January 17, 2006

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Around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is
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The Dividing Line. The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.
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Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.
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This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602, or toll free across the
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United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is
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James White. And good morning, welcome to The Dividing Line.
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It is good to be back after a little technical difficulty and all sorts of interesting issues last week.
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I've been wanting to get to this program for quite some time, simply due to the fact that last week when
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I heard the interview with Bart Ehrman and Pastor Wilkin on issues, etc.,
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I was thankful in the sense that the question that I'm going to play right off the bat, we're going to sort of skip ahead, play a question and then go back through the interview.
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The question that was asked was absolutely perfect. It is exactly what needed to be asked of Bart Ehrman.
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Some of you may notice that on my blog this morning, I noted
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Jason Engler cited, gave the link to a debate coming up in March between Bart Ehrman and William Lane Craig on the resurrection back there in North Carolina.
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And if you haven't seen that, I would encourage you to take a look at that. I really hope and pray that in the context of that debate, the
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Jesus seminar like presuppositions that Ehrman brings to the table will be exposed.
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Now, obviously, William Lane Craig is not a presuppositionalist, but the resurrection is his specialty.
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And I think that he has done some very good work in that area. So this is his field.
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And certainly when someone has overstated their case as frequently as Ehrman has in regards to various issues and especially in regards to the interpretation of scripture in regards to all sorts of issues, whether it be the resurrection of the deity of Christ, whatever else it might be,
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I think a debate like that will bring that out and should bring that out rather rather clearly. At least I hope that is what takes place.
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So the question I'm going to start with this morning, just an excellent question.
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Pastor Wilken asks this of Bart Ehrman. I want you to and I know I blog this, but you might not have heard it.
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Listen, and this is this is really the important part. I was trying to say this at the end of the article that appeared this morning, a little brief thing on the end of the
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Da Vinci Code series. We did exactly 20 parts on that. As soon as I can, I'll put all 20 of them into a single file so you can link that.
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But I was trying to make this point then as well. And that is. In this society where, for example,
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Brokeback Mountain will undoubtedly win the Oscar and won, what, four or six
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Golden Globes or something last night in this society of anti -Christian values, this post -Christian society, this anti -Christian society where God's law is scoffed at, it is mocked, it is a fulfillment of well, biblical teaching when you think about it.
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I mean, if you haven't. In fact, I apologize. I didn't get a new memory verse up yesterday.
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And I think when we do so in light of what's been going on in in our society, it would be good to memorize
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Psalm 12, 8. New American Standard says the wicked strut about on every side when vileness is exalted among the sons of men.
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And I think that's that's what we're watching. As long as the ESV puts that on every side, the wicked prowl as vileness is exalted among the children of men.
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That's that's what we see going on around us. And part of that wickedness and this is very important.
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I hope you hear what I'm saying. You cannot attack the word of God in a in a manner that does not involve sin.
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The way we think and the way we act, these are moral issues before God.
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We are created in the image of God. And to suppress that knowledge is not morally neutral.
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It is a sinful act. It is an act of rebellion. And so when we live in a society filled with people who are mocking
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God's law, then it does not it should not surprise us at all. That as a part of that comes attacks upon the faith that are filled with untruth.
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The Da Vinci Code. People can make 70 plus million dollars off of gross lies about the
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Christian faith, attacking the deity of Christ very hard, the faith, the transmission of the text of Scripture. So on and so forth.
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We as believers and I'm not talking about we as people interested in apologetics or the people who listen to the dividing line.
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I'm talking about we as all believers. This is not something where anymore we can just sit around and say, well, we'll leave that to the apologists.
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We'll leave that to the elders of the church. Those are things the elders of the church are supposed to be doing. I'm thankful that my fellow elder has begun a series in the book of Titus and we get to Titus one nine and we're going to see that the ability to engage in apologetic dialogue in defense of the faith is one of the requirements.
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It is one of the elements that determines whether a person is prepared to be an elder in the church.
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So that is very important, but it's not just limited to them because the command to give a reason for the hope that's within us is given to everyone.
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And so these are not things we can just simply put aside any longer and say, well, you know, we'll let somebody else do it.
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This is a society we live in. If we want to speak to people and want to speak to them, the gospel in an anti -Christian society, we should recognize that there are going to be all sorts of roadblocks thrown up in front of us.
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And that's just the way it is. And so we have to be prepared for these things. We have to be prepared to respond to these things.
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And when we hear people making arguments against our faith, we need.
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And if this is something that you struggle at doing, then you need to practice at it. You need to put forth effort to learn to do this.
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But we need to be able to hear those arguments and identify the false facts. Yes, when we hear someone saying
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Constantine made up the deity of Christ, that's a false fact. Now, it's a false fact based upon a false worldview.
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Probably there's going to be other aspects of what the person's saying that we need to identify, but that's a false fact. Yes. But we need to be able to go beyond that to see what's holding all of this together and respond to it.
