Abdullah Kunde's Opening Statement

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August 24, 2011

Another 90 minute jumbo addition of the program today, with the first hour spent reviewing Abdullah Kunde’s opening statement in a debate with Samuel Green. Then we opened the phones…well, I guess, took Skype calls, mainly, on the TNIV, George Bryson’s dishonesty, and the size of Pope Urban the V’s right ring finger—OK, not quite, it was about some issues relating to Oneness Theology, but we like to give Johnny a hard time.

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00:13: Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is the Dividing Line.
00:20: The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.
00:29: Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.
00:35: This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll free across the
00:44: United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is
00:51: James White. And welcome to the Dividing Line on a special jumbo edition. Of course, someone, you know, really depressed me right before the beginning of the program, so I was asking how long the program was, and someone says, oh, it's just a jumbo.
01:06: Just a jumbo. See how quickly people have become, you know, accustomed to these things, you know, and so it's sort of like,
01:13: I think we're going to start doing five -minute dividing line lits. And that way it could fit into, you know, like Twitter, you know, just real fast, you know.
01:25: Dividing vignettes? Yeah, something like that, yeah. I've got people on Facebook wanting three hours. Three hours.
01:31: Every day. Every day. That's nice. You know, it's 109 degrees outside. Yeah. It's supposed to get as high as 116 degrees here in Phoenix today, and some of you back east are going, yeah, well, we had that.
01:47: I'm good, yeah. We had that. Yeah, but you don't have it for like from May until the end of September.
01:55: That's, it can get really bad for, you know, a month, but we get it for long periods of time.
02:01: It has really helped my car, though. Remember the hail damage my car had from last year? Somebody told me that if you just leave it out in the sun this summer, most of that would go away.
02:09: Most of it has. Yeah, it pops all those things out because it just gets so stinking hot here in the summer.
02:15: Just boom, boom, boom. It must be. That's popcorn cars in the desert.
02:20: That's exactly what it is. Honestly, there's only like one or two left that I can actually see because I'm looking at the video right now, and there it sits, gleaming in the sun.
02:32: How hot do you think it is inside that car right now, about 165 degrees, something like that? Yeah, it's great.
02:38: Anyway, it's a Wednesday. What are we doing here on a Wednesday? Well, here's the plan.
02:44: We're going to open up the phones at about 10 till, okay?
02:50: You got that, oh great, owner of the phones. And all you people who've been calling up while I've been doing all these programs going,
03:00: I want to ask a question. I think Johnny wants to ... Was it Johnny wanted to know the ring size of Urban IV?
03:06: Is that what it ... Yeah. Now, which hand? That's what we need to know, is which hand ring size, is the question that Johnny will ...
03:14: The one that gets kissed? All right. Anyway, all you who have been calling up and saying, he's not taking questions anymore, he doesn't want to talk to us, we will open the phones about 10 minutes till in the last half hour.
03:30: I mentioned that in the dividing line thing. I mentioned on the blog, I said ...
03:35: And then we have other people going, when are you going to get back to the Bob Coy sermon? We're not getting back to the Bob Coy sermon.
03:42: We covered ... The only unique thing in it was that Lazarus, while dead, was able to respond to Jesus' commands, which we found humorous, but there really wasn't anything more to deal with that.
03:54: We will press on with the Fernandez Comas. Today, so between now and the top of the hour,
04:02: I want to get back to Abdullah Kunduz's specific comments on the Doctrine of the Trinity. And then we will be back tomorrow with another jumbo, but we'll divide that between the three debates that we've been working on.
04:15: So there will be, let's see, that'll be three, that'll be at least five hours of dividing lines this week.
04:23: So that's more than sufficient. That's about all, because I've got all the sermons this way.
04:31: I've got this evening, I've got Sunday morning, Sunday night, and I will never get another book written at the rate that I'm going.
04:38: So that's just how that works. All right. Let's get back to ... We were listening to a debate that took place between Samuel Green and Abdullah Kunduz.
04:47: What? What are you looking at me so weird about? Okay. Yes. I'm plugged in. I'm ready to go, as long as you've got the computer ready to go.
04:56: Yeah, just a jumbo tomorrow. Okay. You know, I love Ralph. Ralph's a great guy, but this simply has to be done.
05:04: There we go. All right. I just kicked Ralph out of the channel. Yeah. Just a jumbo tomorrow, question mark, question mark.
05:14: Oh man. Boing. All right. Do not do that in the chat channel.
05:20: I can multitask and I can kick you out at the same time. All right. What were we talking about?
05:25: Oh yeah. So Abdullah Kunduz and Samuel Green did a debate on a really important topic, the
05:31: Trinity and Tawhid. And so we want to, and Abdullah was just getting into his primary concerns about the doctrine of the
05:40: Trinity. We are trying to correct some misapprehensions that he has, that the doctrine of the Trinity divides the being of God into three parts and therefore limits
05:51: God in that way, et cetera, et cetera, and providing some corrections to that. So hopefully in our future debates that we won't have to invest too much time in those issues.
06:05: And so let's get back with Abdullah's comments here. Remember, I was a little surprised because I'm telling you honestly, when
06:15: I listened to this while writing, it sounded just fine. And then I get it on here and it doesn't sound nearly as good as it did in my earphones.
06:26: I just need to bring those earphones in and hold them up to the microphone or something. Maybe that'll work. I don't know. The whole creation to take place is a creation to be governed.
06:35: Now, essentially the basis of these arguments is absolutely ridiculous. It's ridiculous to say that God is so unbelievably transcendent that he wouldn't be able to create.
06:43: Okay. Now, just to get you back up to speed, or if you weren't listening yesterday, the last that we heard was a discussion of Philo of Alexandria and various Greek philosophical sources that talked about the
06:54: Logos. It seems that Abdullah believes that these are the sources for John's use.
07:03: There again are extensive discussions in any meaningful commentary, especially on the
07:11: Johannine literature, but also broader scholastic works on historical backgrounds.
07:18: And again, when I was in seminary and ever since seminary, this is an area that I do a fair amount of reading in, given the types of people that I'm debating.
07:28: There are extensive discussions and arguments and debates concerning the relative input of the
07:39: Old Testament themes of the wisdom of God and the word of God. And I remember, for example, a quote that I've used a number of times in regards to the
07:49: Apocrypha. This is one good thing about, you know, sometimes I get a little, I don't know, not miffed, but just tired with the barrage of different subjects that come my direction.
08:01: I try to be disciplined and not go after everything. You can't. Nobody can possibly know everything there is to know and study everything you need to study and all the rest of that stuff.
08:10: I feel a lot of pressure in that area. But one of the advantages of having to do, you know, getting stretched, being pushed to do things, is speaking on the
08:21: Apocrypha, you encounter Jewish statements in the intertestamental period that the bath kol, the voice of God, had stopped speaking.
08:34: This is relevant to the fact that the Apocryphal books are written during a period of time when the
08:39: Jews themselves recognized revelation wasn't taking place, which is one reason why they never accepted those books as being divine revelation, which is another reason why
08:47: Roman Catholicism is just wrong. But be it as it may, the point was there was a recognition of the very voice of God, the word of God, the wisdom of God.
09:01: What's the relative input of that over against issues like the
09:08: Logos? And what would John have known about Greek philosophy? And what are the primary inputs to the creation of John's theology and all the rest of the stuff?
09:16: You read any meaningful critical commentary, and I'm not talking about an expository commentary where those type of issues aren't even being addressed.
09:24: I'm talking about critical commentaries, and I will say immediately, you know, put my hand up and say, warning, warning, critical commentaries can contain all sorts of stuff that I wouldn't even begin to agree with.
