Open Zoom Calls on the Dividing Line

I've got to confess, it's two o 'clock in the afternoon. Now that I'm in my next decade of life, it's time for a nap.

We're going to have to change the time we do this. Just genetically at two o 'clock in the afternoon, it's just like, oh, time to hit the hay.

We have open Zoom calls today. We already have a couple of folks online. Rich says he's put all the links out, wherever links are to be found,

I guess. I forgot to tweet that we were live. So the

DL is on. Yay. Okay. Tweet.

Send now. There you go. So before we go to any calls,

I walked into the office and I see this pile of boxes.

And I go, what came? He says, I don't know. I haven't looked yet. So he comes walking in and there's a box from Amazon.

So someone paid to send all these books. Now, I just point out that I have three of the four of these in my library and I've had them for a long time, though I do have a hardback copy.

See, I have the little Catechism of the Catholic Church right there. I've had that one for years. So now

I have a new hardback edition. I wonder if this has the changes Francis has made. You know, now we have infallible guidance that the death penalty is unjust, despite what the

Bible says about that. Maybe a debate in the future on that.

But anyway, there's a new Catechism of the Catholic Church. And then, of course, we have Jimmy Akin's The Father is

No Best, which I've had for years and years. And he's wrong about so much of the stuff in there. Stephen Ray.

Oh, wow. Crossing the Tiber. We've done entire programs on these books. And then one

I didn't have. The Early Church was the Catholic Church. Well, you know, I teach church history and we've been dealing with this stuff for a long, long time.

So no one gave a... There's no name with it. Whoever it was, I'm sorry you wasted your money on books that we already have and in fact have responded to in the past.

I'm sorry that you're not aware that we've responded to these issues in the past, but I would encourage you to take the time to maybe do some searches and realize that there's a whole lot more than what these types of books will tell you.

Something in this shirt that's... You know when something starts scratching your neck and it's just enough to drive you right over the edge.

It's weird. Yeah, it's strange. But thanks to whoever sent them.

We're just looking at Francis making mincemeat out of all this stuff anyways. And then who knows what his successor is going to do.

And it's just so strange that back in the 90s, early 2000s, that was, you know, one of my primary focuses was on Roman Catholicism and I'm now watching the

Gavin Ortlin stuff and I look at the topics and I go, yep, been there, done that.

Just the preceding generation, you know, it's different names now. And you have the added element of the internet, you know.

I saw a meme last night that someone did with Gavin Ortlin and Roman Catholic apologists, and it was funny, but we didn't have memes.

When I was taking on Jimmy Akin and Tim Staples and Jerry Matitix and Gary Machuta and Pat Madrid and Mark Brumley and Stephen Ray and all those folks for years and years and years and years, the only thing we came even close, and it was unfair, we had the ability to do cartoons.

We had Angel. We had Angel. Yeah, we had Angel. Oh, yeah, yeah,

I know he does this stuff for Chris. Yeah, yeah. We had the great cartoonist Angel who would listen to the program.

I don't know if he still does or not. I wouldn't blame him if he didn't, because, I mean,

Angel must know everything I know by now if I heard everything four or five times over again.

But anyway, we're in the studio for the last time for the rest of this month, unless I might sneak in at the end of the month if my travel plans get messed up because of weather.

So if some kind of big winter storm blasts into Utah and keeps me from being able to go up there for a debate that will be taking place,

I believe the 27th of February, my son -in -law is doing a debate on who is in the new covenant.

And I want to try to get up there for that and do some stuff. You know, while I'm up there,

I'll speak for Apologia, Utah. It was so great. I saw a note in Facebook that from our pastor up there at Apologia, Utah, we call them baby saves.

If Apologia folks end up someplace, you'll find them outside of abortion clinics. And praise

God, we live in a land where you can still do that. Remember, the land from which we allegedly learned the idea of the freedom of speech and things like that, the good old

United Kingdom, you can be arrested for praying silently anywhere near the high temples of the culture of death.

We can still proclaim. And so I saw a note from just,

I think it was yesterday, that we had a baby saved. Wow, I was just thinking.

Yeah, you know, it was on Janet Mefford's show. She would probably not want to admit this, but it was on Janet Mefford's show on KPXQ.

I don't know how many years ago this was now. At least 10. Yeah, maybe 8 or 9.

Anyway, I filled in for her, and my interviewee was

Jeff Durbin on End Abortion Now, and it was on abortion ministry. And when

I think of how many thousands of little ones have been saved since then, it's really an amazing thing.

And in fact, this is called cross -contamination or something, but I think right now,

Apology Radio is on. And I don't know why we do this, but why we do this when we're all on at the same time.

You know, it's all being recorded, so you can watch one, then the other one. It doesn't matter. But there's an

ERLC article on abortion. And as soon as I saw it,

I sent it off to Jeff and Luke and Zach. And so they are covering it today.

So I don't have to cover the ERLC thing on abortion, because we have other people to do that.

So anyway, there you go. There's stuff going on there. One other thing, and I only see we've just...

Oh, three. Okay. All right. So we've got three calls. So I've got enough time to do this one other thing before we go to the calls.

Oh, by the way, sorry. I was saying we're in the studio for the last time.

That's one of the reasons I decided to do some calls, because I'm thinking maybe I'm wrong about this, but I'm thinking it's easier to do calls when

I'm in studio than when I'm one of the people that's online. Sort of like.

Rich is going, Nope. Just as easy for me as anything else. Just easy peasy.

You were the one sitting there. When you walked in there, you're going, I hope I can remember how to do this. So I heard you.

My short -term memory is really bad now, but it did catch that. So don't give me that.

So hey, from what I just learned, that means we can do Zoom calls while I'm on the road.

And I'm not going to feel at all guilty if I decide to do that, because Rich just went. It's easy.

Reminded me of an old friend of ours that has gone to be with the Lord. Let it be said, let it be done.

That was 1990, 1991. January of 91.

I remember driving me and Kelly and George Nalin Bano in his

Cadillac to the airport. And for some reason, we had horrible fog.

You know, that's pretty unusual. I mean, flight delay fog. And that was the morning we flew over to Southern California.

And that was when we did the debates with Mitch Pacwa.

And that's when I had my encounter with Scott Hahn. The mad

Scott Hahn. He was an angry man. Anyway, just get used to reminiscing, folks.

It is our 40th anniversary year. We need, by the way, where is the bug?

Do we still have a bug? Bug, you know, on the screen. I don't see a bug on the screen.

Oh, they see it. Do we have a 40th anniversary bug?

By the time we get done, it'll be the 41st anniversary bug. If Josh would hurry up.

