The Redskins and Totalitarianism, and Just What IS the Great Tradition?

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:38

Well, greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. My name is James White, and I don't see myself at the moment, so I'm assuming we're working.

00:46

I don't know. There we go. Hey, it's not like I need to see that. It's rather disturbing, actually.

00:54

But anyhow, here we are. It's a Monday, and you may be going, why Monday? Well, got stuff going on here on home turf this week.

01:03

I don't know exactly what the schedule is going to look like, and it could end up being something where I do some

01:10

DL shorts later on, but we just needed to squeeze something in here at the beginning. Always good to be able to remind folks that we're here.

01:21

Look, we realize everyone's getting squeezed right now, ourselves included, and this has always been a ministry of people who are not the big folks, not the big boys.

01:39

I've told the story before how I've been to other ministries, and I'm not meaning this as a criticism of them, but I've been to other ministries where I've been able to see what was up on the whiteboard, see what people were doing, and,

01:52

I mean, there are ministries that have entire employees that do nothing but chase donors around and maintain donor lists and just do all that kind of stuff, and we just, we don't do it, never have.

02:07

It isn't so much a conviction as it has just been.

02:14

It's just Rich and I, and so, no, we're coming up, like I said, next year on 40 years of this ministry, and there are a lot of ministries, and a lot of the younger people wouldn't know this, but there are a lot of ministries that have existed during the course of our 40 years that do not exist today, and one of the main reasons is internal divisions, politics, defections, all the rest of that stuff.

02:45

Um, one of the easiest ways to avoid politics is not have enough people to come up with politics.

02:52

That's one way of doing it, and so the Lord has kept us small and simple and focused, and that's turned out to be a really, really good idea in light of everything else that's happened.

03:05

So the folks that keep the lights on around here are the people who are getting squeezed the most, honestly, and so we fully understand that.

03:17

It's costing you. I mean, you know, the government is now taxing you thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars more per year in the form of higher energy costs and food costs and squeezing people out of businesses and everything else, and that's the way it is, and we will adapt, but just so people know, we don't have any of those.

03:41

We don't have those big donors. We've had, like, one or two in the past, and it was always a disaster. There were always so many strings attached to any kind of large gift that we've just sort of just been the type of people to go, yeah, no, no thanks.

03:59

We'll go with the regular folks, if you don't mind, and that's allowed us to say what we need to say, and like I said,

04:08

I'm not smart enough to run the filters, to go, okay, we've got that group of donors over there and that group of donors.

04:15

Can't do it. I'll end up working at the local hardware store, though that would be a pretty bad disaster in and of itself, before I put myself through that.

04:30

So, you know, if you're one of those few folks that have actually been really blessed by, you know, there are some people, there are some sectors that are just popping along real nicely, then we'll just, we'll remind you folks that if you enjoy the program, that we need your support, but everybody else, fully understand it, fully get it, and it's obviously far more important for you to make sure that your local church is supported than anything else, and keep that in mind.

05:04

That's always, gotta take care of the family, gotta take care of your local church, and anything else comes after all of that, and we are not a local church, therefore, we are lower on that list, but anyways, interesting days, interesting days indeed, and of course, we've got the trips coming up later this year, and they just keep getting more expensive, every day, man,

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I'll tell you, and I heard that our great leader said recently that we'd see gas blow $3 a gallon by the end of the year and stuff, and that just may be because they make it illegal to drive vehicles,

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I don't know, that would do it. I think it really, really would. Anyway, let's get to it today.

05:47

Okay, one story that sort of illustrates the fact

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I've been a little bit hesitant to be addressing certain issues. You know, we're on a new platform, and honestly, in the back of my mind,

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I am hesitant, I'm concerned about what I can say and how strongly

06:17

I can say it, and I think that's exactly the intention, not just for someone with a ministry platform, but for all of us in whatever context we're in.

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We've all had that thought. I wonder if it's really listening to me.

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Yeah. I wonder if what

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I would say in private to my wife is being listened to and will be used against me,

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I would say, in a court of law, but secularism really doesn't have anything in its worldview to ground law in a meaningful sense, at least in a

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Christian sense. It's just arbitrary rules that can be changed at whatever point in time you want, and so I think it's the purpose behind all this, but anyway, you probably heard, what was it, early last week or maybe the week before?

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Let me see what the date on this was. Okay, June 8th, so yeah, it's been about two weeks, yeah, about two weeks ago.

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The Washington Redskins, now jokingly called the Washington Commanders, and as Doug Wilson pointed out, they dropped the

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Native Americans and kept the slave owner. That's true, there's no ways around it.

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Washington Commanders defensive coach, Jack Del Rio, fined $100 ,000 for calling

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January 6th a dustup, and he likewise called the summer of 2020 as the summer of riots, $100 ,000 for speaking the truth, because it's self -evident beyond question, but I realize that most

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Americans today, and it's almost like they waited until the younger generation would be removed.

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They don't remember communism. I remember the Berlin Wall falling.

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I remember what it was to be deeply concerned about Russian incursions into US airspace and the relative status of the nuclear weapons systems of the

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Soviet Union versus the United States. Remember these things, and we remember people being shot, trying to get out of communist countries.

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We live with that as a reality. We knew they wanted to get out, and we knew there was absolutely positively nobody trying to get in, except for spies and missionaries.

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It's about the only thing trying to get in. Everybody else wanted to get out, and so we knew what we had.

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We knew we had it so much better than they had, but the folks that remember that and experience that, they're getting older now, and the younger people, we've never really tried communism.

09:51

We've never really tried socialism. The only reason it's failed in the past is because it wasn't done right.

