Northwest Nazerene University (NNU) and the heretical teaching of some professors

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May 12, 2022

We will be having a discussion with Sean K., a now graduated student of NNU, who spent 4 years trying to lovingly correct professors who were teaching many heretical positions that are not consistent with orthodox Christian doctrine nor the stated position of the Nazarene Church.

00:07: Welcome to Apologetics Live. We're here to answer your questions and challenges about God and the
00:15: Bible. Meet your hosts from Striving for Eternity Ministries, Andrew Rappaport, Dr. Anthony Silvestro, and Pastor Justin Pierce.
00:27: Well we are live, Apologetics Live, here to answer any questions you have about God and the
00:32: Bible. We can take that challenge. You have a question, we can answer it. Let me bring in Dr.
00:37: Silvestro. Welcome, sir. Hey, how are you? Good, good, good. So we haven't been on together in a little while.
00:43: A long time between both of our travel schedules, and we both hit the road next week, right?
00:50: Yeah, we're both gonna be out in Kentucky. Not as far of a ride for you, granted, but a little bit more for me.
00:57: But we will both be out there next week at the Truth Matters, and then the week after that I head to Washington, DC.
01:06: So just got back from doing an ambassador evangelism training with Pastor Kofi out there in Medford, Oregon.
01:14: Great church. It's a church plant, starting out well, starting out solid, and the first thing they wanted to really do in their equipping conferences is evangelism.
01:24: A good thing for a church plant to do. So this is a ministry of Striving for Eternity.
01:30: We welcome you guys to go check out everything at strivingforeternity .org. I know that I have family coming in in less than an hour.
01:39: They are on their road, waiting to come down, and so just before they get here,
01:45: I'm gonna have to bow out, so I'm gonna hand it off to you, Dr. Silvestro, and you set up the early part.
01:51: For those who are new, I should actually describe how we do this show. We don't do this very often. We should. This is a live show.
01:57: For any of you that have any question about God in the Bible, you can just go to apologeticslive .com.
02:03: At that site, you will be able to see where to participate. There's a little stream yard icon.
02:10: It's a duck. I don't know why it's a duck, but it's a duck, and just click on that, and you can join us there. Ask any question.
02:16: We do go to YouTube and Facebook and see where people put in comments. Sometimes we catch them.
02:22: They sometimes go, because we get so many comments on the different platforms, we don't see them all. So the best thing to do is come in and ask any questions.
02:31: And so, but what we try to do is teach you how to do apologetics, and we deal with different issues. Tonight, we're gonna deal with a specific university and some things going on there and a student from there.
02:41: I see Pastor Josiah is also backstage, so hopefully he'll come in and give his wisdom, but I do gotta say,
02:49: Anthony, before we start, I just finished reading a little book that you read. It is called
02:55: Halloween Under the Light of Scripture, The History of Halloween by, oh, check this out, our very own
03:01: Pastor Justin Pierce. What do you know? This is only about 40 pages. It's not very big.
03:08: This was really something that he just did as a starter. I think he's planning on doing a longer version. It is available on Amazon and not very expensive, so if you want to learn a little bit more about Halloween and get prepared for October, I know it seems a long ways away, but he has a really good way of showing you, kind of like Pastor Josiah does, of explaining how to do harmoneutics.
03:31: That seems to be an important thing for all of us here, and he goes through explaining harmoneutics and how to apply it to an issue like Halloween, so I recommend that to y 'all.
03:42: Yeah, it's a good book. I got it as soon as it was available and read it, and I honestly, it was good.
03:48: I can't wait for him to build us out into a bigger book now. Yeah, which he said he's going to do.
03:56: I preached at a church the last two Sundays, and it was all on apologetics.
04:02: I did evangelism training there three years ago. The church has taken off in evangelism and in church growth as a result of the work they've put in since those sermons.
04:11: I went back to teach on apologetics, so to build off of some of that.
04:17: It's amazing to watch what happens in a church that has this type of growth.
04:25: Yeah, so if you want us to come out to your church and do our Vassar evangelism, or maybe, hey, we got a lot of evangelism going, but we've got people that have questions.
04:34: You want a presuppositional apologetics course? We come in for a weekend and help your church.
04:39: That's what Striving for an Attorney does. We come in, and now some of you are saying, but you don't know my church.
04:45: It's a small little church, and no one comes in to visit us. Yes, we do. That's actually exactly who we target.
04:52: We want to go to the churches that no one else will come to because they're just too small and they can't afford it.
04:58: So we have our monthly supporters that help us to be able to go to churches where we fly across the country and get nothing, not even a love offering.
05:07: That's okay, because that's what our monthly supporters do. I'll also give that as a shout out.
05:14: If you want to support us monthly, we wouldn't mind it. Just go to strivingforeternity .org slash support, and that's a way you could do that.
05:23: So before we bring in our guests, let me ask anything else that you want to mention before we get to some questions.
05:29: No, I think we should get to your questions. I do want to give a shout out to my wife, though, because you know what spring is,
05:38: Andrew, on Thursdays in Ohio, right? It's the start of garage sales season. Yeah, you poor thing.
05:44: So hence I got a little more of a tan today. We've been out garage sailing. She does a remarkable job of getting into conversations, and she got some doozies today for us to get into.
05:57: One is Pentecostal, who is all over the board. It was really incredible.
06:03: He literally told us that Jesus is talking to himself when he's talking to the father. Oh, wow.
06:08: Okay. It was really, really strange, you know, for an apologetic, though, right?
06:16: I mean, I think one of the best ways to address the one is Pentecostal is I say, well, how are your sins paid for?
06:22: And I just walk him through the understanding that the father's wrath was poured out on his son according to Isaiah 53.
06:29: You don't understand the atonement until you understand that there was a penalty to be paid on that cross.
06:35: The same penalty would be paid by sinners in hell for eternity if it wasn't for Christ's sacrifice.
06:41: They also, I guess, have schizophrenia at the baptism of Christ. Well, there's no explanation for that.
06:48: But John's hearing the father and seeing the spirit. Wait a minute. Yeah, well, he tried to say that they were just stories for us to get an idea of what's going on.
06:58: And so he begged for personal revelation, and I guess his father was a bishop and he won this
07:05: Pentecostal Church with lots of personal revelations, which I said, how is he any different than Muhammad?
07:10: Yeah. Or Joseph Smith? Or Ellen G. White? Or any of these other false teachers that are out there?
07:17: That now is one of the biggest problems. So we're gonna be doing, on my Rap Report podcast, I'm gonna be getting together with Nathaniel Jolly and Eki who do
07:26: Truth Be Known podcast. And we decided we're gonna do a podcast together. What are we gonna discuss is, let's discuss the two biggest problems in the
07:33: American Church. The sufficiency of Scripture and hermeneutics. I mean, when you're asking for personal revelation, you're saying, the
07:42: Bible just isn't enough for me. I need more than God's Word. But that's essentially what they're saying.
07:49: And so I do gotta say, I mean, this is just kind of funny because what you end up doing...
07:56: There are people who asked if Justin Pierce is alive in the comment section, so I just thought I'd put up his...
08:01: On the Money Brothers is what he said there. So here's the thing. You have a different style of evangelism.
08:08: It's called garage sale or yard sale evangelism, right? You go where they're looking to be out in their garage or in their property, and they want you to come to them.
08:21: And they're not gonna leave because, well, they're trying to sell things. That's right.
08:27: Here's a hint, though, if you're gonna try this. It is a good thing to do. The thing is, when other people show up, then it becomes where they can just jettison your conversation to go over to someone else.
08:38: So if you want to do this now, if you want to get the good deals, you go early in the morning before everyone gets there.
08:45: If you want to have the conversation, you go after the morning crowd leaves. And they're sitting there all day, bored out of their skull, hoping to sell just a few more things.
08:54: And they got nothing else to do and no one else to talk to but you. That's right. And you speak the gospel loud when you do give it so that anybody else shopping can hear it, too.
09:06: We make it worthwhile. We had a good time today. And if there's any question, folks, let me just...
09:12: I was telling this story recently, Anthony. You'll remember it, but Anthony's wife, Julie, has an ability to speak to anybody.
09:20: And it was quite interesting. So Anthony and I, when our wives were out, we were speaking in Redwood City, California.
09:28: We were staying at... they put us up in an Airbnb. And before we headed over to the church, we decided we'd just take a walk around the neighborhood just to enjoy the beautiful weather.
09:37: And there was a guy who had his garage door open. The concrete of his garage door was paved with something so it looked like a marble floor.
09:45: He said he uses it for an extra room when he has parties. But Julie just kind of like walks right up to him, starts a conversation over the floor.
09:54: And before we know it, he's showing us his AfroTurf in the backyard and then bringing us into his office.
10:00: AstroTurf, not AfroTurf. AstroTurf. The fake grass that Ray Comfort has in his backyard, okay?
10:06: Yes, right. But he showed... we go from there, although I will say that guy's, you know, fake grass was way more comfortable and felt more realistic than Ray Comfort's.
10:16: But from there, we end up in his office. He's like walking us all through his house. People he just met on the street.
10:23: Of course, once we were in his office, I quickly identified him as a Mormon, which Julie was like, how did you know that?
10:28: He had a Mormon Jesus hanging on his wall. Yeah, you picked that off pretty fast. That's right.
10:34: Yeah, yeah. So we were talking to... because I was talking to someone, they were like, oh yeah, I walk in, I can see the SDA Jesus because they can spot that.
10:41: They all have their own version of Jesus there. So let's get to some questions that came up early.
10:47: I know that you have Sean in the background. We'll bring him in. But I know I got to jettison soon.
10:53: So one of the questions I was asked, and I was specifically asked not to give this person's name. He doesn't want his pastors to find out.
11:00: This is someone who had listened, came in touch with Apologetics Live through the
11:06: RA Fuentes debate, if you guys remember that, on Calvinism. And so since then, he's discovered his pastors are very much against Calvinism.
11:17: And when he was trying to answer some things, it came up as a question of what translation of the
11:23: Bible do you use? And when he said he uses many translations, the pastors got upset and told him 1611
11:31: King James Bible is what you should be using. Now, so he asked,
11:38: I want to give an answer. But and he didn't want it. He couldn't come on. Obviously, he doesn't want his name known.
11:44: Got it. So here's the thing. How do we answer it? The King James is known as King James only controversy.
11:51: People who believe you must use the King James Bible. There's two groups of people with this.
11:58: If you run into this, folks, one is the people that actually think the 1611 is inspired.
12:05: And the other is those that just prefer the 1611 or the King James. Those that think that the
12:13: King James is an inspired translation, but they don't hold to the 1611 as inspired have a bigger problem.
12:19: Just so you know, the 1611 was the first edition, but it had been there had been several others.
12:26: And so you ended up having the, you know, up until the 17,
12:32: I think 1786 is is with the last edition.
12:39: And so what you end up seeing is that the 1611 was originally done, because you had
12:46: King James who was after a battle between the Catholics and then the
12:51: Protestants, there was this battle where basically England was being split. So why did
12:56: King James want a Bible in English? He wanted an English Bible to satisfy the reformers, but he wanted it to include the
13:06: Apocrypha to satisfy the Roman Catholics. That's an important distinction because when they say the 1611 was inspired by God, they're saying that the
13:18: Apocrypha was inspired by God. Now, many of them don't know that the 1611 had the
13:23: Apocrypha in it, because they don't use a 1611 version. They use a version they can read in modern
13:30: English, which is the 1700s. If I give you a 1611 version, it's going to take you a little bit of time to realize there's no
13:38: S's, there are F's, there's no V's, there are U's, there's different word spellings.
13:44: The King James Bible in 1611 didn't have the standardized English we have today. There was things that they did that caused confusion.
13:52: For example, the transliteration of two words. One is deacon. We have an English word for that, servant.
13:57: But that transliteration, because at the time in the Anglican church that they were doing this, they didn't want to translate the word servant for those who are acting as leaders.
14:07: The other one is the word baptismo. We have an English word for that, to plunge or to dip, but they sprinkled or poured and therefore to translate that word was a problem.
14:17: So why do I bring these things up real quick? Because if the 1611 is inspired, then
14:23: God created confusion in his inspired text, especially that most of the people that are
14:29: King James only are Baptists. The baptism one is kind of a touchy situation.
14:35: But the more important thing is that if the 1611 is inspired, then God inspired the
14:41: Apocrypha and the Catholics would be right. We have to understand why King James did that. Now there's a lot of reasons if people say, okay, well, the 1611 is not inspired, but the
14:50: King James is. Well, let's remember that this was based off a text description,
14:57: Greek text description that was rushed. And it didn't have, it didn't use as many of the manuscripts that were available.
15:04: So this becomes an important thing to look at because this shows us that when we look at this, there are better translations because they use more of the manuscripts that were available.
15:16: We also realize that when we look at the King James that we have, people will say, well, this is the text that God inspired or God wants us to have.
15:27: The initial several prefaces to the King James all stated that the
15:33: King James should be updated as language changes. They did not believe, those that did the translation did not believe it was inspired.
15:42: So if your pastor is arguing for that, be concerned because he has left really focusing on Christ to focus on a translation.
15:52: They end up worshipping a book rather than the author of the book. Anthony, you have anything you want to add to that?
15:58: Yeah, it's the 1769 is the one that people typically read from. So that's the newer version of it.
16:06: And from my understanding, I don't remember which one it is and where I read the quote at, but a number of the, a large percentage of the
16:12: King James was actually copied from either the Geneva or Wycliffe. Well, it's, so Wycliffe had his
16:19: Bible. So yeah, it's Wycliffe. It's like 75 % of it is not. I mean, there was an
16:26: English translation. So, so the question is if 75 % of it was from an already existing translation, why did they need a new translation?
16:34: The very simple reason was he was trying to, I mean, every king or queen was because it was really the two
16:42: Queens before that were trying to take the whole country reformed or whole country Roman Catholic.
16:48: And they were taking, every time they did that, they took all the pew Bibles out of every church, replaced it with Latin ones, or took it out and replaced it with the
16:55: Geneva one. And so what you ended up seeing is that he decided he would do it in English to satisfy one, but do it, add the
17:03: Apocrypha to satisfy another. So if much of it's already existing, much of that translation was already existing, then what he really added was the
17:10: Apocrypha. And, and, and most people aren't going to want to have the, believe the Apocrypha when they hold to King James only.
17:18: Now some will make the argument and, and James White has a great book on this called King James Controversy, because some will make the argument that, that in the, and they've really focused on the
17:28: NIV. That was where they had the problem. And I'm not a big fan of the NIV, but you know, it has its place.
17:35: It's just not something you should use for study, for serious study. The, the, what they'll do is show that, oh, look at these passages where the deity of Christ was removed.
17:46: Well, as we do textual criticism, we realize the deity of Christ wasn't in that passage. That's why they, it's not that they removed it.
17:53: It's that in the earlier manuscripts, it, it wasn't there. It was added in. And one of the neat things with James White does is he takes,
18:01: I think it's the New American Standard and the King James and shows passages where that same argument, he says, well, see, here's where they deny the deity of Christ because the earlier manuscripts had that in there.
18:13: They call him Lord Jesus. And so that argument can go either way.
18:20: Yeah, that's right. All right. So one other question that I was asked to, to answer on the show is the question of, can
18:29: I explain the difference between pro -life and abolitionism? Okay.
18:35: Many people think that those are two of the same, that we can have abolition, we can have pro -life.
18:43: They're both toward the same agenda. Yes and no. So this is a good way of me illustrating this.
18:50: And this actually was, came, comes from the Daily Wire. The Daily Wire gave 10 most common pro -life arguments or pro -abortion arguments and ways to debunk them.
19:01: And so the question is, what about rape and incest? So I'm going to read their, their response and I want to use this as the example.
19:11: So it says, this is not an argument. It's a hypothetical. Rape and incest only account for 1 % of all abortions.
19:18: These are hard and rare cases. They must mitigate the individual moral culpability of a woman to choose abortion, but they do not change the fact that an unborn child is a distinct human entity, i .e.
19:30: a human being, i .e. a person, and therefore worthy of the same protections the rest of us receive.
19:35: We do not kill the child for the sins of the father. If you want to execute someone for rape, execute the rapist, not the baby.
19:44: Now that's a good, pretty good, but here's the problem with that.
19:51: And this is a good way of illustrating the difference between pro -life and abolition. The argument they made there is good.
19:57: It is a human being. That's important. And so an abolitionist says we need to outlaw all abortion.
20:10: All of it. Why? Because as that thing, as that argument says, it is a human being.
20:16: Pro -life argument would be, yes, we need to outlaw all human life because it's a human being.
20:24: But we can take the small steps and say, okay, let us create laws that outlaw all abortion except for rape and incest.
20:37: And that gets us a little bit closer to the point where the abolitionist says, no, all of it.
20:43: Outlawed. Rape, incest, any argument. That's a the answer they gave is a good way for me to illustrate the difference between an abolitionist and a pro -life.
20:58: And pro -life is going to say we could take those incremental steps. Let's fight to get this small bill passed.
21:04: Here's the reality, folks. That small bill that you think is small, you have to fight tooth and nail for anyway.
21:10: The same fight you have to do for an abolitionist one anyway. So might as well go for what is right and say it's all outlawed.
21:19: So that would be my way of illustrating the difference. Anthony, your thoughts on that? Yeah. Well, I want to remind everyone, we had a great show with Sarah Cleveland, who is nationally known on this subject.
21:32: And we had her on, I think it was September of last year. So go in the archives and go find that show.
21:39: One thing that she did say, though, because there's disagreements among the abolition movement. She was really clear that as an abolitionist, that she believes the right position is we want to outlaw all abortion.
