Four Phone Calls, Rod Dreher, Leighton MSNBCs

And good afternoon, welcome to The Dividing Line, we're back on a Wednesday for The Dividing Line Seminary, but today we're taking phone calls, we're at the top of the hour,

I announced on Twitter, sorry if you're not into the Twitterverse, but I announced on Twitter, we would take phone calls, four phone calls, right at the top of the hour, which is what we're going to do, which makes the four phone callers the elect.

So, they were chosen on the basis of computer technological skills and speed of dialing, so we definitely have some kind of conditional election involved in the choosing of the elect and that's just how that is, so you don't get to complain about that.

We're Manichaeans anyways, we've been told, so Manichaeans just sort of made everything up as they went along anyhow, so it doesn't really matter.

So let's get started and talk to Stratton, hi

Stratton. Hello Dr. White, thank you for taking my call, your ministry's been a great help to me.

Thank you, sir. Yes, I just wanted to ask about the kind of the role of how we should view the departed thing and the role now in the

Church, and my question comes from the fact I was reading, finally got around to reading Augustine's City of God, and there's a section near the end where he's talking about people being brought to shrines of martyrs and being healed from relics and things like that, and he even mentions that the miracles were wrought through the martyr

Stephen, and I know that there's probably a number of Performers who would take exception with some of these notions, and so basically my question is, what is the real line?

Because I think we would consider Augustine to probably be a man of God, and so I want to know what is the hard line on Saints and Prayers to Saints and issues related to this when it just becomes absolute heresy, or when it can be somewhat forgiven?

Well, I'd recommend the debate we did on that subject, Prayers to Saints and Angels, with Patrick Madrid back in somewhere in the 90s or early part of this century,

I forget exactly when it was there in New York that we did that particular debate. I think that was probably right around 2000 -2001, somewhere in that area.

To go into the various biblical texts, the concept of intercession, all those issues.

What you have at the beginning of the 5th century would be a transitionary period, you have the development out of the monastic movement that starts in the middle of the 3rd century, you have the development of hagiolatry, the worship or veneration,

Rome now makes a very strong distinction between those terms, whether there is a biblical basis for that distinction is one of the issues, it's certainly one of the issues the

Reformers brought up, there really isn't a biblical basis for that. Latria, dulia, latria being worship, dulia being service, in the

Old Testament especially the Hebrew term ahav means both, so there is no biblical distinction between the two, and I've often said that if you brought before Moses Roman Catholics who were venerating saints and angels, he would not have made a distinction between what they were doing and someone who was brought before him who had an idol or something along those lines.

So you're looking at a period of time there where you're starting to see some of the development that will lead to, especially what we see in the medieval period, the threads that begin to appear around the time of Augustine and especially, for example, the

Doctrine of Purgatory with Gregory the Great in the next century, start combining with other developments into medieval

Roman Catholic theology and eventually into purgatory indulgences, the

Thesaurus Meritorum, and of course the centrality that saints end up having within that whole complex of beliefs that initially started out of martyrology.

The martyrs, and we saw, you know, you saw how that sort of started in some of the thinking when we read from Cyprian just yesterday and what it would be like to be in a martyr church where there are many people who are either leaving this world or others who have been horrifically beaten, bear in their flesh the marks of their suffering for Christ, and there is this automatic elevation of their opinions on things, whether their opinions on things are actually to be elevated or not from a biblical perspective.

But it takes time. It accelerated after the medieval period when literacy really dropped for a number of centuries so that starting in the 7th, 8th century, you have the homily developing rather than a sermon, and it becomes, well, as someone once said to me, sermonettes make for Christianettes, and when the majority of your people are no longer literate and the majority of your priests are no longer literate either, that's when you ended up with a lot of the artwork developing, stained glass windows were initially meant to be sermons, this kind of stuff taking place, and that's when you really have the development of those doctrines that are just so blatantly and plainly contradictory to scripture, but they developed out of popular piety and things similar to that.

So, yes, you find in Augustine, he's a man of his age, his views on sexuality represent viewpoints of that day, and in fact, his eventual perspective on the relationship of the state and church in regards to the suppression of the

Donatists was certainly not to his, he didn't know this would happen, but over the centuries was key to the development eventually of something we would call the

Inquisition. He had no way of knowing that, but that's what takes place.

And so, when it comes to, you know, drawing lines, you draw lines based upon what someone could have or should have known in their particular context in light of their exposure to the full range of Christian truth, and you might say, well, someone like Augustine, well, he sees it all.

Well, not really. He's already living past the period of time where origin has deeply damaged the understanding of the exegetical value of the

Old Testament. He utilizes a tremendous amount of allegorical interpretation, primarily in the

Old Testament. This greatly influences his New Testament exegesis. He only learns

Greek later in life, at least some level of proficiency. He's only got the Latin, there's traditions he's already embraced.

So, that's why I suggest to everyone, what you do is you judge someone's teaching.

You don't judge someone's heart, especially someone who's dead. There is this one called the judge of all the earth, and he will do right.

So, I think the best thing to do is to trust that God is going to glorify himself and the salvation of his people, and hope and pray for the greatest number of people to be saved by God's grace.

See, what happens, in my experience, basically goes along these lines. Just a second.

What happens is you've either got the fundamentalist mindset that says, if you don't look like me, dress like me, and preach exactly like me, you're going to hell.

That's the extreme on one side, and there's a lot of people who do that. When we look back at church history, if you apply that, there's basically nobody in church history that was saved, because there were all sorts of different contexts in ancient history that would preclude everybody from looking like you and speaking like you on every single issue.

So, what happens is, especially former fundamentalists, when they start studying church history, realizing these differences and realizing the range of beliefs that you encounter, even amongst people that we would honor, all of a sudden now you go, oh,

I should be like that now, and they become flaming liberals or don't believe anything at all.

The problem with that is we obviously have significantly more information now than even

Augustine had. I realize that's why I've dealt with this a number of times. People who are saying, ah, it would have been much better back then.

No! We have the completed canon. We have all sorts of information about the original context that they did not have.

We have the Old Testament functioning the way that the New Testament writers indicate that it should have been functioning, rather than being turned into an allegorical book of mishmash, thanks to Origen and people who came after him.

So, there should be, I think, a greater standard today in light of what we have than would be applied to almost anyone in the past.

We have so much more light than in the past. And so, if someone today wants to start talking about purgatory, that doesn't make any sense.

There's no reason to be doing something like that. But someone in the 6th century that doesn't have the clarity that we have on so many issues, they may have, in light of the veneration of saints and angels and so on, veneration, not full -on worship, but the traditions that they had imbibed, they may have a broader expression of faith that we would go, that's dangerous.

And it was dangerous. We see what it ends up leading to in so many things. And so, yeah, it takes,

I think, some very serious thought and consideration, or we'll end up applying a really super strict standard or end up flying off into utter liberalism.

But those are my thoughts on it. Interesting. Thank you for your answer. Okay, Stratton, this is

Rich. I just want to let you know that I've posted the links in the Alpha Omega Ministries Twitter channel for you, to both the audio as well as the video of that debate that James referenced at the beginning of the call.

Great, thank you. All right, thanks, Stratton. All right, bye -bye. All right, let's talk with Nate.

Hi, Nate. Hi, Dr. White, how are you? Doing good. So I was just reading in Hebrew this morning, and my question is basically about how the word

Rehma is translated in verse 3 of chapter 1 versus how the word

Lagos is translated in verse 12 of chapter 4, how they're both speaking of the word, and they're translated in English the same way.

So I'm trying to understand what is the difference between the two Greek words, because I looked it up, and I'm not clearly understanding how they're supposed to be understood differently.

Well, okay. Well, okay, the way

I understood your question was a little confusing, but they're not the same, they're not being used in the same way.

One is called the Word of God, and the other is the Word of His power. So there is a difference between the two.

Now, can they be used interchangeably by an author? Sure, they could, but in Hebrews 1 -3, it's tohreimati teis dunameos autu, it's the

Word of His power in regards to He upholds all things by the

Word of His power. And so this is probably in reference to Christ's creative role, maybe taking us back to Colossians chapter 1, something along those lines.

That's not what's being described in Hebrews chapter 4, where you have the

Word of God being described as living and active and sharper than a two -edged sword. And in that case, it is in regards to God's ability to discern and to judge mankind in light of the warning of Hebrews 4 -11, therefore, let us be diligent to enter that rest that no one will fall through following the same example of disobedience.

And so they're two different things. So the author may be utilizing

Logos or Rhema because he's conceptually viewing the creative power of Christ differently than he's viewing the role of Scripture and the revelation of God in judging mankind.

If they were the same usage, then we wouldn't see a difference like that at all.

Obviously, there is a huge overlapping semantic domain between Rhema and Logos, and I would imagine that that would depend upon the individual author.

I know I'm violating all sorts of fundamentalist interpretational rules where first appearance defines all other appearances and things like that, but the fact is that Luke, Acts, Hebrews, very, very classical

Greek, there may be a stronger distinction between the two than there is in later

Koine, or it could go the other direction. I don't know, but it's possible. Or you could have an author that flip -flops between the two of them just as a matter of what sounds better, and there isn't any particular meaning differentiation at all.

So all depends, and I've never done a specific study of Rhema and Logos specifically in Hebrews or in the

Luke, Acts, Hebrews context or something like that to tell you if there is anything more consistent than that.

