Live DL Via Skype from Evergreen Colorado: Christianity Without the Bible Refuted

I'm just gonna go for it and see what happens here normally I can hear the music but some reason

I couldn't hear the music this time so I'm just gonna sort of assume that we are going and we will go and I'm also assuming that England is out of the

World Cup I'm sorry to all of you but you have to admit you didn't expect them to get that far anyway so I don't know what

I did to myself here it looks like I've gotten punched or something today but that's that's not the case I just look terrible that's what happens when you get old is you start looking terrible anyway and especially when you beat yourself up like I've been beating myself up for the past two months

I've got about less than two weeks left until I finish this two and a half month marathon that I have been on we were up in in Flagstaff Arizona then

Salt Lake City and you know I didn't I saw that there was a message from Jason Wallace in Facebook I haven't

I've been too busy today to have seen it so I suppose it's possible that the video has been posted

I sort of wouldn't expect it that quickly it takes time to edit stuff but the discussion with Alma Allred was recorded of course and you know went real well and was pretty much what

I expected that there's a new there's a new joke and that is whenever you whenever you tell a joke you need to put your hand up just to inform folks that you just told a joke that sort of came out of the discussion and sort of became a humorous element of it later on it was a discussion again there was not a whole lot of give -and -take there are lots of audience questions stuff like that but you know the issues were made were presented very clearly that's what you'd expect you know we've done we've done debates up the last the last the last debate we had specifically on Mormonism was with Dr.

Dennis Potter at the University of Utah and that's available on our

YouTube channel and after that debate we had a Mormon come up to us and said look he says

I've been to all of your debates I don't agree with you but we don't have anybody that can debate you so please stop and there there really haven't been we've just had these dialogues since then and maybe it's due to the fact that Dennis Potter I think is now

Denise Potter yeah he was an interesting fellow he came in with a with an earring and a no war in Iraq backpack so he was the most interesting

Mormon that I that I debated and now he's no longer Dennis but Denise so did that have anything to do with it

I don't know but that's that's the way things have gone so we had a good time up there and we packed the place out

I mean we had it at Christ Presbyterian Church and we had every chair out we had people sitting in Jason's office in the foyer standing standing the foyer in the entranceway we're lucky the fire marshal didn't show up we were we were packed out so it was it was it was a good opportunity some of you know that I'm up north here

I'm currently up in Evergreen Colorado where it's why we're doing this via Skype and this is my my annual trek up to the the high mountains and so I'm doing a tremendous amount of bike riding up here as I do each year a little bit slower each year

I think we'll see how it goes over the next two weekends as far as as that goes didn't have a whole lot of time you know

I was in Belfast and Glasgow those are not exactly high altitude places you can't get much training in given that you know yesterday

I was at 111 11 ,100 feet above sea level trying to ride and you're you know

I can tell I haven't been at a whole lot of high altitude for for a little while so that's why we were up in Flagstaff trying to at least start the process and try to survive this so I really enjoy it

I'm I'm not missing the social media insanity even though I will address all that insanity right now it is good to get away from it every once in a while I think

I think people who burn out or people who don't can't put it down and just can't walk away from it for a while but speaking of social media insanity

I saw a link I think it was this morning maybe it was last night

I think it was this morning I I saw a link to a brief clip from my debate with Peter D Williams that was posted by the traditionalist shall we say letting flowers specifically completely ignoring the fact that throughout the debate

I was very clear and speaking about you know Christ died for God's people you know very very plain in my presentation of and again these folks have never done anything with Roman Catholicism and in many ways are compromised on the issues of the

Reformation so they wouldn't even notice it when you did but my entire presentation against Rome on the subject of the

Atonement the mass these issues is based upon an understanding of the perfecting work of the

Atonement of Jesus Christ there is no perfecting work of the Atonement of Jesus Christ in universal

Atonement perspectives it's all theoretical it makes it possible if you do X Y & Z on that dividing line they are with Rome they're not with me they're on Rome's side of that of that subject just they're on Rome's side in regards to nature of faith and and things like that and so I've been very consistent about that for longer than latent flowers has been around in doing ministry anyways and so you ignore all of that and you take a little clip where I'm talking about general revelation the propriety of judgment in light of general revelation and mankind being made in such a way that he is held accountable for his rebellion against God rejection

