James White Reveals the 3 Secrets to Winning Any Debate (Live Interview)

The Apologetic Dog

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August 10, 2024

https://theapologeticdog.com

00:01: And we are live at the Apologetic Dog. Thank you so much for tuning in.
00:07: I cannot wait because we have a very special guest this evening. Before we hop in, we will,
00:14: I just wanna remind you that if you haven't liked and subscribed to the Apologetic Dog, please do that and hit the notification bell when you get these random live streams on a
00:24: Saturday evening. Our special guest this evening is none other than Dr. James White.
00:29: We will be delving into his debates that he's done, specifically the last three. Dr. White has been such a blessing to my
00:38: Christian walk and me just learning more about how to contend for the faith. And I wanna get into what are specific debate strategies?
00:48: How does he study for these things, prepare for them? And I want us to talk about how does one really win a debate?
00:56: What does that look like? And just to get his perspective on that. And so please watch all the way to the very end because I want him to share with us more in depth what he was thinking about in preparing for these debates and what he could have to encourage us with.
01:12: With that being said, Dr. White, how are you, sir? Well, I'm at my last stop on a 28 day road tour here.
01:24: I get home tomorrow. So I'm actually in Arizona. I could have pushed through, but we try to make the last legs a little bit shorter just for safety reasons.
01:35: You know, you get tired. And I have fallen asleep once driving.
01:40: Thankfully the rumble strips alongside the road woke me up.
01:46: But that was a year and a half ago. So, you know, I'm driving alone and that's sort of how it works.
01:54: On this trip, I was driving somewhere in Southern, yeah,
01:59: I was driving from Dolores, Colorado to Santa Fe, listening to you and Jason Lyle.
02:06: Jason was responding to a common critic who has come after me in years past.
02:16: I'm sure you're aware. Well, maybe you're not, I don't know. But yeah, we had some interesting exchanges in the past, but anyways, yeah.
02:25: So I was listening to that and it's always great to listen to Jason. Of course, I was a few days later out in the dark with Jason stargazing.
02:36: And so he's found this place out near a cemetery outside of Colorado Springs that's pretty much completely dark.
02:46: And he has a 14 inch telescope, of course, and he knows the night sky like nobody.
02:52: I mean, the man's amazing. And he has these super cool night vision goggles.
02:59: I have night vision goggles too, but his are better than mine. And he's even designed a way and built a way to attach his night vision goggles to his telescope.
03:10: So we're looking at nebula up through his 14 inch telescope with this white phosphorus night vision.
03:17: It just makes everything glow. It was incredible. And he was telling me about the article he just put out that challenges the standard cosmology and it's great.
03:31: And then he came to my debate. He came to one of the debates, the first debate we're gonna be talking about.
03:36: He was in the audience. So Jason's a dear friend and undoubtedly the smartest man out of everyone.
03:44: There's no question that when it comes to IQ, I've never met anybody that comes close.
03:51: Well, it was such an honor to be able to have him on the Apologetic Dog and talk about his book, The Ultimate Proof of Creation.
03:57: And I asked him, I said, Dr. Lyle, are you gonna be doing any more debates in the near future? And he said, those are hard to come by.
04:03: He says, if someone would set it up for me, I definitely would. And I said, you gave me a task. And so,
04:09: Ms. Denise, his assistant said, Jeremiah, let's set it up in Arkansas. And I said, I'll get it together.
04:15: So we just gotta find somebody. Be on the lookout for that, hopefully. I was talking to him about two, because what
04:22: I want to do is I want to do a tag team. He and I versus two others. That should be debate 200 for you, is a tag team two on two.
04:30: That'd be fun, yeah. But that would be, that'd be a lot of fun, yeah. Well, if I find two
04:37: PhD contenders, then we might can host that at 12 .5 Church in Jonesboro. Well, the thing that, the topic that we suggest that we talked about out there in the graveyard was probably apologetic methodology.
04:55: Take on some evidentialists. And I could think of some evidentialists to take on at a certain school populated by primarily anti -reformed evidentialists.
05:07: So that would be, that would be interesting. Okay, I'll look more into that and see if I can't have a helping hand there.
05:14: But Dr. White, thank you so much for coming on this evening after your dividing line.
05:20: I caught the tail end of it. So I'm glad that went well. And I just want to encourage our audience that if they have any questions for you along the way as we're reviewing your past three debates, please send that in the side chat.
05:34: And please, once again, like, subscribe, and share that just helps this apologetics ministry kind of go out into the ether, into the internet world.
05:42: And ultimately, we want to push the truth. We want to push the gospel of grace. And so Dr.
05:47: White, you've been so helpful in that. I was hoping we could go in reverse order with your three debates, because your last debate is still really fresh on your mind.
05:59: And I want to start out by asking you, was there a defining moment in this debate with Jared Longshore, which
06:06: I've had the pleasure of meeting him in person. Brilliant man. Really, really enjoy listening to him to explain a number of things.
06:14: But yeah, tell me some highlights in this debate that you had with Jared. It went as I and others had predicted, because it pretty much followed, if anyone had listened to our back and forth, starting in November of last year, when he dropped an article on Reformation Day about his conversion to paedo -baptism, and I started responding, and then he'd respond back and forth.
06:43: And if anyone listened to that, I did most of that in our studio, mobile studio, in the previous version of this that we had that we had to trade in because it was defective.
06:54: But anyway, I did most of it on the road, and it followed that very same line.
07:01: And so, I think I even bothered some of my Reformed Baptist friends.
07:08: Actually, I bother a lot of my Reformed Baptist friends these days, who would rather that I didn't identify myself that way.
07:15: And given how they behave sometimes, I'm ready not to, to be honest with you. But I bothered them because I'm a
07:24: Biblicist when it comes to Thomas Aquinas. I'm a Biblicist when it comes to the Trinity. And I'm a Biblicist when it comes to baptism, the new covenant, the nature of the new covenant.
07:34: And that's what that debate was, was I was very much focused upon arguing that we as Reformed men, when we debate
07:46: Roman Catholics, and I even said to Jared at one point, I said, you know, I think if you guys would engage more
07:52: Roman Catholics, I think you might change some of your views on some of these things.
07:57: Because when I engage Roman Catholics on justification, I will argue that Romans 2, 3, 4, 5 are the key section because you have a extended long discussion of what faith is, what works is, what grace is, what justification is, the righteousness, that is the text.
08:21: There is no place else in the New Testament where you have that kind of concentrated analysis of something.
08:30: And so you'd go to the main and plain section and then you interpret passage of the scripture that may mention something in passing in light of those main and plain texts.
08:41: And so I said, if we did that, where do you go to find out about the atoning work of Christ is intercession, what the new covenant is, what the results of the new covenant are, what the relationship of these things are, how the elect, it's
08:57: Hebrews 7, 8, 9, and 10, which is what I presented. And you'll remember that Jared said, well, yeah,
09:04: Hebrews is your strong section. And I'm like, yeah, there you go, that's why.
09:10: So if you start with the non -plain texts and then force your conclusions on the plain texts, that's not being consistent with how we defend the
09:25: Trinity, justification, so on and so forth. And so that to me was the real issue.
09:31: I did, I got to say almost everything I needed to say, I'll be honest, even though it wasn't all that long of a debate, toward the end,
09:38: I did get to say, hey, there's a historical context here. And the reality is that infant baptism as is presented by reformed
09:52: Pado -Baptist advocates today is a theological novum. That that particular understanding of baptism did not exist before the 16th century.
10:01: So the infant baptism that you see in history, which developed out of emergency baptisms and developed within the milieu of some really bad ideas about what baptism actually does, which we as reformed people wouldn't agree with, that's a really different form of Pado -Baptism than you have in reformed covenantal theology.
