Is the Bible for Real?

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Should creationism be taught in public schools? And first,
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I would like to introduce you to half of our informal debate panel, Dr.
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Robert Dietz, Professor Emeritus in Geology at Arizona State University, and he is in opposition to the idea that creationism should be taught as part of the curriculum in public schools.
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In favor of that position is our other guest, and that is James White, Director of Ministries with Alpha Omega Ministries.
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And right now, at the beginning, I would like to ask if you will please state your position, and just do so briefly if you will, take a couple of minutes, and tell us why you are where you are.
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Alphabetically, Dr. Dietz. Yes, well, I'm opposed to teaching creationism in school.
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It's sometimes called creationist science, but it's not science, it's pseudoscience. It is a religion, and it's not based on faith rather than factual evidence.
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Now, the National Academy of Sciences opposes teaching creationism in schools. The 72 noble lawyers opposed it.
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The Supreme Court opposed it a year ago in June. And the District Court in Arkansas opposed it.
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Now, it's not only pseudoscience, it's pseudo -religion, because most of the mainstream Protestant churches, all of them
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I guess except evolution, and the Catholic Church as well, they find no conflict.
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Now, evolution is not a religion. It's based on evidence, not on revealed truth or faith.
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There's no church, no creed, no dogma, no clergy, no authoritative and inerrant book, no paper pope, it has no radio or TV stations.
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The creationists have some 1 ,400. It has no preachers, it is not infallible, and not revealed.
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It is a matter of scientific evidence. In summary, evolution is a science, but creationism, although they saw it called scientific creationism, is not a science.
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What it is, is biblical creationism. Now, in the LaRousse book of origins, there are some 2 ,000 different stories of origins, of which the
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Christian biblical one is just one. So, why do they call it scientific creationism? They should be honest and call it biblical creationism.
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All right, an appropriate amount of time from Dr. Robert Dietz, against the teaching of creationism in public schools.
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You are listed in my material as James White, and I want to know if we should refer to you, sir, as Reverend James White, as director of ministries with Alpha Omega Ministries.
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Well, I am ordained, but I'm also a Baptist, and we Baptists don't like titles, so I'd prefer James, despite the ordination, and I'd feel a little more comfortable with that.
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Well, fine, I'll feel comfortable with whatever it is that you would like to be referred to, and so, James White, if you will, please, why are you for the teaching of creationism in public schools?
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Basically, we are faced with two models for the origin of the universe. We are faced with an origin theory that would say that all things arose out of natural materials, out of materialism, that the complexity of life arose out of random chance, the chance interaction of molecules in some ancient ocean, a prebiotic soup, some people would call it.
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That is one perspective on the origin of life. The other perspective is that the complexity of life that we see around us could not have come into existence by random chance, or by any natural processes as we understand them, but that would require a creator to bring these things into existence.
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We are talking simply about two models. Evolution is a theory, creation is a theory in the scientific sense of those words, and what
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I am here to present is that the people in the educational system in the United States of America need to have the freedom to fit the facts that we know them into an overarching theory that best correlates those facts.
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I would submit that the evolutionary theory does not best correlate the facts of science as we know them, but that the creation theory does, and the main point is that since we can have intelligent dialogue about how to understand those facts, that in and of itself proves my thesis, that we should have the freedom to discuss this not only on talk shows, but to discuss this within the educational system.
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We are not talking about a situation where we are attempting to push some sort of a dogma or religion.
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We are talking here about academic freedom. The ability to look at facts and to fit it into a theoretical structure to understand those facts.
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When we say evolution, if someone says evolution is a fact, that is a misstatement. Evolution is a theory.
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We look at facts and fit those facts into a particular understanding of those facts, and I feel that we should have the freedom and the intellectual integrity to allow those discussions to take place.
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In just a moment, we are going to go to the phones, and everyone will have an opportunity to participate this hour in this debate.
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I would like to know from you, Dr. Dietz, before we talk to the audience about their positions on this subject, having looked at your cartoon book,
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I think that it is fair to say that this is a satirical look at a lot of things in and around this issue.
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Yes, indeed. The satiricon, Creationism Bashed, is the title of it. I wonder if it would be fair to characterize you as being anti -religion.
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Well, a matter of definition, I am not anti -religion. I am a fundamentalist religion, but I am basically a religious person.
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But if you ask me to, just where I stand, first define what you mean by God, for example, that is the most confusing thing you can say is that you believe in God, because there are 2 ,000 different definitions.
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In science, you must have definitions, and you must have classification. What do you believe in, personally?
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I believe I am a naturalistic materialist. I am not sure what that is.
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I know what a Baptist is. Yes. But I am not sure what a naturalistic materialist is. I believe in the ultra -natural, but not the supernatural.
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And I believe you can explain things by natural laws, by the laws of physics and chemistry. And the earth universe is understandable in terms of these laws.
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Is there some kind of, in your mind, a supreme force, an overseer, a guidance to the system?
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Well, there may be an ultra -natural, not an ultra -supernatural, not a supernatural force. And this is beyond the realm of science, because science does not believe in miracles, does not, cannot apply miracles.
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So I cannot really justify one view or the other on the basis of science. We can go back to the Big Bang and so forth, and we can develop what's happened, but I certainly don't believe in a
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God sitting on a throne, an old man in the sky, who answers your prayers on a day -to -day basis. No, I don't believe in that.
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We should also be fair, by the way, and say that when you say that you are not in agreement with the fundamentalists, that would probably include elements of Catholicism, because the
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Catholic Church takes some bashing in your book, too. Yes, but they generally, they believe in evolution, and they believe the earth is more than 6 ,000 years old.
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And they don't believe in the reality of the great flood, which flooded all the world to a depth of almost four miles.
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In fairness, by the way, in fairness, I would like to ask Dr. White, excuse me, James White, we're not going to do titles with you,
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I know, I know what you're saying. Baptist, James White, are you anti -science? No, not at all.
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In fact, I majored in Bible and biology in my college work.
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That's two majors, or was that one major? That was two separate majors, Bible and biology, department of anatomy and physiology.
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I am not anti -science in any way. I believe that the facts of science will fit perfectly and harmoniously with the revelation of God, if God is indeed the creator.
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But I think it's important that we point out that the two models that we are presented are based upon religious precepts.
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Naturalism or materialism is a religious precept. It makes the natural laws of the universe, they take the place of God in a supernatural system, but they are both religious precepts.
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And what we're really debating here, Pat, is whether a particular religious philosophy, a particular worldview, that of naturalism or materialism, should be installed as the official perspective in our science classrooms.
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And there are a number of votes, a number of voices on this issue, and we'll be hearing from them today.
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Tammy and Anton and Pete and Jason and Richard and all the rest of the folks who are calling in with their voices to be heard on KTAR 620
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News Talk Radio next. As a matter of fact, I read my Bible every day. And in the beginning,
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God created the heaven and the earth. And God also formed man. We didn't come from monkeys, because God formed man.
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And he also formed the woman Eve. It says here in Genesis 221. And when
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I was in the fifth grade, they drilled evolution into our heads. I took my Bible to school, and I showed my teacher exactly what the
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Bible says. And as a matter of fact, I think I got a bad mark for it, but I stood for my right because evolution is wrong.
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It's devilish. All right, Professor Dietz, what about not only the word of Tammy, but the word of the
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Bible? Are you saying that it's just worthless? The Bible is not worthless, but it's not a historical text.
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It's not a scientific text. And it's not written not by Moses, but by a mosaic of authors written by people between 400
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B .C. and 200 A .D. And it's been translated from Amharic to Hebrew to Greek to Roman to Latin to English.
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And there's a lot lost. It takes at least three disciplines to straighten it out, and they don't. One is apologetics, which
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Mr. White's throwing on. The other is exegesis. The other is hermeneutics. But none of these do this.
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In fact, we are asked to accept half things without evidence, led by gurus who speak without knowledge about events without parallel.
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Now, I'd be inclined to believe the Bible, or at least part of it, if there was any mathematics in it. It doesn't have a single formula.
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You can't define the natural world in terms of just qualitatively. You need quantitative information.
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You need formula. James White, I would like to know why you believe, apparently, as Tammy believes, that the
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Bible is our standard. Well, there are a number of reasons. First of all, primarily the authority of Jesus Christ.
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The Lord Jesus Christ referred to the creation events, referred to the Mosaic authorship of those writings, and in fact based his teaching upon those things.
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I think that's very important. Secondly, in the scientific realm, what the Bible reveals concerning the nature of man and the nature of the universe is very consistent with the facts as we know them.
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I would point out that what Dr. Dietz just said about the nature of the Bible is utterly false and completely fallacious. The writings of Moses were known well before 400 years before Christ.
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They were written in Hebrew. I can translate those from Hebrew into English today.
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Any person who would take the time to learn those languages has those texts available to them, so that is simply completely erroneous and off the point.
