's Gospel.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: This is a mess, people.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: This is a mess.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: But let's keep going.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we've got all those types of healing miracles.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: If so that you may know the Son of Man has authority to forgive sins, get up and walk.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: If healing the paralytic is good enough, then we've got that for Fatima.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: So again, Portugal in the 20th century and Jesus in Matthew chapter 9 are just like one another.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: And in Matthew chapter 9, Ethan Muse is taking this miracle to be largely a vindication of a certain dogma, a dogma that was in doubt by the Pharisees and the teachers of the law.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: They had doctrinal confusion over how Jesus is able to forgive somebody.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus brings perfect clarity by healing the paralytic, so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so it is a vindicatory miracle of a miracle worker who happens to be Jesus in Matthew chapter 9.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: And just notice for this whole thing to work, Jesus needs to be a fungible, exchangeable unit in the story.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: He could be any old miracle worker, he happens to be the Son of Man doing this miracle.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: And the main thing to learn from Matthew 9 is that miracles vindicate doctrine.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: Forgetting, of course, that the teachers of the law are not impressed.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: The teachers of the law are not, in fact, rendered docile by this miracle, and they change none of their theology.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: But the miracle in Matthew 9 and Fatima in Portugal in the 20th century, they are being compared to one another and almost equated with one another.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: So Fatima is a place in Portugal where three children, the oldest of which Lucia is ten years old, she says she meets with an apparition of a lady who calls herself the Lady of the Rosary, who she takes to be Mary.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: And there are a number of signs and wonders, including three months after a prediction that there would be some celestial sign, multitudes see in the heavens like the sun is dancing, and some really remarkable things that seem to confirm that this little girl really did have an apparition.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um the little girl grows up, she becomes a nun, she actually writes down a lot of what Mary had said to her as messages for the church.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: And um, these things get released at different times, including in 2000, there was a release of the third secret of Fatima.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: That's what is being referred to as Fatima.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if restoring sight to the blind is good enough, we've got that for Fatima.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: You know, hearing to the deaf, we've got that for Fatima.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: We've got things that are almost tantamount to resurrections.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so Joe Schmidt comes back in.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_02: Fifth, and relatedly, Protestant accommodationist denial undermines the function of miracles as signs to the faithful.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_02: If God's okay with doing the most colossal miracles in all of history, in witness to and furtherance of false doctrines and false claims of divine legates, then miracles no longer serve as avenues by which the faithful can discern right from wrong doctrine.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: Miracles no longer serve as such signs.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, from the earliest time, the people of God have been warned that being able to perform a miraculous sign does not vindicate the doctrine.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: Pharaoh's magicians could do miracles.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: Deuteronomy 13 and 18 talk about all sorts of false prophets being able to do miracles.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus talks about false prophets and false messiahs being able to do miracles and deceive even the elect if such a thing is possible.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: In Matthew chapter 24.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: St.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: Paul in 2 Corinthians 9 or St.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: John in Revelation chapter 13 talks about the most extraordinary miracles.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: In Revelation chapter 13, fire can come from heaven, which was a vindicatory miracle for Elijah back in the day, but even Satan can perform such miracles.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: Scripture from beginning to end, from first to last, warns us of privileging miracles as the routes to establishing faith.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: Miracles must be tested by something else, by something higher.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: Miracles are not first in the system, they never have been.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: And the scriptures are constantly warning us not to privilege miracles.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, Rome has consistently warned fellow Roman Catholics not to privilege miracles above all else.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: This is not the path that people should tread.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: Let's keep going with Joan.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_02: Fifth, and relatedly, Protestant accommodationist denial undermines the function of miracles as signs to the faithful.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_02: If God's okay with doing the most colossal miracles in all of history, in witness to and furtherance of false doctrines and false claims of divine legates, then miracles no longer serve as avenues by which the faithful can discern right from wrong doctrine.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: Notice the language of avenues.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: There's meant to be a road that takes you infallibly from a miracle to Rome.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: I've got a previous video, it's two hours long where I go into why that just cannot work.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_02: Like now, in order to figure out religious truth, we have to become like mini-popes who only settle on theological views after a diligent scientific examination of individual controversies and after learning like Hebrew and Greek to solve some of these centuries-old debates between Catholics and Protestants and also among Protestants themselves.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: We will get back to that.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: With all the doctrinal confusion that Schmidt and Mews are worried about, you have to become a mini-pope in order to sort out those confusions.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas miracles that are undeniable, they bring you to a state of docility where you can merely submit to Rome and then figure out the theological claims secondarily.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: For Joe and Ethan, the problem is if you put doctrine over above miracles, you need the miracles to be above the doctrine and then sort out your doctrine secondarily.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: And Joe says Protestants are always becoming their own little mini popes where they can decide on what the doctrine is.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: The irony, of course, is that this is in contradiction to what actual popes have said.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I find Pope Benedict and his writings as Cardinal Ratzinger so clarifying, so helpful on this issue.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: And whether Joe or Ethan remain within Roman Catholicism or not, I really hope they learn from the best of Catholic teaching and scholarship.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_02: That's your model for how God intends for us to discern religious truth?
