Mary as Mediatrix in Roman Piety, Comments on Scott Swain's Experimental Idea from James 1:5

13 views

September 1, 2022

We have no way of knowing what we will be doing for the next few days program wise, but we snuck one in today, looking closely at the infamous Marian prayer going around the net (one I was addressing in the early 1990s). Then we looked at Scott Swain's comments on divine simplicity and James 1:5.

Comments are disabled.

00:31: Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. Oh, that's echoing really, really badly. I'm in a well.
00:39: OK, welcome to The Dividing Line on a Thursday, which means I have not experienced the arrival of grandchild number five yet.
00:49: Could be due tomorrow, so we will see. It's just one of those things where you just don't make any plans.
00:58: You just roll with the punches. And Rich is here. Rich didn't have to do what
01:04: Rich was thinking he was going to have to do. So that's why we're able to do another program this week. And as you know, next week we head back out on a long, long trip.
01:17: Do have an exciting announcement. We're going to be having a debate. Hopefully we'll have a graphic put together before long to put up.
01:26: I'm in Pennsylvania in the general
01:32: Harrisburg area, which is my old stomping grounds, to be honest with you. I hope to visit once again my old homes if they're still there.
01:46: Google says they are. And man, if my old elementary school was still there, man, that thing would be like, goodness gracious, old as the hills.
01:58: We'll see. But certainly the church where I was baptized will still be there.
02:04: It's no longer that particular building isn't being used as the church part anymore. So who knows what's in the baptistry there?
02:11: That's probably being used for storage, which is a great advantage that Baptists have over Presbyterians.
02:16: We can store much more in an unused baptistry than the Presbyterians can. You were a sprinkler pilot.
02:23: That's true. That's right. So anyway, we will be letting everybody know about that and the specifics quickly.
02:33: But that debate will be going on basically the weekend after G3. So we'll be at the
02:40: Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC. And then the next week, not very far away,
02:46: I'll be staying in that general area. And when I have a little bit of free time,
02:51: I will be visiting some of the Civil War battle sites that I've not visited before.
02:59: Maybe visiting Gettysburg again, if possible. I was looking at the website and discovered that Little Round Top is closed and Devil's Den is closed.
03:09: So that's a lot of the battlefield right there. But still, to stand where Pickett's Charge took place, that's still an amazing, amazing thing.
03:19: And if you don't know about any of that stuff, you haven't read enough American history. You need to do that. So anyway,
03:25: I don't have any details right now about recording, webcasting.
03:34: Webcasting is doubtful. We just need to make sure to get a good recording of this. The subject will be on the ecclesiastical text movement and its claims.
03:45: And so I'm definitely looking forward to that. And then the weekend after will be early church history class at Grace Bible Theological Seminary and all the other stuff.
03:57: So that starts next week. And that means a lot of on -the -road dividing lines back in the mobile command center.
04:05: And so prayers for safe driving, weather, and your support would be very, very, very helpful.
04:16: I would have been somewhere around 91, 92, as I recall.
04:26: I worked as I had just taken a job as a hospital chaplain.
04:33: And I figure it's been decades enough now I can start mentioning names, that Thunderbird Samaritan Hospital, that's no longer the name of the hospital.
04:41: Every hospital changes names when they get bought out by somebody else. And Thunderbird's still there.
04:49: It's two, three times the size that it was when I was there. And I was one of the staff chaplains.
04:58: I had taken the job out of simple survival. I needed to have another job.
05:04: We couldn't make ends meet. We had had what we called Black Tuesday, as I recall, where we lost about 70 % of our monthly support in one day.
05:19: And so I've often commented it was some of the hardest work that I ever did.
05:25: I am not naturally the kind of person that walks into people's hospital rooms and strikes up conversations.
05:36: You've seen a Scottish hug before. I'll do a Scottish hug for you. Catch that?
05:43: That's about as personal as we get.
05:49: And so, yeah, it was very challenging. One of my jobs was to go into the little chapel and to collect all the
05:58: Watchtower and Wake magazines that Jehovah's Witnesses would sneak into the hospital.
06:04: And they were doing their field ministry service and were probably claiming the time that took them to do that.
06:13: And I ended up, by the time I left, with a stack about yay tall of Watchtower and Wake magazines that I had taken from various rooms in the hospital and packed them all up.
06:29: And as I was just looking, it's a very small little room. I mean, there probably wasn't a fact that it was smaller than this room, now that I think about it.
06:40: And there were these blue chairs, blue cushioned chairs that you could sit in. And my eye caught something stuck between the cushions of one of the chairs.
06:53: And I pulled it out. And this is what I pulled out.
07:00: This is the exact thing that I pulled out somewhere in the early 90s at Thunderbird Samaritan Hospital.
07:08: It's from the Redemptorists. Even has a price on it, $1.
07:16: Devotions in honor of our mother of perpetual help. And so I sat down and I started looking through it.
07:28: And I was stunned. I was simply stunned by what I was reading. And only about, what was that, 90, was that 93?
07:44: I think the debate I did with Jerry Matotix at Boston College, two debates we did at Boston College, was sometime around 93.
07:58: And so I had this with me. I took this little, this very little one right here with me.
08:08: And I had it in my book bag. I was going to find the picture. I do have the picture in my photos.
08:15: Only problem with having photos on your very large laptop is that there's like 21 ,000 pictures in it.
08:24: Unless you spend the time to tag all of them, you'll never find one again without sitting there and scrolling for hours. Anyway, I have a picture.
08:31: I think George Raleen Bonneau snapped the pictures, black and white, inside the studio at WEZE in Boston.
08:44: Janine Graff, Graff or Graff, Graff, the Janine Graff show. And I'm in there with Jerry Matotix, the first ordained
08:54: PCA minister to convert to the Roman Catholic Church. And we're going at it as Jerry and I have gone at it for a long, long time.
