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

Well, greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. Oops, I left this way, way back there. Here, let's get it nice and close there. 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. 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, 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.

Ignatius, Church History, and the Vocabulary of Early Theology

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. I think we've done 13 lessons now in church history, and people keep asking, where is all this stuff?

Sermon audio, go to the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church, find PRBC, go down to sermon series, and you'll find under Sunday School, you'll find church history. 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 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 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. Yes, well, and it didn't work either. People are probably wondering why there's a, 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, 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. And look, the beauty of a lava lamp is the slow globular motion. So that's not going to happen today. And we won't, again, condemn anyone, just you know who's involved.

Anyways, now I have no earthly idea what in the world I was talking about. No, I seriously don't. I have no earthly idea. Oh, I was saying that, like someone this morning asked for resources on something that it's not even semi in any area where I would expect anyone would think I would have any knowledge of at all.

So, you know, it's one thing on, you know, in certain areas where I speak all the time, but on other stuff, it's like, why are you asking me? I don't understand. Anyway, it's just sort of, I think it's just, Google has ruined a lot of folks.

It really, really has. And then when they don't use Google, it's, but anyways. Remember AltaVista? Yahoo? WebCrawler? Yeah, yeah, those were, I'm dating myself here, big time. So, anyway, reading something in chat channel, I don't know what that particular website is, so I'm not going to mention it.

Anyways, I've been, we're past Ignatius now. We did, this last Sunday, we did, was there an early supremacy of the Bishop of Rome? And the form of the early church, ecclesiology in the early church and stuff like that.

And not this next Sunday because I'm preaching this next Sunday. So, Brother Callahan will be doing the Sunday school, but we'll be, well, it'll be three weeks down the road now to think about it. 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, am I more familiar with persecution of Christians in other lands, but folks, the totalitarians are on the march.

They are on the march. I was going to bring up, maybe someone in channel could do this for me. There was a Alliance Defending Freedom article on Facebook about the decision of the Ninth Circuit telling, basically saying it is illegal for anyone, including ministers, anybody to negatively counsel, even in private, someone in regards to homosexuality.

I mean, I 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. They want Uber rights. They want supremacy. They want us to celebrate the goodness of their sexuality.

That's all there is to it. And the corrupt judiciary is right along. Let's do it. Let's do it. The whole totalitarianism thing, big, big, big time going on in our land. 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. 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. It's going to be pretty much over with.

But anyway, I just wanted to read a section before we go on to other things from Ignatius that, again, strikes me. We are so often told that in-depth Christian theology, and this does sort of fit in here, we're often told that serious Christian theology of the church, of Christ, of the atonement, deity of Christ, Trinity, that all these things were all developments over time.

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.

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. 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.

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.

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.

So today there are a bunch of people who had never really given much thought to the difference between the ontological trinity and the economic trinity. 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.

So same thing happened in the early church. And so if someone says, well, in the early church, there was much more specificity of language in the Cappadocian fathers who are writing at a much later point than there is in Ignatius.

Yeah, that's true. Because Ignatius is writing long before pretty much anybody else, to be perfectly honest with you. And so he's writing before there's been the pushback against Sebelianism and modalism in the second and third centuries, in the east especially.

He's writing before the rise of Arianism and subordinationism. And so you're not going to expect the same breadth of vocabulary, nor the same concern about the utilization of certain terms. For example, boy, I'm really going off today, but that's just sort of how it works at times.

One of the great problems at the Council of Nicaea was exposing the Arians, being able to come up with a quick, brief, accurate confessional statement that would expose the Arians. Because the Arians could twist almost any scripture and say, well, if what you're saying is this, then we can confess that.

And so a term was needed that would accurately represent biblical teaching, but they would just absolutely immediately expose the Arian and allow the detection of them within the fellowship of the church.

And when the term homoousios was suggested, there was an immediate pushback from the, well, almost all the bishops there were from the 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 Sibelianists. And that in fact, some sources indicate had already been used by the modalists and rejected because of modalistic utilization. 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 biblical teachings.

And so, there's an example of where there was a term that in general, let's say around the year 300, uh, 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.

