No EFS, Predicate Adjectives and Scripture, the God Who Works All Things

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:32

Greetings and welcome to the Dividing Line. We're back in the big studio here. Last week before we hit the road,

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I was going to ask Rich and I forgot. What are you doing Friday? What are you doing

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Friday? That's a long way away. Well, no, not really. It's not.

00:54

I pick up the unit tomorrow and getting it cleaned on Thursday. So I was thinking maybe the best day for the next program would be on Friday in the morning.

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Like before noon, like early, like we used to do it, but maybe even earlier than that.

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So we'll see how that all works out. Oh, there you go. He says he can always do it from home.

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So that's fine. He doesn't need to see me off. I'm only going to be gone for a month. You know, it's no big deal.

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You know, anyway. So starting next week, back to whenever I can get

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Internet and get stuff like that. That's that's how it works. And that's how we love it.

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So that's what we'll be doing. So today on the program. I want to start off with something you're going to sit there and go, really?

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Well, wait a minute. OK, back up, back up the truck. Well, could I just say one thing before we get started?

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I commented on Twitter this morning.

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You know, it's one thing for people to disagree with what you teach.

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That happens. It happens more today because we have this instant communication capacity.

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It didn't happen so fast in the past. But, you know, actually, one of the criticisms that is being leveled against me and this ministry is that we're too consistent with where we've been in the past.

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And we seem to keep emphasizing the same things. I'm thinking about a conversation that Rich and I had in a dark, small, sort of cluttered radio station foyer in Salt Lake City, what, 20 years ago, somewhere early 2000s,

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I would think, maybe late 90s, I suppose. I'm not sure. I don't I don't remember the date. But an

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LDS apologist who I first went toe to toe with at KFYI Radio, downtown

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Phoenix, a man by the name of Van Hale, not Van Halen, I'm sure he's heard that one way too many times,

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Van Hale. And I had just done one of the many, many call in shows that we did up there in Salt Lake City back in the day, back when the

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Mormons still seemed to care about what they believed. And Rich and I were getting ready to leave and Van Hale came out and I remember what he said.

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He said, you know, we've been doing this for a number of years now, going back and forth.

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And he says, you guys, you just, you keep, you're still focused on the same stuff.

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You primarily focus on the nature of God and the

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Bible and you guys just seem to really stay consistent. We're like, thank you.

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Because for us, that was like, yeah. And, you know, back then, all this stuff had happened with Mormonism and, you know, people were chasing after this thing and that thing and the white salamander letter and all the rest of this stuff.

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And we just keep talking about, well, the Mormon God isn't the God of the Bible. And that's really what the issue is.

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And so, yeah, we tend to stay very, very consistent. And so I'm being criticized for that.

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Now, you know, you need to get out of that rut that you're in and start viewing things the way that we view things in our new movement and things like that.

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So the point being that it's not difficult at all to know where I stand on certain things.

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We've got over 2 ,000 entries on Sermon Audio, heading toward 3 ,000.

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And, you know, I've written books and done debates. And, you know, if someone wants to know, it's not difficult.

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It's not like we hide out and keep things hidden. And so when

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I hear people in academia, out there in the schools, saying things to students about me and about what

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I allegedly believe, I'm sort of like, you know what? If we did keep it close to the vest, if we weren't open about things, then, okay,

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I could see where some misrepresentation could come from. But we don't do that. And so I don't see how anyone could possibly have any excuses at all whatsoever for misrepresenting me and what we say on this program.

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So when students contact me and say, well, you know, Professor So -and -so said to me that you believe this,

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I just sit there and go, you know, I'm sitting there going, okay, I think I've denied that at least three times over the past month on the program.

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And, you know, there's, especially when it comes to the EFS issue, eternal functional subordination, or eternal roles of authority and submission,

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ERAS, E -R -A -S. You know, ERAS, I didn't see anybody using that in 2016, maybe it came up around that time period, but EFS really jumped into our minds in 2016.

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You know, there was that, right around, I think it was May, if I recall correctly, some real conservative

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Presbyterians just launched a nuclear strike at Wayne Grudem.

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And Bruce Ware. And we were off to the races. And I've mentioned,

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I've mentioned on the program, when I got back, I've mentioned more than once since then, you know,

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I did for years, I'm going to try to do it again this year, Lord willing, I don't know if I can do it anymore, but I used to do the triple bypass bike ride, 120 miles, 10 ,500 feet of climbing at high altitude, and I just don't know if I can do it anymore, but I'm going to try.

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And I remember that year, I was in the best shape of my life. That was, 2016 was, that was it.

