Matt Slick Live: January 29, 2025

The following program is recorded content created by The Truth Network.

It's Matt Slick Live! Matt is the founder and president of the Christian Apologetics Research Ministry, found online at karm .org. When you have questions about Bible doctrines, turn to Matt Slick Live! For answers, taking your calls and responding to your questions at 877 -207 -2276.

Here's Matt Slick.

Recapitulation Theory of the Atonement and the Eastern Orthodox Church

Alright, welcome to the show. It's me, Matt Slick. You're listening to Matt Slick Live! I hope you're all going to have a good time listening today. If you want, as usual, you can give me a call. It's easy.

Just dial 877 -207 -2276. And I want to hear from you.

Give me a call. And let's see.

I'm about to release an article here within the next hour or two on the Recapitulation Theory of the Atonement, dealing with the Eastern Orthodox Church. I've been working on that. And tomorrow night, I'll be discussing a lot of...

It's still scheduled, that is. Tomorrow night, 8 o 'clock Eastern Time. I'll be on Discord. And I'm going to be in a room full of official... I guess they're official... Eastern Orthodox individuals. And they know that I do not like Eastern Orthodoxy.

But long story short, I'm going to just ask a bunch of questions. I told them, I'm not there to argue. I'm just asking. I want to learn exactly what you teach. And they're like, yeah, we'll do that.

Okay.

And they're supposed to get some official people. I don't know what official means to them. And I asked them for documentation. If they have any documents or anything that they can show me that teaches whatever they teach, so I can document stuff.

And I said, look, that's what I want to know. And they seem to be very interested in helping me out that way. But they know that I deny the legitimacy of the Eastern Orthodox Church. So there you go. And I can give you some stuff.

The recapitulation theory. Man, what an interesting theory of the atonement that is. Basically what it is, this is what they hold to. It's the idea that, not trying to misrepresent it, okay. I'm not trying to misrepresent it at all.

But basically what it teaches is that Jesus, through his life, he lived a good life. He recapitulated the life of humans perfectly. And he didn't ever sin. And so he reopens the door that Adam closed.

So that the adherent can then, how do I say this, the adherent can then achieve salvation through, this is really hard to understand because I have questions. But they can achieve salvation through applying somehow the life of Christ to them.

But it has to be also through their sacraments. It's really hard to explain. And so I'm trying to figure it out. And I'll get to the point where I can really understand it. Because there's a lot of stuff in that that they hold to that's hard to articulate in a single sentence or two or three sentences as well.

So I'm working on that. And so it's that Christ through his incarnation, life, death, and resurrection recapitulates all of human history and experience yet without sin and restores it. So Jesus experienced all aspects of human existence from birth to death, sanctifying each stage and offered it as a model of humanity.

Okay?

How's that? Get your sins forgiven. And so there's some interesting stuff there I'll be getting into. And hopefully I'll be asking those guys those kind of questions as well, the recapitulation theory of the atonement as it relates to them.

Hey, if you want to give me a call, it is easy. All you have to do is dial 877 -207 -2276. You can also send me an email. Just direct it to info at CARM, info at CARM, C-A-R-M dot O-R-G, info at CARM .org.

And put a subject line, radio comment, radio question. That reminds me because yesterday I mentioned, I think it was yesterday, it was Monday, I mentioned our washer broke, washing machine broke. We get the old ones.

We just get the old standard ones and, you know, pay a little bit. And they work for 10 years. They get another one when it breaks and ours broke. And so I went to a couple of stores today looking, you know, repair stores and old, you know, appliance stores.

And I ended up witnessing to the owner of one of them, this lady. We talked for a half hour. It was awesome because, you know, I always like to use my voice, which is distinctive. And I'll say, you know, what time you deliver, if you do, and all this stuff.

Well, they close at 5. I say, well, I'm on the radio at 5. And I can't do it. And that's why I use it as an opportunity to hopefully they'll say, really? Well, what do you do? And boom, I'm off. So it worked today.

That's what I was doing. And this lady, we talked about UFOs for like a half hour. She's fascinated by them. And it was really good. So I enjoyed that. I told her about Jesus, and she's raised a Catholic.

And I said, oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there you go. Anyway, I love witnessing. I love witnessing.