10:25: And so what's our ultimate authority? If we can look back and go, this is why
10:32: Calvin believed what Calvin did, isn't it our job to continue the reformation?
10:40: I'm concerned because I've even had reformed Baptists dispute the importance of the phrase
10:47: Semper Reformanda. They say, well, that's not a reformation phrase. Okay, in the sense of specifically finding those words,
10:55: I think the concept most certainly is, but I've had leading reformed
11:00: Baptist figures say to me, Semper Reformanda was made up by Karl Barth to be able to change any theology one day.
11:07: And I'm like, oh, goodness, no. And the only way that I could ever defend
11:14: Sola Scriptura against Roman Catholicism is if it's joined with Semper Reformanda. Once you abandon that, and you make the even reformed theology and reformed traditions your standard, we are in the same boat with Roman Catholics.
11:29: And so we're gonna be sitting there in the rowboat smacking at each other with the oars, but I didn't get it, get us. Well, I really appreciate this debate because one of the major differences with reformed
11:42: Baptists and Presbyterians are how we view the covenants. And I wanted to just kind of bring this up on screen to show you what was really defining for me.
11:51: And we've studied this, you've emphasized this, and obviously Hebrews 7, 8, 9, and 10 are crucial for this debate.
11:57: And we have the hermeneutic of the redemptive historical methods. So the New Testament, when we go interpret the
12:03: Old Testament passages, we're taking Christ with us and the clear teachings of the New Testament. And so here in Hebrews chapter eight,
12:11: I believe, talking about the members of the new covenant, where God says, I will be their God.
12:18: They all know me from the least of them to the greatest. I will be merciful towards their iniquity and I will remember their sins no more.
12:28: Jared made a comment, maybe you can help me. He said, this isn't really exhaustive in the new covenant.
12:35: This is just language that means maybe the majority, but it's not exhaustive. And that to me, it's hard to harmonize with the writer of Hebrews, quoting the
12:45: Old Testament saying, because when it says the least of them to the greatest, I will be their God. I will write my law on their heart.
12:52: It seems pretty exhaustive to me, Dr. White. So I don't know if you wanted to maybe touch on that a little bit more. Well, yeah, and in the debate,
13:00: I disputed that. He gave two references from Jeremiah, but they weren't in regards to the new covenant.
13:05: They were in regards to other uses of from the least to the greatest of them. And my response was, we need to let the writer of the
13:12: Hebrews interpret his use of that. And in the section right before what you quoted there, previous to that is,
13:20: I will write my law upon their hearts. This is the very fulfillment of the promise that you have.
13:29: Yeah, there you go. I'll put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts, and I'll be their
13:34: God and they should be my people. So this is exactly why Israel kept falling into apostasy and why the name of Yahweh was blasphemed amongst the people is because so many of those who bore the covenant sign, they were circumcised
13:50: Jews, and yet they were not circumcised of heart, and the law was not written upon their heart.
13:55: Or another example that's used, and again, reformed people would seem to understand is I will take out the heart of stone, give them the heart of flesh.
14:03: Well, that's what's going on here. And so it does strike me as very strange that reformed people would try, and they do, there's been a number of ways of getting around Hebrews 8, presented by different reformed writers in their books.
14:21: Some say the new covenant will only be established fully in the future. Jared's saying, well, there's great advantages to the new covenant, but it's not really different from the old covenant and being a mixed covenant and things like that.
14:36: And I'm just sitting here going, look, once you take
14:41: Hebrews 8, and you realize Hebrews 7, 24 through 25 has specifically said that Christ is able to save to the uttermost a specific people because he ever lives to make intercession for them.
14:55: Hebrews 8 is the biblical evidence that he then provides for that.
15:02: And then Hebrews 9 and 10 is then the application, which includes the perfection by that will, by that Thelema, that will perfects those for whom the sacrifice is made.
15:13: This is the central argument of Hebrews. This is why there's nothing to go back to. And this is where we have to go.
15:20: So to try to say, well, from the least, the greatest of them just means a larger portion than there was under the old covenant, leaves you going, so whose sins were forgiven?
15:32: Whose iniquities were covered over? And how did that happen? Again, as long as you allow 7, 24, 25 to be connected to Hebrews 8, and see if the writer is quoting that to substantiate his assertion in Hebrews 7 that he's then going to expand upon in Hebrews 9 and 10.
15:50: I just don't see any way around it. And Jared didn't offer us one. What Jared offered us is, well, yeah, but we have to go to other places.
15:59: And I'm like, no, we don't. The other places he's suggesting will get us off into the weeds of talking about Abrahamic and Noahic and Adamic and all the rest of that kind of stuff, but they're not gonna answer our questions here.
16:13: And so I really do see a parallel to when I'm exegeting
16:18: Romans 3, 4, and 5, and my Roman Catholic opponents go, yeah, but wisdom is justified by our children.
16:24: Well, that's not the same thing. And that's not how we do our exegesis.
16:29: That's how we do our apologetics, whatever else it might be. So I think Hebrews, I think one of the reasons that sometimes people feel like they're on the outside of this particular debate is
16:41: Hebrews is just not that well -known a book amongst even our own Reformed people. And that reflects the fact that it requires such a familiarity with the
16:50: Old Testament. And so many people are, you know, have a, I've said a lot of evangelicals have a sub -canonical view.
17:00: They sort of view the Old Testament as secondarily canonical to the
17:05: New Testament. And that's why I think Hebrews is not loved the way that it should be.
17:13: I don't know if you have read the book, The Fatal Flaw, by our good friend, Dr. Jeffrey Johnson.
17:19: I recently read it and it gets all into the continuity and discontinuity between Old and New Covenants.
17:25: So just wanna do a shameless book plug there because it's so incredible because we can look at these covenants in the
17:32: Old Testament and we see conditions, right? How was Abraham justified as you beautifully laid out in the
17:39: God Who Justifies book? It's always been by faith. That is the covenant that saves Pantelas, right,
17:44: Dr. Wyne? To the uttermost, all the elect have been saved by God through faith, him transforming that heart of stone and putting in that heart of faith.
17:55: And so that's the continuity that we see that the saints of old, the saints in the New Covenant, it's always by faith.
18:02: And then that's the fatal flaw is you don't have an unregenerate mixed covenant when we read through the book of Hebrews.
18:11: Right, and that's what you end up with. And that's what I was saying is it's strange to me because what
18:17: Jared was presenting is the idea that we start with a particular view of apostasy and then we modify and interpret our view of soteriology based upon a particular view of apostasy.
18:29: And I said, I'd like to suggest that we should start with our soteriology and modify and interpret our understanding of apostasy in light of our soteriology.
18:41: The other is more important than the other. And I think, and it did come out because Jared spent part of his opening statement talking about second
18:51: Peter and literally saying that there's a sense in which the false prophets had been purchased.
19:00: And I was like, I've defended particular redemption against all comers and agorazo without a purchase price is never soteriological.
19:08: And he said it wasn't soteriological, but he was trying to say it had some relevance here.
19:16: And I'm like, no, it has no relevance at all. You're just trying to make sure that the
19:21: New Covenant's a mixed covenant. So you're taking your doctrine of apostasy and you're modifying the doctrine of soteriology on the basis of that.
19:33: It's backwards. That's why we come to different conclusions. That's right.
19:38: Well, we have a really good question here in the side chat from BornAgainRN, really wants to get your answer to this,
19:45: Dr. Watt. How would you respond to the claim water baptismal regeneration has always been taught by the church?
19:55: I would say that anyone who would say that is grossly ignorant of church history.
20:03: And I say that because a couple of things. We don't have a large majority of what was written in say the first 200 years.
20:13: So you can guess, you can surmise, but to say that it's always been taught when so many of the writings were lost.
20:25: We know this from Eusebius who quotes portions of stuff that we've got none of it left.