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The main point I would make concerning the Bible is that what the Bible actually does teach about the nature of man and the nature of the universe is fully in harmony with the facts of research and science as we know them.
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Anton, go ahead, please, on KTAR. Dr. Robert Dietz and James White are debating this, and so are you.
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Okay, I have a few points that I can make, and I hope you will let me present my whole case before I will be cut off.
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Well, I'll tell you what, if you do it in a couple of minutes, all right? I'll have plenty of time. Okay, number one, before Pasteur, they taught the theory of spontaneous generation.
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Leave a piece of meat out, and maggots automatically crawl out. All right?
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With Pasteur, with sterilization, he developed a new theory called the theory of biogenesis, that life begets life, and parents and offspring are of the same kind.
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That theory is still being taught today. Now, they did experiments with drosophila and with corn, and in lab, the natural effects can be sped up quite a bit.
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Drosophila never has changed, and the corn has never turned to cabbage.
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Now, for evolution to take place, it must break every rules and laws of chemistry and physics.
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Now, the speaker mentioned that the Catholics have no conflict. That is erroneous. Prior to Vatican II, the
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Catholic Bible stated, and all the others, that in Genesis 1, that God created all living things, plants and animals according to their kind, which is what the theory of biogenesis says, one kind after another.
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Now, the post -Vatican II Bibles say that God created all living things, he thought that it was good, and blessed them, leaving out after its kind.
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Of course the Catholics both have any contradiction at this point. Thirty seconds, Anton. That's it. All right, thank you very much.
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If you will both comment, please. Yes, let me say first of all that he's quite wrong, that, for example, corn is derived from a grass grown in Central America called teosinte, and now the modern corn is zeomys.
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It's an all -new genus. This is macroevolution. And as far as Pasteur is concerned, of course he's talking about biopoiesis, the origin of life.
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Now, evolution does not involve that. Evolution, by the way, is both a fact and a theory. The fact is that there has been descent with variation, and the theory is how it has happened.
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Now, the fact stays a fact, but the theories do change, modified with time.
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Now we believe what is called the neo -Darwinian synthesis. Now, there have been enormous changes. Even all creationists believe in evolution.
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They prefer to call it macroevolution, which is a cop -out. Macroevolution is simply macroevolution going on for a longer period of time.
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Now, we see, for example, all sorts of examples. It isn't quite clear, for example, that penguins and ostriches were birds that once flew.
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They call the bat the bat kind, but there are a thousand species of bats. That's ridiculous. And we have an opportunity.
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Macroevolution. Before the news break, we have to move in, because it's a very complex issue. We have to move into this part of the debate and your response,
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James White, to Anton. Well, obviously I agree with much of what Anton said. I believe that there is, as he indicated, a great deal of evidence that fits perfectly with the creation model.
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Some of the things that Dr. Dease just mentioned, for example, natural selection. That is predicted by the creation model.
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It is not predicted by the evolutionary model, but it is predicted by the creation model that if God is going to create something, he's going to place a mechanism in that organism to allow it to adapt to a changing environment.
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And so, when an evolutionist, for example, says there's no evidence for creationism, I say, wait a minute. We're getting confused here.
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We're talking about two models. Let's look at the facts as we know them. Let's look at the structure of DNA. Let's look at the function of genetics.
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Let's look at these things and ask ourselves the question, which of these two does it fit better in? And the main point being, we need to have the freedom to allow our children to ask the same questions.
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This hour has evolved into this. Meanwhile, Jason, you're standing by, and it's your turn.
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Go right ahead, please, on KTAR. Well, I'm only 13, but...
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You're welcome here. What? You're welcome here. I'm glad to hear you. Yeah, all right. I have a theory on evolution, and I believe that who says one of God's days is equal to one of ours?
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You know? Uh -huh, so the seven days business may not be seven days of 24 hours.
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Yeah, it could be like, say, one day could equal the stage of evolution.
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I mean, I believe in God and all, but I also believe in evolution. So I'm kind of stuck in the middle, but my friend and I have kind of worked out a theory about evolution, and we believe that God did create the
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Earth and started going, and he created man and bacteria.
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But what I do not believe is that we evolved from a little amoeba cell.
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Uh -huh. What's your friend's name? Scott. He's not here right now. No, but it's the Jason and Scott Theory of Evolution.
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And listen, it probably has as much merit as many of the things that we hear from the authorities on high.
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Jason, I appreciate your calling. I appreciate your listening, and I hope that you'll be a regular visitor here. Meanwhile, John is on from Fountain Hills?
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Yes. Yes, go ahead. I appreciate the opportunity. An excellent show. I would, having been brought up through religious schooling all the way through high school,
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I had my fill of, you know, that kind of teaching. And at this point,
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I would say I don't understand why the Bible and that kind of publications are treated with, you know, much more respect than anything other than maybe a literature course would be due to them.
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I must say that I am quite on the side of the scientists who may not at this point have all the answers, but appear to me to be on a closer track to the truth.
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All right. I'll tell you what. I'm going to turn this over right now to our Baptist friend, James White, who's
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Director of Ministries with Alpha Omega Ministries. And I'd like you to respond, if you will, to the fundamental question that he raises, and that is, why is it that the
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Bible is the guiding force for every element of your life? Well, there are actually two issues that need to be,
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I think, addressed there. Before I answer the question, why is the Bible the direct force for my entire life, it's interesting that I wasn't the one who brought the
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Bible up. I have been dealing with the broader issue of creationism, and not specifically
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Christian creationism, at first. I just wanted to lay a basis first. We can get into that as time permits.
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Why is the Bible the directing force for my life and my belief? Because the fact of my personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
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Jesus Christ honored the Scriptures. He taught that the Scriptures were the very words of God. And a person has a choice to make.
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If they are going to call Jesus Christ their Lord, why do they think that they are smarter than Jesus Christ in regards to their view of Scripture?
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That kind of leaves out my friend Rabbi Plotkin, though, doesn't it? As far as what? As far as the
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Old Testament? No, you keep talking about the fact that the reason why we should accept your theory of not only science, but also all of the many things that are associated with it, is because Biblical testimony says, and Jesus Christ has said, and the reason why the
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Bible is a standard is because Jesus Christ said so, but Jesus is a different person to different people, including my
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Jewish friend. Well, obviously the Jewish individual is not going to have the perspective of Christ that the Christian does. But I can only speak as a
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Christian. For the Christian, the authority of Jesus Christ is final. But I want to correct something you just said. You just said that the reason
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I believe X, Y, and Z is because Christ said it. Yes, his authority is the final determination for me.
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But that does not mean that his teaching, for example, on this subject, will be contradictory to, or in variance with, fact as we find it.
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Now, the reason people believe the Bible is because they've been imbued with it at a very early age. They've been indoctrinated. That's untrue.
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And they have no choice. I mean, if my friend here was born in Iran, he would be a Muslim. That's untrue. If he was born in Israel, he would be a
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Jew, and he would not believe in Jesus. That's how it goes. It's where you're born. You are twisted at a very early age.
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As the Jesuits say, let me have a child till he's seven, and we'll have him for life. This is very true.
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We've been all indoctrinated. What's wrong with that? That's obviously untrue. There are many people who have come to accept Christ who came from a completely atheistic background.
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That is not the fact whatsoever. Dr. Dietz is telling us... There are also atheists who used to be baptized.
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I'm well aware of that. But the point being, Dr. Dietz is telling us that what you were when you were six years old is going to determine that, and that means what he's saying is that I don't have the ability...
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The Bible has no validity. The one rule here is that wherever you came from, you got here, and this is my turf, and you don't get to talk while the other guy is talking.
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Go ahead. Let me finish my point. The point I'm making is that I would assert that Dr. Dietz's commitment to a religion of naturalism and materialism is blinding him far more than my commitment to supernaturalism is blinding me.
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Now, Dr. Dietz. Yes. Well, as I said, the people believe in the
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Bible because they've been indoctrinated at a very early age. Now, let me explain what Darwinism means. It means that man is a super ape, not a fallen angel.
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It means that the earth does not belong to man, but man belongs to the earth. It explains why we have two sexes.
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It explains... We understand evolution exactly how it works, and people don't like it. Well, Darwinism may have warts, but it is reality.
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It's the way the earth is. Dr. Dietz, I have to ask you with all of your credentials as a professor emeritus in geology, a respected member of the faculty at Arizona State University, aren't you a little humbled by the fact that so many other great intellects and major minds throughout the centuries have believed in elements of what your opponent believes, have believed in organized religion, have been members of organized churches, and believe in Jesus or Moses or the
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Bible? The Bible, a scientist who understands the universe is very complex, of course,
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I mean, and we stand in awe of nature. No question about that. But we don't believe in simplistic things.
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Now, I believe in the God of Einstein. Einstein, in turn, believed in the God of Spinoza.
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Spinoza believed that God was nature. I accept that. I accept naturalism. I don't accept supernaturalism.