Josh? What? Dude, I mean, Rich and I only have so much time left.

You're young. We're not. OK, so let's let's get to it.

OK, we need a 40th anniversary bug for the screen because it's our 40th anniversary.

And so as we go past that, moving toward 50th anniversary, you just have to get used to the fact that we're going to sit around and reminisce a lot because that's what old people do.

It's just remember. Oh, yeah. The exciting part when you get old is when you have memories.

It's just you're not just in this constant state of forgetfulness. Oh, wow.

Something that that brain cell just popped up and just went, whoo. And it's it's great. OK, anyway, real quick here, because the calls are lining up now.

So Trilogy 101. Hey, Leighton, you said I should unban you.

You may rethink the wisdom of that request. You really you really may.

Um, so yesterday we have this tweet to show partiality and judgment is not good.

Proverbs 24, 23. OK, that's a a commonly repeated frame that there needs to be in human judgment in Mishpat, the

Hebrew term for judgment. There it needs to be based upon what?

The the reality of God's law. Now, of course, God is the source of God's law.

So God always acts in accordance with his law. And the judgment that's being done here is by limited human beings based upon the evidence presented to them in light of God's law, which, of course, means we're not talking about God's freedom to work with his to give his grace as he sees fit or his judgment as he sees fit.

Totally different context there. But anyway, quote, explain how predetermining one twin to go to hell and the other to heaven before they do anything good or bad as Calvinism's application of that text is applied isn't showing partiality and judgment.

Well, this takes us back to Romans chapter nine, and it would be wonderful if we could have a debate where each side exegetes

Romans chapter nine and then discusses it directly in debate. Yeah, we tried that once, and I'm the one that provided the exegesis and the other side debated another topic.

And that's just the way that it is. And despite standing on your head and pointing toward the north and eating asparagus, it doesn't change any of the reality of what actually happened.

But once again, what you have from Leighton Flowers is another example of his inability to understand or accurately represent what the issue really is here.

Because notice the framing, predetermining one twin to go to hell. So you have one twin who has fallen in Adam, and he will receive justice.

And you have another twin who has also fallen in Adam, and he will receive grace.

And what's being said is, God can't do that. That is partiality in judgment.

And again, grace and mercy transcend the categories of judgment.

Judgment is either condemnation or a statement that one is right in light of the law.

The only way that one can be right in light of the law is because of our fallen Adam, which is what these people don't believe.

They don't believe Romans 5. Very clearly, they do not. The only way to be made right in light of God's law is by the imputed righteousness of Christ, which is done gratuitously.

So grace and mercy, and God's freedom to act in grace and mercy, just aren't even a part of the thinking.

And it's sad, because again, here's someone, I was a Calvinist, and I did this.

Before we go to our first call, I am tired. I've got Twitter set up to where it refreshes every little bit.

I'm tired of seeing AOC's crazy behavior. Did you see the

AOC video? Oh, you'll see it. The communists are here.

That's just, for people my age, who can still remember diving under your desk in case of a nuclear attack, having communists in the legislature and in the government is highly troubling.

And basically makes you go, wow, those people we thought were really weird, really weren't weird. They were right.

What they said was coming has come. And there they are. There's your communist workers party person right there.

And so I hope it refreshes soon and gets her off my screen. It did, thank goodness. Oh, it just moved her down my screen.

Oh well. Okay, let's start taking some of our phone calls. And as they came in, well, they're not technically phone calls.

They're Zoom calls. They're Zoom connections. They're stuff we could not do not very long ago.

Let's put it that way. All right, let's talk to the first Jacob.

Jacob on John chapter 15. Hi, James. Can you hear me? I can.

Thanks for taking my call. I appreciate it. I had a question in regards to John 15 .2,

specifically a translation question. Okay. So I had been reading through and it talks about, you know,

Christ being the vine and the father being the vine dresser. And it goes on to say every branch in me that doesn't bear fruit, he takes away.

And those who do bear fruit that he prunes so that they produce more fruit. And I had noticed in my

Greek and English lexicon that I have, I have one by I think Howard Gingrich. And I guess to preface as well,

I am a Calvinist. So when I read through that, it had different translations for that word takes away in the

Greek. And I noticed that I think three of the four kind of gave you this idea of lifting up or bearing up or carrying.

Yet all of the translations, pretty much every single one of them use that the fourth definition, which is more of the idea of taking away.

And from a Calvinistic perspective, how do you think we come to that conclusion of the takes away translation?

Is it contextual? Do you think that they're the same group as in verse six? Because as I was looking at verse six,

I feel like I could make the case that it says those who do not abide in me. He also picks up, carries away and tosses.

Do you think it's contextually or is there something in the Greek language? Because I'm not familiar with Greek.

That gives you the idea that it would be takes away as the translation. Well, yeah, a couple of things.

It probably is primarily being translated within the context. And hence the rest of the story, the branches being cut off, gathered together, burned, fire, things like that are that is influencing the translation of Iroh.

Iroh is a is an old Greek verb, and it simply means to take up.

And so it can be to lift up. Some people have interpreted that way. But to lift up in reference to a vine,

I suppose you could make yourself think through, well, you know, lift it up so maybe it gets some more sun or something along those lines.

But generally, if you're lifting up a branch, vines don't go anywhere. So if you're lifting it up, you're taking it away.

And so it's a pruning action. And in the same way you have in verse.

Well, the important part is, and by the way, there's an article somewhere at AOMEN .org on the vine, the branches, where I walk through this whole section.

I forget now. It was like 15 years ago. What exactly, maybe 20, prompted the particular discussion.

So I may be responding to a particular interpretation that someone gave. I don't remember now if that's the case, but there is a lengthy discussion of it.

But yeah, in 15 .6, if anyone's not abiding me, he is thrown away.

So that's Balo. So that's a casting away. And as a branch, it dries up and they gather them to cast in the fire, so on and so forth.

But then the other is you have this cleansing, Cotharidzo, so that it would bear more fruit, which is what we have in verse two.

Cleaning it is Cotharidzo, which would be sanctification, things along those lines.

So I would assume that to translate it in such a way that you would understand it to take away as in remove from the vine is just doing this within the context of an understanding of what vine dressing would involve.

Now, if can I prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that there would not be a sort of like a remedial attempt to save a branch by lifting it up and giving it more sunlight and stuff like that?

I can't disprove it, but I just don't see where that is picked up on at any later point.

The point that I see in John 15 is, and it's the same point that I think carries over into the sower and the seeds, when the seed is sown, the only place where there is life is where there is fruit.

So in other words, when you have the thorny ground and the shallow ground, you have growth, but you have no fruit, and it withers and dies.

