Christian and Mormon Debate! Part 5 :: Sufficiency of Scripture

Sufficiency of Scripture and the Meaning of Sola Scriptura

So let's jump into sufficiency of scripture. And I guess, Joseph, if you want to take that away,.

Matt. Yeah. So I gave my philosophy of language spiel for why I think that Sola Scriptura doesn't work at a philosophical level. But I think it might be interesting to start with... So I had those three theses, infallibility and neresi thesis that you need for Sola Scriptura.

You need the semantic thesis and you need the perspicuity thesis. I focus on perspicuity thesis, but I'd be interested in hearing what justification you think... That's the fourth point I had. What reason do we have to accept Sola Scriptura?

I'd be interested in hearing your answer to that. Sure. Well, my view of Sola Scriptura is that scripture is the sole infallible rule of faith and practice in the life of the Christian. So that means it's the ultimate authority.

We can look to lower authorities, look at them and then measure those against the scripture itself. So let me say a few things just so you know where I'm coming from when I say Sola Scriptura. We're saying that the scripture itself claims to be both human and divine.

So there's a sense in which it has a speaking authority. It claims to be from God. And I believe it's self-attesting. It's necessarily true. You try to argue against it, you're going to inevitably use principles that the Bible gives us.

And so we talked about that a little bit. But God has also spoken within space and time, and he inspired holy men like the prophets and apostles. And that happened over time. So we can look back in history and get indicators of how these things came about.

Canon, Apostolic Authority, and the End of Public Revelation

So this is where I distance myself from the King James Onlyist because obviously God has spoken. And I would say 2 Peter chapter 1 says that he spoke. He carried men along with the Holy Spirit. Well, in what language did they write?

Well, they wrote in Greek. So now we are dependent in God preserving his word in terms of the manuscript tradition. I don't appeal to a late 16th century English translation to validate that. I say no, God has preserved his word in the original autographs, which I would say we don't have.

However, God through his providence and his preservation produced many well-attested copies where we can formulate what the original actually said. And so Sola Scriptura says we go back to that necessary worldview when we look at Scripture and what it produces.

It's self-attesting. And then we can look back in history and see how God has done these things. So Sola Scriptura says that all Scripture is God-breathed, right? It's theionoustos. Its origin is not with man.

So it's the highest authority that is able to make us complete for godliness. That's crucial. Scripture, that which is God-breathed. Jesus said Scripture cannot be broken. Now, that's really huge because what does the Bible say?

The Bible actually claims to be clear. Psalm chapter 19, given the second portion, says that the word of God not only converts the soul, but it is sure, it is clear. And I think a lot of times people make the argument that we can't understand this or that.

And I'm saying actually the Bible speaks very clearly on that. I would say the Trinity is actually one of those doctrines when we let all of Scripture speak, we realize that there is one God given these strong monotheistic passages.

And given all of Scripture, that one God has made himself known in three persons. And so we would just say Scripture is the highest authority in one's life. That doesn't negate looking at other things that help us see how God has interacted in space and time.

Because once again, it's a divine book, and it's also a human book. Both can be true. Yeah, so yeah, I think it's definitely an important distinction to make between the kind of sola Scriptura, and then in Matheson's terms in his book on sola Scriptura, solo Scriptura, right?

So yeah, I agree that you're not bound to say that your only source of information can be the Bible. It's just that it's the authoritative, the only authoritative source. So I guess, like I said, I raised several problems for this, but I think an interesting one to focus on is, so okay, so there are different candidates in different traditions as to what could serve as an authoritative source of knowledge, right?

So Catholics would add tradition to that grouping, and you know, and Latter-day Saints, and I think others would also add revelation by the Holy Spirit. And so I guess my question is, how can we rule those things out, right?

So on what grounds can we say the tradition is not allowed to be an authoritative source or revelation, particularly since, you know, we have passages like Second Thessalonians, I'm sure you're aware, Catholics like to use that as a proof text, say, oh look, they use tradition then, right?