09:06: We hadn't at that point. I mean, we had done our first debate in August of 90. So this was less than three years after that.
09:15: And I had this in my book bag and I pulled it out. It's on the screen. It's a slightly different translation, very, very slightly different.
09:26: But this, which is on the screen, has been posted on Twitter a number of times over the past week, maybe 10 days.
09:38: Somebody took the time to put it up there. And so a lot of people have been talking about it and the discussion started.
09:46: Jimmy Akin jumped in on it as well. And when
09:53: I first read this, when I was in the chapel with this little booklet, and I first read this particular prayer that I'm going to read to you, my thought was, and when
10:05: I pulled it out to read to Jerry on WEZE, my expected response at that time was that Jerry was going to go, oh,
10:17: Mr. White, Mr. White, Mr. White, you need to understand that this is not that there's different kinds of piety and that piety is not necessarily approved by the church and dogmatically taught.
10:31: And that's what I expected. So here's the prayer.
10:36: You've probably seen it if you've been reading social media. But if not, I hope you're sitting down.
10:43: Oh, mother of perpetual help, thou art the dispenser of all the goods which God grants to us miserable sinners.
10:50: And for this reason, he has made thee so powerful, so rich, and so bountiful that thou mayst help us in our misery.
10:57: Thou art the advocate of the most wretched and abandoned sinners who have recourse to thee. Come then to my help, dearest mother, for I recommend myself to thee.
11:08: In thy hands, I place my eternal salvation. And to thee do I entrust my soul.
11:14: Count me among thy most devoted servants. Take me under thy protection, and it is enough for me.
11:22: For if thou protect me, dear mother, I fear nothing, not from my sins, because thou wilt obtain for me the pardon of them, nor from the devils, because thou art more powerful than all hell together, nor even from Jesus, my judge himself, because by one prayer from thee, he will be appeased.
11:45: But one thing I fear, that in the hour of temptation, I may neglect to call on thee, and thus perish miserably.
11:53: Obtain for me then the pardon of my sins, love for Jesus, final perseverance, and the grace always to have recourse to thee, oh mother of perpetual health.
12:04: Followed by three Hail Marys, the priest is to say, thou hast been made for us, oh lady, a refuge.
12:12: All are to respond, a helper in need and tribulation. And the priest is to pray, let us pray.
12:20: Oh Lord Jesus Christ, thou has given us thy mother, Mary, whose renowned image we venerate, to be a mother ever ready to help us, grant we beseech thee that we who constantly implore her help may merit always to experience the fruits of thy redemption, thou who livest and reignest world without end, and all are to say amen.
12:44: It was like a, it was like a kick in the gut. I, yes,
12:51: I had already been doing debates with Roman Catholics, but I was raised as a fundamentalist
12:58: Baptist, and that meant I had never really been exposed to real popular
13:10: Marian devotion, and especially when it says the three things that the person prays for protection from, one of them is
13:19: Jesus, because by one prayer from Mary, he will be appeased.
13:26: Like I said, I read that on the air on WEZE, and I about fell off my chair. I remember exactly what it looked like.
13:35: The picture was taken from the opposite side, outside the thing, so my recollection is
13:42: Jerry over there, and the picture is Jerry's facing away, and I'm on the other side, but Jerry looked at me, this former
13:52: PCA minister, looked at me and said, Mr.
13:57: White, my prayer is that someday you will be able to pray that prayer with me. He didn't do the, this is excessive piety, nothing.
14:08: He fully embraced what I just read to you. Now, some people might say, well, okay, it's one prayer, and yeah, it seems a little excessive.
14:24: Well, it's not just one. I hold in my hand a book by St.
14:33: Alphonsus de Liguri, who, having written this, was made a doctor of the church.
14:40: This book has gone through over 800 editions. It is fully representational of Roman Catholic piety on the subject of Mary.
14:59: I quoted extensively in my book, Mary, Another Redeemer, in 1999.
15:07: I'll just read you one section, page 325 of this particular edition, which even has
15:13: Latin footnotes. The second argument by which it is proved that Mary was more holy in the first moment of her existence than all the saints together is found on the great office of Mediatris of men.
15:30: Mediatris would be Mediatrix in the Latin, that would be the feminine Latin form, with which she was charged from the beginning, and which made it necessary that she should possess a greater treasure of grace from the beginning than all other men together.
15:51: It is well known with what unanimity theologians and holy fathers give Mary this title of Mediatris, on account of her having obtained salvation for all, her powerful intercession and her merit of congruity, thereby procuring the great benefit of redemption for the lost world.
16:13: I say by her merit of congruity, for Jesus Christ alone is our mediator by way of justice and by merit, de condigno, as the scholastics say.
16:24: He having offered his merits to the eternal father who accepted them for our salvation. Mary, on the other hand, is a
16:30: Mediatris of grace by way of simple intercession and merit of congruity.
16:36: She having offered to God, as theologians say, with Saint Bonaventura, her merits for the salvation of all men, and God as a favor accepted them with the merits of Jesus Christ.
16:49: On this account, Arnold of Chartres says that, she affected our salvation in common with Christ, end quote.
16:59: And Richard of St. Victor says that, Mary desired, sought, and obtained the salvation of all, nay, even she affected the salvation of all, end quote.
17:11: That's EFF, not A, just in case you're wondering. So that everything good and every gift in the order of grace, which each of the saints received from God, Mary obtained for them.
17:32: Is that not representational of the rest of the book? Oh, I, there's markings all the way through here.
17:40: I could, here, I just turned to a page.
17:46: But if by chance, adds the saint, thou fearest to have recourse to Jesus Christ, because the majesty of God in him over awes you, for though he became man, he did not cease to be
17:58: God. And you desire another advocate with this divine mediator, go to Mary, for she will intercede for you with the son, who will most certainly hear her.
18:09: And then he will intercede with the father, who can deny nothing to such a son. So it's all the way through, it is constant.
