KJVO Discussion, the Pope Escapes His Handlers Again, Debate Tomorrow, the Trinitarian Controversy

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Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. I wonder if anyone will be able to figure out... I've been moving books around and I'm putting together some books over in my office where they'll be closer to the desk rather than coming in here.

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So I wonder if anyone will be able to figure out which ones have moved, because we don't move stuff very often back there. And the lava lamp just started lava -ing, which is good.

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It wasn't lava -ing just a few moments ago. So someone just said, The Dividing Line is starting.

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I got Chuck Norris going, yay, yeah, all right. So start off with something... Well, everything today is serious, no question about it.

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But man, talk about a wide variety of stuff. But I hate to start off with something so serious and sad, but I haven't mentioned anything about it on Facebook or anything like that, but over the weekend,

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I was down in Tucson. I was up at the top of Mount Lemmon when

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I got word. And I had been concerned about this after the last things I had seen on Facebook about Gianna Bartolucci's death.

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Tony and Lois, the folks there at the church, people have been praying about this situation for six months now.

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Man, almost exactly six months now, look at the calendar. And I have no idea no explanation.

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Tony understands the truth about God and about God's Word, about God's providence.

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And I'm not going to sit here and say I know what he's going through. Please don't tell anybody. I don't care what you've experienced.

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Every situation is different. The dynamics of every relationship is different. We can have experienced things in our lives that will give us some insight, but don't tell people, especially when they're in grief,

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I know what you're going through, because you don't. That's not what they need to hear. For those of you who don't know the story, on Christmas Eve, Tony Bartolucci, he used to be a channel regular in our chat channel.

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I've spoken at his church before. He knows some of the guys in my church from years and years and years ago, Brick Darrow and Bob Calvin and people like that.

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And he and his daughter were going to get the

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Christmas tree on Christmas Eve. I guess that's their tradition. And they were hit head on.

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And I agree, I don't like to use the term accident. This wasn't an accident. It was vehicular murder is what it was.

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The man who hit them was an illegal alien. And he was an illegal alien who had already been deported once, snuck back in, got himself completely drunk, and then hit

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Tony and his daughter on Christmas Eve head on. That's bad enough.

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But the thing that has honestly caused me tremendous anger ever since that time, their car bursts into flames.

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And I guess when you're nine sheets the wind, you survive accidents pretty well.

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I guess you just flop all over the place and become Gumby or something.

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I don't know. But though injured, he sees what he's done.

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And you know what he does? He runs and hides in a ditch. Now, thankfully, this happened right out in front of someone's home.

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And they weren't away. They were having a Christmas party. And they come running out.

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And they pull them from the burning vehicle. Both were burned. And Tony's gone through I just noticed he just updated his status.

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Tony's gone through a tremendous amount of pain himself, though you can tell he's not been focused upon himself. He's been focused upon his daughter.

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And she sustained tremendous brain injury, head on collision.

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And she passed away. And, you know, people like due to complications like no, look, let's just be honest, that man killed her.

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It was a case of vehicular murder. And it just took six months for that end result to finally come about.

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And I can't answer the questions about why six months of surgeries and pain and, and everything else

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I we can't answer those questions in this life. But we, we pray for the whole church family there, because they've, they've all been going through this.

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And it's, they've all been changed. They will all be forever changed by this experience. We also recognize that they will experience a level of supernatural comfort from God, as he describes the

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God of all comfort. That text, when Paul wrote to the Corinthians, 2 Corinthians chapter 1, the

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God of all comfort, who comforts us in all of our distresses. There's a, you know,

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I learned in the hospital, as a hospital chaplain, you can pretend to be prepared.

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You can think you're prepared for whatever is coming. But the reality is, until you are in the midst of that trial, you're in the midst of that furnace, you're in the midst of that suffering, you cannot really begin to fully understand the nature of the grace of God and the comfort that God can provide in those situations.

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You can't, you can talk about it. People who've gone through it can talk about, but there are some things that we as human beings can only come to understand when we experience it, and especially spiritual things like that.

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And so, I would imagine that down the road, there are going to be people that Tony and Lois and the people at that church will be able to minister to in a way that others simply could not, because of the comfort that they have received from God in the midst of this tremendous loss.

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And you must understand, Tony will always be a bereaved person.

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Anyone old enough to love is old enough to grieve. And, you know, it just so happens last week,

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I officiated at the funeral of a relative, a very young relative, only 31 when she passed away.

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And I had to once again repeat things I've said a number of times in the past.

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I don't really enjoy this topic. I've, we actually, do we have up on, we have up on Sermon Audio that thing

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I did on grief and grieving, don't we? Yeah. People are surprised. I've done a lot of reading in the area.

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I was a hospital chaplain, had to. My second biggest selling book is the book on grief.

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It was being, they had boxes of it at Ground Zero on September 13th, 2001, distributing it to the first responders there, the people that were digging through the rubble of the

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World Trade Center. And the Lord's really used that book. It's really helped a lot of people.

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I can't tell you how many people have had, write to me, saved my life, saved my life. I was ready for suicide and found out that there wasn't any reason for suicide, reading your book.

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So it's, the Lord's really, really used it. But this particular subject really demonstrates that theology matters.

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It also demonstrates that we as a people, especially in Western culture today, we do not deal with death.

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We do not think about death. We put it off. And the scriptures themselves say, teach us to number our days,

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Moses says. It is better to spend a day in the house of mourning than a day in the house of feasting.

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Man, that ain't our culture. We spend billions every year to amuse ourselves so we don't have to think about mortality.

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We don't have to think about all the things that constantly

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God places. As we get older, God keeps designing things into our bodies that reminds us you're getting older.

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The day of reckoning is coming. And we just do our best to completely ignore all of that.

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And the folks at Tony's Church haven't been able to avoid that. They've been facing this for a long time, and that's going to change them, and it's going to deepen their dependence upon the

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Spirit of God. And I think as long as God is glorified, then a true believer, though it won't be easy, and though there will be days when they won't experience this, the true believer will find

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God's comfort to be more than sufficient in that situation. But again, whatever you do, don't go up to folks in a situation,

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I know what you're going through. No, you don't. No, you don't. Every situation is unique.

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Every situation is unique. So we pray for Tony, and we're thankful for his testimony.

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He's under tremendous pressure right now, and his heart is broken. Tremendously difficult situation.

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But we pray for them, and we love them, and I exhort you to pray for them as well.

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I do want to announce, I did on Facebook, that tomorrow, one o 'clock our time.

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One o 'clock our time? Yeah, one o 'clock our time. Not sure how this is going to work out.

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Happened a little bit quickly. Here's what happened. I went down to Tucson over the weekend, do some altitude climbing on Mount Lemon, and on the way down,

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I was listening to various things I wanted to try to catch up on, and I listened to a dialogue between some representatives of the

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Hebrew -Israelite movement. I am no expert on Hebrew -Israelite movement. I've just been listening, as many others have, to Vocabalone, who's been doing some research in that area.

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He was on Apologia, because he was on Apologia. They asked him to dialogue with them, and so I was listening to the dialogue he had with, from what

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I gather to be one of the less radical Hebrew -Israelite movements.

