January 17, 2006

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

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

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

Responding to Bart Ehrman and the Authority of Scripture

And good morning, welcome to The Dividing Line. It is good to be back after a little technical difficulty and all sorts of interesting issues last week. I've been wanting to get to this program for quite some time, simply due to the fact that last week when I heard the interview with Bart Ehrman and Pastor Wilkin on issues, etc., 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.

The question that was asked was absolutely perfect. It is exactly what needed to be asked of Bart Ehrman. Some of you may notice that on my blog this morning, I noted 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.

And if you haven't seen that, I would encourage you to take a look at that. And I really hope and pray that in the context of that debate, the Jesus seminar-like presuppositions that Ehrman brings to the table will be exposed.

Now, obviously, William Lane Craig is not a presuppositionalist, but the resurrection is his specialty. And I think that he has done some very good work in that area, so this is his field. 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, I think a debate like that will bring that out and should bring that out rather clearly.

At least I hope that is what takes place. So the question that I'm going to start with this morning, just an excellent question. Pastor Wilkin asks this of Bart Ehrman. I want you to, and I know I blogged this, but you might not have heard it.

Listen, and 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 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. I was trying to make this point then as well, and that is, in this society where, for example, Brokeback Mountain will undoubtedly win the Oscar and won four or six 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.

I mean, if you haven't, in fact, I apologize. I didn't get a new memory verse up yesterday, and I think when we do so, in light of what's been going on in our society, it would be good to memorize Psalm 12 .8.

New American Standard says, The wicked strut about on every side when vileness is exalted among the sons of men. And I think 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.

That's what we see going on around us, and part of that wickedness, and this is very important, I hope you hear what I'm saying. You cannot attack the Word of God in a manner that does not involve sin.

The way we think and the way we act, these are moral issues before God. We are created in the image of God. And to suppress that knowledge is not morally neutral. 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 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.

The Da Vinci Code. People can make 70 plus million dollars off of gross lies about the Christian faith, attacking the deity of Christ, very hard of the faith, the transmission of the text of Scripture, so on and so forth.

We as believers, and I'm not talking about we as people interested in apologetics or the people who listen to the dividing line. 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, 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 1 .9 and we're going to see that the ability to engage in apologetic dialogue in defense of the faith is one of the requirements.

It is one of the elements that determines whether a person is prepared to be an elder in the church. 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.

And so these are not things we can just simply put aside any longer and say, well, we'll let somebody else do it. This is the 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, 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. And when we hear people making arguments against our faith, we need, 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. But we need to be able to hear those arguments and identify the false facts. Yes, when we hear someone saying Constantine made up the deity of Christ, that's a false fact.

Now, it's a false fact based upon a false worldview, probably. There's going to be other aspects of what the person is 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.

That's what was so good about Pastor Wilkins' question of Dr. Ehrman, is he asks him, in essence, okay, given your position, he's already said, even in this interview as we're going to hear, he's already said, well, yeah, the New Testament's generally reliable, and we can pretty much determine what the original authors wrote, blah, blah, blah.

Okay, if you start off your book that way, you're not exactly going to sell as many copies for Harper's San Francisco. But finally, the question is asked, all right, if what you're saying is there's been all these changes, and there's all these places, he never tells us exactly what they are.

And when he does give examples, they're frequently very weak. And basically are all drawn from the book you wrote a while back, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture. What would have to happen? What would the Bible have to look like for you to believe it was inspired in error?

What would it look like? What would its history be? What would the history of its transmission be? Et cetera, et cetera. Perfect question. Very much parallel to what I had asked of John Dominic Crossan at the very beginning of Cross Examination, when 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 suspension or violation of the natural laws of this universe has taken place in the past? And if you've listened to the debate, then you know that Dr. Crossan said, well, there really isn't any way that you could prove to me a miracle has taken place in the past.

Well, there you go. Well, there is the demonstration, the circularity of the naturalistic presuppositions that he brings to the text. There it is. And I saw people sitting in the audience going, well, there it is.

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 asking such a question?

This question of Dr. Ehrman exposed that exact existence of presuppositions in Ehrman's statement. And I hope when you hear this, your mind immediately goes, hey, wait a minute. That means, and you start seeing what the ramifications of what Ehrman says here.

Here's the question.

You won't find the word objective truth in the Bible, for example.

What situation would need to prevail in the text's history and transmission for you to consider the Bible reliable and genuinely inspired in all of its parts? What would the history and transmission look like?

Well, for one thing, I think if the Bible were inspired in all of its parts, you wouldn't have contradictions. 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, I think conclusively, that God did not preserve the words of the Scripture.

What I'm trying to get at, Dr. Ehrman... 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, then he probably didn't go to the trouble of inspiring them in the first place.

Because if he wanted people to have his absolute words so that he inspired them, he would have preserved them. 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. That, to me, was it. That took care of all of it. And it almost sounded like Dr. Wolkin didn't want him to go there, but that is, to me, the clearest demonstration of the circularity of Ehrman's position.

