January 3, 2006

Alpha & Omega Ministries iconAlpha & Omega Ministries

7 views

Comments are disabled.

00:07
From the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is
00:17
The Dividing Line. The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.
00:28
Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.
00:34
This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll free across the
00:43
United States. It's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is
00:50
James White. And good morning. Welcome to The Dividing Line. Just surfing the net very, very slowly here.
00:58
And someone in channel just mentioned this article I figured is a good way to get started today.
01:04
Prove Christ Exists, Judge Orders Priest. This is from Richard Owen in Rome.
01:11
This is the Europe section of the Times Online. And an
01:17
Italian judge has ordered a priest to appear in court this month to prove that Jesus Christ existed. The case against Father Enrico Rigi has been brought in the town of Viterbo, north of Rome, by Luigi Cascioli, a retired agronomist who once studied for the priesthood but later became a militant atheist.
01:37
I haven't been over there. I'm not surprised by that. It's a very secular country now. Atheism everywhere.
01:44
Signor Cascioli, author of a book called The Fable of Christ, began legal proceedings against Father Rigi three years ago after the priest denounced
01:53
Signor Cascioli in the parish newsletter for questioning Christ's historical existence. Yesterday, Gaetano Mautoni, a judge in Viterbo, set a preliminary hearing for the end of this month and ordered
02:06
Father Rigi to appear. The judge had earlier refused to take up the case but was overruled last month by the
02:11
Court of Appeal, which agreed that Signor Cascioli had a reasonable case for his accusation that Father Rigi was abusing popular credulity.
02:23
Signor Cascioli's contention echoed in numerous atheist books and internet sites is that there was no reliable evidence that Jesus lived and died in 1st century
02:30
Palestine apart from the gospel accounts which Christians took on faith. Oh yeah, there's nothing historical about the gospel accounts.
02:37
There is therefore no basis for Christianity, he claims. Signor Cascioli's one -man campaign came to a head at a court hearing last
02:45
April when he lodged his accusations of abuse of popular credulity and impersonation, both offenses under the
02:53
Italian penal code. He argued that all claims to the existence of Jesus from sources other than the
03:00
Bible stem from authors who lived after the time of the hypothetical Jesus and were therefore not reliable witnesses.
03:10
I'm sorry, but how can any human being not laugh at that?
03:18
If they lived before Jesus, they're called prophets, as someone pointed out in shame.
03:25
So any evidence of someone's existence that lived after the person is not reliable evidence.
03:32
Brilliant. Oh my goodness. And a judge, well see what happens when, oh my goodness.
03:41
Aye yi yi, Signor Cascioli maintains that early Christian writers confused Jesus with John of Gamala, an anti -Roman
03:49
Jewish insurgent in 1st century Palestine. Church authorities were therefore guilty of substitution of persons.
03:58
The Roman historians Tacitus and Suetonius mention a Christus or Crestus but were writing well after the life of the purported
04:05
Jesus and were relying on hearsay. Father E. He said, there was overwhelming testimony to Christ's existence in religious and secular texts.
04:14
Millions had in any case believed in Christ as both man and son of God for 2 ,000 years.
04:23
If Cascioli does not see the sun in the sky at midday, he cannot sue me because I see it and he does not.
04:28
Father E. He said, Signor Cascioli said that the gospels themselves were full of inconsistencies and did not agree on the names of the 12 apostles.
04:36
He said that he would withdraw his legal action. Father E. He came up with irrefutable proof of Jesus' existence by the end of the month.
04:43
The Vatican has so far declined to comment. Oh my goodness. Oh my, oh my, oh my.
04:53
I tell you, I heard some really weird stuff when I was in Italy. There are some very, that, that, that's really, that's really bad.
05:02
And I did also notice that Centurion, who views himself as one of the leading bloggers on the planet, and you know, he's, he's done that without ever really doing anything other than fighting with iMonk, which is very easy to do because if you just mention iMonk people will explode all around you.
05:24
But now he's handing out wooden nickel awards for 2005 and one of the categories was meanest
05:32
Calvinist for 2005. I was up against Calvinist gadfly. Sorry, he's not mean.
05:40
Metalutheran, which is just an insult to Metalutheran, of course. Steve Camp, not liberal at Open Diary and Fideo.
05:48
And the comment is, there was no question in the voting that after nearly 20 years of banging people over the head with Greek, Hebrew, the
05:54
NA USB eclectic text, dozens of electronic gadgets, and many, many crisp meat burritos, the hands down meanest
06:00
Calvinist on the internet is still Dr. James R. White to whom we give this wooden nickel. The problem is
06:05
I only get my crisp meat burritos when I'm in Utah, Minnesota, or near Seattle because, well, they are opening a
06:14
Taco Time here in Phoenix. It's going to open on February 1st. I think I'll have to be there for the opening.
06:19
I love Taco Time, and if someone would like to start a Taco Time restaurant somewhere in the
06:26
Glendale, Phoenix area, I would very much appreciate it. I would be a regular customer at your Taco Time if you did that.
06:32
But anyways, so that's not fully accurate. There are some of the most fascinating, interesting news on the news front.
06:44
We already have one phone call, and the phone lines are open at 877 -753 -3341.
06:50
We have been listening to – there's a Taco Time in Missoula, Montana? Now, how can there be a
06:56
Taco Time in Missoula, Montana, but there's not one in Phoenix, Arizona? That just doesn't –
07:02
I mean, they could take over half the Taco Times around here or Taco Bells around here. There's a Taco Bell in every corner.