09:39: But we need to be aware of these things. In fact, one of the skills that I think if you're interested in apologetics and doing apologetics, one of the skills that you need to develop is the skill, the ability to utilize the resources that are represented by modern scholarship, even when you disagree with much of what is being said.
10:06: The ability to have discernment and to not be rocked off of your foundation by reading stuff that disagrees with where you come from and what your conclusions are.
10:16: That's one thing. I see that a lot in people who come into the chat channel, and I just read this thing, and, oh,
10:24: I just got asked a question because, you know, I'm really concerned about this. And that to me is an immediate sign of immaturity and really makes me wonder if you should be doing this kind of stuff in the first place, if you can be so easily rocked by things.
10:38: You need to, over time, develop the ability to utilize sources that do not necessarily agree with you.
10:45: But you know what? Liberals can get facts right. They can frequently do good research. And a lot of the critical commentaries that are available today,
10:55: I do not in any way, shape, or form find them edifying at all. I mean, it's sad.
11:00: I mean, I've got entire books in my library, hundreds and hundreds of pages and thousands of footnotes.
11:08: And you can just tell, so much time has been spent talking about every little thing that the entire message of the book gets completely lost.
11:18: It's just like, nah, nothing edifying in it whatsoever. But you still might find some useful information hiding in there someplace,
11:26: I don't know. But the point is, there's all sorts of information out there on Lagos Christologies and all the rest of this stuff.
11:36: And primarily, the people who are pushing the idea that the New Testament writers were just non -innovative copiers of fragments of preceding beliefs, these people do not believe in divine revelation.
11:55: In fact, their whole thing is, since there isn't any such thing as divine revelation, then we have to go running about to figure out, well, since there is no divine revelation, where did these guys get this?
12:05: What were their motivations? And the presupposition is there is a divine revelation, which, again,
12:11: I find it rather odd if my Muslim friends utilize those sources. Why would you utilize sources that are written upon a presupposition that contradicts your own worldview without critically taking that into consideration in the reading of it?
12:26: I don't see many of my Muslim friends recognizing the inconsistency of the sources they use at that point.
12:36: So, anyway, that's a lot of background information and a few divergences there we didn't necessarily need.
12:41: Just to bring you back up to speed, he's talking about these—basically, the last thing he's talking about was
12:48: Philo and saying, well, Philo came up with this idea because God is so transcendent, he couldn't touch the universe.
12:55: And he's assuming, I think, that this is the origination of John's usage of this, which
13:02: I would disagree with greatly. These questions aren't quite being answered by the
13:34: Greek philosophers or being proposed. Well, I'd say that, again, these questions only come from an attempt to restrict an uncreated
13:42: God's creative concepts. We have creative concepts of love and mercy. Muslims do not believe that our uncreated
13:50: Lord can be found by them. So, a summary of history. It's pretty clear that Greek philosophy introduced
13:56: Jewish thinkers such as Philo. And highly likely, Jewish thinkers like Philo may influence, at least, some of the writers of the
14:07: New Testament. Okay, if John is just borrowing this from Philo, why does he so fundamentally change
14:41: Philo's view? Because if Philo's view is that you need to have the logos because God can't touch this universe,
14:49: John 1 .14, Logos sarxageneta, the word became flesh.
14:54: Why is it that John's whole point is that this logos that has eternally existed and is as to his own nature deity, truly entered into flesh, did not simply take on a human body, but ageneta, became flesh, without ceasing to be the logos, but became flesh.
15:17: That is a radical, radical, radical departure. Where does that come from? I mean, if you're going to buy into this idea and see the modern
15:25: Muslim goes, well, you know, all these books have been corrupted because they disappeared with the Quran. And so there's a prejudice, an automatic prejudice that's right up front.
15:39: But still, you're going to have to answer those questions. That's a proposal that I'll ask you all to consider.
15:46: Compare what Plato said 400 years before Jesus, that the one creates the word, the logos, which creates the world.
15:54: And then Christian theology, which is saying that the father begets the son, and also begets all, produces the spirit from himself.
16:02: And also what we read in the New Testament, that all things came into creation through the word. It's the same thing, only 400 years apart, and a slightly different theological context.
16:14: Slightly different theological context? You have a rational ordering principle that is impersonal versus the personal logos that is the creator of all things, drawing on wisdom and the word of God.
16:29: You know, God spoke and it was all the way back from Genesis. And why can't we then do the same thing with what the
16:37: Quran does? I mean, honestly, if you're going to start looking, and I really think that Mr.
16:43: Kundat needs to be called on this. If you're going to start looking at trying to draw parallels, there are lots of parallels to be drawn between Quranic materials and pre -existing materials.
16:56: Big time. Big time. And in fact, the
17:01: Quran itself tries to argue against that. Well, it quotes the opponents, you know, these are just the fables and myths of the ancients and so on and so forth.
17:09: And no, it's not. Well, the fact of the matter is, if you apply those same kinds of standards, then
17:16: I would assume he would have to come to the conclusion that if this kind of parallel is valid and relevant to the
17:26: New Testament, then the parallels that have been drawn between numerous sources and I'm not even,
17:33: I'm just talking, some of them are just so obvious. I mean, the Arabic infancy gospel and speaking from,
17:39: Jesus speaking from his cradle and things like that. Quran clearly drawing upon pre -existing sources and materials.
17:48: And does he accept that? And if he doesn't, why not? I mean, I would think theologically, the way the
17:55: Quran speaks, that you could come to that conclusion. I know many of your quote unquote moderate
18:01: Muslims do. But just on a theological level, I wonder how they handle that kind of thing.
18:09: But just a call for consistency. Now, we Muslims, in reading the
18:15: Quran, we say that Christians believe that God literally has son. If we, again, read in the translation, it's not conceivable that God should have forgotten himself a son.
18:25: Limitless is he in his glory. He wills a thing to be. He says unto it be, and it is.
18:31: So do Christians actually believe that God has an actual son? Now, again,
18:38: I'm going to assume that this debate took place before the forgotten trinity arrived, and I'm going to hope that Mr.
18:48: Kunda has had a chance to read that. And if he'd like to read some other folks other than me that have addressed this,
18:56: I could direct him to some excellent works. But it is interesting, and I think helpful at times and frustrating at times, to listen to an intelligent
19:09: Muslim listening to us. I think that helps us, maybe helps us to clarify how we're speaking, how we need to speak, helps us to clarify what we're saying.
19:26: Some of you wonder why I belabor certain points, either here on The Dividing Line or in my sermons or Bible study classes, and this is probably why, because in interacting with a wide variety of opposition to the
19:40: Christian faith, I try to be accurate and to consider how other people would be hearing what
19:45: I'm saying. But you cannot, I mean, you'd turn into the Amplified Bible if you tried to answer every single objection in every sermon and things like that.
19:54: You can't. But you can try to hear what they're hearing, and especially amongst
20:01: Muslims. Now, we find this amongst people who call themselves Christians. I mean, we had the greatest example of it ever two weeks ago when
20:08: Will Kinney called in, and Will Kinney could not even begin to grasp basic rational thought and history because of the strength of the traditions to which he was committed.
20:22: Same thing here. Very often, our Muslim friends begin with the presupposition that our scriptures have been corrupted.
20:37: And therefore, there is, well, quite honestly, in listening to them speaking to each other, there is often a fair amount of condescension toward Christians.
20:49: They don't seem to realize we've actually thought these things through fairly in -depth and that we, there are many of us who read our scriptures in their original languages and we read early church writings and we know something about history, we know something about the development of doctrine, and yeah, actually we do all that kind of stuff.
21:13: And so as a result, you get statements like this in regards to what
21:21: Christians believe and why they believe it and the history of the
21:26: Trinity and really why their perspective is so superior, but it really isn't based upon fully understanding what it is we're saying.