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You have to be young, naive, and stupid to believe those types of things, and you have to be ignorant of history, but that's where we are.

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And so I don't think the vast majority of Americans really understand what a show trial is.

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Let me tell you a story that'll tie in here.

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People today, because they don't study history, because they are told what to think about history, no,

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I'm sorry, they're told what to feel about history, not think about history.

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Think would require thought, rationality, standards, objective truth, stuff like that.

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What you have in the public indoctrination system, not educational system, it's an indoctrination system, is how to emote, how to feel emotion about history rather than actually study history and become mature enough in your thinking to be able to learn from people with whom you would have serious disagreements.

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And so when I was young, it was perfectly acceptable to study, for example, the history of World War II.

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And I had relatives that fought in World War II. My parents referred to the

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Jerrys and to Japs. That was, they grew up during the war.

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And so they referred to Jerrys, Germans, and Japs, the Japanese. And they disliked the

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Japanese even more because of Pearl Harbor, because of Pearl Harbor. They remembered it clearly.

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And it was a deceptive, dastardly surprise attack. And there's no question about it.

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But if you study the history of World War II, you discover that there were brilliant minds and dedicated people that fought on all sides that war.

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Oh, there were horrible people. What the Japanese did to Nanking, unforgivable. Global level crimes against humanity.

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What the Nazis did to the Jews and the Gypsies and so many others, unspeakable.

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What the Russians did to their own people in that war, unspeakable. What we did to Dresden, what the

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British and the Americans did to Dresden was a war crime. There was no reason for it.

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So there's plenty of guilt to go around. But there were people on all sides that were honorable individuals.

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And everybody knew it back then. Everybody knew it back then. They acknowledged it back then.

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It's not like today where, again, you don't think about things.

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You just emote about things. And emotion doesn't allow for that kind of intellectual contemplation of events and personalities and things like that.

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And so there was a man who fought for the

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German army. He was not a Nazi. He detested the Nazis. But he fought for Germany.

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He fought for Germany in World War I and World War II. Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, the

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Desert Fox. There was nobody that George S.

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Patton respected more on the other side than Rommel. He had read

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Rommel's books. And the respect went both directions.

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The German high command and Rommel deeply respected

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George S. Patton as a field commander as well. So much so that they used that to help make the

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Normandy invasion work. I'm not gonna go into all the details. But it's fascinating. If you don't read this kind of stuff, man, you're missing out on great stuff.

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But anyway, Rommel, if Hitler had listened to Rommel multiple times, wow,

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Germany would have won. Because Germany was that close to, I mean, they already had the V2. They were working on nuclear weapons the whole nine yards.

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It was, yeah, it was wild. And so what people don't know is how

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Rommel died. Rommel was implicated in the assassination plot on Hitler.

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He probably wasn't involved with it. But back then, it didn't matter. If you're just implicated in it, that was all that was needed.

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And so he was given a choice. Either he and his family would be brought up on charges, and it would be a show trial.

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So it would be public. It would be obviously completely and grossly unfair.

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You would not be allowed to face your accusers.

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You would not be allowed really to have defensive counsel. Show trials are meant to make a political point for the regime in control.

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And so Rommel knew exactly what that meant. It meant he and his family would be executed, and they would be executed in horrific ways, and they would be publicly mocked and shamed and everything else.

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Or he could commit suicide. He could take cyanide. And they would say that he had succumbed to injuries that he had received.

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He had been injured when his car had been strafed by an American fighter plane.

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But he was recovering. And so he was not still injured.

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But the story they would tell is that he succumbed to his injuries. And he would be given a state funeral, and his family would be, they wouldn't be touched.

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Rommel was undoubtedly the greatest tactician on the field of the

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Second World War. And he was respected by both Americans and British. In North Africa, the

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British recognized his brilliance, and they also recognized that he commanded that prisoners be respected.

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There was, it hadn't gotten to that point yet in the war that it would eventually, where it becomes just extremely brutal.

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And they respected Rommel. And so Rommel chooses to take the cyanide and save his family.

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And that's what he did. And he was given a hero's burial.

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By the way, he had told the German command that the

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Allies would not be coming across Calais, they would be landing at Normandy. And he had done everything that he was allowed to do because Hitler had said, no, they're coming over here.

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And so he wasn't given what he needed, but he did fortify Normandy as best he could with the dribs and drabs he was allowed to have, because he knew where they were coming.

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But they wouldn't listen to him. And of course, that's where we landed was Normandy. And the resistance that we met was because Rommel had fortified those areas.

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But not enough. And even once we landed, they still thought it was a feint. They thought it was a fake.

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And partly because of how they used Patton and a whole fake army. It's a great story.

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It really, really is. You ought to read it sometime. Anyway, that was the idea of a show trial.

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And it was so horrific that Rommel chose personal sacrifice to save his family, then going through it for himself.

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Because a show trial is a mockery of justice. It pretends to be doing justice, but it's actually a mockery of justice.

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There's a reason why Lady Justice has a blindfold on and is holding a pair of scales.

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Show trials, Lady Justice has the blindfold off and the finger on the scales.

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And it is a mockery of the very idea of justice. We have been enduring our own show trial here in the

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United States with this January 6th committee. It's a show trial. They get to choose what evidence will be seen and what will not be seen.

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They made sure that there would be no representation on the committee that would in any way object.

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And require it to actually be an investigation. This is a situation in the

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United States where we literally have, we are literally watching our own country become a banana republic.

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Most people don't even know what a banana republic is anymore, sadly. But one of these tin horn dictator, we're gonna do whatever we want to do.

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We will make a mockery of justice. Situations. And it's happening in our own land.