07:10
But anyway, I would like to cut the ribbon at the biggest Chris Meat Burrito fan they have ever known club.
07:18
We have been listening to Bart Ehrman's NPR interview. I've mentioned there's two interviews, and the second interview, to be honest with you, is a whole lot easier to listen to than the first interview.
07:30
So since we had gotten to the point where they started taking phone calls, and I'm sorry, but phone calls are – on our program, our phone callers are great.
07:37
But on most other stations and programs, phone calls are not overly great.
07:44
And so we're going to go to the second NPR interview, which was fairly short, actually.
07:50
Looking at it here, it's 12 minutes and 48 seconds long, so that's not very, very long. But this one's a little bit easier to listen to.
07:57
It moves at a much higher pace, and it starts off rather interestingly, and it starts off like this.
08:03
This is fresh air. I'm Terry Gross. There's a bumper sticker that reads, God said it.
08:08
I believe it. I guess Bart Ehrman's reaction to that is, well, what if God didn't say it? What if the book you take as giving you
08:15
God's words instead contains human words? Ehrman is the author of the new book,
08:21
Misquoting Jesus. It's about how the New Testament was altered by the scribes who handwrote each copy and in the process made intentional or unintentional changes.
08:30
You know, it's interesting. I was reading Dan Wallace's response to Bart Ehrman. He said pretty much the same things
08:37
I've said, that he massively overstates his case. It's a matter of spin and things like that.
08:42
But one of the things he mentioned is that the title of the book has almost nothing to do with the substance of the book because while it's a general induction to textual critical concepts with an agenda attached, he actually doesn't deal with any of the words of Jesus.
08:59
The variants have to do with Paul and other things, but not actually variants about the words of Christ, which
09:04
I hadn't even noticed myself, which is rather interesting. Ehrman shares the Department of Religious Studies at the
09:09
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He's a scholar of the New Testament and the early church.
09:15
He was born again at the age of 15 and studied at the Moody Bible Institute. Later, while attending
09:20
Princeton Theological Seminary, he started to have doubts about the literal interpretations of the
09:26
Bible. He now describes himself as an agnostic. Let's start with how the Bible was hand -copied for almost 1 ,500 years.
09:34
With the Bible, we're talking about a period before there was movable type, and so for books to be reproduced, they had to be copied by hand.
09:42
Let me just stop him right there for a moment. It was interesting that she describes him as a happy agnostic.
09:49
You know, I have a hard time, to be perfectly honest with you, respecting the self -identified claim of agnosticism.
09:59
I really do, especially given the certainty with which he speaks on certain issues. I have a hard time respecting someone who says, well,
10:07
I just don't know that we can know. It sounds very postmodern, and it fits in with the modern culture.
10:13
I just personally have a little bit easier time dealing with an atheist than an agnostic.
10:19
And so all of the books of the New Testament, and all of the books, in fact, from all of antiquity, were reproduced by hand, which is a very slow, painstaking process.
10:30
To mass -produce a book in the ancient world meant that you would give the book to a company that did these things, and they might have five scribes there who would copy the book.
10:40
And so the mass production, or the kinkos of the ancient world, was the little scribal shop on the corner where you might have five guys doing this to make a living.
10:49
So the books got copied out by hand, and copying a book by hand, of course, meant copying it one sentence, one word, one letter at a time.
11:00
And that's not only a painstaking and slow process, it's also the process is open for mistakes to be made.
11:08
Either accidental mistakes, as a scribe is just being careless, or possibly he's tired, or possibly he's inept.
11:17
And sometimes scribes actually change the text intentionally. Or, of course, it doesn't require ineptness, it doesn't require you being tired.
11:25
First thing in the morning, fresh, ready to go in my office with lights and air conditioning and spell -checking.
11:34
I can make mistakes while copying from something. So that's a rather obvious reality that when we copy things, we are human beings, we make mistakes.
11:42
It doesn't have to do with our ineptness or anything else along the way. But again, these are all issues that are rather straightforward.
11:48
By the way, I was just looking at the screen. This is more than 12 minutes. This is just the section that I had queued up here. It's probably a full half -hour type thing that the last one was.
11:57
When they think the text ought to say something different from what it does say, they could change the text. And then once, of course, they changed the text, the change was made permanent because this was the copy then that somebody else would use.
12:08
Now, listen to that. There I find a tremendous problem in Ehrman's thesis because while he is right in the sense that the tenacity of the text, that is, once that change is made, it will remain in the manuscript tradition.
12:29
Now, by the way, especially in a scriptorium, there were frequently proofreaders. There would be someone who would go over things.
12:35
They would compare things. Many of the older manuscripts show multiple hands working on the same manuscript.
12:43
You have corrections and things like that. If you look at the textual data in the Greek New Testament, you will see, for example, when you have ancient manuscripts that were especially important witnesses, you will have either a little asterisk or a 1 or a 2 or an
13:01
A or a B to indicate which hand had which reading. And so you could actually see multiple readings in one manuscript.
13:08
And so that could take place. There are a number of things that come up there. So this is a rather simplistic presentation.
13:14
It's not overly accurate in what it's saying. But the point is that the tenacity of the text, once the reading is there, then it remains in the tradition.
13:24
That means the original stays there. And that's something I never hear him saying. I never hear him saying, well, you know, the original is still there, but there are some places, not all that many compared to what could be and what would be with any other work of antiquity.
13:39
I never hear him, and again, never is a big word, but we're talking just about what we've listened to here on these programs.