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No evidence for it. Do you wonder why some scientists do? Yes, many of them do, to be sure, not too many.
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By and large, they are agnostic people, and they believe in evidence, and they all believe in evolution. I mean, there are 400 ,000 biologists in this country, and only 700 believe in creationism.
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I mean, it's an absolute fact. Why not face it? In your book, what do you call an agnostic? What's your definition?
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A godless atheist. This is Pat McMahon, KTA, Harvard Deeds of Arizona State University, and the
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Director of Ministries with Alpha Omega Ministries, James White, who has this response, and then we'll go to Cole.
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Yes, Dr. Deeds, in his closing comments, said a couple things that have to be responded to. He said, first of all, we understand exactly how it works, referring to the theory of evolution.
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That is simply totally untrue. There are as many theories of evolution as there are evolutionists. Anyone who's gone to one of their conventions knows that everybody's got their pet theory that differs from everybody else's pet theory, and that's just simply a fact.
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He said it's an absolute fact. A person committed to the precepts of unbiased investigation in science would never make that statement.
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And finally, he said there is no evidence for the supernatural. I would submit that that is due to the presuppositions of naturalism that are
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Dr. Deeds's, that he is obviously very strongly committed to. And the imperfection of our debate forum is that you don't always get a chance to answer back because I'm interested in what
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Pete has to say. Go ahead. Pete? Hi. Boy, what a phenomenal discussion, Pat. This is probably one of the most interesting shows you've ever had.
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Thank you. And I thank you for the opportunity. I'd like to address Dr. Deeds on one issue, and by the way,
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I don't think we should get away from the fact that the whole discussion is on whether we should teach this in the schools or not.
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It appears that we've gotten away from that. I think that if we are going to teach evolution in the schools, which we are, we should also be allowed to teach creationism and give the student the ability.
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That's what school is all about, is to be able to show both sides of the coin. I might add that in the theory of evolution,
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I'd like to give you the definition from Webster's Dictionary. It's an abstract thought, an unproved assumption, a plausible or scientific acceptable general principle.
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When you look at the theory of evolution, it is very much based on faith, just like a Christian's belief is based on the
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Bible. And I think that what we need to keep in light, as Mr. White just said, is that there are no proven facts that evolution is correct.
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There are no... It's all based on assumption, and we talk about the scientific thing.
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You can go into the Bible and look at the theory of the speed of light. The Lord said, a day is a thousand years, and a thousand years is as a day, and that can be proven against the theory of the speed of light.
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I think what needs to be kept in mind in this whole discussion is that you cannot prove either one.
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You have to base it all on the theory of faith. And Darwin himself actually avoided the discussion of the sociological aspects of his work.
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However, there's many people, such as Dr. Dietz, that has made a conclusion and followed that through.
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Let's pass it on to Dr. Dietz, Pete. I thank you very much for some very, very interesting food for thought, and I would like to know if you will respond initially to his request that you leave it up to the kids themselves and the teachers in public school.
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Nonsense. You should teach the state of the art in the school. The state of the art is known to the experts in the field, which are the biologists concerning evolution.
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Now, you can teach about creationism. By the way, he's speaking, of course, not of... He's speaking of biblical creationism, not of the 2 ,000 other varieties of creationism, according to the
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Babylonians, the Hittites, and so forth. He's speaking of a particular type, biblical creationism. Now, this is religion.
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This violates the First Amendment. Now, if you want to teach, you can't teach astrology in an astronomy course.
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You can't teach that the... In astronomy, that the world is the center of the solar system.
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You can't teach the Earth is flat. You have to teach what we believe to be true. There are no absolute facts, but there are hard facts, and the fact of evolution is as firm as any fact we have in science.
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It's as firm as the Earth being round, not flat. People who object to evolution are indulging in an anguished protest against the whole of science and modernity as anti -science.
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We have to move on to Richard, who is standing by, and before he gets older and evolves into another species, please go ahead on KTAR.
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Yeah, Pat, I just had three quick things that I wanted to say. First of all,
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I'm born -again Christian, but I have read a number of things, and I agreed with a previous caller.
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You can't ever prove either one scientifically. There's a good book out by Josh McDowell that historically proves or historically sets down a foundation for the
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Bible. That's the first thing I'd like to say, and then I'd like to say that, so having studied the
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Bible, I had some understanding of it. I was going through Harvard Classics one day, and I came across a writing by Thomas Huxley, who
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I guess was an agnostic, and he began to talk about how the Bible early schools were all taught in a religious setting of that type, and then they began to get away from that, and as they began to find things that went before the time of Christ, and they basically skipped over them, they began to get into science, and that's kind of what
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Paul in the book of Romans was talking about when he talked about people that had different theories and what have you.
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Your conclusion, sir. Okay, one final thing. There's a book out called The Mainstream of Human Progress, and what this book goes on to say is that until people believed in a single deity, they could never have science because everything was haphazard or random.
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It wasn't until they believed in a single god that had things in control that men could actually begin to engage in science and humans could begin to develop into the society we have now.
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I thank you very much, once again, for your participation, and so that Glenn gets on, I'm going to ask you to be brief so we can have some closing comments from our guests.
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Glenn? Yes, sir. I have a question for Dr. Dietz. If we defined altruism as Webster's Dictionary does, as unselfish concern for the welfare of others, first, do you believe that altruism really exists in humans, or that such actions can always be accounted for in terms of genetic selfishness?
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And if you do believe in altruism, how do you account for its having arisen by evolution through natural selection?
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Dr. Dietz, if you will. If I could answer that, it would take about two days. You're speaking of the idea of E.
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O. Wilson, of the selfish gene, and there's some merit to it, but this is sort of the edge of evolution science. Now, evolution is factual, based on evidence.
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Creation has not been revised, altered, since the book of Genesis. It was written about 2 ,000 years ago.
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Creationists defend inflexible suppositions. Science is based on skepticism and irreverence for authority, tradition, and rejects all revolution of creation as uncertain.
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Because we're nearly out of time, I want to ask you both to wrap things up, summarize with this thought in mind.
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Dr. Dietz, what would convince you that the rest of these folks over here on the other side of this issue are right?
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What would do it? It would convince me if I saw an actual miracle. Now, people speak about miracles, but there's no proof, no scientific proof that any miracle has ever happened.
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I believe it if a pair is answered. I've never known a pair to be answered in my life or anyone else's life whose data
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I accept. Things are not double -blind. There are many anecdotal stories, but no reality. Now, the world is natural, based on natural laws, and it obeys natural laws.
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And what would convince you, James White, that in fact, the theory of evolution is exactly the fact that we should follow?
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Well, if the theory of evolution were to explain humankind as we see it existing, the world as we see it existing, if it fit the facts as we know it, that would be a big point in its favor.
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But again, I point out that the evolutionist attempts to make this a battle between religion and science.
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It is not. I understand science. The facts of science are perfectly in line with what
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I am saying. It is a smoke screen to say that this is an anti -science thing. It is not.
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The facts of science are there. Natural selection takes place that is perfectly in harmony with the creationist viewpoint, and the people in our schools need to have the freedom to choose between those two perspectives.
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Yesterday, there was a very small paragraph in USA Today, and some other newspapers picked it up across the country also.
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Let me read it to you, and I'm going to introduce four guests who are joining us this morning. And no matter what your religious beliefs are, this should catch your ear, even if you're an atheist or an agnostic or an atheist or a deist or a pantheist or whatever you are.
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Even if you don't know what you are, listen to this. Twenty -six Bible scholars participating in the
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Jesus Seminar, an attempt to determine exactly what Jesus said, have announced that they, and I quote, strongly disagree that he expected to return to earth and usher in a new age.
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Such beliefs should be ascribed to latter followers or later followers of the gospel writers according to the
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Old Testament. And the report, as I said, is very short. It winds up by saying a 1983
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Gallup poll found that 62 to 63 percent of the American people believe that Jesus will return.
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The Jesus Seminar is a project of the Westar Institute in Sonoma, California. Dr. Robert Funk is with that organization and is a spokesman for this group of people, and he is joining us on the phone lines from California and along with us in the studios.
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And I'll introduce our other three guests a little bit more in detail in a moment. Our three ministers,
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Hyland Schlabotkin, Shelly Volk, and James White. And as I said, we'll introduce them in a moment.
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But Dr. Funk, thank you for joining us today. When was this seminar held?
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When was it held? When did this thing actually take place, this group of 26 scholars meeting?
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Well, this was our ninth meeting, which we held over this past weekend in Sonoma, California.
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And the scholars that you talk about came from what area or what churches or denominations?
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In other words, what are these men and women who met? They're all people who hold academic posts and leading colleges, universities, and seminaries across the country and Canada.
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And we even had one person from London, England. All right. All of these people are theologians, academicians, you yourself, a historian, and you have a
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Ph .D., as I understand, from Vanderbilt University. You taught at the Harvard Divinity School.
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You have a Protestant background. And this is the ninth meeting.