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_02: And that's your model for how religious truth should be promulgated and safeguarded?
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_02: How has that worked out since the advent of Protestantism?
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_02: Has it led to the unity that Christ prayed for?
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_02: Or has it led to the interminable doctrinal disputes and a schism fest?
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_02: I'll let you answer that for yourself.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: Schism fest is certainly one way of characterizing uh Protestantism from uh the other side.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, Protestants can say back, well, there's this tyrannical uniformity on the other side of the tire, but we are going to bring different priors to the conversation.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: Is Protestantism a schism fest the shoe fits at times?
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: Is Roman Catholicism tyrannical uniformity?
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you you can decide for yourself whether it is, but there are always going to be disputes about the one and the many, about unity which can tilt towards uniformity and tyranny, or the many which tilts towards diversity and then breakdown.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: Which is right.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: Well, if you're looking for any kind of vindicatory miracle around Protestantism, um, which I'm not saying that you should, but if you were to look for such miracles, the sorts of evidence you would look for would not be some kind of Protestant miracle worker saying, I condemn the Pope as the Antichrist and then being able to do a miraculous deed.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: Because Protestantism just does not think of itself in the supremacist terms that Rome does, Protestant vindication would have nothing to do really with either affirming or denying the Pope.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: An affirmation of Protestant churches as true churches, even though not in communion with Rome, that would look like the Protestant Church persisting through time as a true church that hands on the deposit of faith, that seeks the evangelization of the nations, that carries on the works of the kingdom that drives out demons, that produces the fruit of the Spirit.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: If such true and vital churches exist that seem to be doing what the church in Acts was doing, turning the world upside down and bringing heaven to earth, lives transformed, addictions conquered, demons driven out, the works of the kingdom performed, and that persisting century after century after century, not in communion with Rome, vindicates a non-Roman vision of church far more than an apparition on top of a building, or a ten-year-old saying that she saw Mary.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: If you're looking for vindicatory miracles, then actually the spread of non-Roman churches and the existence for thousands of years of Eastern Orthodoxy as a non-Roman church, the existence of such multitudes of people being brought out of darkness and into light to follow the way of Jesus and to transform the world through the works of the kingdom, that is happening through Protestant churches and Orthodox churches.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I submit to you that the salvation of multitudes and the mobilization of multitudes and the reaching of the nations for Jesus is a centuries-long remarkable miracle that is, orders of magnitude more impressive than any particular Marian apparition.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: A Roman Catholic with a very strong impulse to tell the world submit to Rome is of course going to see the profusion of Protestant churches around in the world as simply a schism fest.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: There is another way of seeing things.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: Now that is not to say that Protestants don't need to examine their own schismatic tendencies, just as Rome might need to look at its supremacist tendencies.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: But that's just by way of responding to Joe Schmidt's line about schismfest.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: But here's where I want to really get to, uh, because I I found Cardinal Ratzinger's words uh from uh the year 2000 to be just such a breath of fresh air, such sanity, such clarity brought to bear on these questions of what is faith, how do you get it, how do you nurture it, and how do you share it?
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: And writing as Cardinal Ratzinger, he wrote the document, uh, the message of Fatima in the year 2000.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: And Ratzinger, who went on to become Pope Benedict XVI, is doing everything he can to cool down people's expectations about the secret of Fatima and to reorient people away from the spectacle of the 20th century and back to the certain revelation of the New Testament.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: Just get a load of this.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: I am constantly helped by uh Ratzinger and Benedict's uh teaching in all sorts of ways.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: Here's how he begins orienting people's expectations to the miracle of Fatima.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: A careful reading of the text of the so-called third secret of Fatima, published here in its entirety long after the fact and by decision of the Holy Father, will probably prove disappointing or surprising after all the speculation it has stirred.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: No great mystery is revealed, nor is the future unveiled.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: We see the Church of the Martyrs of the century which is just past represented in a scene described in a language which is symbolic and not easy to decipher.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: Is this what the mother of the Lord wished to communicate to Christianity and to humanity at a time of great difficulty and distress?
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: Is it of any help to us at the beginning of the new millennium?