13:45
I never hear him saying, now, of course, in comparison to anything else in antiquity, if we have to be agnostic about the original readings of the
13:53
New Testament, then we have to be much more agnostic about everything else from antiquity.
13:59
I mean, really, if you apply this standard to everything else, there's nothing else that can even come close, the
14:06
New Testament and textual purity and the witnesses to the New Testament in the ancient world. And so if you're going to be agnostic about this, then basically we really don't know much about what happened in the past at all because we really can't trust any of these things.
14:18
And I would imagine his response would be, yeah, but no one's claiming those were inerrant, and that goes back to his theology and stuff like that.
14:24
But anyway, that tenacity of the text, the fact that the originals stay there and that it's an issue of working through the variants of those specific points, that doesn't seem to come out in what he's saying.
14:34
Who copied the text later. Let's look at one of the classic stories in the New Testament that you say scholars say was changed by scribes.
14:47
And this is the story of the woman caught in the act of adultery. Tell the story as we know it. Well, it's a terrific story.
14:53
It's found in the Gospel of John, chapters 7 and 8. The Jewish leaders have caught a woman committing adultery, and they bring her to Jesus, and they set a trap for Jesus.
15:05
They ask him, they say, according to the law of Moses, this woman should be stoned to death.
15:12
What do you say? So Jesus is put in this predicament, because if he says, no, have mercy on her, as you would expect him to say since he's been preaching a doctrine of love and mercy, if he says that, then he's breaking the law of Moses.
15:30
But if he says, no, go ahead and stone her, then obviously he's violating his own teachings about love and mercy.
15:36
And so what's he to do? Well, he stoops down and starts drawing on the ground, and he looks up and he says, let the one without sin among you be the first to cast a stone at her.
15:46
And then he stoops back down and starts writing again. And slowly, one by one, all of her accusers leave until he looks up and sees that she's alone.
15:53
And he says then to her, is there no one left to condemn you? And she says, no,
16:00
Lord, no one. And he says, neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more. What's historically questioned in this story?
16:08
Well, the whole story, it's a very interesting story for a lot of reasons. Interpreters have puzzled over it over the years.
16:14
One of the leading questions is, if this woman was caught in the act of adultery, where's the man?
16:21
Because according to the law of Moses, both of them are to be stoned to death, but apparently they've only come away with a woman. So there are interesting interpretive questions.
16:29
The bigger issue is whether, in fact, this is a story that belongs in the Bible or not.
16:34
And as it turns out, even though this is the favorite story of people who read the Bibles and who make movies about the
16:41
Bible for Hollywood. And now, let me just mention, we've gone four minutes, 24 seconds in here, and we're dealing with, and this is what
16:50
I'm noticing other scholars are saying about Ehrman here as well, which substantiates my own feeling that we're really sadly dealing with an issue of selling books here and not really dealing with the truth and the issues.
17:05
And that is, everybody knows about the textual variant of John 7, 53 through 8, 11. He's not the first person to have spoken about it.
17:14
If you want to see my discussion of it, I have a fairly, you know, John, it's discussed on page 262 of the
17:20
King James Only Controversy. I go through the various, the evidence against the originality. This pericope is extensive and wide -ranging, including both external and internal elements.
17:28
Externally, we note the passage is omitted by a truly diverse group of ancient manuscripts, including P66, P75, Olive B.,
17:34
L &T, W, Delta, Theta, Psi, 141, 33, 175, 65, 1241, 1333,
17:42
Asterix, and 1424, the majority of lectionaries, Latin versions, and Syriac versions. Both A and C most probably do not contain the passage, though both are defective in the section of John, hence cannot be consulted directly.
17:52
Other manuscripts that do not contain the passage mark it off with Asterix or Obeli. This amount of evidence alone would be sufficient, but there is more in the manuscripts that contain the passage.
18:00
It is normally found after John 752. However, in manuscript 225, it is found after 736, in others after 744, in a group of others after John 2125, and in family 13, it is not even found in John, but after Luke 2138.
18:14
Such moving about by body of text is plain evidence of its later origin, and the attempt on the part of scribes to find a place where it fits, such as not the earmark of an original passage of the gospel, etc.,
18:23
etc. So there's nothing exciting here in the sense of this is new information, and to attempt to substantiate what the real meaning is of the title of the book, misquoting
18:41
Jesus, would require dealing with something that would actually have some sort of impact, and yet every time people ask for specifics, as we saw last week, the specifics are very weak passages.
18:54
They're passages that have been discussed many, many times before, and it seems to me really rather crass to go out into places like NPR and into the streets where people have no knowledge of the background of the issues and things like that, and throw this kind of stuff around as if it somehow has some great and tremendous meaning to it.
19:14
It just bothers me tremendously. This story probably was not original to the
19:20
Gospel of John. The earliest manuscripts we have of the Gospel of John don't have this story, and none of the
19:27
Greek -writing church fathers... The New Testament, of course, itself was written in Greek. None of the Greek -writing church fathers who comment on the
19:35
Gospel of John include it in their commentaries until the 12th century, so 1 ,200 years after the book itself was written.
19:43
This shows that the early manuscripts simply didn't have the story. So then the question is, how did we get the story?
19:50
Well, in the Middle Ages, apparently a scribe knew the story, had heard of the story someplace through somebody telling him the story, and wrote it down in the margin of a manuscript.
20:01
And some other scribe came along and saw this story in the margin of a manuscript and then transferred it into the manuscript itself.
