Cultic KJVOism, then a Deep Dive into Theological Method

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looking at the Ruckman-esque behavior of one Cody Zorn, a KJV pastor down in Georgia. Then we did a major shift in direction and did a full hour lecture on theology, Scripture, and how we define our faith. We eventually touched on Calvin, natural theology, and the current controversy over the definition of "divine simplicity." Another program to keep the A&O truckers happy!

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Greetings and welcome to the Divine Line. We're in the big studio today because we have a lot to get to and we are going to be using the big board today so that we will be able to, well,
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I was going to say draw things. I'm pretty much just on a stick figure level there, but got a little bit of an echo there from the speaker in the back.
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We can turn that down a bit. That'll help. Appreciate it. I do want to start, I want to go from the ridiculous to the sublime.
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How does that sound? Ridiculous to the sublime. Today on the program, I was just attempting once again, and you would think after all these years that I would know that this is not a possibility.
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I was just attempting to reason with a cultic King James Only -ist. Now, what is the difference between a cultic
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King James Only -ist and just a King James Only -ist?
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These are your cultic King James Only -ists, and it becomes definitional of them for the entirety of their religious faith.
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It becomes part of the gospel itself. A guy named Cody Zorn down in Georgia, evidently because,
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I don't know, what, about a month ago or so, we did a section on the program where we walk through the text of Psalm 12.
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And we did so in the way, ironically, that the King James translators would have told us to do, and the way they would have done it.
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Remember, King James translators would roll over in their graves if they ever encountered any of these people.
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They would just be shocked. They would be horrified that anyone could take the work that they did and pervert it in the way that they have done so.
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But, anyway, we walk through Psalm 12 because the cultic King James Only -ist will quote
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Psalm 12 over and over and over and over and over again as if it has something to do with the King James Version of the Bible, which, of course, it does not.
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But it talks about God's Word being preserved, and so, well, that means the
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King James Version of the Bible, so this has something to do with something that was written, you know, over 2 ,000 years after these words were written.
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No one who read Psalm 12 when it was first written would have had any idea what it was talking about, and wouldn't until after 1611.
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But we walked through it and demonstrated that when you actually use the same method of hermeneutics that we use to defend the deity of Christ, the trinity of the resurrection, or justification by faith, whatever else it might be, the text is not talking about what they think it is talking about.
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And so I noticed this morning some gentleman, some other gentleman who hasn't chimed in is
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Tommy McMurtry II. It's up there on the screen, that's why I know who it is.
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Tommy McMurtry II had commented on his program,
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I'm sorry, on his Twitter feed, that just no matter how hard he tried, he could not possibly see how
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Psalm 12 was not about the preservation of the King James Version of the Bible. And I can understand that.
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Look, if you've been raised in a religious context, and these churches tend to be very, very closed, they're independent fundamentals,
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Baptist, King James only, and they're built upon fear. The entire methodology of these churches is fear, fear, fear.
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You are afraid to think a thought other than what you've been told to think.
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You have to put on airs, you have to dress in a certain way, you even talk in the same way.
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You try to make it look like when you're in the group that you're right in there, and everybody knows that outside of that, you know, that's not really where you are.
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But the whole point is keeping up the appearances, and you're afraid to be exposed, and you're afraid of the shaming and the attacks, and so it's just all fear -based.
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You're afraid of listening to any other perspectives. It's just a horrible, horrible thing.
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It's never been something we were aiming at doing, but I'm so thankful that over the years, especially over the past 10 years,
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I cannot tell you how many people have come up to me, especially at the G3 Conference and other places, especially when
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I'm traveling the South, that myself, my brother Jeff, Apologia Studios, we've been involved in helping so many of these people to come out of this kind of fear -based, narrow expression of Christianity and find the truth, and find sound churches.
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And they've now started to come to understand the gospel and its application to all of life, and it's exciting.
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It's great, and so I'm very, very thankful that especially since 1995, when the
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King James Only controversy came out, we've put a huge dent in this movement.
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They still cannot in any way, shape, or form defend this position, as was demonstrated just today.
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I responded to this Tommy McMurtry, and Cody Zorn responded to him and attempted to say,
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Oh yeah, just look at the context of Psalm 12. And so I chimed in, wrote a thread.
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It was about, what, five, six tweets long or so, and I asked some very direct questions.
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I provided important data from the text, and here's the thing.
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I actually went to what the psalmist wrote, rather than what was written later in a language that did not exist when the psalmist wrote
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Psalm 12. How dare I do so? Because in cultic King James Onlyism, the
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King James Version is more important than whatever that dusty old psalmist wrote in Hebrew, right?
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I mean, who knows that? Wow. And so I asked direct questions.
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I'm like, well, have you noticed, for example, that the very phrase you use in Psalm 12, and in fact, let me show you here for a second.
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Get rid of this here. Come on. There we go. Here in Psalm 12, and we will see if we can bring things up here.
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There we are. So what I point out, and I know we've done this before, so you probably know all of this really, really well now.
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That's great. That's fine. It's wonderful. But it's helpful to folks to see this kind of thing.
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In Psalm 12, the text, and I will need to scroll this up a little bit here.
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All right. There we go. The primary text, the King James Onlyist use, of course, in Psalm 12 6, the words of Yahweh are pure words, as silver tried in a furnace on earth refined seven times.
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Now, some actually, believe it or not, will say that because you had the five versions of Erasmus, and then one of Stephanos and one of Beza, that's seven, and so those are the
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Greek New Testaments that were used for the Texas Receptus, the King James Version of the Bible. I've actually heard people say that.
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Now, that shows an amazing ignorance of the fact that Stephanos did more than one edition,
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Beza did more than one edition, et cetera, et cetera. But anyways, they've actually gone to that point saying, this is about the
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King James Version of the Bible. Now, 99 .99999 % of all Christians down through the ages recognize that is as absurd as it could possibly be, but that's where they are.
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The point they say is the words of the Lord are pure words. This is a promise of special preservation that's seen primarily only in the
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King James Version of the Bible. And one of the things that I pointed out is in this section, in these very words, that's verse seven in the
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Hebrew, here is the phrase. Well, actually, all right, let's break it up into two proper phrases.
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So here's the words of the Lord, words of Yahweh. And then over here, you have are pure words.
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Okay. This is the only place right here. That is a hapox.
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A hapoxogamona is a unique word normally, or it could be a unique phrase.
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That is a unique phrase in the Hebrew Old Testament. It's never used anywhere else in Scripture. It's never used anywhere else at all.
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Which is interesting. And so I asked, why do you think that might be? I mean, if this is supposed to just be just simply and easily recognized as the
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King James Version of the Bible, why is this the only place where this is used? And then I had pointed out on the dividing line that, and we had made this connection back then, here is
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Yahweh says, I will now arise. I will set him to safety for which he desires.
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He's talking about those people who have been abandoned, those people being persecuted, the needy.
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This is the promise. And you'll notice, even if you can't read
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Hebrew, you can see these are connected right there. This is what's being referred to is the promise that Yahweh has given to deliver the needy.