And you know, we know that in the New Testament, there's discussion of the Holy Spirit leading us into all truth. I think you quoted that earlier. So at certain points in time, those have been valid sources, authoritative sources of knowledge.

So you know, where do you see Scripture saying, you know, those have ceased to be authoritative sources, only the Bible can be moving forward? Let me make a few points, just because I think it's going to help guide our discussion, and it's going to directly answer what you said.

The Completed Canon and the Witness of the Apostles

So I want to say first and foremost, most people think that the canon was completed late fourth century, right? And I would say that is false, and I think you're going to actually agree with me. We would say the canon was completed when the last apostle, or when God finished speaking to man.

So what this is illustrating is that this is a theological, ontological question of when did God finish His Word? We know that, you know, was it Isaac Newton that discovered the law of gravity? We would say that he did not invent it, but he discovered it.

So we would say the church discovered God's Word. It was finished in the first century. I think it's well attested within how the apostles gave the Scriptures to the early church and patristic writers.

So that's the first and foremost, is that the canon wasn't complete in the fourth century. It was completed in the first century because that is an ontological issue of when God chose to speak, okay? And so now we can ask the question, how was it discovered?

Well, it's like I said, well attested that there have been 27 books of the New Testament, and if we wanted to look at a date in time, you got Origen, one of the early church fathers. He had a homily on the book of Joshua, and he included all of the 27 books of the New Testament early second century or, you know, mid.

And all that proves is there was already unity on what was God's read in terms of the New Testament. So then you had heretics running around like Marcion, saying that something wasn't divine, you know, all those things, but there was unity to even call him a heretic to begin with.

So what does this presuppose? That God's Word was already in effect, and most people knew what it was. So I think it's not true to say that the canon was completed. Now we could say that it was universally accepted later, but when you look at the 27 books of the New Testament, it kind of gives us the parameters to know exactly what is Scripture.

Like I said, and I would debate a Roman Catholic, the Apostle Paul said that God entrusted the oracles, the Scriptures, the writings, the words of God to the Jews. The Jews rejected the apocryphal text.

Well, given what the Bible says, that negates that possibility. And we didn't get a whole lot into Joseph Smith, but he made predictions that, in my mind, seemed to fail and did not come to fruition. He seemed to say that there was going to be a temple built in Missouri.

You may have to help me on that. And my knowledge of that history is that never happened apart from some type of spiritual fulfillment, which I would love to know if there's any context clues to know if he was talking about something spiritual or if he was talking about something tangible.

But he seemed to be a prophet that made predictions that didn't come true, and he had no link to an apostle because he came out later in the 1800s. So the apostles, they are my measuring stick to seeing what is God-breathed and what is not.

When you bring up 1 Thessalonians about what is tradition, well, I would just argue that the context is the tradition of the gospel that was being handed down and being entrusted to him like other letters to Timothy.

He was entrusted with the gospel. That is the tradition, both written and oral from the apostles. And so, like I said, we had this strong link to realize that you got Paul to Peter to Jesus, and then you got the apostle John linked to Jesus also being there the night before his crucifixion.

And he gives us the book of Revelation. Now, most scholars grant that the book of Revelation is the last one, but I could even concede to that because it is an apostle giving us a vision that extends all the way to the eternal state, and you cannot add or take away to that prophecy.

Something that, even if we debate about when that came about, you still have Joseph Smith coming so many hundred years later giving us new insight. And I'm saying, look, for one, prophets don't even give a scripture anymore.

It's the apostles and those who are closely associated. When I say closely associated with, Paul usually spoke and he had somebody write it down. So that's what I mean by that. But you don't have prophets giving a scripture anymore.

You have apostles, and there were certain signs that went with an apostle. And I would say I don't see that with Joseph Smith, even though he's not claiming to be apostle per se, but he's definitely claiming to be doing the things that the apostles did, namely give us scripture.

