The Epistle from the Church at Rome to the Church at Corinth with Stephen Boyce

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00:37

Well, greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. We're back here in the big studio. We haven't come up with a name for it yet.

00:43

If we knew how to fundraise, we would do what all the basketball arenas and baseball fields do, and we'd sell the name of the studio to somebody.

00:59

Highest bidder, highest donor, I don't know, something like that, but we don't do that type of thing, so we're not going to do that. We have a special guest today, but before we do that,

01:07

I just want to mention what's coming up. On Thursday, we will be joined, assuming, of course, that this all works today, and that no fires are started, explosions, things like that.

01:23

Assuming everything goes well, then on Thursday, I'm going to be joined by my good friend, and sometimes you use that type of terminology from people that you barely know, but John Cooper is my good friend, and I think he'd say the same of me, and we talk to each other pretty much every day.

01:44

And so John Cooper, lead singer for Skillet, author of a new book, Awaken Life to Truth, which, though it breaks my heart,

01:53

I still don't own a copy of it because he keeps forgetting to send me one, but, you know,

02:01

I still love him despite all of that, and I still have the uncorrected word documents for the book, so I can always hold that over his head.

02:11

So he will eventually get me a copy, but he's going to be joining me at this time on Thursday to talk about the book and some other issues, and so I hope you will join in with us at that particular point in time.

02:25

One other thing, and I'm sure that our guest will appreciate this, too, when we get together here in a second, but we want to continue to pray for Pastor James up in Canada, James Coates up there, who languishes in prison because he will not do what the

02:50

English demanded of Bunyan. Bunyan could have been released from prison, too, if he had just signed a document saying he would stop preaching, and he would always tell the judge, if you release me,

03:06

I will preach tomorrow. And that is the situation we're facing up there. Really, literally, around the world, the high -speed dive faceplant into governmental totalitarianism is truly an astonishing thing to observe and see happening around us, but we need to pray for Pastor Coates and his wife and his church and everyone,

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I would say, up there in Canada, but we're facing a lot of similar situations in Australia, in Germany, in the

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United States. Pray for all faithful pastors who are seeking to shepherd the flock in the midst of Caesar deciding that he is in control of all things, and so we need to definitely be praying for him.

03:59

Being isolated like that from your family and your friends, very, very difficult, far more difficult than any of us really can know unless we have experienced something like that.

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So I ask you to pray for him and for his church and for anyone else who finds themselves in that situation.

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We know his name at least, but there are many others in China and other places like that.

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We do not know their names, will not know their names until eternity itself, but we pray for them.

04:30

So today on the program, our second sacrificial guinea pig,

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I mean special guest, electronic guest, Dr.

04:41

Stephen Boyce is the overseeing elder at City Light Church. Now this says Asheville, North Carolina, but is

04:46

Asheville near the border or something? Because I see you talking about being in South Carolina.

04:53

So how can the church be in North Carolina and you're in South Carolina unless it's right near the border or something? It is.

04:58

I can get to Asheville in about 45 minutes. We're right on the North Carolina. We're in the foothills of South Carolina, which is off the mountain of North Carolina.

05:06

Okay, I had a feeling. I was going to take a look at the map, but I got a little bit too busy this morning. I had a feeling it was just a border issue situation.

05:15

But now City Light Church is actually based on the other side of the country, initially, wasn't it?

05:21

And you've also got one down, I think in the Philippines or someplace. So what's the situation there?

05:28

Yes. So Jonathan Beasley had a vision to start a church out in Seattle, Washington a few years back.

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A very needy city of the gospel, of course. Yeah. And when he went out there, he wanted to start a ministry that not only had a church plant, but an apologetics attached to it, given the fact that they're going to be going and dealing with these problems of not agnostic views, atheistic views.

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And so he built an apologetics ministry with it. And the goal is always to be a church planting church.

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And so most of his supporters are over here on the East Coast because we all came from here and most of them moved out there from this side of the country.

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And through connections, we built a team pretty quickly. We have six elders at the church here.

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And then after that, and you and I were on Samuel Neeson's program together. Right.

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He's the church planter at the one in Malaysia. Okay. In the country of Malaysia. So he's got a whole team built and he's taking off.

06:27

They're doing very, very well, even in lockdown circumstances from COVID. So we have three

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City Light churches right now and an apologetics ministry attached that represents all three of those churches.

06:39

Okay, great. Excellent. So I feel sorry for everybody who moved from the

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East to Seattle right in time for everything to fall apart up there. I hope they brought their bulletproof vests and things like that along with them because you sort of need that in Seattle.

06:56

But you're back in what used to be really conservative areas, not so much any longer.

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Things are changing all around the United States. But doing apologetics,

07:09

I've heard some of your debates. You seem to have a focus on textual critical issues and that has a little bit to do with your background,

07:19

I guess. Tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, I, by default, ended up moving my field of study into canon and text, which

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I've really enjoyed. Textual criticism is hectic and sometimes I'd rather just talk about canon. But I grew up TR.

07:35

I grew up believing that TR was the perfect, inerrant, infallible, inspired. It was the direct replica of the original autographs, word for word.

07:45

I never really believed that about the King James. I was, King James preferred more so than King James only.

07:52

As a pastor who started doing exposition, I started pastoring at 22. And when

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I began to, I was the lead pastor at 22, I should say, and I started changing my philosophy to be gospel -centered and my focus became more on let's preach the text.

08:09

I was a vehement hater of you. I did not, we were taught not to like you.

08:16

We were taught not to listen to you. We were taught that you were the enemy of the Bible. And then actually did the smart thing and listened to you instead of listening to people and what they said.

08:26

So over time, you grew on me a little bit. And then after a while, I read your book, King James, Only Controversy, and it was like more of a scratch your head, like, hmm, maybe

08:35

I'm not getting the whole story. And then as I did exposition, just going through the TR and the King James, I saw them not line up at times.

08:42

And I was like, you know, there's probably more to the story here than I've been told. And after that, it was over. And then

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I was kicked out of that movement altogether, and they don't like me. I've mended a lot of friendships over there, although I don't believe in any way

08:55

I left in a wrong attitude. I wanted to keep brotherhood with them. They just didn't want it with me. So, and that's okay, and that's all right.

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But it opened a whole new field. I got really interested in the Gnostic Gospels very early, and I've done a lot of research on,

09:12

I've done my own translation of the Gospel of Peter. I've done work on the Gospel of Thomas, the

09:18

Gospel of Mary, the Gospel of Judas Iscariot. I've released written works on those. That became very important to me to study them.

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I did a discussion with Dr. Price, Robert Price, on the Gospel of Thomas and Peter.

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It was actually a very good conversation. But most of my work has been in doing textual criticism or canon, and I actually enjoy canon more.

09:40

It's less controversial, except for when you're doing discussions with more of the atheistic crowd and Gnostic.

09:46

Right. Well, I'm glad that you had to be taught to dislike me and to hate me, that it wasn't just a natural thing.

09:52

You did say you were taught to, so I figure, well, that's a good thing. We'll go with having to be taught that.

09:59

But I understand that. I get it. And so, for example, when I had the debate back in December on the

10:07

TR, you were one of the folks that was on to discuss the, I don't know, you've called that an after -debate show or just,

10:15

I guess that's become popular now that you've got YouTube and all this stuff. You know, I'm old school, you know.

10:23

I'm thinking back to my first debate with Jerry Madetix at a Roman Catholic church, and that was long before the

10:29

Internet came along. So the only post -debate shows you did then is if you went to Denny's after the debate or something like that.

10:37

That would be about the extent of that. But, and of course, you've engaged a few folks on the

10:45

TR issue itself, which I remember very clearly listening to the debate you did with the

10:54

Texas Receptus guy. I mean, that's his name on Twitter, is Texas Receptus. Is it, what is it,

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Ray? What's the name? Know who I'm talking about? The guy who you debated on the

11:08

TR. You especially talked— I debated Nick Sayers. Nick, Nick, Nick, Nick, Nick, Nick, Nick, Nick.

11:15

Okay, I was about to say the guy that talks about the, who was and is and is to come.

11:20

That's the best way to— I think he secretly likes you. He talks about you more than anybody.

11:28

Well, anyway, yes, I remember listening to that debate in the dark during the summer on a ride up in the north part of the valley.

11:39

I remember which roads I was taking when I was out there. So that's how I remember those things. But anyway, today is an unusual topic.

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We are going to dive into one of the earliest writings outside of the

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New Testament called, well, you'll normally find it called First Clement, except the name

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Clement is only a traditional attribution. It's not found anywhere in the text of the letter itself.

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It is an epistle written from the church at Rome, the church at Corinth. And so Clement's name was attached to it early on, but it is really one church remonstrating with another church in light of the fact that evidently the church at Corinth, there was factionalism, there had been a division, and the elders had basically been kicked out by a group that took control, in essence, is what happens.

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So in other words, we have clear evidence that an apostle can write you at least two letters, maybe three letters, and you're still a mess.

