Church History & Apologetics w/ Dr. Gavin Ortlund

All right, welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host Eli Ayala, and today we are going to have an excellent discussion on the topic of church history, apologetics, and Christian conduct.

And my choosing those three topics to cover with my guest tonight is very intentional, as I think that this particular guest who you're about to meet in just a few moments,

I think covers these areas very well on his YouTube channel, which I will invite

Dr. Ortlin, Dr. Gavin Ortlin, on in just a few moments. Maybe he can tell us a little bit about his

YouTube channel, which I highly recommend. But before we officially get started with with our guest today,

I'd like to kind of just point people to the fact if you're just joining this YouTube channel,

I know I've received a lot of new subscribers just recently, especially in light of my post debate discussion with Dr.

James White, just right after his interaction with William Lane Craig. If you've just subscribed to the channel, please go back to some of the old episodes that I release, and there are some excellent interviews that I have with scholars like Michael Kruger, James Anderson.

We even had Hank Hanegraaff on to talk about Eastern Orthodoxy, and then

I invited Dr. Tony Costa to kind of engage with Hanegraaff's position and things like that.

So it was really a lot of great dynamic conversations and interviews that you'll kind of see at the backlog, the earlier episodes on this channel.

So if you're new, welcome. If you're an old listener, then thank you so much for your continued support.

It's greatly appreciated. Just by way of upcoming interviews that I want to share with folks,

I'm in the works of having Jeff Durbin on to discuss abortion, which is an area of focus in his ministry, as well as presuppositional apologetics and other related areas.

I'll also be having Nate Sala. Now, if you don't know who Nate Sala is, he's over there on the

YouTube channel, The Wise Disciple. He also does those very popular videos, The Debate Teacher Reacts.

He's a former debate teacher, and so he analyzes various apologetics debates and stuff like that.

So I'm really excited to have him on, and of course, I'm very excited to have our guest today or tonight.

My guest, well, I could say tonight. It's 6 p .m. over here is the evening, so. But, well, now that we have a couple of people already listening in,

I want to kind of just jump in into introducing my guest, who will share a little bit about himself in just a moment.

Hello, Dr. Gavin Ortlund. Welcome to Revealed Apologetics. Hey, Eli, good to see you. Thanks for having me.

Well, it is a pleasure to have you on. I know that you're busy. We were just speaking before going live.

You have four children. I have three children. God only knows how we have time to do anything. Welcome.

Hey, thanks for having me. Yeah, this is fun. Excellent. Well, why don't you tell folks a little bit about yourself, and then you can share a little bit about your

YouTube channel, and then we'll jump right into the topic for tonight. Yeah, sure. Yeah, I'm a pastor in Southern California in a town called

Ojai, which is north of LA, about 80 miles. As you just mentioned, I have four young kids, and so we're right now gearing up for Christmas, which should be a lot of fun.

I write. I have a PhD in historical theology, so a lot of my publications are in historical studies of some kind.

I've done a lot of research in some of the Church Fathers, St. Augustine, Anselm, people like that are really interesting to me.

And then I've just gotten into apologetics. In the last year and a half, it's become a major passion. So my most recent book, which came out last month, is an apologetics book called

Why God Makes Sense in a World That Doesn't. And then I've started a YouTube channel, also about a year and a half ago, and that was mainly supposed to be on apologetics issues, but it's pulled me also into ecumenical conversations and debates and, you know,

Protestant versus the other non -Protestant traditions, those kinds of differences, and talking through that. So that's been a really interesting journey as well, so people can find that on YouTube.

It's called Truth Unites. Yeah, excellent. Well, I highly recommend your content. And I say that I know that, and we were speaking about this just very briefly before we went live, there are folks who are on all sides of the various fences.

I tell people all the time, you know, every time I have a guest on, there's always someone who's messaging me. Why do you have this guy on, or this person's a heretic?

Everyone's a heretic, apparently. But I'm sure there are areas in our theology between the both of us that we probably don't agree, and those differences are probably important, but ultimately, we're able to kind of benefit from learning from the different traditions and different perspectives, and it is possible, and I think you do this well, it is possible to disagree with someone and yet hold to your convictions without compromise, right?

You don't have to be a marshmallow or a snowflake, as they say, just by being kind and respectful to those you disagree with, and I think you do an excellent job at that.

Just real quick, by a quick plug, I do highly recommend that folks who go over to, can

I just call you Gavin, and most people, I don't want to keep saying Dr. Ortlin, but if you guys go over to his

YouTube channel, he's got a great, I don't know if it's on your channel or someone else, I listen to it, you have a great interaction with an

Eastern Orthodox gentleman, where I thought the conversation was excellent, so I really appreciate those dialogues that you're having.

Well, without further ado, I would like to ask you to clarify something for the audience. You did mention that you have a

PhD in historical theology, and I know a lot of people are familiar with what theology is, and they're familiar with church history, but why don't you define for us what historical theology is?

Okay, yeah, historical theology is just very simply, you might think of it as a subset, maybe you could think of it as a mix between systematic theology and church history.

Basically, you're just looking at the church's theology throughout history. So you're doing church history, but with a focus on the theology, on the ideas of the church, not just the events and so forth.

I find that an extremely fascinating discipline. I find it so helpful, especially right now in our culture, in the modern

West, there's been so many changes that are, there's many ways in which our culture in the modern

West is different from every other culture in human history. And yet, we often tend to assume that our context is the normal one, and all the other contexts are the strange ones, and it's good and humbling and healthy to realize, actually, that's not necessarily true.

Why privilege our culture? You know, the modern West has a lot of blind spots. Studying historical theology has been so profoundly helpful for me, personally, as a

Christian and also as a theologian, for many reasons, but one of them is precisely that, to challenge modern

Western assumptions and to expose different ways of looking at something that, if I were, could boil down, for example, one of the things

I've learned from Anselm, a medieval theologian, would just be the word God -centeredness, to start your theology with God, not with human questions.

And so there's so many, I could unpack that a lot, but that that's a brief snapshot of kind of just why

I've become so passionate about how helpful it is to study historical theology.

Now, how would you differentiate between historical theology and, say, kind of just a survey of church history?

I think a survey of church history would have more of a comprehensive focus that would look at a little bit of theology, but it would also really just be looking at everything to do with church history, the events, the people, you know, you might have a lot of focus upon how did

Charlemagne impact the changes of Western Christianity or something like that. Okay, well, historical theology, you're not really going to be focusing on the politics, the events, wars, plagues, etc.,

except insofar as they're relevant to the church's thought. So historical theology is just looking at the church's doctrine and thought.

Hmm. All right. Well, I see a lot of comments coming in. I would encourage folks, if you have a question for Dr. Ortlin, as we normally do on these live interviews, he is more than happy to take any questions that you'll have on any area that he is able to respond to, so church history, apologetics, things like that.

And just to make sure, I have to say this, make sure you guys keep, make sure you guys behave in the comments.

And they're normally good on this channel. I do appreciate it. But I just wanted to throw that out there for folks.

Real quick, also, and I say this every episode, make sure that you preface your question with the word question so that I can differentiate your question from all of the comments.

So there's that. All right. Well, okay, so thank you for defining our terms there, historical theology, and how it's different from just a survey of church history.

Now, when we bring this into contact with apologetics, what is the relationship between historical theology, church history, and Christians fulfilling the mandate of 1

Peter 3, verse 15, to always be ready to give a reason for the hope that's in us. How do you connect those?

How can you share with my listeners why it's important to kind of meld these things together?

Okay. Yeah, this has been, I wrote a blog post about this once on my blog, how theological retrieval, which is just the task of drawing from historical theology for doing theology today, can inform apologetics, which is a really interesting question.

There's so much to that that we could maybe get into. We could talk about, say, you know, how

Christians first faced the challenge of Islam, like John of Damascus and some of these other early

Eastern Christian theologians who are first facing the challenge of Islam, and how that could inform our dialogue with our

Muslim friends today, for example. You know, there's all kinds of specific avenues where we might just learn so much content.

But one of the other things that's a little more subtle and kind of interesting that I've observed is church history can also just kind of help us position the gospel to be really clear for people.

So, you know, it can help us distinguish between what is sort of mainstream classical

Christianity versus what are elements of the faith that are kind of more just a result of our context and our culture.

Okay, so like I'll give two examples of times I've seen this. One is William Lane Craig in his famous debate with Christopher Hitchens at Biola University.

I want to say this was, you might know this more than me, I want to say this was like early, like mid -2000s.

Yeah, 2000, between 2008 and 2011, I want to say.

Somewhere between. That sounds right. I remember the time I was, yeah, that sounds right.

So in the debate, he referenced St. Augustine's view of Genesis 1 as a way to say that a non -literal reading of Genesis 1 is not merely a response to modern science.

Okay. Now, I'm not trying to make a point about Genesis 1 right now. Whatever one thinks about that is fine, but it's just that was an example of where in a public apologetics context, you can say, look,

Christian view, and that's a general point about this whole area, is church history can be a sort of objective witness.

It can be a check to us because it's going to be a pre -modern. It's going to give you a lot of pre -modern voices and therefore it can tell you whether something is merely being a result of the changes with modernity.

It can give you a kind of outside perspective on the modern kind of liberal versus conservative spectrum that we have today.

