DRISCOLL: "THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IS 'VERY BROAD'"
Matthew 7:13-14 King James Version (KJV): "Enter
ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way,
that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.
APOSTATE MARK DRISCOLL DEFENDS
ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH;
SAYS IT AFFIRMS ESSENTIAL DOCTRINES
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:
Mark Driscoll, founder of the infamous Acts 29 church planting network and the pastor who resigned from Mars Hill church amid accusations of staff abuse and misconduct, is
now back into full-time ministry.
In a video posted on his website, he answers a question from a
follower, “whose interpretation of the Bible is right, Protestants’ or
Catholics'”?
In
this video, he talks about being raised in the Catholic church. “There
are some Catholics that know and love Jesus. I wasn’t one of them
growing up. It wasn’t the church’s fault, it was mine,” he says. Now,
you might be thinking, “or course it’s his own fault, the wages of sin
is death, right?” But what he fails to mention is that the Roman
Catholic Church does not teach you how to “know and love Jesus.” In
fact, it strictly forbids you from believing the true gospel.
As Protestants, we believe that salvation is, in short, by
grace alone through
faith alone.
The Roman Catholic church, regardless of the “order” of which the
presiding priests of the local parish are brought up in, is accountable
to authoritative councils of the church. In these councils, the true
biblical faith is explicitly denied and forbidden. Specifically, Canon 9
of the Council of Trent, which is still the official doctrine of the
Roman Catholic Church today, states,
If any one saith, that by faith alone the impious is
justified; in such wise as to mean, that nothing else is required to
co-operate in order to the obtaining the grace of Justification, and
that it is not in any way necessary, that he be prepared and disposed by
the movement of his own will; let him be anathema.
Driscoll continues, stating,
There are some Catholics that absolutely love Jesus. It’s
important to remember that when it comes to Catholicism, They believe
in one God, three persons, Father, Son, and Spirit, the Trinity. They
believe in the virgin birth, the sinless life, the death, burial, and
resurrection of Jesus. So, a lot of the things that I would call the
closed-handed big issues, yeah, we agree as Protestants with the
Catholics.
He “he didn’t have time” to get into the other minor issues he
“disagreed with them on.” However, he had time to make it clear that he
doesn’t believe Roman Catholicism to be a “cult or another religion.”
While he does appear to have the gospel right in this video, he fails
to recognize that the Roman Catholic Church has it wrong. The Roman
Catholic Church denies the essential doctrines of
grace alone through
faith alone and affirms a
works righteousness–a
false gospel refuted by Paul known as the Galatian Heresy. Roman
Catholicism denies the doctrine of the penal substitutionery atonement,
that is that Christ stood as a substitute for man, bearing the
punishment of God’s wrath that we deserved on the cross, imputing our
sin to Him so that His righteousness can be imputed to us (
2 Corinthians 5:21).
Instead, the affirm a false doctrine of infused righteousness which, in
essence, teaches that through good works, penance, and sacraments,
Christ’s righteousness is imparted to us more and more over time. While
it is certainly true that the virgin birth, the sinless life, and the
physical death, burial, and resurrection are essential, without a proper
understanding of these doctrines and how they apply to the gospel the
Roman Catholic’s belief is simply in vain (
1 Corinthians 15:2).
Mark Driscoll, while offending God in an effort to please man, has
taken a soft stance on Roman Catholicism. Roman Catholics hold to a
false gospel and confirmation in the Roman Catholic Church depends on a
confession of this false gospel. Not that Mark Driscoll was ever a
qualified Bible teacher, but this is more evidence of the ecumenical
trajectory of evangelicalism. The Roman Catholic Church is a whore. It
practices idolatry, teaches a false gospel, and denies Christ on every
level. Instead of affirming sinners who are caught up in this false
church, we should be calling them out of it and calling them to Christ.