I do.

You know, it reminds me also, last night we were watching a show. And my wife and I. And at the end of this one show, there was this guy sitting at a place by himself at a restaurant, a restaurant bar, just kind of relaxing.

And these two women, one woman, two women were at a table, you know, 30 feet away. And they're both gorgeous. And so one of them walks up and just approaches the guy and says, you look lonely. Would you like to come and join us?

You know? And my wife's right there. I go, yeah, I'll go. She looks over at me.

You know?

I go, yeah, I'd go. Because I said, by the way, while I'm there, while I'm going to the table, I'm going to be thinking, how can I put up a dialogue about the Lord?

You know?

Yeah, I'll talk to you. You want to hear about Jesus? So, yeah, I got it bad. I got it bad. I'm always talking about the Lord. I want to witness as much as I can. My wife, you know, she just, she does this a lot.

She goes, a lot. Rubs her forehead a lot around me. And stuff like that. Another little story. Once my wife asked me for something. And, you know, my wallet. I go, I don't know. Here, look at my wallet.

You can, you know, whatever. She goes through my wallet. And she pulls out a phone number. There's a phone number there with a girl's name on it. And she's looking at it. She goes, what's this? And I'm looking at it.

I don't recall anything about it. And I said, well, it looks like a girl's phone number. And she goes, well, what's it for? I said, well, it's probably for me to call her and witness to her. Or tell her something about the Lord or something.

I said, let's call her right now. She goes, no, that's okay. I don't care. Because she knows. She knows, you know, that I'm always doing stuff like that. Always trying to share the faith. I said, no, let's call.

She goes, no, it's okay. Don't worry about it. She said, you trust me. Because she knows. She knows. Yeah, I'll go someplace. Hey, hey, I'll just, I'll tell you about the Lord. That's what I want to do.

That's what I live for. Anyway, true stories. I like true stories. Hey, let's get to Alan from Virginia. Alan, welcome. You're on the air.

Hey, Matt, how are you doing?

I'm doing all right.

How are you doing, man?

Well, I'm being pushed to learn into certain subject matters. So, I don't know, big task ahead, I guess.

You mean school?

More about ontology.

Ontology, the One and the Many, and the Hypostatic Union

Oh, you want to learn about ontology?

Yeah.

Okay.

Well, what do you want to know about it?

Well, the big thing is, I kind of want to, I mean, there's probably not enough time in the radio show to go into everything with all that stuff, but I'm trying to gather some resources that I can devote many hours to to study ontology, especially with, in relation to Christian theology, the East and Western, the East-West schism, the Reformation, general Christianity, history, stuff like that.

Well, that's a lot that you're asking for. What I would do if I were you is go to the web and just start asking questions about that kind of thing and see, just look for resources, writings, websites, books and things like that.

Now, ontology, for those who don't know, deals with the nature of objects and or things, let's just say, what's the essence of something. Now, you're talking about the great schism of 1054 with the filioque, right?

I think so, yeah. Or the Eastern and Western Christianity separation.

Yeah, and that's interesting. I don't know. One of the things you could probably do is call up a good seminary and ask if they have someone who knows what good resources.

To have.

A lot of times seminaries have incredibly good libraries. They're scholarly. But you know what else? I just remembered. Let's see, scholar .scholar .google .com. Have you ever heard of that, scholar .google .com?

Oh, I know of Google Scholar, yeah.

Yeah, so you can do resources on the great schism, S-C-H-I-S. And the schism of the West. And I think what you're asking about how Western civilization influenced or was influenced by biblical theology.

So what's the ultimate goal you're trying to do? I'm just curious.

More so, I guess I've got to think about that. Basically to better articulate how nature is worth what I'm trying to describe, trying to explain how salvation works and things like that.

Well, let's talk about this. We've got nobody waiting. I'm not sure I understand your question yet. Because how does nature work when it comes to salvation? Because you're talking about all different categories of nature.

When you talk about the ontological nature of something, you can have an ontological nature of an idea or propositions or transcendentals, or you can have rocks or insects, human life. You can have water, because ontos goes into different categories.

So, and then properties emanate out of the ontos. So whatever something is, just is because that's what it is. Law of identity, something is what it is and is not what it is not. And then it has properties that relate or emanate or are because of the ontos, what something is.

