Hebrews 10:14 says Christ’s sacrifice has “perfected” for all time those who are being sanctified. Yet when Catholics leave Mass, which they believe is the single sacrifice of Christ re-represented (CCC 1364), they aren’t completely perfect.
Protestant apologist James White argues this proves the Mass isn’t the sacrifice of Christ. He makes this argument in many of his publications (The Roman Catholic Controversy) and debates, the most recent being his 2025 debate with Joe Heschmeyer.
In his opening statement, White says:
Within the Roman Catholic system, you can come to mass 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 times in your life, and that is supposed to be the sacrifice of Christ. You are coming to the cross—that’s what you’re doing. And yet in Roman Catholicism the vast majority of people who do that, upon their death, will not go into the presence of God because they are not perfected. . . .
And so there is the difference: you have a completed sacrifice that perfects those for whom it’s made because of the union of the elect with Christ [referencing the cross] versus a perpetuation of a propitiatory sacrifice that does not perfect you. You can come to the cross in the Mass, and you’re not perfected by that. You can receive grace. You can receive forgiveness, but it’s not perfection. That is the vast difference between these two perspectives.
He then quotes Hebrews 10:14 (“For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are [being] sanctified”) for support:
Verse 14 likewise says for by one offering one offering—not one dragged out through the ages—for by one offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. He has perfected—not us, not a sacramental system—he has perfected for all time by one sacrifice. One and one only.
Here’s White’s argument in a nutshell:
P1: If the Mass were the single sacrifice of Christ, then we would walk away from the Mass perfected, since Hebrews 10:14 says Christ’s one sacrifice perfects.
P2: But we don’t walk away from the Mass perfected.
C: Therefore, the Mass is not the single sacrifice of Christ.
Right away, we hit a problem: what does White mean by “perfected”? Or, to be more precise, how is White interpreting the “perfection” spoken of in Hebrews 10:14?
Well, in the middle of the above quote, where I included the ellipsis, White says this (emphasis added):
In Roman Catholicism, the vast majority of people who do that [come to the cross in the Mass], upon their death, will not go into the presence of God because they are not perfected. They will go into purgatory, and they will undergo satis passio. And you can have Masses said for them back here on Earth to lessen their time in purgatory.
Notice that for White, Catholics aren’t perfect because they go to purgatory—which deals with being made completely holy. This tells us White’s likely using “perfection” here to mean sanctification, or interior holiness.
He seems to reinforce this understanding of “perfection” later in the debate, when he says (emphasis added),
A number of Old Testament passages are cited about Christ coming to fulfill the will of God. Verse 10 of Hebrews 10: “By this will we have been sanctified through the offering the body of Jesus Christ.” How often? “Once for all.” Temporal adverb: “once for all.”
Does it say that we can receive some sanctification, we can receive some grace now and we’ll get a little bit more the next time, a little bit more the next time? No. By this will—that’s the New Covenant—we have been sanctified. We have been made holy through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
Perhaps White means something else by “perfection.” But this is what we have to work with.
So, with this understanding of “perfection”—that is, sanctification—White’s argument would be:
P1: If the Mass were Christ’s single sacrifice, we’d walk away completely sanctified.
P2: But we don’t walk away completely sanctified.
C: Therefore, the Mass isn’t Christ’s single sacrifice.
Now, we agree with premise 2—we’re not completely holy after Mass. No qualms there. But premise 1 is the problem.
First, White can’t demand perfect sanctification in this life because the author of Hebrews doesn’t. Hebrews 10:14 itself says that Christ’s sacrifice perfects those who are “being sanctified” (present participle in the Greek), which implies an imperfect state of sanctification.
Second, the logic behind White’s objection actually undermines White’s own theology of justification by faith.
For White, the fruits of Christ’s sacrifice are applied when a person professes faith. But does that person instantly become completely holy inside? No—even White admits that believers still sin and grow in sanctification over time. He did this later in the Q&A session, stating,
Since we still live in a fallen state, and since we still experience sin in our lives, we want to deal with that [sin]. We want to be cleansed from that.