21:35: Now let me just back this up just a second here and get this repetition. He says I believe it and it is.
21:42: So the Christians actually believe that God has an actual son. Now what does the word actual,
21:48: I want to make sure I have the right word, what does an actual son mean? I think
21:55: I know what the Quran means by that because the Quran specifically talks about how can
22:00: God have a son if he does not have a spouse, a wife, someone corresponding to him by which you can have offspring.
22:11: And it seems to me that the writer of the Quran thought that Jesus was the literal offspring of God the
22:19: Father via a female. And the only times
22:24: I can find in the Quran when it says do not say three, do not say three, it is blasphemy, do not say three, it's excess, the only time it lists three in the same context in Surah 5 is when
22:39: Allah says to Jesus at the judgment day, did you say to men, worship me and my mother as gods in derogation of Allah.
22:51: And I think we're finally working on the Zawadi debate, aren't we? And need to get that out because that was,
23:01: I mean it was live streamed so it's probably already out there some place, but definitely need to make that available because the essence of that debate was my arguing that you can actually figure out what the
23:11: Quran is saying and him arguing that you can't. And that there was a consistency in what the
23:18: Quran says on this subject. Actual son. Remember a little over a year ago what was going on very often on The Dividing Line?
23:32: We were talking about something called the Ergen -Kanner scandal. And that hasn't gone away.
23:39: Ergen -Kanner is just hiding in Arlington, Texas someplace. But I love the
23:44: Twitter thing recently. Somebody sent this thing. Someone sent it to Ergen -Kanner. They say everything's bigger down in Texas.
23:50: What's your biography looking like now? I bet you he got blocked real quick.
23:57: But anyway, remember one of the main reasons that I was so concerned about this subject was
24:08: I played one of these interviews, which
24:13: I guess Ergen -Kanner calls a debate, between Ergen -Kanner and a Oneness Pentecostal.
24:21: And at one point the Oneness Pentecostal asked a simple question of Ergen -Kanner.
24:27: Finally got a chance to sort of turn the tables. Asked a simple question about the nature of divine sonship.
24:33: Now Ergen -Kanner claims to be a former Muslim. And anybody who deals with Islam knows that one of the primary things you must deal with on a regular basis is what?
24:48: The Islamic objection to Jesus as the Son of God. Hence, what is the nature of sonship?
24:56: And here it's coming up in this debate between Abdullah Kunda and Samuel Green. Actual son.
25:03: Actual son. Well, we do confess that Jesus Christ is the
25:09: Son of God. What do we mean by that? Given that our scriptures state that Jesus Christ has eternally existed.
25:20: Not as Jesus of Nazareth. But that the second person of the Trinity, the
25:26: Son has always been the Son. The Father has always been the Father. The Father did not become the Father at a point in time.
25:32: There are some texts that seem to talk about incarnational language at some points.
25:39: But there's clearly texts like Colossians 1 that talk about the Son of God. And this is before the incarnation.
25:47: This is one of the big issues we'll be dealing with with Roger Perkins and the Oneness folks. Is the pre -existence of the
25:53: Son as the Son. Now, never is there anything about a Heavenly Mother.
25:59: There is never any suggestion of sexuality, procreation. And in fact, the discussions have to do with an eternal relationship.
26:10: A loving relationship revealed especially in the Gospel of John. But alluded to by the
26:17: Apostle Paul as well. So in multiple New Testament sources. And the
26:24: Father and the Son then send the Holy Spirit. And in fact, the abode, the abiding presence of the
26:34: Father and the Son with us is through the presence of the Holy Spirit. So, we clearly have a belief that Jesus is the
26:42: Son of God. But we do not have a belief in any kind of physical procreation. It is utterly unlike any other kind of triad of gods.
26:55: Or all these other things you constantly hear people throwing out. The Babylonians had their trinities and all the rest of this stuff.
27:02: And none of them ever even contemplated a discussion of this within context of monotheism.
27:09: They never even contemplated what it is that Christianity teaches on these matters.
27:14: Didn't even come close. And so, if you're going to say that is wrong.
27:23: Then you need to demonstrate that A, you can describe it properly. And hence, if you're going to say that God has an actual
27:32: Son. Say that the Father and the Son have eternally existed in that relationship without beginning and without end.
27:44: It is definitional of who they are. It is part of the very means by which the divine persons are differentiated from one another.
27:53: God has actually chosen to allow us, his tiny creatures, to have knowledge of some of the ways in which the divine persons are distinguished from one another in their full participation of the one being that is
28:07: God. Not just in the economic trinity, that is in the roles that they have taken in the redemption of mankind.
28:16: We can clearly see the differentiations there. But we are actually allowed in just a couple of texts to see something more than that.
28:27: Distinctions outside of just how they have acted in creation.
28:33: And the relationship of Father and the Son is one of those. And so, we're talking about an eternal relationship here.
28:43: We're not talking about God siring a Son. We're not talking about the Son coming into existence. And what's going to happen here, one of the reasons
28:49: I'm spending this time, is that Abdullah is going to have some texts.
28:57: I don't think he's actually read the fuller books from which these came. But he's going to have some texts he's going to read from various early church fathers.
29:08: And it's interesting to listen to a Muslim reading patristic sources through a
29:14: Muslim lens. So that when you encounter discussions of the
29:21: Sonship of Christ, some of which are unguarded, some of which aren't even necessarily orthodox, they are taken as being definitive.
29:32: Whereas the creedal statements, to which many of these writers subscribe, that specifically state there is no beginning or end of this relationship and it's not a matter of one person creating another person, etc.
29:53: They're listened to and heard in a specifically Islamic context.
29:59: Even though that's grossly anachronistic because Islam didn't exist at that time. And so I'm giving you that background so when you can hear it, we can better discuss it.
30:11: And why is it that the Qur 'an is linking the concept of having a Son with creation itself?
30:18: We'll talk about that. Let's first of all consider what some Christian theologians have said about the concept of sonhood.
30:28: If you look at Augustine, who was writing very early in the church history, he's basically said that the father is the principle of the
30:35: Godhead. Now let me stop just a second. Augustine is writing very early in Christian history?
30:43: Augustine is one of the later. I mean, he's certainly not an apostolic father.
30:51: He's not one of the apologists. Much of his theological writing is done at the beginning of the 5th century.
31:01: And so, really early? I'm not sure that you'd want to do that.
31:07: But Augustine is writing after Nicaea. He's writing after a number of the major councils.
31:15: He's writing after the Arian controversy has been settled. And as a result, you have to interpret his words in the context of all that he's written, especially his book on the
31:31: Trinity. And not in an Islamic context. I think that's just sort of rather a given, isn't it?
31:38: And alone is unoriginate. That is, that the father alone has no origin.
31:44: And the origin of the son is forgotten from eternity from the father. Now, this is the lengthy discussion of the relationship of the father and the son and whether we can appropriately describe this as one...
32:01: For example, we talk about the spirit, we talk about the procession of the spirit. And here we're talking about whether the father alone is ungenerate whereas the son is generated by the father.
32:18: And I understand why a Muslim listens to that conversation in a chronological context.
32:25: But that's not Augustine's context. We're talking about eternal activities.
32:32: We're describing relationships, not creation. And here would be my challenge to Mr.
32:39: Kunda or any other of my Muslim friends and that is, can you seriously look me in the eye and say yep, that's exactly what the author of the
32:49: Quran understood because I don't see it. Maybe it's my prejudice.
32:57: Maybe I'm missing something. But it does not seem to me that the author of the
33:04: Quran... And remember, Augustine was long dead by the time the Quran came along and was widely known.
33:14: And so, if you're going to go here, then it would seem to me that the consistent thing to do the thing that would be truly telling the thing that would really show that the...
