Jeff and James Compete, R. Scott Clark Decalvinizes Me, More of Leighton Flowers and Ken Wilson

Greetings and welcome to the Dividing Line. It is a Tuesday, I believe. It's hard to keep track of the days, but I know. No, it's a Wednesday. Yeah, it's Wednesday already. This is the third day we've done it in a row?

Wow, look at that, see? Well, we can't, because I've got a flight to Las Vegas tomorrow. Gonna be driving some vehicle down on Friday as my daughter and son-in-law and my grandkids are moving back to Phoenix, and they're gonna be a part of the church and stuff like that.

So we have stuff going on, shall we say. So that's why we won't be doing anything after this as far as the rest of the week goes. Don't want to leave you all alone, but I've been talking to a bunch of folks to say they're behind anyway.

So, you know, you got used to a certain schedule and we've been just blowing that up. So, you know, that's how that works. So, got past Michael Brown. It tightened up a little bit toward the end, but it was 64 -36, I think, on that one.

And so we're in the final four, and in the final four, I'm up against Jeff Durbin. And so, assuming that that's what was going to happen, we got together and had a few ideas, many of the same ideas, which was interesting.

But we wanted to do something to, you know, keep the brackets interesting and stuff like that. So we put a little something together and it dropped this morning. I don't know if you've seen it or not, but, you know, what's it like when Jeff and I compete with one another?

And so here's a little something enjoyable to start off with and to record it on another platform. Here's a little competition between Jeff and I for the bracket competition that's going on right now.

Check, huh? What? But you taught me. Well, but I ain't dead yet. That's true. But it won't be long. Question is, do you have a chin? Oh, no. Three debates.

174. Debates. If I hit your face, I win.

If I stick it in your beard, I win.

All right, you win. Ninja, I told you. I told you.

Really? James, you're taking this too seriously.

Yes, Mr. Miyagi and Daniel-san. So that makes me Mr. Miyagi. I don't look, well, I guess I look a little bit like, he had hair though, and it sort of, you know, I don't know. So yes, I'm Mr. Miyagi, and right now I'm doing pretty well.

But yeah, I'm sort of feeling badly about that, actually. Jeff, sorry about that. But a lot of folks are distracted with other things. And so you can go on Twitter and you can vote. And it's on the other side, it's Jeff and I on this side.

So you got two presuppositional reformed guys on this side. And then you got Ravi Zacharias and Lee Strobel are the last two on the other side. So neither one are reformed and neither one are presuppositional.

So, you know, the final bracket's gonna be a traditional versus presuppositional matchup one way or the other. And so there you go. We'll see how that shakes out. And I'm not sure when the finals are, actually.

I forgot to look. Cause they're getting a little bit longer. So, cause there's still two days left on Jeff and I. So it's like a three day thing, which is good. Cause I'm, like I said, I leave tomorrow and drive back on Friday and then have to help unload stuff on Saturday.

And so I'm gonna be out of it into the weekend. So I'm not sure when the last round will be posted, but it's not like most of us have a whole lot to be doing right now anyways. Well, unless you're in some of the industries that are just being beaten to death right now.

You know, if you're a truck driver, oh my goodness, we should be doing six, three hour programs a week just to keep you going with all that you have to do. So, but for a lot of folks, it's sitting around for a lot of other folks is working hard, difficult, difficult days.

R. Scott Clark, Calvinist Identity, and the Limits of Reformed Labels

Let me show you something that was, that I saw this morning was posted. And the only reason I put this up is, you know, I expect to get this kind of stuff. I don't know who this Geneva and General guy is, but R. Scott Clark, we know the good redoubtable Dr. Clark.

Someone referred to me as a Calvinist. Calvinist, he wouldn't be allowed at the Lord's table in Geneva. And then Geneva and General. And I guess one of the reasons I didn't see this is because I discovered I had him muted.

So obviously this isn't the first time we've encountered his kindness. He'd be friends with Sir Vedas and yell at Calvin, do you have 100 perfect discernment? So part of it's just humorous. I mean, it's sort of silly, especially because the one guy obviously really does believe what he's saying.