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That was, been downhill ever since 2016. And, but I was so strong that year that I was riding with some pastor friends at the beginning, the first big climb up Squaw Pass, Juniper Pass, before you head down to Idaho Springs.

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And all the way up, we're having a conversation about EFS and about the doctrine of the Trinity. And when people are passing us, or we're passing people, they just stop and listen to what we're talking about, and they're stunned.

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What are these crazy people doing, talking theology at high altitude while climbing a mountain?

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It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but that's what we were doing. And so I did programs that summer, and I remember talking about it from Bruce and Marty's, not really basement, but lower floor, where I would stay during those wonderful, wonderful years.

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And so we've talked about it, and I've criticized it. I critique the idea that you can read down into humanity what you seemingly pretend that you see up in the relationship of God.

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Or the real danger was seeing things down here amongst mankind and reading them up into God.

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That's the real danger. And I emphasized my standing with Calvin, and it's a minority perspective.

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But I don't care. For all of you who think the majority is right on that, let's debate it.

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That the Son is autotheos, that he is God in and of himself. This is something that Calvin emphasized, and a number of other people emphasized.

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And you can't believe in EFS or ERAS if you believe that the Son is autotheos. It just doesn't make any sense.

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And I was thinking just a few minutes ago, back to that time period.

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And all of a sudden, it popped into my mind. Talking about the Son as autotheos and writing it on the board, and it all of a sudden struck me, where I was talking about it doesn't exist anymore, and the board doesn't exist anymore.

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Because it was in the second floor of a school building in Irpin, which is a suburb of Kiev.

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And it was destroyed by Russian artillery in 2020, 2021, whatever the—within about two months,

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I'd say, of the beginning of the event. Sorry. Anyway. And that was the class where one of the nuclear power plants had had to be taken offline.

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And so I have this picture of us doing a class on the

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Trinity by candlelight and the light coming from our laptops running on batteries.

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I'll never forget that. But I was talking about the Son as autotheos. So if my students in Ukraine could know where I stand on this issue, there is no excuse for any professor at Bible colleges and seminaries that will not be named right now to be going on secondary information that is erroneous and wrong, and just obviously so.

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So hopefully I've made it very, very clear now. If you encounter someone who says, well,

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James White's a proponent of EFS, you're talking to someone who's done no original research of their own, is willing to repeat secondary stuff they've heard from other people, in other words, gossip, and just doesn't know what they're talking about.

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And therefore, I would suggest you might not—you know, I think it's fair to apply that to other things that they would say in other areas when they do things like that.

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So could we just be clear about that? And if you hear anybody saying that, just correct them and say, no, this is simply not true.

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And that's been very clearly addressed. So anyway, with that in mind, why in the world are we going to look at this?

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Well, you're going to have to hang with me for a second to see why this is relevant, okay? If you are interested, if you're concerned about the modern woke invasion in the form of what's called progressive—I call it regressive

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Christianity—stick with me for the next few minutes through what looks like it cannot possibly have anything to do with that, and you'll see why it does have something to do with it, okay?

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So on the screen, I have one of the key texts regarding Scripture, and that is 2

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Timothy 3, 15 and 16. I'm going to scroll this up here so that we've got all of them.

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There we go. All Scripture has God breathed and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be equipped, having been thoroughly equipped for every good work.

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We all know it. We've gone over it 10 ,000 times before. I think everybody in my church can actually say theognostos.

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It's just something—most people in apologia can say theognostos and can quote the

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Shema in Hebrew, Shema Yisrael, Yahweh Eloheinu, Yahweh Echad. So the danger is we know these texts really, really well, right?

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And so when you encounter a radically different interpretation of a text you know real well, that can really throw you off, can really, really throw you off.

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And so I want to talk about a point of grammar.

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Stick with me because you're going to see the immediate application in a very practical sense right afterward, okay?

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So you've got to trust me here. The screen on the right -hand side looks horrible on our cameras because it's got a white background.

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We're working on that. But the thing on the right, I imagine if you switch to it, it will look a whole lot better.

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Oh, yeah, it looks much better. Look at that. I'm not sure which is easier for me to read, the one on the back?

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It's actually—I think right now the one on the back is easier for me to read. This is

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Dan Wallace's Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics. It is the second -year

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Greek syntax that—there's a shorter version of it, and then the big—it used to be green.

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I guess it's blue now in the current publishing. I'm not sure, but it's a hard copy. Highly recommend you have it both electronically and in print as well.

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And what I want to look at is you'll notice, Passo Grafe Theanustos, Cai of Philemon, all scripture is

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God -breathed—very good—and profitable. Now notice he has every scripture is inspired and profitable.