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I guess there are some Hebrew -Israelites that just can't get through two sentences without dropping

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F -bombs and everything else, and I have no interest in giving people like that even a forum to express their views and their behavior.

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You know, out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. But this group doesn't do that, and so I was very interested to listen to the dialogue, and I came across a number of things, but here's,

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I'm gonna, oops, oh yeah, this isn't a video, this is just audio, so you should just have straight up audio.

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Here was one of the statements that was made by the representative from the

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Hebrew -Israelite movement, and I realize that I'm 1 .6 here, that's going to sound really funny.

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Let's listen to what he had to say. Well, I'm glad you're on here with me, because you've probably seen some of our teachings, and let me deal with this going backwards, first starting with the deity.

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We understand that the deity of Christ was never discussed in the

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Gospels. A matter of fact, the word deity only came up in the 4th century during the time of Constantine, with the

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Council of Nicaea argument of Christ's divinity. So when you deal with it from a theologian standpoint, and I'm sure you are a theologian studying, you realize that the word deity in itself embodies idolatry of the

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Gentiles. There's nowhere in Scriptures that say that we are to acknowledge

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Christ as a deity. What you're saying here, and I know it's

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Christianity, I was a part of it, I grew up, my grandfather was a Baptist minister. Okay, so you had the claim that deity, the description of the deity of Christ, it all comes from the

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Council of Nicaea. Now, um, the

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Gospel of John would find that unusual, Mark 14 would find that unusual, that there's no reference to the deity of Christ.

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You know, we'll look at these things, and what I wanted to do, and of course, the early church, looking at Ignatius, a few things like that, but what

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I wanted to do, and I contacted Vocab, and he put me in, got me in touch, and evidently because I made a comment on Facebook, now all these people are contacting the ministry going, oh, come on, oh, come on, it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, just, just, just, hold on a second.

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I just would like to talk with this gentleman about what he said right there. That's just, you know,

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I don't know, I listened to this whole thing, and I was like, wow, these are some, you know, really ahistorical, never heard of before, beliefs and perspectives, and interesting, but really wild, but this is, that's my wheelhouse.

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This is, I've stood in mosques around the world and defended the deity of Christ against claims like that.

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And so, I just wanted to have a dialogue with this gentleman, say, all right, you said this, then how do you understand these texts?

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How do you understand these early church fathers? Where did these things come from? Just to get an idea of how these folks interact with scholarship, with scholarly, you know, material from the original languages of the

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Bible and things like that. So, tomorrow, it came up, he was like, let's, let's do it right away.

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One of the challenges is, it's going to be dual broadcast, and so they're going to be doing their program at the same time we're doing our program.

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And so, I'm not sure exactly how it's going to work out, but they've asked me some questions, too.

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They want me to answer some questions, which, as far as I can tell, either come from the

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Zeitgeist movie, or Alexander Hislop, or a mixture of the two.

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But stuff about the pagan origins of Babylonian deities and stuff like that, standard stuff that I've responded to from Yusuf Ismail and people like that, the standard

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Parallelomania stuff that is, again, from a historical perspective, has no validity at all, but we will demonstrate that in the discussion tomorrow.

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Nothing new in the questions at all. But that'll be tomorrow at one o 'clock our time, which

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I think is four o 'clock eastern time, eastern daylight time. So, you might want to mark that on your calendars.

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I've had a lot of people on Twitter going, oh, this is going to be great. I don't know if it will or won't. We'll see.

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But I felt like it would be a worthwhile discussion.

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Now, switching gears yet once again. So, here is...

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Technically, the deity of Christ was thrust in the world by Christ. Well, that's quite true. About an hour or so ago,

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I had a brief Twitter conversation with someone who had called

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Write the Vision, King James only -ist, and he was claiming that the...

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He was responding to the Presbyterian meme thing, and he basically said, well, the

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King James Version is the infallible word. Which, of course, that's not what the TR and ER only guys...

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They recognize making an English translation to standards just fraught with many difficulties.

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And so, I just wanted to ask, okay, so which King James? Is it the 1769

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Blaney revision? Is it 1611? What is it? I never really got an answer on that.

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So, I asked a question, and it's a question I've asked of a lot of people. And it's one you might want to ask of people.

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It gives you an idea of just whether they have really thought this through or they're just sort of a firebrand, which most

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King James only -ists are. And so, I asked him, well, in your King James, because I asked which one?

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He said, well, my 1983 edition. So, it took 400 years, almost 400 years for the

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King James to be purified because your 1983 edition isn't the same as the 1611. And it went through all sorts of differences, and we're talking about inerrancy here.

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So, that makes that the final authority. So, what if the publisher of that particular one goes from the

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Oxford edition to the Cambridge edition next time around? Now, it's changed. Which one was the inerrant one? Again, this is why vast majority of folks who think clearly about these things do not ascribe inerrancy to translations.

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But anyway, I asked, well, what is your King James read at Jeremiah 3416?

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And Jeremiah 3416 in the King James says, but ye turned and polluted my name and caused every man his servant and every man his handmaid, whom, and then stop.

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I could grab various King James Bibles from my library.

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And you'll find two different readings in the next phrase, whom ye had set at liberty or whom he had set at liberty at their pleasure to return and brought them into subjection to be unto you for servants and for handmaids.

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Now, why did I ask this question? Simple. There are two primary versions of the 1769

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Blaney revision. Those are the Oxford and Cambridge printings.

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And the two of them have a different reading here. One has ye, which in King James English is a plural, and one has he, which is the singular.

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Now, obviously, if you make the King James, the final standard over against the original languages, there's no way for you to answer which one it should be.

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If you're a real, the King James was re -inspired in the 1611 type

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King James only -ist, the only way to know which one's right is to do what? Well, to do what the

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King James translators themselves would have said, every single one of them to a man, and that is, you look at the

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Hebrew. And the Hebrew is the plural. So, it's ye, not he.

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So, I asked the question. Well, the answer I got back was, well, the he's being taken as a plural.

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I'm just like, what? No, it's not. The he, you could understand either a singular he or a ye in the context.

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So, it's not being taken as a, where else is he ever taken as a plural? I mean, it was a non -answer.

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It really was. It was, I'm just going to dodge this because it's very obvious that my King James only -ism cannot survive a meaningful examination of the

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King James itself. So, it was an inappropriate response.

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I'm actually getting tweeted here. Quote me right, I said I bought it 33 years ago on my way to Bible college, the version that claims preservation

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Psalms, it's Psalms 1267. First of all, it's not Psalms 1267. It's Psalm 12.

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There's only a Psalm 12. It's not Psalms 12. It's Psalm 12. It's in the book of Psalms, but it is the individual

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Psalm. It'd be like saying hymns 12. That doesn't make any sense. Cite it right. Psalm 12 is not about the preservation of manuscripts or translations.

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It's talking about God's faithfulness and keeping His promises in delivering the poor. Read the text in context.

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It's very, very clear. So, which version was it?

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You never did tell us which one you had. So, anyway. Okay.

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Someone's asking me about thoughts on speakers, artists at Together 2016.

