Virginity of Mary, Donatists, and Bloggers

Apostolic Defense, Upcoming Travel, and Blog Responses

Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is 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. Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. 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 United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is James White.

And good afternoon, welcome to The Dividing Line on a special Monday evening edition of the program. The reason we are doing it this evening, of course, is because if we didn't do it this evening, then we wouldn't do it all week.

And there are a number of you who lack such an element of life itself that if we went for an entire week without doing The Dividing Line, many of you would mope around and would have nothing to do. And then again, there are also the legions of critics out there whose lives are so bereft of any other meaning that they need to have something to have a comment on.

And so we just need to try to help everybody out at one time by commenting on The Dividing Line, presenting another program. That means we will not be here tomorrow, obviously. And on Thursday, in fact, Thursday evening, I will be somewhere on Long Island.

I think of toward the North Shore, if I recall correctly, doing a presentation on the King James Only controversy. Wednesday night, I'm on Hicksville Road near Northern State at the Church of God there preaching.

And then over the weekend, doing a youth retreat for Hope Reformed Baptist Church out on the island. It's not going to be on the island. It's going to be in Pennsylvania. It's going to be cold. That's all I know.

I'm putting a lot of warm stuff into the bag that I'm going to be taking because it is going to be very, very cold back there. 877 -753 -3341. Going to also utilize this time to respond to some of the issues that I've been responding to on the blog.

If you're not familiar with what a blog is, it's a weblog. It allows you to, well, hopefully type short things. Some people type long things. And have faster interaction with people. For those of you who don't follow that, there have been some interesting developments of late.

We're going to look at some of those things. I also have a section to play from two sections, really. And I didn't convert it to something that I could really do the way I normally do it where you start right where you want to start, finish right where you want to finish.

As far as playing a clip goes, it's still in the real audio file. And I'm playing it out of real players. So I just sort of have to guess and things like that. But I did want to play a section from a Catholic Answers program, actually.

A Catholic Answers program from back, this is December 3rd, December 4th of last year. And this was pointed out to me last evening that Jimmy Akin says he's willing to debate it. And the way he put this, I wanted to correct any misunderstandings of the way this was expressed.

I guess I should just go ahead and pull it down. I don't have, I hear no sounds. I hear no sounds. Ah, there we go. And I think it was right around here. Let's see if we can find it. Let's try this.

Ah, that ain't it. Here we go. Let's listen to this. You're listening to a special edition of Catholic Answers Live. As we present the Catholic .com Radio Club Membership Drive.

Hey, we should have a Dividing Line Club Membership Drive or something. How would that be?

Call 1 -888 -291 -8000. That's 1 -888 -291 -8000 and become a member today. You know what, Sonny? I recognize that song. All right, so Louis has been holding very patiently. We welcome him from Madera, California.

Hi, Louis. Hi, Louis. Hey, guys, how you doing? All right, how about you? I'm not really here, though.

I hope you all know that. Yes, I know you hear me. Jimmy, are you going to currently, or not currently, but real soon, have another debate with maybe some, maybe like former Catholic priest or some evangelical or something like that?

Because the reason why I'm asking is because I heard your debate here with Anthony Pezzotta. Yeah, that one was really enjoyable. Oh, thank you. Yeah, that's the priesthood debate. Yeah, yeah, that was really good.

I was wondering, are you going to have any other debates on different topics? Well, I'm open to it.

I've done a fair amount of debating in the past, some on radio, some in formal venues, and I'm quite open to it. I don't have any lined up at the moment. One of the reasons for that is that it's just hard to find worthwhile debate partners and set up worthwhile debates.

It takes a lot of effort.

It does. To really do a worthwhile debate.

And I'm somewhat selective about who I'll do them with. I've tried to be. It's hard. If I'm going and the person is just going to veer all over the road.

And stay off topic and everything, then it's really just going to generate.

More heat than light, and I'm not interested in that. I want to do quality debates. It's better to do quality debates and have a market forum where they're doing good and people want more rather than do a lot of junk debates and burn out people's patience with them.

So, you know, I'm quite open to doing more. I had an inquiry recently from James White. That's me. Who is an anti-Catholic apologist. Anti-Catholic? Oh, come on, James. Jimmy. And, you know, I said I was open and, you know, started trying to negotiate what would be reasonable debate topics and things like that and using stuff.

