Hank Hanegraaff’s Attack on Sola Scriptura Refuted, Part 2

Greetings welcome to the dividing line. It is a tuesday i think and so far anyways uh could become wednesday halfway through i saw more people saying get rid of this stupid daylight savings time thing this time than i have in the past including politicians um so maybe who knows maybe sanity will.

No it won't. We're currently buying up all the toilet paper in the land so no no that that's we're doomed. Anyway on the last program um lots of things we could be doing today um it it seems that there is a tremendous need for remedial 101 instruction on what presuppositional apologetics is about and um why it's important and i'm not talking about the new christian intellectuals the single single most arrogant title that anyone's ever come up with for themselves uh especially at something like 30 years of age or something like that um but but there's um there's just there's this tremendous amount of straw man burning going on uh in that particular field right now and so definitely the next time around we'll need to remind folks of the fact that um presuppositional apologetics is a fundamentally theological form of apologetics it's not a it it addresses many philosophical issues but it does not take its life and origin from philosophy and that's that's one of the main reasons it is detested by so many um who feel that well because of their theology they have they have problems.

But we'll get to that uh not today uh but uh later in the week it's going to have to either be tomorrow or friday uh thursday for me is going to become absolutely positively insane um so i'm going to be in the east valley pretty much all day on thursday so uh tomorrow or friday whichever one works for you uh we can uh we can make that uh make that work um but on the last program uh we began responding to um a video that appeared and i expected another video to appear for some reason but it uh it hasn't yet um i since it was talking about the eucharist things like that i do want to to that when it comes out i i didn't check today so it may have come out today um but um responding to a segment of uh hank hanegraaff unplugged i'm not sure what that is i don't know if there still is a bible and saman broadcast i don't know um things have changed greatly over the years and certainly the reach and outreach of cri is a tiny fraction of what it once was and obviously one of the greatest reasons for that uh 2017 when hank hanegraaff swam the bosporus um and entered into eastern orthodoxy and uh so we began looking at a um edition of this particular program.

We started with where you have to start you have to start with the subject of authority and foundation. And even though uh eastern orthodoxy as a religious system as it exists in its shall we say in its native environment is fundamentally averse uh to dogmatic definition.

And if you if you speak with eastern orthodox in eastern orthodox countries in russia ukraine uh especially you will discover that orthodoxy seeks to express itself through. Were you just coughing in there.

Allergies. Well it's nice knowing y 'all oh he's. Well both yeah you're allergic to the coogies. You figured they were all all gone. And then this rainstorm comes through and cools things down and and out out they pop again.

It's uh it's just like weeds in a yard. I was just i thought i'd get there before you. That's all anyway um i just haven't uh done the vacuum bag thing to suck them get them all squished down and get them stored away for the the heat that is undoubtedly right around the right around the corner.

So yeah anyway um but as i was attempting to say east orthodoxy expresses itself through the prayers and liturgy and part of that is just because the worldview out of which it came and part of that i think has continued to be an emphasis upon that to try to differentiate it from roman catholicism um as they seek to um you know obviously they make the argument that rome is split away from them.

They're the ancient church. Um and since roman catholicism is extremely focused upon western thinking and a legal forensic concept that allows them to write books of dogma and doctrine. Well did we're still speaking you know we're still living in a rather new time period in the pontificate of francis where everything is now up for grabs.

Um but i think there's that's where some of this emphasis comes from within eastern orthodoxy is is a self differentiation from roman catholicism anyway the subject of this particular discussion is absolutely foundational.

But when someone like jay dyer or hank canagraph um seek to attack solo scriptura they're doing so in a western context. And so part of what is definitional in fact i would say part of what is definitional of the best expressions of eastern orthodoxy sort of gets lost and uh by necessity because there has to be this you know you're engaging in dialogue and debate with westerners and so you you have to let me put this way eastern orthodoxy is never more like roman catholicism than when it attempts to engage in apologetics within a western context.

And i think we see that in this conversation that is that is going on here and so with that in mind we were looking at the subject of solo scriptura and we were looking at the issues that it that it raises and we are already we have looked at texts that we've looked at within the past few months.