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And so I pointed these things out and asked Mr. Zorn to engage in this particular subject.
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This is what you do when you do exegesis. And it's also what you do when you're confident in the truth.
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And the results were, well, what you would expect from someone who is in cultic
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King James -only -ism. And I'll take the notes off here because that's not exactly relevant any longer.
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So, wow! So I can't ever read a verse in context in my
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English Bible without consulting the Greek Hebrew first. And I explained to the people, lol, you, sir, are the reason why we have a
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King James Bible. So the plow boy can understand the words of God without high -minded, egotistical fools like yourself.
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Now, it's only going to get worse. It's going to get more abusive, childish.
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I mean, this is a sixth grade playground level person that we're dealing with here. This is all they know.
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Now you need to understand why would you do this? You've just been challenged to answer meaningful questions based upon the original words of the psalmist himself.
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You've just been challenged. And the first thought across your mind is to become an abusive schoolyard bully.
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Why? There are two reasons. One is obvious. One is not so obvious.
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And the second one is what I really want to make sure people understand today. The first obvious reason is he has no answer.
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He can't read the original languages. I even said to him, you, unlike the
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King James translators, have been too lazy to take the time to learn to do what they themselves did.
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So don't go touting them and their scholarship when you disrespect them by not even doing what they are able to do.
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That's the first thing. But he has no response. He can't answer those questions.
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He can't interact with the material. The arguments are too much for him. And so what do you do?
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What happens when you are in an argument and you're losing? Well, you get angry.
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You start yelling. You start throwing things. You start making accusations. And most importantly, you stop arguing in any rational fashion.
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You start using all the different forms of argumentation that are meant to increase emotion and hope that you can make an escape.
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Because the other side is going to get all angry and explode and everything else. That's what's going on there.
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That's obvious. And I've experienced that now for many, many years.
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26 years? Something like that now? Somewhere along those lines. Over a quarter of a century,
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I have seen the King James only meltdown take place over and over and over and over again.
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Nothing new there. But that's just one aspect of it. Here's what hopefully will be helpful to other people.
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Because I want to reach out to the people that are in these types of churches.
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You know, you feel in your heart there's something not right here. There's an imbalance. There's an emphasis upon things you don't find when you read your
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King James version of the Bible. And you're wondering what it is. And yet you're afraid to listen to anything else.
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You're afraid to look outside. Why are you afraid? Because you've been told that that's ungodly.
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You've been told that you're going to be questioning the man of God and all the rest of this kind of stuff. And you're also afraid that you're going to be the one being called a high -minded, egotistical fool like yourself.
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And all the other raging stuff. Let me tell you something right now. It has no meaning.
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This is for everybody. Give the weight to someone's criticism and opinion that the work of their life and the validity of their arguments demands.
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In that case, it's a big goose egg. Nothing. There's nothing here. There's absolutely no reason why anyone should fear someone making that kind of comment about them.
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Who cares? I mean, honestly, the last time
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I cared something like about this was, I think it was on the playground in the sixth grade. But we were playing marbles, you know.
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And you're trying to get the steelies. Remember all that kind of stuff? Yeah, I remember that in sixth grade. That was the last time it had any meaning to me.
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And so evidently in these groups, it's still a big thing. But for the rest of us, all you got to do is grow out of it.
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So that's the other aspect is that he does this. These people are not trying to convert someone like myself.
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They're not even going to bother with someone who's read the King James Convert or something like that. Because they know there is no way there's anything they can do about any of this stuff.
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So they're not going to go there. What they're doing is they are hoping that other people, because he knows he has his followers.
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It's a small group, but he has a small group of followers. And what he's doing is he's saying to them, if you dare go this direction, this is what's going to happen to you.
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This is what's going to happen to you. That's the idea with this kind of stuff. So it went from there.
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And this is just the first round. And it's gotten much hotter since then when
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I said I was going to be talking about it on the program. Then he says, imagine if people like yourself put as much time into defending
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Scripture instead of creating doubt and confusion. Just think about that for a second. Just think, over the past 30 years, how much time we have put into the defense of the
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Scriptures. Now from these guys' perspectives, we don't even believe you. They say, you don't even believe you have the
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Scriptures. Because they have this little, you know, I only speak English. I don't know anything about translation.
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I don't know anything about other languages. And so you've got to give it to me in English. And if it's not in English, then...
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And so at one point, I said to him, and I didn't keep this one.
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He said, you don't believe you have the Scriptures? And I said, I have the same Scriptures Athanasius had during the period of darkness after the
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Council of Nicaea. Now think about that for a second. That was an utter refutation of King James Only -ism.
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I don't know that he knows enough about church history to even recognize it. But Athanasius stood alone.
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Athanasius Contramundum. Athanasius stands alone during the Arian Resurgency after the Council of Nicaea.
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And what Scriptures does he have? Well, he doesn't have a King James Version of the Bible. Okay? He does not have the
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King James Version of the Bible. And yet he stands alone in defense of the deity of Christ.
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For any rational person, that's all you need. The elevation of a 17th century
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Anglican translation that has gone through numerous revisions since then to the position of the final authority over the texts that Athanasius used to defend the deity of Christ back then is an absurdity that any
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Christian should disavow and say, we do not believe such foolishness as that.
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If you want to have any connection to, you know, all the way back to, you know, Jesus saying, I'm going to build my church, all that kind of stuff.
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Anyway. So, here you go. We are not as many which corrupt the word of God.
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Oh, I'm so, oh, I'm sorry. Didn't consult the original languages on that verse. Please tell me why it doesn't mean what it says.
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Is this an answer to anything that I had said to you about Psalm 12? Of course not. He didn't, he couldn't, he cannot touch the arguments and he knows it.
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He is well aware of that. So, this is part self -defense and partly, because remember, he's a quote unquote pastor in a
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King James only church. You've got to keep your people under control. And so, you've got to bluster and sound like you know what you're talking about and hope that this kind of rhetoric will keep them from going, yeah, but we quote
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Psalm 12 all the time. Shouldn't we have a really humdinger response? I mean, shouldn't it be based on the text itself?
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Because it sounds like what you're saying makes sense. Yeah. Well, that's because it does make sense. That's the reality.
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Let me see here. Oops. Now, how did that happen? How did we get that small like that?
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Well, I don't know out there. I had said toward the end of the thread, you need to honestly admit that there are at least equally good, if not better ways of understanding
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Psalm 12. And so, he said, honesty? You of all people are going to talk about honesty?
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What a laugh. Okay, honesty dictates that you acknowledge what the entire chapter is about. Verses 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 are all about words and speech.
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You couldn't miss it unless you tried, which obviously you did. So, that was about the only response.
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I don't know what happened though. That was about the only response he had was, well, there's a lot of talk about speech in here.
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Okay, there is. There is a lot about speech. And there is a lot about the words of Yahweh.
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But they're defined in the context as the promise to deliver the needy. You can't deal with that.
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You know you can't deal with that. So, your argument isn't an argument.