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I mean, that is just what you discover from reading what happens here.

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Corinth was a mess, and yet it was a church of Christ. And that, for me, is something that always pops into my head, because if you've been in church life for any period of time at all,

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I have to write a letter today as a pastor about a difficult situation and trying to keep people going the same direction.

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And it's hard, it's difficult, and the Corinthian correspondence actually encourages me along those lines.

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But you've been doing specific work. This was part of a particular project?

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Or what brought you to specifically spending the time to dive into Clement?

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It's actually a pretty incredible journey. When I just finished up my

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PhD dissertation at the end of the year, and Dr. Ehrman, Bart Ehrman, is actually the one that did courses on the early fathers that I had to listen to in my classes, and he actually turned me on to study them.

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And actually, I think it works against his position, the more I studied them. But nonetheless, it brought the interest.

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And my dean and I had talked about a manuscript in Jerusalem called Codex H.

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It's 1056. The date's actually in there once you translate it out. It's 1056 AD.

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It contained quite a bit of the early fathers. First Clement, Epistle of Barnabas, Seven Letters of Ignatius, Didache.

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Various works were in this manuscript. Little work was done on it. So I decided to do a work on some of those books in there in my dissertation.

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First Clement was most of the work in my dissertation. Studying his specifically, how did he view the

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Old and New Testament? How did he quote the New and Old Testament? And then comparing his quotes, both from the

14:57

Septuagint and from his whatever Greek text he had, comparing it to our Byzantine majority text and our critical editions of the

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New Testament today, and seeing how far off his citations were from the original letterings and letters of Paul or the prophets and how they were translated in the

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Septuagint. And then actually doing the textual critical data of, is it what we're quoting today?

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Is he quoting the same canon? And is he quoting the same way that we do? And obviously, he quoted it sometimes more of just giving, he would just give a phrase or he would paraphrase it or something like that.

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But how close is he to the Word of God back then that we are today? So that was the goal in the dissertation.

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Is there any information concerning the source that this manuscript itself utilized in 1056?

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How ancient that would be? Any theories as to, you know, was this a copy of an 8th century manuscript?

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Is this a copy of a 3rd century manuscript? Have there been a lot of steps of transmission?

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Or is it just completely unknown? I would say it was pretty close. The scribe, people doubt the date because the style of the manuscript, and I hate,

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I hated reading through that manuscript. He abbreviated everything, you know, those

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Greek, because he was trying to fit multi volumes in a codex. So he would write very brief, and then it was very sloppy, and it was very close together.

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And I'd have to sit there and zoom in on just like three or four words at a time. And sometimes I would screenshot it on my computer, zoom in even farther, circle things, and say, okay, that looks like an alpha to me.

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And it was annoying to read. And there's no really good transmitted texts of it out there.

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It's hard to get access to. I had to talk to people in Washington State. I had to talk to somebody in Texas. I talked to somebody in Germany.

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To get closer up, zoom ins on it. It was annoying. But I would say that this guy named

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Leo is the scribe. He was trying to put together a multi -volume work that would represent the earliest stage of the fathers, and fit it into one giant section.

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Now in doing that, I personally think the manuscript that he was quoting from would have been not long after Codex A, because Alexandrinus has the oldest witness of 1

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Clement, 5th century. And it's not far off in its wording from that.

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So it must be somewhere close in the transmission, either somewhere in the middle between 1056 and Alexandrinus, or pretty close to Alexandrinus.

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He had earlier copy, as I would say. Okay. Well, that's important in knowing as far as looking at the

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Byzantine text and things like that. So you're looking at this particular manuscript.

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You're looking primarily at Clement. Now, a lot of folks might be a little confused as to why you would be concerned about issues of the canon, because the assumption is, well, okay, you just open up the

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Bible, and you check, and obviously he had the 27 books of the

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New Testament that we have. And he had Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, Romans, da -da -da -da. A lot of people really struggle with the idea of the development of the recognition of the canon in different places at different times.

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In other words, obviously, in Rome, you're going to have certain books that are well -known there over against other books that may not be as well -known there.

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And it's hard for a lot of people to realize that when we're reading Ignatius, Clement, the

18:52

Epistle to Diognetus, we're looking at the Didache, we're looking at those early writings all the way into Justin Martyr into the middle of the second century, that they didn't have the internet, they didn't have publishing houses, they did not have a postal service.

19:08

And there were even books that were very popular in certain areas of the

19:15

Mediterranean that might not be popular someplace else. So, for example, the

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Shepherd of Hermas, Epistle of Barnabas, popular around Rome, they might not be someplace else.

19:27

Hebrews, I was very interested to see in what you sent me, a number of references in the graphic that you sent me to Hebrews from Clement because there were places where Hebrews, Revelation, where both those two books struggled.

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They weren't as well -known as they were in other places. And a lot of Christians struggle with this because they've just always had, you know, a leather -bound, gilded -edged, thumb -indexed, all this stuff's in the past,

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I don't have to worry about it, copy of the Bible. And it seems to me that people like Ehrman and his minions love to utilize the development over time as a means of unsettling, especially young believers.

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You know, we don't know who wrote Hebrews and, of course, Ehrman's big stuff about pseudo -Pauline epistles and all the rest of that kind of stuff.

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And I think as pastors in the churches, and it sounds to me like City of Light has a lot of the same type of ideas that Apologia has as far as the necessity for apologetics and church planning.

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Half the eldership right now is in Kauai, where we're trying to plant a church in Kauai, and it's extremely, extremely hard.

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I did not realize that that particular island had the kind of spiritual darkness, and I mean spiritual darkness, that exists in that place.

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Just oppressive, oppressive. Tremendous amount of suicides, things like that. You would think, who's going to commit suicide?

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You live in paradise. Well, no, it doesn't work that way. Anyway, so we have similar attitudes toward that.

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And so I know that we want our people to understand the foundational issues of how they got their

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Bible so they will not be subject to that kind of deception on the part of people, just simply using even historical facts.

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I mean, Ehrman is normally pretty good on his facts. It's the interpretation that is the problem with Bart Ehrman.

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Not so much his acolytes and his followers. They don't necessarily get the facts quite straight.

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But anyway, so we try to help people understand. But when

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I encourage people to read the early fathers, in the back of my mind, this is an issue always.

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Because they will encounter the fact that, well, you know, why wouldn't they quote this text?

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Or why wouldn't they quote that text? And we can't always know exactly what they had access to. But what's interesting is if Clement is...

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Well, let's go back to an even more basic question first, before I go into this. How would you date

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Clement? Because I've actually seen some argumentation that places

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Clement in the apostolic period that early. Where would you place

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Clement? I place Clement at the end of the 1st century, around 96 -98, right after Domitian.

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There's a couple of reasons for that. I know that there's good arguments for an earlier, before 70

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AD. But he does describe persecution in the book. They were about to go through it.

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But I don't think it was Nero's persecution as much as it was Domitian's, which was not as...

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It was a big deal, but it wasn't as big as what Nero was able to accomplish. I know that Wellborn has the theory of Domitian's reign.

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I hold that as well. He mentions... I think it's important to note, he mentions

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Paul and Peter's executions in the letter. So, it's going to be sometime after Paul and Peter were martyred.

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Right. And if Peter was martyred just a couple of years after Paul, which seems to be the case,

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I think it's after 70 AD. I would label it at the end of the 1st century. Okay. So, obviously, the question then, depending on where you place it as far as the date goes, then the question becomes, well, what is already in circulation?

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What is already known of the Gospels, of Acts, of the

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Epistles, especially some of the smaller letters? And of course,

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I'm not sure if you ever did a word search to see how exactly long, how many words is in Clement.

24:07

It's substantive, but it's not huge. It's probably,

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I guess it would be fairly close, wouldn't it, to the seven epistles of Ignatius as far as length goes?

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Probably fairly close to each other as far as the body of material is concerned. But that's still just one letter, and it's still being written in one context.

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And so you would not expect in any one sermon that we might preach today that someone's going to quote from all 66 books of the

24:41

Bible in that process. And so if you find that there are books that are not quoted from, that doesn't mean that the author was unaware of them, viewed them as non -canonical, any of these types of things.

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Really, you must have looked at the terminology that was used by Clement that would indicate a belief in the inspiration or scriptural status of a book.

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Is he pretty much following the same New Testament examples of it stands written, gegrepti, the graphe, the holy writings?

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Are those the standard terminologies that he uses as well? Yes, it is written, the

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Holy Scripture, Holy Spirit moved this man to write this. He had a high respect for the apostolic authority, too.

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And that needs to be noted. I mean, we're talking about, I would say, his epistles a little bit shorter than Paul's first letter to the

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Corinthians. It's not much far in length from it.

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And he quotes the Scripture, Old and New Testament alone over 100 times.

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So when we say, well, man, I wish you would have quoted all 66 books. It's extraordinary how much his half his vocabulary was

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Scripture. He did not rely on himself as an authority, although he was a bishop. He relied on Paul's authority quite a bit.