And I stopped hearing from him, you know, so I don't know.

Ah, well, it stops hearing from him. Yeah, well, he's exactly right. Right after the debate on Long Island, I contacted him because we didn't. We're having a hard time finding folks. That's all there is to it.

I mean, it is not easy to find folks to do debates with. And so, though we had tried twice before with him and twice before he had said yes and then he said no, I've just come to the conclusion, and other people have said this, Jimmy Akin doesn't like to fly.

He doesn't like to travel long distances. And let's face it, you can't get too much farther from San Diego than Long Island. I mean, that is a long, long ways. So we found someone who's closer, not local, but closer than California, Gary Machuta.

He's going to be my opponent this year on the subject of the apocrypha. And so that was why I didn't follow up with that because there wasn't anything in California. Well, now there is. This year's cruise will be going out of Long Beach.

So once I get back from New York, then I'll contact Jimmy Akin again and say, well, you know, what about the possibility? I'm going to throw this out to the people who are arranging it because we have some other thoughts along those lines and we haven't really come to a conclusion on exactly where we want to go.

But make a long story short, if he says he's open, do something in California. As he himself noted, it takes a lot of work to put these things together. And when you already have somewhat of a, how shall we put it, mechanism in place, like on Long Island, like in preparing for the cruises and stuff like that, it's much, much easier when you have people who already have some experience, know what they're doing, and then you can arrange that kind of thing.

And so, you know, that is something we're definitely open to do. If he says he's willing to do so, great, fine, wonderful. And, you know, I've done 49 of them. We'll keep doing them into the future as long as the Lord gives us the opportunity of doing so.

Obviously, there are some other debates I'd like to pursue right now as well. I'd like to keep that challenge out there to old Dave Hunt. We can do it. We can do it, Dave. Come on, Dave. You said you would.

We can do it. But we'll definitely try to find something out there in California. Since I've got this fired up, there was, I should have written down the time, there was something really interesting. I heard a caller, and those of you who are regular listeners to The Dividing Line will go, Oh, that's interesting.

Evidently, other people are not regular listeners and seemingly aren't aware of a number of the issues. Let me see if I can find it here.

Oh, that sounds interesting. Great services, shop .catholic .com, where it's talking about David's...

Aha, bingo. Let's back it up a little bit. This is why you need a different...

I believe it is one, shop .catholic .com. We'll just have to listen to a commercial.

$100 shopping spree. This is a call about the perpetual virginity of Mary. And when you think about the conversations we had with Jerry Manatix and we've had with Eric Spence and how deeply we've gone into this, this was really surface level right here.

Listen in.

Call 1 -888 -291 -8000. That's 1 -888 -291 -8000 and become a member today. Now back to the host of our program, Jerry Usher. And back to your great questions for Jimmy Akin, our director of apologetics today.

Ben in Fairfield, California. You're up next. Thanks for waiting. Good afternoon.

Howdy. I just wanted to ask a question on Mary and Mark,. I believe it is, in Matthew 1 .25, it says Joseph did not have relations. Matthew 1 .25. I'm sorry, yeah, Matthew 1 .25. He had no relations with her until she bore a son.

He named Jesus. The Protestants say the word until definitely proves, without a shadow of a doubt, that Mary conceived other children. And... Not.

And I explained... Wasn't that deep? Not. That wasn't, of course, Jimmy Akin, that was the other guy.

My point of view is that I think he was emphasizing, you know, the point that he definitely was born of a virgin. Not making any... afterwards. You would be correct, sir. Is there any other thing you would add to that?

Well, yeah, there are a number of things.

I mean, even in English, they're simply wrong about what the word here means. It's true, both of the English word until, which can carry the connotation that a situation later reversed, but doesn't have to.

There are circumstances in which, even in English, the word until does not imply that a situation later changed. I mean, if I say, I didn't have, you know, let's suppose I'm... I'm trying to think of a...

There's a biblical example leaping to my mind, so maybe I'll just go with that, but it's in English, so it'll work. There's a place in the Greek Old Testament where it's talking about David's first wife, Michael, and how she didn't have any children until the day she died.