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I don't even know what it is. Why would I care? I mean, come on, Andrew, why do I even care? Am I supposed to be there?

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If I am, no one told me. So, why would I care? I have no worthy idea. Anyway, so then he then challenged me, explain why you shall not lie or bear false witness has been removed from Revelation 13 .9.

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I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Romans 13 .9, when it appears in Codex Sinaiticus. I'm like, okay, all right.

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So, let's say, all right, this is useful in being able to, as we've done on the program many, many times before, look at particular textual variants.

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In fact, I should go ahead and pop up the presenter here and give you accordance.

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And let's take out this here and blow things up a little bit so that it's visible on the screen.

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Yeah, that looks better. That looks better. All right. Let's take a look we've got. That's way too small.

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You got to go full screen up. All right. Okay. So, Romans 13 .9,

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over here, you remember when you see italics like this, that is the indication of citation of from the

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Greek Septuagint. And right here is indication of an addition in some manuscripts that is not found in the text.

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You follow that over here to the apparatus and you'll find, you shall not bear false witness.

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Pseudo martiresis. All right. And Pseudo martiresis is read by Sinaiticus, 048 -81 -104 -365, 1506, and various, well, you can see down here, they're actually written out a little bit more, where the various additions are in the

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UBS 5th provides this. And notice that the

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UBS 5th provides the parallel to Deuteronomy 5, 19 through 20 as the source.

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Now, what's interesting here to make this relevant to some of our listeners who are into the ecclesiastical text.

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No, no, no, keep it up. Ecclesiastical text, majority text stuff.

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The UBS 5 shows that this is a split in the

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Byzantine manuscripts right here. Notice Byzantine part. So part of the

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Byzantine manuscript tradition. And then the other part has what we have in Romans 13, 9.

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And it went and scrolled because I scrolled that up one too far. And not having that particular phrase.

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Now, notice what the text says, and if there is any other commandment in this word, it is fulfilled or summed up, love your neighbor as yourself.

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So it is very, very clear that it is not

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Paul's intention because he doesn't even try even in the King James to give you an entire list of the commandments in Romans 13, 9.

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He says, and if there is any other commandment, he's just giving a summary of commandments, not an exhaustive list.

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That's why he says, and if there is any other, it's summed up in this, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. So why doesn't the

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NA27 or NA28 have it as the main text? And please note, the text notes are right there on the page.

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You go right over to it. What in the world did I do with my NA? Well, I've got two.

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Oh, it got buried. There it is. Make sure we don't knock the triples over there.

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So if you, you know, got it on the screen there, you turn to Romans 13, 9.

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I almost opened it right up to it. And right down here at the bottom of the page, there is verse 9, and it gives you all the textual data.

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It's right there. Nobody's hiding anything. You can see all the manuscripts. You shall not bear false witness is right there at the bottom of the page.

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So on and so forth. Nobody's trying to hide anything. And then using the term like delete, all the rest of the stuff, baloney.

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The issue is very, very simple. What was originally written by the apostle

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Paul? And when you don't have a bunch of traditions in the way, one of the things that you recognize is that when you have citations of Old Testament texts, the tendency of scribes, especially when the material is well -known to the scribes themselves.

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And obviously, man, at our church, our young people memorize the

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Ten Commandments in like fourth grade, I think. One of those grades in there. When it's a well -known list, there is going to be the tendency toward harmonization with the well -known version.

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This happens not only in citations from the Old Testament, but anytime you have parallel materials, whether it's the

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Synoptic Gospels, whether it's Ephesians and Colossians, you're going to have harmonization to the more familiar form of the text.

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And so the real question is you look at these manuscripts and you look at the earliest papyri manuscript of the

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Book of Romans, which is P46. It doesn't contain the phrase. Neither does

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Alexandrinus, neither does Vaticanus, neither do the Latin or Eastern, Western, I'm sorry,

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Western witnesses. Numerous Byzantine manuscripts,

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Latin Vulgate translations, the Sahitic Coptic, the Georgian, many of the early church fathers did not include the phrase.

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Why? Why? If it had been there, there's no reason for its deletion.

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There's no reason for its removal if it was original. But there's every reason to understand why a scribe who already has memorized the

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Ten Commandments might not even purposely try to insert it. They just know this is the next commandment, and so they insert it.

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And so when you look at the widespread evidence from the

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Alexandrian through the Western through even Byzantine manuscripts, and I didn't look, let me look real quick here.

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Texts and there it is.

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Well, look at that. Isn't that interesting? Because this would be a tough one for the

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Robinson -Pierpont folks, but it does not have. The Robinson -Pierpont majority text,

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I'm sorry, not majority text, Byzantine platform text, takes as the best reading not containing that particular phrase.

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There you go. Now, this is standard basic textual criticism, basic examination of the materials that are available to us, this rich manuscript tradition that is available to us.

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And then just asking the question, given the state of the manuscript tradition, what makes the most sense?

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That Paul was just giving a summary list, did not include this, but later scribes inadvertently added it because of the parallel out of Deuteronomy, the overriding emphasis that the

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Greek Septuagint had in textual variant issues. Otherwise, you have to come up with some type of explanation as to why all these different sources, all these different early church fathers, all these different translations and every manuscript family from Alexandrian to Byzantine has witnesses that do not contain the phrase.

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Now, there's no, then what the guy does, let me see here, not the point.

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And if there be any other commandment, the issue is omission and who omitted. It's not a matter of who omitted. It is a matter of what

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Paul wrote. See, you are so wedded to your tradition that you can't hear what's being said.

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It's not a matter of omitting anything. The question is what is more likely, that someone who knows the 10

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Commandments will inadvertently add it or that somehow for someone thinks it's okay to bear false witness and so they removed it.

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That doesn't make any sense. It makes no sense. So it's simply allowing the textual data.

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There's no, you have yet to give me an argument as to why I should believe that this is an exhaustive list of all the commandments because the rest of the 10

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Commandments aren't in there. And he says that if there be any other, they're fulfilled in this. That's his way of saying that's not an exhaustive.

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I just gave you some of the commandments and they're all fulfilled in love your neighbor as yourself. You're understanding the text of Psalm 12 was wrong.

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You're understanding Romans 13, 9 is wrong. It has nothing to do with omission whatsoever. There is the evidence.

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Um, let me see here. Uh, but P46 also has hundreds of words that verify

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KJV and modern versions omit. Not sure we can use that argument. No, no. Such imbalance.

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And I'm going to identify it. First of all, I'd like to have some specific examples, but the point is, let's say that P46, um, contains a reading that is supportive of the

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Byzantine manuscript tradition as a whole over against say the Alexandrian or something else.

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How is that relevant to this? It's not, it's not.

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You, you see, you've got a position and now you're just trying to do a flanking maneuver or you're trying to cover your retreat instead of actually dealing with the material as the material exists.

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Um, then we've got, uh, every, so now, so now he's going to every, every place where a papyri differs from the modern text is somehow relevant, utterly irrelevant.

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You've been fully answered on Psalm 12. You've been fully answered in Jeremiah 34, 16, and you have been fully answered in Romans 13, 9.

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I leave it to the audience to decide from there because we have other things to get to, but hopefully that was helpful to folks to see, uh, once again, that kind of, um, thinking and the impact that it can have upon folks.

