Radio Free Geneva

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October 19, 2021

Today we started responding to Leighton Flowers’ attempt to respond to our basic discussion of one simple truth and reality: the Provisionist view of man’s will and God’s grace is completely in line with the Roman Catholic view at the time of the Reformation; that is, Flowers stands firmly with Erasmus against Luther on this topic. This is all about the sufficiency of grace versus the mere necessity of grace. This has been a theme we have discussed for decades. Flowers’ attempt to respond revealed so many important errors and weaknesses in the Provisionist position that we simply could not allow the opportunity to pass. We got about 20 minutes through the 50 minute or so response, so, be ready for another RFG in the near future!

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00:17: You constantly hear people that are Calvinist harp on this, God's sovereign, God's sovereign,
00:23: God's sovereign, sovereign, sovereign. They just keep repeating it and they repeat it so much you start to think it's a biblical tree.
00:36: Jesus stands outside the tomb of Lazarus, he says, Lazarus, come out, and Lazarus said, I can't,
00:42: I'm dead. That's not what he did, Lazarus came out. Do you mean to tell me a dead person can respond to the command of Christ?
00:54: And then you take lessons from Judas White and Jeff Durbin, it shows in this kind of sequential format and...
01:03: Do you really believe that it parallels the method of exegesis that we utilize to demonstrate those other things?
01:18: Um, no. Some new
01:24: Calvinists, even pastors, very openly smoke pipes and cigars just as they drink beer and wine.
01:41: Even Jesus cannot override your unbelief. To him, you know what it would sound like if he were listening to it?
01:57: Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It wouldn't make any sense to him. A self -righteous, legalistic, deceived jerk.
02:04: And you need to realize that he's gone from predeterminism, now he's speaking of some kind of middle knowledge that God now has to...
02:21: I deny and categorically deny middle knowledge. Then don't beg the question that would demand me to force you to embrace it.
02:32: You're not always talking about necessarily God choosing something for no apparent reason, but you're choosing that meat because it's a favorable meat.
02:41: There's a reason to have the choice of that meat. Hunkered deep beneath the faculty cafeteria in New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, safe from all those moderate
02:58: Calvinists, Dave Hunt fans, and those who have read and re -read George Bryson's book, we are
03:03: Radio Free Geneva, broadcasting the truth about God's freedom to say for his own eternal glory.
03:12: Yes, indeed. Welcome to Radio Free Geneva. And it was, I don't know, it was something almost prophetic about the last voice you hear is
03:21: Layton Flowers, and then we're under the staff cafeteria at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.
03:27: And so, hey, we knew what was coming, I guess. Welcome to Radio Free Geneva. We have a lot to cover today.
03:34: And the reason that I have chosen to... And we will not finish today. There's no way, given that, for example, we need to read original sources and do things like that to provide the fullest possible refutation of the claims that have been made.
03:52: I actually only have the first 20 minutes finished as far as indexing is concerned.
03:59: And so there are future Radio Free Geneva's to be done. But why bother, many people would say.
04:05: As you will discover, this particular refutation will allow us to address, well, first of all, it will allow us to address the issue of the
04:15: Reformation. And we are, for example, Thursday night, I'll be doing a podcast, somebody else's podcast on the relevance of the
04:27: Reformation today and why it's still important and what it was about, things like that.
04:34: I've taught church history for many, many decades. And so that's a particular focus of mine on the subject of the
04:42: Reformation. And so that's important. But you will also discover that we will be talking about such things as textual criticism.
04:49: How did that get into Radio Free Geneva? Well, you will discover that in his amazing attempt to throw everything, including the kitchen sink, at a basic issue.
05:07: And that is that we documented, we demonstrated that the viewpoint of the provisionists as represented by Leighton Flowers, that the viewpoint of the provisionists on the issue of the nature of grace and the will of man.
05:28: That's what we were talking about. Now, Leighton wants to talk about almost anything but that, but on the issue of the will of man and the nature of God's grace.
05:44: That he is on Rome's side, not on the side of the Reformation, as defined in the first written debate of the
05:53: Reformation between Martin Luther and Desiderius Rassus. Now, of course, he doesn't touch any of that stuff.
06:00: That's just like, he can't. And I think he probably knows that.
06:08: I don't know if he's ever read that debate. I don't know if he's read either of the books.
06:14: Don't know if he'd know where to find them. But the reality is, our point was straightforward and simple.
06:22: That when it comes to the will of man and the ability of the will of man, and to the intention of God's grace, his provisionism is no different than the sacramentalism of Rome on those issues.
06:37: Now, he's going to go off and he's going to talk about Luther's language, just all sorts of stuff.
06:45: He's going to try to make it look like he's just throwing the facts out there and I don't take the time to do my homework and all the rest of the stuff.
06:52: But if you keep your eye on the ball, and if you listen carefully, you discover that our assertion was not only substantiated, but that when you produce an answer like this, where you just throw dust in the air and make lots of noise and hope that people are convinced by that kind of activity, you're really actually saying a lot about where you're coming from and what your position is really all about.
07:21: So we wanted to do this, also gives you an opportunity to, for a couple hours, stop thinking about hypersonic
07:30: Chinese nuclear weapons, Jen Psaki and the face of Big Brother.
07:39: I mean, that's really who Jen Psaki is, the face of Big Brother, how to lie with a serious look on your face.
07:45: It's amazing. We get to forget all of that for a little while, as we think on these rather important things that will still be important after this regime has come and gone.
07:58: These things will still be important. So we will be using my note studio software here to be able to pop around.
08:08: Actually, we're going to be going straight through, but look at the various segments. And so let's start with a new title.
08:16: I have a new title. Didn't know I needed one, but we have a new title. And here it is.
08:23: Hello and welcome back to Zip Dialogy 101. As you all know, when we play our Why You Gotta Be So Rude song, it's probably about our favorite anti -provisionist apologist.
08:33: So I'm now their favorite anti -provisionist apologist. Now, I've never thought of myself that way.
08:41: I defend reformed theology. These guys are the new kids on the block. You can't find anybody who believed what they believe, all down through church history, really, until the modern era.
08:51: So yeah, whatever, if you want to go there, you can call me whatever you want.
08:58: But anti -provisionist apologist doesn't sound like it makes a whole lot of sense, to be perfectly honest with you.
09:05: But that's okay. We press forward with the first thing.
09:11: Now, again, my assertion had been, in what was being responded to, that at the time of the
09:19: Reformation, Rome's understanding of the will of man and the nature of the grace of God, which is channeled through the provisions
09:28: God has given, called the sacraments, is the same perspective as the provisionists.
09:36: Now, I was debating Roman Catholics before anybody even heard of Leighton Flowers.
09:44: My first debate with a Roman Catholic was August 1990, but I'm doing the math, 25 years before Leighton and I did our debate on Roman side.
10:02: So we've been dealing with Roman Catholicism, published a number of books on the subject of Roman Catholicism, and so it's not just, oh, look, they're like Rome.
10:12: No, oh, look, they have the same view as Rome does on the matter of the will of man and the grace of God.
10:23: You just, that was the assertion. And so we've already dealt with Rome's arguments on that.
10:30: Don't need to go back over that. But the point is that they stand on the other side of the divide.
10:40: And what they want to do is say, oh, you're just trying to use the guilt by association argumentation.
10:45: And so that's what we get right here. I wanted you to recognize that when someone stands with Rome on any particular issue, the first thing you should do is attach them to Rome.
10:58: In fact, any Unitarians out there who don't believe in the triune nature of God, the first thing you should do is put
11:05: James White in a cardinal's uniform and say he might as well just move into Rome.
11:12: And in other words, he might as well just be there in Rome if he's going to hold to a Trinitarian doctrine.
11:18: Because after all, if I can attach them to Rome, then that must make them wrong.
11:23: Right. Because that's what all Protestants want to do is try to attack their opponent within Protestantism.
11:33: I say words slower, sometimes they come out better. As you all know, I have fun pronouncing fun words sometimes.
11:39: That all Protestants, of course, if you just want to attack another Protestant, you just you put them on the side of Rome. I mean, it's just simple guilt by association.
11:47: Most of you all who know anything about logic and debate fallacies and tactics, you see through this kind of stuff.
11:55: OK, so you're supposed to see through this kind of stuff. But what are you supposed to see through? The historical reality that the position of Rome on the issue of the will of man and the grace of God is the same.