Now, have we all not heard that one before? I mean, this goes way back. If you've listened to the Svensson debate, if you've listened to the debate I did with Jerry Maddix, if you've listened to Dividing Line, but my experience is the folks at Catholic Answers do not listen to those things.

They do not take that information into consideration. I doubt very much Dr. Svensson's book has been looked at, anything like that. It's just sort of like, let's go with what worked back in 1986 or so.

Well, you know, that shows us right there. Obviously, she didn't start having kids after she died, you know, so that situation didn't reverse itself. It's simply a way of saying it didn't happen up to this point.

It didn't tell us anything about what happens beyond necessarily. So, you know, there's an example where since it's in the Greek Old Testament, it tells us something about Greek, and we can even see how that makes sense in English.

I mean, in English it makes sense to say, you know, she didn't have any children until the day she died. We understand that means she didn't have any children at all.

I could stop it right there because it's sort of like, yeah, so you're not familiar, first of all, notice the use of the word term instead of phrase, all the rest of that stuff. Just seemingly no knowledge of it at all.

It's not even figuring into the stuff over there. So that strikes me as a tad bit strange that he who is called staff apologist would be unfamiliar with the developments that have been taking place over the past number of years on this particular subject.

And, you know, I know Gerry Matitix isn't with Catholic Answers anymore, but still, you know, they're out there doing this stuff and it's good. In fact, I heard a discussion of a debate that James Aiken did with someone, a former Roman Catholic who is now a Baptist missionary, on the subject of the priesthood.

I would love, I'm going to try to get hold of it because we've debated that subject and I would very much like to know what the assertions are and provide a response to it. So we'll follow up on that and seek to do so.

So I just wanted to play that and then take a look at some of these comments that are out there. Those of you who have been following the blog wars this week, some of you are somewhat confused. Some of you who have been keeping up with the Auburn Avenue Presbyterian Church conference controversy and new perspectivism and the relationships and non-relationships that exist between them.

If you've really kept up with it and you've listened to the program and you've maybe participated in some of the discussions, you're probably pretty disappointed. And I certainly am disappointed, not only with individuals, but with the fact that there is just so little meaningful conversation going on.

There is a tremendous amount of ad hominem, but very little exegesis, very little meaningful discussion of the important issues that really this whole movement does illustrate for us. Very different pictures of what God is about doing in this world, what apologetics is, what evangelism is, what the purpose of the church is, what the nature of the church is.

There's a lot of foundational, fundamental things that go into all of this. And so some of you may know that on the bat, the really, really low end here, we'll start with the almost not worthy of mentioning end and we'll move up from there to something that hopefully will be a little bit more useful.

Donatism, Sacramental Validity, and the History of Persecution

But most of you know there is an anonymous blogger out there who posts in the name of Purist. And when we first stumbled across his website, when was that? Friday, somewhere in the past number of days, it was fairly new.

It started December 28th, if I recall. And the first few things were sort of funny. The individual obviously is able to write, has a theological background. Generally people without a theological background are not throwing out names like Schleiermacher, Schleiermacher, Tilliger, things like that.

And obviously has some level of theological training and of course has the ability to engage in incessant sarcasm. And so the first few things were sort of funny and talked about the great white shark and that's me.

And of course the entire blog is nothing but sarcasm. It's a blog of the Reformed Donatist faith. And a lot of you have been asking, what is this Donatist stuff? Well, that's why I've recommended it to a number of people.

And of course you can automatically tell where someone's coming from. Where when you mention a book called The Reformers and Their Stepchildren by Leonard Verdine, if the person, if their heart rate increases by 15 beats per minute, their blood pressure shoots up by 20%, their pupils dilate and they begin to drool, you're probably dealing with a person who has some very strong sacralist viewpoints and tendencies.

So I would just recommend Verdine's work to you. I had the opportunity of meeting him when he was, I believe, 98 years old. He was still as sharp as a tack at 98 years of age. And the Donatist controversy refers to a gratuitous guess at purest identity.

That was very funny. I'm sorry. That's why you need to be in the channel during this time. It helps you to understand these things. Very, very funny. Anyway, the Donatist controversy, the term is used by sacralists to refer to Anabaptists primarily.

Roman Catholics and Protestants used the term Magisterial Protestants. That is who believe in a Magisterial Reformation. Both Luther and Calvin were Magisterial Reformers. And hence they believe that the Reformation needed to extend to the entirety of the state church complex.

