Thoughts on the New Legacy Standard Bible Project, Ephesians 2:8-9, and Then Phone Calls

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and and that's everybody's,

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I mean, anyway, it's not going to get into the depressing stuff today, but we are definitely face planting into a global depression.

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And I'm not getting into that either. So here we are. And I am not going to continue listening to the

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Wilson, Ken Wilson debate right now. People need a break from that.

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That doesn't mean there hasn't been lots of ongoing stuff. I spent an hour and a half today tracking down a single footnote.

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And I am now in contact with others who have been looking at this book longer than I have who are going, have you seen this?

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Have you seen this? Check this out. Check this page out. He says it's here. It's not there. It says the opposite.

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We're finding serious issues, serious, serious issues. I've been looking at the dissertation and sometimes you just, you'll just read a paragraph and go, what?

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And it's not, I mean, I'm used to reading very dense scholarly stuff on topics that are,

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I mean, if you've been reading anything on CBGM, you know. So there's one thing where you can tell that a point is being made.

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Then there are other stuff where you just go, this just looks like it's sort of cobbled together and it really isn't making a point.

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So when I get into that, but I do want to say that for me anyways, there are positives to be taken away from this.

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I mean, it's always enjoyable. I know that, for example, when I first started really dealing with Roman Catholicism, that greatly enhanced my study of church history.

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When you're digging deeper and deeper, you'd be challenged on stuff and get deeper and deeper. And so, for example,

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I now know much more about such issues as Manichaeism than I did before, much more about the nature of determinism amongst the

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Stoics and others than I did before. That helps a lot to clarify things, clarify your thinking, go deeper on things.

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Early church fathers would believe faith was a gift of God, which

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Augustine didn't invent. Stuff like that. So you get a lot, you get a lot, well, at least

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I try to get a lot out of this kind of a study. I hope that you will as we continue it as well.

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Speaking of which, let me at least get to the one thing that I was specifically going to be talking about.

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We may open the phones. I'll see here in a minute. I saw it just like you all did last night.

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The posting of the video from John MacArthur announcing that the

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Master's University and Seminary have been obviously talking with the

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Lachman Foundation. And here's why. I don't know if,

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I don't think, I don't think you've even seen this. I think, have you seen this? This is my

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Jeffrey Rice Post -Tenebrous Stoics Rebind of a brand new, recently printed 1977

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New American Standard. I went with brown and orange.

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I've got the orange on the inside and stuff. And what

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I discovered was, see, I have a 1977 large print

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NASB that Jeffrey did for me in a beautiful turquoise.

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And it is a Bible that I've had since probably 1980 something. I think it dates in the front.

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I forget what it was. But the 1977 NASB was the

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Bible that was the most popular for a long, long time. That was what John MacArthur was using from probably 1977 onward.

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And then, of course, it was revised in 1995, the 1995 edition. A lot of people now have that, obviously.

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I always liked the thicker, shorter, but still incredibly readable 1977 large print that I had.

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So that one's bound in turquoise. But then I happened to stumble across this publisher,

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AMG Publishers, Chattanooga, that are still printing today the 1977.

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So I bought one, had it sent to Jeffrey, and he did this. And I've been noticing that a lot more of his rebinds recently, because I follow him on Facebook and Twitter, have this non -foil embossing, the imprinting.

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There's no foil in it. There's no gold in it. It's just the leather itself. I'm noticing more and more

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Bibles are looking this way. So what? Stamped.

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Yeah. Yeah. Just straight stamp without foil. Right. So I've got Sola Scriptura on the front with a Cairo, and then

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Sola Gratia, Sola Fide, Sola Christus, and Sola Deo Gloria. I'm so thankful that Jeffrey knows the proper forms of those

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Latin phrases, because he's got it tattooed on his brain.

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Probably somebody else too, but tattooed on his brain, because he's just heard it so many times now, and done it so many times.

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But man, I can't tell you how many times I see, especially Solus Christus messed up.

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Sola Christa or something. So anyhow, so I got this just recently and love it.

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And I love the 77 NASB because it, well,

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I memorized a lot out of that. I started memorizing with King James, and then they switched over the

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NASB, and that was the 77. In fact, here's one of the, this was, anyone remember the open

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Bible? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Open Bible, NASB, says the word of God.

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This was one of them that I used for a long time, right there, for especially memorization stuff.

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Folks, he's just got Bibles laying all over the room. I know. I mean, it's just, they're everywhere. I do. I do.

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And that's okay. That's a good thing. I got a 1550 Stephanos over there. What do you want? The open expanded was what

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I was using when we first met. You didn't have like a, some type of charismatic crazy

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Bible? I was using the open expanded. But you were charismatic crazy. I was a

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TBNer, yes. Yes. Yes. Oh, believe me, I remember. Yes. I remember the first time you walked up to me, and who was with you, what you were wearing, the maroon members -only jacket, remember?

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Yes. Uh -huh. Yeah. Yeah. And you had a wild look to the eye. How you doing, man?