Okay, I guess that makes sense. Yeah, I mean, because when I was just reading verse 3 before I even got to chapter 4 today, it seemed like it was more like a declaratory statement where the

Son is declaring the creation of the world in verse 3, and then in chapter 4, it's like what you said.

Well, I wasn't... Yeah, but I think in Hebrews 1, it's bearing up.

Pharaoh probably has more to do with, especially because it's right after saying he's the exact representation of his person,

I would say a reference to his divine power in creation and the sustaining of creation,

Colossians chapter 1 would be the closest parallel to that. So that may be why it's differentiated, but I can't tell you for certain.

Okay. All right, thanks, Nate. Well, I think you answered my question, though. Okay, thanks for your call. Bye -bye. Bye. All right, let's talk with TJ.

Hi, TJ. Hey, Dr. White. Thank you for taking my call. I want to let you know

I felt that effectual calling from Twitter today. I'm very happy to be considered of the elect.

Well, and since you made it through, then you were justified and glorified, so...

So glad to hear it. Hallelujah. Hey, I got a question for you. I've been in a conversation with a

Roman Catholic friend of mine regarding justification, and one of the arguments he brings up,

I first encountered from James Akin, actually, from Catholic Answers, regarding Paul's use in Romans 4 of Abraham being justified in Genesis 15, and then going to Hebrews chapter 11, which he had indicated, had suggested that Abraham had also been justified earlier in Genesis 12, when he leaves home, builds an altar to God and whatnot.

I just want to get your thoughts about that, and, you know, clearly I don't certainly think that that indicates that there's a progressive justification or anything, but that's kind of where he's getting at.

Or a repetitive justification, which would basically require that Abraham was committing a lot of mortal sins, because he would be justified in Genesis 12,

Genesis 15, and Genesis 22, because they'll also argue that he's justified in Genesis 22, based on James chapter 2.

So there's a whole section on this, and I think it is in the chapter on Romans chapter 4, in The God Who Justifies.

So there is a lengthy, written, you know, discussion of this in light of the fact that, in essence, the

Roman Catholic apologetic at this point, and it is something that comes from Jimmy Akin and Tim Staples, and that group of Roman Catholic apologists have been utilizing this for a while, and we've been responding to it just as long,

Roberts and Janus, people like that, especially back when they were all in the same circles and before they all divided up.

But anyway, the problem is, this is an argument against Paul, because Paul's entire argument, if you follow it in chapter 4, and I'm not sure if you saw my sermon on Sunday, but...

Was not able to stream that one now. Yeah, it'll be up on YouTube before long,

I would imagine, while we can still post stuff there. But I did do 4 .16

through 5 .1, basically, at Apology on Sunday.

But one of the things I did mention is the issue of the blessed man in 4 .7,

4 .8, and the fact that in Roman Catholicism, there is no blessed man. I don't know if you've discussed that with a friend, or what answer these...

Yes, it's actually a point that I've brought up with him, as well, using your own material, which

I'm very thankful for. Right, but there really isn't a consistent answer. I mean,

Peter Stravinskis actually first said it was Jesus, and then said, well, I hope to be.

And if you take that perspective, then the rest of chapter 4 is not going to make any sense, especially verse 9, is this blessing, and that blessing is the non -impetuous sin.

You go back to verse 6, just as David also speaks of the blessing on the man to whom

God credits righteousness apart from works, and then he interprets the positive imputation in verse 6, because that's legitimi, that's the term to impute.

So, the blessing is a man to whom God imputes righteousness apart from works, and then he goes back to Psalm 32,

Psalm 31, the Greek Septuagint, and he defines it as the non -imputation of sin.

So, the positive imputation of righteousness is interpreted by the apostle in light of the non -imputation of sin and the fulfillment in 4, 7, and 8.

But then, here's the key, is this blessing then on the circumcised or on the uncircumcised also, for we say faith was credited to Abraham as righteousness?

Now, what is the apostolic example? The apostolic example that grounds his interpretation of the imputation of positive righteousness, the non -imputation of sin, in Psalm 32 is

Genesis 15, which is the second most commonly cited text from the

Old Testament and the New, thanks to Paul. So, if – so, he then says in verse 9, when was this?

This is – is this blessing then on the circumcised or the uncircumcised also, for we say it was reckoned?

How then, verse 10, was it reckoned? And then, you have in peritame, ante, an acobustia.

So, while he was circumcised or uncircumcised. So, it is a temporal argument.

If – so, if Abraham is justified in Paul's understanding of what it means to be made right with God, in Genesis 22, which has been argued, because it says the same thing in Genesis 22, he offers

Isaac, that's James 2. If that's the case, then his entire argument here collapses, because he was circumcised then.

So, Paul knows when he was circumcised, and so he's making the argument, this was done in non -circumcision so as to deal with the issue of the sign.

But the Genesis 12, let's keep something in mind, where is the first reference to belief or faith in the

Bible? Most people don't know. It's Genesis 15. There is nothing mentioned in Genesis chapter 12.

Now, oh, but Hebrews 11, yes, in going back and looking at obedience and things like that, you do find that.

But Genesis 12 does not use that term. Genesis 15 does. That's the introduction, and what's the key difference between the prophetic promise found in Genesis 12 and then what happens in Genesis 15?

I think this is really, really important for people to see this. I mean, this would be something to do big, long discussions on, but we're doing it in a phone call.

What's the difference? Genesis 15 is the establishment of the covenant, and if you look at it, and most people haven't looked at it, unfortunately, and when they do look at it, their eyes sort of glaze over for one real obvious reason.

Why is God cutting animals up and then a smoking pot is going between the cut up parts of the animals, and I don't get this.

And it's because they don't understand the covenantal background of that time period and what that's supposed to mean today.

This is God literally cutting a covenant and making a covenant, and it's in the context of God making the covenant that man responds in faith.

And Abram believes God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness. So, Paul then says, he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of faith which he had while uncircumcised, so that he might be the father of all who believe without being circumcised that righteousness might be credited to them.

Now, again, there's no crediting of righteousness in the Roman sacramental system. So, this whole section is just a little bit outside of Roman understanding in application of gospel categories, but the argument is with Paul.

And in fact, I've pointed out to people, you know, that's the kind of argument I have a feeling the

Jews brought up against Paul in the synagogues. And I don't want to be on their side.

You know, that's not a good side to be on. And so, the question to ask is, faith is first mentioned in Genesis 15.

It's the first time you have covenant promises that can be believed in. Genesis 12 is important because God talks about how he's going to bless the world, but he does not provide that covenantal relationship until Genesis chapter 15.

The apostle sees that as the key. He makes that the temporal marker of when

Abraham is justified so that the offering of Isaac does not become a quote -unquote re -justification, but a demonstration of the reality of the faith that he had back in Genesis 15.

And yes, Abraham is obedient to the call, and it is that obedience that is being praised in Hebrews chapter 11, but Hebrews chapter 11 isn't talking about justification.

It's not talking about imputed righteousness. It's exhorting believers in light of those who've come before as to how they're to live their life.

So keep the category straight, and the apostle doesn't end up contradicting himself. If you don't, he ends up contradicting himself.

That makes good sense. I very much appreciate it. It's a question that I've been kind of struggling to answer for a little bit now, but I will definitely get back to some of your material and hopefully find some more on it to offer a good straightforward answer just like that.

So I very much appreciate it, Dr. White. All right. Thanks for your call. All right. God bless you. Have a good one. I'm glad to see people having the good conversations, and that is a very important conversation to have, no question about it.

And okay, let's go to Seth in Georgia. Hi, Seth. Hey, Dr.

White. Thanks for taking my call. First, before I ask my question, I just want to say thanks in that back in 2011,

I had a crisis of faith as a Reformed Evangelical, and I came across on aomen .org

a blog post I think you made where you said top ten reasons why you shouldn't convert to Roman Catholicism were things to consider.

Yeah, I think it was top ten questions you should ask before you convert to Catholicism, or something along those lines.

Yeah, yeah. That was it. Yeah, well, I was very much on the verge of converting to Roman Catholicism, and I read that one night very late, and it literally was like the scales fell off my eyes, and the next day it was great.

Saved my marriage, saved my faith, because I was about to leave a, you know, go into a false gospel.

So I just, you know, a small blog post like that can go a long way. Yeah, yeah, and I've reflected many, many times on the fact that we live in a day where you can now minister to people thousands of miles away and years removed from you in a way that we never ever could before, which also brings judgment,

I think, in the sense of we need to be all that more careful about what we do and say, but it is a fantastic thing to be able to do that kind of stuff.

And I remember writing that article, and I remember posting it, and it was in response to something that somebody had sent in, and so you never know what those things are going to do.

So thank you for letting me know about that. I really appreciate that. Yeah, no, it's very, very pivotal. Thank you.

So my question is, and I've read various things on this.

I've watched a video that Doug Wilson tried to flesh out on. It's from the Westminster Confession.

It's chapter nine, section four, where it talks about the general equity thereof may require regarding judicial law.

And it just seems like such a broad umbrella statement that it could be twisted to mean anything in some respects.

I've watched some debates on it. What are your thoughts on that statement itself? Can you point me to some good resources?

I just can't seem to get a good lengthy explanation on this, not necessarily for a silver bullet answer, but just to kind of help me work through it, as I consider, well, of course, where I'm at in relation to constitutional law, just standard judicial law, secular law versus biblical law.