And so evidently in Jesus's horticultural examples, it is the possession of fruit that is the indication of spiritual life.

And so I wouldn't want to look at verse two and go, yeah, there is this group that does not bear fruit, but they're lifted up so they can get more sunlight so they can bear fruit or something like that.

I wouldn't be able to defend that against someone who would be saying, nah, the consistent way of looking at it is to see it in this way, in the horticultural sense.

So yeah, the answer to your question is, yeah, I think they're looking at the whole context and going, this is the same thing as cutting out the branches and gathering them up and they dry and they're burning.

Okay. Do you think that that in me is not...

So would that not be very similar to like an in him when it's used?

Well, again, it would seem to me the same context as the sown seed.

So you have seed that goes into the ground, and it does sprout up, but it does not have any root in itself.

So we could, and there are other places

I think it would be better to do this from, but we could be seeing this in the context of the same struggle that I think

Jesus is preparing the disciples for in the parable of the sower and the seed.

And that is, man, think about how many times I know now that I've been in ministry for four decades, there have been so many times that you've seen this sudden growth and the leaves shoot out and you're so encouraged.

In our days, it's so easy to be encouraged when you see something, you see someone, it looks like they've been converted, and it looks like there's really something happening in their life.

And then two years later, they're not even making profession of faith any longer.

And as I look at the parable of the seeds, it's really the parable of the soils.

That should be the better way it's identified, the parable of soils. As I look at that, I see Jesus preparing the disciples for what ministry is going to be like.

And the same way in John chapter 15, if you are not truly attached to the vine, if you're truly attached to the vine, you will bear fruit.

That's his statement. But there are a lot of people that look like they are, and man, do we see that today, big time, so many people that use the name, so many people that claim spiritual experience and fidelity to Jesus and everything else, but no fruit.

And in fact, everything but that. So I think both of them are warning us about the same thing, that we're going to encounter that and not to be unduly discouraged by it, because I've seen a lot of people that do get really discouraged by it.

Okay, well, I really appreciate that, James, and I really appreciate your ministry. It's been a huge help over the last few years.

And God bless you. Okay, thank you. Doing what you're doing. Appreciate it. Thank you, Jacob. Thanks for the call. God bless.

All right. Okay, we actually have more than one Jacob today, which, if you understand

Jacob and stuff like that, could also be said to be James, because that's how the name is translated.

Let's talk to another Jacob. Hi, Jacob. Hi, Dr. White. How are you doing? Pretty good.

Good. I recently graduated from Midwestern this past August, and I've noticed, obviously, over the last year or so, you've been talking about the great tradition and Thomas and Midwestern and obviously

Matthew Barrett coming out of that. If you could, this might be an impossible task, kind of sum up the main issues you have with that, and really, is your concern with the system of thinking, or is it with the possibility that people might be going

Roman Catholic? Is it both of those things? Yeah, so that's pretty much it. Yeah, okay.

I will need to see if I can find something here real quick. I didn't have this queued up, but I wanted to find a book from a number of years ago.

There it is. And maybe if I grab it on... Yeah, here we go.

Have you heard of a book called

Evangelical Exodus? No. Okay. Evangelical Exodus, Evangelical Seminarians and Their Paths to Rome.

This was a book that came out...

Let me see if I can find the date here. Oops, I do not want

Accordance Bible Software in my thing there. I need a contents forward introduction.

Nope, that ain't helping me any at all. There we go, 2016. Okay, so in 2016, this book came out, and it is edited by Douglas Beaumont.

It has a forward by Francis J Beckwith. Do you know who Francis Beckwith is? I've heard the name.

I don't think I've read any of his works. Beckwith, Francis Beckwith, not Roger Beckwith. They need to be differentiated from one another.

Very, very different. Francis Beckwith was once president of the Evangelical Theological Society, and then reverted back to Rome.

He had been a Roman Catholic, and then Evangelical, and then converted back to Roman Catholicism.

And so he writes a forward to this book. This is a book written by former staff members and students of Southern Evangelical Seminary.

Now, SES is just a shadow of what it once was. It was never all that big, but I mean, it's really not any longer.

It was founded by Norman Geisler. I don't know the details about how he ended up leaving there and going to California toward the end of his life and stuff like that.

Politics that I'm not familiar with and not going to get into. But anyway, SES is still known as being deeply wedded to Thomas Aquinas.

I was only there once. That's where I debated Michael Brown on Reformed Theology.

And did sort of a mini debate that no one told me was going to take place, but it took place anyways on Presuppositional Methodology.

But everything there was about Thomas Aquinas. I mean, Geisler was a huge fan of Aquinas, and SES to this day is still deeply focused upon Thomas Aquinas.

And this book is by, I think it's like 12 former staff members and students who've all become

Roman Catholics who all went to SES or taught at SES. And it's fascinating because there is such an interesting discussion in the book about what it's like to be told, on the one hand, that Thomas Aquinas is just this massively important person and just so deeply gifted and insightful in so many things.

In fact, Aquinas' name appears 90 times in a relatively short book. And yet to then go, well, you know, well, let me just read you something here.

Let me see here. Go back one page. In the chapters that follow, you'll be introduced by way of their personal journeys to some very impressive young men, all of whom are connected by their association with Southern Evangelical Seminary as either students or members of the faculty.

You may be thinking, how is it possible that such an august group of Catholic converts can arise from one small evangelical seminary in one geographical region of the

United States over only a few short years? One of the reasons, and certainly a very important one, was the type of theological formation that drew many of them to SES.

As well known in the evangelical world, SES founder Norman Geisler is a self -described evangelical Thomist, a follower of St.

Thomas Aquinas, perhaps the most important Catholic thinker of the second millennium. What Geisler found in St. Thomas was a theologian whose views on God, faith, and reason, natural theology, epistemology, metaphysics, and anthropology were congenial to his evangelical faith.

Although Geisler, of course, rejects those parts of Aquinas' thought that embrace distinctly Catholic doctrines, his love of the angelic doctor inspired his students to investigate

St. Thomas' body of work with greater depth and less antipathy to Catholicism. What those students discovered is that Aquinas' Catholicism was not some time -bound product of the medieval church, but a wealth of theological insights in perfect continuity with his predecessors such as St.

Augustine and with his successors such as the other Council of Trent. I obviously would dispute that, but that's the assertion.

What they also discovered is that one cannot easily isolate the evangelical -friendly

Aquinas from the Dominican friar St. Thomas. There is exactly where we are today.

There is exactly my issue with what's going on with Matthew Barrett at Midwestern.