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: Or are these only projections of the inner world of children, brought up in a climate of profound piety, but shaken at the same time by the tempests which threatened their own time?
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: We're talking about three children, the oldest of which was ten, and it's in the midst of the Great War.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: How should we understand the vision?
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: What are we to make of it?
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the very first thing Ratzinger wants us to know public revelation and private revelations, their theological status.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: Before attempting an interpretation, the main lines of which can be found in the statement read by Cardinal Sardano on the thirteenth of may this year, at the end of the Mass celebrated by the Holy Father in Fatima, there is a need for some basic clarification of the way in which, according to church teaching, phenomena such as Fatima are to be understood within the life of faith.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: The teaching of the Church distinguishes between public revelation and private revelations.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: The two realities differ not only in degree but also in essence.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: The term public revelation refers to the revealing action of God directed to humanity as a whole, and which finds its literary expression in the two parts of the Bible, the Old and New Testaments.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: It is called revelation because in it God gradually made himself known to men to the point of becoming man himself in order to draw to himself the whole world and unite it with himself through his incarnate Son Jesus Christ.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: It is not a matter, therefore, of intellectual communication, but of a life giving process in which God comes to meet man.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: At the same time this process naturally produces data pertaining to the mind and to the understanding of the mystery of God.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: It is a process which involves man in his entirety and therefore reason as well, but not reason alone.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: Because God is one, history, which he shares with humanity, is also one.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: It is valid for all time, and it has reached its fulfillment in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: In Christ God has said everything, that is, he has revealed himself completely, and therefore revelation came to an end with the fulfillment of the mystery of Christ, as enunciated in the New Testament.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: To explain the finality and completeness of revelation, the Catechism of the Catholic Church quotes a text of Saint John of the Cross.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: Love this in giving of his son his only word, for he possesses no other.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: He spoke everything to us at once in this sole word.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: And he has no more to say, because what he spoke before to the prophets in parts, he has now spoken all at once by giving us the all who is his son.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: Very Hebrews one there.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: Any person questioning God or desiring some vision or revelation would be guilty, not only of foolish behavior, but also of offending him by not fixing his eyes entirely upon Christ and by living with the desire for some other novelty.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have the desire for some other novelty?
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: At that point, Saint John of the Cross is telling you stop it.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: Christ is all.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: This is Saint John of the Cross.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: This is Scripture.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: You can offend Jesus by seeking some other novelty and not looking to him as your all in all.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: Ratzinger continues, Because the single revelation of God addressed to all people comes to completion with Christ and the witness born to him in the books of the New Testament, the Church is tied to this unique event of sacred history and to the word of the Bible, which guarantees and interprets it.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: But this does not mean that the Church can now look only to the past and that she is condemned to sterile repetition.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: The catechism of the Catholic Church says in this regard, even if revelation is already complete, it has not been made fully explicit, it remains for Christian faith gradually to grasp its full significance over the course of the centuries.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: The way in which the Church is bound to both the uniqueness of the event and progress in understanding, it is very well illustrated.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: In the farewell discourse of the Lord, when taking leave of his disciples, he said, I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth, for he will not speak on his own authority.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: On the one hand, the Spirit acts as a guide who discloses a knowledge previously unreachable because the premise was missing.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: This is the boundless breadth and depth of Christian faith.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: On the other hand, to be guided by the Spirit is also to draw from the riches of Jesus Christ Himself, the inexhaustible depths of which appear in the way the Spirit leads.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: In this regard, the Catechism cites profound words of Pope Gregory the Great.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: The sacred scriptures grow with the one who reads them.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: The Second Vatican Council notes three essential ways in which the Spirit guides in the Church, and therefore three ways in which the word grows, through the meditation and study of the faithful, through the deep understanding which comes from spiritual experience, and through the preaching of those who, in the succession of the episcopate, have received the sure charism of truth.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: So that third way is an institutional and a Roman supremacist institutional definition of who bears the ministry of the keys, who can bind and loose and that sort of thing.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: So that's a very typically Roman Catholic kind of understanding, that third thing.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: But Ratzinger goes on.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: In this context, it now becomes possible to understand rightly the concept of private revelation, which refers to all the visions and revelations which have taken place since the completion of the New Testament.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: This is the category to which we must assign the message of Fatima.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: In this respect, let us listen once again to the catechism of the Catholic Church.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: Throughout the ages, there have been so called private.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Private revelations, some of which have been recognized by the authority of the Church.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: It is not their role to complete Christ's definitive revelation, but to help live more fully by it in a certain period of history.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: This clarifies two things.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: The authority of private revelations is essentially different from that of the definitive public revelation.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: The latter demands faith.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: In it, in fact, God Himself speaks to us through human words and the mediation of the living community of the Church.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: Faith in God and in His Word is different from any other human faith, trust, or opinion.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: The certainty that it is God who is speaking gives me the assurance that I am in touch with truth itself.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: It gives me a certitude which is beyond verification by any human way of knowing.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: It is the certitude upon which I build my life and to which I entrust myself in dying.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: What is faith?
