January 10, 2006

Bart Ehrman, Textual Criticism, and the Limits of Mind-Reading Scribes

Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line. The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us.

Yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence. Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. This is a live program and we invite your participation.

If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602. Or toll free across the United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is James White.

And good morning, welcome to Dividing Line. Hope we will be with you the entire hour. We are having technical difficulties, but it sort of cleared up. But that means, of course, it could unclear up very quickly.

Actually hoping the move of the offices, which is somewhat like a freight train heading toward us at high speed, will take care of some of these issues because our current internet service provider is a little bit slim on the P part of ISP or the S and P part.

They just do internet, but you don't necessarily get service or have it provided to you on a regular basis, at least of late. And when you have their number memorized and without even looking, you can just hit the right digits to go to where they tell you who's blacked out and entire cities disappear on a regular basis, that's generally not a good thing.

And that's where we are. So I wish I could recommend our internet service provider, but only if you're my mortal enemy would I recommend that you. Yes, today on The Dividing Line, we have been responding to Bart Ehrman's NPR interview.

And I have been getting a series of emails from someone that seems rather disagreeable and unhappy and obviously sitting there listening. And as he's listening, he's firing off emails at me. You know, I generally, when folks, you know, start getting a little sarcastic or you can just sort of tell they're really not happy campers.

You know, there was a day when I really felt like, oh, I've got to respond to this person. I've got to review this person. And anymore, I just, you know, shuttle them off into little dark corners of my email program and don't worry about it.

But I thought, well, instead of either just ignoring this person and then they'll run around and say, hey, you've got no answers, and that's just how people are, or spending the huge amount of time of having to go through all these, you know, examples and stuff, typing it out, that it would be better to just go ahead and respond to these assertions as part of the Ehrman response.

And we can go back to listening to that. I have three emails in my hands here. Basically, he's saying, look, you know, you're not being fair to Ehrman. He's not claiming, and I mentioned one of the earlier emails, he's not claiming to read mine.

Well, I'm sorry, I disagree with you. Okay. I have that right. My program, you get your program, you start doing your own thing and you can say what you want and we can go from there. But the fact of the matter is when you look at a textual variant, the first thing you do is not start making assumptions about the theology of the scribes.

That may come in. There's no question that people discuss that. I've discussed that in my books. There's no question it comes in. But that's not the first thing you do. And that's what Ehrman's doing.

He seems to have this almost infallible knowledge, and I'm not the only one who said this, by the way. Many people have faulted him for this. He seems to have this almost infallible knowledge of what the scribes were thinking.

And the fact of the matter is we don't know what they were thinking. And the best you can do there is conjecture because they're dead. And unless you, you know, speak to the dead or I see dead scribes, you really can only put that on the level of conjecture.

And we're not hearing conjecture from Bart Ehrman on these NPR interviews. We are hearing I am great scholar, expert, and I say this. And, of course, the NPR people are like, yeah, that proves that. Shows the Bible is only a human document, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

So, I'm sorry, but let me give you an example. There is a very well-known textual variant at 1 John 3 .1. And 1 John 3 .1, see how great a love the Father has bestowed on us that we should be called the children of God and such we are.

Now, in the King James and the New King James, it simply says that we should be called the children of God. Then it continues on for this reason the world does not know us because it does not know him.

The phrase and such we are is not found in the King James, New King James, in the Textus Receptus. And the reason is fairly clear. It's not a part of the Byzantine platform. It is, however, found in a large number of sources.

And specifically, Alexandrian and Western sources, P74, Sinaiticus, ABC, so on and so forth. So, it's got a very strong foundation to it. Now, when you look at the data for, it's just two words, Kai Essman, and we are, it would be real easy.

I mean, if this is how we want to start doing textual criticism, it's going to destroy any meaningful agreement. But this is how I'm seeing Bart Ehrman approaching the text is selling books this way. Well, you see, the early church didn't want people to believe that you were truly adopted as sons of God.

There's a great deal of discussion about how you need to persevere and so on and so forth. And so, scribes altered this. And they removed this so that people wouldn't be encouraged to live in a libertine lifestyle.

Well, you can go the other direction. You can say, well, actually, scribes added this at a later time because they were concerned that people would not embrace the fullness of their salvation in Christ.

I mean, you can do all of that stuff and read back into scribes' minds all sorts of things. But that's not how you start. You start with the textual evidence. And you look at the text. And this is a classic example of what's called Homo Eteleuton, similar endings.

