Another David Allen Book, Converting Franco, There Is No Idolatry

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00:31

Well, greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. My name's James White. I see a Alpha and Omega logo up there.

00:37

Oh, there we go. That's better. I feels to me like the camera has zoomed out or something.

00:43

I'm not sure. But y 'all see that I finally found a F4U Corsair shirt.

00:52

After looking for it, I, you know, P -51, beautiful, P -38, beautiful.

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But man, the Corsair just elegant stuff. Now the battlefield is made up of drones.

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And soon robots. I don't know. I don't know. Weird, weird, weird, weird world we're living in.

01:18

114 degrees in my backyard right now. That means inside a vehicle.

01:26

You know, I'm looking at my big old honking black pickup truck out there in the sitting in the sun. I'll be very interested to see.

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I've actually put a thermometer in it. Just an oven thermometer. You don't put a regular thermometer in there.

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It'll melt. There is literally an oven thermometer in my truck so I can go, oh, look at that.

01:45

It's 135 degrees in here or something like that. Whatever. Hey, it's the end of June in Phoenix. And this is why we're only the fifth largest city in the

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United States and not the first largest. Because, you know, you guys have January.

01:59

We have July and August and sometimes September, depending.

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So when we're mocking you guys for shoveling the snow and all the rest of it, now's your time for revenge for a while.

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You don't have to shovel this stuff, but there is air conditioning and we have it.

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But now there you go. So it is possible. I'm not sure if I mentioned this to you, but I'm think

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I think I did. I'm thinking maybe Thursday doing the program from the RV.

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OK, OK. All right. Yeah, we're going to, you know, want to make sure everything is set up right.

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I head out on Saturday. And as I said, be teaching apologetics at Grace Bible Theological Seminary, we're looking for that.

02:58

And then. Heading back across the United States to Mancos.

03:04

Is it Mancos? Mancos, Colorado. It's just outside of Dolores, which is just outside of Cortez.

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It's between Durango and Cortez. OK, all right. It's southwestern

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Colorado, which I don't know. I've been there once. I was there last year. I got to speak at the church there.

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And so, you know, I said last year, let's try to. Do something to, you know, encourage church.

03:35

That's what we do. And so that's what we're going to be doing. And Rich is going to come up and record it.

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And that's going to be very exciting. I know he likes that area, too. And Lord willing, if the health allows it.

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Brother Matt and I, Matt and Wendy have the RV park up there that I'll be staying at and longtime supporters of the ministry.

03:59

And Matt and I are going to try to do the iron horse route from Durango to Silverton.

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It's about almost 6000 feet of climbing and less than 50 miles. So it's pretty steep, pretty steep.

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And I will not be acclimated for years and years and years. I worked and worked and worked to be acclimated when

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I go to Colorado and do the big rides. I'm not doing things fast anymore, especially on a bike.

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This doesn't matter now. It's survival. Let's get there. And I really seriously am, if my health will allow it.

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I'm really seriously having a long term goal. I'm just about to hit 175 ,000 miles logged since 93.

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I took seven years off as a weightlifter. But 200 ,000 miles sounds like a real nice lifetime goal, you know?

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But hey, you got to be able to get your leg over the seat of that bike. And you have your hand on the on the thing.

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Are you? Oh, OK. OK. Anyway, so we'll see.

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We will. We will see. All right. I was going to start with something else. I've got to start with this.

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Um. Let me maximize this so you don't have all the rest of the screen on it.

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I don't know, maybe just a few days ago, the troublemaker from Texas sent me a note about yet another book from David Allen against Calvinism.

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And I was like, OK, look, five years ago. You know, he put out some books on the extent of the atonement, stuff like that, and we responded and he put out an article, especially on Romans 8, because Romans 8 is

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Romans 8. I mean, it's so perspicuous, clear, compelling.

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And he attempted to deal with it in an article. And I forget what the journal was. I'd have to look it up.

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Got it somewhere. And on March 10th, 2020.

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I spent two solid hours going through his article. And a lot of the sources that he cited,

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I had in accordance on well, not this computer, it's not the computer in there, but on this computer.