12:11: That's not a logical, there's nothing fallacious about pointing out the historical reality.
12:19: Now, since I have done far more debates than Layton Flowers has down through the decades, that very argument that he just propounded was used against me by Dr.
12:34: Sabin in 1999 on Long Island. He is a oneness advocate.
12:40: And so he was saying exactly that. The Trinity is a Roman Catholic doctrine.
12:46: There is one problem with that. The doctrine of the Trinity is a biblical doctrine that long preexisted the rise of Roman Catholicism.
12:55: The observations that I made were based upon the views of the Roman Catholic Church at the time of the
13:01: Reformation as represented by Desiderius Erasmus in his debate with Luther. So my observation with historical and contextual, and I'm not sure that Layton Flowers understands what historical contextual actually means because he didn't provide a counterexample that would be relevant.
13:17: And so on the logic basis and argumentation basis, minus one for Layton on that one because that isn't the point.
13:27: The point is the observation, which we will have to make a number of times over the course of our time together, that the issue was very narrow and very focused and Layton wants to avoid it as much as he possibly can, which only gives us the opportunity of emphasizing once again, something that I remember very clearly emphasizing in 1999 on KPXQ Radio when
13:57: I did a series, this thing keeps moving, I don't think it's it's fault, it's my fault, keep leaning into it and it moves.
14:04: We did a series in response to Norman Geisler on the subject of chosen but free.
14:10: And one of, now in 1999, chosen but free came out after that, but in 1999 we did a response on the radio program to comments he made on the
14:25: Bible Answer Man broadcast about the nature of grace. And what
14:31: Dr. Geisler said was that you need to remember that Roman Catholicism affirmed at the
14:37: Council of Trent, which it did, that anyone who says you can be saved outside of the grace of God should be anathematized.
14:46: That was their anti -Pelagian statement. Now, no one's arguing that Rome says that grace is unnecessary, but what we emphasized then and have emphasized consistently ever since then is the
15:02: Reformation was not about the necessity of grace. The Reformation was about the sufficiency of grace.
15:10: You can go back, the archives are up there. I think we go back to 98, don't we? Somewhere around there.
15:15: Okay, so you can go back and we can document that for almost a quarter of a century on this program, we've been saying the same thing, that the issue is not the necessity of grace, it is the sufficiency of grace.
15:32: We've been very, very consistent and it's just a reminder to everyone, this whole thing will remind us, and I appreciate this opportunity to do so, that that is a dividing line.
15:43: That the position being presented by Layton Flowers is of a grace that can not save.
15:53: It cannot save in and of itself over against sola gratia, where you have efficacious grace, because remember, the whole argument was, well, this isn't an issue, you know, because he was talking about Titus 2 and stuff like that, this is an issue, unless you remember, actually it was
16:14: Revelation chapter 22, remember he mentioned that, I mentioned there was a textual variant there, this wasn't really good text to use for something like that, because there was a textual variant there, and then we talked about, he says, well, you know, if you're going to say that I'm presenting universalism, then the only problem is if you project efficacy onto grace, the provision of grace.
16:41: So this is a dispute between two sides, both say that grace is necessary, only one side says that grace is sufficient, without whatever you put on that list.
16:58: We have been consistent in saying this for a very, very long time. Very, very long time.
17:06: Okay, so we continue with the next section. That being Reformed is not equivalent to or tantamount to being
17:14: Calvinistic. In fact, we've looked at this before, but here is the question, is being
17:21: Reformed synonymous with being Calvinistic? Okay, now, what he's going to do now is he's going to start the dust throwing.
17:33: And so instead of responding to what was actually said, and that is the
17:38: Reformed are consistent in the presentation of God's grace being efficacious, being powerful,
17:47: God's grace actually saves. It does not simply make salvation a possibility.
17:53: It does not provide a possibility of salvation. It actually saves versus absolutely necessary, but in and of itself, insufficient to bring about salvation.
18:06: This is, that's what the issue is. We're not going to deal with that from Leighton's side.
18:12: Instead, he's going to try to bring in all the five points of Calvinism now.
18:18: Did I bring in the five points of Calvinism? No, I didn't. I was talking about the specific issue of the
18:25: Reformation, an issue that I have lectured on and taught on and written about for about 30 years.
18:33: So rather than focusing upon that, he's going to start going this direction, that direction, and we're going to respond to some of those things because it's useful to do so, it's the, the well -known teaching moment type of a situation, but just keep in mind the reality of what's really going on here.
18:54: And so if he wants to argue, well, being
19:00: Calvinistic wasn't the issue. That's not what Luther was. Luther certainly wasn't arguing that against Erasmus, was he?
19:07: No, he wasn't. Luther identified something that was the hinge upon which it all turned.
19:15: What was it? The will of man. The bondage of the will versus the freedom of the will.
19:23: So his argument is with Luther. And if he wants, he's going to dismiss Luther as a foul -mouthed anti -Semite, et cetera, et cetera, which again, it is interesting to note that the stuff that he drags out sounds like the same stuff that the
19:39: Roman Catholics bring out all the time, too. I wonder what that is. I mean, for years,
19:45: I've been hearing the same stuff thrown at Luther by Roman Catholics, and here
19:50: Leighton Flowers is doing it, but there's no connection. No, there's no connection between the two at all.
19:57: Now, the next one, I just want you to hear something because I am going to have to make an observation, and this is all some people are going to hear because there are some people today that are such snowflakes.
20:11: Remember when, I guess we don't use snowflakes anymore, but there was a period of time when we were talking about snowflakes, such, you can't criticize anyone without,
20:23: I'm the big bad meanie, et cetera, et cetera. As we will see in the course of today's program,
20:31: Dr. Flowers utilizes a tremendous amount of secondary sources and materials.
20:42: And I'm just going to be, I'm going to be very, very blunt. I don't think he understands most of what he's citing.
20:48: He lacks the background, the reading, the scholarship to be able to handle the sources that he then brings to the table.
20:58: We saw this, for example, when he confused the various clements and made just utterly absurd statements about church history last year, and then didn't really want to admit it, but, you know, had to, was sort of forced to at some point.
21:16: And one of the ways in which this is illustrated is the fact that Dr. Flowers struggles to enunciate basic words that if you had ever sat in a class with a professor and had studied the subject, you would have heard the words used over and over and over again.
21:37: So it would be fairly simple to understand how the words should be pronounced. And we will see that this becomes relevant for, for two reasons.
21:50: First, what I just said, this is evidence of secondary source utilization, not primary source utilization, and this then illustrates, we're going to see at the end of our analysis today, at least the 20 minute mark, that Dr.
22:06: Flowers will utilize anything to attack
22:11: Calvinism. Just look at his website, look at YouTube. You can figure that one out for yourself, but he'll use anything, even when it's just simply his own horrific misunderstanding of the field.
22:24: We'll see that in regards to textual criticism. And so this utilization, this,
22:30: I have a priority. My priority is I'm going to attack this. And then
22:36: I'm going to use anything I can get hold of. And, oh, that looks good over there. Well, that looks good over there. But the problem is that over there is in a different context.
22:43: And that over there is a different context. And if you use them, you're, you may be impressing some people, but you're actually producing fallacious argumentation.
22:52: So, uh, for example, uh, in this, he's reading from his own document, which is interesting enough, but notice something here.
23:01: Could gladly affirm the Hattersberg Catechism. What is the Heidelberg Catechism? There is no
23:08: Heidelberg and it's, it's right on the screen.
23:13: It's right, right there. You can, you can see it. There's, there's no S in there, but I really wonder,
23:20: I'm just going to be honest, has he ever read the Heidelberg Catechism? Does he know anything about its history, its background, its relevance, who produced it, how it was related to other catechisms and, and declarations of the time and any of that,
23:35: I don't know. I don't know. Well, that's just one, as we're going to see, it's not just one.
23:41: In fact, we're going to see one name that will be mispronounced minimally 10 times.
23:47: I think it may be as much as 15 times. And again, it just means that this man has not sat in a classroom with a professor so as to learn.
23:58: And that explains some of the just really horrific argumentation that normally marks
24:05: Layton Flowers materials. Now, so again, let's go back to the kind of argumentation that many, many
24:14: Roman Catholics use regularly that ended up here. It's especially true, by the way, given the fact that some of these well -known
24:23: Christian leaders throughout human history were known for also burning their dissenters and their books.