So that's my measuring stick. Scripture itself gives me a beginning point and an end point, and it gives me a gospel of grace to be able to easily see these other gospels that I would say is false because every single one of them bring in works.

And then I would say Paul's argument that's consistent with Jesus and the Old Testament says that belief in God, true, trusting, repentant faith, that is the grounding for our justification apart from works or not by works.

And I get how universalism doesn't struggle with this because then we could boast about it. If we're bringing our own works to the table, then I get to look at myself and say I'm glad I was spiritual.

I'm glad I made the right decision. Look at me. And even if somebody said that's not what I'm doing, I would say, but you could. You would still leave room for glorying, right? I was able to synergistically work hand in hand with what God did.

So back to your original point, it's the scripture itself that gives me the bookends, the beginning and the end. What's wonderful is the Bible is very clear on that. So real quick, I'll let you respond to all these things that I said.

I believe the apostle Paul claims to be the final apostle. In 1 Corinthians 15, he talks about not only is Jesus being resurrected, showing himself to many people, over 500 eyewitnesses, and then him realizing that he's an apostle born out of due time and that he's the least of all the apostles because he persecuted the church.

He says, Jesus appeared to me last of all. So I don't understand how Joseph Smith can make the claims that he claims, so on and so forth. So sorry for preaching there. No, that's all right. That's all right.

Apostles, Prophets, and the Limits of Revelation

Yeah. So yeah, several points to comment on. I'll do, I'll comment on what I remember. So yeah. So, okay. So a statement like, you know, God revealed himself to me last of all is not inconsistent with there being later apostles.

It was literally true at the time that the last of the current apostles to have someone appear to him was Paul. So I think like cemented as not inconsistent with there being further apostles. On the point of Joseph Smith.

Yeah. So let me see if I can think of an example. Okay. So let's say there's a family that has three children and the youngest says, I came last. And then five years later, they have another child. At the time, it was literally true that that child came last, but that didn't mean it was false that there could later be later children.

So I think semantically, I don't think it's impossible to reconcile the appearance of later apostles with this statement. Is there, is there a clue within scripture that would give us that indication?

Because I want to, I want to agree with you. Well, I mean, like grammatically. Okay. So yeah, I think grammatically, like last of all of the apostles at the time, there were what, you know, 12 apostles.

So last of all of those, yeah, sure. He was last. Just at the grammatical level, I don't think we can, we can say it precludes the possibility of, I mean, and there are, I think, scriptural indications of a restoration, but I don't, I don't, I didn't come prepared to argue that particular point.

This is the problem I see. He's talking about being last of all of seeing a resurrected Jesus. And that's contextually the case that he's making in first Corinthians. And he goes on to talk about, and it's because of that resurrection that we too will receive resurrected bodies in the age to come, not necessarily in terms of exaltation, but glorification, we will receive glorified bodies.

So I get how we can, we can hypothetically grant how there's, there's certain ways of grammatically understanding this, but the context tells us everything that we need to know that the apostle Paul is the last apostle to see the resurrected Christ.

Acts 1 tells us that's a necessary qualification of being an apostle, which gives the scripture. So you can see how I'm having a hard time going past the book of Revelation because of the clear indicators of what the New Testament is giving me, telling me what is scripture, which cannot be broken.

Yeah. So, yeah, I would just have to disagree on those grammatical grounds. It was true that he was the last of those apostles to see Christ. I don't think he was the last in history. On the point of, let's see, oh, Joseph Smith's association with the apostles.

So you said your measuring stick is associated with the apostles. I mean, technically the claim of the restored church is that the apostles, so John the Baptist first, and then Peter, James, and John came and restored the priesthood line that was requisite for a church to exist.

So we do claim that he was associated with the apostles. So, you know, he allegedly meets the, sorry. Did they resurrect or come back spiritually? What did you say? Yeah, they came back spiritually. They have not been resurrected.