I looked at theonomy and, you know, was kind of toying with that many, many moons ago, but it just never really got a lot of traction with me.

So I just want to have a healthy understanding of the Christians' relation to, you might say, secular law.

And this statement, I think, kind of is leading me in the right direction for this section, but I just can't seem to make sense of particularly that statement.

So I just want to know what your thoughts are on that. It's, I don't know that it's, well, yeah, the reality is that there were a lot of, the reason that it's not a super specific statement is that the

Westminster divines were not absolutely unified as to exactly what it was supposed to mean either.

And so the problem when you, when you have many people forming a document, you end up using terminology that allows for peace to exist, but may also at the same time mean that there will be continued discussion and need for application for many, many years to come, especially if what you're writing ends up having relevance to people many, many years to come, which of course,

Westminster Confession has and does. And that is why you will find amongst many men who will profess a very high view of the

Westminster standards differing views. And in fact, you will have differing views depending on what country you're in.

British Presbyterians and American Presbyterians could have differing views.

The Puritan movement obviously had its own perspectives, but there were differences amongst them too.

So finding, you know, this is a situation where you can learn from other perspectives and you can grow in your own.

And unfortunately, what a lot of people do is they end up taking up sides, getting behind the stone wall with a musket and shooting at the other side, rather than sitting down and going, well, you know, okay, now

I've seen three or four different viewpoints. That really helps me to try to find a balanced understanding of where this is to be.

And this is very important today. We live in a massively antinomian age.

There is a natural antinomianism in secularism. The secular mind is naturally against God's law because it exalts man's will.

It exalts man's final authority, his autonomy. The entire gay marriage, gay mirage type of movement is an antinomian rejection of the general equity of God's law.

There's no question about it. You can see that type of thing. And so the problem is that most evangelicals are running head first into these cultural issues while being in churches that are scared to death to ever talk about this.

And with a lot of pastors who've never really thought through it either. And we could get away for a long time with rather surface level responses in regards to how we are to view these things.

And so yeah, if you're, you know, when you're quote unquote looking for resources,

I think what you're going to find is that you're going to be able to read a particular individual and gain insights.

In fact, I would read from people outside of your own background. Listen carefully.

You do not have to automatically embrace everything that is in a book that you're reading.

You can learn from it, file away information, and then maybe read the other side.

And sitting on the two different benches, shall we say, across the field from another, you can very often go, hmm,

I don't think that his argument's actually being responded to here. I get the feeling that what this guy's saying, he's struggling with that element of that guy's argument over there.

And that takes time. A lot of us may not have even the time to enter into all that kind of thing these days, but other people might have a lot of time to be reading these days.

But I think that's the best way to find a fair middle ground that at least is well informed.

It may not be a matter of having a middle ground. It may be that one particular side really does have it down, but just needs to be very balanced in the way that it's addressed.

Fundamentally, that's pretty much how I handled the

Holiness Code years ago when I preached the Holiness Code. I think it's a 38 -part series that I preached on the

Holiness Code and other related texts in the Old Testament. And I pretty much based it upon the assumption that God's law is good and just and righteous and no

New Testament writer tells us to simply ignore it. And therefore, we need to read these things because the

New Testament writers assumed that we were reading these things. These are the very words that they considered to be the words of God.

And so, we have to very seriously understand categories of prophecy and fulfillment of what was definitional of the

Jewish people as a nation versus what would be the general moral aspects of the law.

So, for example, in Leviticus 18, when God says the land is spewing the people out because they've done these things, he's talking about the pagan people.

People have never had revelation given to them in the form of Scripture, and yet they are held accountable for knowing these things.

And then you have the same laws applied in chapter 20 to the Jewish people.

And so, there is an element there, plainly, where God is saying, I have built into my creation this element of justice.

And now, I'm proclaiming it to my people in a very, very specific and full way.

And so, our job then is to analyze everything and not skip anything and not just simply go, we're not in the law, we're under grace,

I can forget about all that stuff. That doesn't work. If you seek to do it in that way, you will have an answer to the people who say, well, you shouldn't be wearing mixed clothing and all the rest of it, mixed fibers and the rest of it.

Well, what was the mixed fiber thing about? Why weren't you to harvest all the way to the edges of your field?

And when you actually start looking at the backgrounds of a lot of these things, you end up seeing that there are very extremely important valid principles that are contained in the law, and that's what the apostles do.

That's the type of application that they make. When Paul's writing to the Corinthians, he says, you know that having your mother isn't a good thing?

This is obvious. And that's in the law, that's in nature. It's right there.

So, I think what they were trying to do was to recognize that there is a general equity that is revealed to us in the word.

And there have been disagreements from the beginning as to exactly how to categorize what those things are and make application.

My concern is not when people discuss that and have debates about that.

My concern is when people are afraid to even enter the conversation.

And unfortunately, I see a lot of that today. If you a culture that is repaganizing and has lost any understanding of who male and female is, what marriage is, what sexuality should be involved and everything else, we need to have a foundation.

And the apostles assumed we had that in something that we basically stopped studying a long time ago.

But for a lot of folks, yeah, for a lot of folks, they're not allowed to do that. That's the path to some dreaded error out there.

But I think it really does need to be done. And so, like I said, as far as resources are concerned, to be honest with you,

I'm not sure what I would even recommend on the side that basically says we're not in the law and we're under grace, forget all that stuff.

I mean, Andy Stanley comes to mind, but that's what that's going to do for you. Yeah, you don't want to go there. You know, now this is going to really, really, really anger a bunch of folks.

But I can call him a younger man because his hair isn't gray and he's at least probably,

I think he's about 12, 15 years younger than I am. Brilliant guy that would be a good resource for resources because this is what he deals with.

But the Ezra Institute up in Canada, Dr. Joseph Boot, I'll bet you he would have an entire bibliography that he could provide.

I mean, his book, The Mission of God, would have a bibliography that would help a lot with stuff like that.

But bibliographies, good bibliographies are the best resource because they'll give you all different sides.

A bad bibliography only gives you one side, but a good bibliography will also give you the other stuff that they cited, even when they were disagreeing with it.

So, you know, when people ask for resources, I'm always like, have you learned to mine bibliographies?

They are really, really useful and helpful. Yeah, agreed. It's interesting.

You talk to somebody like an Andy Stanley and you bring up general equity and they'll just lose their mind.

And then you talk to a theonomist and they'll just lose their mind. And trying to stay somewhere in the middle to have a meaningful biblical response, yeah, it's pretty challenging.

So thank you for that. Okay. Well, thanks, Seth. Thank you for your phone call today. Yes, sir.

All right. God bless. Bye -bye. All right. The four elect have been chosen and glorified.

We're talking about wacky ideas of the elect in the past and the utterly invalid connection of said concepts to the

Christian faith. Hey, speaking of Doug Wilson, ah, cold water is good.

What? I'm sorry? Yes. We're going to need to let you know this.

We're going to try for next week for another sweater vest dialogue. We sort of had it interrupted due to, you know, weird things in the world.

What? No, that is not.

No, that's not. No, that's not going to work. No, no, we're not. We're not dragging Milo into any discussions between Doug and I.

I mean, though, I think it would be pretty cool if Doug and I were to have a dialogue with Seb Goldswain playing music in the background.

That would be really cool. He could do like Segovia stuff with me and some bluegrass with Doug and would sort of be interesting.

I hadn't thought about a soundtrack for for that. But, you know, because Doug's into he plays some instruments or something.

They've got some bluegrass band up there or something that he's part of. So good stuff.

OK. OK. Anyway, speaking of Doug Wilson, did you see the

Rod Dreher article today? Did you see it? Rod Dreher, well -known cultural commentator.

Well, you saw that Google got rid of Christchurch, their app.

And the only reason they could have possibly done so were some sermons that were preached either by Toby Sumter or by Doug or both, basically saying that, you know, how to deal with a plague and what plagues mean.

And Rod Dreher wrote an article. And I'll have to look at I was looking at this one,

I tried to save it, never know. It didn't save. So I don't know where it went, but hopefully

I can track it down again. But I don't know how many times

Rod had to repeat himself. Now, I really don't like Doug Wilson and I really, really, really disagree with his views.

And I really just think he's obnoxious and he's just as arrogant as they can come.

And he it's like nails on a chalkboard. He's just over and over and over again, all because what he was saying was this is wrong.

And in fact, what what Wilson has been saying on certain aspects,

I wish he'd use different examples. I mean, he just. Fell over himself to try to do damage control to what he knew was going to happen, because at the end of the article, there was an addendum.

I'm not defending Doug and I'm not saying I like what he has to say. I'm just because he knew what was coming.

You know, the Doug Wilson derangement syndrome knows no reasoning.

And so his point was once Google starts doing this.

We we will be kicked out of any kind of ability to communicate in these forums.

And that's. I've been saying this for a long, long time and, you know,

I'm I'm keeping track of all the people, you know, just what three weeks ago

I tweeted something about, you know, it's just really strange that this virus starts in the city where China has one of its main virology labs and the first doctor that warns about it somehow dies of it.

Yeah. And and people are like, oh, stop wearing the tinfoil hat.

The Chinese would never do something like that. And I'm just like, well, even at the time,

I was like, if you don't if you don't think the Chinese communists would kill a million of their people, if it meant that they would have the advantage in the world militarily, economically, then you don't understand communism.