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Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I was like, gotta watch this one. Gotta watch this one. This could be bad.

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Anyway, how did we get on that? Anyway. So, 95 NESB comes up.

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And right after that, I became involved with it because of my King James only book and defending the textual basis and stuff like that.

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And I was like, okay, I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. So, I had some involvement there for six, seven, eight years, something like that.

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And then that sort of ended. And most people know that there is a 2020 edition coming out.

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Now, I have been sent some review chapters to look at. And I simply haven't had the time.

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I've got too much on my plate. I've got too much on my plate.

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There are so many things I want to do. Do programs on, do teaching on, do debates on.

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And there's just, there's not enough time in the day to get it all done. So, I haven't had a chance to look at it.

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But those who have, have felt that for some reason, the 2020 is going to go a direction that old time fans of the

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NESB don't want it to go. So, I knew that, you know, the

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Preacher's Bible, it came out a year before last, I think, or maybe the year before that. I remember now at, which

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I do not have. I was offered one, but I said, I, there's no reason I use almost exclusively electronic and I've got these beautiful Jeffrey Rice things.

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There's no reason to do that. But, Steadfast Bibles, which puts that out.

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I learned, I forget when, within the past year, has an agreement with Lachman that they are going to be able to continue to produce in 1995, even once the 2020 comes out.

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They don't have to switch over. Which I found interesting. Then last evening,

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John MacArthur announces on his video from deep in the bunker of Master Seminary, wherever it is, that there is, they have signed the contracts, done whatever they need to do with Lachman, to where they are going to produce the

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Legacy Standard Bible, LSB. It sounds like a landing craft in World War II.

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The LSB, Legacy Standard Bible. Which is somewhat of a revision of the

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NASB. Now, given, I don't know how long this has been going on. This has been going on for years and years and years.

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Okay. But if this is a fairly recent thing, this cannot be that much of a revision because to do a revision where you're literally retranslating and applying standards of how to deal with prepositions and it's complicated.

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It's a huge, huge task. It's massive. And so I'm thinking this is going to be the 1995

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NASB with some upgrades, but pretty much still the same translation.

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And Dr. MacArthur mentioned two of the upgrades.

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The first was the rendering of the Greek term doulos, which is translated as servant or slave, because it can mean either servant or slave.

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I mean, there's lexical information, manuscripts, written works, contemporaneous to the

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New Testament that utilize doulos of either one. So you could have a servant who was not technically a slave who was a doulos, or you could have a slave who was a doulos.

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Well, evidently, the LSB, Legacy Standard Bible, is going to consistently render doulos in the

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New Testament as slave rather than servant. I don't have a proverbial horse in this race, a dog in this race, whatever.

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I'm hesitant to say that you should just always render one particular word in a particular fashion.

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I mean, aren't there some places where servant would fit better? I don't know.

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Maybe it's just simply that in our modern day, you're not supposed to use the other word at all.

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We're supposed to sort of wipe out history and forget that slavery has been a part of human experience from the beginning.

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And maybe that's what it's about, I don't know. But doulos is going to be rendered as slave, a slave of Jesus Christ rather than servant of Jesus Christ.

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But then the other thing that I've been on for a long time is instead of using the standard

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L -O -R -D with small caps in the Old Testament, this version will use the tetragrammaton

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Yahweh. I assume spelled Y -A -H -W -E -H.

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Now of course, there are lots of folks out there who have their own little particular theories about the divine name and how it should be pronounced.

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And of course, the Jews find it offensive if you do pronounce it, but that's a tradition that developed after the days of Jesus.

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And it's a long -standing tradition, that's why we have Lord. That represents Adonai in the

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Hebrew, which isn't, it's the vowel pointing to Adonai underneath the tetragrammaton. We've talked about this before.

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Now I've adopted very often on this program in reading the scriptures from the pulpit,

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I will render L -O -R -D in the Old Testament, when it's the tetragrammaton, as Yahweh.

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It's God's covenant name. I think that's a definite improvement. I've never understood why we utilize the

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Lord convention, and so I certainly have no problems with that at all.

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And if anything, it might make it even clearer when you have Old Testament passages that are being cited in the New Testament where Jesus is being identified as Yahweh.

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I think it would be great if there would be notes identifying each one of those, and notice that Jesus is here identified with words originally about Yahweh.

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I think that's great, I think that's super. I don't know what other changes. I sent a note through a friend, didn't hear back yet.

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I would love to know if they are updating to the

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Nessiol in 28, or if even better than that, they are utilizing the

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ECM, the Additio Critico Mayor, because Acts has already been done for that, and I would highly recommend that they do so.

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Not that much of, I mean, less than what, well, less than 100 major places between Acts and the

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General Epistles where there would be a difference between the Nessiol in 27 and what would be in the

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ECM. But I think it would be a good idea. I haven't heard back what the textual foundation for the

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New Testament is, but we'll let you know. This sort of introduces an odd situation where you have a single translation that is now dividing out into various utilizations.