Somebody on somebody on twitter just today was asking me well you know are you going to continue your response to jay dyer we've been doing that a little bit at a time basically it's been breaking down to particular texts that he has attempted to say well this means the early church believed this early church believed that and so we're going to continue doing that but it has just broken down into little segments that we've been we've been providing responses to and so we that's what's happened here as we've been listening to hank and his guest and so we will we will continue with that i just want to bring one thing up over here before i before i do that so that i can be looking at that at the same time i think we're ready to go we're i backed it up a few seconds from where we were just so you're you know we're just not picking up the exact same second that we uh uh let go last time so let's uh let's go back.

To listening now all of a sudden you have people that come to the same biblical text and they say you know what that biblical text does not mean that this is truly the body and blood of jesus christ but rather it's a memorial it's a remembrance.

Okay. And so we had stopped right.

There and why. Because we pointed out that that's the biblical language the biblical language is memorial remembrance that that's the greek since hank's really into greek today. Um you know i'm i'm almost i'm i'm almost remembering something where.

Um now i don't think it would have happened in the first program because in the first program is where first program when i was on the bible lanceman was when we did king james only controversy and set all the records as far as melting the phone lines.

Um because there was a lot of people really had a lot of questions about that. Um but i i have the strong recollection of some point earlier on where something was said about try to avoid using greek try to avoid using the biblical languages.

And um so it's somewhat ironic uh that there would be this big huge emphasis now upon upon these things. But the reality is the biblical term is do this as an anamnesis a remembrance of me. Um and so it just struck me as very strange and odd that this would be the argumentation that hank would make at this point.

Because that's that's the first and foremost plainly biblical teaching.

So you have all these different interpretations and because of the interpretations that are different you have all kinds of permeations within christianity now i've often said god has his people everywhere but the problem is the christian faith keeps fissuring keeps fragmenting and a lot of what's behind that is private interpretations.

The solo scriptura where.

Everybody becomes their own pope. Yeah where everyone becomes their own pope. Uh that undoubtedly was a an assertion that i rebutted in his presence on the program and at that time he agreed he doesn't any longer.

Um and obviously solo scriptura does not mean everybody becomes their own pope. Um that would not explain for example divisions amongst ethan or eastern orthodox who don't have a pope according to their own confession.

Um but the reality is that the abuse of an completely perfect and sufficient source is not an argument against the sufficiency of that source. And the whole solo scriptura blueprint for anarchy thing is false on its face and this has been pointed out before i'll point out again maybe hank's friends can point out to him though i've not found him to be one listening really well to what is said once he makes up mind he's going to do something.

Um if you take all of the religious organizations movements denominations that profess to hold the solo scriptura they know what it is they define it and they seek to live in light of it it's part of their confessions.

Um it is something that they they try to hold the members their denomination their ministers uh to solo scriptura. Now there are not that many organizations that fit into that into that particular rubric and you might go really aren't all pros and nominations.

No no. Um you can't tell me that bethel church believes in solo scriptura. Um the charismatic movement as a whole with exceptions and only very knowledgeable exceptions who recognize what the issue really is and seek to do something about it.

But the vast majority of people watching the trinity broadcasting network and listening to people on a regular basis saying the lord says this and lord says that do not believe in solo scriptura. They they have either a very squishy understanding of what the canon itself is or they have a concept of continuing revelation or whatever else it might be.

But the idea that the scriptures are the sole infallible rule of faith for the church because they are theanistas because they are god-breathed that's that's not where they are that that's not uh a part of it.

So when you when you see differences and divisions between word-faith advocates and followers of word-faith teachers um that's not because of solo scriptura. And never does the does the belief that scriptures are the sole infallible rule of faith make everybody a pope.

That that's the standard roman catholic argument that that hank has borrowed and it's a completely fraudulent argument because that does not give me infallible certain certitude as far as interpretation is concerned.

I do not get to ignore the church. I do not get to ignore history. I do not i have to practice all those things that hank has made up acronyms about for decades. Um i have to practice all those things.

And i have to recognize that i stand upon the shoulders of giants. I i do listen to what preceding generations have said but i recognize the fundamental authority difference that exists between them and the scriptures.

And so it doesn't make me a pope. Um everybody who thinks they are a pope you know them and their bible solo scriptura out under the under the tree. We've spoken against this for a long long time but and this is something that hank did know should know certainly had access to all sorts of resources that would have explained these things to him.

