Today on the Dividing Line: NJ/NY Report, David Gushee, Austin Fischer

I don't know, it's probably not wise to be downloading the install for an upgrade to Accordance right as the program starts.

Probably not a good idea, but that's what I'm doing. Just doing it right there, easy, easy install.

We'll see fast enough. Hey, you could be back here in the warmer climes. I understand that our friends back east are going to be getting slammed by the polar vortex in the middle of November.

How do you like that? The polar vortex. Why do you keep doing that? You only start for like 30 seconds on that camera.

It's the exact same camera as this one, and yet it obviously just sits up there and feels unloved and like nobody cares for it because you only use it for like 30 seconds and you go away.

And hopefully someday, someday, there'll be a Borg cube right here and it'll have little green glowing lights on it and that's the only camera that's going to catch it unless we put it over there someplace and that really wouldn't fit.

Notice how things have changed for those of you who, oh man, you can see my potato chips over here.

Well, wait a minute. They're not potato chips, actually. There we go.

They're not potato chips, they're the exotic vegetable chips. They're really good. And I was munching on a few before we got started, but you can see them over there.

Then you wonder why I moved to the other camera because that's not the angle, you know. We have the full room, then we get close up and, you know.

You know, I hit that fire side. I hit that thing and, and, oh, that says install update.

So now, now I'll start. I thought it was already downloading all that stuff. Oh, well. Anyways.

Hi, it's good to be back. The polar vortex is coming and the end of the world and stuff like that.

Actually, it's only going to drop down. It's going to, you folks back east where it's going to be 40 degrees below your normal.

I want you to know that we here in Phoenix will be suffering along with you. It's supposed to get down to 75 for a high next week.

That's rough for us. I'm going to tell you something. We may have to wear jeans. Sorry.

Anyway, and Zach Knott's out there in Twitter land managed to get home from Cane's, the

Cane's drive -through in time to listen to the dividing line today. That means he's getting to listen to the dividing line and eat the greatest chicken fingers on the planet, which is where I'm going for lunch today, too, because they don't have

Cane's in New York. Never even heard of Cane's in New York, which is really sad. And people thought

New York was the center of culture. If you don't know about Cane's, you're not in the center of culture.

Look at that. I have Accordance 11 up now, and it looks exactly like Accordance 10.

Obviously there's things. I've got Logos 6, I've got Accordance 11, and you get these updates, and you've got to go watch five hours worth of videos to find out all the stuff hidden away and all this stuff.

And I don't have five hours worth of video time. Maybe I could download some of those videos, listen to them.

Nah, nah. Listening to them in audio on the bike, worthless, because they'll be showing you stuff. So we won't even go there.

But at least Accordance is up, because that is what I'm normally using when I look for Bible passages. I just wanted to say thank you to everybody who made the

New Jersey, New York trip possible, especially Chris Arnson, who, of course, organized all this stuff.

Eight different churches over the course of 11 days, including the travel days, and one debate, and it was good to meet a lot of folks.

I started going to Long Island in 1995, and real seriously in 96.

So it's been, in some places, it's been like 18 years since.

And I saw Ed Morton North Shore, and I said, who's this old man? And of course,

I don't look anything like I did 18 years ago, either. But we've all aged. But it's nice to see all the folks, and of course,

I've spent a lot of time at Hope Reformed Baptist Church. I used to go to Tuscarora with them all the time on their winter retreats and things.

And almost all those kids are growing up and having kids themselves, as at mine, and all the rest of that stuff.

I did not like driving in New Jersey. New Jersey is insane. I think it's absolutely nuts to have to drive through neighborhoods and go around and do things like this just to turn around.

Just silly, just absolutely silly. But I managed to escape New Jersey. Once I got to the churches, that was great.

But getting there, oh, just pure insanity. And of course, the weather wasn't good.

The weather was pretty crazy while I was in New Jersey. And it cleared up once we got to New York.

Isn't it amazing to be excited to get across the bridge, pay, what, 10, 15 bucks just to get across the bridge?

And then it's like, yes, I'm in Manhattan now. It's great to be in Brooklyn.

I can drive now. That tells you something about the roads in New Jersey. So we need to feel for our brothers and sisters in New Jersey who have to put up a lot of stuff.

Anyway, enjoyed the opportunity, enjoyed the debate with Steve Lewis.

I guess the one of the weirder parts isn't available yet.

I'm not sure when it's all going to be available because Rich had not heard or it hadn't sunk in the section where Shadid argued that if Jesus was truly

God, then he should have acted like Neo so that when the people were going to throw rocks at him, that he would have been done like Neo and stop them in midair.

And that was the first time

I had had the Neo argument used. Bet you didn't have a rebuttal for that one.

Actually, I did. I actually did. Was Morpheus involved? No, no.

Morpheus really wasn't involved in that. But yeah, okay.

There you go. You know, we're all in trouble now because we actually know what he was talking about. Yeah, I know all about stopping bullets in midair and then diving into Agent Smith and blowing them up and stuff like that.