20:09
Which is probably the origination of John 5 -4, by the way. Just in passing, you might make that comment. In the
20:15
Gospel of John. And from then on, that manuscript got copied. And one of the subsequent copies of that manuscript was the copy that was used then by the
20:25
King James translators when they translated the Bible. Well, yeah. I mean, it becomes much more prevalent in later
20:35
Byzantine manuscripts, and hence is part of the TR and becomes part of the text that is then translated by the
20:41
King James translators. That's, again, a little bit simplistic as far as the presentation there goes. But, yeah, okay.
20:48
But you know what's amazing to me is that there's so little of that, comparatively speaking. I mean, you would think that we would be dealing with this on every other page in the
20:57
New Testament, but we aren't. We've got John 5 -4. We have John 7 -53, 3 -8 -11.
21:05
Possibly 1 John 5 -7. Other than that, we have, you know, the long granting of Mark really doesn't fit into that.
21:13
That's not something that would be in the margin and included. But as far as entire passages, that's it.
21:20
That's pretty much it. I'm trying to think off the top of my head. I mean, you have some instances where a verse that's in Matthew will end up inserted in later manuscripts in Luke simply because the scribe assumed it was supposed to be there or thought it should be there or something along those lines because it's a parallel account, something like that.
21:38
Parallel corruption is very easily recognized. But that's about it.
21:44
And, you know, that doesn't really help you substantiate your accusation that there's this wholesale kind of editing going on and things like that.
21:53
But, well, anyway. So this story has become totally familiar to people who read English, but it wouldn't have been known at all to Greek reading
22:01
Christians reading the Gospel of John in the ancient world. Can you explain a little bit more what might have led a scribe in the 12th century to add this story?
22:11
Well, it's a terrific story. In the Gospel of John, right at this point, Jesus is condemning his opponents for not judging one another fairly by not having a right judgment.
22:23
And this is a story that in a way encapsulates that idea that judgment is to be a righteous judgment and that mercy is more important than judgment.
22:33
And so this illustrates the point being made in John 7 and 8. And I suppose a scribe was reading
22:39
John 7 and 8 and thinking about it and thought, you know, this story I heard, in fact, fits right in here and put it in the margin for it then later to be copied into the text.
22:49
There does seem to be evidence that it has an ancient origin to it, at least. It's certainly consistent with Jesus' teaching anyways.
22:56
But once again, there's really no question, I don't think. I know that some of those who argue for Byzantine priorities say, no, no, no, it fits just perfectly, and here's the evidence for it, and blah, blah, blah.
23:06
But the idea, trying to explain why it would be deleted by the wide variety of sources,
23:17
I think it's one of those passages that is a telltale sign of where you can become imbalanced in your
23:23
Byzantine priority argumentation too. But be that as it may, I still sit here going, well,
23:30
I can see how this plays great in NPR, but this doesn't play great with anyone who actually knows anything about the subject.
23:38
So what's your actual purpose here? I mean, did the scribes have that much freedom in the work that they could just add a story?
23:46
Well, it's shocking, but it's shocking to my students just how often the scribes would change their texts.
23:55
I feel for his students. In our setting today, when a book is produced, it's always the same book.
24:01
So I can go out and buy a copy of the Da Vinci Code, and it doesn't matter what city in America I buy the copy, it's exactly the same copy, word for word the same, and so that's what we expect of our books.
24:12
But in the ancient world, they didn't expect their books to be like that because they knew that these things were always being copied by hand and that mistakes were always being made, so that the very first copy of a book probably had mistakes.
24:23
And then the person who copied that first copy copied the mistakes and added some of his own mistakes.
24:30
And then that third copy was itself copied, and its mistakes were replicated then down through the line.
24:35
Now, hold the phone there for a moment. More oversimplification for the purpose of spin agenda.
24:47
That sounds, and this is real common for people to misunderstand this, that sounds like you've got one manuscript that then gets copied to another manuscript.
24:54
Now that manuscript then copies this one, this one gets copied to that one, and there's this narrow line.
25:00
It doesn't work that way. This is one of the reasons why people are a little confused when they start studying this and they go, okay, the more ancient the manuscript, the closer it is to the original, right?
25:15
Well, think about that for a second. Okay, let's think about a manuscript that, let's come up with two different manuscripts just theoretically, okay?
25:32
Let's say we have a manuscript that we can date fairly firmly to the year 500.
25:39
All right, let's use nice round numbers here, around 500. Then let's say we have a manuscript that we can pretty well nail down to 1100, 600 years after the 500.
25:54
Now, in general terms, in general terms, it would seem that the manuscript written in 600 should carry more weight than the one that was copied in 1100, simply because it's that much closer to the original, right?
26:12
However, it's not so much the date as the number of generations that exist between the original and that copy.
26:25
If the one copied in 500 is a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy, while the one in 1100 is a copy of an even more ancient manuscript from 300, and hence is only a copy of a copy, then the one in 1100 actually should have more weight than the one from 500, right?
26:52
So it's really the number of generations that exist. And that's just one aspect of it, but that's one that's rather important.
27:00
You can't just simply go, hey, whoa, this one's from the time of Nicaea, and this one's from 1000, therefore this one has to have that much more weight than the other one.
27:10
Now, obviously, once you get into the situation, and this is one of the big issues with textual criticism that I, again, it keeps me from going along with a lot of very conservative and even reform brethren, they tend to forget something simple about history.
27:29
And that is, Greek as the language of theology faded out in the
27:34
West fairly quickly. Greek as the language of theology and transmission of the text of scriptures was forced out in Palestine, North Africa, by what?