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It's an observation. But it doesn't overflow. It doesn't override the actual flow of the text itself.
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Anyway, there was one more here. And I'm not, hopefully it will not just, it did. What is that?
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Well, I'll skip it then. No reason to go back over there. So, anyways, it has now gotten crazier since then.
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And I didn't bother to save all those. Because I had said to him, you know, we keep looking for somebody on your side to come out and to do a meaningful debate.
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And you can now see why it is that no matter how hard you try, these folks won't do it.
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And there's a reason they won't do it is because in a debate you actually have to make arguments. And when you make arguments like that, everything is going to absolutely fall apart.
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All right. From the ridiculous to the sublime, this just came in the mail for me.
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I was very happy. This is Brandon Ellis' Calvin Classical Trinitarianism and the
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Aseity of the Sun. I am really looking forward to digging into it. Because thankfully it's not overly long.
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But reading through it, it's going to be a very, very, very, very, very slow read. I wish
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I had it electronically. Not just to read. But that is definitely one that I'm going to be diving into.
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We had mentioned a few weeks ago. This is going to be, from this point on, all the key.
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And by the way, just one thing. If you are a member, if you're a member of one of these churches and you've been told to obey and to not question the mog, the man of God, so on and so forth, any man who stands behind a pulpit who has to behave like a sixth grader when his obvious lack of ability to handle the
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Word of God is challenged is not a man of God and you are under absolutely positively no scriptural commands to remain under that person's ministry.
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Get out of there. Find a church that honors and believes all of the
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Word of God in such a way that they recognize that the Word of God has been in the possession of God's people all along.
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Not just since 1611. You'll discover that there are many of us out here who have an extremely high view of Scripture and we consistently apply that and you'll discover there's a whole lot more to what
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God's Word commands and a whole lot more freedom in Christ than anything you have been taught by these particular individuals.
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All right. Now, like I said, drawing.
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Let's see here. All right. How do
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I even introduce this? In the Christian faith, we have, at the center of our faith, we have absolute, core, definitional beliefs at the center of our faith that cannot, they define the faith.
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Every Christian must believe these particular things. Okay? And then, outside of those, we have the next set of beliefs that are extremely important, that the denial of these, they are so closely related that a denial of any one of these would probably indicate a fundamental misunderstanding of something in the center, but they're not the definitional doctrines.
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They are very important, great clarity, but not as much centrality as what you have in the center.
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These are concentric circles. And so, then you have the next set outside of that. And obviously, we can just keep on going here.
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How many of these do you want? And obviously, there are going to be disagreements between people as to exactly what doctrine fits in what circle.
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But what happens eventually, what happens eventually is that you get to a range out here that would be called the adiaphora.
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The adiaphora. Now, what does adiaphora mean? The adiaphora.
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The things that do not make a difference. They aren't definitional, and they should be things upon which
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Christians are able to extend freedom about and to have differences of opinion.
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Now, we all know that what happens is we get out here, and your tradition, your experience, your upbringing tells you that there are things in here that are really actually in the second level.
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And so, you're extremely reluctant to extend any kind of allowance for disagreement.
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And, of course, one of the most important things, this is really important to think about, you will hear all the time people talking about gospel issues.
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What is a gospel issue? All right.
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Well, and what will happen is someone, let me give you an example.
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The subject, on January 16th, we're all doing, hopefully, I invite all of us to be doing sermons.
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I, Lord willing, as long as I'm going to be there, and my plan is to be there, I will be preaching on God's law in regards to God's creative decree regarding human sexuality at Apologia Church on January 16th in solidarity with our
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Canadian brothers, because that'll be the first Sunday where it is literally illegal in Canada to say anything negatively in regards to transgenderism, homosexuality, sexual orientation, all the rest of that kind of stuff.
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And so, I have said for decades that the issue of homosexuality is a gospel issue.
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Now, many people say, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Gia's never said anything about it. So how could it be a gospel issue?
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And my response has been, because you have to be able to define what sin is to be able to explain the very necessity and nature of the gospel.
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Why does Christ have to die on a cross? Why does he have to give his life? Because God's law has been broken.
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And so a substitute is needed. But God's law, the breaking of God's law is what drives this, you see.
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And so if you can't define what sin is, and the Bible clearly defines homosexuality as a violation of God's law, then you have no way of defining the gospel.
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So that is a gospel issue. And so it's not out here in the adiaphora.
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But others, but Independent Fundamentalist Baptist, for example, have no adiaphora.
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Everything is a gospel issue. All these circles are just one circle. It's just you have to be this.
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We draw a solid circle here, and you got to be in there, and outside there's nothing. Well, that means everything is a gospel issue.
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Now, what we have to think about is lines that go inward and lines that go outward.
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What do I mean by that? When you have a central doctrine that then has not just implications but necessary application going outward, that's what makes it a gospel issue.
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If you don't believe this, you can no longer believe what's in here. But the line doesn't necessarily go the other direction.
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Everybody wants to have a Christian worldview that will make all of this consistent with our
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Christian confession. We want to do that. But we have to be very careful to think clearly about which direction the line is going.
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So, eschatology. I have brothers who believe in pretty much all of the
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Orthodox eschatologies. Now, I see that here.
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You better believe that if I'm trying to be consistent here, it's going to have an impact on my eschatology.
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But are you going to make it a gospel issue to say, if you don't agree with my eschatology, that means you are not saved.
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That's what the Independent Fundamentalist Baptists do. But hopefully we all recognize most of them have no earthly idea what any of the other views are.
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It's just arrogance based upon ignorance. You've heard it over and over again. So I want to have a
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Christian worldview that's going to hold all this stuff together. But when I do,
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I recognize I need to extend grace to others who will have a different emphasis.
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And very frequently, that emphasis will be found in what each of these inner lines are all about.
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Where you're placing, you know, this one's a little bit farther out than this one. And some might, well, no,
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I think that doctrine, that's where a lot of this is coming from, is from the differing emphases that we have.
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We're going to see that later on. We'll be getting into some of this stuff later on, if I remember to get into all the stuff later on that I have, which is probably not going to be the case.
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But, in fact, I was just, I was digging in a little bit to the
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Ellis book over there, and immediately ran into a portion of the discussion and went, yep, yep, yep, yep.
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Because I was listening to a really in -depth conversation between current theologians on the subject of divine simplicity.
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And I would say 99 .8 % of Protestant Christians, who actually really make a credible profession of faith, they're actually serious about the faith, would not have been able to follow that conversation.
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It was highly technical, and it's not that what was being said could not have been said in such a way for them to follow, but these are theologians talking to the theologians, and so they're using all of the technical terminology to make that easier.
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And so it makes it sound so much more complicated than it is. But the point was,
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I could listen to them, and I had also listened to some of them talking to other theologians that they were now disagreeing with.
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But they were agreeing with them before on other things, and what's the difference between them? Emphasis.
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Emphasis. And one of the things that struck me was, in the
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Ellis book, was a discussion of the development.
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Well, here, I'm going to come back to this, but got to grab these things while I'm thinking about them.