And if you're not familiar with church history, then you know that there were people called Anabaptists. Now that term Anabaptist, unfortunately, is thrown about with as much abandon as Donatist is, and very rarely defined to any level whatsoever of specificity.

And the term is used of a wide variety of people, from Trinitarians to non-Trinitarians, people who were individuals who had orthodox beliefs about salvation, people who didn't, and all sorts of things like that.

But it's a real very convenient term. You can just throw it around and say, ah, you're an Anabaptist. And of course, if you believe in Credo-Baptism, the baptism of adults and of young people who make a profession of faith, rather than Paedo-Baptism, baptism of infants who cannot make a statement of faith or a confession of faith by nature of the fact that they're infants.

Many Paedo-Baptists will just simply throw that Anabaptist term out there of anyone who is a Credo-Baptist, and hence we cannot truly be reformed and things like that, because we just do not understand the covenant.

And you get pat on the head, and someday you'll understand, and things like that. We've discussed some of these things in the past. Well, anyway, Verdain goes through the various terms that were used by both Catholics and Protestants, magisterial Protestants, sacralists who believe in the state church, of the Anabaptists.

And Donatist is one of them. And the reason they used it is it went back to a historical situation in the church. If you recall, up until the peace of the church in the beginning decades of the 4th century, when empire-wide persecution of the church came to an end, 313, you know, the Council of Nicaea is 325.

During that period of time, there was persecution. And the church struggled greatly in how to respond to individuals who gave in under persecution. Now, what kind of giving in are we talking about here?

Well, it depended. Obviously, there were those who would go so far as to deny Christ and deny the faith, and so on and so forth. And almost everybody agreed that once you did that, after the persecution ended, there would be no forgiveness, there would be no coming back into the church.

But what about other forms of, quote-unquote, giving in? One of the things that the Romans wanted to do is they wanted to take the scriptures away from the Christians. I'm not sure why they did this because, you know, the scriptures couldn't have been overly relevant at this point because you need the medieval period.

Oh, wait a minute, I'm sorry. I'm starting to be sarcastic, aren't I? They wanted to get the scriptures out of people's hands. And so they would come and knock on your door and they would say, do you have any of the Christian scriptures?

And if you gave up those scriptures, then you were considered to have given in, to have lapsed under persecution. Well, it even got to the point where some people, recognizing that your average Roman soldier was not the most literate guy at this point in time, they had been earlier, but remember, Rome's on the decline big time at this point.

And so your average Roman soldier was not a literary genius. And so you might be able to get away with just giving him the ancient equivalent of Time magazine and he wouldn't know the difference. That was still considered by some of the more rigorous people to be giving in, to lapsing, to any kind of cooperation whatsoever with the governing authorities who were persecuting Christians would be considered being lapsed.

And so the church struggled with, well, what do we do with these people once persecution ends? Because remember, persecution was very frequently a geographically limited thing. There were only a few periods where it was absolutely empire-wide.

And so when the persecution ended, now what do you do? Well, that led to all sorts of arguments and debates as to what you were having to, how you could bring people back into the church. Now, take all that as a background.

During one of the periods of persecution in the 3rd century, there was a man who was accused of lapsing, giving in, in regards to giving the scriptures to the Romans. Now, after all these centuries and everything else, no one will ever be able to know until eternity itself the actual facts of the matter on this particular issue.

We won't know whether he did, he didn't, whatever. The fact is, he was accused of this. Now, what happened after persecution was over, was this man was involved as one of the individuals who laid hands upon another person in setting him apart and ordaining him to the bishopric, to being bishop in North Africa.

Now, the rigorists said, look, that individual, because he lapsed under persecution, cannot be properly involved in the ordination of someone else because he is in a lapsed state. So therefore, because of the state of his own soul, then his engaging in a sacramental action of setting apart someone else, that person is not properly set apart.

He can't do that because he's not properly related to the church, because he has lapsed from the faith. And so they refused to recognize the validity of the ordination of this bishop because of the involvement of this man that they believed had lapsed under persecution.

This led to a schism. And that schism is called the Donatist Schism. The Donatists were those who elected their own bishop in place of this bishop. And one of those bishops in that line was named Donatist, and therefore they were called Donatists as the followers of him.