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We don't have a Department of Justice anymore. We have a Department of Injustice. And this is what we're seeing.

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And so here, it's one thing to see the regime doing it. But here you have a sports team.

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That's the big change that's taking place is the corporate world is now joining together and doing what politicians could never do.

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Would never be allowed to do. Only, really,

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I think only 10, 15 years ago, there would have been such a backlash for something like fining someone $100 ,000 for expressing what is self -evidently, what is self -evidently a rational and fair opinion at the very least, let alone an obviously true opinion.

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I mean, there are people who have spent months in solitary confinement, while people who were throwing

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Molotov cocktails and trying to burn down federal buildings and doing billions of dollars worth of damage aren't even charged with a misdemeanor.

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And simply let go. You can't look at that and go, there's something up here.

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This is injustice with a capital I. This is absurdly unfair and unjust.

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But now we have a totalitarian system firmly in place.

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And we all know it. There are many people sitting in this audience who cannot express what you really believe and what you really feel in any context any longer, because you recognize you could lose your job.

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You can't say it in social media because you know you're being monitored in social media. You can't say it out in public, lest someone record you.

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There's, everybody's got one of these and boy, those are high resolution cameras these days, huh? Pretty good sound too.

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So we all feel this, we all recognize this. And we may not have gotten hit with a $100 ,000 fine, but we all recognize that what

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Jack Del Rio is facing is what we all face on various levels now.

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And it's like we've gone over a tipping point where up until a certain point, it was a large enough majority that still recognized what fairness is, what truth is, what some type of justice would be.

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But now we've gone over that point and now they'll get away with this.

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Only a few years ago, he would have quit immediately and filed suit. That's still what he should do.

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I mean, how can you continue to work for a company that is taking its cues from the

24:26

Chinese communists? Then again, that's pretty much all of major league sports now, isn't it?

24:32

Yeah, I guess so. They're all afraid to say or do anything that would offend, for example,

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China because of monetary reasons. It's obvious, it's plain, everybody knows it.

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There's no arguing about that. But we are being trained to experience guilt when we engage in wrong think.

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Wrong think, yeah, you've got to read 1984. If you haven't by now, it's just a little bit too late. It's going to be so old news.

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By the time you get around to it, you'll be thinking you were reading a historical novel and not something that was predicting something to come.

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1984, Brave New World, This Perfect Day, got to read them. Put all three of them together and you go, hey, that's where we are now.

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Yep, exactly. But you are to feel guilt at wrong think and not thinking the way you're supposed to think.

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And every day in multiple ways, they are seeking and succeeding in training the secular -minded

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American to submit to tyranny, to a techno -totalitarian tyranny.

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And when we talk about totalitarianism, you must understand a totalitarian cannot possibly exist with the recognition that there's somebody out there that thinks they're wrong.

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That somebody must be dealt with. And if they will not repent of their wrong think, then they need to be silenced and executed.

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A report came, what, about two weeks ago? Actually, less than that.

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I was in the RV, so it was last week. From a watchdog group saying that they now have even more documentation and evidence of the fact that the

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Chinese Communist government is, again, they do show trials all the time.

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There is no justice in China. There is no meaningful legal system.

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There is no judge that can go against the Communist Party. If you're charged, you're guilty, it's done.

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And they get to determine what the punishment is. There's no established legal system that says, it's this, it's this, they can just do whatever they want.

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And so what they're doing is if you're condemned to death, why waste a bullet?

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They take you into a medical facility and they knock you out and they take your organs.

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To be given to faithful party members that need them. And then you are burned and disposed of.

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Literally, they're cannibalizing people. And all they've got to do is bring a charge and you're guilty, that's it, it's done.

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Talk about an efficient way of maintaining control over a population. You will not want even the slightest hint of questioning the government, because all the government has to do is say,

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I think you did this, guilty, let's take your liver, your spleen, your intestines, and your brain and your heart and whatever else.

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We'll give them to somebody else. And you'll never wake up again. And there'll never be a grave, you just disappear.

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We have, the Chinese Communist government right now is as evil, are far more evil than anything

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Hitler ever dreamed of. Hitler only had a few years to do anything. They've had decades.

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Their numbers make Hitler's look like he was an amateur. You go, oh, but he was focused on one particular group of people.

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So hating everybody is better than hating particular groups of people?

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How does that have a moral element to it? We are living in a day where there should be absolutely universal condemnation of what's going on in China and North Korea.

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But there isn't, because of money. The same reason that while the

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Europeans have been moving away from using mRNA vaccines with younger and younger populations because they recognize the overwhelming evidence that they are not only ineffective, and now with Omicron, completely ineffective, but that they are extremely dangerous.

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That the adverse side effects, especially in regards to cardiac issues, is now so well -documented that it simply cannot be questioned by any rational person, as long as the rational person has access to the information, and of course, that's the problem, isn't it?

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We don't have access to the information. Literally trillions of dollars have flown into the pharmaceutical industry, the medical pharmaceutical industry over the past couple of years.

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You can buy a lot of death, a lot of death with trillions of dollars. You really, really can.

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I mean, Charles Barkley was talking about the

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PGA and this new Saudi thing. I don't know much about it, but he was saying, hey, for $100 million,

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I'd kill a relative. He was literally saying it. I mean, I don't know what's happened to Charles, but I lost a lot of respect for this guy.

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He was defending the Saudi stuff. And he says, and for $200,

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I might kill one of my relatives I like. He was just being truthful. And the fact of the matter is, most hit men get a whole lot less than that.

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So it should not shock us in any way, shape, or form that here in the United States, the

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FDA just approved shots for kids as young as six months. No one has any long -term data on the effect of these things on children.