Yeah, it's great. Anyway, had a good time that made debate number 142.

Hopefully we will be able to put all of it together because Shadid had a cameraman there too.

So if something got lost because of the because what's up right now doesn't have my cross examination of him, which

I thought was sort of important. I mean, I started off demonstrating that it would not matter what verse what text of scripture

I would I would show him. He'll just dismiss it based upon his presuppositions. So that was sort of important.

And without that, some of my closing comments wouldn't make much sense. So if that got lost because of Google YouTube issues, then hopefully we can get that from from Shadid's cameras or something like that.

I hope worse comes to worse. But hopefully the whole thing will eventually be put together and and made available.

And a lot of people said, yeah, but his arguments just all that good. And that's true. They weren't.

Well, I'm hearing some disagreement that it is up.

I haven't had a chance to go back and look at what they posted afterwards, but I think they saved this stuff locally and they're reuploading.

Well, I've seen a lot of stuff. I've seen a lot of stuff that says my that his cross ex is up, but mine isn't. And what

I've seen, Link, is Farshad saying yours is not up yet. My cross ex. Yeah. Yeah. See, Farshad says your cross examination is not up.

Yeah. OK. So that seems to have gotten lost somehow because his was after mine. So it sort of ended at the break and then picks up with his cross ex and mine went and it's gone.

So I don't know where it went. The audience questions were

OK. And so anyway, the point is that, yeah, his arguments were not the best arguments, but they are the kind of arguments you're going to be hearing from Muslims most often.

And that's the issue is you have to respond to what you're going to be prepare you for dealing with.

Even though I'll have to admit the neo part that was, I guess, some interesting new arguments on Long Island.

In fact, Hamza Abdul Malik was in the audience just as confused as he's ever been. And you know, the fool with Philippians defense.

And and and so now we have the neo thing that that's that's definitely one that we should put on the list to be added to the

Radio Free Damascus thing is just be stopping those stones like Neo and the

Matrix, you know, isn't that all right, you say so it was. It was.

Yeah, that was that was so next thing on the list. I'm only home for a little over two weeks. And the day after Thanksgiving, I head off to to Kiev and then to Berlin and I was

Russia invaded them yet. Yeah, sort of. Oh, OK. Yeah, it could be interesting.

There's just something about scheduling you airline flights, Ukraine and invasions or revolutions.

So that's what was going on last time, sort of. So, yeah, we'll see. I hope it's still

Kiev, Ukraine when I get there. But you never know. I mean. But I will be speaking,

I believe. I'm yeah, I'm speaking on the 30th there in in Kiev.

At the church there, like I did last time, which is very enjoyable, which means, Nick, you better be better to be ready, better to be ready.

The one thing I only have to think about, one thing I do not even have to think about. And. Oh, there's

Nick now distracting me. Here I am, I I didn't even see that. I had to look over as I was talking about Nick and there's

Nick trying to distract me. You always mention people distracting you with silly stuff during the dividing line. So cyclists hit 207 miles per hour in four point eight seconds.

Now, obviously, that means he was being dragged by the car. So but yeah,

I'll have to take a look there, but thanks, Nick. I appreciate the the. Wait a minute. He's being dragged by the car.

Was that before or after the car hit him? Yeah. Now something tells me he was a bungee corded to it or something.

But anyway, but the one thing I have to worry about is wherever I'm going to next, my translator,

I'll just I'll just talk and and let him do his thing. And so that that that works, whether I have to do it with the start stop methodology or the continuous run methodology, whichever one it is.

But I hope you're I hope you're feeling good, Nick, because you're going to be working real hard for two weeks.

Well, actually, I think. No, no, I would have to imagine that even in Berlin, he's he's going to have to be doing some translation.

I could be wrong. I could be wrong. I don't know. Maybe it's just in English. Maybe everybody speaks English in the

Berlin class. I don't know. I don't know. But justification and the Trinity, the two classes will be doing in Berlin and Kiev and then

Norway the month after that G3 conference in Atlanta, Florida.

We're setting up debates along with the. Jeremiah cry stuff in in March, early

March will be a TMI of the inerrancy. And around the world conference, we're having there right before the

Shepherds conference and then looking at hopefully around May, the grand tour of central

Texas. I'm going to have Tom Buck be working with some other pastors to try to put all that together.

I need to get him those pastors names and they'll hopefully cooperate together and we'll work something out.

And man, time goes by fast. It's just it just goes by very, very quickly.

And so much to do in the meantime. So and thanks to everybody who makes this possible.

I just we don't talk about money much around here, but I do need to let you know, we are supported by individuals.

Don't have any rich people out there. I seem to attract. Regular folks,

I don't seem to attract rich people, and so. The ministry goes on and many of you help with the special projects, but the regular ministry has to keep going on or the special projects become irrelevant.

And so we need to we need your support. I mean, you know, it's getting toward the end of the year. Everybody starts putting out their appeal letters and, you know, try to get into the red at the end of the year.