27:46
The Islamic expansion. Starting with the death of Muhammad, starting in the middle of the 7th century, you have
27:53
Islam expanding all the way up toward Constantinople, all the way across North Africa and up into Spain.
28:00
Until that century of Islamic expansion, 632 to 732. So, obviously, manuscript production in those areas, and manuscript production of Greek in those areas where Latin becomes the language of theology, is going to be diminished, and therefore, in those small areas left where Greek remains the language,
28:20
Constantinople, Byzantium, the text type that was already prevalent in that area is going to, in later years, be outrageously over -represented by later copies.
28:30
But that doesn't, by any type of logical thinking, have anything to do with what the original text actually read.
28:37
That's why you can't give the fact that you have the vast majority of manuscripts or the
28:43
Byzantine text type, the kind of weight that certain people do. I'm sorry, historically,
28:49
I can't see how you get around those simple considerations. I've seen books, you know, you've got
28:55
Pickering's book that's filled with mathematics and all this stuff about how it just happens. I'm sorry, you cannot mathematically deal with the human context of history in that way.
29:06
I'm sorry, it just doesn't work in that fashion. And so, all this stuff comes together, and this is why we have to study these things.
29:14
It's why, I'm sorry, a simple believing housewife, a simple believing pastor today, there was a time 50 years, 100 years ago, you could have said, you know,
29:26
I'm not going to get into all that stuff. I'm not going to worry about textual criticism. And you probably could have gotten away with it. We don't live in a society where that's the case anymore.
29:33
You've got Bart Ehrmans running around. You've got Muslim apologists running around. You've got all these people running around. They're using technology to spread misinformation and spun information, even when it's accurate information, it's spun information, about the foundations of our faith.
29:48
And we need to know how to respond. That's why we have to study these things to a level that previous generations probably did not have to study them to.
29:56
877 -753 -3341. We'll continue with the Ehrman. Go to DDOT and your phone calls right after this break.
30:03
Do your best and nothing less to be blessed. Try to save your soul from death.
30:11
It's all worth righteousness, you know. Can I man your pen?
30:33
The Trinity is a basic teaching of the Christian faith. It defines God's essence and describes how he relates to us.
30:39
James White's book, The Forgotten Trinity, is a concise, understandable explanation of what the Trinity is and why it matters.
30:45
It refutes cultic distortions of God, as well as showing how a grasp of this significant teaching leads to renewed worship and deeper understanding of what it means to be a
30:54
Christian. And amid today's emphasis on the renewing work of the Holy Spirit, The Forgotten Trinity is a balanced look at all three persons of the
31:01
Trinity. Dr. John MacArthur, Senior Pastor of Grace Community Church, says, James White's lucid presentation will help layperson and pastor alike.
31:10
Highly recommended. You can order The Forgotten Trinity by going to our website at aomen .org.
31:17
More than any time in the past, Roman Catholics and Evangelicals are working together. They are standing shoulder to shoulder against social evils.
31:25
They are joining across denominational boundaries in renewal movements. And many Evangelicals are finding the history, tradition, and grandeur of the
31:33
Roman Catholic Church appealing. This newfound rapport has caused many Evangelical leaders and laypeople to question the age -old disagreements that have divided
31:43
Protestants and Catholics. Aren't we all saying the same thing in a different language? James White's book,
31:50
The Roman Catholic Controversy, is an absorbing look at current views of tradition in Scripture, the papacy, the
31:56
Mass, purgatorian indulgences, and Marian doctrine. James White points out the crucial differences that remain regarding the
32:04
Christian life and the heart of the Gospel itself that cannot be ignored. Order your copy of The Roman Catholic Controversy by going to our website at aomen .org.
32:18
Let's go ahead and take our phone call before we continue on with Bart Ehrman.
32:49
Let's talk with Michael. Hi, Michael. Hello. How are you, sir? I'm doing very well. Yes, sir.
32:54
I have a question about creation. Okay. When God created man, did he create him as a dichotomy or as a trichotomy?
33:02
Oh! Or is there a third and more accurate option?
33:08
Well, those are the primary systematic theology categories.
33:15
You have those who hold to a dichotomous view and see man as flesh and see soul and spirit as primarily coterminous terms, synonyms, and then you have others who would say no.
33:30
You have body and then you have soul, which they would identify as the mind, and you have spirit, which is different than the soul.
33:38
Then you have all sorts of other discussions like traditionism, creationism, as to the origination of man's soul, whether it's the direct creation of God at conception or whether it's more natural than that and a natural result of reproduction and all sorts of things like that that when you first take systematic theology, everybody sits around and argues about stuff like that and you don't really accomplish much else.
34:00
But anyways, the important thing to remember is that these are convenient ways of describing biblical categories that are not necessarily...
34:13
We need to be very careful to remember that in Hebrew thought man is one, that in Western thought we tend to divide man up and we tend to give into some
34:25
Gnostic or Manichean ideas that you can do one thing in your spirit but your body does another and there are separate entities in that sense.
34:34
We need to realize that the idea of the separation of the spirit from the body is very unnatural. That's why resurrection has to involve the physical body in some state because to bring man back to that wholeness that he was created in.
34:49
So no matter what viewpoint you end up taking in regards to being a dichotomist or a trichotomist, you need to be careful you don't take that to the point of truly cutting man up to where those things are separate from one another because I think that would be a very unbiblical perspective to take.
35:07
But as far as being a trichotomist or a dichotomist, I am a dichotomist. I believe that man is body and spirit, that there is a spiritual aspect of man, the physical aspect of man.