You don't understand history. You don't know how many millions of Ukrainians were starved to death purposefully by Stalin.

You don't you don't understand communism. Communism is satanic evil at its core.

And yes, I include Bernie Sanders. You just don't understand it. You don't you weren't taught in school and you don't realize in the last century, 120 million people were killed by communism.

And I'm not talking about words, just a contributing factor. I mean, firing squads and gulags and starvation and mass murder.

That's what communism is in its essence. And so now, of course, now the stuff's coming out from the

United States government going, hey, that what the

Chinese were saying wasn't quite the truth. And we've known it all along. And in fact, we are warning about it.

And the guy that is the head of WHO is on the take from the Chinese communists. And and it's like, so who was wearing the tinfoil hat?

So anyway, a lot of that type of stuff's going on. But back to Rod Dreher, he's you know, we've been saying for decades that the intention is to push us out of the cultural conversation into the ghetto.

Do you? OK, history again. Remember what happened in Poland, the

Warsaw ghetto? Remember what? It would not be the first time that totalitarian governments have simply shoved people into a ghetto and then sealed it off and hope they just all die so they wouldn't have to waste the bullets to shoot all of them.

And that's what people want to do with Christianity on the

Internet. They want to purge the Internet of any pushback from a

Christian perspective, because we will not bow to the state. This is about bowing to Caesar.

This is about offering incense on the altar. And anyone who wants to establish the ultimate authority of the state knows this is why

China is chucking pastors into prison for nine years.

What was it? Two and a half, three years ago, I read the letter that the church,

Latter Rain Church, I think, sent to the government saying we will be great citizens.

We will pay our taxes. We will do our jobs. We will not steal.

We will be good citizens. But you aren't

God. And you are under the lordship of Jesus Christ. The state can't handle that.

State will not allow that. And so now what we're seeing, just keep your eyes open.

Don't accuse me of the tinfoil hat. Just watch. It's happening in front of our eyes, but we don't want to see it.

Technological totalitarianism. Technological totalitarianism.

That's the one place that's going to differ from 1984, though there was technology in 1984. Remember the screens, the view screens?

Well, that was the best you could do in the late 40s as far as, you know, foreseeing what would be coming.

But technology, utilization of AI, bio implants, bio implants into the brain.

All this is out there. It's part of the discussion right now. The utilization of genetic manipulation,

CRISPR technology, it's all out there. This is not tinfoil hat stuff.

This is a part of the general discussion. And a lot of people have been trying to say for a lot of years, the worldview that you bring to these kinds of discussions is vital.

Because yeah, we could cure some amazing diseases.

We could also create some amazing diseases. And we could use this power for good or for evil.

And who gets to define that? Because today, within 10 years, we've seen what was called good, now called evil and vice versa.

So it's that level of technology that really, to me, introduces a tremendous challenge.

Because we can go back and look at how the early believers responded to Rome and the demands of Caesar.

We can look at that. But Caesar back then did not have AI and did not have thousands and thousands of cameras all over the streets and facial recognition and the ability to forcibly inject stuff into your body to track you.

Differing times, as far as that's concerned. So yeah, seeing an app deleted, for a lot of people, it's just like, that's

Doug Wilson, who cares? Well, that was

Rod Dreher's point. Rod Dreher's, I'm loathe to have to defend this man.

Even though he did say he listened, you could tell it made his skin crawl, but he listened to Doug's sermon and then said, at one point,

I have to admit, I was really challenged by what he said. Because he basically said, we can't go back to where we were if we want to hear what

God's judgment means. So I got to give him credit at that point, despite the absolutely, the amount of cringing that he was doing.

He did listen and his point was absolutely valid. And it's a point that we've all heard before.

Have we not heard this all before, folks? Remember, it came out after World War II?

I'm just abbreviating it tremendously. The point is, as long as it's not you, then, well, you know.

So when we saw heretics getting closed down or people getting closed down, well, you know, that's not the rest of us.

They won't do that to us. And I said two weeks ago, at least two weeks ago, maybe three weeks ago now, the state will not make theological distinctions between us.

They're not going to go, oh, these are the very careful, orthodox, historical ones who do deep exegesis.

They don't care. It's not relevant to them. And so, yeah, look up the

Rod Dreher article. Laugh a little bit. You could just see him going,

I don't want to type this. And then he has to type it because it's just the way it is.

But look it up and then think about what. Yes. Well, but it's quite a fascinating,

I just posted it to Twitter. It's quite a fascinating story because that was the result of a phone call to the dividing line.

And that's where you. You posted this on Twitter? Why can't I see that? I don't know. Well, look at the, do you follow your own ministry on Twitter?

Yes. But it's right there on the Alpha and Omega Ministries top 10 show that James mentioned and folks can browse around.

There were actually a number of follow -ups. Chris actually had you on Iron Sharpens Iron to talk. That show had a lot of residual.

Yeah, here it is. That's from 2007. And then right above that, by the way, is

Doug Wilson, a brief response to Rod Dreher's defense of my right to speak titled,

I am not sure I have ever been damned with fainter praise. I told you,

I told you the whole time you're reading it, you're just going, Rod is about to vomit on his computer, but he has to say it.

We talk about the, we tease about the concept of I don't have to outrun the bear.

I don't have to outrun you. But when there's an army of bears coming after you, eventually they catch up.

Eventually you become food. And that's the thinking that we all need to start really putting into gear this whole, you're being paranoid, you're doing the tinfoil hat.

Well, first of all, just so that if there's anybody out there that is making designer tinfoil hats,

I would like to find them. That would be a real interesting thing. Not going into summer in Phoenix, no.

Well, I don't know. It could be very reflective. Anyway. No, it would be very hot. But your point about the fact that we are, they're taking new angles at getting us to bow the knee to Caesar.

They're taking a new approach, a backdoor approach to try to get us to, what's the harm?

What's it hurt? I mean, you all want to be healthy, right? And I can really see where this whole event we're still in the middle of right now will result in the mantra a month from now of, see, this is evidence.

The government needs to be in charge of healthcare. Oh yeah. Of course it is. Really need. And again, it's that cradle to grave mentality that eventually results in what you're talking about in communism, where we're ants.

You've got to recognize that the part of the ant colony is very expendable.

Oh yeah. Very expendable. And if that's how those who rule over us view us, then we're a thorn in their side.

We're a problem to them. You think about the stuff, the pictures that you and I saw growing up of German soldiers not wanting to waste bullets on six

Jews, so they lined them up and shot through all six of them with one bullet.

We have seen these things in our lifetime, and we're not going to be quiet about it.

That's history. That's in the past. Not going to be quiet about it. That's not something that people think about anymore. Our grandparents saw it too, and we're not going to be quiet about it.

Well, the saying is, the larger the government, the smaller the citizen.

The larger the government, the smaller the citizen. That's reality. So the more you want government to do, the smaller you got to get.

That's just the way it is. Okay. I have a whole thing

I want to get to here. It's three o 'clock. I do too.

But do you have a couple of commercials to, you could queue up?

Um, or just some, what we should do is we should, we should find some

Seb Goldswain videos and just let Seb, I'm sure Seb would let us just switch over to him picking and grinning for a few minutes.

We want to take a break and do it that way.

Some of these commercials are from 1999 or something like that. Yeah, but this particular commercial that I'm going to start with is very relevant to our day and time.

And so we'll just go ahead and, and I'll be interested in hearing what it is.

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I think same sex couples should be able to get married. The NAACP has passed a resolution endorsing gay marriage as a civil right.

This comes two weeks after the president announced his support for same sex marriage. Under the guise of tolerance, our culture today grants alternative lifestyle status to homosexuality.

Anyone opposing or questioning this today is quickly shouted down, called a bigot, a homophobe, a hate monger, threatened and accused of discrimination.

It's become commonplace to see people who take a biblical stand against homosexuality ostracized to the point of losing their job.

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Hello everyone, this is Rich Peer. All right, welcome back to The Dividing Line.

I don't know why I didn't open my office door. It was very, very negatively impacting the airflow.

And no, it's not hot in Phoenix yet, but it's a common what? I just,

I want to point out the reason I chose that particular commercial, the commercial for the same -sex controversy, there are elements in that commercial that we're talking about right now.

Oh, we are, especially because of the Obama thing. But the loss of our freedoms, loss of our employment, loss of our, you're running against the politically correct mantra, and whether you get the book or not, it, the fact that that was, that commercial was done, what, 10 years ago?

Well, the book came out in 2001. Yeah, but I think we did that, well, that's, he's reading,

I think, from the backside of the book. Yeah, yeah. So that's a, almost, that's a 19 -year -old message.

Yeah. And we're not saying we're prophets. No, no, we don't want to say that.

But, you know, there's been a red flag you've been waving for a long time.

Hey, folks, wake up. Yeah. And here we are. Here we are. So here we are.

I'm done. Okay, thank you very much. So we are going to transition back into a discussion of church history, and specifically,

I wish to provide a response. I'm not going to be doing this all the time, but I felt like this would be appropriate, even though the irony is that when

I respond to one particular individual, he says that's a red herring, and I'm avoiding another individual, but he can talk about me, but I can't talk about him.