And by the time of Augustine, there were so many, Augustine coming over a century later, there were so many Donatists in North Africa that many people believe they outnumbered those who continued to follow after the bishop who had been ordained, and Augustine would be representative of that Catholic group over against the Donatists.

And so there's lots more to talk about how this was very relevant to how Augustine eventually gave in to allowing the use of force for the suppression of heresy. At first he did not feel that was a proper thing to do, but he was put under a lot of pressure, and eventually he allowed the emperor to send troops to physically repress the Donatist churches.

And of course, you know what happens when you use military force. All that does is cause the movement that you're seeking to suppress to grow, at least in the context in which it was found. And so Donatist churches continued to exist up until the Muslim expansion in the 7th century, and then they basically disappeared at that point in time.

Then again, almost everything in North Africa did, as far as Christianity was concerned. Now, what does all this have to do with the use of Donatist? Well, the substance of the argument that makes this relevant to our day and time is that the Donatists rejected the idea that a sacrament functions merely because a sacrament is done correctly.

They rejected what eventually became the quote-unquote orthodox view of the Catholic Church, and this became such primarily under the influence of Augustine, which is called ex opera operato. The sacraments function merely by the functioning of the sacrament.

The person who specifically operates or performs the sacrament, his spiritual condition is irrelevant. That's why even today a Roman Catholic would believe that a Muslim could validly baptize someone in an emergency situation as long as it's done in the name of the Trinity.

The state of grace of the individual performing the action is irrelevant. That's ex opera operato. The Donatists believe in ex opera operante. That is, that the state of grace or the condition of the soul of the person performing the sacrament is relevant, and therefore an unbeliever cannot perform proper sacraments, and therefore you see the difference between the two.

Now, what that eventually led to was that the Donatists rejected a sacral system. They did not accept the idea that just because you are baptized into a church as an individual, that means that that is a valid church or that you've been validly baptized, and so that led to a schism and the establishment of two churches.

In sacralism, what you have is an identification of state and church together so that your baptism also becomes your entrance into the state. In fact, most people are aware that at the time of the Reformation, one of the key issues in regards to infant baptism, and one of the reasons that the princes who rebelled against Rome still pushed for infant baptism, was that the tax rolls in that day were based upon the infant baptism rolls.

That's how you became a citizen. You became a member of the church and a citizen by the same sacramental action. And this goes back to the situation in North Africa, Augustine having to fight against the viewpoint of Cyprian, who rejected this ex-opera operato perspective in many of his writings, and Augustine's fighting against him and Augustine's position becoming the standard perspective.

And so really what it's all about, the reason you have the Donatist argument being thrown out there, is that those who are into the idea that we need to have a second Christendom, and you create a Christian society through baptism, this is something the Donatists rejected, and so they tried to slap this title onto a Reformed Baptist like myself, as if they were heretics back then and you're a heretic now, and therefore that's the relevance of the whole Donatist thing.

So when you've seen that in the blogs and in the discussions, that's where some of the background gives you a real quick rundown, the background of why that term is being used and what the reference of it is.

So with that said, we're going to go ahead and take our quick break, and then we'll continue commenting on these things. We'll be right back right after this.

Catholic Answers, Mary’s Perpetual Virginity, and Matthew 1:25

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The elders and people of the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church invite you to worship with them this coming Lord's Day. The morning Bible study begins at 9 .30 a .m. and the worship service is at 10 .45.

Evening services are at 6 .30 p .m. on Sunday and the Wednesday night prayer meeting is at 7 .00. The Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church is located at 3805 North 12th Street in Phoenix. You can call for further information at 602 -26-GRACE.

If you are unable to attend, you can still participate with your computer and real audio at prbc .org where the ministry extends around the world through the archives of sermons and Bible study lessons available 24 hours a day.

You're listening to a special edition of the dividing line, Spurgeon Held Hostage. The days are counting down for his inevitable release as the publication date for Debating Calvinism 5 .2 views nears.

Get your pre-publication copy hand signed by Dr. White today at aomin .org.

I'm following Jesus, his walk of grace.

I think that sounded a little live actually. I don't know what you're talking about. Calvin, no it wasn't Calvin, it was Spurgeon, hell that's Calvin too. Spurgeon Held Hostage. Believe me, believe me, Calvin is screaming for release as well.

