God Made Them Male and Female, then, Mike Licona on the Resurrection and the Bible

Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. It's Friday and my MacBook Pro is slowly having its brains reinstalled in the other room.

Failed on me on the trip. That wasn't good. This is like the fifth

MacBook Pro I've had since 2008, something like that. All the rest of them are still working. It doesn't bode well.

But anyways, it's repaired and restoring and hopefully I can get back to work because I have lots to be doing.

But we're here with you right now and lots of stuff to get to on the program today, beginning with a rather disturbing image actually.

This hit while I was overseas and didn't have an opportunity to comment on it.

And it's certainly not the first time something like this has happened.

We all recall in the Olympics where a... the term we're supposed to use is transgender.

There is no such thing. It's a fantasy term. It was a man dressed as a woman competing in the women's race and winning.

And I commented then, I felt so horrible for the third place woman finisher who of course gets nothing.

So, you know, and then a few weeks ago we had the girl who's hopped up on testosterone pretending to be a guy but still competing with girls, setting all the records and winning her weight class, his weight class, her weight classification.

Yeah, her. But hopped up on testosterone. And so the next of the insanity is a weightlifter for New Zealand.

And here is the image that was put all over the place.

This is... that's a guy, okay? I've seen lots of guys with that same type of pattern baldness.

That's a guy. And muscles of a guy, bones of a guy, that's a guy.

But that's allegedly a woman setting all sorts of new records in the women's category and winning and competing and stuff like that.

Now, you and I know that's a guy. If you took blood from that individual and had a test done, a chromosomal test done, without telling anybody what this was about, just chromosomally, is this a man?

Is this a male or a female? The answer would be inarguable.

This is a male. XY is the chromosome pairing versus XX for the female.

But we live in a day where reality itself has now been subjected to the ultimate authority of man so that if between your two ears you think something, allegedly it is.

Now, this kind of thinking cannot survive for a matter of seconds in a conversation.

You saw... what's that guy on Fox News that's got a program now before O 'Reilly and Tucker Carlson?

Tucker Carlson had some Democratic operative on before I went overseas. And he just wiped the floor of them.

It was easy. Because it's not a rational position. So if I feel like I'm a 7 foot 4 inch tall

Chinese female, then you need to treat me as a 7 foot 4 inch tall...

will you look up at me? Will you speak Chinese to me? Will you take me out to dinner?

And that's why you see in the universities, they won't debate this.

They just shout it down. They engage in acts of violence. They shout people down.

They shut down anyone who would converse about this or try to talk about this because they can't win debates because it's not a rational position.

You can tear it apart in seconds because it's a fantasy. It is insanity.

But it is... it's a theological thing. And because it's not being treated theologically, then you're not getting much in the way of meaningful response to it as far as a worldview is concerned.

This is about man pretending to be something that he's not.

It's the vacuum. It's the vacuum into which something has to flow.

Because in the history of Western thought, God had the center place.

God was sufficient, epistemologically speaking, to function at the center, defining everything else.

Once man kicked God out, well, the problem is man's not sufficient to do that.

And you end up with incoherence and knowledge chaos in all of man's experience.

But as this rebellion, and it is rebellion, grows and grows and grows, then now we have this absurdity.

It's one thing to point out, yes, this is the end of women's sports, and it is.

Why would you put out the effort to become an

Olympic -level sprinter in the 400 meter? Why would you...

Remember that woman? What was that woman's name in the Olympics this year that just won every, almost every female event?

She was actually a woman. And it was great. I mean, she'd be done and out of the pool doing interviews before anybody else got done.

I mean, it was just that dominant a performance. However, however, if you took pretty much any qualifying male in the same events, she wouldn't beat them.

They'd beat her. And she's the best in the world. So what does that mean?

That means that testosterone is a good thing when it comes to sports. That's all. And that's why we had men's categories and women's categories.

So there could be fairness. So there could be... But why would you bother training to become a swimmer or a sprinter or a weightlifter when all you have to do is just have some dude say,

I'm a female, grow a ponytail, and there you go.

You're done. You're not going to be winning anything. You're not going to... There's no gold, silver, bronze for you.

And I even saw it while I was finding this image. They talked to a female weightlifter. And she was sort of like, it needs to be fair.

And so there should be like a third category. You should have male, natural male, natural female, and other.

Thanks. Nothing like getting us in trouble over there.