21:52: I completely agree with her. The pro -life movement says, as you said, Andrew, that we believe in getting increments.
21:59: Now, the abolitionist, there's some abolitionists that are happy to say, look, I'm going to fight for abolishing all abortion.
22:07: But if I get an incremental bill, I'll take it and then keep on working. And that's what
22:12: Sarah had said. Some abolitionists don't like that either. They don't like compromise whatsoever. And so there's a little spectrum in there.
22:21: But the bottom line is, as you said, Andrew, it's do you believe in abolishing abortion from the get -go or do you believe in just taking baby steps towards that process?
22:30: And that is episode 117. If you want to go search for the title, just go to christianpodcastcommunity .org
22:39: and just do you can search for just Sarah Cleveland or the full title is Abolition of Abortion with Sarah Cleveland.
22:46: So that was an excellent episode. Of course, Anthony was running that one. So that automatically means, folks, those of you who are regular know what that means.
22:55: It means it went into overtime, as we know here as Anthony time when it goes over.
23:01: So that was several episodes ago, like 30 some episodes ago. So I encourage you to check that out.
23:08: So those are the two questions that I was asked if I could answer. And for those listening on the podcasts,
23:14: I will try to drop the link to that previous episode in the show notes. So I'm going to at this point,
23:21: I'm going to hand it over to you because you have the guest and you know him better. So you could introduce him.
23:26: I do. Yep. So let's let's bring in, first of all, Pastor Josiah Nichols.
23:32: So Josiah, thank you for joining us tonight again. Hi. As you can tell, we're secretly making you a regular now, too.
23:41: So, yeah, between him and Justin Peters, I don't Anthony, I don't know if you're able to watch what we had,
23:48: Justin, since he's been here more than me in the past few months, he was that he was the host and I was the special guest.
23:54: He's been on a bunch. Yeah, so that's it. So but now
24:00: I want to bring on a special guest. And and so without further ado, because it's a little later than I thought it was going to be.
24:07: Sean, how are you doing tonight? I'm doing pretty good. How about yourself? Doing well. Thank you for being on.
24:13: And I'll ask you to speak up just a little bit more if you can or get the microphone closer to you. Thank you for being on.
24:19: And so this is really interesting. What what I had, what had happened to me. So I was out in Boise, Idaho area back in March and right after Shepherd's Conference and I was teaching for six straight days and somebody came up to me and said, hey,
24:36: I have this letter I want to email you. If you don't mind seeing it, because there's a student who's been fighting back at Northwest Nazarene University, which is in the area, which just so happens.
24:48: I know several people that actually go there and have had issues with with the doctrinal positions on a number of the professors there.
24:57: So I took interest in, you know, like anybody who is going to stand up for truth. I take interest in I want to see what's going on.
25:03: I love I love that idea of people standing up. And so I was happy to read this letter.
25:11: What I expected to be, you know, one or two pages ended up being much more than that. And then when
25:17: I saw the revised version, it's like 28 pages worth of.
25:22: Yeah, it's about 17000 words. It's about four times what its original size was.
25:28: I revised it, but it's that's trying to counteract some of the allegations of me taking things out of context.
25:37: You know, I've not only do I have all the evidence supporting it behind it, but I'm like, I'll incorporate more of it in the letter itself to, you know, shock and awe,
25:45: I guess, is the strategy I went after. Yeah, well, I appreciate it, though. I mean, you took a very nice piece.
25:51: Yeah, right. Yeah, you should have nailed this to the front door. I'm on campus right now.
25:58: Maybe I'll go over afterward and do that. Do that, take a picture. Yeah. Maybe use a thumbtack so you don't get charged with vandalism.
26:06: Right. Good idea. So and we designed to have the show today because you literally just graduated.
26:12: Yeah, commencement was just last Saturday. So now they can't stop you from graduating.
26:18: No, I mean, some professors did want to see me expelled, but I did not succeed, fortunately for me anyway.
26:26: So that was good. Yeah, I'd say I appreciated the scholarship that you really went through in this paper.
26:33: You know, in the show, a lot of our listeners know this, that I had done what ended up being over 100 hours of research.
26:40: Initially, it was about 60 hours of research into a cult in Iowa that pastor had been doing a lot of very naughty things behind the scenes.
26:51: And through many hours of research and talking to witnesses and whatnot, essentially the same thing you did,
26:58: Sean, is had lots and lots of documentation to be able to walk out there and be able to say, look, this is what's going on.
27:06: Here's what the witnesses are saying. And at that time,
27:11: I did give every opportunity for the other side to show up on the show, which they didn't do at any point.
27:19: They wanted to threaten us. They wanted to tell us not to do this. They want to do all kinds of stuff. But the last thing they wanted to do was actually address the allegations that were brought forth by multiple witnesses.
27:30: In fact, their first line of defense after you wouldn't stop was to come after me and tell me
27:36: I had to put a stop to you because of what you were doing. And so it was to kind of go to, okay, if you don't stop, we'll go to your boss, you know, the head of the ministry and tell him to make you stop.
27:46: And in which case I said, you can come on the show. And I actually dealt with that letter that he sent. You got a chance to deal with it too.
27:55: So for me, I took a huge liking to your letter,
28:01: Sean. And obviously, we've talked a few times now. And I will say that I waited until today because I want to make sure you were in the clear.
28:11: But I reached out to the dean and the acting dean of the school so that I could say, hey, look, we're going to have the student on, the one that you guys tried to expel, the one that you are saying he took all these professors out of context.
28:27: And of course, in the background, I've already talked to other people. So I've corroborated Sean's story anyway. And so I knew better.
28:34: But what the surprise was, is as you sent me those phone numbers, I made the phone calls today.
28:40: And as you said, the one dean's out of town, the acting dean was in town. And he ended up calling me back about four hours after I called him.
28:49: And boy, that was interesting. And before I get into that phone call with Dean Richard Thompson, Sean, just in general, you obviously had a number of concerns at this school.
29:06: And you started in your freshman year noticing these issues from a doctrinal perspective.
29:14: And how many of those years, you were four years in school, were you actually trying to address these situations with professors, themselves, because I know you did that, with deans, with other people within the
29:28: Nazarene church? So not necessarily framing them in terms of this doesn't seem to fit what the faculty policy manual says or what the
29:40: Articles of Faith of the Church of Nazarene, which since they're religion faculty, they're required to affirm. But I know that even freshman year,
29:47: I raised some questions. One of the Bible professors in inter -biblical literature said something like, well,
29:54: Sodom and Gomorrah has nothing to do with homosexuality. Which I'm like, well, I mean, I've read Robert Gagnon. So I know that that's just nonsense in that point.
30:01: And people will say that usually don't end up affirming orthodox doctrine on homosexuality on that point.
30:08: That turned out to be the case. And so I wrote to ask him a question, never responded. But it began especially,
30:13: I think, let me think here, probably late sophomore year, right before we went online for the second half of the semester.
30:23: And before we resumed in person in June, my junior year. And besides my comments in class, we can talk about more specific incidents later.
30:34: But it was that year when a number of students had written a tract or a pamphlet handed out to all the on -campus students and many of the faculty.
30:42: And basically arguing homosexuality. Basically, pro -LGBT, it's fine. Bible's fine with that.
30:48: In and used to change its policy with respect to that. I responded to the tract's authors. They had an email address in the back of it.
30:55: It was just an anonymous email. But one of the students, she responded to me with her campus email. We talked really briefly.
31:02: But then she said, I'm going to hand you off to my good friend, Dr. Bankard, who was at the time the only philosophy professor.
31:08: And I'm like, that's kind of weird. Just to be clear, though, just to be clear, these were pro -homosexual tracts.
31:16: Yeah, it was. That were being handed out on campus. Yes, by a number of students. As I said, one of them responded with her own email address to me.
31:26: And by the way, this is when I began to think, oh, this is probably much more serious.
31:31: Because if I wanted to be particularly charitable, even some of the more objectionable things I had heard previously, such
31:38: I mentioned in that Bible class, maybe he's just saying about that particular passage, but he'll still affirm homosexual practices are immoral, gay marriage, that's not legitimate.
31:50: Conceivably, it's not probable. But if I'm going to be charitable, maybe you could take it that way. Or even when the same professor at lunch said to me and another professor, well, whatever you think about the issue, maybe
32:00: Paul's admonition, better to marry than to burn with lust, maybe that could apply to gay marriage. Whatever you think about the issue.
32:05: Well, that's kind of weird. So too with this professor, this Dr. Banker, the philosophy professor, he had a rainbow sticker on his door.
32:13: But being charitable, I'm like, well, it's upside down. It wasn't Roy G. Biv. It was Biv Yor or whatever, upside down.
32:20: Maybe it means something else. And maybe he was playing devil's advocate when he said after class that probably some gay marriages are fine.
32:27: But when this came around, I'm like, oh, this is probably not looking good.
32:33: But he responded because she emailed the student and emailed him and said want to meet.
32:38: And so he responded later that day or sent an email to me. So we met shortly after that. And he had said he had offered to speak to the faculty or rather the board of trustees,
32:47: I believe, about the student's concerns. And so that's kind of set me a bit more, take it with more urgency my junior year where a few issues came up.
32:58: For instance, a certain author, a professor was using for a class I had certain other objections to the author as well, including the content of the book.
33:07: But what I raised with the professor was, well, you know, this guy is pretty well known for being an emergent church figure and among other things, being pro
33:14: LGBT. I'm just afraid the tacit implication here is that some students who will look into this guy will be like, well, it's no big deal then.
33:22: And in a kind of an unforced error on this professor's part, he responded. One of the first things he said was, well,
33:29: Wesleyans disagree about gay marriage. And I'm like, yeah, but should they? Like, that's the real who cares about the descriptive fact.
33:37: That was a weird way of putting it. And then he said, well, I'm confident our OT and NT professors wouldn't wholeheartedly agree that, you know, that the author
33:46: Leviticus, they don't, of course, believe in mosaic authorship. And Paul wouldn't would condemn the practices in a gay marriage.
33:54: And I'm like, OK, but I eventually asked him because of this, like, well, I'm confused now.
33:59: What do you think about homosexuality? He never responded, which was kind of weird. So I had a lot of these things.
34:05: I mean, it was around this time is when I'm like, OK, I'm going to set out to document more carefully my concerns, which eventually gave birth to this letter.
34:14: But before I'll just continue this, the gay tract came up again in my junior year. See, one of the art professors under the auspices of the chaplain's office speaks at chapel.
34:26: And I just rewatched it. If someone has my letter, you can actually I think there's a link to their unlisted
34:32: YouTube video. So do you want me to give the letter out in a link? Because I can
34:38: I can do that if you wish me to. If you want to, that's fine. I mean, I view it as I have a it's a public copyright.
34:43: You can do whatever you want with it. So if you if you give that to me, Anthony, I'll put that in the show notes.
34:49: OK, I'll email that to you here. Yeah, but but just can just briefly this gay tract.
34:55: This is about a year after it was originally written, distributed. This art professor speaks at chapel.
35:02: I just rewatched it recently. It was it was worse than I remembered. Very pro LGBT and other more extreme woke stuff.
35:10: But one of the things he he he he commends the students who wrote the tract. He quotes from it.
35:17: And among other things, he said, you know, imagine if LGBTQ students felt accepted here for who they are.
35:25: If I'm being really charitable, I could give an orthodox reading to that. I mean, the whole context would fit with that.
35:31: But, you know, I'm a charitable guy. But then he continues and for who they loved without judgment.
35:37: I'm like, hmm, I have I have a problem with this. So I write to him. He never responds. I write to the chaplain, one of the chaplains anyway.
35:44: And he kind of just ignores my concern, which I thought I put pretty well and explained clearly.
35:51: And he said, well, all this professor was doing was saying LGBT people are made in the image of God. And I thought to myself, did you not listen to the same thing we listened to?
36:01: They were completely different. That's not what he was saying, or at least not only what he was saying.
36:08: And but fortunately, he's no longer chaplain here. That's good. So that's when a lot of my concerns like that's why
36:15: I began to crystallize. This is a much more widespread issue. My experience being mostly with the
36:20: College of Theology, but as well. And but probably my most extensive interactions concern,
36:28: I think, the atonement and biblical authority or the nature of scripture.
36:33: So let's get into those a little bit later. I want to because I want to kind of do one thing at a time as we walk through, you know, the issue of homosexuality is a huge one.
36:44: So in our in our garage sale evangelism, I'm going to put you on with me here with our with a garage sale evangelism today.
36:53: My wife got in another conversation with a couple who said they were there are church members. She handed them each a gospel track.
36:59: That's how she opened up this conversation. And and guys like, oh, what's this? And my wife's like, well, it's a gospel track, gospel presentation.
37:06: And he goes, oh, and then the wife pipes in who's sitting there and she says, oh, well, we go to church. Turns out they only go to church like once every so often.
37:14: And it was to our old mega church that we left years ago when they went when they started to go a merchant church. And and she had a hang up in the church regarding homosexuality.
37:25: And so she just couldn't understand how God was going to condemn homosexuals. She couldn't understand why we can't just allow people to do what they they want to do.
37:35: Is it really that bad? Does the Bible really speak against this? I mean, all the same tired, old, old arguments.
37:42: And for me, this is a real this is a real issue because, you know, I've taught on the social justice movement now.
37:48: It's going on, I think, four years. And and I know Andrew and I were two of the first people in the country that were really, really pressing this issue in a systematic way.
37:59: And and people have asked me for years, do you believe that intersectionality or critical race theory is what's going to what's going to really injure the church?
38:06: And I've said no literally this whole time. I don't believe those are I think they're issues, but enough people know about them.
38:13: The homosexuality piece, on the other hand, is different. Yeah, well, if I could add something. So one thing
38:18: I've also just noticed from either sitting in on some ministry classes where this we had one semester where it was one of the main focuses, but we've also had other discussions either in classes or elsewhere, not to mention some conversations and observations
38:32: I've had about with other students. Well, just give one example that I actually spoke at student chapel beginning last semester and my testimony and in it,
38:41: I just briefly mentioned. And I think in a very, I mean, the sound cliche winsome way, but I just briefly said, you know, this homosexuality is an important issue.
38:55: It's not something you can just be like, well, you know, I don't really know a thing about it, whatever it's particularly, especially if, as Christians have always said, homosexual practices are intrinsically and severe, like gravely immoral.
39:06: It would be unloving and uncharitable not to mention this or to teach this. And then I moved on after that.
39:12: And a number of students complained so that the student chaplain is a student.
39:18: It's a student government position. The next week didn't explicitly say I was wrong for what
39:23: I had said, but at least in appearance, a lot of students walked that back. So there were a lot of a lot of confusion. Many students who disagree with the orthodox doctrine, and that's part of why.
39:34: So even if you didn't have some of these explicit pro LGBT comments and actions by many faculty in the
39:40: College of Theology and a few elsewhere I know of, that would be problematic enough because you have this issue that you can get to.
39:47: You can get at the root of it. You can in classes and professors and private conversations, you can instruct in the truth.
39:55: Well, they have a relationship, but they either don't want to or they go this pro LGBT route.
40:02: If you want to give them some specifics, I have pulled my letter up here. Okay, so let me ask you this.
40:09: I do want you to get into some specifics on this. How far did you take this?
40:15: I mean, you already mentioned. By how far do you mean by and what by? In terms of there's a hierarchy within the
40:21: Nazarene Church. Yeah, so I'm with very at various times. I had talked probably the atonement would be good example illustrate this through a happenstance.
40:31: I give a presentation on the Eucharist in one of my classes, and I give the presentation of different views, including like the
40:37: Roman Catholic view. And then the professor criticized me. I'm like, no, I think I presented it accurately. And then I gave him part of that was my critique of that view in terms of the mass being a perpetuatory sacrifice.
40:50: And I think that infringes upon the supremacy of the cross. And that's one of my problems with it.
40:55: And in that connection, he said, well, I actually well, there's some passages of scripture that support the cross being a perpetuatory sacrifice.
41:02: But I don't really think that's the best reading overall. And I'm like, well, what are you talking? I mean, the words explicitly used in scripture.
41:09: And so we talked about that briefly. I then looked at what some other professors had said about it, including the philosophy professor's essay with a bio logos where he argues against it, as well as historical fall.
41:21: And I talked with him, met with him because I was then later. This is that's late 2020 in early 2021.
41:28: In mid 2021, I was doing a Sunday school class on the atonement, doing some research.
41:33: And I said, well, I wonder if you guys I emailed this to the professors who I talked with previously.
41:39: I wonder if you guys would I think you guys should read this book. I think it's very beneficial. I think it was Leon Morris is a polystolic witness of the cross, something like that.
41:47: I can't remember the title. And I wanted to I engage one of the professors just never responded again. But I engage in conversation trying to reason with Dr.
41:54: Benkert for a while. And then he's like, well, I'm going on sabbatical. Why don't you talk to these two other professors? And so I emailed them.
42:01: One of them never did. This is the third one of them involves a third professor and never responds. And so I spent several times over the course of about eight, nine months trying to talk about this topic with several of the faculty and including some people who are
42:16: I don't think I've articulated. I'll hear all my concerns with the department as a whole. But I having talked with my pastor off and on, as well as a few others about similar concerns in August, when
42:27: I prepared the first draft of this letter, I shared it with my pastor, who has since retired about fifty five years in ministry.
42:36: And he said, he said, well, we'll finish it up and I'll forward it to our district superintendent.
42:42: For those who don't know, Nazarenes have a it's like a hybrid between an
42:47: Episcopal and a Congregationalist polity. But in any case, the district superintendent has care in a certain region, about 30 or 40 churches, maybe less, depending on where.