It's really interesting to do that. Another example would be Ross Douthat on Bill Maher's show. There's an episode.

It's not on YouTube anymore, unfortunately. It was a really fascinating discussion. Bill Maher, as you know, is not exactly the most friendly person to religion.

Not exactly. Yeah, I mean when you think of the

New Atheists, he's almost more sarcastic than them. So he was going on and on and I thought

Ross Douthat did such a good job at defending Christian beliefs, and he referenced the rapture. And he said, look, what you think of as like the normal Christian view is actually a 19th century innovation.

He's using basically theological retrieval. That's another way, a specific way, is it gives us kind of it's a distinction between what we see as kind of the normal Christian view versus what is actually classically consistently been orthodox.

Would you say, so kind of to draw another example, would you say that that's kind of equivalent to interpretations of Genesis, for example?

Some will say that certain interpretations are given to respond to evolution in kind of current situations.

Would you say it's similar to the idea that say, for example, St. Augustine had a particular interpretation of Genesis that shows that it is plausible to interpret it in different ways without the pressure of the modern evolutionary context.

Would you say that that's similar to the point you're trying to make with respect to understanding Scripture within a specific context, and then having that as kind of apologetically useful?

Does that make sense? If I understand your question, right, that's exactly my point.

It's exactly the point I'm trying to make. Yeah, in other words, when you see that Augustine doesn't think the days of Genesis 1 are ordinary solar 24 -hour periods of time, that might incline you to be more open to the fact that this isn't just a capitulation to 19th century geological discovery.

And that's true, even if you disagree with St. Augustine's interpretation. So if St.

Augustine says, hey, we could we could understand Genesis in this way, we don't necessarily have to understand it that way, you can disagree with him, but it shows that people were asking these questions and thinking about these things in that way.

Without the pressure of evolution. So it's not just a modern example of responding to a specific context as opposed to taking the

Scripture in its proper historical context. Exactly, right. You might conclude that Augustine was wrong and that the days are 24 -hour periods of time.

But if you see that this view is present in Augustine, and not only in Augustine, but actually in many people prior to him, and many medieval interpreters as well, you might at least be inclined to say, okay, that's still a difference that's within orthodoxy.

This isn't like a dividing line between the people who take the Bible seriously and the people who don't take the

Bible seriously. And sometimes it is framed as that by certain contemporary ministries that have a particular view on these things.

It's framed as though here's the serious view for people who uphold the Bible as God's Word. People who are pitch compromising to modern science.

Right. The Augustinian tradition of exegesis in mind, even if you disagree with it, you might categorize that differently.

Right, and I think that's unfortunate. I hold to a specific interpretation of Genesis, but I don't buy some of the criticisms of say like old earth creationists that they're just compromising.

I think that, I mean, this is not a discussion on Genesis, right, obviously, but I do think that there are people just look at the biblical data, they have different understanding of what the proper context is and the genre, and they just understand it in a different way.

And they think that, you know, there are other options than at one particular interpretation. And I respect that even though I hold to my own position for the reasons that I do.

So that's a great point. All right. So let's kind of jump more into kind of, not to say that everything you said is impractical,

I think all of it is practical, but let's jump into a more practical example where something like church history and historical theology will be very useful within an apologetic context.

How can we use, how can you convince someone who doesn't, they're not really up on church history or historical theology, how can you convince someone that it is important and then provide an example, say, for example, the role church history plays when you're doing apologetics with a

Roman Catholic or an Eastern Orthodox person or a Muslim? Perhaps we can kind of draw some specific examples as to where this type of information, this type of study, this historical, you know, church history perspective, how this can come into an actual dialogue with someone from those different perspectives.

Okay. Yeah. Well, the first appeal that I love to make to people is if you fall in love with church history and it's the main thing, it's just so that you can know what to say in this conversation, then it's kind of like, oh, well, but you know, we should just love church history, first of all, because we love

Jesus. So Jesus is at work throughout church history. We are, when we become a Christian, we're not just entering into a personal relationship with Christ.

We're brought into this spiritual family we call the church, and the church extends throughout time as well as throughout space.

So we have brothers and sisters in Christ who have gone before us. And so to me, there's just such a basic appeal that we can make, and it's so edifying.

I mean, if someone reads Augustine's Confessions and isn't moved emotionally, spiritually, and intellectually, then

I don't know what can move us, because that book is so from the beginning when he says our hearts are made for God and they're restless until they find their rest in him.

This is such a penetrating book. However, to answer your question, it is so helpful.

In fact, we are, I just feel embarrassed at how many times Protestants are woefully ignorant of church history today, and it makes

Protestants extremely vulnerable to the apologetics efforts of non -Protestant traditions, such as Orthodox or Catholic or others.

And I see it happen over and over again, where people don't know a thing about church history, and then they hear these appeals from an apologetics ministry about how early on bishops enter into the church as a misdemeanor office, about how everyone thought the body and blood of Christ was literally present in the bread and wine of the

Eucharist. Oh gosh, we could go, everyone believed in baptismal regeneration among the church fathers.

If there's anything universal, it's that, you know, and all these different appeals, and Protestants are just completely swept off their feet.

And I think that a basic understanding of church history is, amidst a zillion other reasons, it's healthy and good.

It's good so that we'll be more capable in terms of interacting with those kinds of arguments.

Hmm, so let's get a little more specific then. So you're talking to an

Eastern Orthodox person, right? And the person says, well, the problem is, pardon, the problem is you

Protestants have really strayed away from historic Christianity. You know, what we teach is what the church believed from the beginning.

So why don't you provide a response for us, maybe give some, I don't want to use kind of the military language, but ammunition for a

Protestant who says, hey, you know, my cousin who's Eastern Orthodox, he told me that, I didn't know what to say. How would you speak to that and kind of provide someone the beginning of how they might engage that sort of claim?

Okay, I'll draw attention to two example areas where we could draw attention to these in the midst of that dialogue.

But I would want to encourage people to do their own homework and to make sure that their own knowledge is sufficient for what they say.

In other words, don't just pull out a claim and then say that because I think someone could get themselves into trouble by over speaking or speaking when they don't know enough to back up the claim.

So maybe these would be areas for the Protestant to study so that then they're even more equipped in that dialogue.

But one of them would be how icons and other images and physical objects of an artistic nature are utilized in Christian worship in the early church.

Because the Eastern Orthodox claim is that venerating icons is an essential and necessary part of worship.

And that comes out of the Seventh Ecumenical Council at Nicaea too, and there's an anathema placed upon those who don't affirm the veneration of icons.

So, but if you look into church history, I think the case can be made very compellingly that the veneration of icons is not well attested in the first several hundred years of church history.

In fact, many of the earliest church fathers say they renounce all use of icons, let alone venerating them, bowing before them, kissing them, anything like that.

And I think a good case can be made that this is a later accretion in church history.

Now, there's a lot to that. There's counter -arguments we need to engage and so forth. But that's an area that I could encourage people to really look into and I think we've got a pretty good case that can be made.

Sure. Now, what sort of responses, you know, you said that there's a good argument to be had that it's a later accretions.

What are some of the things that Eastern Orthodox folks bring up in response to that assertion? And maybe you can kind of, not in as in -depth as you possibly could, but can you kind of play out a back and forth in terms of, you know, well

Protestants typically say that, yeah, it's a later accretion, but really what sort of information do they appeal to to combat that assertion?

Yeah, they will appeal to various claims of evidence that it is apostolic, that it does go back.

They'll talk about certain inscriptions on early

Christian tombs. They'll make various architectural appeals from early Christian buildings, and then they'll appeal to certain fathers early on.

So it's hard to get into this without getting, it's hard to just get a little bit into this without getting really into it.

But essentially, I think that the basic way I'd interact with those claims is, it is true that you can find the use of images among Christians early on, but in terms of their veneration, the reason we know that Christians didn't practice that is because we have so many testimonies from early fathers, or just we'd say ecclesial writers like Origen, who are, they're saying, you know, we don't venerate images, and they're saying that this is a distinctive point of difference between Christian worship and pagan worship, because it's so common in the pagan culture around.

The veneration of images in some way or another. So those testimonies from so many fathers are hard to dismiss.

Another area that I would encourage people to engage in if they're talking with Eastern Orthodox Christians is the filioque clause, which is the phrase and the creed that's

Latin, means, and from the Son. It's the idea of whether the Holy Spirit proceeds from the

Father and the Son, or just from the Father. And the historic Orthodox view is that affirming the filioque is a heresy, and, you know, a damnable heresy, and you can find lots of Orthodox.

Well, from the Eastern Orthodox perspective, the Western Church would affirm that the

Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, right? So that was the the heart of the split in 1015, am I correct?

1054, sorry? Yes, I mean, there's a lot, that's at the heart of the theology and the differences.

There's a lot of politics to that split as well. But yeah, so that's another area where I think a good case can be made that you've got a lot of Western fathers that the

East will not want to anathematize, will not want to say we're heretics, but they pretty clearly affirmed the filioque, and you know, again, there's responses here to that, but I think a good case can be made.

So I'm just trying to flag two areas where, yeah, like dive into those things if they're looking for help in responding to these strong claims.

Now, okay, so when I speak, for example, with Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox folks, they tend to appeal to the authority of different streams of Church Fathers, so that the

Eastern Church has their Church Fathers and the Western Church has their Church Fathers. Do you think that it's apologetically important to focus on those different streams?