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Um, okay, we move on to some important stuff. Did you see what the Pope said?

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I actually had to check this out because, uh, there's just so many, um, fake, uh, things put out, uh, about the

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Pope, you know, on these onion type sites that, and of course, all sorts of places where Francis said something and then people just blow it up because he's the

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Pope. I get that, but I had to check, check this out. This is from LifeSite News and generally they tend to be very pro -Roman

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Catholic, very pro -Roman Catholic. Uh, Pope Francis spoke yesterday, this is from June 17th.

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Pope Francis spoke yesterday at a pastoral Congress on the family for the Diocese of Rome and his remarks are causing consternation among faithful Catholics.

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Yeah, they do that a lot, don't they? In off the cuff remarks, yep, he went off teleprompter again.

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Oh no. Well, was it that Babylon Bee thing? Yeah, that Babylon Bee thing was talking about, uh,

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Pope Francis escaped his handlers again today and, and they finally caught up with him and got him back inside the

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Vatican so he could stop saying wild and crazy things. Well, this fulfills it again. The Pope made the dual claim that the great majority of Catholic marriages are null, in other words, not actual marriages, and that some cohabiting couples are in a real marriage receiving the grace of the sacrament.

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Quote, I've seen a lot of fidelity in these cohabitations and I'm sure that this is a real marriage.

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They have the grace of a real marriage because of their fidelity, he said. Then in something almost worthy of the, of the

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Clinton campaign, the Vatican has provided video of the full remarks by the

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Pope as well as a full transcript of his remarks. In the transcript, however, the words the

37:53

Pope has heard clearly in the video at one hour, 14 minutes and 20 seconds are changed from saying the great majority of Catholic marriages are null to a part of them are null.

38:10

So, so even the guy making the transcripts going, oh man, we gotta say this.

38:16

So once again, Pope Frankie escapes his handlers, just, that Babylon Bee story was not really a satire.

38:28

It was a real news story. That's the problem. He, he escapes his, his handlers and, and Roman Catholic apologists are left just going.

38:43

Because that's, oh, we, we know where he's coming from. You know where he's coming from. Come on, quit, quit making excuses.

38:51

Well, I guess you have to, I guess you have to. You know, a couple of times recently, what? You've got that smile and no, okay, good.

38:58

A couple of times recently, there's not a lot to listen to on radio when you're driving these days.

39:03

There really isn't. I can't stand Sean Hannity. And Michael Medveds moved forward a little bit in the day and they got rid of Hugh Hewitt.

39:13

He's in the morning now. I don't listen to radio in the morning. So the guy who screams all the time, Mark Levin, he's on the afternoon now.

39:19

I just, I can't stand someone who is just constantly, hi, how are you today?

39:24

You know, I just, I just, I, I, it's just, it's too much. So once in a while I pop over to 1310 and I listen to what the

39:34

Romanists have to say. And once in a while I end up listening and I follow him on Twitter.

39:47

I listen to Patrick Madrid once in a while. He has his own program on in the morning and I follow him on Twitter and I read his tweets and once in a while we'll tweet something back and forth and we sort of just go, hey, hey, hey, you know, cause

39:59

I don't know if Patrick would want to admit this, but we're a lot alike.

40:07

We're about the same age and we end up retweeting a lot of the same things.

40:16

And I think we both just shake our heads at what's going on in our society. And there are some times

40:22

I'll sit there and I'll be listening to talk something about something. And I'm like, it's exactly what I'd say.

40:27

It's exactly what I'd say. And then all of a sudden it hangs a hard left because as Pope so -and -so said, or as one

40:37

Saint what's said who had seen Mary or something, and I just go, oh. And what it has done, you know, one quick comment

40:50

I want to make, I just figured this Roman Catholic comment about the Pope and real marriages and all types of stuff is relevant.

40:58

It's just, it's made me all the more sad. Because there's so much of a biblical worldview there.

41:10

And then where the rubber meets the road, where the gospel comes in, that's where all the differences are.

41:16

That's where all the differences are. And you can't, you can't just sweep them under the rug. You just can't do it.

41:23

That's why I'm sort of, I'm really sad that the debates have pretty much ended.

41:31

The debates that the guys at Catholic Answers will admit were very important in getting them off the ground, they've pretty much ended.

41:40

I hardly hear about any meaningful debates anymore. And that's a shame.

41:49

Maybe it reflects the fact that our society is to the point where debate is irrelevant now. And, you know, if you debate, then you're considered unloving and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

41:58

But there was a day when at least Patrick Madrid and I both agreed that these were vital issues that need to be debated.

42:04

And we did debate them. Well, he and I only did two, I think. Two, right? The solo scriptura debate and the veneration of saints and images debate on Long Island.

42:16

Am I forgetting one? I don't think I am. Well, yeah, yeah, yeah.

42:22

But no, just Patrick and I. Because in those early years, Jerry Matityx was more their main guy.

42:29

They don't want to be reminded of that. But it was true. We have pictures. We have recordings.

42:36

And, but, you know, I wish that there was more heartfelt, meaningful debate, because it's, it just seems to me, you know,

42:53

I hear so many commonalities, and yet it's that gospel issue.

43:00

That's the key. And of course, it's related to authority and all the rest of that stuff. But it just strikes me along those lines.

43:07

Next thing real quick, we may have to go a few minutes over. Life on him. And I do want to mention that Right Division said, thanks, sir.

43:15

Respectful debate. Appreciate your responses. I appreciate that. That's good. That's, that's a good thing. I don't know if he continued listening past that point.

43:22

But that's a good thing. Dr. Moeller dedicated an entire issue of the briefing yesterday morning to the gospel of Jesus' wife stuff.

43:37

Okay? If you go back when this stuff first broke in 2012, we commented on the program at that time that this was a yoner of an issue.

43:51

It was a yoner of an issue from a number of different perspectives. Not even, not even talking about the provenance of the, of the papyri, whether it was real or false.

43:59

The fact that a Gnostic in the second or third century believed wacky and wild things about Jesus.

44:09

Wow, that's shocking. No, it's not. It's one of the reasons we've been reading some of this stuff.

44:15

And I need to go back and we need to get back to some story time. We finished, we finished

44:20

Thomas. I know, I know we finished Thomas, but there's some other wild ones that's, that I could grab down here that I actually have close by here that, that we could look at.

44:34

But this alleged papyri and the gospel of Jesus' wife,

44:43

I just grabbed this. Didn't even know it was down there. Forgotten about it. Here's the primary culprit in all this.

44:49

Karen King. There are, and there, a lot of them are women. There are a lot of men too, but there are particular people in scholarship.

45:05

Karen L. King is the Winn Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Harvard University in the Divinity School. Ooh, Harvard.

45:11

Ooh, Divinity School. Look, folks, it's no longer a Christian, Christian institution.

45:17

Hasn't been for decades. And yet it's got the names. Everybody goes, great scholarship.

45:23

Well, she was the one pushing this papyri. And notice that the title of this book,

45:29

The Gospel of Mary of Magdala, Jesus and the First Woman Apostle, her whole big thing all along.