24:33: Okay. So keep that in mind. It may look like your particular favorite theologian of the past is the most popular because he won in the war or whatever.
24:43: Okay. So now we're, we're going to the, you know, they just burn the heretics as if the argument was, we're talking about the most popular people.
24:54: This is a popularity where that the majority, as if my argument was the majority of reformers are on my side, therefore
25:01: Layton Flowers is wrong. My argument was and remains that in the issue that Martin Luther himself identified as the central issue of the
25:15: Reformation, Layton Flowers agrees with Erasmus against Luther.
25:21: That really isn't a disputable point. If you know, Layton likes to talk about,
25:28: I just don't think that he's a proper person to have a dialogue with. He's not really an honest interlocutor, so on and so forth.
25:34: Well, if, if Layton was an honest interlocutor, then what he would have done is actually responded to the assertion that was made and the assertion that was made was not even touched.
25:48: Should have just simply been admitted. That's true. And here's why. I think
25:54: Luther was wrong in what he said about individual election. I think he was wrong in what he said about the bondage of the will to sin.
26:06: And I think Erasmus was right on these issues. Just, just be straight up front.
26:13: Instead of throwing sand in the air and going all over the rest of this stuff to try to find a way around it, it just simply doesn't actually accomplish anything.
26:26: And so again, just demonstrating how far we've gone from the original subject. Granted, I write
26:31: Martin Luther, Zwingli, Calvin were all highly influential leaders of the Reformation. However, however, their views more closely aligned with Tulip sociology are far they're a far cry from the five point
26:45: Calvinistic views resurging today. Okay. So once again, was my assertion that the five points of Calvinism defined the fundamental division at the beginning of the
27:01: Reformation between the reformers in Rome? No, that's not what I said. What we said and what is true and what remains true is that when it comes to the issue of the
27:13: Reformation, it was whether grace is necessary, but insufficient or both necessary and sufficient.
27:23: That's the issue. That's, that's not the five points of Calvinism. And so what he's done is he's gone back to an old article that he wrote and he's thinking, well, this, this is, this is a good response.
27:35: Let's, let's throw this out there. It's actually not a response to what was said. Now he has plenty of followers who will just go,
27:44: Oh, there you go. Blue, white right out of the water again, without ever stopping and going, well, yeah, that if I'm honest, that, that was what white said that that was his point.
27:56: And yeah, I did. I looked up some stuff and yeah, he's been saying the same thing long before Leighton Flowers got started doing anything.
28:06: So why is Leighton responding this way? Some of the questions that must be asked now in the process, here's where our speed in covering, cause
28:21: I've covered half of the material as far as the video goes already that I've got that I've already gotten indexed, but that's, this is where we slow down, but it's, it's worthwhile because when
28:37: I heard this section, I was offended. I am offended as a professor of church history.
28:45: I'm offended as one who honestly believes that we as Christians should be very, very intent upon recognizing that we should not place a standard upon those who went before us that we would not want placed upon ourselves.
29:11: And it just seems that the anti -reformed are willing to massacre church history, sort of like King James only is, are willing to massacre church history too.
29:23: They really, really are. And it's a, it's a sad thing to observe. It really is.
29:30: But let's listen to it. And then you'll see what he's doing here is notice on the screen, these three well -known reformers held some very questionable beliefs and practices.
29:43: So we're going to have questionable beliefs and practices. And the first instance that is given, here's the quote, you can see it on the screen.
29:52: I'll, I'll have him read it. But for instance, Calvin believed the sacrament of the Eucharist provided the undoubted assurance of eternal life to our minds, but also secures the immortality of our flesh, comma, close quote.
30:06: That's only part of the sentence. Cause then he goes, while Luther condoned bigamy. So you see the context, this is his article.
30:14: He is accountable for this. So the question we have to ask is, did, did
30:25: Leighton Flowers come up with this quotation from a careful and fair reading of the Institutes of Christian Religion?
30:31: Or is he getting it from secondary source and hence has no idea what the context is, what the arguments were.
30:38: Does this man have the historical background knowledge at the time of the Reformation to be able to meaningfully critique
30:46: Calvin's view of the supper? And I'd like to know where he got that ability, but here, here's what he has to say.
30:53: For instance, Calvin believed the sacrament of the Eucharist provided quote, undoubted assurance of eternal life to our minds, but also secures the immortality of our flesh.
31:02: Okay. So there's, he read it. It's his article. And so I stopped.
31:10: And even though later he is going to say that I would not take the time to do original reading or research or to represent them or all the rest of this stuff, even though I'm playing their own videos as I normally do.
31:23: There's some amazing hypocrisy later on expressed. But despite that,
31:31: I took the time, I stopped and I started looking for the citation.
31:39: So I had to go over to his website and look around and find the material and then find the article.
31:48: And eventually I found the footnote, which gave the reference for the citation to Institutes of the
31:54: Christian Religion, book four, chapter 17, paragraph or section 32.
32:02: Yesterday on Twitter, I invited people, if you wanted to have a little deeper experience of Radio Free Geneva today, to take the time to read anywhere beginning in chapter 17.
32:20: But specifically section 32 yourself. Again, my personal feeling is,
32:29: I doubt very, very much that Leighton Flowers was sitting around reading the
32:34: Institutes one day and went, wow, look at that. I'm going to mark that and use that in the future because that's an amazing assertion on Calvin's part.
32:45: It sounds, because it's a highly questionable belief and practice.
32:53: The reality is that if you read this section of the
32:59: Institutes without a knowledge of the schoolmen, without a knowledge of Aquinas, without a knowledge of the current debates going on, even within the
33:17: Reformation, now I have stood, four years ago, I stood in the room where the
33:24: Marburg colloquy took place. And I lectured to our people at that place concerning the dispute that took place between Luther and Zwingli, Philip's deep desire to bring the
33:46: Reformation together. And they agreed on 14 out of 15 points, but they couldn't agree on this one.
33:53: And there was no Concord arrived at. And this is where there's the famous painting of Luther and he's written on the table, whether that was a table that had a nice cover on it or whatever.
34:09: He's written on the table. The Latin is hoc est corpus meum, this is my body.
34:16: This is SD in the Greek. This is my body. And he's, he's pointing to it.
34:24: And I lectured on the reality of the fact that, historically, the majority of those at Marburg were convinced by Zwingli's arguments over against Luther's, that Zwingli was significantly more respectful toward Luther than Luther was towards Zwingli by a long shot.
34:46: But Luther, Luther is much more of a theologian of the heart than he is theologian of the mind.
34:59: He is not nearly as consistent as Calvin is. And it's a fascinating area of study.
35:07: And it's an important area of study to recognize the mediating influence that John Calvin had.
35:17: John Calvin could probably have accomplished what Philip wanted to have happen at Marburg, in the sense that his position is not a fully
35:33: Zwinglian position. His position is one that affirms a real presence of Christ, but not in a materialistic sense and not in the sense of ubiquity that began to develop in defense of Luther's position.
35:54: So the point is, there's a lot here and I see no evidence,
35:59: I have no evidence that Leighton Flowers has any idea what the issues were, nor would
36:12: I, I would be shocked if he was even aware of the fact that the section of the
36:19: Lord's Supper in the London Baptist Confession of Faith, 1689, is deeply influenced by Calvin and is pretty much
36:26: Calvin's position. So there is a bunch of background and it offends me when people who are trying to promote a new position, they've come up with their own name and all the rest of this stuff, pull this kind of stunt with church history.
36:52: It's cheap, it's easy to do, but it misrepresents history, it misrepresents those who've gone before us and it's simply dishonest.
37:04: So I'm going to read section 32 because I don't like being told that you don't do your homework, first of all, when over the years we've demonstrated this exact opposite of that, but I want people to hear what was actually being said.
37:26: So after having spent numerous paragraphs, this is a fairly lengthy section, disputing transubstantiation and the idea of what would eventually be called consubstantiation, ubiquity of the body of Christ and all the rest of this kind of stuff, having refuted all that, now
37:47: Calvin comes to a positive statement. Now, should anyone ask me as to the mode,
37:56: I will not be ashamed to confess that it is too high a mystery either for my mind to comprehend or my words to express.
