Ignatius and Church History, Andy Stanley, Ravi Zacharias, Epistemology, 1 Corinthians 1:18ff

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Went just over 90 minutes today on the program, wandering about a bit at the start on church history issues and Ignatius, and then moving on to discuss the Andy Stanley comments in the interview with Russell Moore, finishing off with a half hour plus walk-through of 1 Corinthians 1:18 ff. Theology matters! Visit the store at https://doctrineandlife.co/

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00:32
Well, greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. Oops, I left this way, way back to here. Let's get it nice and close there.
00:39
That'll make Rich much happier. There we go. A little closer. It doesn't go much. It doesn't go any closer than that.
00:47
Sort of still figuring out exactly what I'm doing here. You know, last week's program, last two weeks, pretty intense programs, intense subjects.
01:04
And unfortunately, one of the things I will be talking about, I haven't been able to track down the full video on yet, and I want to, but I still think there's enough to sort of address what we can.
01:19
But I was just looking at Ignatius again. I know I've been on a bit of an Ignatius kick recently, but I covered him in Sunday School.
01:27
I think we've done 13 lessons now in church history, and people keep asking, where is all this stuff?
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Sermon audio, go to the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church, find
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PRBC, go down to sermon series, and you'll find under Sunday School, you'll find church history.
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There's been 13 of them so far. And by the way, not that this is going to change anything, but please do not ask me to be your online bibliographical generator on Twitter, because Twitter's not really made for that, and that's not something
02:08
I can do in life, okay? I mean, a lot of people will send me stuff on Twitter, and they'll say, you know, basically they're asking me to do
02:20
Google searches for them. And it's like, you know, I really don't have time to do Google searches for you. And it's a little frustrating, and you might need to explain that.
02:35
Yes, well, and it didn't work either. People are probably wondering why there's a...
02:45
The lava lamp needs to attain a certain temperature before it starts lava -ing. And if someone who will remain unnamed does not start the lava lamp hours before the program starts, then it just sort of...
03:00
Well, what's going to happen is here in a few minutes, it's going to go, and then freeze. And it'll just sort of sit there for a while before it starts lava -ing.
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And look, the beauty of a lava lamp is the slow globular motion, so that's not going to happen today.
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And we won't, again, condemn anyone, just you know who's involved.
03:26
Anyways, now I have no earthly idea what in the world I was talking about. No, I seriously don't.
03:33
I have no earthly idea. Oh, I was saying that, like, someone this morning asked for resources on something that's not even semi in any area where I would expect anyone would think
03:50
I would have any knowledge of at all. So it's one thing in certain areas where I speak all the time, but on other stuff, it's like, why are you asking me?
04:00
I don't understand. Anyway, it's just sort of... I think it's just Google has ruined a lot of folks.
04:08
It really, really has. And then when they don't use Google, it's...
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But anyways, remember AltaVista, Yahoo, WebCrawler?
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Yeah, yeah, those were... I'm dating myself here, big time. So anyway,
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I'm reading something in chat channel. I don't know what that particular website is, so I'm not going to mention it.
04:38
Anyways, I've been... We're past Ignatius now. We did, this last Sunday we did, was there an early supremacy of the
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Bishop of Rome and the form of the early church, ecclesiology in the early church and stuff like that.
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And not this next Sunday because I'm preaching this next Sunday. So Brother Callahan will be doing the
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Sunday school, but we'll be... Well, it'll be three weeks down the road now to think about it.
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But we're going to be doing persecution next. And that's really, really important in the early church. And more important, you know, the interesting thing is covering persecution this time will have a little more meaning to it because not only are we...
05:25
Am I more familiar with persecution of Christians in other lands, but folks, the totalitarians are on the march.
05:32
They are on the march. I was going to bring up...
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Maybe someone in channel could do this for me. There was a Alliance Defending Freedom article on Facebook about the decision of the
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Ninth Circuit telling, basically saying it is illegal for anyone, including ministers, anybody to negatively counsel, even in private, someone in regards to homosexuality.
06:15
I mean, it... Hate to be part of the I -told -you -so crowd, but I told you a long, long time ago, these folks do not want equal rights.
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They want Uber rights. They want supremacy. They want us to celebrate the goodness of their sexuality.
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That's all there is to it. And the corrupt judiciary is right along.
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Let's do it. Let's do it. The whole totalitarianism thing, big, big, big time going on in our land.
06:53
And that's why I say once programs like this start disappearing, you'll know why. It's not like we didn't tell you.
07:00
You'll know why, and it's going to happen faster than any of us know. It really, really is, especially with what's going to happen in this next election.
07:11
It's going to be pretty much over with. But anyway, just wanted to read a section before we go on to other things.
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From Ignatius, that again, strikes me. We are so often told that in -depth
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Christian theology, and this does sort of fit in here. We're often told that serious
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Christian theology of the church, of Christ, of the atonement, deity of Christ, Trinity, that all these things were all developments over time.
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And if what someone means by that is that there is more care, a wider vocabulary, more specificity in language in the late fourth century than in the middle of the second century, well, that's a given.
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And why is that a given? Because there have been so many controversies. And so when you have controversies, what happens is the range of terminology and vocabulary increases in that area.
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So you have, as people write in the area, as thought is invested in the area, you have an expansion of the language and terminology that can be used to describe the situation.
08:55
A lot of lay people, lay theologians, I guess we could call them, have learned a great deal about the issue of the economic trinity over against the ontological trinity in light of the recent discussions about eternal functional subordinationism.
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They had not known about these things. It's not that the vocabulary hadn't been there, but now their vocabulary has expanded because of their exposure to these controversies, and that happened in history.
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So today, there are a bunch of people who had never really given thought to the difference between the ontological trinity and the economic trinity.
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But now they know what the difference is, and they even know that it's probably not good to read issues of the economic trinity back into the ontological trinity because that creates all sorts of problems.
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So same thing happened in the early church. And so if someone says, in the early church, there was much more specificity of language in the
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Cappadocian fathers who are writing at a much later point than there is in Ignatius.
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Yeah, that's true, because Ignatius is writing long before pretty much anybody else, to be perfectly honest with you.
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And so he's writing before there's been the pushback against Sabellianism and Modalism in the second and third centuries, in the
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East especially. He's writing before the rise of Arianism and Subordinationism.
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And so you're not going to expect the same breadth of vocabulary, nor the same concern about the utilization of certain terms.
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For example, boy, I'm really going off today, but that's just sort of how it works at times.
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One of the great problems at the Council of Nicaea was exposing the
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Arians, being able to come up with a quick, brief, accurate confessional statement that would expose the
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Arians. Because the Arians could twist almost any scripture and say, well, if what you're saying is this, then we can confess that.