42:57: And since he was in this the Intermountain District, he said,
43:02: I'll forward it to him. And and so he does. So and then on this, the first draft, which is initially just intended for him.
43:10: We have this post script saying, well, it'd be great if you and I basically the district superintendent, me and my pastor can meet, talk about some of the concerns
43:18: I've seen and see what he wants to do. About a month goes by.
43:23: So now we're in. So he's ended in early, early September of twenty twenty one, about a month or so goes by.
43:30: We haven't heard back neither me or my pastor from the Intermountain District superintendent. I noticed that all the trustees in you board of trustees are on campus, or at least a lot of them.
43:40: Some maybe for COVID didn't come. Well, I know that the there's seven districts of the
43:48: Church of Nazarene in the Northwest Educational Region, which is where Northwest Nazarene University is.
43:54: And I know that they're members of the board of trustees and saw their colleagues with the Intermountain District superintendent.
44:00: So I said, I'll send it to the rest of them. They're all together. They might be able to meet, talk more effectively, both as clergy and as trustees.
44:08: They have a vested interest in oversight in this. And then and then they can, if they want to talk with either the dean of the
44:16: College of Theology or whatever. And so that's that gets their attention. That's when things start going. It's also one of them, one of the people he's actually retired.
44:25: He sent it to a few other pastors and a trustee. And so that's where it gets out of. That's probably where you initially through somewhere along this chain unit, you get it initially.
44:35: But that's that's how it came to the attention of in the systematic way of the
44:40: College of Theology. So we're talking now early October. I think October 8th is 2021 is when
44:46: I sent it out to the some higher ranking Nazarene clergy and also trust members of the university.
44:53: Yes. So there's a lot of people that that are aware of of what's going on. Oh, yeah.
44:59: Yeah. My pastor says that even at like pastors conferences and so forth, he's heard dozens. And I think the word he used was like 200, probably 100 or more complaints about in a new from pastors who heard it from their students who go here.
45:12: And that's just Nazarene pastors. I mean, Nazarenes only count for about one third of the student body. You have a lot of Baptist non -denominational.
45:20: You have some I'm sure you have some Presbyterians, Anglicans in there, too. So and I don't know if you want to, you know, some evangelical
45:29: Methodists. They're not exactly fans of some of the teachings in the College of Theology.
45:34: So it's I think it's well known. And a lot of it's easy to discern just by their published work or online comments like you don't even need my letter to get a good sense.
45:42: But of course, as a as a professing Christian school, you know, unsuspecting parents are expecting to send their students to a school that is going to be safe.
45:52: Correct doctrine, everything else. Right. So, you know, I know there's a lot of listeners that would not not agree 100 percent with Nazarene doctrine in general.
46:02: Right. I mean, so I'm not even talking about that. I'm talking about Orthodox Christianity that we would all agree on.
46:10: And so so I did pull up the letter. Right. And I've spent a lot of time. Do you have a link to the letter?
46:16: You sent me the actual letter. But Sean, is this letter available on the Internet anywhere?
46:22: Well, I have a link on my own Google Drive. I plan to keep it permanent so I can after I can send it to you or something like that to you.
46:31: Do you need that during the show and or could it be afterwards? You know, no, no. Just so I have it. We can do that.
46:36: Or if you want, I can I mean, I could post it at Striving for Eternity if you want it there. You know, you decide,
46:44: Sean, let me know. OK, so I did pull up or I did do a lot of reading through these things.
46:51: And so Joseph Bankard is a professor at NNU and a professor that you mentioned several times in your letter to the staff.
47:02: And Joseph Bankard is the one who wrote the article Substitutionary Atonement and Evolution. So for for people who don't know,
47:09: Biologos is is a heretical organization and a very dangerous one.
47:14: So Biologos teaches anything against the Christian worldview they possibly can. They are they're obviously
47:22: Christians. What's that need to be Christians? Yes. They basically teach the world's point of view and then say, but we're
47:29: Christians. So we're Christians. Right. To be fair, one of the other Biologos essay authors in that series
47:35: Bankard's essays in does criticize Bankard for rejecting what I would say, just rejecting the atonement.
47:41: So they're not as bad as they could be. But yeah, I'm not very much a fan of Biologos for several reasons.
47:47: And by the way, Biologos is I don't know if it was founded by, but I know it's funded by Francis Collins, who is a
47:55: Roman Catholic. Everyone thinks he's a Christian. He's not. And Francis Collins is a provolutionist.
48:01: Francis Collins is the guy who is just implicated as one of the guys taking lots of money in the background with Dr.
48:07: Fauci with payouts to do what they did in the whole COVID response.
48:13: I was going to bring that up in our, you know, if we did a new section. Yeah. I mean, this is the same
48:18: Francis Collins. And so I just want to share with listeners, this is how dangerous
48:25: Francis Collins has been for us as biblical creationists. Biologos is really well funded.
48:32: He invented something called the gene gun and made loads of money off of it, funded this organization. And here's what they do.
48:37: It's really dangerous. They take Christian school teachers. They, all expenses paid to come out to their camps throughout the year, they give them, they pay for their airfare, pay for their lodging, pay for their food, pay for their training and give them free credit hours that they need for their continuing education every year.
48:57: And so teachers naturally take the free course, take the free everything, get a trip to California.
49:03: And while they're out there, they're being indoctrinated with non -Christian values, starting with evolution.
49:11: So that's who Biologos is. And I know I speak out against Biologos a lot because of what they do.
49:18: I really wish Christians would put their money towards training Christians and Christian school teachers and flip the script.
49:25: Come on now, Anthony, you know that the truth doesn't get supported with money? No, no.
49:31: I mean, that's how the Marxists took over our country through the education system starting in 1905. So yeah,
49:36: I know you're absolutely right. Fortunately, some of this, that kind of stuff hasn't yet taken a stronghold in Nazarene circles.
49:45: Although I could be wrong about this. I'm afraid that one of the Nazarene academic was partly responsible to find the creation of Biologos.
49:53: So I'm sorry for that. But fortunately, by and large, it has not taken too strong a hold.
49:59: Although if you have several faculty yet, and this is just true, not just in NU, but I've heard
50:05: Point Loma is worse than Northwest Nazarene University. That's another Nazarene school. So it doesn't take a lot of time to change.
50:13: That's one thing I say just in general, is the faculty are not necessarily representative of evangelicalism generally, or Nazarene in particular, but they can be representative of what will be.
50:25: And that's the concerning thing. And so that's part of why I was driven to prepare this letter. Look, yeah, absolutely.
50:31: If there's a podcast that Andrew, myself, Justin, Pierce do, and one of us says something that's wrong, we're going to lovingly correct one another, not just allow it to slide and allow false teachings to happen.
50:46: This is the way we're supposed to be responding in life, sharpening one another and watching each other.
50:53: That's what we're supposed to be doing as professing Christians. It's obvious that in most
50:59: Christian schools today, that's not happening, that heretical doctrine is getting in there and nobody's saying anything, and it just snowballs.
51:07: And eventually, you end up getting a bunch of liberal theologians that end up inoculating the schools.
51:13: Yeah, well, I mean, there's a school, Calvin College is probably in a worse state than NU is. I mean, they have a recent scandal of sorts with a faculty member who got married in a gay marriage.
51:25: And a professor who officiated at this, you know, but they're like, we keep the
51:30: Christian perspective on this. That's Calvin College's position. But they were willing to devolve the institute or whatever particular program as an independent thing to keep her on.
51:42: So they could also still say, oh, we actually keep our policy, which is why it's kind of deceptive there.
51:48: And besides, they sponsor a student group that talks about how to be allied to the LGBTQ community.
51:54: So they only keep it by the slenderest thread that, you know, but on paper, they may be great.
52:01: But in practice, the problem is that whatever their policy and positions are, if they're not willing to enforce it.
52:06: So I don't know if NU is too far beyond being able to be turned. But I mean, hopefully not.
52:14: Or if it is, at least hopefully that comes to attention, whatever. Clarity, I think, would be useful. But yeah, so a lot of Christian higher education is a bad state.
52:23: Well, it can be. It can be cleaned up. And, you know, we know that that happened at Cedarville. Yeah, I was going to just mention that because that's a great example.
52:31: I mean, what he did was brilliant in my mind. I mean, it was heading liberal and he just offered all the professors,
52:40: OK, here you go. Here's your contract for the year. Here's our doctrinal statement. You have to sign our doctrinal statement to have a contract.
52:49: If you don't agree with our doctrinal statement, you can't teach here. But they knew many of them didn't. So what did he do?
52:55: Just offered him a deal. Hey, you get one year. If you right now say, I'm not in alignment,
53:01: I can't sign this. You get one year that you can teach, that you can go look for a job.
53:07: And then you get one year severance. So you can have up to two years to find a job. And if you find a job, you get a year's salary.
53:16: So that looks pretty good if you already know you don't agree with the doctrinal statement. But if you sign it, you're in agreement with the doctrinal statement.
53:23: And we find on Facebook, we find you teach something else anywhere else. You're immediately fired.
53:28: Nope. No package. Nothing. Just gone that day. And so. Yeah. And so what happened was basically all the liberals were like,
53:36: I'll take your money and get out of here because I'm going to be gone anyway. So they left.
53:42: And he was able to turn that around. Yeah, I have some of these ideas around some of my friends.
53:47: I find it. Yes, it was great. So I wanted to bring up this before you talked about the next topic.
53:55: Let me just because I'm going to get going. So what I will do, because I know, Anthony, you'll forget.
54:01: Let me give a word to our sponsor. And actually, we have a new sponsor as well.
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55:15: And if I was to switch over to Pastor Josiah there, he's helping us promote it right now, as usual.
55:24: There he is falling asleep. It wasn't because of Anthony that he fell asleep.
55:29: That is because he just loves his MyPillow. And so we appreciate that with him.
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57:22: And so we are encouraging everyone to go and subscribe and use this tool if you have a podcast.
57:28: And so that way you'd be supporting another Christian brother who is under attack. And that way he would be able to to well, it's going to have the tools going to help you.
57:39: I know that I use it, as you could see, but it also helped him out. So we need to stand up.
57:46: It is time for us to stand up against the world and they're pushing against our views.
57:52: And so with that, you know, Melissa wants me not to turn off the the live stream.
58:00: I'm never going to live that down. I was in for Sean. Let me explain this, Sean. So I was actually
58:05: Josiah mentioned it before you came on the show and when I told him you're going to pop in at some point, he got nervous.
58:11: Yeah, I was I was in an airport. Of course, I was maskless, unlike everyone else at that time, walking around in the airport and I figured
58:19: I'd jump into the podcast and and help, you know, mention something while I was trying to get onto a flight.
58:25: And then I ended the broadcast instead of leaving. So let me end the broadcast right now.
58:31: Oh, I'll try not to do that.
58:37: But but yeah, no, I do. I I'm going to listen to the rest of this offline as I got family coming in.
58:42: So, Sean, let me just say thanks for for coming on. Thanks for standing up and and doing what you're doing, because this is what we need to do, folks.
58:53: Some of you may have seen what I posted on Facebook, Facebook Live. Anthony, if you saw that. But I've just gotten fed up with these people, the liberals who feel that they have the right in public to say whatever their views are, and they expect that we as Christians don't.
59:09: And so we I had a woman, there was two people in front of me in the line at the grocery store who when this leak came out about Roe versus Wade said she goes,
59:17: I just think it's crazy that people would be against abortion. So I just turned to her and I said, well, ma 'am,
59:23: I agree with you. I think we should have the right to murder people. And she said, well,
59:28: I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that that, you know, women have have a choice. I said, I agree. Women should have a choice who say who they murder.
59:35: And she goes, well, I would never do it myself. But but I think that everyone that, you know, women should have a right to what to do with their body.
59:43: I said, that's right. Women should have their I would never murder someone myself, but people have the right to murder whoever they want, you know, because she's never been challenged.
59:52: And she's like, she goes, well, you know, you as a man don't have the right to tell me what to do with my body.
59:58: I said, excuse me, how dare you? I never told you how I identify. And she had this incredulous look on her face.
01:00:05: And she's like, you are a man. I said, so men can't tell women what to do with their body.
01:00:10: She's like, that's right. I said, well, seven men made abortion legal. If you think that they're wrong in doing so, you should speak out against abortion.
01:00:20: And she left the store very upset. You know, but I said, I apologize to two people for me.
01:00:26: I said, I'm sorry, but I was raised to believe that we should keep our opinions to ourselves. But if someone wants to voice it in public, be expecting a response.
01:00:32: And I think it's time for Christians to do that. And so I'm glad that you are standing up against this liberal onslaught at our universities, especially ones that profess to be
01:00:42: Christian and standing up and saying, no, we got to put a stop to this. Thank you.
01:00:48: Humboldt Clay, I identify as having a beard. Anthony, you got to read what you put up.
01:01:01: Humboldt Clay said, I love all my brothers here. Bearded brothers are better.
01:01:07: So I guess Josiah wins for the night. Then that is that isn't.
01:01:13: No, the reality is, Humboldt Clay, you have four bearded men present here.
01:01:20: OK, there are four of us that have beards. Just some of us don't let it grow as long. That's that's right.
01:01:26: I still have one. It's that's right. It comes out like 10 a .m. I shave at eight.
01:01:32: It's out by nine. So, you know. Yeah, that's right. The Jewish beard grows a little faster than even the
01:01:38: Italian. Yeah. So, well, thank you for being on,
01:01:43: Andrew. Enjoy your kids tonight. Yep. Thanks, guys. Bye. Godspeed. Don't shut us off. Nope. So my beard,
01:01:51: I lose 10 years. Yeah. You know, Eric Pester and Stagner just shaved his beard. I don't even recognize him.
01:01:58: Go on Facebook and go see him after the show. Of course, check it out. And it's crazy.
01:02:03: I thought he shaved his head when he showed the pictures, all the hair in his hand. No, he shaved his beard. All right.
01:02:08: So let's get back to the show. And I see somebody in the background. J .C .B .D .E. So whoever you are,
01:02:14: I don't allow people into the show unless I know who you are and kind of what you want to ask. So if you go to the private chat, go ahead and put your question in.
01:02:23: And and I'm happy to to bring in at that point. But so Joseph Bankard is is the professor who has the rainbow stickers on his door.
01:02:33: Yeah, well, he doesn't anymore. He removed it. So he removed it. Well, good. I'm glad he finally removed it. Yeah, there's still another professor in the
01:02:39: English department, although she actually left for Treasure Valley Community College. But she still had a and hers was like the new transgender, like the rainbow, but with the little triangle on the side.
01:02:49: OK, yes. So extra special stickers. Yeah. So so Bankard, who's a professor in your school who you've had interactions with regarding homosexuality, is the one who wrote this article that is posted on Biologos.
01:03:04: Yeah, it's it's entitled Substitutionary Atonement and Evolution. His introduction says growing up in a
01:03:10: Christian home, I never questioned the validity of substitutionary atonement. I was raised to believe that humans were sinful and God was holy because of sin.
01:03:18: God could not be in a right relationship with creation as a solution. Jesus played the role of mediator between humanity and God.
01:03:24: Jesus served as a perfect sacrifice for human sin. His blood covers our iniquities. And because of his death, humans can be forgiven.
01:03:31: So I like that. So this is good biblical doctrine. This is actually what the Bible teaches like over and over and over again.
01:03:39: The problem is, is that after that it goes downhill because he he doesn't understand how this could be a good biblical doctrine.
01:03:49: And so what he ends up talking about as potential problems is that he says, from my perspective, now, again, this is a professor of theology.
01:04:01: From my perspective, he's a professor of philosophy, but he's within the college of theology, college of theology, professor of philosophy.
01:04:09: Gotcha. Substitutionary atonement creates two potential problems for Christian theology. It seems that if substitutionary atonement is true, then
01:04:16: God is either severely limited in power or unnecessarily cruel. If the only way
01:04:21: God can forgive or reconcile is through blood and sacrifice, then God's power is limited. Why is sacrifice the only way
01:04:28: God can forgive? If God is all powerful, then there should be a number of ways to reestablish right relationship with humanity.
01:04:34: If God can't forgive without blood and sacrifice, then God is limited in power.
01:04:40: On the other hand, if God can forgive humanity in many ways and simply chooses to use his blood as God's means of forgiveness, then
01:04:48: God seems unnecessarily cruel. Why would God torture? Why would
01:04:53: God will the torture, humiliation, and death of his son if there were other ways to redeem humanity? Then he goes on to deny the fall as a historical event.
01:05:04: Yeah. One of the reasons he gives, by the way, is like, it's probably like where did
01:05:13: Cain get his wife? I'm like, when I was 12, I'm pretty sure I could have answered that.
01:05:18: But all right. If you think it's persuasive reason, go ahead. All right. Oh, yeah.
01:05:23: No, you're right. He talks about the issue of Cain and Abel. He talks about tired old arguments.
01:05:32: Does a day, yom, in the beginning of Genesis actually refer to a 24 -year -old time period? Josiah is writing a book that I'm going to help him with real soon.
01:05:40: I'm going through the Hebrew on this stuff. I'm really excited because he's a really good scholar on the
01:05:46: Hebrew. So I'm really excited for Josiah's book coming up. Somewhat a red herring with Dr.
01:05:54: Benkert because he just denies at least Adam and Eve were the sole progenitor of the human race. So even talking about the meaning of day, you have to move in the more fundamental, like were they actually the, you know, so he just,
01:06:08: I think, well, I don't think he actually intends to be like the red herrings, but like that's fundamentally, I don't think that's why he's rejecting it.
01:06:15: Primarily, I think it's because of a certain reading of science and then valuating that or placing it above the authority of scripture.
01:06:23: And so that's a fundamental problem. I have not, he has not so much. What does this word mean?