So by White’s own logic, if the Mass can’t be the sacrifice of Christ because we’re not made instantly holy, then faith itself couldn’t make us approach that same sacrifice—since believers aren’t instantly holy, either!
If he’s going to demand that we walk away from the cross in the Mass completely sanctified, he’d have to demand that we walk away from the cross in faith completely sanctified. But that would be absurd. Thus, he shouldn’t demand that we walk away from the cross in the Mass completely sanctified.
A third response is that White’s argument is a non sequitur. The consequent (“we would walk away from the Mass completely sanctified”) doesn’t necessarily follow from the antecedent (“if the Mass were Christ’s sacrifice”). There’s another explanation as to why someone could walk away from the Mass without being fully sanctified other than the Mass not being Christ’s sacrifice. That explanation is our disposition.
In Catholic theology, the fruits of Christ’s sacrifice are applied in the Mass according to our disposition—the interior openness and faith with which we approach the altar.
It’s similar to how Protestants explain “backsliders.” If someone professes faith but later falls away, Protestants don’t blame the cross; they say the person’s faith wasn’t genuine. The problem was in the individual’s disposition.
So if a Protestant can appeal to disposition to explain a lack of fruit in faith, Catholics can do the same regarding the Mass.
Now, White might reply that his previous appeal to purgatory isn’t about holiness, but about punishment. That Catholics still have a debt of temporal punishment for forgiven sins, so he might argue, means that the sacrifice wasn’t “perfect.”
He made this more refined point in his 1991 debate with Fr. Mitch Pacwa, saying that if punishments remain, reconciliation hasn’t taken place. After quoting Romans 3:25, he states,
Jesus Christ is our one propitiation. He has propitiated, satisfied, for all of our sin. Now, why, then, does the Roman Catholic Church say that the Mass is offered for satisfactions—that is, a propitiatory sacrifice—but it is not one that perfects completely and totally those for whom it is made? Obviously, it shows it is another kind of sacrifice.
Then, a few moments later, speaking about the effect of Christ’s sacrifice,
if punishments remain that must be remitted either through works of satisfaction or attending the eucharistic sacrifice or in purgatory someday where our own sufferings are satisfactory, considered to be sufferings of atonement whereby we atone for these things—if punishments remained, then reconciliation has not taken place.
This, however, assumes a particular view of how God applies the merits of Christ’s death—namely, that once you’re reconciled, you can never again incur guilt or punishment.
But that’s not the biblical picture.
The first letter of St. John says, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1:9). To seek God’s forgiveness by confessing our sins means we’ve incurred guilt, and with that guilt comes a kind of debt of punishment. So when John talks about God forgiving our sins and removing that debt, he’s really talking about being reconciled to God. And notice something important: John says “we.” He’s including himself. He’s talking to Christians here, which implies that believers can indeed fall into sin and need forgiveness again.
Hebrews 12:6 adds that “the Lord disciplines him whom he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.” The Greek term for “chastise” literally implies punishment. And the ones receiving such punishment are God’s children—AKA Christians.
So, contrary to what White believes, Christians can still incur a temporal debt of punishment after conversion.
That a believer can still suffer for post-conversion sins doesn’t mean the application of Christ’s death was ineffective—it simply means God applies its fruits over time, in response to our ongoing need for purification.
Since this potential counterargument against the Mass depends entirely on White’s assumption about how God applies the merits of Christ’s death to believers—and that assumption is false—it follows that this potential counterargument carries no weight against the Catholic claim that the Mass is the sacrifice of Christ.
So, to recap White’s argument—which reads the “perfection” in Hebrews 10:14 along the lines of perfect sanctification:
- White’s logic contradicts Hebrews 10:14 itself.
- White’s logic would refute his own theology as much as ours.
- The lack of total holiness after Mass comes from our limited disposition, not Christ’s sacrifice.
- And Scripture clearly supports the idea that believers can be reconciled again after post-conversion sins, which undermines White’s assumption that perfection means no more reconciliation ever.
As to what the author of Hebrews means by “perfection,” that’s for another time. But we can say that White’s interpretation and use of it against the Mass fails.