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I mean, you got us old folks with our 77s, and then you've got the 95s, there's plenty of them running around, and then you're going to have the 2020, and then you're going to have the

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Legacy Standard Bible, that's going to have, you know, it could have a really broad appeal.

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I don't know who's going to own the copyright on it, but if Masters is given the freedom to really roll with this thing and to put it into study

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Bibles and into electronic versions and everything else, then they should just copy what

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Crossway has done, because Crossway killed the NASB, because Crossway out -marketed

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Lachman 47 ,000 to 1. Because when

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I first started in seminary, the NASB had the field. ESV comes along, and man, they got into people's hands, and they just let people use it and do stuff with it, and drove the

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NASB right out of the field, as far as popularity, sales, that type of stuff goes. So if they have the freedom to do so, man,

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I wonder what could be done with it. It could go a long way, because the

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Dulaw's thing I'm non -committal on, but the Yahweh thing in the Old Testament I think is a great idea, and there are some other things they might suggest along the way, but it's too late for that,

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I'm sure. But still, fascinating stuff going on there.

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So I said I'd mention that, and so you might want to be keeping an eye out for that. This could keep

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Jeffrey busy for a while, because everybody who has their NASBs wants to get their legacy standard

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Bibles and send them off to Jeffrey to get the fancy -dancy stuff, the fancy -dance cover.

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But we'll see. But that'll be interesting. Now, one little thing that I have been looking at and would remind you of, let's go ahead and open the phones, 877 -753 -3341.

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We only have 40 minutes left in the program today. I would like to add, folks, I just now found out.

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So when you call me up and you ask, when is James going to open the phones, I just now found out.

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So that's how this works. Just letting you know. Yep. That's how we do it. I imagine there's a lot of webcasts and podcasts and stuff where there's a schedule, and we're going to do this amount of time, and they sit around in meetings and do this, that.

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We do not do that. We do not possess the capacities and abilities to organize ourselves in this fashion.

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I just come running in here and go, what are we going to do today? And there you go.

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Real quick, I was directed by a

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Lutheran gentleman that I've been talking to on Facebook who has been spending a couple of months taking apart the

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Ken Wilson stuff in certain areas, not in other areas as much, but in certain areas, sending me all sorts of documentation and sources and, look, this says it's supposed to be on this page.

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It's not on that page. And look at this, the page actually says the opposite of what's being said and all the rest of this kind of stuff.

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So one of the articles that he sent was really, really useful. I found it very, very helpful.

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It was from the Australian edition of the Gospel Coalition from 2017,

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September 13th, 2017. And if you look it up, please remember that we

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Americans are weird and we're backwards because the date is 13 slash 09 slash 2017.

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That's the logical way of writing dates. We do it illogically. 13 is the day, 9 is the month, 2017 is the year.

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Day, month, year. That makes sense. We do month, day, year, which does not make any sense at all, but that's what we're used to doing.

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And so people get lost and confused. And I'm not sure how to pronounce

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Matthew Oliphy's name. It's O -L -L -I -F -F -E, Oliphy sounds close, but it's titled,

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Is Faith the Gift of God? Reading Ephesians 2, 8 -10 with the ancients. And what was really interesting is you have a quotation from Abraham Kuyper.

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Well, let me just read before I get to the quotation. First, classical Greek literature, the Septuagint, and the New Testament provide evidence that this, and I'm referring to, for by grace you've been saved through faith and that not of yourselves that is the gift of God.

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So you're probably aware of the fact that in the Greek language, tuta, which is translated this, that, in this context would be, and that not of yourselves, that tuta is neuter.

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And neuter, there is nothing neuter in the preceding section, the preceding phrase.

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And so people have said, well, it can't refer to faith, but it can refer to grace, and you have been saved is masculine, it's a participle.

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There's nothing in the preceding section that is neuter. And I have explained this in light of the fact that the neuter can be taken to wrap up an entire preceding clause.

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So I understand that everything, grace, salvation, and faith is encompassed within the that not of yourselves is a gift of God, not as a result of works.

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So no one may boast because if you insert mankind into the grace, into the salvation, into the faith, then he's going to boast.

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And so to remove all ground of boasting, Paul says not of yourselves is a gift of God, not as a result of works that no one may boast for we are his workmanship, not he has provided for us.

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Paul wasn't a provisionist. It says, I say he has provided the possibility that we then can synergistically cooperate with him to bring about our salvation.

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We are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which

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God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them. And so probably one of the most balanced sections of scripture on this particular subject.

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And what was interesting is this article says, first, classical

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Greek literature, the Septuagint and the New Testament provide evidence that this can indeed refer to faith.

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There are 15 certain or highly probable examples of this rule, 10 in the classical literature, four in the

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Septuagint and one in the Greek New Testament. Second, many ancient exegetes take it that way as Abraham Kuyper observes nearly all the church fathers judged that the words it is a gift of God refer to faith.

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This was the exegesis of those that spoke the Greek language and were familiar with the peculiar Greek construction.

