Caesar’s Gold, Augustine Actual Again

And greetings welcome to the dividing line. It is a thursday. I think uh about that time of the week or so and beautiful here in the phoenix area right now really is we had a little bit of a nice cool down.

It's actually i saw 59 degrees now you don't understand some of you most of you in the rest of the world go yeah so but starting next week we won't see anything in the 60s again until probably late october early november for the low at night at sunrise you know coolest part of the day.

Yeah so to have been up to like 107 and now it's like it was like 88 89 yesterday so i got that. That's you. You take your blessings as you as you can take them. You really do. Anyway um i i i i'm totally hesitant to even um ponder or consider making comments about what happened the night before last um but i sort of need to i'll try to keep it brief and i will try to but i'll be honest um what happened is the troublemaker from texas and you all know who that is the troublemaker from texas had been commenting on twitter about churches and monies and i i i hadn't followed all the links you know frequently.

You just sort of have to look something go okay and you don't get to really follow up on it. But i finally tuned in and then he sent me a text and i figured out that what he was talking about was churches taking money from the united states government as part of what cares ppp.

The ppp portion of cares payroll protection something. Yeah. And he's he's telling me about some of the churches that he understands have taken money and how much how much. And i'm i'm just like no no that's no that's that's not no.

And then he starts giving me more information and more information and i'm like you've got to be kidding me. Millions of dollars fake money anyways. But millions of dollars from the empty treasury. So from underneath the floor of the empty treasury as we dig deeper and deeper and deeper into absolutely unsustainable debt deeper and deeper and deeper millions of dollars that was supposed to be for businesses and as people were quick to point out i couldn't believe how fast people were non-profits.

Millions of dollars. And i'm talking some churches literally a single church taking more than a million dollars one i've been told and i don't know how i'd ever be able to verify it. I hope someone's digging into these things.

I'd love to see some public records of this one particular mega church 2 .2 million dollars. And i'm i at first i it was just really hard to believe it. I just i just figured this must be a complete anomaly because we're sitting here talking about the church and state and the proper um the proper realms of each where the authority is supposed to is supposed to be.

We're talking about a period of time where the government is clearly making claims that it has the right to determine not only when and how the church can meet but what the church can do in its worship.

All for our safety of course and for the common good of course always. And in the midst of this we we actually have churches that are taking money from the united states government to keep their well their doors aren't open but to keep their payrolls going taxpayer money now just on a governmental level leaving leaving the theology and that bible thing out.

I'm just like how does this work. I it why didn't. Why wasn't the freedom from religion foundation uh all over this one like a duck on a june bug. I mean and that would be one time i'd go. Yeah. Okay i'll.

Yeah sounds about right. How we're not supposed that's not supposed to be happening. They're not supposed to take money from us. That's why they can't tax us. See the power to tax the power to destroy.

I mean and we didn't make that up by the way that was the chief justice of the supreme court united states that said that. So we're not talking about that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah i knew. Yeah no. Okay so i'm going back and forth a lot on twitter with some guys talking about this and they seem to be of the impression that the church doesn't pay taxes because of non-profit law.

And that's all that's garbage. Non-profit law started in 1954. Okay so get rid of all non-profit law revoke all non-profit status shut down the united way or make them for profit. Shut down all the un stuff.

Shut down all the non-profits. And the church still doesn't pay taxes. Shouldn't. Because taxation is a burden upon that which is taxed. And the first amendment clearly says they they cannot restrict the free exercise.

Yeah. But nobody but nobody today has any idea why that was. Yeah they don't. They don't. They have no idea that there were established churches. They don't know anything about history and so they think that the non-taxation of churches is a benny right.

It's it's something that we talked the government into and therefore we owe the government something for that. Well i i keep wondering why it is that so many that have this attitude about the first amendment that we can just look the other way on all this religion stuff.

How about doing that with the press. Well because it's in there too right there that it's all coming apart at the seams as far as that goes. So but you know so just so just but just on the on the on the governmental side of things the idea of taxpayer money whether you want to admit that taxpayer money or not being used to pay payroll for churches should cause anybody to go.

Whoa wait a minute. That doesn't sound overly kosher to me. What i i don't understand the number but one of the the exchanges i had said that there was a church that had over 500 employees is are you kidding me i don't understand a church even a mega church needing a hundred employees.

Well i would guess possibly you know if you have food for the poor services as far as running a warehouse clothing stuff. Yeah who knows i don't but if you think about when you and i were part of a mega church way way way back when i i can't add up to a hundred.