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. 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. But all of you Muslims who are quoting Ehrman, I hope you're listening to this, and I hope you're listening very clearly, because what that would mean, obviously, is that everything Ehrman is saying about the 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 Uthmanian revision stuff is all about. And so, what would he say about the 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 New Testament.

So, when you have to quote happy agnostics to substantiate your position, you've got a bit of a problem. It's called hypocrisy. Anyways, what would his position mean? What does that mean? I mean, it's easy to hear what he's saying.

If it was inspired, then God would make sure there are no variance. Okay. Are there any works of antiquity that do not have variance within them? Answer, no, there are not. 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?

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, and then kill anyone who came close to try to change it.

I suppose that would be the one exception here. 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, by definition, by definition, 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.

So, if God did give it, then there would have to be some kind of supernatural activity, 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, there would have to be some supernatural activity where somehow scribes would become themselves supernaturally controlled by God.

In fact, I guess I stopped that too early. I just realized I stopped that way too early. Let me see if I can find it, because Wilkin asks a question.

Let me see if I can find it. In readings, and you don't have the original text, it shows, I think conclusively, that God did not preserve the words of the scripture. What I'm trying to get at, though, and 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, then he probably didn't go to the trouble of inspiring them in the first place, because if he wanted people to have his absolute words so that he inspired them, he would have preserved them, 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 variants, no amendations, no apparent scribal errors, 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.

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 Pastor Wilkin likewise was like, what? It wouldn't be all that hard to do if you're God. Okay. What would that process look like? What would that process look like?

The text is inspired, and the first copyist is copying, and let's say he's copying the first Thessalonians. 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, 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 Apostle.

And so he's copying it out, and he's just about to misspell a word. 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?

And so he goes on a little bit farther, and he's about to skip a word because of Homo Etelyatan, and he again goes into a trance. His hand goes back, and he then puts in the right word. Is that what 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, and so no one really wants to copy the scriptures anymore because as soon as anyone is about to mess it up, bam, they're gone.

Or angels come down and correct it. I mean, come on. This is the height of scholarship? 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.

Here's your problem. Here's where this guy has completely missed the boat, and this explains all of the radical overstatements and the unwillingness to address the issues in a meaningful fashion. Here it is.

Oh, yeah, if it's inspired, then there wouldn't be any variance, and nobody would ever misspell anything, at least until the praying press, and then I suppose when they start the praying press, then there's your typesetting, the supernatural attendance would come along, and every single manuscript would be identical, and I wonder what would happen with foreign language translations.

Would they have to be Theanustas as well? Would God have to himself translate into the Latin? Coptic? Sahitic? So the spirit has to keep inspiring over and over and over again? What is the difference between this?

I want to know. I really do want to know. Because some of you have seen the King James only program we did on the 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. 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 English?

And without hesitation, Dr. Kipp looked into the camera. He actually was looking at the host, but the camera was sort of over his shoulder anyways. He looked at him and he said, God has only promised to give us one inspired and errant translation, one language at one time, 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. 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, so therefore that sort of proves it.

And this kind of stuff. And we shake our heads. And yet here's Bart Ehrman, basically saying, yeah, he's right. That's what would have to happen. You'd have to have a re-inspiration when translations take place.

You'd have to have a re-inspiration every single time a printing press fires up, every single time a scribe takes up a pen. There needs to be some divine intervention that is going to result in some trans-like automatic writing so that there are no variants whatsoever.

I had never heard anyone say that outside of suggesting something similar to it in the King James only movement. But that's what lies behind it. Same type of idea. And you just go, in other words, Dr. Ehrman, there couldn't be a divine revelation in the past from your perspective.

Let's just be honest about it. From your perspective, given your naturalistic presuppositions, given the fact you've abandoned the faith, you are clearly a naturalistic materialist in your worldview as far as what you accept as truth and error and things like that.

And he has some other interesting epistemological issues regarding to subjective and objective that will come out in the interview. But let's just be honest. From your perspective, there could not be any divine revelation in the past.

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 and then you apply that to whatever pretended revelation, the terminology you would probably use, that you're going to be examining, whether it be the 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 Koran for that matter.

They all fall under the same rubric and they're all precluded by what? By naturalistic presuppositions that say God couldn't give revelation. If he did, then there would have to be this amazing type of supernatural ordering of copying that would preclude any textual variance.

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. 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.

The folks at NPR, you can't expect them to have a clue of what the issues really are. But first we're going to go ahead and take a phone call at 877 -753 -3341. And let's talk to Michael. Hello, Michael.

Hey, Dr. White. How are you?

I'm okay. Actually, this is my second time calling. Yes, sir. And the first time I made a very eclectic show. Oh, okay. So I apologize that my questions will be eclectic. The first one I wanted to ask you was, your friend Eddie Del Coro and I have been talking for some time about, and we wanted to get your opinion of, who do you believe is the best Arminian scholar today?

Oh. Well, you know, there aren't very many Arminians who want to, let's put it this way, there are lots of Wesleyans who are very scholarly who will go ahead and call themselves Arminians. 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 Calvinist, et cetera, 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.

They approach the text from a philosophical perspective, and they wonder why they don't really impress most Calvinists. It's because, you know, I looked at Ben Witherington's book, and his criticisms of Calvinism were extremely surface level.