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That's what was so good about Pastor Wilkins' question of Dr. Ehrman is he asks him, in essence,
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OK, given your position, he's already said, even in this interview, as we're going to hear, he's already said, well, yeah, the
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New Testament is generally, you know, generally reliable and we can we can pretty much determine what the original authors wrote, blah, blah, blah.
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OK, that, you know, if you start off your book that way, you're not exactly going to sell as many copies for Harper, San Francisco.
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But finally, the question is asked, all right, if what you're saying is we you know, there's there's been all these changes and we and there's all these places.
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He never tells us exactly what they are. And and when he does give examples, they're frequently very weak. But and basically are all drawn from the book you wrote a while back,
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The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture. What would have to happen?
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What would the Bible have to look like for you to believe it was inspired in error? What would it look like? What would what would its history be?
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What would the history of transmission be? It's a perfect question, very much parallel to what
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I had asked of John Dominic Cross at the very beginning of cross examination. I had said what conditions would have to prevail, what type of historical evidence would have to exist for you to believe that a miracle, a a a suspension or violation of the natural laws of this universe has taken place in the past.
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And if you've listened to the debate, then you know that Dr. Cross has said, well, well, there really isn't any way that you could prove to me a miracle has taken place in the past.
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Well, there you go. There is the demonstration, the circularity of the naturalistic presuppositions that that he brings to the text.
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There it is. And I saw people sitting in the audience going, well, there it is.
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But obviously, a naturalistic presuppositionalist who is enslaved to his presuppositions doesn't even know he has those presuppositions, thinks everybody should share those presuppositions, is sitting there going, well, why even bother ask such a question?
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This question of Dr. Ehrman exposed that exact existence of presuppositions in Ehrman's statement.
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And I hope when you hear this, your mind immediately goes, hey, wait a minute. That that means and you start seeing what the ramifications of what
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Ehrman says here. Here's here's the question. You won't find the word objective truth in the Bible, for example.
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What situation would need to prevail in the text's history and transmission for you to consider the
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Bible reliable and genuinely inspired in all of its parts? What what would the history and transmission look like?
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Well, for one thing, I think I'd have to I think if the Bible were inspired in all of its parts, you wouldn't have contradictions.
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Would you have variants? Well, I don't know. See, my own personal view about that is that since you have variant readings and you don't have the original text, it shows,
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I think conclusively, that God did not preserve the words of the scripture. What I'm trying to get at, my view about that is, is that if God didn't go to the trouble of preserving the words of scripture, the authoritative words of scripture, that he probably didn't go to the trouble of inspiring them in the first place.
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Because if he wanted people to have his absolute words so that he inspired them, he would have preserved them.
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But the fact is, he didn't preserve them, which shows that he probably didn't inspire them. So I don't know. There you go.
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That, to me, was it that that that took care of all of it. It almost sounded like Dr.
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Wilkin didn't want to go there. But that is, to me, the clearest demonstration of the circularity of Ehrman's position.
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Let's think about what that means. Dr. Ehrman has just told us all that if God inspired the text of scripture, that there would be no textual variance in any of the manuscripts of scripture.
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Now, by the way, I know we have Muslims listening to this. I know that some of Nadir Ahmed's followers listen to us, and some of you saw the little notes and the wild and wacky stuff that he's put on the web, and that just speaks for itself.
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But all of you Muslims who are quoting Ehrman, I hope you're listening to this, and I hope you're listening very clearly.
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Because what that would mean, obviously, is that everything Ehrman is saying about the
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New Testament, he would be saying about the Qur 'an as well, because we know the Qur 'an did have textual variance. That's what the whole
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Uthmanian revision stuff is all about. And so what would he say about the
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Qur 'an? That it's not inspired either. So keep that in mind every time you quote him, you're quoting someone who would not believe that your own text is inspired, and that in point of fact, on the same basis as what he's talking about in the
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New Testament. So when you have to quote happy agnostics to substantiate your position, you've got a bit of a problem.
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It's called hypocrisy. Anyways, what would his position mean?
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What does that mean? I mean, it's easy to hear what he's saying. If it was inspired, then
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God would make sure there are no variance. Okay. Are there any works of antiquity that do not have variance within them?
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Answer, no, there are not. Would, given antiquity and given the mechanisms by which antiquity transmitted written documents, would it be possible for God to give a written revelation prior to OCR technology, prior to digital imaging?
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Answer, no. I suppose there would be one possible way you could do it, and that would be that God would create a mountain and he would chisel the entirety of his word into stone.
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And then kill anyone who came close to try to change it. I suppose that would be the one exception here.
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But as far as actually a written revelation that could be distributed to all mankind, that could be read in a church or used in missionary efforts, anything like that.
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By definition, by definition,
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Bart Ehrman has said that prior to the modern era, there could be no written revelation from God because the only way that you could transmit that revelation is through hand copying.
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So if God did give it, then there would have to be some kind of supernatural activity.