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None. None. Not enough time's gone by. It's not possible.

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And given the massive amount of negative, far more than any other vaccine that's ever appeared on the planet, has more negative evidence as to its dangerous impacts on human health.

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But there's gonna be parents running off with their little bundle of joy in their arms to make sure they get genetically altered.

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I sit here and go, judgment.

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Big time. Right in front of us. And sometimes I just go, all we can do is tell our great -great -grandchildren this is why we fell.

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This is why we fell. We loved money. We loved rebellion.

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We didn't love God. We didn't give thanks. And we will exist for eternity as a monument to what happens to a people who are given great light and who sin against that light.

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We need to preach into them and into our ancestors down the road.

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Here's how to avoid what we did. Here's how to avoid what we did. That's what we need to be doing.

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So totalitarians are what they are because they have, well, modern totalitarians are what they are and have arisen so quickly because of secularism.

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Old -style totalitarians had to live in a world where there was still something called objective truth, objective morality.

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When the Allies liberated Buchenwald and Auschwitz, I think it was at Buchenwald as I recall,

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I think it was Patton, yeah, Patton forced the inhabitants of the nearby towns to tour what had happened right under their noses.

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Why? Because there was still the idea of right and wrong, objective morality.

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Secularism, once it reaches, once you get to that generation where even your grandma and grandpa have abandoned any, there's no fear of God before their eyes.

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That's what secularism, secularism by definition, there is no fear of God before their eyes because there is no God, there is no judgment.

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We are not creatures of God. Once you're dead, you're dead. There's no judgment after that. There's no fear of God before their eyes.

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Therefore, once you get to that point, secular totalitarianism would have no problem wiping out half the human population without feeling guilty about it.

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Or maybe burning down all the food processing plants so that people starve to death.

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I mean, that's an evil thing to do, but it's just so outmoded to think there's such a thing as evil.

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A good thing to do, get rid of the surplus population and help save mother earth because mankind is a disease, right?

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Yeah, yeah. Somehow a recording of all this stuff is gonna make it through to the future.

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And someday there's gonna be, someday down there going, yep, there were people did see what was coming and tried to warn, tried to say, hey, here's some guidance as to where you're going.

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Anyway, Jack Doriel, just quit, get out. Find it, go buy a ranch, get an honest job.

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There is just absolutely positively no reason to get into any of that whatsoever. I have not had the opportunity yet.

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In fact, I have not even gotten the email with the link yet to Sam Waldron's appearance on Iron Sharpens Iron.

36:47

I really want to get a chance to listen to that and we'll make some commentary on that. Maybe that's something

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I'll record later on in the week. Again, depending on what our schedule is gonna be like at that particular point in time.

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I did want to just very, very quickly before I talk a little bit about the great tradition, a video, a couple of people, even people overseas have sent me a video.

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I don't know how this video got around because this guy evidently does hip pieces on everybody,

37:19

Justin Peters and everybody else. But some guy who's probably not a member of a church or if he is, it's a home church with one family in it, his own, and half of them wish they could be excommunicated.

37:33

But some guy put out a video. I didn't even watch all of it. I watched enough of it to go, oh, okay. And basically what it was is he was trying to use me to attack the

37:44

LSB, Legacy Standard Bible. And he took what I said in the interview with Steven Anderson, saying, we don't need any more new

37:55

English translations. Every publishing house gets their own and blah, blah, blah, blah.

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And so then says that I was condemning the LSB and stuff like that, which of course I wasn't.

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And then someone said the insinuation was made, well, yeah, he's supporting the LSB because MacArthur and you don't want to go against MacArthur and all that stuff, which is why

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I'm a post -millennialist, right? You may not know what even that means. Anyway, let me just clarify for anyone who might be confused by the silliness of the rhetoric.

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The LSB is not a new Bible. It's not a new Bible. It's a 1995 NASB with some,

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I think, really, really, really good improvements. And I mean that in the sense that, as I've said,

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I have commended the LSB, I'm using the

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LSB. I preached last night and you might want to go to Apologia Studios and catch last night's sermon.

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It was really meant just for our people, but we had visitors who said, man,

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I'm taking that message back to my people. So, but it's out of Colossians 2.

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It was out of, it was a pastoral exhortation to all of us to recognize that once we've been in a church for a while, it's real easy to start getting negative in our thinking.

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And basically the way to solve that is to really focus upon being thankful for all the blessings you receive in your fellowship.

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The vast majority of people that I've ever met who've left the church, they did so because they became discontent.

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And if you're expressing thanksgiving, you won't become discontent. So that's available to Apologia Studios, the

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Apologia Studios YouTube channel. But I did not use an English translation.

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I used the Nestle Island 28th edition and I simply translated the text live as I was going through it.

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I prefer doing it that way. And I used my Jeffrey Rice rebind, so it's pretty.

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But Jeffrey Rice has an LSB that I've purchased and he's searching for the proper,

40:30

I want a bright, soft orange cover. And so he's looking for the best goatskin for it.

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So I'll have an English translation, it'll be an LSB. And I've said over and over again, look, it's the 1995

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NASB. For years, and you can go back, go to Sermon Audio.

40:54

I have thousands of things on Sermon Audio and I have hundreds of sermons on Sermon Audio going back years.

41:03

And when I'm doing Old Testament stuff, what you'll hear me doing is when I see L -O -R -D in all caps, what do

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I do? I read it as Yahweh. Well, what does the LSB do? It renders them all as Yahweh.

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So I don't even have to be taking that extra step while I'm reading. They're doing exactly what

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I've done for decades in the Old Testament. I think that's great.