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: How do I get it?
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: How do I nurture it and how do I pass it on?
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: I think Ratzinger has some really good wisdom for us all.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: God speaks with self-authenticating power through his word.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: He addresses me in a way that is already assuring me that I am in touch with truth itself because truth is speaking to me.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: This is a doctrine of public revelation.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not even quoting from like the magisterial reformers.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'm quoting from Ratzinger, who is citing St.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: John of the Cross and Pope Gregory the Great and Vatican I and Vatican II.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, even by Roman Catholic lights, this is how faith happens.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: This is how faith is nurtured.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: This is how faith is understood and passed on.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: And it is very different from private revelation.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: Private revelation is a help to this faith and shows its credibility precisely by leading me back to the definitive public revelation, i.e., the scriptures.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: In this regard, Cardinal Prospero Lambertini, the future Pope Benedict XIV, says in his classic treatise, which later became normative for beatifications and canonizations, an ascent of Catholic faith is not due to revelations approved in this way.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: It is not even possible.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: These revelations, the private revelations, seek rather an ascent of human faith in keeping with the requirements of prudence, which puts them before us as probable and credible to piety.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: The Flemish theologian E.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: Darnus, an eminent scholar in this field, states succinctly that ecclesiastical approval of a private revelation has three elements.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: The message contains nothing contrary to faithful morals, it is lawful to make it public, and the faithful are authorized to accept it with prudence.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: Such a message can be a genuine help in understanding the gospel and living it better at a particular moment in time.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, it should not be disregarded.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: It is a help which is offered, but which one is not obliged to use.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: And yet again and again, this very new departure in Roman Catholic apologetics, the punchline of studying Fatima and other Catholic miracles is submit to Rome.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: Just snap out of it, my friend.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: Submit to Rome.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_02: Submit to Rome.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_02: God has manifestly vindicated the Catholic Church, so you should submit to Rome.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: You first, Joe, you first, Ethan, why don't you submit to Rome first?
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: Because this is not Rome's way of coming to Rome.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's certainly not the preferred way of coming to Rome.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: Within Rome, there is public revelation, which is the scriptures, and there are private revelations that can point back to the public revelation.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: And even as Rome publishes the third secret of Fatima, Rome is bending over backwards to warn people away from the path that Ethan Mews and Joe Schmidt are treading.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: They are really demolishing any difference between public revelation and private revelation.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: They're really demolishing any difference between Fatima and the Gospels.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: And because they are privileging the miracles, repeatedly they say that actually the resurrection of Jesus in the first century is in some senses less certain than the miracles of Fatima and Zaito.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_03: Cameron Batuzi says it.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_03: The Zaytun apparition, the Fatima, and like these, these are very well-evidenced events.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_03: And so you should accept it, especially if you accept the resurrection on the account of what we have in the Gospels, what we have in Paul's letters.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_03: So if you accept it on that, if you accept the resurrection on that basis, then you should also accept that the really good evidence for these other apparitions.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_03: And what's what often happens seem you know for from our position is that people are applying their skepticism inconsistently.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_03: Like if you applied the same level of skepticism, if you're skeptical of Zaytun, if you applied that same level of skepticism to the resurrection, then you would just not be a Christian.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_03: You would just like doubt that Jesus actually rose from the dead.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_03: And so that's ultimately, I think, the point that Trent is making the that that I would also affirm.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_03: It does seem to be inconsistent.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_03: Is Ethan saying it?