Yeah, right. And of course, logically speaking, that's exactly what you have to say.

Yes. Women should get to compete against women who were born as women.

That's the only fair way to do it. And they shouldn't be hopped up in testosterone. But okay, that's easy.

But that's not the real problem here. I mean, that's a byproduct. But the real problem here is theological.

It is reality -based. And I just want to...

This is... I believe this is a hill to die on, if you understand that terminology.

I do not believe that it is an option for a Christian to capitulate to the pressure.

And in New York State, in state government, if you don't use the chosen pronouns, huge financial penalties.

In other words, according to New York State, you must lie about someone's gender.

The science says X, but if the person says

Y, then you have to go with Y. You must lie.

And it's a worldview that obviously has no room for someone to say, excuse me, but they don't get to do that.

Only God gets to do that. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. And so here's what

I'm saying. This transgender movement, which did you notice?

It exploded the day after Obergefell. Did you notice that? It exploded the day after Obergefell.

Up till then, all the focus was on loving homosexual relationships.

And now it's guys have to be able to use the girls' bathroom. Obviously, they weren't going there before Obergefell, but now they won

Obergefell. They got to destroy marriage. And next thing to do is to destroy everything that could possibly build a meaningful family unit.

What I'm saying is this. It is not only irrational, untruthful to refer to that man as a woman, it's evil.

It's evil. Now, you don't hear almost anyone saying that. You get people who haven't thought these things through that just have a natural reaction and react out of bigotry or hatred or whatever.

There are terms we shouldn't use just simply because they automatically reflect upon the truth in a negative fashion.

But look, there comes a point where we have to say, you are demanding that I lie.

I couldn't help but think. Sorry, Star Trek analogy coming for those of you who want to just tune out.

But oh, Drat it all. I forgot. I'm sorry. I forgot to bring the

Borg sphere. It's at home somewhere. I need to. I know right where it is.

I know exactly which bag it's in, but I haven't put my bags away yet. But I need to bring my Borg sphere.

I'll put it right over next to the Borg cube. By the way, thank you.

I have yet another mug. By the way, giving me mugs while traveling is dangerous because they're hard to get home.

I had to try to get two mugs home. I got them home, but it ain't easy. There I am on a bike singing

Mighty Fortress is our God or Bulwark Never Failing. I'm going to London. This was made for me to commemorate my

March trip to London. So I wanted to thank the folks for that very much.

What was I talking about? Oh, I don't know. Yes, I'm sorry, Jimmy.

Nothing I can do about it. The live stream is a wreck today. Keep stopping and peace is missing.

We reset the modem. I don't know what it is. Sorry, but hopefully it's recording.

We've had problems with that before too. So I apologize for that. Every time this happens, you get hold of the internet people and, oh, we didn't do this right.

No, we didn't do that right. Then everything starts working and now the monitor's gone and all things crashing all around us, burning up.

There we go. So I will just attempt to pretend.

I'll just minimize Twitter so I won't see that. I'll minimize channel because they're whining about channel and we'll just try to get stuff done.

You'll just have to watch it later on and we'll just hope that a certain large internet service provider will get their act in gear.

We called and complain regularly, but there you go. Anyways, Star Trek analogy here.

I don't remember the name of it. I didn't have time, really didn't take the time to look it up, but there was a

Next Generation episode. So Next Generation was the late 80s, early 90s.

I forget how many years it was on, but this just shows how fast things have changed because I don't think you'd have this episode anymore.

But if I recall correctly, Picard was captured by the Cardassians or something. It was sort of a cross link to the other series.

I don't know. DS9. And they put something on him that would cause just intense pain.

He did it a little bit better than Kirk and the guys did in the original one. Remember that one where the women captured them and put those belts on them?

Anyways, but it's hard as an actor to pretend like you're in a massive amount of pain unless you've had kidney stones.

Then you can just channel that thought and then it works real well. Anyway, this

Cardassian guy, behind him were four lights and he kept demanding of Picard, there are five lights.

How many lights do you see? Well, there are only four lights and he'd zap him with this thing and he'd be rolling around on the floor and he just day after day, the torture and the pain.

And right when he's about to get rescued, he's writhing on the ground looking up and I think he says, once he gets rescued, he says to Riker or something like that, he says that the frightening thing is,

I was to the point where I could see five lights. And the idea was, from the perspective of our society today, why not just go, yeah, you say there's five lights, cool.