The books that are being promoted, the seminars that are being done, you can't follow—well,

I can't follow Barrett's feet anyways because I've been banned or blocked, but it's still possible to do so, and I have plenty of other people who do that for me.

You can't follow his threads, his tweets, without going, Thomas, Thomas, Thomas, Thomas, Thomas, Thomas, Thomas, Thomas, Thomas, Thomas.

It's all Thomas 24 -7. The books that are being written, the new organizations being founded, and the

PhDs being done, and everything else. My argument has always been

Thomas Aquinas would never have allowed for the distinction and the division of his theology the way that it's being divided up so very conveniently there, and it simply doesn't work.

So, as here is a convert saying, what they also discovered is that one cannot easily isolate the evangelical -friendly

Aquinas from the Dominican friar, St. Thomas. There was no historic Thomas with Catholic barnacles.

There was just St. Thomas Aquinas, the Catholic priest. There was, however, more to the students being drawn to Catholicism than just accepting a collection of compelling arguments and historical insights.

It was, as you shall see, about something alluringly evangelical, so on and so forth. So he goes on to tell the story. So, my concern, obviously, is that when

I see people fundamentally attacking the phrase

Biblicist, redefining it, repainting it, and then talking about the great tradition,

I've been dealing with people and the subject of tradition for a very, very, very, very long time.

When I see Craig Carter talking about the great tradition and great tradition exegesis, have you heard his definition of great tradition exegesis?

No. I was suggested, I think, two of his books, Interpreting Scripture with a

Great Tradition. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. So that's where he'll talk about that? Yep, yep. In fact,

I should probably just have this on my desktop so I can just pull it up all the time.

Tradition... Dropbox. Let's see if it comes up real quick, I can grab it for you real quick. But...

Man, it's really close here. There is... If you ha... Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

See, I see great tradition popping up here on my screen all over the place. I don't know if you have that book electronically.

Yeah, I have it on Logos right now. Okay, look up great tradition exegesis.

Let me, and I'll do the same thing here. And recent, of course,

I'm not in Logos, I'm in... Kindle, which doesn't move quite as fast. And I'll see if I can pull it up too.

But if you can find great tradition exegesis, I typed it out and I have it somewhere on my system here, but I apologize for not being able to pull it up as quickly as I...

Logos is indexing, so it's not pulling it up right now. Well, you know, anytime anybody asks me, so what's

Logos doing on your system? The answer is indexing. Yep. Why is your computer going so slow?

Because Logos is indexing. Back in the days of like a

Pentium chip, it was just go eat dinner while Logos is doing its thing.

That's just sort of how it worked. Oh, there it is. Interpreting description of great tradition. And yeah, let's see if it's there.

And sorry, everybody, but this is worthwhile. And exegesis.

Boy, if I get here faster than Logos does, you're going to be really... That's going to be really embarrassing.

Yeah, what's happening here? Yes. So there is one of them.

Exegesis, great tradition. Boy, that happens a lot, doesn't it?

There is a lot of great tradition exegesis in this book. But all right, if I can't pull it up...

Got it, got it. It says page 111 of 280.

I have unfortunately discovered recently that Kindle's page number stuff is not necessarily overly accurate.

Here, let me read it for you. 111 on here is the heading is a great disruption. Bing, bing, bing, right? Okay, so you make sure that I read this correctly, because that's where you are.

The Great Disruption, Exegesis, Scripture and Modernity. The great tradition was a three -legged stool made up of spiritual exegesis,

Nicene dogma, and Christian Platonist metaphysics. By pressing deep into the meaning of the text contemplatively, spiritual exegesis yielded the

Trinitarian and Christological dogmas, which in turn generated certain metaphysical doctrines such as creation, ex nihilo, and the reality of the spiritual realm.

Metaphysics then created a hospitable context for further spiritual exegesis in which the interpreter penetrated through the literal sense to that to which the text referred, the spiritual or heavenly realities that led upward eventually to participation in the divine radiance.

It was all based on a sacramental ontology in which creaturely things, words, were taken up into the divine and made into signs, which conveyed the reality to which they pointed.

Great tradition exegesis was and is a profoundly spiritual and moral act in which the interpreter who succeeds in grasping the true res or subject matter of the text is irrevocably transformed the process, sanctified and turned into one who possesses eternal life.

Now, I've walked through this in the past. Early on in this dispute, because I've done more debates against Roman Catholic apologists than anybody else alive right now, to my knowledge.

I mean, if I'm wrong about that, just point me to who it is because I'm not sure who it is. But I've spent years and years and years, you know, someone just sent me another copy of the

Catechism of the Catholic Church. So I know Roman Catholic phraseology and terminology.

And in fact, Craig Carter knows, because look at the next sentence. To some Protestants, all this talk of sacramental ontology and Trinitarian dogma may sound vaguely

Roman Catholic and therefore suspect. Yes, it does. And guess where Craig Carter did his

PhD work? At a conservative believing Roman Catholic institution. Oh, sort of like Norman Geisler did.

So I'm sitting here going, I know this language. I've read this language in book after book after book from believing

Roman Catholics. And so when I hear people attacking, quote unquote,

Biblicism, attacking the idea that you need to first determine what the author intended to communicate to his audience, you start there in exegesis.

And here you have Aquinas's, you know, when you read

Aquinas's commentaries, you know, you can be reading along going, uh -huh, okay, yeah, okay. And then all of a sudden, boom, he's off to the races someplace else.

And you wonder what happened. It's because he, like everyone after Origen until the

Reformation, was deeply infected with this multiple levels of meaning in the text idea.

And that's what we got rid of in the Reformation. Or at least we thought we did.

And now there are people going, oh, but we actually can do that stuff too.

And so my concern is real simple. You can't separate

Thomas Aquinas out. You can't dissect the man. And when you get into how he used scripture, it's highly problematic.

I've given numerous examples. Nobody on this side has even tried to touch. The examples of completely blown exegesis that I've provided from Thomas Aquinas that is based upon his view of scripture as scripture.

No one's even tried. And I wrote an article for Pro Pastor, the journal for the seminary that I teach for.

And I dealt with, did Thomas Aquinas believe in sola scriptura? Which, of course, is an anachronistic question because it wasn't even an issue at his time.

And I went through the fact that he does not hold the sola scriptura as we do in the

Reformation, but he also didn't hold the same view that Trent would eventually hold to and that modern Rome holds to.

No one, aside from just simply mocking us for even addressing these things, has refuted any of that either.

They just sort of ignore this kind of stuff. My concern, therefore, was how Aquinas used scripture.

And therefore, when you talk about theology proper, and when you talk about the origins of Aquinas' metaphysics, they do not come from a person who believes the first and foremost source of Christian information and Christian revelation is scripture itself and only scripture.