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Is it one meeting a year or has this been going on for a number of years? We meet twice a year.
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We began in 1985 and we set ourselves the task, first of all, of inventorying everything that had been attributed to Jesus in the first 300 years.
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That includes materials not only in the New Testament, but in all of the other Gospels and Gospel fragments that we have preserved for us from the ancient world.
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And then we set out to evaluate each one of those items. There are more than 2 ,000 of them in this inventory.
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And we began with the parables. We met at the University of Redlands a couple, three years ago and went through all of the parables and the last several meetings we have been engaged in evaluating all of the aphorisms and other materials.
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All right. Now, a lot of people really will hear what you said and they might not get a grasp of this.
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Besides the Gospels, I think everybody should know what we're talking about here. You're talking about the four
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Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And then you said that there are some other things that are not considered to be part of what you would find in a typical
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Bible and a typical bookstore. And you said there are more than 2 ,000 different items. Where do they come from?
34:57
Well, another principal source that we fortunately have had now since the 1940s is the
35:03
Gospel of Thomas. Thomas was found in a Coptic version among some documents discovered at Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt in the middle 40s and has now been generally available.
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And then we discovered when Coptic Thomas became available to us that we already had some Greek fragments of Thomas and we just didn't know what they were.
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And this Thomas, of course, would be one of the apostles, the so -called doubting Thomas that we read about?
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Yes, possibly so, though there is some dispute about which Thomas it is. There is also the claim by the title of this book that this
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Thomas was the brother of Jesus. All right. Now, I read this paragraph in introducing you that was in USA Today, and I must tell you,
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I usually don't like referring to USA Today. I consider it to be America's gross oversimplification of the news.
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They've managed to boil it all down into sort of an adult weekly reader, and so we had, out of what is obviously a long -term study by a group of people who are, as I said, theologians and academicians, one little paragraph here.
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Now, this thing deserves more than one little paragraph, so that's why I'm asking some very basic relative questions to this.
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Yes, I understand that. They said that in this one little paragraph, once again, that, and the only quote that I have is that you folks strongly disagree that this man
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Jesus says that he expected to return to earth and usher in a new age. Is that a good synopsis, or what exactly did the organization say?
36:36
No, I think that's correct to say that. What we did was examine in some detail, in great detail, in fact, all of the sayings attributed to Jesus in Mark 13 and the parallel passages which are found in Matthew 24 and Luke 21, and we decided all of those sayings that have to do with the future appearance of the
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Son of Man and related phenomena are really secondary. And as a consequence of that,
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I asked my colleagues whether they would formulate some general recommendation to the public at large, and they did that in several different ways, but the way in which it is reported in the paper is essentially correct.
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And I think that owes to the fact that most of the people in New Testament studies these days would describe or characterize what we call apocalyptic language that's used to describe the future kingdom, for example, like we find in the book of Revelation, would describe that as mythic and symbolic.
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So consequently, they feel that the literal interpretation of those materials is incorrect to begin with.
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And then the likelihood that those words do not go back to Jesus makes them doubly suspect in the minds of many.
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Alright, now, Dr. Funk, we talked about what the group, the scholars, feel that he didn't say.
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What then, to turn this thing around and phrase it in a slightly different way, what then does the organization, the group of scholars feel that he was saying, or was he really saying anything about this at all?
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About the future kingdom? About a future kingdom, about him returning, about there being a time when this man, in English we know him as Jesus Christ, is going to be the king of the earth, the ruler of the earth, which is what mainline
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Christianity has, at least from what I understand, has thought for the last few thousand years.
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What then does the group come up with that he was saying? Well, I could respond to that by pointing to two of the sayings, at least, about the kingdom of God that the group is inclined to think do go back to Jesus, at least in some form.
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By the way, one of the inaccuracies in that news report is that we are not trying to determine the exact words of Jesus.
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It's impossible to determine the exact words of Jesus. What we are trying to do is to determine those items in the record that might with some plausibility go back to Jesus in some form or another.
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But many of us think that Jesus spoke Aramaic and probably didn't know Greek, and the only form in which we have the tradition is
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Greek, so we will never recover his exact words. But two of the sayings, this is one of them found in Luke 17, 20, the kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed, nor will they say, lo, here it is, or there, for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you.
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Now, it is difficult to know precisely what that means, but there is a corollary in Thomas, which we also think may reflect some of the ideas of Jesus, and it runs like this.
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The kingdom will not come by waiting for it. It will not be a matter of saying, here it is, or there it is.
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Rather, the kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth, and men do not see it. And then there is another one also in the gospel of Luke, 11, 20, that goes like this.
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If it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. Now, the conclusion we draw from those is that Jesus spoke about the kingdom of something that was present in his own time, in his own ministry, that he felt it was breaking in even then, and he gave us evidences, the things, the sorts of things that he did in casting out demons and healing people.
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We're inclined to think that if that was his view of the kingdom, he probably did not talk about it as a future event, such as we find in the book of Daniel.
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All right. Now, of course, it doesn't take an Einstein to know that what you have just said goes against the grain of what mainline
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Christianity has been thinking, as I said a moment ago for the last few thousand years, and certainly what most of the
40:48
Christian churches are teaching today. I mean, this is not something that you're going to hear in the average run -of -the -mill local neighborhood
40:57
Christian church. Do you agree with that? Well, to this extent, most of the ministers who are trained in mainline seminaries know all of this, of course.
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In many cases, they probably have not communicated it to their congregation. Do you think there's any specific reason why they wouldn't?
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Yes, because we live in a society that is essentially illiterate biblically, because of our doctrine of the separation of church and state.
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We've taken that to mean that we really cannot educate people in these matters, and if colleges and universities stay out of the business, then what happens in the public is they get their information largely from TV evangelists and others who have a very slanted view of all this.
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So I think many pastors are put in a difficult position of saying things to congregations that they know very well, but finding that the reaction is adverse among their own people, so they just don't say anything.
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All right. On that note, I'm going to pause for a moment. As I said, we have three other guests that I have yet to introduce to you who share opposite views of Dr.
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Robert Funk, and the group of... I suppose they share opposite views. You'll find out in a moment. And the group who met over the last few days, the
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Jesus Seminar. Hang on, and we'll continue in a moment on the talk station, 910 -K -FYI.
42:17
My guest joining us in California is Dr. Robert Funk, founder of the
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Jesus Seminar, a group of 26 theologians who met to try to figure out exactly what
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Jesus said. And, of course, we have to be very technical here as we discuss this, and I don't think that any of our guests are going to disagree that it's insofar as we know that this man,
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Jesus, did not write any of the books in the Bible, per se. I mean, he didn't sit down with a pen and handwrite any of this stuff.
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It was all written by various apostles and prophets in the Old Testament and on and on.
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And I introduced Dr. Funk to you just a moment ago, and he has set up his premise quite nicely.
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Joining us in the studios this morning are three ministers. Shelly Volk, who is a pastor of Calvary Church of the
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Valley. Hyland Slobotkin, who is with Living Streams Church.
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These are Christian churches. They are, am I correct if I say non -denominational yet, but Christian churches?
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You can say non - or inter -denominational All right. And James White, who is also a theologian.
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He is the founder of Alpha and Omega Ministries. Is that right? Based here in the
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Valley. Yes, it is. And welcome, gentlemen. Thank you for joining us. And you heard Dr. Funk set up his premise, as I said a moment ago, quite nicely here.
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Have all of you heard this before? He said all of the ministers who have attended seminary in this country have heard this before, but they don't talk about it.
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So let me just do a roundtable, beginning Hyland with you. Have you heard this before? Oh, sure. This is old, historical information we have here in terms of just the fact that a lot of people have been saying for many years that Jesus really didn't write the
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Gospels, as you said earlier. He didn't sit down with a quill and a parchment and sit down and write any of this.
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Right. But there were men who walked with him, lived with him, put their head on his shoulder, and he spoke certain things that they wrote down.
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And we have enough evidence, even just comparing the Gospels to the Gospels, that to come up with information that what he said was exactly what he saw, or close to what he said.
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Shelley Bolk? Yeah. This is nothing new, and I would agree that the
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Gospels were not written, per se, by Jesus, but this is an account of his life and his words.
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And James White? Yes, definitely. This is something that's very familiar, I think, to most individuals who have, for example, done any graduate work in theology or in New Testament.
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I would just say that I disagree that the reason that you don't hear more about the Gospels is because people are afraid to talk about it.
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I think the reason that you don't hear more about it is that the majority of pastors reject this kind of a theoretical viewpoint on the
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New Testament, as I do. What you've heard so far, what do you object to or reject more than anything else?
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What stands out here? Well, I think the whole perspective on what the New Testament is and how we got it,
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I think, would be where the most major disagreement is. None of you agree with the idea that the
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Catholic Church is Jesus Christ is not coming back. All of you agree with the idea that he is coming back, a physical person, not just a concept, not just a new age, but a...