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But they've also, and they never contacted me, but it's funny that every single text that I felt could be better rendered in regards to the deity of Christ in NASB, they've rendered it the way

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I would render it. John 1, 18, Romans 9, 5. So it's like, well, here's an

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English translation of the NASB that has now made all the improvements that I as a theologian and scholar have always read into the text as I was using it.

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So why wouldn't I use it? So to attempt to connect what

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I said and saying, yeah, we don't need to be taking some, starting from scratch and doing yet another one.

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We've got enough. This was sort of the final improvement of one that's been around since the 60s.

42:31

When did it first come out? Forget. But anyway, it's been around for a long time.

42:37

So another silly YouTube video that can be dismissed and should be dismissed. Okay. What is the great tradition?

42:47

I want to talk to all of my great tradition Baptist friends.

42:54

We used to just be Reformed Baptists, but now we have Reformed Biblicists like myself and we have the great tradition

43:06

Baptists who are literally getting to the point of in doing the concept of a great tradition with such authority and assuming it is so much a part of God's intended plan that you're actually getting to the point of thinking that there was sort of a development process in the very doctrine of God, the doctrine of the

43:45

Trinity that doesn't, that finally reaches its apex with Thomas Aquinas and that that becomes the touchstone of orthodoxy.

43:58

And I don't know how people survived before then, before you had Aquinas because Aquinas was dependent upon the

44:07

Muslims to get Aristotle back into the mix, providing his writings.

44:15

I don't know how anybody made it before then, but I firmly believe that what we must believe about God can only be defined by what is found in the pages of Scripture.

44:36

So when I say, yeah, I can't have fellowship with someone who denies the deity of Christ, that's because the deity of Christ is in the

44:44

Scripture. He's called God. He's identified as Yahweh.

44:51

You reject that, you're rejecting direct biblical revelation. I can't have fellowship with someone who believes there's multiple gods.

45:01

Joseph Smith separated Mormonism from the Christian faith when he said, we have imagined, supposed

45:08

God's God from all eternity. I'll refute that idea and take away the veils that you may see. By refuting that idea, he separated he and his followers from biblical

45:18

Christianity. That was true the day that Joseph Smith said it.

45:24

And it was true the day the last apostle died.

45:30

That did not need to wait for Thomas Aquinas. And so I want to ask my friends who have been infected by the great tradition.

45:46

I think that's a fair, from my perspective, the things that I'm hearing, it's a fair statement.

45:51

Infected. I'm going to do a little math here.

45:58

Okay, so it was 462 years. I'm going to put that in memory over there.

46:06

And let's say that's about right. I forgot to look up the exact date, but yeah, look at that.

46:14

I thought, wow, smack dab in the middle. That's really cool. I want to ask how you define this vitally important concept that you have now ushered into a place of definitional religious authority.

46:38

Because I'll be perfectly honest with you, I don't think most of you have a clue what you're talking about. And I mean you scholars, you big boys with the big

46:47

PhDs. I don't think you have a clue. I don't think you have a clue what you're talking about. I don't. What's the great tradition?

46:55

See, I know that Rome has struggled for a long time to answer specific questions about the content of tradition.

47:11

I still have in my mind the place in Baldwin, New York, where I had the debate with Jerry Matitix back in the mid 90s.

47:26

And I would quote from early church fathers, and they were saying things that were contradictory to Rome's positions.

47:36

And Jerry's response was, well, but they don't represent apostolic tradition.

47:42

Well, what does that represent, apostolic tradition? What we say represents apostolic tradition. And we've pointed out that if from Rome's perspective, you have this overarching sacred tradition, and you have written tradition and oral tradition, this is the scriptures, and this is what's passed down by the apostles.

48:00

They can't tell you what's in here. Only once Rome dogmatically defines something do you know what's in here.

48:10

And even then you're not 100 % certain. And so tradition is a wonderfully nebulous term.

48:20

It's greatly malleable, and you can make it mean just so many things.

48:26

It's just, you know, it's like Gorilla Tape. It just, it can hold anything together, but it's not overly specific in and of itself.

48:35

Every roll of Gorilla Tape ever seen looks like every other roll of Gorilla Tape. Doesn't really communicate a lot.

48:43

So what is it? What is the, now that you're into traditionalism, what is the great tradition?

48:49

Who gets to define it? Who gets to define it? Because I'm hearing some of you guys talking about the great tradition, and you're really into Thomas Aquinas, and therefore into Aristotelian metaphysics.

49:05

And you're big into the necessity of having these metaphysical pre -commitments and things like that.

49:11

But then there are others of you that are talking about becoming Christian Platonists. And Plato and Aristotle weren't exactly on the same page.

49:22

Platonism and Aristotelianism, no, there's fundamental differences.

49:29

And so which is being communicated by the great tradition, and in what way, and on what subjects?

49:36

Because Aristotelian categories of accidents and presence, for example, absolutely foundational to the

49:44

Roman Catholic doctrine of the mass. You could not have the rise of the

49:51

Roman Catholic concept of the mass as a perpetuatory sacrifice involving transubstantiation if you did not have

49:58

Aristotelian categories, which I've argued from the beginning means it could not possibly be apostolic.

50:03

And it cannot be possibly what the early church meant by real presence, because they didn't have those categories.

50:10

So is the early church a part of the great tradition or not a part of the great tradition? Or is the great tradition just about the doctrine of God, but nothing else?

50:17

But who throughout the history of the church made those divisions for you? Would Thomas Aquinas himself have allowed for the distinctions that you make?

50:28

And if you make distinctions Aquinas would not have made about his own theology, who in the world do you think you are?