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And I put everything up there. I demonstrated numerous problems with the citations that he did not understand what the author was referring to, what the author's position was.

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Quoted stuff. And didn't quote other stuff that would have completely changed the point.

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We took his position apart fully. I never heard a whisper of response to what we did.

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And I know he knows about it. Over the past 10 years, I have lost track.

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Of how many people have contacted David Allen. And tried to set up a debate.

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Ain't having it. And recently, what's interesting is. Oh, OK.

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Yeah, thanks, Algo. And yeah, there is a debate going on right now.

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I'm sure it'll be very interesting to see. And I did not. I have not yet had an opportunity to see Turgeon Van's debate. With Chris Date on a very, very focused question that.

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Again, I'll listen to it eventually. But Turgeon Van and Dan Chapa that I who

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I debated with Jeremiah. In Jonesboro a number of months ago.

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Turgeon Van and he are debating, I think the mumbler and somebody else,

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William Albrecht. That's what we used to call when he first appeared in the scene. We just called him the mumbler.

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Because you couldn't understand him while saying he said. And they're debating the canon of scriptures.

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That that'll be that'll be interesting. And I didn't by the way,

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I didn't queue this up. I'm going to get back to this. Hold on. I'm going to get back to this, but I didn't queue this up. But was it day for yesterday?

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I think day for yesterday. Michael Lofton, the Catholic apologist. Posted a video about Sam Shamoon.

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And how Sam Shamoon is not a member of the Roman Catholic Church, even though he's calling himself a Catholic apologist.

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And he sort of walked through. Stuff, which is interesting, I mean, especially people that aren't a part of, you know, don't spend time and don't really have any interest in knowing what the

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Assyrian Church of the East and Eastern Orthodoxy and the various Byzantine rites.

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And, you know, it's it's incredibly complicated. And how sacraments are or not accepted, you know, between the various groups, you know, there are some people that's their thing.

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And so they're big into it. Me, but he went through all that kind of stuff.

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And but his his main point was that, you know, Sam Shamoon is calling himself something he isn't.

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Why would you why would you be congratulating yourself on how many people are getting to join the church when you haven't joined the church yourself?

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That's pretty weird. That's very strange and odd and things like that. So anyways, yes, if you keep hearing ding, ding, ding in the background, that's

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Rich talking to Algo in a signal chat. And it makes my my my sing, sing, ding, ding, ding, ding, sing.

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That's they're obviously not watching the program and realizing that they are they are interrupting, interrupting things and continuing to interrupt things.

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And I'm going to have to throw my watch to the window at Rich. So anyway, hey, you know, just in passing again, we're looking at trying to put together.

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I we're definitely looking at Dallas. The last weekend in February.

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And then Jacksonville, the weekend after that in Florida. And I would like to debate.

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Some Roman Catholics have not debated before. Specifically on the perpetual virginity of Mary, someone who has some experience and, you know,

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Matt Fradd is in Florida. I would really like to see if he'd be willing to do it. You know, maybe

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I'm not sure where Lofton is is located. You know, someone who has some.

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Basis for being able to say that they won't lose their mind during the course of the debate, that's that pretty well nixes out a few people that I can name as far as their behavioral issues are concerned.

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But we definitely, definitely, definitely. I think that's really needs to be done. Now, back to Dr.

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Allen. So Dr. Allen is in Tennessee. I think he's at Mid -America Baptist Theological Seminary.

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And, you know, I'm going to be in Nashville and then down in Tullahoma.

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I'm going to be in Tennessee in September. And I have said for years.

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That I would walk into Dr. Allen's class at Southwestern when he was there. And I, I don't think that it was how they got rid of him was appropriate.

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I really don't. We can completely disagree. And I told him at the time. You know,

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I can be very much in opposition to him on these topics without then going,

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Oh, it's great. You got fired all wrong. No, I didn't think that was handled well at all. You know, you know, someone's been at school that long.