They come back and they confer upon him this priesthood authority. So the claim is at least that he was associated with the apostles. Obviously you don't believe that, but that's kind of where I get back to the question of epistemic grounding, right?

So how do we know, say that historically Paul was associated with Peter or that he saw Christ, right? And for me, I think the only sure or semi-sure epistemic foundation for that belief is a witness of the Spirit.

And so that same witness of the Spirit to me can testify that Joseph was actually associated with the apostles. So then lastly, the point I want to make is, oh, sorry. Yeah, go ahead. So what would you say if I say, well, the Holy Spirit is telling me that the book of Revelation is the last book of the Bible?

Then were we just at an impasse? Yes, I think on that point we would have to be, yeah. See, I like Reformed epistemology. I do think the ultimate thing that is convincing is the Spirit bearing witness, Romans chapter 8.

However, I think we can demonstrate what is objective. It just doesn't mean that it'll convince somebody that's walking in the futility of their mind, being the natural man, the unregenerate man. I get how there's an antithesis between believers and unbelievers.

But I'm saying what I'm trying to make the case for is the Bible defines its own terms and gives its own limitations. Now, we come from different world views. So that's why a lot of this conversation I'm wanting to, I think the closest thing to an internal critique that you did was with divine simplicity.

However, my understanding of that is one that is incomprehensible given the New Testament's terminology. Now, I get how maybe you don't accept that, but I feel like there's good evidence internally on my own worldview of why the book of Revelation is supposed to be the last book.

All this is tethered to having apostolic authority in the signs that they did. My argument to why I cannot believe, not just subjectively because of the Holy Spirit, but objectively looking at the New Testament, I would have to reject the later claims that Peter and John came back.

Does that make sense why I would reject that? No, I understand why you would reject it. So my point is that on the other side, there isn't just the subjective experience of the witness of the Spirit. There's also objective reason to think.

So many scholars do think, and many religious people do think, that the claim in Revelations that we can't add to this refers only to the book of Revelations and not to the biblical canon because the book of John was written after Revelations was written.

So in terms of the canonization, I mean, so your view is that the canonization process doesn't define what is canon, right? What does God breathe? And I agree, what does God breathe is Scripture, and then we later recognize it.

Yeah, yeah, I agree. But yeah, so I think the fact that, say, a book was written that is included in the canon that was written after the book of Revelations was written is objective reason to think that the claim that nothing can be added is only referring to Revelation and not to the whole biblical canon.

Prophecy, Conditional Revelation, and Joseph Smith

So I have a question that kind of slips back in this discussion. So is it possible, in your worldview, for Joseph Smith to make a prophecy that fails? Yeah, I'm so not sure. So there's the verse in Deuteronomy that says, the way we judge prophets is if they have a failed prophecy, then they're not a prophet, right?

I know that there are, so okay, so this is not an area that I've done loads of reading, and I've read some things about the alleged failed prophecies. He has some very spectacular successful prophecies, and I mean, I just, again, like I don't, I'm not familiar with all the list of prophecies that are allegedly failed, and then all the responses.

I know that there are extensive responses to those. Yeah, so I would be fairly confident in saying that there are plausible answers to all of those allegations, such that we can say that he had no failed prophecies.

I don't want to rule out that a prophet can never say something false and think it's a prophecy and be wrong about that. If God told him, it'll come to pass, though. So, but this kind of illustrates the differences of where we're coming from.

I'm over here saying, if I believed in the Bible, and a prophet made a prediction that failed, to me, there's no question they're a false prophet, right? So you understand where I'm coming from. If there's any possibility that this prophet, you know, failed, like if I'm willing to admit in some conceivable world that they failed, well then, based on Scripture, they can't be a prophet from my view.

Like to me, there's no, you know, maybe third option. They're either a prophet or they're not. They give a prophecy, it fails, so forth. So something that I see, and I'm not wanting to just, you know, belabor this point, but when Joseph Smith made a prophecy that he would build a temple in Missouri, and we can get into, I have the quote here, the Doctrines and Covenant, but it seems like the Mormons were driven out of Jackson County in 1833, and this did not happen.