No problem. You identify as a five light person, I'll join you in that, no worries.

There's no objective truth. It doesn't matter how many lights there really are up there. Objective truth doesn't matter.

And that's where we are today. And I say to you, as a Christian, it does matter.

It matters whether there are four lights or five lights. And it matters whether that's a man or a woman.

There is an objective reality. And I know, I know the psychobabble and that's what it is.

It's psychobabble that sex and gender are not the same thing.

Yes, they are. Yes, they are. In a functioning society, in a society filled with adults, in a society that wants to continue on for any meaningful period of time, yeah, it does matter.

And so I think this is a hill to die on in the sense that when the society demands that we engage in fantasy, that we lie, that we are untruthful, then we have to say,

I can't do that. And I won't do that. And that is truly,

I think, where we are. And so when you see these things, most of us just roll our eyes and go on.

But you need to understand, this is the forefront of this movement where you must think as we think.

There was an article, Andrew Sullivan, this was from March 16th.

Over the weekend, Andrew Sullivan wrote an essay comparing the progressive intellectual movement, known as intersectionalism, to a type of secularized religion.

That's curious because Sullivan defines the movement not only by its ritual and liturgical practices, but in my own summary, in its willingness to function as an agent of absolute judgment against dissent in the present.

I recommend you read the entire essay, which is excellent. His essay comes as a result of recent mob violence at Middlebury College, where students protest the presence of Charles Murray, whose research has resulted in controversial findings and interpretations.

Here is Sullivan's description of intersectionality. Intersectionality is the latest academic craze sweeping the

American academy. On the surface, it's a recent neo -Marxist theory that argues that social oppression does not simply apply to single categories of identity, such as race, gender, sexual orientation, class, etc.,

but to all of them in an interlocking system of hierarchy and power. And here is how he elevates intersectionality to the level of religion.

It is operating, in Orwell's words, as a smelly little orthodoxy, and it manifests itself, it seems to me, almost as a religion.

It posits a classic orthodoxy, through which all of human experience is explained, and through which all speech must be filtered.

Its version of original sin is the power of some identity groups over others. To overcome this sin, you need first to confess, that is, check your privilege, and subsequently live your life and order your thoughts in a way that keeps this sin at bay.

The sin goes so deep into your psyche, especially if you are white or male or straight, that a profound conversion is required.

Like the Puritanism once familiar in New England, intersectionality controls language and the very terms of discourse.

It enforces manners. It has an idea of virtue, and it is obsessed with upholding it. The saints are the most oppressed, who nonetheless resist.

The sinners are categorized in various ascending categories of demographic damnation, like something out of Dante.

The only thing this religion lacks, of course, is salvation. Life is simply an interlocking drama of oppression and power and resistance, ending only in death.

It's Marx without the final total liberation. It operates as a religion in one other critical dimension.

If you happen to see the world in a different way, if you're a liberal or libertarian, or even gasp, a conservative, but in there a

Christian, if you believe that a university is a place where any idea, however loathsome, can be debated and refuted, you are not just wrong, you are immoral.

If you think that arguments and ideas can have a life independent of white supremacy, you are complicit in evil.

And you are not just complicit, your heresy is a direct threat to others and therefore needs to be extinguished.

You can't reason with heresy. You have to ban it. It will contaminate others' souls and wound them irreparably.

And what I saw in the video, this is now referring to the Charles Murray incident, what

I saw in the video struck me most as a form of religious ritual, a secular exorcism, if you will, that reaches a frenzied, disturbing catharsis.

When Murray starts to speak, the students stand and ritually turn their backs on him in silence. The heretic must not be looked at, let alone engaged.

He ends with this indictment. This matters, it seems to me, because reason and empirical debate are essential to the functioning of a liberal democracy.

We need a common discourse to deliberate. We need facts independent of anyone's ideology or political side if we are to survive as a free and democratic society.

Well, I don't know that we're going to, to be perfectly honest with you.

And of course, from a Christian perspective, this is all theology. The secular conservatives who recognize the insanity of our society right now, because they've abandoned the

Christian worldview, don't have an answer for it. All they can do is bemoan it, say this is terrible, this is horrible, write books against it, but they have no solution.

They have no way of dealing with this. And of course, you may say, well, what do you say?

Well, at least I understand what's going on, and therefore I can look at it and go, that's judgment.