So it's disturbing and sad to see someone utilizing this kind of argumentation. Um when it's just invalid argumentation it would not survive any meaningful cross-examination. Uh that's that's for certain.

Um so this so so look at the look at the organizations that seek to practice solo scriptura and the theology that they arrive at. How different is it between the various groups that truly believe in solo scriptura.

As far as i know they're all trinitarian. Uh they all believe in justification by faith. They all believe in the resurrection of christ. They believe in the coming of christ. They believe in the inspiration of scripture.

They they believe there is a church. Um they have tremendous consistency in what they believe. Now let's look at all the groups that say the bible is a revelation from god but do not practice solo scriptura.

Um what do they believe. Well that's a big group. It's not just rome. It's not just eastern or eastern orthodoxy. You've got the mormons. You've got the jehovah's witnesses. You've got all sorts of people who say they believe the bible's word of god.

But it's not enough in of itself. And when you look at what they all believe they can't even agree on who god is. So the roman catholic goes. Well that's not fair. Because we're the one root. You can't compare us as the east orthodox says the same thing.

But if you're going to make whether you accept or reject solo scriptura as the dividing line. Well they're all on that that side of the line. And where is the where is the vast majority of confusion. The vast majority of confusion is found when you bring tradition.

When you bring external sources of authority in look what's happening among southern baptists today. Where's so much of this division coming from. Um it's not so much coming from meaningful exegesis of the text of scripture.

It's coming from bringing the mindset of the world in whether it be your old-fashioned traditions or in the current situation critical theory and intersectionality and getting woke and all the rest of this kind of stuff.

Um and that's causing division. But it's it's a rejection of solo scriptura not an embracing of solo scriptura. That is causing this fracturing that hank was referring to uh in his discussion here with a i had not heard of nathan jacobs before.

But he's about to continue on with the conversation here.

Yeah so i i think any problem with what i just said not at all. Actually uh i i'm very sympathetic to the argument that just from you know common sense if you were to say well who's who's in a better position to tell us what you know this text means uh somebody who's native to the culture native to the language.

Um okay this this harkens back if you weren't listening.

Last time to an argument that just may have been made by hank that you you need to look at the people who spoke greek in the early church as your ultimate authority because they were the closest. And i i argued against that um that they're the large majority good grief.

I can't think of anybody who melito sardis at least he was in that area and he excuse me he um did inquire of people in palestine. But the vast majority of the writers in the first three centuries that we possess today again i can't think of an exception um are not writing from the culture that produced the new testament.

They may be greek but good grief again. Church history. How about world history. Why were they speaking greek. Was there a unified culture. No there was not a unified culture. There was an enforced unanimity or enforced utilization thanks to someone by the name of alexander the great the king of macedonia son of philip um who in a very short life uh expanded his kingdom massively primarily to the east um and then the huge expansion of greek language as which became the lingua franca was then utilized by the romans who arose shortly thereafter as far as the world power is concerned and consolidated what he had uh accomplished.

But their language never displaced. In fact they were more influenced by by greek thought than the other way around. And so their language never really displaced greek until the second third century in the west uh within christianity then latin uh takes over at that point as the as the language of the church in the west.

But the point is that means people from so i mean all the gnostics were speaking greek. That doesn't mean they're even in in the same worldview as the writers of scripture. So to look at someone like tertullian uh or irenaeus or justin martyr and think that they their interpretation should be given some kind of extra credit.

Origin clement of alexandria. Um you look at their writings. And then you ask a simple question from a biblical perspective. Did they understand. Did they really have a solid grasp on what was going on in two-thirds of the bible called the tanakh.

And the answer is no. Not really not really um each one to a different extent. Obviously um but they're not coming from that that culture. They they are not jews. And after ad 70 um there's only certain places you can go where you can inquire of those who are jews and some of those be in babylon.

Some of their those are you know in bethlehem and places like that. Um and some early writers did you know seek their information but still they weren't coming from that perspective. So i didn't this just doesn't.

Work it's just it's just historically unfounded. Is only a couple of generations removed from the text or one generation or maybe knew the author. Right. Uh there's certainly a case from just common sense to say they're probably the church fathers are probably more reliable interpreters than us.