If you can find a reason that does not involve mind reading, it is best to start there. OK? That's how you do it. It is best to start by looking at the text and going, hmm, OK, we do know pretty much everybody agrees about what kind of scribal errors scribes would make.

Because we make them today. Homo Eteleuton, similar endings. You're sitting there copying along. And you've just written the word producing. And your eye goes back to what you're copying. And you just type the letters I-N-G.

Your eyes see I-N-G. And you continue on. The problem is it's an I-N-G at the end of a word two words down from where you actually were, resulting in the deletion of the material in between. If you're not paying attention to what you're typing, then you may not know that it no longer makes any sense.

Or it may make perfect sense because it is a continuing comment that is not necessary to the flow and context of what's being said. You might not even notice it unless you proofread it. And how many of us do much of that anymore, right?

So the first thing, when you look at 1 John 3 .1, is you see the Greek term kleithomen mu epsilon nu. And then you see chi s men. And you go, oh, you have mu epsilon nu. You have the same ending at the end of kleithomen as chi s men.

And therefore, the first line of discussion is, it's a textual variant where a scribe, primarily in the Byzantine area. His copies influence the Byzantine area, not the Western or Alexandrian type texts.

An early scribe missed this word because of homo etelioton. Not because you can read his mind. Not because you know that he was concerned about this, that, or the other thing. But because of simple scribal error.

That's what I'm talking about. Now, if you want to go the other direction, you can sell more books. There's no question about that. I mean, there is a huge audience of people who don't want to believe that the Bible is the word of God.

And don't want to believe that we can have any idea what it says. Now, they don't want to go so far. And this is what they'd have to do if they want to be consistent. And I think my writer would have to be consistent on this.

You'd have to go to the point where you would say, well, we don't know really anything about history. We just don't know. Because at least until the invention of the printing press, you have textual variation in any handwritten documents.

And therefore, since we have variation in handwritten documents, we can't know anything. We really can't have any knowledge of anything in the past. And so we just become radical skeptics and there's no way of really knowing.

Now, hopefully everyone would agree that of all of the ancient documents that we have, the New Testament has the richest and fullest textual manuscript tradition behind it. There's nothing else from that time period that can even come close.

So if we can exercise radical skepticism on the best we have from ancient history, then the rest of it, of course, is just throw it out. Who cares? We don't know anything about history. Unless you find it chiseled in a piece of stone that you can demonstrate hasn't been changed and you can identify its specific strata archaeologically, then if it was passed on in writing, forget it.

Unless it's chiseled in stone, that's the only way to do it. I guess that's the only way you can go. So this is what I've been talking about is this ease with which Ehrman makes these comments. But there are other things he says here.

He says, oh yeah, but even tenacity isn't perfect, especially if the problem happened very early. How do you know that? How can you prove that one way or the other? Where is this skepticism coming from?

And again, NA27 contains a conjectural emendation in the text and several hundred notes. I'd like to know what the conjectural emendation is. I've never seen a reading in the Nessie Olin text that has no manuscript support whatsoever.

I've never seen it. You will see the letters CJ in the Nessie Olin text, and that's giving you information concerning where a scholar or more than one scholar, but normally it's just one listed, has conjectured about an original reading that does not have manuscript support.

And I do not know, never seen, and would reject outright to be perfectly honest with you, any reading in the main text of the Nessie Olin text that is based merely upon conjecture. I have not seen any at all.

I'd like to know what it is. Never run into it. I'm sure that since I've got three emails in like one day from this individual, I'm sure that I will be informed very quickly as to what this alleged conjectural emendation is.

He says, that's the New Testament. The Old Testament situation is much worse. Not much worse, completely different. The textual transmission of the Old Testament is completely different than the New Testament.

Completely different time frame, different materials, different, everything's different. I mean, even parallel to is, well, it's not worthy of doing because it was a completely different process. So you validly criticize Ahriman for making things sound worse than they are, but aren't you going to the opposite extreme and making things sound better than they are, contrary to the scholars on your namesake NA27 committee?

Well, it's not my namesake. I've used that in email addresses because it's easy to get that email address. Not too many people are doing so. I think it's sort of silly to pick on people's email addresses.

I could pick on his, but that would be childish, and so I'll leave the childishness to other people. When will you start railing against them? Well, when I find them out trying to make money by spinning things all the time, then I will.