Oh pretty close. Yeah but yeah i would say so no way 500 not 500 but i mean maybe osteen's church. Well i don't know but you know you you you go back and forth and ask the question. Okay so your church isn't holding services because of this for whatever reason and we can have that debate.

We've been having that debate but your your folks decided that second corinthians nine is out the window too. Since you're not having services you're not providing me the service. So therefore your business the business transaction isn't actually happening.

Right. So why do i need to buy your product today. Because you're not selling it. That's the attitude. Sorry i'm sorry. Yeah yeah the dividing line today is being hosted by rich fierce and i'm just gonna sit back and listen in hit my hot button bud.

Well yeah well it was my hot button uh on um on tuesday evening because so okay so there's the there's the constitutional thing let's get back to let's get back to caesar and the church. Can you imagine the apostle paul writing to the churches and saying you know this this uh famine across uh across the roman empire is causes real problems.

So we've we've decided to apply for for special uh imperial monies from caesar uh to help us get through this difficult time. Can you imagine that. Can you imagine the roman response to that. That's it's a real thing.

Um i just it just blew me away that pretty quickly there were people immediately coming back and saying well there's there's nothing wrong with that. I mean if it's being made available well first of all i don't think that was its intention but even if it was here's the issue if you don't think the church has any business speaking prophetically to the government then i can see why you might go.

Why not. Why not. If it keeps uh keeps the lights on and the doors open. Big deal. We all know it's funny money anyways and it the bill won't come do this for a few more years. Maybe um but but then why.

If you take that perspective then you're never going to be able to say a word when the government mandates and they're this close doing it already mandates the celebration on your part of the obergefell decision um tells you you cannot have a pro-life sunday that if your church has people outside an abortion mill and my church does almost every day of the week um you can't do that any longer.

Once caesar once you have caesar's money in your pocket what can you say. And and the problem is i just think there's a lot of churches that go we we don't ever intend to do that. Anyways what about gay marriage.

That was obergefell. Well yeah. But coming in and ordering the pastor you will do you will perform this wedding in your church. Yeah. And if you pay for and if you kept your church afloat with caesar's money and then caesar tells you to do this.

What what moral ground do you have to say no you don't have the right to do that because caesar's going to go. And by what right did you take my money. I i was just left going. And some people like well you know you've been saying that there can be different views as to whether you you know go to online stuff and things like that and trying to parallel the two.

There is no parallel between these two things. It's one thing to have the argument that you should shut down to love your neighbor. Now look it's been well said. Um there have i i was contacted i won't mention any places but by people outside the united states.

Um about the program last thursday and one of the main points that was made in discussing who was the lehman. Yeah the the article um from nine marks. Well the points that was made was if you take this perspective then you're only shepherding a portion of your people the others that have a conviction that they need to continue to worship you're just leaving them out.

Um if someone and there are we we have created a subclass of the panicked in our society now and they are they they are not happy people. They tend to be very angry people and they they tend to lash out.

But if you have people who are panicked and who are afraid you don't force them to go to church. You don't want that kind of person in the service in the first place. So you you leave you leave freedom in that situation.

But at least one of the first things that we talked about in our church was leading our people to not be panicked to not be experiencing this debilitating level of fear. Anyway there are people outside the united states that were going man we we need unfortunately layman's article is going all over the place.

We need written material to respond to it. Good. He's going to do it. I'm glad he will. Um so there's just my initial response was shock. And then it became more shock when people started saying i just i just can't understand why you're responding this way.

And i'm like it's not the same thing how it they're two completely different things now look there's no question that when the shutdown started the initial story was a couple weeks. That's what we all thought.

I mean everybody was was was quarantining for two weeks and then you're good. Right. Flatten the curve two weeks and then it's three weeks and then it's a month and now it's been what 10 weeks now something like that.

I've forgotten what the what the number is but but it's just getting ridiculous and the the narrative keeps changing. But at least initially it was very brief help everybody get over this. Nobody really thought it through.

We weren't given time to think it through. And major leaders are getting phone calls from governors asking for their help. Can you help us to save lives. Okay we need to revisit all of that because it's i i am not a prophet nor a son of a prophet.

But this will happen again. This will happen again. It may happen before the end of the year. It will happen again. And what we're seeing is we are seeing governors who are absolutely power drunk power drunk.