He is clearly bringing Aristotelian metaphysical categories into the interpretation of what scripture says on the nature of God and therefore limiting the range of what scripture can say to those categories.

That is a deep concern. It is a concern that I think is completely valid, and I don't understand why a

Southern Baptist institution would be promoting not only the writings of Thomas Aquinas –

I teach church history, read Thomas Aquinas, great, put him in context – but what's happening is it's his modern interpreters within Roman Catholicism that are being set forth as people who have a better grasp on the doctrine of God than you could have if you're following the

Reformation and if you're following an understanding of Biblicism. The Bible just isn't enough.

That's extremely problematic, and it's going to – you know, I don't want to see

Evangelical Exodus Volume 2, Midwestern version. Okay? I don't want to see that.

But my question is, what's going to stop it? Where is the balance?

I don't see the other side. I don't see the balancing side at Midwestern right now. If you're changing the entire

PhD program from systematic theology to philosophical theology, where's the balance?

There wasn't any balance at SES. You've got Evangelical Exodus. So where's the balance?

And I'm seeing this at other institutions as well. Um, this is going to burn itself out because Thomas just isn't all that exciting.

And once you get past the first few doctoral seminars, and it starts getting a little bit on the old side.

The fascinating thing is I've talked with so many Roman Catholics, including Roman Catholic priests, and they had to spend years on Thomas.

And they're like, they were wasted years of my life. It's like, I know, I get it.

They just don't – I've talked to Roman Catholics. I'm sure one of them's listening right now.

And they're like, oh yeah, y 'all are getting into Thomas. Good. Well, we'll get the homecoming party ready for you.

You'll be welcome in. Just let us know, you know? But it can't last forever.

It's a new, exciting thing. The attraction of scholasticism, it hits every generation from different directions.

But I'd hope by now that we had a more solid base so as to be able to recognize these things and not fall into this kind of stuff.

But that's where we are. So there you go. So do you see this as like, currently, as like a

Midwestern problem? Or is this going to spread through the Southern Baptists? Oh no, it's not just Midwestern. No, no, it's not just –

I wish it was just Midwestern. Matthew Barrett is focusing the energy there.

But this is happening in Reformed Baptist institutions and non -denominational institutions and Presbyterian institutions.

And look, it's real simple. If you want a seat at the big table with the big boys, then this is the way to get it.

You're not going to get it repeating the truths of the Reformation concerning the supremacy of Scripture.

No, you're not going to. That's not going to wash. You're not going to get there. Roman Catholicism is the avenue into the seats of power as far as the

Academy is concerned. And so it's a high, high, high temptation.

Like I said, it hits every generation from different directions, but it hits every generation. And that's what

I see it as. It's the temptation of scholasticism, of the Academy, of – well, to be perfectly honest, and people can verify this,

I've said this for years and years and years. I think every person teaching in a theological seminary should have to not only memorize 1

Corinthians chapter 1, but they should have to have it preached to them every six months.

Because it's like being constantly exposed to a virulent strain of something other than COVID.

Let's use something other, please, than COVID. You're constantly being exposed to this temptation, and you need to have that constant recentering in a recognition that the wisdom of the world is foolishness to God.

And if you confess the Lordship of Jesus Christ over every aspect of human life, including the intellectual, you will not be given a seat at the academic table.

That's just all there is to it. Stop looking for it and be happy in reality that you are not tempted to try to go there.

So, man, that's real concerning. So, I would like to get a

PhD there, because my wife and I have kicked around the idea of moving to Kansas anyways, outside of Midwestern.

But in biblical theology… You realize there are no mountains in Kansas, right? Yes, yeah.

I could not live in a place with no mountains, okay? My grandma lived in Kinsley, Kansas.

We went there for two weeks every summer. You couldn't see a mountain anywhere, and I was just so glad to leave afterwards.

Nice people, but no, I'm sorry, I can't do it. So, you must be different than me on those lines. I'm sorry. Yeah, we'll see how it turns out.

I'm in the Central Valley of California, so I see mountains every day. Well, any place out of California isn't improved.

But I've been thinking about getting a PhD there in biblical theology, but what you're saying about higher education, like my dream would be to teach in seminary, but I'm worried about it for what you just said.

Don't get me started on that sermon, brother, because look, the reality is, you know,

I don't know what you're doing right now. I don't know what the Lord has placed in your heart, the gifts that He's given to you and things like that, but let's just be really, really honest.

The future of Christian education in the West is extremely up in the air right now, because if you see what

I see coming, if you see the totalitarianism that is in Europe and in the

World Economic Forum and everything else, they don't want schools teaching people to think differently than what the narrative is supposed to be.

And so, I'll just be perfectly honest with you, I think the only form of Christian education that is going to continue in the not -too -distant future is a localized form connected to either a or a group of local churches where the people teaching there are a part of those churches.

I just, the big box seminary model works great, sort of, not biblically great, but great when there is freedom in the society, but I'm not seeing that there's going to continue to be freedom in our society to allow that kind of stuff.

I'm just telling you what I'm seeing. I hope I'm wrong, and I hope that there's a revival and a massive move of the

Spirit of God, because I don't want my grandchildren going through what I think they could be facing in the next couple of years.

Right. But I'm just simply going, if things don't change, yeah, we need a different model as to how we're doing things, and the big box places are hard.

So, even from just a learning aspect, like let's say, right now I farm almonds in California, so I'm pretty well set up, but let's say

I wanted to go just to learn. Do you think this dispute is going to kind of dominate every one of the programs, or do you think it's going to dominate...

I mean, I know you're not Advent Western, so you can't give a... I can't answer that, but what I am seeing right now is such an emphasis.

Have you seen the series that Crossway has now contracted with Matthew Barrett and Craig Carter and Carl Truman and the whole group of people that are pushing the mystic renaissance, a whole series of books from Crossway introducing

Thomas Aquinas to Protestants. Once you get... And then there's a bunch of organizations now, classical theology organizations and stuff like that that are growing out of this, that are all these same people.

That means that's where the funding's going. And unfortunately, for big box seminaries, the people on your staff that are getting published and are getting the books out there are the people that are actually directing things, because they're the ones bringing prospective students and they're bringing notoriety to the organization.

And so, I could be wrong. I would love to be wrong. But the reality is, right now,

I see a massive imbalance there. And if one person can bring that kind of a change, my concern is, who is it on the board that's gonna provide the balance to the other side?

I don't know. I don't know. Okay. Well, thanks for all that. And just real quickly, where would

I go to resources on both sides evaluating this dispute? Oh, well, you know what?