But that's generally, textual critics are not out there trying to make money. They're actually trying to ascertain the original reading of the text. Then you say Ahriman wouldn't want to refer to John 1 .8.

I think you meant 1 .18 because the vast majority of scholarly opinion would go against him and that he has odd views that he's been refuted on. I was referring to some scholarly articles that came out about three or four years ago, maybe five now that I think about it, on this particular subject.

Again, aren't you going to an extreme here? Again, at least one member of the NA27 committee agreed with Ahriman's choice in this verse, which, if you're wondering, 1 .18 is the difference between monogamies, theos, monogamies, quios, only begotten God, unique God, and unique son.

Again, no one is going to argue that you can't find a scholar who's going to, I mean, there's all sorts of people who hold to the Byzantine text platform that are going to take quios. There are some eclectic scholars that are going to take son at that point.

Not very many, but that was the point that was being made. The vast majority do agree. It is interesting, he points out, that the Holman Standard Bible reads with the Byzantine rather than the eclectic text at that point, which I find odd.

But, okay, great, big deal. You make it sound like he is out on a far-out scholarly limb here with his choice here, but that is in fact not correct, is it? No, I would say that, again, he is talking, he wants to try to make it sound like, and here's, this was the context of it, that central definitional biblical doctrines like the deity of Christ are based upon just a few verses.

And this writer is going to do the same thing. I'll give you an example. That's where John 118 came up at, is if Ehrman was going to be fair, then he would be fair in mentioning 118 and saying, now here is a situation where further studying of the text has brought greater light because the vast majority see that theos is the better reading here and blah, blah, blah.

But he didn't, and he won't, because he's spinning things. That's the whole point. I wish this person would just listen to what the point is. You're responding, we are responding to the extreme spin for the sake of selling things and for the sake of, in essence, in my opinion, excusing or defending an act of apostasy.

That's what's going on here. Pretty simple. I mean, he's the one who brings this out, is he not, in his own book. I mean, he's the one who brings in his moving from being a conservative evangelical to where he is now, and that's now being used by everybody as, oh, here's great evidence of, once you start thinking how you can't believe those things, et cetera, et cetera.

So he's got an agenda. We're exposing the agenda. That's all there is to it. So it was in that context that he was talking about the deity of Christ and trying to make it sound like, well, you've just got this here.

And here we have, again, an out-of-context citation here of Dan Wallace. Dan Wallace, editor of the NET Bible, also prominent text criticism, says, quote, the list of passages which seem explicitly to identify Christ with God varies from scholar to scholar, but the number is almost never more than a half dozen or so.

As is well known, almost all the texts are disputed as to the affirmation due to textual or grammatical glitches, John 1 in 2028 being the only two which are usually conceded without discussion. End quote.

Then he says, if there are only half a dozen, then losing two or three to text criticism is a valid point for airmen, isn't it? Again, it's very frustrating. You know, when people have made up their minds, they don't listen to what you have to say, and that's what's happening with this gentleman.

What did Dan Wallace say? What's he addressing? Well, anyone who's familiar with the field knows he's addressing the use of the term theos of Christ. And what are the passages? Well, right off the top of your head, you would have one in the Old Testament, Isaiah chapter 9, with El Gabor.

You would have, in the New Testament, John 1 -1, John 20 -28, Romans 9 -5, possibly Acts 20 -28. You would have Titus 2 -13, 2 Peter 1 -1, and 1 John 5 -20. I went through all of these in the Forgotten Trinity.

This entire chapter, here are the passages that specifically use the term theos. But I also made it very clear, both in my comments last week and in the book, that that is not in any way, shape, or form the only foundation, or even, to be quite honest with you, the strongest foundation of the deity of Christ in the New Testament.

There are all sorts of lines of evidence. The identification of Jesus as Jehovah. There's no textual variant in John 12 -41. There's no textual variant in regards to the identification of Jesus as Jehovah in Hebrews chapter 1, verses 10 -12.

All the manuscripts say that they're quoting from the subject at that point, that the author of Hebrews is. That's just one element of it. You have all the ego-i-me stuff. That's not a textual variant issue.

You have all the facts that Jesus says things that no creature could ever, ever say. It is only by atomizing the text and ignoring all of the teaching of the text, and all of these passages, that you can say, oh, well, see, there's these two passages, and that just throws the whole thing out the window.