50:35

Where did you get the hubris to decide that, well, we can define this great tradition, but it only has to do with the doctrine of God that's directly relevant to the definitions we've made in our

50:50

Protestant confessions. Has nothing to do with soteriology, has nothing to do with ecclesiology, has nothing to do with sacramentology, all that stuff.

50:59

Soteriology, just put it all aside because we recognize we don't hold the great tradition in those things.

51:08

So you're redefining the great tradition to where it's totally and completely theology proper and nothing else.

51:16

Who in that time period does the same thing? Thomas doesn't, don't even go there.

51:24

Now, again, I suppose I should mention, and I've mentioned this before, but our new reformed

51:32

Thomists, they like to pick and choose which realm of scholarship in regards to Thomas Aquinas, they are going to imbue with authority and therefore turn their noses up at anyone who would disagree.

51:52

So you have the old interpretation of Thomas Aquinas that has a long, long, long history to it, that certainly

51:58

Roman Catholicism bought into and utilized. And then you've got the new

52:05

Thomists that have a new way of looking at his perspectives.

52:10

And it's those new Thomists that are real popular with the reformed Thomists. And it's just assumed if you don't agree with them, well, you don't agree with this writer or that writer, therefore you know nothing about Thomas.

52:24

I'm sorry, most of you haven't. I was thinking about doing this.

52:31

Most of you don't have a clue what you're talking about. The man produced a huge amount of literature that has provided Dominicans and many others centuries of material to argue about and to disagree about.

52:55

And so the idea that there is a singular interpretation of Thomas that is the interpretation, when most of you don't even read

53:04

Latin, not with any particular capacity or ability, you don't, you know it.

53:11

You're going on secondary and tertiary sources, but you get so encouraged by all the people around you.

53:20

Hey, let's all put up our Thomas signs. Let's go, this is great. How do you even know where Thomas stands?

53:33

Why would you believe that Thomas would accept your rejection of his sacerdotalism?

53:43

Or why do you think he would accept the idea that his theology proper can be the necessary definition of theological orthodoxy, but his sacerdotalism is separated from that?

54:02

Because he didn't separate them. You read his own history and he is deeply committed to the mass as a perpetuatory sacrifice.

54:20

And he experiences tremendous spiritual input from a denial of the once for all finished sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

54:35

So do you think he separates that in his mind from his theology proper?

54:45

Um, that's absurd. That's just simply absurd.

54:53

So what about people before him? Here's what I want to do, and I noticed the clock and I'm sorry, I'll, um, 462 years.

55:11

So let's just go 450 just for a nice round number. 450 years after the

55:19

Council of Nicaea and 450 years before the end of Thomas Aquinas' life.

55:25

There's a few years off there, but you get the idea. It's about four and a half centuries, both directions. So in other words, it's smack dab in the middle of what we have to call the great tradition, right?

55:37

Because we're reading all about how you need to have a pro -Nicene culture and exegesis and you've got to, we've got to get back to pre -modern exegesis and it's a great tradition.

55:55

And you guys are just so excited about it. You don't know which ends up. You all really want to make t -shirts.

56:02

I know you do. You haven't done it yet, but you're going to, well, you probably do, but they're hidden away. What's right in the middle of the great tradition?

56:15

Second Council of Nicaea, 787. It is a ecumenical council.

56:26

It's the last ecumenical council. And I've heard a bunch of, oh, yep. Seven ecumenical councils.

56:32

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You bet. Not a one of you, if you're a Baptist, actually believes that.

56:41

But anyway, it's always just makes me laugh when I hear you saying things like that. But here's the

56:48

Acts of the Second Council of Nicaea, 787. I would estimate that a tiny percentage of Christians in total, and certainly a tiny percentage of the

57:01

Reformed Thomists or the great traditionists have a clue what the background was, politics.

57:11

Oh, there were lots of politics. The degradation of Rome, the exaltation of Constantinople, and yet the continued ecclesiastical claims of Rome and lots of politics going on.

57:34

We're only, what, three, yeah, less than 300 years from the final schism.

57:41

There are differences between the Greek and Latin versions of many of the

57:47

Acts of the Council because, well, let me, in fact, let me see if I have that one marked real quick.

57:58

Yeah, there it was. Yellow, I can still read. Let me see if I can find it because it's funny.

58:07

Yeah, there it is. Let me just read this section to you.

58:18

Now, as I read stuff, here's my question for you great traditionists. Is this the great tradition? Is this the exegesis that we are supposed to be now embracing?

58:27

It's smack dab in the middle. It's an ecumenical council. Thomas would have embraced everything in here.

58:35

Everything. Your great man would have said, oh yeah, here's apostolic tradition right here.

58:47

Okay, all right. Quotes, page 157. If moreover, following the traditions of the

58:53

Orthodox faith, you embrace the judgment of the church of the blessed Peter, prince of the apostles, and as the holy emperors, your predecessors did of old, so you too venerate it with honor and love his vicar from the depths of your hearts.

59:08

Or rather, if your rule granted by God follows their Orthodox faith in accordance with our Holy Roman church, the prince of the apostles to whom was given by the

59:16

Lord God, the power to bind and to lose sins in heaven and on earth will repeatedly be your protector and strew all the barbarian nations under your feet, parading you everywhere as victors.

59:30

We can, you don't believe in the papacy, right? So you're not gonna believe in the exegesis that gave the papacy and yet it's right there, right?

59:40

Now, this second paragraph. For sacred authority reveals the marks of his, Peter's dignity, and our veneration should be paid to his supreme see by all the faithful throughout the world for the

59:50

Lord appointed him as key bearer of the kingdom of heaven to be prince over all and honors him with the privilege by which the keys to the kingdom of heaven were entrusted to him.