So sometimes what I hear people say is, well, it spiritually happened. I'm like, you know what, I got to hypothetically grant their world view, and I'm just saying, where contextually, either in the immediate context or later in the literature, do we see that that was a spiritual happening, and how is it falsifiable that a prophet, you know, could make a prophecy and it failed to come true, and then they can be condemned on that basis?

Yeah, so I'll be honest, I haven't looked into that particular prophecy, right? So I mean, I can send you resources afterwards that answer that question. So, okay, so the way I see it, a necessary and sufficient condition for someone's being a prophet is that they are called by God to be a prophet, presumably.

So when we talk about things like failed prophecies, what we're saying is, it looks like God gave us a condition. He says, you can't know directly, like I do, whether I called this person to be a prophet, and so I'm going to give you an outward sign, right?

So Deuteronomy seems to be saying, if this person has a failed prophecy, then they're not a prophet, because you can't tell if I'm a prophet or not, if they're a prophet or not. You know, so like, logically, it's possible that Joseph Smith was called of God to be a prophet, and therefore was a prophet regardless of what he said.

But yeah, so your argument would be that conflicts with scripture, because it says that if he has a failed prophecy, he's not a prophet. I mean, okay, so some problems with this kind of line of reasoning.

One, so yeah, I don't want to say that he had failed prophecies. I don't know, personally, because I haven't investigated this particular area of church history. Hopefully, he didn't. Right, right. So ideally, he would not have.

So yeah, a couple of problems. One, it seems like by this standard, from what we can tell, there are prophets in the Bible who would not count as prophets. So like, I know people cite the example of Jonah and the destruction of Nineveh.

Also, Christ saying that he would come back within this generation, and that seemed not to come true. Actually, on the LDS view, that did come true, because he came to the Americas with that generation.

But it would seem like on that standard, unless you can do some work around to reinterpret that scripture, that that was a failed prophecy, right? And so, okay, so when we say what's a failed prophecy, I think we have to look at what would we say about it?

Obviously, I don't believe Jesus is a false prophet. I would say that would be unfair. Right, it would be destructive to both of our worldviews, I think. But yeah, so basically, when we talk about what's a failed prophecy, I mean, it's just a very complex matter, I think.

Obviously, we have limited epistemic positions. When we look at a prophecy, we're looking at a particular time frame. So when they give a particular time frame, presumably, it will take place within that time frame.

If there's no time frame given, then it seems like we can never really say, well, that didn't come true, because we don't know when it will come true. And then there's also, yeah, like you said, that the kind of interpretive level of maybe it came through spiritually in some way that we didn't expect, right?

So the Jews, for example, before Christ came, anticipated that the Messiah would be this, you know, political, kind of warlike liberator, right? And in that case, they were wrong about that. So their interpretation of what it meant to be a Messiah was incorrect.

And so they would see Christ as failing to fulfill that prophecy, and therefore proving that he wasn't Messiah. But we would say they were wrong to expect that from that prophecy. And so yeah, this is an area, I think it's tricky to try to pin down and say, your worldview is wrong on this point, either in the Bible or in the case of Joseph Smith, for all those reasons.

But yeah, particularly, I think, because time frames and interpretation, on top of the fact that really a necessary and sufficient condition for being a prophet is being called to be a prophet, right?

And so presumably, having that spiritual witness, to me at least, would be sufficient, that I wouldn't then need to appeal to an outward, you know, kind of epistemically fallible way of judging. And maybe we would differ in how we say this, but to me, the Spirit can't tell me, well, this prophet is from God, and it just is.

And yet, what he says is not going to line up with the prophecy that was given to him. To me, he's called by God. The words he says are going to come to pass, specifically in this Doctrines and Covenants quote about him building the temple in Missouri.