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And so a term was needed that would accurately represent
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Biblical teaching, but they would just absolutely immediately expose the
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Arian and allow the detection of them within the Fellowship of the
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Church. And when the term homoousios was suggested, there was an immediate pushback from the, well, almost all the bishops there were from the
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East, but specific Eastern bishops. Not because the term as it was being used in that context was inappropriate or against the theology that they had already held, but because the term was likely to be misused by another group that in some ways was more of a concern to them than the subordinationists were, and that is to the modalists, the
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Sibelianists. And that in fact, some sources indicate, had already been used by the modalists and rejected because of modalistic utilization.
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And it's a good term, homoousios, as long as it is placed within its proper context and defined in an appropriate way over against other
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Biblical teachings. And so, there's an example of where there was a term that in general, let's say around the year 300, was uncomfortable for most people or rejected because it had been misused, that then becomes the very linchpin of identifying another error at another point in time placed in the proper context.
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Homoousios of the same being. So, the point is when we look, when we do history, you've just, you've got to do it in such a way that you recognize your own place in it.
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What do I mean by that? I think one of the reasons that folks like, and I'm not trying to pick on poor old
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Dave Hunt, he's gone on to his reward and I'm sure he does history well now.
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But one of the things that was extremely troubling about the way that Dave did history, was that he didn't do history.
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He used historical facts to promote a particular perspective. And he just wasn't fair with the people that he was addressing from a historical perspective.
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And when I say we need to look at ourselves as we stand in history, a lot of evangelicals hold to an eschatology where there really isn't going to be any more church history after us so we don't have to worry about the generations that come after us.
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The problem is almost every generation before us has had people that had the same idea.
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And it's a little bit on the problematic side. We don't know when the
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Lord is returning. And we're not to live, we're to live with the idea of imminency.
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He can return at any point. But at the same time, we are to live in such a way that we leave a testimony for the generations to come after us.
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There's a tension there. And I'm not using that word in the way that Fuller uses it. It's the now and the not yet of we've been saved, we're being saved.
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We are to live in such a way that if Christ returns, we're ready to meet him. And yet, we're to live in such a way that there are, you know, people after us are going to,
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Rich, there's somebody right outside the window. Sounds like they're digging through the wall. So if you could deal with them,
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I'd appreciate it. It's extremely, extremely distracting. It's about right there.
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It's like, I'm not supposed to be here. Anyway, yeah, somebody in the channel says Dave Hunt's already a Calvinist.
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We need to do history in such a way that we look back upon those before us and we are fair to them.
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We are fair in allowing them to speak from the context in which they were actually living.
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Ignatius has never heard of Arius. Ignatius has never heard of Sibelius.
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In the same way, Augustine made decisions that were momentous in the centuries that came after him in positive and negative ways, in positive and negative ways.
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But he could not have seen so much of those things. And yet, it's so common for people to judge him in light of what happened because of what he said as if that was his intention or purpose.
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We don't want to be judged that way. We want to be judged on the basis of what we knew, where we were at that particular point in time, what our knowledge was, what our focus was, and we need to do the same thing with other people in church history.
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So anyway, all of that, just so I can get around to reading a particular section here from Ignatius's epistle to the
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Philadelphians. Now, it's interesting. This actually may be,
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I didn't double check this, but this may be the text in Ignatius that, remember
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I read quotes on the priesthood last time or was it the time before? Last week sometime,
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I read a bunch of quotes on the fact that the concept of a sacramental priesthood developed over centuries in the early church and was not a part of, for example,
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Ignatius's view of the church. There was no Christian priesthood. When he refers to priests, he's referring to the old covenant priests.
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And in his letter to the Philadelphians, section 9, well, it is interesting.
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There's sort of the beginnings of, you know, this is a time period where the
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New Testament doesn't exist. And there are lots of scholarly questions as to exactly what
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Ignatius possessed of the New Testament. I think it's pretty obvious he had Hebrews, as we'll see here in a moment.
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But what's eventually going to develop is, well, given people's claims to authority, how do we know?
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And from that, you're going to get apostolic succession and what apostolic succession means and all the rest of that stuff.
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But it's fascinating to read phrases like, but for me, the archives are
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Jesus Christ. The inviolable archives are his cross and death and his resurrection and the faith which comes through him.
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By these things, I want through your prayers to be justified. Now, again, it doesn't strike most of us in any significant way to be reading someone who's writing in the generation after the apostles, very beginning of the second century, to use terms like cross, death, resurrection, because we have all that in the
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New Testament. But you have to remember, just this morning on Twitter, someone referenced a book.
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I couldn't even find it on Amazon. If it's not on Amazon, it doesn't matter. But basically, an anti -Paulanist.
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There are people who, you know, there is a tremendous anti -Pauline bias amongst many people.
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We've seen, you know, Muslims love all the anti -Paul stuff they can get a hold of. There's a deep strain of anti -Paulanism amongst
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Muslim folks. And by the way, that reminds me,
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I need to, please remind me as soon as the program's over to respond to Dr.
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Tony Costa's email. I'm trying to arrange to have Tony join us on Thursday on the program to discuss basically
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Muslim apologetic methodology. He and I both have pretty much observed the same,
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I'm not sure how to describe it, but grossly inconsistent utilization of sources that marks the almost all, almost all
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Islamic apologists. Their love of liberalism and secularism and humanism and just unbelief when it comes to anything about Christianity.
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And then they're completely eschewing that and rejecting that when the same scholarship be applied to their own system.
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They just do not use the sources in a meaningful fashion.
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And they don't care. They just don't care. And Paul Belal Williams is one of the best examples of this because he should know better.
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It's not like he was raised in Afghanistan and never ran into a Christian while there or Pakistan and ignored all the
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Christians as many that have that experience. He doesn't have any excuse for the many, many times that he not only misrepresents
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Christianity, but just shows such arrogant disregard for believing
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Christian scholarship. Just dismisses it with the British nose so far up, it's almost
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French. Sorry, Rich. And yet at the same time, turning that around and believing things that no critical scholar would ever accept in regards to Islam.
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It's just the double standard is outrageous. But you got to remind me to respond to Tony's email because I forgot to do that yesterday.
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I apologize. Anyway, I'm wandering far too far astray today.
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But here in getting back to Ignatius, I apologize for that going away.
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The cross death resurrection, we're used to it.
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That's in Paul. It's in all the New Testament. It's a completely New Testament thing. But to recognize how many people attack
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Paul, say Paul's the one who invented New Testament Christianity, or at least what became New Testament Christianity.
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Like I said, the guy on Twitter, this book, you know, just the words of Jesus and, you know, rejecting
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Paul and all the rest of that kind of stuff. There's a lot of that stuff out there. And most Christians have never even given a second thought is to know how to respond to it.
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But it is important to think about these things and be prepared to give a response to it. And here in one of the earliest sources outside the
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New Testament, you have what sounds to be very, very Pauline language being utilized in regards to the cross, the death resurrection.
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And of course, remember, Islam denies all these things. And yet there is no generation. There is no level.
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There is no, you can find nothing in the Christian faith that is not immersed from the beginning in the message of the cross, the burial, the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
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It is, it has been the Christian proclamation from the beginning. And some Muslims go up quite well because Surah 47 says,
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God made it look that way. And so that's the way it should look. Anyway, section nine, need to get to it here.