Homoousios of the same, same being. So, the point is when we, uh, 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. 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 Dave Hunt. He's gone on to his reward and I'm sure he does history well now. But one of the things that was extremely troubling about the way that Dave did history was that he didn't do history.

He used historical facts to promote a particular perspective. And this wasn't fair with the people that he was addressing from a historical perspective. 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 anyway.

So, we don't have to worry about the generations that come after us. The problem is almost every generation before us has had people that had the same idea. And it's a little bit on the problematic side.

We don't know when the Lord's returning. And we're not to live, we're to live with the idea of imminency. 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.

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. 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 people after us are going to... Rich, there's somebody right outside the window. Sounds like they're digging through the wall. So, if you could deal with them, I'd appreciate it.

It's extremely, extremely distracting. It's about right there. It's like, I'm not supposed to be here. Anyway, yeah, somebody in the channel says Dave Hunt's already a Calvinist. We need to do history in such a way that we look back upon those before us and we are fair to them.

We are fair in allowing them to speak from the context in which they were actually living. Ignatius has never heard of Arius. Ignatius has never heard of Sibelius. 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.

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. 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.

So, anyway, all of that, just so I can get around to reading a particular section here from Ignatius' epistle to the Philadelphians. Now, it's interesting. This actually may be, I didn't double check this, but this may be the text in Ignatius that, remember I read quotes on the priesthood last time or was it the time before?

Last week sometime, 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, Ignatius' view of the church.

There was no Christian priesthood. When he refers to priests, he's referring to the old covenant priests. And in his letter to the Philadelphians, section 9, well, it is interesting. There's sort of the beginnings of, you know, this is a time period where the New Testament doesn't exist.

And there are lots of scholarly questions as to exactly what Ignatius possessed of the New Testament. I think it's pretty obvious he had Hebrews, as we'll see here in a moment. But what's eventually going to develop is, well, given people's claims to authority, how do we know?

And from that, you're going to get apostolic succession and what apostolic succession means and all the rest of that stuff. But it's fascinating to read phrases like, but for me, the archives are Jesus Christ.

The inviolable archives are his cross and death and his resurrection, the faith which comes through him. 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 last of the apostles, very beginning of the second century, to use terms like cross, death, resurrection, because we have all that in the New Testament.

But you have to remember, just this morning on Twitter, someone referenced a book I couldn't find on Amazon. If it's not on Amazon, it doesn't matter. But basically, an anti-Paulanist. There are people who, you know, there is a tremendous anti-Pauline bias amongst many people.

We've seen, you know, Muslims love all the anti-Paul stuff get hold of. There's a deep strain of anti-Paulinism amongst Muslim folks. And by the way, that reminds me, I need to, please remind me as soon as the program's over to respond to Dr. Tony Acosta's email.

I'm trying to arrange to have Tony join us on Thursday on the program to discuss basically Muslim apologetic methodology. He and I both have pretty much observed the same, I'm not sure how to describe it, but grossly inconsistent utilization of sources that marks the almost all, almost all, Islamic apologists.

Their love of liberalism and secularism and humanism and just unbelief when it comes to anything about Christianity. And then they're completely eschewing that and rejecting that when the same scholarship be applied to their own system.

They just do not use the sources in a meaningful fashion and they don't care. They just don't care. And Paul Blal-Williams is one of the best examples of this because he should know better. It's not like he was raised in Afghanistan and never ran into a Christian while there, or Pakistan and ignored all the Christians as many that have that experience.

He doesn't have any excuse for the many, many times that he not only misrepresents Christianity, but just shows such arrogant disregard for believing Christian scholarship. Just dismisses it with the British nose so far up, it's almost 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. 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.

I apologize for that. Anyway, I'm wandering far too far astray today, but here in getting back to Ignatius, I apologize for that going away. The cross, death, resurrection, we're used to it. 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 Paul, say Paul's the one who invented New Testament Christianity, or at least what became New Testament Christianity.

Like I said, the guy on Twitter, this book, you know, just the words of Jesus and, you know, rejecting 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 as to know how to respond to it.

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 New Testament, you have what sounds to be very, very Pauline language being utilized in regards to the cross, the death, resurrection.