Again, most of our folks give out of their out of their want, not out of their excess.

And so we don't put any big special push on at the end of the year or anything like that. We just don't do a lot of fundraising.

But I do every once in a while need to remind you. We're here because you're there and we need your support.

So if you enjoy the dividing line, please consider that it's the regular. And fifteen dollars a month type thing, that's that's what that's what does it.

That's really, really what does it. So help us out with that if you can. And we will continue doing what we're doing now on the way home.

I read a book that there are a lot of books I read because I have to read them, not because I enjoy reading them.

And in fact, there's a lot of books I really enjoy reading that I just don't have time to read. I had to read

David Gush's new book. It was just just sort of necessary because he's getting all sorts of press and and evidently during the

Matthew Vines Reformation thing, he was there and there was all sorts of tweets going out.

And, you know, his books endorsed by all these ultra leftist liberal folks like well, and any emergent folks like Brian McLaren and things like that.

But I needed to need to read the book and it doesn't take very long. It's not a very big book. It's there's only nineteen hundred and fifteen locations in the

Kindle edition, so it can't be all that large in the paperback edition either.

And so I I got through it and I marked a number of things. And what

I'm going to do here at the beginning anyway is I'm trying to get all the way through it, but I just want to sort of go through the things that caught my attention.

Because you're going to be hearing about this for a long time. Well, I don't know how long you're hearing about it, but you're going to be hearing about it.

And it's just another of the many, many, many people who are going to be.

Putting pressure upon you. To compromise on this issue. And it is compromised from his perspective.

It's just it's just another another perspective. It's just something you need to consider about. You know, we've just been misreading scriptures and we need to move forward in its progress and so on and so forth.

But the reality is the pressure from the culture is being put upon every single

Christian church, educational institution, big time, every individual.

And the arguments could basically be, look, you're being left behind by history. You're going to be you're going to be a relic.

You're going to be viewed as a as a narrow minded bigot. And the gospel will suffer and what they don't deal with.

And Gushy never dealt with this, didn't even seem to realize that it was an issue. I mean, the book is shallow, especially the biblical material.

That's incredibly shallow. I was I was shocked. I mean, it's supposed to be one of the leading ethicists. Well, I guess,

OK, leading ethicist doesn't mean you're an exegete. But but very little interaction.

With the other side, I mean, he has to acknowledge Gagnon. Not not a word about any of Michael Brown's materials, anything like that.

Nothing in the bibliography, just just passed over in silence. But so much of the heart of the arguments we're making just not even touched upon.

Not even touched upon very uneven quality of material. Of course, the organization is you start off assuming the rightness of what you're saying and the conclusion of the debate.

And then you don't get to the biblical stuff until way down the road. And I'm noticing this in a lot of these books.

You start off with the personal stuff. I mean, and again, just as with Brownson, you get into the book and discover that Gushy's sister came out as a homosexual, as a lesbian just a few years ago.

And voila, the position changes. Brownson's son comes out as a homosexual. Voila, the position changes.

Seems to be a theme here. There seems to be some some connectivity somewhere along the line of all these things.

But the argumentation is is is not deep. There's nothing new. Absolutely nothing new in in in this book.

In fact, if you've read Brownson, if you've read Vines, you're going to be disappointed that you wasted your money here because there isn't anything new.

It's just on that level. It's just warming that up. It's rewarming that material, that that kind of argumentation.

And and in not an overly compelling fashion, you know, a lot of it's just his journey, his getting to know gay

Christians and so on and so forth. And and and there you go.

Um, so. I want to go through basically quotes, you know, the highlighting that I did in the book and help, hopefully in a helpful way, talk about what you're going to be hearing because he's going to get pressed.

We all know. We all know that these folks get the press, the people respond to them. Silence, because we know how how the media, how the media works.

So. We start off and it says the church never had a category called sexual orientation in its ancient tradition.

Once it understood in the late 20th century that a distinction should be drawn between sexual.

I'm clicking the button. Thank you. Sexual orientation and sexual acts. The smarter branches of the church were able to accept such a distinction.

This helped some Christians tentatively begin to accept gay people in the church, which was in advance. I was like, oh, far, far enough to understand that.

It's what he says, the smarter branches of the church. So we have the smarter branches of church, which are the liberal ones.

And then we've got the dumb branches of the church who just don't get it. How did I mean, there is such a there is such a contrast to this and some of the stuff he said later that I'm sort of like.

Did the editor catch this? My editor at Bethany House would have said, seriously, really, you sure you want to go there?

But there it is. The smarter branches of the church were able to accept such a distinction. And, of course, what that eventually leads to is the the assumption,

OK? Here's a paragraph, the loosening up. This is I suppose

I'll go ahead and give locations. Location 377. What are you looking at? You want me to try to reach over there and raise the raise the oh, it's yeah, it's it.

Yeah, we didn't get started early enough this morning. That is I'm sorry, that still wasn't enough.