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And I would imagine there are probably some, I wouldn't call them evangelicals, but some pretty radical folks who actually think something like this did happen.
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There'd have to be some supernatural activity where somehow scribes would become themselves supernaturally controlled by God.
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And in fact, I guess I stopped that too early. I just realized I stopped that way too early.
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Let me see if I can find it because Wilkin asks a question. Let me see if I can find it. Readings, and you don't have the original text.
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It shows, I think conclusively, that God did not preserve the words of the scripture.
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What I'm trying to get at, my view about that is that if God didn't go to the trouble of preserving the words of scripture, the authoritative words of scripture, that he probably didn't go to the trouble of inspiring them in the first place.
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Because if he wanted people to have his absolute words so that he inspired them, he would have preserved them.
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But the fact is he didn't preserve them, which shows that he probably didn't inspire them. So I don't want to put words in your mouth, but the text history and transmission would have to be a divinely delivered text in some way that comes to us with no variance, no amendations, no apparent scribal errors.
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But God would have seen to it that the text in all of its parts, syntax, grammar, word, order, everything, spelling, remained entirely intact for the better part of two millennia.
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Well, it wouldn't have been that hard to do if you're God. There you go. Can you imagine? It just got quiet because I think
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Pastor Wilkin likewise was like, what? It wouldn't be all that hard to do if you're
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God. Okay, what would that process look like?
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What would that process look like? The text is inspired and the first copyist is copying.
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And let's say he's copying the First Thessalonians.
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All right, he's traveled through Thessalonica. He's seen this letter from the Apostle Paul. There's stuff in there that's relevant to the church that he's a part of up the road a bit.
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And so he wants to make a copy of the Apostle's letter to the Thessalonians to take to his church so that they can hear the wisdom of the
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Apostle. And so he's copying it out and he's just about to misspell a word.
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He's just about to misspell a word and all of a sudden he goes into a trance and spells the word correctly by automatic writing and then comes back out like, whoa, whoa, whoa, what happened?
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And so he goes on a little bit farther and he's about to skip a word because of homo italiaton. And he again goes into a trance.
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His hand goes back and he then puts in the right word.
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Is that what is that we're suggesting? Or would it be even more interesting? He's about to misspell the word and God zaps him with lightning and blows him to smithereens.
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And so no one really wants to copy the scriptures anymore because it says anyone is about to mess it up, bam, they're gone.
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Or angels come down and correct it. Or, I mean, come on, this is the height of scholarship?
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It is such a glowing, unfounded, ridiculous, absurd, naturalistic, materialistic, fundamentalistic presupposition that it just sits there with neon lights pointing at it going, here's your problem.
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Here's your problem. Here's where this guy has completely missed the boat.
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And this explains all of the radical overstatements and the unwillingness to address the issues in a meaningful fashion.
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Here it is. Oh, yeah, if it's inspired, then there wouldn't be any variance. Nobody would ever misspell anything.
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You know, at least until the praying press. And then, I suppose, when they start the praying press, then is your type setting.
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The supernatural attendance would come along and every single manuscript would be identical. And I wonder what would happen with foreign language translations.
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Would they have to be Theanostas as well? Would God have to himself translate into the
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Latin? Coptic? Sahitic? So the spirit has to keep inspiring over and over and over again.
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What is the difference between this? I want to know. I really do want to know. Because some of you have seen the
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King James only program we did on the
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John Ankerberg show. And right off the bat, John Ankerberg turned to the guy who was representing the position of Peter Ruckman, a fellow by the name of Dr.
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Samuel Kipp. And he basically said to him, are you telling me that if I live in Russia and I want to have the word of God in inspired and errant form, that I have to learn
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English? And without hesitation, Dr. Kipp looked into the camera.
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He actually was looking at the host, but the camera is sort of over his shoulder anyways.
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He looked at him and he said, God has only promised to give us one inspired and errant translation, one language at one time.
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And right now it's the King James version of the Bible. So yes, that's what I'm saying. Now, we look at that and we just roll our eyes and go, oh, my goodness.
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Because how do you defend that? Well, he actually defends that in one of his books by saying English is the language of all flight, of all aircraft flying in the world.
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So therefore, that sort of proves it. And this kind of stuff.
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And we shake our heads. And yet here's Bart Ehrman basically saying, yeah, he's right.
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That's what that's what would have to happen. You'd have to have a re -inspiration when translations take place.
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You have to have a re -inspiration every single time a printing press fires up, every single time a scribe takes up a pen.
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There needs to be some divine intervention that is going to to result in some trans -like automatic writing so that there are no variants whatsoever.
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I had never heard anyone say that outside of suggesting something similar to it in the
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King James only movement. But that's what that's what lies behind it. Same type of idea.
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And you just go, in other words, Dr. Ehrman, there couldn't be a divine revelation in the past from your perspective.
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Let's let's just be honest about it from your perspective, given your naturalistic presuppositions.