And of course, remember, Islam denies all these things, and yet there is no generation, there is no level, 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.

It has been the Christian proclamation from the beginning. And some Muslims go up quite well because Surah 407 says, God made it look that way, and so that's the way it should look. Anyway, section nine, need to get to it here.

The priests, too, were good, but the high priest, notice the priests, too, were good, not are good. Also the priest, yeah. But the high priest, singular, ha, I'm looking at the Greek over here, and it's singular.

The high priest, entrusted with the Holy of Holies is better. 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 Christian voice.

I'm not saying that your eschatology should be determined by this early Christian voice, I'm just saying compare it. Think about what it means. He alone has been entrusted with the hidden things of God, for he himself is the door of the Father, through which Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and the prophets and the apostles and the church enter in.

All these come together in the unity of God. But the gospel possesses something distinctive, namely the coming of the Savior, our Lord Jesus Christ, his suffering, and the resurrection. For the beloved prophets preach in anticipation of him, but the gospel is the imperishable, finished work.

All these things together are good if you believe with love. Is there something super, super, super deep there? No, it's just that what we emphasize today, the centrality of the gospel, the fact that we keep going back to the gospel over and over and over again, 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. 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.

It truly is. Now, sort of in the same area, when we look at the negative results of a traditionalist fundamentalism, now I hope you hear what I'm saying there, traditionalist fundamentalism. Fundamentalism, historically speaking, is just fine.

It's focused upon a fairly narrow range of things that are just definitional, supernatural Christianity. But as we know, in the modern day, when you, when your fundamentalism becomes a tradition, it can produce some really ugly stuff.

When I think of the ugliest forms of fundamentalism, I think of someone like Sam Gipp, you know. I won't even blame people like Steven Anderson on fundamentalism. That's, that's, I don't, that's not go there, even though they sure love to duke it out.

But when you think of fundamentalism producing the closed-mindedness that is often associated with the movement as a whole, that wasn't the case historically, but it developed fairly quickly. There's no question about that.

When people are raised within a fundamentalist mindset, when they reach adulthood and come out from underneath what's frequently a strong authoritarian system, they can go many different directions. I mean, many just fly off into the world and are never seen again.

But the emergent church primarily finds its lifeblood in people who were once fundamentalists, and now everything's back on the table. And, you know, I don't know what the emergent church is anymore, because when you put everything out on the table, 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 everyone's going to come to different conclusions because you don't have a guide anymore.

There's no objective truth. There's no real scripture. You can't, we can't keep reinventing the wheel every generation. None of us have ever done that. We may pretend that we are, but that's not the case.

When, you know, I've seen over and over again people who, and remember what, if you go back and listen to the program I did, and why, why is it this guy's name is just anathema to me? Who is, who is the guy that I was on Unbelievable with that I, there are certain names that hit a bad sector in my hard drive, and the fat table is corrupt at that point.

I did Unbelievable with this guy. He, Merchant Church, 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, and as soon as somebody says it, I go, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know.

Brian McLaren, Brian McLaren. Thank you, Algo. Yeah, when we did our program together, one of the things I pointed out was we had a pretty much the same type of upbringing, and no, 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. 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, squeaky shoes, 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 bath water together. I may have gotten rid of the bath water, but I've kept the baby.

That's where the difference is between us, really is. I think it bothered him a little bit to have to dialogue with someone like that, because so many of the people that he dialogues with are just with him and just throwing it all out, 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, fine, but you don't start from scratch, because that's naive to think anybody could do that.

That's silly. We're all standing on the shoulders of giants. So anyway, I just get the feeling when I listen to Andy Stanley that he's in that range, that not fully emergent, but I'm sort of, I'm trying out my wings, I'm demonstrating that I'm my own person type stuff.

Andy Stanley, Ravi Zacharias, and the Resurrection Versus Scripture

Now, I've been looking for the full video of this interview between Russell Moore and Andy Stanley, and the reason I've been looking for it, have you got a freeze frame on it? Show the freeze frame. Now, Andy Stanley does not look happy to me, 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.

Russell Moore does not push back. Well, Russell Moore does, if you listen carefully, in a sense, push back a little bit right toward the end of this. So I want to see the whole thing. Yeah, I know someone pointed to that quotation from JuicyEcumenism .com.