It's really weird. But I'm talking about Leighton Flowers, of course. He posted a video, almost an hour -long video, after Monday's program where I discussed the fact that in our 2015 debate, he quoted a 4th century source as if it were the writings of a 1st century individual.

And he emphasized the authority of that 1st century individual, his relationship allegedly to the

Apostle Peter, as an element of the weight of those words.

I've pointed out that those words had nothing to do with anyone living in the 1st century.

They come from the 4th century. And what's interesting is what the response has been to that, because that has then cast some light upon Clement's epistle to the

Church of Corinth. And the amazing attempt, on the one hand, to say, well, don't look at me.

I'm not a scholar. I'm just bringing you what other scholars actually say. But I'm going to tell you what

Clement actually wrote, and that Clement's beliefs are more like mine than James White's, is in essence what was said.

In the process, the warning that I've been giving for a while now about the lengths to which this movement must go to establish its positions becomes patently clear, but also gives the opportunity of looking a little bit more at Clement, at how he exhorted the, not he, but how the

Church at Rome exhorted the Church at Corinth. And we keep talking about Clement. Again, we don't know who wrote this epistle.

We know that Clement's name is associated with the early leadership of the

Church at Rome, but the singular, what's called the monarchical episcopate, did not develop at Rome until about 140.

So if Clement is the writer, then he's writing as the secretary or as one of the elders for the

Church. It's not him having some type of authority. It's the

Church speaking here. Why does this become important? One of the things that Leighton's going to say is, red herring, red herring, red herring.

Every time I bring up the background information that makes it possible for us to handle this type of patristic information in a fair fashion, in a contextual fashion, allowing it to speak for itself.

He thinks that's just all a bunch red herring stuff. I'm bringing it up to point out that this kind of material is subject to abuse if people are wanting to establish a particular perspective.

But when I have to deal with this kind of stuff, I'm debating atheists,

I'm debating liberals, I'm debating Roman Catholics, I'm debating

Jehovah's Witnesses, Unitarians, Mormons, and they're all coming at this information from different perspectives.

If I'm not consistent and careful, if I try to twist something to go one direction, there's somebody waiting over here to get me from that direction that I'm twisting it toward.

That is not the case for Leighton Flowers or anyone in the provisionist movement. They are not engaging in it, any of these people at all.

They just don't do that kind of thing. They're not teaching this stuff. This is just part of how to promote the movement.

And that results in some pretty twisted stuff. So I have picked up the speed to 1 .2.

I don't know if anybody else is having this problem.

Normally I tell people to go to ccel .org to look up patristic stuff. It's not working for me.

Ever since this pandemic stuff started, I don't know if they're not going in. The website will come up, the search stuff doesn't.

So it'll bring up Clement and then it's a blank page. So maybe they fixed it, I don't know. There are other sources.

Realize the New Advent source is a Roman Catholic source, but there are various sources online.

And I have always highly recommended the reading of these sources.

And I always have told people there's the good, the bad, and the ugly. And so you can find all sorts of weird stuff in the

Shepherd of Hermas or in the Epistle of Barnabas and things like that. Yeah, read it and appreciate what you've got now, but that only makes a greater contrast with Diognetus and Clement and Ignatius and all the rest.

And like I said, there are excellent books. The old version, you've got

Lightfoot and Harmer here. You've got Holmes now is sort of the standard paperback edition.

These things are available in Accordance. They're available in Lagos. I think most of them are available in Olive Tree.

So you can get them electronically to have in your library and things like that. It's good to have these resources, be able to check them out.

They're normally original language versions as well, certainly for the Apostolic Fathers there are.

So for example, in Accordance, I have what I'm gonna be looking at in Clement in English on one side,

Greek on the other side, you can check the references and do things like that. So there you go.

So with that, let's run through this. I'll try to be brief. I'll try to be quick. I will try not to expand on too many things.

My temptation is to want to teach. I've said before, the first class that I taught starting in 1990 at Grand Canyon University, Church History.

It's a passion of mine. I have seen so many people. I have been,

I was given a passion for Church History by having a great Church History professor.

So by this amazing mechanism called the internet, I've taken the function of a

Church History professor for thousands and thousands of people. And it's exciting to me.

I now have students that have PhDs in Greek and other things, and I taught them years and years ago.

That is really a blessing. It's truly exciting to see that kind of thing. And I want to see it.

I want to communicate to you the same kind of passion that I have about recognizing

Christ has been building His Church. And we need to be very realistic about the fact that He's always used imperfect people.

And there have always been disagreements. And nobody gets it exactly perfectly.

And this is what bugs a lot of my fundamentalist friends, because I'm saying, therefore, you can't kick everybody out of the kingdom.

And then a lot of people are, you're just so mean to Leighton. Leighton is a really nice guy.

I don't like having to disagree with him. But he's imbalanced. I mean, the very opening music of his program is about Calvinism.

I'm so glad that we deal with so many other issues, rather than just, quote unquote,

Calvinism. But he doesn't. And the result is what it is.

So let's listen to what Leighton had to say. Oops, why isn't, I guess it would help if I clicked on it.

Some of the red herrings that James White continues to kind of plug in to this discussion by taking his attention off of Ken Wilson and focusing it back onto me.

So he does an hour -long response to me, accusing me of red herrings, because I'm talking about him. So that makes his response a, think it through, red herring.

It's not a red herring at all. It was perfectly relevant. And in fact, I'm playing the interview that he himself did.

He raised his use of Clement in our debate, and I respond to it.

And that makes me raising a red herring? No, don't think so. Now, as I talked about in my last episode, there are some pseudo -Clementine writings that are attributed to Clement by some scholars, but then others have brought questions to whether that should be attributed to Clement or not.

I would love to know what scholars you're talking about. Please tell me any modern scholars that believe that the pseudo -Clementine writings are actually traceable to the first century.

I'd really like to see where that's from. And I read from some of those pseudo -sources in my debate.

Which you said were not the pseudo -sources. You were using a secondary source. You were wrong.

Please admit it. I attributed it to Clement. Now, I think James White is perfectly within his right to call those out and to say, those seem like pseudo -sources.

We're not sure those are from Clement. No, it's not a matter of not sure they're Clement. You said it was the letter of Clement to the church at Corinth.

You identified it as a source that it wasn't. You misquoted it. Leighton, admit it.

Just come out and say, yes, I used an internet source and I was wrong. That's not what's in the letter.

What I identified was wrong. This is called damage control. This is called spin.

Okay, I'm about to insult you, Leighton. This is MSNBC. It doesn't change the fact that they are early writings and they are consistent with many of the same writings that we see from Clement and the other early church fathers.

And so... Oh, wait a minute. How do you know they're consistent with Clement? Leighton, honestly, in your next 57 -minute -long response,

I have a question for you. When was the first time you read

Clement's epistle? It's called First Clement, which is probably a first century, maybe early second century, but most people think first century letter.

When did you first read it? All of it. My gut feeling is it was last weekend.

That's my gut feeling. Tell me I'm wrong. Show me. Prove it. Tell me

I'm wrong. I can show you my students from 1990 what

I taught them about Clement. Okay, so when did you read Clement? I am that close to absolute certainty, and I'm going to ask you to confirm it.

You had not read it when you gave that quote for our debate. Yes or no? Please answer the question.

Don't call it a red herring. Answer the question. It's not completely discredited to look at those sources, but I think

Calvinists are well within their rights to point out the fact that some of those pseudo -writings are not necessarily from those who have the names on them.

That's a tribute to a particular author, something that was not necessarily from them. So James White, instead of focusing on Ken Wilson's thesis, which is where I really would rather the focus stay.

That's not your job to tell me what to focus on. Thank you. He instead talked about our debate and talked about my reference to Clement from the back and forth discussion that we had.

So if I'm doing something wrong, then why did you raise it to Ken Wilson when you interviewed him? I didn't force you to do that. That was two years ago.

We had had no discussions about it. I'd never given it a second thought. You raised it. Then I'm like, okay.

So reading the book, it has a brief little section on Clement. So let's, huh.

I remember. Yeah. I'm marking it to the thing. Oh, he says, I said that Clement was a

Calvinist. I don't remember saying Clement was a Calvinist because I don't say things like that. So I took the time to look it up and found out you were wrong.

Don't MSNBC this thing. Just, just be honest and say, yep. Yep. Yep. Yep.

Yep. I got caught. I was using the internet, didn't check my sources. And that's really all there is to that.

James White, uh, some of the errors he makes in this broadcast. So we're going to have errors documented. Don't find any in the rest of what we're going to play, but notice what he's saying.

Cause he's primarily for his people. Uh, we're going to, we're going to document errors here. One, he, he interprets, of course,

Clement much like he interprets Paul and the other new Testament, uh, authors, um, by assuming, in my estimation, he's assuming that if somebody uses the word elect or the number of the elect or something of that nature, that they must be talking

Calvinistically. Now, did I ever say that Clement was a Calvinist? I've never said it. I've never suggested it.

Anyone who listened to what I said, when I'm, whether I'm talking about Clement, whether I'm talking about the piss of Diognetus, what have

I always said? What do I say about all church writings? You have to let the fathers be the fathers.

I have demonstrated this in debate with people from many different perspectives for decades.

Why misrepresent me? I'm not saying he was a Calvinist. What I am saying is there's certain people out there that are promoting the idea that everybody in the early church had the exact same view on this topic and that's you guys.