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Given the fact you've abandoned the faith, you are are clearly a naturalistic materialist in your in your worldview as far as what you accept is as truth and error and things like that.
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And he has some other interesting epistemological issues regarding to subjective and objective that will come out in the interview.
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But let's just be honest. From your perspective. There could not be any divine revelation in the past.
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That's all there is to it, right? Let's just be honest. That's where you're starting. You're starting with the presupposition that there is no divine revelation.
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And then you apply that to whatever pretended revelation terminology you would probably use that you're going to be examining, whether it be the
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New Testament, whether it be Gnostic writings, whether it be the Bhagavad Gita, Buddhism, though I've discovered these folks generally are more kind to Eastern religions or the
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Koran for that matter. They all they all fall into the same rubric and they're all precluded by what?
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By naturalistic presuppositions that say God, God couldn't give revelation. If he did, then there would have to be this this amazing type of supernatural ordering of copying that would preclude any textual variance.
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That's what you have going on. Amazing, amazing thing. It truly is. So we're going to take a look at this whole interview because it went very, very well.
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And unlike the NPR interviews we were listening to, now you have someone asking questions who knows how to ask questions and knows what the real issues are.
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The folks at NPR, you can't expect them to have a clue of what the issues really are.
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But first, we're going to go ahead and take a phone call at 877 -753 -3341.
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And let's talk to Michael. Hello, Michael. Hey, Dr. White. How are you? I'm okay.
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Actually, this is my second time calling. Yes, sir. And I made it the first time I made a very eclectic show.
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Oh, okay. My questions will be eclectic as well. First of all, I want to ask you was your friend
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Eddie Delcour and I have been talking for some time about and we wanted to get your opinion of who do you believe is the best
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Armenian scholar today? Oh, well, you know, there aren't very many
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Armenians who want to, let's put it this way.
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There are lots of Wesleyans who are very scholarly, who will go ahead and call themselves
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Armenians. They don't have any problem with that. The problem that I have with most of those, including, for example, the authors of Why I'm Not a
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Calvinist, etc. The simple fact of the matter is they're not exegetes. I mean, when you look at Ben Witherington and these others, they're primarily philosophers.
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They approach the text from a philosophical perspective, and they wonder why they don't really impress most
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Calvinists. It's because, you know, I looked at Ben Witherington's book and his criticisms of Calvinism were extremely surface level.
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They weren't exegetically based. There wasn't hardly any reference to some of the key texts at all.
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When he did address certain texts, he really did so very poorly. It's all from a presuppositional philosophical standpoint.
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I'm Reformed because of the exegesis of the text of Scripture and the highest view of Scripture, and if you don't start there, you're really not going to be having much to offer to me.
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So those folks are quote -unquote scholars, but they don't have a lot of impact upon us because they start from the wrong perspective.
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But then you have a whole spectrum of quote -unquote evangelicals who don't want to call themselves
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Arminians, though they are Arminians. They believe in libertarian free will, and they deny an eternal decree of God, and they are
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Arminian to the core, but frequently they're inconsistent in holding to the security of the believer or something like that, and so they don't want to wear that label similar to Norman Geisler in his extreme
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Calvinism versus moderate Calvinism, and I think I've proven, and I think the majority of people would have to agree fairly clearly in The Potter's Freedom, his moderate
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Calvinism is actually nothing more than inconsistent Arminianism. But amongst those individuals, you have a huge variety of levels of scholarship from zero scholarship, from negative scholarship like Dave Hunt, all the way through many of the people that we've reviewed on the program and Radio Free Geneva, the various pastors who may or may not have various ascended degrees from seminaries, but who just slaughter the subject by just repeating what
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Dave Hunt had to say or something along those lines, to individuals who have scholarship in other areas, but in this area they wander into it once in a while and sometimes get themselves in trouble like Norman Geisler did.
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William Lane Craig is a Mullenist, and as a Mullenist, as a promoter of middle knowledge, obviously he would be very opposed to reform distinctives along those lines, and so here's a guy who's got all sorts of scholarly credentials, but once again, once he starts getting to this area, that's not his area, that's not something that you're going to be able to go, ah, see, he's done a lot of work in this area, now we can dig in there.
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So it's really hard, I mean, I have made a concerted effort, for example, to collect the best exegetical arguments on John 6 that I can find, and it is really difficult to find really decent stuff, normally the errors just glow like neon signs, they're just very obvious, very clear, and, you know, we spend a lot of time trying to get the people who are the most vocal in attacking
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Reformed Theology to actually stand up and defend themselves exegetically, and they just won't do it.
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Ask the fellow who put together the debate we're doing in April, I think it's April 21st, in Sedalia, what handstands he had to do to get anybody to debate me on the subject of Reformed Theology, the list of people he contacted reads like a who's who's list of anti -Reformed evangelicals, from the guy
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Jenkins, and from LeHay, Geisler, Hunt, the entire staff of Liberty University, from Falwell to Ergen -Kainer, he has a file folder of rejections from all these people, who would not even appear before a high school,
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I believe a Christian high school group, to defend what they will say in public behind the pulpit, because they would have to face someone who could then cross -examine them, and they won't do it.