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We won't get into the God -breathed inspired thing. And here's the issue. Let's read with Brother Wallace on this issue.

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Many scholars feel the translation should be every inspired scripture is also profitable.

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Let's just stop for a second. Think that through for a second. What would be the difference in meaning if it said every inspired scripture is also profitable?

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And what has changed? What has changed in the translation?

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Well, if you look at the legacy standard, all scripture is

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God -breathed versus every God -breathed scripture is also profitable.

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That would be—so what's changed? What has changed is where you're putting the word is.

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And for those of you who are Greek readers, this section of Wallace's grammar is on the article and specifically here the article with adjectives.

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Now, I've said many, many times before, Greek is least like English when it comes to the article.

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The article is very, very hard for us as English speakers to grasp in its utilization in Greek.

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It is the least like how we do things in English.

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And so it's a very lengthy segment. In the book, many, many, many, many, many pages long.

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And what you're dealing with here is what is called the predicate use of an adjective.

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So it's the difference between saying the good king. So that's an adjectival function describing the king.

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Or the king is good, where goodness is being predicated. And so we use is as the mechanism of expressing it.

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So the question is, when you have passagraphe— and we're going to look here in a moment.

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Well, just keep something in mind. In fact, Rich, you don't even have to change anything because me down there isn't covering this.

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But notice as we go back, right here, and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings, which is hiera gramata.

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You have known the sacred writing. Now, what are the sacred writings?

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Everyone agrees that the sacred writings to which Timothy would have been exposed and with which he would be familiar would be what we call the

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Hebrew scriptures. The Tanakh, the Torah, the Nevi 'im, and the Ketubim, the law, prophets, writings.

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So we already have the context provided to us that Paul is talking about the scriptures and that this would be an already understood context.

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And so when it would say passagraphe, graphe is continuing gramata from verse 15.

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And then as we scroll down, and remember we have a chapter division here, but there were no chapters and verses in the early text.

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And so this is very much a continuation. It's the very next sentence. I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is judged living the dead by his appearing in his kingdom, preach the word, preach the word.

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So it's right here. And so in just two, two, three sentences in the exact same context,

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Paul's making reference to the written scripture, which Timothy would have known from a child.

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He calls them the hiera gramata, the graphe, and tanlogon.

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He is to preach the word. And he says, notice in season, out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort, same terminology just used up in verses 16 and 17 for what the man of God is to do in the church.

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So in context, we have the apostle dealing specifically with scripture and Timothy's usage thereof.

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So back to Wallace. Many scholars feel the translation should be every inspired scripture is also profitable.

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Now, immediately, hopefully your mind is going, but Timothy would not be in a context where he would be thinking that he has to figure out what is inspired scripture and what is it?

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He's not sitting back going, okay, well, I've got Moses, but this stuff in Leviticus, I'm not feeling the

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God -breathedness of it. And the genealogical list, so much for that.

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And, oh, those imprecatory Psalms, really, seriously? And I've never really gotten

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Habakkuk, so let's get rid of that. No, this would not be a part of the context at all in any way.

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So let's get into it. This is probably not the best translation, however, for the following reasons. So here's

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Wallace explaining why this is not a good translation. Contextually, among those who see the pastorals as authentic.

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Now, I have to stop again, because a lot of folks, you're blessed to be in good, solid churches, and so you go, why would anyone even mention this?

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I mean, who doesn't believe the pastorals are authentic? Well, again, if you go and you buy commentaries or you go outside the realm of the preaching in your good, solid church, you will find that there are lots and lots and lots of people that have a reduced

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Pauline canon. A reduced Pauline canon. What on earth is that?

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They don't believe Paul wrote everything that is attributed to Paul. In fact, they don't believe that the pastorals were written by Paul.

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What happened to me? You're working on it. Did you bump something?

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No? Okay, all right. So now you're getting a little more text in. Okay, just so you know,

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Rich is playing around, I think. Rich seemingly understands all this, and so he's just playing with the video.

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I just wondered, you know. Anyhow, so you and I will just talk, and don't worry about it.

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The guy's playing. Okay, so lots and lots of people teach in seminaries and Bible colleges that the pastorals, 1st and 2nd

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Timothy, Titus, are not Pauline. You may want to ask the question, why?

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And I'll give you the basic reason. The basic reason is that when people look at the church in the pastorals, they believe it's too advanced in its form to have been in existence early in Paul's day.

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I think that's a joke when you look at Acts, but they feel that the whole idea of having elders and the church as it existed, as it's seen in the pastorals, that came after Paul's time.

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So it's all theory. We have a theory as to what the church looked like. This doesn't fit our theory, so therefore it can't be

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Pauline. So instead of taking everything the way it's been taught down through history, we've come up with something new, and therefore we're going to get rid of this.