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You mentioned Hebrews. I think it's interesting. That's the most quoted New Testament book he uses. And the only place that Hebrews was really disputed later in history was in Rome.

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Rome is the one that disputed it. And it's like, go backward here. Let's go back to your first earliest, you know, attestation of bishop leadership.

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And he was quoting Hebrews clearly and very succinct. When we talk about him in looking at Paul's writings, he mentions the writings of Paul.

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And this is where I think Dr. Ehrman really misses these books. I think he thinks they're weapons against the

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New Testament, but they're actually tools to help. In chapter 47 of 1

26:52

Clement, he tells the Corinthians who are struggling with division to take up the epistle of the blessed

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Paul the Apostle in chapter 47, verse 1. And then this is what he says.

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What did he write to you in the beginning of the gospel? So he's assuming two things, Dr. White.

27:11

He's assuming they still have the letter of Paul and that they can just put their hands on it and start reading it.

27:17

And then he can question them on the material from within it. And he says, of a truth, he charged you in the spirit.

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So he links this writing, which is 1 Corinthians, and I'll read the rest and you'll see exactly where in 1

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Corinthians. He says, you can go grab this letter, pick it up, read it. I can question you from the material in it.

27:39

And he charged you in the truth by the Holy Spirit concerning himself with Cephas and Apollos because even then you had made parties.

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We're obviously talking about 1 Corinthians chapter 1, where Paul rebuked them for having divisions over him,

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Apollos, and Peter. And so here's Clement, I believe about 30 years after the fact, assuming the church at Corinth still has the original letter, still is able to read it, still able to get the theology, the teaching, and the doctrines from it, and go back and use it as their authority to stop being divided.

28:11

I think that's an incredible truth that we can just easily read over in just going to 1 Clement chapter 47 and say, oh, that's not a big deal.

28:18

That's a huge deal what he just said. There's a lot of things he's assuming. Yeah, so I have it up here on the screen now.

28:25

And so you can see where he says, take up the epistle of the blessed Paul, the apostle.

28:31

So on Elabate, obviously, that would be a standard term that would be used, the epistle of the blessed

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Paul. So they're not going to be going, oh, we don't know what you're talking about there. Clearly, they know what this is.

28:47

And then what wrote he first unto you in the beginning of the gospel?

28:52

That's interesting. Did you look at all at the use of Tuyoangaliu in that context?

29:00

I mean, that sort of sounds like he's connecting. It's almost like he's got the epistle to the

29:06

Romans as a gospel in his terminology at that point. I think he's using 1

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Corinthians as a term. I think there's two things. One, 1 Corinthians gives a major layout of what the gospel is.

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I mean, by the time you get to chapter 15, there's no question what the gospel is. But he talks about their divisiveness is not according to the gospel.

29:28

It's actually working against the gospel. In chapter 1 of 1 Corinthians, he gives a clear presentation of who

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Jesus is in the gospel. I also think it's possible, and I have no proof of this, it's just a theory. A lot of times, these fathers that quoted guys like Paul, they used

29:45

Luke's gospel quite a bit. So I wonder how much of Luke's gospel was attached to some of the letters that Paul was circulating in these

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Gentile churches. Luke's gospel seemed to be a circulated gospel. And I know that the early fathers would hold to the position that when

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Paul said, according to my gospel, he was talking about the gospel of Luke. And when he quotes in 1

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Timothy phrases of Jesus, Paul used Luke's gospel over Matthew's, for example, or Mark's when he's quoting from that.

30:16

But I think that what he's saying there specifically could be that he's talking about the gospel message as a whole.

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He did not see—they didn't have division of genre, gospels, epistles, and stuff like that.

30:30

He obviously recognized it as a writing from Paul. He says, take up the epistle. So he made a distinction that it was a letter written to them similar to what he was doing.

30:39

But the message of that epistle was as equal to the gospels. And I do think that's the point because there is— if there's a book that we can go to outside of Romans that is clear, and he's being smart.

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He's using a letter that they would have most certainly had and held dear. I'm not saying that they didn't have

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Romans in Corinth. But think about it. If this is a church 30 years after Paul, and they had his original letter or a close copy of it, they would have taken pride in that letter.

31:08

So he's kind of using it against them. Like, hey, you've got the letter. Pick it up and read it. What you're doing is what you got rebuked for 30 years ago, and it's not gospel.

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The way you're acting is not gospel. I think that may be the indication there. I don't know if you have any thoughts, but that's fine.

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Well, it's also interesting that out of the truth, he charged you in the spirit concerning himself and Cephas and Apollos.

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You got to take that one of two ways. Either he's saying what was said to a previous generation is still true to you, or that could be taken as an argument for an even earlier date for Corinthians.

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I mean, he could literally be saying, you're the same people that were making the divisions, and he already told you this.

31:57

You'd have to interpret it one of those two ways, but certainly charged you in the spirit.

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This is a spiritual undertaking in this writing. I follow a few leftists on Twitter, just simply to remind me of going to seminary, and this idea of the spiritual nature of Scripture, they're trying to make that some later development that only we've come up with in the recent decades and things like that.

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But it's there from the beginning, this idea that this is an epistle of Paul, but it is spiritual in its nature.

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It was he charged you in the spirit to do these things. So yeah, definitely, definitely.

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And this crowd may have been a part of that original audience because it's only about 30 -40 years later.

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Corinthians would have been earlier in the 50s, but I do think that there's an aspect where this is where it is used for an earlier date.

32:58

Also earlier in the book, he mentions that they had seen the sufferings of Jesus. So there's also argument there that some of these people actually had experienced or his sufferings were before your eyes,

33:10

I think is the phrase. There could be implications of that. They're not as literal, but even then it's not unrealistic to think even if it was a later date, there could be people 30 -40 years later who were still alive that were part of the original group there that Paul wrote to.

33:25

But it's interesting for sure to say the least. And I'm okay with an earlier date. It doesn't bother me. I'm fine with either.

33:31

Well, yeah, yeah. It's just interesting that that might be an aspect of it. But so before we look at specific, maybe some of your specific favorite texts, just on the issue of canonicity and what you've concluded, how much of the canon is he familiar with?

33:56

Is there good evidence that he may have had some books that we would not consider to be canonical that he did?

34:10

Yes, and that's the incredible thing, is how many other works he didn't quote in there.

34:17

You don't see any of the Gnostic Gospels being quoted by these guys. There's this new movement, Dr. White, and I know you're familiar with this, where the

34:24

Gnostic Gospels are now popular. Oh, yeah. Oh, they were expelled. And it's like, well, nobody used them and nobody quoted them.

34:31

But let's take, for example, I can read it off to you real quick in… Or I can bring it up so people can see it, because if you give me the reference ahead of time,

34:42

I can normally pull it up fairly quickly here. Well, I got my chart, and I was going to show you how many, read how many of these.

34:50

Sure, you can do that. We'll be able to display that. Are you going to do a screen share? Let me see if I can.

34:56

I would love to, actually. Let me see if I can, because this one is updated. I believe the one I sent you was not updated.

35:05

Is that working? Yes. Okay, so I have changed my formats here to direct, indirect, partial, potential.

35:17

So if there was a direct citation, it was a clear, an entire verse section or something like that, that's a direct citation.

35:26

Indirect is he's paraphrasing. Or you could tell he's kind of quoting from memory, and he might even add his own nuances in for emphasis.

35:33

Partial is just a single phrase, maybe a short phrase. And if I was not sure, and this happened quite a bit, there was a couple times

35:41

I was like, man, I really want this to be something he's quoting. But to be honest, I wasn't sure enough, so I just put it in a potential category.

35:48

And so Matthew's gospel, he quoted six times total when you're looking at all of these collectively.

35:56

And Mark once, Luke twice, Acts twice, 1

36:01

Corinthians, at least two, possibly three with a potential there. 2 Corinthians, he used a partial phrase out of 2

36:08

Corinthians, which again, makes sense. He's writing to the Corinthians. 1 Timothy, he did a partial phrase.

36:14

And I actually was shocked that he was, there was another one between 2 Timothy and Titus, but the wording was closer in the

36:23

Greek to Titus' phrasing of it than 2 Timothy. So it seemed that he was using

36:28

Titus more so. I don't remember all the words. I could go back and look, but it was closer to Titus.

36:33

Hebrews, he quoted directly five times at least, and then paraphrased a section.

36:40

And then he also used the partial citation three additional times, nine times he used

36:46

Hebrews. James, surprisingly, at least twice. And that's very, very important too, because James is a very disputed epistle.

36:54

And some would say that didn't become a canonical viewpoint, but he quoted James. He used Proverbs quite a bit, and he used

37:01

Proverbs and James next to each other a lot, which was kind of annoying because sometimes Proverbs and James are on the same page, and it's like, whoa, whoa, which one are you quoting?

37:11

And so it was hard to discern that. 1 Peter was quoted one good time.