20:30: We have no way of knowing what it was. So that's the first, it's just a historiographical issue. And that is people who say, oh, all of church history, obviously know nothing about church history, point
20:42: A. Point B, when we do have material from people, many of them are not even addressing the subject.
20:49: They're not even talking about the topic. And so how do you know what they believed about it? Well, I'm going to assume without any counter evidence, but you can assume all you want, but that's not how you do history.
20:59: And thirdly, just read Tertullian. Tertullian, is he completely on our side on things?
21:06: No, but what his work on baptism demonstrates is that there were a lot of different views represented in his day.
21:16: And so in his day, you had people who were baptized to conversion. You had people who delayed baptism.
21:22: He spoke against that, but it was very common. Look at what Constantine did. Constantine's not baptized until right before his death and that by an
21:30: Arian, which has all sorts of interesting ramifications and things about it too.
21:37: But so there were people who were baptized to conversion. There were people baptized later in life. There'd be people baptized put off to the death.
21:43: And then you had people who were baptizing babies who were sick. And this is coming from an unbiblical.
21:51: And again, this is a period of time where the canon is still being recognized. So you have people in the middle of the second century that don't even have
21:59: Paul's writings. And if you don't have Paul's writings, your theology is probably gonna be not all that hot.
22:07: And so you had people doing baptisms of children because they're afraid that they're not gonna live long enough to be baptized later on.
22:17: And so the point is, there were lots of different understandings of baptism, even in Tertullian's day in the late second century into the beginning of the third century, even if you ignore his becoming a
22:29: Montanist and all the rest of that kind of stuff. So, yeah, people who make those kinds of claims,
22:35: I just sort of look at them and go, I would suggest you not take a church history class because you're gonna fail.
22:42: So. Hey, I like that sauce. Got another question for you real quick.
22:48: And I think this kind of gets to the heart of the debate between Presbyterians and Reformed Baptists. You've talked about this so much.
22:54: This comes from Particularly Particular. It says, if the atonement of the work of Christ is only mediated through the new covenant, would that disrupt
23:05: Presbyterian covenant theology? Well, that sounds like a question in regards to 1689 federalism.
23:15: And look, my son -in -law is 1689 federalist. I don't have any problem with that.
23:21: I thought he did a great job in the debate that he had on that. I'm sure you've seen it. But here, look, this is the only reason that I don't use that moniker and use that kind of language.
23:35: And that is, I am not ready to say that the biblical position is that Abraham was in the new covenant.
23:44: He's in the covenant of grace, but there is something specific and special about the new covenant from the least to the greatest of them that is inaugurated and initiated specifically in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
24:00: So if you try to go that direction, part of my concern is that I have seen, for example, if you're familiar with quote unquote new covenant theology that was the
24:17: Ernie Riesinger stuff from the 1980s, especially 80s and 90s, it was sort of popular there.
24:24: I knew and sort of got into association with some people that were really into that new covenant theology stuff.
24:32: And I came to the conclusion eventually that it was an overreaction to Presbyterian argumentation on paedo -baptism.
24:43: And I have seen Baptists overreact to the other side.
24:50: And hey, they were living in a period of time, they're being persecuted. Okay, would I have overreacted? Maybe I would have.
24:56: I'm in a situation where I don't have to worry too much about getting my third baptism from my
25:03: Presbyterian friends. So that sort of changes the context and stuff. But it does seem to me that there is a danger of Reformed Baptists becoming imbalanced and finding every kind of argument possible to differentiate themselves as much as possible
25:22: For me, again, it's what is biblically, consistently defensible.
25:30: And I would struggle to defend the assertion that Abraham was in the new covenant for one simple reason.
25:40: I cannot even begin to imagine the writer to the Hebrews not mentioning that.
25:46: That would be central to his argumentation, but he never mentions it.
25:51: So I'm like, well, okay, if you wanna use, if you wanna do the speculative theological route,
25:59: I'm not gonna argue with you about that, but I'm not necessarily gonna go with you.
26:06: We have a Eric Yeager in the side chat, and he basically says, hey. I've seen that picture somewhere before.
26:17: He's lucky that it's so small I can't read it. Well, hey, thank you so much for weighing in.
26:24: Wait a minute, I didn't get a chance to finish reading that. It's so small on my screen,
26:29: I'm sorry. Let me see if I can pull it up. If one does not get this right,
26:38: I strike, so come on, brother, at the very heart of our peace with God, if that intercession doesn't actually provide justification, can the new covenant member have the assurance?
26:49: Yeah, there you go. Look, that guy is so super smart that he married my daughter, so.
27:01: Which some days I'm sure he wonders whether that was all that super smart at all, but no, no,
27:07: I love Eric, and I'm looking forward to seeing him again, and I have a lot of people comment upon the debate that he did, and I'd like to see him get the opportunity to do more of that kind of stuff, because I think he has the gifts and talents to do that, so.
27:22: And I'm getting old, so he's the next generation. There you go. Well, I just want you to know,
27:27: Dr. Wyatt, I'm about to step into the debate dojo with some Presbyterians on these similar topics, so your work has been super helpful, and also,
27:36: Dr. Jeffrey Johnson, I've been reading the Kingdom of God, understanding the covenants and biblical theology, so those are just great.
27:44: I know too, Jeffrey Johnson, are you talking about the president of the seminary? Mm -hmm, yep.
27:50: Okay, okay, good, all right, because I know two of them, and I've actually mistakenly called the one rather than the other, because they're both in my contact list, and it's like, oh, sorry, forgive me.
28:02: So I just need to make sure we're talking about the same folks, yes. Yeah, yeah. Well, hey, I just want to direct everyone watching, go check out this debate if you haven't.
28:11: I thought Jared, he's brilliant, I thought he did a great job, just very articulate, very respectful, and I want to shift gears, though, because I want to go in reverse order to the last three debates that you've done.
28:23: This one with Jared was very respectful, very likable, learned a lot. Now, Dr.
28:28: White, tell me a little bit about the afterthoughts of this debate with the gentleman,
28:36: Tim Barker, who is an open theist. Tim Barber. Tim Barber, thank you. Right, I've debated a few
28:43: Barkers, too, so, no, literally, their last name is Barker, so it does get confusing after a while. I wanted to debate
28:52: Will Duffy because I debated up in Denver in 2014 on open theism, and that was a very fascinating debate, and I had watched
29:09: Will Duffy's debate with Matt Slick, and I appreciated his demeanor in that debate, and that he was willing to defend some of the statements that his own church leaders had made and things like that, and so I thought it would be a good match.
29:33: He's in the area, so he doesn't have to travel, something like that. He just kept saying that he wasn't available or he didn't want to do it or something, and so there are, of course, a number of open theists that I just find reprehensible in their behavior, their attitude.
29:51: If you, for example, listen to the debate that Matt Slick did with a particular open theist recently, and then they did this after -show thing where they were bringing up personal attacks on Matt and stuff like that.
30:06: Just vile, just vile, vile, vile, and so I will not lend my platform to these people.
30:13: They have completely put themselves outside of any list of individuals that I would engage by their behavior, and I'm just gonna let them sit out there and have their little communities, but I'm not gonna help them get their name out because they're beneath my minimum level of behavior and maturity level to do so.
30:42: So I had hoped to get together with Will Duffy. Maybe something will work out in the future. I had never heard of Tim Barbee before when he was suggested to the church there, the
30:55: New City Church. Aaron Carlson's the pastor there. I'm really excited.
31:01: That's sort of becoming my new home base in Denver when I'm there, and it's a lot like Apologia.
31:10: So we are so much on the same pages. Our worship is very similar, and it's great to have that kind of positive unity with a church that's hundreds of miles away, but same
31:25: Bible, same spirit, same gospel, it's great. So he had been mentioned, referred to them, and this was being done fairly quickly.