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So it's really hard to compare, for example, a Wesleyan scholar with a
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Geisler or a Hunt or something like that, you know, the name G. Gordon Olson always comes up, his book as one possibility, but again, we've addressed various and sundry errors in that.
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So it's hard to come up with a meaningful standard by which to say, okay, here's the best that the other side has to offer.
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Okay, so me and Eddie are stuck. Well, you know, I think I mentioned most of the names there, and at least, you know, some of the differences that we look at between them.
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I'll tell you what, let me just put you on hold for just a moment, we'll pick up your other question on the other side, we'll go ahead and take a break. And we'll be right back, right after this.
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And welcome back to Dividing Line. We are talking with Michael. And Michael is our eclectic caller.
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He is demonstrating the superiority of the eclectic method to the majority -text method.
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And so your second question, Michael, was? Oh, actually, just one mention. What is the book by Bill and Wilmington you're speaking of?
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The book by what? Bill and Wilmington. Oh, Ben Witherington III. I'm looking around here.
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Something about evangelicalism. Maybe somebody will mention it in channel.
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I'm looking at these stacks and stacks of books around me here. And I don't remember.
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It had some... Oh, there it is. There it is. It's White, The Problem with Evangelical Theology.
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It looks like it's a Baker book. I'm not sure. But it's in the middle of a stack. And if I try to take it out, it could be very dangerous.
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And you'd hear a loud noise. And then there'd be no more Dividing Line. Okay. The other question was,
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I just finished watching the Crawson debate. Yes. And two questions.
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One might be actually for Rich. But I thought the debate was very edifying, at least on your part.
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Wasn't very impressed with Dr. Crawson, because I've never heard him debate. And so I was very impressed.
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Well, he's a good speaker. He's not boring to listen to at all.
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Are you guys going to... From my understanding, you guys did tape the one on the ship?
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Yeah. What we've got to do with that. The reason that's been delayed so much is we had horrible problems.
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Yeah. Why did the lights dim? Someone in the channel is asking, but we'll explain that later. We had problems working with the crew in getting our equipment and their equipment to work together.
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And my opening statement, I've been told, I haven't heard it, but my opening statement is completely undiscernable.
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You can't understand a word of it. Thankfully, I read the entire opening statement and it's still on my
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Palm Pilot. Oh, okay. So what we have to do is we have to re -record my opening statement and try as best we can.
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And thankfully, it's only 10 minutes long. I had to hurry through it, so we should probably be able to get fairly close.
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But I have to sit here where I'm sitting now and re -read it, re -record it, sync that up as best we can, then play with the audio for the rest of it before we can make the
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DVD out of it. So and with the move issue, that's what has caused that one.
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Because I want to see that one. I thought that was an excellent example of how dialogue can take place without compromise.
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So much of what we see when scholars dialogue today is a situation where the conservative is, in essence, forced to compromise.
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And I remember very clearly at one point, Marcus Borg looked over at Dr. Renahan and myself, and there's some great pictures of this dialogue.
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I mean, Dr. Crossan was very animated, and I'm leaning forward, and he's leaning forward, and we're going back and forth.
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And at one point, Dr. Borg basically says, well, then if you believe what you just said in regards to the centrality of the gospel and know the way of salvation, then you would say there could be no
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Christianity without the physical resurrection of Christ. We're like, you know, Dr.
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Renahan and I had made that as clear as we possibly could in our opening statements. You know what I mean? Just had pounded it, and it took literally an hour of going back and forth and asking questions and discussing things before it's like, then this is really central to you.
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Yes, there you go. We got there. It only took us an hour to get there, but we got there finally.
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So yeah, I'm looking forward to having that out. But, you know, with the move that we're facing and all the work that the grand poobah of editing is doing in framing doors and knocking holes in walls and wiring things and putting ceilings in and da -da -dee -dee -dee -da -da, you know, we are a small ministry.
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There's two of us. You hear both of us on the dividing line. The entire staff is in one place at that point.
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So that's just sort of how it works, you know? And my last question was, I guess I said probably more for Rich, but we'll find out.
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My copy of the debate, on the first CD of it, the rebuttal from Dominic Crossin, it's wigging out on me.
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It's wigging out on you. It's like you'll skip and... Yeah, I had the same problem on the DVD at church.
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And so, and all of a sudden it became quiet, because we're waiting for that voice that sometimes wanders in from nowhere, and I'm not hearing it wandering in.
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So maybe someone doesn't want... God, she can't take much more. You'll have to talk to that disembodied voice right there.
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I know that trying to find formats that fit with everybody, you know,
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I had problems just this week with my brand new Dell laptop, which
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I love my Dell laptops. My old one could play anything. It didn't matter what I threw in there.