37:18

Now, 1 Peter is not disputed at all. In fact, Polycarp's Epistle to Philippians, he quoted 1

37:24

Peter more than anybody. So there's no dispute there. And I was really, really hoping 2 Peter would have been a quote.

37:29

It seems like 2 Peter, you know, 2 Peter, I struggled with 2

37:35

Peter for at least a year. It really bothered me. And when I saw a potential there, I wanted to slip it into this category right here, but I wanted to be honest too.

37:45

Jude, I think he quotes Jude, Dr. White, at the very end. He does not, he uses a Pauline salutation at the beginning, but if you read his conclusion, it's very close, very close in wording to how

37:59

Jude closes out his short epistle. And Clement doesn't know how to stop.

38:05

He was probably a Baptist. He didn't know how to stop a letter. He gave a closing, and then he picked right back up and went again.

38:12

It's like, wait, I thought you were ending the letter here. But so he does two closings, and he uses the same phrasing in both closings, which are very similar to Jude.

38:20

Now, Revelation, and I put this in a partial, and I fought hard, because I really wanted to put it in potential because it seemed odd to me that he was quoting.

38:30

But he conflates a phrase, and maybe we can look at this in a little bit. He conflates a phrase from Isaiah that John is quoting in Revelation chapter 22.

38:40

And the difference is Isaiah reads one half of it, but John adds an additional phrase to Isaiah that's only in the book of Revelation, and he quotes the whole thing.

38:52

So he clearly had at least the terminology of John and what he wrote in his closing in the book of Revelation.

39:00

And I place it in a partial, and again, we can look at that. So that's the difference. Do you have that reference?

39:07

I do. I can actually pull it up. I can switch screens. I don't know if somebody can see my switch screen here.

39:15

It's chapter... I pulled it off on the side.

39:21

Chapter 34, verse 3 of 1st Clement. 34, 3. Since he forewarneth us, saying,

39:28

Behold, the Lord and his reward is before his face to recompense each man according to his work. Yes, the

39:35

Apo, Dunai, Ekistot, Hekistot is not in Isaiah.

39:42

And I don't know if it'll let me unshare. I have that on the screen, so I can...

39:49

Well, actually, look at that. I seem to have lost my connection to the screen.

39:55

Oh, no. Is it showing up on mine at this point? It is, uh -huh. Okay, so here's the layout here.

40:03

Here's the English I'm highlighting. This is Clement's statement in Greek, and I had to add this in here because this phrase right here of kurios kai a mithos, you have a phrase that lines up with Revelation 22, but it's probably from Isaiah 40.

40:23

And then he brings in a second phrase from Isaiah 62, verse 11. So he kind of conflates two

40:30

Isaiah phrases, more so probably than Revelation. But this phrase right here, when you're looking at it in Isaiah 40, this phrase is not in Isaiah 40.

40:42

This phrase is in Isaiah 40 and Revelation, but this phrase is not. So where did he get this?

40:48

And the idea of this is render to every man. He used that term. So that's why

40:53

I have it listed as a partial. It seems to me that this whole phrase here would be better suited for Revelation 22.

40:59

And the first phrase is a conflation of Isaiah 62 and Isaiah 40 together. It's three phrases.

41:06

And if you look at the blue here, Dr. White, these are the variances. This is where they're different. So if you're looking at Revelation 22, it's not a direct quote from Revelation because these differences are in the text.

41:18

These differences are in the text. And then if you go to Isaiah, you have all these differences. So you know it's not directly taken from there, just phrases.

41:25

Same thing with Isaiah 62. Look at all these differences. Here's where they read the same in the red.

41:32

Here's where they're different. So it looks to me like, and I know that's really difficult for your listeners. I apologize. All that to say, you can find the whole phrase of 1st

41:41

Clement, save one and two words. And that's just a definite article before the

41:47

Lord. The whole phrase can be found in a conflated between two verses in Isaiah and Revelation put together.

41:54

You can reconstruct his comment when you do that. And so I believe he's using this phrase from Revelation 22 in a conflated state with Isaiah 40 that John also quoted in that same verse here.

42:09

So I believe that's what's happening. And I know that's hard to see, and I don't know if you got your screen got up. I do have it up.

42:15

I'm not sure if Rich could show it to you here. But one thing I do like about at least this,

42:23

I'm using accordance here, is it does italicize this section showing that it's a quotation here.

42:35

And so what you're saying basically is that this section from here to what here, is that the, okay, is what you have in Revelation, but not found in the

42:49

Greek Septuagint. Right, not in Isaiah Septuagint. The recompense every man or everyone, however you want to translate that, it's not in Isaiah's.

43:03

John put that in there. And then John quoted the rest of the phrase after it just as Isaiah did.

43:08

John's clearly quoting Isaiah, but he adds that recompense, giving back to every man or every one.

43:16

And only Revelation has that phrase. Isaiah Septuagint did not. So I believe either it's just a massive coincidence that Clement had the same phrasing of mine that John did, or he would have been familiar, which makes it really interesting in the dating of Revelation and really interesting in 1

43:33

Clement. Sure does. Because if they're both late, either way, you got the same problem.

43:39

If they're both late and he had access to Revelation, he had it within a couple of years of the original.

43:45

Or even if it's early, you still have the same problem. If Revelation's early, he's early. He had access to a letter of Revelation, which would have originated from Patmos.

43:55

And we once more, we know that Revelation was not liked in Rome, and it was very disputed at later times.

44:02

Revelation was accepted early on. It wasn't really until the 3rd or 4th century that people started disregarding it and not wanting it.

44:09

Right, right, right. Well, that's fascinating, especially because that Isaiah section,

44:19

I'm just thinking about some, I just get this feeling that I've seen it someplace other than Revelation, but I wouldn't know where it was.

44:28

It's just what, but that is very interesting. And it is, this is how people do dating.

44:34

This is how you look into things. This is how you, the facts you have to bring into mind. But we only have a certain amount of time.

44:41

And so I'd like to try to give folks some sense of what's in this epistle, because a lot of people, certainly people who grew up in fundamentalist churches, especially, have, tend to have a somewhat of a anti -early church father attitude.

45:08

They're all a bunch of Roman Catholics, basically, is what you're told. And that just simply, simply isn't the case.

45:16

And so there was, there is just so much beautiful teaching in First Clement.

45:24

And when people read this stuff, they just sort of figure it's like going down to the local Baptist bookstore and picking up a commentary in the

45:30

Bible. That's not the case. These were, these were first century, early second century

45:35

Christians. And so they're talking about stuff that sometimes we're like, why are they saying this? Why would they say it that way?

45:42

There's all sorts of things that we have to bring in. But what were some of the specific places that you maybe focused in on?

45:55

I know that I mentioned to you that I wanted to especially focus in on a summary of the gospel that is provided to us in section 32 of, well, that is paragraph, it's not verse.

46:12

I guess it would be paragraph is the proper term or something along those lines. I'm not sure. But it's sort of a summary of the gospel.

46:21

Were there some other places you wanted to look at before we looked at that? Or do you, or is that be a good place to go? You never stopped teaching gospel ministry at any point in the letter.

46:32

One of the most incredible things about Clement is how well versed he was in the Old and New Testament.

46:37

And we just looked at the charts of the New Testament. He quotes the Old Testament frequently, frequently, the

46:43

Psalms the most. But he was interested in this church's walk with God and their sanctification, really.

46:52

He challenged them on their purpose of salvation. And I get this feeling, and I don't mean to throw anybody under the bus, but I'll just go ahead and do it.

47:01

I've heard guys like Dr. Layton Flowers and others talk about how election and Calvinistic theology really started in the time of Augustine.

47:11

And then I read the church fathers and it's like, I don't, I mean, I'm not challenging the fact that they haven't read them, but it's, when you're able to sit down with a

47:20

Greek text and the English translation and you have to compare the Greek with the English and our text with theirs, and I've been able to sit down for an entire year and read through 1

47:28

Clement, you start having to look at the details a little bit. It's like, man, that sounds really Pauline.

47:33

And it's clear, I do think this is the Clement that Paul talked about in the book of Philippians. And I think he was trained by Paul and Peter, which is why he mentions both of them as a representation of the apostles.

47:47

He mentions the apostles and their persecution, but he mentions two specific, Peter and Paul, because he would have been trained and advised by them in Rome.

47:55

And I think that looking at his understanding of Pauline theology, and you and I kind of talked about this on Messenger, it doesn't appear he quotes from Romans, but wow, his theology is straight from the book of Romans.

48:08

He says in chapter 2, verse 4, I found this interesting. He loved the word elect, and I know that scares people, but it's fantastic because he understood the idea of God's people set apart unto himself and how,

48:26

I mean, he mentions them as pilgrims. That's how he starts this letter, as sojourning pilgrims.

48:32

He says, we're the sojourners at Rome writing to the sojourners at Corinth. So he already looked at themselves in light of kind of that Peter, that Peter mentality that you see as sojourners and pilgrims.