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A visible, personal being. All right, so you take these words literally that he will come back, a man will be here.
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That's what the Bible says as far as I can see. Yes, definitely. I think that the second coming of Christ is throughout the entire
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New Testament tradition. In the very earliest documents that we have of the New Testament, for example, the Pauline Epistles, the
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First Thessalonians, which is dated as one of the earliest writings, is chock full of the second coming of Christ.
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And I think that the major area of disagreement between, for example, myself and Dr. Funk, would be where the
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New Testament came from, how we got it. Is it something that was written after many generations of reflection?
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Is it a late document? Or are we talking about documents that were actually written by eyewitnesses who are trustworthy in what they report?
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What do you say? I say, obviously, that they were written by eyewitnesses who are trustworthy in their reporting, that the concept that there was a redaction of various sundry sources, that a person sat down many, many years after the events that he describes, and I'm talking here a century later, sits down with a bunch of different sources and says, well, let's see,
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I like this over here, I like this over here, let's put it all together into one thing, and thereby twisting the history, or twisting the words of Jesus, or inserting the words of theological concepts, such as the coming of Jesus Christ, which most theologians
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I'm familiar with would assert is one of the most primitive, one of the most early concepts within the
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Christian church, was the soon return of Jesus Christ. Dr. Fogg, do you agree that these letters of Paul and some of the other apostles, were they written by these men?
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Are they things that were written as eyewitnesses? Or do you and your group feel that, as James White said, they were written as eyewitnesses?
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That is to say that there are people who feel that they were written much later as sort of a critique of what happened back then.
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Well, a great many things have passed here already that need to be sorted out. All right, go ahead and jump in.
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Some things I can agree with, and some things I can't. But let's start with the major premise. I don't know of any critical scholar who would date any of the canonical
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Gospels much earlier than around 65 or 70 A .D., which is already 40 years after the death of Jesus.
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All right, let me just jump in. A lot of people won't understand what you mean. Canonical Gospels, what is that? Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the ones that appear in the
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New Testament that most of us know. All right, and you say that most people say they were written around what, 60 to 65
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A .D.? I don't know of a single critical scholar that would date them much earlier than that. Moreover, I don't know of a single critical scholar who really mounts an argument that any of the
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Gospels were written by followers of Jesus, immediate followers of Jesus. Excuse me, would you consider
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Dr. F .F. Bruce as being a critical scholar? Well, he's really marginal to the modern Christian movement.
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He's the only one. Marginal? Wait a minute now. He's just about the only one that can be cited. How about Dr.
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Leon Morris? Dr. Morris? How about that? Same character.
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You see, what you're talking about are people that are really on the fringes of modern Biblical scholarship.
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I'd like to point out that, for example, my graduate work is at Fuller Theological Seminary, and I'm afraid that a person like that, an individual such as that, would be considered very mainline.
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In fact, from our perspective, my perspective, for example, within the Baptist Church, would be considered somewhat to the left sometimes of where we are.
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Well, I'm afraid that this is a hopeless kind of conversation. I want to point out to you the very obvious fact that you don't have anybody representing any of the mainline churches in this conversation other than myself.
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What do you mean? That says an awful lot about the kind of people you have to find. Who can champion this sort of view?
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Do you think we're kind of scratching the bottom of the barrel here? Excuse me, Doctor, who would you identify as mainline churches?
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Would you consider, for example, the 14 million member Southern Baptist Convention to have anything to do with the mainline?
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It's really being dominated by a very small group, I'm sorry to say. Most of the Southern Baptists I know would like to be a part of this process, but are being forced by many people in the
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Southern Baptist Convention who are on a witch hunt these days out of this conversation. And I think that's really very unfortunate that we're having the
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Inquisition all over again. Well, I'm not a part of any kind of Inquisition, sir. You were just referring to that as something which you approve,
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I take it. No, I don't necessarily approve of that at all, but I am pointing out that, for example, individuals such as Dr.
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F. F. Bruce or Dr. Leon Morris are not in any way, shape, or form fringe element scholars at all.
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Your definition of Yes, I'm afraid they are. I'm afraid you just don't know the definition of scholarly literature. You wouldn't say that.
50:18
I do, sir. No, I'm afraid you don't. All right, let me pause for just a second here, and we'll see if we can find some common ground in a moment.
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Dr. Robert Funk, founder of Jesus Seminar, is here, a group of theologians that he represents.
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They have been meeting over the last few years, twice a year, trying to put together exactly the meaning of what it was that Jesus said and what is actually in this thing, this book that we call the
50:41
Bible. And his organization has come to the conclusion that Jesus never indicated that he would come back again.
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There's no reason to think that, according to their manuscripts and to what they've come up with. Now, Shelley Volk is joining us.
50:55
He's a pastor with Calvary Church of the Valley. Hyland Slobotkin is here, of Living Springs Christian Church.
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I'm sorry, Living Streams. I made an abbreviation there. I put L -S. No problem. Please forgive me for that. And James White, who is with Alpha and Omega Ministries, and they're joining us in the studios.
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And, you know, I think one of the problems that we have here, Dr. Funk, is a problem with common ground.
51:19
If you're going to talk about an issue such as this, and you can't get a basic agreement on who is what or which scholar is going to be one upon which, you know, the conversation can revolve around, you're right, we could talk about this all day and not get anywhere.
51:35
Dr. Funk Yes, I think that's true. And that, of course, is the reason there has been very little conversation between these two groups during this century.
51:46
What happened was that as a result of the heresy trials around the turn of the century, when the churches were trying to sort all of this out and deal with the question of critical scholarship, which had been imported primarily from the continent, a lot of scholars simply went underground and decided they were not going to speak in public for fear of reprisal.
52:09
And, you know, I think trying to do is to induce my colleagues to come out of the closet and say something to the public.
52:16
Now, what we get for that often is the kind of response I've just gotten here. And, as a matter of fact, a couple of the
52:23
Southern Baptists who've been active in our group have recently been forced to resign. And it was either that or lose their job.
52:31
Earlier, we lost a couple of other people from other groups, but not from any of the mainline churches.
52:37
So it's a very difficult thing to do. In a context like this where certain elements in the society are defensive about a position, and I don't want the rest of us,
52:48
I guess, to be able to say anything. Well, excuse me, I'd like to point out, first of all, that I have no problem with someone saying this as long as they allow for a dialogue to take place upon the facts that are presented.
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I think we need to recognize, first of all, this is not a scholarship versus anti -scholarship position whatsoever.
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Dr. Funk has redefined scholarship and has decided that the scholars who disagree with him are not actually scholars.
53:10
They're fringe element people, even though they hold teaching chairs in great universities, which
53:15
I think is just as bad as someone saying to Dr. Funk, you can't publish, you can't write, you can't express your opinions.
53:22
I would disagree with both. I think that we need to recognize the difference with which we approach the text.
53:29
We attempt to interpret the text in the light of what the writers themselves believed, thought, and taught.
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We do not approach the text from a perspective and a philosophy that is completely opposite of what the authors had, because I think if you do that, if you attempt to interpret even something as different as Shakespeare from a position and understanding of the world totally opposite of Shakespeare, you're going to come up with some weird things.
53:54
I think that we approach Scripture from a different perspective, that we utilize the same manuscripts, the same dedication to truth and scholarship, but we have a very different worldview.
54:06
Okay, how do you approach the Scriptures? Okay, well, when I approach the Scriptures, I attempt to approach them, first of all, in interpretation, in the light of which they were originally written.
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I'm not going to attempt to force them into my molds and my philosophy. All right, now, wait a second. Dr. Funk, do you disagree with that approach as you go in to study, to figure out what is the intent, the meaning of the author?
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Is that the correct way as far as you see to do it? Absolutely. Of course. Nobody would want to deny that.
54:33
The only question is whether what he's saying is accurate or not, or whether, in fact, he is imposing on the author of the
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Scriptures.
55:06
He's imposing on the author of the the author of the the author of the the author of the the author of the the author of the the author of the the author of the the author of the the author of the the author of the the author of the the author of the the author of the the author of the the author of the the author of the the author of the the author of the the author of the the author of the the author of the the author of the the author of the the author of the the author of the the author of the the author of the the author of the the author of the the author of the the author of the the author of the the author of the the author of the the author of the the author of the a mental basis.
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We, I became a believer, and when I read words such as this, let me just read three verses from the
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Gospel of John. Let not your heart be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in me. In my
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Father's house are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And these are
59:32
Jesus's words. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself that where I am, there you may be also.
59:40
So what you're saying is that if you approach it from a purely intellectual standpoint, as Dr. Funk and his group has done, you're not going to get anywhere.
59:47
Absolutely. We can talk on a mental basis, but unless we have the Spirit of God to enlighten us, and God said,
59:53
I will put my spirit within you, without the Spirit of God, this book does not make sense, and we'll talk now until the
01:00:00
Lord comes and will not understand it. Dr. Funk, I want to get your response to that, but I've got to pause here for just a moment.