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_01: Because a person who adopts this hyperskepticism towards Catholic miracle claims, um, maybe they have like uh these very personal reasons that they accept Christian truth claims even though they reject the Catholic truth claims.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_01: But what they've completely forsaken is any ability to do apologetics for Christianity or to go out and defend the Christian faith against a skeptic.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_01: Because if you're going and you're saying, look, you could have photographs, you could have scientific analyses for these Eucharistic miracles, you could have, you know, 100,000 witnesses, and all of them have signed their names, and it's contemporaneous documentation, you could have 15,000 healings, and you know, you could have people's eyes regenerating through the intercession of all these saints and all this stuff, and you're gonna still strain for skeptical, like atheistic explanations of all of this stuff, to then go back to the person and then say, oh, well, based off of these ancient historical documents, you know, where there's debates about the provenance of the documents and who's writing the documents and how much legendary embellishment has occurred in these documents, you're gonna say that that evidentiary record should persuade the atheist, even though they have in the background that like even in cases where they had way more overwhelming evidence presented to them, that basically there was always a skeptical, naturalistic debunking of it.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's just it puts you in a dialectically impossible situation to advance the resurrection.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_01: So he will always have a trump card if you're debating him, and yet you're a s you play the skeptic against Catholics.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_01: So you've just completely neutralized your ability to do apologetics for Christianity.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_03: Hmm.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_03: It's it's a big problem.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_03: I think you highlighted a really good reason why it's such a big problem for people and and why everyone should just embrace Rome.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_03: Just uh just do it, just embrace.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_02: Here's Joe saying it.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_02: And they we literally have like the transcripts from that.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_02: We have like two dozen people from his town testifying to like feeling his stump beforehand, no leg, and then afterwards, leg.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_02: So no leg, leg.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, oh gosh, like this is insane.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_02: Like, this is much better evidence than the resurrection, for instance.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_02: Like in my in my view, like the resurrection, like, yeah, we have people who, I mean, four or five eyewitness accounts, or like accounts that maybe claim to be based on eyewitness testimony.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, we think that probably they're written decades after the fact.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_02: There's some, they're not in probabilistically independent on one another, sometimes they're like boring from one another.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_02: So we got Paul and then the four evangelists.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but like, okay, so like four or five testimonies decades after the fact compared to, okay, like very shortly after the fact, like a trial where people are giving sworn testimony.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_02: It's two dozen of them saying I felt his leg beforehand.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_02: Now he has a leg afterhand, the two people who performed the amputation, etc.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_02: So like, I'm like, oh my gosh, this is insane.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: This is a really serious problem.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: It is to bring down the resurrection of Jesus to the level of the private revelations of Fatima.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: And it's to raise up Fatima to this evidentiary place that is supreme in somebody's journey to faith.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: And it's really hard to say which move is more inappropriate and illegitimate and just plain wrong.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_00: Which is more wrong to drag down the resurrection to the level of Fatima, or to raise up Fatima to the level of the resurrection.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: These are huge errors.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: Please, whether you're Catholic, Protestant, whatever you, whatever you are, forget that for the moment.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: Please don't take this path to faith.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: And Protestants can be guilty of this a lot because I think a lot of Protestant apologetics around the resurrection is basically treating the resurrection like it is a first century Fatima rather than a 20th century Fatima.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: So much Protestant apologetics in this space on YouTube in the year 2026 is about basically establishing whether something freaky occurred one Sunday morning 2,000 years ago.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I am just as concerned with Protestant apologists making people trust in the resurrection as though it was a Fatima.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just as concerned with that as with Roman Catholic claims that we need to really pay more attention to 20th century miracles.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: Treating the resurrection like one more freaky occurrence in the first century is not helping anybody.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: And in a sense, it's worse because you can kid yourself that you're actually proclaiming Christ when really you're talking about evidence for the empty tomb when judged by various criteria of historicity.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_00: That is not the scriptural spirit-inspired proclamation that Christ is risen.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: 1 Corinthians 15, which is often brought up in these kinds of conversations, and apologists are really trying to say, no, it really did happen.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: There were eyewitnesses, there were 500 of them.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: Paul talks about it in 1 Corinthians 15.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: Well, yes, Paul does talk about it in 1 Corinthians 15, framed by Jesus Christ died according to the scriptures, he was buried, he rose again according to the scriptures.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't say according to eyewitness testimony, which is really quite good, actually, on the balance of probabilities.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's not it's it's a scriptural proclamation, not even that a strange thing happened one Sunday morning.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_00: It is the proclamation that not only that Christ rose, it is the proclamation that Christ is risen, and of course, of course, because he's God and God's not going to rot in some Jerusalem tomb, is he?
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: Think about it, right?
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: Like that is the weight and the emphasis and the direction of a scriptural proclamation that Jesus Christ is Lord.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_00: Not can we establish some kind of supernaturalism because there's quite good evidence for a freaky occurrence one Sunday morning 2,000 years ago.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: Blows my mind it blows my mind that any apologist, Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, drags the resurrection down to the level of Fatima.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: To be honest, I'm gonna say I I think in some ways it's worse.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's worse when Protestants drag down the resurrection of Jesus to the level of Fatima.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's probably worse to do that than to elevate Fatima to the level of resurrection, but they're both pretty bad.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_00: Can we just agree that that both are bad tendencies and both are present on either side of the Tiber, either side of the Protestant Catholic divide?