38:03: And to speak more plainly, I rather feel than understand it. The truth of God, therefore, in which
38:11: I can safely rest, I hear embraced without controversy. He declares that his flesh is the meat, his blood, the drink of my soul.
38:20: I give my soul to him to be fed with such food. In his sacred supper, he bids me take, eat, and drink his body and blood under the symbols of bread and wine.
38:33: I have no doubt that he will truly give and I receive.
38:40: Only I reject the absurdities which appear to be unworthy of the heavenly majesty of Christ and are inconsistent with the reality of his human nature.
38:51: Since they must also be repugnant to the word of God, which teaches both that Christ was received into the glory of the heavenly kingdom, so as to be exalted above all the circumstances of the world, and no less carefully ascribes to him the properties belonging to a true human nature.
39:07: So this is, again, argumentation specifically here about the ubiquity of the idea, and certain
39:15: Lutheran theologians develop this, the idea of the fact that some of the divine attributes are actually communicated to the physical aspect of Christ.
39:25: So his physical body becomes omnipresent. And that's how he's in the supper.
39:32: And Calvin, following Augustine, is saying, no, he's at the right hand of the father. He will return someday, but he's not here in that sense.
39:42: And this is a fundamental denial of the reality of his human nature. That's what he's saying. This ought not to seem incredible or contradictory to reason, because as the whole kingdom of Christ is spiritual, so whatever he does in his church is not to be tested by the wisdom of this world.
40:02: Or to use the words of Augustine, quote, Such, I say, is the corporeal presence which the nature of the sacrament requires, and which we say is here displayed in such power and efficacy that it not only gives our minds undoubted assurance of eternal life, but also secures the immortality of our flesh, since it is now quickened by his immortal flesh, and in a manner shines in his immortality.
40:37: That's where the quote came from, by the way. Those who are carried beyond this with their hyperboles do nothing more by their extravagancies than obscure the plain and simple truth.
40:48: If anyone is not yet satisfied, I would have him here to consider with himself that we are speaking of the sacrament, every part of which ought to have reference to faith.
40:58: Now, by participation of the body, as we have explained, we nourish faith and not less richly and abundantly than do those who drag
41:06: Christ himself from heaven. Notice he's not dragging Christ. Still, I am free to confess that that mixture or transfusion of the flesh of Christ with our soul, which they teach,
41:17: I repudiate, because it is enough for us that Christ, out of the substance of his flesh, breathes life into our souls, nay, diffuses his own life into us, though the real flesh of Christ does not enter us.
41:32: I may add that there can be no doubt that the analogy of faith by which Paul enjoins us to test every interpretation of scripture is clearly with us in this matter.
41:42: Let those who oppose a truth so clear consider to what standard of faith they conform themselves. Every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ has come to flesh is not of God, 1
41:50: John 4, 3. These men, though they disguise the fact or perceive it not, rob him of his flesh."
41:58: End quote. Now, to take
42:04: Calvin's doctrine, which involves an understanding of the means of grace.
42:11: Now, it is quite probable that in the circles that Dr.
42:17: Flowers is familiar with, there's probably very little discussion of the means of grace. That is a
42:23: Reformed concept. It is not a part of fundamentalism.
42:32: It's not a part of the, well, okay, Anabaptist is such a broad phrase that it, you can never, there's almost nothing you can say of Anabaptists that would be, that would not be easily refutable by reference to one or another.
42:49: So I won't even go there. But the idea that God has provided means by which not his grace is controlled and channeled like sacraments, but he has provided ordinances, baptism and the
43:11: Lord's supper. He has provided in the organization of the church.
43:18: The eldership is a means of grace. The diaconate is a means of grace. The worship, the reading of the word, the seeing of the hymns.
43:27: These are means of grace. And the supper in a particular fashion is a means of grace because Jesus promised that when his people would be obedient to him, when they would observe this, which he had commands of them, that he would be with them, that they would be proclaiming his death until he comes.
43:51: And that's what Calvin's referring to. If you think that that portion of a sentence removed from all the paragraphs before and after and all the section where Calvin talks about justification by grace alone, through faith alone, everything somehow provides the idea that as is here,
44:14: Calvin believed the sacrament of the Eucharist provide the endowed assurance for eternal life to our minds, but also the cure is the immortality of our flesh.
44:20: As if that's a questionable belief or practice. Then you're only demonstrating that you only read sections of historical documents to try to find a way to impugn the author.
44:35: You have no honesty or integrity in your interpretation of those words. None, none.
44:44: Shame on anyone who does it. Shame on anyone who does it. So I wanted people to, and like I said,
44:53: I said to everybody else, hey, you all go read it. You read it for yourself. Because if you read it, you're going to see that there's so much being, so much reference being made to what's come before.
45:02: You're going to have to back up and you're going to have to really see just how broad this conversation was and how taking a snippet out like this is just simply abusing the early church.
45:13: Not the early church, the Reformation church, church history. Shame on everyone who does it. Now, Leighton Flowers, to my knowledge, has never taught church history.
45:25: And that's a good thing for every student who has not been exposed to that kind of abuse of church history.
45:33: So there you go. Now, uh, so, uh, Calvin is this big, bad person.
45:40: And of course, so is Luther. He was known to be somewhat anti, uh, anti -Semitic, Semitical too.
45:47: It's anti -Semitic, not anti -Semitical. I will just simply, um, direct everyone.
45:59: It's available online. You can go to the, um, I don't know why this thing keeps moving on here.
46:06: Uh, you can go to the Sovereign YouTube website and you can look this up.
46:16: November of 2017,
46:22: Washington DC, there was a conference held there.
46:28: I spoke twice. My daughter spoke once. Uh, Dr. Peterson spoke there, uh, as well.
46:35: And one of my two talks was called the
46:41: Two Luthers. Everyone who was a part of our group that went on that, uh, trip where we had just gotten back in September from Germany and visiting the places of the
46:58: Reformation will tell you that I made them extremely uncomfortable by how many times
47:11: I pointed out the reality that starting the first night in Berlin, first night in Berlin, I said to everyone, now
47:21: I, I know, and you need to understand so that we do not create a, a caricature, a cartoonish view of the
47:31: Reformation, that most of the men that we will be studying in their lives, following their lives, following the places they went, visiting places in their lives, so on and so forth, that most of these men would not extend to us the right hand of fellowship and in fact would have banished us if not have, if not in some instances execute us.
47:52: And some people were just blown away, but I emphasize that throughout our trip, because you want to know the truth about history.
48:06: You don't want to have a cartoonish version of history. And there are a lot of people that present the cartoon version rather than the reality.
48:15: And so that presentation, you can listen to it, once again will provide original citations from Luther, especially from Eck, his greatest opponent in his life, and yet one of the most anti -Semitic
48:40: Roman Catholics of his day. Fascinating that Eck and Luther were at absolute loggerheads, but they seemed to almost outdo each other in their expression of anti -Semitic statements.
48:56: But I talked about the reasons for that, and I talked about the change in Luther. Does Leighton Flowers have any idea?
49:04: I think if you say someone is anti -Semitical, you probably haven't done a whole lot of reading in Luther's life, what
49:14: Luther said before 1525 and what Luther said after 1525.
49:22: And I would imagine if Leighton is watching this or watching it at a later point, that if he were to be here in person and I were to simply look at him and say, what was the major event of 1525 that changed
49:37: Luther's life, he would have no earthly idea. Would have no idea. He gives no evidence of being a person who does anything in this area.
49:51: And so throw it out if you wish, but you have to ask the question, why are you doing?
49:58: What does this have to do? What did the Calvin quote have to do with what
50:04: I said? Absolutely, positively nothing. So why throw it out there?
50:11: Red meat for your followers. Make it look like, oh, I've done it again.
50:16: Look, see how easy it is for me to demonstrate that James White just doesn't know what he's talking about.
50:22: And yet it has nothing to do with the subject at all. After he makes these comments, he then begins to discuss
50:34: Luther's successor. He was the professor of Greek at Wittenberg.
50:43: Once again, I don't think any of these were recorded, but a number of times on the trip that we took,
50:52: I discussed the relationship between Luther and Melanchthon and Melanchthon's own theological journey over time.
51:02: And then his journey after Luther's death and the influences, so on and so forth.