01:00:06
I guessed Dr. Robert Funk and three other gentlemen, and I'll introduce them again for you right after the news today. Dr. Funk, the statement was made just before the commercial break that you cannot study these scriptures purely on an academic, theological level, that you have to go in with sort of a spirit -filled desire,
01:00:23
I think would be the right way to phrase it, in order to fully comprehend and understand what's there.
01:00:29
Do you agree with that or disagree? Well, that's a very romantic view of textual interpretation. Let me point out that what happens in these conversations often is that we switch from an inspired text, from a
01:00:41
Bible that is inspired, to an interpretation that is inspired, so that the interpretation has to be equally inspired in order for us to know that it's the correct one.
01:00:51
I want to be very clear about our group. We don't claim any special inspiration. We don't ask each other whether we're being driven by the
01:00:58
Spirit of God. What we do is ask each other about our credentials. We review each other's work.
01:01:05
It's an open, peer -review process that's carried on in colleges and universities everywhere.
01:01:11
And the only thing that causes our work to stand up is whether it is convincing to other people. Yes, indeed, we do really object to this way of going about it.
01:01:20
I appreciate your objection, but I'd rather stand on the side of the Lord where he says, I will send you...
01:01:25
Well, I'm sorry, that doesn't mean standing on the side of the Lord. That means standing on the side of your own privileged point of view.
01:01:31
As far as you're claiming, if I hear you correctly, that relying on the Spirit is some romantic vision, yet the
01:01:37
Lord saw fit to say to our own people, a new heart also will I give you, and a new Spirit will I put within you.
01:01:44
And his words are life and Spirit, and God said he'll send the Holy... How do I know that your Spirit is the right one? I'm talking about the
01:01:51
Spirit that God said he'd send. He'll send the Holy Spirit... You're saying that you understand that Spirit better than I do. No, no, no,
01:01:56
I didn't say that. I'm saying without the Spirit that God sends, the Holy Spirit, which he says is our teacher, it's futile to discuss the
01:02:04
Bible without having that Spirit. Is the Bible, then, in a special category from all other literature? Definitely. Hold on on that answer.
01:02:10
We've got to take that up. Should the Bible be scrutinized like all other literature? And not only that, what do you think?
01:02:17
We'll take phone calls right after the news at 258 -KFYI, so stay tuned.
01:02:23
Let me very quickly reintroduce all of our guests, for those of you just joining us, and if you are, you missed a very fascinating first hour of the show.
01:02:30
Dr. Robert Funk, founder of the Jesus Seminar, 26 scholars meeting over the last few years, twice a year to find out what
01:02:37
Jesus really said, and according to the news reports, they feel, after intense study, that this man,
01:02:44
Jesus Christ, did not say that he would make a return to the earth, that he was coming back.
01:02:50
And also joining us with an opposite viewpoint, three ministers joining us in the studio, Shelley Volk, who is the pastor of the
01:02:58
Calvary Church of the Valley, Hyland Schlebotkin, who is with Living Springs. I knew that!
01:03:06
And James White with Alpha and Omega Ministries, and where we left off just before the news, we are going to go to the phones in a moment with a number of people who are calling in.
01:03:14
There are lines open at 258 -KFYI, but the issue that Dr. Funk raised, and needs to be discussed here for a moment, should you approach the
01:03:23
Bible from an intellectual standpoint or from purely a spiritual standpoint, or both?
01:03:29
And Dr. Funk has approached it, his group has approached it from an intellectual standpoint.
01:03:35
These gentlemen are academicians, they are theologians, and Dr. Funk, if I'm misrepresenting anyone in any way, feel free to jump in, because I don't want to.
01:03:43
I want to put this out as forthright as possible. You feel, and your group feels, that it should be approached from an intellectual viewpoint, much the same way as we would approach any ancient document that we would find, any archaeological discovery, a letter from Thomas Jefferson or George Washington.
01:04:01
It should all be approached the same way. That's correct, yes. That is the heritage of the Enlightenment that I taught everybody in our discipline shared.
01:04:10
Well, first of all, I'd like to say that... This is James White. Yes. Yes, we can approach the text of Scripture, the history of the text of Scripture, from an intellectual viewpoint, and I have no problem with that,
01:04:24
I engage in that kind of study. You feel it withstands the intellectual test.
01:04:30
But there are a couple things that need to be kept in mind. What Shelley was attempting to say is that the text itself tells us that that cannot be our only perspective on these words, that we cannot just simply relegate it to the pile of men's best thoughts about God.
01:04:47
That's what Shelley was attempting to bring out. And to understand, for example, what Jesus talks about when he talks about coming to me and finding rest, requires the spiritual element.
01:04:56
What I'm saying is that if God is true, he's true in the spiritual realm and in the scientific, factual realm, and therefore we can approach
01:05:05
Scripture from this perspective. But what I am also saying is that individuals coming from Dr.
01:05:10
Funk's perspective are coming at the text, I believe, and I attempted to engage this topic earlier,
01:05:17
I believe with presuppositions that are not only foreign to the text itself, but that are not logical and rational presuppositions in regards to an entire world view.
01:05:30
Dr. Funk, I'm not going to ask you if you disagree, I'm just going to ask you why you disagree with that. Well, I'm afraid one of the items here is whether or not we've passed through any stages in the history and evolution of human thought and understanding since the first century.
01:05:49
If what is being said is that the perspective we are to bring to the Bible is the Bible's own perspective, then
01:05:54
I'd have to say that every historical and scientific scholar I know of disagrees with that point of view.
01:06:00
Obviously we don't live in the same climate and the same world view, in the same intellectual universe, so those differences are always before us.
01:06:09
The only question is how we're going to deal with them. Now, what
01:06:15
I think we object to most is making some kind of faith statement or faith point of view the touchstone for whether or not one correctly understands the text.
01:06:30
See, what I think I hear the claim that's being made is that unless you accept some kind of point of view within the
01:06:37
Bible itself, one is not really an eligible interpreter of it, or not a bona fide eligible interpreter. Is that what you said?
01:06:43
No, no, I think we need to be very upfront with our presuppositions. If we're approaching the text with a presupposition that would not allow, for example, for harmonization, for inspiration, for any type of thing like that, if our world view automatically makes, for example, the miraculous, something that could not possibly be real, we need to be upfront.
01:07:02
When these news releases come out in USA Today or whatever it is, and say these scholars have determined that Jesus didn't say these things, they need to point out these scholars don't believe, for example, that in a world view that would allow for the miraculous or something along these lines.
01:07:19
That simply isn't true, and you're just, what you're doing is exposing your ignorance of this group and their work. Well, why don't you correct this, sir, instead of just insulting other people, if you could just provide that.
01:07:29
I'm not insulting you, I'm just telling you what you don't know. You have just made an assertion about this group which simply isn't true.
01:07:34
Would you say that your world view would be more of a naturalistic world view that would come out of the Enlightenment?
01:07:40
Those are categories that we really can't use as historians. What do you mean? What you're trying to do is to set up a dichotomy that was alien to the first century.
01:07:48
Now, I thought just a moment ago you didn't want to do that, now you do. No, I don't believe so, sir. I think the dichotomy is what is put up by your position, and that is the enforcing of an
01:07:57
Enlightenment perspective that is predominantly rationalistic and naturalistic upon the first century writers.
01:08:03
Yes. All right, let's, on that note, begin with the calls. It's 818. June is a first -time caller in Scottsdale to KFYI.
01:08:12
Hello. Hello. I have a question for Dr. Funk, and that would be, if he is a scholar of the
01:08:22
Scriptures, does he believe, then, that Jesus came as the Messiah to the
01:08:28
Jewish people? One of the things we do not do as scholars is ask theological tests of each other.
01:08:34
That's irrelevant to the discussion we're having. Then can I ask you, do you believe in the
01:08:40
Old Testament Scriptures? You cannot ask me what I believe about anything. It's irrelevant to the subject.
01:08:46
Talk about dichotomy. Okay, wait a minute, I'm confused now. If I can't, if we can't ask you what you believe, then how do we find out what you are going to tell us, and what you're trying to say?
01:08:58
Because my conclusions about these matters are not determined by a theological point of view or by some dogmatic point of view.
01:09:05
In other words, he's totally unbiased. They are determined by what, then? They are determined insofar as we humanly can make them determined by the evidence.
01:09:13
Okay, then let me ask you this. Would you believe, then, the Scriptures are evidence, and as you read them, to see them and look at them in a historical point of view?
01:09:27
Would I understand them how? I'm sorry, I didn't understand. Would you look at the
01:09:32
Scriptures, the Old Testament Scriptures, historically, and read them, and see them as a historical point of view?
01:09:44
Would you look at them in that way, and understand them in that way? I thought that's what we were saying.
01:09:50
Okay, well then, I have a couple of Scriptures I just want to read, and I would ask how you would, as a historian...