I think... I'm gonna have to check. He could actually... This is actually interesting, because...

Okay, yeah. Do you know who

Jeffrey Johnson is? No. Okay. Jeff Johnson is the president of Grace Bible Theological Seminary, where I'm a professor, so I will tell you my biases right there.

And he wrote a book on the failures of Aquinas' natural theology, just got attacked by these people just right, left, and center.

You might want to take a look at that. And then he's just... He's got a book coming out, and I think it's coming out fairly soon, that I read just a few weeks ago that I thought was extremely fair and very useful in laying out the various perspectives.

And so if you read a Craig Carter and a Matthew Barrett and a James Dolezal, then if you read

Jeffrey Johnson on the other side, you'll be able to see some of that.

And if you follow Dr. Clausen, K -L -A -S -S -E -N, from Masters... Now, Masters has currently got people on both sides of this issue, so it's an internal war, shall we say, going on there.

But Dr. Clausen has been writing some really good, useful stuff on Twitter, just threads where he's going through...

You know, he had a great discussion of the fact that Calvin wrote a forward.

Calvin was going to write a commentary on Chrysostom's expositional, exegetical works, but he never got around to it before he died.

But he did write the forward, and in the forward, he has an excellent discussion on what

I would call Reformed Biblicism, and that is... If you go back in my programs to...

Just look up Sattoletto. Do you know who Cardinal Sattoletto was? Yes, I've heard the story vaguely over the years.

Cardinal Sattoletto, Bishop of Geneva, wrote to the Genevan church. They didn't have anybody respond back.

They kicked Calvin out. So they said to Calvin, said, could you respond to this? And Calvin did, because what people don't know is

Calvin had a huge pastoral heart. But anyway, Calvin's response to Sattoletto, I went through it on the dividing line a number of months ago, and I used some of that as a foundation for saying, this is what

I would call Reformed Biblicism. This is where you're not doing the Church of Christ thing where it's just me and my

Bible under a tree, and I ignore church history and all the rest of the kind of stuff. But it is the supremacy of Scripture that is the norma normata, the norm that is normed by no other norm.

And it is how this works out in examining tradition. Klassen had a great thread on that.

Like I said, I did the whole thing about that. Jeff Johnson's book and the one coming out actually will be addressing issues like this as well.

And there's a lot more, but a lot of it goes back into history. There's a lot of discussion at the time of Reformation in regards to the schoolmen and Thomas and things like that.

And obviously, there were scholastics in the Reformed movement that were appreciative of elements of Thomas's theology.

And those who say, well, that's all we're trying to say. Well, I'm just not so sure that's all that's being said.

I'm very concerned about that. So, yeah, those would be some of the sources you could go to.

Awesome. Well, thank you so much. Thanks for all your time. I would ask you when you're coming out to California, but that's probably never going to happen. That's a that's that would.

Yeah, no. There is there is a locked gate at the on my side of the

Arizona border at that point. In fact, could you all quit sending Californians to Arizona, please? Because it's really y 'all are messing everything up.

You keep voting for the same dumb stuff. So anyway, I'm sure you weren't, but you're overwhelmed by the

Northern California people. So what? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, thank you so much for your time. All right. Thanks. Thanks, Colin.

All right. So Turret and Fan is in the Twitch channel, and he says,

Sola Scriptura is the seat belt. If you unbuckle it, don't be surprised to get ejected from the vehicle.

Yeah, that's true. That's very true. And lots of folks are.

I think the problem is that there are a lot of folks out there that think you can.

It's thrilling to loosen that seat belt up. I guess you've already got Mike up there.

Okay. Hi, Mike. Yeah. Can you hear me? I can. As as God's Providence would have it.

I had to change a diaper right at the last second. And thankfully, Rich saved me by adding that little piece in.

I just got done. Well, all righty then. Timing is everything.

Yes, timing is everything. So yeah, if she yells in the middle of this, Daddy is on a

Zoom call. It doesn't work very well with a 13 -month -old. I fully understand that. Okay, so my first is just a clarification to my main question, which ended up on the rabbit.

This rabbit trail was on. So in your debate you had with Roger Perkins, he was constantly pressing you on the three consciousnesses in God, in the one being.

There was an article written about you, how your position with the multiple consciousnesses would inevitably lead to multiple wills, which would break divine simplicity, funny enough.

I just wanted to get quick clarification on that. Of does the multiple consciousness, the son and the father being acknowledging, you could say, one another mean multiple wills?

I wrote an article, I forget when it was. Someone had once again, you know, all my critics are evidently afraid of actually taking all this stuff out into debate with Oneness folks.

I don't know how they would do it. Evidently, they seem to think they would do real well, but I've never seen anybody that does.

I'd love to see them debate Roger Perkins personally. It would be somewhat interesting to watch.

But I wrote an article, and it's on the Theology Matters blog. And it couldn't have been more than four or five months ago where I I walked through the actual cross -examination section.

I, if I recall correctly, I had a either pulled a transcript or somehow had the transcript produced of what

Perkins said and what I said all the way through. And I also provided, since I still have, you know, it's not like I erased this stuff.

I still had the keynote presentation that I had used down there in Australia.

It was a debate in Brisbane, as I recall. And so I pulled the screenshots from what

I had actually projected at that particular point in time because what people have done is they've tried to say, well, you know, this was his main point is like, no,

I was responding to a oneness person who denies that there are three divine persons who does not believe that there is an eternal son.

So you've got to deal in some way, shape or form with the evidence of the fact that the son as the son in distinction from the father has eternally existed.

Um, I think some people that are pushing, um, certain, uh, um, extended applications of divine simplicity today, uh,

I don't, I don't know that they could ever prove that. I, I, I mean, I, from what they've said,

I don't know that they would even be able to take one of those debates because I don't know what they would even be able to say other than, well,

Thomas said so, or something along those lines, which is not going to fly with a oneness advocate.

I can, I can assure you of that. Um, so look up that article, but let me just summarize it in this way.

Uh, I just mentioned to the previous caller that Dr. Johnson has a, um, uh, book coming out and the language, and I don't have it in front of me.

I mean, I have the book, but I, it would take me too long to, to go through my mail files to find the

PDF, uh, that I, that I read. Um, he differentiates between, um, a, a biblical philosophy and a, uh, not a biblical philosophy.

Uh, he used the terms biblical and philosophical to distinguish two different perspectives in regards to how we define our, our theology.

So, um, a, a biblical doctrine of simplicity is a term that I've used. Um, and that would, you know,

I, you can make a biblical argument that God is not made up of parts. The problem is that when you use

Aristotle and when you use Aristotelian metaphysics, you're now bringing in a limitation and a set of, of def, deficional, definitional categories that are unknown in Scripture.