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: What is the solution?
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: I think uh Catholic scholar Eric Yabara, um, he has been raising issues with the Ethan Muse-Joe Schmidt thing um ever since kind of Ethan Muse has has become more prominent and wanting people to take the same path that that Muse has taken.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_00: Here's a clip of Ethan Muse that got shared on Twitter, and then we'll see how Eric responded.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_01: In 1 Corinthians, he says, My message and preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_01: So your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God's power.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_01: So what is he saying there?
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_01: He's saying, I'm not coming to you with all these arguments and like clever reasoning in order to convince you based off of, oh, I'm gonna do all these proofs from Old Testament.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_01: The preaching of the cross or I'm gonna give you theological arguments that are gonna convince you that I'm right and I have sound doctrine.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_01: No, I'm gonna work miracles so that your faith will rest on God's power and you'll believe on that basis rather than your own private judgment and reasoning.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_01: He goes to 2 Corinthians 12.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_01: He says, I ought to have been commended by you, for I'm not in the least inferior to superapostles, even though I am nothing.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_01: I persevered in demonstrating among you the marks of a true apostle, including signs, wonders, and miracles.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_01: So the credentials he has as an apostle, which show that he has divine sanction, are the miracles that he's working in confirmation of his message.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I've already mentioned a bunch of texts earlier.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_01: Acts 2 on Pentecost, Hebrews, we look at Mark 16.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_01: Also, there's all these diverse texts throughout that are showing miracles are ways to prove.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_01: They're ways to prove revelation.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_01: And so if you have an epistemology, if you have a approach to knowledge where what you say is, look, there's no way to possibly tell the difference between a miracle and a demonic deception.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_01: And so therefore we just have to go based on whatever my private understanding of scripture is, you are siding with the Pharisees against the apostles and our Lord and the faithful throughout the New Testament.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_01: Because that's the exact argument they made.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_01: And the argument that all the Christians make is miracles.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_04: Wow, that's powerful.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_04: If you look at the Old Testament with Elijah and the pagan priests, you see they're both trying to perform a sign, and the pagans aren't able to, and then fire comes down from heaven for Elijah's sacrifice.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_00: Which Satan is able to do in Revelation 13.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_04: Elijah's sacrifice, right?
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_04: And not to not to say Protestants are like pagans, I'm certainly not saying that.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_04: But at the same time, it seems like on one side you have the fire from heaven, you got Fatima, Padre Pio, dozens of other miracles.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, saints are canonized often.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_04: And in order for a saint to be canonized, there have to be a validated miracle.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_04: So you have literally thousands, I don't even know what the count is, thousands of miracles over on the Catholic side that seem to be unique to Catholicism or seem to be heading in that direction.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_04: And I look at the Protestant side, and it just seems like there's not much there.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: It is so ironic that this YouTuber says it seems like there's not much there.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_00: That's exactly what we would expect if there is a true church according to 1 Corinthians.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: In 1 Corinthians chapters 1 and 2, Paul is saying, Yes, my message is not with wise and persuasive words, which is the Corinthians were all looking for.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_00: They were looking for the kind of thing that Greeks look for.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: Greeks look for wisdom.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_00: And Jews look for miraculous signs, and Paul refuses to give them either.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: Let's read 1 Corinthians chapter 1, verse 17.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_00: Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel, not with wisdom and eloquence, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_00: For the message of the cross, the message of the cross, the word of the cross, is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_00: It is the power of God.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_00: What is the power of God?
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Romans chapter 1, verse 16 says that the gospel is the power of God for salvation.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, that is route one to faith, not miracles in the twentieth century or the fourteenth century, or where whenever.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_00: The gospel, the word of the cross, is the power of God.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_00: For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_00: Where is the wise person?
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_00: Where is the teacher of the law?
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_00: Where is the philosopher of this age?
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_00: Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_00: For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_00: Ethan Mews, Joe Schmidt, anybody, Protestant, Catholic, this, this, this is how you get faith, and it's how you share faith.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_00: The preaching of the cross is what actually causes faith.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_00: If we're gonna go on on what St.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_00: Paul says, let's let's please and and Ratzinger is telling us to do us this, and St.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_00: John of the Cross is telling us to do this, and like Vatican I is telling us to do this, and even when Rome presents to you the secret of Fatima, it's telling you, please, please privilege this.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_00: Please.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_00: Goodness me.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_00: Verse 22, Jews demand signs.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_00: Miraculous signs.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_00: That's what they want, that's what they're craving.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_00: Paul doesn't give it to them.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_00: Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_00: The power of God and the wisdom of God.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_00: For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's what you found the church on.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_00: The preaching of a cross that looks weak when you're looking for signs like the Jews here.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_00: And it looks foolish when you're looking for wisdom like the Greeks do.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so you will create, through preaching, a church that is not obsessed with Greek wisdom or with miraculous signs.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_00: You will not produce a church like that when you preach the cross.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_00: And that is the power of God for salvation.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_00: That is what is going to create a community of faith.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_00: And what will that community of faith look like?