And I tried to point that out, but again, my correspondent here has already made up his mind. And so he only hears, you know, it's a little bit like Dave Hunt. You only hear what agrees to your thesis, but when it doesn't agree with your thesis, well, then you just, you know, you don't hear it.

So, that's a shame. Let's see. I... speaks of certainty. He says, you made a comment in 1229, which I presume is concerning the email I sent you a few weeks ago, where I defended Ahriman against your claim that he had the ability to mind-read dead people.

Well, I'm sorry, but you're just wrong. Hence, what are you claiming to do? In this dividing line, you defend your claim on the basis that Ahriman says that a scribe changed his or changed that, and speaks with certainty.

Yes, in other words, Ahriman speaks with certainty as to what a scribe was thinking when he did things. And you can't do that, unless you talk to dead people. Okay, but that means you have to throw out all the work of mainstream textual critics.

No, it does not, because mainstream textual critics will only discuss possible scribal reasons and predilections after dealing with the text and the external evidence. Yes, start with what everybody agrees on, and then you attempt to explain the form of the readings with conjecture or looking at what scribes might have been thinking afterwards.

Hello, afterwards, not first. And then you let people know what order you were doing that in. And you don't go out and try to say no one can know anything about the deity of Christ because you do it backwards.

That was the whole point. That means you have to throw out Metzger's textual commentary, where he frequently says that a scribe did this or did that, and oftentimes speaks with just as much certainty, saying that a certain thing happened for a certain reason without expressing any doubt at all.

Well, once again, I haven't seen Bruce Metzger, and sadly, he and Ahriman seem to get along quite fine, but I have not seen writing books called Misquoting Jesus and peering on NPR and doing things backwards, starting with the conjectures about scribal thoughts and then going backwards from there.

At least Metzger starts with the witnesses to the text, and that's what you do. I don't see you criticizing Metzger and the NA27 committee for producing this work. In fact, you've adopted NA27 for your email address.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, anyways, we've now seen that this is where this fellow's coming from. On your 301 dividing line, you seem to be complaining about Ahriman's presentation of John 8, because there are so few additions from the margin to the New Testament, that there is John 5, 4, 7, 5, 3, 8, 11, 1 John 5, 7, that this doesn't substantiate a case of wholesale editing.

Yeah, my point was that, again, when you go into these NPR interviews, and you've titled your book in such a way that you are, in essence, questioning the originals, not so much the transmission over time, but the whole thing you're trying to say is, you're communicating the idea that there are so many hundreds of thousands of variants, really, you have no idea what the original said, and what you're really talking about is a small number of texts where you have major textual variants.

He says, aren't you being overly certain now about claiming why the scribes added these verses, because they came from the margin? No, because when you're talking about a text that is not found in earlier texts, and, in fact, goes from one place to another, there really isn't a whole lot of a question as to where these things could have come from.

We're not talking about what the intention of a scribe was as to his theology. We're not talking about what a scribe's theology was. We're not talking about, well, you know, he believed this, and so he would want to do this.

No, we're just simply talking about the fact that in handwriting, and we've seen this over and over again, in handwritten manuscripts, when you would forget something, you'd put it in the margin. You didn't have extra pieces of vellum laying around to just throw it out, you know, wad it up and throw it away.

It wasn't like you'd go down to Kinko's and buy another 500 sheets and go on from there. It doesn't work that way back then. And so the issue of scribal insertion of notes in columns and sometimes text in the margin that was supposed to be put back into the actual text itself because they made a mistake is well known.

You don't have to read minds to know that. Okay, so anyway, I've wasted more than enough time here in demonstrating where we're going with this fellow. But anyhow, sir, I wish you'd listen. I'm sorry you have problems with this stuff, but you know, in my experience, I don't believe that Bart Ehrman made the move he made simply because he was studying stuff.

There's always, when you dig down and when you talk with folks, there's something more. There's always something more. There's some other reason down there that somebody isn't coming out and really telling the story about.

A Christian’s Knowledge of the Deity of Christ and the Meaning of Historic Christianity

So anyway, you know, I unfortunately did not open a text window. So I know we have a caller here, but I haven't a clue who it is. Here we go. Let's talk with Mike in Texas. Hi, Mike. Hello. How are you?

I am doing very well.

I have a quick question. Sure. Can a Christian know that Jesus is, I'm sorry, or maybe to rephrase the question, do you have to believe that Jesus Christ is God in order to be a Christian? Or can you be a Christian and not know that Jesus is God?