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Now it's interesting that as we're listening to the interview between Leighton Flowers and Ken Wilson, maybe we haven't gotten to this point yet,

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I've listened to it a couple times. One of the arguments that Flowers makes is that, well, you know, the people that were the closest and spoke the

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Greek language, you know, they agree with us. Well, not here they don't. And I'm skeptical and hesitant of these types of arguments, but the numbers are interesting because the author goes on to say,

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I can confirm Kuyper's assertion. Only a minority of ancient commentators associate this exclusively with salvation.

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Eight ancient exegetes specifically assert that this refers back to a feminine noun in Ephesians 2 .8

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-9. Seven taking Teutah to refer to faith. That would be Chrysostom, Jerome, Augustine, Theodoret, Fulgentius, Ecumenius, Theophilact, and I hate green font.

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And one taking it to refer to grace, that's John of Damascus. And references are given to each one.

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And of course we have in the Wilson dissertation the assertion that Augustine made this up and it goes back to Manichaeanism.

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So evidently all these guys are actually secret Manichaeans. One name there you may have, well, a couple names you may not have known, but Fulgentius, Bishop of Ruspe.

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Wish we had more from him. He's very, very important on many grounds, not only solid in his theology on key issues, but on the sufficiency of scripture as well.

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Important stuff. But the point is that when you look at Ephesians 2, how many people have memorized

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Ephesians chapter 2, verse 8, 8 and 9? I've always said you need to memorize.

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If you've memorized verses 8 and 9, you need to memorize verse 10. It's sort of necessary.

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But how many people have ever stopped to think what that or this refers back to?

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And how could you have any meaningful discussion of it if you're a

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King James only -ist? The King James translators themselves sort of said, well, you make recourse to the original languages.

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But that's not something that King James only -ists do. It's fascinating to think about how many people have memorized verses.

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And it's happened to me. I've gotten verses memorized, and then years later, you're doing deeper study, and all of a sudden you go, actually, anymore, once you get to my age, this is what happens.

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You see something, and it used to be you'd go, wow, I had never thought of that before.

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Now at my age you go, wow. I probably thought of that before. But I forgot.

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It's gone. Gone. It's exited. Left stage left.

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So, if you want to look it up, it's Faith to Give to God, Reading Ephesians 2, 8 -10, with the Ancients, Matthew, Oliphy, TGC website,

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Australian edition, September 13, 2017. Look it up.

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Enjoy. Have fun with it. And we'll go from there. All right.

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Let's get a few calls in here. We've got about half an hour. And let's,

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I guess, start at the top with Cesar. Cesar? Yes.

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Hello. Hello, sir. Hi. I'm so nervous. Why are you nervous?

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Are you out and about when you shouldn't be? Will the Gestapo get you and put you away for breaking quarantine?

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Do you have your papers? Sorry. Oh, no, I am actually inside.

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I've been inside for quite a bit. Well, I'm sorry. But I do have to work. Yes. Well, that's good.

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If you can still work, that's the important part. About a third of our fellow citizens won't be able to do that very soon.

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So, anyways, literary criticism, what can I do for you? Yes. So, recently,

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I've been taking a class on Luke and Acts. And the professor is big on this literary criticism, and he sometimes calls it a reader response criticism.

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Real response? Reader response. Reader response.

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Okay. Yes. And so, recently, the class,

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I mean, some of the stuff that he says in class, he talks about how, like,

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John the Baptist was a promoter of social justice, that Luke never mentioned John actually baptizing

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Jesus. He puts Luke, late first century, saying that he borrowed from Mark and Q.

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Actually, today in class, he said that in Luke, Jesus' death does not have...Luke

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never mentioned that Jesus' death has atoning significance.

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And I wanted to ask if any of this is actually valid, if it's actually...like,

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some of the stuff that he says really confuses me, like, is this really what, I guess, scholarship is?

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I mean... Well, it's... He says Mark was wrong in his ending. Yeah, it's what modern scholarship is.

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It's when you are willing to take the text apart, ignore its own context, assume that one author, for example, will contradict himself, start with the assumption that whatever has been believed in the past isn't right.

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So you can look at Luke -Acts, and you can take it apart, even though you don't have any manuscripts to do this, you don't have any historical, hard documentation that does this, you can theorize.

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So almost any modern commentary, not all, but almost any modern commentary you're going to pick up, whether it's on Luke -Acts or John or whatever, is going to indulge in various theories of redaction criticism.

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And so, for example, when you look at John, well, maybe there was an earlier version of John that didn't have chapters 14 through 16, and that got added in later, and so therefore you can theorize this, you can theorize that.

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And when you're looking at Luke, you know, Luke's a little bit tough because he uses...obviously knows his history really well, and is obviously using external sources, but because he says he's using external sources, because he's collected eyewitness testimony and stuff like that, then you can start taking it apart as to, well, maybe this represents this source that Luke depended upon, and maybe this represents this source that Luke depended upon.

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And then someone else will come along and say, no, I'm going to come up with a different set of indicators of sources, and then you can get published doing that.