33:30: And how nobody can produce anything like it. Really? Honest? That one's always just left me going
33:37: I guess that's really impressive in certain lands. It ain't overly impressive here because sorry, there's whole sections of the
33:45: Quran where I go what? No one could write anything like this? And just on any level,
33:52: I would go I know lots of literature that is greatly superior to this. Well, it's just all in the Arabic. Well, okay,
33:58: I talk to a lot of my Arabic -speaking friends and they're like, what? It's just not the case.
34:03: But I look at the Karmic Christi and I go, that's way beyond anything in the
34:09: Quran. And there's all sorts of sections of Isaiah that laud the oneness of God not
34:19: Unitarianism, but monotheism. They're not the same thing. And in much better words than anything
34:26: I've ever found in the Quran. So I just, I don't buy that. But look me in the eye and tell me the author of this
34:32: Quran when he's talking about say not three that he understands what
34:38: Augustine was talking about. I'm sorry, I have a hard time accepting that.
34:45: I mean, you have to say it but can you really defend it? If we jump to Justin Martyr you said we believe in a crucified man.
34:54: Hold on. If we jump to Justin Martyr well, this is to jump backwards by a long distance centuries to Justin Martyr Justin Martyr mid -2nd century and Justin Martyr is one of the most commonly cited early church writers by people who are attempting to introduce confusion in the early church.
35:21: I remember I first taught church history at Grand Canyon University in 1990.
35:29: Wow. Over 21 years ago. I had hair back then and I remember from 21 years ago one of the comments that I made
35:46: I remember what room we were in in what classroom building it's really weird how some things stick with you like that and it's really weird how once you start getting into the middle age part of your life you start talking about things like this and realizing that you're getting older but anyways one of the things that I said to my class was that it is painfully obvious to me that Justin Martyr was significantly more familiar with Plato than he was with Paul well
36:16: I didn't know how right that was because in preparation for a debate years later I worked all the way through Justin Martyr and lo and behold
36:25: Justin Martyr never quotes Paul in fact there's really no evidence that he was even familiar with Paul so you have a writer who is seeking to present
36:36: Justin never took off the philosopher's cloak you know he's sort of one of those
36:43: Jesus persons back in the 60s and 70s walking down the seashore and runs into something and ooh cool and you know as a result you take him for where he was at that time that's wonderful that's great but trying to make him indicative of orthodoxy as a whole and not recognizing the huge difference contextually between Justin Martyr and Augustine I mean huge difference
37:15: Nicaea has taken place in between this time period I mean there's been a lot of discussion going on just isn't good and a guy who doesn't even have access to the entirety of the
37:28: New Testament including some of the most important material on the issue of the nature of the sonship of Christ just keep in mind whenever you hear constant citations of Justin Martyr that there might be a reason why they're going there the word is
37:57: God's offspring and child the word is God's offspring and child in the
38:05: Greek philosophical sense since Plato is his primary source yeah not in a
38:10: Muslim sense are you actually suggesting that Justin Martyr thought that that God begat literal children
38:19: I mean I understand that down in Mecca I understand that around the Kaaba I understand Allah has his daughters and his wife and all the rest of that stuff and so I fully understand that in the polemic context of Muhammad but that's not the polemic context of Justin Martyr and this is where we see someone importing their their context reading our sources from their context and folks if we hear this and we go well those
38:51: Muslims shouldn't do that we shouldn't do it in reverse either and man do we hear it all the time that's one of the things that concerns me is if we're going to call upon them to be more accurate in handling our sources then we've got to try to be just as accurate in handling theirs and I try to be and I'm certainly striving for that but unfortunately there are a lot of a lot of people sort of preying on evangelicals these days that are not careful in their comments about Islam at all a rational power out of himself see that's that's not even an appropriate understanding of what the
39:44: Lagos is but again given Justin's context and the limited amount of information he has what's he driving that from primarily
39:52: Greek philosophy that's not where John was coming from that's not where Paul was coming from but here in the middle of the second century you've got a converted philosopher who is still much more philosopher than he is
40:05: Christian theologian being cited and there's just no reason to do it to try to create this canard that Christians believe that Jesus is a begotten son of God in the sense of the
40:19: Quran's understanding of that that God has a wife, they have a kid comes into existence that is not what we believe in any way shape or form
40:34: Athanasius also said that the son himself is not the son by participation but the father's own offspring now
40:45: Athanasius there are he wrote entire books on the deity of Christ his eternal nature his relationship to the father and one little quote is not even is not even enough to begin to explain what
41:04: Athanasius' view of Christ was and again what is Athanasius defending when's he writing these things primarily in the middle of the fourth century in defense of the council of Nicaea and so what are you going if you're going to honestly deal with Athanasius what is going to be your overriding consideration well his historical context, what's he doing he's defending
41:30: Nicaea five times kicked out of his church because he will not condemn Nicaea and so if you don't have that in your interpretation of Athanasius then don't pretend you're actually interpreting
41:42: Athanasius because you're not and we could bury somebody in the citations of Athanasius affirming the eternal nature of the sonship of Christ and all the rest of that stuff he wrote entire books on the subject
42:00: I've said one of the encouraging things that has been my experience over the years was back in seminary when
42:09: I was doing a lot of spending a lot of time reading these guys and engaging in polemics and apologetics was very often their interpretation not always but especially with Athanasius this was the case, their interpretation of scriptural passages, their arguments in regards to the deity of Christ were the same ones that I was using many, many, many years later and that there is a real encouragement there.
42:35: Christian theologians themselves say that the son is the literal offspring of the father
42:42: Christian theologians themselves say that the son is the literal offspring of the father in their context what they meant by that is when you talk about literal offspring is not a created being but that there is a literal eternal relationship between the father and the son that has always been.
43:06: No wives, no procreation, no beginning no end it is a relationship that describes it is a relationship that allows us to discern between the father and the son if that is what is condemned in the
43:25: Quran, show me where show me where I'll fire up my
43:31: Quran here on my computer and you show me I will show you where the
43:38: Quran speaks of a very physical sexually based relationship and no one will argue,
43:49: I think that I could not show you numerous Muslims who over the years have argued exactly that one big name,
44:00: Ahmed Didat what was his constant argument sonship has to do with the lower sexual nature how many times do we hear him say that in debate after debate we've played on this very program where did he get that?
44:16: He got it from the Quran now if you want to tell me Didat was wrong go ahead and tell me
44:22: I know that not every Islamic apologist just bows down at the feet of Ahmed Didat and says he was the greatest thing ever but he certainly is the most listened to Islamic apologist and at the very least we can certainly understand where he got his ideas
44:37: I think he was being fair in his reading of the Quran at that point so anyway first of all, second of all they agree that the father
44:47: Allah is unoriginal that he has no origin and that the son actually has an origin no, no that's not what that said that is when it says the son had an origin not in time not in time as I discussed in the book basically this is describing the three persons as the the father in the background and flowing forth from the father the revelation in the son and flowing forth from the father and the son now the spirit who indwells us and again we as time bound creatures insist upon applying temporal categories to these things no matter how many times
45:36: I jump up and down saying we're not talking about creation in time we're not talking about the son coming into existence there was never a time when the son was not that was established that was the
45:52: Aryan perspective and that was long gone by the time Athanasius and Augustine, both of them opposed that very concept so to take these words and read them in an
46:02: Islamic context from the 7th century rather than the context they're originally in that's where the problem comes up there you go there he recognizes an important element of this we're talking about outside of time we're not talking about what the
46:27: Quran was talking about and so will Abdullah Kunda understand the need to avoid anachronism and the reading back into Christian theology categories enforced upon it by a religion that comes along hundreds of years later that's the question there wasn't any response to that that's a big issue, think about that yeah it is and we will think about that in October so did he literally have a son?