So a bird will have certain properties related to it that a rock will not have and vice versa. So you're talking about ontos, you're talking about the very nature of something, what it is. And ontos can't be captured in a jar.

It cannot be photographed. Ontos is a difficult thing to articulate when we're talking like this because how do you, for example, capture the essence of a bowling ball? Can you take a picture of a bowling ball?

Well, that's the properties of bowling ball-ness that you're observing. And so are bird-ness, roundness, chair-ness. So a chair, for example, chairs and trees, I use those two things a lot, talking about ontos, relationships and things like that when we're discussing the nature of things, nature and essence of being.

And this is important because you can't transfer the properties of one essence to another essence. It's just not possible because properties relate to the ontos. So an angel can't become a human.

What's that?

Well, it's just like you can't say that the divine nature of Jesus is directly transferred to the human nature, for example. They have to be separate but still united.

Right.

So each nature in a person of Christ, in a hypostatic union, retains its own ontos. A human nature and another nature, the divine nature, there's two separate distinct natures in the person of Christ.

They abide in the person. But the attributes of those natures, the attributes or properties of those natures are ascribed to the single person. So that person has the ontological nature of both because the properties are ascribed.

This gets really tough stuff here. But hold on. We'll be right back after the message here, the break, okay? Hey, folks, if you want to give me a call, the number is 877 -207 -2276. We'll be right back.

It's Matt Slick live, taking your calls at 877 -207 -2276. Here's Matt Slick.

Hey, everybody, welcome back to the show. If you want to give me a call, the number is 877 -207 -2276. Allen, are you still there?

Hey, Matt, can you hear me?

Yes, I can. Yes, I can, brother. So we can keep talking about this if you want, okay?

Sure, yeah. I also would like resources if you could provide me, like, any, like, colleges that you recommend for studying this, any books you think they may have, et cetera.

What I would do, hold on, let me get something open here. It's going to take half a minute for my Kindle to open. And then I've got a series of books in there that will discuss a lot of these things. So you're going to have to go into some secular as, oh, man, I haven't even logged into that.

I've rebuilt my computer. So let me do it on my phone. And so you're going to have to do some reading, do some studying. And it will be a worthwhile endeavor, but it's going to take a little bit of work, which is fine, you know.

Oh, I believe it.

It does.

So let's see. So here we go, my library. So there's, let's see, I'm going to type in philosophy. Philosophy. It'll give me several books that I have as soon as I can get into my library show. Come on.

Here's a book, Philosophy Made Slightly Less Difficult. That's a good one.

Okay.

Philosophy Made Slightly Less Difficult. All right. You might want to look into the issue of the one and the many. This is a, a lot of people don't put this together, that the issue of the one and the many relates to ontology.

But let me show you what's going on. What's the ontology of the universe? What's the ontology of existence? So is the universe comprised of one thing or of many things? The one and the many is this issue.

And ancient philosophers 2 ,500 years ago to now are trying to decide is the universe one thing or many. If it's one thing, the nature, the ontological nature of the universe is one thing, then it undermines truth values because if everything is one thing, how can you have distinctions between objects?

Because it's ultimately one essence. This would mean then that what we're perceiving is not a proper representation of the actuality. And this causes problems. So truth is undermined. If you say that the universe is comprised of many separate entities, not entities as living beings, but abstractions or substances, is a chair a different substance than a tree, a different substance than a rock, et cetera?

And if the universe is comprised of many different substances, then are these substances eternal? Where do they come from? If there are many of them, then how do you compile a theory of unification between them by which you can then show how they're all interrelated?

Because without this unification of distinctions, you can't have truth values either. You can't make truth statements. And so this is a very serious issue, and it deals with the one and the many.

Wouldn't the many, couldn't one define, couldn't one separate it into two camps, the material and immaterial?

Well, you could. Then you'd have many, right? If it's material and immaterial, then what's the nature of the immaterial? What's the nature of a thought? What's the nature of an abstraction? So if I conceive of a circle in my mind, and I'm imagining a circle right now, and you are too, are we imagining the same thing?