I've not seen this Geneva and General guy out doing apologetics. If he'd like to send me a picture of him being in the audience supporting me while I was debating Yusuf Ismail in the largest mosque in South Africa a few years ago, defending the deity of Christ and the Trinity in that kind of a situation, and hence refuting Sir Vedas and his, in fact, depending on exactly how you interpret Sir Vedas, I've probably debated far more people that hold Sir Vedas' position than this guy has ever even met in his life.

But hey, keyboard warriors, you know, keyboard warriors to keyboard warriors. The reason my attention was drawn to this is, of course, we've talked about R. Scott Clarke, who has a very, very, very, very, very, very narrow, he's the essence of the TR movement, the truly reformed.

We are the, not Texas Receptus, that gets confusing. We are the truly reformed, and no one except us, we are the truly reformed. But what's really interesting, and it's a good opportunity for education, is the fact that a few years ago, right before the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, or at least the traditional dating thereof, we were in Berlin with our group that we took to various locations there in Germany in regards to the Reformation.

And the first night at our hotel in Berlin, I gave a talk extemporaneously. I think all of my presentations were extemporaneous on that particular trip. And one of the things that I mentioned, just to be honest with you, it wasn't a big element of what I said, but it's what people picked up on.

As I said, now, I'm well aware of the fact that many of the men that we will be studying, we'll be visiting birthplaces where they died, where they ministered, so on and so forth, would not have extended to me the right hand of fellowship.

And in fact, would have banished me, imprisoned me, or even executed me. And that shocked almost everyone, which shocked me that people were not aware of that historical reality. Well, one of the things we did on that trip was to demythologize the Reformers and to put them in their proper context, because if you do not put them in their proper context, you will end up with a fictionalized Reformation.

You'll end up with a cartoon version. And unfortunately, that's what a lot of people had in 2017 and continue to have today, is a fictionalized, false, shallow understanding of what was going on back then.

And especially as we stood in the Vartburg Castle, where Fritz Erba was imprisoned and where he died, a lot of people had to struggle with the reality of what sacralism is and the narrowness of the thought that sacralism produces and produced at that particular point in time.

And we had some people say, I'll just never really be able to honor the Reformers if this is how they were. And it's like, well, be careful. We're looking back. We have a vantage point they did not have.

So let's be careful as to what it is we're saying about them and everything like that. And just be careful, because if you apply too stringent a test, you're gonna end up with no Christians in history.

And if you end up with no Christians in history, you've probably gone just, you've probably just missed it just a little bit. So the point is that, if Dr. Clark wants to say that I'm not a Calvinist, I'm not Reformed, I'll, Lord bless him, let him do his thing.

But there are many, many, many thousands of people around the world that we've had the opportunity of introducing to Reformed theology. And at least we have been able to do so in such a way that the foundation of their commitment is a foundation focused upon what really defines Reformed theology, in my opinion, that is your view of God and man.

And it's based upon scripture. It isn't based upon, it takes into consideration the whole realm of history, but it can do so honestly. It doesn't have to whitewash anything. We don't have to make the early church fathers into Calvinists.

We don't have to make Calvin into the perfect person. We can deal with his issues and Luther's issues and Zwingli's issues. And they all had issues. And they all had beliefs that many Calvinists of whatever stripe would go, nah, I'm not so sure.

Yeah, that's a little weird, et cetera, et cetera. So we can actually allow them to be who they were. We don't have to play these games of, well, they were these superheroes without any faults. No, they had their faults.

And if you're unaware of them, then when the enemy brings those things up, you're sort of left out much to say. But what is interesting is when you think about the Lord's table in Geneva, the context over the conflicts that Calvin had regarding the Lord's table in Geneva were based primarily on the fact that Geneva was a form of theocracy.

And hence I have partaken of the Lord's supper in many a Presbyterian church. I doubt R. Scott Clark would allow me to. I mean, if he's consistent, he wouldn't. He would be allowed to partake at our church.