51:08: Again, forgive me for questioning whether or not there is any basis for thinking that Leighton Flowers knows anything about Philip Melanchthon from original sources, because every single time that he says
51:27: Melanchthon's name in this video, and I think minimum of 10 times, maybe as many as 15 times, he can't pronounce it right.
51:37: It's right there in front of him. Over and over and over again, this is what we ended up hearing.
51:49: Who is Melanchthon? There is no
51:54: M there. That is not a Latin pronunciation. Every single time he said
52:02: Melanchthon. Listen to it yourself. Now, Rich pointed out at one point
52:08: I was playing it and he said, oh, there he said it right. And I said, no, he didn't. I rolled it back and Rich said, oh,
52:14: I was looking at the screen. I was reading it and my brain heard what I was reading and corrected the mispronunciation.
52:23: So be careful. Listen carefully. I didn't have time to do it, but I could have simply taken each one out and put him
52:31: Melanchthon, Melanchthon, Melanchthon, just over and over and over again. I don't know why, but my point is, and this is what
52:38: I was saying earlier, this doesn't happen if this man has ever taken a meaningful church history class, where you have a professor, where you hear him speaking.
52:50: You know how I can illustrate this? I have a minority pronunciation of Septuagint.
52:58: I say Septuagint. You know why? Because my Greek professor I had for seven years said
53:04: Septuagint. And so you're going to be influenced by the people from whom you learn as you gain your scholarship.
53:15: And so this man has not learned, has not gained any scholarship in church history.
53:21: He's going with secondary sources. I don't know where this came from, but the relevance, as I said, is going to be in a few minutes, well, half an hour, whenever we get to it, when he starts making commentary about what scribes did in textual criticism.
53:41: And yet you can tell by the language he's using, he has no idea what the most basic categories of textual criticism are about.
53:51: None. He wouldn't know the difference between a variant and a translation of his life depended on it, and yet he's making entire arguments.
53:59: And what holds all this together? Why even mention this? Why pick on the man's mispronunciation?
54:05: Because the point is, he has a goal and the goal is to promote provisionism, but that's not really the positive aspect.
54:12: The positive aspect is attack Calvinism. And anything, anything that can be used to do that will be brought in, even if he doesn't have a clue whether it's historically accurate or not.
54:25: That's imbalance. That's, that's a bad thing. Yes, you say subjunct because I say subjunct.
54:35: And that's because Dr. Barrett said subjunct. So there you go. It's, it moves along that way.
54:42: Yeah. Okay, let's press on here because we are coming up on the first hour and I'm just gonna go through what
54:52: I have. And if that, I'll try to make it within two hours. If it's an hour and 45 minutes, we'll do an hour 45 minutes.
54:58: That's fine. That's the way that it will work. So let's go to the next section here.
55:06: After Luther, owing to Melanchthem's influence, not only adopted a corporate theological reading of passages like Romans 9, but also insisted on some human role in faith and repentance, which leads to salvation.
55:20: Again, check the citations. I, I, I welcome you to check my citations.
55:25: It's fine to do that. I, I, I, be good Bereans. Don't just take my word for something. Go read the sources.
55:30: Okay. I wanted to play that part because that's exactly what we did, isn't it? You know, we, we check the citations.
55:37: We go and read Calvin. We go and read the original sources and find out that he's taking stuff from secondary sources.
55:46: Uh, but notice what he said, most Lutheran interpreters, in other words, there was movement after Luther and there was, but if this, if, if, if Dr.
55:59: Flowers was familiar with the subject he's addressing, then he would know there are tomes on the reality that Luther's expressions in the bondage of the will differ from the later
56:15: Lutheran understandings. Later Lutheran interpreters move away from Luther on this point.
56:22: There's no question about it. None. But they also admit what Luther actually said and what
56:30: Luther actually said to Erasmus is still the issue that he has yet to even begin to touch.
56:40: This is, this is also a place where we can, we should be encouraged to learn how to listen to argumentation.
56:48: There's so little argumentation presented today. I mean, listening to Jen Psaki and identifying that every third word out of her mouth is a lie, that's easy.
56:56: Anybody can do that. You just have to have a few functioning brain cells, but in other contexts, you have to be able to listen and consider the foundational issues and see how things are being twisted one way or the other.
57:13: Certainly we have to do that in this context as well. So yes,
57:18: Lutheran interpreters did move away. Everybody knows that. That doesn't change the reality of the debate between Luther and Erasmus.
57:28: He tells of that. But the point being is that sometimes
57:33: James White wants to try to demonize us by putting us outside of the
57:40: Protestant category and say, oh, you're on Rome's side with regard to these things. When the truth of the matter is, even key, some of the key, even the most intellectual, well -learned scholars central to the reformation at the time of the reformation actually differed with men like James White and modern -day
58:02: Calvinists. This is just a fact of the matter, okay? Facts don't care about your feelings.
58:08: And so as we say quite regularly, repeating the popular phrase in the political realm, facts don't care about your feelings.
58:15: So what do we see here? What he's done is, again, he has shifted from what the assertion was that Luther and Erasmus have this debate.
58:27: He's on Erasmus' side versus Luther. He agrees with the provisionist, the provision of grace through sacraments or any other way over against the sufficiency of grace on the reformed side.
58:41: That was the issue. He's avoided all that. He's gone to, let's talk about five points of Calvinism. Let's go to an issue over here, an issue over there.
58:48: And oh, now see, there are people who disagreed with James White back then on other issues, on other issues, not on the issue that I was talking about, not on the issue that I presented, but on other stuff.
59:02: So this is called straw man argumentation. You've spent the time evidently hoping that your followers will just simply listen to what you have to say, and they just sort of go along with this changing of the direction, and now you see what we've done.
59:20: We've demonstrated that the real scholars disagree. We actually changed the subject, but hey, there you go.
59:28: That's the kind of argumentation that we have here. Then we got this one, and we could spend a lot of time, but just briefly, let's...
59:39: The first to introduce these very, quote -unquote, Calvinistic doctrines into the early church, the first on record to interpret things from that perspective, the concept of total inability and irresistible grace.
59:53: So this is Augustine. We're back to dupied. We're back to stuff that we refuted rather fully last year.
01:00:03: We went long before Augustine, and again, this is where Leighton didn't know who
01:00:10: Clement was, and when Clement lived, and what Clement wrote, and remember all that stuff.
01:00:15: You have to go back, and it was during the big lockdown period when socialism began taking over the world.
01:00:23: But again, just throwing out the stuff on Augustine and things that we have addressed all the way back in 2020, back in those good old days before vaccines.
01:00:41: Just be clear about the facts, okay? Just know what you're talking about when you're talking and listening to men like James White, because he's not going to take the time to go through all of that.
01:00:52: Now, let me just... I'm going to replay that. Okay, so just be clear on the facts, and when you listen to James White, he's not going to bother you with facts.
01:01:06: He's not going to take the time to accurately represent anything.
01:01:13: I just want to point out for all the people, and I see the comments, how come you're just so mean to Leighton Flowers?
01:01:22: I don't see anybody pointing to this thing and go, wait a minute, that's a very disrespectful and mean -spirited thing to say, and it also happens to be patently false.
01:01:36: Why don't we get that side of things? I'm not quite sure, but evidently, one side can present the kind of stuff we're seeing here, show no evidence of a knowledge of the original source material.
01:01:54: I would be stunned if Leighton Flowers ever read The Bondage of the
01:01:59: Will, this kind of stuff, but then they take shots like that. Hmm, that's interesting.
01:02:08: So, be clear about the facts. I would suggest to everyone, yes, we do need to be clear about the facts. That is a very...
01:02:15: we agree on that. What we don't agree on is that that's not something I would ever do. I think we've already sort of demonstrated how backwards that is.
01:02:24: Just be clear about the facts, okay? Just know what you're talking about when you're talking and listening to men like James White, because he's not going to take the time to go through all of that.
01:02:34: It just makes his view look less likely to be believed. Oh, by the way, go through all of that was his article, was the article he was just reading, and mispronouncing in the process, but that he was just reading.
01:02:47: That's what... I wouldn't take the time to go through all that. It would be easy to go through all that, to be honest with you.
01:02:58: I mean, I just did with the Calvin quote, right? Just did with material regarding Luther.
01:03:05: I didn't bother with the bigamy stuff, because that gets you into all the Philip stuff and everything else that related to that, and wouldn't get us any farther along the lines here.