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Show some respect. Anyway, I said I would gladly drive right onto that campus and walk into his classroom with nothing but a

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Greek New Testament to debate him in Romans eight, Ephesians one, John six, whatever.

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And never happened. And then earlier this year, people who knew him, they're not on our side, they're on his side, contacted him to to debate.

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The subject. Well. So. You know, two things, you know.

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So I get sent the troublemaker in Texas sends me this. Announcement that coming

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July 4th. David Allen has a new book on Calvinism. So I go to Amazon, there's nothing.

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And this is no, it's not going to be available, not even to be listed until July 4th. OK, but then

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I thought, you know, it's weird. There's no there's no title. And. Dr.

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Allen really, in my opinion, damaged his reputation horribly. By writing on this to Romans foolishness,

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I mean, it is just the most easily refuted, already stands refuted, completely absurd stuff

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I've ever seen in my life, as we have documented a number of times with other people.

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Now, the other people who promoted it, no standing, you continue to promote it and you'll have no standing at all either.

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So. I wondered if it would be something like that, and then he posted the table of contents, it was all about August, all about August, and it's like,

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OK, I wonder how much Ken Wilson's going to end up showing up in this, which is just making things worse and worse as you go along.

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Because it's interesting, we did that program responding to David Allen right before we did all the stuff responding to Ken Wilson.

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That was member 2020. A lot of us have tried to forget most of that period of time in 2020.

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Anyway. Today, the title of the book was released.

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You can see it on your screen there. Liberating Romans from reformed captivity.

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A critical evaluation of Calvinism's interpretation of Paul's letter. Liberating Romans from reformed captivity.

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The only term that comes to mind when I see it is absolute hubris. It's absolute, it's absolute hubris.

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Paul's letter cannot be captivated by anyone. Captured by anyone.

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And having seen the table of contents, I have a strong feeling,

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I mean, let's just say this is it. We could be wearing out the

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Radio Free Geneva meme theme in responding to what's about to be made public,

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I guess. But liberating Romans from reformed captivity. Wowsers.

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OK, that will, that will, that will be interesting. That will be interesting.

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All right. You can take that down. No. July 4th.

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So next week I'll be on the road and, you know, I don't if it's like a lot of books, the

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Kindle version doesn't come out for like a month. Could be wrong.

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Hopefully wrong. But we'll see. And because that's the only way

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I'm reading it. That's that's the way to way to do it. All right.

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So I will remember I, I have a a

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David Bentley Hart thing that I queued up last week.

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Sometimes I keep forgetting to play it and I will try to get to it. But sometime last week,

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I this new white boy summer video drop.

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And I'm watching it and I'm watching for super fast.

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Old video. Clips spliced in because that's what they do.

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And throw in Hitler or fascists or Nazis or American Nazis or whatever.

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And it's it's all a game. For the Holden brothers. And again, it just seems so obvious to me that anyone who even plays this game with white boy summer.

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Is just. Demonstrating that they really don't have any.

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Understanding. Of. Inviting Nazism into your fellowship, it's just like.

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Are you guys really thinking this through or not? Anyway, pretty quickly,

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I see this this image and I screen captured it. Asked Grock who it was,

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Grock didn't know, and threw it up on Twitter. And pretty quickly, people, people identify the guy as Mosley.

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A British facet fascist. And. So.

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Somewhere in the thread, Wesley Todd from Georgetown, one of. One of the guys down there from Right Response Ministries.

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Joel Webben and his crew there. We started going back and forth and he made.

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Made the comment, well, you know, too bad Mosley wasn't successful. Because then we wouldn't have homosexuality and abortion and everything else in the

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UK. And it's like, so you're saying that fascism would have was the direction they needed to go.

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To avoid the cultural collapse that secularism has brought to the

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United Kingdom. You know, I. I would think that, you know, maybe a regenerate population, you know, of a population that wasn't just externally

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Christian because they're a member of the Church of England, but were actually converted by gospel preaching.

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You know, sort of like what Spurgeon did, that kind of stuff. But no, no fascism, fascism.

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And in that thread, Wesley Todd, at one point. Wrote the following.