So for example, a Protestant might want to challenge the authority claims of both a

Roman Catholic and an Eastern Orthodox. Would that be a good route to take when engaging in any one of them?

So for example, the Eastern Orthodox says this is what the Church has always believed. But then you point out, well,

Roman Catholics kind of disagree with you, and they say that this is what the Church believed. Which authority should we be following? Is that an okay route to take, or do you think there's a better route to take in engaging those sorts of issues?

Yeah, what's interesting is both churches tend to claim the consensus of all the

Fathers. Okay, so both will tend to, like the Eastern Orthodox Church will want to appeal to Western Fathers.

The Catholic Church will want to appeal to Eastern Fathers. And so one of the things that I think that Protestants can, that might help

Protestants, is to not position it as just, it's just me over here as an individual

Protestant versus wow, you know all the Church Fathers over there with you. But to recognize, first of all,

Protestantism is not the first division. If you were to subtract Protestantism from the equation, you'd still have a

Church that's deeply divided at multiple levels. So it's helpful for Protestants to realize that we've got the other

Eastern traditions, the Oriental Orthodox Church and the Assyrian Church of the

East, or two other Eastern churches. And then we've got other groups that have split off from the Roman Catholic Church both what are called proto -Protestant groups, like the

Waldensians, or a medieval group that split off from the Catholic Church, eventually joined in with the

Reformed tradition, a Protestant tradition. You've got the

Old Catholic Church, which split off at Vatican I. So, and then you've got, you know, all kinds of, within Orthodoxy, you've got schisms, you've got the true

Orthodox who think that the what they call the World Orthodox have become heretical and because they've become too open to ecumenism and so forth.

So it's helpful to realize, because often it's leveraged against us, like, well, there's just the one church that's totally united and then you guys split off into all these different groups.

And it's helpful to kind of even it out a little bit and say, and also then with appealing to the Church Fathers, and I think it's appropriate to show how the consensus of the

Church Fathers, I'm sorry, but it does not neatly support any one contemporary church.

It just doesn't. There will be, on many points, the Fathers don't have a consensus.

On many particular doctrines, the Fathers say have different views. And then on the points where they are in agreement,

I don't think that it neatly services or aids the apologetics efforts of like one particular church.

And so I think that's one way Protestants can start to think about that in order to be prepared to not be swept off their feet by these overconfident assertions that we hear.

Now I have a friend who, he has an apologetics website and he has a section on the Church Fathers and he has an article entitled,

My Church Father Can Beat Up Your Church Father. And the point he's trying to make is that it seems to be that when

Roman Catholic tradition and Eastern Orthodox tradition appeal to the Fathers, in reality there's a lot upon which the

Fathers contradict each other. Is that true? Do you see a lot of contradiction in a lot of these claims that if we're going to put our trust in the the majority of the

Church Fathers taught this one thing and, well, when you appeal to different people, there seems to be conflicts. Is that an accurate picture of the

Church Fathers or am I missing something? I think it will depend upon what the issue is.

There are some points where the Church Fathers, at least in strong majority or in perhaps near unanimity, tend to arrive upon one view.

And here's a lot of times why people leave Protestantism. They go into these discussions naively thinking, oh, this is going to be an easy case.

All the truth is obviously on our side. And the fact is it's actually pretty tricky. There are some points that can be leveraged against much modern evangelical practice, though less so,

I would argue, against historic Protestant views and practice. That can be pretty powerful.

And I would want to encourage Protestants to humbly listen to the appeal and consider, hey, the other side is not necessarily insincere or stupid.

They're smart and sincere in many cases. So you got to really take seriously what they are saying. At some points there may be a strong appeal from the

Church Fathers that can be made against us and we'll have to wrestle with that and work through that. In some of those cases, there will be

Protestant traditions that are more historically aware that can better accommodate that criticism.

A Lutheran or an Anglican might be able to say, yeah, we would agree with the point in question here on some of those appeals that are made.

Yeah. Yeah, and other points. But I think you are right that, yes, often the claim of the consensus of the

Fathers is overstated. Oftentimes there is more diversity among the Fathers than is acknowledged by those claims.

Sure. Now, how would you respond then to, and by the way, I'm asking these questions on purpose. I don't have prepared questions, but I am asking these questions on purpose because I hope that people will see the way you're answering it actually is exemplifying the apologetic significance of knowing

Church history. So if I were to say, you know, well, what if the, you know, a Roman Catholic says, well, the Church always believed

A, B, and C, and then you give your answer and hopefully people are making the connection. Well, wait a minute. When I engage a

Roman Catholic, it's really helpful to kind of know a little bit about that information. So hopefully, you know, Gavin's answers are a good exemplification of what it looks like to incorporate knowledge of Church history into the apologetic task.

So I think you're doing an excellent job there. But so Protestants get a bad rap because Protestantism seems very segmented.

We hear, you know, I lost count of the number, but you know, there are one trillion billion quintillion denominations, right?

You know, of course, that's not a real number, but how would you respond as a Protestant to the claim that Protestantism has brought nothing but division?

And it's just proved positive that Protestantism does not have the truth because look at all the different denominations.

How would you help my listeners engage in that sort of challenge? If someone were to state it as Protestantism has brought nothing more than division,

I'd want to push back at the lack of charity and the uncarefulness of an assertion like that.

Most of the Roman Catholic theologians who are some of my dear friends who I respect the most will acknowledge that some good things came with the

Reformation. It's not just this pure unadulterated evil. They would disagree with the fundamental material claims of the

Reformation. So those kinds of overstatements I would push back on. Now if someone makes a more modest and careful statement that says

I'm really concerned about the amount of divisiveness in Protestantism. I would agree.

I don't think there's any good in denying that that's a real challenge. And I would say, you know, to be a

Protestant Christian doesn't necessarily mean that you think Protestantism is perfect. Or that there's no, in fact, one of the whole glories of Protestantism is the principle of Semper Reformanda, which means always reforming.

That we always want to continually self -examine in light of Scripture and improve our faith and practice if it can be improved in any way.

And there probably, especially with our practice, be continual adjustments we can make. I'm sympathetic to this concern.

Now one of the ways it's overstated is the amount of division in other traditions, non -Protestant traditions, is sometimes swept under the rug, you know, because there's this sort of institutional overhead.

Therefore it's acting like, well, we have unity. But the truth be told, unity is more than just institutional unity.

What Jesus prayed for in John 17 is more full -orbed than just, well, we're all technically a part of the same institution.

Sure. You know the fact that you've got radical progressives and arch -traditionalists who hate each other and don't think, don't recognize each other as Christian.

Well, that's not unity, but they're still in the same institution, you know. So I think drawing attention to the complexity of the word unity and all that's involved with that,

I think you also have to look at the historical context that we're no longer in a kind of state -church nexus.

So between Constantine and even continuing on through the Reformation, the church and state come together.

Well, if denominations, which is what Protestantism has, make a lot more sense, we understand that we came into being after that had been broken up somewhat.

And so denominations, because we're not claiming to be the one true church, denominations are a way of negotiating our theological differences without violating our conscience.

And so I think it's helpful to try to just draw attention to the fact that even though there is lamentable disunity in Protestantism, the fact is that we can actually still have various kinds of unity that aren't enough, but they're still very meaningful and real.

And that also is lost when these criticisms are overstated. But at the basic core concern, I think it's okay for a

Protestant to just say, yeah, that's a valid criticism. I mean, J. Gresham Machen said it in his Christianity and Liberalism very plainly.

And Hermann Babinck talks a lot about this. Protestantism does have a tendency to fragment too much.

And I think that's something we should humbly consider. Yeah, that's very important. I think it's important that we admit when there's an issue and not necessarily get into defensive mode.

I mean, when we do apologetics, we prepare so much to kind of like give an answer. But sometimes when someone makes a statement, we need to acknowledge the validity to some extent to what they're saying and really honestly engage in light of the valid aspects of their objection or their challenge.

So I think that's very important. Now, an important principle within Protestant theology is, of course, sola scriptura and kind of related to what

I previously asked with respect to the divisions within Protestantism. How would you respond to someone who says that sola scriptura in particular is one of the key reasons why you have all of these different denominations?

And so sola scriptura has produced more division than unity, if anything else, and that's a good reason to reject it.

How would you respond to that with respect to the context of sola scriptura? Okay. There's so much to this.

Yes. Sola scriptura is a big topic, but let me just say two things that might be helpful just at the very beginning.

One is we want to press for clear definitions because of all the things that in Protestant theology are often caricatured,

I think sola scriptura may be the most frequent. I agree. It is so often reduced to the idea that, you know, it's like the

Bible only in some general sense. And all sola scriptura meant in its historical articulation originally was that the

Bible is the only infallible rule for faith and practice, for Christian faith and practice. It's not saying the

Bible is the only useful tool for faith and practice, or it's not even saying that the Bible is the only authoritative entity for faith and practice.

It's saying the Bible is the only infallible rule for faith and practice. And what that is trying to do is set up an alternative to the non -Protestant traditions which do elevate tradition in some way or another to the same level of authority.

So for instance in the Catholic Church, sacred scripture and sacred tradition are equally to be received as the word of God.