31:37: We struggled in both of these debate in Colorado Springs and debate in Denver to get this stuff put together on short notice, and so I read
31:50: Tim Barber's book, and he has a small number of videos out, and so I watched his video on John 6.
31:59: It was Leighton Flowers, and it was Ken Wilson, and it was Manichaeanism, and he clearly doesn't have a clue what
32:07: Manichaeanism was actually about. Then again, it was Ken Wilson, or Leighton Flowers, but so it was that same kind of stuff, and he had a video on how
32:18: Calvinism makes God evil, and it's the standard, standard stuff that's been refuted over and over again.
32:23: He clearly hasn't done any reading in Calvin onwards, Edwards, Spurgeon, anybody.
32:32: It's all secondary stuff, but his book,
32:38: The Overlap Life, and he mentioned this.
32:45: It's strange because it's basic, it's sort of a post -millennial in the sense of living in light of eternity and the kingdom of God, and there was a lot.
32:58: Even he said, I think you'll see a lot of overlap to what I'm saying and what you all say at Apologia, and it's true, but as I said in my opening statement, what really confuses me is the foundation of our hope that that is all gonna take place is the sovereign decree of God, and so this weird denial of this embracing of open theism and this rejection of God's sovereign decree and stuff like that, it just doesn't fit with all the rest of his position.
33:37: Well, we didn't get to really get into most of that because of the way that Mr.
33:43: Barber chose to address the particular subject, and he has since the debate said, no,
33:51: I didn't have all that stuff written out. I was sitting there and I was looking. He said he was typing all of that. Well, either he's the fastest typist in the world or he's dishonest, and the reason
34:00: I have to say this is I objected immediately after the debate, the next time
34:08: I was on the air, because it did seem to me that he read his opening statement which, okay, fine, read your opening statement, read the rebuttals and read the closing, and if he's saying that he typed all that during the debate itself, that doesn't explain how in his rebuttal he spent a great deal of time arguing about and rebutting me on anthropomorphisms and analogy because I never used either word.
34:39: That was not a part of my presentation, and the funny thing is he said, when he responded to that during the debate, he said, well, that just shows that I knew where you were going, so which is it gonna be?
34:51: During the debate, he's not saying, oh, no, no, no, I didn't have that pre -written, but during the debate, he's like, yes,
34:58: I did, so which is it gonna be? I don't know, and then in his closing statement, he literally had the temerity to say that he had refuted all the biblical texts
35:10: I presented, and he didn't even come close. He didn't even try to deal with Daniel 4. He didn't try to deal with Psalm 33.
35:16: He didn't even touch them. It's like I never even read them, so it was really, it was like debating a less aggressive form of Leighton Flowers, and I'm getting to the point where after the last debate with Leighton, I told a dear friend of mine who sort of helps me out when
35:41: I'm in Houston. He and his family, do you need anything? Do you need any groceries? They used to be members at Phoenix Foreign Baptist Church when they lived in Phoenix, and Rudy Jaboris is his name, and I was walking over to greet people after the last debate with Flowers in Houston, and we're walking, and we were alone in this corridor walking toward the greeting area, and I said,
36:05: Rudy, if you ever hear me ever again talking about debating
36:10: Leighton Flowers, punch me in the face, and I told Rich the exact same thing.
36:16: Just punch me in the face, so it's not an enjoyable thing to do, and eventually, you just gotta come to the point where, oh, please, that's enough.
36:26: There's no reason to keep going, and I don't think I enjoyed debating
36:32: Mr. Barber again either. We had had a nice lunch, but I had done most of the talking during that too, so yeah,
36:42: I mean, I think a person who's interested in opiate -ism will find it to be useful on that level just simply due to the fact that the texts that I presented weren't touched.
36:58: I mean, in the cross -examination, I tried to get into his N .T.
37:04: Wright, Romans 828 thing, and once I get home, I wanna, once we're back in the regular
37:09: Dividing Line studio, I wanna go through his suggested translation,
37:16: Romans 828, and deal with that, but I realized when I started with that in the cross -examination that he didn't know enough of the language to be able to answer the questions, and so no one was gonna understand what
37:25: I was saying, so I bailed out of that, went into the Isaiah texts, and he, when
37:33: I went to Isaiah 4310, I have to trust that the audience is going to see what's really going on, because his fundamental way around the
37:44: Isaiah texts and the clear statement, how do you know who the true
37:50: God is? He knows the future. It's just, and he knows the past and why it happened, and how do you fit that with opiate -ism?
37:57: You can't, so his argument was, well, God knew what he was going to do in that historical situation with Israel and Cyrus and the captivity, so he tried to limit it and say, he's not talking about all of time.
38:13: He's not talking about an eternal decree. He's just talking about this one point in history, and so I take him to the texts where the scripture, where in that very same, the trial of false gods,
38:27: Isaiah 40 to 48, where God says, I am the only true God, and he admitted, yeah, that's universal.
38:36: That's applicable all over the place, and I said, well, in the same sentence, they're saying,
38:41: I'm gonna tell you before it comes to pass that you can believe and understand that I am he, which Jesus quotes from himself in John 13, 19.
38:48: We never got a chance to really get into that. He was anticipating that, because I brought that up in the debate in 2014.
38:55: I think it's absolutely devastating to open theism, but we ended up sidetracked on all sorts of other things, but in one text, you have,
39:08: I know the future, and because I know the future, you can know that I'm the one true God, and I'm the only
39:13: God there is. Yeah, that's universal, but that isn't. That was really the end of the debate, because you're gonna make the text say whatever you want it to say at that point, and I don't know if he really realized that.
39:26: He didn't seem to see where I was going in that cross -examination period, and of course, his cross -examination wasn't.
39:33: His cross -examination was, he just had his pre -programmed questions, and he's just gonna run with it, and my cross -ex was completely based upon what his presentation had been, and how he responded to what
39:48: I said. So yeah, it was very, very different than both the first and the third debates, as far as I can tell.
39:57: Well, I just wanna reflect a few points, because I was trying to process everything that was going on.
40:02: I thought this was the defining moment in the debate, when you kind of caught him on an inconsistency, and it was
40:08: Isaiah 43 .10 that you were talking about. He'll concede to their God is universally
40:13: God overall, none before him, none after him, but as you continue on in the context of the trial of false gods, oh, well,
40:21: God declaring the end from the beginning, well, that's talking about a particular case with Cyrus.
40:26: Now, help me out here. Is it back in Isaiah 40, where he starts talking about from the beginning, laying down the foundations of the world?
40:35: Because I get in these similar discussions with provisionists, even, and I'm like, when's the beginning here in Isaiah 40 that's being consistent with the whole context?
40:45: Well, oh yeah, that's the beginning of time. You know what I mean? Well, yeah, and I did make that argument in my statement, but I did that out of Psalm 33 specifically.
40:57: I mean, I did with Isaiah, but Psalm 33, he never even, it's like he had never seen it before.
41:03: And Psalm 33, to me, that is just so crushing to that position.
41:13: God's thoughts, God's intentions are established, man's thoughts, man's intentions are not, and what's that based upon?
41:18: He spoke and it stood firm. He said, and it came into existence. It's all based upon God as creator.
41:25: And that's why open theism, I think, is such a dangerous heresy, is that it necessarily ends up, well, in classical forms,
41:36: I call Tim Barber's form a mutant form, because what I'm seeing now is instead of a growing consensus amongst open theists as to the nature of their system, because I was one of the first people to do a public debate with one of the leading open theists at Reformed Theological Seminary against John Sanders.
42:00: And true historic, over the past 20 years, historic open theism, will openly question whether all biblical prophecy is necessarily true.