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It could play it. My new one was having all sorts of problems. Ended up being software, but it was having all sorts of problems.
37:56
So I've... Let's talk about the lights instead. You mean... Oh, yes. By the way, Michael, did you notice at one point during the audience questions that the lights went down?
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The lights just sort of started fading out. Did you happen to notice that? I didn't notice it, no. Oh, you didn't notice that. Well, Rich sure did.
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And it's because one of our faithful volunteers, a wonderful brother in the Lord, was starting to get a little tired, and he leaned back against the wall and turned the lights off with his back.
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And so he started looking around, and we're all looking around, and he didn't realize he had done it until someone comes running up behind him to turn the lights back on behind him.
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So he's in channel right now, very excited. The fact that you didn't notice it on the DVD. He thinks he's been redeemed by that.
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So anyways... I will look, though. Okay, yeah. Well, we'll see what we can do about that rebuttal period, because obviously that is important to be able to see the whole thing.
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So anyway, thanks. Honestly, Michael, you should send an email into the website, and I'll get that taken care of for you.
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Thank you, I appreciate it. All right, thanks a lot. God bless. God bless. Bye -bye. Yes, there was...
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Yeah, good buddy, good man. He was helping us out, but he just leaned back against the wall. I think he had his arms crossed, you know.
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And all of a sudden, the lights start dimming. He has no idea that he did it until someone comes running up behind him to turn him back on again.
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And then it's like, oh, I'm famous now. Oh, that was good.
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Anyway, hey, if you want a little bit of an idea, I'm going to start doing this even though we're talking about November.
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But, you know, November's coming. We're talking only a little over 10 months away now, I think.
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No, 11 months, 11 months. The conference and cruise, the debate with John Shelby Spong.
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Yes, I have begun. Yeah, it was my son that fixed it. Yes, he who turned off the lights just mentioned it was my son who recognized what had taken place when he didn't recognize what was taking place.
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I've started tracking down various and sundry audio resources, shall we say, from John Shelby Spong.
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Because I like to hear what my opponent says when they are in the context of feeling at home.
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Preaching in churches that they feel are in their realm of things, supportive of their perspectives.
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I've discovered that the same online library that we bought a number of MP3s from of Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan.
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Those are the ones I was listening to for hours out there on the road back in the summer of last year. Also has five or six from John Shelby Spong that I'll be downloading.
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And so I started listening, I believe, Wednesday. Yeah, last
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Wednesday, I started listening to John Shelby Spong. He's a very good speaker. You wouldn't really know that from some of the things
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I've heard. I listened to the interview that he did, a very, very brief interview, very, very brief interview on White Horse Inn.
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And he didn't strike me as a good speaker on that. He almost sounded like he was either ill or possibly, given some of the comments he makes actually in what
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I listened to on Wednesday, possibly he may have been in a situation where, when he knows he's going to be in the minority, he speaks differently than when he is relaxed.
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And I really hope that though we will be debating and there will be a strong opposition to what he's saying,
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I really hope that he will speak more like he does when he's relaxed than when he isn't, because he was very, very easy to listen to.
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He can be very humorous like John Dominic Crossan. Sometimes that humor is somewhat offensive, but he can be that way.
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And so I want to hear how people express themselves.
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I like to listen to their answers to questions from people that they think are saying the same things they're saying.
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That's part of my debate preparation. That helps me, especially in the cross -examination to ask questions using the language that they themselves would be using.
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That's one of the problems that a lot of people have in debates, is the language issue, bridging that gap.
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If I can understand why he believes what he believes, if I can listen to him talking about his background, listen to him talking about being raised in the
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South, and believe me, if you're a Southerner, you don't like John Shelby Spong.
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The South is just horrible from his perspective. I've not heard him say a single positive thing about the
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South so far. I haven't heard enough to be able to say he never does so. Maybe he has some positive things he says.
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I haven't heard any so far. I've been able to tell, listening to everything that I've ever heard from him, the
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South is filled with nothing but a bunch of white, red -necked bigots as far as that goes.
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Anyway, listening to him, I'm listening to him giving a discussion over in San Diego to an entire group of, obviously, folks that are way off to the left.
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He's amongst friends. It was prior to the
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Sins of Scripture coming out. His talk was called
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The Terrible Texts of Scripture, because that was the original title to that book.
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He explains the fact that they changed the title, and this was the working title, and then they changed the title to Sins of Scripture, and so on and so forth.
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That gives you some interesting insight. It just helped me a lot to hear what he's saying and understand what he's saying, and to grasp what is really going on in his mind.
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I just wanted to play you just a brief snippet here. He wants to say frequently that a certain text, because it has been misused, because it violates his particular worldview, cannot be the
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Word of God. Now, he says that, in essence, what we have in Scripture is an evolution, a development, and the problem is people stick to the old stuff rather than to develop stuff.
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So, he likes the story of Hosea and Gomer. That's moving away from the tribalism.