And the magisterium has the role of interpretation, which is really where the real authority at the end of the day will lie.

Because the power of interpretation is kind of everything. So I think when people want to knock down sola scriptura too quickly by caricaturing it, or they want to draw out all these consequences from it, which are actually very tricky historical arguments to make, it's like, how do you know that making a causation argument is tricky from point

A to point B? You have to be sure that that's what caused it and you have to make the case for that.

So people do the same thing where they say Protestantism is the cause of secularization and so it's like, that's a tough case to make.

I mean, how do you say that that caused that? You need to say it in conversation so people in a hand -waving manner can throw out these comments, but to actually demonstrate that there's a necessary correspondence there,

I agree. It's a very, very difficult thing to demonstrate. Yeah, totally. So what

I like to do is say, well, what's the alternative to sola scriptura? G .K. Chesterton famously said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others that have been tried.

And I love that quote because it's kind of getting at like, yeah, democracy isn't like the way heaven is going to function. Democracy is not super, super efficient.

But given human nature, it's the best way to do it that we've found so far. And I would say sola scriptura, you know, give me the alternative to sola scriptura.

If the Bible's not the only infallible rule, what's the other infallible rule? What else is infallible along with scripture?

And what grounds do we have to accept that? And so for all of the the challenges that are put on sola scriptura,

I think it kind of makes it more of a fair fight at least to define it accurately and ask, what are the alternatives?

Now, I agree with you when you say that sola scriptura is very misunderstood and perhaps one of the most misunderstood things, and it's caricatured in a lot of ways.

And of course, it's easy for Protestants to play the victim card, right? No one understands our position. They're always misrepresenting.

But what are some popular ways in which Protestants have miscaricatured Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy?

Why don't you unpack some of the kind of the modern Protestant myths, right?

Where a lot of people amongst Protestant circles who exist in a bubble will say, well, Roman Catholics believe this or Eastern Orthodox believe this, when in fact, that's not true.

And then at the tail end of that, you can kind of perhaps explain how a knowledge of church history can help us be a little more careful when we're speaking to those other traditions.

Okay. Thank you for asking this because this is something I'm very eager to do because I always want to speak accurately, respectfully, and so forth.

I'll focus on Catholicism now because Protestants often historically haven't known much as much about the

Eastern traditions such as Eastern Orthodoxy. So a lot of times we don't have caricatures of them. Unfortunately, because we don't have any understanding of them.

Well, they are becoming more vocal, at least on the internet. There's a growing Eastern Orthodox presence.

So a lot of people are becoming more aware of it now, but yeah, go ahead. No, you're right. There's a huge movement.

You're right. It's becoming bigger. But historically, I mean, when I was growing up, I don't think I knew what

Eastern Orthodoxy was until I was in high school. Yeah, I just thought it was Roman Catholicism without a

Pope. That's all I... Yeah, so that's kind of unfortunate in its own way and something we should lament and try to learn more about that tradition.

But with Catholicism, some of the characters... Okay, for example, one would be we sometimes fail to understand the distinction between veneration and worship.

So we say that Catholics worship the saints or that they worship Mary. Now, someone could take the view that that distinction is not valid and that actually they do end up practicing worship.

There is idolatry there. But I'm just saying you'd still want to be careful to at least interact with, even if you take that view, you still need to understand their theology.

Like you can't just be blissfully ignorant of the distinction between veneration and worship that is opposed.

So unfortunately, Protestants have often not been careful there. I think sometimes the idea of papal infallibility is misunderstood by Protestants.

Sometimes we think that that means the Pope is sinless or holy. It's not what it means.

Sometimes we think that it means that the Pope, everything they teach is infallible. That's not what I mean. Just under certain conditions.

And so that's another area we need to be very careful to understand accurately. And a third would be sometimes we think of Roman Catholic theology as just rank legalism in terms of salvation.

And again, one could ultimately, after careful study, come to the view that Roman Catholic theology, they might still have strong concerns about the

Catholic view of justification. Fine, but you still need to understand accurately what they're saying.

And so, you know, for example, a lot of times people don't really, they're not even aware that Catholics distinguish between initial justification and final justification.

And so that category of thought doesn't even come in to their understanding of that issue.

And so that those would be the kinds of things where, you know, I'm not saying there's not going to be still remaining disagreement, but we just got to understand it accurately what it is that we're disagreeing with.

And I do think these caricatures are so common, unfortunately. Sure, sure. Why don't you unpack for us the difference between what say

Roman Catholicism teaches and what a Protestant might observe when they go into a

Catholic church. So the example you gave is a lot of Protestants to say that, you know,

Catholics worship Mary. And we might go to a church and it looks a lot like worship. Can you kind of make that differentiation and the importance of recognizing the difference between what we observe and what is actually taught with respect to their theology?

Yeah, if a, I mean it would depend of course on, you know, where you go and what specifically you see.

One local parish might be very different from another. Yeah, if a Protestant saw a

Catholic Christian bowing down before a statue of Mary and kissing the feet of the statue and praying to the statue, okay.

Now I would have a concern about that practice myself. I would not think that that is a salutary healthy thing to do.

But we would at least want to understand that from their perspective. So a Protestant might say, okay, or how about when the

Eucharist is being received or how about when there's like a kissing of the cross, something like that.

Protestant might at least want to try to think through, okay, what kinds of physicality, physical gestures are appropriate?

What kinds of, so they'd want to think through the proof texts that Catholics will give in the scripture about there's times where someone will bow to someone else.

Okay, and they say, well, look, not all bowing is worship. Well, that's a valid point. Not all bowing is worship. There are cultural dimensions too.

Bowing can have different expressions. In some cultures you bow, you know, and not all, you know, there's the snake or that serpent that Moses holds up, you know, physical objects in the scripture are used and can be, can serve in certain ways.

Relics, Catholic views on relics. You'll want to think through the fact that, well,

Paul's handkerchiefs are used to heal people. Now, I'm not saying that that's a good proof text for a full -blown

Catholic theology of relics, but you want to think through, okay, what, you know, let's distinguish between where we are going to disagree, but then understand their arguments and where we might agree or where we might see, oh, it's a little more complicated than just a rank dismissal of whatever's happening.

I don't know if that makes sense, but those are just some areas. I just want to encourage, because it's charitable interaction and also accurate representation,

I think are so important when we're having these discussions. I agree.

And as before we went live, I had shared with you that I primarily deal with presuppositional apologetics.

So I promote apologetics in general on this channel and presuppositional apologetics in particular, but presuppositional apologists and Calvinists tend to come off a certain way in which they are not as gentle and respectful as if I could say it that way.

And folks know what I'm talking about, and it is very important that if we're going to honor

Christ in how we interact with people, we need to do so in a way that is consistent with what the

Bible says with respect to our conduct. And I think that involves a lot of what you do, where you are just really open to hearing what the other person says, even though you have a very strong disagreement with them.

Even when I'm talking to someone who is blatantly heretical, I still want to love that person.

I still want to hear that person out and then engage with gentleness and respect, with a sternness, with a sharpness, with logical precision, with the

Bible undergirding everything I say, but at the same time in a way that doesn't break off those lines of communication and conversations can continue to happen.

And so I think a lot of that is shut down when people don't follow that sort of method of engagement.

And unfortunately, a lot of my Calvinist brothers and presuppositionalists, we can get a little excited in our interactions with people, and so it doesn't always work out the way that it should.

But I think you do an excellent job in interacting with folks, and so I very much appreciate that.

Now, my question now is going to kind of move us into a book that you wrote on the existence of God.

So, I don't remember the name of the book, and you can share it in just a moment after I ask my question, but church history, what or in what way can church history be helpful to us when engaging atheists?

So you have the church history having a great apologetic, you know, it's a great apologetic aid interaction with Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, but actually it's a vitally helpful tool when we're engaging atheists.

Why don't you unpack that for us? What role can church history play, a knowledge of church history play, when we're engaging with skeptics who attack various historical points to Christianity?

And then maybe you can kind of transition into how you kind of share the existence of God with them based upon some of the principles that you lay out in that book that hopefully you'll give us the title for.

I don't have it in front of me. Sure, sure. Absolutely. So the book's title is Why God Makes Sense in a

World That Doesn't, and the subtitle is The Beauty of Christian Theism.

Okay. Last month, and I hope it helps people. It really came from my heart.

I poured a lot of my heart and soul into it. It's an academic book, but it's written to be as accessible as possible.

I give a lot of unique arguments. I give arguments for God from math, from music, from love, things like that.

I'm sort of recasting these classical arguments into a narrative frame, and I'm asking what kind of story makes the most sense of our world?

And I am appealing both to beauty and to plausibility, and I'm arguing that the

Christian story is more plausible than alternatives, but I'm also arguing it's just a better story. It's a more elegant story.

It's a more interesting story. It's a more evocative story. It is more dignifying to humanity. It has better explanatory power for the full range of human experience.

So to speak to the church history part, which your question brought up, one of the historic ways that Christians have committed the gospel is in terms of what they call the transcendentals, that is the good, the true, and the beautiful.

And that's exactly what I'm trying to do in this book. I'm trying to say, so much of apologetics focuses on just the true.

It's trying to say the gospel is true because, and I think that's important, but I think it's also helpful to say the gospel is good because, and the gospel is beautiful because, and give reasons for all three.