It's it's frozen. It's frozen up there. Yes, it's it's sad. The borg light's fine, but the lava lamp is stuck in the 1960s rather than 1970s.

Anyway, the loosening up of cultural attitudes has slowly brought these silent sufferers out of the shadows.

Some of us in Christian work like me and my work as a pastor and professor have come to know gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender

Christians committed, believing, baptized, morally serious followers of Jesus.

There are millions of such sexual other Christians in the US alone and millions more around the world.

Say it with me. There are millions of LGBT Christians. That's all that last the last two sentences are all in italics.

So the assertion is made. Without dealing, the biblical argumentations all at the end.

All of the argumentation as to the foundational things comes at the beginning.

So it's really clear that for Gushy, what you're having to do is find a way around the biblical material rather than deriving your beliefs from the biblical material.

It's it's painfully obvious to me. And the question is, are there?

Gay Christians, it's a given from his perspective. Now, are there people who call themselves

Christians who engage in homosexual acts? Well, that's a given as well. Duh. But the whole debate is, is that consistent with the biblical definition of who and what a

Christian is? And he doesn't even bother with that. It's just you just have to start with that as an assumption, which is what makes the considerably less than compelling for those of us that would say,

I think scripture defines what a Christian is, not our profession or things like that.

And so, in other words, Gushy starts with the changing of the verb in First Corinthians 611 from were to are.

He does that by a very shallow and this is why

I don't think he'll ever debate because there's I did not get any any of any feeling whatsoever in reading the book that he's up to defending this.

But what he does is present a very shallow redefinition or attempt to redefine arson and Malakai are some quite either in First Corinthians chapter six.

And so you get around it that way. But that's what we're being asked to do, in essence, is is say such are some of you.

But then you have to take the butt out and translate some other way. So that's what you've got here is you start with the end of the debate and then read it backwards into into everything else.

Next section, he says, these Christians have been there all along. I have in recent years met some of them.

And so I began meeting them. I did not know these LGBT believers were already a part of the Christian community.

And their testimony is that they have been badly hurt. Sometimes throughout the church has taught in pulpits and classrooms, sometimes by how it has been taught, sometimes by straight

Christians who felt authorized to treat these suspected LGBT people with casual contempt or worse.

So you start with the assumption that. There is complete consistency and then you do with the text, which you have to do to to make that work.

He would say that's not what he's doing, but that's the presentation of the book. He's clearly not trying to reach the person who says, no, the

Bible is where I'm deriving my authority from. He goes at it backwards. He says later on next, this location for two, we can't simply abandon the

Bible or church tradition or historic Christian beliefs just because there is a cultural movement of great power bearing down hard on us to snap our views in the line with prevailing opinion.

Well, very true. That's exactly true. But that's exactly what he's done, whether he knows or not.

He knows that what he's done is not the right thing to do. He just doesn't realize that's actually what he has, in fact, done a church that offers hospitable welcome to gay people, lesbians and sexual others, actual others.

Isn't it interesting? We have to change our language to create categories when we are clearly trying to get around certain prohibitions.

So sexual others. Does that come from Scripture? Of course not.

But it's being enforced upon Scripture by these external cultural norms. Sounds like what we just read.

We shouldn't be doing hospital. Welcome to gay people, lesbians, sexual others, as grateful recipients of God's saving love and Jesus Christ is, in fact, a church faithful to the gospel and what it means to be the church.

This is long before everyone's starting to deal with the biblical text long before even trying to work through Romans 1 or Genesis 1 and 2 or any of those things.

So how can you say this? You're poisoning the well or going at it backwards, whatever terminology you want to use.

You're going at it backwards to do this kind of this kind of presentation. Location 488.

Um, it is harder to simply dehumanize and dismiss a flesh and blood human human being with a name and a family and a history of serving

Christ in the local church. So again, the idea being, well, you know, since these folks are amongst us, even though they may have been dishonest with us about their views, even though they might be there, even though they know that the church says this is wrong, et cetera, et cetera.

To simply dehumanize and dismiss. Well, look, are there people who do things like that?

Yes. Is it an appropriate argument on the part of David Gushy to assume that that's what everybody has done or that any clear biblical presentation on the nature of homosexuality from the perspective of the

Bible? That that somehow is dehumanizing and dismissive and so on and so forth.

That's what we're being told. That's what being told, no matter how contextual it might be.

And remember, there are all sorts of people in the church, quote unquote, that we have to address with the warnings of scripture.

And only by assuming that homosexuality is not, in fact, you know, he calls it covenanted monogamous relationships.

I'll talk about covenant a little bit later on. Only by assuming that that is not sinful behavior can you even mount an argument.

What does it say about our priorities that we will fight to the death over this issue rather than say divide over our stand on clergy sex abuse or mass murder or caring for the poor?

I was really surprised by some of the arguments that Gushy presented because they're just so bad.

And I would think that someone trained in ethics and morality would have had to take some, you know, symbolic logic and some reasoning classes and things like that.