18:19: Yeah, since then, like I said, I was one of the most spiritually troubling books to ever read.
18:29: Since then, oh Mary, thy office is to be the peacemaker between God and men. Let your tender compassion, which far exceeds all my sins, move you to succor me.
18:41: It's what the whole book's about. 800 editions, Liguri is a doctor of the church.
18:49: This is real Roman Catholicism. This is the merit and the role, the centrality of Mary.
19:01: Now, would you see much of this kind of thing at Boston College today?
19:12: Amongst the professors and liberals and, no, no.
19:18: Do you see this in Mexico, Central America, South America?
19:24: In the shrines, in Spain, Portugal? They're not as common in Italy as they used to be, but you can still find them, especially in Southern Italy, not so much
19:36: Northern Italy, but Southern Italy. Oh yes, all over the place, all over the place.
19:45: So I saw a lot of people quoting this prayer, and it is perfectly appropriate for any
19:53: Christian who believes what scripture teaches to give due consideration to any prayer where an individual would demonstrate that they fear
20:06: Jesus. Jesus. If you fear Jesus, then you don't know
20:12: Jesus. You say, oh, but he, like it said, he's truly
20:19: God, so you're to fear God. Okay, that's different. This prayer is seeking deliverance from your sins and from Jesus, and it has the idea that Jesus needs to be appeased.
20:40: This is connected, of course, to the fact that there is no finished work of Christ in Roman Catholicism.
20:50: You say, oh, of course there is. No, if the central act of worship of the
20:55: Roman Catholic system is the mass, and you believe in transubstantiation, you believe that the mass is a perpetuatory sacrifice, even if you say it's unbloody, and even if you say it is representing the one sacrifice of the cross, it's still perpetuatory, but it doesn't actually save.
21:16: So there is no finished, accomplished, once for all atoning work.
21:22: That's the problem. And so without that finished atoning work, vast majority of people, since they don't have peace with God through our
21:35: Lord Jesus Christ, having been justified by faith, but since they're justified by baptism and then re -justified sacramentally over and over again, they don't have true shalom, true peace.
21:49: That was what was so central about the question that I asked
21:54: Mitch Pacwa in January of 1991 at a church in Southern California.
22:06: Knowing that Mitch knows like 12 languages, he would know what shalom meant, that shalom is not a temporary ceasefire.
22:17: Shalom is a wellness relationship. And yet within Roman Catholicism, you can commit a mortal sin before you go to bed tonight and die as an enemy of God.
22:33: And so at best, what you have is temporary ceasefire. That's not shalom.
22:39: That's why I asked him the question that I did in regards to the greatest commandment, loving
22:45: God with our hearts, soul, mind, and strength, which none of us fulfill each and every day.
22:53: And so if violating the greatest commandment is not a mortal sin, what is? And to his, to his commendation, his initial response didn't really address my question, but thankfully the way we were doing it,
23:15: I had the opportunity of redirecting it. And so when I really pressed in on it, you can hear him say, there's a long pause, and then he says,
23:27: I don't know. I don't know. You wouldn't get that from the vast majority of the other
23:34: Roman Catholic men that I've debated, but he gave an honest,
23:40: I don't know, because that is the question about peace and the ground of peace within the
23:49: Roman Catholic system. When you have a finished work, when the cross is empty because Christ is raised and is seated at the right hand of the
24:03: Father and intercedes for his people, we have that anchor that goes into the holy place.
24:11: Hebrews chapter six. By the way, a beautiful text that a lot of people don't even know about because all they think about when they read
24:20: Hebrews chapter six is the beginning of the chapter, instead of the incredibly encouraging conclusion of the chapter.
24:30: So it was interesting to me to see a new generation, in essence, rediscovering this horrific prayer and considering what it means, considering what it communicates about the
24:50: Roman Catholic understanding of salvation, atonement, the relationship between Mary, the plain, purposeful, obvious paralleling in Mary of the offices of Christ.
25:13: He is mediator, she's mediatrix. He is redeemer, she's redemptrix.
25:19: All these, he's risen from the dead, she's bodily assumed into heaven.
25:26: It is so obvious when you lay them all out. He's king, she's queen of heaven and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah.
25:33: There is a purposeful, intentional paralleling in Mary of all the unique offices of Jesus.
25:42: No question about it. Now, it didn't happen overnight and it's sad to watch the zealous servants of Mary, not servants of Christ, servants of Mary, absolutely destroying early church history to try to find ways of getting around the simple reality that the dogmas of Rome today that you have to believe in regard to Mary, they were not passed on by the apostles.
26:28: They were not believed on by the early Christians. Rome always wants to sit there and say, we're the 2000 year old church, but then when faced with the reality that she has developed all sorts of concepts that were utterly unknown in the early church, utterly, you know,
26:47: I've said over and over again, the council fathers at Nicaea did not believe the things that a
26:58: Roman Catholic today has to believe. The things that a Roman Catholic today, according to the dogmatic statements of the church has to believe.
27:11: Francis doesn't believe the vast majority. A number of the cardinals don't believe the vast majority. There is a,
27:20: I don't know where this is gonna lead within Roman Catholicism, but Francis is looking old and I've always had the feeling that he is going to resign like his predecessor did.
27:42: Benedict is looking really old. I don't know if you've seen him. I think he's 93, something like that.
27:50: He's very, very frail. I expect he will die before long. Well, you can say that about anyone that's 93.
27:58: You know, that's just sort of how it works. But the next
28:06: Pope, wow. You know, Francis has filled the
28:16: College of Cardinals with his own acolytes, the people who think like him. And so, you know,
28:25: I'm not gonna predict what's gonna happen, but any person who is not sold out your soul and mind to a particular perspective knows that Francis is very different in his views and beliefs from all of those who've come before him.
28:53: And in all probability, the next guy will be much like him, if not more like him in that sense.