If we can help non -Christian friends see that the gospel is not merely a plausible way of making sense of reality, but it's also the answer to our deepest longings in our heart.

It's also the best shot we have for having a robust vision of what justice is and that there's a reason to fight for justice, ultimately, a transcendent reason to fight for justice, a reason to value love.

I think that that will be what, that's a classic Christian instinct and I'm drawing that because I think it's so important right now in our culture.

Right now we live in such an age of distraction and such an age of disenchantment. I think we really have to,

I think beauty can help us cut through that and gain a hearing a little bit better.

Because so often we, and so I start out the whole book with Blaise Pascal's, one of his pensées or thoughts where he says people are afraid that religion, which he means really the

Christian religion, might be true. And so he says because of that you have to be more psychologically shrewd.

You can't just hammer them with arguments showing them that's true. You have to start by showing them that it's respectable and desirable and then you also show them it's also true.

And I just think there's actually some wisdom to that, you know, that the psychological strategy there of helping people understand that actually if Jesus rose from the dead and you become convinced of that as opposed to being an atheist, the emotional transition from atheism to Easter is from,

I mean, you got to repent of your sins and that's a pretty humbling thing to do. But you've gone from a world in which there's nothing ultimately transcendent to a world,

I mean the implications of that emotionally and existentially could not be bigger.

It's literally an infinite difference because now we've got something that's going to go on forever and ever and ever, namely the glory of God, and anybody can be a part of it if they repent.

So the implications emotionally are so helpful to, I think, draw attention to. That's one of the things

I'm trying to do in the book. Can you repeat the title again? There are some folks asking for the title again. Yeah, why

God makes sense in a world that doesn't. People can find it on my website, people can find it on Amazon, anywhere.

Now, would you identify yourself within the apologetic tradition as a classicalist, classical apologetics, or an evidentialist, or do you not put yourself in a category?

I don't know that I neatly fit in any one of the categories, and it's not that I'm trying to be a misfit.

No, no, no, no worries. I'm not trying to put a label on you because what

I was saying, because I know a lot of people who are presuppositionalists, the way we argue, we would probably take a different approach, but what

I want to point out is that if you were a classicalist or an evidentialist, there's still great value in reading something like your book because, say for example, within the presuppositional tradition, there's a heavy emphasis upon the transcendental argument, and folks on my channel will be very familiar with that form of argumentation in which we ask what are the necessary preconditions for some fact, and while that might not be your approach,

I think the way you defend, say for example, the Christian story being the best explanation for, say, love or math, that's something that a presuppositionalist can actually learn from, and suppose they disagree with your overall method, you can contextualize that information, and still it would be very helpful within a presuppositional framework.

So I wanted to encourage folks on my side of the apologetic spectrum that there's still value in reading things like this, and I would encourage people to do so.

So if you're a presupper and you take a different apologetic approach, I would still highly recommend digging into some of this material and learn to contextualize it.

So I just wanted to share that. Yeah, and my approach has a lot of points of resonance with some kind of classic presuppositionalist instincts, honestly.

I tend to think that these different approaches, that's partly why I don't know how to situate myself, I tend to think that they're not as absolutely different as some say, you know, if someone takes the view that kind of, well,

I'm of this category, I'm of this, I'm a presuppositionalist, or I'm a classical approach, I would tend to think that there'd still be overlap between some of the appeals that are made in real life contexts.

Yes. And therefore, you know, we could all sort of read each other's literature,

I would think, because a lot of the points that are going to be made are, you know, there are differences.

I don't want to minimize the differences, but it's not like we're all fighting a fundamentally different game, from my vantage point.

Yeah. Thank you for that. All right, so I want to transition into the latter part of what

I wanted to cover, and that's Christian conduct. And that will be the last point, and then we'll take some questions.

Who was it? I think it was Dr. Bob, was it Dr. Bob? Let me see here.

He says here, if you can see up on the screen, he says, get to the questions, Eli, the mob demands it. So there are people who are looking forward to getting their questions in, and I'll try to go down the list and go through the questions, if I could identify them.

You might get a mixed bag, I hope you don't mind that. There are some questions that are not necessarily related to our discussion, and there's some that are.

You know, it is apparent that people know who you are, and are probably asking questions related to some other context.

So as long as you don't mind me incorporating those as well, I'm game, as long as you're game.

Yeah, that's fine with me, go for it. All right. So this is going to be kind of an easy question for you, but Christian conduct, what role does

Christian conduct play in the apologetic task, and how have you allowed that biblical context to inform the particular way you engage unbelievers?

Because I think one of the things that drew me to your page is, or your channel rather, is that you are talking and even debating very hot -button issues, yet you're so disarming about it, and I think there's value to that.

Some people would interpret that as being soft, I don't. I think we can be a little too soft sometimes, but the way you do it, at least in my exposure to the stuff that I've watched,

I think you've been able to be very conversational, very open, but still really highlight those key differences between yourself and the theological opponent you're engaging with.

So how does Christian conduct play and create the framework for how you engage the folks that you engage with?

I would say that an old phrase I've heard that I think about a lot is, if love is not felt, the message is not heard.

I think about that when I'm disciplining my kids. I think about that when I'm pastoring people. If people don't think you care about them, they are far less inclined to hear what you say.

And so I would agree with you that it's not compromise to be friendly and gracious as much as we can.

In fact, I think it takes a greater strength, a greater discipline, a greater sort of nobility to remain gracious, accurate, charitable, to not be flying off the handle and discussing our differences.

There are a few things I respect more, I've often said, than calm disagreement. So it doesn't mean we shy away.

It's like we could say, okay, there's the position. I disagree with it. Here are my three reasons why. And we go through the reasons why.

But we have to resist that almost seemingly irresistible pull into using exaggerated rhetoric or going ad hominem when we get frustrated, when something annoys us.

And then we feel like we want to push back. We want to punch, you know. We've got to restrain that because first, that's just what the gospel calls us to.

And second, that's what will actually win over the hearts and minds of people. So I would say when we find our identity in Christ, in the gospel, our identity is not at stake in being right.

Sometimes people are so tough and they put it on, I'm fighting for, I'm just passionate for the truth.

But honestly, it's more about ego. Honestly, it's more about I want to win. And it's more about me than about the truth.

If we care about the truth, we should be willing, for example, when our opponent makes a good point to say you're right.

And how rare is that in the apologetics realm? A lot of times that never happens. But if we love the truth, then we should be perfectly happy to say on this particular point, they're right.

They made a good point. And that shouldn't be threatening to our identity, if our identity is in Christ. And that's apologetically useful because I think your opponent comes away respecting you more, that you actually care about the truth.

And you're not just, you know, a cheap car salesman trying to get your point across and really not caring about what the other person is saying.

So, and again, you are able to do that without compromising. This is the big thing.

I hear a lot of people, especially on the internet, in the internet, you know, you're kind of just being a softy, not you, but like Christians when when we try to, you know, show gentleness and respect, we're almost insulted.

You know, like, oh, look what this person's doing. They're such a compromiser. And that's just unfortunate. Not everyone comes off as strong as other people.

I mean, people find that more straightforward route to be useful. And in certain contexts, it is. Other people, they're not looking for a fight.

They're looking for an engaging conversation where people can disagree and just get the issues out in the open.

And so I think that's a very helpful way to go about it. But thank you for that.

Now, let's move on to the audience questions. By the way, you're doing an excellent job. I hope you're still good to go for a few more minutes here as we go through some questions.

And once again, if I forget to say, I probably won't forget. But just in case, I just want to appreciate you taking the time to come on to this channel and to talk about these issues.

It's been very edifying so far. Oh, man, thanks for having me. I've really enjoyed it. And I'll try to be brief in my answers so we can get through as many as possible.

Awesome. Oh, thank you for that. Sometimes I have guests, they'll be like, well, you know, back. I'm like, no, there's so many questions.

We got to get through them. So I appreciate that. Okay, so first question is by Dr. Bob. He says,

I'd be curious as to Dr. O's take on the history of the church's theology of persecution.

For instance, what can the church's response to Diocletian's persecution teach us today?

I like that question. Thank you, Dr. Bob, and thanks for the comment about the mob.

Sticking up for the mob out there. Yeah, okay. So he's referencing an early persecution in the early church and then asking kind of what my take on the history of the church's theology of persecution.

Well, there's a lot to that. I think, you know, one basic top level kind of big picture thing that immediately comes to my heart and mind is how much there is in the

New Testament about the necessity of suffering and the necessity of persecution. So in the book of Acts, Paul says we must pass through many hardships in order to enter into the kingdom of God.

In, I think, 2 Timothy, he speaks about everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.

It might be 1 Timothy. It's one of the pastoral epistles. Many verses like this. I mean the whole of the

Christian life is framed as we suffer with him now. We're glorified with him then. I mean, you know, sometimes just the categories used to describe

Christians in the New Testament are you know metaphors that are just highlighting the reality of suffering.

Like Romans 8, we are considered sheep to be slaughtered. I mean, gosh. So the reality is those who follow

Jesus Christ in this fallen world will experience persecution. And then I think what is so amazing about the

New Testament teaching that I think we see throughout church history as well is the response to that is to rejoice.