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He refers to Christianity as a tribal religion. Islam is a tribal religion. We have the tribal religion of Western culture versus the tribal religion of Eastern culture, and so on and so forth.
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So, just listen to what he says here. And it's not easy to listen to. There's a part here that's, you know, from my perspective,
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I believe much of what he says is simply blasphemous. But this will give you an idea of the kind of mindset that John Shelby Spong brings to his work.
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God inflicted the Egyptians with plague after plague after plague after plague.
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And in the middle of those plagues, even the Pharaoh has had enough, says our Bible. So, the
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Pharaoh goes to Moses and says, Enough, Moses. Call your God off. We'll let you go. And so,
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Moses prepares for the exodus. And then the Bible says,
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But God hardened Pharaoh's heart because God wanted to hit him one more time.
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So, we have plague after plague after plague. And then there's the final plague, all in the
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Bible, where God's going to send the angel of death throughout all the land and murder.
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I think we ought to use the emotionally charged word. God is going to murder the firstborn male in every household.
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And the Jews are told that they have to put the blood of the paschal lamb on the doorpost of their homes, because this angel of death does not appear bright enough to know the difference between a
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Jewish home and an Egyptian home. So, it's got to have a bloody signpost out there.
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And when the angel of death sees this bloody signpost, he will pass over the
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Jewish home and only kill Egyptians. And then while the Egyptians are grieving for their lost firstborns, the exodus occurs.
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And it seems that the Egyptians get over their grief fairly quickly because after the
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Hebrews have started their exodus, the army of the Pharaoh with its tank divisions of iron chariots is sent after them.
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And the biblical story says, Moses looked ahead of him and he saw the Red Sea. And he looked behind him and he saw the army of the
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Egyptians barreling down upon him. That's being caught between a rock and a hard place. And he didn't know what to do, and he inquired of God.
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And God said, walk into the waters of the Red Sea. And the story says that the water split.
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And Moses and the people of Israel walked through on dry land. And the Egyptians said, well, if they can do it, we can do it.
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So, into the Red Sea plunges the army of the Pharaoh. And God causes those walls of water to come back down and drown all the
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Egyptians. And then God is portrayed on the other side of the river or the sea as rejoicing at the death of the
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Egyptians. My friends, that's a very tough view of God if you happen to be an
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Egyptian. But you see, nobody reads this story from an
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Egyptian perspective. They recognize it as the tribal literature of our ancient forebears.
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That's not the only place where you have that mentality. And if you can find that in the Bible, why can't you apply that to your enemies today?
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Why can't you assume that God hates everybody you hate? Why can't you be tribal?
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There's that wonderful story in the book of Joshua, where Joshua is at war with the Ammonites, the people of Ammon.
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And Joshua is winning that war, and he is killing his enemies. And suddenly the sun begins to go down.
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And Joshua knows that his enemies are going to get away under cover of darkness. So Joshua prays to God, says the story, and God stops the sun in the sky.
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First instance of daylight saving time. God tampers with the laws of the universe for the sole purpose of having more
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Ammonites get killed. It's not a very noble purpose to mucky with the laws of the physical universe.
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So there you have a taste of the kind of presentation that Bishop John Shelby Spong of the
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Episcopalian Church. I can guarantee you one thing. I know of some conservative
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Episcopalians who roll their eyes at Spong. Some Anglicans who just go, please, please, please, please, please don't hold us accountable for this guy.
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Look, it's real simple. If that man had been a member of Reformed Baptist Church, he would have been excommunicated a long, long, long, long time ago.
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Okay, that's just all there is to it. The fact that he remains in fellowship, however you want to refer to it, with the
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Episcopalian Church today without having been excommunicated tells you something about their views of theology and their views of church discipline.
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But anyway, hopefully as you were listening to that, you can get past the shock of hearing certain statements to see the misrepresentation, the spin, and the errors.
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Why did God harden Pharaoh's heart? So that he could beat him up a little bit more?
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What's the actual biblical statement? So my name might be proclaimed throughout all the earth. We're talking about an idolater.
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And this is really where he completely misses it because he doesn't believe in such things as original sin. He blames original sin for child abuse.
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So he doesn't believe we're sinners. He doesn't believe there's such thing as a wrath of God. There's no God. God doesn't have a holy law that's been violated.
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We determine who we are and how we are to exist. God's only there to affirm us in our decisions.
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And so when he hardens Pharaoh's heart, the idea of the demonstration of God's glory and righteousness in the punishment of sinners is completely foreign to Spong.
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It's not completely foreign to the writers of Scripture. So who is misusing Scripture? Who is not interpreting Scripture within its own context?
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But of course, Bishop Spong. He says that he murdered Egyptians. You murder innocent people.
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That's a term that is used of mankind murdering his fellow mankind and doing so improperly.
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That's different than execution by the state, for example. That's different than killing in war. And what we have here is a holy and just God who has been withholding his wrath against these individuals, letting that wrath go out for a specific purpose upon a limited group of people.