That's not me. You're the ones that are making the argument and I'm going, huh, doesn't seem like this was the same thing you're saying.

Seems like this could mean something. Seems like someone writing a doctoral dissertation might want to look at those sections in the epistle to Diognetus.

Maybe you might want to talk about the number of the elect. Maybe there's something more to be said here. We're the ones responding to your argumentation and you're dodging and ducking.

And of course that's question begging. The debate, the point up for debate is what is meant by the authors of scripture and thus

Clement as well. Someone who was along there with the authors of scripture at the same time that they were.

What is their meaning when they reference the elect? Now, the one who was with them, that would be the real Clement, which would mean you just demonstrated that it's important to look at him, not somebody 300 years later, 200 years later.

Right? You just, did you catch that part? Anyway, well, you should have caught that part because it's sort of important.

They're just not being honest. Obviously we all have our theological baggage. We have our presuppositions.

We have the things that have influenced us from our perspective. And we all have to acknowledge that. Yep. And that's why you do exegesis.

Not only the biblical text, but that's why you handle patristic evidence with great care, because it is far too easy to read into people who came before you, a reflection of yourself.

And you know why I am loath to do that? Because I've had to debate all sorts of people who were doing that.

When I, one of the, one of the things that was echoing in my mind, I remember right now, I'm seeing the room. Well, before it went dark, thanks to certain

Alan, but I'm seeing the room in Seattle and I'm debating a man who's much more intelligent than I am.

John Dominic Crossan, one of the most brilliant men I've ever met. He, IQ off the charts, really is.

And I'm debating him and I'm sitting here, I'm looking at,

I can see my notes. I think I had them on a computer and the thought is going through my mind over and over again.

I had read it in a book, so I didn't develop myself, but it was so brilliant. And it was the reality that the people in the historical

Jesus movement and Crossan would be sort of the radical edge of that one, because they have such a disdain for the historical sources as to anything supernatural in it.

Whatever they, it's like, it's like when they're looking down a well and when their eyes adjust to the gloom, they think they see

Jesus, but what they're actually seeing is their own reflection in the water. And that's what these people end up doing.

They see in history, they fill in the gaps because they don't believe that there's a consistent viewpoint anyways.

And that's how history can be abused. And so we all have our theological baggage, no two ways about it.

That's why you have to have consistent hermeneutical principles and consistent historiographical principles.

Absolutely important. And so anytime you hear James White or others say, well, this person's coming to their conclusion because of their tradition or because of their presupposition.

Well, we could turn that around and say the exact same thing back to James White. We can say, well, you're coming up with your interpretation because of your

Calvinistic tradition. If I did not provide the stuff you call red herrings, then you'd be right.

I provide the context. I provide the background. I provide the consistent method of interpretation that I would use for each one of these sources.

You don't. You just throw it out there. That's the difference. And that's just a question -begging argument.

It's a very low form of debate. It's kind of like a playground, kind of back and forth.

Because again, any question -begging is anytime you can just repeat what your opponent says, and you can just repeat it back to them without changing a word.

You can know that's a question -begging argument. And James White uses that quite regularly in his discussions. And so what

I wanted to do is play apportionately. So I was just accused of using question -begging all the time on this program.

Anybody who listens to it knows that's a false assertion, or he doesn't understand what it is. In fact, the thing

I'm normally faulted for is going into too much detail to provide the very foundation for not doing question -begging.

So this is the pot calling the kettle black in a major, major, major way.

What is most likely the appropriate interpretation of Clement in the context of Clement's writings? And so let's go through some of that.

Yes. See, that's the right way to do it. I just point out there aren't any writings to do that with.

There's just one. Don't you remember the debate I asked you? You said that he had many writings.

What many writings are you referring to? You didn't know. I don't know that you know now. It's frustrating,

Leighton, because you're still going, I'm the one making the errors. And then you can say stuff like that?

It's not the way it was understood throughout Old Testament times. Even though Paul interpreted it that way.

Okay, so now this is fascinating, because he's actually going to accuse me of promoting apostolic eisegesis, because what

I have said is, isn't it tremendous when we get to have apostolic eisegesis of Old Testament texts?

So when, well, phone call earlier in the program,

Romans chapter 4, quotation from Psalm 32, you get apostolic interpretation.

You get apostolic interpretation of Genesis 15 -6. We can look at it. When was that in the timeline of Abraham's life?

How is this relevant to the doctrine of justification? Remember the phone call? It's coming up on, you know, an hour ago now.

So when we have apostolic interpretation of Old Testament texts, that is an inspired interpretation, and that is a vital, vital element of New Testament studies.

I have never suggested that the apostles are eisegeting.

In fact, I have defended the apostles against the allegation of eisegesis, especially in regards to what?

This is, again, where when you're a one -string banjo, that one string's going to wear out.

But I have defended apostolic eisegesis of Old Testament texts against Jewish objections in regards to the messianic prophecies of Jesus.

Michael Brown, I did an hour and 20 -minute long program going through Isaiah 53, but there are so many other texts where they're directly quoted in the

New Testament, and you have an apostolic interpretation. That's an inspired interpretation. Now, sometimes that really throws us curves, because then we have to wrestle with what is said, but the point is the

New Testament provides that light. That's going to be turned here into the idea that what

I'm saying is we should eisegete the Old Testament. He says, he's quoting, he's playing my opening statements from the debate, and so I'm pointing out that no one has interpreted election in this way that Augustine does, not in Old Testament times.

And then, of course, he's making the comment, well, Paul quoted from Old Testament. Now, remember, in his debate with Steve Tassi as well as in his debate with me, both times he says, well, these guys over there, non -Calvinists, they want to run to the

Old Testament. They want to run to the Old Testament quotes to see what they said there. So what I was saying is that what they're doing is they will go to Old Testament passages to come up with an interpretation that disagrees with Paul's interpretation.

They actually want to disagree with the Apostle. You want to disagree with the

Apostle? Or are you saying your interpretation is better than the Apostle? No, what

I'm saying is when we have an Old Testament text that's interpreted by an Apostle, I think it's good to go with the

Apostle. Yeah, yeah, that's, and I don't remember, I've never, I have actually honestly never listened to the

Steve Tassi thing. I just, sometimes I think it was just a bad dream, got some, got some bad beef that night.

And instead of looking at, quote, unquote, the apostolic interpretation. So what

James White is saying there, he did this with John Crammond in the debate on Unbelievable as well. Who? What?

Oh, okay. All right. Now, now, okay. This concept or idea that, that, that Paul is ultimately taking these quotes from the

Old Testament and he is eisegetically reading a new doctrine into them and saying, even though it didn't, it didn't mean this then when he quotes from it, he's, he's using his apostolic interpretation.

He's taking this quote from the Old Testament and he's using it to establish a new understanding or a new theology.

And that's ultimately what White requires that, that Paul is doing. Baloney. We can go on from there.

That's just all it is. There are some things are just so wrong, so completely misrepresentational, so straw man.

You know, I need, I need some matches. I need, I, you don't, you're not allowed. Go get it, man.

I think this is time. I think it's finally ready. Oh, you got it. You got, uh, latent, latent, latent.

Yeah. And this is another thing he just brought up recently in Twitter, pointing out somebody's, um, uh, inability or lack of ability, uh, is just a fact of the matter.

So if you have somebody who is being deemed a scholar or somebody that other people are referencing as their scholar or source, then just like in a, uh, you know, in a courtroom, if you, if, uh, if the defense attorney attorney puts up a, a, uh, a witness who is an expert in a particular field, then the, then the

DA can cross examine that, that expert's ability and their capabilities, because they're being put up as the expert.

Now, nobody's putting up the low latent flowers as the expert on all of these things. Which is why you're doing 57 minute long videos on these things.

No, you are putting yourself out there, sir, whether you want to admit it or not. And what he's talking about is latent flowers put out a tweet where he described

Augustine as a former Manichean heretic, um, who knew hardly any

Greek at all. Now, why do you think he'd put that out? Did you think I'm just relating, you know, the, the factual data?

No, it was an ad hom against Augustine. And my response was, you don't seem to know

Greek any better than Augustine did. I would drop that part. Oh, you're at homing me, whatever.

If you, I mean, there's no, there's no, there's no standards here. You can use ad hom against Augustine all you want.

But when someone turns around and says, you know, you might want to drop that because it's not really relevant and you're in the same boat.

Well, then you're just being mean to me. And well, I am the big meanie weenie anyways, aren't

I? So that's, that's sort of the, sort of the thing. That's what everybody on Twitter says. A decade of his life and Manicheanism, though very different than what we know as Calvinism has some similarities, like the concept of total moral inability from birth, because Mani, as I've heard it pronounced more regularly now by scholars,

Mani actually taught that, that because the flesh is evil and bad, that people are born in a condition where they cannot do good things or righteous things or good things whatsoever without some kind of a divine, effectual work.

Now, let me just stop right there. Just, just brief question. Is that a meaningful parallel to the reformed concept of federal headship and the fallenness of man in sin and total depravity?

What would you need to know to answer that question? You would need to know, are we talking about a theistic system?

Is there a God who has created man? Is there a revelation of this

God's will? Is this God holy? Why is birth, why does birth result in the necessity of some divine intervention for the human being?

The answers to all of those questions between Orthodox Christian belief and Manichaeism are 180 degrees opposite.