Boy, this is relevant to us every single day and challenging. And I think if we have joy in our relationship with Christ, it's often a good test of whether we're really authentically abiding in him and walking with him at an interior level in our heart, relying upon the

Holy Spirit each moment of the day. Because it's easy for me to drift and I lose the joy, but the thought that we're actually called to rejoice in persecution.

Matthew 5, rejoice when people slander you. That's at the end of the Beatitudes. I'm about to preach to Beatitudes.

That's the final thing is rejoice when people slander you. That is so counterintuitive. That is so hard. You know, when you're on YouTube and people are making videos and they completely misrepresent your views, that is frustrating.

It's easy to want to punch back, you want to fight. And the thought that we're actually not only not to fight, but we're called to rejoice.

Because we're, and the reason it gives is we're a part of this massive tradition going back to Abel. It's always been this way.

The four in the same way, they persecuted the prophets before you. So that is profoundly challenging. I'm probably not at all addressing what

Dr. Bob was wanting me to talk about, but that is what came into my heart and mind when he asked about the church's theology of persecution.

Sorry if that went in a different direction. No, that's excellent because sometimes it can be very, especially when you're living in comfortable

United States of America, it's very easy to forget that the early church underwent persecution.

Persecution that we're not experiencing today, at least in our part of the world. Others are experiencing in other parts of the world, but I think there's a very important relevance there.

So I think you did a good job with that question. Here's another one by Hudson. Should we interpret church fathers writings as divine?

Divine should be D -I -V. I'm sorry, that's just a little pet peeve of mine. At the end of the day, what they believe should have no more authority than pastors and the

Holy Bible we read today. I don't know what that second part is referring to, but I guess if we can kind of rephrase his question, how should

Protestant Christians understand the authority of the church fathers, their writings?

So what role should they play in the life of a Protestant who, say, holds to Sola Scriptura? Yeah. Okay.

I don't think we should interpret the church fathers writings as divine in the sense that they are divinely inspired.

That's what we believe about the scripture uniquely. We could interpret them as divine in the sense that God is providentially at work through them, just as he's at work in the world today through the church in various ways.

I think there's an error, two errors we could fall into. One is the kind of, oh man, the fathers are like everything.

Whatever we see in the fathers, that is kind of the final end all of theology. That's something

I think we want to steer away from. But I sometimes think that Protestants can go too far to the other extreme, especially in comparison to the claims of the non -Protestant traditions where the church fathers are treated as kind of with a shrug.

I don't think we should take that attitude either. Someone said they have no more authority than pastors and the Holy Bible we read today.

Well, I would say the Bible has more authority than the fathers, but then pastors today, well,

I'd see it a little differently simply because the church fathers have stood the test of time. So time has been able to sift out.

For example, there's a reason why we still read Augustine today, but we don't read other fourth century bishops who wrote things that weren't any good because people didn't find them.

It's like, you know, just kind of the test of time weeded out the more valuable and significant combination.

Whereas a pastor today hasn't gone through the test of time. You might not know. So if you have a choice between like Augustine and like T .D.

Jakes or Joyce Meyer, which one would you go? Which one stands the test of time? Yeah, that's a pretty easy, uh, the confessions of Joyce Meyers.

That doesn't sound, that doesn't sound intriguing to you. Yeah, and well, even we could say, you know, godly, uh, you know, pastors today.

It's because we can learn so much from pastors today. There's many great pastors today. So I think, but, um, the church fathers,

I mean, another reason is the earliest of the church fathers may have been personal associates with the apostles or personally known them and that should have some weight.

If they personally were taught by an apostle, that's significant, uh, in my, in my mind.

So I'm not saying it's, I think, I think there's a middle ground here between they're infallible or at the level of scripture and oh, you know, it's just like any old pastor.

It's like, no, we should have a humble consideration of them as weighty and authoritative voices, even if we recognize that the scripture alone is going to be infallible.

That's my view. All right. Thank you for that. Um, okay. We have a very, uh, passionate question here.

I guess there's a context there. Uh, Big Yehuda says, when are you going to apologize for throwing

Christians under the bus? I don't know what they're talking about. Um, but, uh, have you ever been in favor of the government persecuting

Christians, Dr. Ortlin? No, it's always interesting being on YouTube and sometimes just trying to make sense of things.

Some, one of the greatest challenges is in responding to comments is not just belligerence, but sometimes incoherence.

I think sometimes people assume that someone can read their mind or interpret what they're saying. Um, what, without explaining it,

I'm not familiar with what this question is referencing. I'm certainly not in favor of uh, the government persecuting us.

Um, I could take the occasion to say one other thing about persecution that I, that came to my mind right after I finished my answer to Dr.

Bob's question. Christians also need to be careful not to too quickly pay the, play the persecution card.

Sometimes Christians are just obnoxious. And then when they get a negative response to being obnoxious, they say, oh,

I'm being persecuted. That's very true. We should be careful about and sensitive to as well. It's people around the world right now are going, undergoing severe persecution, like getting their heads chopped off.

So in relation to that, we should be a little bit sobered in, in comparison when, because a lot of us honestly, in the

United States, those of us who live here, honestly, relatively speaking, we're, we're very blessed.

We have a lot of, we don't face what a lot of people face. Absolutely. Yeah. All right. Thank you for that.

I hope, I hope that satisfies, uh, the answer as best as possible. Um, um, big

Yehuda, I know he seemed very passionate. Probably won't, but maybe it could help remind them to explain what they're referencing.

So then, yeah, he might, he might have wrote other things, but, uh, and the, the, before that, but I mean, he posted a couple of things.

I don't want to read through all of his comments just to get to the question, but, uh, um, I hope that, that works.

I don't want anyone to think we're sidestepping any question if they really want to ask you something, but, um, all right, let's move on here.

So Dr. Bob has another question. Um, how did the anti, the anti -Nicene, the anti -Nicene, not the anti -Nicene, the anti -Nicene, uh, church deal with persecution?

Was the one under Diocletian the only empire -wide persecution? What key points can we take away to apply in our current situation?

That was very similar to the other question, but if you want to take that one. I appreciate Dr. Bob coming back because I had a feeling that I probably wasn't addressing exactly what he was after with his initial question.

Um, I cannot remember the second, the answer to the second part of whether there certainly were many other persecutions and I think many of them were, would have been empire -wide, but I can't remember exactly off the top of my head.

What I can say to this in terms of how the church responded is, um, here's one thing.

The church grew like weeds. It grew like wildfire during that time.

In the time of Cyprian, so mid -third century, there's about 1 million Christians and then you just chart the church's growth throughout the second century, third century, and then from Cyprian on and it's just explosive.

And so one thing we can learn to apply to our current situation is while we should not wish for persecution, while persecution is evil, at the same time we should not fear persecution in the sense that it will destroy the church.

That is just not how things really work. And now there are times in church history where the church's witness in a particular region is, uh, to human eyes uh, really diminished or even seemingly destroyed in a certain region because of brutal persecutions.

Again, we never want to wish persecution, but I think what we can draw from the facts of how the church just exploded with growth um in those early centuries prior to uh the conversion of Constantine you can, and the

Council of Nicaea, you can see that persecutions, it's like an image in, and I'll end with this, it's an image in John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress where there's water being poured on a fire and people are like, how does the fire not go out?

And you go around the wall and you see there's oil supplying the fire so that the water cannot put it out.

When Satan throws his worst at the church, that does not surprise Christ. That does not discourage

Christ. It, it, he, Christ suffers with his people in a sense because you can look at him saying to Saul, why do you persecute me?

So it's not like Christ is indifferent to the suffering, but it will not work the purposes of Christ. He will build his church.

And so I think one thing we can start with is just we should not be afraid because um, you know,

Luther said, you chop off my head. The worst that can happen is I get a new one in my resurrection body, you know, um, persecution.

I love Luther. I love Luther. That's something he would, he'd use extreme examples like that.

Um, okay, so we're kind of going in order. So Dr. Bob has another question here and I think it's a cool kind of a historical question.

He says, how does, uh, how did Christianity's interaction with Islam impact the church's understanding of slavery in the age of discovery?

That's it. That's an interesting, I don't know if you're able to answer it. That's kind of a very, very historically specific question.

But if, if you'd want to pass, that's fine. If you have something to say to that, then go for it. Dr. Bob, way to go

Dr. Bob with these very interesting questions. I am not able to answer that off the top of my head.

I would need to do a little bit of reading before I could answer that. Uh, what I can say more generally about the church's understanding of slavery is if anyone's interested,

I've just done a study on Gregory of Nyssa's, uh, views of slavery and specifically his, his sermon condemning slavery.

That's a very significant episode in terms of the church's, uh, treatment of that issue.

And so if people are interested in that, they can find it on YouTube. Um, it's not on my channel. So they just have to Google something like it was a

Karam forum talk. So they might Google something like Gavin Ortland Gregory of Nyssa slavery or something like that.

Put that into YouTube. They can find that talk that might be of interest on the more general question here, even though I can't speak to the specifics of this one.

Well, Dr. Ortland is unable to answer that question, but actually Dr. Bob during the age of discovery,

I'm just kidding. I don't know the answer. I don't have a clue and sorry about that. Uh, all right, here's a question by, um,

Chris Matthew. How do you approach the prevalence of baptismal regeneration in the early church fathers?