01:06:29: Because that's a, you might have bad exegesis, but you can still value the authority of scripture, but he's already moved beyond that.
01:06:36: It's really not even relevant to the point. Yeah, that's right. And he puts a second critique in here that says, his second critique is in the realm of science.
01:06:47: In my estimation, substitutionary atonement does not fit well with the theory of evolution. No kidding.
01:06:53: That's the whole point is that the gospel is so, okay, let me do a quick teaching here.
01:07:00: The gospel that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, he was buried, he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures.
01:07:08: This gospel, I asked this to numerous pastors and other
01:07:13: Christians who don't understand a biblical creation or why it's necessary. And I say, why did
01:07:19: Jesus have to die? Why was that the chosen punishment for Christ? And the reason is because of the literal
01:07:27: Adam and Eve, the literal six day creation about 6 ,000 years ago, the literal command that Adam was given by God to not eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, because in the day you eat of it, you shall surely die.
01:07:43: That was a immediate spiritual promise of future physical death. Jesus paid the penalty that was given from the very beginning in Genesis.
01:07:54: That was the penalty for sin. Jesus had to satisfy the father's wrath and take that penalty ultimately in death in order to pay the penalty in full.
01:08:05: This is basic Christian doctrine that we're reading about, which is why
01:08:10: I go around the country teaching against evolution and talking about how while somebody can be saved and believe in evolution, it is a heretical doctrine that undermines the gospel message very clearly.
01:08:27: Yeah, it's kind of acid. And the critique you'll see even in some Nazarene theologians of the last century, their systematic theologies.
01:08:36: My honors thesis was on the—it's a narrow focus—it's on the doctrine of vicarious satisfaction in Nazarene theology, which
01:08:44: I define in my letter. Basically, in a sentence, it's just—you can express it this way.
01:08:51: Since it was necessary, God willed the death of Christ—suffering and death of Christ—as a means upon which he could justly pardon our sins.
01:09:00: And that's just a scriptural doctrine. I mean, not only in, but especially like Isaiah 53, any of other passages, of course, as well that teach either that in its entirety or you get it from the full counsel of God.
01:09:13: It's there in the—people try to make this claim, oh, only Anselm was the first one to articulate it this way.
01:09:21: I mean, he has a particular way of cashing it out, of course, but no, it goes well before him.
01:09:26: And in particular, with the context of Bancourt, as well as some of the other professors—Peterson, Leclerc's book on the
01:09:32: Atonement, at least some of their critiques of, I'd say, a scriptural doctrine of the
01:09:37: Atonement—pretty bad, but they make the same sort of things—is they'll say, well, as Wesleyans, we want to say this.
01:09:44: And so one of my projects was I just look through as many systematic theologies from—well, just Christians in general, but since I'm at a
01:09:53: Nazarene school, I look through Arminian or Wesleyan and Methodist ones. Wow, for the last 400 years, what have they affirmed?
01:10:00: Oh, this doctrine of vicarious satisfaction. What a surprise. And I would argue that it's also required by the sixth article of faith of the
01:10:08: Church of the Nazarene. Of course, I don't know if they would—I mean, I assume they would disagree with that, although it just doesn't fit with what the
01:10:16: Nazarene article requires. But fundamentally, the problem that's been identified is it's a low view of sin and of God's holiness.
01:10:25: But you notice that you quoted from Bancourt, how he phrases it as, well, God is limited in power, as if God's justice, both in terms of retributive justice, but also the just administration of the universe, are not part of God's perfections or something.
01:10:41: It's a kind of diminishing of the holiness of God's holy love or his holy justice.
01:10:48: And so he creates this paradox, which never bothered anyone else in church history of, yes, the cross displays
01:10:59: God's love, his justice, and wisdom and power all in one. Why would you want to—but no, either it limits
01:11:06: God's power or God's cruel or something, which is— So do you want to define that,
01:11:15: Josiah? Or Sean, do you want to define—to tell the viewers what vicarious satisfaction means?
01:11:22: Yeah, so it has to do with the idea that merely to forgive upon even just repentance would be unjust of God.
01:11:33: You have the scriptural teaching in Romans that God might be just and the justifier of the ungodly, because if you recall in Proverbs, it says, among those the
01:11:41: Lord hates is those justify the ungodly. So God's doing this, his justice has to be maintained intact.
01:11:48: And so from the scriptures, it's Christ becomes a propitiation. He basically bears what is due to us, or an equivalent anyway, so that we are pardoned.
01:12:02: We have the remission of sins, because we're united to Christ. He becomes our substitute and proxy, so that the just demands of God, God's wrath, which is to us liability to penalty, is removed.
01:12:17: And it's not as—you'll see Bankret and others caricature it as, well, did God not love us before he killed
01:12:22: Jesus? You know, like, well, no, no, the claim has never been that. It's God, because his love, wishing to bestow distinguished blessings upon us, but seeing sin and death as an obstacle had to provide atonement, and that he did freely in Christ Jesus, so that he might be just and the justifier.
01:12:43: So it's this Christ takes our place, is a representative, and God's just claims are satisfied so that he can freely pardon and restore us to fellowship and all the rest that goes with salvation.
01:12:55: Yeah, amen to that. So I'm going to bring another guest on, and this guest has identified himself in the past as a chicken man, has recently identified himself as atomic apologetics, and now he identifies himself as ex -Wesleyan.
01:13:13: Let's bring on one of our friends, John. How are you doing tonight? I really miss the chickens.
01:13:18: Isn't it nice enough for you to put the chickens back on air again? The sad thing is, is I work now on the nights that you guys do your show.
01:13:28: So yeah, I'm not able to like, you know, show the chickens outside right now. So you know, if you want to do a special show or something on an off night, like maybe a, you know, a
01:13:38: Friday or Saturday night, that would be nice. I can probably show you the chickens there, but right now they're at home.
01:13:47: So okay, well, Andrew doesn't know this yet, but we're going to be doing a special show on a Sunday night with Kevin Yant.
01:13:53: So are you at home on Sundays? No. I'm going to have to find another special guest then for a different night of the week.
01:14:03: Okay, so you had a question you told me about in the private chat. Andrew knows these things.
01:14:09: Don't think Andrew doesn't. He's not always behind the scenes, listening in whenever you might think he's not.
01:14:16: I'll just sip on my Waterloo again. So, okay, so John, you had a thought or a question?
01:14:22: No, well, I wanted to address this situation with the West Lian Church, because I grew up in a
01:14:29: West Lian Church, you know, from a very young age, all the way up until like probably like in my early 20s.
01:14:37: And I'm 51 now. And I'll tell you right now, this problem with liberalism and just these really bad theologies in within the
01:14:49: West Lian Church, it goes back. I mean, it just keeps going back way back when even when
01:14:54: I was around, you know, but going through that, I didn't really realize what the problems were at that time, because I was just surrounded in my little bubble.
01:15:09: And so it wasn't until much later on where, you know, when getting involved with like the reform versions of churches and learning more about real biblical studies and solid exegesis, it wasn't until then
01:15:35: I realized that, you know, the West Lian Church has just been a hindrance when it comes to teaching strong biblical values.
01:15:48: And, you know, just today I was looking on my Facebook and I saw a friend that I used to know way back in high school and she grew up in the church with me in the
01:16:00: West Lian Church. And I'm looking at her profile pic and sure enough, you know, there's like this
01:16:06: Black Lives Matter, there's, you know, gay pride and, you know, all this stuff.
01:16:12: And then I was just thinking, man, it's like, now that I think about it, all my friends that I had back in the West Lian Church, they're all liberals now.
01:16:21: They're just absolutely running rampant. I guess my point is, is that the problem goes back.
01:16:31: It's not just, you know, this past five or 10 years. This goes back, you know, for many, many, many decades.
01:16:39: And to be fair, we see this in a number of denominations. I mean, obviously the Episcopals went this route many years earlier.
01:16:48: Methodists have gone this route for a long time. Although, you know, this looks like the split's finally happening between the
01:16:53: Global Methodist Church and the United Methodist Church. They're finally legally operative, the GMC is, yeah. Yeah, so thank
01:16:59: God for that. SBC has been dealing with this stuff in the background for the last 10 years, has really come to light in the last four or so.
01:17:08: You know, so we're, we just see this everywhere, which is, again, one of the big reasons why
01:17:13: I wanted Sean on is because I'm like, we need people, young people who are going to stand up for truth.
01:17:20: It's, we need this, we need this out there. And so, okay,
01:17:25: Sean, I'm going to continue to work through some of this stuff. And John, if you want to stay on, stay on and keep giving more of your feedback on this.
01:17:35: So you did tell me when we talked, Sean, that as you have, you approached professors, you approached the
01:17:44: Dean, approached others, and they seem to be very squishy in how they responded to you.
01:17:51: They were not direct. Well, to his credit, Dr. Bankert, at least, is pretty, usually pretty clear about what he believes.
01:17:57: So I'll give that to at least... Okay, so he's clear about his liberal beliefs. But at least some of them, as you indicated, like with Dr.
01:18:04: Peterson, the way he'll frame things as... I think there's a scripture that can be used to support that.
01:18:10: It's like, well, what do you believe? Because you've said that about other things you don't believe. So like, why don't you just answer this?
01:18:16: You know, so a lot of them are being squishy. Some just never respond either because they're busy or they just, whatever.
01:18:22: I don't know why. But yeah, so over, particularly over the course of, in sophomore, junior year, especially, and even just before I sent the letter out to my pastor and from there to others, try to interact with,
01:18:38: I think, the majority of the professors in the College of Theology. Besides in class comments and other things like that,
01:18:45: I've tried to do. Yeah. Yeah, so I mean, but you've tried addressing.
01:18:50: And so, you know, I waited, as I said earlier in the show, I waited until, you know, to reach out to you today to get some phone numbers and to call the dean and just to have a chat with him.
01:19:03: And with the hopes of, hey, if you guys want to come on the show, maybe not tonight, but at some point in the future, and let's work through some of this stuff.
01:19:11: Because it'd be really helpful for these guys to be on a recorded video saying what they believe or saying what they don't believe or whatever.
01:19:19: I mean, but the point of the interviewer is to ask very specific questions. So today,
01:19:25: I did call Richard and he called me back about four hours later. Again, the acting dean of the College of Theology and Christian Ministries at NNU.
01:19:34: And he's a professor of New Testament theology, from what he told me anyway. Which, by the way, which is what, according to what another professor,
01:19:42: Dr. Kibb said, he and the Old Testament professor would not wholeheartedly agree that Leviticus and Romans condemns homosexual practices in a gay marriage.
01:19:52: Keep that in mind. That's according to another College of Theology professor. I think that's been borne out in my conversation with him, by the way.
01:19:59: But that's, I just wanted to connect. Yeah, you know, and I could tell that because when he, when he's, he basically was like, well, so what do you want?
01:20:07: And I said, well, you know, as I left on the voicemail, you have a student and actually a number of students who have been coming out.
01:20:16: And I said, I've talked to a number of them. All, none of them want their names public because of retribution.
01:20:24: There's only one that has come out with a letter and has put his name out there publicly to be able to talk about what's going on here.
01:20:33: And so I asked him very specific questions. And so I said, there's some things
01:20:39: I'm trying to get clear. You know, I've done the research on other things
01:20:45: I've brought up onto the show. I'm very thorough in my research. I don't leave stones uncovered. And so I wanted you to have an opportunity to be able to speak on behalf of the college as to what's going on with what's being taught by professors here.
01:20:59: And so I asked him very clearly then I said, okay, what is the official stance of the church?
01:21:07: And then I corrected myself to the school. Even though you guys are tied to the church closely, what is the official position on homosexuality?
01:21:18: What do you say is the official position? And he wouldn't answer me.
01:21:24: And so I asked again and again and again. He says, well, you know, we need to define terms in order to talk about what you want to talk about.
01:21:33: I said, okay, homosexuality. It's in the Bible. It's quoted in Leviticus that it's an abominable sin.
01:21:42: I quoted in Romans that it is doing what's unnatural. Like when
01:21:47: I talk about science, let's talk about science, right? It's unnatural. So we see it there.
01:21:52: And he still refused to answer. He says, well, we still need to define terms.
01:21:58: I said, okay, how do you want to define terms? And he said, okay, well, he goes, are we talking about the act or the orientation?
01:22:06: I'm like, oh, here we go. I know where this is going. I go, let's start with the act.
01:22:14: He goes, let's start with orientation. Orientation is not a sin.
01:22:22: And but then he stopped. And I said, okay. But is assenting to the orientation, is assenting to it wrong?
01:22:32: It's just sophistry trying to get around. Oh, yeah, it is. And then I kept asking him the question over.
01:22:37: I said, is the activity sinful? Is the activity sinful? And then finally he said, okay, well, the activity is sinful.
01:22:44: Oh, good. Okay, I'm glad you said that. And then I said, let's go back to this orientation issue.
01:22:53: And I said, what do you mean now by orientation is not a sin?
01:22:58: I said, is it if somebody has a proclivity to it? Is it I wouldn't say born with because I don't believe genetically people are born with homosexual behavior.
01:23:07: So I said, is this something that is what exactly is it? He wouldn't answer it.
01:23:12: And then he said, this isn't essential. And this is not essential anyway. Yeah, well,
01:23:18: I mean, he kind of has to say that since we have that Dr. Benkert, who I mentioned earlier, he
01:23:24: Dr. Benkert mentioned over the last several months. Dr. Benkert is also a method
01:23:29: United Methodist pastor in Callister. I listened to like two of his sermons, 200 of his sermons, and several of them deal with these things more or less explicitly.
01:23:38: And in one of them, he mentions, and I've heard from others of students who come out as gay to this professor in particular, and who he just affirms in that view.
01:23:51: And this is a tenured professor who these issues have been known. I mean, that like this same professor wrote that biologos essay, and what
01:23:58: I've been told by other professors, that is what these are probably other issues that played into it as well, but it hindered his being tenure under the previous president.
01:24:06: So like they know more or less pretty well what they talk about. So I mean, if he if he had to say, yeah, it is an essential issue.
01:24:13: Well, then what are you going to do about the department you're in and chair of?
01:24:20: That's a touch a sticking point. Yeah, that's right. And so what he kept going back to is he said, look, it's not in our articles of faith.
01:24:28: He goes, it's not addressed. And I said, hold on a second. It's addressed as a faith address. It says it talks about the inerrancy of scripture.
01:24:36: And so it points back to the scriptures. I mean, even if you're you're a look, I mean, let's admit the articles of faith is very, very, very weak.
01:24:44: I mean, as worse as faith and message, the fourth, the fourth article of faith on the authority of scripture should be revised to be stronger or at least explicitly make that point.
01:24:52: I agree. But it is in the Code of Christian Conduct, which is in the manual and which is binding on at least a clergyman.
01:24:59: That's right. It's yeah. Actually, I remember some of these issues on my freshman year kind of connected to some of the things
01:25:05: I mentioned with respect to another professor. The comments about Sodom and Gomorrah has nothing to do with homosexuality and maybe
01:25:11: Paul's advice. I actually wrote a brief little tract of my own. I think it's called Thinking About Homosexuality.
01:25:18: And I kind of go through these things. So if you think that the homosexual practices are sinful, well, then naturally the relationships in which they are like an essential integral part, like gay marriage are also sinful and the orient or the desire toward them.
01:25:34: And this would vary maybe on traditions. If you're a reformer Lutheran, you probably will say that concupiscence is sinful.
01:25:42: So you'll probably say that's sinful properly speaking. But at least it's at least morally or non morally wrong.
01:25:47: Like you shouldn't have a desire to for the sinful thing itself. Like, you know, you can probably parse it out, you know.
01:25:54: But my own impression, I don't know if with Dr. Thompson, although I do recall him saying in class toward the end of a session on Romans one, it was
01:26:04: New Testament letters was the class. Well, perhaps it doesn't apply to the actions in a gay marriage.
01:26:10: So which raises two questions. Like, how confidently would he affirm that homosexual practice is sinful?
01:26:18: He already evidently doesn't think it's essential. And secondly, when he means like the homosexual practices, does he mean what happens in a gay marriage?
01:26:27: They like to define terms certain ways. That's an important point to mention. But more fundamentally, where was
01:26:35: I going with this? Dragging my mind. No, I wouldn't do that.
01:26:42: Maybe. But in any case, you do have this, at least with him, there's a squishiness with some of them.
01:26:49: They'll go out in class, are in social media, are in sermons and published works and make it pretty clear.
01:26:57: I mean, one of the former professors here, Tom Ward, who unfortunately is still an ordained elder in the Church of the Nazarene in this district, like he's deaf.
01:27:05: He's read his blog, pro LGBT. He's Facebook posts of him just like celebrating like with I don't know what church, but like they have rainbow banners and so forth.
01:27:19: So it's like this seems like a noxious. Oh, I know what's going on earlier with that. So you have like these quibbles about words, but you see this with I think
01:27:28: Presbyterians have the Revoice Conference. Nazarenes have something called Love Wins, which unfortunately
01:27:33: Nazarene Theological Seminary, a different school, partnered with in some fashion who will say stuff like, oh, yeah, homosexual practice.
01:27:41: That's that's sinful. Yeah, but it's good to celebrate this identity. You know, that's that's their inconsistent position.
01:27:49: X is bad, but identifying with X is not bad, which I mean, at best, that's just highly imprudent.
01:27:57: You don't avoid the appearance of impropriety. You are clearly at the best your near occasion of sin.
01:28:05: And secondly, for these organizations like the Revoice Conference or Love Wins and whatever other individuals and groups there are afflicting other churches, it's just a front just to soften.