45:35

I mean, it's just so painfully obvious that these people are grossly biased and wildly imbalanced in how they look at stuff.

45:48

So a big, huge article comes out. A guy who did some serious investigative work.

45:56

I mean, serious investigative work. Came out in The Atlantic last week. Pretty much proving beyond a shadow of a doubt who forged this thing.

46:07

And he lives in Florida. And you look back at 2012 and when this first came out, oh, the media all over it.

46:18

See, there's just so much stuff about Jesus that we don't know. All this stuff. Dan Brown and the

46:24

Da Vinci Code fit in with all that stuff. I haven't seen almost any regular media coverage of this story at all.

46:37

Mainly because it's not right before Easter, not before Christmas. It's a timing stunk.

46:44

But there's so many stories like this that come out. And people just get all upset and angry and like, oh, the world's coming apart.

46:53

Oh, we can't believe what we believe. And then when the whole story falls apart, which it eventually does, once serious scholarship can be done, some balance can be brought to things.

47:06

That doesn't get covered. The media doesn't want to talk about stuff like that. No, they want the sensationalistic.

47:13

They want the anti -Christian. That's the stuff they'll put out there. But then when there's a rebuttal, when there's a response, it's sort of like, oh, hum.

47:21

And then the false story just gets repeated over and over and over and over and over again until it becomes just an accepted truth when it's in fact a lie.

47:32

And these Gnostic Gospels and people like that promoting it. Hey, how many times in debates with Muslims has somebody grabbed, you know, the folks down in South Africa grabbed

47:44

Tabor? Tabor's not a balanced scholar in this area. He's got an axe to grind.

47:51

Oh, but you put enough spooky music in it and pick your facts and you can make anything sound good.

47:57

Like the Didache is a secret. I started

48:02

Clement. I'm doing the church history thing right now, PRBC. I think this was the sixth lesson.

48:08

And even though I'm preaching Sunday, I'm going to go ahead and do church history again anyways, because it's going to be a while till I get to do it again.

48:15

So I want to get something done. But man, this is going to be a long series.

48:21

I guess as I've gotten older, I've just gotten more verbose or something. I don't know. But I did all of church history in like 52 lessons last time.

48:32

Ain't going to be 52 this time because I just started reading portions from Clement, not

48:39

Clement of Alexandria, but Clement of Rome, allegedly Clement of Rome. We don't really know who wrote it. And I've just been commenting on everything on how often the elect of God appears and just doing all sorts of,

48:49

I think part of it's because I got to teach development of patristic theology at Golden Gate between when

48:55

I did the first church history series and the one now. But anyway, the next thing we're going to get to,

49:03

I think we're going to get to it before I head to Colorado and Utah. By the way, folks in Utah, two debates, two debates in Utah.

49:13

Well, dialogues, debates, whatever. They're going to be friendly, but they're going to be useful. Me and Alma all read Mormonism, Who is the

49:21

True Jesus? And the Imam up there. I'm really looking forward to this. We're going to be dialogue.

49:27

And what is really cool because it's the same subject from two different perspectives. Talk about test for consistency.

49:33

I'm putting myself in a position you can come and you can listen. Do I say something different to the Mormon that I say to the

49:39

Muslim? Or do I say the same things to both? Do I use the same standards? There's, I think that's the test for truth.

49:45

So, but we're going to be up there at University of Utah. I put on, you know, I shared the invitation from Jason Wallace on the

49:55

Facebook page. I'm not sure if it got on Alvin Omega's Facebook page, but we need to get Hasim, son of Ramallah on that and try to get a banner ad up.

50:04

Yeah. And I need to get it on the calendar so that folks can get the information through their Google. Well, and we're doing a whole conference.

50:09

I'll be preaching at the OPC church there and stuff like that. So I'm doing something that whole weekend in Salt Lake.

50:15

And then the two days before that, I'm doing something in Santa Fe too. So we need to try to get all that up there.

50:22

Feed me the information and I'll get it on the calendar. It's on Facebook. Facebook is a large place.

50:30

You know, there was a day when you would have been saying, oh, just put it on Facebook and I'll get it.

50:36

But now, now. I'll find it. Now. I see how it is. The, the student has become the master.

50:44

Yeah. Okay. That's what's happened there. Anyway. Tim says on, on Twitter, wait, is

50:57

Uncle Jim's heretical audio books making a comeback? Heretical audio books. That's good. I, I got lots of,

51:04

I, I've got an entire, I've got, I've got pretty much the best scholarly

51:09

Gnostic library in print in my office. So I'm good on that.

51:14

We need to get you. Which by the way, by the way, real quick before I, because I am going to get to Trinity stuff. So just hold on. Um, is there,

51:21

I know we put something this morning. Was that the only thing left on the ministry resource list? Oh, okay.

51:27

Well, I, the last couple of things I'm not sure. Well, anyway, um, put something up today.

51:33

Later in the day, I'm going to be putting something big up. I haven't even told you about this and I'll explain it then, but putting some more resources up on the

51:42

MRL, always thankful for folks who help us with that. Uh, um, and it will help me in here.

51:51

And when I travel, um, and I'll explain maybe, can I give, we can put an explanation on stuff.

51:58

I could send you a little paragraph. Okay. I'll, I'll, I'll do that. So we'll put this stuff on the MRL. Were you going to add something before I go to the next section?

52:05

No. Okay. Yeah. I blew it out of your mind. Sorry. Cause I say, wait, wait a minute.

52:10

And then I saw something floating off across the room. Probably was, was the thought. So anyways, just, just summarizing, you know, here we are four years down the road, the papyrus, even

52:21

Karen King is now admitting is a fake. Um, but who's going to, who's going to make, and the whole point was it didn't matter one way or the other because we already, if we have done some homework already knew that the, um, the

52:41

Gnostics were weird. Oh, and what I, what I had been going at there was before I leave for Salt Lake, that's where I jumped the track before I leave

52:48

Salt Lake, I should be into the Didache, uh, in the lectures in the church history series.

52:55

So, uh, and I'm probably going to read most of the Didache and comment on it, but I've done that for years.

53:02

So, so the clip that the guys showed down in South, South Africa about the Didache and we all know about it.

53:09

My Sunday school classes know about it for crying out loud. Um, and other people know about, need to know about too. All right.

53:16

Okay. I'm actually keep this brief. I'm gonna keep this fairly brief. Well, if I read from the book here, it may not end up being brief.

53:25

Um, I started into the big pile of articles that I laid out for myself.

53:35

Um, this is not going to be my full statement on the eternal functional subordination issue that is currently exploding, uh, in really amongst, in reformed circles.

53:50

You know, maybe in other places too, but pretty much in reformed circles. Yes. Did you see Phil Johnson jumped in on that?

53:56

Everybody's jumping in on this. Yeah. Everybody's jumping on this. Um, it took it appearing on a blog, uh, for it to become a big, a big thing, but it's been bubbling for a while.

54:11

And, uh, now it's become big thing. Let me just make a statement and try to help provide some background stuff.