48:45

And so he's already writing, like you are a distinct people. You are supposed to be different.

48:50

You're supposed to be set apart unto Christ by his gospel, and you're still divided over issues

48:55

Paul addressed. Why are you still divided over issues? So then he goes into chapter 2, verse 4, and he mentions the phrase that the number of his elect might be saved with fearfulness and intentness of mind.

49:10

And I don't, I know you have a different, maybe different translation. He focuses on the fact that there's a selected number that God has committed to bring to the full end of their salvation with a certain way of going.

49:27

Like, so your sanctification that brings you to the ultimate finality and consummation of the salvation

49:32

God has chosen you for, he has chosen not only that you get there, but that you get there in fearfulness and intentness of mind.

49:39

He's talking about their struggle and suffering, and that God has willed that they would go through these measures and difficulties to bring out that salvation they were elected to.

49:49

That's perseverance. But that perseverance would come with difficulty and that's a part of their salvation process.

49:56

I'm not sure if you, last year, when we were doing all those dividing lines during the initial lockdown, when we thought the

50:05

Black Plague was upon us, I started doing a response to Ken Wilson's dissertation on Augustine and dupied, the term he came up, dupied.

50:20

And when he talked about Clement, he handled Clement in a small number of paragraphs and basically skipped over, this was one of the first ones that I pointed out, was if you're going to try to pretend to be representing

50:33

Clement as having had your perspective, then how in the world can you do this without making reference to terminology such as this?

50:44

And this isn't the only place he did it, but arithmonton eclecton, the number of the elect, his elect out to, you've got to deal with that.

50:53

You can't just pass that over and go, well, no big deal, but it was passed over as if it was no big deal in this dissertation.

51:03

And so that was one of the first places that I went. There are numerous other places where he utilizes this terminology, but that particular phraseology is,

51:12

I think, extremely important. Yeah, he was working through the almighty

51:18

God's hand in the verse prior. Confidence, he stretched out the hands to almighty

51:23

God, supplicating him to be propitious and unwilling. You committed any sin, yet had conflict day and night for all the brotherhood that the number of his elect would be safe.

51:33

So there's going to be a particular number and they're going to get to the place that God has for them, but it's going to be through these means.

51:44

And this is the pilgrimage he's talking about earlier in chapter one. He starts out in the same terminology that Peter does.

51:52

You're sojourners, you are pilgrims, you are foreign from the place that you're in. You're going to go, he's preparing them.

51:58

And I believe, okay, let's say it's an early writing or late, either way, whether it was Nero or Domitian, there was miniature elements of the

52:07

Nero persecution in Domitian. He's trying to prepare them through what they're about to go through, if not already, because he talks about the

52:15

Lord's sufferings in verse one of that same chapter, that the sufferings were before your eyes.

52:21

And he's basically saying, don't think that you're going to get there any differently than Jesus did. You're going to experience this, but know this, that God's elect will go through this and they're going to make it.

52:32

And this is the means by which God's going to complete your salvation. And he gave it a particular number.

52:39

These are beliefs that Clement had, and he said it with conviction. He didn't apologize and preface it or apologize for making that kind of a comment.

52:48

He bluntly said, this is what you're going to go through. This is God's choosing. This is how it's going to be. Well, and last week on the program,

52:56

I went through 1 Corinthians 1, and it's very clear testimony to the sovereign grace of God, election, whether Jew or Greek, it's those who are called, that's what makes a difference.

53:09

You're either being saved or you are perishing, and the difference is called.

53:16

And so it's interesting that he can utilize that kind of theology in talking to the

53:23

Corinthians and can assume that they have the same beliefs that he does.

53:28

In other words, if he's using those illustrations, then he is assuming that those are common beliefs between the two.

53:35

It's not, well, this is just something we Romans believe, you Corinthians believe something else. That obviously is not the case at all.

53:41

Yeah, and he fills it out more, Dr. White, in chapter 29. If you wanted to go to chapter 29, verse 1, he gets very specific in the final product of election and why election happened.

53:59

He gives, he doesn't just say you're elect. He says why you're elect. In chapter 29, verse 1, and again,

54:05

I'll try to read your translation. If I, I've got mine up. I can't remember who I used. He can, I think

54:11

Rich can switch over to it so you can see it. There we go. Yeah, let us therefore approach him in holiness of soul, lifting up pure and undefiled hands unto him with love towards our gentle, compassionate

54:22

Father who made us an elect portion unto himself.

54:28

And then he quotes Deuteronomy 32 about it is written. And there's one of those phrases that we talked about earlier.

54:37

When the Most High divided the nations, when he dispersed the sons of Adam, he fixed the boundaries of the nations according to the number of the angels of God, his people,

54:45

Jacob became a portion of the Lord and Israel measurement of his inheritance. So he's using Old Testament terminology of election for New Testament saints using an

54:55

Old Testament passage about God setting his people apart distinctly, the number of his people,

55:01

Jacob being a portion of the Lord. He's saying, hey, you're a portion also unto him.

55:08

And then he quotes Deuteronomy 434 in verse 3. He says in another place, he says the

55:13

Lord takes for himself a nation out of the midst of nations. There's that distinction.

55:19

He's going back to his original statements. You're sojourners. You're not like everybody else. God has called you to be distinct.

55:25

He's called you to be holy. The holy of holy shall come forth from this nation. Now, he's going to bring an application to that in the next phrase, seeing that we are the special portion of a holy

55:38

God. I mean, this isn't, I don't know about you, Dr. White, but that makes me want to have a hallelujah fit.

55:44

I mean, he's using a text of scripture from Deuteronomy 32 and Deuteronomy 4, and he's saying, hey, since you're the special portion of a holy

55:56

God, let us do all things that pertain to holiness. Forsake evil speakings, abominable, impure braces, drunkenness, and tumults, hateful lusts, abominable adultery, hateful pride.

56:06

For he says, God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble. And by the way, there's one of the text of variances.

56:12

It's because that's in James 4, it's in 1 Peter 5, and it's in Proverbs, but Proverbs in the

56:18

Septuagint has kurios instead of theos. So he's either quoting

56:24

James 4 or 1 Peter 5 there because he uses the reading of the New Testament quote rather than Septuagint.

56:31

So he quotes that, and then he says, let us therefore cleave, in verse 3 of chapter 30, or paragraph 30, let us cleave unto those to whom grace is given from God.

56:42

He's talking about brothers. Those whom, cleave to them whom grace is given.

56:49

It's a gift from God. Let us clothe ourselves in concord, be humble and temperate, holding ourselves aloof for the backbiting of evil speaking, being justified by works, not by words.

57:00

So he jumps right into this. You're elect. You're elect to be holy. You are not to live this way.

57:05

That's not why God chose you. God chose you to be this way. So cleave to those whom also have been given this grace.

57:11

There's so much that you could probably say there, but I got excited at the seeing that you're the special portion of God's holy that he was clarifying were the elect, that were elected unto himself in verse 1 of chapter 29.

57:25

Definitely. And it's not that far after that in that section, then, that we encounter paragraph 32.

57:35

And in 32, after the quotation from Genesis, thy seed shall be as the stars of heaven.

57:43

I think that's 12, not 15 there. That, then, is the introduction, then, for this incredible section that reads as follows.

57:56

They all therefore were glorified and magnified, not through themselves or their own works or the righteous doing which they wrought, but through his will.

58:05

And so we, having been called through his will in Christ Jesus, are not justified through ourselves or through our own wisdom or understanding or piety or works, which we have wrought in holiness of heart, but through faith whereby the

58:22

Almighty God justified all men that have been from the beginning to whom be the glory forever and ever.

58:30

Amen. So, obviously, putting the amen at the end of that is his way of saying, you know, this is the end of this particular section.

58:40

But it is amazing to me that you have this terminology so we having, so I'm going to go ahead and put it up here.

58:51

Look at a couple of these extremely Pauline phrases here. Yes. So we have been glorified.

58:59

So Romans 8, the golden chain. We have been called through his will.

59:09

Yep. Down here in diathelematos, through his will.

59:17

In Christ Jesus, Ephesians 1, of course. And then here is claithentos, called.

59:24

And I'm going to have to scroll this up a little bit because it's, I hate getting old because, you know, the font,

59:33

I use too large a font now to really do this as effectively as I should have.

59:39

Let me roll this up here. Boy, it's, look at that thing bounce all over the place.

59:44

It doesn't know. It just went totally, totally crazy on me because I was trying to get it to do stuff it doesn't want to do.

59:50

1 Clement 32, 3. And come on, come on, show me 4.

59:57

There we go. There we go. We got it to work. That tablet back there needs to be shot.

01:00:07

Here, this is really important. Being justified, what?

01:00:15

Not through themselves. Udihaoton, not of themselves.

01:00:23

Not through their own wisdom. That sounds like 1 Corinthians. Nor their understanding.