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Here is an interesting discussion. This is from Muller.
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Everyone thinks, for some reason, that all you've got to do is just pull out post -Reformation reform dogmatics, and that answers all the questions.
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Though, very frequently, there aren't a lot of quotations from it. So there is a discussion under 6 .1,
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natural and supernatural theology. The problem of natural theology, natural theology and the
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Reformers. This massive work is on the development of Reformed orthodoxy from the time of the
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Reformation through to the modern period, and so there's all sorts of things that go into that.
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But there is a... Let me just read a few things for you here, so you can follow along.
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This revised understanding of Calvin, that is, the understanding of his thought without reference to the neo -orthodox paradigm grafted into it by the
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Brunner debate. Don't get me started on Barth. I had to go to Fuller, so I don't even want to talk about Barth anymore.
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In turn, indicates a greater affinity between Calvin's teaching and that of the Reformed orthodox, notice
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Calvin's teaching, and that of the Reformed orthodox. So you've got Calvin at the beginning, and then there is a recognition, and it's a true recognition, that there is a development over time into the
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Reformed orthodox. That means it's not necessarily what Calvin would believe. That's really not disputable.
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At the same time that it recognizes in Calvin, as will also be found in the later Reformed, a firm distinction between pagan natural reason or fallen reason, and a
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Christian application of reason to the examination of the created order. By the way, just in passing, I hope you hear that.
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That's very relevant to what, quote unquote, natural theology is. A regenerate mind and unregenerate mind are going to deal with natural revelation and scriptural revelation in different ways.
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Fundamentally, has to be. The right application of reason to the natural order, moreover, would issue in a cogent natural philosophy in the outlines of which
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Calvin concurred with his contemporaries. The latter point stands directly counter to, let me skip.
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Okay. Several formal observations are in order. First, Calvin, Bollinger, Vermigli, and Musculus all discuss a naturally available knowledge of God, but they nowhere construct a natural theology, and nowhere discuss either the advisability or inadvisability of constructing one.
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Calvin in Verre proposed a twofold knowledge of God as creator and redeemer, while Musculus addressed the issue of natural and revealed knowledge with a threefold division of the subject in the general revelation in nature, the special revelation in scripture, and the gracious witness of the spirit that renders scripture authoritative.
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Bollinger, like Calvin, appears to have distinguished between the reception of natural revelation by pagans or unbelievers and the reception of natural revelation by way of the testimony of scripture.
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That's interesting. Bollinger also, again like Calvin, had a well -developed view of the conscience of having an innate or implanted knowledge of the natural law, albeit one that could not motivate the unregenerate sinner to do good.
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It was the Thomas -trained Vermigli, though, who of all the early reformed codifiers of doctrine produced the most extended treatment of the problem of the natural knowledge of God in relation to theology.
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Oh, I wonder why. Second, the Reformed Orthodox do use the term natural theology, and several of the
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Reformed Orthodox writers, notably Alsted at the beginning and Van Til at the end of the era, wrote works entitled Theologia Naturalis, natural theology.
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Alsted ultimately included his natural theology with the outline of his larger Methodist. The Orthodox writers do not typically mingle natural theology with the theology based on biblical or supernatural revelation.
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Their systems of catechetical, scholastic, or positive theology remain expositions of the supernaturally grounded body of Christian doctrine that rests on scripture.
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Once, however, here, once, however, natural theology had been admitted to the encyclopedia of theological study.
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Differences did arise among the Reformed Orthodox concerning its purpose and its relationship to the other forms of theological discourse.
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In the 18th century, moreover, natural theology was used as a preliminary step towards supernatural theology, particularly by Wolfian theologians like Weidenbach and Stopfer, as well as by less philosophical writers like Klinkenberg.
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This development, however, proves the point by contrast. It was not at all the Reformed approach in the early or high
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Orthodox areas to build supernatural theology on a rational, natural foundation.
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I think there's a lot of people who really need to hear that. Anyway, recent studies have shown, moreover, that the natural theology and metaphysics of the early
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Orthodox were not dogmatically framed by constant warnings concerning the radical limitation of fallen human reason, but rather argued that given the problem of the fall, the proper study of philosophy was an exercise intrinsic to the reparation of the image of God in human beings.
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Arguably, it was one of the academic burdens of early Orthodox writers like Kekerman, Allstead, Herbord, and Burgersdijk to develop a philosophical curriculum, including metaphysics and natural theology, in the
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Reformed academies and universities. Please notice, this is happening long after Calvin, long after even the second generation is when this is happening.
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And that in so doing, they broadened not only the curricular interest of the Reformed, but also
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Reformed interest in the ability of the rational faculties to discern truth in their examination of the rational and logical orders.
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According to Allstead, natural theology could have both a propageutic and an apologetic function.
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Move the cursor. On the one hand, it might lead toward the higher truths of revealed theology. On the other, it might be the basis for debate with pagans and atheists.
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Interestingly enough, that would be not as much of an interest in Calvin's day.
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Pagans and atheists were not the people that he was encountering. This perspective may clash with the impression given by the introductory chapters of Calvin's Institutes, albeit not with the broader view of Calvin's thought to be gleaned from the
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Institutes in conjunction with the commentaries and sermons. While in the broader context of the thought of the Reformers, notably writers like Vermigli and Hyperius, there are also a series of significant antecedents.
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In addition, and more importantly, here we go, we're finally getting to it. The context of the early
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Orthodox writers was different from that of the Reformers.
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Why? Whereas Calvin arguably understood the debate over reason, natural revelation, and philosophy as a battle against the causes of excesses and mistakes of what?
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In the theology of the later Middle Ages. Kekerman, Alsted, and their contemporaries surely saw the issue in the context of the establishment of a
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Protestant Reformed theology in the institutional context of academies and universities, specifically the academies and universities in lands where the
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Reformation had been successful and the abuses for the most part set aside.
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And certainly the institutionalization of Reformed thought implied the appropriation in a more thorough and overt manner of the best of the older Christian tradition, both patristic and medieval.
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In brief, we shall be able here, as on the other topics investigated, to identify continuities and discontinuities in the development of the
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Reformed teaching. Here's the issue. Calvin is in a different battle.
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He is in the battle with Rome primarily, but he's also battling on the issues of God's sovereignty, divine election.
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He's battling with Servetus on the Trinity. And this is reflected in the what?
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What was the term we were looking at before we got sidetracked there? The emphases that he would bring to this same diagram.
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The emphases he would have. Vitally important. And the later
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Reformed are all of a sudden developing this interest in these other things because now, well, they're in academic settings.
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And unlike Calvin, who knew that if he traveled alone, he was in grave danger of being killed by Roman Catholic assassins, but also
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Protestant assassins, for that matter. He knew he was in grave danger. That tends to focus your theology.
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But now when the only thing you have to worry about is getting your papers graded in the academic setting, all of a sudden your attention can wander to other things and it's going to impact your emphasis.
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And that's what we've got here. That's what ends up doing these things.
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Now, let's look at something like this.
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Let's say, let's think of some foundational biblical doctrines in Revelation.