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So, and another one is, well, Paul uses a lot of terminology. I'm sorry, the pastorals use a lot of terminology that Paul doesn't use elsewhere.

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They're personal letters, and you use different terminology in all your personal letters over against the letters you'd write to an entire church, too.

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So it's all circular reasoning. It really collapses when you look at it.

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So there you go. So among those to see the pastorals as authentic, the argument has been that Paul would not need to assert the inspiration of Scripture to Timothy.

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Indeed, that the author might be doing so here has been used as an argument against authenticity. But it is possible for the pastorals to be both authentic and for the apostle to be making an assertion.

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He has a habit of reminding Timothy of truths he already knows, such as that Christ Jesus was raised from the dead, and that Paul himself was a minister of the

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Gospels of Gentiles. That seems pretty obvious to me. Thus, as Fairbourn points out, it could not be superfluous to impress upon him a sense of the divine character of Old Testament Scripture.

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And B, if the author were merely asserting the profitableness of Scripture, it's a wonderful word, then what would be the basis for his very forceful command in 4, 1 through 2?

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Could he solemnly charge Timothy in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus to preach the word if he had simply asserted the

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Scripture is just profitable? So context is important. But here's the key, grammatically.

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Now hold on here, because he's going to use some stuff that terminology may not be familiar to everybody, but like I said, we'll get through this together.

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Grammatically, the fact that verse 16 is asyndetic, i .e.

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begins without a conjunction, conjunction cannot be due to new subject matter, but to the solemnity of the statement, because the author has been discussing the holy writings in verse 15.

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Thus, seeing theanustos as predicate fits in better with the solemn tone established at the beginning of the verse.

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So again, let me remind you, theanustos is an adjective. And so to see it as predicate is that it is predicating something about what's being described, which is the

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Plasicae Vitae, all Scripture. All Scripture, then your predicate, with the verb is, is

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God breathe. All Scripture is God breathe, okay? So any Bible that uses that translation is seeing this as predicate.

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And he is saying that is better translation. And B, since the copula is lacking, it needs to be supplied in English.

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And the most natural place to supply the equative verb, equative verb is, is, is between the subject and the first word that follows it.

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It is in fact significant that an author typically leaves out the copula when he assumes the audience knows where it naturally should go.

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Point C, the fact that chi, and, means and 12 times as often as it means also, as well as the fact that it is unnatural to translate it verbally as also between two adjectives in the same case argues for a predicate theanustos.

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D, since the article may be anaphoric when referring back to a synonym, and since the author has been discussing the

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Scriptures with three different synonyms in this context, which we've already looked at, that was hierogramata, graphe, and then tanlogon, it seems likely that the article is anaphoric in 4 .2

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when he declares, preach the word. What he's saying is, logon in 4 .2

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has an article. And what he's saying is that article is referring us back to the graphe of 3 .16.

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If the writer had said that only inspired Scripture was profitable in 3 .16

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and then tells his readers to preach all Scripture, that is the word, it might be a misleading statement for Timothy might inadvertently preach some

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Scripture that was not inspired. But since the writer leaves logon unqualified apart from the fact that it's referred back to graphe in verse 16, it is perhaps likely he meant to make an assertion about all

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Scripture in verse 16, that is, that it is inspired. And finally, what bears on the relation of adjective to noun most directly?

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In the New Testament and the Greek Septuagint, in Classical and Koine Greek, the overwhelming semantic force of an adjective -noun -adjective construction is an equative clause.

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In an equative clause is that the first adjective will be attributive and the second will be predicate.

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There are almost 50 instances in the New Testament and the Septuagint in which the second adjective in such a construction is predicate and the first is attributive, 39 of which involve pas, which is what we have in verse 16, before the noun, most in the

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LXX, the Septuagint. And none on the other side. The evidence is so overwhelming that we may suggest a rule, and here's the rule, in pas plus noun plus adjective.

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So here, look over here. Pas, here, pasa, pas plus noun, graphe, plus adjective.

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So that's exactly what you have in 2 Timothy 3 .16. In pas plus noun plus adjective constructions in equative clauses, the pas being by nature as definite as the article implies the article, thus making the adjectives following the noun outside the implied article -noun group and therefore predicate.

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In the least, the evidence renders translation of this verse such as the NEB's every inspired scripture has its use highly suspect.

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I told you I'd get you through to the end of it, and you may be sitting there going, I'm not really sure what you just got done saying. It is a discussion.

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Well, okay. Well, look, I'll be honest with you.