They love this and their worldview has no restraints on it. And so this is going to happen again. So we got to think that part through and and really know what we're doing. It would really help. We're all on the same page.

I know we're not going to be but that that would help. But this is a completely different issue. This is taking government money bowing to caesar and taking caesar's money while at the same time caesar is in every way making it clear that he thinks he can tell you what to do in worship when to worship how to worship whether worship at all.

Along with the fact that caesar is already starting to define as hate speech reading from leviticus or romans or first corinthians. I i just didn't think that anybody would would even defend it. I i just my assumption was anybody who did this they're just hoping no one's going to notice.

Um i was obviously wrong about that. I personally think that if a church says you know what we did was right and we are not ashamed of it. Announce it put it out there tell the government we want our name put out there.

We we took uh funds from the united states government as a part of the corona pandemic. Uh to to keep ourselves going. Uh we did it and uh we don't think there's anything wrong with it. Put it out there.

Don't don't make people guess. Because you know i can think of the one church i've been told in texas makes perfect sense big mega church. But then there was a reformed church. I was told not in texas that i was like really how how what.

Now i can uh we have we have the uh the primary leadership of the ministry sitting here. Um we're not taking any money from the government anytime soon. Right. We have never nor will we as long as i'm breathing as long as you're breathing take money from the government of the united states or any other or the russians or the russians or the chinese or the ukrainians or the you know whoever it is don't bother sending it.

Yep so there is that. Yeah um and i can tell you i don't think jeff would mind that. Jeff's response was not unless we're dead that's just sorry. There's a consensus there. Um over our dead bodies. Exactly.

Um but i'll be honest i i just when i first saw this i was just like no it had never crossed my mind that someone that people in leadership of the church would actually go yeah let's let's take government funds to keep things it just and when that that's that's not a good situation to be in when you get hit with something you've never even thought of before.

And then the more i thought through it the worse it got the worse it got. Um so um anyway i if if anyone was offended by how offended i was i i'm not apologizing for it i i can't. I am deeply offended by the mindset that views the church as a business.

I know it i know we have to function in caesar's world. I i get it we got to fill out the forms got to do the stuff. I get it. But there is a clear line a very clear line between doing what is necessary to function within our society and taking caesar's money to keep going.

The source for the church is called god and the ordained mechanisms that god has provided for the continuation. And we are all hurting. We've all had people in our in our our congregations that have lost jobs and income and we're having to dig deep to meet needs right left and center.

But it just never crossed my mind. Then we go. I wonder if the government would do that. Um i i don't i i really struggle with how anyone can can come up with an overarching narrative that would allow them with a straight face to say yeah we took what 150 000 in the government that's going to help us out for a while.

But i can assure you that if that same government comes along and tells us that we can't say this or we can't worship there or we can't we're gonna we're gonna stand right up to them and say no way. Well okay i hope so i hope you don't mind that they're laughing at you.

Uh you know the guys that signed the checks that you took and cashed they're they're going to be looking at you going. Oh really. Hmm. Okay if you say so i i just i i was i was i have one more thought i what what i find most curious about this and what started in tom's.

I don't know where along the line you picked up on what was going on with who. Tom. But the troublemaker in texas. Yes i'm sorry. Um his primary point was well taken and that is that there's this cooperative fund.

Yeah. And isn't that what that cooperative fund that all these different churches send huge amounts of money to is for i mean you think about the church that we were a part of in the 1980s. In the 1980s the pastor was so proud of the fact that we sent one million dollars to that fund every year.

That's how you became president of the southern best. Well he was trying anyway he didn't actually do it. But i know yeah by anyway but the question of the taking up a collection for the saints in jerusalem there's that passage in acts.

None of these things seem to be going through people's minds and i don't understand why we're supposed to be helping each other out that there comes a point in time where a church has plenty and another church doesn't and we help each other but no we turn to the government.

Well and it's not like the thing was this no one could have planned no one could have planned this because there was no system involved where the government says if a pandemic happens we're going to do this.

Yeah it's like no the government all of a sudden said we're gonna make this money available and it had to have been a fairly somebody had to come along and say hey they're saying non-profits can apply and we're a non-profit.

Therefore here's here's the solution to our problem. And it's like um there could not have been extensive reflection over time. But in my opinion this really goes to how you view the church and how you view its its role in regards to caesar.

Really does really does. Okay i'm done i promise i'm done. Well i'm going on to stuff about manichaeism anyways and you've never ever ever turned on the mic about that. So um so so there so there you go um all right so developing story because uh i did say i think there should be public um revelation of the amounts of money um and who took it.