42:16: So they will point to passages that they would say contain unfulfilled biblical prophecy.
42:22: They have to, because the fundamental thrust of open theism initially was the defense of the autonomous will of man.
42:32: And so what free human beings will do cannot be known to God, cannot be known to God.
42:41: That really wasn't Barber's position. He was sort of making it up as he goes. And I think that's what's happening with a lot of these rando internet open theist apologists is, hey, they just get to, it's like a wax nose.
42:56: You get to put it into whatever form you want, and you'll defend your particular view, and you won't be held accountable for somebody else's particular view or whatever.
43:06: So yeah, so that also was somewhat frustrating. Because when
43:14: I would ask him questions from Isaiah, well, I wouldn't necessarily say that.
43:20: Well, I wouldn't necessarily, and I finally, I think I did get frustrated enough at one point to go, well, what would you necessarily say?
43:27: Because it was just so, it was so, trying to nail
43:34: Jell -O to a wall at that point, and very different than the debates that I had with Bob Enyart in Denver in 2014, and with John Sanders at RTS.
43:50: So yeah, it was frustrating, not enjoyable at all. Well, going back to kind of some of the
43:57: Isaiah texts, this is one I point out to say, look at the context, the end all the way from the beginning in Isaiah 40.
44:04: Do you not know, right, questioning the false gods that can't do anything, can't tell you anything that's going to happen in the future, and can't give you an explanation for what's happened in the past?
44:14: Do you not hear? Has it not been told to you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?
44:22: Now, I have a specific question for you about time. Now, I don't think in y 'all's debate, he committed to anything, but isn't it really important in talking with open theists to establish, is
44:34: God within time, or is he the creator of time, and therefore stands outside of time?
44:41: Yeah, no, his position, and I think you're right, he may not have been very clear about making that, but his position in his videos is presentism.
44:53: So he, well, actually, now that I think about it, I did make reference to that, but I don't think he actually followed up on it.
44:59: Yes, he believes that God is present in time, that time is not a creation of God, that God experiences progression of events, all of that, he does believe that, yeah.
45:10: Yeah, well, last thing before we move on to your first debate in this week's sequence, we're going in reverse order,
45:17: I noticed he kept trying to slip in there, James, we're brothers, right?
45:22: We're brothers, we'll be talking about this, and that made me feel uncomfortable. I'd like for you to speak to a little bit about the
45:30: God of open theism. Is that something we need to charitably interact with and refer to those as brothers, or do we see open theism as heretical, looking to God, making
45:42: God in our image, because you think about it, we don't know the future, and open theism is just a bigger version of me.
45:49: Well, it is a bigger version of me, and so we certainly need to warn people of its heretical nature, it's damaging to Christian theology and Christian practice.
46:00: At the same time, I'm not prepared to say that an open theist automatically, by that embracing of that, is not a
46:08: Christian, so I think it's extremely dangerous. I'll leave that up to the
46:14: Lord to determine. I certainly know some open theists that would go, I wouldn't call that guy a
46:19: Christian for love nor money, but again, not my job, but there are, so yeah, he really wants to emphasize that part he did in his book, he did in his videos, and okay, like I said,
46:37: I'm not gonna become judge, jury, and executioner in that situation, but what I will say is, not in my church, you're not teaching this stuff, and I would say to anybody else, avoid this stuff like the plague, because it's utterly destructive, and that's what
46:59: I was trying to point out, his own system, where he has all these grand hopes of the future, without the sovereign decree of God, he has absolutely no way of knowing that'll ever happen.
47:10: Well, I still think there's many things in that debate that is educational. Obviously, there's a huge clash when your view of God is he doesn't know the future.
47:22: Usually, like when you've said on your dividing lines, consistent Arminians will lead to open theism. Usually, when you start pointing that out to people, and they see that consistency of, man, that might end in open theism, usually the debate is won, so when you have to start with someone who affirms that position,
47:38: I just thought, man, this whole dynamic omniscience thing, I feel like it could get kind of in the weeds pretty quick, because the way
47:46: I see it is just two different worldviews, two different approaches to who God is and who man is, so I think that would be a difficult debate to have.
47:55: Yeah, it's not an easy debate, but the biblical witness is very, very strong.
48:04: I think we saw that, because if he had serious responses to Daniel 4,
48:10: Psalm 33, or anything like that, that would have taken up more of his time.
48:16: Instead, he was taking all sorts of shots about evil, and the purposes of evil, and people falling through a floor into a sewer.
48:23: I didn't even know what that was about, I'll be honest with you, and he kept doing it over and over again. It was purely intended to appeal to the emotions and stuff like that, so anyways, yes, enough on that one.
48:38: Yes, moving on, so I have a poll going on in the live chat of asking everybody what their favorite debate was of the three, and it was this one, and I try to do research on the ongoing debate between Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, and Protestantism, and yeah, it really comes down to who is the ultimate authority.
49:01: Now, y 'all had an interesting debate, because the actual debate question thesis is the
49:06: Bible teaches Catholic authority, dot, dot, dot, not sola scriptura, so he actually had the burden of defending that, so yeah, what were your initial thoughts going into this debate with Alex?
49:22: Yeah, well, what had happened was the church that we were working with there in Colorado Springs, their founding pastor had become a
49:31: Roman Catholic, and so I had said, hey, and I said, is he still in the area? He said, yeah. Would he be willing to debate?
49:38: Well, we'll find out, and so they approached him, he wasn't, they approached these
49:45: Inferno men, I think it was called, a Roman Catholic group, and I guess they've talked to a bunch of people and couldn't find anybody.
49:56: I guess they even contacted Catholic Answers, I'm glad that didn't work out, I'm sort of burned out on Catholic Answers right now.
50:04: I mean, four debates in just this year, and then they talked to Alex, and I had never heard of Alex when they came back, said, well, we've got someone who's willing to come, here's his
50:23: YouTube channel. I'm like, okay, and I fire up a video, and I'm like, no, this is
50:33: Rocky, this is Sly Stallone. I mean, he is, I mean, the accent, the voice, everything is
50:43: Sly Stallone. I mean, I'm sure people run up to him and go, hey, hey, hey, Alex, go, oh,
50:50: Adrian, we did it! I'm sure it happens, I'm sure that that poor boy goes through it all the time, because he sounds just like Sly Stallone.
51:00: So you have to sort of get over that at first, and so I listened to some of his shorter videos first,
51:06: I'm going, okay, he did a thing on solo scriptura, that's pretty much standard argumentation, used to that, and then the long thing that I listened to was a debate he did with an
51:17: Eastern Orthodox guy. Our debate was his first in -person debate. These were done online before, and that was almost a three -hour debate with this relatively new convert to Eastern Orthodoxy, a really sharp guy,
51:34: Luigi, I think was his name. Anyway, I listened to that while riding up in Flagstaff, not very far from where I am right now, just down this direction, but that was over a month ago.
51:46: So that gave me more of an idea of how he was going to do debate, how he was going to do cross -examination, what to expect along those lines.
51:56: And I, just listening to him, I was going, yeah, this guy seems well -prepared, respectful.
52:05: This could be interesting. And so we meet at the church that day and have a nice conversation.
52:16: During the debate, he is doing the work that you need to do in a debate.
52:23: He's taking notes. He's responding to what I have said. He's not running off on other tangents, and he's not doing cheap debating tricks, which
52:35: I've had a lot of Roman Catholic apologists do down through the years. He's actually debating me, unlike Jimmy Akin, who was just like,
52:42: I'm not gonna debate you. You're arguing over words. Let's go back to my slides here. And I felt just so,
52:48: I would never debate Jimmy Akin again. That was just so disrespectful. And so, well, I'll tell you something.