35:21
I think you find too many times the biblical writers utilizing pneuma and psuche in such a way as to make them interchangeable.
35:32
So as to make that distinction, it hardens that distinction difficult to maintain.
35:38
I know that Paul says that I wish it's your body, soul, and spirit, and people say, ah, see, there you have the proof.
35:44
Those are absolutely separate things. I think it simply means the wholeness of man in that passage. So I don't think it's a super major issue unless someone really gets extremely focused upon saying, well, in some modern teachings it does, cutting man up and some of the spiritual warfare people get into some odd things along those lines too.
36:07
But I was actually raised as a trichotomist and in college went,
36:12
I don't think I can really substantiate that one any longer exegetically.
36:18
So I adopted the dichotomist perspective. So that's what that discussion is all about.
36:24
Can you recommend a book that talks about that or that might document that belief?
36:29
Any of your systematic theologies are going to go through that.
36:36
Berkhoff and Raymond and Grudem, they're all going to give you the various perspectives and the various passages that are utilized to substantiate that.
36:44
So I would imagine there probably is a book on the subject as a whole, but everything
36:51
I've read about has been in larger works, and it's a sub -point within those discussions. May I ask two more questions?
36:57
Well, okay. It's kind of related. What does it mean when it says that God created man in his image?
37:05
Well, the imago Dei, the image of God, is that which separates man from the creation.
37:10
So it's not a physical image, unlike what the Mormons would think. It is that spiritual element of man that the animals do not, which involves the ability to see us, ourselves, as individuals over against others, the personality, the ability to see ourselves as the creations of God, the desire to communicate with God rather than just simply to communicate with what we can see, that would be other people.
37:38
So it's that spiritual aspect of man that allows him to unite with God and to worship
37:44
God and to pray and so on and so forth that is lacking within the animals. That's why it can't be the physical aspect of it.
37:51
I think the emphasis in Genesis is upon the fact that both man and woman bear this image of God.
37:59
Most people would find that to be a rather inane observation, but the fact of the matter is sadly that in the history of quote -unquote
38:06
Christian theology, at least during the medieval period, there were many who questioned whether women actually bore the image of God.
38:15
I think the emphasis in Genesis is that that Selim and Demut in Hebrew, that image and likeness, the
38:23
Imago Dei, is born by both man and woman. Now some will actually go so far as to say that it only exists in man and woman united and that that's part of what the
38:33
Imago Dei is, but I think that misses the point that it's man and woman, that they are created in the image of God and that really lays the foundation for the equality of man and woman, not so much in functionality but equality before God that we see in Christianity, which is revolutionary historically.
38:51
I really hate when I see people like John Shelby Spong and others saying that Christianity is offensive to women and puts women down, things like that, when in reality if you know almost anything about history at all, you know that the viewpoint expressed in Scripture concerning women and indeed the exaltation of women and the viewpoint of women as bearing the image of God the same way men do is absolutely radical.
39:16
Okay, and last question. When it comes to worship and music, is it sinful or wrong for unbelievers, specifically children, to participate in the church choir?
39:29
Oh, well, there's nothing in Scripture about a church choir, first of all. There is much about singing our songs and psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, but there's nothing about choirs.
39:40
The only thing even semi -close to that is sort of based upon speculation, not so much speculation but at least in regards to looking at the historical worship in the temple and the issues of choirs being used there and we look at the psalms and we can see some evidence, since those were songs of course, of a multi -voice singing of those things.
40:05
But the fact of the matter is you don't have any New Testament regulation or discussion concerning the nature of how you sing or how many sing or one group of people singing in front of another group of people.
40:18
Those are not issues that are addressed. And so, you know, that really gets to the whole issue of children participating in all,
40:28
I would think, all of worship. And if we are to train them up in the nurture and admonition of the
40:35
Lord and you're to give examples to your children, the issue really is at that point, are you doing what the
40:43
Lord would have you do in proclaiming the gospel to them and calling them to faith and repentance and trust in the
40:48
Lord Jesus Christ and then you leave the rest to God as far as whether he's going to draw that person to himself.
40:56
You do the best you can, not in trying to produce a false profession from them.
41:02
Parents themselves need to be the ones looking especially to the evidences of whether that profession is something that's real or not.
41:08
But what you're doing is you're providing example, you're providing guidance. And, you know, once they get to an age where their heart is really being exposed as to what it really is, those issues tend to become rather clear at that point as to whether they wish to continue in that practice or whether the last thing in the world they want to do is end up in church.
41:31
So I honestly have never seen kids in a church choir before, unless we're referring to the youth choir, but we don't have a choir at our church.
41:39
We're too small to have one. We are the choir. So I wouldn't know how else to address it at that point other than to say that at that point, if you're in a church that has a choir, then the elders of that church would have to be the ones that would be addressing issues as to who would be up there and who would be involved in it.
41:57
I know I was in a situation once where there was a fellow who we all knew had just run off with his wife and was running away with another single woman in the choir.
42:09
And yet they sang in the Easter presentation. I mean, that ruined it for me, that's for sure. There would be an issue where most definitely the elders should have some say and some knowledge of what's going on in that kind of a context.
42:23
Okay? Okay. All right, thank you for calling. Okay, thank you. All righty, God bless. Bye -bye. All righty, well, we cover the waterfront here on The Dividing Line.
42:32
We cover all of them. Let's – I wanted to play – let me jump over to a completely different presentation here.
42:46
Last week I mentioned that someone on the channel posted a URL to a number of the
42:51
Ahmed Didat presentations and debates online. And first I started downloading them.