But a lot of the issues that were involved where Calvin was very strong had to do with submission to the church elders and the pastors. And a lot of that just had to do with the fact that it was a sacral city.

And so you just, reality is you had a bunch of unregenerate people that you were trying to get to act like they're regenerate. And we aren't in that situation, thankfully. And therefore we can have, I think, a much more biblical and meaningful doctrine of the Lord's table as a result.

But anyway, so I thought that was, you know, you see weird and strange things on Twitter and an opportunity to point out and go, hey, let's think about what that is. I obviously do not grant to Dr. Clark, despite his great exaltedness, the right to define these terms.

And I'll continue using terminology and defending that use as I have in the past for years I've been saying that there are so many Presbyterians that I know of who are considerably less consistent with Calvin's doctrine of God than I am that if you focus upon externals and miss that, okay, whatever, I was briefly looking at a video clip that is of a, he's now an Eastern Orthodox priest, but he studied under a number of Reformed guys.

And what was interesting was he made reference to PCUSA, well, okay. In fact, the argument that he put forward first for his reason for converting to Orthodoxy was that he could see that 20 years from now, 30 years from now, 40 years from now, the organizations he was associated with would no longer believe the things they believe today.

And so he wanted something, as he put it, why should I raise my children in a faith that they will not be able to have 50 years from now? And of course, a Reformed person would say, well, that's externalized.

The true Church of Christ is going to be here 50 years from now. And the name on the door might be different, but the worship's going to be the same. And the consistency is found in, it's like defining apostolic tradition or apostolic succession in the early church.

You can either externalize that and connect it to sources of authority, or you can say the best way to stand in apostolic succession and succession to the apostles is to believe what the apostles themselves taught.

So it's an apostolic succession of truth. And the same way we see that as far as the nature of the church is concerned. But the point was this guy, one of the main reasons that he leaves and ends up in the process.

Well, it'd be interesting. I didn't watch a whole lot of it, didn't have time to watch a lot of it. It'd be really, really interesting to see what kind of amalgam in soteriology that man has. How much has he brought in and how much did he have to get rid of when it comes to the issue of soteriology?

Because he said he studied under Sproul and Gerstner and a bunch of other people. So anyways, the point was, he was saying that he could see that part of his reason he left was this malleability, this changeability.

And this was all amongst Presbyterians. And here I am using, we're a confessional church. I teach the catechism in each service. We do a catechism question in every service. And it's Keech's Catechism.

It's called the Baptist Catechism, Keech's Catechism. But it's the one Spurgeon used and it's based on the London Baptist Confession. And right now we're dealing with the offices of Christ. And so, who has had more fracturing and splintering toward liberalism?

Paedo-Baptist or non-Paedo-Baptist? Who are covenant theologians? Throw that one in there because obviously you've got American Baptists and you've got all sorts of, Baptist is not nearly. Isn't it weird?

Just thinking here, thinking about it. Baptist and Presbyterian, what do those describe? Isn't it odd that some of the names that we have really don't, they almost assume the core and then have these external descriptions.

So, I mean, what does Baptist mean? How Baptists understand baptism is very wide, very, very wide. And there have been tons of heretical groups that have believed in Credo-Baptism, tons. Just have been tons of heretical groups have believed in Paedo-Baptism.

I mean, the form of baptism just does tell you something but it doesn't tell you a whole lot. And Presbyterian, form of church government, elders. I mean, that doesn't even, there's all sorts of variations within that.

It's strange that the words that have ended up being attached are frequently not all that useful in defining what the real issues are. It's interesting to consider some of those aspects. But anyway, so if you have been, concerned that I've been accused of being a Calvinist, you now have reason to not worry about that because R. Scott Clark has said I'm not a Calvinist.

So all those accusations down to the ears, you can just now dismiss them and not worry about them at all. And I think that's a good thing. So anyhow, let's get back to our audio here. And if you notice, I'm slightly distracted.

I have, my daughter's undergoing a medical procedure right now and waiting to get good word from that. And so if you don't mind, as stuff comes in right now, the Apologia guys are chatting it up on our WhatsApp thing.