I really do and i would encourage personally any church that took government monies to give it back or at the very least do what it was supposed to have been used for in the first place find yourself some local businesses that are struggling and help them out um i that that would be that would be my my encouragement at that particular point in time.

So so there you go um but yeah if you want to see what happens when i just get hit with something i has never ever ever thought uh then then there you go um so pastor luke is sending me uh whatsapp messages um he's editing a tract he's written and uh i had i had uh not objected to but suggested that one particular phrase might be somewhat opaque a little bit difficult to understand and so he's uh he's asking about other possibilities and i managed to type doing the dl and his response was stop reading this then thanks bear appreciate that.

Ah it's it's a live program folks it really it really is okay. Um i uh i did get a few more minutes uh thankfully uh over the past two days not a lot but did have a lot of fun this morning i'll just i'll just mention this quickly just had a lot of fun this morning i've wanted to get out to uh my daughter's uh visit the grandkids and set up my solar scope.

I have a hydrogen alpha solar scope and uh so yes you can look directly through it at the sun because that's what it's designed for it's won't do any good for anything else. I can assure you that uh you wouldn't see anything else in it because obviously it's highly filtered and uh but it's filtered to only give you a certain uh spectrum so that you can look directly at the sun and uh so we got that all set up this morning and uh my uh uh dear chiropractor's husband and oldest son got to come along with us as well.

Um i am such a klutz we set up in the backyard and i'm helping people look and stuff and then i want to tell the kids about the sun and about how big it is and you know that 99 .8 of the mass of the solar system is in the sun so all the other planets the asteroids all that stuff is 0 .2 of the mass of the solar system all the rest is in the sun.

I mean think about that gives you an idea and the sun's made of hydrogen and helium so you really get an idea of and i'm explaining fission to them and fusion and then i connected it to the trees in the backyard the next family over and the and the chlorophyll and how i was just doing the science teacher thing.

You know i was department fellow anatomy physiology. I've got the science background so i was doing my thing. Well i'm wearing a hat because it's sunny and the way it was sitting on my head they've got this big old honking bug zapper back and i plowed into that thing twice.

I mean plowing into it once. It's not your backyard. It's understandable. But smart people now plot that in their mind not me. And i had just seen nicoletta i'd just seen my chiropractor and i tore my neck up twice banging banging into this thing uh but but i had to take her husband back and so she she laid me back down fixed me back up.

I was like uh there are a lot of people that think i think i'm so smart when actually i'm normally walking around going james you're an idiot. Um because because i but um we did have fun and uh uh what was neat was i we could see a light spot.

It's not a sun spot yet but a lighter spot on the surface of the sun and then some plasma ribbons on the very disc. And i have a bunch of there's a called a soho. It's the soho app for your iphone that gives you today's pictures of the sun uh for with various filtering.

And so i brought up the hydrogen alpha one and what we saw in the scope was much clearer than even what we had in the image. To be honest with you it was it was sharper uh more of a 3d type thing. But it did verify.

Yep what we thought we were seeing is exactly what uh what was up there. And it's uh it's an amazing thing. We live an incredible universe. We really do and i really enjoyed really doing my best to instill in my grandkids um a thirst for learning reading studying making the making yourself the best you can be um not settling for mediocrity and doing so as christians in the sense of recognizing the uh tremendous creative power of god and and our role in that and how we can we can honor god and we can glorify god in the study of his creation.

That's what it's supposed to if you really want to see where science quote unquote scientism. Not science. But scientism has gone wrong. Scientism has gone wrong um in its idolatry. Because while we have more knowledge than we've ever had before we do not acknowledge the source of that knowledge.

We as romans 1 say says we suppress the knowledge of god and refuse to honor and give thanks the one who created all of these things even though the complexity and beauty of these things is a constant testimony to his his power and his goodness.

So i want my my grandkids to excel in the study of true science because true science will always be done under the lordship of christ under the lordship of the one who made all these things and hence gives consistency uh to to all of these things.

So we had a good time this morning. And like i said it's not beastly hot yet uh out in the sun it was probably near 100 but in the shade it was. It was upper 70s or lower 80s. That wasn't wasn't bad at all.

It's beautiful. So uh did have did have fun doing that. Okay uh took the first half hour for those preliminaries and we will try to tomorrow do some some phone calls at the start we haven't done that this week.