Okay. Um, I have given a more extended treatment of this in my dialogue with Jordan Cooper.

The, we had three separate dialogues, um, the second of which was divided into two videos on his channel.

People could check that out. Um, briefly, I would sum it up by saying, uh, an entry point would be to say, what do we mean by baptismal regeneration?

As soon as we start asking that question, we start to see there's great complexity here.

And the claim that everyone believed in baptismal regeneration actually is very slippery. Partly because what many people say will be underdetermined to, in order to make the judgment of what, how, what, what exactly do they mean?

Um, do they mean that the water itself regenerates? And if so, how frequently, how much will they make allowances for the exceptions that we clearly see in the

New Testament? There's many times where people get regenerated, get the Holy Spirit prior to their baptism.

Now, I think that what you have as universal and as clear and what I would affirm is that there's an association between baptism and regeneration among the church fathers.

The nature of that association is actually really complicated. Um, and as a Baptist and as someone who sees baptism as the seal of regeneration,

I'm essentially affirming what Thomas Aquinas and many other prominent theologians who affirm baptism of regeneration would see as the exceptional case.

What they see as the exception, I see more as the norm. And the reason is because we just differ about infant baptism and then we differ about the timing of when it happens.

I just don't believe that when all the language is used among the fathers about being regenerated through baptism that it's, you know,

I've made a video on this and I argue for my view as a metonymy, which means part for the whole. So baptism is standing as the um, the part of salvation that is representative of the whole of salvation because it's the visible expression of salvation.

It doesn't mean you're literally regenerated through the water at that moment, but this is the sealing of that.

This is the public expression of that. I actually think that's a reasonable view and a way to make sense of a lot of the data in the new testament as well as in the fathers.

I think it's consistent with how circumcision is spoken of throughout the scripture. Circumcision also being a matter of the heart, that circumcision also being spoken of as something that is ultimately an interior act of the

Holy Spirit and yet doesn't always mean it happens when you're physically circumcised. So, um, there's a lot more to say but that's just a brief overview and people can check out my resources for a full treatment.

All right, excellent. Now I can't see it on my end, but I remember seeing it and then it went away because the comments are moving, but someone was asking a question about um what your views were and I suppose this is not a church history question, but I suppose 100 years from now it will be an interesting question with respect to how the church interacted with issues of critical race theory, liberation theology.

I think they also mentioned abortion and LGBTQ. I forgot all the letters. Um, but um, so I this is kind of a thing that we're going through currently, but I would imagine uh 100 years from now, it'll be an interesting study as to how the church navigated those issues.

Do you have any particular stance with respect to to those topics? Uh that you could I don't remember the question was

I can't share it on the screen. Um, but do you have anything to speak to that or would you like to pass on that one?

Well, uh here and here I've promised brief answers. So I can't you know, well if you're not if you're not in a rush

I'm not in a rush. We we can we can you can spend a time on a question that you think really is an important one but if you don't think it's a question that you want to spend time on you can give a quick answer we can move we can move on.

I want to respect your time as well. Thank you. Well, what I'll say is two things. First, I am planning on doing

I've got uh, it's under my computer as a part of the one of the books my computer is stacked on right now but I've got a number of resources

I've I've already got on my YouTube channel. I'm planning on venturing into some new areas.

I'm not going to stop doing the things I'm currently doing but to press into some new areas in terms of various cultural issues two of them on my list, uh, would be um critical race theory and then gender and sexuality issues and then also climate change is an issue

I'd like to address uh other cultural issues like that. Um so I'll say more about these things in the future.

Uh, what I can say now is well, I mean obviously each of these issues is so complicated.

You can't I mean it's like if someone says, you know talk about CRT and and do it in 60 seconds.

You're like how do I you know, what do I even start with? Right. I can speak to the posture that Christians should have as we study these things because that's something we've thought about a lot uh as I've been just starting to get into them a bit and and that is and already in previous conversations having before been forced by this uh circumstances of life to try to have quite helpful pastoral responses to questions and so forth is basically

I think on the one hand, I'm very concerned about a kind of uncritical um uh naivety in which a particular contemporary intellectual movement or particularly or particular issue sort of becomes the functional gospel for people and and people become completely absorbed in it so that it received more emotional energy than um the gospel and there can be a um,

I think an extreme arrogance in a dismissal of Like how

Christians have thought about something all throughout church history. Um, and I'm very concerned about that So I think first thing is a kind of grounded humility to to be aware that the things that will seem normal to us in our culture um

We have to realize we have cultural blind spots And so we have to kind of there needs to be a a critical appreciation of any contemporary uh movement or theory and not just I'm, very concerned about this kind of like just diving in wholesale mentality.

On the other hand I'm also concerned about a a sort of conservative dismissive posture that sees a contemporary movement as the enemy it feels threatened by it and therefore the mentality is kind of like build up walls bunker down Throw grenades, you know

And the the truth is that most of these issues are sufficiently complicated that we're going to have to be willing to listen

Sure to what's at what's being said Um, and what may be valid and any contemporary movement

There's going to be the need to distinguish What are the true claims from the false very rarely will the path of wisdom be just 100 % wholesale dismissal

Most of the time there will be a need to distinguish. Okay, this is right here, but it's wrong there And so that's when you're going to be

So I think that Just a more moderated posture can be helpful to Christians as we start to engage on issues like that.

Sure Yeah, I think that's fair. Uh, okay. Dr. Bob has a these are always fun questions Does dr o have any favorite church historians, right?

There's you know, if you're a sports fan, who's your favorite basketball player? Well, who's your favorite? Uh, you know church historian my own journey into this topic is colored by philip schaaf's optimistic late 19th century reform post

Millennialism, uh, so who who's if you had a church history trading cards who would be your most coveted?

Which would be your most coveted card? Yeah, I I would the first person I would have thought of would also be philip schaaf

I think philip schaaf's a fascinating figure and it's done so much to advance the cause of the historical scholarship the church father's translation efforts of various texts um, and and as uh, dr

Bob mentioned there is kind of an interesting figure. So, um, I often will turn to yaroslav pelican's five volume

Okay, uh history of dogma. I think that's a really good Survey text of kind of an overview for historical theology

So yeah, those would be two schaaf and pelican would be two kind of things that are kind of right there on my shelf

Another one is j and d kelly's early christian doctrines another great summary book That's what

I like about these books is they're not so academic and pretentious and specialized.

They really are helpfully clearly systematizing so that anybody can dive in and really

Follow the train of thought so those would be three texts that I find helpful Excellent. Very good. Um, this is not a question, but I love comments like this and it definitely warms my heart.

I appreciate it Victory street ministry says eli. I'm not a calvinist, but I wanted to say thank you for your ministry and merry christmas

Well, merry christmas to you and I greatly appreciate that and those who are listening I hope this conversation here that we're having tonight as well as um,

The other discussions and live streams and q and a's have been helpful and a blessing to you guys

I very much appreciate you guys listening in. So thank you so much for that victory victory street Um, we have a question by paul.

Uh wahid What specifically was the issue with the assyrian church? Why do the coptics and eastern orthodox think they are heretical?

Okay, this goes into 5th century disputes about christology the nature of christ

And i'm trying to think of a good summary of a book that if someone wants to get into all the weeds on this and work through this uh, they could go to and um

I won't be able to pull up the name of the author but it's a female author who's written a real

She's written several really helpful things on the assyrian church of the east. I think She may well be either eastern orthodox or oriental orthodox herself.

I'll try to it might come to me later in this uh discussion But if people are wanting to get into the details of that, she's written a really helpful overview that could be

All right. Thank you for that. Uh thomas hexed, uh has the question. Dr Ortlin, would you recommend that modern credo baptist churches adopt a historic confession of some kind from around the 1670s and 80s?

Uh period perhaps. Thanks Yeah, I think that is worth considering um

A lot of times what happens with contemporary baptist churches is that because they're not a part of a denomination sometimes the statement of faith that the church will adopt can be kind of willy -nilly and Just I don't know the previous pastor and elder board worked on it together and it may not have a whole lot of historical depth or Accountability, it may just be somewhat randomly constructed

Um, maybe not but you do see a lot of statements of faith. One of my biggest concerns is sometimes statements of faith are

Way too specific, I mean i've been at churches where the statement of faith is like seven pages and it's going into all these details and it's like it'd be one thing if you said this is our church's um

Position papers or something like that I don't think it's wrong to be specific about what you believe But generally a statement of faith is what every member of the church has to personally affirm

All right join the church. And so if a statement of faith gets hyper specific on lots of secondary and tertiary doctrines it can be

It starts to become way too exclusive where genuine christians can't join your church. And so the state of faith

I think is something that Should be sensitive to that dynamic So looking to historic confessions can be one really helpful um

Way to get something again That's been more time tested and that might helpfully challenge a lot of a lot of contemporary

Baptist views are actually different from historic baptist views in terms of like how we talk about baptism So looking to these historic resources,

I think can surely only be a good thing even if they're not adopted At least to investigate them and to use them as a resource it's kind of like those churches who are like if you're going to be a member of the church you need to affirm the

Dispensational pre -millennial, you know eschatological position is like wait a minute. Wait what?