So that's not it. But I'm just sort of watching for the little texts that says she's out, she's good, everything's okay. You know, that helps you to take a deep breath and move on from there. So I would hope that you would grant me that opportunity.

All right, so I had somebody tell me yesterday and he'll know who he is, excuse me, that I froze their brain yesterday. Look, I understand that sometimes the discussion of church history can get rather deep.

And I understand that if you are just trying to keep house and home together, and especially if you are wasting away in Panicsville, that was, you know, wasting away in Margaritaville and Panicsville, the last thing you want to think about is Manichaeism or Docetism or Gnosticism or Stoic philosophy.

Though Stoic philosophy actually has a few things to say to the current situation if you're familiar with it. I get that. At the same time, there are other people that are sort of like, man, it's nice to have something to think about that has some eternal value and isn't all about the same stinking thing.

You know, if people are just sitting around watching television, watching the news, wow, is that, no, that's a no. Bad, bad, bad idea. Get out, take a walk. You know, if you see a drone coming, you know, you might want to hide behind a tree or something in certain states or nations as they are in the UK.

But it's getting warm here in Phoenix. Could be in the mid to upper 80s this week. So, I mean, there's just no better place to be, virologically speaking, than out in the warmth. I mean, that stuff doesn't like ultraviolet radiation.

So that's the best place in the world to be. Despite the fact that the government says don't go there, it is the best place in the world to be. Well, some of our, our government is of many minds. So who knows?

But yeah, don't sit around listening to that stuff. But if you do want to listen to something, hopefully this will give you a lot of interesting information. Now, sometime over the past number of days, maybe all the way back on Monday, maybe it was last week, I forget.

Rich was telling me that the Lutherans were all mad at Wilson. Now, which Wilson? I'm like, okay, what did Doug do now to get the Lutherans mad at him? And it wasn't Doug Wilson, it was Ken Wilson. And the Lutherans, the Lutherans are mad at the Wilsonans.

And so I'm like, what are you talking about? And so he sent me this thing over and there were some Lutherans, one in particular, who were really going after the stuff that has been said in this particular book right here.

And I got in touch with the fellow and he set me up with hours worth of stuff to read just in what he sent me yesterday afternoon and into this morning, which I haven't had time to do so because of everything else going on and won't have time to for a while.

But he's been working on this subject for months and he's sending me pages of Ambrose and Origen and Jerome and saying, hey, look, now his focus is much more narrow than mine is. His focus is in what we're sort of hearing Wilson saying right now, Ken Wilson saying right now, in regards to Augustine's doctrine of baptism and how novel and new it ended up being.

And he's saying, not only is that transparently untrue and here's the documentation, but he's saying, and look, these references came straight from Ken Wilson's book. Here's the actual page. He's either left part of the quote out or gave you the exact opposite of what the quote actually said.

And he's going, this is just really bad. And so I've been looking at some going, well, I wanna be able to verify all that stuff and check it all out. But there's some folks doing some digging going, uh-uh.

And obviously if the statement is made, look, no one understood John 3, 5 the way Augustine did before Augustine. That is transparently untrue. Everybody should know that. But anyway, so once we get into reviewing portions of the book itself, that will obviously come to play there.

But we are listening to an interview that took place in 2018. And the reason we're listening to the interview is it's easier to do in the book actually. And it also establishes what the actual thesis of the dissertation is because the interview was written before this book was written.

In fact, from what is said in the interview, this book had not been thought of yet. So if Ken Wilson says X in this interview and X is here, then there is a direct connection established and you can't go, well, you can't review that book.

That doesn't really represent the other book. Well, actually it does. So that's what we're listening to. So let's get back into where we left off, listening to the 2018 interview, Leighton Flowers and Ken Wilson.

And so he said, what's the difference between the two? It can only be the providence of God. Okay, I'm sorry.

So he's talking about two children in Augustine's teaching. One is not, one dies before baptism. The other is baptized before death. One goes to heaven, one goes to hell. That's what he's saying, is Augustine's context of his argument.