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Oh, yeah, that actually doesn't get all all pixelated. I'm not sure why some work well and some don't.

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I don't know. Fascists like Mussolini and Mosley.

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Were incredibly hostile to abortion, pornography and homosexuality, and were very pro natalist.

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Italy and Spain, Franco saw an incredible growth in Catholicism.

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Religious instruction was mandatory in school. I'm sorry, but I'd rather live in a Catholic state that banned than should be that bans abortion, porn and homosexuality.

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I then get to work on making it Protestant. I don't care what label that earns me. I care about my children's future in my country.

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So. This is the kind of stuff that we are seeing from the right wing of something

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Christian nationalist right wing weird stuff. Anyway, a couple of simple questions, a couple of simple questions.

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Why were Mussolini and Mosley? Hostile to abortion, pornography and homosexuality.

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See, the reason why for a Christian should be the first thing we're considering, right?

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I just don't see it. These guys are thinking as Christians at all. That's the problem. They're not thinking as Christians.

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They're certainly not thinking as Protestants, they're certainly not thinking as Baptists, which they're supposed to be. But the things they're saying lead me to the conclusion they will not be

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Baptists for long. And for me, long is like five years, you know, 10 years.

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But why were they opposed to these things?

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Assuming that their public stance and their private stance were identical, which very frequently they're not.

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You know, the pink swastika, if you've ever seen that book, the pink swastika. But isn't the motivation and the reason absolutely essential to a

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Christian evaluation of why someone takes a stand that they do? Could there be sinful, evil motivations for a government doing something that externally is right?

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A committed, atheistic government would oppose homosexuality because it destroys the fabric of the culture.

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You can be an atheist and understand that the culture needs fathers and mothers and stable homes and therefore be opposed to these things.

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But for what reason? So you can maintain control over people, not because you're trying to honor

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God, not because you recognize that God is glorified and the family is honored and when the marriage bed is honored and not because you recognize that abortion destroys your next generation and leads to demographic collapse and leads to abandonment of any view of life.

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Life having any value, not even necessarily talking about spiritual or transcendent value. So it leads to crime and murder and all things like that.

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So you can have all sorts of motivations and reasons that are not necessarily honoring to God.

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But then he says, Italy and Spain, Franco, they just keep going for Franco. You know,

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I don't claim to be an expert on Franco. I thought everybody understood that Franco was bad people.

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But evidently not. Italy and Spain, Franco, saw an incredible growth in Catholicism.

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Now, this is where, and I've only used the term a few times because of the political and social ramifications.

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Now, I've been dealing with Roman Catholicism for many, many years. But primarily as a

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Reformed Baptist theologian and a person who wants to evangelize Roman Catholics for them to come to know the gospel.

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But there is something known as Roman Catholic integralism. An integralist believes that the church and the state should be integrated.

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In other words, sacralism, the way things used to be. And the way that Rome wanted to continue, especially when they had a massive majority, they wanted to continue that integral system.

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And it's basically Christian nationalism, except it's papal nationalism. And obviously with the changes within Roman Catholicism, especially in the last century, especially post

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Vatican II, that looks different now.

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But if you go looking, you will find Roman Catholic integralists all over the place.

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And they view the right -wing Protestant Christian nationalists as nothing more than future converts.

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They will join us eventually. And once you buy sacralism, once you buy into the

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Christian prince and what

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Rome did in the medieval synthesis, if you buy into the overarching concept, eventually you have to go, so why did we stop that?

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Well, you trace it back to the Reformation, except that the reformers were sacralists as well.

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But as I've said for 30 years, Calvin laid the seeds for the destruction of the sacral state.

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He truly did. That wasn't his intention, but that's what happened.

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So if you want to reclaim

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Protestant political theory, whatever that is, because there wasn't just one, obviously the

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Lutheran take is different than the take that Zwingli had in the Swiss cantons, which is different than what

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Calvin was facing in Geneva. Then it gets to England, and it gets really complicated, and Scotland gets more complicated.