Romans chapter 1 etc I mean if you've read my book on justification you knew what I was talking about you take that isolate that out say this is like oh don't don't you people have anything else to be doing

I mean seriously there's there's just there's just so much going on out there right now and so many vitally important issues we wonder how it is that critical race theory and egalitarianism and the revoiced conference concepts have flooded into what were once conservative churches and it's because these folks have been sitting around scouring the internet for stuff to shoot at Calvinists I guess it's not that the

Calvinists saw it coming either but we had different reasons so anyway if you you know someone just asked me on Twitter I just I just rushed back here to be able to do this they asked me on Twitter they said so are you gonna do a video clips and responses my response was no

I don't respond to stupid because that's all it is it's it's it's it's just dumb that there's there's no reason to even waste your time

I feel like I wasted my time here I suppose no it's always good to point out to folks that there is a massive dividing line between those who respond to Rome utilizing a consistent apologetic that is derived from the the perfection of the work of Christ and those that in essence agree with Rome on the nature of the will the nature of faith synergism and I've pointed out over almost 30 years now that when you read

Rome's modern works when you read the current Pope for example he is real big on this idea of the universality of the cross because I think he's a universalist which is you know very consistent but Rome has in discussion of sin and redemption and all sorts of things like that for years and years now have been very very consistent in basing all sorts of false doctrine and teaching upon a universal concept of the atonement and a misunderstanding of what that means and of course a misunderstanding of justification and and the whole nine yards and so it's it's all there and actually it's because the this substantive material that I want to cover today is closely related to this silliness

I guess and let me well before I get to that I do want to just briefly acknowledge the fact that a number of people have sent me some quotations from William Lane Craig and evidently there was a powwow recently on the subject of the historical

Adam whether there was such an individual as Adam is there a is this merely a poetic device and yeah you know there's been a lot of discussion about this there was the pushback from the against the

Aesthetic Evolution from Phoenix Seminary that books came out just a few weeks ago and there been some conferences pro and con

I guess but these individuals got together and William Lane Craig is reporting on it and I found it

I found some of it really interesting for example here's a quote the

Old Testament scholars pointed out that the Genesis narratives are full of anachronisms on any account for example the pun she shall be called woman for she was taken out of man

Isha and an ish involves Hebrew words that did not develop until the time of Israel's monarchy and so could not have been uttered by Adam now the assumption that Hebrew is the original human language is not assumption

I've ever made it is the original language in which the account is written but for example does anyone well yeah

Muslims do but does any serious person have a problem with the idea that the

Gospels are written in Greek even though much of the speaking was originally in Aramaic notice

I didn't say all I think I think there was Greek speaking involved in there and then you have a direct a direct citation or direct quotation but Sermon on the would have been done in something other than Greek and yet it is only preserved for us in Greek so why the utilization of the language of the people of Israel at the time of Moses is is relevant and then then you have the theoretical application that you get this is very very common you see it for example in barter

Barterman argues that we should have a very limited

Pauline corpus in other words only about seven books written by Paul and that everything else comes later on because he overlays his own personal theory as to what the early church looked like and anything it doesn't fit with his personal theory as what the other church looked like now how does he know that good question he's not utilizing the the only sources from which we could derive what the other church looked like look like which is the

New Testament so you you create your own theory and then you go well these books you know the pastoral epistles they they can't be from that time period because they show a church different than the church that my theories present it's a whole lot easier to do that with the

Old Testament because you're talking about extremely ancient writings and so you can come up with all sorts of theories which have next to no meaningful hard basis to them as to when this developed or when that developed or when this word came along and that word came on and that's what you're doing here well you know we think he shot that particular develop to the you know monarchical period that you don't have any evidence of that but it's just your theory it's it's it's the same type of stuff that you run into with with the dating of the books of the

New Testament and all the rest that stuff and so so Adam couldn't have said these things and so these are just being put in the word in the mouth of Adams Adam didn't exist even more obviously

Adam couldn't have spoken Hebrew at all since the language did not yet exist well possibly it's interesting these guys can be so agnostic about something that is directly taught in scripture and yet so firm about stuff that isn't and that is purely scholarly speculation that's rather intriguing but this is the this is the actual quotation that has gotten most of the attention theologians the conference were mainly concerned with the fallout of these discussions for the doctrines of the fall and original sin if there was no historical