And so he said, what's the difference between the two? It can only be the providence of God. That God decides whether a baby is saved or not saved based on whether that baby gets to the font and he's the one who controls the circumstances.

Therefore, it's not the human will that can save you. It only appeals for good or only appeals for evil. So God is the one who decides and it has nothing to do with the human person. And that's the way he justified his argument was through infant baptism.

Now, the connection between Augustine's doctrine of baptism and those who went before him is important because what he's saying is, Augustine is developing his doctrine of baptism having gone back to Manichaeism for his interpretation of all the rest of this stuff, specifically divine determinism, et cetera, et cetera.

And that this is seen in what prompted the argument with Pelagius in regards to the subject of baptism. Therefore, if in fact you can demonstrate that there were people before Augustine that had the same view of baptism that Augustine did that you're not claiming were Manichaean and you can't establish any type of relationship between themselves and Manichaeism, then obviously the thesis fails at that particular point is basically what some of the discussion going on is all about.

So the debate wasn't really about so much about Calvinism, Arminianism as we know it today, obviously, because that's obviously acronistic and in the sense that that's not until years later, obviously, but the whole debate.

Did he say acronistic?

Okay, all right. It's an acronistic, but I... Huh?

Oh, okay, all right, well. We have with sociology. That's not really what Pelagius and Augustine originally were debating. They were really dealing with the issue of corruption of the nature of the child from birth and what to do with the corrupt nature and whether you baptize them or not.

So it seems to me Pelagius, therefore, regardless of what we think about Pelagius today or what we believed, he was actually siding with many of us who hold to credo-baptism today or to baptism of believers today.

No.

No, no, he wasn't. I, again, have not read too much on the subject of Pelagius' doctrine of baptism, but it was not Baptist in the modern sense of Baptist. And in fact, there's a fair amount of discussion concerning Pelagians and their perspectives and the fact that after the days of Pelagius, they were forced to agree because they believed in infant baptism, but they were forced to agree after Pelagius' death with the idea that baptism was for regeneration.

So they were not doing the Southern Baptist way of baptism. Okay, to try to say, yeah, he was actually on our side with all that, is again to engage in a extreme level of anachronism and transportation of context that is highly invalid.

You're exactly right, Lane. So Augustine's the one that came up.

With baptismal regeneration, that that is self-evident for them. Nobody else before then really articulated that.

Okay, that's what the Lutherans are taking apart. I've already read enough to realize, well, knew this already, especially to look at John 3, 5, that that's just simply, I don't even know where you get that.

I don't, I suppose I could see how you get a THM and not have really dealt with church history enough to know one way or the other on this, but there are so many references that once we get into it in the book, if we get that far in the book, can be provided that demonstrate that that's just simply not the case.

Not even close, but Dr. Wilson is very, very, very confident about his statement.

And so you're right. Pelagius didn't understand the baby being born as damned. He thought that they went to heaven because they had not sinned. And so everybody else believed that too. He had some other issues, but at least he was right on that aspect.

See, and the thing that should be catching our attention, the thing that should catch your attention is when someone says, and everybody else believed that too. This is not how serious historians speak.

Just go listen to, there's some great church history series that you can go listen to. And a serious historian will say things, a serious historian, serious, yeah, see? Turned upside down. The problem is it upside down, but I can't see which, what?

Yours? Yes, yours, if you ever say something about Google, it will. So, yeah. Yeah, that's right. Well, it's listening to you all the time anyway, so don't worry about it. What were we talking about? A serious historian will be very careful to say that something along the lines of, as far as extant records indicate, the majority of contemporary writers seem to view this subject in this way while this writer seemed to take another perspective.

So that's the balanced, careful way. What you get with this material is everybody. This is brand new. No one had ever thought of this before. And when you use that kind of language, you're begging for refutation.

You're begging for someone to come along and say, well, look at what Origen said back here. And look at what Amber said over here. And now, since you've laid it all out that way, you end up getting refuted.