01:28:14: So they say enough to, you know, so people who aren't too attentive are like, oh, well, you know, whatever the problems are, they'll still say homosexual marriage is bad or whatever and we'll move along.
01:28:27: But it's just a front to soften people and to weaken institutions and churches positions. That's my impression of that kind of quibbling about orientation, you know, because it's usually not framed in terms of like, well, in our tradition, we don't think concupiscence is sinful per se, which my understanding of the
01:28:48: Nazarene church is it's one of the unconditional benefits of the cross is that that is unilaterally pardoned.
01:28:54: I have to read Wiley again, but so there's different traditions, but they don't frame it in that terms. They frame it in orientation. They don't talk about this for other sins, which is
01:29:01: I don't see a lot of people, you know, trying to defend the same thing with like, you know, those who identify as gay, but I think we should be celibate.
01:29:11: Oh, that's good. That's fine. That's not there's no problem. Nothing to worry about there. You don't see a lot of people doing that for like the virtuous pedophiles or something, which isn't, you know, like, as you recognize, well, why wouldn't you want to a not identify with this sin and to avoid association with this so -called community like it, you know, so that frankly, it might be a certain passage of scripture.
01:29:34: I went historical books about a certain clan or the people within it. You know, they knew the times when
01:29:40: Israel should do and I get a sense that in a lot of churches and institutions, there's people who don't know the time and what the church should do.
01:29:50: Yeah, but it's like somebody saying, well, you know, the act of adultery is sinful, but I can lust all day and I can think about, you know, sleeping around all day long as long as I don't act out on it.
01:30:01: It's okay. Yeah, well, I mean, at that point, you're at least assenting to it internally, which so at that point, it's no longer just a desire orientation.
01:30:09: You clearly assent to it. Right. And, you know, so it's problematic. One thing, and I don't know if he mentioned this in his conversation, they love mentioning this to people who ask about it, and they'll even say it to me too, is you've taken things out of context.
01:30:26: Well, he didn't accuse me of that, but he accused you of that in the phone call. And that, but that's why
01:30:32: I was asking him these specific questions. I said, how is he taking things out of context? And when
01:30:37: I was asking specific questions is when he was refusing to answer. They've never actually bothered to point out any factual mistakes in my letter.
01:30:47: The reason I think so fundamentally is because I think I reported everything accurately. But even if, as I think is unlikely, if there are one or two factual mistakes,
01:30:56: I was maybe slightly misrepresented this professor or something, which isn't to say I did so sloppily or without due diligence.
01:31:04: The pointed out would be like the exception that proves the rule. It's like, well, actually, on page five of the letter, you say that this professor said this, but actually, here is the professor saying something opposite.
01:31:17: Okay, well, what about the first four pages in the last 21 or whatever, you know, so. And that's one thing
01:31:22: I find interesting to like, here's an example with Dr. Banker, who, because he is more at least honest about what he believes.
01:31:30: I mean, he'll still say in his curriculum vitae that he's in full accordance with the articles of faith of the
01:31:35: Church Nazarene. But I mean, well, not exactly. Not exactly.
01:31:41: That's not the case. But like, he's there's a news article on him line online when back in 2009, the
01:31:46: Methodist Church, their General Assembly or General Conference officially like reaffirmed what their position is on like no practicing gay clergy, no blessing, same sex unions and so forth, which, you know,
01:32:00: I mean, their Book of Discipline already prevents a lot of things, but you still have a practicing lesbian as a bishop.
01:32:06: So, you know, again, it's you need people actually care about these things. But in response to that, he says, this is pretty much the entire quotation, you can find the article online if you want to, but it's,
01:32:17: I'm disappointed with the UMC's vote. At Calhoster UMC, we work hard to welcome and love everyone.
01:32:23: Of course, they equate welcoming and loving with affirming the in the sin and so forth, which is just a nice rhetorical switch, but not really truthful.
01:32:32: The UMC vote will not change how we do business. So the UMC vote, which says no gay practicing gay clergy and no blessing, same sex unions will not change how we do business.
01:32:42: We will continue to welcome and integrate all interested persons into our church family. And then he has a sermon with several sermons.
01:32:49: He mentions this, I typed excerpts from some of them, but one of them, I believe I typed in this entirety, or at least will eventually get around to, and he just describes his position.
01:32:59: In the exact quotation, he's describing the position of people who are opposed to that resolution, but then he later identifies it as his position in his sermon, but is that the
01:33:12: United Methodist Church be inclusive of gay and lesbian individuals fully, meaning that not all homosexual activity is sinful, that homosexuals can be in a loving relationship that is not sinful, and that therefore they should be allowed to be ordained in church leadership, elected to bishop, and whatnot.
01:33:29: So, I mean, I don't know if that's out of context. If that's not, if that's out of context, I really don't know what context,
01:33:35: I almost think by out of context, I mean, you told other people what we didn't want to hear, the context being the people we want to tell not, you know.
01:33:43: But, yeah, so. Something I want to ask you. Yeah, so it's just, yeah, go on, yeah.
01:33:50: Yeah, something I want to ask you is, I'd like to understand how you.
01:33:58: We got a ghost in the background who keeps flipping the screen differently, so I don't know what's going on there. I think it's
01:34:05: Andrew playing with it in the background. It's okay. I was just wondering how you came to this college.
01:34:10: Were they pretending to be a conservative Christian university, or were they pretty open about what they believed?
01:34:20: So, part of that has to do with probably some of the story beyond the present scope, although if you look on YouTube, there's some stuff
01:34:26: I did about this. I was raised as a Jehovah's Witness, then I eventually, I'm not a witness anymore, so I left that, which, by the way, was useful preparation for this.
01:34:37: All the consternation they've given me, nothing to having half my family shun me, so compared to that, this has been easy.
01:34:44: It's a walk in the park. But part of that had to do with how I came into attending a
01:34:51: Nazarene church in Spokane Valley, and I can't remember all the particulars, but I was suggested to go to NNU, and I heard things about a few of the professors, which checked out, but not,
01:35:03: I don't know so much necessarily about. I can't remember, in short, I can't remember all the details of how I ended up coming to NNU, but it has to do with the fact that I, of the various churches
01:35:13: I emailed in Spokane Valley, the only one that actually responded substantially, well, two of them, one was a
01:35:19: Catholic church, but that was only a live option insofar as you abstract the certain Roman dogmas that just don't work, but the other one was a
01:35:29: Nazarene church, or particularly the youth pastor of that church, and so that's how I came into that orbit, and from there, this is a
01:35:36: Nazarene school, and although, as I've indicated, fairly quickly, I noticed cracks in some of the facade, and actually some foundations as well, but I don't know if that is clarifying into how
01:35:49: I came to NNU, but I do believe they present, although I'm told by some former trustees and people like that, that they don't necessarily try to recruit among Nazarenes anymore.
01:36:01: I think they recently created an office assistant to the president for congregational engagement, kind of like as a
01:36:07: PR kind of thing, because even apart from my letter, I think some of the concerns have become more widely known, at least in Nazarene circles, and I would imagine probably, at least,
01:36:17: I mean, a lot of, I mean, most of the student body is Christian of some sort or other, and some of them are fairly engaged and aware of how things go, so I think some of the things have become more widely aware, but to answer your question,
01:36:32: I don't quite remember how I came to NNU in particular as opposed to some other school. Cody Peoples says, you're moving in the right direction from Jehovah's Witnesses to the
01:36:43: Nazarene, and to be fair, I mean, Sean and I have talked about theology. He's more solid than what you would expect a
01:36:52: Nazarene to be, so I just want to put that out there as well. Yeah, well,
01:36:57: I mean, and there's a few things, at least in terms of, I do think there are some caricatures of, like,
01:37:04: Nazarene theology, particularly the insistence on entire sanctification or Christian perfection, which, if you just parse it out, and like, it sounds, my joke
01:37:15: I make is among, well, some of it is too, is at least some of the Nazarenes and Nazarene professors here don't know other traditions so well.
01:37:22: I mean, I've had a professor say that, like, the Reformed understanding of sanctification is imputed righteousness.
01:37:28: I'm like, no, that's just justification. Like, what do you, you know, professor of church history,
01:37:35: I don't know how you don't know that, but evidently that's the case, but if you parse it out more accurately, it's just like, oh, judge strictly, we all deserve hell, and we still fall short, so it's more of, like,
01:37:48: Christians can avoid living in grave and gross sins, oh, okay, and we move by the love of God and not love of self or sin, oh, that sounds good, but my joke is that sometimes
01:37:59: Nazarenes like to think they invented holiness or something like that, you know, which, if you remove that kind of caricature,
01:38:05: I think it's less objectionable, and I think it's actually fits pretty well in with the mainstream.
01:38:11: By mainstream, I don't mean, like, mainline churches, but who have given up any idea of holiness whatsoever, but, yeah, in terms of Nazarene articles of faith, there are some distinctives, which
01:38:26: I don't think my letter necessarily touches upon, and part of that is just because it's what
01:38:34: I do focus on, the four categories in my letter. Do you want me to talk about that in more detail?
01:38:40: But in any case, there are certain Nazarene distinctives that, like, if you're a Baptist, I have several friends who are Baptists, they'd be like, well,
01:38:46: I don't agree with that anyway, which is, you know, we can agree to disagree on those points, but there's some things that Nazarenes, like all
01:38:53: Christians, agree on, at least officially, and then there's a question of do you actually have, as a member or clergy or as a teaching at an institution, do you actually keep to this?
01:39:03: Oh, you don't, that's a problem, and that's what my letter is designed to address. Yeah, and that's kind of,
01:39:09: I do want to go through your letter a lot more, because we're, so far, we've touched on a lot of things, and if you want,
01:39:16: I can sketch just the four categories, describe them, and give maybe a notable incident. We've already talked a lot about the
01:39:21: LGBT stuff, but yeah, and I'll probably ask you questions as I go through your letter, and then I'll let you answer those.
01:39:27: I think John Chicken Man has a question. Actually, I just want to let you guys know,
01:39:32: I got to get going, but I was going to let him know, hey, thank you so much for all you're doing for the
01:39:37: Nazarene Church and all, and exposing all this. Stick around, and we'll turn you into a
01:39:44: Calvinist before you know it, all right? I have some friends who are Baptists, like, oh, come to our church, and the
01:39:50: Anglican, he's like, oh, come to my church, you know, but we'll see. I mean, I used to be a
01:39:56: Jehovah's Witness, so stranger things have happened. Never know. Okay, well, you're a lot more informed than I think the average person even is, but see you.
01:40:06: We'll see you, John. Thanks for coming on. So, okay, Sean. We've come, and this kind of connects to the authority.
01:40:12: I do think there is a kind of artificial, this is in some Wesleyans generally, but also
01:40:17: I've noticed it at my schools. They'll say things like inerrancy. Well, that's a Calvinist doctrine, and I'm like, well, it's so weird that the
01:40:24: Calvinists got a time machine, and they told Justin Martyr to say this, or something like that, so I think in the last,
01:40:32: I don't know, 50 years, Wesleyan has, or even Arminian, has gone under, well, I mean, historically, you had a bunch of the
01:40:38: Dutch Arminians just became rationalists, or Socinians, or Unitarians, and, you know, so that's pretty bad, but then you have, like, in contemporary times,
01:40:46: Wesleyan almost just means open theist, process theologian, squishy on biblical authority, when it's like, yeah,
01:40:54: I don't think Wesley would like that very much at all. It's artificial.
01:41:01: Maybe it's like an insecurity about identity. Wesleyans are like, well, if we agree with reformed people too much on things, we won't have an identity anymore, so we've got to move away from the authority of scripture.
01:41:14: Don't do that, please. That's my take on that anyway, but yeah, so if you want to go through the letter or anything like that, that'd be good.
01:41:20: Yeah, I mean, you know, so just to kind of finish up on the homosexuality piece, I mean, for anybody who wants to read the letter,
01:41:27: I did send Pastor Andrew the link to your Google Drive, so anybody can go download it and read what you wrote.
01:41:35: I think, if nothing else, the thoroughness that you did in, like, investigative journalism type stuff is excellent here, but, you know, so you went through sermons of these professors.
01:41:49: You highlighted the areas. Yeah, I work as a dishwasher, so I can just listen to hours of stuff every shift, so yeah,
01:41:56: I got through 200 sermons pretty quickly. Yeah, and it's obvious because you were able to talk about each one, and, you know, so you talked about Dr.
01:42:07: Bankard in his sermon on why the church divided over homosexuality.
01:42:12: He makes it clear that he's pro -LGBT in that sermon. Yeah, you don't praise Karen Oliveto, the practicing lesbian who was made a bishop in whatever jurisdiction in the
01:42:22: United Methodist Church and not be pro -LGBT. Psychologically, it just wouldn't fit, but then, yeah, he goes on and explicitly says that's his perspective, and does so in many sermons.
01:42:32: That was back in 2016, he said it, but over the last, between then and now, he's had about a dozen other sermons that more or less extensively deal with that issue.
01:42:44: He makes pretty clear what his position is. Yeah, and then 2018, you write that he, that you had a friend who took
01:42:51: Dr. Bankard's Cornerstone course. Part of this class consisted of trips to Grace Episcopal Church.
01:42:59: So field trips to an Episcopal Church? Yeah, Cornerstone is kind of like a how -to college course with, like, community involvement.
01:43:09: Like, I took it with a different professor, and we went to, like, a kind of, like, an abuse shelter.
01:43:15: They, I guess, went to this Grace Episcopal Church, and among the things my friend said was, like, that when they went to this church, whoever was the rector or whoever there, whoever gave them a guide or whatever, was like, well, here's how we, we want to show grace to people in the
01:43:30: LGBTQ community, and they're probably, like, the, I've never actually been to this church, no real intention to do so, but they're probably, like, the
01:43:37: Congregational Church or the Evangelical Lutheran Church, which has little, like, gay little signs on their church doors.
01:43:43: So, you know, why are you partnering with, or as a professor in a class with that church when you can go to,
01:43:51: I don't know, Boise Rescue Mission or something, if you want to do some community engagement that doesn't, I don't know, undermine and confuse students?
01:43:58: Because this might, my classmate ended up being confused, like, I don't know, what's wrong with them, homosexuality after this, and I was able to explain.
01:44:05: And fortunately, unlike some of the other students who I mentioned who came out as gay to this professor, she did not have that issue herself, because that could have been disastrous with her, as it has been with some students.
01:44:18: Yeah. And then you, you chronicled another sermon where he said, if your kid is gay, buy a rainbow shirt and invite his boyfriend over for Thanksgiving.
01:44:28: Yeah, not, not that the would go with. Yeah, I mean, it's really, it's, it's, it's unbelievable.
01:44:35: If you didn't have this chronicled, you know, it's, it's, it's amazing. And yet, I mean, let's be really clear.
01:44:42: Homosexuality is a sin. It's abominable sin. It's unnatural sin. It is a sin that will put you in hell for eternity, which, by the way, was kind of the beginning of the end of the conversation with the acting dean today on the phone.
01:44:54: He didn't, he didn't want to talk about that a whole lot. But so, so you go through and you chronicle a number of things about homosexuality.
01:45:03: And I will say this before we move on to your next point, is that, you know, when, when the dean and I were talking about homosexuality,
01:45:13: I was quick to point out Genesis, one marriage between one man and one woman. And I said, by the way,
01:45:20: God only made two genders, male and female, period. Yeah. To which he says, what do you mean?
01:45:28: And, and, and, and challenged me. And I said, well, God made two genders, male and female.
01:45:35: They were authorized to marry. He married them. And, and that is the basis of, of marriage is one man and one woman.
01:45:42: And by the way, that there is only two genders, which are synonymous with biological sex.
01:45:48: And then with those, there are gender roles that God gives, um, to the two genders.
01:45:54: And then I just kind of headed it off. And I said, look, I know what you're going to say.
01:45:59: It's what everyone else says. It's a, what about people born with, with different body parts? What are people born with some of the mutations,
01:46:06: XXX, triple X syndrome, Klinefelter syndrome, others. Yeah. I said, look, God's creation.
01:46:12: He looked at it and said it was perfect. In Genesis one 31, the design of marriage was perfect. And one man, one woman and two genders.
01:46:19: I mean, this is part of the perfect creation. And it's only because of the fall genetic mutations are bad that some people are born in with Klinefelter syndrome.
01:46:28: And then in the end, they will be restored with new bodies in, in heaven or hell, right.
01:46:35: A body made for eternal life or one for eternal destruction, but they will have a real body that is normal.
01:46:42: Yeah. I have a conversation. Uh, I, in my letter, there's a link to one of the supporting documents.
01:46:49: Unfortunately, I accidentally deleted the recording, but I did type out a transcript of a conversation I had with a, another professor on that.
01:46:56: She raised the point. Oh, there's 4 % or however many she said are people of intersex. It's less than one.
01:47:02: Oh yeah. I had mentioned in that conversation. Um, cause I, I think actually Dr. Benkert made a similar claim a year or two previously.
01:47:10: And so that's why I wanted to follow up on this statistic. And I found a survey or a study that rather that said, well, you know, it depends what you mean, but like, if you're talking about like what most clinicians would describe as intersex, like it's difficult to determine, or there's not lack of function, it's like 0 .0027
01:47:27: % of people or something like that. And there's still the fundamental question of like, how does that detract from the norm?
01:47:33: Like in terms of like, if I'm born without eyes, well, clearly humans ought to have eyes.
01:47:39: Like that doesn't affect. It's funny you said that. Cause I said the same thing. I said, what if somebody is born without arms and legs?
01:47:44: I go, is that normal? He was, he was not happy with, with that example.