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You get done with first year Greek, all right? And I am so thankful I took Greek in college, not in seminary.

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You get done with first year Greek, you are so, so happy that you can identify your grammatical forms.

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I learned eight case Greek, then I ended up teaching five case. I've done both. I've taught eight and five.

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But you're so thankful, for example, that you can recognize the genitive at the end of first year, and you can translate it correctly.

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And then you get in the second year, you discover there are at least 12 different kinds of genitives, and that's minimizing the possible syntactic.

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So second year just makes you feel like you're starting all over again. And so syntactical discussions can be challenging, but they are also very, very important, especially, especially, especially participle.

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Participles are, participles are the color of Koine Greek.

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Participles are the difference between that first RGB monitor that we got long, long ago.

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And then the first time you got a full color monitor with 16 million colors and all the rest of that stuff.

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And you went from 640 by 40 resolution to, you know, 4K resolution we have.

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That's what participles do for you. That's just all there is to it. They're, they're wonderful. And if there's anything that you do after you learn first year

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Greek, if there's anything you do, if you're not going to learn all of Greek syntax, at least do the participle.

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It will benefit you greatly. Just my suggestion for you there.

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So what does any of this have to do with anything? Well, let me, let me show you something.

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Pull this up for you. Drag it over there. Unfortunately, it's not going to, I need to change the colors on this one too.

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I have a debate coming up a week from, Tuesday or Wednesday.

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I'd have to look at a calendar. In Houston.

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And I think I, I think I get there Tuesday. So I think Tuesday night,

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I'm meeting with some folks, having dinner like we did before at a nice Mexican place where we can have chips and salsa and sit around and talk.

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That's, that's always enjoyable. And we're not all a bunch of Reformed Baptists. There's Lutherans and Presbyterians and stuff like that.

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And yet somehow we managed to get along without killing each other. At least I hope we won't. And then the next night,

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I'm debating Keith Giles. Now I'll be honest with you. I'm a little concerned about something.

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I have started a book by Keith Giles where he is denying penal substitutionary terms.

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Very common amongst the regressivists, so -called progressivists, deconstructionists.

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Those of you on Twitter may have noticed a lot of interaction with a Kevin M.

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Young, Dr. Kevin M. Young. I am not sure they're not the same person.

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No, they're not. I get it. But I cannot tell the difference between the two of them, between Giles and Young.

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They are saying the exact same thing. And I've been noting that a lot of folks are retweeting

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Kevin Young's stuff. I think the algorithms in Twitter, once somebody starts retweeting it, it's sort of like snowballs.

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And everybody who follows everybody else starts seeing the same stuff from this guy.

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And most conservative -believing Christians just freak out because he is fully deconstructed and he's opposed to inerrancy.

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And especially the fact that these folks will use our language, but they mean something completely different by it.

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And I'm not freaked out by these people because that's why God forced me to go to a full theological seminary in the 1980s, so that I would already know where this stuff was coming and maybe be able to translate it for you, because that's what you sort of have to do.

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So I'll have finished up the book Against Penal Substitution and Atonement by the time I get there, obviously. And I just finished the main book from him that I wanted to read that's called

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Sola Mysterion. Sola Mysterion. Now we know the solas, Sola Scriptura, Sola Deo Gloria, and Sola Fide, and all the rest of the solas.

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So we have Sola Mysterion, Sola Mystery. Now, mystery as it's used in the New Testament is something that was hidden from the past and has now been revealed.

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So that's how it is. Having read it, I've finished it now. This is really no different, even though he was once an ordained

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Southern Baptist. I think he was ordained. I could be wrong about that. It depends on the

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Southern Baptist church. He was a Southern Baptist music minister, let's put it that way, many of whom are ordained.

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There is very clearly in Giles's work the same stuff you have, for example, in Christian science with the

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Christ spirit, theosophy, Madame Blavatsky, what we would see in the general

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New Age movement, a fair amount of Buddhism, Eastern spirituality. All of the commitments to the uniqueness of the

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Christian faith have vanished. And both he and Jung, that's why

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I say I'd really be surprised if I could see both of them in the same room at the same time, are into helping people deconstruct.

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That is, leave Orthodox historic Christianity and become spiritual.

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And so I was listening again to Sola Mysterium and I came across this.

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I've got it in Kindle, that's why I have it up on the screen. Now you're going to find out why we just spent time looking at Greek grammar.

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Okay, so let's look at it. Now I know this makes some of you very nervous. This is something we have been warned against from the pulpit, the idea that there is more truth or new teaching from sources outside of Christianity is labeled dangerous.

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We've been told that anything outside of the Bible or the Christian faith is heretical and possibly even demonic in origin.