And so one must be very careful with one's language. But what this does is it ends up forming an argument from authority because of how the interview began. And what you really have going on is, well, this guy went to Oxford and everybody goes, Oxford's really, really brilliant.

Well, that's not actually the case any longer. It never really was fully the case, but it's certainly not the case any longer. Unfortunately, I wish that it were, but anyway.

Augustine, Manichaeism, and the Question of Baptismal Regeneration

From Adam's decision in the garden, would that be an accurate assessment? Exactly, Leighton. And that's the Manichean view.

It came right out of Manichaeism. That's not a Christian view. And Augustine, with his 10 years, picked that up and brought it into Christianity to fight the plagues.

I must have, I'm sorry, I must have messed up the color coding there. Let's see what the context was there, because it's important, because here is now Wilson saying, this is the Manichean view. It's been brought into Christianity.

So remember, Manichaeism, fundamentally dualistic, no single deity who's the creator of all things, a mixture of Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Gnosticism, and Christianity. A true jumble of things. And so let's see what the context was here.

They are of an age where they can give an account, they are responsible, which means they have the ability to respond willingly or unwillingly to God's appeals, and therefore they're held responsible for their choices.

That's what I mean about it, and that's what most people, generally speaking, intuitively would think of the word as responsible. But an Augustinian, as taught by him later in his life, or a Calvinist, says, well, no, no, no, we believe men are responsible too.

They don't mean that. What they mean is that men can't respond willingly or positively to God's offers, but they're still culpable or held guilty because of the imputed guilt from Adam's decision in the garden.

Would that be an accurate assessment?

Okay, now, this is important, because this gets us to Romans chapter five, it gets us to federal headship, and this is a discussion of Christian theology. This is talking about how God deals with his creation.

There is no way to address that particular subject within Manichaeism, because you don't have a single God. You don't have the one God who creates all things, just like you don't have one Jesus. You've got multiple Jesuses, okay?

So, maybe this illustration will help. When we go out and witness to Mormons, as we have done for decades, we sometimes would discuss issues like the First Vision. We ever gonna see those First Vision tracks?

It's not like we really have to rush them right now, but if I don't touch, it's good. We would have tracks on false prophecies of Joseph Smith or the First Vision or things like that, but we recognize that those were issues that we're trying to use to get back to the key foundational issues.

And when you talk with Mormons, you wanna talk about who God is, who Christ is, and what the gospel is. But even then, what we realized was when you try to get around to the gospel with Mormons and they have a God who is an exalted man from another planet, the biblical gospel is too big for a God who's exalted from another planet.

That's an insufficient basis for grace. You can't talk about grace if you've got a God who himself had to be the recipient of grace at some point in the past. And so, there was even a hierarchy there.

You've got to talk to the Mormon about who God is. You've got to present them with the God who created all things. And so, in the same way, since you need to have that foundation to give meaning to the discussion of soteriology, in this situation, you have to have the one true God of scripture to give meaning to a discussion of such things as Adam, Adam's nature, federal headship, the application of God's law, the whole concept of guilt.

All of these things are being used in a Christian context, a monotheistic Trinitarian Christian context. You cannot transfer that to Manichaeism because everything ends up becoming redefined. Just as in Mormonism, all the language that we use is redefined by the polytheism of Mormonism and the fact that God's an exalted man, that we're all the same nature as God.

That results in a redefinition of what eternal life means, what exaltation means, what glorification means. It changes everything because the foundations are different. Well, the foundation of Manichaeism and Christianity are completely different.

So if you just pick up the terms out of a Christian context and then try to map them over to Manichaeism without changing the language, you're gonna be twisting everything. There is no basis in Manichaeism for the demonstration of the glory of God through the creation of the cosmos and the redemptive process and the vindication of God because of the incarnation.

You can't put that into a dualistic worldview along with Zoroastrianism and Buddhism, okay? So if you just pick that stuff up, so a careful scholar should hear Leighton Flowers saying all of that and should say, no, this is not, okay, she's outright.