And there is only one way to deal with judgment, and that is to call for repentance. See, the secular conservative, the secular libertarian, the secular liberal has no solution.

Look, the secular liberal can recognize the insanity of what's going on on our college campuses.

They brought it about, but now it's being turned upon them. It's grown another head, and it's this monster that they can't control.

They created it, but they can't control it. And they have no solution to it, because there is no such thing as repentance.

Once you've got God out, what are you going to do from there? What are you going to do from there?

I don't know. I don't know. But it does raise tremendous issues.

By the way, I am well aware of the fact that since, was it

Tuesday? Did we have a deal on Tuesday? Since Tuesday, Princeton Seminary has rescinded the prize to Tim Keller.

But amazingly, they're still having him give the presentation. I find that incredibly awkward.

That's really weird. Why would you do that? I don't really understand that.

But anyway, that's what they're doing. Not shocking. Princeton, PC, a lot of people,

PCUSA. Again, Christianity and liberalism, two different things.

It was fleeing Princeton almost 100 years ago that led to Westminster and eventually to nominations like the

OPC today. There's reasons for that.

It's a different faith. There's no biblical authority. There's no objective revelation from God.

That's how they can stand in prophetic opposition to biblical standards. They need to be identified for what they are.

I'm going to change what I'm feeding you and get rid of that because I can't even look at that. Yeah, yeah.

Got to get that out of there. All right. In our last period of time here, you say, last period of time?

Yeah, yeah. Only doing an hour today. Sorry about that. Like I said, I've been without my computer since I got back from the trip.

I have a little MacBook that has worked wonderfully well for me, but there's a bunch of stuff

I need to be doing long term that I don't have the software installed on that to be able to be doing and working on stuff.

I've just been trying to do other things. It's been a little frustrating, but it's back. Probably should be fully restored by now in the other room,

I hope. Even though I just know a bunch of those programs are going to go, this is a different CPU.

You need to re -enter your password. I'm going to be spending who knows how much time looking up old registration numbers and all that fun stuff.

Let's hope they replaced everything but the screen. That means

I got a new battery and a new logic board and a whole nine yards. Let's hope that that took care of it and it's doing me well.

Anyway, we'll hopefully have some longer dividing lines when we get into a little better...

I haven't even been home a week yet. Coming back, you don't get jet lag that much.

You just don't. There's a day or two where you're a little... It's going the other direction. That's my experience.

Now going to Australia, that throws you for a loop because you end up in the next day.

It's weird. Anyhow, a couple things before I jump into this next thing.

Please don't forget, I know that there are going to be people who are going to be angry because I haven't said as much about this as I need to.

It's on the website. We've talked about it. There's still time to go on the Reformation tour.

It's going to be 500 years before I can do this again. No, I'll be honest with you.

I haven't talked to Mike about this, but I think doing

VERMS for the 500th anniversary of Hir Stehe Isch Isch Kamm Nischt Unders would be great.

That's four years down the road. So September, Josh Bice and myself are just beautiful places to go.

Great time to be there. Check it out on the website. It's just going to be a grand time.

You really want to be a part of that. Also, prayers please for the debate in Rapid City.

Have we put up a... There's something in the rotation on the website.

Now you're looking at me like you don't know. I don't know. Oh, good.

So information is at amin .org for the debate against Iglesia Ni Cristo on the

Trinity. That's the 21st. Is that what it is? 21st.

Information is there. Do we have any information about where I'm... I know there's the conference afterwards on Saturday.

Anything about where I'm speaking Sunday? Working on it. Okay. So I will be speaking for basically three days there in Rapid City.

I've never been up there before. So a bunch of you up in that part of the country are always like, nobody loves us.

No one ever comes here. It's too cold and windy. Please, could you avoid the cold and windy part?

If there's four feet of snow, I'm going to be really bummed out. But that happens and can happen all the way into May that far north.

I realize that. But anyway, we're going to be up in Rapid City and it's going to be an interesting debate.

It's going to be an interesting debate. Yeah. It's going to be a sharp debate.

This is not going to be an ecumenical love fest by any stretch of the imagination. And so it'd be great to be there.

It's one thing to see the videos, another thing to be there live as we defend the biblical truth of God's revelation in Scripture.

And so that's at the end of April. Then at the end of May, I'll be in Wittenberg at the

Shepherds Conference in Wittenberg. That's going to be pretty special. Dr. MacArthur is going to be speaking.