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The priests too were good, but the high priest, notice the priests too were good, not are good.
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Also the priest, yeah. But the high priest, singular, ha,
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I'm looking at the Greek over here and it's singular. The high priest entrusted with the holy of holies is better.
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He alone has been entrusted with the hidden things of God for he himself is the door of the father through which, now compare the ramifications of your eschatology with this extremely early
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Christian voice. I'm not saying that your eschatology should be determined by this early
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Christian voice. I'm just saying, compare it. Think about what it means. Um, he alone has been entrusted with the hidden things of God for he himself is the door of the father through which
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Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and the prophets and the apostles and the church enter in.
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All these come together in the unity of God. But the gospel possesses something distinctive, namely the coming of the savior, our
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Lord Jesus Christ, his suffering and the resurrection for the beloved prophets preached in anticipation of him.
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But the gospel is the imperishable finished work. All these things together are good if you believe with love.
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Is there something super, super, super deep there? No, it's just that what we emphasize today, the centrality of the gospel, uh, the fact that we keep going back to the gospel over and over and over again.
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If Ignatius is standing in the line of apostolic succession of truth, if Ignatius is doing what the apostles did, then when you are focused upon the gospel and you live in light of the gospel and you make decisions in light of the gospel and you are very careful to proclaim that gospel, you're standing in that exact same line of succession because the only meaningful line of apostolic succession is a line that has the substance of the revelation of God as its core.
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Any other kind of apostolic succession is worthless. It's empty. And certainly the historical claims of apostolic succession in the idea of the papacy in particular, vacuous, just simply vacuous.
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It truly is. Now, sort of in the same area, uh, when we, when we look at the negative results of a traditionalist fundamentalism, now
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I hope you hear what I'm saying there, traditionalist fundamentalism.
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Fundamentalism, historically speaking, is just fine. It's focused upon a fairly narrow range of things that are just definitional, supernatural
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Christianity. But as we know, in the modern day, when you, when, when your fundamentalism becomes a tradition, um, it can, it can produce some really ugly stuff.
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Um, when I think of the ugliest forms of fundamentalism,
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I think of someone like Sam Gipp, you know? Um, I won't even blame people like Steven Anderson on fundamentalism.
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That's, that's, I don't, that's not go there, even though they sure love to duke it out.
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But, uh, when you think of fundamentalism producing the closed mindedness that is often associated with the movement as a whole, it, that, that wasn't the case historically, but it developed fairly quickly.
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Uh, there's no question about that. When people are raised within a fundamentalist mindset, when, when they reach adulthood and come out from underneath what's frequently a strong, uh, authoritarian system, they can go many different directions.
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I mean, many just fly off into the world and, and are, and are never seen again. Uh, but the emergent church primarily finds its lifeblood in people who were once fundamentalists and now everything's back on the table.
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And, you know, I don't know what the, the emergent church is anymore because when you put everything out on the table, um, something like that may, you know, you may, you may get to have a few conferences together, but eventually it's just going to blow up in which direction and, and, and everyone's going to come to different conclusions because you don't have a guide anymore.
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Uh, there's no objective truth. There's no real scripture. You can't, you, we can't keep reinventing the wheel every generation.
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None of us have ever done that. Uh, we may pretend that we are, but that's, that's not the case.
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When, you know, I've seen over and over again, people who, and remember what, if you, if you go back and listen to the program
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I did and why, why is it this guy's name is just anathema to me?
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Um, who is, who is the guy that I was on unbelievable with that?
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I, there are certain names that hit a bad sector in my hard drive and, and the fat table is, uh, is corrupt at that point.
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Uh, I did unbelievable with this guy, he emergent church, um, and I, for some reason, his name, there's about three or four people's names that just simply will not stick with me for love nor money.
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Um, and as soon as somebody says, I go, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. Um, Brian McLaren, Brian McLaren.
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Thank you, Algo. Um, yeah, when we did our program together, one of the things
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I pointed out was we had a, pretty much the same type of upbringing and no,
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I've never done anything with Rob Bell. Rob Bell would never do anything with me for love nor money. I can assure you of that.
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Um, I point out we had a lot of things in common and in our upbringing, in our youth, many of the things that I read in his books about, you know, his wearing, wearing his black pants and his white shirt and his squeaky, uh, squeaky shoes.
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Uh, that's what I did. I remember those things. But the difference is when he rebelled against that, when he became an adult, he threw it all out, baby and bathwater together.
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Um, I may have gotten rid of the bathwater, but I've kept the baby. Uh, that's where it's where the differences between us really is.
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I think it bothered him a little bit to have to dialogue with someone like that. Uh, because so many of the people that he dialogues with are just with him and just throwing it all out.
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And I'm like, no, there's no reason to throw it all out. You can critically examine things. You can let go of things that were never definitional, that were just traditions of men.
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Fine. But you don't, you don't start from scratch cause that's naive to think anybody could do that.
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That's silly. We're all standing on the shoulders of giants. So anyway, um,
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I just get the feeling when I listened to Andy Stanley that he's in that range that not fully emergent, but I'm, I'm sort of, you know,
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I'm, I'm trying out my wings. I'm demonstrating that I'm my own person, uh, type stuff.
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Now I've been looking for the full video of this interview between Russell Moore and Andy Stanley.
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And the reason I've been looking for it, um, have you got a freeze frame on it? Show the, show the freeze frame.
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Now, Andy Stanley does not look happy to me.
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And I have been told through other sources that he was quote, miffed, end quote, as to how he was treated by Russell Moore in this interview and that Russell Moore pushed back on a number of his claims.
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Russell Moore does not push back. Well, Russell Moore does, if you listen carefully in a sense, uh, push back a little bit right toward the end of this.
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So I, I want to see the whole thing. Um, yeah,
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I know someone pointed to that, um, quotation, uh, from juicy ecumenism .com.
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I found that too. Uh, thank you, Jamie. Um, but no, I've not found the video and I don't know why.
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Um, but it'll appear eventually, but even though he's reading all of his answers,
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I don't think he is reading all of his answers. Nah, I don't think so. Um, so there seems to be more to this, but still
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Andy Stanley has a influence that seems to me to be way out of proportion with the theological value of his insights.
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How's that? I mean, uh, you know, the stuff about small churches, and that does come up a little bit here.
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He does, I think he still has this idea that if yours is a small dying church, you know, you should sell everything off and give it to the church planting people.
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I think he thinks of himself as the church planting people, you know, the big mega church. I don't think having multiple campuses and having one guy preaching at multiple campuses is church planting.
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Um, but be that as it may. So we've, we've criticized some of this stuff before, but what happens with someone like this is they start grabbing hold of some theological phraseology, uh, to justify where they're going as they're going away from where they had been.
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And everybody can tell they're going away from where they had been. And so they grab stuff to justify it.
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And what Andy Stanley has done is he's been pointing to some stuff from Ravi Zacharias as defense of what he said here.