We'll try to do that as best we can tomorrow. Oh one quick note as i mentioned at the top of the program i will be on with emilio ramos this evening at 7 p .m central so i guess that would be 8 p .m eastern we're going to be discussing all sorts of textual critical stuff cbgm numbers of manuscripts things along those lines and that will be live via skype i think with emilio ramos so you can look up red grace media and you can um join with us uh this evening as we look at those things.

One other thing um i am in contact you may have noticed that there were two relevant debates and i don't think i have uh them on anything on this unit um now that i think about it as far as the downloads uh go so i can't you know do anything with that.

But um fellow by name steven boyce um did two debates very recently within about a week. Well i think it was the next day. Wasn't it one with layton flowers and then one with jeff riddle. That's um that that's an interesting stretch uh as far as the topics going from layton flowers and all his allegorical man's abilities arguments to jeffrey riddle and the issue of the percocet adultery.

I have not listened either one of them yet. I'm going to try to listen to at least the uh the jeffrey riddle uh debate as i have a about 75 to 80 miler to try to do this this saturday um mainly in the dark because it is going to start warming up um by saturday so i'll try to get to that.

But uh it is nice to see somebody else uh taking on some of these topics uh like i said um on our uh blog uh i'm not see i'm not sure which ones have been posted yet because i see them before they appear uh when i post things in there.

But um uh what if we rewrite the stars uh is the march 20th um uh chris uh wisenant has given us discussing henwell's work part seven what if we rewrite the stars. So there's uh more information being uh presented in regards to the background and history of augustine and and the early church fathers and things like that.

So i'm glad to see that i've mentioned a book being worked upon not by me but by uh by others especially in regards to the baptism and church history issues. So i like to see positive things. I mean i i think that on a social political level the panicked agenda-driven overreaction uh to a uh disease that has a 99 .98 99 .95 percent um survivability index.

Uh did you notice this morning for example uh john glenn's wife died um and of course they of complications of coronavirus she was also 100 years old. How often honestly how often when 100 year old people die do they focus upon the final mechanism.

Because when you're 100 it can be almost anything. Normally that's what's said. But no no not today we had to obviously keep pumping it up keep pumping it up keep pumping it up because it has become the mechanism of societal legal change and it's working that way because it's effective.

Um how do i get into that. Um i i don't know i i'm not sure where where i was going with that one but that's okay. Uh i i don't know i don't know what i'm going to hear when i listen to these debates but when we i get around to it and i listen to it well we might review some of it on the program if there's you know particularly useful material that we'll look at we'll um we'll see we'll see.

Um so where are we where are we in doing what we were told cannot be done and that is in responding to a dissertation from oxford university because if it's done at oxford um it is automatically the best there is.

And um um the seminary for which uh dr wilson teaches is willing to say he is the leading expert in the world today on augustine i think the vast majority of church historians would go who what what are you talking about.

Um i i do not see that this dissertation has made any impact in augustinian studies of any serious um note but be as it may we're told you you it's just it's just beyond you. You can't uh can't do it.

Um yeah someone just posted from space weather space weather app. I'm not. I thought i had that yeah the soho one i was really disappointed and i'll i'll have to someone just put i've got solar monitor the sun now in soho i need to look for space weather app.

Uh because that is better and that is uh much closer to what we yeah that's pretty much what we saw. That's pretty much what we saw today. I'm sure that's what soho had too i just don't know why i just it it transferred to my phone in a rather low resolution thing.

But the soho app gives you all those those things too. But i'm gonna look that one up and uh get that one because i i like having i love you know any weather apps i have on my phone. It's really embarrassing.

It's really embarrassing. I i can give you every kind of radar image known to man when when the monsoon storms start coming. Um yeah i'm a little bit of a geek on on those levels but uh that's okay. Uh anyway uh going back to uh dr wilson's gestation.

So where are we. Is this just never ending. I mean it's hundreds of pages long so we could be doing this forever. Well again i've tried to make the examination relevant by spending a fair amount of time reading from original sources whether it's from augustine or whether it's looking at the manichaeans.

One thing we that we haven't done yet that we really really really need to do um is to go through gnosticism. We've talked about a little bit we've talked about manichaeism. We've really gone through some of that and i know we spent some time i read from the nag Hammadi scripture i've read from the secret revelation to john.

We we have done some of that. But i i feel like there does need to be a little bit discussion of barbelo and it would be helpful to just discuss a little bit of the um difference between gnosticism and manichaeism when it comes to the nature of divine beings in essence.