Some churches have statements of faith where it's really that specific of like a specific eschatology you need to affirm

So yeah, I totally totally hear what you're saying there. Um, I have a toto Bermudo, uh, thank you so much for the super chat

Um question luther an augustinian monk defended the literal six -day interpretation of genesis

Do you think luther was aware of augustine's view of genesis? I don't know for sure.

I don't know enough about luther to say I suspect he probably was because augustine's view of genesis was um

As was so much of augustine's theology So influential throughout the medieval period

So I would be surprised if luther was not familiar with at least the basic contours of augustine's position um

So, yes, I suspect that that he probably was from I mean even in anselm I found passages in anselm's cur deus homo, which is book.

Why the god man where he'll reference The fact that some people see the days of genesis one um differently than you know, and so that that seems like it's kind of Something that people are aware of in the medieval era.

So i'm guessing that luther would have been aware of it Um, of course luther doesn't you know agree with augustine on everything augustine will say though Sure.

All right. Thank you for that toto. And again, thanks for the super chat super chat. Dr Bob, merry christmas.

Merry christmas to you Eli and gavin really appreciate you both has jay dyer offered to debate either of you and what do you think of the orthosphere?

I don't know if you're familiar with the orthosphere I most definitely am and i'm most definitely aware of jay dyer.

I'm not sure of how much you know of jay Um, but you could engage that question and i'll share my thoughts and we'll move to the next one

All right, so so I have to go first time, okay Well, you want I I can go first.

I mean I want you to to be as comfortable as possible Do you need a vocal breath? Do you need a vocal rest real quick?

Oh, no, that's fine I mean I could be brief. I know he's never i've never had any sort of contact with jay dyer

Um in terms of so that's the first part of the question with the second part. What do I think of the orthosphere?

Um, I have During my dialogue with craig truglia who's an orthodox christian who has a presence on youtube

Uh, which happened I think actually that might have been what you referenced earlier in this discussion Eli that happened about a week ago,

I think I stated my concerns to craig that um there is

Among many people in the online orthodox community Uh an uncharitable mentality

And sometimes an arrogant mentality and that is true to some degree for every tradition of course, you can find lots of Lots of that in all kinds of places, but it seems to be more concentrated to some extent in in certain circles within the online orthodox community

And I say that as someone who has great respect for orthodoxy and who assumes that that's not representative of many

Orthodox christians, especially out of the online world I mean i'm sure that there's many

I know that there are many charitable and wonderful people in that tradition but in the online community in certain circles of it, there's that mentality and that's

Um concerning to me and I I hope that that will improve I agree. Uh, yes.

I'm aware of jay. I was actually going to have him on my show a while back to have a

First an interview on eastern orthodoxy because I was wanting to learn more about it and and folks can say eli

Well, why don't you just read a book? Um before I went live with with gavin here. Um, we were talking about our kids

Uh, he's got four kids. I've got three kids Um, they're little it's hard sometimes for me to just sit and do like in -depth research um, so a lot of the learning that I do and the studying that I do um is through these interviews and Discussions that I have with um with people.

Um, so I I wanted to invite jay to have um A discussion where he just kind of lays out the orthodox position.

Um, but then it came to my mind, you know, it'd be great Um the way I learned maybe folks can resonate with this I learned in conflict so watching a debate or a moderated discussion actually helps me learn a little bit more about the finer points of uh,

Some competing positions. That's just the way I learned So I suggested having a moderated debate with a friend of mine.

Um folks who follow my channel are aware of him. Dr Tony costa and of course, dr

Tony costa respectfully declined, uh for various reasons that I won't get into and I kind of resonated with his reasons shared that with jay and um

Things took a turn for the worse and there was kind of some misinterpretation as to where I was coming from and unfortunately things uh fell through but with respect to jay, um,

I Respect his knowledge of history and um, he's a fairly young guy and and really knows his history.

He's an excellent debater Um, it was unfortunate that things didn't work out but um Yeah, so that's where we are.

He he offered to debate me and I was like I want to learn about eastern orthodoxy. I'm not in a position to debate someone

Um, so, um that that never happened unfortunately, so that that's where we are there, but I am aware of him

All right. Thank you for that. Let's see here How are you doing? Let's take just a few more questions.

I know i'm i'm like monopolizing your time. I'm so i'm so sorry Good i'm enjoying it.

Yeah, maybe just a few more and then I'll probably need to run Okay, let's let's do one more. We'll do one more. Let's see here

Uh, this is a good one. I think there's a nice good practical question here Um, howard phillips asks is there a beginner's list of books by the church fathers you would recommend?

I think that's an excellent question where where does someone jump in? You know, they're like hey, I want to know a little bit more about the church fathers.

Where do I start? Yeah, great question Okay, I have written a blog post it went up on my blog and then it was republished at the gospel coalition website

And I think I can't remember the title of it, but it's basically answering this question It gives five examples.

Sorry if anybody heard that noise something That I have four young kids who may be banging on the walls any minute now

One of my my daughter might run in here and start singing the frozen soundtrack and everyone will have to listen. Uh, so I understand uh, yeah, so uh dad posts

Canvases, so they might just google that they could find it. It's also on my blog Um, basically, you know, some of the top ones

I think are really great athanasius on the incarnation of the word Wonderful book. It's succinct.

It's readable great translation and an edition and Accessible edition in the popular patristic series with a great introduction by cs lewis on the uh,

That alone is worth the price of the book his little essay on the reading of old books And it gets you into eastern thought it gets you into the atonement

It's pretty rich and multifaceted book wonderful starting point accessible. Not too long. I love augustine.

I I I just think Every christian should give their try at reading at least portions of if not the entirety of augustine's confessions the rich the combination of rich spirituality and theology

It just and psychology. I mean, it's just so uh, it's a masterpiece as an audio book, too

I've listened to the confessions on audio. It's not dry at all. It's so interesting I'd highly recommend that that medium if that works for folks, but yeah

Yeah, that's a great way to do it if you have a commute or something like that um irenaeus

Everyone always thinks of he's against heresies. He's an earlier figure late second century He wrote a book and I the title of it is weirdly escaping my mind

It's a catechetical book or book for teaching. I think it's like On the app now, I can't remember the title.

It's weird. My mind is stopping working But that's on that blog post my fault. I've had you on too long.

I i'm so sorry No, no, not it's not not that at all. Um, and then but that people could look it up in the blog post, um, it's just it's really helpful because it's designed to just be a

Teaching of the gospel and it's so biblical It goes through the whole of the scripture and and talks about how the new testament fills the old testament and so forth

That's a really accessible short one. Um, it's also in the popular patristic series Um, and then

I would say serial of jerusalem's catechetical lectures which can be found online and again, they're just really

It's just one of those things that's great for entry level because they're designed for people preparing for baptism to kind of understand

The father's thought on what you need to know before you get baptized and i've made a video about why

I think he's so interesting Those are a few examples. Is that the the demonstration of the apostolic preaching there?

Is that it? Thank you Thank you, whoever said that All right All right. Well, that's it.

I think you did an excellent job and this was super helpful And again, I I know you don't mind but I do apologize.

Um for Keeping you so long. I figured I don't know if he's gonna ever come back I need to keep him here as long as I can.

I'm just kidding Not a problem. I really enjoyed it. So thanks for having me me too. Thank you so much Well, um where can you just remind folks where they can find you where they can find your books?

Um, and maybe kind of give us some parting parting words before we end the live stream Okay, uh people can two spots that are good to find me

One is my youtube channel truth unites. Another is my website gavinortland .com That will have links to all my books that will have links to Um social media stuff.

So those would be kind of two Shots if you want to find more of my work find more of my books um and a parting word would be

When we have all these intellectual discussions uh that sometimes the overall summative effect of it can be to overwhelm us or to create fear or A sense of like a deer in the headlights because of all the complexity of the issues and all the problems in the world and so it helps me

In the face of that I always come back to the simple reminder that In light of the gospel we can rely upon the holy spirit's help

Moment by moment day by day and therefore go through our lives without a sense of fear as our dominant uh posture toward the world but with a sense of um uh hope

As our dominant posture in the world and so that's kind of where I Often find helpful to land the plane in terms of where do we go from here?

As we just look to the lord moment by moment for his strength Sure, and folks i'd highly encourage you guys to go over to uh, dr.

Ortlin's youtube channel and subscribe He's got some excellent conversations and teachings and they're manageable They're far shorter than my than than these interviews.

Uh, two hours and a half an hour and a half You got some pretty nice ones that are like 20 minutes a half hour

Uh, they're very manageable. So I highly recommend folks go over there and subscribe Also, um, if you want to support revealed apologetics, you can do so in a number of ways number one you can pray

Um definitely I would appreciate prayer that this is a passion of mine I love talking with other brothers about theology and apologetics with the hopes that it is encouraging and beneficial

For the wider body, um, so prayers would be appreciated that that this can continue Um, you could also support revealed apologetics financially that definitely helps put me in a position to have more time

Uh to put more content out. Um, you can do that by visiting revealedapologetics .com

And there's a donate, uh section there on the menu You can do that and also all of these youtube, uh interviews and discussions are transferred over onto itunes in audio format uh for your your podcasting pleasure, uh,

Listening, um, and if you are enjoying that you can write a positive review on itunes It's definitely a super helpful when folks, uh do that.

All right. Well, that's it for this discussion Thank you so much everyone for listening in and thank you. Dr. Ortlund for giving me your time