And if he did, then why use this kind of argumentation? The reason that we will fight to the death over this issue is because it's a gospel issue, because it goes to the very ability, the very ability that we have to define what sin is.

And if you can't define sin, you don't need a savior. You don't need a cross. You don't need a resurrection. You don't need redemption.

You don't need atonement, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. This is a gospel issue.

This is a biblical authority issue. If you follow Gushy's conclusions, the scriptures are not sufficient to address this issue.

His primary approach when he finally gets the biblical material is to throw out, well, this scholar says this, and this scholar says that, and that scholar says that.

So we don't really know because there's so many different perspectives out there. And obviously what that means is that we can't know anything about the

Trinity, the deity of Christ. We can't know anything because you can find a scholar who will dispute everything, right?

We can't know whether Jesus was God. We can't know whether he rose from the dead because of the fact that, obviously, there are all these different opinions out there.

So if he's consistent, he should say the scriptures are simply insufficient to actually address these types of subjects.

And then secondly, if he still continues to hold a biblical Christology, the big question that I want to be able to ask these folks is, look, if you're, and he does play with the,

I'd rather go with the Jesus hermeneutic thing. Um, if, if that's what you want to say, then

Jesus knew that there were people in his day who wanted to engage in this kind of covenantal monogamous committed relationship.

He said nothing. In fact, he just, um, in the text you yourself noted in Matthew chapter 19, emphasized the standard view and the standard interpretation of Genesis one and two, which you decry.

So why is that? Why, if Jesus is the creator himself incarnate in flesh, then he knew, right?

So why, why is there never any, any discussion of these things? That's just one of the questions I really eventually someday want to get to.

Uh, location 525, one starting point might be to say that historic Christian understandings of sexuality are being re -evaluated due to evidence offered in the lives of those who do not fit the historical heterosexual norm together with associated research and mental health efforts.

So what's the ultimate authority here? Not scripture. It's not exegesis. It's not, here is a word from God that, that defines everything else.

It's yeah, well, I've gotten to know some, these are nice folks. And then there's this research that these, uh, these folks are doing, uh, and there's mental health efforts and, uh, and that's what we need to go with.

That, that, that's the ultimate authority. And, and obviously for him, it is, um, our topic in this book, of course, the particular challenge to the norm offered by the discovery, discovery slash acknowledgement of a persistent presence in human societies of women and men who experience permanent exclusive same sex attraction rather than opposite sex attraction.

So, uh, it is again, absolute given, just a given from this perspective, that same sex attraction is inalterable despite people who have given testimony.

Otherwise, because there are people who don't experience that, that means nobody experiences that. Just a given given has to be that way.

And then because it is persistent, that must mean it's morally good. Now he would never, and I found it ironic.

I really expected that an ethicist would have a whole chapter on why it is inappropriate to ask about the slippery slope and why it is inappropriate to say, well, if you don't really think

Leviticus 18 is relevant to homosexuality, then is it also not relevant to bestiality?

Um, how about intergenerational sex? How about incest? How about things like that? Um, nothing, silence, nothing there at all.

And I'm like, how, how can this be? I mean, this just seems like it would be one of the most obvious things that you would address, but no, no, uh, also on location five 37, however, the total failure of the ex gay movement.

So if you're an ex gay, uh, you know, this, this continues the theme of Justin Lee's book and torn.

These folks must deny the reality of anyone who can be changed, who has been changed by the power of God, who has had a change in their desires.

Just, they don't exist. They do not exist. They have to be denied out of existence. This just can't happen.

This can't happen. Uh, location five 50, uh,

Myers, an alleged Christian psychologist claims that quote, sexual orientation in some ways is like handedness.

Most people are one way, some of the other. So it's like, whether you're right -handed or left -handed great homosexual, you know, just, just the way it is, just, it's all inborn.

Uh, this is a very mechanistic view. It's, it's all hardwired.

Funny. They haven't found any genes, you know, for this or, uh,

I haven't found it in the mapping of the, uh, human genome, but it's just the way it is because, well, people said that because they, they say it is interesting.

Some will take the personal narrative, psychological research, and clinical conclusions just outlined seriously, integrating them into further

Christian reflection and ministry, and others might choose to dismiss them. I cannot take the latter path.

So that is in essence, a statement of his ultimate authority. His ultimate authority is personal narratives, psychological research, and clinical conclusions.

And this is all before we get to the Bible. This becomes the lens through which the Bible must be viewed.

Again, this man's not a conservative to begin with. And if anybody had asked about this beforehand, that would have been obvious, but he's being painted this way for, uh, certain purposes.

Um, I suggested there is a fork in the road here between accepting these relatively new but firmly held clinical claims about sexual orientation and refusing to do so.

Uh, again, uh, the ultimate, um, things. Uh, previous public policy and ultimate and culture fights that traditionalist

Christians once led have almost been forgotten. Remember the Disney boycott, the Teletubbies, the fight over gays in the military?

These ones gained national headlines. On these, traditionalist Christians have largely gone silent. What? We should still be talking about Teletubbies?