Adam then obviously we cannot be held accountable for his sin nor did sin and death enter the human race through Adam to a large extent

I think the importance this issue is going to depend to watch me listen to this because this is where the connection is to all this stuff today is going to depend on how committed you are to Catholic slash reformed theology normally don't see

Catholic slash reformed being describing a single theology the doctrine of the imputation of Adam's sin to us is not one that is clearly attested biblically this is

William Lane Craig we've known this for a long time we've known this position for a long time dr. Craig doesn't really care much about where he stands in the stream of historical theological tradition and doesn't care if he holds to for example a quasi heretical view of the person of Christ and I forget what year it was we reviewed his debate with Shabir Ali but in that debate

Shabir Ali he's like original sin you know we don't know it's not really you know something taught in Scripture you know so he dismissed

Shabir's argument by basically dismissing the concept of original sin and so it's this isn't shouldn't be overly surprising because this has been something he's been up to for quite some time he says what is essential

I think is affirming the universality of sin well how do you do that biblically

I mean it's one thing obviously you know dr. Craig holds the philosophical methodology and so he can simply say well it makes sense that this is the case or it's proper that this is the case but at least amongst the reformed we sort of want have this you know word from God type thing called exegesis of the text of Scripture so how would you affirm the universality of sin if you have already taken the step of mythologizing or allegorizing or poeticizing the existence of Adam as an individual why would there be universality if we don't fall in Adam then why would there be any necessity for the universality of sin

I mean you you open the door there to the possibility of something other than that a non -universal perspective is what

I would assume would would come from all of that and so so there you go with that um let me see universality of sin and the need of every human being of God's saving grace that doesn't require a historical

Adam for me then the central theological issue raised by the historical Adam will will be not original sin of the fall but rather biblical inspiration and authority can we in a scientific age trust what the

Bible teaches so is he saying that the Bible teaches that he accepts the idea the

Bible does teach the existence of a historical individual named Adam he doesn't get into the conclusions that they that they come to but anyway that's some of the stuff that is being said again

I'm not I'm not at all surprised or shocked by this because this is really been

William Lane Craig's thing for for a long long time and it's gonna continue

I think to be his thing for a long long time so very interestingly

I I did as I promised listen to Michael Brown's interview of Andy Stanley on the last dividing line

I said I'd listen to it while I was driving up Flagstaff I did it wasn't all that long and I had it on high speed there was nothing new as far as I could see as far as you know we have gone over Andy Stanley stuff a number of times and he's not changing his tune he's not saying anything new

Michael pressed him obviously on the issue of the authority of the Old Testament the the normative nature and I don't think that Pastor Stanley gave meaningfully consistent answers to the questions that were asked especially to the obvious apostolic example of the

Apostles themselves in the New Testament not unhitching themselves from from the

Old Testament utilizing the Old Testament narrative as a standard source of authority the quotation of that text being a final answer even in the

New Covenant age stuff and and we know that Stanley you know his theology was deeply impacted in a negative way by Geisler and by that whole anti Lordship easy believe is an easy grace stuff from Dallas and that area so you're seeing the fruit of that over time but you're also seeing the issue of apologetics and I think there is a good example of this that was printed a little while ago this was

March 30th of this year and this is from cross examined org so dr.

Turk and the article is entitled Christianity is true even if some of the

Bible isn't and so what this is again is this idea that the historical reality of what

God has done in space and time and specifically in that now and I okay

I need to take that back only what has done in space and time in the resurrection is the ultimate proof of the truthfulness of the

Christian faith because the way I was putting it God did all sorts of things in space and time and the redemption of the

Jewish people in the Exodus and in the prophets and so on and so forth but that puts us back into the

Old Testament and that's one of the issues that Stanley's saying well you know it's like there's a lot of people that have a problem with with you know the flood or with the mosaic law or you know this that or the other thing or even a historical

Adam which connects us back to the William Craigsbook but the problem is the people have problems with the historical element of the

New Testament narrative as well and he has said you know those people have problems with the virgin birth and things like that well the idea that you can somehow disconnect the resurrection from everything else