01:03:15: But that didn't have anything to do with the point. It was all a straw man. It was dust in the air.
01:03:22: It was a misrepresentation of what the original discussion was about. We have yet to have any meaningful interaction with the argumentation that was presented.
01:03:32: Not a scintilla, not a sentence, nothing. But we do have a whole lot of smoke blowing.
01:03:41: So you do need to watch the facts. Therefore, he wouldn't go through the facts of the matter like we're trying to do on this program by letting you see for yourself what's behind the curtains, so to speak, of what so many men like James White want to try to paint out there as being something that everybody in the
01:04:00: Reformation time all believe like we do. This was a key dividing point of the Reformation, and all the
01:04:06: Reformers just believe the tulip like we do. That's just factually incorrect.
01:04:12: So continuing... Okay, so did you catch that? Did you catch the shift?
01:04:18: Where did I ever say all the Reformers believed the tulip? Leighton Flowers? Where did
01:04:23: I ever say that? Never said that. Everybody knows I've never said that. It's a lie. It's as dishonest as the day is long.
01:04:33: But I didn't see anybody in his comments going, Leighton, that's not what he was saying.
01:04:38: He was very clear. He specifically said on the nature of man, man's will, and the nature of grace that you'd be on Erasmus's side versus Luther.
01:04:52: He wasn't talking about the five points of tulip. I didn't see anybody doing that.
01:04:57: Instead, I saw a lot of rah, rah, yay, oh, ooh. And it demonstrates that a lot of people are very easily impressed by really bad argumentation.
01:05:08: I mean, it's not even argumentation. It's just deception. That's all it is. Just horrific stuff.
01:05:16: Okay, now, here's where we get into... All right, here's where we get into where it got even stranger.
01:05:32: And it gets really strange toward the end. I haven't even indexed all that stuff yet. If you recall the presentation that I made, my first set of comments was, okay, he's quoting from Revelation 22, but didn't seem to know.
01:05:50: And I would like to know. My gut feeling is, he did not know there was a variant there. My gut feeling is, if I walked up to him at a mall and put the
01:06:06: Nestle in 28th edition in front of him and said, read the textual data. I don't believe
01:06:12: Leighton Flowers could do that. I really don't. I've never, ever, ever, ever, ever heard him give me any reason to think that he would have the ability to do that.
01:06:22: Never. And so I'd like to know, did he know there was a textual variant before I pointed it out?
01:06:29: Why did I point it out? Because you don't make a dogmatic assertion based upon a textual variant.
01:06:39: The variant in Revelation chapter 22 impacts the meaning. And so if you're going to make your point, make your point from a text that is not a questionable text.
01:06:51: And especially the Book of Revelation, that can be a challenge given the textual state of the
01:06:58: Book of Revelation. You don't have a majority text in essence in Revelation.
01:07:04: The Byzantine text type split all sorts of different ways. And so I pointed it out and I made reference to it.
01:07:13: And then he had then quoted from Titus 2.
01:07:19: I went to Titus 2 and provided an exegesis of Titus chapter 2.
01:07:25: Now, the next time we continue with this, what you're going to see is an amazing example where one side provides a text -based interpretation and the other side's response is to never, never, never provide the slightest positive interpretation of the text at all, ignore it, and refute the exegesis by saying, well, if you believe that, then this must be the case.
01:07:54: Rather than any even attempt to touch the text.
01:08:02: It was astonishing, as you will see. So a little bit of heads up as to what will be coming.
01:08:11: But before we get there, and everybody, I think, you know,
01:08:17: Brother Estes was the one who brought my attention, thanks a lot, ruined my life.
01:08:22: No, just kidding. And just kidding.
01:08:30: I'm sure he caught this and I wonder if the thought didn't cross his mind as soon as he started hearing it going, oh man, something tells me
01:08:39: James is going to go after this. How could I not? When someone starts trying to use
01:08:47: TC, textual criticism, against Calvinism, and the process demonstrates they, well, as was originally said, now
01:09:01: I give a demonstration, they were never reformed by any stretch of the imagination, never had an understanding of it by any stretch of the imagination.
01:09:07: But clearly I have no idea what textual criticism is about either. Yeah, I'm probably going to, yeah, probably going to stop there.
01:09:14: Because it was natural for me.
01:09:21: And anybody who knows me, knows it would be natural for me in looking at the
01:09:27: Revelation 22 text to note the textual variance. There's a lot of people who watch this program because they really enjoy on the last program
01:09:37: I did John nine, remember? And we talked about a variant we had never discussed on the program before.
01:09:44: I don't get the feeling that Layton listens to those parts. I think he only listens to the part of this program that is about him.
01:09:54: So here's, all right, here's, here's the section.
01:10:01: Let's let's listen in. This one has a variant, however, in the original text.
01:10:07: And some of the scribes, according to scholars, were in order to fight against the, the rise of universalism, which some were trying to make the argument that universalism is true.
01:10:18: If the grace of the Lord Jesus be with all, then therefore some of the scribes added all saints or added in the terms in other, in some of the other documents.
01:10:31: And James Watt actually even acknowledges this earlier in his broadcast. He acknowledges the different variants within the different scribal translations, which by the way.
01:10:44: Now what's a scribal translation? No one knows.
01:10:49: I don't think he knows either. Acknowledged? No, that was the whole point I brought it up.
01:10:55: It's not so much acknowledging something as bringing out the reality that, and maybe this is just something that Layton's not accustomed to, but when you actually read a critical
01:11:05: Greek text, you notice the variants. They're marked. You don't have to look at the little footnote down there in the
01:11:12: English. They're marked. It's right there. But did you hear what was said?
01:11:21: He said that scholars tell us that scribes, because universalism was arising, inserted saints into the text.
01:11:42: Now I would really dearly love for Dr. Flowers to open up the critical
01:11:53: Greek text for us and tell us, which scribes did this?
01:11:59: When? How do you know that universalism was arising in their context?
01:12:06: How do you know this is an addition and not a deletion?
01:12:11: What was the process that you went through to come to these conclusions? Because those of us who actually do textual criticism,
01:12:21: I was at a seminary just a few weeks ago lecturing on coherence -based genealogical methodology.
01:12:28: When I got home, I did another lecture at another seminary on the 1550
01:12:33: Stephanus and its place in the history of the Texas Receptus and the place of apologetics in textual critical material.
01:12:42: The fact of the matter is I'm published in that field, been doing it for years, and I can tell when someone is once again blowing smoke.
01:12:52: And that's what Leighton Flowers just did. He doesn't know what the background, he doesn't know what the scribes were thinking.
01:12:58: That's what Bart Ehrman does. This scribe here, this arose because of this early controversy.
01:13:05: And real textual critical scholars don't do that kind of thing. They may raise the issue that, well, possibly in some places this was a concern which might give rise to something, but they don't say it like this.
01:13:22: This kind of, well, this is why the scribes did this. You don't know that. You can't even begin to know that.
01:13:31: The data does not provide us with that kind of information. It's that kind of conclusion is just, again, it's smoke blowing.
01:13:40: But the point, the whole point that he missed was that the text that he chose to use and make his theological point from was not the text to do that from because of its context and its history.
01:13:53: Besides that, it's a concluding statement. It's a salutation at the end of a book, basically.
01:14:05: Hardly a meaningful foundation for arguing something. But the fact that did you, he talked about scribal translation.
01:14:14: What is a scribal translation? Because if you know textual criticism, you know the difference between a manuscript, the text of the manuscript, because sometimes you have to differentiate between the two.
01:14:31: And then a translation, are we talking about an early translation from the
01:14:37: Greek into Latin, Sahitic, Boheric, Coptic, the key early translations,
01:14:43: Latin, the old Latin, things like that of the new Testament. What is a scribal translation?
01:14:49: We can talk about scribal errors, but not a scribal translation.
01:14:57: So when you can put words together that don't make any sense, in the context of using them, it's probably because you don't know anything about the field you're talking about.
01:15:10: So that then led to this. And with this, we may actually only end up doing an hour and a half.
01:15:20: I'm being self -controlled today. I'm trying to be self -controlled. Listen to this.
01:15:27: Variance and the various scribal errors. Now, it started a little bit too early.
01:15:34: It says, he talks a lot about variance. Okay. That's like saying
01:15:42: Anthony Fauci talks a lot about viruses. It's a little bit more than that. Yes, we talk about variance.