It also uses the same language about the people of that generation would see it come to fruition. I can't see anywhere in the context of it talking about a spiritual happening. So I think you'll be okay with me doing this, but this is the huge...this is what I would want people to go look at, because obviously, you want people to go look into this after our interaction.

Galatians 1, False Gospels, and the Right Jesus

So my concern is that the New Testament gives us the bookends of what is Scripture, what is not, and in the New Testament, it's different than the Old Testament because of Hebrews 1. It's the apostles that were with Jesus, and he promised the Holy Spirit.

It's the apostles that were validating their message with many signs and wonders. And Paul is the one that told us, if somebody comes and preaches a different gospel, and he preached the gospel of grace, and they come and preach a different gospel, and I'll just say it works.

And even if they have this amazing testimony of how an angel from heaven came and gave them, he says, let them be accursed. And so you could probably just agree how where I'm coming from, that seems like a major concern, and I feel like I have clear teachings from and objectively from the Word of God to be like, okay, I'm going to reject any message that goes against the gospel of grace, and I'm going to reject any testimony that goes against the New Testament.

And I've seen a lot of Mormons come out of Mormonism, convert to Christianity because of Galatians 1. That's why I asked Marlon, can we talk about Galatians 1 in connection to Joseph Smith? Because Joseph Smith said a lot of things, and then I don't know how much time we have left on this section, but I do have another question that you might be interested in talking about.

Can I respond to a couple of things first? So I did fail to mention actually one more important point about prophecies is that in many cases they're conditional, right? So if my people are righteous, then this and this will happen.

If not, it doesn't come to pass. And so I think that's a potential answer to the case of Jackson. I mean, so even in Scripture, the condition is not always given. So in the case of the Levites, God says you're going to have this priesthood forever, and there's no condition placed there, but then later it is taken away because of their wickedness.

And so I think when a prophecy takes place, it's not always this will necessarily come to pass. It is often this will come to pass if this is done, and if not, so yeah, so God says I'm going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, and then Abraham says I'm going to find someone righteous, and if not, you know, so yeah, basically prophecies often are contingent upon the actions of the righteous and of the wicked.

And so that's another reason to be kind of skeptical of this idea that we can totally destroy our worldview by pointing to one prophecy which seemingly didn't take place. Right, and I respect a lot of that, and don't take any major offense to this, but is it possible that you might have been inflating covenants and prophecy with some of the things that God said to His people in the Old Testament?

Because I know there's conditional... Go ahead. Yeah, you know, maybe. I think I would have to look. I think there are probably very clear cases of conditional prophecies, but I'd have to look to be sure of that.

Same Jesus or Different Jesuses?

I don't want to make that statement without checking. Well, I appreciate a lot of that. This is my next question. So do you think that Christians and Mormons believe in different Jesuses, or do you think we believe in the same Jesus and different things about Him?

Yeah, so actually I think this is... You may disagree. I think this is a question of philosophy of language. When we say Jesus, are we referring to the same thing? And so that depends on your theory of reference.

The very popular theory today is the causal theory of reference, and on that view we would be talking about the same being or person. I'm inclined to think it makes sense to say. So I know President Hinckley has the famous quote where he says we have different Jesuses.

I think it is a semantic issue. I'm inclined to say we believe in the same Jesus and we just believe different things about Him. But then, at what point would I say someone believes in a different Jesus?

I don't know. I think that's a question of... I think you could definitely make a case for saying I believe a different Jesus. Sure, I wouldn't be bothered by someone making that case. Well, I appreciate what you said, because I do see...

I see that Mormons and Christians use a lot of the same terminology, and we define our words so different. And I appreciate you saying you don't know how necessarily you'd falsify, like, give an example of what a different Jesus would look like, because other religious thought would say that Jesus...

I think Islam teaches that Jesus is a prophet. He's a good guy, but he never died on the cross of Calvary. Well, for me, that is a different Jesus that didn't even atone for sin, right? You believe some level of that, right?