01:09:58
Well, I don't want to spend a lot of time reading a lot of Scriptures, but why don't you just pick one, and let's just get an idea of what you're trying to do and what he will say.
01:10:07
Okay. I saw in the night visions, and behold, one like the
01:10:15
Son of Man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of Days, and they brought him near before him.
01:10:22
Okay. And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him.
01:10:31
His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom, that which shall not be destroyed.
01:10:38
A prophecy of the Messiah from Daniel. Go ahead, Dr. Kahn. What's the question about that?
01:10:44
What is the question, June? The question is this, that if the prophecy states that his kingdom will be an everlasting kingdom, and will not be destroyed, and truly,
01:10:54
Jesus is the Lord, then how would Dr. Funk see that in this earth, that his kingdom would be an everlasting kingdom that would not be destroyed without his return?
01:11:07
Well, there are a lot of questions loaded into that, but I suppose what it turns on, ultimately, is how we are to understand that language.
01:11:16
Whether we are to take that in any kind of literal sense, whether the kingdom is something that's observable. See, I quoted earlier the saying of Jesus, which most of us think is authentic, that the kingdom, in some sense, is hidden from the eyes of men, and therefore is not observable, it's not a political kingdom, but I'm speaking now about Jesus.
01:11:37
Now, that would not be the case of Daniel. You see, Daniel is inspired by the Maccabean Revolt and the events that surround that, so that there,
01:11:47
I think, the hope is a political hope, in all probability, with cosmic overtones.
01:11:53
But whether or not Jesus shared that point of view is the question that's under discussion. Maybe from a starting point,
01:11:58
Dr. Funk, let me just ask you, this is Shelley Volk, do you believe that the Word of God is true?
01:12:05
I'm afraid, you see, what I'm getting here is the Inquisition all over again. I'm just trying to participate in that.
01:12:12
Let me rephrase it, then. Are we starting from the standpoint that we all agree that this is the inspired
01:12:18
Word of God? Would you go that far and give me an answer? I'm not willing to respond to that kind of question.
01:12:24
What you're doing is playing to the gallery. You're trying to... No, no, no, no. I want to find... Yes, you are.
01:12:29
You're playing to the gallery. Okay, wait a minute. I need to point something out here. First of all, Dr.
01:12:35
Funk has said earlier that when he approaches this text, he's approaching it only from the information.
01:12:42
Dr. Funk, it is impossible to approach the text without any kind of bias.
01:12:47
That's what I keep trying to point out. You have your biases. I'm just asking you to be open about them. You cannot just simply say, well, my viewpoint is solely based upon facts as if everybody else's wasn't based upon some kind of fact.
01:12:59
Oh, I didn't say that, now. Again, you're putting words into my mouth. I wish you'd stop doing that. What I said was that insofar as humanly possible, the checks and balances that are set up in the academic community is that the kind of biases that I have that are operational in everything that I do, granted that immediately, have to be countered by points of view that other people have and open and free discussion and examination of the evidence.
01:13:25
And yet... You do that under a scientific point of view. And yet, when I cited, for example, someone as great of a scholar as Dr.
01:13:32
F .F. Bruce, you completely dismissed him and the evidence from him, clearly showing that there is a strong bias operating here.
01:13:40
And I'm just simply saying, look, if you have a bias, it is going to affect what comes out.
01:13:46
Now, wait a minute. You see, the point about F .F. Bruce is not that I reject F .F. Bruce. I have read
01:13:52
F .F. Bruce. The problem I have is that the preponderance of the guild have rejected his point of view.
01:13:58
So the majority rules, then? And obviously, you are in the minority amongst all
01:14:04
Christians. Well, you always like to use majority words in a witch hunt. Well, I'm not on a witch hunt, sir. I'm attempting to point out what you're actually saying.
01:14:10
I'm fascinated... You're being stupid to say something like that. He called you stupid. I'm fascinated to find out why you feel this is an inquisition.
01:14:16
I don't see it as that. It's just a discussion with three guys dressed in, you know, coat and tie sitting here, and I imagine you're probably the same way.
01:14:25
The reason it turns out... I mean, they killed people in an inquisition. That's what these people are doing around the country.
01:14:33
I don't think they've threatened your life. I haven't heard that. I'm going to try to do something here, because during the commercial break, we have had sort of an interesting situation develop with Dr.
01:14:45
Funk here, and... Let's see if we can get him again. No? All right.
01:14:51
Well, because... Well, I'll tell you what. As we try to get him... Forrest, why don't you try to get him? And I'm going to ask
01:14:57
Jim Casale to come in here in the studio for a minute, because I want to put this direct quote on the air.
01:15:03
This is very fascinating, the way this whole thing is going here. All right. Well, are we going to try to get him on the air again?
01:15:10
Okay. Let's see what happens here. This is really interesting, and I'll tell you why in just a second.
01:15:17
Can we get him on the air? Dr. Funk, are you there? Oh, we're going to try to call him.
01:15:22
Okay. Hello? Dr. Funk, we lost the line here. Yes, you lost the line intentionally.
01:15:29
Why is that, sir? Well, I really don't... This conversation is not a good conversation. I'm not interested in carrying it on.
01:15:35
I'm sorry. Did you tell our producer to tell us to go to hell? Yes, I did. You told...
01:15:41
You lied to me yesterday. Your producer lied to me yesterday. Nobody lied to you, sir. Oh, yes, you did.
01:15:46
No, no. You told our producer and our guest and all and me to go to hell?
01:15:51
I did, indeed. And you're a biblical scholar? Yes, I did. Why do you want us to go to hell, sir?
01:15:56
Well, hell is a good place to go. Hell is a good place to go? Yes. Why is that? Well, I'm sorry.
01:16:02
I'm not interested in pursuing the conversation. Why is that, sir? Have you been mistreated in some way?
01:16:08
Well, it's not a profitable conversation. Have you been mistreated in some way? Only I was misled.
01:16:14
You were misled in what way? Well, I was told I would not carry on a conversation from people who represented the fundamentalist point of view.
01:16:22
No, sir, you were not. Yes, I was told that. No, of course you weren't. I was guaranteed that. You were not. Or I would not go on the air.
01:16:28
And, sir, if you were guaranteed that, why did you go on the air for 90 minutes? You were not guaranteed that.
01:16:34
All right. Well, I'm going to cease right now. Thank you very much. So you want us to go to hell. Okay. Well, there you have it, biblical scholar
01:16:40
Dr. Robert Funk. I don't know if you gentlemen would like to comment on this at all.
01:16:46
Well, Barry, I'm saddened that this has to be Dr. Funk's perspective.
01:16:53
When we first started, I attempted. You were here. You listened to the whole thing. I attempted to engage
01:16:58
Dr. Funk on what he would call his own level, that is, the facts of the situation.
01:17:05
You remember what happened. He just became emotional and angry with me and eventually insulted all of us and would not engage it.
01:17:14
I think we just need to—I don't want to get mad at him. That's not what
01:17:20
I'm here for. I'm not angry at him. I think it's kind of strange that this biblical scholar would wish all of us to go to hell.
01:17:28
That's kind of an interesting concept. Barry, this is Highland Slovakia with Living Streams Christian Church.
01:17:34
And I've been drooling here, frothing, waiting to say something. I've been very polite.
01:17:39
My mom taught me to be polite, and I've been waiting my turn. But I want to say a couple things. First of all,
01:17:45
I'm not saddened at all by his response here, because I think what he's done, out of his own volition, is he's described and explained and demonstrated to everybody where the
01:17:59
Jesus Seminar is at. They don't want to talk. They don't want to debate. They don't want to have an intellectual discussion, which was his premise initially.
01:18:08
Let's talk intellectually here, because as Shelley pointed out, the things of the Spirit are foolishness of the natural man.
01:18:16
And when he said earlier that he didn't want to bring his belief system into what we were talking about is ridiculous, because everyone has a belief system.
01:18:26
Whether you wake up in the morning and believe that the sky is going to be blue, you believe something.
01:18:31
And Jesus talked about belief all the time. Believe me, I am in the Father. The Father is in me.
01:18:37
He who believes in me, the works that I do, he also do. And over and over again, in Romans 1,
01:18:46
Paul says he's not ashamed of the gospel. It's the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.
01:18:53
It's ridiculous. I appreciate everything you're saying, but I'm still back at go to hell. I'm sorry.
01:18:58
I can't get past that. That's really upsetting. I've never heard an intellectual scholar on a talk show tell anybody to go to hell.
01:19:06
You've got to recognize that most of these individuals do not believe that any such place exists, so it does not carry exactly the same connotation.
01:19:13
I'm serious. I'm very serious about that. Anyone who reads the Bible. No, no, no.
01:19:19
You're wrong. He doesn't read it. He studies it. He said that a number of times intellectually.