01:15:49: We talk about New Testament textual criticism. We talk about manuscripts and we talk about their role in apologetics because it's vitally important, extremely important.
01:16:01: So yes, we do actually talk about variance, and we do so apologetically, and we do so in depth, and we've done so for a very, very, very long period of time now.
01:16:13: Variance and the various scribal errors. I've always found it interesting that on Calvinism, God ordains whatsoever comes to pass, right?
01:16:24: And therefore, God ordains his own word to be scribally misinterpreted, to have variance, to have errors.
01:16:36: And so this whole debate over inerrancy to me seems somewhat superfluous if Calvinism is true, because ultimately you've got
01:16:44: God sovereignly decreeing the errors within the scribes and the variant documents that we have out there.
01:16:51: Because as you know, we don't have the autograph. We don't have the original version of any of the New Testament passages.
01:16:57: Now we have New Testament scripture, Old Testament scriptures for that matter. We have very strong, very good scribe copies, obviously, from scribes over the years.
01:17:10: And that's one of the better than almost any other document in the world. We have a great amount of reason to believe that the scriptures do convey the message of the original authors in a very strong way.
01:17:24: However, the fact that there are so many variants and scribal errors seems to be proof of free will and the ability for people to make real mistakes.
01:17:34: Otherwise, you've got God sovereignly and unchangeably decreeing for people to mess up his translations and the scriptures, which, again, doesn't really compute in my mind, at least.
01:17:45: And again, maybe it's just like I said before, a shortcoming of my own cognitive abilities to understand and grasp how that that makes any rational sense.
01:17:53: If inerrancy is so important, if holding to inerrancy is so important of the original autographs, which we don't even have, then why wouldn't this concept, an idea of inerrancy of the scribes, translations of and depictions of the original text, also be under the sovereign decree of God to be inerrant as well?
01:18:13: And it doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Anyway... Okay, you see why we...
01:18:20: Because there might be some people, there are people that are...
01:18:26: There are lay people that are just confused. It's astonishing that a person who teaches at a seminary...
01:18:33: May I just simply say to the leadership of the seminary that Dr.
01:18:38: Flowers teaches at, are you listening to this? Are you listening to this?
01:18:47: Okay. Anyway, I can see how lay people can be confused about this.
01:18:55: In fact, I, upon listening to that, could not help... And that'll be it.
01:19:01: So you can probably pull that down. There's really not anything up there. I hope...
01:19:09: Some of you may remember that many, many, many moons ago, I was riding
01:19:16: South Mountain, listening to Bart Ehrman on the Lutheran show out of St.
01:19:24: Louis, issues, et cetera. And Dr.
01:19:35: Ehrman said something that just astonished me because it was so simplistic.
01:19:42: I didn't expect it from Ehrman. Ehrman said that one of the reasons that he abandoned a belief in the inspiration of the
01:19:54: Bible... Now he... Just to make sure everybody knows, his argument is he lost his faith because the problem of evil, because of theodicy.
01:20:03: That's what he said when he debated Michael Brown. But it's very clear that textual issues were central to the degradation of his false faith.
01:20:17: And so he made the argument on issues, et cetera. And I just remember,
01:20:23: I was going downhill. I had to be careful because it's... I was just astonished that someone who knows as much as Bart Ehrman could make this argument.
01:20:30: But basically, he said that if Scripture was inspired, then
01:20:39: God would have protected it from any textual variation.
01:20:48: And I'm like, and exactly how would he do that?
01:20:56: Because as I've said many times, if you accept Ehrman's standard of a variant -free manuscript tradition, then
01:21:10: God could not have given his word until 1949.
01:21:17: And we all know why that is, right? Because what was invented in 1949?
01:21:23: The photocopier. Now those first photocopies, might not have even qualified.
01:21:32: But the photocopier was invented in 1949. And so, if the standard is perfection of transcription, which no one until our century would have ever even thought of.
01:21:49: You do realize that, right? I mean, transcriptional error of handwritten manuscripts was how human beings had all literature up until the printing press.
01:22:02: And the printing press didn't get rid of it. When Gutenberg invented the press, at least in the
01:22:10: West, Chinese had it before we did. But when Gutenberg did that, it was movable font.
01:22:16: And so, there were still errors. You know, you've heard the adulterer's
01:22:21: Bible, where the printer forgot the word not, and thou shalt not commit adultery. And it was printed that way.
01:22:27: And the king was so embarrassed about it that he chucked the printer in jail for that. So it was, again, not until the modern period where you could have any expectation of an exact copy.
01:22:45: And that being done by photocopier. So, nobody in human history could have understood this until, even understood the argument until the modern period.
01:22:59: And so, every century, every century of church history has a discussion of the differences in the manuscripts.
01:23:07: Well, at least starting with the second. We have very little in the first. So, Justin Martyr argues with Trifo the
01:23:15: Jew about the readings of the Greek Septuagint, and about textual issues.
01:23:21: And that continues throughout church history, every single century.
01:23:30: So, Ehrman's argument, I just, I was astonished, because how exactly would that work?
01:23:37: If a scribe is making a handwritten copy, and he's about to make an error, does
01:23:45: God just take over his hand? And instead of, all of a sudden, and he writes the right word instead of the wrong word?
01:23:56: Or does he just burst into flames before he can make the error? I mean, how does this work?
01:24:03: I have no earthly idea. And it was, for me, one of the clear illustrations of how
01:24:13: Ehrman really has to come up with some amazing ways of thinking to excuse his apostasy, because that's what he did.
01:24:28: He was, he's an apostate. So, how then do you respond?
01:24:34: And I'm going to sit down. I've been standing for an hour and a half, and ah, you stood up, because you've been sitting for an hour and a half.
01:24:42: So, I think it's fair that, and I've got wheels here. Now, which is going to move, the podium or the chair?
01:24:48: Oh, good. Chair. It's live, folks. That's the way it is. So, how do you respond then to what
01:25:01: Leighton says here? Because aside from all the terminology,
01:25:09: I mean, there was a massive confusion in there. And he's again, repeating secondary stuff.
01:25:14: He's heard, well, we just, we do, we have just such great scribal translations and the scribal things.
01:25:22: And, you know, he's heard people talking about these things, but would he be able to explain the relevance of the
01:25:32: CBGM databases to a demonstration of the coherence, the standard coherence of all the
01:25:39: Greek manuscripts with one another or anything like, no, of course not. It's just not his thing.
01:25:46: So, it's a massive confusion. And he's just repeating secondary sources again.
01:25:51: But putting all that aside, which is hard to do, but we'll put it aside for now.
01:25:58: What do you do with the argument that Calvinists have a problem with inerrancy because that means
01:26:10: God decreed textual variation? Well, you need to understand.
01:26:16: We have seen this every single time we have dealt with, and this is where the true imbalances, this is everything in time we've dealt with latent flowers.
01:26:28: This is what it boils down to. There can be no sovereign decree.
01:26:34: Everything that takes place in time has to be, has to have its origin solely in the human realm.
01:26:42: There can be no sovereign decree. So, you can look at everything and ask, why did
01:26:51: God decree to do it in such and such a way? As if recognizing the biblical teaching that there is a decree then also reveals to us all of God's purposes as to why that is.
01:27:06: So, then what he does, and this is amazing, is that the existence, notice the conflation of categories that came up there.
01:27:16: The existence of textual variation proves what? What did he say? Free will.
01:27:23: Free will. No, it proves that God used human beings in the transmission of the text over time.
01:27:35: It has nothing to do with free will. It proves that God used creatures, human beings, who were not designed to be perfect copy machines.
01:27:48: That's what it proves. It doesn't, it has nothing to do with total depravity or anything.
01:27:56: I suppose you could say it at least has some relevance to the fallen nature of man, but I'm not sure that you could make an overly strong theological argument that Adam would have been a perfect scribe.
01:28:14: Adam's eyes and mind would be subject to, would
01:28:19: Adam's mind and eyes not have been subject to error prior to sin? So, Adam was a
01:28:27: Xerox machine before the fall? I don't know if you want to really argue that, but the fact of the matter is that the vast majority of textual variants in the
01:28:41: New Testament are scribal errors. They are not, as some people like to argue, purposeful, but they were errors of mind, errors of sight.