47:05: well we'd say that Christians apparently do believe that did he literally have a son?
47:11: well we would think that Christians actually believe that no matter what Christians say about the nature of that sonship that's one of the problems with this dialogue why is the concept of having a son linked with the concept of creation because the
47:25: Quran and glory to God over the beast is not only refuting a Christian idea that God has to have a son so,
47:33: Abdullah is saying that the Quran, because I've met Muslims are saying, once they realize that there really isn't any anti -Christian polemic that is meaningful in the
47:44: Quran's words and there really isn't then they have to conclude that well, obviously the
47:49: Quran was dealing with something else but it sounds to me like Abdullah is saying, oh no there is an anti -Christian polemic there there is a response being given to Christianity, so we can ask where is the accurate representation of Christianity because you have to have an accurate representation if you're going to provide a refutation of something but it's also refuting the original great philosophy that it came from let me back it up just a second here and catch you've got to catch these things because this is people say, how do you do this while you're debating?
48:57: I don't know, I was just born this way it ruins lots of good sermons too but it's just the way
49:02: I am I hear these sayings, I remember what was said before I go, do you just contradicted yourself and that's
49:09: I think why some people listen to this program to listen to myself it's also refuting the original great philosophy that it came from it's also refuting, the
49:18: Quran is also refuting the Greek philosophy that it came from so now it's no longer might have influenced, now oh yeah, that's where it's coming from there's been a huge leap in certainty so much so that the
49:34: Quran can actually refute the Greek philosophy but we weren't given an argument that is that airtight were we?
49:46: Not that I heard but that's the kind of thing that's going on I'm going to open up the phone lines if you want to get lined up now's time to get in line for the last half hour of the program, we're going to do 10 more minutes of this, take a break, then we'll take your phone calls, your
50:02: Skype calls, dividing .line 877 -753 -3341 877 -753 -3341 open up the phone lines and I did forget to mention this at the beginning of the program let me announce it again right now tomorrow morning beginning at 11am and Rich, I need to give you these sound files so that we can get them queued up but tomorrow morning beginning at 11am now are you changing this?
50:30: just for the sake of the recording and the archive this is Thursday, August 24th or 25th, 2011 yeah, and the archive this will eventually be in the
50:42: Wayback right, but the debate will be this show, but the debate will be tomorrow morning 11am on the
50:52: Wayback machine, on our 24 -7 stream we will be playing the entirety, it's exactly four and a half hours you put the two together, they're exactly four and a half hours we'll be playing the entirety of the
51:11: Bruce Reeves Roger Perkins debate on the Godhead it's a two night debate the first night
51:22: Mr. Reeves went first, second night Mr. Perkins went first, and then there's Q &A at the end of the second night, so that's why it's a little bit longer but four and a half hours we're going to play the whole thing and I want to do that for a couple reasons it'll give you more of a context to listen to the discussion that we are having of that and secondly, because I didn't
51:57: I didn't I will not I do not have time to play the portions of Mr.
52:05: Reeves' responses and very very often the responses were exactly what
52:10: I would say and so they were very good and so I wanted you to get a chance to hear all of that so it's starting tomorrow at 11 so what's going to happen is that will end right before we do tomorrow's program which will start half an hour early and we'll do a jumbo, we'll do a 90 minute and that's how it'll work so put that on your calendar if you want to hear it, we will start streaming that at 11 o 'clock tomorrow morning on Thursday and hopefully you can get a chance to catch that.
52:49: Okay, so that's what's coming up, let's get a few more minutes in here, we've got one call in right now I realize given the time of day some of those who've called before probably could call in later and say
52:59: I didn't know, I didn't read the blog, blah blah blah, but hey we're doing everything we can to get through as much material as we can and we get some people who say don't take calls at all and other people saying calls are good and you just can't keep everybody happy no matter what you do so we press on here for just a few more minutes before we take a break and then take your phone calls here on The Dividing Line that this intermediary being needs to be established in order for creation to occur for any of the cases,
53:31: God just says where it is that's it, it doesn't need an intermediary it doesn't need a partner, it doesn't need any help that's what we believe in our thought
53:37: Okay, we don't believe that there needs to be an intermediate being either that concept of the
53:49: Logos just is it's the complete opposite of what you have in John, so there's just no reason to even make the connection here,
53:57: I just, I didn't understand it just I'm saying to Abdullah Kunda who
54:04: I know listens to this program, maybe not live today but will listen probably in the archives, that kind of argumentation just doesn't hold any water, it's just it's not carrying any weight at all ...
54:15: ... ... ... ...
54:23: ... ... So from Abdullah's perspective the New Testament is ambiguous at best on the subject of the
54:33: Trinity and he's going to make I think a huge tactical mistake and that is he decides to draw most of his text from the
54:41: Gospel of John even Bart Ehrman even Bart Ehrman who doesn't believe for example that Mark believed in the deed of Christ we'll tell you, well
54:51: John obviously did that's clear so I find it interesting, some of the sources and the consistency of the use of sources that our
55:01: Muslim friends engage in ... ... ...
55:08: ... ... ... ...
55:15: Now Jesus indicates that he is lesser than the Father no,
55:21: Jesus indicates that he is other than the Father the doctrine of the Trinity teaches that Jesus is other than the
55:28: Father that he is distinguished from the Father that he is the one who has voluntarily come, he has been sent by the
55:35: Father but he himself has voluntarily come as well, and that he is in perfect unity with the father.
55:44: That is why it is very common for our Muslim friends, and this is one of the issues
55:49: I have addressed this numerous times in our YouTube videos, especially in responses to Zakir Naik, because he just uncritically, without thought, without even, just in such a simplistic, surface -level way, throws out
56:04: John chapter 5 all the time, but never shows any evidence of actually having seriously dealt with what
56:11: John chapter 5 is actually saying. John chapter 5 contains numerous references to the deity of Christ.
56:17: You simply have to allow them to be there. You can't just ignore them. And you have to understand what's what's going on in John chapter 5 is when
56:27: Jesus says, I do nothing of myself. He's not denying his deity. He is asserting the absolute harmony and unity that exists between himself and the father.
56:39: He is not some renegade deity that has shown up to do his own thing.
56:46: And only a presupposition of Unitarianism can cause you to take that and use that as a rejection of the deity of Christ.
56:55: Now, we have gone through John chapter 5 before. Like I said, I would recommend, I know that I just did recently look at part of my response to Zakir Naik on YouTube, and I took the time to go through John chapter 5, and I know
57:13: I've recorded that a number of times. Someday, someday, we're going to have to create a scripture index to those 530 some odd videos.
57:25: We've got to find somebody who's really bored and really likes what we do that would be willing to come up with a scripture index, an interactive scripture index.
57:41: Because that part wouldn't be the difficult part. The difficult part would just be creating the data. It'd be one thing if it was written stuff.
57:47: It's not written stuff. But we have 530 some odd videos on that channel, and there's a lot of teaching in there.
57:58: But it's not always easy to find because, you know, you can only put so many keywords in.
58:04: You don't have a scripture index thing when you post these things. So it becomes a little difficult. But anyways, there's a whole list of verses, and that's a good place to maybe take a break and then start with our phone calls.
58:17: Right now, we only have Skype callers. We have two Skype callers. Interesting subjects, but that means the phone lines are open 877 -753 -3341.
58:27: We'll be right back. A godly man is such a rarity today.
58:34: So many stars, strong and true, quickly fall away.
58:41: Answering those who claim that only the King James Version is the Word of God, James White, in his book,
58:46: The King James Only Controversy, examines allegations that modern translators conspired to corrupt scripture and lead believers away from true
58:54: Christian faith. In a readable and responsible style, author James White traces the development of Bible translations, old and new, and investigates the differences between new versions and the authorized version of 1611.