01:47:51: Well, I mean, probably cause it's something like, well, are you saying intersex people are disabled in that way? I'm like, well, in some extent that they are disabled.
01:47:58: They are. It's like, you mentioned like pedophilia in terms of like homosexuality. I mean, there are some interesting connections there, but I think pedophilia, like in terms of is worse, like to act upon and probably worse psychologically live with.
01:48:13: But if I might compare it to terms, like the whole, like born that way argument, like if that's a good argument for homosexuality, if what if it works for a pedophilia, like, but then the objection is like, well, you thinking that homosexuals are as bad as pedophiles.
01:48:25: It's like, well, the point of the comparison is you're the one who makes this argument. I'm pushing it to its extreme.
01:48:30: I've reduced your reductio ad absurdum. You're just not being consistent. So I think that's a problem there.
01:48:37: Maybe one thing before we leave this section, it might be useful to indicate some of the, I still think this doesn't really involve a lot of reading between the lines, but maybe more subtle ways.
01:48:47: Some of the professors in class like to kind of bring this up. Maybe I do want to go to through that. I'm going to finish up the phone call part and then
01:48:54: I'm going to have you run through that because I do want you to do that. So the phone call ended when, when
01:48:59: I brought this part up about less than 1 % and I said, these are bad genetic mutations. And he, he then said, well, you know, there's science that would, that would go against what you just said.
01:49:11: And I said, just to let you know, I am a dentist. I have nearly a full medical education in that as well as a full dental degree.
01:49:21: And I can, and, and I know full well about the genetics of this, to which he then goes on to say, well, my wife is an, is an
01:49:30: OBGYN nurse and she knows science too. And then click, he literally hung up on me.
01:49:39: So that was the end of the phone call. Yeah. And that, and that of course raises questions of like, as I mentioned earlier, when he says are begrudgingly, it says, yeah, homosexual practices are moral.
01:49:51: Not only is, well, how tentative is his affirmation of that intellectually, but I mean, in practice, given that he is the head of the department and currently acting dean, you can kind of get a sense of how little it matters to him,
01:50:03: I think. But also like, what does he even mean when he says that? Because, you know, you can verbally agree to the same thing, but it means something significantly different.
01:50:11: But just the last thing on this section on, I mean, there's more in it, but I think this is illustrative of kind of the subtle ways professors will try to, you know, bring it up and we'll, some of them are not so subtle.
01:50:21: You'll see, I'll just read this paragraph really briefly. I mean, it's part of two paragraphs.
01:50:26: So in, this is another professor, Dr. Smerek, in the course, Relativity and Disaster, and that lived up to its name, by the way.
01:50:35: It was the same thing as contemporary philosophy. Basically, she just wanted to give it a new name. She positively mentions homosexuality or transgenderism fairly frequently.
01:50:43: That really surprised me, by the way. I was kind of bold enough. It is not hard to determine her probable motive in doing this, namely to convey the impression that homosexual practices and transgenderism are acceptable.
01:50:54: Consider the following. This is probably the most subtle one, but I'm going to, I include it, indicate like certain tells, you know, like if you play poker, there's certain tells.
01:51:05: She casually spoke of a certain author who said to her wife, I wish I could all the dogs and read all the books.
01:51:10: Like she wanted, she was agreeing with that sentiment, but she said to her wife, like, hmm, there is some questions.
01:51:17: On two recent occasions or two occasions, she condemned Dave Chappelle's recent comedy program for hate speech because of remarks, his remarks about transgenderism.
01:51:26: It was unclear whether she makes a distinction between his insistence that men are men and women are women or the particular manner in which he said this or the jokes he made a connection to it.
01:51:35: But in our current time, many would lump all these under hate speech. So just saying like a man can't be a woman, that's hate speech, right?
01:51:41: Many people say that. In doing so, she spoke of him dismissively as having become like a white Ohio male.
01:51:46: I mean, that was a really weird thing to say. It's one of the things I have highlighted. I am a white.
01:51:52: I almost said to her, man, the only thing Dave Chappelle, I assume viewers know he's a black man, but I almost said, well, the worst thing he could be, cause a white liberal professor, you know, but I don't,
01:52:04: I figured I probably shouldn't say that as if they were a bad thing. And this is probably the more grotesque one besides,
01:52:11: I don't mention this, the kind of, she had chosen a really weird documentary to show on Foucault, but Foucault, but, and he says at one time, she casually recommended that we watch a music video by a rapper who goes by the name
01:52:24: Little Nos X. I don't know if you viewers know that he's an interesting character, unless she said two men making out would gross you out.
01:52:33: So, I mean, you know, if she wanted to be push, come to shove, she could say, well, I didn't say
01:52:39: LGBT stuff is fine. I mean, some of her social media activity where she commends Seattle Pacific University, there was a protest back in August, Seattle Pacific, at least affirmed its position so far on, you know, homosexuality good on them.
01:52:54: But there were a number of students advocating for like pro -LGBT or queer professors and so forth.
01:53:02: So like, yeah, you never actually said the words LGBT stuff is fine, but like, this doesn't take a lot of discernment to know where your sympathies lie.
01:53:13: And what's alarming besides her teaching students in the College of Theology and conducting university side interviews for ministerial standing is she also,
01:53:21: I think she's involved in some kind of like diversity, equity, inclusiveness stuff in like administration here.
01:53:27: So like that's problematic for the future of the university. And there's some other stuff
01:53:33: I mentioned about her and other professors, but it gives a sense of how ubiquitous is among, at least among the College of Theology.
01:53:38: And I am sure other departments have problems too. Although here it seems to come up more like engineering, it probably won't come up nearly as much as in a course on ethics or on biblical interpretation.
01:53:49: So that's, and that's where I have problems, but that gives you, I think, a good sense of the LGBT stuff, what it looks like and how like there's, you can say out of context all you want, but I'm just going to be bemused by that,
01:54:05: I suppose, until they actually bring some tangible claims to that front. Yeah. And you have, I mean, there's eight pages on just that part on homosexuality within your letter.
01:54:16: And I'm sure you've got much more than what's even in here. Well, like I mentioned, like I only alluded to it as I mentioned here, like they,
01:54:26: I, well, yeah, here's a better example. Like I, a pastor I know in Spokane, he mentions like if pastors conferences and various things, events on campus, he'll mention that some faculty, like in the
01:54:35: Department of Theology couldn't remember who was like, well, is transgenderism really that bad? So, I mean, so it's pretty extensive.
01:54:44: I mean, well, interestingly, the Dean of the College of Theology, when I asked him via email, like, do
01:54:50: I correctly represent the Church of Nazarene's position on homosexuality and transgenderism? One of the things he said was, well,
01:54:57: I don't think we can say transgender issues are sinful at this time. There's an email to that. It's like, did
01:55:02: I take that out of context? I mean, if so, just have him go on record and say, no, I actually think transgender identity is sinful.
01:55:12: It's psychologically harmful, spiritually ruinous, but of course he won't say that. But if you say out of context, maybe some naive people will be like, well, he said, she said,
01:55:20: I don't really know what to make of it. And that's how, frankly, I think they've been able to kind of put a damper on any student complaints to pastors or parents who will call them is, oh, you're a student misunderstood.
01:55:31: I was only explaining another view or they took my words at a, but no, that's part of why my letter I document as most of my evidence is things on their published work, things
01:55:41: I or other students have heard them say are emails. Like you just, there you go.
01:55:47: Fortunately, Idaho is a one -party consent state, so I was able to include those, but that was useful.
01:55:54: So I don't know if you want to go on to a brief survey of some of the other material in the... Absolutely. So your choice.
01:56:01: What's next? So I'll just really touch upon religious pluralism. That's the heading here. I don't know if any of the professors,
01:56:07: I don't think they would identify themselves as religious pluralists, but there's some problems in this front regardless.
01:56:16: And just to briefly describe, find like, I'm sure you guys, many of your audience will know, like there's exclusivist and then you have an inclusivist position and then you just have full -on religious pluralism.
01:56:27: And religious pluralism meaning many ways to... Yeah, like at least many, basically a lot of other religions are more or less equal.
01:56:36: I mean, you could still be a religious pluralist and be like, yeah, I don't really think you'd be sacrificing kids, but basically, yeah, that's not good.
01:56:46: And then there's other, like, I think exclusivism is correct. I think at least for adult, whatever you want to say, age of reason or whatever, you need to have an explicit faith in Christ, orientate the will toward Him, trust in Christ.
01:57:02: As D .A. Carson says, faith is not some abstract principle, it's Christ -centered. And then there's another view, which they don't go to.
01:57:09: They go to a more extreme view, which is, but you can still say, well, maybe you don't want to be a Christian, but you can't at least be, maybe general revelation through grace can be salvific for some people.
01:57:20: But they don't even say that. They'll go on, at least several of them, including in a sermon or another email course context, will be like, no, you can be saved in other religions, which, you know, which if you find that attractive in the abstract, when it comes to like, well, okay, the
01:57:37: Bible condemns idolatry, how you can say Hindu can be saved. So, you know, that's already, that's well even beyond general revelation can be salvific, because general revelation, as Paul teaches, people are self -condemned for idolatry because they ought to know better.
01:57:50: So that's even a more extreme position. You'll have a, and then you have that position gone to even more extreme.
01:57:57: You'll have a statement by, here's Dr. Bankyard in one of his sermons, which matches what I recall him saying in a class.
01:58:04: Well, I'll read, yeah, I'll read it entirely. I suppose it's not too long. I think I'm here to spread the good news to people who don't have much hope.
01:58:12: That sounds good so far, who are lost and isolated and broken. And I want to say, you don't need to live like this.
01:58:18: I got a community you can be a part of, but I have a hard time going to people who live wonderful lives, who filled with hope, with a passion and a purpose, but who don't happen to be
01:58:26: Christian. I don't feel the need to convert them. I feel the need to join with them to link arms and make the world better for the kingdom of God.
01:58:34: Well, not only you think other religions can be salvific, but apparently they're more or less on par with Christianity.
01:58:40: That's like the, that's pretty much, you might call it something that's, I would argue, virtually religious pluralism.
01:58:46: And it matches with, again, out of context. No, I have, there's an essay that you can find online in the
01:58:53: Wesley Theological Journal from a few years back by another professor, Dr. Gorman, where he articulates a very similar position to this, which seemed to be echoed by other faculty as well.
01:59:04: In this one, this might be a weaker portion of the letter because I may read the manual, but I don't know if there's a particular,
01:59:11: I tie this implicitly to the fourth article of faith on the scriptures reveal, or they inherently reveal all things necessary for our salvation.
01:59:20: And the reason I do so is, how do I put it? There's no article of faith saying, oh, a person has to have conscious faith in Christ to be saved.
01:59:30: Although I think that that is just kind of like the de facto position of the churches in Nazarene, certainly of most people and pastors
01:59:36: I've talked with. But I still think it'd be very alarming to Nazarenes and others who find this letter like, oh, what did they really think about the gospel then?
01:59:46: And one way it manifests itself in class, other than when Dr. Baker did say in class, yeah, in virtue ethics, he tends to, you need to understand that he tends to use a lot of illustrations and comments in his sermons in class.
01:59:57: And I've had like five or six classes with him. He said the same, oh, I don't think we need to convert virtuous
02:00:03: Buddhists or something. Another way it manifests itself is with Dr. Riley, the Old Testament Hebrew professor in an
02:00:09: Eastern religious course, Eastern religious traditions course. One of the assignments was to observe other like one or two, like a
02:00:17: Hindu service or whatever, which I don't think it's intrinsically wrong. I don't think it's necessary, but whatever.
02:00:24: But then he'll say, he phrased it. I wrote this down right after the word. You can go to the
02:00:30: Hare Krishna Center in Boise. They're very hospitable there. They'll even offer you to join them in worship and prepare a vegan meal afterward.
02:00:37: It's kind of weird. He's only summarizing what they'll do, understandably. Okay. The next week, when discussing the assignment again,
02:00:44: Dr. Riley said, participate as much as you want, but don't violate your conscience. I don't think a
02:00:54: Christian should be participating in any manner with pagan worship, but all right. That's a very weird thing to say. So it manifests itself in two different ways.
02:01:01: Some of it stems from like with Dr. Smerick, a kind of relativism about truth itself. She, so if you don't think, if you think truth is relative,
02:01:12: I mean, of course you're going to think the truth of the gospel is relative as well. It's just particular application of that principle.
02:01:18: But this is the second or the third, rather the third section of the letter. I call it, I title it the doctrine of the atonement and related matters.
02:01:25: We've already talked briefly about the atonement. So I'll focus on the related matters. So before we even get to that though,
02:01:31: I mean, there's a couple of quotes I want to read about this pluralism because you had, I mean, Dr. Gorman, you said, wrote an essay in which he argued that people of other religions can be saved in and by those religions.
02:01:43: In class, Dr. Bankert, so we go back to Dr. Bankert, who said that, I don't think it makes sense to say that Gandhi is in hell.
02:01:50: Yeah. And not even, not even, keep in mind that maybe Dr. Bankert doesn't know too much about Gandhi, but I mean,
02:01:57: Gandhi knew of the scriptures and of the gospel, had Christian associates. And so that's why it's not even the claim of general revelation can be salvific, which
02:02:05: I think is problematic enough, but it's, you don't even like, even if you preach the gospel, you can be fine if you just be, so that's why, that's what's alarming.
02:02:15: I try to be very clear in this because I know a lot of the professors seem to conflate the claim of maybe general revelation can be salvific with, maybe you can just be a
02:02:22: Hindu and practice, that'd be fine. Like, no, like they're, they're two distinct claims.
02:02:28: One is worse than the other. And that's really problematic. And for some reason they go with the worst of the two claims anyway, which is
02:02:35: Yeah, I call this, I've actually coined the term Ravi Zacharias syndrome. And, you know, people for years have asked me if I liked him as a, as an apologist.
02:02:45: And even before all the stuff came out in public, I always said, no, I didn't like him. The reason why I didn't like him is because when he's asked the question, is
02:02:54: Jesus the only way? The proper Christian response is, yes.
02:03:01: This is really easy, right? Like this, like this is a really easy test. And then if you want to explain the scriptures further to somebody, then please do so.
02:03:11: But, but that's a really easy answer. And, you know, Ravi would go off in this five minutes soliloquy before he kind of getting around to answer something, but it wasn't really the answer to the question.
02:03:21: And, and I feel like, I guess, as I read through your religious pluralism section, I can't help but feel that that's where a lot of these professors are at.
02:03:30: Yeah, they'll try to be sophistical and say like, well, no, Jesus work is still the basis of salvation.
02:03:37: But, which, it's just so weird that you have like the apostolic preaching and, and acts and like the
02:03:44: Hebrews, as well as, I mean, in one of Paul's letters, you have, I don't remember which one topped my head, like Hammanes and Alexander, they deny the resurrection happened.
02:03:55: They're damned or something like, if that's the case, well, then I'm hint like, or you'll have like another
02:04:01: Nazarene academic, the late Al Strousdale, who Gorman's view very much resembles his. He wrote a book called
02:04:07: With Chords of Love. I wrote some essays critical of it. But his view is something like, and similar to Brian McLaren, the emergent church guy who
02:04:18: Gorman also likes, is like, well, Buddhism will be saved. Like, what does that even mean?
02:04:24: Like, if Buddhism is saved, it's just Christianity now.
02:04:30: It's not Buddhism. You might have certain churches with different aesthetic on the outside, but like, that's a certain, you know, cultural residue, but you're not going to have
02:04:39: Buddhism anymore. But if you're a Buddhist, a good Buddhist can't be saved, you know, it doesn't.
02:04:45: So you but you have these nice sounding things, at least try to pay lip service to, like, every knee will bow in the name of Jesus, like,
02:04:51: Oh, Buddhism will be saved. So I'm really, I'm, I'm Christians, like, that doesn't make a lot of sense there.
02:04:57: Sorry about that. But your view is wrong. Or at least it these Nazarenes and others who are affiliated with this school, have a right to know what they're getting into.
02:05:08: That's my opinion. Absolutely. Jason Cave says, Jesus plus anything is heresy.
02:05:14: Amen to that. Pastor Justin Pierce, who is too tired to come on, but at least he's commenting, says
02:05:21: Mother Teresa said the same thing. She would not seek to convert pagans. Yeah, it's,
02:05:27: I mean, random Mother Teresa had her own issues. But I mean, it's a wicked thing for Christians to preach anything but Jesus alone.
02:05:35: Yeah, I guess. And it also resembles and connects to, it's illustrative of the, we can say the same things like this
02:05:44: Dr. Banker, and people like him will often say, I've, I preach the good news. And they may, it may overlap a good deal with what we would affirm.
02:05:54: But they mean something definitely different by it. But because they verbally affirm the same things, whether they're being in their own mind, they're knowingly duplicitous or not, it can be very treacherous.
02:06:05: You can be caught unawares by, oh, no, he affirms the
02:06:11: Great Commission. Well, but he affirms the Great Commission that is somehow compatible with not feeling a need to convert so -called virtuous
02:06:19: Buddhists. Like, hmm, I think something's gone awry there. So that's part of why I discussed this section here.
02:06:25: Yeah. Anything else in the section you want to discuss? No, no, we can, we can move on. Pastor Justin Pierce is kindly pointing out as Josiah did by paper, he didn't want to interrupt.
02:06:35: We are officially in Anthony time. So there we are again. Nope, nope.
02:06:42: I'm good until 830 and myself, but yeah, so I'll try a little time. That's good. Yeah. I'll just briefly summarize the third and fourth sections and talk maybe a bit more explicitly about the response from the university anyway.
02:06:56: So the third section is the doctrine of atonement and related matters, which in terms of articles of faith that the church
02:07:03: Nazarene deals with the fifth, sixth, and 16th articles of faith. The fifth article of faith has to do with the origin of sin, original sin and so forth.