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And I'm told having that chance to look at it, and I, I don't know that I will, uh, that on Sunday, he sort of doubled down in his sermon at his church.
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Uh, I, I saw the video, but I asked, I asked folks, Hey, could someone grab that?
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Is there some way, um, that someone could grab that? And no one was able to do it.
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So I hate when people put videos up, but then there's no way for you to grab it. You have to sit, just sit there and stream it online.
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Uh, you know, if it's on your phone or something, destroy your, your monthly, uh, data usage or whatever. So this is all we've got, but it's, it's worth taking a look at it because it's certainly all over the place.
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So let's, uh, let's don't ask me why Russell Moore asks
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Andy Stanley if he were the evangelical Pope. Um, I, I found that really weird, but anyway, here we go.
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Well, let's wrap it up. That was great. Thank you very much for having me. We were talking a little bit earlier, uh, couple, couple of years ago,
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I guess some, some reporter referred to me as an evangelical Pope, which made my
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Catholic grandmother happy. Uh, but I kind of said, you really don't understand how evangelicalism works.
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And, and, and part of me was kind of pridefully saying, I don't want responsibility for that. You know, uh, if I were, if I were
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Pope, I would kind of hope things would be different. If you were real, the evangelical
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Pope, and you really had the authority to say, this is how it's going to be, uh, within American evangelical
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Christianity, uh, what would you do? Um, I would have all the churches that are dying, dying, dying, dying, dying, sell their buildings and give the money to church planters.
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I just made that up sitting here. That was pretty good though. I don't know. That wasn't on my list. I just know a lot of church planters here.
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I mean, the, the, misused and unused real estate in this country just drives us all crazy.
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Cause some of you're in a, you're in a grocery store, you're in the back of a school and down the streets, you know, four and a half million dollars worth of property and eight people sitting in there.
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Anyway, that's not on my list. Now, I'm not sure why a bunch of people were all upset with him about that.
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Um, if you, if you're in Europe, you already, you already know how this works.
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There are closed churches everywhere. Uh, there are all sorts of nightclubs in former historic cathedrals and things like that.
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And once it becomes economically, um, disadvantageous to attend a church, uh, let's just say
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I know of a large former sports arena in Texas that will be available for more sports in the future.
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Um, no question about that. None. And there, there are all sorts of, you know, it's sad to see churches die.
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It really is sad to see churches die, but it happens. Uh, frequently it happens because of sin.
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Frequently it happens because of change leadership. Frequently it happens because he had a bad ecclesiology and the one pastor that made it all work leaves and nobody could possibly step into his shoes and make something work after that.
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There's, there's all sorts of explanations that could be offered, but yeah, there's a, you know,
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I'm not sure who he thinks church planters are. Um, but there's, it is a reality of our day that there are dying churches all around us.
40:08
And as the, this, the society becomes more and more enamored with secularism and more and more officially secular to the point of being specifically opposed to the expression of anything but a secular perspective, which is exactly why you see, by the way, y 'all catch the briefing yesterday.
40:29
This is exactly why you see police officers, uh, on beaches in France requiring
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Muslim women to either take off their burkinis in public or leave.
40:45
Has nothing to do with security. You know, when I first heard about it, I thought, oh, security issue, hiding bombs and stuff under burkas.
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That's not like that hasn't happened before. Nope. Has nothing to do with it. Nothing to do with it at all.
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It is the virulent official secularism of France and that virulent official secularism is coming from a different direction in our own country and it's growing rapidly.
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Um, and the form of secularism in France and the form of secularism developing here and growing here is totalitarian in its mindset.
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It cannot allow for any dissent, whether it's Muslim, Christian or anything.
41:33
You, you simply have to bow to the, the secular gods.
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And, uh, they, they are just as wild eyed in their fanaticism as any jihadi or any, um, uh, inquisitor, uh, ever was in history.
41:53
It's a, it's a scary thing. So anyway, there you go. Okay. Here's my short list.
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Going back to what we talked about earlier, I would ask preachers and pastors and student pastors in their communication to get the spotlight off the
42:09
Bible and back on the resurrection. Okay. What's that? Well, he's, he's, he's talking about what he's talked about before.
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So he's re, that's why I'd like to see, uh, what this was before.
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But that of course, is the big statement. And he says, we talked about it before. I'd like to hear what was said before, but get the spotlight off the
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Bible and onto the resurrection. I think that's what he said. Let me, let's, let's try it again.
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I would ask preachers and pastors and student pastors in their communication to get the spotlight off the
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Bible and back on the resurrection. Um, let's get people's attention back on Jesus as soon as possible.
42:52
Back on Jesus. And the only way that I can understand this is in the sense of rather than on the
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Bible. There's a, there's a contrast being drawn. For us as always, who is
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Jesus? Did he rise from the dead? And that we would leverage the authority we have in the resurrection as opposed to scripture, not because I don't believe scripture is inspired in terms of reaching this culture.
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We've already talked about that one. So he's obviously just summarizing some kind of argument that he's made before and summarizing it very, very badly, very, very badly.
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Um, that's incoherent to me. Um, Andy Stanton is not, not an apologist.
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He doesn't, he doesn't defend the faith in context around the world, but, uh, that is an incoherent position as far as I can tell.
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Because, well, first of all, I do not see this spotlight on the
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Bible rather than on the resurrection. Um, this seems to have some type of connection to the mere
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Christianity movement to where you can have the resurrection of Christ as a concept, as an ordering concept unto itself, self -sustaining, self -defining without scripture.
44:40
And so the, the resurrection takes on a life of its own.
44:45
It becomes a revelation unto itself that can be valid without the
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Bible being valid. Oh, did I do that? I did do that. Um, okay.
44:57
I'm going to need help from the channel. There is a descriptor and it's on my computer in the other room, but I forgot to copy it into a
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Dropbox. So I don't have it. I wanted to read it. There's a descriptor on Sunday's sermon at Andy Stanley's church, um, that basically says, do you really have to believe everything in the
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Bible? The Bible sometimes makes people very uncomfortable. What if the Bible really isn't necessary for Christianity and the resurrection is sufficient?
45:30
That that's that I want to, I want to read it exactly. I was just paraphrasing by memory. It's not like I tried to memorize it.
45:37
Um, but I, I screenshot that and forgot to do the one last thing of drag the screenshot into Dropbox.
45:44
So I would have it here on my system. So somebody grabbed that for me, uh, because I want to be able to read it to you because that's, what's going on here is this idea of the resurrection as a theological construct that can be discussed, presented.
46:07
There it is. Thank you. Uh, I hate to have to read this Nick on the air, but Steelers fan.
46:15
Um, do you find some of the Bible stories about God unsettling?
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Do you ever wonder how you can trust Jesus? If it requires you to believe everything in the
46:27
Bible is true, does Christianity seem like a fragile house of cards that may tumble down in the face of scientific or archeological discovery before you abandon your faith?
46:43
It's worth exploring this question. What if the Bible isn't the foundation of the
46:49
Christian faith? David D provided the rest of it there. Uh, so thanks to both of you.