59:08: You can order your copy of James White's book, The King James Only Controversy, by going to our website at www .aomin
59:16: .org. Pulpit Crimes. The criminal mishandling of God's Word may be
59:22: James White's most provocative book yet. White sets out to examine numerous crimes being committed in pulpits throughout our land every week, as he seeks to leave no stone unturned.
59:32: Based firmly upon the bedrock of scripture, one crime after another is laid bare for all to see. The pulpit is to be a place where God speaks from His Word.
59:41: What has happened to this sacred duty in our day? The charges are as follows. Prostitution, using the gospel for financial gain.
59:49: Pandering to pluralism. Cowardice under fire. Felonious eisegesis. Entertainment without a license.
59:57: And cross -dressing, ignoring God's ordinance regarding the roles of men and women. Is a pulpit crime occurring in your town?
01:00:04: Get Pulpit Crimes in the bookstore at www .aomin .org. Under the guise of tolerance, modern culture grants alternative lifestyle status to homosexuality.
01:00:22: Even more disturbing, some within the church attempt to revise and distort Christian teaching on this behavior.
01:00:28: In their book The Same -Sex Controversy, James White and Jeff Neal write for all who want to better understand the
01:00:34: Bible's teaching on the subject, explaining and defending the foundational Bible passages that deal with homosexuality, including
01:00:41: Genesis, Leviticus, and Romans. Expanding on these scriptures, they refute the revisionist arguments, including the claim that Christians today need not adhere to the law.
01:00:52: In a straightforward and loving manner, they appeal to those caught up in a homosexual lifestyle to repent and to return to God's plan for His people.
01:01:01: The Same -Sex Controversy, defending and clarifying the Bible's message about homosexuality. Get your copy in the bookstore at www .aomin
01:01:09: .org. How the pilgrim's progress is not an easy way.
01:01:21: It's a journey to the sun day by day.
01:01:28: Following Jesus is a walk of praise. And welcome back to The Dividing Line.
01:01:38: Let's start taking our calls. We've got three callers online via Skype, and none via the old -fashioned phone line.
01:01:48: Not sure why that is, but 877 -753 -3341 is that.
01:01:54: I guess everyone wants to hear themselves in sterling, beautiful sound, digitally reproduced.
01:02:00: So let's start with Daniel. Hi, Daniel. Hi, good afternoon. Yes, sir.
01:02:05: It is nice to hear my melodious voice over the airwaves. I'm a very humble man, in reality.
01:02:13: I can tell, yes. You're from Texas, too. Yes, sir. What's that song? What was that old song?
01:02:20: Ain't It Great to Be Humble? What was it? It's Hard to Be Humble. That's right.
01:02:25: When You're Perfect in Every Way. That's right. I remember now. Yes, it really is. Yes, it is. Okay. Yes, sir.
01:02:30: I had a question about just your general thoughts on the TNIV. On one side,
01:02:36: I hear a lot of really, really nasty things about it. Of course, that's also from the same people who are King James only.
01:02:43: What are your general thoughts on it? I really haven't spent any time on it. I have seen discussions primarily focused upon gender neutrality issues.
01:02:57: My understanding is it's moved farther away from the original
01:03:05: NIV, which had some very great renderings and yet also had some not so great renderings, like rendering flesh as sinful nature.
01:03:16: If you're into dynamic or functional equivalency, then that kind of thing is going to be great for you.
01:03:25: But I'm not all that excited about that. It's great, especially for people who are learning
01:03:33: English, maybe, or something like that. But I would think that people who have a mastery of the language would want something a little bit more literal and a little bit easier to follow a phrase as it's used in Scripture or something like that.
01:03:49: But I've seen big articles, and I simply haven't had time to look at the new stuff.
01:03:55: So I apologize for that, but it's just not been a big priority on the list.
01:04:01: I actually have it. I was wondering when I saw your topic, so I actually scanned down the huge list of resources
01:04:09: I have in accordance, and lo and behold, there it was. And so I started looking at it, and I just happened to bring up John 8 very truly.
01:04:21: So instead of truly, truly, it's very truly, I tell you, Jesus answered before Abraham was born,
01:04:27: I am. At this they picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus hid himself, slipping away from the temple grounds.
01:04:34: So that's going to be, it looks like it's very, very smooth, very smoothed out.
01:04:40: It's probably a very easy reading, but again, as a result, you need to be careful as to some of its renderings because the
01:04:50: New Testament isn't always all that smooth. Yeah. In its original language, I mean. Yeah.
01:04:56: But obviously my concern would be in regards to how far you have taken, quote unquote, gender neutrality.
01:05:05: I don't think it does Father, Mother, God stuff, which is the radical, whacked out stuff you get coming out of Europe or New England or something.
01:05:15: But the primary battleground amongst evangelicals in regards to gender neutrality is issues like brothers and sisters or things like that.
01:05:26: And clearly there are places where masculine pronouns are being used for everybody.
01:05:33: But then there are other places where it might not be. And then the question is, should you not be more careful with the text when there might actually be a reason for the use of a masculine pronoun versus a feminine pronoun or something?
01:05:49: A couple of years ago when, well, not a couple of years ago, a number of years ago when I wrote The God Who Justifies, the first edit came back to me, and they had done this random insertion of feminine pronouns into the text.
01:06:03: And I marked every single one of them and said, no, no, no, no, no. Because I guess one of the things now, even in Christian publishing, is you randomize he's and she's.
01:06:14: I guess they don't do it's, which should be a little bit weird. And I'm like, no, I'm sorry,
01:06:20: I'm too old for this. When there's a she, I stop and start looking for the feminine antecedent.
01:06:27: Otherwise, the default pronoun's a masculine. Well, there are people trying to change all that, and I guess they're probably going to succeed.
01:06:34: But hopefully it's after I'm dead. So anyway. All right, well, thank you very much. Okay, thank you,
01:06:39: Daniel. All right, bye -bye. All right, and whenever we have
01:06:45: Skype calls, we've got to allow for a few moments for transfer of calls from,
01:06:52: I don't even know how this works. I don't even know how Rich has arranged all this stuff. But what, you know, ever since that storm in Tucson, no one has called our phone lines.
01:07:08: 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number. And let's talk with Matt.
01:07:14: Hi, Matt. Hi, Dr. White. Can you hear me? I certainly can, sir. All right, great.
01:07:19: I can't hear myself, but I hope I'm coming through with sterling, perfect quality. In fact, if you start singing,
01:07:26: I'm sure it'll be just wonderful, but we will cut you off if you do so. Aw, man. All right.
01:07:33: Well, the reason I wanted to call in is because I heard your Radio Free Geneva that you did with Michael Coates' book and how
01:07:40: George Bryson's, that little citation, that missed citation was mentioned in his book.
01:07:46: I call it the absurdity. The absurdity, yes. And George Bryson, of course, resurfaced yet again, and he came on to Turd and Fan's blog, and I went back and forth with him a couple different times, but I pointed out to him that basically he's doing the same thing that he did with you, that he did with Douglas Wilson with one of his books where he pretends as if Douglas Wilson recommends him as a reliable source on Calvinism.
01:08:15: Right. But he actually, I know you covered this, I think, on your December 14, 2006 edition of The Dividing Line, where you said maybe he was doing satire, maybe
01:08:26: Douglas Wilson was doing satire or something. But really, Douglas Wilson was not recommending the book.