01:00:28

That is 1 Corinthians 1, right there. Or their godliness. That's interesting.

01:00:34

Or works which they have worked. That looks like Romans 3 and 4 to me.

01:00:45

Works which they have worked in holiness of heart. So you've got all these. I mean, that's quite a list here.

01:00:52

Not being justified themselves. Wisdom, godliness, understanding. Works which they've done in their, but, and there it is.

01:01:02

Diates pistos, but by faith. Allah, the adversative

01:01:07

Allah. I mean, here is someone who obviously has been trained by the

01:01:13

Apostle Paul. And trained in their, in his theology. And then to say, and that's how the

01:01:22

Almighty God justified all men that have been from the beginning. I can just see the

01:01:28

Ryrie Study Bibles and the Schofield Study Bibles flying through the air at the screen right now.

01:01:35

But I remember so well when I first came to understand in Bible College a seminary.

01:01:42

Nope, it's been justification by faith all along. And that's exactly what

01:01:47

Clement is saying there too. I mean, I think you get close to this.

01:01:54

I think maybe that section in the Epistle to Diognetus is just as clear, just as compelling.

01:02:03

But there aren't too many places that you're going to get in the first 300 years of church history.

01:02:11

That are going to be this clear and this apostolic as you have in Clement. I mean, this is just, it's a bright light.

01:02:19

Because there's going to be centuries coming when you're not going to have a lot of bright lights. But man, it's nice to see this one.

01:02:25

Well, and this is the beauty. He obviously, I think that last phrase he's borrowing from Romans 5 when he talks about justified.

01:02:32

And then he mentions the glory of God. I think he's using Romans 5. And this is what I was saying in the correspondence.

01:02:38

He doesn't like directly quote to Romans. But it's clear his theology is very much from Romans. And he has some

01:02:44

Ephesians in there, it seems like. And like you said, 1 Corinthians. He was influenced by Paul's theology.

01:02:52

He had a high, high respect for Paul. He appealed to Paul's authority in his writings and in his teachings.

01:03:00

And it's clear that he believed them with conviction. So if we're going to, and this is how

01:03:05

I look at things made people different. People say, well, Paul didn't mean that in Ephesians 1.

01:03:10

Paul didn't mean that in Romans 4. Okay, so if there's a dispute, who would have known what

01:03:17

Paul meant? More than me and the guy I'm arguing with. Let's see, is there anybody in history that knew

01:03:23

Paul personally? Who actually talked about what Paul believed or used the same theology

01:03:29

Paul would have? Okay, Clement was trained under Paul and Peter. And he had something to say about justification and election.

01:03:37

Or these kinds of terminologies that you see in Romans 8. So what did

01:03:42

Clement believe Paul meant? What did Clement believe the terminology was?

01:03:48

And if his seems to be pointing to what seems to be sovereign election from the beginning,

01:03:53

I really don't know what people do with that outside of, well, that's not what that means. That's a simple cop -out. Then what does he mean if he's not meaning that?

01:04:00

Because what he said is exactly what Paul's saying. And it's not what you're saying. And this is way before Augustine showed up on the scene and started writing about these concepts too.

01:04:09

Oh, yeah, most definitely, most definitely. Well, we have been talking a lot. So let's get to a couple other ones real quick here.

01:04:15

So we'll at least be able to say we got something done. Here's chapter 16, verse 1.

01:04:23

And I wanted to look at this phrase here. Lightfoot's translation is the scepter of the majesty of God, even our

01:04:33

Lord Jesus Christ. So you have that right here. And so when we look at that, the scepter of the majesty or the power of Jesus Christ, which is then defined as So this isn't necessarily a direct statement that God is our

01:05:04

Lord Jesus, but the Lord Jesus is the scepter of the majesty of God. And I look at that phrase and I am reminded very much of Psalm 110, which of course is, we like to say at Apologia, that's

01:05:21

God's favorite Bible verse because it's quoted more often than any other verse from the

01:05:27

Old Testament in the New Testament. So that must mean it's God's favorite Bible verse. And Psalm 1101, of course, the

01:05:34

Lord said to my Lord, sit my right hand until I make the enemy's footstool for their feet, which Jesus then quoted and confuted the

01:05:40

Pharisees with that. But then the next phrase is he stretches forth your mighty scepter from Zion.

01:05:48

And it's Yahweh that stretches forth the king's mighty scepter from Zion, who is the

01:05:55

Messiah. And then Yahweh says to that king, rule in the midst of your enemies.

01:06:02

And then of course in Revelation, you have this picked up in the language from Psalm 2 and Isaiah 42, ruling the nations with a rod of iron, this idea of this extension of divine power here being described of Christ.

01:06:19

But notice in the context came not in the pomp of arrogance or of pride, though he might have done so, but in lowliness of mind, according as the

01:06:27

Holy Spirit spake concerning him. So it's the fulfillment motif.

01:06:34

Very much a part of the early church. That is, these are all things that the Old Testament prophesied concerning Christ.

01:06:41

And then the incarnational motif of Philippians chapter 2, the garment Christi and things like that.

01:06:47

But you have very, very high views of Christ. And you might say, well, yeah, but you don't have as much as you have like in Ignatius, where he keeps calling

01:06:58

Jesus God over and over again. And you have Ephesians 7 and Ephesians 9 and stuff like that.

01:07:04

But that's because he's writing to another church and saying you're in rebellion against these issues.

01:07:11

You don't he doesn't need to be. He's not writing to them that they have a poor Christology. So he doesn't have to be reemphasizing all that kind of stuff.

01:07:20

But it still comes out even in passing as he is using this type of biblically soaked language all through.

01:07:27

Yeah, and he connected and he would have definitely been looking at the psalmist because he used the psalms more than any quoted.

01:07:35

I think the psalmist over 25 times in this epistle. And so he used the psalmist quite a bit.

01:07:41

And he tried to always connect it back to which is why he used a lot of the Hebrew terminology because he used

01:07:49

Hebrews nine times. But he connected a lot of the Hebrew terms to Jesus himself in reference to Old Testament theology.

01:07:57

Then in this section, he goes right into Isaiah 53 quotes the whole section of Isaiah 53.

01:08:03

It's clear. He had a view of the Christology of Jesus as deity in this reference.

01:08:10

I think his theology is right where ours is today when it comes to the person of Christ. Oh, no question about that.

01:08:18

I'm not sure why my tablet is just just having fits over here, but we'll live with it.

01:08:27

And if we could look at 1st Clement 49 5 as well on his view of Christ's atonement,

01:08:33

I think that would be interesting to some. Most definitely. All right.

01:08:39

We are there. How's that? 1st Clement 49 5. He goes into this kind of 1st

01:08:45

Corinthians 13 thing about love. Right. And then he drops right into it and says love covers a multitude of sins, which he he's actually once more quoting 1st

01:08:54

Peter there. Not the Old Testament version of that because the wording is different. He's quoting 1st

01:09:00

Peter 4 8. Then he says love endures all things long -suffering. You can tell this 1st Corinthians 13. They would have been familiar.

01:09:06

They have the letter. Love has no divisions. Love makes no seditions. Love does all things in concord.

01:09:13

Then he says in love were all the elect of God made perfect. Already done.

01:09:18

Completed action. In the love of God. The elect have already been made perfect without loving. Nothing is well -pleasing to God and then he jumps right in and love the master took us unto himself.

01:09:28

He he loved that phrase. I don't know if you've picked up on that a couple of times. Dr. White where it's unto himself unto himself.

01:09:36

He brought us to himself. It's oh, hey, not about us. Hey to God. Yeah, go ahead.

01:09:42

Steven. Steven. Do you see something that I've not seen this before? But did you see that? Well, of course you've seen this but you've been looking at but look at this that section the master.

01:09:54

Oh, where do we see that? Where do we see that? Isn't that that's that's second

01:09:59

Peter two. That's the master who bought the denying them.

01:10:06

Yep. Yep. Yep. There it is. Despotis. That's interesting. I hadn't seen that before.

01:10:14

Interesting. Interesting. I'm going to put that in my mouth. Thank you for helping me on my. I'm eight second

01:10:21

Peter. Dr. White helped me out here. Well, look at that. That is really really important because it is the master that took us.

01:10:30

So there is a specific there in love took us unto himself.

01:10:38

And then you have right below that there is there is his blood that there there needs to be a close look.

01:10:51

At that you might you might be able to make enough connection there to at least get into your last last column of your of your of your chart there or something because look look at the language.

01:11:05

We have here who pair him own.

01:11:10

That's that's your classical substitutionary atonement. Edokan gave given his blood for us by the will of God and his flesh for our flesh and his life for our lives.

01:11:22

I mean, this is this is and it's all using and it's by the will of God.

01:11:29

It's who pair. And who pair so it's all substitutionary language that is being used here specific pronouns us not just general type of stuff.

01:11:42

Yeah, that's talking about the elect in context going back to verse 5. He's talking about the elect let remember by his love.