What is the nature of circle-ness that you can apprehend and I can apprehend in different places, different times, different brains? These questions are deep. Now, another book you might be interested in is Apologetics, no, I just hit the wrong thing here, A Justification of Christian Belief by John Frame.

And he's my old professor from seminary. His ability to write clearly is phenomenal. Here's another book that is really good, Christian Apologetics by Norman Geisler. That will get into some philosophical issues.

And then I'll give you another one. Presuppositional Apologetics by Greg Bonson. And you could get into books on apologetics from Cornelius Van Til. Yep, there's a lot out there. And so this is something I've dealt with a lot.

And, you know, when I talk to atheists, I have to discuss these things sometimes. And over the years I've discussed them many times. So then you get into propositional theory. What's a proposition? A truth-bearing entity.

Well, what do you mean by entity? An abstract entity. Does it have actuality or is it not? Does it occupy space and time? What is an abstraction? What are platonic norms? How does it all work? What I'd suggest that you do in the process of learning this, and I'm dead serious with this, is that you develop an outline.

Now, you can do what I do. I recommend this. I need to do a video on this. I've talked about it so many times. What I do, I have my philosophy outline open right now. It's 104 pages in Microsoft Word.

And I do literally an outline format. I don't narrate. I do outline. So my number one point is a priori. My number two is abstract object. Number three is aesthetic realism. Number four is altruism. Five is analytic constructivism.

And then analytic synthetic distinction. These are topics that I've had to learn about and discuss. Don't think I've got them all memorized. I don't. There's just too many. And in my outline, I have these alphabetical.

This is my philosophy thing. I have 161 of them. And then one of them is terms, and inside of there's like 50. So what you do then is you learn a concept like Ontas. And you go to Word, or you can go online at office .com, and you can keep this.

It's really good. And you develop a system. You type in number one, or you just type in the word Ontas. You hit the outline button, and then you make it a header one. And then you open your navigation bar on the left, and then you can see the header.

And what you do, each main topic is a header. And so then you go to your number one like Ontas. And then you hit enter and tab. It goes over to the right underneath there, and you type Ontas defined. And then I will write something out, and I'll hit enter again.

I'll do problems with ontological studies, and I'll list some problems out. I research it. And so if you do this kind of a thing, and then you highlight the different levels, then in your left, like I'm looking at mine, I can see all the outline I've got in a super short format.

I can go to it like cognitive ethics. I can define it. There it is right that fast. Hey, hold on. We've got a break, so let's hold on a little bit longer. Hey, folks, we'll be right back after these messages.

Please stay tuned.

Matt Slick. Live! Taking your calls at 877 -207 -2276. Here's Matt Slick.

The Trinity, Divine Simplicity, and Inseparable Operations

All right.

Welcome back to the show. Let's get on a little bit longer here with Alan. Alan, you still there?

I think so.

Okay.

So these kind of questions are tough, and they're underlying, and then you get into the issue of theological application, and they take you in different directions. And there are Christian philosophers who deal with this stuff, and it can become quite heady, and it can have ramifications on your theological understanding of things, particularly when you get into the nature of the Trinitarian essence and how can one being exist as three distinct simultaneous persons as one essence.

That's interesting.

And it's not like each of them have a different, I guess, divine nature, because that wouldn't make sense. Because a divine nature would have to be consistent between all three.

The divine nature is Trinitarian. So there's what's called the is of identity and the is of predication. The is of identity, that chair, that is a chair, is of identity, is of predication. The chair is read.

There's a predicate. There's something to it, about it. Now, in Christian theology, is of identity and is of predication are the same when it comes to the Trinity. God is a Trinity. Yahweh is a Trinity, where the Trinitarian essence is the one essence of what he is, and its essence is triune.

It's one substance. We call this divine simplicity, that God exists as a single substance, the divine substance. The divine substance is Trinitarian. But yet, we have what's called the perichoresis. In the Godhead of the Trinity are three distinct simultaneous co-eternal persons that exist in a perichoretic relationship.

Perichoresis is that they mutually indwell each other. There's no parts, because it's one divinely simple being. And yet, there's distinction. There's another doctrine called inseparable operations. Because God is one being, one essence, one thing, then he ultimately has, this will be more tough to get into, one mind.