Do you, do you think a lot of us really felt that, uh, that, uh, that he was, had, had a point there?

Uh, I think there is still every reason to be talking about gays in the military. Um, and I never thought that boycotting almost anybody was relevant and I never, don't even remember what they were boycotting

Disney over. What was it? I, I've forgotten. But, um,

I found, again, I found that argumentation incredibly shallow. Change is happening in relation to the clinical and scientific claims as well, undoubtedly related to straight people getting to know lesbian and gay people.

If you just get to know folks. Yeah. If you just get to know folks. Um, if that was, you know, if I were to change my viewpoints on the basis of getting to know folks, then

I would no longer be saying what I say about Islam because I've gotten to know a number of really nice Muslims.

And once I got to know Mitch Pacqua, he's a really nice guy. So I guess we don't talk about Roman Catholicism anymore.

You know, if we all just held hands and hugged and sang

Kumbaya, it would all be good. No, I just wonder if, if Dr.

Gushy has met any people who want to have sex with children, find out that they're real people with real feelings and hearts and emotions.

And has, has he read some of the papers that are being put out now by, by serious intellectual psychologists that are saying this is a sexual orientation and look at the damage we have done to these people.

And we have, they've been in our, our communities all this time. And, and, you know, has, has he gotten to know any of the people that, you know, has he gotten to know the two brothers that want to get married in, in, in Germany and, and, um, and think, has he got just, it's just a matter of getting to know folks.

You know, if, if you get to know the people that are trying to break into your house, you'll find out they're real people.

They have needs, they have wants, they desires, you know, it's just. Let's get to know folks.

It'll change everything. More and more traditionalist Christians now accept, however, reluctantly that a small number of human beings simply are of same sex orientation.

Fewer make the ungrounded claim that sexual orientation is willful, perversity chosen and changeable. Well, for some people it is.

For some people it is. And evidently he doesn't even make that distinction. Um, because again, you gotta understand that the whole approach here, and I wasn't intending to spend all this time.

I'll, I'll mark where I am and, and pick this up later on because I wanted to switch topics, not just have one topic today.

Well, we did do the report on the New York, New Jersey trip, but, um, all these books are pressing for the most sanitized, morally acceptable form of homosexuality, which happens to be the vast minority of homosexual expression.

They'll say, oh yeah, those gay pride parades. Oh, that's, that's terrible. All that stuff there.

And yet, uh, the studies that they try to ignore would seem to indicate, um, that we're only talking about what, um, maybe being really, really, really, really, really generous.

5 % of male homosexuals want any type of monogamous relationship.

And that's, that's, that's actually much higher than the actual numbers of the reports that I've read.

Um, and so what you do is you put out there the most sanitized version you can get and just ignore the 95 % and say, well, yeah, yeah.

Okay. Um, and that's what you've got here too.

Um, fewer make the ungrounded claim that sexual orientation is willful perversity chain chosen and changeable.

You're saying, you're saying that the transgendered people that go from being a male one day to a female the next day to a, what is it?

Hidden spirit the next day or whatever the term is. And, and then they're back to male and then they're back to female.

You, you don't see it. That might be a problem that it's, that it's not, that it, there's an issue there.

Um, you don't think that there are homosexuals who are willfully rebelling against God and what they do.

I think there are, I watch them prancing down the streets and those gay pride parades and there was a, there seemed, they seem to be the majority.

So you seem to be pushing the minority on the basis that there's nothing they can do about it and ignoring the fact that by doing what you're doing for this small group, you're doing for this huge group, something that is incredibly damaging to marriage and the culture and the society as a whole.

It's something you might want to think of. Many traditionalist Christians understand that millions of their neighbors have adopted a sexual identity as lesbian, gay or bisexual, and that these core self identities point to something real and significant that it is counterproductive to ignore even if the whole concept of sexual identity can be challenged as a modern construct.

And it is a modern construct. And more and more traditionalist Christians have gay friends. These trends are especially clear among younger

Christians. All true. And for a Christian, all relevant but irrelevant eternally.

Because I don't care how old you are as a Christian. It doesn't matter how old you are as a

Christian. You've got an unchanging standard. You have something that's been given to us that it really seems these folks have long ago lost sight of.

And that's the normative inspired authority of scripture. That's what happens in that situation.

I'm going to see if I can't put a mark in here or something and make it...

There we go. I'll put a mark right here because I could not... Has anybody else had the same problem?

I cannot get the Kindle app to run on any of my Macs anymore. It just crashes. It just opens, closes. I think maybe this wants you to do it online now.

I don't know. Let's see if this works. Start here. Not tried this before this way, but we'll put it in there.

We'll see if it works. I don't know. All right. We will continue that review, but I wanted to change subjects today.

And I wanted to get back to and make some progress in some of our debates because I have chosen, and some of you are going to find this...

Some of you are going to go, I've chosen to review at least the opening statement from the debate that Michael Brown did on Long Island about 18 months ago.