42:58
I tried to convert them over to MP3 and couldn't get it.
43:08
And then I figured out why. They're all videos, little teeny tiny videos. And then I found the right page that had the
43:13
MP3s on them and grabbed as many of these MP3s as I possibly could. And I started listening to one as I was writing on Saturday.
43:27
And I was just, again, utterly amazed. And I think the Didat stuff – yeah,
43:34
Airman stuff is very important because this is the stuff that's on NPR. As we deal more and more with Muslims in our country and in our society,
43:42
Ahmed Didat was certainly one of the biggest names to ever splash across that particular realm.
43:53
And I certainly wish that I had listened to more of –
43:59
I wish I had been able to listen to Didat. I, of course, read the book with Josh McDowell. But I wish I had been able to listen to Didat.
44:10
And before I debated Hamza Abdul -Malik, because the questions at the end would not have in any way, shape, or form surprised me at all.
44:20
I mean, I think I answered them correctly. But I was a bit amazed at a couple of the questions that I was asked.
44:28
And now I wouldn't be because I know exactly where they came from, exactly where they came from.
44:33
So, you listen to the debate between Ahmed Didat and Shah Rosh on the deity of Christ.
44:41
And you then listen to the questions at the end of the Malik debate, and you go, ah, that's where it all came from.
44:50
So by listening to this, once again – and I'm not trying to give an apologetic or a defense as to why
44:57
I choose what we discuss in the program. But just so you understand, so that maybe you won't tune out.
45:04
Maybe you feel like you live in a portion of the country where you're never going to run into a Muslim, so this isn't all that important.
45:10
We're talking about the deity of Christ. And we're talking about some of the same arguments that Jehovah's Witnesses use.
45:17
Some of the same arguments that atheists use. We're talking about the transmission of the text of scripture, and that's coming up.
45:23
You'll see the connections. The Islamic apologists use Bart Ehrman all the time. You go to a number of the Islamic apologists' websites today, and they're all talking about what book?
45:31
Misquoting Jesus. It's their favorite book today. Book of the Month, Book of the
45:37
Week, whatever. That's where it's all coming from. So when you deal with one area, and if you deal with it fully, you're actually covering a number of different areas.
45:46
And so I offer that as encouragement to you, even to – some of you have complained it's difficult to understand
45:54
Ahmed Didat. Well, you know what? If you listen to the end of the Moloch debate, it wasn't overly easy to necessarily interpret what some of them were saying either.
46:03
When they asked questions, something you've got to work through. That's more of an American thing, to be perfectly honest with you. We tend to be thrown off by accents because we don't hear as wide a range of them as you do in other countries.
46:15
It's just a matter of concentrating more and learning to understand those things. So anyway,
46:21
I was listening to this, and I was simply shocked at what I heard this man saying.
46:28
Not only at the blasphemy, the mockery of this. And what I hate about it is that he really tries to come off as the kindly, elderly man.
46:37
He's always smiling and laughing. But in the process, he is very purposefully misrepresenting certain statements and certain things.
46:47
And I was listening to this debate, and Sharash went first. And he did a fairly decent job, to be perfectly honest with you.
46:53
It wasn't a bad presentation of the deity of Christ at all. He brought up a number of the key texts and spoke with good pacing, and it wasn't bad at all.
47:07
And Didat's opening statement was just amazing to me, especially once again.
47:12
Once again, you listen to the audience and how the audience is responding to him and how he's playing the audience.
47:19
He's a master of playing the audience, not actually debating the issue and bringing up the proper type of responses that would provide a meaningful response to what his opponent had said.
47:33
And so right at the beginning, I want to play this section. I think the quality is a little bit higher, too, since we weren't having to take this off of a videotape.
47:42
It had already been MP3'd. So let's listen to this section, and I'm not sure how far I'll go, but there's a number of things in here that I wanted to respond to.
47:53
And believe me, Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, there is not a single unequivocal statement in any of the 66 books of the
48:07
Bible where Jesus says,
48:13
I'm God. Now, what he said there, he doesn't pronounce this word well.
48:22
He's saying unequivocal. There is no unequivocal statement where Jesus says, I am
48:27
God and worship me. Now, we had heard that one before. Remember when we had the Sebille debate, and he was saying, you have to have
48:35
Jesus saying, I am God. You have to have these words. As if somehow, you know, when Jesus accepts worship, when he calls himself the
48:41
I am, with the ago I'm me sayings and John and all the rest of the stuff, that's irrelevant.
48:49
We can just dismiss that and not worry about that. But unless we have these exact words, and of course, that's a ridiculous position to take, but that's the position that he took, and evidently his followers find it to be a convincing position as well.
49:02
There isn't. I would have been very happy to hear Jesus, from the lips of Jesus, this simple, straightforward, explicit statement.
49:16
I am God, I worship me. Because I as a Muslim, and we Muslims as a whole, we believe that Jesus Christ was one of the mightiest messengers of God.
49:27
We believe in his miraculous birth. We believe that he was a Messiah. And we believe that he gave life to the dead by God's permission, and he healed those born blind.
49:39
This is really the only point of real difference between the Muslims and the
49:46
Christians. Now, that of course is ridiculous. This is the only difference between Muslims and Christians, is the divinity of Christ?
49:53
Hardly. It does summarize many of the foundational differences.
50:00
Those foundational differences including the transcendence of Allah to the point where he cannot be involved in his creation.
50:09
The whole concept of the holiness of God, punishment for sin. Allah evidently can just wink his eyes and punishment disappears.