54:20

And then when I do really jump into this, I want to do it in such a way that I can provide some links, um, when we post the program so that if you really want to do some serious reading, cause this, you know, to me, like I said, when

54:36

I, I briefly talked about this in the last program, to me, I'm just thankful that a lot of people in the pews today are being introduced.

54:49

I bet you more people know what perichoresis means today than a month ago.

54:55

The interpenetration of divine persons. I've been trying to get people interested in this stuff for a long time.

55:01

And I am so very thankful that this book has gotten a lot of people interested in the

55:10

Doctrine of the Trinity, especially from a biblical perspective. As I say in here, I'm a biblical Trinitarian.

55:15

I believe in the Trinity because it is a divine revelation. And if you've read that, then maybe that's turned you on to reading some of Warfield because I was,

55:26

I remain deeply indebted to and influenced by B .B. Warfield on the Doctrine of the Trinity. His stuff is still some of the most insightful material on that subject that I'm familiar with.

55:36

Last year for G3, what did we do? The Trinity.

55:42

Now, careful folks, listening folks, notice that there are some differences between us.

55:51

And careful folks might have noticed, wasn't just a difference in emphasis in some areas between, for example, myself and Bruce Ware.

55:58

Well, it actually goes to some of these issues. Bruce Ware isn't a big fan of Warfield.

56:05

I am a big fan of Warfield. And it goes to some of the issues that are now coming out and becoming more fully understood, especially the issue of autotheos and Calvin's break from the interpretation of Nicene Orthodox that developed during the medieval period in regards to what generation means and the idea of the divine essence being communicated from the father to the son as being the definition of generation.

56:43

And Calvin's saying, nyet. He didn't say nyet. He didn't speak German or Russian.

56:50

Nein, nein would be a German, nyet. You know what I mean. Calvin said no.

56:59

And many Reformed people since then, like Warfield, have said no.

57:07

And so there are background issues of the aseity of the son, whether the son is autotheos.

57:17

That's one area of discussion, because that then has a huge impact on how you understand generation inspiration.

57:28

And all of that has to do with what are called the opera ad intra, the internal operations of the Trinity and how we recognize and differentiate between the father, son, and spirit.

57:40

The EFS controversy, the eternal functional subordination controversy, goes to the idea being promoted by Wayne Grudem and Bruce Ware, both of whom are principals in the primary controversy of compatibilism versus egalitarianism.

58:02

Now, look, that's an important issue. That's an important issue. As far as I can tell, that issue has followed the same trajectory, is following behind, but the same trajectory as the homosexuality issue.

58:31

In other words, a high view of scripture is directly relevant to whether you will adopt a complementarian or egalitarian perspective.

58:46

Now, I know people who claim to have a high view of scripture who call themselves egalitarians. I know one in particular that used to be a channel regular.

58:56

But as I observe it, inevitably over time, those folks end up adopting a significantly less than conservative view of scripture on that issue and many others.

59:11

Certainly, that's been the case in the denominations in which that battle has been fought out. Going back to what

59:18

EFS means, I was first introduced to the idea, and I don't know that he's said anything about this, but the first person that I encountered that promoted this idea was

59:35

Dan Wallace. And we were having a discussion about the,

59:42

I've mentioned before that the one time I ever attended the

59:47

Evangelical Theological Society annual meeting, one of the two things that I enjoyed the most was standing at the

59:55

NET table and having an hour -long conversation with Dan Wallace about the

01:00:03

Carmen Christi and the meaning of harpagmos in the text.

01:00:10

And part of Dan's understanding of how he takes harpagmos is this concept of an eternal functional subordination of the son to the father, which you will then find, and the idea is, you see, historically,

01:00:34

Christians have always confessed in the economic trinity the subordination of the son to the father.

01:00:43

What's the economic trinity? The economic trinity, of course, is the roles that the father, son, and spirit take in bringing about the work of the trinity, which is bringing about the whole drama of salvation.

01:00:58

It's really all of creation, but centered in the most, the central glorifying act of the triune

01:01:04

God, which is salvation itself, which is why the gospel is about God. It's not about us.

01:01:11

It's what God is doing. And so, very clearly, the son voluntarily takes a role where he is sent by the father.

01:01:21

And the spirit voluntarily takes the role where he is sent by the father and the son.

01:01:28

And, you know, one of the arguments, obviously, early on was the issue of the relationship of spiration, does the spirit proceed from the father and the son or the father only?

01:01:41

This is part of the split between the east and the west, 1054, and all that kind of stuff. So, the economic trinity, that's not an issue, that the persons take different roles.

01:02:00

And so, that's really indisputable. And many of those who oppose the doctrine of the trinity, they confuse the economic trinity with the ontological trinity, ontology, that which is in its being, ontos, the

01:02:14

Greek term, normally, participial, on. And so, when we're talking about the ontological trinity, we're talking about the trinity not as seen by what

01:02:25

God does, but God considered simply as God, God's being, the ontological trinity.

01:02:35

What a lot of people are reacting against, and appropriately so, I believe, is the assertion that in the ontological trinity there is a subordination of the son to the father, that the son is willingly submissive to the father ontologically, by nature.

01:02:58

And the connection then becomes, well, if there is a natural hierarchy hierarchy within the trinity, not just economically, but ontologically, then it makes sense.

01:03:21

This becomes the parallel for the natural differentiation of male and female.

01:03:31

And 1 Corinthians 11, 3 is brought up in regards to, as God's the head of Christ, or the man's head of the female.

01:03:41

And of course, immediately I just go, excuse me, Christ is a economic, functional, messianic term.

01:03:50

You're way off if you're trying to read this into the ontological trinity, but some people do.

01:03:57

All right, so what's been happening is, well, how do

01:04:10

I put this? Again, I'm glad that people are thinking through this issue. For some folks, it's the first time they've ever given serious thought to perichoresis and the relationship of the divine persons.

01:04:23

And what was the last big thing that helped people think through this? The modalism stuff with Phillips, Craig, and Dean.

01:04:31

But even then, it was very obvious to many people that the vast majority of evangelicals sort of like, whatever, yawn, too complex for me, too many

01:04:41

Latin words and Greek words, and I'm just not going to go there. So I'm glad people are talking about it.

01:04:50

But let me state a few things. A, I do not believe in eternal functional subordination.

01:04:56

I do not believe it's biblical. I don't believe it's necessary. I believe it is problematic.

01:05:05

And from a consistency perspective, I would definitely see it as problematic in consistently leading to subordinationism.

01:05:21

But here's where the problem has arisen. I'm a little concerned at the tenor of the conversation.

01:05:34

And I'll be pretty honest with you, I haven't seen a whole lot from the other side.

01:05:39

Most of my feeds pretty much filled up with people who happen to agree with me. That makes sense,

01:05:46

I suppose. Most of the people that I would have expected to come out in opposition to this have done so.

01:06:00

But I'm really concerned that basically the same kind of rhetoric that leads people to accuse me of being a hyper -Calvinist by necessity, if I believe

01:06:19

X, Y, or Z, is also leading people to say that Bruce Ware and Wayne Grudem are false teachers.

01:06:32

When they're not false teachers, we can disagree. But they are saying, we are not subordinationists.

01:06:42

We do not believe that this necessitates any kind of fundamental denial of the absolute deity of Christ.