So, would you say that that's a false Jesus, or just something different? Yeah, I mean, so like I said, okay, so this is actually an area I'm really interested in, is this idea of how do we refer to things.

So, there's, like, the traditional view of reference was... So, initially... Well, okay, okay. So, there's the descriptivist view of reference, which said that in kind of its strongest form, there's this cluster of descriptions, and if you have enough of them, you're referring to that thing.

So, like, Wittgenstein has this famous passage in the Philosophical Investigations. He says, if I talk about Moses, right, if I say, you know, maybe he didn't lead the children of Israel, and he didn't part the Red Sea, and, you know, how many things would drop away before we say that's not Moses anymore, right?

So, like, yeah, was Aristotle the teacher of Alexander? If we take that away, is it still Aristotle? And that view has really fallen out of favor, to say that dropping descriptions is sufficient to change the reference.

For philosophical reasons, it's much more popular today to say that we're talking about whatever we're causally linked to. So, on that view, everyone who is getting their information about Jesus from, let's say, the New Testament, is talking about the same person, but at a theological level, that's kind of unsatisfying, because I agree with you that to say that, say, Jesus was not divine, he was not the Son of God, or he didn't die on the cross, it's of real theological significance.

We're talking about a very different type of thing. So, like, I would be happy to say Muslims are talking about the same Jesus, they're just very wrong about Jesus, but I would also be happy to hear someone say they're talking about a different Jesus.

It wouldn't bother me to say it's a different Jesus. Okay, and like I said, I appreciate a lot of that. Here's where it comes down to. We might can have epistemological, different understanding of the same Jesus, but different things about him, but when we talk about an ontologically different Jesus, to me, that is where the New Testament is so clear in saying there is only one Jesus that saves.

There's a striking passage in John chapter 8 where Jesus says, I told you that you will die in your sins, for unless you believe that I am, ego I me, which is, I would argue, Exodus chapter 3, the eternal, existing, only God.

Jesus is taking that and saying, unless you believe that I am the eternally one and only existing God, you will die in your sins. So, you know a lot of, I'm sure, Christian doctrine. We would take the stance that John won, Colossians won, Hebrews won.

Jesus is claiming to be the creator God who did speak ex nihilo, and so he takes it. Jesus is saying that he is the creator, and then by definition, everything else is a part of the creation. So you can't, in my view, you can't believe in a Jesus that's a part of the creation.

That's an ontological distinction from who Jesus himself claimed to be. To believe in the wrong Jesus, I would say you don't have your sins forgiven. Not only do you have to believe in the right Jesus, you also have to receive him in truth too, and I would say you can't bring your works to the table along with believing in the right Jesus.

You got to believe in the right Jesus and receive him in truth, and I would say that's in repentance and faith. Do you think that's a fair view, given my stance of the 66 books of the Bible? I think it's an internally consistent view.

I think it makes sense that you would want to distinguish between the right Jesus and the wrong Jesus because belief in Jesus is what counts as salvific on your view. One of the problems I have, I don't know that it's, so kind of two problems, I guess.

I don't think it's clear, well it's not clear, I think, in the New Testament that certain beliefs, ontological beliefs about Jesus qualify you as being right and others not right. So there's no way that says if you believe in a creator Jesus, then you're saved, if not not.

And I think also really I'm not comfortable saying that a lot of these philosophical categories are even really present in even the New Testament. I think so, you know, this kind of talk of the Greek philosophical tradition kind of becoming mixed with Christianity a little bit later, you know, like talk of ontological distinctions within God, within Jesus, I think is just anachronistic to the New Testament in a way that we can't really make that distinction and say salvation is based on that distinction.

But that's, yeah, that's my view of that. Before Marlon jumps in, so what is your understanding of what Jesus is saying when he says, unless you believe the ego I am, then you will die in your sins? What is he getting at there?