29:04: So, yeah, I get it. There's this gap that exists between the dogmatic
29:14: Catholicism that's necessary when you look at all the teachings of the
29:22: Popes up into the modern period and where Francis has gone and what he actually believes.
29:29: There's a huge gap, and that's why you can't get Roman Catholic apologists to defend
29:34: Francis. I don't know what they're gonna do when they've got Francis I and Francis II. I'm not saying the next guy is gonna take
29:43: Francis II, but as far as theology and belief goes, you can only blue pill so long if you get the matrix relationship there.
29:59: So here's a new generation of folks discovering what we've been talking about.
30:07: We were talking about 30 years ago and what people were talking about 30 years before me in certain contexts, and once again, realizing what the real key issues are, even though I'm not sure that everyone really does see what the real key issues are.
30:27: We've tried to lay those out in the debates. I think that those debates remain, and especially the debates with Mitch, I think they remain extremely valuable.
30:44: Despite Francis's evolutionary movements, I think they still remain extremely, extremely valuable and explains why we evangelize
30:55: Roman Catholics. A person who fears
31:01: Jesus doesn't know him, doesn't know him. Does that mean all
31:08: Roman Catholics are lost? We've said it over and over again, no, but I've said it for decades.
31:18: A Roman Catholic that is saved is saved in spite of the dogmas of Rome, not because the dogmas of Rome, and is living inconsistently with the dogmatic teachings of the church because their faith has to be focused on something other.
31:37: If you're praying these prayers, that's not the faith of the
31:44: New Testament, not even close. But some of the people that are cited in here,
31:53: St. Bonaventura, one of the difficulties of church history is he'll have stuff like those quotes, and then he'll have quotes on what's clearly a concept of the sufficiency of Christ and justification by faith.
32:14: How do you hold those together? You can't really, but some people try.
32:24: What are you gonna do in that situation? Well, means you have to really think seriously about those things.
32:32: All right, let me take that down, and hopefully that discussion was helpful along those lines.
32:47: I think it was yesterday morning, maybe, or maybe the morning before that, I forget exactly when, Dr. Scott Swain from RTS Orlando posted a little argument, a little article,
33:03: I guess I should say, a biblical argument for divine simplicity, the analogy of Scripture. When he posted it on Twitter, he did say this was sort of experimental.
33:24: I'm not sure if I can say there used to be a day when we would have been able to discuss things like this without cancel culture and things like that.
33:38: Maybe I'm just engaging in the, man, things were better in the olden days than today thing.
33:46: But it would be good if theologians could suggest things and they could be discussed without everyone jumping to the heresy word, the unorthodox word, the get them fired word, the never read any of his books phrases, all the stuff that's being thrown at me by the hyper -orthodox, those who think they are anyways.
34:20: In even looking at portions of Dr. Swain's little article,
34:26: I am not calling for the board to meet and deal with Dr.
34:34: Swain. I'm not gonna be calling for cancellation of his books.
34:40: I'm not gonna be identifying him as a heretic, anything along those lines.
34:49: But I am gonna be disagreeing with what he's saying and I'm going to be asking the question, is this great tradition exegesis?
35:02: Is this the new hermeneutics that we are supposed to be practicing and embracing?
35:12: And once again, I admit my bias here.
35:20: My bias is derived from the fact that I limit my dogmatic assertions to that which
35:34: I can consistently demonstrate is taught and promoted by and defined by divine scripture.
35:49: That is the standard that I have used in debating others, both within and without the faith.
35:57: So it's one that I have to hold myself to. When people in debates have tried to hold me accountable to non -biblical sources of authority,
36:07: I've rejected that. And so once again,
36:14: I recognize that is not how most Christian scholars in academia think.
36:25: Most Christian scholars in academia have never done a debate, which I think is obviously a huge detriment.
36:34: And I would point out that many of the reform scholastics that they like to cite all the time, were trained in debate.
36:45: They did debate. It was part of any meaningful scholastic training program in that day involved doing debates.
36:59: And I think the fact that debates aren't being done is very evident in much of what is being said today.
37:10: But that issue to the side, this article seeks to use the analogy of scripture and make an argument for a particular definition of divine simplicity.
37:26: Let me, the particular definition is the doctrine of divine simplicity teaches that God is without parts, i .e.,
37:38: so here's his interpretation of that, that there is no real distinction between God's being, that he is, and essence, what he is.
37:50: Or between God's being, that he is, and the various attributes we use to describe his essence.
37:57: He is this and this and this. Now, for those who have not been following the debates recently, divine simplicity is a part of the doctrine of monotheism.
38:22: Monotheism believes there is only one true God is the foundation of all theology proper in scripture.
38:34: Monotheism together with the existence of three divine persons and the equality of those persons, those are the three sides of the triangle that make up the biblical doctrine of the
38:41: Trinity. The reason Christians believe in the Trinity is because the
38:46: Bible teaches these doctrines. You have to end up denying some aspect of those truths to not believe in the doctrine of the
38:55: Trinity. I have, of course, defended monotheism from Unitarians, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, Muslims, and they're all
39:07: Unitarians of different stripes. Mormons aren't technically
39:13: Unitarians in any sense. There is probably the instance you can get, but ironically, when applied to this world, they end up arguing some of those points.
39:24: Anyway, so the doctrine of simplicity that God is not made up of parts, there is a biblical doctrine of simplicity and there's a philosophical doctrine of simplicity.
39:43: The biblical doctrine of simplicity has a very easily established basis. There is only one
39:51: God. God's the creator of all things, and therefore God cannot be made up of constituent parts because he is the maker of all things, and so he'd have to be the maker of himself if he was made up of constituent parts.
40:04: So if God's being is complex so that one aspect of his being is fundamentally different than another aspect, you put the two together and this makes
40:16: God, or maybe three or four, whatever. He's not made up of lesser parts because if it's a lesser part,
40:24: God created it. So monotheism, God's the creator of all things. It's right there in the page of Scripture.