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But that way of thinking seems to contradict what Jesus says to us in John 16, doesn't it? If Jesus tells us there is more truth to experience than what he told us, and if the

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New Testament... Now remember, I'll just stop here for a moment. He's talking about the ministry of the Holy Spirit in the future. It's not something in the

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Bhagavad Gita or something. And if the New Testament declares that God's Spirit has been poured out on all flesh, which again, theology matters.

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It's not poured out on all flesh as in every single human being. It's poured out on all flesh as in Jews and Gentiles, and that is through the ministry of Christ.

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That is people who are reconciled to God through the gospel. Again, you can misuse anything in Scripture to start creating your own religion.

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And if we encounter truth from other people outside our faith community, then why wouldn't we accept this truth as coming from Christ as Jesus did?

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From Christ as Jesus did. Did you catch that? I didn't catch that the first time through. You have the

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Christ Spirit and you've got Jesus. Okay, so again, this is theosophy.

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This stuff's been around for a long time. It's been the enemy of Christianity for a long, long time. So deconstructionism always leads you to this kind of stuff.

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Of course, this doesn't mean we just accept any message we encounter. Not everything is Christ -like. How do you define what's

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Christ -like? Not every teacher is true. Not every teaching is beneficial. This means we have to use discernment and our own

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God -given mind of Christ to determine what to accept and what to reject.

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But how do we do that? Here are a couple of ways we can know what is God -breathed and what is not.

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First, we can turn to 2 Timothy 3, 16 through 17. A set of verses that are, ironically, quite often misused to teach that we should only find truth in the

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Bible. So here's what I want you to do. What?

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I'm just talking to the folks and leaving it up to you. Rich is trying to get me off track.

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It's just a little thing he does. So here's what I want you to do. As I read this section,

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I want you to ask yourself, you're in a restaurant, and someone saw you reading a

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Bible. They've come over, and a conversation has started. You're at a bus station. You're at the airport.

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I don't even want to think about that part. And this conversation begins, and someone says these things to you.

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How would you respond right now? Would you feel comfortable responding to someone who says these things?

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So that are, ironically, quite often misused to teach we should only find truth in the

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Bible. The verse as it is rendered in most English translations says, all scripture is

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God -breathed, and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training righteousness, so that the servant of God, I'm not sure they got that one, may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

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The problem with interpreting this verse in this way. Now, there's, just stop for a second.

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Interpreting this verse? Oh, translating this verse. All right, okay. Well, yeah, translation, interpretation, they are intimately related.

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But these regressivists will confuse these things. Very few of them are overly skilled in what

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Dan Wallace was talking about, okay? And once you abandon a belief that scripture literally is

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God -breathed in a unique fashion, then you're not nearly as concerned about context.

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And I would assume that Giles would reject the pastorals as Pauline anyway.

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I mean, that's my assumption. I don't know, but I would assume. He says, the

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Greek word for scripture does not actually appear in the text. That's right. Someone added the word scripture here where it does not belong.

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So we just stop immediately. Scripture is obviously a perfectly acceptable, contextual, accurate translation of the term graphe.

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He had just used hierogramata. He's going to use tanlogon in the next sentence down below.

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And graphe, so again, if you reject the Pauline epistles,

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I'm sorry, the pastoral epistles as Pauline, then you might say, well, sure, Paul uses graphe elsewhere, but that's

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Paul. This is somebody else. See how you can disconnect those things? But in the context, even if this is a disciple of Paul forging a letter, it's still going to be derived from Paul's usage.

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This is just simply absurd. Someone added the word scripture?

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No, they didn't. You're literally translating the term graphe. Now he says, now notice he has graphe, which is wrong anyways.

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He clearly doesn't know what he's reading. The word found here is actually the word graphe, which is a common term for writings.

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Well, so's gramata and so's logon, et cetera, et cetera. In other words, the verse actually says this.

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All God -breathed writings are useful for teaching, rebuking, so on and so forth. So you see what's going on here?

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You see what's happening here? You don't want to say scripture because in the mind of most people listening to this, they're going to go, oh, the

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Bible. He wants to expand that. Do you want to use a nebulous translation that does not take into account the preceding verse, context, or what comes afterward?

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So he's not going to talk about preach the word. No, that would be contextual interpretation.