46:57
Now I haven't had time. I think I probably will go ahead and grab that somehow.
47:06
Uh, it didn't look downloadable, but somewhere, um, I want to get the audio for that because I'm supposed to ride in the morning and I, that's definitely something
47:17
I want to put on the ride list because, well, like I said, he, he said, well,
47:26
I was told that he was linking to an article from Robbie Zacharias in defense of what he was saying.
47:36
All right. And here's the article. And this is the only thing in the article that I could find that was relevant. What do you say to a pastor who says apologetics is just philosophy and we do not need that?
47:49
All we need is the Bible. Now I've heard people say that.
47:57
Obviously you've never heard me say that. Um, I have never said, uh, that apologetics is just philosophy.
48:07
Obviously I do not say that we do not need apologetics. Um, so it's, it's an imbalanced question from my perspective.
48:16
Um, Ravi's response was, I desperately wish it were that simple.
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When pastors believe and teach, all we need is the Bible. They equip their young people with the very line that gets them mocked in the universities and makes them unable and even terrified to relate to their friends.
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If pastors want their young people to do the work of evangelism to reach their friends, that line will not get them anywhere.
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Even the Bible that Christ gave us is sustained by the miracle of the resurrection. That I think is where he's trying to go.
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Even the Bible that Christ gave us is sustained by the miracle of the resurrection.
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The resurrection gave the early church the argument that Christ is risen. We saw, we witnessed, we felt, and we touched.
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The apostle Paul defended this gospel. He went to Athens and planted a church there. In Ephesus, he defended the faith in the school of Tyrannus.
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We also need to become all things to all people. If a pastor says, all we need is the Bible, uh, what does he say to a man who says, all
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I need is the Quran? It is a solipsistic method of arguing. Now we know that Ravi's not a presuppositionalist.
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The pastor is saying, all I need is my own point of reference and nothing more than that. Even the gospel has verified, was verified by external references.
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The Bible is a history, a book of geography, not just a book of spiritual assertions.
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The fact is the resurrection from the dead was the ultimate proof that in history and an empirically verifiable means, the word of God was made certain.
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Otherwise, the experience and the amount of transfiguration would have been good enough. But the apostle Peter says in 2
49:58
Peter 119, we have the word of the prophets made more certain as to a light shining in a dark place.
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He testified to the authority and person of Christ and the resurrected person of Christ. To believe all we need is the
50:09
Bible and nothing more is what the monks believed in medieval times and they resorted to monasteries.
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Now, I just got to stop right there and go, no, that's not what they believed.
50:21
That's not, that's, that's not an accurate reflection of monastic foundational theological belief.
50:30
I'm sorry. It's just, it's just not. We all know the end of that story. This argument may be good enough for those who are convinced the
50:36
Bible is the authority. The Bible, however, is not authoritative in culture or in a world of counter perspectives.
50:44
To say that it is authoritative in these situations is to die both how the Bible defends itself and how our young people need to defend the
50:53
Bible's sufficiency. Now, this is a fundamentally different perspective than what
51:00
I present. There's no question about it. This is not presuppositionalism. This is evidentialism. I do not believe it's apostolic.
51:10
But I also don't think it's what Andy Stanley was saying or I'm not sure what the connection is.
51:18
It is sad that some people think a person who asks why the Bible is being dishonest, this is a legitimate question.
51:26
Okay. Now, a couple things. When, when
51:34
Ravi says, even the gospel is verified by external references, what does he mean by that?
51:43
Does he mean that the gospel happened in history and therefore it's historically true?
51:49
Or does he mean that the authority of the gospel is dependent upon uninspired sources?
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This is, this again is the issue of epistemology.
52:07
And, and so much of apologetics really is a discussion of how we know what we know.
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And as creatures made in the image of God, how do we know what we know?
52:23
What is, does the Bible even address this? Some people would say it doesn't. I think it most definitely does.
52:29
Not in a simplistic, well, here is a biblical epistemology type thing. But I think it very clearly addresses the primacy of revelation over against all of human philosophy.
52:45
And I think when you take together Romans 1, 1
52:52
Corinthians 1 and 2 especially, you put those two together, you do have a very strong foundation for developing a meaningful
53:04
Christian epistemology, together with the fact that Peter's point in 2
53:12
Peter, it says he testified to the authority and person of Christ, the resurrected person of Christ.
53:21
But while Peter did that, he said that that was subsidiary to the prophetic witness.
53:31
And that's then what gives rise to Peter's description of the very nature of Scripture.
53:39
And that is that men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. And it was that prophetic witness to the person of Christ, the ministry of Christ, and then the death, resurrection of Christ that is more certain than Peter's own experience.
53:56
That was the point there at that particular text of Scripture. And so, the question is, when he says the
54:06
Bible, however, is not authoritative in culture or in a world of counter perspectives.
54:12
Yes, it is. Culture and counter perspectives from a
54:23
Christian perspective are lower authorities than God speaking.
54:29
This goes to what the point of contact is. The point of contact is not some type of neutral ground upon which we reason and argue.
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The apostles never presented any theory of neutrality. Even when
54:49
Paul stood in front of those who did not accept the Jewish Scriptures as authoritative, that did not stop him from making the proclamation that a day was coming when all of mankind would be judged by one man,
55:06
Jesus Christ, who was perfectly fitted for that role because of the fact that he was raised from the dead.
55:14
And Paul knew as soon as he said resurrection, they were going to scoff. They were going to mock.
55:20
Didn't matter. Didn't matter. So, I cannot possibly agree with the statement, the
55:32
Bible, however, is not authoritative in culture or any world of counter perspectives. To say that it's authoritative in these situations is to deny both how the
55:40
Bible defends itself and how our young people need to defend the Bible's sufficiency. Well, if you think the only way to do that is through an evidentialist methodology, well then, okay.
55:55
But obviously, there are a whole bunch of us out here that go, that's not how the
56:00
Bible defends itself. And that's not how our young people will be able to defend the
56:07
Bible's sufficiency. Because if the Bible's fundamental authority is derivative from secondary means, from other means, it's derivative from these historical sources and these manuscript sources and these things over there, its authority can never supersede any of those.
56:23
And yet, that is what is needed to fundamentally establish the reality of the resurrection in the first place.
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This has always been my criticism, is that the evidentialist wants to pretend that we can treat, well, how many times have we reviewed debates where someone's saying,
56:46
I'm not asking you to believe that the gospel accounts are inspired or authored, just take them as generally reliable historical sources.
56:55
And the atheist is absolutely positively right when his response is generally reliable historical sources are insufficient to establish what you call the resurrection.
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And they're right. Generally, historical sources can tell us things that happened in the past, but what we're talking about is something absolutely stupendous.
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And it requires a source that has sufficient authority to establish these things.
57:34
And now, is that what Andy Stanley's saying? I honestly, the few times that I've ever seen any of his teaching, you know, and now in the big mega churches, it's the open collar, no pulpit, sitting on the bar stool, you know, fancy background type thing.