01:08:33: He did say the first half was that his descriptions of Calvinism were fair and accurate, and he clearly knows the subject, but the part that George, of course, didn't include was where he said, well, when he tries to refute
01:08:44: Calvinism, it falls in a totally different category. And so I talked to him, and I told him, you know, and I expressed to him what
01:08:54: I've been learning from him throughout the years because I've been listening to your program, and he always comes up, and I see him pop up here and there on the blogs, but if there's one thing
01:09:04: I keep learning about these guys is that they have, they just have this amazing capacity for just outright lying.
01:09:11: I mean, it comes so naturally, they make it look so easy, and George has still, to this very, you know, excuse me, as of the time of this program, he is still trying to justify himself.
01:09:25: He will not say that, oh, well, I called Douglas Wilson, and he said that I did everything perfectly honestly.
01:09:30: Or he's not even saying, okay, Michael Coates shouldn't have quoted that part of his book, it was a misrepresentation,
01:09:38: I was there, I knew that it happened, and he should not have done it. He's still just trying to justify himself left and right.
01:09:44: Yeah, no, that does seem to be George's M .O., and this is probably the clearest example that has ever been provided, and from my perspective, there really isn't any dispute here.
01:10:01: So his unwillingness to repent and to admit, okay, all right,
01:10:07: I never said what I quoted, and you never said what you quoted, but to still say, well, but James did say yes, as if that's somehow relevant, because I said yes to something else, and I said yes in a particular context.
01:10:23: Now, one side can provide the actual recordings, and the other side has to find some kind of sarcastic summary statement from a comm box on the
01:10:32: Internet to come up with its argumentation. I mean, it is truly an amazing example of just the attitude that the two sides have about what the subject actually is, and it strikes me that what you have in George Bryson is an abject fear of Calvinism.
01:10:54: You have, you know, and look, the situation he's in, I think, would explain that. He basically has been tasked,
01:11:01: I'm not sure that he looked for this, but it got dumped in his lap. He has been tasked with the job, the duty of being the guard dog at the front door of Calvary Chapel and keeping
01:11:16: Calvinism out, and he's not doing a very good job. And in fact, the leadership of Calvary Chapel knows they are churning out
01:11:26: Calvinists all the time. And I talk about this on the program, and then
01:11:34: I go speak at places, and I cannot tell you how many people. We had visitors at our church about a month ago, and they were just visiting
01:11:44: Phoenix. And, hey, we're another pair of Calvary Chapel folks that, you know,
01:11:50: Calvary Chapel turned us into Calvinists. And it's just like you said, they kept telling us, read all the
01:11:55: Bible. And when we did, then we started asking questions about what the Bible says about these things, and all of a sudden we found ourselves experiencing the
01:12:03: Left Buddha Fellowship. And that has been repeated over and over and over again, and until they stop this
01:12:12: George Bryson -esque kind of response, which has absolutely no intellectual element to it at all.
01:12:20: It is just, it's fear -mongering. It's, ooh, this is really what
01:12:26: Calvinists are all about. They serve an evil, despotic god, and, you know, this kind of stuff.
01:12:33: Until they stop doing that and start trying to provide a meaningful, exegetical response.
01:12:39: But the fact is, they can't do that. I mean, we saw what happened back in February of last year, when the
01:12:48: Calvary Chapel leadership itself on their own radio program, they had to bring in the president of Veritas Seminary to try to respond in 1
01:12:56: John 5, and they still did a face plant on it. So, they just don't know what to do about it.
01:13:03: And so fear -mongering seems to be the way to do it. And for George, once you're afraid of a position, to admit you've ever been wrong about anything, including when the documentation is like, you know, videotape.
01:13:17: I mean, this is as close as, you know, it's as good as anything we had on Ergon Kanner.
01:13:22: You know, I mean, here's the audio, here's what was said, here's what you said was said. It's a complete lie.
01:13:30: If he were to go, well, alright, yeah, that was really dumb. In his mind, he is unlocking the door to the hordes of zombie
01:13:41: Calvinists, who in his mind are standing outside of every Calvary Chapel in the world. So, he can't do it.
01:13:47: He just can't do it. And you and I sit there and try to reason with him, and we go, how can these people be like this?
01:13:54: But I really think I've figured it out. And that is, we are looking at the exegesis of fear, and an utter unwillingness to be honest in these things because of that fear factor that is there.
01:14:09: Well, yeah, I mean, I listened. I got the BAM program back when you were only offering on that ancient media format called
01:14:18: CDs. CDs, which was the only way we could make it available for quite some time. Yeah, and I listened to it, and I'm not, you know, nobody's stupid.
01:14:26: We knew why Hank Hanegraaff was pushing you to give a literal answer, yes, because he knew people were just going to clap their hands to their faces and be like, oh my gosh, he said yes, he said yes, and he would totally ignore everything else you had just said, and they wouldn't bother to think of the fact that George Bryson couldn't offer a counter answer for his own position.
01:14:48: And so, that's why. And wouldn't, no matter how hard, I mean, it was so obvious. And it was, for many people, that was the beginning of their journey into Reformed Theology, was here's a guy, and I'm trying to go, could we look at biblical examples?
01:15:02: No, I don't think so. It was like, I think one of the first comments I got, because remember, even though that aired over three days, that was actually just one three -hour marathon for me.
01:15:13: And I remember as I was driving away that evening, I talked with somebody, and stuff started coming in, and I started immediately getting feedback, and one of the first things that somebody said was, man, that was the difference between the
01:15:27: Bible Answer Man and the Philosophy Answer Man. One side was doing Bible, the other side didn't even want to get close to the
01:15:33: Bible. And that was more representational of the reality than people knew, because you all didn't hear the conversations during the breaks.
01:15:45: I've heard you talk about those before. Yeah, yeah. Those conversations during the breaks were often focused upon Mr.
01:15:51: Hanegraaff's assistant promoting Molinism. And I would love to have had that come out in the discussion, because all that would have done is just shown even more so which side was trying to be biblical and is biblical.
01:16:06: But anyways, back to George Bryson. Yeah, neither Michael Coate nor George Bryson will respond to any of my emails anymore.
01:16:14: It's just been silent. And so you have two men who have been willing to put into print under their name an argument that is dishonest on a level that I don't even know how to describe it.
01:16:32: And yet one is just hiding. Mr. Coate is just hiding down there in Tucson, hoping
01:16:39: I don't show up at his church or something like that, which is only 90 minutes away. What's that?
01:16:44: And then George, who, as you can see, seemingly does most of his communication with folks on comm boxes on blogs.
01:16:54: I'm really not sure what that's all about. But be as it may, that's the way it is. So I understand.
01:16:59: Thank you, sir. All right. Thank you very much. Thank you, Matt. All right. God bless. Bye bye. All right. Still, 877 -753 -3341.
01:17:09: No phone calls on the regular lines. They do work, right? You've checked them?
01:17:14: Okay. That's just amazing. Okay. Here we go. Let's talk with Johnny.
01:17:22: Oh, we're waiting? Oh, I'm sorry. Let me preemptively answer
01:17:28: Johnny's questions. The Urban V's right hand ring finger size was a very feminine six.
01:17:42: Okay. So now we don't have to talk to Johnny because we got it all taken care of.
01:17:50: Now I have a feeling I know where Johnny is going to be going with his question. And is this just because folks in California are really slow here?
01:18:00: Or we're just... Yes. Vicki Ann and Channel just said, is this live?
01:18:09: No, it's Memorax. It's an old commercial for you. Yes, this is live,
01:18:15: Vicki Ann. I'm sorry that you missed the Twitter and blog announcements.
01:18:21: Are we ready to go now? Oh, he's gone? I did answer his question.
01:18:28: What a guess. Man, that is good. That is awesome.
01:18:34: Is he calling on a phone line this time? Just go ahead and take it. Welcome to the dividing line, whoever you are.