40:33: There you have a biblical doctrine of simplicity that God is not made up of constituent parts.
40:40: That does not require the embracing of any particular form of Greek metaphysics and philosophy.
40:51: It was revealed in Scripture before Aristotle and before Plato, and so it is part of the once for all, delivered to the saints faith that is definitional of the
41:08: God that we worship. Now the philosophical doctrine of simplicity, as you find in this article, brings in especially
41:24: Thomas's Christianized Aristotelianism in the categories that come from it.
41:32: And one aspect of that is the idea that if you can distinguish, if the mind can distinguish between various concepts, then those concepts have existence in reality.
41:46: So you can't just have true statements about one glorious being of God.
41:55: If you can distinguish between omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, justice, wrath, mercy, love, if you can distinguish between these things, then they become things.
42:21: And the assertion then is that this would require God to be made up of things that are lesser than the divine being.
42:33: And this then leads to the conclusion that, well, therefore, all of those things must not be distinguished, at least by God.
42:45: We can distinguish them, but we're doing it wrong. When God considers these things, then they're all one.
42:57: And so you see this in this definition given by Dr. Swain, or between God's being, that he is, and the various attributes we use to describe his essence, he is this, and this, and this.
43:09: So this, and this, and this all become one this, as we will see as we look at the article.
43:16: And this has been the issue. We have read before, whenever I queue up this one particular resource
43:34: I have, as long as somebody posts something, everything scrolls, you never get to see anything again, it's terrible.
43:43: Went the other direction. There have been people who have warned about becoming balanced in this area.
43:54: Gerhardus Voss, who was a professor at Harvard, Gerhardus Voss, in his Reform Dogmatics, has said, may we also say that God's attributes are not distinguished from one another?
44:07: He says, this is extremely risky. We may be content to say that all
44:12: God's attributes are related most closely to each other and penetrate each other in the most intimate unity.
44:23: We're only describing the very being of God, and so there can be no disharmony, and there is an intimate unity, definitely.
44:34: However, this is in no way to say that they are to be identified with each other. Also in God, for example, love and righteousness are not the same, although they function together perfectly in complete harmony.
44:49: We may not let everything be the same, or let everything intermingle in a pantheistic way because that would be the end of our objective knowledge of God.
45:00: Likewise, Charles Hodge said, to say as the schoolmen, and so many even of Protestant theologians, ancient and modern, were accustomed to say that the divine attributes differ only in name or in our conceptions or in their effects is to destroy all true knowledge of God.
45:21: It is obvious that, according to this view, God is simply a force of which we know nothing but its effects. If in God, eternity is identical with knowledge, knowledge with power, power with ubiquity, and ubiquity with holiness, we are using words without meaning when we attribute any perfection to God.
45:37: We must, therefore, either give up the attempt to determine the divine attributes from our speculative idea of an infinite essence, or renounce all knowledge of God and all faith in the revelation of himself, which he has made in the constitution of our nature, in the external word and in his word.
45:57: So, there was a time, a few years ago, when it was recognized this is an area of speculation, disagreement, and there were those who were warning, you take this far enough, you're gonna end up with pantheism.
46:17: You're gonna end up with a God who's everything and nothing. And I don't think that any of my brothers who are so intent upon this one topic now have any intention of going there, or will ever go there, but the warning is still a proper warning.
46:42: It's still a proper thing to say, this seems to be the direction that this goes, because they'll say, well, it seems the direction you're going is toward tritheism, right?
46:51: If you don't believe in our philosophically defined doctrine of simplicity, your biblically defined doctrine of simplicity just isn't enough.
47:04: Without these metaphysical considerations that are post -biblical, and this is what has led to all the discussion of natural theology, and what can we come to understand in this way, et cetera, et cetera.
47:22: But without our definition, then you're gonna end up with three gods.
47:28: Well, that's just simply not true. There's plenty in scripture to keep us from adopting the idea of having three gods.
47:39: The apostles didn't have your metaphysical pre -commitments, and they didn't end up with three gods.
47:44: And so, it's a, you know, feel free to express your concern, always good to have warning, consider these things.
47:53: But then here, the other side, the concern of reformed theologians who would say, yeah, that tends to be going that direction.
48:07: Okay? So with that in the background, Dr. Swain, you know, and I, again,
48:19: I linked to the article and invited people to read it. Some of us, that's how we do it.
48:28: Rather than warning people and saying, don't listen to this person, as one guy said, you know, three or four months ago,
48:42: I don't want any of the people in my church listening to the dividing line, you know? Cancel culture. There's a fear.
48:52: There's a fear of not being able to really respond, I think. And so anyway, we're not gonna do that.
49:02: What I want people to look at was something really interesting. First of all, one quote from the article that I thought was interesting.
49:11: Because it is God's written word, Holy Scripture is the source and norm for sound theology. Our theology, our discourse concerning God is judged fitting or unfitting to the degree that it faithfully represents divine discourse and Holy Scripture.
49:24: Does that apply to the Council of Nicaea as well? To all creasing confessions?
49:31: Are all creasing confessions to be judged by Holy Scripture, which is the source and norm for sound theology?
49:38: Or is it just our thinking? I would say everything. I would say it's
49:46: God's word written, Holy Scripture is the source and norm for sound theology. Our theology, our discourse concerning God, our confessions, our creeds should be judged fitting or unfitting to the degree that they faithfully represent divine discourse and Holy Scripture.
50:02: I agree with that. Just a few years ago, that would have been utterly unremarkable.
50:08: It would have been met with snores. Not so much anymore. Okay, so the first thing that is said in this attempt to use the analogy of Scripture, so an overarching testimony of Scripture, not so much looking at texts in context, but overarching.
50:32: Quote, it might seem that the doctrine of divine simplicity contradicts the logic of biblical discourse. For example, Psalm 145 .3
50:38: lays down a clear rule for God honoring speech. Great is the
50:43: Lord and abundantly to be praised. Here, the indicative, the Lord is great, entails an imperative, the
50:50: Lord is to be praised in an abundant manner. The Psalm goes on to indicate exactly what such abundance entails.