I'm going to be speaking. A number of people there in Wittenberg. And then I'm going up to the

Czech Republic and then from the Czech Republic over to Kiev. And I'll be teaching for EBTC, TMAI, a number of folks that I know.

Obviously, I've been to Kiev a number of times. Really looking forward to doing that as well.

And this will undoubtedly be the busiest year of my life as far as travel is concerned.

There's no doubt about it. And so once again, as I mentioned the last program, that travel link, if you can help in getting us to the places we need to go, very much appreciate your doing so.

Okay, so with that said, this is the video that I wanted to look at last time.

Just didn't get around to it. And people, I know what everybody's going to say, you need to stop picking on Mike Licona.

Well, I'm not trying to pick on Mike Licona. There are vital, important, fundamental methodological, theological, philosophical issues that separate a consistent reformed apologetic from a consistent synergistic apologetic.

I keep saying it, need to keep saying it, will keep saying it, that your theology determines your apologetics.

If your apologetics determines your theology, you've got upside down backwards and probably don't preach in a church.

And yeah, I do still hope to at least make some brief comments exegetically about the attack on the local church.

It was really an attack on Jeff Durbin, specifically. That was launched by yet another one of the internet nomads, the people out there in the internet that just aren't overly concerned about this.

Yeah, we know the apostles went around local churches, establishing elders and stuff like that.

But you know, that was just back then. We're beyond that now, I guess. I do want to make comments about that, but priorities are something we need to do.

So anyways, this is a video that was posted again while I was gone, where Mike Licona addresses the misuse of what he calls the historical method by Islamic apologists.

So in other words, he's well aware of the fact that Muslims are pointing to his stuff going, see?

See? There's no inerrancy, and there's errors in the Bible, and see?

See? Even Mike Licona says so. All right. Just because a Muslim apologist says it doesn't mean they're accurately using it.

I've been misrepresented far too many times to even recall by Muslim apologists misrepresenting my statements, so on and so forth.

So okay, I get that. But what's interesting to me, and and Licona is right, that there is such a massive inconsistency in Muslim apologists utilizing liberal, progressive theories of doing historical research and text research when they will not apply the same things to the

Qur 'an. And there are some, I didn't get a chance to read it, but I saw one person saying, hey, that's perfectly fine to do, and here's why.

And I haven't had a chance to download the article to see just why it's proper to use differing scales and differing standards.

Because it's painfully obvious that if you're to apply the standards that are normally applied to the

New Testament, to the Qur 'an, to the Hadith, the results would be substantially negative, shall we say, to the

Islamic perspective. So I agree with him in the conclusions he's coming to.

But it's what he says at the beginning that I decided as soon as I saw is that this is something we need to talk about.

This is something again, will help us and help the audience to understand what the issues are.

So here's Mike Licona. And here we go.

I want to embrace a worldview because it's true, and not because it's what I was taught to believe. That's why the resurrection of Jesus became so important to me.

If it actually occurred, Christianity is true. Indeed, that's what the apostles were preaching in the book of Acts.

Now, we've heard this before. If the resurrection is true, then

Christianity is true. I don't understand that statement. Christianity is more than the resurrection.

There's no Christianity without the resurrection. But there's much more to Christianity than just the resurrection isn't there?

Does the resurrection prove the Trinity? Can you have Christianity without the Trinity? Does the resurrection prove in isolation the fulfillment of prophecy and the nature of the

Messiah? The concept of atonement, substitution, constantly under attack.

I was just noticing an article had just been posted on that. There is much more to Christianity than just the resurrection.

It's central, definitional. But to say if the resurrection is true, then

Christianity is true, leaves you either with an incredibly reduced

Christianity, which again, the mere

Christianity movement, that's not totally out of the sphere of discussion.

But either with an incredibly reduced Christianity, or the Christianity, I don't even begin to understand.

So I just don't get it. I don't see, but again, that's because I believe that in my apologetic, my duty is to present the whole counsel of God, not just a teeny, teeny little fraction of it.

No matter how important it might be, if I am to be, and this is again, this is where the churchman part comes in, because the

Apostle Paul says to the Ephesian church elders, that he is blameless, the blood of any man, he's guiltless.

Why? Because he did not hold anything back from them. He proclaimed to them the whole counsel of God.

And see, this is where the churchman part comes in, because I'm not just doing apologetics. I'm not trying to get someone to a position of mere theism.