Yet, there's a manifestation of differentiation of that, and I'll get to that in a sec. So God is one being with one will, ultimately. And so, in inseparable operations, Jesus says in John 5 .19, for example, and I'll show you what this is.

In John 5 .19, Jesus says that he could do nothing unless it's something he sees, present tense. He sees the Father doing. So he can do what he sees the Father doing. But what's Jesus doing? Walking? Is the Father walking?

No.

But what do you mean by sees what the Father's doing? This deals with the nature of the Trinitarian essence that as one is, the other is. Inseparable operations. So another verse here is John 5 .30. I can do nothing of my own initiative.

As I hear, I judge. My judgment is just because I do not seek my own will, but the will of him who sent me. So now what we have is the issue of distinction that is manifested by their relationship to each other and to us.

So God is one essence. And as he relates to us, we see that only the Word became flesh. And the Father sent the Word, or the Son, to become incarnate. And the Holy Spirit convicts. So we see and recognize the distinction within the divinely simple, pericritic being.

And we recognize distinction of persons when they relate with each other and to us. And so we would say that the is of identity, God is a trinity, is both identity and predication. That the attributes, so to speak, ascribed to him are equal to his essence.

So we say God is three persons. Because the three persons are the one essence. That's a Trinitarian essence, and that's what God is. So this is about as deep as I've ever gotten into theology explaining the Trinity.

The stuff I've learned over many years. Trying to make it simple, but that's it. And I'm always cautious, even now, to discuss those things like that because I don't want to accidentally, in my ignorance, misrepresent God.

But this is what I've seen, what I've learned, and theologians have talked about and have had to deal with in various discussions. I don't know if that helps or not, okay?

Yeah, I appreciate it. I'll be referencing, I'll almost definitely be referencing this radio show to make sure I get more things utilized for my future studies.

No, I'm dead serious. You need to do an outline. Do an outline.

Do it.

Always do an outline. I have like 30 of them. I'm not kidding. You will find that it will be invaluable. As you learn your information, you're also going to have to categorize it. Categorization of information is critical to understanding it because categorization means you're understanding the relationship between concepts.

When you understand the relationship between concepts, then you can explain them better. If you're not sure where to put ontos as it relates to the hypostatic union, how you can explain them and how they relate to each other, then you don't understand the concepts.

But if you are writing these down and you do them alphabetically, you know, ontos versus hypostatic union, for example, H will become before O. That's fine. And then you do that, then what you'll have is a foundation and a framework that you then can use to grow with.

So a lot of times on the radio, what I'll do, someone will ask me a question, like philosophy, whatever. I open up my document that I've done and research on that. So someone might say to me, well, Matt, what is coherentism?

Coherentists claim that beliefs and beliefs alone are what confer justification, and coherence cannot account for the special role of perceptual beliefs. Coherentism is a theory of epistemic justification.

Then I put the problems of it. I'm just going skipping through stuff. Coherentism does not provide a reliable method for testing and validating the truth of any greater set of propositions in which initial beliefs reside.

So I'm just going through the quickly stuff. So I'll read these during a break. I'll read my research, and I'll try and answer questions. Sometimes I do it live as well. It becomes incredibly valuable.

Okay.

Okay. I guess two more questions. Sorry, I'm taking up so much of the radio show's time.

Or the break, okay.

Okay. Are you going to be recording or making a video on the Eastern Orthodox recording? Sorry, the session that you're going to have tomorrow?

You know, that's a good idea. I don't know. I normally don't. I just ask questions. I take my notes as I'm doing it. And maybe I can find a way to record it. I want them to tell me what they teach. And I don't like listening to myself.

I don't listen to my own radio shows. I hate watching myself on videos. I'm the worst. In fact, that anybody would listen to me and watch my videos makes me suspect their intelligence.

Okay.

When I see myself on the radio and stuff like that, I'm like, who would listen to that guy? That's a jerk. So I prefer to just write things down. So maybe they record it. I don't know. And I'm sure they do.

They record me a lot on Discord and then try and use what I say.

Maybe I can download OBS and try to record something and send it to you.

Oh, that would be good if you come on. If you want to come on to Discord tomorrow, let me know. You can email me if you have Discord ID and we can coordinate.