01:28:55: They were attempts to harmonize one of the synoptic gospels with another synoptic gospel, and it may have been purposeful, it may have been unpurposeful, it may be that the scribe had memorized the section from Matthew, and then when he's, when he's transcribing the same section from Luke, there's a mental harmonization that takes place.
01:29:16: All sorts of discussions of these various issues in regards to the origin of scribal variants in the manuscripts.
01:29:29: But all that that proves, and because then he likes to say, well, we don't have the autographs.
01:29:36: That's true. Was it God's intention that the autographs should stay, and mankind messed that up?
01:29:43: I don't know. If there's no divine decree, who knows? But the idea he's putting forward is, how does that work in Calvinism?
01:29:54: Because the existence of variation is a part of God's decree on Calvinism, because everything is a part of God's decree.
01:30:04: Well, that's true. So when I look at the real challenging realities, not only of difficult textual variants, but even more importantly, of the textual variation that exists between the
01:30:23: Greek Septuagint and the Hebrew Old Testament, and then the fact the
01:30:30: New Testament writers quote from the Septuagint, and even quote textual variants in the Septuagint, that is a challenge that everybody has.
01:30:41: How does that prove free will? So let me ask, let me turn this around and ask of Leighton.
01:30:50: When, let's use Hebrews 8. When in Hebrews chapter 8, the majority of the
01:31:00: Hebrew Masoretic text has the phraseology, though I was a husband to them, from Jeremiah 31.
01:31:12: And yet the writer to Hebrews quotes, though I did not care for them, from the
01:31:18: Greek Septuagint. We can go back and we can see that in the
01:31:26: Hebrew language, the difference between the two is only one letter. Baal means to be lord over or husband to.
01:31:36: Gaal means to despise. And bait and gimel, very similar to each other in shape and form, even in modern script, let alone ancient script, which was even less discernible than the modern script is.
01:31:55: Anyway, so from Leighton's perspective, was that a human being using their free will to corrupt the text of Jeremiah 31 and the authors of the
01:32:17: New Testament weren't bright enough to catch it, and so they've continued the error by their free will?
01:32:24: So man's, do you believe that man's free will can corrupt scripture? I could ask you about a lot of different variants,
01:32:35: Leighton, because I don't, I'll be, again, I, you stumbled into an area that you should not have even gone into.
01:32:44: But is it your position that man's free will gave him the ability to corrupt scripture?
01:33:00: So when men spoke from God as being carried along by the Holy Spirit, you can be carried along by the Holy Spirit, but you can still use your free will to corrupt the scriptures, maybe out of ignorance, um, maybe, uh, an anti -Jewish scribe that was angry with his people changed, uh,
01:33:20: Baal to Gaal, and that free will was outside the, the, uh, sovereignty of God.
01:33:28: And so that's what's in the text today. And God couldn't, couldn't do anything about that.
01:33:35: Could God have done something? What would be the mechanism by which God does this that would protect the vaunted free will of each scribe?
01:33:44: I'd like to know what that exactly would be, because most of the men who were involved, not all, but most of the men,
01:33:52: I would say certainly R .C. Sproul was involved, so we can include him. But a lot of the men that were involved in the writing of the documents, defending the
01:34:03: Chicago Statement inerrancy, for example, defending inerrancy were reformed. And so we've never had this discussion, this objection before, because we believe
01:34:17: God ordains the ends as well as the means, and the means by which
01:34:22: God has ordained to communicate his word to us has differed between the
01:34:27: Old and the New Testaments. The Old Testament documents are the covenant documents of the people of Israel, and so they were not intended for distribution outside of the people of Israel.
01:34:40: And so the copying and distribution methodology was covenantal and limited, geographically limited.
01:34:54: You don't have copies of the Tanakh being sent outside of Israel, really until the period, minimally it's a period of dispersion, where the
01:35:08: Jews take them with them, but they're still primarily meant to be in the covenant community. Totally different from the
01:35:15: New Testament, and the gospel that it contains is meant to go to the whole world. And so there is an immediate explosion of the distribution of the text, translation of the text into those early
01:35:30: Old Latin, Coptic, Sahitic, Boheric, etc. that are very important in textual criticism.
01:35:39: And so different methodology, but if you want the manuscripts to go out to the whole world, which if you're using
01:35:55: Oikomene, there would be the whole Roman world, and you need to have enough of them produced, they're going to survive the persecution, especially the great persecution between 303 and 313, where thousands of manuscripts were destroyed.
01:36:09: Then the only way you can do that is through scribal copying, and many of those scribes are not professional scribes.
01:36:17: And again, God did not create us to be Xerox machines. And so yes, that was
01:36:26: God's intention, that he would preserve his word in that fashion.
01:36:34: And I do believe that we have all the original readings called the Tenacity of the New Testament text, because they not only copied what was before them, but they even would copy silly mistakes that someone before them had made, rather than lose anything.
01:36:49: So the original readings, I believe, are still there. And when I asked Bart Ehrman about that, he could only identify one place where he felt the original reading was no longer there.
01:36:57: And even the most rabid critic, who has any serious technical critical knowledge at all, would be limited maybe to three or four places, at most out of 138 ,000 plus words in the
01:37:09: New Testament. So I believe we have all the original readings.
01:37:15: The means that God used in his decree included the means that would be the only way of transmission, and that is hand copying in a fallen world, with people who can't get
01:37:31: LASIK, can't go down to Walgreens and buy a pair of readers. Rich and I both would not make the greatest scribes these days, especially if we were reading someone's small handwriting.
01:37:43: Oh yeah, I was trying to read the back of a pill bottle recently, and it's like, that's not even 2 .5,
01:37:51: what do you mean? That's going to have certain results. I've never met a
01:38:01: Reformed person that goes, oh yeah, well that must mean there's no sovereign decree.
01:38:08: Because if there is a sovereign decree, then God could have just decreed that every scribe would be perfect at what he does.
01:38:16: Well I guess God could have decreed that every preacher would be perfect at what he does too, and that there would never be any false teaching, and we wouldn't have to worry about that either.
01:38:29: This kind of arrogant questioning of God's decree and his way of doing things just absolutely astonishes me.
01:38:42: It truly does. But I think it's a question that can be turned back around, because I'd like to know, in the midst of the three or four hour response that will undoubtedly come to just what we've done here, and it won't touch on anything of the substance of what we are actually saying, but in the midst of all that,
01:39:04: I'd like to know in your vaunted non -decretal cosmology, because that's what you've got.
01:39:14: You don't have a divine decree. God has goals, I guess, and he's doing his best to get there, but could man in his free will have corrupted the scriptures, purposefully or by accident, and there's nothing
01:39:37: God can do about it. From your perspective, could
01:39:44: God have kept someone from making a major error in the transcription of the scriptures?
01:39:54: Those would be things that would be interesting, indeed, to know about. Okay, so, well, one hour and 40 minutes, that was short.
01:40:06: I thought I'd wax a little bit longer on some of those, but I figure we've definitely got the ball started.
01:40:15: And so, the next section really rehashes the discussion on Matthew 23 -37.
01:40:25: He again repeats the, he doesn't believe in the two wills thing, which we corrected before, but he just keeps repeating it because that's the thing.
01:40:34: And he does bring up Cornelius Venema, and a footnote in an article, we'll take a look at that, rehashes some of that.
01:40:45: But then, especially when we get into Titus 2, that's when things get really interesting, because when you hear someone respond to the exegesis of the text of scripture with a scattergun explosion against all of everything reform theology could possibly ever mean, rather than saying, no, you're wrong about Titus 2, because here's what the text says.
01:41:11: Not a text over here in another book, here's what, here's where you misunderstood
01:41:18: Titus 2. Let me explain it to you. He can't do that, and he won't do that.
01:41:24: He won't. But instead, you get this explosion of, can't be that, because this and that and the other, all over the place.
01:41:33: It's pretty amazing. Pretty amazing. So we will get to it. I just don't want to exhaust everybody in the process, but we will get to it.
01:41:44: All right. Well, there is Radio Free Geneva for today. It's amazing that even after yesterday, there's already stuff in the
01:41:53: Evernote file for the next program and what's going on in our world.
01:41:59: Things are happening fast. But hopefully for at least an hour and 40 minutes, you were able to put a lot of that stuff aside.
01:42:05: I haven't heard any explosions outside, so I don't think the Chinese are waiting for us outside the doors, but who knows.