52:55: You walk into a church, not only dressed like him, but wearing a cowboy hat, and you keep it on while you're standing in front of the people,
53:02: I would never, I've never even crossed my mind to do stuff like that, but he did. So anyways, so he's doing the work that you need to do to do a debate.
53:14: He's writing fast. He's trying to, you know. And, you know, we got done, and he was just so respectful, and we just got along so well, despite our obviously strong disagreements.
53:29: There was no compromise or anything like that, but it was like, I just really like this guy. And that's been the main comment that I've gotten from everybody.
53:37: Rich mentioned that after watching. He said, I really like that guy. And then, and so I had brought some books to give to my debate opponents, and I forgot to bring them to both debates.
53:50: And so I said to Alex, after the debate, I said, well,
53:56: I found out he lives in Albuquerque. And I'm like, man, I go through Albuquerque all the time.
54:02: It's either I -40 through Albuquerque across New Mexico, Tucumcari, stuff like that, or I -10, the southern route, down through Las Cruces and into El Paso and into Texas, depending on if I'm going to like Louisiana, or, you know, if I'm going north, south,
54:18: I go through Albuquerque all the time. And I'm like, we should do some more stuff in the future, you know, since I travel through your area.
54:27: Oh, I'd be honored. And I said, you know, I forgot to bring my book. I have to go through Albuquerque on my way home.
54:33: This was yet, I went through Albuquerque yesterday. And I said, would we be able to get together for like lunch on the way back that I could give you the book that I wanted to give you?
54:43: Oh, that'd be great, yeah, let's do it. So the funny thing is, this is a very large
54:50: RV. And so I can't, I have to go through the truck lanes. We have a fleet card.
54:56: I have to go, I'm back with the semis because I'm not much smaller than a semi -tractor trailer when
55:02: I'm hooked up. And about the same height and about 10 feet shorter grand total, so I'm big.
55:09: And so we have a fleet card and there are only certain stations I can go to that'll honor that card and give us a nice discount.
55:17: And so I looked a place up in Albuquerque that I could go to and stuff. And so I sent him the address and he says, oh, it's about five minutes from here.
55:26: And he says, I used to work there. He used to work at the truck stop in security that I had selected to get together.
55:34: And they have a little restaurant there. And so we met yesterday and it wasn't quite two hours but almost two hour lunch.
55:46: And I think the reason that people are enjoying that debate it's been viewed almost 200 ,000 times now.
55:53: I think the reason people enjoyed that debate is
55:58: Alex told me yesterday, he said, he keeps calling me Dr. White. He kept saying, James, he keeps calling me
56:04: Dr. White. He's seven years younger than my youngest child. Okay, so there's that and he's respectful.
56:15: So he just keeps saying, I just know you as Dr. White. And he says, I've watched all your debates. Now, I don't know if he means all my debates with everybody or all my debates with Roman Catholics which is plenty in and of themselves.
56:26: But what I discovered yesterday was his understanding of what a debate is supposed to be came from watching me debate.
56:34: And so he's like, you've got to respect your audience. You've got to respect the topic.
56:40: You have to, you can't play games. You've got to make sure people understand what the debate's all about.
56:46: Where do you get all this stuff? You've got it from me. And so it makes perfect sense because we view debates the same way that we debated the way that we did and it turned out the way that it did.
56:59: And I just love that guy. We're gonna, we're gonna - He was very respectful to you.
57:05: I just, I appreciate that. And that allows for a better exchange. So maybe, did you say you are gonna maybe do some stuff again in the future?
57:13: Yeah, yeah. I was, I actually need to track down some churches in Albuquerque.
57:21: I used to have churches in Santa Fe that I would speak at and stuff like that. But I, I need to find at least one solid church in Albuquerque, maybe a group of them that will work with, for my side.
57:34: And he believes he has the foundation there in Albuquerque to undertake his side.
57:41: And yeah, I would like to, you know, add to some of my future trips if we continue to have trips after the election.
57:51: I mean, to do stuff with Alex there in Albuquerque or elsewhere, you know, he, he traveled from out, he drove from Albuquerque up to Colorado Springs for that debate.
58:00: That's not too bad of a trip, but it's, it's a, it's a bit of a hike. And so, yeah, go ahead.
58:08: Real quick, this kind of goes back to something we said earlier, but it is definitely relevant to Roman Catholics, especially, this is an apologetics question.
58:16: Catholics will ask for one specific Orthodox writer, Dr. White, who ever stated water baptism does not regenerate.
58:27: So I didn't know if you had initially, I know Cyril of Jerusalem, he talked about regeneration preceding the time when your body goes into the water, but I didn't know if you wanted to follow up with that question.
58:43: Well, it might be something worthwhile engaging when you've got a bunch of quotes in front of you.
58:48: I don't have anything in front of me at the moment, but like I said, in response to the last one, when you make that kind of claim, you're just showing how little you know about church history.
59:01: You're clearly dependent upon secondary sources. You don't understand historiography.
59:07: It's as bad as the Protestants who produce these lists of dates.
59:17: Purgatory was invented in this year and this was invented in this year. That's ridiculous.
59:25: For example, the modern Roman Catholic doctrine of baptism is based upon a number of more foundational assumptions and when you realize that, and this is my best example, no one's ever given a counterexample to refute it, but I point out that the first full length treatise on the atonement of Christ does not appear until the end of the fourth century.
01:00:00: So if you don't, and like when Eusebius is making reference to people and stuff like that, he never makes reference to anyone who did anything earlier than that.
01:00:09: So it's pretty much an established fact that you're talking at the end of the fourth century before the first person writes a full length treatise on the atonement.
01:00:21: What that means is the conversations and the issues that are going on in the church broadly where you actually have interaction are not on soteriology.
01:00:34: They're on Christology, theology proper. And when do you start seeing a change?
01:00:42: The plaguing controversy. Well, what's going on at the same time the plaguing controversy? The fall of the
01:00:48: West. You're entering into the medieval period. And once that, once Augustine dies, you've got a few bright lights in the next century but already the ability to communicate, travel, converse over distance is collapsing because the
01:01:12: Western Roman Empire is collapsing. And so it's really much, much later before you end up with the kind of conversation needs to take place where you have lots of people involved and you can have correspondence and stuff like that taking place.
01:01:32: So when people try to say, well, this is just absolutely universal in the early church.
01:01:40: It's like, well, wait a minute, wait a minute. What early church are we talking about here? Where do you, at what point?
01:01:47: What are they actually talking about? Is this a subject they're even addressing? And unfortunately,
01:01:53: I think, especially in social media, the vast majority of those types of claims, they're minimally secondary type things where you're reading jargons or something like that rather than actually dealing with church history as a whole.
01:02:10: Well, I just wanna encourage the audience, especially the questioner. I plan on having Dr. Tony Costa later on this month.
01:02:17: We're gonna be talking about baptismal regeneration because there are some really good quotes. The early church had, as you know, a baptism of desire.
01:02:26: That's the core of what we're saying. If you have a true faith, trusting in Christ, well, you desire to be obedient to all that Christ has commanded.
01:02:35: And there are some of those quotes. And like you said, there's so much discussion and disagreements on the nature of baptism for so many centuries.
01:02:45: And if anything, that alone says, hey, we should go back to the word of God to teach us these things.
01:02:51: And so on this debate, I wanted to touch on another thing before we start winding down. In this debate of authority, especially with Roman Catholics or Greek Orthodox, you talk about this all the time.
01:03:03: I've heard you talk about this with Dr. Kruger. But one of the main objections, and I can't remember specifically if it was from Alex, but maybe in some way, is you
01:03:14: Protestants, if you don't know the extent of the canon, what books belong in the canon, well, you can't know what is
01:03:20: Scripture at all. Yeah, I mean, that is part of his, he has a video on Defeaters of Sola Scriptura.