God has done and it's just gonna stand there on its own without scriptural witness without prophetic witness without explanation without anything is really what you're left with and none of the

Apostles held that perspective none of the Apostles saw the resurrection in this way we are not in any way decentralizing the resurrection we're simply saying that when if God's gonna do something that big and that awesome he's gonna make sure we know why he did it and what it accomplishes and how do we know that we know that from Scripture we know that because God has spoken we are not left to just simply speculate and so this this this whole idea that he presents that you know what he's trying to do is a you're you're minimizing the target that's what the whole mere

Christianity apologetics movement is about you minimize the target minimize the number of topics you actually have to deal with and make it so that the atheist who wants to throw out contradiction after contradiction this that and the other thing you just you can just fluff all that stuff off and say it's not relevant but we're talking about here you're just you're not even trying to engage the subject etc etc and so you're presenting a minimalized

Christianity so you have a minimalized central core to try to have to defend in the first place and then of course you theologically you remove from the core of the

Christian message you know on the one hand when you're talking to Christians to say all this stuff still very important but on the other hand you'll say but it's not relevant in talking to unbelievers because they don't need to hear us arguing about stuff like this you just basically boil it down to God exists the

Trinity in some way the cross and resurrection really happened but you can't ask the questions why is that relevant what does it mean what was accomplished what was

God's intention what was God's purpose you're not allowed to ask any of those kinds of questions because that gets you into in the weeds that are way too deep allegedly to be able to really function properly and so here we have this blog article from cross -examined and it says is

Christianity true just because the inerrant Bible says it is well

Christianity is true because God has acted decisively in the person of Jesus Christ and the outpouring of the

Holy Spirit and we know what all these things mean because God has spoken from the beginning has always wanted his people to understand his intentions and purposes and therefore from the beginning has provided the written scriptures to clearly explicate what he's doing and why he's doing it so it's a false dichotomy is

Christianity true just because the inerrant Bible says it is no Christianity would still be true even if the

Bible was never written well not in the form of Christianity that we know I don't know what kind of Christianity you're talking about but good luck explaining to anybody dr.

Turk what Christianity is without the scriptures I mean as soon as you say well

Jesus pussy well let me just finish no no who's Jesus how do you know what did he do you can't do it

I mean I just don't it's astonishing to me that people make this type of argument when it's so obviously incoherent says let me explain it's a common belief prevalent among some

Christians that what we know about Christianity depends on an inerrant Bible what we know about Christianity depends upon God's faithfulness in giving his revelation yes are there people who do not believe in inerrancy who at the same time believe the scripture is sufficiently clear to communicate to them divine truths yes when they read that Bible they find

Jesus holding their view of scripture no therefore you would like to think that maybe somewhere down the road they'll get the idea huh if I'm trusting this

Jesus fell of my salvation if I actually believe what the scriptures teach these God incarnate um maybe sorta

I might want to believe what Jesus view of scripture actually was you know despite you know the unbelieving seminary professor across the table from me anyway sure we know that there are several non -christian writers from the ancient world that make brief brief references the first century events and the beliefs of the early

Christians corroborating what we read in the New Testament we also know there's an increasing number of archaeological findings that support characters and events in the

Christian storyline yeah but none of those are gonna give you the cross and the resurrection not with in any way to understand it

I mean all you can say is there was an event problem to Pontius Pilate there was a crucifixion there was stories about empty grave but the all of the connection to Phoenicus 16 from the book of Hebrews where do you get that from scripture the whole concept of redemption and substitution and where they come from comes from the scriptures but some of us erroneously think that Christian beliefs cannot be sustained unless the

Bible is without error how about we say Christian beliefs cannot be known with certainty and known with consistency unless God can actually speak because when we listen to what

Jesus tells us in scripture which is the only way we have him speaking his view of scripture is the highest view of scripture and so if we're gonna be consistent you might want to hold

Jesus's view of scripture why do we have apologists suggesting that it doesn't matter that we hold

Jesus's view of scripture because we live in a strange age and when you do not derive your apologetic methodology from scriptural example and command but from pragmatism that's what you're gonna get there's fun that would mean that the

Christian faith is a house of cards ready to collapse if one verse or reference in New Testament is discovered to be false now can you tell where Andy Stanley's getting his stuff obviously this perspective and probably