Well, you know, there's a big controversy about that. There's been a tremendous amount written of late. There is no salvation in a Jesus Christ who is less than God. And Jesus himself said, unless you believe that I am, you will die in your sins.

And so the deity of Christ is definitional of the gospel. The question is, what level of understanding does a person have to have? In other words, the concern that I would have is that some people want to go so far as to say, well, you have to have a perfection of knowledge of the relationship of the Father, Son, and Spirit.

And you need to be able to explain the procession of the Spirit from the Father and the Son in comparison to the Eastern view of the procession of the Spirit from only the Father. And you need to understand the hypostatic union and blah, blah, blah, blah.

And if that's the case, there are almost no Christians on the planet, simply due to the fact that I think if we were to give a basic Trinitarian quiz to almost all evangelicals walking out of church this coming Sunday, it would be very easy to put the words in such a way as to trap them into various forms of modalism.

I bet you could get well over 50%. And in fact, if I was to be really honest, probably 90%, well, let's be nicer, 80 of those individuals to agree that on the basis of John 10, 30, Jesus is the Father.

I think you could really do that. And so the question becomes, for me, the issue is, I do not believe a person who rejects the deity of Christ, who believes that Jesus Christ is less than God, who believes Jesus Christ is merely a creature, who's Michael the Archangel, for example, if you want to go with Jehovah's Witnesses.

A person who holds to a false view of who Christ is, knowingly rejecting the deity of Christ, I don't believe that person can be saved. Can a person be saved in simple faith in Christ without a full-blown, developed doctrine of the relationship of the Father and the Son, simply knowing that Jesus Christ came into this world and died to save sinners, and that he wasn't just merely a man, but we call him Lord, and is then willing to be taught the Word of God and to understand the Word of God and to embrace the Word of God, that's a different issue.

And I think that most definitely can happen, because how many young children do we know who embrace Christ and yet honestly couldn't give you the specific definition of exactly how the deity of Christ is outside of, well, I understand that Jesus Christ is Lord and that he's risen from the dead and that he created me and how all that relates to the Father and stuff like that, I may not be perfectly clear, but I'm willing to be taught and willing to embrace the Word of God at that point.

So, I think the issue when you look at what keeps people from salvation in Scripture is holding to a false view of something, not ignorance of something that's true. If they have been given the whole Gospel, then that's going to be a part of it, they're going to hear about the Lordship of Christ, but they may not fully understand how to integrate that with, well, how does the Son relate to the Father and all the issues of inter-Trinitarian theology and things like that, that should be our joy to study and to understand and to want to grow in knowledge of those things.

That should be something that we really enjoy. It shouldn't be a chore. It shouldn't be something that we go, roll our eyes, and I don't want to do all this work, blah, blah, blah. But that's where I would see the dividing line between the two.

Okay. Does that make sense? It makes sense to me, yes.

Okay, alright. And also, what exactly is historic Christianity, or do you have a book that talks about it? Is there a book you could recommend that explains that?

Well, see, that question, that phrase is going to be approached from all sorts of different perspectives. You have the historical, secular way of looking at quote-unquote historical Christianity, which is going to be an incredibly wide subject.

And the reason being that now you're defining Christianity based upon anything that in any way relates to Jesus. So that's why you'll find secular historians referring to the Gnostics that the Apostles anathematized as Christians, because they talked about Jesus.

Now, the Apostle Paul said that his enemies, who talked about Jesus, were under the anathema of God and didn't have salvation. So there is a theological answer to what is the history of the true Christian church, and then there is the secular answer.

And then even when you get into the theological realm, there are those who are going to say, well, I think you need to define that based upon God's word, and you're going to hear others say, no, I think you need to define that based upon some other standard outside of what the Apostles themselves would have recognized as true Christianity.

And so that is a conflict I get into with people all the time, because they want to equivocate on that. I try to at least make those distinctions clear to folks, and I try to be consistent anyways in the answers that I provide in regards to that, and that when I speak of Christianity, when I, for example, Richard Dawkins is on Channel 4 in the United Kingdom, just started a grossly anti-Christian, really anti-religion, it's not just Christianity but Islam and everything else, but I think primarily focused on Christianity, two-part series on television there, blaming Christianity and religion for all evil.

There would be no evil if it wasn't for religion. And it's interesting, on one point, he's right, because he is a naturalist materialist, and a naturalist has no basis for even talking about evil to begin with.