I've said it before, the Muslims have this part right, evangelism and apologetics, they go together, they go together.

You can't separate them out. And so that means that what you win them with is what you win them to, what

I want to win them to is to a full orbed Christian faith. And I believe that it's only that gospel, the whole message, which includes the resurrection, but a lot more than that, that is actually going to change hearts and minds in the first place.

So there you go, you see how it all, it all sort of hangs together. And so anyway...

...Jesus and be saved because Jesus rose from the dead. I looked very carefully at the historical evidence we have today and concluded that historically speaking, it's quite probable that Jesus rose from the dead.

Now, once again, I understand why Dr. Lyconah speaks like this.

I forget what year it was when we reviewed the first Lyconah -Ehrman debate.

But I pointed out at that time that there was a real issue in that debate and Ehrman was really pushing it and it's pretty obvious to me that Lyconah doesn't push back because it's basically his position as well.

And that is, Ehrman is presenting the idea that history is a thoroughly and unquestionably naturalistic activity.

To engage in doing history, you must be a naturalist, a naturalistic materialist.

Now, of course, the irony is we all know historically, historians in the past didn't do that.

But we're all enlightened now, see. Dr. Lyconah is a child of the enlightenment. Aren't we all?

But we need to recognize the influence of that enlightenment and that influence is not always positive.

Now, to be in the academy today and to be accepted in the academy today, well, you don't have any choices.

But from a naturalistic perspective where history cannot speak to anything outside of what you can measure or so on and so forth, then all you can speak of is probabilities.

You don't have a sure word from God. You don't have any way to even evaluate those claims.

The problem is, of course, in talking about something that is always presented as a supernatural intervention of God, THE supernatural intervention of God in all of history, and that is the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

And so, I understand what he's doing. I just don't think that it's appropriate for a

Christian to capitulate to the demands of a secularized society to abandon the

Christian worldview. Because it is an abandonment of the Christian worldview. And that's the problem.

So, obviously, I think Dr. Lykona would say, well, yeah,

I know that's not what the apostles said. The apostles did not say that it's most likely Jesus rose from the dead.

They proclaimed it as a reality. And when I'm proclaiming the gospel,

I'll do that, but not when I'm doing scholarship. See? So, there's no such thing as gospel -soaked or based scholarship within the academy.

Well, that raises the question as to the very nature of Christian scholarship and all the other things.

Look, I understand. If you're defining historical research in the way that it's often defined today, where you preclude any role of the supernatural, then all you have are probabilities.

I'm simply saying, as a Christian, is that where you want to go? Can you even go there? That's the issue.

Once I saw that, most everything else theological became of secondary importance to me.

And that's a problem. That's a real problem.

And again, I don't know Dr. Lykano. We've never met. We're about the same age.

But I just don't get the feeling, I could be completely wrong about this, my feeling is

I don't see a strong connection to the local church. I don't see teaching and ministry in a local church.

And you might say, well, what does that have to do with anything? It has everything to do with that. Because this disconnection of the reality of the resurrection from the necessary revelational context that gives it meaning.

Once you take any divine truth and you disconnect it from the balanced presentation it finds in Scripture, it takes on a life of its own and it becomes something other than Christian truth.

I've pointed out a number of times when you look at the East and the West in the history of the church, you have this strange difference.

In the East, you have an emphasis upon the incarnation. You have an emphasis upon theosis, the idea of being absorbed into the one, divinization of man.

You have a denial, functional denial of original sin. In the West, you have a much more forensic focus upon the cross, whereas the

East emphasizes incarnation and resurrection. And so, you have a focus upon justification, the means of being made right with God.

And both imbalances are improper. Imbalance is not a good thing. So, when you separate the resurrection out like this and make it the linchpin, this is it, that's problematic.

And I think it leads to some imbalances that are quite evident.

Now, I feel free to study the Gospels as God has given them to us and without fearing that I may find something that threatens to expose

Christianity as a false religion. I'm not a Calvinist.

There's a lot behind that, by the way. There's a lot behind which is, I'm free to say, no, we aren't.

He's the one that's free to allow the Gospels to contain errors, contradictions, falsehoods, because all you have to worry about is the

Gospel truth. I'm sorry, scratch that.

All you have to worry about is the resurrection truth, not the Gospel. That's not even in the realm there.