58:02
It's been very fuzzy. It's never been on this level of what
58:11
Ravi Zacharias is saying. So, if that's what he's trying to say, well,
58:16
I would still disagree because I'm disagreeing with Ravi on this. There is a fundamental difference.
58:22
This is not something new. I mean, we've been talking about this for decades. It's not something new.
58:29
If someone goes, James White was attacking Ravi Zacharias today on the dividing line.
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That's all he ever does. You know, I can just, I'll just see it. I predict its appearance.
58:42
But the reality is we've talked about this thing so many times. We've talked about the foundations of apologetics.
58:47
We've talked about the vast difference between having a sure word from the
58:53
Lord, being dependent upon the Spirit, recognizing that the message that is preached is foolishness to the world.
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And if you ever develop an apologetic methodology where it's no longer foolishness to the world, it's no longer the gospel.
59:12
That's, you know, do we need to walk through it again? Maybe we do.
59:20
Tell you what, I hadn't intended to do this. But it's been a while.
59:26
You know, I've, you can go, and I remember the church in Detroit.
59:33
I was at a fine church in Detroit at a conference there, and I did a lengthy presentation on this.
59:40
So, you can find stuff. Micah, there goes
59:47
James White prophesying again. How great. There's going to be another meme or some other thing that's going to, you know, somebody will probably put horns on my head to do that too.
59:59
There's a lot of folks listening to this program that weren't listening even six months ago. And I don't know why that is, but we're just going to keep trying to do what's important to do.
01:00:12
And since I've told folks that I would actually suggest, honestly, for all of us that live in a secularized society to review this text minimally every six months, maybe
01:00:28
I should take my own advice. And we'll go ahead and do this. Let's walk through it again.
01:00:40
1 Corinthians chapter 1. Because I can't think of any text that more directly addresses the danger, the inherent danger that exists for the
01:00:56
Christian in a world where man's wisdom is highly exalted.
01:01:03
No text addresses the danger of missing the foolishness of the gospel and hence the very power of the gospel than this text.
01:01:15
This is the text. So, let's, I can't think of anything more useful than to look at the word to close out our time.
01:01:27
And of course, that may take us out to jumbo length or something like that. That's fine. 1
01:01:34
Corinthians chapter 1. We're just going to, let me, yeah, let's do this right.
01:01:47
All right. Let me, how's that?
01:01:56
Okay. All right. The word of the cross or the message of the cross is indeed to those who are perishing.
01:02:11
Please notice apolumenos, to those who are perishing moria, moria, from which we get obviously the term foolishness or moron is where that comes from.
01:02:30
The preaching or the message, the logos of the staru, of the cross is to those who are perishing foolishness.
01:02:38
So, the first thing that is said is that the person's spiritual nature will determine their reaction to the message of the cross.
01:02:54
And then notice, but to tois sozomenos, and notice the parallel between, that's cutting it off for some reason, the
01:03:05
Greeks disappeared there. So, there we go. Notice we have apolumenos and sozomenos.
01:03:13
So, this is, there's clearly in Paul's mind here, a direct parallel between these two.
01:03:22
So, you're only given two choices here. You're either amongst the perishing or you're amongst those who are being saved.
01:03:29
But to us who are being saved, and I know there are people just get all upset. No, it's those who are saved.
01:03:37
No, it's not. No, it is not. It is those who are being saved. And I've, again, new people growing up, that if you said that, oh, you're just, oh, that's terrible.
01:03:50
No, now not yet. It's both there. Let the language say what the language says.
01:03:55
This is the description he's being, that he uses. Don't think you're wiser than the apostle. Don't think you're wiser than the spirit.
01:04:02
The same message is to those who are perishing, moria, but to those who are being saved, us, who are being saved, dunamis theou, the power of God.
01:04:15
One message, not different contexts. It's one message and it is responded to differently.
01:04:27
It is seen, it is heard, it is experienced differently depending upon the nature of the individual and spiritual nature.
01:04:37
It's their relationship to God, whether they're perishing or they're being saved. And there is no middle ground.
01:04:44
Oh, Paul is just so, oh, that's just black and white. That's just not, what about the people that are seeking?
01:04:51
But look, for Paul, you are either apollumenois or you are sojomenois.
01:04:59
That's all there is to it. Sojomenois, sorry. That's all there is to it. You either reject this, reject its authority, or you embrace its authority.
01:05:10
All right? And then I think he explains this. That's the thesis statement.
01:05:16
The thesis statement is the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing.
01:05:23
And every time we as the church try to change this, try to make it attractive, try to make it wise in the eyes of the people of the world, we are demonstrating we don't really believe what the scriptures say.
01:05:42
We don't fundamentally accept what's said here. There's an explanation. Verse 19, for it has been written,
01:05:52
I will destroy the wisdom of the wise ones, and the understanding of the understanding ones
01:05:58
I will set aside. I will make, so here you have quotation.
01:06:07
And let me turn this on so we can see that, so you can see these things. Out of Isaiah chapter 29, original term for philosophy, love of wisdom.
01:06:18
So the wisdom of the saphos, the wise one, or we might say philosopher.
01:06:28
Where is the grammatius? That's a common term used for the scribe. But in the gospels that had sort of a more defined meaning.
01:06:39
Here it would be the person of learning, the person of letters, the person of books, the person who lives in the library.
01:06:45
That wasn't nearly as common a thing in that day, nor could it be. But where is the scribe?
01:06:52
Where is the debater? I say, see, that's you. Well, the debater of this age.
01:06:59
And of course, he's not talking about age in the sense of time period. But he's talking about this world, this system of things.
01:07:10
Where is the debater of has not, and here's the question, has not God. Let's go ahead and bring it up.
01:07:18
Has not God. There we go. This is a verb.
01:07:28
Brian brings up a video of me from PRBC. It's on Twitter if you want to see it, and it would be interesting.
01:07:36
Go ahead and compare that sermon, because that was a few years ago. I haven't recorded anything for years, sticking a camera on the back of a pew.
01:07:46
And that was before 2010, because I'm a big boy there. But go ahead and compare what I say there with what I'm saying now.
01:07:52
Guess what? There won't be any difference. There will not be any difference. Right here, this verb, we don't,
01:08:07
I suppose we do have somewhat of a verb to fool someone, but that's not what this is talking about.
01:08:13
God, has not God made foolish, literally to make something foolish, the wisdom to Cosmo.
01:08:26
So that's, again, of this age to Cosmo, they're being used of this world, these are parallel concepts that are being used here.
01:08:36
And I simply have to ask a question. And, you know,
01:08:42
I see young men going into seminary, bright young men, promising futures.
01:08:52
And I see them talking about wanting to do philosophy. And I'll just be honest with you,
01:08:58
I get really concerned. I get really concerned, because I have seen so many who have gone that route, ruined.
01:09:11
Because I don't think they ever drove a stake down and answered this question.