02:07:11: The sixth article of faith has to do with the atonement and the 16th article of faith, particularly the first section has to do with like eternal judgment.
02:07:19: And so I, with terms of atonement, I would not be surprised if all the professors end up denying a vicarious satisfaction, which is a very important element of the atonement.
02:07:29: Like, yes, sin is a multifaceted problem in terms of death, bondage to Satan and corruption and so forth like that.
02:07:39: And so the cross and salvation also address those things. But also there is this, we also are under the just condemnation of God.
02:07:46: The cross also has to address that. And that's one, that's an element they don't like.
02:07:52: And we've already talked about that briefly, so I won't really dwell upon it too much, except to say that in this, in the letter itself,
02:07:58: I primarily focus, and this is true of the other two issues, is on the factual element. So what the professors say or deny.
02:08:05: And I link to, or allude to as well, two white papers I wrote, one for this particularly, especially for Nazarenes, the fifth article of faith, where I argue, yes, if you just read the fifth article of faith, you'll see surprisingly, wow, it requires you from the historical
02:08:21: Adam and Eve, original sin, original state of righteousness, which Banker in his Biologos essay in some email correspondence with me denies, and that they're the sole progenitors of the human race and so forth, historical fall.
02:08:34: And that we've already defined, like, you know, and so I, and also my white paper I quote from various Nazarene theologians the last 90 years to show like, yes, whatever, because I, since I've interacted with Peterson and others,
02:08:46: I know kind of what they'll try to bring, they'll bring red herrings and be like, well, theistic evolution is compatible with the article.
02:08:54: Now, I would argue it isn't, because surprisingly, all the Nazarene theologians who wrote on it were like, theistic evolutions, or they wouldn't even frame it that way.
02:09:02: But evolution sucks. It's terrible. I do think it probably should be revised to head off that kind of concern.
02:09:08: But even in the sake of argument, I granted that and said, but it still requires you to affirm Adam and Eve, historical persons and so forth.
02:09:16: And he never responds to that. He just wants to bring a red herring and act as if I'm saying things I'm not. And with terms of the article in the atonement,
02:09:24: I allude to another white paper, as well as to an honors thesis I wrote, where I argue, so the white paper in my honors thesis does this too, as well.
02:09:32: It exegetes the article, six article of faith, but then it just surveys the systematic theologians used by the church
02:09:39: Nazarene from its inception until more recently. So you have even Methodists like Samuel Wakefield and John Miley on word, say, look, they all affirm this doctrine.
02:09:50: There is variation. Some of them don't like talking about imputation. Some of them don't like using the word punishment, but I mean, in essence, they mean the same thing.
02:09:59: But they all affirm God's justice has to be satisfied for him to pardon sin. Among other things, and you'll see this in the article itself, it's the ground, the only ground of salvation, well, pardon is part of salvation, is the suffering of Christ.
02:10:13: They deny that. In other words, they'll deny what Hebrew says, without the shedding of blood, there is no remission.
02:10:19: But the essays and so forth are designed to make the theological gap between saying, well, here's what the article says, here's what they're saying, here's why it's incompatible.
02:10:31: And then with the 16th article of faith, that has to do with kind of incipient, at least quasi -universalism that Dr.
02:10:40: Bankert alluded to in class, as I recall, a friend of mine recalls, took the course later, very explicitly in one of his sermons, although there might be a slight ambiguity there.
02:10:50: And I note this in my essay, because I want to be even -handed, as well as one of the professors said as well. And the gist of it is something like, it connects, it's kind of an intersection of their open theism.
02:11:00: God doesn't, the future isn't determinant, so God's knowledge of the future isn't. God continues to give prevenient grace, the grace that enables salvation, to the damned, and so forth.
02:11:10: If you combine all these things together, if not of logical necessity, but just of the trajectory of these claims, which some of the professors have made in class, you would get universalism.
02:11:22: Or you certainly wouldn't get what the 16th article of faith says, which in essence says that you have to come to faith in this life, or you're not going to make it, basically.
02:11:33: And so there's a problem there. The last section, in some ways, the first three sections are in some way implicitly about biblical authority.
02:11:42: But this last section is specifically addressed to that. In some ways, it's kind of a catch -all, where I talk about, here the main focus will be like on a
02:11:53: Marcion, there's other emphasis too, but a Marcionism, which of course is, well
02:11:58: Marcionism, strictly speaking, is that the God of the Old Testament is evil, because he created matter, and also look, he does evil stuff.
02:12:06: Pseudonostic, whatever. But there's a kind of Neo -Marcionism, which is like, the
02:12:11: God of the Old Testament is the God of the New Testament. He's not evil, but like, the portraits of this
02:12:16: God is wrong. And so the main sticking point for them will be like the invasion of Canaan, but they really mean the flood and other things like that.
02:12:26: And here I point out some context where it comes up in class, comments that Professor Dr.
02:12:32: Gorman made, Dr. Bankard as well, as well as to make sure I show that I know their positions.
02:12:40: Two of Dr. Bankard's sermons deal with these at length, right? And then this also connects a bit to show that I have not taken them out of context on the
02:12:50: Atonement. Two professors, Dr. Peterson and Dr. LeClaire, the latter of whom is unfortunately on the
02:12:57: Articles of Faith Committee for the Church of the Nazarene, they wrote a book on the Atonement and some other things.
02:13:02: Their thesis was interesting. How does the Atonement speak to the sinned against, or the cross speak against? That could be great.
02:13:09: Many good places you can go with that. They mostly avoid those and go to bad places instead, in my opinion.
02:13:16: But in connection with this biblical authority thing, I quote on page 118 of their manuscript, a friend of mine, it's one of their classes
02:13:24: I was not allowed to take, but sent it to me. They just say, yeah, part of our objection is that God is not violent, because violence is necessarily wrong, it seems.
02:13:32: I mean, they're somewhat ambivalent on that point, but they do claim God is not violent. And you either have to say
02:13:38: God is schizophrenic, because Jesus says, love your enemies, but God in the Old Testament does this, and also the
02:13:44: Holy Spirit kills Ananias and Sapphira, all very problematic. So you either have to say this hermeneutic of love, which lets us get rid of the
02:13:52: Old Testament and New Testament judgments, is true, or you have to say God is schizophrenic, which matches basically with what
02:13:59: Benkert says in his one of his sermons, which is you either have to say, hold my position, which is none of these happened, or you have a
02:14:07: God who looks very much like Satan. Now the problem with when it comes to biblical authority, I think is to be obvious, but to frame it in terms of the fourth article of faith of the
02:14:16: Church of Nazarene is, how can scripture inerrantly reveal all things necessary for our salvation, if it is so often and so egregiously wrong as their position would state about the doctrine of God, God's character and actions, how can you trust it at all, even if it says those nice things you like?
02:14:37: And so implicitly, by holding this neo -Martianism, they completely deny the authority of scripture.
02:14:45: And then there's the last section of this portion, has to do with gendered language for God, and so forth.
02:14:51: The more moderate position is, in terms of the university, is they don't like saying
02:14:58: God, himself, or him, they use God -self, you know, or they just say
02:15:03: God, instead of using a pronoun. For most, which frankly, in terms, some of them will say, at least in some contexts, she, and so forth, for God.
02:15:15: Certainly they give toleration to students who do that, which I find that very arrogant in terms of the scriptural and you know, historical use, like you're just going against the scriptures and what
02:15:26: Christians have always done, that seems problematic. But also, in terms of biblical authority, it seems to suggest that scripture has been very unhelpful at this point, and potentially damaging, so we need to move away from the scriptural practice.
02:15:41: Of course, they won't frame themselves at doing that, because they're like, well, Jesus called himself a mother hen. Like, okay, but Jesus said that as a human being, as a man, so like, but ultimately, what they're doing is, they're moving away from the scriptural, the scriptural commands to pray, our
02:15:57: Father, and so forth, and approved examples, because evidently, they think scripture is unhelpful in these points.
02:16:06: Well, that undermines scripture. How can it inherently reveal all things necessary for salvation, if it's so harmful in these points?
02:16:12: And so that's the essence of the biblical authority. So altogether, I mean, at the end of the day, I'm, frankly, in my own opinion, it just seems that the religion, at least taught by that, if you would follow everything the professors say, it seems to be a kind of another religion.
02:16:30: A Christian -like religion has a lot of the external trappings, but in essence, it's severely different at several significant points.
02:16:37: Yeah, we call those cults, like Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons and Roman Catholics and others.
02:16:44: So I want to read one quote. I mean, in this section of biblical authority, I mean, there's a few whoppers in your entire letter that I had to read my wife, just in total disbelief.
02:16:54: And this was probably the biggest one of them all. And there's, I mean, it was hard to rank them, don't get me wrong.
02:17:01: This one says, you know, some are more or less strongly deprecate masculine terms for God or indicate that we can, with as much propriety, refer to God in the feminine.
02:17:14: And then you go on to say, in spring 2022, Dr. LeClerc gave a lecture in Christian Theology 1, in which she strongly encouraged students to refrain from using masculine language, he or father for God.
02:17:28: Four students in that course were able to relate to me what she stated, both the arguments she gave for her admonition and the admonition itself.
02:17:35: For instance, she said that since most child abusers are male, and many people have abusive fathers, we should refrain from calling
02:17:43: God father as doing so might trigger their PTSD. She also argued that since God and his divinity is not gendered, we should not call
02:17:51: God he or father. And then she talks about patriarchal society, and I'm like, this is absolutely unbelievable.
02:18:02: Yeah, well, I mean, and that's one of the things, I mean, when I could touch really briefly upon, like, the university's response,
02:18:11: I wasn't allowed to enroll in any College of Theology courses for this last semester. And talk about that for a moment, because I mean, you talked about the cost, and there was a cost to you here.
02:18:22: Yeah, yeah. Well, let me just briefly talk about the statement, then I'll go on to that. So I, because I wanted to clarify with,
02:18:30: I heard this, that troubled me. So I basically said, well, we heard, and several of the students joined me in this little project to write to her, we said, well, we heard
02:18:37: X, is this an accurate representation of what you said? Our concerns are, here are our concerns, and I bring them up in the letter as well.
02:18:46: What do you make of those? And her response was not to write to back to us, I didn't necessarily expect her to write, but instead, she lambasted me and other students, some of whom weren't even affiliated with this, and so forth.
02:19:01: In the next class period, evidently, she asked each student, did you tell? Did you tell? But the only relevant thing she said in that email to her class was, besides misquoting me, the letter shows truly bizarre logic.
02:19:14: Now I take umbrage at the second one, but I mean, I also don't think her statement is correct as far as misquoting her, but I mean, part of, even the purpose of the letter, email, was to get her to say, like, do you think this is inaccurate?
02:19:26: So like, why would that be a fault when we're, you know, endeavoring to clarify your position, right? I mean, that's, you've asked these professors to do this.
02:19:33: Yeah, and include this all in a footnote, I attribute, you can even hand it, but part of why I don't really think I have misquoted her, or in other words, why these four students, one of whom came to me and others
02:19:44: I know and just happened to talk with shortly. The reason I don't think so they misrepresented her in this is, one, fundamentally,
02:19:51: I've heard from four students independently that day, or that within the few days of that lecture, very, most part, very detailed accounts that interlocked with each other.
02:20:03: So I don't really think there's a lot of misrepresentation. And secondly, other than fitting generally with what her position is, it fits with what, one of the things she says in this book, she and Peterson say on the book, it's more narrow in this book, but it seems to fit very well with what she said in class, which is, and yet using father language in a book about victims of abuse would be, to put it bluntly, re -traumatizing for some who have suffered at the hands of fathers or father figures in their lives.
02:20:28: So basically, and so basically, to do so would betray the very essence of our subject matter, since so many of the abused and abandoned find male, and male familial language can, that's a typo on her part, but can be extremely problematic when applied to God.
02:20:43: So whenever, unless they're quoting someone else in this book, they only refer to the father as the first person and so forth.
02:20:49: So it's, it fits with what she said there. So if there is some imprecision, it's very slight,
02:20:55: I think. But in terms of response, there've been, there were basically three phases of this. One was shortly following the, so on October 8th is when the district superintendents, three of them anyway, met together and said, we'd like to bring it to Peterson.
02:21:12: You want to include your name on that? I'm like, well, one, they'll know it's me anyway, and I'm standby on my work. Go ahead.
02:21:18: And with, shortly after that, Peterson shares it with Dr. Thompson. I know this because six days later, on October 14th,
02:21:26: I have an interview for ministerial standing, which is a university side thing. It's not a denominational thing.
02:21:31: I mean, it's related to that, but it accomplishes three purposes. One, it's a requirement for Christian ministry major. It's a thumbs up to district credentials boards.
02:21:40: And third, it's a requirement for a scholarship. And this interview is usually no more than an hour. Sometimes it's less.
02:21:46: Mine was about an hour and 45 minutes. The last hour of which was explicitly talking about this letter.
02:21:52: And I wrote, I didn't record it, unfortunately, but I wrote down my recollection of it a few hours later.
02:21:58: I think it's pretty accurate, but there was a lot of contempt and disapproval in this.
02:22:04: That's when Dr. Thompson told me I had engaged in blackmail, which maybe being a pedantic person,
02:22:10: I thought to myself, well, if I'm doing something wrong, it's not blackmail because blackmail, you don't let the cat out of the bag until you get something.
02:22:16: But, you know, I like to be precise. But any case, there was a strong condemnation. I was presumptuous and arrogant.
02:22:23: I think he was taken aback a little bit when I mentioned my pastor was the one who forwarded to the district superintendent, because his whole point was
02:22:29: I had no credentials to make these decisions for the denomination. And I'm like, what decisions have I made?
02:22:34: I didn't decide bringing it to people's attention. So, you know, so on. Yeah. You're telling what the Bible teaches.
02:22:40: And this Dr. Thompson is the same Dr. Thompson I spoke with today. And before I was really hung up on,
02:22:46: I was going to ask him why he called this blackmail. Well, I mean, yeah. So basically blackmail gossip.
02:22:53: Just briefly. Basically, they say it had nothing to do with the letter, which I don't believe for several reasons.
02:23:00: I appeal, I go through appeal process. The first level of appeal was definitely doomed to fail because I was appealing to two of the professors in the
02:23:08: College of Theology who made the decision, one of whom at least knew about the letter because he's Dr. Peterson. But in any case, that goes through.
02:23:15: Then on December 21st, they say you can't enroll any of the College of Theology courses for next for the spring.
02:23:22: And I would have wanted to for at least one of two reasons, one to complete a religious studies, but I could also completed a philosophy bachelor's or to enroll in the courses
02:23:31: I needed for a Christian ministry major if I could get that appealed through unofficial means. But in any case, he said the reason he gave was defamation.
02:23:42: He said, I talked to the faculty chair, his defamation, this letter you wrote. It wasn't problematic.
02:23:47: You had concerns. It was just the way you did it. I don't really think that's true, but he tied it to the letter.
02:23:54: Now, which is interesting because it's like, if you have a smell detector, you're like, yeah, the letter also played a role in the first decision, which they say it didn't for whatever reason.
02:24:03: Although when Peterson wrote to the appeal committee, he says, it would have been sufficient reason for us to do so.
02:24:09: It's like, well, then why wasn't that part of the decision? It's a very odd, a lot of questions there.
02:24:14: But I write to appeal to the dean of the college and to the vice president of academic affairs saying
02:24:20: I'm going to appeal this decision to prevent my enrollment in courses. And neither of them respond for like, well, actually, they don't ever respond until later.
02:24:29: I eventually appeal right to the president of the university. He's on sabbatical for like two weeks or whatever. When he gets back, he responds and says, oh, my understanding, you have appealed two recent academic decisions.
02:24:39: I'm like, no, I've only appealed one. What are you talking about? Because some reason they want to conflate the ministerial standing decision with being able to enroll in courses.
02:24:49: And there's several problems with that. One, it seems to implicate them in a lie, to be honest.
02:24:55: It seems to. There's potentially ways they could try to work it out. But they say the ministerial standing decision had nothing to do with the letter.
02:25:02: But then the university's position seems to be, my understanding is, oh, this was decided at the same time the ministerial standing decision was decided.
02:25:12: Well, Peterson clearly says this is about the letter and defamation. Uh -oh, that's a problem.
02:25:18: And at a certain point, they had to maintain that position because it was already several weeks into the semester.
02:25:24: There was no way to undo it. But I was somewhat disappointed with this because I wanted to vindicate myself.
02:25:30: I wasn't defaming them. And also the claims I make. To speculate a little bit, I wonder if the reason they had to not let me appeal this is if they did and they're like, no,
02:25:41: Sean didn't defame anyone, that seems to strongly suggest that the claims were true.
02:25:49: Uh -oh. But in any case, then the third level, which is actually a disciplinary action, is connected more recently in connection with, for instance, the email
02:25:57: I wrote to Dr. LeClaire, a few of us had sent off to her. That apparently caused so much disruption in the class.
02:26:06: Like, okay, whatever. And that was a problem. And somehow my letter was also a problem as well.
02:26:13: It was kind of bogus. But they did let me appeal that one. I think they were somewhat slow in following their policy in terms of letting me have a copy of the complaint, but whatever.
02:26:22: Now I'm done with that. There have been other actions. I know that some faculty in a faculty meeting have, their whole policy to others has been to say just lies out of context, defamation, evil act of violence.
02:26:37: That's one thing that they've used for at least part of what I've done and so forth. Very strange conduct,
02:26:46: I think. And maybe I was being naive originally. I mean, looking back,
02:26:52: I think I might have been. Or just projecting onto them what I would do if I was them in terms of like why
02:26:58: I would want to defend myself or, you know, like respond to what's actually being said.