It's religion. I'm not a Calvinist. Really? But when I wrestle with some passages, such as Romans chapter 9, and try to determine how they're best interpreted,

I come to the text with an openness to Calvinist interpretations, since I realize that I may be mistaken, and Calvinism may very well be correct.

In a similar manner, when I find myself wrestling with some passages in the Gospels, I come to the text with an openness to the presence of some errors.

Now, hold on a second. First of all, I'm being distracted here. I'm pretty certain that right over his left shoulder is

Gail Ripplinger's book. Doesn't that look like New Age versions? I think that's

New Age versions. Isn't it? It is. It is

New Age versions. That's been bugging me the whole time. That's been bugging me the whole time.

That could explain everything. I keep Gail Ripplinger's stuff in the other room because it creates a mental vortex.

It just sucks it right out of you. It's that bad. Right above the thing on his chair there, the thing on the back of his chair, that's

Gail Ripplinger's New Age Bible versions. Anyway, I'm sorry. Squirrel.

Squirrel. I would not wish

Gail Ripplinger on anyone. That would be inappropriate. I'm sorry. I need to replay what was just said so I can actually respond to it in a meaningful fashion.

It just bugged me. When I find myself wrestling with some passages in the

Gospels, I come to the text with an openness to the presence of some errors, since I realize that the doctrine of biblical inerrancy, or at least some ways of understanding it, may be mistaken.

Now again, I've said each time over the past week, Dr. Lycona, please. I'm calling on you.

Everyone should be calling you. Just join the majority. Those of us who actually believe in inerrancy, we are in the minority.

Just come straight out and say, I don't believe it. You can't redefine it far enough to stretch where you are.

We know William Lane Craig really doesn't believe it, and we know you don't really believe it, so just come straight out.

Just say it. Join join all the other folks. You're the majority.

We think you're dead wrong, and I don't know why you do apologetics if you don't believe it, but just come out.

Just come out in a minute. This sounds like what is called epistemological humility.

I could be wrong, but what it leads to is, and the word could be wrong, and everything we've believed all along could be wrong except for the historical reality of the resurrection.

Now what it means, we don't have a clue. We can't say what it means.

We can't reason backwards to the issue of atonement. We really can't do that.

That's going too far, but we know that Jesus rose from the dead. That much we absolutely know, but all the theology about who he was and what he was trying to do and prophecy and all that stuff, that's a bit much.

Could be errors on that, and we just don't know. It sounds like epistemological humility.

The problem is what you're trying to tell people. Well, what

I'm trying to tell people is here's what God would have you to do. Here's the call of God on your life, and that is to bow the knee in repentance and faith in Jesus Christ.

Now when I say that, there is a bucket load of divine revelation that I'm now responsible for substantiating.

Not substantiating to you because you as a rebel sinner against God aren't in a position to be judging his word in the first place.

I need to substantiate it from the Word of God in his sight. It's not up to me whether you believe it or not.

It really isn't. I am the one that is entrusted with the task of proclaiming it to you.

You then are held accountable for it, but I don't change hearts, and the truth value of the proclamation of the gospel is not determined by how people respond to it.

Never has been, never will be. When the Apostle Paul proclaimed the resurrection on Mars Hill, a few people believed.

Most scoffed, laughed, kicked him out. Does that have something to do truth value? Not a bit.

It has a lot to do with the judgment of those people, but it has nothing to do with the truth value of the statements at all.

Again, recently I had a conversation with somebody on the subject of Islam, and he was saying, we can't have these dialogues.

If you're ever talking with a Muslim, you have to correct every single error they make because someone might get deceived. And I'm like, excuse me, but I think

God knows how to keep his elect people. In fact, the Bible specifically says the elect cannot be deceived.

Christ doesn't lose any of his sheep, and it came down to theology. He didn't believe that.

If you don't believe that Christ can keep his sheep, then you're going to approach things very differently.

I know, I know. Al Mohler said again this morning, he's probably been saying it longer than I have, but theology matters.

And it does in apologetics too. And it does right here. We're seeing it. I want to do what the great biblical scholar

F .F. Bruce advised. Develop my theology from reading the biblical text rather than bringing a theology to the text that has been, in essence, freeze -dried, pre -packaged, denominationally approved, and handed to me for consumption.

That's a nice simplistic way of saying we can sort of ignore whether we're dealing with a supernatural text or not.

Because you say, I want to build my theology from reading the biblical text.

Why? Why not read extra biblical works? Why not take the canon apart?