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And this is what you find in most modern commentaries, is not a whole lot on the actual meaning of the text, or how what

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Luke says is relevant to what Paul says in Galatians, or anything else, it's this kind of stuff.

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It's redaction criticism, form criticism, not textual criticism, mind you, that's different.

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Textual criticism has actual hard manuscripts where you can look at what a manuscript says and what another manuscript says, and deal with variant readings and things like that.

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When you're dealing with redaction and form criticism, you're dealing with theories, theories about materials we've never seen, and probably won't ever see, because it's all theoretical.

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But it's all based upon the idea that, well, what's been believed in the past can't possibly be the case, and so we are free to create contradiction and error wherever we want to see it.

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And we will never, ever give the author the benefit of the doubt. No, no, no.

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If it's a biblical author, the assumption is that he's wrong. And because Christians down through the, for 2 ,000 years almost, have been explaining alleged contradictions and things like that, we've already had all of that.

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We don't need to do any more of that. The assumption is everything is a mess. And so you can delve into mythical sources and influences and all sorts of stuff like that, and it's how you get published.

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And so when someone says, well, Luke doesn't have X, Y, or Z. So the assumption there is, well,

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Luke doesn't have as developed a atonement motif as John or Matthew does.

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And so if you then buy into literary dependence, which your teacher obviously does, and large majority of scholars do, you now have to explain that because he's got

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Mark, it's in Mark, so why isn't it in Luke? And so now you get to be a mind reader removed by over 1 ,900 years from the author.

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That's lots of fun. That gets lots of articles written and books published and, oh, that's just a gold mine when you start trying to be a mind reader.

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That's why I've always said, starting with literary dependence, saying that Mark is first, Matthew and Luke both have him and change him, and John doesn't know what in the world's going on, raises far more questions than it ends up answering.

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But it does allow for a lot more writing of articles. So there you go. So what you do is you mind read

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Luke and try to come up with a set of sources that maybe Luke would have had that would explain something like this.

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A lot of people would say, well, that shows that the salvific motif only existed within a part of the

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Christian movement. Because then you bring Bower in, and Bower, of course, his theory was that the early church was a mishmash of 47 ,000 different perspectives, and only over time did the

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Orthodox eventually win out. And so you can find, you can divide stuff up in a million different ways.

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And yeah, that's what scholarship looks like. If you go to SBL, the Society of Biblical Literature meeting, which, that's one meeting

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I wouldn't mind getting wiped out by the pandemic thing. That would, nothing would, that would not cause any harm whatsoever if that got canceled.

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But if you go to SBL and you look at the topics and you go listen to the stuff, this is all you're going to hear.

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That's why they're there, is to write stuff like this. And it just ends up going every which direction.

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And so it's very confusing, no question about it. And it's confusing for a student to have to try to dig through all this stuff and then find the older voices or the still sane voices that will say, well, let's look at this and let's not start with a set of assumptions that all these people had no idea what they were talking about, contradicting themselves all the time.

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Let's actually think about what, what if this is what Christians have believed it was?

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And let's look at it that way. Oh, wow. A lot of these issues just disappear immediately, isn't that interesting? We're still out here.

37:32

That literature is still out there, but it is, the market is flooded with a lot of, of other stuff.

37:38

A lot of other stuff. And, you know, I went to a seminary, my first master's degree was in Fulitzer Seminaries and I had to,

37:45

I had to learn all that stuff. I now know why I had to, you know, many years later.

37:52

But I had to go, go through that stuff. So you're not the first person to, to have to run into all that, all that stuff, but you can still learn from those courses.

38:03

It sounds like it's an online course. No, this is actually a course at,

38:09

I go, I'm a, I'm a student at Boston College. Boston College?

38:15

Hell yeah. Okay. So, so the, the liberal Jesuit school.

38:21

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Okay. I'm, I'm like the, I'm like the one conservative reform student there.

38:28

Yeah. And I just, I just like look at my classmates, I go, you guys really believe this stuff?

38:33

Oh yeah. If you go this direction, you're going to not end up believing the Bible at all. Oh no, they, no, they, well, that's just it.

38:41

Boston College has been so far to the left. I've said many times on this program that if the

38:48

Pope ever gets around excommunicating everybody at Boston College, then I'll think he's serious. But till then, I'm sorry.

38:54

You know, every Roman Catholic that goes, well, we all believe the same thing. I go, yeah, right.

39:00

Been to Boston College recently? I mean, you're, you're running into the bleeding edge of, of liberal

39:07

Roman Catholicism at that point. And yeah, that, that, that explains everything. That's definitely where they're coming from.

39:13

That's definitely where they're coming from. No two ways about it. So go get yourself some

39:19

Michael Kruger books. Dr. Michael Kruger is the president of RTS in Charlotte.

39:25

Pick up some of his stuff on the church in the second century or on the cannon and stuff like that.

39:30

And, and you'll, you'll discover there are still folks out there that can handle all this stuff quite well.