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: It might look unimpressive.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_00: Verse 26, brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_00: Not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were influential, not many were of noble birth.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_00: But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_00: God chose the lowly things of the world and the despised things and the things that are not to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_00: It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_00: That is our righteousness, holiness, and redemption.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, as it is written, let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's in that context that Paul says, My preaching was not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_00: The demonstration of the Spirit's power is that through the proclamation of Scripture and through the word of the cross, a new community of faith is born, which is not impressive.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_00: And it's especially not impressive for Jews who are looking for miraculous signs, and it's not impressive for Greeks who are looking for wisdom.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_00: It is the nobodies of this world who are gathered at the foot of the cross of Jesus.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_00: And over there, the Greeks are tut-tutting because it doesn't look very wise to them.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_00: And over there, the Jews are kind of they've stubbed their toe and they're kind of looking like I was looking for miracles, and you just gave me the cross, and I I kind of strip I tripped over it.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_00: That was the stumbling stone, the stone of offense.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_00: But here, here is a group of people who had just gathered around Jesus.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's so interesting that this YouTuber says, you know, and I look at the Protestant church, it doesn't look very impressive.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I mean, number one, the the work of scholarship that is most relevant to the question of miracles in the modern day is Craig Keener's two-volume work about miracles, the majority of which coming from Pentecostal and charismatic Protestants the world over.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_00: So A, I don't think you're looking very hard for miracles, if that is what you're looking for.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_00: But B, if you are looking for them as the predominant way of vindicating a true church, then no wonder when you look down at a bunch of people who are just gathered around the Word of the Cross, you're not going to be that impressed.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_00: Paul is precisely saying in this passage, he is precisely saying that we are not to offer to people who are really craving celestial signs, we are not to offer miracles to them, we are to offer the word of the cross, and that is the power to save.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_00: And this is what Eric Yabara is picking up on when he responds to this video from Ether Muse.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, Well, of course the miraculous has its significant place.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_00: However, I'd hate to be using miracles as a way to contradict the report of St.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_00: Luke and St.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_00: Paul's own words.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_00: I trust that isn't being done here.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_00: And then he quotes from Acts chapter 17, as was his custom, Paul went into the synagogue, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the scriptures, explaining and proving that the Messiah had to suffer and rise from the dead.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_00: Or Acts chapter 18, every Sabbath, he reasoned in the synagogue, trying to persuade Jews and Greeks.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_00: Or Acts chapter 28, from morning until evening he explained and declared to them the kingdom of God, and tried to convince them about Jesus from the law of Moses and from the prophets.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_00: Or from the very end of Romans.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_00: Remember the beginning of Romans chapter 1, verse 16, I'm not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to all who believe.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_00: He finishes that letter in Romans 16, verse 25.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_00: Now to him that is able to establish you according to my gospel.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_00: To establish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ according to the revelation of the mystery, which was kept secret from eternity, which now is made manifest by the scriptures of the prophets, according to the precept of the eternal God, for the obedience of faith known among all nations.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_00: Now in the previous chapter, as Eric Ubarra notes, when Paul speaks of one's faith in God, he is referring to the message of the cross as the power of God.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_00: That means the gospel testimony itself and the power that is manifested in it.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_00: In the Epistle to the Romans, he's speaking about chapter 15 here, Paul does speak of the manifestation of the miraculous in the fact that pagans are now worshipping the true God.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'm definitely on team Yubara in this.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_00: Eric Yabara and Ethan Mews go back and forth on Twitter on this whole question.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_00: But there are plenty of Catholics on the Roman side of things saying, please, can we not privilege miracles in the way that you're privileging miracles?
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_00: It totally upends what Scripture says.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_00: It upends what Ratzinger says and Vatican I says.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_00: Please let's not go down that route.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_00: God speaks in his word and proclaims a word of the cross.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_00: And that is what changes people.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's what gives assurance.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's what gives faith.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_00: That's how you nurture faith, and that's how you share faith.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_00: If Ethan Mews and Joe Schmidt are correct, then all apologetics should basically be investigating miracle claim after miracle claim after miracle claim.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_00: And now we've got a sift through eyewitness testimonies of something that happened over a hundred years ago in Portugal.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_00: All that does is kick up dust in the face of the seeker when over here there is bread to the hungry.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_00: There is Christ in him crucified.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_00: Please can we stop kicking up dust in people's faces?