01:09:22
And thought through what it meant, when it comes to this world, to the academy, even to the so called
01:09:33
Christian Academy. How you answer this question, will determine how you do apologetics, and it will determine how you respond to the challenges of secular totalitarianism that is coming into every one of our lives, every one of our lives.
01:09:53
When you use ook rather than may, the expected answer is positive.
01:10:01
Has not God made foolish? Has not God moroned the wisdom of the world?
01:10:09
Well, has he? Has he? Do we do our educational system in light of the answer to this question?
01:10:20
Do we teach in our seminaries in light of the answer to this question? Or how often do we continue to want the approbation and acceptance of the world and its wisdom?
01:10:36
How often do we want to be viewed as sophos by to cosmo?
01:10:49
I'm thinking about on Sunday, doing a sermon. I think I probably will do this.
01:10:55
I was going to start a sermon series, but it's going to take a lot of preparatory work. So I may not do it.
01:11:02
Unashamed of inerrancy, you want to immediately destroy any shred of credibility in major portions of the academy today?
01:11:16
Say what I just said. You know, someone was saying last week, he just so desperately wants to be accepted within scholarship.
01:11:23
And I wouldn't be saying things like that because I know I'm just going for the academy when
01:11:32
I say I'm unashamed of inerrancy. And mainly,
01:11:39
I'm unashamed of it because of this. God is the one who has moronized. I need to come up with an
01:11:46
English transliteration of the verb that is used here.
01:11:56
Morino. Morino is the, see it down there at the bottom. To make foolish.
01:12:07
That's what God has done. Do you believe that? Well, this is just about the cross.
01:12:15
No, it's not just about the cross. The cross is the central aspect of history, but it has so much more application beyond that.
01:12:24
I'm not going to get it done if I keep preaching like this. For since in the
01:12:32
Sophia to Thayu, in the wisdom of God, the cosmos did not know through wisdom, through its own wisdom, in the wisdom of God, the world through its wisdom did not come to know
01:12:56
God. That's God's purpose. It was God's intention.
01:13:03
And it's the demonstration of the wisdom of God. That the means to coming to know
01:13:10
God is not human wisdom. It's not human wisdom. You can climb, you can climb up to that mountaintop and find the guru at the top.
01:13:24
He's not going to be able to introduce you to God because God in his wisdom has said, that is not the way to know
01:13:35
God. All your theistic arguments and everything else is not going to bring anybody to God.
01:13:44
Am I saying there's no reason to discuss those things? No reason to study those things? I'm not saying that, but you're not going to bring somebody to God that way.
01:13:52
Because God in his wisdom has said, that's not the way to me. That's not way to acknowledge me. Instead, God was pleased, judakeo, to be well pleased, to enjoy.
01:14:11
God was pleased, deates morias, to kerugmatas, through the foolishness of the kerygma, the message which is preached, which is specifically in this context, the message of the stauru, the cross, through the foolishness of the kerygma to save the ones who believe.
01:14:43
So, that's what pleases God, is to save through what the world calls foolishness.
01:14:55
Now, again, theology matters. Your traditions are extremely important.
01:15:04
And when you bring a tradition to this text that says that you've got to convince people, you've got to treat people like they're neutral moral agents and you just need to give them more argumentation and eventually you can convince them, you can walk them through all the objections and so on and so forth.
01:15:29
If that's where you're starting from, which is not Paul's view, but if that's where you're starting from, then this stuff just doesn't make a whole lot of sense and you're going to sort of skip past it.
01:15:40
But Paul is saying that if you want to see people saved, then it is through the foolishness of the kerygma, the foolishness of the message preached and the ones who are saved are those who believe.
01:15:57
That's his statement. Right there, verse 22. For indeed,
01:16:04
Jews are seeking after signs. And Greeks seeking after, in Zetaio, normally is to seek, inquire, and there's, you know, there's normally an outlay of energy that's involved in doing this.
01:16:23
And the Greeks are seeking what? Sophia. Sophia in the accusative.
01:16:29
The Greeks are seeking wisdom, but we proclaim
01:16:37
Christon estaro menon. You see,
01:16:43
Paul knew his audience. Paul knew what they wanted and he knew what would tickle the ear of the
01:16:54
Jewish person. They're seeking after signs. And so, he knew that there would be certain things he could do to attract their attention.
01:17:06
And Greeks, oh, he knew what they wanted. Oh, they're seeking after wisdom. And Paul's a well -educated man.
01:17:12
He's read, he's read in philosophy. He could use all that language if he wanted to. And oh, how often in today's world we have pastors who are having surveys done to see what kind of sermons and what kind of music and all this, you know, to try to get the most people interested and all the rest of that kind of stuff.
01:17:34
Entire companies exist that will come in and do surveys for you to tell you how you should do church in your area, what you should wear and how long your service should be and all the rest of that kind of stuff.
01:17:45
Paul's response is, but we proclaim, we preach
01:17:50
Christon estaro menon. I've told you many times before, that verb was almost considered off -color language by many people in the first century.
01:18:08
It conjured up images of such disgust in the minds of so many people that in polite company, there are people who just never even use it.
01:18:31
And so Paul says, we know, I know what the Jews want. I know what the
01:18:36
Greeks want, but you see, I'm a Christian and we've been entrusted with one message and we don't get to edit it.
01:18:45
We don't get to change it. We don't get to be ashamed of it. We proclaim
01:18:51
Christ crucified. And he knows the result of that to the
01:18:59
Jews, scandalon, scandalon, stumbling block.
01:19:07
To the Jews, the idea of a crucified Messiah is absolutely ridiculous.
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You cannot ever convince me that it was God's intention for his Messiah to be humiliated by the
01:19:21
Romans in that way. Scandalon, I can't go there. To the Jews, scandalon.
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To the Gentiles, I'm looking at the text.
01:19:37
Yeah, I knew that was what it was going to be. You see that little thing right there? That means that's textual variant and I brought up the variant down below and it stopped.
01:19:49
There it is. LAC, the reason for that is because right up above there's the
01:19:56
Hellenist Greek was used. Then it goes to ethnos down here.
01:20:02
And I just knew that some scribe somewhere would try to keep them parallel or just inadvertently keep them parallel because it was
01:20:09
Jew, Greek, now it's Jew, Gentiles. And there are some manuscripts that actually have that as the reading, including 1739, 1881.
01:20:19
And in fact, it's the majority reading. Sinaiticus, Alexanderus, Vaticanus have
01:20:25
Gentiles there. To the Gentiles, foolishness.
01:20:32
So, Paul knows his audience, he knows what they want, and he knows that the proclamation of a crucified
01:20:40
Messiah. I mean, when I hear people talking about how Paul made up this religion and all the rest of this stuff,
01:20:46
I just have to laugh. I just have to laugh. It's so foolish. It is so foolish for anybody to think that this would be an attractive thing in the days of Paul.
01:21:00
He knows. To the Jews, scandalon. To the Gentiles, absolute foolishness.
01:21:07
So, where is his confidence? Well, this is why theology matters.