01:11:49

He perfected the elect and now he's telling us how he did that the atonement sealed and finalized our

01:11:58

Salvation because he already uses it in an heiress if I'm not mistaken.

01:12:04

He says he has perfected. Yes, and I'm pretty sure I need to go back and look at the tense of that but he uses it in a way that it's an already done process.

01:12:15

But how could he do that? How could he already perfect us in his love because he paid it all he paid all of it by his blood by the will of God and then if there was any question about the physical body of Jesus remember he's also around the time where Gnosticism started coming on the scene denying the body of Jesus flesh for flesh right lash or flesh.

01:12:38

He's also combating if there's a question of well, what did the earliest fathers believe about Jesus? What's not

01:12:44

Gnostic theology? Oh, no, he talks about substitution from his body for our bodies which also has kind of this idea of our body in the resurrection sense.

01:12:55

I know he's not talking about resurrection, but if he's giving his body for our body, there's there's a substitutionary punishment which also results later in resurrection which he talks about later in his letter.

01:13:06

Now, there's there's the full dynamic of Salvation right there tied into the atonement. I'm looking at so many quotations here that I have marked that would be would be relevant to so many of these issues.

01:13:25

I'm looking at section 50. This declaration of blessedness was pronounced upon them that have been elected by God through Jesus Christ our

01:13:34

Lord to whom be the glory forever and ever. I mean that just the language and that's only that's only a few sentences after in love the master took us unto himself the love which had towards Etc.

01:13:48

Etc. Jesus Christ our Lord has given his blood for us by the will of God. That's just a few sentences later that that that comes along and this just yes, it is.

01:13:57

It's Eris Perfect, by the way, the made perfect is an Eris Perfect, sorry, Eris Passive.

01:14:03

So you have an Eris Passive there. So yeah, he's looking at it as something that's happened because of the atonement.

01:14:10

Sorry, go ahead. Well, I and I just wanted to look at this one real quick as well because I think it's it's important.

01:14:19

This is in section 58 and this is for folks who again think that everything we believe about God and Christ and their relationship developed at the

01:14:33

Council of Nicaea or something along those lines for as God lives and the

01:14:39

Lord Jesus Christ lives and the Holy Spirit who are the faith and the hope of the elect.

01:14:45

So surely shall he who with lowliness mind and instant gentleness hath without forgetting with so and so forth. So what do we what do we have there?

01:14:52

We have Hatheas the father he lives and Hakureos Jesus and Tanuma Tahagion.

01:15:02

So you have easily here in the first century or early second century depending on where you put these things.

01:15:10

These are the pistis and the elpis what tone eclectone of the elect.

01:15:18

I mean, this is deep theological language that he doesn't have to now stop and explain which means it's the common language, the common you this time he can assume a common understanding of all of these things.

01:15:36

It's beautiful to see these things and to see these bright lights in these sections.

01:15:46

I'm just looking toward the end of the letter and very Trinitarian.

01:15:52

Oh, it is. Yes, it is. Yeah. So we have for example, Jesus being called our high priest and guardian

01:16:00

Jesus Christ in section 64 and then of course the final section of the letter.

01:16:07

It's 65 sections long you get some names, but but you have the grace of our

01:16:16

Lord Jesus Christ. Oops. I keep forgetting to take my little thing of a Bobby down there the grace of our

01:16:23

Lord Jesus Christ be with you and with all men in all places who have been called by God.

01:16:29

That's Kaleo of again same language of election called by God D out to through him through whom be glory and honor power and greatness and eternal

01:16:42

Dominion unto him from the ages past and forever and ever amen. And so this is how the the grace of the

01:16:50

Lord Jesus Christ be with you and with all men in all places. That's a great doxology.

01:16:55

And as you pointed out very consistent with with Pauline theology, so we've just barely touched the surface obviously and like I said earlier, sometimes people see programs like this and then they go out and they buy the apostolic fathers or they buy some church history books and they don't find

01:17:16

Clement, but they run into second or third Clement and they're going this doesn't sound the same want to explain to them why that's the case.

01:17:28

Yeah, I definitely do not believe second Clement is the same writer right tactically.

01:17:34

It's different second Clement starts second Clement and the epistle of Barnabas seem to be in cahoots at times like I they were around the same period.

01:17:45

I think it's possible. They were even the same scribe. I don't know. There's good arguments on on that but second

01:17:51

Clement and even Eusebius dealt with some of that too when he talked about Clement and this he would he was more inclined to believe that this was the

01:18:00

Clement of Philippians that Paul had known and ministered with he definitely excluded the second

01:18:07

Clement side of it like I think Eusebius was highly skeptical second

01:18:13

Clement being attributed to the same writer of the first and he said so we have good reason to believe that second

01:18:19

Clement was a little bit later. They're very interesting that there's actually a section that first Clement quotes, but it's not really in the

01:18:27

New Testament but second Clement and the epistle of Barnabas quote a phrase out of first Clement.

01:18:34

So it's clear that the first Clement did proceed those and that we're borrowing from first Clement.

01:18:39

So I would say that those two were probably about the same time, but they're different different writers for sure, right? And so they're coming from a later period and just like if you walk into a

01:18:50

Christian bookstore today, you're going to get books of different levels of goodness and orthodoxy and some that aren't orthodox or good at all the same thing in the early church.

01:19:02

You're going to find a fairly wide representation. And of course, we only have a small representation of what was being written at that particular point in time as well.

01:19:12

So people have to keep that in mind. Obviously, we're looking at some of the highlights not necessarily the lowlights of early church writings, which you could find in the

01:19:24

Shepherd of Hermas and in the epistle of Barnabas, which are not nearly as theologically developed as we would like them to be but that shouldn't surprise us.

01:19:36

But we do need to let people know that we're looking at particular sections here and there was a bunch of stuff in here about church governance, which might be before we start wrapping stuff up here.

01:19:52

We've been going for an hour and 20 minutes into the program now, but it is important to note that this is not a

01:20:04

Pope in Rome writing to the church in Corinth telling them what to do.

01:20:10

I mean, that's the one thing that is just not here. If we are constantly told that the early church had this, you know, constant faith of the church to the earliest period the

01:20:22

Bishop of Rome as the infallible head of the church and all the rest of this kind of stuff. There is no one person speaking for the church at Rome here.

01:20:32

This is the church at Rome speaking to the church at Corinth and it is one church remonstrating with another church.

01:20:42

It is not the church that is the head of all other churches saying you just bow to our authority because why waste the many, many paragraphs of providing

01:20:55

Old Testament examples and everything else? If what was actually going on here is, hey, you all have messed up.

01:21:02

You kicked out the proper elders, not Bishop singular. There is clearly a plurality of elders functioning in Corinth and evidently a plurality of elders functioning in Rome, which is extremely important.

01:21:18

I mean, if Peter was the first Bishop of Rome and he is meant to have an office that is passed down through that church, one singular monarchical episcopate, then this should be the one place where that is seen with clarity.

01:21:35

It's not there. You have a plurality of elders. This is the primitive form of the church.

01:21:42

There's no question about it. And then you connect that together with Ignatius who's writing 107 approximately.

01:21:48

And when he writes the church at Rome, he mentions no single bishop. When he writes to other churches in the

01:21:55

East that had a single bishop, he mentions them by name. But when he writes the church at Rome, he doesn't say anything about the

01:22:02

Bishop of Rome, a particular Bishop of Rome, anything like that at all, which is why most scholars feel that the monarchical episcopate didn't develop in Rome until around 130 -140

01:22:11

AD. So the church at Rome didn't think that it needed to have one bishop as the successor of Peter.

01:22:20

And that's extremely important to recognize in light of the later developments within Roman Catholicism.

01:22:26

It's really, really, really important. So anything else you want to just throw in there on Clement before we start wrapping stuff up?

01:22:35

No, not much to say other than I challenge anybody to read 1st

01:22:41

Clement, kind of separate it, if you can, from rather a massive volume of Church Fathers just by itself.

01:22:49

Keep 2nd Clement out just by itself. Sit down and read sections and just see for your own self with your understanding of Scripture, how many

01:22:59

Pauline statements are, man, he's quoting Scripture here. Just see the beauty of how these men respected the

01:23:06

Word of God, both New and Old Testament. You notice that we went through a lot of these passages.

01:23:11

There's only one, and I didn't get to answer this. You asked it, and I probably got distracted, but he only quotes one other book that's not canonical, and that's

01:23:21

Judith. He tells the story of Judith in the Apocrypha, which he used to Septuagint.

01:23:27

So he definitely would have had access to stories like that.

01:23:32

So he obviously saw it as historically accurate, but he never said it is written or anything like that.

01:23:38

Interesting. He actually mentions Esther in the same paragraph with Judith and he uses a phrase from Esther that would have been in the longer version of Esther in the

01:23:46

Septuagint. So that's interesting, but he doesn't quote a lot of other sources or speaks of these mystical

01:23:54

Gospels we don't know anything about or these weird letters from some of the other apostles that went out into the other parts of the

01:24:01

Mediterranean. Like we don't have anything like that. He strictly stuck to the Old Testament canonical books that we have with the addition of an apocryphal citation about a woman who was courageous.