They weren't exegetically based. There wasn't hardly any reference to some of the key texts at all. And when he did address certain texts, he really did so very poorly. It's all from a presuppositional philosophical standpoint.

And, you know, 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. 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.

But then you have a whole spectrum of quote-unquote evangelicals who don't want to call themselves Arminians, though they are Arminians. They believe in libertarian free will, and they deny an eternal decree of God, and they are 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 and his extreme 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 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 in Radio Free Geneva, the various pastors who may or may not have various ascended degrees in seminaries, but who just slaughter the subject by just repeating what 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.

William Lane Craig is a Molinist, and as a Molinist, 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 into 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. 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 we spend a lot of time trying to get the people who are the most vocal in attacking reform theology to actually stand up and defend themselves exegetically, and they just won't do it.

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 reform theology. The list of people he contacted reads like a who's who's list of anti-reformed evangelicals, 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, 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.

So it's really hard to compare, for example, a Wesleyan scholar with a 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.

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. Well, you know, I think I mentioned most of the names there and at least some of the differences that we look at between them.

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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The Best Arminian Scholars and the Limits of Philosophical Argument

And welcome back to Dividing Line. We are talking with Michael. And Michael is our eclectic caller. He is demonstrating the superiority of the eclectic method to the majority text method. And so your second question, Michael, was?

Actually, just one mention. What is the book by Bill and Wilmington you're speaking of? The book by what? Bill and Wilmington.

Oh, Ben Witherington III. Looking around here. Something about evangelicalism. Maybe somebody will mention it in channel. I'm looking at these stacks and stacks of books around me here. And I don't remember.

There it is. There it is. It's White, The Problem with Evangelical Theology. It looks like it's a Baker book. I'm not sure. It has a B on it. But it's in the middle of a stack. And if I tried to take it out, it could be very dangerous.

And you'd hear a loud noise. And then there'd be no more Dividing Line. Okay.

I just finished watching the crossing debate. Yes. The question is, one might be actually for Rich. But I thought the debate was very edifying, at least on your part. I wasn't very impressed with Dr. Crossman because I've never heard him debate.

So I wasn't very impressed.

Well, he's a good speaker. He's not boring to listen to at all.

Are you guys going to from my understanding, you guys did tape the one on the ship?

Yes. What we've got to do with that, the reason that's been delayed so much is we had horrible problems. Yes. 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.

And my opening statement, I have been told, I haven't heard it, but my opening statement is completely undiscernible. You can't understand a word of it. Thankfully, I read the entire opening statement, and it's still on my 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. And thankfully, it's only 10 minutes long. I had to hurry through it, so we should probably be able to get fairly close.

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 DVD out of it. And with the move issue, that's what has caused that one, because I want to see that one.

I thought that was an excellent example of how dialogue can take place without compromise. So much of what we see when scholars dialogue today is a situation where the conservative is, in essence, forced to compromise.

And I remember very clearly at one point, Marcus Borg looked over at Dr. Renahan and myself, and there are some great pictures of this dialogue. I mean, Dr. Crossan was very animated, and I'm leaning forward, and he's leaning forward, and we're going back and forth.

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 Christianity without the physical resurrection of Christ.

We're like, you know, Dr. 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.

Yes! There you go. We got there. It only took us an hour to get there, but we got there finally. 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. There's two of us. You hear both of us on the dividing line. The entire staff is in one place at that point. So that's just sort of how it works, you know?

I have my last question, Rich, but we'll find out. My copy of the debate, on the first CD of it, the rebuttal from Dominic Crossin.

It's wigging out on you. It's like he'll skip and... Yeah, I had the same problem on the DVD at church, and so... And all of a sudden it became quiet because we're waiting for that voice that sometimes wanders in from...

Nowhere. Nowhere, and I'm not hearing it wandering in. So maybe someone doesn't want... Captain, she can't take much longer. You'll have to talk to that disembodied voice right there. I know that trying to find formats that fit with everybody...

You know, I had problems just this week with my brand new Dell laptop, which I love my Dell laptops. My old one could play anything. It didn't matter what I threw in there. 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. 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?

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, 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.

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. 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. I will look, though. Okay, yeah. Well, we'll see what we can do about that, across that rebuttal period, because obviously that is important to be able to see the whole thing.

Anyway, thanks.

Honestly, Michael, you should send an email in to the website, and I'll get that taken care of for you. Thank you. I appreciate it. All right. Thanks a lot. God bless. God bless. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

Yes, 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, and all of a sudden the lights start dimming, and he has no idea that he did it until someone comes running up behind him to turn them back on again, and then it's like, uh-oh, I'm famous now.

That was good. 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, but, you know, November's coming. We're talking only a little over 10 months away now, I think.

No, 11 months, 11 months. The conference and cruise debate with John Shelby Spong, 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.

I've started tracking down various and sundry audio resources, shall we say, from John Shelby Spong, because I like to hear what my opponent says when they are in the context of feeling at home, preaching in churches that they feel are in their realm of things, supportive of their perspectives.