50:57: Psalm 145 is an acrostic poem that fulfills its own rule by extolling God through a wide array of divine attributes by praising
51:05: God from A to Z. Psalm 145 extolls the Lord's greatness, majesty, goodness, righteousness, power, kingship, eternity, faithfulness, kindness, and holiness.
51:15: According to Psalm 145, it takes many names to praise the Lord according to his excellent greatness. Then he quotes from Psalm 150, verse two.
51:25: So yes, Psalm 145 does do that. I have it up here under the
51:33: Old Testament text banner. There it is. Great is Yahweh and highly to be praised.
51:39: His greatness is unsearchable. One generation shall praise thy works to another and shall declare thy mighty acts.
51:46: On the glorious splendor of thy majesty, on thy wonderful works, I will meditate. And men shall speak of the power of thine awesome acts.
51:54: And I will tell of thy greatness. They shall utter the memory of thine abundant goodness and shall shout joyfully of thy righteousness.
52:00: Okay, there's a bunch of terms used right there. Majesty, wonderful works, power, awesome acts, greatness, abundant goodness, righteousness.
52:13: Lord, Yahweh is gracious and merciful. Oh, I just realized that I'm still using the
52:19: NASB in the Old Testament section. I need to switch that over to the LSB or it would say Yahweh is gracious and merciful, but we'll worry about that a little bit later.
52:30: So the question that's being asked, here's what he says. With respect to the question at hand, does
52:35: Psalm 145's invitation to, an example describing many different names to God, a linguistic reality, suggests that there are many different things in God, an ontological reality.
52:49: What is the assumption being made? What's the background here? You see, that would never cross my mind as a question or an issue.
53:03: Because when I hear everything that's being said, these are all, why
53:09: I use the term attributes, the Eastern Church uses the Energia as the term, but these are all true descriptions of the one being of God.
53:22: Because there's only one Yahweh. So it would never cross my mind to go, well, if I use many different, if I talk about all the things that God has done and his righteousness and his power and his goodness and his mercy, then am
53:41: I suggesting that God's made up of parts? Because that's not the metaphysical concept of the psalmist.
53:51: That's not the metaphysical concept of Isaiah or Jeremiah. It's not mine either.
53:58: So it never crossed my mind. And so it's a question that is only relevant to people who are willing to embrace certain metaphysical presuppositions that exist outside of Scripture and then answer questions about Scripture based upon those external metaphysical considerations.
54:22: I think that's very important. And so he goes on to say, well, let's look at the analogy of Scripture.
54:32: And he says, a first step in applying the analogy of Scripture is to consider explicit affirmations of divine simplicity.
54:40: One such affirmation appears in James 1 .5, where God is described as one who gives simply, i .e.,
54:49: with unmixed motives. James' affirmation of God's simple goodness is closely related to his affirmation of God's unchangeable goodness.
54:59: In contrast to the doubleness and instability of doubting human beings, James 1 .8,
55:05: God is a simple and unchangeable giver of good gifts, unsusceptible to being moved by temptation or to temptation,
55:14: James 1 .5, 13, 17 through 18. So this is what caught my attention and a lot of other people's attention, and I think properly so.
55:30: Because the question that I asked, and it was interesting, one of the less friendly
55:37: Reformed Baptist folks out there, I actually blocked him this morning, I was just getting tired of the acerbic interaction, tried to substantiate this by going to Douglas Moo's commentary in the
55:54: Pillar New Testament Commentary series. I had to take the time to point out he was abusing
55:59: Moo, misrepresenting Moo just like the same fellow misrepresents me, it just sort of seems to be part of the process.
56:06: But Moo did not say what Dr. Swain is saying here at all.
56:15: And the reason this caught me is when it said where God is described as one who gives simply, i .e.
56:26: with unmixed motives, it almost struck me that what's going on here is we're told, we're being told all the time now, that we need to interpret the
56:47: New Testament the way the apostles interpreted the Old Testament. Well, that sounds really good, doesn't it?
56:58: That sounds very spiritual. The problem is we're not apostles, we're not writing scripture, and the apostles spent a great deal of time with the
57:17: Lord Jesus after his resurrection where he taught them how the Old Testament scripture is testified of him from Moses through all the prophets.
57:27: And we get to learn that from the book of Acts and from the applications made by the apostles, but just seems to me that we should probably be content with their revelation of that.
57:52: So when I ask what is this great tradition exegesis, what is this pre -modern?
57:59: I've pointed out many, many times, Thomas Aquinas, for example, will cite numerous passages in the
58:06: Psalms and they're just based upon the appearance of a word. The word's in my
58:12: New Testament text and it's in an Old Testament text and therefore they must be connected. Even though in context, what the psalmist is talking about and what the
58:23: New Testament author is talking about are completely different things. Contextually, there is no connection.
58:30: And it's just, it's basic human language to recognize that there are words that have a meaning when they're used one way and a completely different meaning in a different context and connecting them creates riotous chaos.
58:47: And so I asked people to look at James 1 .5. If you deal with Mormons, you've dealt with James 1 .5
58:57: over and over and over again because this is where they will go in defense of their asking for a testimony from God.
59:15: And so James 1 .5, nothing new here. But the context is, and let perseverance have its perfect works that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
59:30: But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God who gives to all generously and without reproach and it will be given to him.
59:37: But he must ask in faith, doubting nothing for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind.
59:43: So there's the verse before, the verse after. You can see that there is a consistent context here and the consistent context is in regards to believers.
59:55: They are having to persevere, become perfect and complete.
01:00:03: They are to ask of God wisdom. He is described as the one who gives to all generously and without reproach.
01:00:11: They will receive that wisdom, but he, same believer, must ask in faith, doubting nothing for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind.