Yes, well hey folks, if you're not aware of it, there is a little link there on our main page to the upcoming book, Calvinism Debated 5 .2 Views. I did mention that in some places on the planet, it is only by Dave Hunt.

I am no longer associated with the book there. I wonder if they're going to cut my sections out of the book. In Canada and the United Kingdom and France and Germany, at Amazon .com, my name is not associated with the book at all.

It's just, poof, it's gone. That's probably just a mistake. I doubt they really meant to do that. Anyway, I saw an email, and I'm not sure if I, I think I forwarded it over to you. I saw an email where one book distribution service was saying that they expect to have that book in their warehouse by the 12th of February.

Now, I don't know where they got that unless they talked to Multnomah. So, I'm sort of hoping that maybe by even mid-February, by the 15th or so, we may have them. The last time we did this, we did it with The God Who Justifies.

If you pre-order the book, that first run that we have, then I will sit down and give myself hand cramps, which is what I did last time. We dragged my kids over. We dragged everybody over. We had a huge book signing party.

We had all the mailers ready to go and labeled. As soon as those books hit, man, I just started signing away and stick them in there and send them out. So, the UPS guy is going to go absolutely bonkers the day we do this.

But be that as it may, it's available on our website. You can pre-order it now. I know it's all you can order at one time. There's a reason for that, and it's a good reason for that. So, just go ahead and go for it.

But hopefully, you should be able to get hold of it even by the end of February if we can get them. Yeah, I noticed that. Some people are actually saying it's already available. Well, it's not. And so, anyways, get it ordered.

Get it pre-ordered so that if you'd like to have it signed, then who knows? 20 years from now, you can sell it on eBay for $59 .95, just like somebody was doing one of my earlier books from more than a decade ago.

So, anyway, no, my kids were not signing while I was resting. They will tell you that. Back to the strange, odd things. I mentioned this purist guy. The first few things, you know, the first couple days, they were funny.

They're not anymore. Since there's no substance here, it's just the same repetition, the same now very tired, old things. It's really boring, and it's not funny anymore. Sarcasm is only funny up to a point, and then when you just keep going with it, it eventually becomes really sort of sad.

And so a purist has become really sad, and I sort of feel sorry for him because you can just only take that type of thing so far until you actually have the guts and the integrity to stand up and say, Actually, my name is such and such a person.

Here's a positive presentation where I believe this person won't do that, and so, you know, it's sort of really boring. Then we go over to Tim Enloe's website, and I know he said, OK, you get the last word, but that's really silly because that's not what's been happening.

For those of you who've been following this, you know that Mr. Enloe and I attempted to discuss the Galatians 2 passage on Julie Staple's board quite some time ago. I wonder when that was. Maybe she knows the specific date, and it didn't get very far because we were told that, you know, I just allegedly, and this keeps being repeated, claim that I can do perfect exegesis that has no influences from the outside and all this silly stuff that anyone who's read The Interchange knows.

I've never made those claims. I've very clearly stated my position, and that is certainly one of the key issues in what I'm seeing from almost all these individuals, not every single one of them, but the vast majority of them, is this complete inability to accurately represent what is being said and to constantly wander off into stuff that is completely irrelevant to the topic at hand.

It's very, very frustrating. It was sad to see someone that, I've said many times, I very much like Tim Enloe, and he's a very sharp fellow, but it's sad to read things like, no, I don't think you do.

I think rather that you're just one more arrogant little modern pretending to be better than everything and everyone else, everyone who's come before you, and that your attitude toward those who disagree with you is one of the most unchrist-like things I've ever seen or heard on this internet.

It just goes on and on and on, and it's very, very sad to see this complete lack of balance and things like that. Even after saying, okay, I'm not going to say any more about that, even today's blog entry, which is on something completely different, says I really need to read Knoll again, especially in light of present goofy criticisms.

Of course, certain critics ought to read Knoll and Hatch and Murray and Schaefer too, but that requires paying attention to more things than exegesis, and that's just too hard for some, I guess. Now, who's being talked about there?

Well, who has he gone after in regards to discussion of exegesis, but yours truly, and so it's a little bit like another fellow that I know of, I've known for a number of years, who can't write anything without taking a shot at me in a footnote or something along those lines.