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So let's start off with monotheism, okay?
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There is only one true God. If you're going to make that affirmation, there are certain inevitable things that flow from this.
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If there is only one true God, and he is the creator of all things, all right, then to believe both of these will inevitably require you to believe that God is, for example, eternal.
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Because there's only one God, he's the creator of all things, so anything that exists comes from him.
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And so these beliefs have necessary implications.
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Let's try one belief that, unfortunately, a lot of Christians sort of struggle with, and let me show you how this works.
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Let's take monotheism. Let's take the deity of the sun.
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I didn't say deity of Christ just because Christ is normally in reference to his incarnate state.
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He is, of course, deity in his incarnate state as well, but he was deity before then as well. Deity of the sun, let's take incarnation.
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The word became flesh, all right?
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And let's take a resurrection, not general resurrection, but the resurrection of Christ specifically, the reality of that.
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Now, if we believe all these things and we bring them in close proximity with one another, can we ignore the implications that each has for the other?
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I don't believe so. And when you look at what has happened in the history of the church, what has happened is when you affirm all of these things, a true incarnation,
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Jesus truly took on a physical nature. He's truly died and was truly raised again bodily from the dead.
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He's truly God, truly man. There's only one God, and the result of this is the foundation of what leads to the hypostatic union.
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Now, what's the hypostatic union? That Christ is one person with two natures? They are not separated from one another,
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Nestorianism. You do not take out a part of the human nature or replace it with the divine,
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Apollinarianism. That's where Bill Craig is. You do not mix them together so he's half man, half
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God. That's Eutychianism. Two natures, not intermingled, but in one person together, hypostatic union.
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That term is found nowhere in Scripture. And so here's the question.
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This is what I want us to think about today, and that is what authority, what is the authority link here?
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What is the authority of a belief like this? And we as non -Roman
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Catholics and non -Eastern Orthodox, and even they would have differences as to exactly what this is, we have to explain why we would identify a denial of this as a heresy.
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In light of, of course, Sola Scriptura.
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And many people say you can't. Because if they understand Sola Scriptura in a certain way, it just simply has to be laying there on the page, and there has to be a chapter and a verse, and that's all you can do.
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What I'm asking us to think about, to struggle with, to think through. If we don't think through it in the context of faith, then someone else can come along and require us to think through it in the context of unbelief.
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And the better time is now than it is later on. Now's the time to think through these things.
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These are biblical. These are directly found on the pages of Scripture. If I did the doctrine of the
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Trinity up here, I'd have monotheism, I'd have the three divine persons, I'd have the equality of the persons, and that results in the doctrine of the
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Trinity. And it's believing these things that leads to this.
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So is this biblical? And how far can we go from here if we keep going upward?
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How far can you go and still call it biblical? Well, obviously, one test is, is this truly necessary to confess these things?
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I would say, in this case, it most certainly is. That's where it comes from. I mean, you could put some more boxes down there if you wanted to add a few things to it, just to round it out, but yes, yes.
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But let's think about another term that you may not have heard of as often.
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Perichoresis, perichoresis. Now, if I were to be a betting man,
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I'm not sure what percentage of healthy, committed
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Christians who actually read books on the faith and everything,
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I'm not sure what percentage of people would actually know what that term is, but it'd be a fairly small percentage.
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And yet there would be some who say, without this, you can't have a thoroughly biblical understanding of the doctrine of the
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Trinity. Well, what does it mean? It means the complete interpenetration of the divine persons with one another.
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And if you were to just explain it, sort of, it would be if in the confession of the
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Trinity, we say that father, son, and spirit are fully
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God and share fully, fully the divine being, the being of God.
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And that is, that's orthodoxy. That's the orthodox understanding that they, each of the divine persons are fully
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God, share fully the being of God. If that is the case, then this flows from that because if there is not complete interpenetration of the divine persons, that would mean that there is some aspect of the being of God that one of the divine persons does not share.
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So this flows from and is the inevitable result of confessing these things.
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And why would you confess those things? Well, maybe due to the fact that, for example, each of the divine persons is identified as Yahweh.
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That would be a really good, solid foundation for doing that. But you see the interconnectedness.
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You see that what you're fundamentally doing is there is such a thing as a negative statement theology.
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And many of our statements of theology are not a positive
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God is this, but a negative God isn't that.
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And part of that is simply due to the fact that when you're talking about a God who is outside of time, he's the
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Alpha and Omega, he's the beginning and the end, he's with the first, he was the last, we can't even start to necessarily wrap our little creaturely minds around these things and we are dependent upon divine revelation for so many things.
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And so because of that, we always have to be humble.
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And this, of course, just a brief reminder in passing, we've said it many, many, many times before, but that theologian from Geneva, I think, was very, very, very wise to say that we should make an end of speaking when
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God makes an end of speaking. Well, how do you do that? Is confessing this, the hypostatic union, a violation of the wisdom that Calvin gave us in those words?
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I don't believe it is. And I don't believe he would have said it was. But eventually, we do have to deal with the reality that God has made an end of speaking.
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There are questions that can be asked that either cannot be answered in a directly biblical fashion, or we just have to be honest in saying that is a question that takes us into the realm of speculation, into the realm of speculation.
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What has happened down through the centuries is where that line is and needs to be drawn is a matter of debate.
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And the reality is, even today, even in the Reformed community, you will find men who are, well, of course,
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Reformed people do have the tendency to require a very, very, very narrow application of that term.
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And so there'd be people, they would say, I'm not Reformed, or they would say, no, you're not Reformed unless, in fact, if they were consistent, they would say
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Calvin wasn't Reformed. So it sort of makes the term, I guess, would have to be a moving target for a lot of folks.
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But you have people teaching in broadly Reformed contexts that have different emphases.
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And once you get past a certain point, so let's say, you know,
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I ride bike, and I've been actually riding bike to the office, and sometimes
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I do that after dark, and so I need a light. And man, oh, I am so thankful.
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Light technology has really, really exploded over the past 15 years.
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I can't imagine what it was like before then. But I have some incredible lights. And so I have a light on the front of my bike.
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It's not even my brightest one, but it puts out on high 1 ,200 lumens. I've got a 2 ,000 lumen one, actually.
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But this one is 1 ,200 lumens. And that's, I've had, that one
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I haven't, but the 2 ,000 one, I've had cars actually flash me to try to get me to turn my brights down.
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And it's like, sorry, I'm on a bike, really can't do that right now. So let's say we have a light source here, all right?
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And it is, it's putting out its light, and we might as well use yellow for light, okay?
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And so here comes the light from the light source. And you've heard, you've probably heard the phrase, don't overdrive your lights.
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Back in the olden days when we took, overrun your lights, when we took driver's ed, this would be something that would be discussed.
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Your lights only go so far, and the faster you go, the less time you're gonna have to respond to what's coming at you.
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That you're not gonna be able to see until it hits your lights. And if you're overrunning your lights, then you're going too fast. On a bike,
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I'm not in too much danger of doing that, but this bike can go pretty quick. So you sort of get out to the outer reaches of what your light source is gonna provide to you.