01:24:12

And then he talks about the doctrine. He always used New Testament writings to give his doctrine and beliefs.

01:24:20

He didn't use extra works. He saw them as the authority of the apostles and that they should be read and that they were authoritative enough to correct your living and that these churches had access to them and needed to pick them up and go back and read them.

01:24:34

Right. He didn't say, hey, go back and read my words back earlier in the epistle.

01:24:39

He said, no, pick up Paul's epistle. He's already told you about this. Get back and do it. Right. He saw them as an authority over his own writings.

01:24:49

Excellent. Well, I really appreciate your spending some time with us today talking about 1st

01:24:54

Clement. We have a very strange audience that actually likes this kind of stuff and those who don't tuned out about an hour and 15 minutes ago anyways, so I don't have to worry about that too much.

01:25:06

If folks wanted to get in touch with you, how would they track you down? I want to give a shout out to John Cooper real quick.

01:25:14

There you go. There you go. There you go. See, I'll let him know that he needs to watch all the way to the end.

01:25:19

So I'll fill him in on your story that you told me earlier. Well, let's do that off the air.

01:25:27

I will. Yeah. So if you want to get in touch, we have social media,

01:25:34

Facebook pages, City Light Seattle has their own, City Light Asheville is mostly the one I respond to now.

01:25:40

Also, you can email me. I think my email is on there somewhere. It has sections about our leaders on Facebook.

01:25:48

We have a website citylightasheville .com, citylightseattle .com. And the debates you've done like the debate with Nick Sayers on the

01:25:58

Texas Receptus to just put your name in and those will come up on YouTube. It'll show up on YouTube.

01:26:04

Our discussion together on the channel will, Dr. Price, my discussion with him. I'm also doing on the 11th a discussion with Josh Scott.

01:26:13

Yes. Yeah, tell people about that because I'm still wondering what you paid him to do that.

01:26:19

I'm well, it's kind of funny. I was halfway joking. I read the article. I think it was on the Christian Post, right?

01:26:25

And I just I shook my head. I was like, oh, no, this can't be true. So I posted the article and just put out a shout out.

01:26:31

I was like, I wish you would sit down and have a conversation with me about this. And then I tagged a friend of mine out in California, The Gospel Truth Podcast.

01:26:38

He's a big fan of yours, by the way, and he's probably been sending you a hundred emails that get spam, but he's been trying to get good discussions on his channel and I tagged him.

01:26:52

I said, you should get this on your channel. Well, he did. He reached out. He investigated. He found

01:26:57

Josh. He sent him a message and then brought us into a message and said, hey, what dates work? And then we threw out some calendar dates and eventually we got in the same.

01:27:05

I was his shot. Like, well, anybody, people, people may not know what we're talking about. This was, I was sort of, you know,

01:27:13

I saw this thing going through social media and it was a church that basically had just made a statement that is reflective of standard.

01:27:23

What's now called progressive. Back when I was young, it was called liberalism. Now it's called progressive.

01:27:30

You know, disbelief in inspiration, inerrancy, the consistency of script. This is, this is what you have in a large portion of United Methodist, Liberal Presbyterians, you know, all these, all these groups.

01:27:44

I mean, I went to Fuller for crying out loud. And so I was,

01:27:49

I saw it and I'm like, yeah, these people have been around for a long time. There is a reason why Machen wrote the book that Rachel Machen wrote nearly a hundred years ago, but everybody else is freaking out because they live in the borders of orthodoxy and they just don't even know that these other viewpoints exist.

01:28:10

And so when I saw that the, one of the pastors at that church was actually going to have a dialogue with you,

01:28:17

I was like, generally, they don't do apologetics. They don't do this kind of discussion at all.

01:28:26

And so you just must have a really nice looking face. You must look very calm and kind and me,

01:28:34

I, you know, I remember my friend, Michael Fallon, when

01:28:39

I debated Peter Stravinskis 20 years ago now on purgatory, there was a

01:28:46

Roman Catholic in the audience and he was talking to Mike afterwards. And he, he said to Mike, he said, you know, when

01:28:53

Father Stravinskis was speaking, you could just, you could just feel the spirit moving.

01:28:59

But when James White spoke, you could see the horns coming out of his head, the demons dancing around.

01:29:07

It's like, I just got that face, I guess, you know. I will take the opportunity

01:29:14

I've been given. I'm actually very surprised by it, but I will do my best to, I have more questions than comments for him to be honest with you.

01:29:22

And even so after his sermon, he has put out blogs that are actually giving more detail, which

01:29:30

I printed them all off and I've got highlights circled and things like that. His recent statement was that if the gospel doesn't have social and political in it, it's not the true gospel.

01:29:42

And so funny thing is there, there are a lot of us who would say, well, if we could talk about what you mean by that, because obviously saying

01:29:52

Jesus is Lord was a very socially upsetting reality at that time.

01:29:59

So that's not untrue. It's the problem is if you don't have

01:30:05

Jesus's view of scripture to go along with that, you're going to end up where all the leftist denominations have ended up over time because you don't have that unchanging objective reality to keep you grounded.

01:30:20

You're going to end up fighting with the society's weapons instead of changing hearts by the power of the spirit.

01:30:28

So it's interesting. He believes Jesus was more of a progressive and that he was actually seeking to progress what was written in the law on the

01:30:37

Torah when actually he was reforming what was lost in the heartbeat behind the law on the

01:30:42

Torah. So that'll be an interesting discussion. He would basically be similar. He's an extreme version of where Andy Stanley was going with this whole, let's unhitch ourselves.

01:30:53

He would say that the prophets of God heard the word of God. We don't have those words.

01:30:58

What was written is their best representation of what they originally heard.

01:31:04

So that would involve their defects that would involve their human elements. He says God would never, he says it right here.

01:31:10

God would never command genocide practice. Let's see.

01:31:16

Yeah, God would never command genocide or different aspects of criteria in there because that's not in God's character.

01:31:24

So he's already excluded those things. That's just human elements adding to what God had said.

01:31:29

Yeah, so Jesus' view of scripture is going to be absolutely central to that, which if they're far enough on the left, they just dismiss the

01:31:35

New Testament witness to that and say that's just what the writers said. That's not something that Jesus said, which means we haven't a clue.

01:31:42

Anything Jesus actually said or did, we don't know anything about him and Jesus ends up looking, wow, shockingly like them.

01:31:49

Yeah, that's a little bit concerned because like I'm reading his words and I'm just,

01:31:54

I'm not trying to be mean. I'm being honest. I read what he says about the scripture and Dr. White, it's the same thing atheists say.

01:32:00

Oh, yeah, same. Well, once you boil it down, it just becomes, it really, and people really struggle with this, but that's why, you know, 30 years later,

01:32:12

I can look back and go, oh, that's why the Lord put me in a situation where I had to go to Fuller Theological Seminary.

01:32:21

You know, I had to study under these folks. I had to learn how to get the golden nuggets out of all the rest of the stuff and to understand how they thought and that has been one of my greatest assets as an apologist since then.

01:32:37

I mean, just look back at my first debate with Shabir Ali on Islam. Shabir was reading all those liberals.

01:32:44

He'd use those liberals against Christians and run over him like a Mack truck. That ain't going to work with me.

01:32:50

I got a master's degree in liberalism at Fuller Theological Seminary.

01:32:55

So they don't carry the same weight. And so, yeah,

01:33:01

I'm going to be very interested in seeing how that goes. Like I said, I don't get to do those because I'm considered that terrible, horrible, nasty fellow that even you said you vehemently hated.

01:33:11

So God changed my heart. Yeah. Well, there you go.

01:33:16

There you go. But my cats still love me. So that's the important part. Anyways, well, thank you. I think this all worked out fairly well.

01:33:23

I mean, I'm still fighting a few things with some of the tech, but it was really neat to be able to put all that stuff up there and you were able to read it.

01:33:30

And hopefully this has been very helpful to folks. And I think maybe on Thursday, you'll even be tuning in once John Cooper joins us as well.

01:33:40

So you'll be all ears. Thank you very much, Stephen. I really appreciate it. God bless you and your ministry and thanks for joining us.

01:33:48

Thank you, Dr. White. All right. God bless. Thank you. All right. Well, thanks folks for being with us on the program today.

01:33:55

We've gone a full hour and a half. I hope that was useful to you. Like I said on Thursday, same time,

01:34:00

John Cooper from Skillet will be joining. We'll be talking about his new book, some other things that we will be sharing with you.

01:34:07

I hope you'll join us then. Thanks for watching. God bless. Oh, am

01:34:13

I going too fast for you, Rich? I mean, I've been moving like anything up here.

01:34:18

So now, okay. We're waiting for Rich to catch up at the end of the program and he's looking for the music.