And the result is certain aspects of Scripture end up being, um, uh, exaggerated and other aspects of Scripture just simply have to be ignored.

And so, uh, we've seen this, we've seen some younger advocates of this stuff actually, uh, bristling when you would say something like the father loves the son.

Well, that's a, no, the, the son, uh, uh, you know, the, the son and the father, they are one and complete and there's nothing that the, the father is lax that the son could give by loving him.

But I was just quoting Scripture. Jesus said the father loves the son. It's, you know, so once you, once you have this in this, this structure that you create, um, it ends up determining what you can and cannot see in Scripture.

And from my perspective, um, if, if you find something helpful, uh, out there in Aristotelian metaphysics, great, fine, enjoy it, but realize that what is going to be most helpful is to know what the apostles intended to communicate in its fullness in light of the entire witness of the, the law and the prophets and the writings.

That's what the new, that's what, that's what the Bible is about. And that's what we need to be about. And the categories in which we put these things need to be biblical categories.

And so if someone's, um, philosophical categories cannot allow them to see that, for example, in Philippians chapter two, when the son does not give consideration to remaining equal with the father in his position, that that is the act of the son.

And it is the act of the son in a way that is not the act of the father or the act of the spirit.

That's the act of the one true God. But if you can't have the son doing anything that is focused upon, um, his own actions, then you don't have three divine persons anymore.

And, and you can't have the son even thinking about what equality with God the father would be.

I mean, how, if, if, if there is no ability of father, son, and spirit to love, to interact with, um, then you, you don't have any pactum salutis, you don't have an eternal covenant redemption.

You don't have anything unique in the incarnation of the son over against whether the father became incarnate or the spirit became incarnate.

It would all, it's all just one big mishmash. You have to allow the scripture to define these categories.

And my concern is, um, Aristotle did not give us enough to define the categories given to us in scripture.

And so, if you start with him, you're going to have to throw a bunch of other stuff out. That, that's all there is to it.

And so, uh, when people start arguing about wills and, and how to define them and what's, what's definitional is, is, is having a will definitional of being or person and all the rest of this kind of stuff, fun stuff.

Those are interesting speculative questions, but the reality is when you go back to what

God has revealed to us, he's revealed to us in scripture that the father sends the son, the son comes voluntarily, the father and the son send the spirit, the father and son make their presence in the people of God by the spirit of God.

Those have to be the primary categories that determine what our theology is, not, okay, there is the biblical evidence, and now we need to cram this into Aristotle's metaphysics.

Uh, because, and anything that doesn't fit, well, it, it just gets left behind. Um, so, uh, going back to the, to the debate,

I would just, uh, I would go back and listen because it's available online. What was my presentation?

What was the presentation that I made? Cause that, the, the thing you're talking about was in cross -examination and, and nobody, nobody, nobody in my group amongst

Reformed Baptists, amongst Reformed at all, would have ever had an objection to my opening presentation until recently, nobody would have.

So, um, yeah, there you go. I, I think it was a biblical presentation and, um, well, that was how

I, uh, I kinda had to get that clarification cause I was reading, um, which is where, like why my thing is the

Trinity and the cross, um, was because I read something and it's all within the last 20, you know, 2020 to 2022, where unless you believe in inseparable operations, you don't know anything about the gospel or the

Trinity or. Right. Yeah. And most, most of these people had never heard of inseparable operations before just a few months ago.

Yeah. So no idea. So my, thank you for the clarification in my question kind of comes from that, um, with your,

I know how you take Psalm 20, uh, uh, Jesus's words, my

God, my God, why have you forsaken me as a, the Psalm 22? Um, I've heard you talk, you know, talk to Muslims about it, um, in many of your debates.

Um, and without dividing, cause I know that when you talk about like John 17, um, we don't divide up the persons, like that's the eternal, like when he prays to the father in John 17, that's not the divine side praying to the divine father.

No, you know, it's the, it's the whole being in all that he does, even in your big, you know, you've done it for what a year now where you're with, um, only the father knows when he's coming back.

You know what I mean? When the son's coming back. Um, so my question is in light of that, in your position on, you know,

Psalm 22, how does, without dividing up the God -man on the cross, how does the eternal son, and I might be, you know, correct me if I'm wrong, even just using that term, um, experience the crucifixion?

Um, because we recognize the God -man was cursed, who is, he who hangs on a tree.

Um, he, the God -man became sin for us. Um, he, the

God -man experienced God's wrath for us in, you know, in, uh, See, I would be very careful to distinguish,

I would be very careful to, and somebody got in trouble for this. Uh, Josh Bice got in trouble with this recently, but it's, it's all through the reformers and in the early church.

It was the wrath of the father. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I'm sorry.

Did I miss? No, you said, you said the wrath of God. And since we're distinguishing persons and stuff like that. Yeah. Then I, I just,

I just think it's perfectly appropriate. And I think it in this context, especially in light of the prayers of Jesus and the prayer in the garden.

Um, yeah, it's, it's the wrath of the father that he is, that he is bearing in the place of his people as the

God -man. Yes. How does, how does the eternal son experience that wrath of the father?

Like, like it's kind of hard to, he made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf that we might be made the righteous of God in him.

And, and the exact mechanism of the, the, the, the application of that wrath or anything along those lines, um, there, there isn't anything in scripture outside of the, the, you know, in Hebrews, um, we, we are given all the, the, the fulfillment pictures from the old

Testament language. We're, we're, we're given the fact that the high priest is also the sacrifice, which is an amazing thing to consider.

These are all categories that take us way past when anything you would have in the old

Testament. And yet they are the, the, the, the shadows that were used to communicate these things. Um, but the, the, the life that is given is the perfect life of the

God -man. It's not that God dies. It is that the life that is given is that perfect human life that is representative of the perfect human nature that the son takes on in the incarnation that would not have been subject to death because he was not subject to sin.

So there is a voluntary substitutionary aspect. And, uh, as, as I've often said to my, my

Muslim friends, uh, when they look at Jesus saying Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani, they see weakness.

And I said, that's because you're not seeing what's actually happening on the cross. This is, this is the fulfillment of Psalm 22.

This is what's going to bring about the reconciliation of, of God's people. And the

G, the reason that Jesus is sweating blood in the drop, droplets of blood in the garden is not physical death.

It is that, uh, experience of take, of becoming sin so that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.

And, and, and that, that happening, him becoming a curse, becoming sin doesn't, because not an infusing into his being.