Frank Turek himself key to what Andy Stanley is saying it's the same things although I think there are good reasons to believe in an errant

Bible inerrancy is an unnecessarily high standard by which to establish the central event in Christianity the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth which will celebrate this

Sunday so this is just before Easter so it's an unnecessarily high standard by which to establish the central event of Christianity well that depends on whether you're simply saying well something happened or whether you're actually proclaiming the gospel message the resurrection message that the

Apostles presented specifically that the death of Christ had this intent that the person who died was this person therefore could accomplish these things hmm unnecessarily high standard

Wow I I didn't know that there was a gradation when coming to the the actual full work of what

God has done in Christ I didn't know there was a gradation Christianity hinges on that historical event no

Christian hinges on that historical event as explained as prophesied by the prophets and as explained by the

Apostles that's read Luke 24 if this was true we didn't need

Luke 24 why did Jesus the first thing he does after the resurrection opens their minds to understand what modern philosophy no modern apologetic method of pragmatism what did he open their minds to understand

Oh the scriptures Wow that's right he's just he's walking along the road to a man yes what does he do he opens the books of philosophy mmm books on logic

Oh opens the scriptures to them meets with the Apostles later on opens their minds to understand the scriptures it's central folks it's central it's so obvious so Christianity hinges on that historical event true as far as it goes but not in this context because in this context it's being used as an argument that well you know the

Bible you know it's it's important and it's good it might be an original but that's a not necessarily high example someone please explain to me how you can read into either

Peter's discussion or Paul's discussion of John's discussion Luke's discussion

Jesus's discussion of the witness of the of the prophets to Jesus's person birth ministry death row and resurrection and the meaning of all that without scripture not possible not possible if Christ rose from the dead then game over Christianity is true no that's not true because strange things have happened other people rose from the dead if I said if Lazarus rose from the dead

Christianity is true game over no there has to be an explanation of who Lazarus was who raised him from the dead what the context was and how do you know any of that you don't know that from reading

Tacitus you know that from what the scripture says

God has spoken on the other hand if he didn't rise from the dead then as a first century eyewitness by the name of Paul admitted

Christianity is false well given that it's the central claim that would be true but we only know that notice how he puts here as a first century eyewitness by the name of Paul admitted how do you know that well it's found in the scriptures yeah but we can just take this as a reliable testimony really that you really think that works

I don't believe that works I believe that's inconsistent obviously the other side thinks that we can just we can just simply look

Paul's writings as reliable historical records well once you go there I really think you're doing because then you can start picking

Paul apart you start doing all sorts of stuff and simple historical records are insufficient to establish theological meanings of historical events they're just one one view and there's lots of there's lots of people who today will accuse

Paul of being in contradiction with Paul and with Peter and with John and so if there is no overarching narrative you know good luck with any of this stuff anyway but you don't need inerrant sources to establish that the resurrection actually happened or any other historical event for that matter for example if you found an error in the stat line of the football game should you assume that every game story and stat line in the newspaper was a complete fabrication then why do some people do that with the

New Testament why do they assume that unless every word is true then most of it is false so here's the idea that I'm sorry but I personally find it fundamentally offensive to compare an irrelevant non -cosmic non -divine non -binding thing such as a stat in a football game with the central proclamation of the reason understanding and divine intention of the central aspect by which the central action by which the triune

God glorifies himself in all of creation I would call that a major category error illustration well they assume that because they are confusing the fact of the resurrection with the reports of the resurrection conflicting reports of a historical event are evidence that the event actually occurred not the reverse not always

I mean I suppose you can argue that when you have conflicts amongst witnesses in describing a traffic accident that this is due to all sorts of issues in regards to perspective trauma differing levels of observation on the part of individuals whatever else but you can't you can't go beyond that to say well let me use an example of this there are contradictions in the book of mormon concerning what happens when

Jesus allegedly comes to the new world does that mean Jesus came in the new world no Jesus didn't come you have to just have to be really careful how you use argumentation like this in other words to return to our sports analogy the only reason there is error in the stat line to begin with is because the game was actually played and someone tried to report on that game not necessarily people people made up things in the past that had no reality now the stat line or the error would exist unless the game had actually been played after all who reports in a game that didn't actually take place oh there are lots of possibilities like that there's