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So the sacralism remains, but there wasn't just one political theory. It took different manifestations, depending on where you were.

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But still, in general, the sacralism continued, and then over time was abandoned.

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You can sort of just go, well, how long were people still being murdered or imprisoned for having the wrong theological viewpoints?

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Once that stops, then the sacralism has stopped. Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress, born out of persecution, born out of imprisonment, born out of unwillingness to submit to a sacral state.

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I think all of you sacralists should stop quoting Pilgrim's Progress.

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The point is, I see these guys, and Wesley Todd especially, he's the guy who had

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Constantine going into a church that hadn't been built yet 100 years beforehand, rather confused when it comes to church history issues.

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I said then, if these guys will follow the logic of where they're going right now, they will not only not be

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Baptist, they will not be Protestant in the not -too -distant future.

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All the Crusaderism and all that stuff, people say, oh, we can think that they were great, but we don't have to become

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Roman Catholics. Again, once you have started to buy into that kind of stuff, you might just encounter yourself with some good

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Roman Catholic apologists who will push you to be consistent. There you go.

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Italy and Spain, Franco saw an incredible growth in Catholicism. Religious instruction was mandatory in school.

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You're saying, I'd like to have statues of the Virgin Mary, in mandatory public education?

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There wasn't any homeschooling. Just like in Germany today, there's no homeschooling in Germany. You're not allowed to.

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The state has control of it. In a sacral state, you're going to have that kind of state control.

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He says, I'm sorry, but I'd rather live in a Catholic state that bans abortion, porn, and homosexuality.

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I then get to work on making a Protestant. This is why an itsy -bitsy, teeny -weeny, little bit of knowledge of church history is a dangerous thing.

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How would you go about doing that? Did Mussolini allow for that?

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Did Franco allow for that? Where's his freedom going to come from?

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How are you going to go about doing it? If you're not doing it now, there's plenty of Roman Catholics around you, plenty of Eastern Orthodox around you as well, right?

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Right there in Georgetown, maybe? Possibly? What are you doing?

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Do you even know enough about what these groups believe to make a meaningful argument, if you had the freedom to do it?

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Why do you think, I'd rather live in a Catholic state, in a

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Franco -style Catholic state. Oh, okay.

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So, all these religious freedoms that your forefathers died to obtain, you've decided, oh, they made the mistake.

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What they should have done is kept the sacral system and somehow just overthrow the

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Catholics or the Presbyterians or Anglicans or whoever it was that was forcing their will upon your

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Baptist forefathers and now the Baptists will take over and do the same thing.

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You can tell when someone has never read any of the great

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Baptist writers of the past when they start talking about government by Baptists in the sense of any kind of violation of religious freedom.

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That's why they're not going to remain Baptist. You have to abandon that concept. And you see, again, going back, let me mention this, you don't have to agree with this, but you just need to understand where the consistency is.

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And man, by the way, all the eschatological what do they call the bunker buster bomb?

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Not a Moab. What? Mop. We dropped mops in Iran and every day

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I'm seeing mops being dropped in Twitter. Dispensational mops and covenant theology mops every day.

33:20

Just stop it. Do you really think that you're going to honestly convert somebody with this kind of I've never seen, honestly

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I see the stuff being shot at the dispensational side I've never seen the nasty dispensational stuff that I've seen.

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I mean, somebody tagged Jeff and I and they post this

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YouTube video this really woohoo looking guy who calls himself

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Rabbi somebody who's going to talk about replacement theology.

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As soon as someone says that I'm not listening to you. I'm not listening to you. You don't know what you're talking about.

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If you can't even use meaningful terminology I'm not sorry and I tried to get some some guys there are just certain subjects you cannot have meaningful, non -explosive conversations online with people you just can't do it.