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_00: And please can we offer them the bread of life, Jesus Himself?
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_00: I say that to a certain brand of Catholic apologists who I think is elevating Fatima to the level of the resurrection.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_00: I say that to a certain brand of Protestant apologetics that I think brings down the resurrection to the level of some kind of Fatima.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_00: Let us unite around the word of the cross.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_00: Miracles are not the way to faith.
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_00: They are not The way to Rome, even Rome disagrees.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_00: So let's just conclude.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_00: I've been asking these four questions.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_00: How do you get faith?
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_00: You look to Christ and Him crucified and you say He is Lord, right?
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_00: You hear the Word of the Cross again.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_00: And the Word of the Cross can speak to you and assure you in the depth of your being that God is addressing you and assuring you that his arms are outstretched, he's bleeding his own heart's blood for you.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_00: The blood of God is being shed on that cross for you.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_00: Do you see that this is the divine manifestation?
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_00: When you see that, then I guess you trust that God really is benevolent towards you.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_00: Are his arms open to you?
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_00: They were nailed open for you.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_00: How do you get faith?
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_00: You look to Christ and Him crucified.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus Christ, crucified according to the scriptures, and raised again according to the scriptures, according to that scriptural story of God approaching us and giving himself to us utterly and gratuitously, and then pouring his spirit onto us.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_00: Do we want Jesus as Jesus is offered to you by the Spirit as the Father's gift to the world?
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_00: Do you want him?
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_00: If you want him, then you are receiving Christ, and that is faith.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_00: That is how you get faith.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_00: How do you nurture faith?
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_00: You look again and again to the Christ of Scripture and you see him given for you.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_00: And you receive him in bread and wine, right?
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_00: And you receive him in the community of the church, as the Christ in the word of your brother or sister is stronger than the Christ of your own heart.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_00: And faith comes to you from the outside, and you are nurtured in that faith.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_00: And then how do you share that faith?
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_00: Not by diverting people from Jesus, but by proclaiming the word of the cross, no matter how foolish it looks, no matter how weak it looks.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_00: At the end of the day, this is not a Protestant versus Catholic divide.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_00: I'm with Ratzinger, okay?
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_00: Pope Benedict, he's my guy on this one, right?
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'm with Eric Yabara.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'm with St.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_00: John of the Cross, okay?
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_00: This is not Protestant versus Catholic.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_00: This is one tendency that has emerged within Roman Catholic apologetics, and I think it should be resisted.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_00: I think it should be resisted by other Catholics, and other Catholics are resisting it, and they should resist it.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_00: And on my side of things, among Protestants, I think I should keep on resisting those who want to drag down Easter as though it's just one more Fatima.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_00: I think that should be resisted as well, because I think it is the word of the cross that creates faith.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_00: And it's one kind of distraction to point people away from Jesus and to a suburb of Cairo in 1968 and to wonder whether that apparition on top of the church is Mary or not.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's one kind of distraction.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_00: There's another insidious distraction, which is to turn the sure word of scripture into the uncertain eyewitness report of some eyewitnesses that need to be weighed in order to assess whether a particular tomb was empty one Sunday morning.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_00: That can be a distraction too.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_00: And in one sense, it's a more insidious distraction because you can tell yourself, well, at least I'm using scripture.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_00: But well, okay, but you're using scripture as though it's like a Cairo newspaper from 1968.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_00: Protestants or Catholics, it doesn't matter actually on this one.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm with Pope Benedict on this one.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'm with Eric Yabara on this one, okay?
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm against certain Protestant versions of this problem.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, can we unite around Jesus Christ and him crucified?
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_00: So where are you on all this?
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_00: And if you want to check out how I think faith can happen and how I seek to share my faith with others, why don't you do 321?
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_00: Go to 321course.com and you'll check out how I seek to offer Jesus to others.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's a totally free course.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_00: You can binge it in a couple of hours or do it in eight sessions.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_00: And this is just a scriptural way of offering Jesus to you so that you might trust him for the first time or trust him for the 10,000th time.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_00: I think this is how faith comes.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_00: I think this is how faith is nurtured.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I think this is a great resource for you so that you can share your faith with others.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_00: You can send others to 321course.com and they can have that experience of Christ as well.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_00: Well, if you've got this far in the video, I'm sure it deserves a like.
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_00: Why don't you subscribe to the channel if you haven't already?
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_00: And we'll catch you on the next one.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_00: God bless.