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It's a little bit like scripture. Scripture sheds light, defines truths, gives us things that we need to know about God.
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But to the dismay of many, there is an endpoint.
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Now exactly where that endpoint is is gonna depend a little bit on different people who have different views.
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But you get to a place out here where things start getting fuzzy.
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And once you go past that, once you get past this area, then what you're basically dealing with is once you go out here, what do you have?
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What do we call that out there? Well, we would want to argue, we would want to argue that, well, as long as I'm being consistent here and I'm trying to make proper applications and we looked at the hypostatic union, you can look at perichoresis, and there are things you can do.
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You wanna argue that based on divine revelation, I wanna be consistent as I go here, but eventually
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I get to a point where this is speculation. That's all it is.
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Once you get past that certain point. But Roman Catholics and Orthodox have a way around this.
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And I'm afraid more and more Protestants are starting to buy into having this extra little thing.
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And what I mean by that is there are those who would say, well, yeah, if all you have is scripture, then yeah, that's all you end up with.
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There we go. But there's something more to be had, you see. There's something more to be had because once you get out here, then what you can have is, change this over so that, sorry, there we go, highlighter.
01:00:09
What you can do once you run out of scripture out here, you can get tradition.
01:00:19
You can call it the great tradition if you want. You can call it whatever you want, but we've got tradition out here.
01:00:27
And so here's tradition. And it functions as a lens to refocus the light from scripture so that we can go farther out to here and we can get all sorts of stuff out here that we can now call divine truth that the writers of scripture back here never would have dreamed of, never even thought of it.
01:00:52
Now, some of the more obvious examples of things like this, we in the
01:00:57
West are primarily familiar with the Roman Catholic traditions that have been defined.
01:01:05
And over since the 1870s, the things that have been defined on the base of 1850s have been the immaculate conception of Mary, which has nothing to do with the virgin birth, by the way.
01:01:28
Papal infallibility, infallibility.
01:01:39
Too many lines there. Yeah, PI. IC, PI, and then
01:01:45
BA, bodily assumption. I'll just go with it. It takes too long to write these things. It's starting to sound like R .C.
01:01:53
Sproul with the chalk going. Except you don't get any chalk dust off of this. It's not quite the same thing. Anyway, immaculate conception, papal infallibility, bodily assumption of Mary.
01:02:01
These have all been defined on the basis of tradition since the 1850s. And these are dogmas.
01:02:08
And so this is what tradition ostensibly gives you.
01:02:16
Now, the reformers said no.
01:02:25
They lived in a day when this was one of the primary arguments against their gospel preaching.
01:02:35
And so they emphasized the sufficiency of scripture. But then if you listened as I was reading from Muller, once things become academic and you've got the institutions and you can travel from city to city without worrying about the other side killing you, all of a sudden there is an introduction of other sources.
01:03:04
And you can start looking at some of this stuff that your predecessors had said no, no, no to.
01:03:12
But now you're open to a discussion of these particular things. But you have to bring something else in because there is a limitation as to what scripture reveals.
01:03:27
Now, I would say you could spend your entire life delving into what is in that revelation from God to be sure.
01:03:39
And you would never be, you'd never run out of these things.
01:03:47
But there is this incredible desire on the part of many people to keep on going.
01:03:53
I don't like being stopped here. So I want to keep on going. I've got other questions that I want to ask.
01:04:02
And that becomes a real issue. It becomes a real issue for all of us.
01:04:12
And where you end up coming down on so many of these issues is going to be dependent upon where you believe the tipping point is reached between that which is necessary to confess.
01:04:27
So as to continue to confess all true biblical revelation and passing by that point into that which either has been confessed by people in the past.
01:04:42
And when you ask, why did they confess it? You're just told, well, they did.
01:04:47
And so they're part of the great tradition and therefore we need to too. And I go, why is it necessary to be able to do so, to say these things, to be faithful to the biblical revelation?
01:05:04
And this is really where the big question comes. Is there an authority after that?
01:05:11
We have historically said no. We have pointed to example after example after example where people have erred on this.
01:05:19
And there are so many dead ends in the history of the church where scriptural sufficiency was abandoned.
01:05:29
And sure, people may have gone with the flow for a while and no one believes that any longer today.
01:05:36
There were dead ends. It didn't go anywhere because it wasn't actually divine truth. Philosophical systems and all sorts of things leads to that situation.
01:05:49
So in getting ready to wrap up here, yes, you will all notice where I discovered new features.
01:06:02
Playing around going, oh, that works. Oh, that's helpful. That's nice. So let me just make a comment here about what we're gonna be doing in the future.
01:06:16
We've announced that we're gonna be interacting with certain positions and raising questions in regards to the doctrine of simplicity.
01:06:29
And we've already discussed this, divine simplicity. God is not made of parts.
01:06:44
We're made of parts. And some of our parts wear out before other parts wear out. We are not simple in either spiritually or physically.
01:06:56
We are made of component parts and we are temporal. We're limited in time.
01:07:05
And vast majority of us, vast majority of us outside of people who are reading
01:07:11
Thomas Aquinas thought that when we talked about God being simple, that it was sufficient to recognize that we were confessing his aseity, that he is
01:07:28
God in and of himself. He is not dependent upon anything outside of himself. He is not a complex being that is made up of lesser parts.
01:07:37
You can't break God down. God's being cannot be divided into thirds. So the son's not a third of God or the spirit a third of God.
01:07:47
We thought that was enough. And for decades, that's what we taught.
01:07:56
But recently there has been a emphasis upon going no after Aquinas as far as it's really tight formulation.
01:08:16
And even before him, going back to some, not all, but some in the post -Nicene period, simplicity was taken to mean more than just God is not made up of parts.
01:08:33
So some people will positively express simplicity as all that is in God is
01:08:39
God. Because if you don't say all that is in God is
01:08:44
God, then you're saying that there's stuff that's less than God that is definitional of God.
01:08:52
Okay, you don't want to say that. You don't want to say anything that is going to demand that Yahweh be a part of his creation.
01:09:04
I mean, one of the absolutely unquestionable assertions of Scripture, one that's often missed because we don't read
01:09:13
Scripture very often in the context of, especially in the Old Testament, of the apologetic it's providing against the religions around Israel where their gods came forth from the creation.
01:09:27
Yahweh is the creator of all things. And that is especially an assertion that he therefore is
01:09:33
God completely. He's not God out of creation.
01:09:39
He's not God made up of creation, et cetera, et cetera. Okay, all that, great.
01:09:48
But let me read you some quotes that were posted just today on Twitter.
01:09:55
Here is a quote from 16th, 17th century.
01:10:04
The attributes of God, the attributes of God. So when we talk about the attributes of God, generally we are talking about those divine realities that God has revealed to us are true of him.
01:10:24
So for example, in the trial of the false gods, Isaiah 40 -48, there are numerous attributes of God that are discussed there that set
01:10:35
Yahweh apart from the false gods. And so his eternality, the fact that he is the creator of all things, the fact that he has all power, that he has all knowledge, omniscience, omnipotence.