Right. Um again and i i pointed this out before. This sounds logical but it's not many of these individuals. Someone like justin martyr did not even have a completed canon. Can you imagine what your systematic theology would look like if you didn't have hebrews.

As a vitally i mean that's that's been one of the biggest problems in my opinion. Uh for the church up to the point of the reformation was a massive diminishment of a recognition of the centrality of hebrews and the importance of hebrews is the longest sustained argument about the intention of the father son and spirit in the atonement in all the new testament.

What if you didn't have that. And many of these early writers didn't have it so is that not going to impact how you interpret romans. Chapter eight. Yeah of course it will. Of course it will. So i i just think this is just.

Naivete at best and and so on the one hand i'm sympathetic to that but of course obviously you have the problem of the the exercise of interpretation creates these this diversity of interpretations right that fracturing and figuring that starts to happen one of the things.

That i think is uh interesting uh is can i just mention that that is not an inevitable result. That's what people assume that the more interpretation you get the more fracturing that you get. That's a function i think.

In fact i'm really surprised that the orthodox are arguing this way. I think this is where the western way of thinking has influenced because the orthodox would say we have the same traditions we've had since the eighth century ninth century.

And we can keep going over it over and over. And it does not require fracturing at all. Why does the bible require fracturing. But your traditions don't see. That's that's that's something a westerner would say.

That's something a westerner would go. Well yeah i mean the more people interpret the wider the perspectives are going to get. But the reality is that i think most of that comes from the western mindset and the western way we do scholarship.

The only way you're going to get published is you come up with something new. You you're not going to get published if you say you know what on this subject we've had it right all along that's not going to get you anywhere.

And so it's the very way that we do scholarship borrowing it from the world. Um that ends up producing much of this type of fracturing. Um it's not something about scripture itself and it's not the necessity of truth.

Um one of the greatest uh encouraging things to me is when i will read um athanasius. We just said my fellow pastor jeff just had another grandchild he's getting very early start on these things uh and the middle name is athanasius.

And my first comment was that poor kids could be spelling that the rest of his life. But uh when we read athanasius um who's very popular amongst the orthodox and when you read his his arguments against the arians he's arguing the same text that we argue today in the same way that we argue today.

So it doesn't require that there be a fracturing the truth hasn't changed. Um can we can we get a deeper appreciation of it. Can we uh for example uh when we look at the granville sharp constructions in second peter 1 1 uh in thais 213.

Can we more strongly substantiate the arguments that someone like athanasius might have made in light of the study of the language. See we have access to significantly more uh this is gonna sound strange because they obviously would have had much more greek literature available to them at that time in a library.

How many libraries were there now. There certainly was a big one alexandria. Um but for the vast majority of people library was something you could ever access. And so though there would have been more extant manuscripts books in their day.

We have things like thesaurus lingua greca where we can look for a word or a construction in the greek language or the latin version thereof. And we can we've now cataloged things and they couldn't catalog things back then.

So we can compare things they could never ever compare. In fact you could not make the comparisons that we can make today until 15 20 years ago um when i was doing my thd uh on the trinity one of the things that we got man we could barely afford it back then.

We only we couldn't afford it all but we we got anyways was the tlg cd-rom. Now they don't have that anymore. Now you have to do it online. But anyway um and that allows you to to do these incredible searches that no one could do before it just it was not physically possible to be able to see the structures in the language that we're able to see today.

So this modernistic hey you know uh everybody back then you know as far as church history is concerned so there's two extremes. You've got the modernist who says hey it's only stuff today that matters and so we can ignore those people back then.

They've got the people back then say well those people are the ones that mattered because they were so close the original and if you think it through there are advantages and disadvantages in both. And there has to be a balance.

There has.

To be a balance you you mentioned mystery right. And the etymology of the word mystery is a fascinating one in terms of how it originates and how it makes its way into eastern christianity. Moustakos right.

The word moustakos from which we get mystery uh its root right. Its its underlying root was mouin which was a greek verb that meant to shut and that referred specifically to the initiation into mystery cults where you would shut your eyes and shut your mouth in order to be received into uh the mystery cult.

And so plato starts to use the word moustakos to refer to those that knowledge that is had only by the initiated that secret knowledge that's only had by the.

Initiated of course that's not really the meaning in the new testament but the point is the mystery cults gnosticism gnosis knowledge. Um the idea that these things are hidden and therefore can only be obtained through the process of the cult itself.