So it doesn't, it's not as though it affects the... No, no. Well, there's an important point and I hope you realize how important a point that is because, um, from Rome's perspective, if there has to be an infusion of grace, that would be a problem.

But when it says he made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might may the rights of God in him in the same way that the son voluntarily is, uh, imputed with our sin without himself somehow having to be infused with some substance in the same way, we have the righteousness of Christ imputed to us.

And it's not, see, from Rome's perspective, justification is infusion of grace. From the biblical perspective, it's the imputation of the righteousness of Christ.

The ontological change that takes place in us, that's regeneration and sanctification. They have to be distinguished.

If they're not distinguished, you end up with, uh, what happened before the Reformation. So yeah, it's not, it's not, it's not an infusion.

It's not a mixture. It's not a, a, the, the divine substance cannot change in any way, shape, or form.

Um, but the God -man as a whole experience that, yes. And I insist that it is the son in a way that it's not the father.

Because if you don't, if you say that the son, that the father suffers in the same way as the son,

I don't see how you, how you're not a modalist. I don't see how you read that in that article. Yeah.

How do you escape that? I don't think you can. I don't think you can. Yeah. My, my, my thing is just because I want to make sure that I do justice without falling into like Nestorianism to say that only the son suffers.

Right. But clearly only the, clearly only the humanity dies. Right. You know, he doesn't cease to exist, but the, that it is true to say that the son as a whole experienced death and the wrath of God or the father, um, on the cross.

Purposely, personally, and, uh, uh, as a, uh, and, and by his own choice.

Yes. Yeah. Most definitely. Most definitely. I don't see how you can read the New Testament and come up, come up with anything else.

But that's the problem is I'm saying these ultimate questions have to be answered first and foremost from that, which is the adustos.

And there are just a lot of people today are going, well, no, I'm not sure that's enough. Um, or we have this statement and we're going to just run with this and it's okay.

Fine. Whatever. Yeah. All this, uh, a lot of heresy talk. And I thought it was just because you wore your coochies.

Well, you know, there is, there, there are some, there are some people that would say, uh, you'll notice

I'm not wearing a coochie today. Rich put the microphone down. Okay. Rich wanted to join in on that and see what church discipline could be brought to bear, uh, because of that.

So yeah. Thanks a lot. Really appreciate that. You know, I was thinking about sending you, um, uh,

Mike, a coochie, but not anymore. Uh, so, uh, all right.

Thanks. Thanks for the good call, Mike. All right. All right. Bye -bye. Thanks. God bless. Bye -bye. Yeah. Right.

Okay. There you go. Oh, all right. Sorry for, um,

Mark and Josh and Brenda. Uh, I, I, I spent way too long on, uh, some of those answers, but, um, the, these are, these are big issues today.

And, um, now that rich is sits in there and just makes it like, Oh, this is easy.

This is, I can do this anytime. He controls the vertical and the horizontal that that means that, cause

I was a little hesitant, um, to do open phone zoom stuff on the road because I start on the road on Saturday.

Um, but now that he says it's, it's, it's easy, then we'll, we'll do it more often.

And to be honest with you, um, preparation wise, you know, if I've been driving all day, it's easier to not be trying to put together articles and stuff like that.

Um, but I'll also tell you, uh, it takes a lot more mental energy to do these programs than ones where you determine what you're going to be talking about.

It's all there is to it. Cause I don't know what it, you know, if I look at what rich has up here, get a little behind the scenes thing here.

Uh, it's Jacob, John 15 to Jacob MBTS, great tradition, Thomas, Mike Trinity and the cross.

That's all I had. So, and you have no, no prep prep time for any of that.

It's just like, go. So it's actually a little more, uh, uh, challenging to do it that way, but it's also the most interesting way

I think of doing it as well. So I can guarantee you, I do know one thing.

Um, Twitter will be buzzing for a week from today's program, buzzing for four months, actually.

Um, right, right, right, right. I wanted to, uh,

I wanted to read that material from, um, from evangelical Exodus because it's exactly what we've been saying.

Let's face facts. We've asked a number of times for these guys for calls on this subject, and we haven't gotten any here.

We get a guy, he's asking all the hot button questions. He's going to all the places you got to spend that time.

You got it. It's, it's time to get it all out there. Well, we have, uh, we have gotten it all out there and I think we've been pretty consistent about it.

So there you go. So, Lord willing, the, uh, the next program will be, my gut feeling would be

Monday, uh, if they have internet in the absolute armpit of Texas, because I'm heading to Houston.

I won't be to Houston yet, but there isn't anything to the

West of Houston until El Paso. So I'm going to be right in the middle of that. So, so Twitch wants to make it interesting.

They want you to do a driving line with open phones. That would be impossible.

Hey, I've seen you play chess while driving a car, but I wasn't using a board.

I wasn't using a board. There'd be no way that I could see what the calls were.

I like my truck. I like my RV. Um, I like my life.

Uh, the driving line. Yeah. Yeah. You know, if, if it doesn't work out on Monday, then we'll definitely get a driving line in there, uh, along the way, because, um,

I have worked on making that work fairly well. So, and fairly safely. So, uh, prayers appreciated.

Uh, there's a travel fund. If you'd like to buy a few gallons of diesel fuel for us along the way, um, uh,

I know Rich and I were talking about, uh, the future and, um, um, how to do things better in the future and stuff like that.

And if, uh, if you want to see us out there in the, in the churches doing, you know, got two debates, two debates on this one, uh, only a few weeks later, another debate.

And I've just been contacted by someone who organizes lots and lots of debates with a debate topic that I'm like, that might be one

I want to do. Uh, it would be outside our debate structure parameters, but I'm, I'm thinking about it.

Um, and I would like to see what the possibility would be of doing a debate on the road, not,

I mean, electronically on the road, um, to see how that could be done, to see if that would be a possibility.

Um, that may be the only way I'll ever be able to get to engage some of the people

I've debated overseas again, uh, would be in that, um, would be in that context. And so, um, yeah, just pray that for wisdom.

Uh, I know that the economy is despite the fact that the people in charge say the economy is the best it's ever been.

Yeah. Yeah. 10, $10 for a, for a dozen eggs is the best it's ever been. Yeah. We're all, we're all fine here now.

How are you? Yeah. Um, uh, Biden has never had to, but Biden does not buy his own eggs.

I can assure you of that. Um, so I, you know, we realized that, but, uh, for those of you, some, some of you, there may be one of you out there that has just been made incredibly rich by what's going on in the society right now.

Uh, and if you'd like to see us out there on the road, the, uh, the travel fund is, uh, is one way of doing that, uh, to, uh, to help do that.

So, uh, next time from, from the RV is how we'll be doing it.