01:00:22: And so generally what we would do is we would lead our people to follow the context and to understand that James is communicating to his audience the necessity of perseverance, the need to have wisdom, which
01:00:45: God will give to us as to how we can be perfect and complete, but that we must ask in faith, doubting nothing.
01:00:53: We can't be like the people that are shifting sands. We don't wanna be the double -minded man in James 1 .8.
01:01:06: So here is the term that Dr.
01:01:15: Swain is focusing on. Haplos, haplos, which as you can see, is translated in the
01:01:23: Legacy Standard Bible and in almost all English Bibles as generously. Now, if a certain one is lacking wisdom,
01:01:37: Sophias, let him ask, para tu didantas theou.
01:01:46: So let him ask from the giving God to all, haplos kai me anai didzantos.
01:01:59: So this is a description of, here is the giving
01:02:09: God, and then he gives to all in a certain way. And that's this phrase here.
01:02:18: And it has two aspects to it, a positive aspect, haplos, and then a negative aspect, without and not reproaching.
01:02:35: So both of these are describing God, but they're describing the process of how
01:02:42: God gives to the person who asks in faith for wisdom. And he gives generously without reproach, and it will be given to him, is the promise that is there.
01:03:01: James is not in this text describing God. He's describing how God gives. Now, that involves a fundamental assumption concerning the character of God.
01:03:13: But we need to recognize that the initial meaning has to do with asking wisdom from God and being encouraged to do so, because he gives generously and without reproach.
01:03:32: He wants to give to his people what they need to be his servants, to serve him.
01:03:39: He wants to do that. And so there is the description of what
01:03:48: James 1 .5 is talking about. Now, haplos can be translated as simple.
01:03:59: And so is that the connection? Douglas Moo in his commentary on this text goes to related.
01:04:11: Now, haplos is a hapoxogammon in the New Testament. It's the only place where it's used in the New Testament. But the root and related terms, cognate terms, he spent quite some time in his commentary, which is a little interesting because the pillar is not meant to be a super complex level commentary series.
01:04:34: But he spends quite some time going through and arguing that what he's, he's not really, he says it's not so much that he gives generously.
01:04:47: He's not saying that that's not a part of the meaning, but that there is a consistency to his giving.
01:04:57: Now, I would argue that the, that it's far more relevant syntactically speaking and hence lexicographically speaking to take, use another color here so you can see what it looks like, to take this phrase here and it's the, if this is the positive and this is the negative, if this is not reproaching, then haplos needs to be the, well,
01:05:36: I don't have any place to draw here. And I didn't put up the green screen in the back so I could do the chalkboard thing.
01:05:47: There is any word, I'll just use this little open space, has what's called a semantic domain.
01:05:56: And some have a very small semantic domain. It's a very technical term.
01:06:02: There's not much room to move around. Other words have wider semantic domains and where the meaning in that domain is in any one use is going to be determined by the context of the author.
01:06:19: And so my point being that in this context here, not reproaching, whatever haplos is, you have to interpret it within the context of what
01:06:34: James is saying is he's encouraging people. If you lack wisdom, God is your source.
01:06:40: Go to him and it will be given to you. Just ask in faith. That's what's being said.
01:06:47: And so he gives generously or purposefully so that you can be perfect, complete and do his will.
01:06:56: That's what's being communicated. If you're gonna make a connection between this and the philosophical doctrine of simplicity and say this is a explicit statement, well, wow, that's a stretch.
01:07:23: That's just a huge stretch. Would anyone come up with that just sort of reading it on their own?
01:07:30: I don't think so. And it just really makes me wonder, is this analogy of scripture, pre -modern exegesis thing, well, haplos can be translated simple and so therefore we can make the connection?
01:07:49: Is that the idea? I don't know.
01:07:57: But is that how any of us would handle this while teaching in our churches and trying to?
01:08:05: How many of our people in our church would understand this?
01:08:11: Let me read it again. One such affirmation appears to James 1 .5 where God is described as one who gives simply, i .e.
01:08:20: with unmixed motives. James' affirmation of God's simple goodness is closely related to his affirmation of God's unchangeable goodness.
01:08:36: In contrast to the doubleness and instability of doubting human beings, you get that down in verse eight, being a double -minded man,
01:08:42: God is a simple and unchangeable giver of good gifts, unsusceptible to being moved by temptation or to temptation.
01:08:52: Well, there are true statements being made there, but they're made farther down and that's not what James 1 .5 is talking about.
01:09:00: So do we have to, on what basis do we sort of cram it in there?
01:09:08: And the question I asked is, you stand before,
01:09:14: I mean, people are preaching through James all the time. If you stand before your people, are you going to tell them that this is a affirmation of God's simple goodness?
01:09:27: That's not what simple is functioning as. This is affirmation of the fact that God will give generously and without reproach wisdom to anyone who asks him in faith.
01:09:37: That's what it's about. Now, if you want to say, and that means God is good. Well, yeah, but every text of scripture is gonna, is you can take it that direction.
01:09:48: You can make any text of scripture an explicit affirmation of whatever you want. Along those lines, it just, what are the rules here?
01:09:58: What are the rules here? So this was part of the question that is being asked.
01:10:08: There we go. I guess I'll go ahead and read one more paragraph since we've gone this far.
01:10:20: A second step in applying the analogy of scripture is to consider the implicit affirmation of divine simplicity.
01:10:28: This is an implicit, not an explicit. Consider the implicit affirmation of divine simplicity in 1
01:10:34: John 1, 5. Whoa, wrong camera. 1
01:10:40: John 1, 5, God is light and in him is no darkness at all.
01:10:47: Now, I happen to really love this text. Well, it's in 1
01:10:53: John, first of all, and when you've taught Greek for years and years and years, you've translated 1 John with all sorts of neat folks over the decades.