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This means any writings that are useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training righteousness are

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God -breathed writing. He's going to go on, by the way, to, in the next pages, use

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Buddha as an example. Okay, so this means any writings that are useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training righteousness are

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God -breathed writings, which is why the Apostle Paul, well, he says Apostle Paul here. Well, no, wait a minute, I'll take that back, which is why the

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Apostle Paul could quote pagan poets and prophets to idol -worshipping Gentiles in Athens and teach them about the unknown

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God who loves them, provides for them, and is their Heavenly Father, the one in whom they all live and move and have their being, as if what's happening in Acts chapter 17 is

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Paul is saying that what he was quoting was theanustos. That's absurd, but once you, you know, blow the walls out and start doing this kind of stuff, this is what you end up with.

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So when we encounter truth in other writings or other teachings, or even other people, we can discern whether or not what we hear is true or God -breathed by asking ourselves, is this useful for teaching, correcting, and training righteousness?

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Is this teaching Christ -like? If the answer is yes, then we can receive it as being of the same spirit as Christ told us these truths would come.

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If not, we can safely reject it and turn it away. So you've just destroyed having any sure word from God.

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You've just destroyed the Christian canon. And you've turned Buddha or anything you find anywhere into something that is...

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And I'm wondering about next week, will the texts, maybe in 1

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Corinthians 6, will that not be Christ -like, and therefore to be rejected as not the

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Augustine? We'll find out. We'll find out. But you see why it's in...

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You know, sometimes, you know, I remember, you know, years ago,

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I've told the story before, when I was teaching for Golden Gate, I was asked if I could teach

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Hebrew. That pixelated.

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If I could teach Hebrew, because they were having trouble getting people through first year Hebrew. I said, well,

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I took more of it in seminary than was required. But I went ahead and taught it.

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I got everybody through. Why? One of the reasons was, as a part of my teaching style,

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I would show my students how I had used

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Hebrew, apologetically, preaching, teaching, things like that.

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So help maintain their drive, especially with Hebrew.

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It's so outside of our wheelhouse. It's so hard to memorize the vocabulary, because it's triliteral, three letters.

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But that's what did it. And this is how I would do it. So if we had been doing, you know,

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I taught Greek syntax, and this is the kind of example that I would use. Okay, we're talking about these articles, and pretty good form of adjectives, and this is so hard.

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And it's like, here's an example where this has been very, very important. And I could pull up a debate, and I hadn't done nearly as many debates back then as I have now.

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But just a way to help people see, man, this is actually worth my effort in getting it.

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I'll never know until I need it. And you need it. You need to know it before you need it, not afterwards.

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That's important. So just trying to encourage you to learn

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Greek and Hebrew. You might say, the world's falling apart. Yeah, well, but there's still some things that need to be known when the world falls apart.

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And that's one of them. Okay, back in 2018, September 7th of 2018,

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Layton Flowers posted this on Twitter. And I didn't know it was the date. I just, for some reason, somebody retweeted it.

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And it's the first time I had seen it. And Layton said he won't comment if I don't remove my block.

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So I did. I unblocked him. So maybe he'll comment now or something.

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I don't know. But it actually looks better from that perspective than it does from the front, doesn't it? Yeah, that's weird.

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But here is a tweet from Layton Flowers that we'll finish up with today. Present active verbs.

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You see why that catches my attention? Because I'm a geek. We were just doing adjectives and predicate position and using equative verbs and stuff like that.

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Present active verbs. Notice in verses like Ephesians 1 -11 and Romans 8 -28, that God's working of all things for good and in accordance with his will are present active verbs, not past completed actions.

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This doesn't fit the deterministic interpretation of Calvinism. Okay, all right.

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I wish there was some way I could... Well, let's just... So Ephesians 1 -11 and Romans 8 -28 are the two texts that were...

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And so God's working of all things for good and in accordance with his will.

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So it's for good in Romans 8 -28 and Romans 1 -11 who works all things after the counsel of his will are present active verbs, not past completed actions.

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This doesn't fit the deterministic interpretation of Calvinism. Let's just on a bird's eye level here.

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Once again, we go very clearly. Layton may have called himself a

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Calvinist at one point, but he never understood. And here is yet another of the many, many examples that has been provided of this over the years.

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Because why would describing God's action in time, his providence, be somehow contradictory to the fact that providence flows from the decree?

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We believe God has a decree and when that decree is actuated in time, that's

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God's providence and that would be a present tense ongoing action. So no one who actually understands

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Reformed theology would make this argument. But we've pointed that out many, many, many times before.

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Okay. So now you'll notice it's a very small little thing there. Well, I'm going to be bringing that back up in just a second.

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So I'm just going to pull the background out so that it's nice and clean.

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So let's take a look at those two texts real quick because we only have so much time.

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And let's start with Romans 8, 28. You can almost see it over there. It's better than it used to be.

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And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good to those who are called according to purpose. So here is the working together.