39:36

And don't have to worry about it. Okay. Thank you very much, Dr. Light. All right. Thanks. Thanks. And stay well over there in Massachusetts.

39:44

I'll let you know also that the next class has to do with something called Christian Communism. Looking at the

39:52

Book of Acts. Okay. Well, I'm glad you're getting a degree in fiction.

40:00

All right. We'll see you then. Thank you very much. Okay. All right. Bye bye. All right.

40:07

Bye. If each one takes that long, we will probably only have room for the next three, I would imagine.

40:15

Okay. Let's stay on the East Coast and talk with Nate. Hi, Nate. Hi.

40:21

How are you? Doing pretty good. Great. So my question is basically regarding the two people that shall not be named from Twitter.

40:32

They basically gave the argument that presupposition, presupp is essentially fideism.

40:38

And I've even seen some other people associated with Platonism. And I was curious if you could explain or try to help some of the other people out there who don't really understand what they're talking about.

40:51

Like, where are they coming up with that? Well, when you won't represent what has been said plainly by Vantill or by Bonson or by any of their interpreters thereafter, you have to explain origins and sources.

41:16

And the best way to do that is to try to make connections with, well, you know,

41:23

I'm dealing with the subject of people trying to connect Augustine to Manichaeism and all of his thoughts just came straight from that and there's no

41:29

Bible involved and everything like that. You have a similar situation here where you have someone with a specific goal and the goal is the destruction of presuppositionalism.

41:41

One of these young men has actually said that he has dedicated his life to the destruction of presuppositionalism.

41:47

Yes, I'm aware. I saw that when he first said it. Yeah. If you're going to say something like that, then you have to have a mechanism, a weapon to wield.

41:59

And so, in this particular situation, obviously,

42:06

I don't have time to go through. I mean, I've a number of times have attempted to say, look, the power of the presuppositional approach of apologetics is because it takes very seriously the power of sin in the mind of man.

42:24

And it is based upon both a meaningfully reformed understanding of God's sovereignty, compatibility, the nature of gospel proclamation, and most importantly, what

42:42

Platonism was missing, what Stoicism was missing, though Stoicism was closer than Platonism, and that is an understanding of the enslavement of man's will in sin.

42:59

And hence, we're just simply seeking to adequately apply the foundational revelation given by the

43:08

Apostle Paul in Romans chapter 1, and as a result, are in an overarching sense seeking to not elevate the rebel sinner to the position of judging the existence of God, because the apostles don't do that.

43:25

They do not invite rebel sinners to the position of judgment.

43:30

In fact, it was when Paul introduces the resurrection and says that by this resurrected one,

43:38

God will judge the world, that the philosophers on Mars Hill are like, ah, come on, come on.

43:46

Yeah, now you just went too far. The real issue has to be, are we asking a rebel to judge the existence of his judge, or are we announcing to the rebel that he will be judged by his creator, and how do you do that consistently?

44:11

And so, I really think that even though some of these men claim to be

44:17

Reformed, when you listen to what they do with Romans chapter 1, and basically have to stand on their head to turn it into something other than what would fit in the rest of the

44:28

Book of Romans, I think that really is the issue. I don't know that arguing philosophical terminology is going to get you very far because, for example, what form of Platonism are you referring to?

44:45

Are we talking Neo -Platonism? Are we talking Platonism of this century, of that century? How about in this particular writer, or in that particular writer?

44:52

And the reality is that you can go all sorts of different directions. And fideism, just simply have faith, that's just a straw man.

45:03

That's saying that we just simply say, have faith. And we're obviously not saying, have faith.

45:09

That's not the foundational situation. It is, however, a recognition.

45:16

Presuppositionalism does have as part of its assumption that if the world is created as God says it is created, then there is an ultimate authority to be found only in God himself.

45:32

And so, I think they confuse whatever they want to identify as fideism with the necessary recognition of ultimate authorities.

45:44

And hence, for example, saying that, as in Scripture, God cannot prove, he cannot swear about something greater than himself.

45:54

And so, his word has to be final because there can be no external authority above it to verify it.

46:00

So, yeah, there are others who have written on certain aspects of things.

46:08

But for me, that's really the issue, is let's just be honest with what's actually being stated rather than creating all these straw men.

46:18

But look, I'm highly skeptical that someone who says they have dedicated their life to the destruction of presuppositionalism is really open to being corrected as to what presuppositionalism is.

46:37

Because in their mind, it is the ultimate danger. It is the greatest sin. It's the original sin. In fact, that's a term that's been used, too.

46:45

It is the original sin. And when you're that imbalanced, I don't know there's a whole lot of help in that situation.

46:54

And I see people, that's why I'm really glad I don't deal with just one area.

47:02

Sometimes I feel way too scattered and drawn out, but that also helps you to remain balanced in other areas, too, and not lose your footing.

47:12

And I think that's what's happening. Yeah, I mean, I'm getting a PhD in mechanical engineering, and I barely understand half of this philosophical argument back and forth between them.