01:10:49
But we also would think of the attributes of God in regards to his justice, his love, his mercy.
01:10:54
Or in Romans 9, the fact that he wants to reveal his power and his might and his justice.
01:11:03
These are attributes of God. And in any theology class you take, you discuss these attributes and you hopefully emphasize the fact that we're not simply taking the human ideas and projecting them backwards upon God, but are recognizing that in God's revelation, we see the pure definition of these things.
01:11:31
And then we have a creaturely created, in our experience, fallen reflection of these attributes.
01:11:44
And the grave danger is always that we as creatures are going to project back upon God a creaturely understanding of what
01:11:58
God is revealing to us about himself. Because God, we are to grow in the grace and knowledge of the
01:12:04
Lord Jesus Christ. We are to meditate upon the revelation
01:12:09
God has made of himself. God wants to be known by his people. And he has given us a true and proper revelation of himself.
01:12:21
So back to my quote. The attributes are all essential to God for in him is no accident at all.
01:12:34
Now, what is accident? Well, when we talk about accidents, we're talking about Aristotelian categories of accidents, substance.
01:12:45
For in him is no accident at all is one way of saying that there are not accidental states of existence.
01:12:58
He's immutable, he doesn't change. And so right now, Rich is sitting. It's accidental that he's sitting.
01:13:05
He could be standing. I'm standing, but it's accidental that I'm standing. I could be sitting. These are accidents.
01:13:12
But all the attributes are essential to God for in him is no accident at all. Whatsoever is in God, the same is
01:13:21
God. All these, here's the point.
01:13:27
All these are also one in him. All these attributes are one in him.
01:13:37
His mercy is his justice. And his justice is his mercy.
01:13:45
And each are his essence. Only they differ in our apprehension.
01:13:54
Now, here's the issue that faces us today about which we need to discuss.
01:14:03
We need to talk. Let me make this very, very clear, especially because there are a bunch of young guys that don't seem to want things to be clear and are a little bit on the hotheaded side and like to just pop off and take people out.
01:14:19
Cancel culture amongst the reformed. It's great. I think that men like James Dolezal and Richard Bercellus and Jim Renahan are
01:14:38
Christian brothers, great scholars. I pray God's blessings upon them.
01:14:45
They've done wonderful things to the kingdom of God. And I do not for a second suggest that if you believe what
01:14:56
I just read, you are heterodox, heretical, dangerous, or anything like it, okay?
01:15:05
But in our day, there are people reading these folks who have decided that if you don't believe that, you are all those things.
01:15:16
Now, here's the issue. I see, and I've read
01:15:24
Dolezal, I've listened to the 2015 lectures. People go, well, you just need to read this.
01:15:30
But I did, and that's the problem. I see a huge chasm between the first part of this quote and the last part.
01:15:47
What do I mean by that? When I listen to the proponents of this definition of simplicity that specifically says, his mercy is his justice and his justice is his mercy, that means
01:16:06
God's love is his wrath that means God's mercy is his omniscience.
01:16:12
That means God's omniscience is his omnipresence. All the attributes are undifferentiated in God.
01:16:22
I see a huge chasm between saying all that is in God is God and saying there is no way to speak truthfully about the multifaceted aspects of the beauty of God's being.
01:16:39
I see this definition of simplicity as a metaphysical crushing of the beauty of God's attributes.
01:16:50
But they say, and this is what they say. They have answers. Let me explain what they are. But they say, that's just our apprehension.
01:16:59
That's what it says right there. Only they differ in our apprehension. Okay. So God doesn't know the difference between his mercy and his wrath?
01:17:14
Or is that only a creaturely distinction between mercy and wrath?
01:17:19
I praise God for mercy and grace because I know what
01:17:26
I deserve is wrath. How is any believer benefited or edified by being told that what they need to believe is that we distinguish between mercy and wrath, but God can't make the differentiation that we make?
01:17:49
He gave us the ability to do it, but he doesn't have the ability to do it? No. So God's revelation to us of his attributes is not something that's actually true in himself.
01:18:06
So I go, all right, just simply on a pastoral level,
01:18:12
I've been teaching and preaching in Reformed Baptist churches for decades, and I have never, ever, ever seen anyone falling into what
01:18:22
I'm hearing people saying is the danger here, that God will fly apart.
01:18:30
You'll never be able to trust his promises unless you believe his wrath is his justice or his wrath is his mercy or his justice is his mercy.
01:18:38
Just however you want to do it, you take any attribute of God and you say it's the same as any other attribute of God because all the attributes of God simply have to be his essence.
01:18:48
And since there's only one essence, all distinction disappears. And the chasm that I see is between on the one side, okay, on this side, you have the truth of simplicity and that is
01:19:05
God is not complex, that is not made of parts.
01:19:20
Now, I have believed that all along, I still believe it today, and it has never, ever, ever crossed my mind, not once that there is a contrast between my saying this and my discussion of God's omniscience or God's omnipotence or immutability or any of the attributes of God.
01:19:45
It never once crossed my mind that what I was actually saying is these are the constituent parts that make up God.
01:19:51
No, they aren't. They're true statements that God has revealed about himself. They are not parts that make
01:19:57
God complex. It's just not true. There's no reason to believe that. So the chasm then is right here.
01:20:06
And then over on this side, all attributes are the same.
01:20:18
Okay, when I hear brilliant scholars, brilliant scholars,
01:20:29
I'm not questioning their scholarship, but I am pointing out that this might have something very similar to do with what
01:20:40
I read earlier about Calvin and the development of Reformed Orthodoxy over time and the difference in emphasis and context.
01:20:50
None of the guys that I know of that are pushing this stuff have ever debated a Roman Catholic, not once, not once.
01:20:59
I don't know one of them that's taken any of this into a mosque, haven't taken on Bart Ehrman, and that might be my problem.
01:21:11
Maybe I'm the one that has the problem here. But you see,
01:21:16
Calvin emphasized the things that Calvin emphasized, even questioning Calvin's, that's what this book's about,
01:21:25
Calvin's emphasis upon the son as autotheos grew out of his battles against those who are fundamentally seeking to undercut the doctrines of Trinity through a subordinationism.
01:21:39
If you're not out there doing apologetics and defending the faith against a world that's seeking to undercut things, if you're in the academy, well, you're going to have a different emphasis, aren't you?
01:21:57
And so here's the chasm in between the two. And when
01:22:03
I ask how you get across here, and I ask for Scripture, is that fair to ask for?
01:22:20
Is that fair to ask for? I demand that it is. I'm going to ask for it, whether you think it's fair or not.
01:22:29
The verses that come back to me, I am that I am, yeah, that's here.
01:22:36
Yeah. Every single text I have heard, we're going to deal with them.
01:22:44
Every single text I've heard, it's right here. It's all this, this, this. Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep.