01:18:43: How's it going? This must be Johnny. I'm not sure how we knew that, but how did...
01:18:49: I'll get the explanation for this later. You were supposed to be on Skype, but now you're not. But anyways, go ahead.
01:18:55: What's on your mind, Johnny? My answer wasn't good enough for you? Unfortunately, I haven't been able to hear the show for the past 20 or 30 minutes.
01:19:03: Oh, that's a shame. I told you that the answer to your question is that Pope Urban's right -hand ring finger size was a very dainty six.
01:19:13: Oh, okay, got it. Now I can sleep. Okay, good. I've known you've been sleepless now for weeks.
01:19:20: Yes, yes. All right. Actually, you've probably got some obtuse
01:19:26: Oneness Pentecostal argument here. Well, there's something I'm a little bit confused of now.
01:19:32: I do remember when you debated Robert Sabin years ago, one of the lines that he said that stayed with me was he was complaining that you had not established the distinction between being and person.
01:19:44: Now, in your presentations, at least on the dividing line, I've heard you basically accuse them of Nestorianism, making
01:19:50: Jesus two persons, specifically in the prayer life. Well, I actually have not used that terminology because I know that Nestorianism has a particular historical context, but there is no question that their theology involves the idea of Jesus being two persons, and I think that that is borne out very clearly in the debate that we're listening to.
01:20:18: There's no question about that because it is the Father indwelling the Son, and the
01:20:23: Father is the divine person who becomes the Holy Spirit. The Son is not. I mean, the entire prayer life issue, yeah, there's no question that that is the standard
01:20:34: Oneness perspective. Right. Well, what I'm a little bit confused of is because there's two things
01:20:41: I'm seeing here. They seem to feel that they can't distinguish. In other words, you can't have a multi -personal being, so you'll have this denial of the
01:20:52: Trinity in that sense. The assumption of Unitarianism, right. Right. But at the same time,
01:20:57: I was reading David Bernard, and I found two statements in his book that to me sound contradictory because either he's defining the word being as something different from nature, or I'm not understanding what he's saying.
01:21:09: But in his book, Doctrines of the Bible, he speaks of Jesus as having a dual nature, which would be
01:21:17: Orthodox. But then in another place, he would speak of the Father and the
01:21:22: Son as forming one being, and that made no sense to me whatsoever. Father and the
01:21:28: Son, I need to, I don't have, I'm not sure that I have that book.
01:21:33: I just repurchased his Oneness of God book because I guess I must have lent the other one out.
01:21:39: I couldn't find it anywhere, so I repurchased it. But I don't have the context. You'd have to read me more of the context because that sounds odd.
01:21:49: Yeah, let me see if I can find it because I'm looking at it on Kindle. He speaks of Jesus revealing his dual nature.
01:21:57: This is in location 2363. Yeah, but even when they would say dual nature, you need to understand that when, at least from the
01:22:08: UPCI perspective, and you'll find some variations along these lines, but the important thing to remember is the person who indwells the physical body is the
01:22:23: Father. He alone is deity. The Son came into existence at his birth in Bethlehem.
01:22:30: So the idea of a, it's not one person with two natures. It is literally two persons because there's communication between those natures in the form of prayer.
01:22:44: And this is something that Reeves went after with Perkins, trying to push him to answer the question not only of the prayer life but of the suffering, because this is very relevant to the issue of the atonement, who actually dies.
01:23:01: And this is where you heard in the last program where Roger Perkins talks about dead deity.
01:23:07: He mocks the idea of dead deity. So whatever you do with the two natures, they are not only distinct, but they are completely separable, so that what is affirmed of the one in its death is not affirmed of the other.
01:23:23: That's an important aspect to keep in mind. Assuming Perkins basically expressing the same things that your author is expressing,
01:23:37: I found the quote, by the way. This is what he says. He says, He was the
01:23:43: Father and the Son, the deity in flesh. He did not say, My Father and I agree in one, as if He and the Father were two separate persons united in purpose.
01:23:50: Only rather, He represented the Father and had united with humanity to form one being,
01:23:55: Jesus Christ, the Godhead incarnate. And it just doesn't seem, it sounds logically contradictory.
01:24:01: He already established the dual nature, but it seems like he thinks that the word being is something different from nature.
01:24:07: I don't know if you know anything about that. It sounds like he's using the word being there as person, as a human being or something like that.
01:24:16: It sounds like that's how he's using it. But this is why a lot of folks are confused by this, because this is, again, it's a lot of its terminology, and that is why
01:24:26: I have done my best to cut through the confusion that is created by a lot of this argumentation and going to what the real difference between Orthodox Christian faith is and Oneness theology, and that is who became incarnate.
01:24:46: Now, we would have a vast difference as to what incarnation is as well. I think that's important, too. But the fundamental issue, because for them, the word did not, when you say the word became flesh, if there was no preexistent word as a person, then you don't have an incarnation.
01:25:04: A plan cannot take on flesh. The plan was for the
01:25:09: Father to indwell a human being. But the
01:25:14: Father did not become flesh. The word became flesh. The union does not result in an admixture or half
01:25:24: God, half man, or anything like that, but the union is such that it continues to this day in Oneness theology.
01:25:30: One of the questions I'm going to be asking that didn't come up in the debate is, what about the continuing ministry of the
01:25:40: Son as intercessor in Oneness theology? Who is interceding in heaven?
01:25:47: Is that just a human nature without a spirit? Who is
01:25:53: Jesus in heaven today? Because, you see, from our perspective, Jesus remains the God -man. But if Jesus was only the
01:26:01: God -man in Oneness theology because the Father was living inside a human being, the Father is now the
01:26:06: Holy Spirit. And so, who is Jesus in the role of intercession in the presence of the
01:26:15: Father in heaven in the book of Hebrews? Who is that? What is that? Honestly, I don't know.
01:26:21: We'll find out, I guess. But it is an inconsistency to try and—they will allow for one person to have multiple natures, but they will not allow for an essence, a nature, to have multiple persons.
01:26:35: I find that as a category. I think they want to have their cake and eat it, too. Well, there's no question that the forms of argumentation that they utilize are internally inconsistent.
01:26:46: In fact, one of the things we're going to hear is Roger Perkins constantly saying, well,
01:26:53: I didn't see person—the Bible doesn't talk about persons. And yet, at the beginning of the second part of the debate, and this is going to air tomorrow, you're going to hear him using terms like ontological, you're going to hear him talking about how allegedly haise means one person, and he's going to be deriving these from lexical sources.
01:27:15: So when he's positively defining his side, oh, he can use person, and he can use ontological, he can use ontology, he can use all this fancy language to define his perspective.
01:27:25: But when we do it, well, that's not in the Bible anywhere. The inconsistency is really striking, and the forms of argumentation—I think you're onto something there.
01:27:36: But you also realize that there are differing perspectives out there, and given the relative newness of at least the
01:27:48: UPCI version of things—I mean, you're talking 100 years— you don't have quite the harmony and unity that you have in Trinitarian theology and a lot of those issues.
01:28:00: So keep that in mind as well. Okay? Okay, thank you very much. Hey, thanks for your call. All right, and remember, Urban V, ring finger, a dainty size 6.
01:28:08: That's what you really need to know. Thank you. Thank you so much. God bless. Bye -bye. We aim to please here on The Dividing Line, a jumbo edition in the books.
01:28:21: It's going to take longer than a month to get through everything after the last couple weeks. We're adding a whole day extra as we go along here.
01:28:29: We'll be back tomorrow, folks. Remember, 11 o 'clock for the debate, 3 .30 for the start time for another
01:28:36: Jumbo DL. We'll see you then. God bless. Thank you.
01:28:56: Thank you. The Dividing Line has been brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries.
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