01:03:30: And you have to have the canon in Scripture for Sola Scriptura to be true. And I just got a really good idea.
01:03:41: I need to get Alex's address and I'll send him Michael Kruger's books for Christmas.
01:03:48: Yeah, that'd be good. I will, I need to do that. And I would be happy to do that.
01:03:55: There are certain people I've given books to, I gave him two books yesterday, signed them for him.
01:04:00: And there are certain people I've given books to that it was sort of like, well, there goes a fallen warrior. There's a wasted book.
01:04:08: But I wouldn't feel that way with Alex. I have prayed for Alex every day since our debate, and I'm gonna try to stay committed to doing that because I just like the guy a lot.
01:04:21: I really, really do. And only more so after we had lunch yesterday. And I really believe there are gonna be some things he said in that debate that he's gonna have to, he's gonna have to pull back from.
01:04:36: I think what he said about Theano Stas, he's gonna have to pull back from that because I've never heard another
01:04:42: Roman Catholic say that. And I don't think it's consistent with Roman Catholic theology to take the position he did.
01:04:51: And on that subject, I would just wanna challenge him because of the reality that Rome does not give you an answer that can satisfy that particular argument.
01:05:08: Rome doesn't give you an infallible canon of scripture until 1546. Rome can't give you an infallible,
01:05:15: Rome can't give you an infallible list of infallible councils. Rome can't give you an infallible list of infallible papal pronouncements.
01:05:27: There was a Twitter thread that I saw today, introduction to Rome and infallibility.
01:05:33: Timothy, sorry, I've done this program and the dividing line of my brain's starting to melt.
01:05:39: It's okay. It was an excellent introduction to the reality that Rome doesn't give you what
01:05:49: Rome would have to give you for that not to be a self -defeater for Rome as well. And so it doesn't understand the nature of canon.
01:05:57: And it's really easy for Roman Catholics to use canon arguments because the subject is not something that most people know about saying anything about in the first place.
01:06:09: And so, especially if you bring it up later in the debate where the other guy has 60 seconds, you can't give a meaningful discussion of how the canon of scripture is an artifact of revelation, not an object of revelation in 60 seconds.
01:06:26: Not to people who've never even thought about it. That doesn't mean that the Roman Catholic has a good argument there.
01:06:33: It just means that most of the people who are listening to our debate have never thought about these issues at all. So that might be a good subject for the future because he said a couple of things.
01:06:51: The one thing that everybody has commented on was if the
01:06:58: Roman Catholic Church ever approves of or practices gay marriage, you will know the
01:07:03: Roman Catholic Church is false. And I looked out at the audience at that point in time and I caught a number of people's eyes.
01:07:11: Because remember, I think I mentioned to you that Jason was in the audience. Jason Lyle was just a few rows back watching all of this.
01:07:21: And I caught a number of people and they're all like, whoa, man, how long is it gonna be before he has to really deal with what he just said?
01:07:34: Because it's plain to me that Francis is not going to do that but it is his intention to fundamentally change the trajectory of the church so that a successor down the road will.
01:07:51: So you really have to wonder. I was sort of sitting there thinking,
01:07:56: I may not live long enough to text message him and say, well, what about it now,
01:08:02: Alex? But we'll see, we'll see. So anyway,
01:08:09: I don't remember the question you were asking me. No, no, well, you touched on the authority. You basically said, well, if you put the shoe on the other foot, they don't have an infallible list of councils and so forth.
01:08:20: And what I've always thought too is it's a non -starter because they made a fallible decision to trust
01:08:28: Rome at the very onset. And it's like, yeah. Yeah, I mean,
01:08:33: I've made that argument for years and years and years. People say you need to have that infallible authority. You made a fallible choice to accept the claims of whatever group.
01:08:43: There's all sorts of other groups out there that make the claim to be that infallible authority. Not only the Eastern Orthodox, but you got the
01:08:49: Mormons, you got, oh, they don't count. Well, tell that to the millions of Mormons. It's easy to say that, but you made the infallible choice, to make that your infallible authority.
01:09:02: And one of my arguments, especially in regards to papal infallibility itself is, there has never been a time in history when you could know whether what the
01:09:11: Pope just said would be infallible 40 years from now. Papal infallibility to me is one of the most useless doctrines ever even propounded, because if Honorius could be anathematized by every single
01:09:28: Bishop of Rome for 400 years upon their becoming Bishop of Rome, they had to anathematize
01:09:34: Honorius as a heretic. Yet when Honorius was teaching monothelitism, there was no way for you to know whether he was being infallible or not.
01:09:41: There was no way for you to know whether he's heretical. So it's a worthless doctrine.
01:09:48: I mean, I see a lot of people today knowing that Francis is not in concession to an insistent tradition with the history of Roman Catholicism, but they hold that as their, yeah, but I know he will never teach the church wrongly because of papal infallibility.
01:10:08: And it's like, you mean because of a doctrine that no one believed for the first 1500 years of church.
01:10:15: So it's, yeah, it's a tough situation they're in.
01:10:21: And it's a tough time to be a Catholic apologist with Francis around. Yeah, it really, really is.
01:10:29: Dr. Lyle said the same thing because he was talking about the hermeneutical spiral. The more we are acquainted with God's word, it's perspicuous, it's clear, and we learn more the more we listen to God.
01:10:41: The same God that created Adam to have speech is the same God that can clearly communicate us how to have a right relationship with him.
01:10:51: His sheep clearly hear the good shepherd's voice. And so Dr. Wyatt, thank you so much for all your endeavors, for contending for the faith.
01:10:59: Something I wanted to ask you, now we talk about winning debates, right? What, you know, honestly, we preach
01:11:06: God's word and we trust that it will never return empty or void. But I wanted to ask you, what are some good tangible exercises, things that you do to help prepare for debates so it's as meaningful as possible to the hearers?
01:11:21: I try to get at least 30 miles on the bike and no, anyways, you said exercise, so.
01:11:27: Oh, yeah. Yeah, you know, that's changed a little bit over the years as I've learned more and more about debate and engaged in debate and, you know, today
01:11:43: I think I probably have hopefully better motivations and better goals in doing debates than when
01:11:52: I first started. But for me, what hasn't changed is you have to have the right long -term goal of the glory of God, the edification of God's people.
01:12:08: You know, this one debate's not gonna change the world, so, you know, you're not that important. You want to have respect for the topic, or why would you be debating it, you know?
01:12:21: If you're debating something that happened at the Olympics this summer or something like that, that's hardly relevant to the eternity.
01:12:31: So hopefully you're debating something that really does impact things, so to give you the, if you're gonna invest that kind of time in it.
01:12:39: But then you have to have your audience in mind and you have to recognize that coming, you know, amongst your people, you're gonna have certain people on your side that are not gonna hear a word the other guy has to say.
01:12:53: And you're gonna have people on their side that's not gonna hear a word you have to say. There's nothing you can do about that.
01:13:00: That is life in a fallen world. There are gonna be people, there are gonna be people who are gonna hear you saying things that you're not saying, and there are gonna be people on your side.
01:13:12: They're gonna hear things that the other guy, he's never said. So there are gonna be people who are gonna be unfair, they're not gonna listen.
01:13:17: I can't, there's nothing I can do about that. And then once you cut that portion off, then there's gonna be people on my side who really need help on this subject.
01:13:31: Maybe they're being tempted toward that other position, they're thinking about joining that, they maybe have family members who are thinking about joining that.
01:13:38: And then you've got some of the people who really wanna do apologetics themselves and they are wanting to learn and they wanna get out there and address these issues.
01:13:45: And so I want to debate in such a way as to encourage them. I've hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people now over 34 years of debates now that have been kept out of these, well, there you go, that have been kept out of these groups or have been equipped to bring family members out of these groups.