01:06:50

That's what they say. Now, we can argue whether that's the case or not. We can argue the consistency of it. But that's what they're saying.

01:06:57

And it almost seems to me like those that are really lighting the torches right now might want to recognize that that's the same attitude that, you know, you've got a false god, you're a pagan.

01:07:13

That's sort of the same attitude that the hyper -Calvinists use against those of us who will not send the

01:07:23

Armenians to hell. Because the Armenians are inconsistent. I've said over and over again,

01:07:30

Michael Brown, he's inconsistent. Love the guy, saved by grace alone.

01:07:37

But you've got this synergism thing going over there. You can't fit them together. But it's a blessed inconsistency.

01:07:45

Well, if you want to say that there is an inconsistency between believing in EFS, eternal functional subordination, and saying that that will inevitably lead to a subordinationist viewpoint of Jesus, that you're not gonna be able to, you know, you're standing on a pretty slope there and you're not gonna be able to stay there.

01:08:13

Okay, make the argument, but don't make the argument, and if you disagree with me, you're not a

01:08:18

Christian. Because the idea is you're denying the reality of their statement that, no,

01:08:27

I'm not down there with the subordinationist. You may be arguing, well, your position should logically lead you down there, but if they're saying,

01:08:35

I detest that, I reject that, you've got to accept that they're making that statement. Now let's have the conversation as Christian brothers, and maybe you can convince them that the slope is too steep.

01:08:48

They're not gonna be able to stay there. Maybe you can convince them of that. But doing the firebombing, flamethrowing thing along with the proper expression of concern as to what

01:09:07

EFS may lead us to, I don't see how that's helpful.

01:09:13

And so, basically what I'm saying is my side needs to dial it back a bit. And we can have this conversation without just automatically throwing the walls up and just tossing the hand grenades.

01:09:35

I really have to wonder, to be honest with you, what would happen if the year was off by one, and we were doing

01:09:44

G3 this year on the Trinity. I mean, I get the feeling with the fervor of some of the language out there that some people would have to end up dropping out.

01:09:59

Just because, well, the only way we could be there is we're gonna have a debate because that person says I'm a false teacher.

01:10:05

Well, that person believes in subordinationism. I think

01:10:11

I would like to see a meaningful debate on the subject.

01:10:16

I'm not volunteering myself because people might say, well, why not? You've written on it,

01:10:21

I know. But I've made a commitment to this project and it's in textual criticism.

01:10:28

And there's only so many things you can do and do well. And this level of project requires that I just go, come on, this has got to be something for somebody else.

01:10:41

I'd like to see a debate, but I would really be hesitant to see it if either side or both sides went into it with the idea that I'm debating an unbeliever on this.

01:10:56

That would be problematic from my perspective. I don't think that that's going to help us because when it comes to these issues, well,

01:11:06

I did want to get to one thing. I'm going to go ahead and do it if you don't mind. What? What are you laughing at?

01:11:13

Oh, some people in the YouTube chat, they keep seeing your thing popping up through your sleeve on your right arm.

01:11:22

Where have they been for the past number of months? I know. I believe the new nickname is, you're the gangsta theologian.

01:11:33

Yeah, OK. Focus, folks, focus. Let me just give a little,

01:11:45

I want to do a little reading here. Just give you some information. Someone was kind enough.

01:11:53

Was that in channel this morning? I think it was a channel. I'll see if I can find the links because I downloaded the, it wasn't channel.

01:12:06

But I'm not sure which unit it'd be on. If I can find the links, I can remember, I'll put the links on the thing. Dr. Oliphant, who really got things stirred up at ReformCon over at SES and appropriately so.

01:12:25

Brilliant man. I was listening to him at high speed talking about the aseity of the sun just a while ago.

01:12:38

And I'm just going, you know, this guy and I teach a lot alike. We really do. We teach a lot alike.

01:12:47

So it was great to listen. He hit so many of the things that I've said about what's going on at SES.

01:12:54

But he's just a lot smarter than I am. Anyway, he made reference to these same things.

01:13:01

And I think this is one of the things you need to think through if you're. And I think this is an issue that goes before the realm of being able to really address the

01:13:14

EFS issue. And I'm not sure that's necessarily being addressed the way it needs to. Robert Raymond got himself in trouble for what he said in his systematic theology.

01:13:25

Paul Owen went after him. Paul Owen goes after everybody. And so I figure if Paul Owen goes after you, that probably means you're onto something.

01:13:33

But, hey, I'm letting you know, if you want to hear a response to this from the other side,

01:13:41

Paul Owen wrote an article. You can look it up for yourself. I'm not going to give many more free advertising. But here, where do

01:13:52

I want to start? There's so many. If you have the book, this is the Trinity and the Creed starting around page 332 or so.

01:14:05

Let me just start with this quotation. It's on 334. Benjamin B. Warfield commenting approvingly on Calvin's Doctrine of the

01:14:12

Trinity writes, I suppose I could have actually put this up because I have it in my Logos setup.

01:14:17

But anyways, The principle of his Doctrine of the Trinity was not the conception he formed of the relationship of the

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Son to the Father and of the Spirit to the Father and the Son, expressed respectively by the two terms generation and procession, but the force of his conviction of the absolute equality of the persons, the point of view, which adjusted everything to the conception of generation and procession as worked out by the

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Nicene Fathers was entirely alien to him. Speaking of Calvin, this is Warfield speaking of Calvin.

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The conception itself he found difficult, if not unthinkable. And although he admitted the facts of generation and procession, he treated them as bare facts and refused to make them constitutive of the

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Doctrine of the Trinity. He rather adjusted everything to the absolute divinity of each person, their community in the one only true deity.

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And to this, we cannot doubt that he was ready not only to subordinate, but even to sacrifice, if need be, the entire body of Nicene speculation.

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He states further, It was a very great service to Christian theology that Calvin rendered when he firmly asserted for the second and third persons of the

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Trinity, their autotheates, their self -deity, autos, and then theates from theatetas.

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Well, the form is, it's not theates from theates, it's theatetas from theates, found in Colossians 2 .9.

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For in him, all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form, as Warfield himself defined theatetas in Colossians 2 .9,

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that which makes God, God. So, autos, self -deity, truly deity.

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Rather than the idea that generation is the eternal, not in time, but eternal communication of the divine being from the

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Father to the Son, and then from the Father and the Son to the Spirit inspiration. Calvin's like, yeah.

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Warfield declares that Calvin's position, quote, roused opposition and created a party. But it did create a party, and that party was shortly the

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Reformed Churches, of which it became characteristic that in the doctrine of the Trinity, they laid the stress upon the equality of the persons sharing the same essence, and thus set themselves with more or less absoluteness against all subordinationism in the explanation of the relations of the persons to one another.

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Raymond goes on. Accordingly, Warfield expresses great astonishment, quote, at the tenacity with which Calvin's followers cling to all the old speculations, end quote.