I'm ready to come home, yeah. That's good, that's good to see. This is not a valid question because we're crossing categories. That should be the response to Leighton Flowers here. Should be Leighton, you're mixing categories, you're mixing language.

It will inevitably create confusion. That's not what you're gonna get because Leighton's confusion has been created by reading Ken Wilson's book because it's Ken Wilson who has the same confusion.

And that's what we hear here. Exactly, Leighton, and that's the Manichean view. It came right out of Manichaeism. That's not a Christian view. And Augustine, with his 10 years, picked that up and brought it into Christianity to fight the plague.

So there's your assertion.

This is the only gentleman that I know of who has this theory, this thesis. All the serious historians I know recognize the need for having categorical thought and contextual thought and a recognition that you just can't, this is invalid transfer of terminology.

But there you go. There's what we're looking at.

Pelagius, Historical Caution, and the Limits of Anachronism

Now, I've often argued that Pelagius has kind of become the boogeyman of the book. The deterministic line of Christian thought. In other words, those who have kind of lined up with Augustine have done a really good job at painting all of us in a really bad light.

Maybe even maligning a little bit of what Pelagius himself taught based upon some of the readings I have from him. He does say that we need divine aid, that we need help of God.

So this is a whole long section of seeking to rehabilitate Pelagius. I'll just leave that out there and let you go. Now, let's be consistent. I have pointed out the fact that there is serious discussion about Nestorius in church history.

Nestorianism is considered a heresy. And once something is attached to someone's name, then the tendency of history is not to read that person's material fairly or even allow it to survive, actually. So a lot of heretics, we only know what their heresy was.

Not all, but a lot of heretics, we only know what their heresy was by secondary sources. Now, I don't know about you, but would you want to be defined by how people represent you on Twitter? Me either.

So there is good reason to consider the possibility that Nestorius was not actually a Nestorian and that the heresy is an imbalanced application of concerns that Nestorius had related to Christology and specifically the term Theotokos.

The same thing may well be true of Pelagius. There is no reason because, look, Reformed people believe what they believe because they exegete the Bible consistently, okay? And so that would be demonstrated by a debate between myself and Ken Wilson on the doctrine of election in the Bible, okay?

So we could do that one first before we get into the weeds of other weird stuff. And I am confident what the outcome of that would be. We are Reformed not because there is such thing as a Manichean interpretation of scripture because we don't have a Manichean interpretation of scripture.

None of us are influenced by Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, and Gnosticism as the foundation of a historical grammatical interpretation of the text of the Greek New Testament. So that's, you can put that off to the side and not worry about that.

But what we're hearing here, and let me just remind you of why I stopped right here.

He does say that we need divine aid, that we need help.

So Pelagius says we need divine aid. Joseph Smith did too. But in what context? See, when you try to determine Joseph Smith's understanding, we have so much more, so much. I mean, we've got a ton because we're nice and close.

And he lived during a period of documentation. What we know about Pelagius really depends upon epistles and letters. And you might say, well, those are helpful. They are, but one thing is for certain, most of the time when we are reading epistles and letters from people, they're brief.

And very often the author is assuming that the reason the person's writing in the first place, they've already read some of their books, which we may not have anymore. So we have an entire collection of Calvin's epistles and letters as well.

Great insights into building a historiography of that particular individual. That's important stuff. But Calvin himself made it clear, if you want to know what I believe, you read the Institutes first.

And then you interpret everything else, my commentaries, my sermons, my letters, in light of what I have written in the Institutes. Not everybody was quite that nice and straight upfront in helping us to do that kind of thing.

So is it possible that Pelagius was not as Pelagian as later generations would say? It is. And is that worthwhile looking into if you're doing church history and doing a PhD in Pelagius? Obvious. But that's not...

And the problem is when people do, when people look into church history and don't have access to a lot of the original, well, not even original sources, very, very few people have access to original sources as in the TLG or the Patriliga Latinae or whatever else it might be, the writings of the early fathers in Latin, Greek, and then even then, some of that stuff has not been translated into English and some of it hasn't been collated.