47:20

But Nate, you know why that is. Because if you're in mechanical engineering, there is a certain vocabulary.

47:26

It's a shorthand that allows you to express complicated things in a brief term, so you and another engineer can get past the basics and get to the more important stuff.

47:36

That's all you've got when it comes to philosophy. That's all you've got when it comes to theology. It's just the technical terminology.

47:43

And I know I just, you're not supposed to tell people that. But it's true. Once you learn the vocabulary and what it's referring to, a lot of the mystery is actually removed.

47:55

And the problem is, especially in philosophy, there are so many different perspectives.

48:02

And it doesn't matter what you criticize. I don't care how many times I've criticized Molinism. I'm going to encounter a

48:09

Molinist and go, that's not really what Molinism is saying. Because I'm not sure that William and Craig is correct.

48:14

So you end up with this scattering of everything. And you can imagine what would happen in mechanical engineering if you did not have some type of canons of what terms mean.

48:25

You wouldn't be able to design or communicate. But that's what you get in philosophy. That's a problem.

48:32

That's a problem. Well, I mean, maybe it's because they don't actually have to build machines for a living to run the economy and everything.

48:38

Yeah, I'm not getting on a plane built by a philosopher. Nope. Nope.

48:44

Nope. Not happening. Not in this life. Hey, Nate, we've got three more calls to get to. We're running out of time. Thanks for your phone call today.

48:51

Yep, have a great day. Have a good day. I'm not getting on a plane built by a philosopher. No. Russ. Hi, Russ.

48:57

Gotta keep moving here. I'm glad to speak to you, Doctor. Since I've been held prisoner in my own house by our children,

49:06

I've been looking at your study on Hebrews. Yes, sir. And you make an excellent proof of why

49:13

Hebrews had to be written before the fall of the Temple. Yep. My question is the Gospel of John.

49:19

Yes. Since they mention Lazarus, Joseph of Arimathea, and Nicodemus, I've seen it theorized that these guys had to be dead before John wrote about them.

49:29

But do you have any thoughts on, like you did with Hebrews, as to exactly when John might have been written before or after the

49:37

Temple? Right. Well, of course, we know that the standard answer on that is to put

49:43

John in the last decade of the first century. That's the standard answer, theorizing that some of the persecutions we—that the reason that John is on the

49:56

Isle of Patmos is because of a persecution under Domitian at a later time in Roman history.

50:06

There are interesting counterarguments, and I'll just let you know, if you want to read some of those counterarguments, you might want to look up Kenneth Gentry, who will argue for an earlier date for Romans, and will argue that it's pre -70.

50:28

And now, that's going to get you into a lot of discussion as to which persecution is being referred to at certain points in the

50:38

New Testament. You know, I wish we had a, you know, a dated manuscript or something like that that would, you know, answer this with finality.

50:47

But there are some really interesting counterarguments. I don't—you know, there are some issues that would then be impacted in the study of eschatology, depending on when these books were written, and especially the dating of Revelation would be very much impacted as well.

51:08

And, aside from all that, Russ, you also have the very interesting discussion—it's a valid discussion, but an interesting discussion—between people who would say that you have the

51:19

Apostle John, and then you have another John, who is

51:24

John the Elder, who they distinguish from the Apostle John. And is that a possibility?

51:31

And there are some solid scholars, real brilliant folks, that adopt that as well, which you'll probably run into.

51:37

But it's a fascinating area, and I'm not—I don't think there's really almost any question at all about the dating of Hebrews.

51:47

The book just doesn't make any sense if it's post -70. But I've been reading, over the past couple years, some of the arguments for an earlier date for John, and they've got some really good arguments.

52:02

But I'm not decided absolutely one way or the other on that. It's definitely fascinating stuff to look into.

52:10

So you can't say which way you lean right now? Well, I'm leaning toward the earlier date, but I was raised with the later date, and it's just one of those things where there's a lot more reading you could do.

52:26

And we're not talking about something that you have a specific revelation that decides.

52:33

We just don't have any dating as far as that's concerned. But, like I said,

52:39

I am aware of the fact that that will then impact how you interpret certain other elements of what would be called the

52:45

Johannine corpus. But there's some—there's arguments on both sides, and so I haven't made up my mind on that.

52:56

Well, now you've got me headed in another direction, since it looks like I'm going to have a lot of time to study.

53:01

There you go. I'll follow up on that. Thank you. All right. Thanks, Russ. Have a good one. God bless. All righty.

53:08

Russ has been imprisoned. It sounds like he said he was imprisoned by his kids, but that's what he said.

53:15

All right. Let's talk to Blake real quick. Hi, Blake. Hey, Dr. White. It's good to hear from you again.

53:22

Yes, I call you every day. Wait, what? I call you every day.

53:31

Well, it's more like I talk to Rich on— That's what he said, yes. So really quickly, because I know you've got a lot of stuff to do, so I've been doing, you know, a lot of researching in the

53:45

Greek language and everything, and I noticed with some words they use what's called Alexandrian, and I did some research on it, and it was from, like,

53:55

Egypt, and also from Alexandrian the Great, so I'm a bit confused.