01:11:01: And so you bet 1 John 1, 5. Strangely enough, in this case,
01:11:11: John's implicit affirmation of divine simplicity more directly conveys the underlying logic of divine simplicity than scripture's explicit affirmation of the doctrine in James 1, 5.
01:11:22: Well, we sort of didn't really find that explicit there in James 1, 5, but anyway.
01:11:29: 1 John 1, 5 affirms two things. Now, listen to this and ask yourself the question, is this what you hear scripture saying?
01:11:40: 1 John 1, 5 affirms two things about God's relationship to light, both of which preclude a partitive or composite understanding of that relationship.
01:11:55: According to 1 John 1, 5, one, God is identical with light and two,
01:12:03: God is nothing but light. God cannot be distinguished from light as if light were a non -essential attribute because he is light.
01:12:18: Nor can God's light be distinguished from other parts of God, e .g.
01:12:23: his being, wisdom, goodness, power, et cetera, because he is nothing but light. According to 1
01:12:30: John 1, 5, God is essentially and exclusively light.
01:12:42: I'm looking back at Rich to see, what do you - Let's go over to the love part. God is love, they're the same thing.
01:12:48: Oh, you can't. Yeah. And they have to. Because - They have. Right. Love is light, is majesty, is power, is wrath.
01:12:56: They're all the same thing. That's it, that's all he is. And that's what Hodge was saying is. We're no longer using these words as having any meaning.
01:13:04: That's right. God is essentially and exclusively light. Right now,
01:13:13: I'm looking at lights. Am I looking at God? Because we have a bunch of lights here and I've never figured out why.
01:13:20: It is an impossible task to make me look good in any light at all, because I'm an old, ugly man.
01:13:27: But we have lights so that you can see. And am I looking at God? Because God's exclusively light.
01:13:36: God is essentially and exclusively light. This is, to me, where this philosophical definition, just completely turns scripture upside down.
01:13:55: It empties it of meaning. When we say
01:14:00: God is light, there's no darkness in him at all. We know what that means. There is no darkness in him.
01:14:08: We see light described of God in many ways, a light unapproachable, no man can see.
01:14:17: That doesn't make him light any more than he's the various precious stones described in Revelation.
01:14:27: God is light. God is love. And God is thrice holy.
01:14:35: Does that mean he's more holy than he is light? Or that light is holiness?
01:14:44: Again, if you want to, in your speculative moments, sit there and say, for God, his holiness is his light, okay.
01:14:57: I'm not gonna do that. And I don't see any, there's certainly no biblical mandate for me to believe that.
01:15:04: And I don't see that it helps my people for me to drag them along the speculative path that says this.
01:15:17: But according to 1 John 1 .5, God is essentially and exclusively light.
01:15:29: No, not what I said. I don't think that John intended to communicate that.
01:15:35: He does not give us the metaphysical categories to make the philosophical application. The people who would have been reading that would not have made that application at all.
01:15:44: They would have recognized the
01:15:49: Old Testament. It's always better to look for an Old Testament context than some type of Greek philosophical context.
01:15:58: Even though I did see someone just yesterday saying, oh yeah, everybody in Palestine knew about Aristotle and Plato.
01:16:06: Like, oh my, not gonna go well for that particular individual.
01:16:12: But this is where my concerns are. And I think most people can understand where these concerns are and how they're being expressed.
01:16:28: So anyway, there's more that could be said here. I'm not done with, it's a short article. There's only a couple more paragraphs.
01:16:40: I'll just read one more. Psalm 92 .15 confirms the logic of divine simplicity on display in 1 John 1 .5.
01:16:47: According to Psalm 92 .15, under the Lord's blessing, the righteous flourish in declaring that the Lord is upright and that there is no unrighteousness in him.
01:16:55: Once again, God is identical with his uprightness. And God is nothing but righteousness.
01:17:01: But I thought he was light. And please don't tell me light and righteousness are the same thing.
01:17:09: For God, they are. You see how this functions. Whether scripture is speaking about divine light or about divine righteousness, both attributes appear to operate according to a shared logic of divine simplicity.
01:17:23: Based on these two examples, we may suggest the following rule for God befitting speech. Here's the rule for God befitting speech.
01:17:32: To say that God is X is to say that God is essentially X. I .e.
01:17:38: X is not accidental to what God is. And that God is exhaustively
01:17:43: X. That is, X is not a part of what God is. Okay?
01:17:52: I understand what's being said. But I do not embrace the metaphysical categories that are necessary to come to this conclusion.
01:18:01: And I say to you that the application of this rule and those metaphysical categories to the execution of scripture turns scripture upside down.
01:18:12: So, there you go. Haven't had to call anybody names or anything else.
01:18:22: And the only way for the other side to respond to this, consistent with their past behavior, is simply to say, well, you disagree with this person, that person, and the other person.
01:18:33: Or our understanding of this, that, or the other thing. I would love to see some type of exegetical defense, but we will see what comes from that.
01:18:48: All right. I did get a text from John Cooper asking how summer was doing.
01:18:57: So, I'm gonna be getting a few more of those as this time goes by. Again, don't know how things are gonna work.
01:19:08: I hit the road on Tuesday. Will I have any time to do something on a Monday? I don't know.
01:19:14: I don't know. To be honest with you, if I have any time to sneak something on a
01:19:21: Monday, again, it all depends on baby arrival time, but I might have to do it from the unit.
01:19:28: That may be the best way to get together. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. The unit will be parked in my house.
01:19:35: It will be, gotta get that refrigerator cold. That's sort of,
01:19:40: I don't want to be eating any of the deli turkey that has been in a refrigerator that wasn't really cold.
01:19:49: Strange fire. Strange fire. Yeah, yep, gotta keep that in mind as you're driving down the road.
01:19:58: No two ways about it. All right, so thank you for watching the program today. Like I said, we'll let you know on the app next time we're gonna be able to get together with you and pray for the trip and for my little grandson, and we'll see you next time.