01:14:13: So that's always encouraging and that's good. But then on the other side, there are gonna be some on the other side who have ears to hear.
01:14:22: You've gotta trust the spirit of God's going to work and that they will open hearts and minds. And so lots of former
01:14:29: Mormons, former Jehovah's Witnesses, former Muslims, former Roman Catholics that have been,
01:14:36: I just, I can't tell you how many people over the years I've heard from, talked to, come up to me.
01:14:42: I was raised in Roman Catholic Church. I'd never heard the gospel. And the amazing thing is people who would be outside the country where they're not really around a really good active church.
01:14:54: I've talked to people who said, I am a follower of Jesus Christ today and the only thing
01:15:00: I had were your debates on YouTube. And it's like, wow, that's a pretty modern situation to be in because there wasn't a
01:15:12: YouTube. And when I started Alpha Omega Ministries, I can assure you, we didn't have cell phones. So you've got those folks and then you've got some people on the other side that are gonna hear you and it may start a process that eventually will lead to their being brought to the truth.
01:15:32: And so you have to keep your audiences in mind. And for me now, as I'm getting older, my goal is to leave behind a body of work that is going to be a blessing to the church 50, 100, 150 years after I'm gone.
01:15:47: You don't think about that as much when you're, my first debate, I was 27, I think, against Gerry Matitix.
01:15:55: And so you don't really quite have that long -term perspective at that time.
01:16:03: And I think that does impact sort of how you behave in the debate and how you argue and stuff like that.
01:16:09: So it's good, I think, to pick up that perspective fairly early so that you're not going, man,
01:16:15: I wish I had done that debate or man, I wish I had behaved that way in that debate there or whatever along the way.
01:16:21: But it's a learning process. So I certainly have learned a lot over the years that way.
01:16:27: But yeah, those are my goals. And so winning is, you know, when we would go out to the
01:16:35: Easter pageant, Mesa, and pass out tracts to Mormons, we'd have lots of Mormons that would take our tracts and spit on them, rip them up, stomp on them on the ground, you know, do stuff like that.
01:16:46: We called them fallen warriors. And, you know, we'd be walking along, see one on the ground, we'd pick it up and want to litter.
01:16:52: It would have footprints on it and stuff like that. And early on, I would tell my volunteers, this was not a waste.
01:17:00: This tract wasn't wasted. The effort to hand it out wasn't wasted because God is glorified whenever his truth is proclaimed, even when it's rejected, even when it's rejected.
01:17:13: And so if you keep that in mind, then you win a debate by clearly presenting
01:17:21: God's truth and doing everything in your power that God has given you the gifts and abilities to do to refute falsehood.
01:17:30: And if you do that, you do your homework, you don't just...
01:17:35: There are sometimes some Christian apologists, you know, will just jump into a debate.
01:17:43: And, you know, I just about lost it once where, and the guy's a good guy, but this debate starts and it's like, well, wait a minute, that's not the debate that I was here to do.
01:17:55: How did this get changed? And then he goes, that's fine, I'll do that one too.
01:18:02: And you could tell he was just, he wasn't prepared. That's not how you do it.
01:18:08: That's not how I do it. If someone else can get away with it, okay, fine, but that's not the way to do it.
01:18:14: You do your homework, you do the best that you can do, and then you leave the rest to the
01:18:20: Lord. A quick question here, born again, Ariane says,
01:18:26: Dr. White, how would you respond to someone like William Albrecht saying that Trent closed the canon, but Catholic answers say, no, they left it open.
01:18:35: Guys like Trent Horner saying that, what do you think? I've not heard Trent say that, so I couldn't go there.
01:18:45: Albrecht, what does it mean to close the canon? And the canon was closed when the last inspired word was written, that's obvious, and I'll be honest with you,
01:18:57: William Albrecht, he did something once. It was a few years ago
01:19:03: I was listening to him. He is so into this Marian stuff, so far beyond even a semblance of balance that it's pathetic, it's so sad.
01:19:14: And I remember listening to a presentation he did once where he was trying to find some evidence for some later
01:19:20: Marian dogma in this early material. It was honestly so contrived, twisted, that it made
01:19:30: Gail Ripplinger's New Age Bible versions look like a work of Oxford scholarship. It was that bad.
01:19:37: It was some of the worst stuff I have ever seen in my life. It really, really was.
01:19:42: So, yeah, I've not heard Trent Horn say that, so I'm not sure what he's referring to.
01:19:50: And I've listened to a lot of Trent Horn on the issue of the canon, because he's always talking about me on it, so I can't respond to that, because that doesn't sound like what
01:19:59: Trent's actually saying. Well, Dr. White, thanks so much for your time squeezing me in on the road.
01:20:05: I'm glad that you're back in Arizona land, right? So you're done with your trip here.
01:20:12: This trip is over. I've got till basically middle of October. So that's not that long.
01:20:20: Middle of October, we head back out again, and the next debate will be with a former ordained
01:20:27: PCA minister who converted to Roman Catholicism. And the thesis that he came up with is the
01:20:36: Roman Catholic mass is the only way to properly worship God. So that'll be in Mobile, Alabama.
01:20:46: And when's that gonna be? Pretty much the last full weekend,
01:20:53: I think it's October 26th, 27th. I'd have to look at it again. And then
01:20:58: I'm going from Mobile to Dallas. I'll be speaking at the Fight Last Feast thing on America's need to repent of its secularism.
01:21:08: And then I'm only home for like two weeks for Thanksgiving.
01:21:14: And I head back out to St. Charles where I speak every year.
01:21:19: This will be my 24th year speaking there first weekend in December. And then stopping by and seeing
01:21:26: Derek Melton in Pryor, Oklahoma. He's the guy that makes those incredible knives that you may have seen online.
01:21:32: Melton forged the pastor there. And so that'll be the last run there.
01:21:39: And who knows what 2025 is gonna be? I was gonna say, we're gonna miss you at the
01:21:44: Tullahoma Conference. You won't believe it, Dr. White. Guess who they got to debate instead of you?
01:21:52: I have no idea. Me. I haven't found. Oh, okay. I have to find a church of Christ advocate to debate me on it.
01:22:01: Oh, okay. So yeah, I got some pretty big shoes to fill. It's gonna be a big disappointment to everybody.
01:22:08: Well, I've been there two years. That's a long drive in winter weather.
01:22:14: That's a long drive in winter weather. If it was like March or something like that, it might be a little bit easier, but it's just so far to go.
01:22:23: And the way I travel now, you have to try to schedule a bunch of other things to make it worthwhile.
01:22:29: Or it's just really too expensive to do that unless you're making stops and doing stuff along the way.
01:22:35: So yeah, I'll miss it. I thought about trying to squeeze it in, but honestly, the main reason was it's 2025 and I don't know what's gonna be going on.
01:22:46: So I didn't wanna commit to something. And so I hope you can get there.
01:22:52: I hope the conference goes on. We'll see, yeah. But that'll be interesting.
01:22:59: Yeah, that's great. Me and Keith Foskey, we need to get some bow ties since you're not there, but that'd be a way to kind of give you a shout out.
01:23:09: Well, I taught Keith how to tie one. We'll find out how good his memory is. We'll see.
01:23:16: All right, Dr. Wyatt, well, thank you so much for coming to the Apologetic Dog. When you're close to Jonesboro, Arkansas, we'll have to have you at 12 .5.
01:23:23: We'll set something up. Can't wait, but you have a blessed rest of the evening. Thanks so much again. All righty, thanks a lot.
01:23:29: God bless. All right, see ya, bye. Everybody else, thank you for tuning in to the
01:23:35: Apologetic Dog. If you haven't subscribed, please do that. Please like, share, and hit the notification bell.
01:23:41: I have a whole lot more content coming up. I have a number of debates coming up. You're gonna wanna be in tune for that.