Um mystery in the new testament is that which was unknown in the past but now has been a part of the relation to jesus christ. Um and so that's at.

Paul uses it in the key texts. Well when this term gets picked up by clement of alexandria and eastern christians uh it begins to be used for that knowledge of god that is had only via christ meaning those who have been initiated into the faith who have been received into the church who have been who have embraced the faith those are the ones who have been initiated into a certain knowledge of god that comes only via christ.

Now. What. Now. Of course. What i would.

Point out is what we would want to do is we would want to look at the term moustidion and we would want to define it biblically and then it's perfectly valid to go um clement alexandria does this now.

Clement of alexandria is a a broken reed um origin. He even said origins not a church father. Well of course he was a church father um. But he was wildly unorthodox and clement of alexandria is only slightly more orthodox than origin was.

Um and so you would want to define these terms biblically first and then ask the question did these fathers have an accurate understanding or and this is a big issue how many of them were deeply influenced by greek philosophy and allowed that to become a lens through which they then started seeing things in the text of the new testament or the text of the old testament.

That would be how we would do it. It's also important is that for clement that specifically referred to moustiko is specifically referred to the opening of the biblical text the opening of the old testament in particular.

Uh to see the things that are there. Right. To see that for example the ark is a type of baptism. Right. And see that's why there's three stories to the boat you know. And things like that. Um because clement's point is that on the one hand the old testament is filled with all these odd stories.

Right. Odd care. Remember. Uh clement leads.

Us to origin who leads us to the allegorical interpretation the old testament which leads to literally a more than a millennium of a fundamental degradation of the authority of the old testament text.

Um because partly because of the the division that took place between the synagogue and the church part of which was necessary part of which was not um because of an ignoring of paul's warning in romans 9 through 11 especially in 11.

Um you had this this there was a recognition even in the medieval period of the content of the tanakh but that was seen for a long time up until the reformation. The reformation really helped to undo this.

But it was seen as having that knowledge is something anybody could have this kind of thing this kind of spiritual insight which has no connection to the text became the methodology. So you had to have this spiritually enlightened understanding text.

You could see things that have nothing to do with what the original authors would have intended the original audience would have understood and do not have prophetic fulfillment in the new testament scriptures.

And there's that's where the issue is is we're not talking about passages about the messiah. We're not talking about isaiah 9. We're not talking about things like that. We're talking about looking at things where god worked with his people in having the tabernacle or in in these types of things.

And where you all of a sudden start claiming to have this spiritual kind of knowledge what this. And then you attach to that the idea that if you only have the the knowledge that any old joe on the street could have of what was going on in the old testament well that's anybody can have that.

But you need to have the secret knowledge. You need to have this special sacred knowledge which you only get in certain ways you see that led to the old testament becoming a closed book for the vast majority of people up until the reformation.

There were some exceptions during the medieval period but they weren't popular exceptions in the sense of having.

Major impact upon a large number of people murderers you know adulteries and murders and talking snakes and all sorts of weird stuff and what does it all mean. And his point is only in the revelation of christ and the knowing god through christ do you begin to see those things flower and open so that you see what they are really all about.

And that's how clement used the word moustakos and then origin uh of alexandria not a church father but an early christian writer.

Who was very influential. Um i still don't get. How can you say he's not a church father. I suppose what he's saying is we recognize that he was unorthodox on numerous things. Because he was um and and in fact the the interesting thing is we do not yet know how unorthodox he was because last i heard i suppose something major could have changed but the last i heard um all of his materials hasn't even been translated yet and hence a lot of his stuff is still locked away in original languages that only a few people have ever seen.

Because he i mean he produced it's like 6 000 volumes. It's it's like there was a he had scribes just followed him around and just wrote down everything he said. Man no thank you. Um i mean that was that was weird.

Um brilliant but not grounded. Yeah. Exactly. Brilliant but not.

Grounded origin begins to use that and expand on that. Specifically he uses the train. His spiritual interpretation of the transfiguration is that the transfiguration at the transfiguration. And obviously you know the story that you know we have uh some of the apostles there and then christ is transfigured.