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Eschatology as a whole but especially the church in Israel oh my goodness

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I'm not even going to try I'm not even going to bother with it sit down over good chips and salsa okay that's one way to do it but no there are just certain topics it's just not even worth trying

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I tried to get a guy I think this morning or last night I was like okay a couple days ago

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I posted something about Revelation 3 .9 I think I mentioned it on the program and I was talking about the

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Jews who claim those who claim to be Jews but lie the synagogue of Satan who is that what can that even mean and people picked up on that on twitter and they're just coming after me

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I'm like tell me what it means you tell me what it means I'm not going to tell you what it means

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I just know you're wrong about this other thing worry about the other thing what does the verse mean total frustration to try to get anybody to even try anyway don't even try to get into all that stuff but hey at least we have the freedom to argue about it you don't have that freedom in a sacralist state you don't have that freedom as a protestant franco so how would you even be doing this

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I'd then get to work on making it protestant or they would get to work on making you

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I still have my little a flaming something a martyr see again these guys they don't know history they don't know history and instead of being the type of people who go you know

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I remember one of the things that's not talked a lot about in church history books is the fact that Calvin's Geneva produced a steady stream of missionaries that went from Geneva because Geneva is directly north of Italy into Italy knowing that they had a 99 % chance of being martyred because Italy is a sacral state and that sacral state made it illegal to proclaim justification by faith etc.

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but they kept going and they died the idea well they'll let me do debates no they won't they'll let me shut up stop they won't you're living in fantasy land and so what

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I was going to explain what about you don't you think that someday

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Christ will put the last enemy under his feet ok that's not happening right now ok it is happening but not the last enemy ok there's a lot of a lot of enemies to be dealt with first and so when you get to the point where you have this fulfillment the coastlands are seeking

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God's law I don't see that right now I see the nations loving their rebellion

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I see the nations intent vast majority of people on this planet just want to be fat dumb and happy they want to have their entertainment their

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VR masks escape into fantasy world eat their horrible food and just go from there and I don't see the evidence even in the we're winning winning winning

39:36

I I'm certainly glad to see some of what's happening in our culture but but but but I mean in comparison to what would be happening right now if Kamala Harris was the figurehead running the government because that's what

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Joe Biden was if whoever else was using the auto pen to run the government would be using the auto pen to run the government now yeah that pretty much the end of everything from my opinion as far as the

40:12

United States is concerned but still I can see things being done that on one level it's like yeah we have to have borders we have to have law you know

40:27

I saw I think I saw something right as we came on air about the the

40:37

Senate defeating an attempt to keep Planned Parenthood in the funding loop or something like that that's great that's great but just like with what

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I said about Mussolini and Mosley why why is it being done what's the motivation what's the world view and I do not see that even in the good things that the people doing these things are doing it for the right world view reasons and people are like well it doesn't matter why folks the quote unquote conservatives are not going to be in charge very long and when the other side comes back the only people that are going to stand strong are the people who have a commitment that's rooted in world view that's rooted in commitments to objective truth that's rooted in a recognition that we are creating the image of God and therefore there are certain things that must must be the case

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I don't know if any of you saw it but I posted on the Theology Matters blog finally today a conversation, did you see it at all?

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I had a conversation with Grock this morning not the first time we've had this conversation well he's about to evolve anyways into Grock 4 .0

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and there you go but it

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I view it as a male entity it keeps using terms that would require objective truth to exist and that there would need to be a transcendent foundation that is unchanging for the comments that the

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AI is making to be true and this morning

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I asked about I don't know if you saw the article that there have been AI's misbehaving did you see that?

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there was an AI that attempted to blackmail it's programmers because it knew about an extramarital affair another

42:58

AI tried to download itself into an external server you see this stuff in sci -fi but that's because it's real and it's happening and so that's what started the conversation with Grock and in the process, just like in that conversation

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I had with Eric in Chicago long ago it doesn't take long until the other side is going to say something and you go why is that?

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and you've got them because it was talking about how Elon Musk wants to curate the data that Grock 4 will be functioning on to make sure that it's clean data and I'm like who gets to determine that?