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Lorraine Bettner, a contemporary follower of Calvin, does indeed follow Calvin here, rejecting the doctrine of the Spirit's eternal procession to the

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Father and the Son as without biblical warrant, quote. In the original Greek of John 1628, the phrase came out from, which is here used of Jesus, is stronger than the precedeth from in 1526, which is used of the

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Spirit. Yet, the context of John 1628 makes it perfectly clear that what Jesus said of himself had reference to his mission and not to what is commonly termed his eternal generation.

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For his coming forth from the Father into the world is contrasted with his leaving the world and going back to the Father. We are, of course, told that the

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Holy Spirit is sent by the Father and by the Son, but the mission as he comes to apply redemption is an entirely different thing from the procession.

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It seems much more natural to assume that the words of John 1526, which were part of the farewell discourse, and which were therefore designed to meet a present and urgent need, namely to confront and strengthen disciples for the ordeal through which they were soon to pass.

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Hence, John 1526 at best carries no decisive weight concerning the doctrine of the procession of the Spirit, if indeed it is not quite clearly designed to serve an entirely different purpose.

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J. Oliver Buswell, Jr., another 20th century follower of Calvin, asserts that the, quote, the ancient church incorrectly understood the words of John 1526 when it took this passage of Scripture as teaching a doctrine of the eternal procession of the

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Holy Spirit within the Trinity, end quote. While he says the doctrine's only value is that it gives us a vehicle for conceiving of the relationship between the

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Spirit and the Father and the Son, he also states that the word procession is, quote, a hindrance rather than a help.

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The Spirit certainly does not teach, the Scripture certainly does not teach the procession of the

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Holy Spirit as a mode of expression of His eternal relationship within the Trinity, unquote.

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So then Raymond says, with all this I concur, but I do not intend to deny that the three persons of the

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Godhead do have distinguishing, incommunicable properties which are real, eternal, and necessary.

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Indeed, without them, there would be no Trinity. The distinguishing property of the Father is paternity, paternitas, from which follow economical activities in which the

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Son and the Spirit do not share. The Son's is filiation, filiatio, from which flow economical activities in which the

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Father and Spirit do not share. And the Holy Spirit's is spiration, spiratio, from which flow economical activities in which the

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Father and Son do not share, all descriptions which can be justified by Scripture. We must be extremely cautious, however, in asserting what these distinguishing properties mean, lest we go beyond Scripture.

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Now here, how many times have I pointed out that one of the primary differences,

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I know we're going long, it's going to be a jumbo, that's fine. One of the primary differences between Calvin and Edwards was that Calvin said, where God makes an end of speaking, so should we.

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Edwards is willing to, in essence, say, well, the light is so bright up to this point that we can walk a little farther in the shadows.

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He's willing to go beyond where Scripture has drawn a line. And Calvin says, no, it's dangerous out there.

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Could be a cliff that you don't see coming. And I think Calvin was the correct there.

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And Raymond's following him there, and he says, but we must not attempt to define beyond the fact of the clearly implied order a modal how of the

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Father's paternity. And there can be no question that the Son is the Son of the

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Father. We know that His Sonship means that He is equal to the Father with respects to deity. And we also know that as the

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Son, He is to be distinguished from the Father with respect to His personal property affiliation. We know also that His Sonship implies an order of relational, not essential subordination to the

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Father. There's where Raymond's, we know where Raymond would have been on this one. He's just said there is no essential subordination to the

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Father, which is doubtless what dictated the divisions of labor in the eternal covenant of redemption, in that it is unthinkable that the

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Son would have sent the Father to do His will. But beyond this, we dare not go.

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We must not attempt to define beyond the fact of the clearly implied order a modal how of the

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Son's affiliation is enough to know that the scriptures affirm the titles Father and Son speak of a personal differentiating manifoldness, that is subjective conscious selves within the depth of the divine being.

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Finally, there can be no question that the Holy Spirit is a divine person who is the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ, and that He proceeded and came forth from the

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Father and the Son at Pentecost on His salvific mission. But we must not attempt to define beyond the fact of the clearly implied order a modal how of the

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Spirit's spiration. It is enough to know that the scriptures affirm that this title distinguishes a third subjective conscious self in the depth of the divine being.

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I'm going to go ahead and read this next paragraph. In conclusion, because that's always a good thing to finish up with.

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In conclusion, I would say that it was not in their concern to distinguish between the persons of the

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Godhead that the Nicene and Post -Nicene Fathers made their mistake. That task had to be undertaken in the face of the

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Sabellian heresy, which made any real personal distinctions between them. Where they made their mistake was in their attempt to explain how it is that the

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Son becomes the Son of the Father and how it is the Spirit is the Spirit of God and of Christ.

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The explanations they offered have the Son acquiring His essence and personal subsistence from the

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Father through an eternal act of being begotten and the Spirit acquiring His essence and personal subsistence from the

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Father and the Son through an eternal act of proceeding. But in doing so, they went beyond scripture and concluded to formulations that, in effect, make

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God the Father alone, autotheotic, and the cause and deifier of the

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Son, the very opposite effect to the dominant intention which governed them throughout their labors.

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And the Father and the Son, the co -causes and co -deifiers of the

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Spirit. I really think he was trying to be very balanced there.

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But what I really appreciated about Raymond was so often, unlike most systematic theologies, his was based upon exegetical text.

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I disagreed with him. I don't... Do I have it down here? Yeah. Perspectives on church government.

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Oh, move it over so we can meet. Perspectives on church government. The only real debate in this book is between me and Robert Raymond.

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On what? That book is in the bookstore. Yes, it is in the bookstore. And so is this one.

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Lord of Glory by B .B. Warfield. Is also in the bookstore, in the Alpha Omega bookstore. Alpha A -O -M -I -N dot org, yes.

01:24:05

Store dot A -O -M -N dot org. Yes, that too. So, and I disagree with Raymond on Philippians 2, 5, and following.

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I'm not saying, oh, you know, bowing down. I'm not doing that. But I so appreciate the biblical emphasis in a systematic theology that is so often missing in systematic theologies.

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And the same thing in regards to Calvin. You know, Calvin looks to post -Nicene speculations and goes, miss something there.

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And I think he was exactly right. And I think that greatly impacts. Because we have to know what we mean by generation and spiration.

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I think they're appropriate terms. But as he just said, to go into the how of them ends up causing real problem.

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And that, I think, is a issue that then will really condition how you look at the

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EFS stuff and how you're going to approach it. Even if you disagree with it, you're actually going to end up disagreeing with it from different perspectives depending on where you come down on this issue of whether the

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Son, the Spirit, or autotheos and things like that. So something tells me when we finally do get around to it, it's going to be not just a jumbo.

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It's going to be a super mega jumbo dividing line or multiple dividing lines or something along those lines.

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So anyway, there you go. We have covered a lot today. A lot, a lot, a lot today.

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We really have. But it's important stuff. And I think especially, like I said, this particular conflict going on right now, going to keep a close eye on it.

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And it's going to be interesting to see what kind of developments there are that come out from that.

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So thank you for listening to The Dividing Line today. Tomorrow, the dialogue with the

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Hebrew Israelites on the subjects mentioned earlier, which will be co -broadcast, and that will be at 4 p .m.

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Eastern Daylight Times. We hope you'll join us for that. Pray that the technology works, and we'll see you then.