54:01

So regarding all of this, when it comes to the Greek language, what does it mean that it uses an

54:06

Alexandrian wording, if you catch my drift? Well, that wouldn't be a pronunciation issue.

54:14

The only thing that I can see that would have any meaning there is an

54:19

Alexandrian reading. In other words, the standard terminology, which is being challenged right now and will probably pass away, but the standard terminology that still exists in a lot of commentaries today is to recognize

54:31

Byzantine readings versus Alexandrian versus Western, sometimes Caesarean. Those are manuscript families, and so if a scholar uses the phrase

54:42

Alexandrian wording, he'd be referring to a situation where you have a textual variant of the manuscripts, and the majority would read one way, but then the

54:55

Alexandrian reading would be different than that. And so it's not an issue of how it's being pronounced, it's actually an issue of what the actual reading is.

55:05

So, for example, the Alexandrian reading of John 118 is hominogenes theos, the unique god, whereas the

55:19

Byzantine reading is hwios, son. And so normally, if you're reading a commentary, that's what it's referring to, is a textual reading.

55:29

It's not a pronunciation reading. Okay. And then you said, like, there's different categories, the

55:36

Western, and then there was the... I'm trying to remember the other one that you said. Well, Alexandrian is normally identified with the unique text of the early papyri.

55:48

Even though there are a few Byzantine readings in the papyri, there are entire papyri that are just simply

55:53

Alexandrian in their orientation. And then the Byzantine is the majority, and then you had

56:02

Western readings primarily in Acts. Like I said, these categories have been challenged by the advent of what's called

56:10

CBGM, the coherence -based genealogical method, which a lot of people don't know about yet, but it's there and it's having its impact, and CBGM is basically saying that the only manuscript family that actually exists as a family is the

56:24

Byzantine, not Alexandrian or any of the others. But there's still lots and lots and lots and lots of books and commentaries that were written when that was the standard terminology, and that's probably what you're referring to.

56:37

Yeah, definitely. Okay. Well, by the way, James, real quickly, I've been doing a whole systematic theology thing for NowMentor .com,

56:46

and I've been promoting your books like crazy. And I've actually read the whole thing of the Forgotten Trinity, and I'm going to work on whatever

56:55

Christian needs to know about the Qur 'an. So I'm actually reading your material, and I'm really loving it. All right,

57:00

Blake, I appreciate it. I hope it's helpful to you. Oh yeah, it's been a real blessing. All right.

57:05

Thanks, man. We've got to run. Thanks for calling today. And let's get one last in here. Osmar. Osmar, yes sir.

57:17

Hi, can you hear me? I can. What's going on in the background?

57:23

Oh, sorry, I was with the mechanic. Okay. What can we do for you?

57:30

I want to ask you a question on Matthew 5, right? When Jesus is speaking, you know,

57:38

He's talking about the laws, right? Murder, and adultery, and divorce, and the oath, things like that.

57:48

But at the end, He says, on chapter 5, verse—one second—He says, "'You have heard that it was said,

57:59

Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.'" Why does He say that, that it was said? Well, He's referring, in each one of these, in the

58:09

Sermon on the Mount, He is referring to the fact that the Jews possessing the law had vacated the law of its heart intention.

58:21

So, for example, when He says, "'You have heard that it was said,

58:27

You shall not commit adultery.' But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery within his heart.'"

58:33

He's not doing away—He's not saying that that wasn't what God revealed. What He's saying is, if you simply reduce the law to a set of standards and do not deal with the inner person and the reality in your heart, that you're not understanding the law to begin with.

58:52

And so, it can't not be understood as Jesus just getting rid of these things and saying, this is bad stuff.

58:58

In reality, He is taking that external law and He's bringing it internally.

59:04

So, do not murder, but do not hate your brother, because that's where murder starts.

59:11

And so, He's taking the law and He's applying it in the heart, demonstrating that the real place that needs to be changed is the heart.

59:19

You can say that you're being obedient to external stuff, but that doesn't really make you obedient to external stuff.

59:28

It's the change of the heart that really, really matters. So, hopefully that's helpful to you there.

59:34

And we are out of time here on the program today, but we did get four, four programs in in one week.

59:42

Congratulations to us. I'm not sure what we'll do next week, but we will,

59:47

Lord willing, as long as I survive driving a van that can only go so fast from Las Vegas down to Mesa, Arizona, that's what

59:59

I'm going to do. In fact, if you really want to pray for me, I'm concerned that my flight might not make it.

01:00:06

They keep playing around with it and stuff, but I got to be up there tomorrow.

01:00:12

They need a driver. My family needs drivers. So, I'll get up there one way or the other if I have to rent a car and drive up overnight.

01:00:20

That's a long drive. Long drive. I'll have to find... I can think of some people I might be able to find online to listen to that would keep me awake.

01:00:29

Just out of frustration. But anyways, so, Lord willing, we will be back next week here on The Dividing Line.