59:57

And so elevated by this supreme honor, he was worthy to profess the faith in which the church of Christ is founded.

01:00:04

This blessed profession was followed by the blessing of reward. It was by his preaching that the holy and universal church was made illustrious and it was from it that the other churches of God received the proofs of the faith.

01:00:16

That's a claim to Roman supremacy. The fascinating thing is that entire paragraph is missing from the

01:00:22

Greek version. It's only in the Latin version. Now, does that mean it was added by the

01:00:28

Latins or deleted by the Greeks? Well, depends on whether you've got a

01:00:34

Roman Catholic interpreting it or an Eastern Orthodox interpreting it because they're gonna disagree about that.

01:00:41

But the point is, even the documents that you would look at require interpretation and are looked at differently depending on who you are and what your predilections are.

01:00:55

That's interesting. So, here's a segment. Did I, I thought

01:01:04

I had one marked before that, but oh goodness, it's already 4 .01. I'm sorry. Are we good,

01:01:10

Rich? I can see signal here. Probably not too much more, but ecclesiastical legislation was canonically transmitted from of old and from the first, this is from the first session.

01:01:27

This may have been the Pope of Rome's letter. I'm not sure, but anyway, and their successors,

01:01:34

I'm not seeing any response from Rich. I think I may have put him to sleep, and then the little three dots and a thumbs up, okay.

01:01:45

And also by the holy and ecumenical six councils and the local councils convened according to orthodoxy to the effect that those who come over from any heresy whatsoever to the

01:01:54

Orthodox confession tradition of the Catholic church are to renounce their heresy and profess the Orthodox faith in writing.

01:02:00

Therefore, I too, okay, this tells you who it is, Basil, Bishop of the city of Ancyra have chosen to be united to the

01:02:06

Catholic church to Hadrian, the most holy Pope of elder Rome, elder Rome, Teresios, the most blessed patriarch and the most holy apostolic sees,

01:02:14

I mean those of Alexandria, Antioch and the holy city of Jerusalem, and indeed to all the Orthodox high priests and priests.

01:02:20

I make this my present written profession and bring to you who have received power by apostolic authority.

01:02:26

At the same time, ask forgiveness for my tardiness from your blessedness assembled by God. I should not have been slow to profess orthodoxy, but this is a result of my extreme ignorance and my sluggish and negligent mind.

01:02:37

This reason I ask your blessedness all the more to entreat that forgiveness be granted me as well.

01:02:43

I profess, here's the way he professes, I profess and believe in one God, the father almighty, a consubstantial and jointly enthroned trinity, venerated and glorified in one

01:02:51

Godhead, power and authority. Well, that's theology, right? This is the great tradition in essence, right?

01:02:59

Because we're talking about theology, theology proper. I also profess in its entirety the dispensation of one of the holy trinity, our

01:03:06

Lord, one of the holy trinity, our Lord and God, Jesus Christ, as the holy and ecumenical six councils have handed down.

01:03:14

And I reject and anathematize every heretical prating as they anathematized it. While I entreat the intercession of our immaculate lady, the holy

01:03:23

Theotokos, of the holy and heavenly powers and of all the saints, and I accept and embrace with all honor, their holy honored relics and pray them the veneration of honor, having faith and receiving sanctification from them.

01:03:40

Likewise, I also kiss and embrace and venerate with honor the sacred images, both the dispensation of our Lord Jesus Christ, how he became man for our salvation and of our immaculate lady, the holy

01:03:49

Theotokos and of the holy apostles, prophets, martyrs and all the saints. Is this the great tradition?

01:03:59

Theology proper, worship, ecumenical council. If that's not the great tradition, there ain't no such thing.

01:04:06

And every one of you reject it, or you're not a Baptist, right?

01:04:15

I'm sorry, I'm just going to the original sources. I'm not reading Muller, forgive me, for I have sinned.

01:04:28

Getting a little frustrated with, well, you just have to read this source, that source. How about going to the original sources, hmm?

01:04:34

Oh, I confess, this is an English translation, forgive me for that. Tracking down the originals on these is a little bit tough.

01:04:41

Let me see here, where did I mark those? It's hard to find some of the yellow, there we go.

01:04:48

Okay, all right, I already read that one. Ah, here. Part of it's hard because you can't see stuff close up.

01:04:58

Here, Terracios, the most holy patriarch said, this is in the second session, page 144. You ought years ago to have opened your ears to hear

01:05:06

Paul the divine apostle say, hold to the traditions that you received either by our word or by our letter.

01:05:14

And again, he wrote to Timothy and Titus, reject profane and foolish babbling. And what is more profane or more foolish than saying that Christians have committed idolatry?

01:05:24

You know what he's talking about? This is in defense of the veneration of images.

01:05:29

That's what all of second Nicaea is about. This is the end of the iconoclastic controversy at the end of the eighth century.

01:05:38

How many of you already knew that? But did you notice the text that's cited?

01:05:45

Hold to the traditions that you received either by our word or by our letter. Ah, where have we heard that before?

01:05:54

Oh, that's second Thessalonians 2 .15. Huh, well, let my old mind go back here.

01:06:03

I think it was within the past six months that I read from Thomas Aquinas, the

01:06:14

Summa Theologica and he quoted from second Thessalonians 2 .15.

01:06:22

And he specifically said there was an unwritten tradition and in fact defended a particular relic of his day on the basis of that unwritten tradition.

01:06:33

So, huh, we have in the middle an ecumenical council exegeting, is this exegesis?

01:06:46

Is that exegesis? Was there any exegesis there? Was there any context, language? No, but it's a great tradition exegesis.