01:21:15
This is why theology matters. But to those who are called, to the elect, kleitos, the elect.
01:21:33
But to the elect, judaios, tekai, helison.
01:21:40
So, to Jews and Greeks, Jews and Gentiles, and that's pointing out, man,
01:21:51
I, funny, I never, here is one place where I will differ from the sermon that Brian posted to Twitter.
01:21:58
I hadn't run into the Hebrew Israelites when that was recorded. So, it never really crossed my mind that you look at a text like that and, oh, notice that the elect.
01:22:11
Who are the elect made of? Jews and Gentiles, Jews and Greeks. Not just Jews, Jews and Greeks.
01:22:22
Just thought we'd mention that in passing. But to those who are the called,
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Jews and Greeks, Christ, theudunamon, power of God, kaitheusofion, and the wisdom of God.
01:22:44
What makes the difference? It's the same message. This is an explanation. This is an expansion. This is an explanation of what he said in verse 18.
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Perishing, those who are being saved, what's the difference? Here it is.
01:22:59
It's God's call. It's God's act of election. If you don't believe in election, you're not going to have any categories to put this into.
01:23:08
So, it's going to be confusing to you. And you're probably going to downplay what this actually means.
01:23:17
But whether the proclamation of the crucified Messiah, Lagos 2
01:23:24
Staru, the message of the cross, whether that proclamation is a scandalon or foolishness, or whether it is the very power of God and wisdom of God, it's all up to God.
01:23:45
That's where theology matters. And the reality is a lot of modern day evangelicals do not have a sufficiently balanced biblical theology to be able to put those categories together and go, ah, the reason that I see in the gospel the power and wisdom of God is not because I'm wiser.
01:24:18
It's not because I'm better. It's all because of God's calling.
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It's all because of God's election. And that's what he goes on to say.
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He says, because the moron to Thayu, what an amazing phrase, the foolishness of God, saphoteron ton anthropon, is wiser than man.
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And the weakness of God is stronger than man.
01:25:00
And he says, look to your own, notice again, for blepite, try and get it so that English shows there, for look to, literally it's blepo to see, look to tain clason humon aldelphoi, look to your own calling, brethren.
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See, he, Paul taught the Corinthians God's sovereign election of a divine people.
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This isn't the first time he's introducing it to them. You can tell . Paul had taught them about God's divine election.
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He says, look at your own calling, brethren. There are not many saphoi kata sarka.
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There are not many wise according to the flesh. Oopaloi dunatoi, not many that are powerful, not many that are mighty.
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I love this one. Oopaloi eugenais, that's the very word from which we get eugenics, well -born, noble, high or noble birth.
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Look at your church. Look around you. You see what
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God's doing? God's doing everything.
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For God has chosen Tamora to Kasmu, the fool, in order that he might shame to Saphos.
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You might say, well, I don't see that happening on the campus of my university. Yeah, well, someday, every one of those super wise professors is going to stand before he who is
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God. And that super wise professor is going to realize that he is but an ant crawling upon the ground in comparison to God.
01:27:06
And he will answer for his arrogance and he will answer for his oppression of God's people.
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And God shames the wise. Why should we want to be amongst them?
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We don't want to be amongst those who are shamed. And God has chosen the weak things of the world in order he might shame the strong things of the world.
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That's God's doing all these things. And the agene, the not well -born, so the insignificant, the inferior of the world, the things and the things that are despised,
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God has chosen the things that have no being in order that he might nullify the things that have being.
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God has chosen to do it exactly the opposite way that the world would expect.
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Why? So that no flesh may boast before God.
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You see, there's a day coming. And at that judgment, in that day of judgment, there'll be no boasting before God.
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There'll be no one that stands before God and says, by my wisdom, by my intellect, by my ability to follow the ontological argument when nobody else could,
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I've brought myself to this position of being in favor with God. No, no.
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So that no flesh may boast before God. All those verbs, everything that was being done,
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God did it. Not man. God did it. And again, theology matters.
01:28:56
That's why verse 30, ex alto de humais este en
01:29:01
Cristo Jesu. Ex alto, by his doing, literally out of him, you are in Christ Jesus, not out of you.
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All this stuff about God makes us savable, but it's all up to us.
01:29:19
For some reason, when we get to listen in to the apostle, as he's talking to the
01:29:26
Corinthians, man, he sure does talk about God being in control of all things.
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He talks about election. And you want to know why you're in Christ Jesus? Ex alto, by him, you are in Christ Jesus, who has become to us,
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Sophia apotheou, wisdom from God, righteousness, sanctification or holiness.
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I like holiness a little bit better there. Cai apalutroses, redemption.
01:30:12
So all these things, wisdom from God, righteousness, holiness, redemption, it's all in Christ Jesus.
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And the reason that you have any of those things is because of him. He's the one that has put you in Christ Jesus in order that the concluding argument is, verse 31, so that just as it has been written, let he who boasts, the one boasting, let him boast in curio, in curio, in the
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Lord. Only in the Lord, not myself. I have no grounds for boasting whatsoever.
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It's all found in God. You see how theology matters?
01:30:59
You see how that ends up determining what is being said when it comes to apologetics in our relationship to the wisdom of the world?
01:31:13
Yeah, your theology of salvation will determine how your seminaries and your denomination function.
01:31:21
It will. Has to. Because these are things God has done.
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These are things that God has done in such a way as to show us what is important from God's perspective.
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What's important from God's perspective is the demonstration of his power and his making foolish the wisdom of the world so that no one can boast before him.
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Someday, what does Ephesians 1 say? It's all going to be seen to be to the praise of his glorious grace.
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There's going to be one five -letter word. I'm glad in Greek it's also five -letter word.
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One five -letter word that's going to make all the difference. Grace. Nothing else.
01:32:10
Yes, that's absolutely decimating to the pride of man. So be it.
01:32:17
So be it. But you're saying we have to depend completely upon God and our evangelism and our apologetics.
01:32:26
Yep. Yep. And have you always been saying that? Yep. So you never argue evidences.
01:32:34
No, I never said that. I fully understand that there is a role for clearing away barriers and all the rest of that stuff.
01:32:44
But those evidences can never be the foundation upon which the authority of the word of God is placed.
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And the heart in which the Holy Spirit works will recognize the authority of the word of God. And that's why,
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Brother Stanley, we don't need to get the focus off the word of God on the resurrection. You've created a distinction that does not exist and cannot exist.
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Cannot exist. Didn't expect to go there today.
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But then again, I didn't expect to wander around through Ignatius for a long period of time either. But there you go. There you go.
01:33:24
All right. Maybe by Thursday, that video will be posted someplace.
01:33:32
Maybe not. You know, honestly, if what I'm hearing is that Stanley was miffed at how he was treated, then again, how did that one clip end up out there?
01:33:45
I don't know. I don't know. But it gave us the opportunity to think about some important things yet once again.
01:33:53
So that's a good thing to do. So hopefully that was useful to you. Thanks for listening to Dividing Lines today.