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He could have justly wiped out the entire Egyptian nation. He could have justly wiped out the entire
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Jewish nation. Those things are not mentioned. The fact that Scripture itself and the very same texts say that my mercy has come to you not because you're somehow better, not because you're somehow more attractive, etc.,
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etc. Those things are all ignored by Bishop Spong in his misrepresentation of the text.
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He says that in regards to Joshua, the miracle takes place the sole purpose of having more Ammonites get killed.
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No, it takes place the sole purpose of God glorifying himself and establishing his people in their homeland from which he's going to bring the
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Messiah to be the savior of his people. It's amazing how just a small amount of accuracy and truth can get in the way of what is otherwise a nice presentation that you're making to your audience and making them all think that you're accurately representing the text of Scripture when in point of fact he's not.
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Now the problem, of course, is that no matter how hard I try in a debate,
53:28
I never have as much time as the other person has to present the misrepresentations. And so given that a lot of them are not even on the topic, there are gonna be some that I'm not gonna be able to address, unfortunately.
53:40
And that's where you have to trust the people who are listening will do some homework afterwards and see what is actually being said and judge the debate accordingly on the basis of that.
53:52
Let's take one more phone call before we run out of time and let's talk to Alan back in the great state of Georgia.
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Hello, Alan. Hey, how's it going, Dr. White? It's going well. That's good.
54:06
You actually hit upon a point I wanted to ask you about Spong. Is he still an ordained minister in the
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Episcopalian denomination? To my knowledge, he remains the retired Bishop of Newark.
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I do not know of any ecclesiastical censure upon him, any removal of fellowship.
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I could be wrong. Maybe somebody has, but I would think that I would have heard that.
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I would think that I would hear him referring to it because I can guarantee you if it took place, it would be the centerpiece of his introductions.
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It would be the centerpiece of his presentations and it would probably triple his income. So, I mean, seriously, because that would give him the...
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In fact, to be honest with you, I think he would like to see that happen simply to be able to play the martyr card at that point.
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Though at the same time, I have heard him in essence say that he believes that my breed, my stilted, ignorant, evil breed, because those are the terms that he uses of people who would, for example, say that homosexuality is abomination before God, that we are ignorant and that we are evil.
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That's how he defines evil is anything that diminishes the life of someone. Now, of course, I would say homosexuality grossly diminishes the life of those who are trapped in its power, but he rejects that and uses his own definitions at that point.
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He doesn't have an absolute standard, an objective standard by which to define what is evil and what isn't because it doesn't have an inspired word.
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But be that as it may, he feels that we are disappearing.
55:49
We're passing away. I get his little... He writes one or two things a week, maybe only once a week in response to people who write letters to him.
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And he said in one a couple of weeks ago that he feels that in 10 years, there will be a great diminishment in the number of people who hold this.
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And in fact, in this particular lecture, he talked about the fact that the older generation is passing away, the newer generation is coming up, and within 10 years...
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And he was referring specifically to, at that point, bemoaning the recent re -election of George W.
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Bush. His politics are very, very clear in his presentations as well. He's as far off to the left as you can get.
56:32
But also in the theological realm, that there would be a major shift. And so, from his perspective, he's almost like an ultra -liberal post -millennialist.
56:44
It's going to get better and better. And what's better is people believing less and less that the
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Bible is the Word of God in any meaningful or definitional fashion. Well, he denies...
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If I'm not mistaken, he denies the resurrection. He denies inerrancy and inspiration of Scripture.
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I mean, as liberal as the Episcopalian denomination is, don't they have a statement of faith? I mean, they do.
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It's not followed at all. It's just that I was talking with John Mark about this. Why is he still a member, if he is indeed still a member of that denomination, why has he not been disciplined?
57:22
Well, they're not going to get rid of him. And he doesn't feel any need to leave because he can use that as a platform from which to promulgate his perspectives.
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And so he can sit there and talk about the evil bishops in the Anglican communion from Africa, the evil backwards 400 years out of date bishops who are seeking to promote conservatism within the
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Anglican communion. So it's a platform from which he can speak. But that church as a whole has lost its ability, at least in the
57:55
United States. Look at what's happened with the bishop up in New Hampshire, Vermont area with Robinson.
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They can't get rid of that whole situation either. So they don't have any objective standard upon which to judge anything as true or false anymore.
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And that's what's happened. So, hey, thanks for your call, Alan. We're out of time. Appreciate the call today. Thanks for listening to the program.
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We will continue with the interview of Bart Ehrman starting from the start of that particular interview.
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The next time around, Lord willing, that'll be on Thursday evening at four o 'clock our time.
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Whatever time that is for you, you can figure it out. You're all intelligent folks. We'll see you on the dividing line. God bless.
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We've been brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries. If you'd like to contact us, call us at 602 -973 -4602 or write us at P .O.
59:40
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59:47
That's A -O -M -I -N .org where you'll find a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates, and tracks.