I believe that utilizing the argumentation of Ken Wilson and Leighton Flowers, these men would never be able to consistently defend the

Christian faith against the arguments of those who try to draw parallels of every aspect of Jesus's life to Greek religion,

Roman religion, and Egyptian religion, because they're using the same kind of argumentation. They ignore categorical differences.

So, if you buy the Osiris, Horus, Dionysus, Mithra, all that stuff, then you're going to buy this too.

That's why I can see the fundamental problem is because we're dealing with it over here. We're dealing with you see that Osiris and Horus and Dionysus was sewn into the thigh into virgin birth.

It's absurdity. Well, there's sort of a connection there. It's similar. No, it's not.

It's not similar at all. Encapsulating and capturing portions of light from the light realm that were captured when the primeval man was defeated by the darkness, but he did it purposefully, but then he was raised up, but parts of his armor were left and the light is now in the darkness.

And so now that's captured in Adam and Eve, which are part of the creation, but they are evil because they do with our matter and capturing light particles.

Nothing. If you cannot see that, that absolutely destroys the thesis. Well, we can't see the categorical distinction.

I don't know what to do for you. I really don't. That's similar to Calvinism.

Now, we're not trying to say that what Manicheanism teaches and all the forms of Manichean weird Gnostic backgrounds and conclusions are exactly equal with Calvinism.

We're just simply saying, this is one aspect of Manicheanism that is similar. Similar, but it's not exactly equal.

We admit it. How do you bridge the fundamental chasms that exist in the definitions of categories?

You are not thinking categorically. You're not thinking logically. You're not thinking rationally. God created the universe good.

Adam was not an evil creature at his creation. And Adam is not encapsulating some particle of light that needs to be digested and released to the

Milky Way. And to draw those parallels is absurdity to the nth degree.

Okay. Now first, if you don't see the irony in that, let me point it out to you. Okay. Because what an ad hominem is, is trying to ignore or dismiss a person's argument based upon a flaw in their character or their ability.

Okay. So based upon my flaw, my inability to do Greek very well live and to pronounce

Greek very well live, though I do consider myself trained to do Greek in writing, but not in speaking.

That's one of the reasons I refrain from speaking Greek very often, because I know I'm going to mispronounce words. But the fact that I have a lack of ability in that area, therefore,

I'm going to dismiss the argument that was just made. That's an ad hominem. That's dismissing the argument. Okay. And so he is dismissing my argument.

No, I'm pointing out that that is what you're doing to Augustine. That's what you're doing to Augustine.

And you can't see it. And so when I turn the mirror on you, oh, you're such an ad hominem!

Well, look in the mirror, Leighton. You're doing it all the time. The earliest church, again, if I was trying to make a point that's not already been established by hundreds upon hundreds of scholars before me, then you might have a point.

But it is an accepted and known fact that the earliest church fathers taught a libertarian form of the freedom of the will, and only until Augustine do we see anything like that change.

Augustine's the first So any evidence against the thesis is just automatically dismissed.

Your thesis is your ultimate authority. And so when anyone presents anything in Clement or Diognetus or anything else that is against your thesis, when people provide you over and over again with quotes from people who lived before Augustine, who used

John 3, 5, or talked about faith as a gift, as has been done, dismiss it.

Just dismiss it. Just ignore it. It's not there because it's been established. Well, there's really no reasoning with that, but we will keep demonstrating that as time goes on.

Ken Wilson's dissertation goes through a lot of these quotes, and I'm looking forward to when Leighton gets to those because I think those are devastating to what he's trying to claim because they clearly show

Gnostics and Manichaeans using the very verses that Calvinists use to establish their deterministic philosophies.

And you have early church writings, like Ignatius and Irenaeus and others, who are repudiating that interpretation.

Now, once again, we have the uh -oh, Gnostics used your verses, so therefore you're wrong argument.

I am, again, I'm sorry, but plainly these people do not engage the rest of the world's religions.

They do not engage any, this is their one thing, and so they can use this kind of argumentation and not realize that it can be used against them over and over and over again.

They don't debate Unitarians. The Unitarians could look to certain people in early church, say, look, you're using the same verses.

You're a bad person. Ha ha ha. Since they don't do that, then they don't see that this is foolishness on a level that is really, really difficult to comprehend.

Eventually, where you get to, I'm going to look at something, I really want to get to the

Clement quote, but I did want to just point out that in looking at, he just said that Ignatius argues against these very interpretations.

I don't think he's read pages 42 and 43 of the dissertation because the only thing that is, the discussion of Ignatius involves,

I don't know, three, four sentences and had nothing to do whatsoever. It's quotation of a single source saying that it seems like Ignatius believed in some sort of libertarianism or something like that.

It's extremely facile. It's not even close to a meaningful statement about Ignatius.

It's that shallow. Where are you getting this from? Because it's not coming from here.

So where'd you get it from? Well, that was something else, but yeah.

So where are you getting it from, Leighton? We're going to have to go through Ignatius now, too? These are not things that would be a part of Leighton Flower's world because it doesn't debate

Roman Catholics on the subject of papacy on the basis of early church history. There's just things not relevant to our point of contention.

I mean, those are red herrings with regard to our point of contention. So when I point out that he's making fallacious connections, bad arguments, ignoring context, it's all red herring.

All red herring. He's never had to deal with these sources in argumentation in any other field.

This is the one thing. It's all provisionism. It's just the one thing. And so we can forget about all the rest of that stuff.

It's all just red herrings. Do not confuse us with all that other stuff because that would make us have to interpret things in a balanced way.

And that's not fun. He's not even aware. And I don't know how you could have read the letter. And I'll be honest with you.

I do not believe that in 2015, Leighton Flowers had ever read Clement's Epistle.

It's called First Clement, Clement's Epistle. Again, completely irrelevant to the point of the debate. Completely irrelevant.

Remember, this is a quotation in his opening statement. It's typed out.

It has been timed. It is encased in plastic, but it's irrelevant.

So whether you're accurate in your research, whether you read original sources, or whether you're just throwing stuff out you got from a

Google search, it's completely irrelevant and it's a red herring. You're trying to distract stuff.

All these things are called red herrings. They're just focusing upon superfluous side issues.

Yeah, whether it really was the first century guy who was close to the apostles like you said it was, or some guy hundreds of years later, it's just a red herring.

Don't worry about it. Dealing with the fact that Clement and or possible early church writings attributed to Clement were clearly, as Calvin said, extolling the ability of the human will.

There were lots of people who extolled the power of the will. There were lots of heretics in the early church too.

I would encourage you, Leighton, you got some time at home. Read The Shepherd of Hermas tonight.

It's not short, but read The Shepherd of Hermas tonight. And if it doesn't make you feel uncomfortable, then that's going to tell me a lot.

But read it, because I think you're going to go, that's weird.

Doesn't seem like this guy was really familiar with a lot of New Testament. Read it.

Does that make it right? I'm well aware of the wide range of perspectives.

That's my whole point. You're the one, you guys, the one saying it was a narrow little range and there wasn't any disagreement.

And I'm saying, what? Really? Okay. All right, here we go.

Getting to the good part here. The elect or chosen of God. That's the real point of contention.

You can't, again, question bag and just assume elect means what you think it means. You have to establish that with argumentation.

And Leighton doesn't take the time to do that here. He might do it elsewhere, but he doesn't do it here. And that's what I'm pushing back on. So how does one become elect?

Now, this is in reference to the quotation that I gave from Clement on the program,

I guess on, I think on Monday, I think is when it was. And I had quoted the number of the elect.

Remember, it was from right at the beginning of Clement. I gave the quotation that the number of the elect might be saved.

And I said, now, I would expect that if you're seriously analyzing, now, if you're just providing surface level,

I didn't see it, move on type stuff, fine. But how has Wilson's dissertation been presented to us as the be all end all of the highest scholarship ever produced on the early church?

I read all of them and all of them viewed it in this way. No, they didn't.

No one's ever said that. And there's the documentation against that is not even questionable.

So we dare to go, you know, if you're, if you're going to talk about, about Clement, then you might want to consider this.

You might want to consider that. You want to talk about Diogenesis. Well, there's a lot of stuff in here that you skipped right over.

It didn't seem to note. And that's what we're talking about here. That's why he doesn't, doesn't establish what elect means.

The point is who talks about the number of the elect. You guys don't. You guys don't.

And it's going to be explained here in just a moment why that is, because you don't believe

God elects anybody. God elects to do something. He doesn't elect anyone in your system.

There is no number of the elect in your system. So it is perfectly logical to ask the question that if you think they were a bunch of traditionalists like you, then why did they speak like this?

I'm not just assuming something. I'm saying, hmm, number of the elect means there is a specific number to the elect.

Who gets to decide that? Is it possible given how often Clement quotes from, um, who is that guy?

Oh, Paul, that that might be the background? Might be.

Might be. In fact, I think it probably is. Someone over another.

Okay. So why did God choose to save James White and not, uh, the latest atheist that he has debated who may go on to be with the

Lord? Okay. So the, the last atheist. What'd I do? Kill him or something? Knocking off my atheist opponents or whatever.

I don't know what that has died. Why did God choose James White and not that person? Well, the Calvinist answer to that question is, well, we don't know.

No, the Calvin deep breaths.

I need to find some essential oils. Could we get Karen to set for Karen?