I had not listened to the debate until I was on Long Island last week. And so I took the time to listen to it.

Debate who makes final choice in salvation, God or man. And I think it would be worthwhile to address this.

Certainly, Michael and I have debated. I was really surprised. I did not get a chance beforehand. I'm sorry.

I wanted to actually highlight this and play it, but we won't get to it today anyways. But I wanted to play

Michael Brown saying what Dave Hunt said and what

Norman Geisler said so many times, that election and scripture is always under service.

It's never under salvation. And I just, I don't know how anybody can look at 2 Thessalonians 2 .13 and come up with that.

I mean, if I'm going to criticize Geisler and Hunt and others for being just blinded to the reality of that text by their tradition,

I've got to say the same thing to Michael. And I was also, there is a fundamental difference in the entire approach that Michael has with a man who is his former student than he takes with me.

Just fundamental. And let me illustrate it here. We have the audio up.

Here's how he started. And you tell me if this is how he would start with me. Genesis to Revelation.

Now, for those not used to a proper debate setting, this is opening comment, opening comment. So I'm not going to be giving a rebuttal of Bruce's statements.

But I do just want to say that numerous scriptures were misquoted and misused. There were even errors in terms of use of the

Greek. And I will categorically demonstrate that anything attributed to my position was actually falsely and wrongly attributed because it's not what

I believe and hold to. So in short. So there's a start.

I you know, Michael has said things even in our debates that I was like, really?

But I that's not how he started with our debates. And I did see a fundamental difference in the approach.

But since it's a very strong enunciation of unadulterated synergism, then

I think it would be good to respond to it. But but we already have other stuff in line.

And it's not really fair to just completely get rid of that. So as you may recall, we were listening to Austin Fisher's.

Where were we? Yes. Start here. There we go. We were listening. We're going to listen briefly to Austin Fisher's rebuttal and then

Brian Zahn's rebuttal. And then we're going to be done with that two on two Calvinism debate.

And it just seems appropriate that sense. The other Zahn stuff that I want to get back to is from his debate with Michael Brown, where we are on Michael's side in the defense of substitutionary atonement.

That it would be consistent, fair, right, proper, necessary to likewise then criticize

Michael's comments and and of course, from my perspective, punch some very serious holes.

In Michael's comments, exegetically, linguistically, theologically.

And again, as we've done in the past, when I when we responded to his entire Calvinist call in show.

I really think that the biggest blind spot for Michael Brown is the common blind spot for all synergists.

And that is I just I believe the only way for the the scriptural testimony to be held together consistently for us to have harmony in our handling the scripture is you must order the truths of divine revelation.

And I will defend the assertion that the primary truths of revelation will start with God, his word and his character and his nature.

And will then that will then order our understanding of his creation, which includes man and hence salvation.

So God what God has revealed about himself has to come first. And I think

Michael's real weak point is right there. He's not sure where he lands on issues like Molinism and simple foreknowledge and and stuff like that.

And as a result, seemingly thinks that he can escape having to be held accountable for whether he is taking a

Molinistic perspective or whether he's taking a simple foreknowledge perspective and what all of that means and what it and the questions that have to be answered.

And I think that comes out very clearly in all of that, too. So we'll we'll get to that.

Wow. It's amazing that I would be watching the chat channel to discover that the lava lamp is now lava -ing and and yes, the lava lamp is now lava -ing.

And Clunaklina in channel is is is excited about that.

But the mouse isn't mousing. I don't follow that part. Why is what mouse?

My mouse is working just see it's right over there. It's just just fine. Anyway. All right. Let's get back to Austin Fisher.

This is only. I think it's five minutes, so we should have time to get it done unless I talk a lot before we run out of time.

So let's go back with this is Austin Fisher's second rebuttal.

No, first rebuttal. He had an opening statement. We listened to that. Here's here's his rebuttal.

Very good. Thank you. OK, Austin is next. He is formally going to be rebutting

Tim, who's just had 12 minutes in a row. Good luck. Yeah. You said

God is not against anyone's salvation. And yet God, again, unconditionally predestines people to help for sins

God ordained that people commit. That's not a mystery. I understand it. You know, I'm not I get what's being said there.

And so notice, I don't think anything's been said to explain how unconditional predestination is congruous with the

God revealed in Jesus Christ. It's just been asserted. Some of these quotes about, you know, many are called, but few are chosen.

That hasn't explained how that's congruous with Jesus. And a lot of these verses haven't even really pointed out unconditional predestination. Ephesians one, not unconditional predestination, necessarily.

Very few of these verses. The main one that usually is quoted is Romans nine, which is where it always comes down to. So I got.

I know. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. I understand that you can get away in a debate with doing the well, you know,

Ephesians one isn't necessarily unconditional election. And what you're saying is, oh, there are people who have written books that say it's not unconditional election.

And what's your fundamental assertion? We don't know. The Bible is not clear enough to say, look, in a debate,

I, I feel and evidently other people don't feel this, um, this weight.