He he glows with divine glory uh his garments shine whiter than anyone can bleach them. And uh he converses with moses and elijah who both show up. And origin suggests that moses and elijah represent the books of the prophets and of the law which have no light in themselves but only become illuminated when bathed in the light and glory of christ.

And the christ's white garments that glow represent the four gospels that are illuminated only in the light of christ and that the apostles who are there are the illuminated interpreters because.

They're cloaked in a cloud of uncreated energy as well. That's right now. Did you catch that.

They're cloaked in a cloud of uncreated energy whenever an orthodox person uses the term energy tune in energia. Um i mentioned this last time uh when i was i i got to bop around kiev uh with my dear friend nick a couple years ago and we went to a museum uh of world war ii and and all the stuff that ukraine has been through between the soviets and everything else it was fascinating and even had a section on the current war that was going on and and continues to go on which the world has pretty much ignored.

Um that's a whole nother issue anyway. Um as we were leaving we walked by a very large orthodox church that had just begun a service and so we walked in and right up front was a gift shop where you could buy icons.

Um and then inside the choir had just begun to sing. Look there i have friends who who um still have a lot of fundamentalists in them. Um that forgot about this. But there are few things musically more beautiful in the world than than chant.

I mean um i i posted on facebook recently um somebody had posted this and i i listened to it. Um they they went into the the the huge the massive incredible byzantine church in constantinople modern day istanbul as you know in the middle of the 15th century the the turks finally breached the walls primarily thanks to um the crusades and things like that.

Um they finally breached the walls they had stood against. They kept the turks out of europe all that time. And finally they they take constantinople as a blood bath and they turn this massive church which at one point is one of the largest structures in the world into a mosque.

Um but it's a christian church. And what they did is they went in there. Did did you see this did you listen to it. Oh man you've got to um a few years ago they got permission to go in there when nobody was in there because you can't have anybody in there to do this when nobody's in there and they set up equipment all around the room and then they all they do is they just what was it wasn't clap what was it.

There was some sound they would make and then they recorded what that sounded like at various places in the room and they created an audio filter that you can then apply so you could hear what a choir would have sounded like in that building back in the day and so they they'll play a chant and then they'll apply the filter and it's just like oh whoa so the the music i mean it was beautiful.

We nick and i walked in and you there is beautiful beautiful music coming out of there but i'm looking around and you can have beautiful beautiful music. But from a christian perspective the world can produce beautiful beautiful music.

What makes it beautiful is its truth content. Yes the god made us to appreciate the beauty of that sound just as we appreciate the beauty of the sunset. Um and and an orthodox service lasts forever and you are assaulted from every direction they have the incense going and the sound and the the the the building and it it's meant to to fill all the senses.

But from the christian understanding of the creation of man what would make any of that important is not the response of the creature but the conforming of the creature to the image of the creator through the communication of divine truth and what happens and what has happened in the vast majority of eastern orthodoxy is a replacement of that truth with traditions a denial of certain vitally important elements of divine truth especially in regards to anthropology and soteriology and foreign concepts and some of those foreign concepts the primary one is this concept of energia of energies.

There are places of energies and you have to go to these places i i would argue in the new testament the places of energia is wherever the holy spirit of god is and holy spirit of god dwells within his people.

And so when you have a small band of believers in prayer in the back room of a storefront in poughkeepsie that's where real energia is going to be found when they're on their knees seeking to be obedient to christ in all things applying the gospel living the gospel.

But the tradition has developed there's these places of energia and it can take on quite simply a rather blatant character of paganism with all the beautiful music all the the structure and the architecture.

Once you take out christian truth then you've got people simply coming to a place hoping to get certain energy for healing and for success in business and and it becomes very token and very materialistic even though it's talking about uncreated energy because what animates is christian truth.

And that's why solo scriptura is so important. Because once you deny that the church is the bride of christ and the church hears the voice of christ in his word. Once the church says we are the infallible interpreter of this and once the church says we are the one that determines what this is the church enters into a monologue with herself a mere echo.

You no longer hear what is outside of you and can bring correction you can there can be no reformation anymore. And that's a tragedy. Especially when that tragedy takes place in the midst of such beauty.

And so one of the reasons again that and here i am talking about it again that i have attempted to try to avoid getting dragged into this whole area is because trying to communicate with western evangelicals and going no no wait guys hold on the smells and the bells aren't the issue.