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The problem is that it's all things that are working. Now there is an interpretational issue here because some translation says

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God causes all things to work together. And then here you have all things work together for good.

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So SoonerGuy doesn't necessarily tell you that as to what that's going to be. But let me pull this up here so you can have the computer tell you these things.

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Well, but you can't see that over there anyways. But there you have a present active verb.

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All right, let me... Got to get over here.

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I'm not sure I was doing anything. Oh, I did. Okay, sorry. I think you can see present active indicative there.

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That hopefully is large enough now to see it. So there you have, but this is

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Panta. All things are working together for good.

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So this isn't even saying what Leighton was saying it was saying. This is simply saying all things work together for the good.

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And now obviously all things can't be back in eternity because that would make an eternal creation.

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So it has to be present tense. It's talking about what is going on right now for those who are called according to this purpose.

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That's for us. That's in our experience. So there's nothing there that is even slightly in opposition to Reformed theology.

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So the other one was, I think, more important. Oh, I didn't want you to do that. Stay over there.

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Thank you very much. We don't need the thing of a Bobby there. Oh, good.

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I got it. Ephesians. Oh, E -P -H -1 -11.

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There we go. All right. In him, we also have been made in inheritance, have been predestined according to the purpose of him, works all things according to the counsel of his will.

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The one. So two.

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Now, this is a lengthy clause. Two tapanta energuntas catatein bulein to thelemitas autu.

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So again, as you look at the Greek, let me, this will be the last one

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I'm showing. So let me just point one thing out, and then I'll go over and we'll look at it a little bit closer.

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But please note that the working energuntas, you don't have to take my word for it, present active participle.

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It's not a finite verb. So that's sort of the original tweet was present active verbs.

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This is participle. And like I said earlier, participles are the color of the language.

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And so what do you actually have going on here? There you are.

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Loud today. Oh, go away. So here you have his will.

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According to, so you have a two right here, but then you have tapanta.

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So all things energuntas. So what's actually being described here is the all things working according to his purpose, the purpose of his will.

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This is a entire descriptive phrase that, again, these participial forms in Paul, especially are so rich and they are just so beautiful.

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So what you have here is just one big description of the, who works all things according to his will,

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God. So we have been predestined according to the purpose, according to the purpose right here.

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And then all the rest of this is just a big description of God. And the description is the one working all things according to the counsel of his will.

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And the two up here brings all this together. So the idea that the participle, so it's singular genitive.

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So the participle, by the way, make this look a little bit better here.

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The participle here, this is its verb. It's article up here.

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The all things working according to the counsel of his will.

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That's the God that we were describing. And so that's why the article is over there.

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It's going with the participle. And that mechanism is found frequently in Paul's writing.

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And it's, I think some of the most useful exegetical insights that I've ever experienced have come from seeing how the participle and its article and the phrases that are put together, how that works.

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All right. So what's all that saying? The God who has called us, who has predestined us, has done so, he does so, and the description of that God is the one who works all things according to the counsel of his will.

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And so for someone to say, well, for that to actually refer to a divine decree, it could not be a present tense.

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Well, it's not present tense, finite verb. It is a present tense participle.

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But all that means is the one working all things.

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God is still described as the one working all things. That is an extensive decree.

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You can't get around it. You can misidentify it, but you can't get around it. It's right there, right there in front of us.

01:00:00

If we are willing but to see it. So there you go.

01:00:06

Hey, and almost exactly on time. Not too bad, not too bad. Oops.

01:00:14

How did that happen? I looked back there and the screen had disappeared and the writing was still there. How strange is that?

01:00:22

Huh, weird. Yeah, just a quick flash. Anyway, so we'll let you know, obviously on the app, on social media.

01:00:36

Right now, I'm leaning toward Friday, unless something crazy happens and we can sneak something in before then.

01:00:46

But prayers appreciated, not only traveling mercies prayers, but these few days before and after a road trip are stressful.

01:01:00

Because I suppose if I put the word out, hey, I need help loading and unloading my trailer,

01:01:06

I'd probably get people to show up. But nobody knows where stuff's supposed to go and I'd never find things again. It's just sort of how it works.

01:01:14

I sort of have to do this stuff on my own. So as I'm loading stuff,

01:01:20

I don't want to get two stops down the way and find out that I don't have a belt or something along those lines.

01:01:27

So that's what's gonna be going on this week. But hey, if stuff happens between now and then, we can make things happen and fire up the old feed.

01:01:37

But hopefully this has been useful to you. I know for the geeks in the audience, you've definitely had a geek fest today.

01:01:44

Or a Greek fest, depending on how you want to look at it. But hopefully it's been edifying to you. Lord willing, we'll see you sometime later this week.