I found that too. Thank you, Jamie. But no, I've not found the video, and I don't know why, but it'll appear eventually. But even though he's reading all of his answers, I don't think he is reading all of his answers.

No, I don't think so. Okay. So there seems to be more to this, but still, Andy Stanley has a influence that seems to me to be way out of proportion with the theological value of his insights. How's that?

I mean, the stuff about small churches, and that does come up a little bit here. I think he still has this idea that if yours is a small dying church, you should sell everything off and give it to the church planting people.

I think he thinks of himself as the church planting people, the big mega church. I don't think having multiple campuses and having one guy preaching at multiple campuses is church planting, but be that as it may.

So we've criticized some of this stuff before, but what happens with someone like this is they start grabbing hold of some theological phraseology to justify where they're going as they're going away from where they had been.

And everybody can tell they're going away from where they had been. And so they grab stuff to justify it. And what Andy Stanley has done is he's been pointing to some stuff from Ravi Zacharias as defense of what he said here.

And I'm told, having that chance to look at it, and I don't know that I will, that on Sunday he sort of doubled down in his sermon at his church. I saw the video, but I asked folks, hey, could someone grab that?

Is there some way that someone could grab that and no one was able to do it? So I hate when people put videos up, but then there's no way for you to grab it. You have to just sit there and stream it online.

If it's on your phone or something, destroy your monthly data usage or whatever. So this is all we've got, but it's worth taking a look at it because it's certainly all over the place. So don't ask me why Russell Moore asks Andy Stanley if he were the evangelical Pope.

I found that really weird. But anyway,.

Here we go. Well, let's wrap it up. That was great. Thank you very much for having me. We were talking a little bit earlier, a couple years ago, I guess some reporter referred to me as an evangelical Pope, which made my Catholic grandmother happy.

But I kind of said, you really don't understand how evangelicalism works. And part of me was kind of pridefully saying, I don't want responsibility for that. If I were Pope, I would kind of hope things would be different.

If you were real, the evangelical Pope, and you really had the authority to say, this is how it's going to be within American evangelical Christianity, what would you do? I would have all the churches that are dying, dying, dying, dying, dying, sell their buildings and give the money to church planters.

I just made that up sitting here. That was pretty good though, wasn't it? I don't know. That wasn't on my list. I just know a lot of church planters here. I mean, the misappropriation and the misused and unused real estate in this country just drives us all crazy.

Because some of you, you're in a grocery store, you're in the back of a school and down the streets, four and a half million dollars worth of property and eight.

People sitting in there anyway. That's not on my list. Now, I'm not sure why a bunch of people were all upset with him about that. If you're in Europe, you already know how this works. There are closed churches everywhere.

There are all sorts of nightclubs in former historic cathedrals and things like that. And once it becomes economically disadvantageous to attend a church, let's just say I know of a large former sports arena in Texas that will be available for more sports in the future.

No question about that, none. And there are all sorts of, you know, it's sad to see churches die. It really is sad to see churches die, but it happens. Frequently, it happens because of sin. Frequently, it happens because of changed 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. There's all sorts of explanations that could be offered.

But yeah, there's, you know, I'm not sure who he thinks church planters are, but it is a reality of our day that there are dying churches all around us. And as 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, did y 'all catch the briefing yesterday?

This is exactly why you see police officers on beaches in France requiring Muslim women to either take off their burkinis in public or leave. 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, that's not like that hasn't happened before.

Nope, has nothing to do with it. Nothing to do with it at all. 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.

And the form of secularism in France and the totalitarian in its mindset, it cannot allow for any dissent, whether it's Muslim, Christian, or anything. You simply have to bow to the secular gods. And they are just as wild-eyed in their fanaticism as any jihadi or any inquisitor ever was in history.

It's a scary thing.

So anyway, there you go. Okay. Here's my short list. 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 Bible and back on the resurrection.

Okay. What's that?

Well, he's talking about what he's talked about before. So that's why I'd like to see what this was before. But that, of course, is the big statement. And he says, we talked about before. I'd like to hear what was said before.