Okay. Then it puts me at a disadvantage. But if I'm going to say something like that, I'd like to try to back it up.

Uh, I mean, I, I obviously feel very confident, uh, that if I were to sit down with anyone one -on -one with the

Greek text of Ephesians one in front of us and just start at the beginning and walk through it, um, that it's going to teach unconditional election unto salvation.

You can't be adopted as sons. If salvation is not a part of that forgiveness of sins, it's all there.

It's also to your logical language. It's, it's, it's, it's in Christ, but Christ is not the chosen one.

Ephesians one. He's not the direct object. That is a dative, not an accusative. Um, I mean,

I've, I've, I've heard it all. Um, and so it just bothers me when people do the, the weasel word stuff.

Well, I know some scholars, you can say it about anything. It doesn't have any meaning.

It's, it always has to be second, third, fourth level type argumentation rather than argumentation directly from the text.

And I, I'm sorry, I don't respect it. Four minutes for Romans nine. Easy. Um, so real quick, here's my way to brief explanation.

All right, ready? Romans nine, Romans nine.

This, um, uh, how long is, I think, I think my, the, the presentation that we have posted on the front page is what?

About 30 minutes, I think I did in Romans nine. I think, okay, he's only gonna do four minutes. That's not fair.

I had more time, but I, I walked through it. All right, let's, let's see what we've got here. Why Romans nine doesn't teach unconditional predestination.

Romans nine, one through six, Paul has posed this very troubling question. Why have so many Jews rejected Jesus, the

Jewish Messiah? As a Jew, it's a problem that really troubled Paul. And so he spends the rest of nine through 11 answering it.

And that's really key. If you want to understand why. Now notice what they're going to do. There's, there's the first normative attempt is to be able to bail out of the specific statements of chapter nine by running to a disconnected interpretation of chapter 11.

That's, that's very, very common, uh, for, for folks to do. But remember, and I'm obviously not going to get all through this because it's

Romans nine. How in the world could you do that in five minutes? Anyhow, um, but Romans nine, six, it is not as though the word of God has failed for they are not all

Israel who are descended from Israel. That is the key issue. Piper got it right.

And the justification of God years ago, that the key issue here is the distinction within Israel based upon God's sovereign choice, because then says, nor are they all children because they're

Abraham's descendants, but through Isaac, your descendants will be named. And so there is a promise of God.

There is a purpose of God and it transcends any kind of nationalistic boundary.

God has always been free to direct the course of that promise. And that is a part of the old

Testament scriptures. And therefore the Jewish question isn't really a question in that sense.

It's already been answered by the Christian scriptures. It's already been answered by the Christian scriptures. Paul is saying here in Romans nine, you got to read all the way through to chapter 11, because it's all one long answer to the question.

Why have so many Jews rejected Jesus, the Jewish Messiah? Now, according to the Calvinist interpretation,

Paul's answer to this is basically unconditional predestination that God has unconditionally elected some of the

Jews, but then has unconditionally damned most of the Jews, leaving them to their sins. That's not our position at all, of course.

And again, you know, can't blame Austin. He was a teenage Calvinist, but he's making himself as if he was an expert on it.

So I guess we can hold him accountable if he's being promoted that way. And he's making money from that.

Then, OK, then he needs to be held accountable to it. But he was it should have been. I was a teenage Calvinist.

That was should have been the title of his book. The answer is provided in chapter nine with specific instances and with objections raised against the apostles position right there in chapter nine.

Jump into chapter 11 without dealing with the specifics of chapter nine is dishonest.

It's not doing exegesis. It's not actually dealing with the text in the way that it needs to be dealt with.

And unfortunately, it might help you out in a four minute period in your debate. And you might go say, oh,

I dealt with that. But no, you're not dealing with that. And in fact, once Paul raises objections to his position and responds to them, that is his primary response.

He may expand upon that. He may go into other subjects. There's certainly a continuity in nine through 11.

But what I'm discovering is that the new idea is, well, the best thing to do is just jump to 11.

And let's ignore the specifics of the answers given by the apostle to the objections that he himself raises to his doctrine.

That is the key to Romans nine. If you ever listen to anybody who skips the objections, then you're listening to someone who's not trying to deal with Romans nine.

They're trying to promote a tradition at the cost of Romans nine. That's what you're dealing with.

Absolutely no question about it. So I'm going to mark it. We didn't get very far. I'm sorry.

But we're going to pick up with that because Romans nine, too important to skip. And we're going to dig into it.

Because like I said, there's only two and a half minutes left of that. Five minutes is on. And then we're back to the other material.

So we will continue and press on with that. Thanks for listening to The Dividing Line today.

Lord willing, we'll be back on Thursday, which I think is when some of you folks back east are going to start getting hammered by this big storm.

So you can cuddle up and put a fire on, and we will help to make that cold front a little less chilling when it comes through.

Or we'll try anyways, because I'll probably be in short sleeves. So anyways, that's what it's like living in Phoenix during the winter.