So I guess that's somewhat true, but without religion you wouldn't know which way is up. But anyway, he's going to make reference to the Inquisition and the Crusades and say, see, this is Christianity, and secular authorities are too.

And I'm immediately going to say, excuse me, but how can you saddle Christ and his gospel with activities that have absolutely positively not a shred of ground to stand on in his own teachings and in the teachings of his apostles?

How do you blame him for that? How do you blame someone for taking a teaching or a perspective and just absolutely ripping it out of its context, completely perverting it and saying, oh, but see, that's what these people, I stand in their line, I have their authority.

No, you don't. People talk about apostolic succession. I talk about apostolic succession of truth. That is, if you don't teach what the apostles taught, don't claim to stand in their succession. If someone comes along after I die, don't take over Alpha Omega Ministries and teach the exact opposite of what I did and say somehow I have something to do with it.

It doesn't work that way. So I try to be very consistent upon that. Really, I don't know about any books that are specifically addressing that particular subject just alone, but any book that you study in regards to the history of the church, that is a concept that you have to keep in the forefront of your mind all the time.

That is, as you're reading about these people and you're reading about the history of the church, what standard are you going to be using to judge what's going on? Fundamentally, it has to come down to the word of God and its teachings.

It's very easy for us to, from a distance, be very, very harsh in our criticism of others, but that's one of the reasons I've had a number of people call this and they'll say, what do you think about such and so in history?

Do you think they were a Christian? And I go, well, wait a minute. I can't read people's hearts. I can't read people's minds. I can identify what they were teaching and whether what they were teaching is biblical or unbiblical or where in the spectrum it falls, but don't ask me to try to look back in history and read people's minds and their hearts.

I can't do that with people who are alive, let alone people who are dead, which is one of the issues we were discussing earlier. So any church history text you're going to be studying is going to address this, but it's not necessarily going to address this within a theological construct, and that's what I try to encourage people to do is look at it from a theological perspective.

More of your older church histories did seek to be more theologically accurate or biblical in their examination of the past. Modern histories don't really make an attempt to do that because that's considered to be bad form.

If you're a historian, you don't deal with theology, et cetera, et cetera. Of course, I don't know how anybody can do that. But anyways, I hope that's helpful to you there. Brother, we need to take a quick break, and when we come back, wow, I'm excited to get to talk to just one of the most amazing, amazing folks ever.

Right after this break, we'll be right back.

The Trinity is a basic teaching of the Christian faith. It defines God's essence and describes how he relates to us. James White's book, The Forgotten Trinity, is a concise, understandable explanation of what the Trinity is and why it matters.

It refutes cultic distortions of God, as well as showing how a grasp of this significant teaching leads to renewed worship and deeper understanding of what it means to be a Christian. And amid today's emphasis on the renewing work of the Holy Spirit, The Forgotten Trinity is a balanced look at all three persons of the Trinity.

Dr. John MacArthur, Senior Pastor of Grace Community Church, says, James White's lucid presentation will help layperson and pastor alike. Highly recommended. You can order The Forgotten Trinity by going to our website at aomin .org.

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And many evangelicals are finding the history, tradition, and grandeur of the Roman Catholic Church appealing. This newfound rapport has caused many evangelical leaders and laypeople to question the age-old disagreements that have divided Protestants and Catholics.

Aren't we all saying the same thing in a different language? James White's book, The Roman Catholic Controversy, is an absorbing look at current views of tradition in Scripture, the papacy, the mass, purgatorian indulgences, and Marian doctrine.

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Presuppositional Apologetics, the Bonson-Sproul Debate, and the Need to Defend the Faith

And welcome back to Dividing Line. We continue with the program. And now I've had to try to calm myself down during the break just because I'm so excited to get to press this button and talk with Gary in Minneapolis.

Hi, Gary. Hello, Dr. White. Well, I tell you, unless John MacArthur was calling me, I don't know I could be any more excited.

You're giving me the creeps, Dr. White.

Well, Gary, let me just say on behalf of all of the channel rats, we've truly enjoyed having you back recently once or twice, and you are the only person I know of who could be in channel just a few hours and be kicked out more often than anyone else in all of 2006 so far.

It's truly an exciting thing to get a chance to have you on the program today. I'm very humbled by the news. Well, seriously, you have been greatly missed, and so everybody in channel is really enjoying what I'm doing right now.