50:18
His wrath does not have to be propitiated, etc., etc. All that stuff, there are fundamental differences at those points.
50:29
But to just say this is the one thing, and we're all so close, and if we could just get rid of this one issue, is hardly recognizable.
50:38
And for that, I say that our brother has not used a single statement from the lips of Jesus saying,
50:48
I am God, I worship me. Why he walked this earth, he never made... The nearest he came to that, where he says,
51:13
I am... Where the dream, in which
51:23
John, in the dream he saw... So, there you have a complete dismissal of the inspiration and canonical authority of the book of Revelation, because when people eat too much, they have bad visions.
51:58
Now, again, you need to understand from the
52:03
Islamic perspective, God cannot use various forms of language. Well, I guess he can in the
52:09
Quran in some instances, but he can't use various forms of language. He can't use parables, can't use apocalyptic as you have in the book of Revelation.
52:17
The book of Revelation does not say it was a dream, by the way. It is revelation given to John and does not say he was sleeping or something along those lines.
52:26
And beyond all of that, this is actually in the section that's not about visions of beasts or anything else.
52:32
It's in the self -descriptive section concerning Christ. And so, that's a very facile way.
52:38
You notice the audience, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Isn't that funny? But isn't it odd that the very first section of the
52:46
Hadith, at least the section that I've been reading, the recording of the
52:53
Hadith, one of the more, the Bukhari collection of the Hadith, the very first section describes how
53:00
Muhammad would receive revelation from God. And many people feel that he was having epileptic seizures.
53:09
And he would be sweating and shaking and all the rest of the stuff. And, you know, that's what people have when they're on drugs.
53:16
So, would it be valid or right for me? And should Christians laugh, vike it up, and go, ha, ha, ha, it looks like he was on drugs, ha, ha, ha, ha.
53:24
Is that apologetics? Why were people going, oh, that's a great response. Why not deal with the
53:30
Book of Revelation? Why not deal with what it actually says? I just don't, I don't understand that kind of response.
53:37
I don't get it. There is a considerably lower view of truth, logic, and compelling argumentation at play here than what we as Christians can embrace.
53:49
So, there you have it. Now the idea of the
53:55
Holy Trinity. Now, oops, I just hit a button that I'm not sure
54:01
I want. That's a button I've never seen before in this place. And it lit up. I'm scared. Anyway, this, what
54:10
I want you to hear here, I want you to listen, and I'm going to let this go a little ways. Well, we don't have time.
54:16
Oh, drat it all. Don't have time. Listen, I think we might be able to get at least to his description.
54:22
The next time around, I want you to hear, he knows that what he is saying here is wrong.
54:30
He knows that what he's saying here is wrong. There's no question that he knows this.
54:39
And believe me, Mr. Chairman, Oops, that's what that button does.
54:46
Let's see if I can find it. And we believe that he gave life to the dead, like what our brother has not educated a
54:52
Christian. Of course, our brother has a chance, my brother Shorosh, of coming back. But while Jesus walked this earth, analyze what he did.
55:04
Now, the idea of the Holy Trinity in which the
55:09
Christians, the bulk of Christians, including the Anglican Church, Roman Catholics, the
55:15
Presbyterians, the Lutherans, they believe in this thing called the
55:22
Holy Trinity. In the Christian catechism of the churches, they say,
55:29
I'm quoting, that the Father is God, the Son is
55:34
God, and the Holy Ghost is God. It is the
55:40
Father is Almighty, the Son is Almighty, and the Holy Ghost is Almighty. I'm quoting the catechism.
55:53
The Father is a person, the Son is a person. Did you catch that?
56:01
Did you catch what he just said? He's reading the catechism? No, he's not. He just said, the
56:07
Father's a person, the Son's a person, the Spirit's a person, but they're not three persons. They're one person? No, that's called modalism.
56:14
That's an ancient heresy of the church. Patrapassionism, modalism, dynamic monarchianism, whatever you want to call it, that's a heresy of the church.
56:24
He knows that. How do I know he knows that? Because he's going to describe it later.
56:30
He knows that that's a heresy, and yet he's just thrown it out there. He's just handed, if I were debating him, he's just handed me a home run ball to knock out of the park.
56:43
But why does he do it? That's what I want to know. When he knows, why does he do it? I am asking, what language is that?
56:51
Is that English? It sounds English, but this is not English. Person, person, person, but not three persons, but what?
57:03
I say, what language is that? What is a person? If you and your two other brothers, we can't make out the difference between the three of you.
57:21
You are all identical. You say, no.
57:33
So he tells me, no, he's a different, what makes him a different person?
57:41
If the personality is different, and the
57:50
Son, and the Holy Ghost, I say, you have three distinct mental pictures in your mind.
57:59
When you say Father, you don't think of the Father.
58:05
And of course, these are all straw man arguments that have no application to the doctrine of the Trinity, and he knows that.
58:11
He is well aware of that, or he should be well aware of that, if he, and again. Anyhow, well, that's all the time we've got for the program today.
58:19
We will continue with Ehrman and DDOT, and your phone calls on the Dividing Line this
58:24
Thursday. Hope you were with us then. Thanks for listening. God bless. We've been brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries.
59:35
If you'd like to contact us, call us at 602 -973 -4602 or write us at P .O.
59:40
Box 37106, Phoenix, Arizona, 85069. You can also find us on the
59:46
World Wide Web at aomin .org, that's A -O -M -I -N dot O -R -G, where you'll find a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates, and tracks.