01:06:56

An ecumenical council right in the middle and then right at the end,

01:07:03

Thomas gives us the exact same thing. How can that not be great tradition exegesis? And yet every one of you rejects it unless you're ready to submit to the

01:07:13

Bishop of Rome, anyways, which some of you might well be willing to do. How can you get around this?

01:07:22

Why haven't you thought about this? We already read those.

01:07:31

Ah, one more. It is, for throughout the world, wherever Christianity exists, these sacred images remain.

01:07:49

By the way, if you're gonna be a great tradition Baptist, you gotta throw out the Puritans because they weren't really into this image stuff.

01:07:58

Don't put Thomas on the same shelf with them because at night you're gonna go in there and there's just, it's gonna be.

01:08:03

It's gonna be war, it really is. For throughout the world, wherever Christianity exists, these sacred images remain and are honored by all the faithful.

01:08:12

So that our minds and spiritual desire may through a visible face be lifted up to the invisible majesty of the

01:08:18

Godhead through beholding the represented image according to the flesh, the son of God deigned to assume for our salvation.

01:08:25

It is he whom we worship as our redeemer in heaven and praise and glorify in the spirit because as scripture says,

01:08:33

God is spirit. And for this reason, we worship this Godhead spiritually.

01:08:39

God forbid that we should deify the images as some babble, but in every way we offer the affection and devotion that we have in love of God and of his saints.

01:08:50

We have the images just as we have the books of divine scripture to prompt veneration while we preserve the purity of our faith.

01:09:06

If that does not offend you, you've got a problem. So the images are just like the scripture, prompting us to venerate in the purity of faith.

01:09:22

That's a great tradition. It's right there. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

01:09:28

Isn't that theology proper? Isn't that what you're talking about? How is that not the great tradition?

01:09:36

Because some of you say, well, that's not the great tradition. Who are you? As my mom used to say, who died and left you in office?

01:09:47

Who are you in 2022? Look back there and say, oh.

01:09:56

And you see, there is a clear answer to all of this. It's clear answer.

01:10:01

I thought we all understood. I've been teaching from the beginning of my teaching, which ain't that long ago, obviously.

01:10:11

I taught in the first class I ever taught was church history, Grand Canyon University, 1990.

01:10:20

And when we covered early church history, I said then the same thing that I'm saying now. When you look back at church history, you want to accurately understand what people believed, why they believed it.

01:10:35

You can benefit from when they are consistent with scripture. And when they are not, you can benefit by finding out why they are not.

01:10:47

But the touchstone is always and must be scripture.

01:10:54

Not scripture as interpreted by some nebulous great tradition.

01:11:00

Not scripture as after Nicaea. What makes

01:11:06

Nicaea is true is Nicaea's consistency with scripture that came before it. I thought we all got that, but some of you didn't get the memo.

01:11:21

And now some of us are trying to help you by warning you that we know what's around the next corner.

01:11:28

You may not see it, but to tell you what's around the corner.

01:11:37

Look at what happened after the second Nicaea. Look at their argumentation.

01:11:45

It's not exegesis, it's eisegesis. It is the kind of abuse of scripture that you expect from cults.

01:11:59

It's that bad. It's that bad. I had one other thing.

01:12:06

Sorry, I had one other thing marked here. I don't want to leave it out. All of the councils had canons that they promulgated, rules to the church.

01:12:21

Nicaea did. Rome tries to ignore the sixth canon, but it was there. Here is the first canon.

01:12:32

That it is necessary for the divine canons to be observed in all respects. For those who have attained the priestly dignity, the testimonies and right ordering have their models in the canonical injunctions.

01:12:45

If we receive them gladly, we join David, God's herald, in singing to the Lord God with the words, in the path of your testimonies have

01:12:53

I delighted as in all riches. And you have appointed your testimonies as righteousness forever.

01:12:59

Give me understanding and make me live. Since it is forever that the prophetic precept bids us observe the testimonies of God and live in them, it is clear that they remain unshaken and unmoved.

01:13:09

For Moses, who saw God, speaks as follows. It is not permitted to add to them nor take away from them.

01:13:14

And the divine apostle glorifying in them proclaims, they are things into which the angels long to look.

01:13:19

And if an angel preaches to you a gospel different than the one you received, let him be anathema. So you have citations from Psalm 118.

01:13:29

You have 1 Peter 1. You have Galatians 1 and Psalm 118 again.

01:13:36

Every single use completely out of context and applied to something that every one of us, if we're a

01:13:45

Baptist, would agree was wrong. All the canons.

01:13:54

Notice, for those who have attained the priestly dignity, you do realize that the

01:14:02

London Baptist confession of faith has no priesthood in it, right? And yet that sacerdotalism is of the essence of the great tradition.

01:14:18

And there you have great tradition exegesis. Take every scripture that was cited in that canon, and it's no better than when the

01:14:29

Jehovah's Witnesses use it or the Mormons. So what are you gonna do?

01:14:36

You have to be a reformed biblicist. Yep, that's what you gotta do. There's no way around it.

01:14:42

There's no way around it. You have to stand up and you have to look at that stuff and you have to say it's wrong because the scripture says this.

01:14:54

Either that or just submit. Just admit you've been wrong all along and submit.

01:15:00

Those are your choices. Don't halt between two opinions.

01:15:07

Those are your choices. I woke a few people up.

01:15:14

As well it should. As well it should. There was a

01:15:21

Tom Hicks tweet there I was gonna think about. We've gone 15 minutes over here and I'll leave it for another time we've made our point.

01:15:30

Thanks for watching the program. Again, don't know what the schedule the rest of the week is going to be, but we will seek to stay in touch and we will try to use the app to keep in touch with you when we do have something coming up.