02:27:04: But no, they seem to be content mostly to just frame it in terms of either a confused student, but really just malicious.
02:27:11: I mean, that's how Dr. Peterson framed it to an email to me. Malicious, defamatory, slanderous, you know, they go on.
02:27:20: Backstabber seems to be another friend. They don't actually use the term, but they've gone, you've gone behind their back.
02:27:25: You've betrayed us. Yeah. The bottom line is, is they're borrowing from the liberal playbook.
02:27:32: I mean, we see the liberal politicians doing this continuously. I mean, the bottom line is, is that they committed a crime against you.
02:27:41: You know, you paid for a degree, you had every right to get a degree, and they denied you the degree that you were seeking.
02:27:50: For what they did, I mean, they've literally, what they've claimed you've done, which is blackmail, serious libel.
02:27:59: They could just as easily be truly accused of those things that they're accusing you of.
02:28:05: I mean, maybe not the blackmail so much that I know of, but the libel certainly. Yeah, the blackmail wouldn't work. But the libel certainly, and the backstabbing.
02:28:13: I mean, it's really incredible to me. Well, I mean, part of the reason they were slow in terms of giving me a copy of the complaint was they had a...
02:28:20: To be fair, I don't envy the university administrators like the vice president of academic affairs because you have an enraged college of theology.
02:28:29: I'm pretty sure all of them to a person, if not at least most of them, wanted to see me expelled.
02:28:35: I mean, part of the disciplinary process at this university is two RDs, resident directors, will meet with you and so forth.
02:28:41: And one of them mentioned to me, well, some of the people we talked to when they talked to theology faculty were like amazed, like, why are you still here?
02:28:48: And I'm like, well, I'm only here because I can't get a degree anywhere else because you have to, that was my joke.
02:28:54: But no, they were really keen on that. Although I would argue I've done nothing wrong against the student handbook, but certainly nothing that warrants the dismissal.
02:29:03: So I wouldn't envy their position because they have to placate the college of theology.
02:29:09: I mean, I don't think they should be placating the college of theology, but you can understand the impulse to do that, protect the organization.
02:29:15: I'm glad I'm not in any kind of university administration, but I am glad that they, at least to this extent, didn't bend to the pressure of the college of theology.
02:29:25: But I know, and some of it I think may have backfired on them, particularly like with one of the professors. He's made it public to the,
02:29:33: I'll say it now, I guess it's not like immoral or illegal to do so, but one of the faculty members did resign, mostly because the university did not discipline me enough,
02:29:45: I guess, which probably included expelling in his mind, but very ineffective.
02:29:50: And he, for some reason, sent it out to all of the faculty of this university, which, I mean, some of them don't even have any idea of anything's going on at all.
02:29:57: So that's, I think, an unforced error on his part. But I know that faculty have talked to me and other students, and some of the students,
02:30:05: I just saw an acquaintance of mine saying, oh, this professor was talking about this letter the professor wrote.
02:30:12: But I don't know, it's just an odd mindset in terms of bringing it out.
02:30:18: But at every stage, one thing has been fortuitous, the providential, at every stage of the appeal,
02:30:24: I get to bring up the appeal committee, and my ministerial standing is, here's the letter. I mean, there are faculty here, but I've talked with some who, like STEM professors and others, who have, like, they don't know what goes on in the
02:30:35: College of Theology, whatever, you know, there's other departments here. So they don't know too much.
02:30:40: They hear a rumor here or there. And so this has been illuminating to some of them. And even the vice president of student development, when this,
02:30:47: I appealed to her, she did not know anything about my letter. And so I'm like, well,
02:30:52: I'm going to submit this as part of the official record, because it's germane. But also, like, could it go to her?
02:30:58: I don't know if she's sympathetic to the concerns, but at every time I get to say, here's my letter, you know.
02:31:03: So it's been useful in that way. And, you know,
02:31:08: I mean, in some ways, I think, beneficial overall. I mean, it has been fortuitous that through God's grace and through providence,
02:31:16: I think he's brought me through this. I mean, in temperament, certain things don't bother me too much.
02:31:22: I mean, I could only imagine if I worried about what faculty and students say about me, that would probably be miserable. But I just don't care,
02:31:29: I guess. But, you know, that has been, I guess, a brief synopsis of some of the things that have gone on in terms of at NNU, as well as the response to me.
02:31:40: I only hope that it hasn't had so chilling an effect. I mean, I know that even in my appeals, some of the claims they made about me was like, oh,
02:31:48: Sean's dangerous and threatening to students and so forth, or at least makes students feel unsafe and so forth.
02:31:53: I'm like, well, here's a number of students who've had me in classes this semester and the previous ones, what they say. At least some of the ministry students did not want their names attached to that because they feared like reprisal, even just for like saying, hey,
02:32:06: Sean's not a crazy guy, you know. And I know that some other ministry students and others from Nazarene or otherwise who have concerns, you mentioned one who was here and who left, and I know of others of similar experience, but those who stay here, they're very wary of what they say in class and to others.
02:32:24: And so my concern is just it won't have a chilling effect on students. And there are, I think, hopeful signs that that isn't the case, both among ministry and other students who are at this school and alumni.
02:32:36: And I mean, there have been other institutional effects I've heard,
02:32:41: I mean, because some of the pretty big donors have found out about my letter and are sympathetic to it. And so that might put pressure on the university because the aim here, ultimately, the ideal aim would be even have the faculty, whether they remain or not, to repent and to come to unity in truth.
02:32:59: But if that can't be achieved, it's to reform the university, at least to curb the more egregious elements and to replace that with something positive.
02:33:11: So that's the hope. There are less satisfactory ideals, which is just cutting ties with the university.
02:33:18: I mean, that might, honestly, that's my guess of what will happen sooner or later, the university or the denomination, one of the two will just be like, we're done with our association.
02:33:26: I mean, that's happened with other schools. I mean, you know, back in the day, like Harvard and Yale used to be, you know, really actually good
02:33:32: Christian schools, but, you know, that hasn't, you know. Yeah, until the Marxists got a hold of them. Well, I think it was probably before that, but yeah.
02:33:38: But yeah, so there's been, you know, the hope, though, is to see, like, and one of the, in the meantime, it's like, well, if you're a pastor of a church,
02:33:48: Nazarene or otherwise, in at least particularly in the area that sends, I mean, it's not just from the Northwest. I mean, but I think primarily from the
02:33:55: Northwest that NNU draws its student population is to be aware of what's going there. And frankly, it might be ideal not, if you're a parent or say, hey, don't go to this school, or at least if you are, you need to be aware of what they're going to teach.
02:34:09: Intellectually, here's why it's wrong. Remain in a good church fellowship with good Christian friends, that will get you through.
02:34:17: I know that... We can call you the Nazarene Martin Luther, then.
02:34:24: Martin... Once he takes his letter and pins it to the door, then... I'll try to do that, yes.
02:34:31: Take a picture for us. My last comment, maybe if I don't have anything after that, that'd be good. If you want to have anything to say after that would be good, is
02:34:38: I know that I've, okay, I'll say it from this way. I've been told by students who go to, or have gone to a local evangelical
02:34:47: Methodist church, so distinguish them from the United Methodist Church. A lot of the pastoral staff,
02:34:53: I'm told, went through NNU, not exactly, they don't exactly see eye to eye with them, but that if any student goes or is like applies to or is accepted to NNU, they're like, hey, why don't you reconsider?
02:35:06: But if they do go through, I've told these for a time, they've had people like in a class kind of like inoculate you against some of the more obnoxious points they teach there.
02:35:16: I don't know the exact content of that class. I considered asking one of the pastors there, but I just slipped my mind.
02:35:23: But the reason they did that is because they had students in like the youth groups and so forth who come back like, yeah, I'm not a
02:35:29: Christian anymore. And that's even happened in classes. Like a student will say,
02:35:34: I'm an atheist now because of this course. I don't think most students say that. I think most, fortunately, I mean, for lack of a better way of saying it,
02:35:42: I think most are inconsistent, so they absorb these harmful teachings which are destructive to loving
02:35:50: God with whole soul, whole mind, and whole heart, but they won't follow them to their conclusions or they'll remain inconsistent, which is, at least in their context, almost a blessing, for lack of a better way of putting it.
02:36:03: But it's not rare to find students who come here. There's a
02:36:08: Lutheran guy, Jordan Cooper, has a brief, this is about Eastern Nazarene College, probably 20 years ago, but he had a very good anecdote on that point of like, in a
02:36:16: Bible course, a professor does a survey, how many of you believe the authority of scripture? All but two will say, yeah, I do. At the end of the course, this is probably a more extreme example, but at the end of the course, only two said so.
02:36:25: So whether they're consciously trying to destroy faith or not, I think that is a very understandable outcome in many cases.
02:36:33: So that's all I have to say, I suppose, unless you have any comments or questions that might elicit anything else. Yeah, I mean, you gave us a wealth of information about what's going on at Northwest Nazarene University, and of course, you already said what you hope to happen is that there is repentance and or reform that occurs at the university.
02:36:53: I actually pray that they do the right thing and give you the degrees that you should have gotten over there.
02:37:00: It is unbelievable that they did this to you. Yeah, well, I mean,
02:37:06: Oboe, one thing I think, I wonder if the College of Theology faculty actually think this, but like,
02:37:12: I'm not aware of me being driven by malice or anger. I mean, some of them, like Dr. Banchard, he and I got along really well.
02:37:19: He's a very affable guy. I personally, on a personal level, like him a lot. Some of the professors, I don't really know that well, but I was never driven by animus or like a vendetta, like, oh,
02:37:29: I gotta just get them because other than teaching bad things, they've never wronged me personally.
02:37:36: So it's more of a, I don't like what's going on here. Someone needs to speak out. Why not me?
02:37:42: But yeah, so I hope there is some. Yeah, of course, you will wish the other professors would have done this.
02:37:50: You would wish the dean would do this. You would wish that it shouldn't have to come down to a student in school.
02:37:57: Well, frankly, I mean, it is troubling to me that, I mean, a lot of these have been, there have been attempts to reform the
02:38:04: NAU with some good results. I mean, Dr. Thomas Ord, if anyone wants to look him up, was fired.
02:38:10: That was good. Then they fired the university president who did that. Probably not as good, but it's alarming to me that you have high -ranking university officials or even church officials who either because they don't take an interest in terms of like time or,
02:38:27: I don't know how it allows to continue for so long. I mean, that's one thing
02:38:32: I'll, you know, I mean, it's not like it has to be, it doesn't have to be that way. I mean, I mean, there's maybe there's something, you know, you mentioned some cults.
02:38:41: I mean, maybe there is something learned from Jehovah's Witnesses. They would not let someone be a fake
02:38:46: Jehovah's Witness. Now that's good because, I mean, you shouldn't be a Jehovah's Witness first place, but at least they do have a care about terms of their doctrinal integrity.
02:38:56: Why, why should Christians have less concern? I mean, you know, particularly on this essentials points, but even like, you know, in terms of like Baptists, like if I'm a
02:39:05: Presbyterian, it's just dishonest for me to try to be a Baptist. That wouldn't make sense. That's dishonest, you know, but when it comes to like, yeah,
02:39:12: I don't think the Bible even has authority. It's like, that's very problematic, even worse than that.
02:39:18: But they don't, university and other officials in the denomination have a lackluster response so far.
02:39:24: That's my opinion anyway. I pray that that changes. I just don't know how you're a theology teacher and don't believe in the
02:39:30: Bible. I mean, that's just, it's mind -blowing. Well, I mean, I don't want to apply this to any particular professor, but it does elicit a reminder of mine in terms of, is it
02:39:40: Titus? He says, you know, they think godliness is a pursuit for material gain or something like that. I don't, the reason
02:39:47: I hesitate to say that it applies to them is because I don't know what their own conscious, what they actually think.
02:39:53: I think they might actually believe that you can be a Christian and believe and do and, you know, regard the world in the way they do.
02:40:01: I just think it's, if I saw that they're deluded, like that is inimical to faith and true righteousness.
02:40:07: And so I hope, I hope they repent. I mean, it'd be great. Everyone repents, reconciliation, university restored.
02:40:14: That's my hope. Yeah. Amen to that. And you know, on that, I thank you for being on.
02:40:20: We, I know you, you're even beyond what you were wanting to be on tonight. So I appreciate you being on.
02:40:26: If you're going to hang out backstage for just a moment when we end the show, but Sean, thank you so much for being on.
02:40:33: Josiah, thank you for being on for moral support for all of us. We'll have to get you on next week and pick your brain on some of this stuff from, from this week, as I'm sure you are like bursting at the seams with all kinds of stuff to to say.
02:40:48: Yeah. One of them I just want to say really quick is that the professor who said that the substitutionary atonement of Christ made
02:41:00: God cruel. He has a very, very horrible, horrible view of God.
02:41:08: And he has a horrible view of man. He elevates man to essentially sinless perfection with what he said.
02:41:17: And he, and he, he creates God as this bully who just needs to forgive everybody.
02:41:23: He, he just, who, who wishes. It's just, it's absurd.
02:41:29: That's absurd. Well, maybe just a brief comment. It's, it's also, they evidently were instructed or came to accept caricatures, which if you were a laity, maybe that wouldn't be so bad, but these are philosophers, theologians, they're supposed to be like know what they're talking about.
02:41:45: But like, if you read any through any like systematic theology, whatever tradition, I think of Richard Watson, like they're basically, they're
02:41:54: Sassinians here. Like, but so a lot of the arguments against the Sassinians, like, oh, they tried to pervert the opinion of the
02:42:00: Orthodox. They present God as implacable and naturally vengeful, like in the sense of like, not in terms of having retributive justice, but like as having to be bribed or bought off.
02:42:09: And that's how they'll describe it. I'm like, well, no one, we don't believe that, but you know, or they'll embrace other caricatures, like in the backside of the cross,
02:42:17: LeClaire and Peterson will be like, well, this view of the atonement, God purposely misdirects his wrath.
02:42:24: And I'm like, well, no, because the union of Christ in nature through grace, in terms of his godship and will is what allows this whole thing to work because he identifies with sinners, obvious.
02:42:37: Or it requires a split in the Godhead. I'm like, how, how does the voluntary offering of the son to the father through the eternal spirit to satisfy the one justice of God.
02:42:48: So they'll just, they'll make all these caricatures. So not only they just reject sound doctrine, they just, they seem to have a persistent ignorance or blindness as to what it is.
02:43:01: And the problem is, of course, students do too, but they'll be impressed by what the professors say. And so they'll warp their view of scripture.
02:43:07: They're not well -grounded in historical theology. And so all sorts of problems arise from that, but probably should go now.
02:43:14: So at least I'll need to leave pretty soon anyway. Yeah, no, that's right. And so, I'll say one last appeal to professors of Northwest Nazarene University, Dean Richard Thompson, who
02:43:27: I talked to today, Dr. Bankard, others. If you truly believe that Sean is misrepresenting, if he's blackmailing, if he's,
02:43:39: I mean, all the other things that you accuse him of doing, then we ask you come on this show and do what you have not done for him yet, which is point out those errors that you claim he's made.
02:43:53: Point out those things. And then also, if you're going to do that, that you need to clearly speak what your positions are on each of these subjects so that if you believe he's misrepresented, you tell us what you actually believe so that the world can know.
02:44:09: This podcast will be downloaded many, many, many, many times over. This is a flagship podcast of a very large podcast network.
02:44:18: And so lots of people will see this. You will have an opportunity to set the record straight if that is what you want to do.
02:44:27: So I'm open on this. Two of you guys have my cell phone number, Dr. Thompson and the actual dean who's out on leave today, or leave this month.
02:44:38: You have my cell phone number as well. I'm sure if you call Sean, he's happy to give you my cell phone number too.
02:44:43: So it's there for you to get ahold of me. Yeah, I would want to add, just for precision's sake,
02:44:50: I wouldn't say that Dr. Bankard accepts sinless perfection because, at least not as articulated by Wesley, although his preferred term was
02:44:58: Christian perfection, because Bankard in one of his sermons explicitly denies entire sanctification.
02:45:04: I think we're going to say he has a low view of sin, almost like the natural man is, yeah, sure he sins, but it's no big deal.
02:45:12: I think that would be an accurate characterization of Dr. Bankard. Yeah, but he does deny the doctrine of original sin from what
02:45:21: I gathered in terms of a historical atom. Yeah, well, he thinks basically because humans...
02:45:27: Yeah, if I wanted to follow up, there were some other leads on him and other professors, what they would mean by original sin anyway.
02:45:34: But yeah, they don't think in terms of that humans were created in the state of original righteousness, and that there are certain consequences, both in terms of relationship with God, and as well as natural ability.
02:45:46: Like human nature suffers an injury, a corruption, so that it is wide, it affects everything.
02:45:52: That grace is necessary for any movement of God good at all. But he does have a very low view of sin, and I think of the holiness of God as well.
02:46:00: So that much I think you've correctly pointed out, which is unfortunate. Yeah, absolutely.
02:46:06: So thank you for that. Thank you, Josiah, for being on as well. Sean, thanks for all the work you've done.
02:46:12: I mean, it really is... For me, I love seeing younger people stand up. I wish a lot more would do that.
02:46:19: So please be a friend of the show. Come on in the future, if you'd like.
02:46:24: And again, Northwest Nazarene University, reach out.
02:46:31: If you want to correct a record, if you want to go on record to say what you actually believe, please come on. We will have that forum for you.
02:46:38: On that, y 'all have a good night. Pastor Justin Pierce will be hosting and be back again next week.