Um and what i mean by that is what is the ultimate god if we can use that term in manichaeism and gnosticism and how they differ. Because fundamentally for there to be any kind of logically meaningful connection between manichaeism and gnosticism augustine and then reform theology in regards to the sovereignty of god and his actions in this world then there has to be coherence.

Coherence at key elements of the worldview. Let me illustrate why this is the case the and i've mentioned this before but let me just make sure you understand when people argue that the jesus story was derived from the various religious mythologies of the period before the time of christ.

Egyptian mythologies greek mythologies roman mythologies. When you start examining you know well you know this god had 12 disciples or this god rose from the dead or this god was born december 25th etc etc etc.

And connections are drawn between these things. The the serious responses to this offered by christian theologians point to the lack of coherence at key worldview points that destroy the relevance of the alleged parallel.

Now some of them are just stupid. I mean having a fetus sewn into the thigh of a male until it's born is not a virgin birth. Okay that's just stupid. And the isis osiris horace mythology hacking god's getting hacked up into 14 parts and can only find 13 parts and becomes a zombie god of the underworld is not the resurrection.

The necessary points of connection of coherence are lacking. And therefore that type of argumentation is fallacious. And we need to be teaching our young people why that is fallacious. And to think with clarity on these things.

I'm simply applying the same standards here. And if you can look at the primary culprit is manichaeism. Because augustine was a manichaean hearer for nine years. So if you can look at manichaeism recognize its complete dualism.

It is more consistently dualistic than gnosticism. We we identify gnosticism as dualistic because the gnostics say if it's spiritual it's good if it's physical it's evil. And so they they bifurcate reality.

And we call that dualism. But manny took that even farther to where he says that the light principle and the principle of darkness those two realms are co-equal and co-eternal. One did not give rise the other.

Now in gnosticism the realm of the physical though not directly created by the primary good deity comes into existence through the mistaken activities of emanations that do come out of him. So the physical realm is not eternal and indirectly is created at least by the power of the eternal deity or the greatest of the deities the non-emanated one um if not by the will.

In other words didn't desire that to happen. But the last and lowest of the emanations the eons from the one true god known as sophia or wisdom erroneously brings about the physical creation. So sophia's power was derivative back through a chain of emanations back to the one true god.

But there is no expression of that one god's desire and will in the creation of mankind. So gnosticism is dualistic. But it's not as consistently dualistic as manichaeism. I suggest to you that neither manichaeism nor gnosticism in light of its theology proper has any logical rational philosophical theological or historical connection to the christian understanding of the one true god yahweh as the creator of all things who does in the heavens and the earth as he pleases to quote psalm 135 6.

There is no logical connection philosophical connection. There is no relevance between these two things. The attempted connection is incoherent. It lacks coherence in worldview and is therefore bogus inappropriate and wrong.

And if that's true the entire thesis that is being put forward as applied to reform theology is refuted stands refuted and cannot be rescued. And to remind us of uh that uh let me plug this in let's just remind ourselves.

This isn't my word this isn't my um this is here's i know i know i know you've all heard it. But we have people tuning in all the time got to make sure that we're understood here say that augustine was.

The first to clearly articulate these views um that coupled with what you found it seems to be an insurmountable uh argument against a more deterministic understanding of the text. Yes if.

You want to remain a traditional christian if you want to go uh be a manichaean christian with augustine. Um then it's fine to take a deterministic view but for a traditional christian you should.

Hold a free will view. So this is this is that's dr wilson speaking being interviewed by layton flowers. Uh i didn't. I i did not tell layton flowers what questions to ask. Um this was recorded long before i ever heard it.

This was recorded before the foundation of augustinian calvinism was published. But after the dissertation was published this is the application that's being used that we are being called manichaean christians.

Um so that assertion which i'm seeing repeated more and more in written materials in social media which tells you something about social media. But i'm seeing it more and more that assertion would require coherence of world views at key foundational and definitional points between manichaeism gnosticism and let's throw in the others that are used stoicism completely different foundational set of thought than the other two um and neoplatonism those points of coherence do not exist.

The thesis is disproven thereby. Um so that's the first thing. Secondly um is the use or misuse or abuse of augustine and the constant the constantly biased interpretation of augustine uh even to the point of the uh abuse of secondary sources such as the john amira source that we pointed out last week those are issues that need to be addressed and looked at.