01:22:50
It does not get us over here. It just doesn't. And am
01:22:59
I wrong to say I need this? Because I'm saying if you want to believe it, if this gives you some kind of insight, some kind of, you know, if you just are thrilled to think of it in that way, if there's something about in God, all his attributes are one.
01:23:25
Okay. Can I not, am I no longer to be a part of the fellowship?
01:23:31
When I go, I am thrilled when
01:23:37
I see the fulfillment of God's wrath in his own mercy and grace in the incarnation.
01:23:49
And I believe God knows the difference between his wrath and justice and mercy and grace.
01:24:00
And I see no benefit of saying, well, that's just how we see it. But in God, they're all the same thing.
01:24:08
All that does is put God out there someplace and say what he is revealing to you as the basis of your glorifying him and loving him actually isn't real.
01:24:21
It's actually not true in him. If you want to say, well, but, but it's, it's just all mystery and it's, and it's just necessary.
01:24:29
I just go, I don't see the necessity. I'm sorry. Every dire result
01:24:35
I haven't seen happening. Now, now I do need to make a correction right now. Generally what's being said is, but if you don't hold this position, then you're a mutualist.
01:24:47
And I will, I will admit a little bit frustrated that, that anybody who doesn't go, doesn't leap the chasm is called some type of divine mutualist.
01:25:01
That is not fair. It's far too shallow. And I'm shocked that more people haven't stood up and said, oh, come on.
01:25:08
There's lots of reasons why people would question this. It has nothing to do. It's like, it's like, it's, it's like, this is now the issue and you're either here or all the, it doesn't matter whether you're
01:25:22
Trinitarian, Unitarian, Muslim, an atheist, you're all thrown into one, one thing as this, this is the defining issue.
01:25:30
And that's, it's not fair. That is just blessedly not fair. There are people who reject this for wrong reasons.
01:25:42
There's no question about it. There are people who reject this because they don't have a sufficiently high view of scripture to even address the topic.
01:25:51
I get that. But you've got to hear why someone would go.
01:26:00
Well, you know, it's, it's an interesting discussion and okay, I can,
01:26:05
I hear where you're coming from. And there's been people who've said these things, but the reality is there's been people who've said a lot of things, especially in the medieval period that we just go.
01:26:16
Yeah. No, don't think so. I mean, imagine the impact on exegesis in the medieval period.
01:26:26
And then the reformation brought tremendous light because it unencumbered us of so much of the deadness of the schoolmen.
01:26:37
And yet now I'm seeing people just extolling the schoolmen to the highest level. And just think of all this great stuff because they'll, they'll go look in the modern period, you've got all this naturalism that snuck into our exegesis.
01:26:52
Well, in liberal circles and in mainstream circles. Yeah. Certainly not for me.
01:26:59
I thought we were doing pretty good on that, but no, all of a sudden now, uh, sure.
01:27:06
At least the schoolmen were not anti -supernaturalists. Get it. I get it.
01:27:12
I reject exegesis of the text of scripture that is based upon naturalism, but I thought we were already all agreed on that.
01:27:21
I don't see any of that providing me with the evil Knievel jump, uh, across the
01:27:28
Grand Canyon to the other side. I just can't get there. I'm dating myself.
01:27:33
Well, yeah, I suppose so. Um, but look it up.
01:27:40
Why, why, why do we donate to Wikipedia? Evil Knievel. What's he talking about?
01:27:45
Okay, fine. Whatever. Sorry. so there's some, there's a lot of stuff that Rich, Rich is in the back going, mercy, mercy, mercy.
01:27:57
Stop. That's what everybody's doing. I started reading Muller, but, um, you know, it says, please, no, no more.
01:28:05
Uh, please, please don't give me anymore. Okay, fine. I won't. I told you we were going from the, uh, absurd, uh, to the sublime.
01:28:15
And, and that's, that's exactly what we did. Um, just one other thing. I had it queued up here, so I don't want to,
01:28:21
I don't want to skip it. We talk about natural theology. Let me just give you Muller's definition of natural theology.
01:28:26
Just, just in passing. Um, because, because there are people would say, well, that's where you're wrong.
01:28:38
Natural theology can do that for you. Well, what's natural theology?
01:28:44
Well, it depends on who you ask. Natural theology, the knowledge of God that is available to reason through the light of nature.
01:28:53
Natural theology can know of God as the highest good, and it can know of the end of man and God on the basis of perfect obedience to the natural law.
01:29:01
It is therefore insufficient to save man, but sufficient to leave him without excuse in his sins.
01:29:08
The Protestant Orthodox include virtually no natural theology in their systems, and never view natural theology, human reason, or the light of nature as a foundation upon which revealed theology can build.
01:29:21
That's at least Muller's definition. Now, are there all sorts of questions that we asked about that? Of course. How do you differentiate this from natural revelation?
01:29:31
My brother, Jeff Johnson, has been writing upon this, just had an e -book come out, I think yesterday, that discusses this even more.
01:29:41
So, here's my plea to everybody. Can we talk about this with open
01:29:48
Bibles? Or have we literally gotten to the place where even
01:29:55
Reformed Baptist Orthodoxy is so stiff that we cannot open the
01:30:03
Bible and ask fundamental questions about something as important as this? Only one side that I know of is lobbying the, oh, they've got a bad theology of God.
01:30:19
When it was announced that I was professor of apologetics and church history at Grace Bible Theological Seminary, a
01:30:27
Reformed Baptist online said, oh, well, you know, we know where to go if you want a bad theology of God.
01:30:36
All right? It seems that side is intent upon saying, so long, hasta la vista, we're not going to have this conversation.
01:30:46
Are we that brittle? That we can't open our, I can't open the
01:30:52
Bible and say, guys, with everything else that united us in the past, we opened the scriptures and we went to that.
01:31:00
What changed? What changed? Don't like to change, but there you go.
01:31:07
There you go. Again, preliminary conversation here. Threw this in at the end because we had made the quotation, and I didn't want to waste the time we'd spend.
01:31:18
I didn't want to have to read it a second time, but this is just a start because I've, we are going to look at what is given as scriptural foundation for believing this.
01:31:30
And here's the question I'm going to ask. Is it the same method of hermeneutics and interpretation that we have used to establish the foundational doctrines that we have agreed upon all along?
01:31:44
Or does it require us to adopt a new hermeneutic?
01:31:51
Do we have to bring in a metaphysical? We all have a metaphysics, but do we have to bring in a metaphysical system to provide the rungs in the ladder to get across this chasm?
01:32:10
Those are some of the questions. They're important questions. And I think most folks should go.
01:32:19
It's a good conversation needs to be had. And really, where is this in what we were talking about earlier?
01:32:29
Remember, we were talking about the hypostatic union, where does that come? Is that in the light of scripture or is it well beyond it?
01:32:38
Have we overrun the headlights? Questions to be asked.
01:32:44
Well, you're at least thinking or you're asleep. One of the two. That's the only options. So thanks for watching the program today.
01:32:52
I don't know how we're going to do exactly the end of this week, but we're going to do something.
01:33:03
It may be a remote program from the other studio or something, but we'll be back. Lord willing, one way or the other.