01:19:25
I'm beginning to believe that, in fact, the next question I wanted to ask him was, does he believe that Jesus is
01:19:30
God? Let's talk about the deity of Christ, the foundational truth of Christianity, and I would venture to believe that he would balk at answering that question.
01:19:39
I don't think it would be fair to put those words in his mouth. The only thing we can do is rely on his last statement.
01:19:45
Okay, let's go to hell. I've got to pause here for just a second. We've got a number of people waiting on the lines.
01:19:52
I want to know what you make of what you've heard over the last few minutes. This is certainly one of the most fascinating things that has ever happened to me on the air.
01:20:00
I've had callers and listeners tell me this, but never doctors and philosophers and theologians.
01:20:05
We will go to the phones in a moment. We have that on tape? Oh, this? Can we play it back? Can we actually play it back?
01:20:12
This is great. All right, we'll try. I tell you, I've been doing talk radio now for almost 15, 16 years.
01:20:18
I've never heard anything quite like the last few minutes, but let us go right to the phones. Jeff in Glendale has,
01:20:24
I understand, been holding for some time. You heard the entire show. Yeah. What do you think,
01:20:29
Jeff? I found a scripture that describes—actually, I found a few short scriptures. 2 Peter 3.
01:20:35
We don't need to spend a lot of time reading the Bible here. I just want to know what you think about it. It's a little bit less time than you think. Verses 3 -10.
01:20:41
It says, Know this first, that scoffers will come in the last days, walking according to their own lust, and saying,
01:20:47
Where is the promise of his coming? Well, he wasn't saying that. He was just saying, Go to hell. Yeah, I know, but before that he was saying that.
01:20:53
And then also in Romans 1, professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.
01:21:03
I think that just nails it right on the head for that guy. So you think he's foolish? I think he might even be a fool at heart.
01:21:11
Although, you know, Paul was a fool at times, too, and the Lord can still change his heart. I'm sure he doesn't think highly of you either,
01:21:17
Jeff, so I appreciate the call. Sue in Mesa, this is KFYI.
01:21:22
Hello. Hello, Barry. This reminds me of a little conversation we had in Stillwater and up in Walpack in New Jersey.
01:21:33
We had some people that were existentialists. And the reason you can't talk to an existentialist is they have no common ground.
01:21:43
They have to take a vote on whether to get up in the morning. Maybe you can't debate these issues.
01:21:49
Yes, you can debate them. I was in a room with them for two hours. I was first -year
01:21:55
Bible college student. Boy, I'll tell you, my father sat up there in pins and needles. However, the problem is with these people, they have committed...
01:22:03
Now, please understand, I'm not a fundamentalist. I'm too liberal for the conservatives, too conservative for the liberals.
01:22:10
What I found with these people is they have no verbal plenary inspiration when it comes to the
01:22:16
Bible. They have no common ground. If it's the way they described it to me, if I read it and I like it, then it's inspired to me.
01:22:24
Otherwise, it's nothing. I can get more words out of the Reader's Digest. Okay, let me ask all of you this.
01:22:32
When you have a guy like Dr. Robert Funk, we have that ready? Give us an example.
01:22:38
This is Dr. Robert Funk. When you have this kind of guy... You lied to me yesterday. Your producer lied to me yesterday.
01:22:44
Nobody lied to you, sir. Oh, yes, you did. Oh, no. You told our producer and our guest and me to go to hell?
01:22:51
I did, indeed. And you're a biblical scholar? Yes, I did. Why do you want us to go to hell, sir?
01:22:56
Well, hell is a good place to go. All right, well, that pretty much sums it up. Now, when you've got a guy like this, how do you engage these people in any kind of serious philosophical, theological, or spiritual debate?
01:23:08
Well, Barry, you know, Jesus described hell as the place of burning, brimstone, gnashing of teeth, a terrible place.
01:23:15
In fact, Abraham... We're talking about the... Luke 16. Lazarus, who called back, you know, and said, it's terrible here and there.
01:23:26
I mean, for anyone who believes that the Bible is the Word of God, I mean,
01:23:31
I'm not sure where Dr. Funk is coming from now, but hell is the place where you don't want anybody to go.
01:23:37
In fact, the Lord says in 1 Peter that it is His desire that none should perish and none should go to hell, but all should come to repentance.
01:23:45
Barry, I'm sorry, Hyland, but go ahead if you want to finish up. No, just that, from our perspective.
01:23:52
You would never want anyone to go to hell. I don't think that it's possible. I don't think that it's possible to deal with these guys.
01:23:58
Well, you can deal with them. The answer to your question is that what I was trying to do, I think you can if they are willing to listen to you.
01:24:06
You can't deal with anyone, no matter what their perspective is, if they won't listen to you. But if they will allow for a real debate, if you'll allow for the facts to be introduced, if you'll allow for presuppositions to be brought out, he would not allow it and, in fact, had to run from it.
01:24:20
And I think Sue would tell you the same thing, that if you're going to deal with someone like this, you've got to get down to their most basic beliefs, and if they won't allow you to do it, you're right.
01:24:26
There's nothing you can do. That's right. All right, thank you, Sue. And this is Michael in Phoenix on KFYI at 845.
01:24:33
Hello, Michael. Hello, Barry and the crew there. I was just wondering what the guy said.
01:24:38
I wonder if you could summarize what Dr. Funk said. He said for us to go to hell, sir. Well, I mean, you know, what his position is, his overall theological position was.
01:24:48
He wouldn't allow, he wouldn't, we tried to ask because we felt that a person's theological perspective is going to color what he says, but he identified our asking him that as a witch hunt or as an inquisition and refused to answer the question.
01:25:04
As far as I can figure out, what he said at the first hour of the show is that you must approach the
01:25:11
Bible from an intellectual standpoint with a lot of theologians who go in with no bias whatsoever and try to, in a committee sort of way, figure out what is written there.
01:25:23
That's what I gather. But when he was directly challenged by James sitting here on that respect, he did change his statement once, and at that point, at the change,
01:25:37
I'm not sure what he was trying to say, except for the fact that their group of 26 theologians do not believe that there will be a second coming of Jesus Christ.
01:25:47
That's his main point. That's his main point. He seemed to think that the new concept of semantic awareness or whatever is going on in the universities...
01:25:57
The age of enlightenment. Yeah, it's better by far than anything before it, and that's a priori.
01:26:05
Exactly, and I kept attempting to point that out, and he would not allow that into the discussion, like Barry said.
01:26:12
If you don't allow that into the discussion... One thing that Dr. Funk said is that when Shelley Voigt talked about the
01:26:18
Spirit, and we're talking about spiritual things here, and the Bible is a spiritual book, he called it a very romantic view.
01:26:25
That it's a scripture that says that we have not received the Spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that's the
01:26:30
Holy Spirit, that we might know the things freely given to us by God, which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the
01:26:40
Spirit, the Holy Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words. If that were written in 1989, what would it say?
01:26:47
How would you say that? I would say that what it is saying is that a system, a thought,
01:26:54
Barry, a worldview, based upon man as being the center of the universe, is foolish.
01:27:00
Our understanding must be, and the only way that we as human beings can ever allow this to be the case, if the
01:27:06
Spirit of God teaches it to us, is that we are a created being, that God is the creator, and we must treat him as the creator, and look at him as the creator, and accept what he says to us as being authoritative.
01:27:19
How do you reach, then, a person who is very philosophical, and very precise, academician, scientist, people who want to explore this book, this
01:27:32
Bible, purely from an academic viewpoint? How do you reach these people?
01:27:38
You're saying you can't just go in purely on academics. Two things. What Hyland over there is attempting to say is that to accept the
01:27:46
Bible as the Word of God requires the testimony of the Holy Spirit. We all agree with that. But he's saying you can't go in with that presupposition.
01:27:54
I understand that. But the book itself says that. But what I'm saying is... That you must go in with that presupposition?
01:27:59
The Bible itself says that no man, because of the sin in his or her life, will allow it to have true authority until the
01:28:06
Spirit comes in. But, please don't get me wrong, if that person could put away the natural result of sin, his rebellion against God, and just approach the
01:28:15
Bible unbiasedly, as Dr. Funk was claiming to do, I believe that he would find the Bible to be true. But I don't believe that any man can do that.
01:28:22
When I came to know the Lord in 1970, I was coming out of engineering, mechanical engineering, and I approached the
01:28:30
Bible in a scientific framework, and I began to study it in a geological sense, geographical, historically, anthropologically, and I came to believe the
01:28:40
Bible was true, void of what I consider spiritual wisdom, and it fit into the real world.
01:28:47
I'm going to try to fit in one call here. Before we pause, Lucille in Apache Junction on the toll -free lines.
01:28:53
Hello. Hello. I have enjoyed listening to this, and I feel sorry for Dr.
01:28:59
Funk. I don't think he has any idea where he's coming from.
01:29:05
I don't think he has any idea where he's going. The Bible says that God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our
01:29:15
Lord Jesus Christ, and we can't do that unless the Father draws us.