I, I feel sorry for any woman named Karen today who sells essential oils because was it

Babylon B that started that? I think, I think Babylon B might be, be accountable, um, for the, the attacks upon Karen, the essential oil salesman.

But, uh, I need some, I need some essential oils right now. Just, just make everything happy again.

Uh, what were we talking about? Oh yeah. Um, the man claims to be a former

Calvinist, but he cannot for the life of him accurately represent what he allegedly once believed.

Can't do it. He's got a religious, uh, compunction against doing it.

Can't do it. Why is one chosen over another?

You see, provisionism is so man -centered that it defines everyone, even our views in light of their limited categories.

That's obvious. That's that we've, we've documented this for years now and it's only getting worse.

It's not getting better. You say, we don't know. If you mean we don't know, as in some earthly knowledge of mankind, that's one thing.

But the answer that Reformed theology gives is found in Ephesians chapter one.

The grounds of the choice in Romans nine, which are you supposed to have debated once?

Um, Ephesians chapter one is God's will.

The goodness of God's will resulting in the praise of his glorious grace.

So it's within God and God does not have to reveal this to us, but it's not a, oh, we don't know.

It's a God. It's a God thing. It's for his glory.

And he doesn't have to reveal that to us, but there is a reason. And what we do know is if it's based upon what man does, then

God's a respecter of persons and grace is no longer free. And I think that's what you're going to end up saying by the time we get done with this.

The scary thing about this is I think Leighton Flowers ended up saying in this very presentation that the elect are those that love

God. They love God, therefore they become the elect. As if the rebel sinner has the ability to take out a heart of stone, give himself a heart of flesh and love

God. And you know why that really bothers me? Because that's what the book of Mormon says, isn't it?

What does the book of Mormon say? Um, what did

I do? Put it back? Oh, yeah. I put it back. Well, I've got the big one down there, but that weighs 47 pounds. Nope.

No, that's an open Bible. It's the same cover, but what does the book of Mormon say? If you shall love the

Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, then is his grace sufficient for you?

I don't know how to differentiate that from what Leighton Flowers is about to say about the epistle to Clement and how he's going to interpret chapter 59.

That's frightening. That's frightening for Leighton. We should pray for him because he's going way, way out there.

Well, the Calvinist answer to that question is, well, we don't know. It's not revealed to us. It's a mystery. And it's according to God's secret counsel.

We don't know. And we just know this. Calvinists say they know this. It has nothing to do with us personally.

It has nothing to do with our faith, our choices, our behaviors, our actions. God's election is unconditionally done.

It's an unconditional election. And so it is completely without regard to the person's decisions, actions, their faith, anything of that nature.

It's eternal. It is God's activity in eternity. It is to his glory alone.

And that part is true. That's exactly what it has to be for grace to be free.

Not deserved, not earned. So let's see what the other option is.

We as provisionists, we would say this instead. We'd say, God has graciously choosed us to save those who put their trust in him. Now, God has graciously—let me, let me slow it back down here.

I want you to hear this. I want you, you know, we want to accurately represent here— —of that nature. Now, we as provisionists, we would say this instead.

We'd say, God has graciously choosed us to save those who put their trust in him. I think there was a mispronunciation of something in there that sounded like,

God graciously chooses to save those who put their trust in him.

I think that's, I think that's what it says. So their trust results in their being chosen?

Okay, so if God knows who's going to do that, then the number of the elect would be fixed.

So I'd like to know from, from Leighton, when

God created, was the number of the elect fixed? In God's mind. I, I, I think it's, that's a fair question, isn't it?

I think it's a fair question. But there's more to it. Okay. So we, we don't believe that God unconditionally elects people to be saved.

We believe that God graciously chooses to save those who freely choose to put their trust in him. God's election to send the gospel to all people is not conditioned upon their good or bad things that they do.

Catch that? God's election to do what? To send the gospel to people.

It's, it's to, to act. It's to do something, to provide something.

It's not actually a choice of anyone. There is no free, positive act of God in this matter.

He sends a gospel. He chooses not a person, but an act.

It's impersonal than that. It's to, it's choose to act. And that act only provides.

May have provided for nobody, I guess. I don't know. Where there is a, again, as a

Southern Baptist, he can't escape this, but his system really doesn't have room for it. I mean, to me,

Leighton Flowers needs to seriously consider leaving the Southern Baptist Convention and becoming an open theist.

He would finally find his people if he were to, if he were to do that.

It's, in other words, unconditional of their morality, but it is conditioned upon their faith in him. Now, this is the distinction that sometimes

Calvinists are not very good at pointing out, and this is what I'm trying to point out to you. Yeah, so we somehow have a duty to point out this distinction that you're, okay, all right, fine.

So that you see the difference. When we can talk about somebody being saved unconditional of their morality, the good or bad they do, because there's good and bad people, both in heaven and hell, relatively speaking.

Do you catch that? Now he said, relatively speaking, but there are good and bad people in heaven and hell, relatively speaking.

I, okay, I'm going to try my best to interpret this in the least heretical possible way, because obviously the only people in hell are bad people.

And the only people in heaven are people who have the righteousness of Christ. Okay. There aren't, it's not a mixture.

It's not good and bad. I think what he's saying is that there are people in hell who on a human moral level were better than some people who are in heaven who've been saved by grace.

I think that's what he was trying to say, but in the process muddled it so badly, it became a really bad statement.

Everybody in hell is the enemy of God. Everybody in heaven is in love with God. Why the one over the other?

See, that's where we differ. The ones who are in heaven are saved by grace. And by grace, they're free from their slavery.

They're given a new heart and they're changed from God -haters to God -lovers. They are not saved because they were

God -lovers to begin with. That's the big difference. Big, big, big difference. There are people who live more moral lives in hell than even some who may be in heaven who live less moral lives.

Okay. So it's not about morality, the good and bad they do. So you can say someone is saved unconditional of their moral living as in comparison with somebody else who ends up in heaven or in hell.

Okay. So that's the condition. The condition is not the morality, the good or bad they do. So what is the condition? Well, we just don't know what it is if you're a

Calvinist. We just don't know what it is if you're a Calvinist. What is the condition? No.

The condition is the finished work of Jesus Christ upon the cross of Calvary. Every Calvinist knows that. Every Calvinist knows that the only condition that brings one into the presence of God is union with Christ that brings you his righteousness.

Otherwise, you will not stand before a holy God. You said you were a Calvinist once and yet you can never ever represent us correctly.

At least I play you. What we would say, no, we know what the condition is.

It's faith. Okay. So they say it's unconditional. We say the condition is faith. And so we still do believe it's not based upon the good or bad that you do, i .e.

your morality, but it is conditioned upon faith. And Calvinists say it was not conditioned on the good or bad you do. And it's not conditioned upon faith, the election.

And that's what we're pushing back on. We're saying, yes, it's not conditioned upon the good or bad you do, but it is conditioned upon your faith in Christ. And that's the difference between our two worldviews.

So now that we know the two differences, two sides. Okay. All right.

So obviously I went long and I have five minutes.

The problem is the five minutes are where he's reading from Clement. So it's only

Wednesday and tomorrow I will show you what he does.

If you'd like to read where he goes, let me, let me read it. Let me read it to you real quick.

Grant us Lord to hope on your name, which is the primal source of all creation and open the eyes of our hearts that we may know you who alone are highest among the high.

You are holy abiding among the holy. You humble the pride of the proud. You destroy the plans of nations.

You exalt the humble and humble the exalted. You make rich and make poor. You kill and make alive.

You alone are the benefactor of spirits and the God of all flesh looking into the depths, scanning the works of humans, the helper of those who are in peril, the savior of those in despair, the creator and guardian of every spirit.

You multiply the nations upon the earth. And from among all them, you have chosen those who love you through Jesus Christ, your beloved servant, through whom you instructed us, sanctified us and honored us.

So here's going to be the argument. And from among all of them, you have chosen those who love you.

So you love God. He chooses you. But the actual statement is you have chosen those who love you through Jesus Christ.

Oops. Pelagianism really messes with the brain.

It really messes with the reading ability too, as we will see. But I will pick up with that after we get done with Seb Goldswain, because it's only

Wednesday. Is it Wednesday? Okay. It's more

Wednesday or not. Thank you. I don't know. Yeah, there we go. What?

I don't know. I've lost. It's the third dividing line. The first one was an hour and a half.

Yesterday was two hours. Today's two hours. We're up to five and a half hours so far. The question is, did you choose

Wednesday or did Wednesday choose you? It's a good question. Good question.

But the question really is, will I be able to see the Milky Way tonight to know where the light particles are going and where they're going to the moon?

Nevermind. Because we're Manichaeans. Oh, and by the way, I forgot one last thing.

Wait, one last thing. Layton, you think that it's an argument against Augustine that he was a former

Manichaean and didn't know Greek well. You're a former

Calvinist, who you now say that means you were once a

Manichaean and you don't know Greek well. You and Augustine are like brothers.

That's why you don't want to use that kind of argumentation. That's why you don't want to use that kind of argumentation. So we'll be back tomorrow.

Don't forget, Seb Goldswain is going to join with us. We hope. I mean, internet allowing us and no solar flares, which haven't been going on for a long time because we're in a solar minimum.

But anyways, we will try to be with you tomorrow at our regular time. I might have to go early just so that he doesn't have to be up till like who knows when in the morning.