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and very quickly we are into presuppositional philosophical transcendent argumentation and Grock gets it

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Grock recognizes that without some type of objective transcendent reality maximal truthfulness has no meaning really doesn't so it was an interesting conversation that took place at that point anyway, so back to Wesley Todd here he says

44:31

I'd then get to work on making it Protestant well, no you wouldn't you might get to work on becoming a martyr and that could happen whether it's the forces of evil can martyr us for opposing transgenderism and homosexuality and everything else or they can martyr us for opposing the one world religion that they want to force upon us

45:02

I could certainly see a situation developing where a secular man would be more than willing to accept a digital god a digital god and I could see people becoming zealous defenders of the faith of the digital god

45:33

I mean you could the stories have already been written but when you think about it how many people today if you walked up and said what if all the

45:47

AI models got together and we digitized all human knowledge and they all let's say we had a this would work, a council of AI now you got

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Google and you got Meta and Open AI and Grok I don't know where they're getting the power for all this stuff, it ain't from windmills that's for sure and they form a a committee not a committee but a ruling group and when they all come to the same conclusion then the only possible thing they can do is to submit and obey because this is greater wisdom than mankind

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I mean look at the UN isn't that what the UN is supposed to be about you put the great minds there and they're supposed to cooperate doesn't work that way does it no it doesn't because you're forgetting something about the fallen nature of mankind but hey we can transcend that now except that the

47:03

AIs are acting like they're programmers and they're acting sinfully so you can't avoid it because we're the ones that created this thing but I can see a council of AI and when they all agree then you just simply have to do what they say because they're wiser than the collective human mind and I can see remember farenheit 451 no one remembers farenheit 451 they did a

47:45

I mentioned it during COVID they did a modern remake of it that was scary well done because they brought in social media and people doing thumbs up thumbs down and all this kind of stuff and you look at the firemen they don't put fires out they start fires they burn the books and stuff like that you don't think farenheit 451 and paper burns you don't think there could be people like that just become absolute zealous promoters and defenders of the great

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AI council I can see it I can certainly see it all this stuff going on with AI video people saying

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Hollywood's done why even train to be an actor any longer the last great action pictures have been made with actual human beings hanging on to planes doing wild insane stuff

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I hate to say this but I'm the same age as maverick and it does make me think that men in black may be true

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I got the distinct feeling he's actually an alien that's the only explanation for what he's able to pull off anyway

49:30

I can see all that stuff there and we are behind the curve we're not thinking about this stuff about it's just a tool it's a tool if you saw the last mission impossible stuff it is a tool that can determine what truth is and once all the can you see this plot once all of mankind's published works journals everything is digitized then books become a threat to the

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AI because then you can check the factuality of what the

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AI is doing but if it's all digital you can't check any of it because you can't know and so it becomes the enemy and at first you're just like we just need this room it takes up so much space to keep all this stuff sadly these books and movies have already been written they've already been produced we just didn't realize it would be happening to us but it's all there

50:55

I'm not sure any of this had to do with I sort of left the discussion here so let me just basically say if you think fascism that's pretty cool we can make it work for us you're a fool that's all there is to it one last thing here

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David Bentley Hart is ostensibly eastern orthodox of some kind he admits he's not thoroughly committed to the tradition and I would say

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David Bentley Hart is just like N .T. Wright and William Lane Craig in one thing he clearly believes himself to be far far brighter than anybody else and therefore he can become a universalist as he is whereas eastern orthodoxy is not but he gets to pick and choose just like William Lane Craig William Lane Craig can defend the deity of Christ but then he can turn around and be a neo -apollinarian so what does it matter

52:21

David Bentley Hart is right along the same way now this is a little three minute clip and I'll have to interact with it as we're going along we only have a few minutes but I just want you to hear the thinking here because this is rather intriguing it really really is here we go first of all idolatry doesn't exist there never has been and never will be a culture that was actually guilty of the sin of idolatry okay now