But get the spotlight off the Bible and onto the resurrection. I think that's what he said. Let's try it again. I would ask preachers and.

Pastors and student pastors in their communication to get the spotlight off the Bible and back on the resurrection. Let's get people's attention back on Jesus as soon as possible. Back on Jesus.

And the only way that I can understand this is in the sense of rather than on the Bible. There's a contrast being drawn. For us, it's always, who is 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. 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. That's incoherent to me. Andy Stanton is not an apologist.

He doesn't defend the faith in context around the world. But that is an incoherent position as far as I can tell. Because, well, first of all, I do not see this spotlight on the Bible rather than on the resurrection.

This seems to have some type of connection to the mere Christianity movement. To where you can have the resurrection of Christ as a concept, as an ordering concept unto itself, self-sustaining, self-defining, self-sustaining without Scripture.

And so, the resurrection takes on a life of its own. It becomes a revelation unto itself that can be valid without the Bible being valid. Oh, did I do that? I did do that. Okay, 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 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 that basically says, do you really have to believe everything in the Bible?

The Bible sometimes makes people very uncomfortable. What if the Bible really isn't necessary for Christianity and the resurrection is sufficient? I want to read it exactly. I was just paraphrasing by memory.

It's not like I tried to memorize it. But I screenshot that and forgot to do the one last thing of drag the screenshot into Dropbox so I would have it here on my system. So, somebody grab that for me 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.

There it is. Thank you. I hate to have to read this Nick on the air, but Steelers fan. Do you find some of the Bible stories about God unsettling? Do you ever wonder how you can trust Jesus if it requires you to believe everything in the Bible is true?

Does Christianity seem like a fragile house of cards that may tumble down in the face of scientific or archaeological discovery? Before you abandon your faith, it's worth exploring this question. What if the Bible isn't the foundation of the Christian faith?

David D. provided the rest of it there. So, thanks to both of you. Now, I haven't had time. I think I probably will go ahead and grab that somehow. It didn't look downloadable, but somewhere I want to get the audio for that because I'm supposed to ride in the morning, and that's definitely something I want to put on the ride list.

Because, well, like I said, he said, well, I was told that he was linking to an article from Ravi Zacharias in defense of what he was saying. 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? All we need is the Bible. Now, I've heard people say that. Obviously, you've never heard me say that. I have never said that apologetics is just philosophy.

Obviously, I do not say that we do not need apologetics. So, it's an imbalanced question from my perspective. Ravi's response was, I desperately wish it were that simple. 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. If pastors want their young people to do the work of evangelism to reach their friends, that line will not get them anywhere.

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. Even the Bible that Christ gave us is sustained by the miracle of the resurrection.

The resurrection gave the early church the argument that Christ is risen. We saw, we witnessed, we felt, and we touched. 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. We also need to become all things to all people. If a pastor says, all we need is the Bible, what does he say to a man who says, all I need is the Koran?

It is a solipsistic method of arguing. Now, we know that Ravi's not a presuppositionalist. The pastor is saying, all I need is my own point of reference and nothing more than that. Even the gospel was verified by external references.

The Bible is a book of history, a book of geography, not just a book of spiritual assertions. 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.

Otherwise, the experience and the amount of transfiguration would have been good enough. But the Apostle Peter says in 2 Peter 119, we have the word of the prophets made more certain as to a light shining in a dark place.

He testified to the authority and person of Christ and the resurrected person of Christ. To believe all we need is the Bible and nothing more is what the monks believed in medieval times and they resorted to monasteries.

Now, I just got to stop right there and go, no, that's not what they believed. That's not an accurate reflection of monastic foundational theological belief. I'm sorry, it's just not. We all know the end of that story.

This argument may be good enough for those who are convinced the Bible is authority. The Bible, however, is not authoritative in culture or in a world of counter perspectives. To say that it's authoritative in these situations is to die both how the Bible defends itself and how our young people need to defend the Bible's sufficiency.

Now, this is a fundamentally different perspective than what I present. There's no question about it. This is not presuppositionalism. This is evidentialism. I do not believe it's apostolic, but I also don't think it's what Andy Stanley was saying or I'm not sure what the connection is.