Why not just set every part of the Bible against every other part of the Bible? You have a theology, and you have a position you're bringing, whether it's a coherent position or not, whether it has any historical foundation or not, whether it's something

Christians have always believed or not. I'm sorry, Dr. Laconi, you do not live on an island.

You are not a tabula rasa. You can't do that. You can pretend you've done that, but you're not.

You haven't done it. And in moving to this freer position that you seem to feel that you've adopted, you're actually just adopting other perspectives rather uncritically, it seems to me, in regards to the nature of Scripture, coherence of Scripture.

And my experience, we're about the same age, but I think

I've done a little bit more in church history, and I've seen this happen before.

And generally, the result has never been a move toward a more thoroughly biblical position, but always away from that, always away from that.

So, well, that's what's going to happen. I hope that. That's not what I'm hoping for. I reiterate that I feel comfortable with this approach because Jesus rose from the dead.

Therefore, Christianity is true, even if it were to turn out that some things in the Bible are not.

Again, what does that mean? What does that mean? I'm comfortable with this approach because Jesus rose from the dead.

Therefore, Christianity is true. It almost sounds like you're trying to prop up your own faith here a little bit, like whistling in the dark as you walk past the graveyard type thing.

But what does it mean? Does it mean necessarily that the apostolic proclamation of what the resurrection means is true?

Or is it just simply the historical reality of it? Because it sounds like what you're saying is, well, yeah, it is possible that Paul's understanding of the resurrection might differ from John's, which might differ from Mark's, which might differ from especially the author of the

Hebrews. That's different from the resurrection.

So, if we don't know what the resurrection means and how that makes

Christianity, whatever you define as Christianity, what's Christianity here? How does the resurrection make

Christianity true? Does the resurrection prove the deity of Christ? Doctrine of the

Trinity? Substitutionary atonement? Imputation of the righteousness of Jesus Christ by faith alone, grace alone?

We're not told. I just wonder if there has been a debate where someone has said to you, what does that mean?

Because I'd be interested. My goal is to understand the

Gospels as their authors intended. Could I be mistaken pertaining to ways in which

I interpret some stories in the Gospels? Certainly. But it's my reverence for the

Scriptures that obligates me to pursue understanding what they're saying with integrity.

After all, if I truly have a high view of Scripture, I must accept and love the

Gospels as God has given them to us, rather than insisting on reading them through a lens of how

I think he should have. If I fail to follow this principle, I may think

I have a high view of Scripture, when all I really have is a high view of my view of Scripture.

And that's not... Now, again, believe me, I'm a Fuller graduate. I have heard this most of my life.

This is the essence of the explanation that was given to me at Fuller about why Fuller abandoned the doctrine of inerrancy.

This is exactly what was said. Well, we want to have a doctrine of Scripture, not a doctrine of our understanding of Scripture, so on and so forth.

But the question is, when you talk about having a high view of Scripture, how do you exactly understand that when you then turn around and say, and what that means is,

I have to allow for incoherence in it? That's really what's difficult to understand in this situation.

Yeah, well, yeah. And I cut him off, right? Something we're almost out of time here. More than misguided piety.

With that said... Yeah, and that's where he switches, then, into the discussion of... And that's what

I wanted to cover. So, I often wondered why

I, you know, the Lord worked things out to where I had to stay here in Phoenix and do my theological education here in Phoenix and things like that through Fuller.

Well, now, I think in hindsight, I know why. I can hear the tone.

I was exposed to it a long time ago. And just look at where Fuller is today as a result. I mean,

I graduated in 85, so spent 30 years, 32 years, my goodness.

Really? No, I graduated in 89. That's right, that's right. Coming up on it, 89.

So, look how far Fuller has gone in those 30 years. Just my experience, that once someone starts down this path, there just generally isn't any stopping point, especially if they're doing apologetics, they're constantly being pushed for consistency on these things.

And that's going to... It's been bad. Let's just put it that way for other folks.

So, I wanted to address that. I saw that while I was out and about, out in the boot.

I think I saw that when I was in London, if I recall correctly. All right, there you go.

Another, hopefully, learning moment here on The Dividing Line. Hopefully, next week, fairly normal schedule, maybe a little bit longer programs, once or twice.

I mean, hey, the week before we left, we did five hours. So, that was a fair amount.

But, hopefully, get caught up on some of that and go from there. Thanks for watching