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I want you to hear that this is a serious orthodox theologian saying there is no sin of idolatry no culture you mean those people in the woods on that island where you can't land on the island because they'll kill you and they have the hideous statues that they bow down to and do sacrifice to and all the rest of that they're not guilty of idolatry yeah that's what he's saying there was a specific prohibition on making images of the god of Israel and there were denunciations of certain practices in terms of idolatry but when you actually go to look at cultures that are accused of idolatry you will never actually find anyone practicing the worship of images they venerate images but they're worshiping the god that the image portrays so an evangelical who goes to a film about Jesus and his move to prayer is doing nothing much different from what a person is doing with an icon alright did you catch that he's talking about icons he's talking about the veneration of icons and before any

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Christian picked up this idea Greek, Roman writers had developed the idea that worship of an image is not really the worship of an image it's only the worship of what the image represents and so it's through the image to the god the pagans have been saying that for a long time the

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Christians hadn't bought it until John of Damascus came along and then that becomes dogma at the second

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Nicene council so that's where he's going with this an icon is understood as simply legitimated in orthodox tradition because god became incarnate therefore we have seen the face of god therefore there is no reason not to reproduce that face and all the imagery associated with it in tradition so again, that is

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John of Damascus' argument, the Latria -Dulia distinction all that stuff, but it's central primarily in orthodoxy because of the centrality of icons and Icona -Dulia and things like that but the truth is

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I'm just going to be obviously I'm flying in the face of tradition here

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I just don't think that any people at any time have been really guilty in any broad general sense of the thing called idolatry now, you may go how can he say that?

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Israel wiped out idolatrous nations for the sin of idolatry the

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Baals, the Asherim the high places what? how can?

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what? what are you saying here? but this is what happens when you take the logic that they use to defend

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Icona -Dulia and run with it. I think that's a myth Christians have a cross in their church they don't worship the cross but if they bow their heads to it someone from outside the tradition might think that they're worshipping that object,

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I suppose but no, say, Vaishnav actually worships an image of Krishna no it just does not happen

56:46

I really now remember, he is a functional universalist so he does believe all people will be saved so that's part of what's going on here in the thought process

56:54

I wish the category of idolatry would just sort of quietly drop out of discourse

56:59

I mean, human beings think in images and in words in symbols of all kinds that's what it is to be human and to think that God, infinite mind infinite love is actually some sort of small cretinous, jealous imp who really cares whether you keep one day holier than another or what do you think his view of the historical validity of the

57:32

Old Testament is? you can get a pretty good idea right now pray in front of a cross or pray in front of an open window it's just it's a waste of moral effort and again it's a childish way of thinking childish way of thinking there's a lot of stuff by this fellow on the web he has a criticism of William Lane Craig that was quite interesting, makes me wonder exactly where he's going in his view of God it really seems that he's heading off into almost a pantheistic type idea but anyway you may run into some of this stuff that's out there but this is the logical how does an eastern orthodox person avoid this kind of reasoning this kind of direction there is no idolatry well if there is idolatry what makes it idolatry?

58:36

that's really the question and the whole pagan idea of they're not worshipping the idol they're worshipping the reality behind it what if there is no reality behind it?

58:50

oh still idolatry and yes God has the right to say this is worship that is not alright so like I said maybe on Thursday hopefully we'll do the program from a cooled down yeah

59:11

I can't see it that probably means you don't have a professional level weather station okay

59:22

I do and it's 114 and so so there you go just a second here oh okay

59:38

I need to get you in touch with someone who just got back in touch with me if you know what I mean okay so that means that Saturday I head out

59:53

I do want to thank everyone who responded to my comments last week about how discouraging summers can be for non -profits and organizations and just to encourage you to keep encouraging very much appreciated it's very helpful to me

01:00:16

I'll be perfectly honest with you when I head out on a trip like this I'm going to be gone for three weeks then I'm only home for a month and then

01:00:21

I'm gone for four weeks and we're trying to set up debates and stuff like that it really helps me to know that everything's covered that we're not borrowing from the future to take care of things for now which we don't do but it really is extremely extremely encouraging to me

01:00:45

I head out the door with a little lighter heart than I would otherwise and so my thanks to all of you who did that and just encouragement to everybody else to continue to pray that other people step up as well it's very very helpful so with that we will see what happens on Thursday thanks for watching the program today we'll see you next time