Sure, yeah. I have a discussion probably from 6 to 7 or 8. I'll probably just keep it to 6 to 7 with the guys and then probably take an hour to make sure stuff is configured.

Right.

But yeah. Are you going to be in like a public channel or is it going to be like a locked channel?

I don't know. I don't know what it's going to be. I hope it's not a locked channel. But usually what happens when I go into a room, it usually fills up.

Usually.

Because I'll be the one whose questions are fired at me. And then we do it that way. It'll be 50 people in at a time sometimes, sometimes more, sometimes less. So I assume that what they're going to want to do is keep it open.

Okay?

Okay.

I assume.

Yeah, maybe I'll send an email. Maybe I can record it for you or something.

Yeah, that'd be fine. Yeah, OBS is awesome and it's great stuff. It's easy to do. I want to start using it more and more. I need video help. I need a lot of video help. So for example, we've got a break coming up real quickly.

Take the session I do and then convert it into some audio files and video files with references and scripture references that come up on the screen. And we'll start releasing things like this. We have a lot of need for video and editing work.

But it takes a lot of work. So anyway, we're going to probably hire somebody for that full time. Hey, there's the break. We've got to go.

Okay, buddy?

Here's the music.

All right.

Thank you so much, Matt.

All right, man.

Email me.

All right.

Hey, folks. We'll be right back after these messages. I'm sorry for waiting so long. Mike from Dayton and Jermaine from California. We'll be right back after these messages. Please stay tuned.

Matt Slick live. Taking your calls at 877 -207 -2276. Here's Matt Slick.

Witnessing, Grief, and the Hope of the Resurrection

Everybody, welcome back to the show. Just want to give a shout out to Stephen with a V from Scotland who gifted what?

Two?

Two or gifted a subscription on Rumble. Now he's gifted two. He says, okay, well, hey, thanks.

I love that.

That's awesome.

All right. All right. All right.

Let's get to Mike from Dayton, Ohio. Mike, welcome. You're on the air.

Hey, thank you, Matt, for taking my call. I'm not as intelligent as you, sir. As much as I listen to you on the radio, I'm a first-time caller, and I was intrigued about your witnessing. Witnessing is true to my heart as well.

I love to not miss the opportunity, but a lot of times I miss the opportunity is because of the lack of knowledge. You know what I mean? And today I had to put my dog down. I had to take my dog to the vet, and I had to take care of that.

And anyways, by doing that, I had to, you know, I was wanting to witness to the person. And, you know, it was hard, you know?

Yeah.

You know, I wanted to say to them, and I wasn't sure to say it, was, you know, Jesus conquered death, and this is why we don't have to put our dogs down is because he conquered death now, and we don't die.

We will live forever. And I think the intent is with God is the animals would live forever as well. But I didn't know that answer, and that was my question to you.

Yeah, we don't know if animals do or don't live forever in heaven. We just don't know. The Bible doesn't tell us.

Yeah.

So there's going to be a paradise with, it looks like, the restoration of animal life. 98 of all species that have ever lived are now extinct. So, you know, I don't know what it's going to be like. I just don't.

And they will be the least of our concerns, so to speak, compared to the glory of Christ. I do understand what it means to lose an animal. I have a cat named Punch Face. He was the most incredible cat I've ever, I mean, all of them are just pale.

And I miss him still after 25 years. Nice to see him again, if that's possible. So, you know, I get it.

You get it.

Yeah.

And I wanted to have that opportunity to witness to that Marian. And I just, you know, I thought, well, what can I say to them? Thank you for doing this, though. But, you know, my heart was saying, you know, I even I stopped and we prayed for her to have no pain.

No, no, no.

Yeah.

You know, and I did. I did do that part. You know, I did pray with them.

I prayed.

They all cried. I just felt like I wish I knew something a little bit more to.

Say.

You know, I mean, and my heart was grieving as well. And so is theirs. But, you know, I felt like God was directing my life with that. You know, I mean, it's a witness, I guess, praying for praying before the dog passed.

It was more than anything. So thank you, Matt, for your wealth of knowledge. I mean, you're here. I'm just a high school dropout. And this one's a witness to people. You know, I mean, and just love the world.

Well, I love the love God as well as much as I can. I read the Bible. I try to understand that you're just awesome. You're really awesome. Thank you so much.